From balmy Vũng Tàu, I offer you these ydel thoghts. Even Chaucer fades. Words dies even as we speak. Most stories are never told, much less heard. Bits of America, improved, farcical or cheesed up, will persist thousands of miles from its spectacular death.
Linh
P.S. Bonnard was caught fixing one of his paintings already hung in a museum. Revisions can be endless. Book versions of my articles are generally better.
This paragraph will be added to book version of article:
After a nap during which I dreamt of a nondescript Paris with a Chinese sign and no French, I woke to remember we also talked about the legendary performance artist Tehching Hsieh, test wise Taiwanese students being rather dull, snitching as common even in Taiwanese prisons and how weird that even the most educated Taiwanese visit fortune tellers. One bizarre technique involves a mouse. Yu Mei found a YouTube video to show me.
For decades I was a Tai Chi student and the most impressive teacher I ever had was a Taiwanese ex soldier settled in Boston. He taught both Kung Fu and Tai Chi, the latter as a fighting art which is quite rare in the West where it's valued more for meditation or stress reduction. J-M Yang had a slew of instructional books and videos to augment his hands on teaching approach. Quite the successful entrepreneur, he was a good orator who could entertain w/ speculation and banter about fringe subjects like crypto-zoology. During one sit-down break, he noticed I was wearing an outrageous World Weekly News tee-shirt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character) He asked me in all honesty if the child was real. I knew we had made an off-beat connection.
Hi Linh, I think you're right to warn Frank and Yu Mei off going to Europe. Never mind the possibility of war, there's also the likelihood that within a few years the Europeans will be as under the technocratic thumb as any Chinese region is purported to be.
America's idea that China will invade Taiwan is just fear mongering. What possible benefit would there be to China doing such a thing and immediately creating millions of alienated countrymen? I'm sure they'll just bide their time, waiting as China's economy catches up to Taiwan's (which it already appears to have done in the cities) and then absorb the country, hopefully on beneficial terms to both.
Meanwhile Frank and Yu Mei will be dealing with a strange country, a foreign language, ever more illegal immigrants from completely alien cultures and increasing restriction of movement as the NATO-supplied armaments that have been 'misplaced' by Ukraine turn up in Europe's streets.
The 'global south' is looking ever more like a refuge from the ramifications bound to result from increasingly insane politics. I just hope it's not the sort of refuge that Neville Shute envisaged in 'On The Beach'
In an effort to withdraw from the American imperium, I emigrated to Ireland several years ago. My thinking ran like this:
- I didn't want to live in an empire any more, not even in the ruins of one, so the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France were out as options with my shiny new EU citizenship.
- I wanted to live in a small country with nothing much to steal, this to hopefully keep the US uninterested in bringing freedom to the place.
- I wanted to live in a country that still valued art and its artists, as opposed to the pure business culture of the US.
- While the English language wasn't mandatory, it was preferable, as this dog is too old to learn new language tricks.
What I've found here:
- It's true that no matter where you go, the empire will never stop finding new ways to fuck up your life.
- Living in a small vassal state does mean your nation gets yanked around by more or less every imperial whim.
- Irish politicians are forever saying true things about Israel, enraging Zionists. After decades watching American politicians snarfling the ass-cracks of the Israel lobby, this tickles me. The US does not interfere with this at all, because American politicians fear the Irish diaspora as much or more than they fear the Zionists yelling into their telephones every day.
- The country itself is cold, gray, dank, and its infrastructure and services are dilapidated. Though it does have things like national healthcare and seemingly many welfare state-style benefits, most of those benefits have tricky fine print attached to make sure you never actually qualify for them. The first time I get seriously ill here I will certainly die before getting any actual medical care. The bureaucracy here makes the American DMV seem like Las Vegas in comparison.
- 800 years of English colonialism has left a deep scar that makes the place reflexively and fiercely anti-imperialist. Though it has civil relations with the UK and US and largely tows the line, there is no actual enthusiasm for the adventures those nations are always getting up to.
- In the small heritage town I've lived in for three years, what used to be more or less homogenous streets of Irish bumpkins are now streets filled with migrants of every sort. Some days I'll go for a walk and not overhear a single conversation featuring an Irish accent, or even any English-language words. As a migrant myself, I've hardly the right to complain, though I would point to my Belfast-born Irish grandma as an actual cultural link to the place. What I can say is this quaint little town has started to feel dangerous. Having grown up in an American ghetto, my radar for street danger is highly-sensitive and it has been bleeping warnings of late.
So has the WEF got Ireland by the balls? Maybe kinda sorta, but over the long run all of that agenda will be buried here. Say what you will about the Irish, but they don't have a lot of patience with rank bullshit.
I have puzzled over the dramatic changes to Ireland and the speed to which those changes were happening especially the replacement of the heritage population.
I was shocked, absolutely shocked, to find that they originated with a female Jewish academic who has inspired the elite with the ideas that there is no such thing as race and anyone can be Irish.
It reminds me of how those dreadful anti Semites who hate Jews for no reason say every, single time.
It is astonishing the enthusiasm so many whites, especially uni educated women, have for replacing their population.
It is extra weird in Ireland because they spent so many years fighting the British only to let their whole country be given away.
As I said, the WEFster cultists are certainly skulking about here, but they keep getting smoked out. If there were not larger World War III fish to fry, Irish democracy would surely be attacked and dismantled to the point it sang the mandatory "We Love Israeli Genocide" hymns and banned heterosexual relations for all purposes other than producing soldiers to go fight Iran:
Ian O’Doherty: Hate-speech bill finally bites the dust, but why was it brought to life in first place?
I don't think the Irish have been forgotten about by the WEF acolytes in the rush towards war elsewhere. It's true that some of the Irish have recently started to display resistance to the massive immigration that will change the demographic within a generation but I think this is a short hiatus before attention gets turned elsewhere. I hope not, but having spoken to some expatriate Irishmen in the 30 to 40 age bracket, they seem pretty sanguine about it - saying that Irish have emigrated all over the world and so Ireland should accept the immigrants.
My answer to Ian O'Doherty asking why the hate speech bill was brought to life is - it was to test the waters. Just as 'covid' was testing the waters (and far too many were found wanting) so too the hate speech bill actually found it's way into public debate, instead of being killed at birth. It demonstrates that the Overton window is real and I'm pretty sure we'll see it's return in a few years - perhaps in some different guise of 'safety for refugees' from WW3.
On a lighter note, Dave Allen's version of the Overton window is a classic
Just before I moved to Shanghai almost nine years ago, I spent several days in Taiwan - mainly in Taipei and Hualien. The centre of Taipei had the vibe of an Asian city that made it in the 90s but had not progressed since, while the rest of the places I visited had not moved beyond the 80s, sharing a similar atmosphere with older parts of Singapore and Malaysia.
Soon after that I found myself in Shanghai and started traveling around the Eastern seaboard of China. The difference in the level of development across the straits was striking, and this rift I suspect is growing larger every year.
A young Taiwanese friend made a visit to the Mainland early this year to see things for herself instead of listening to the news; sharing videos of her travels on Instagram. She spoke of how it hasn't been easy to find employment, echoing sentiments from a friend who moved to Taiwan last year. It's not a walk in the park on the Mainland either, but if one is willing, one can walk into a factory to ask for a job and start from the bottom, or set up a business with a potential domestic audience that consists of a few hundred million internet users. It's not as easy to do that on a small island with limited resources, almost-stagnant manufacturing sector (with the exception of semi-conductor and electronics) and a market that is unwilling to part with their hard-earned money.
When push comes to shove, there will be plenty more young Taiwanese wanting to discover China for themselves and explore the work opportunities available. In time, Taiwanese will understand that they're not so different from their brothers and sisters in Fujian, Guangdong and Hong Kong. Neither side wants a war, the only ones who do are corrupt politicians betraying their own countrymen for money and promises of glory.
Although not forgotten, Chiang is slowly being erased from his god-like perch in Taiwanese history. I believe Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall has been renamed, and his statues mostly removed. An interesting thing NOT being erased is 2-28 and the subsequent "White Terror" visited on the Taiwanese by their Nationalist "brothers" from the mainland back in 1947 when they first showed up, on the run from the Communists. If you had had more time, you would likely have found a visit to the 2-28 National Memorial Museum interesting, and with plenty to write about.
One could argue that far from saving the country, Chiang could actually be blamed for the dilemma Taiwan finds itself in today. It is largely attributable to him that Taiwan stubbornly insisted on maintaining its claim, far beyond its shelf life, that it was the sole legitimate government of China. If instead he had accepted the inevitable fairly early on, it's quite possible we would have China and Taiwan peacefully if uneasily co-existing as two internationally recognized countries, with Taiwan in much better shape geopolitically. The situation where countries around the world were forced to recognize one or the other, but not both, got them where they are today.
I agree with others commenting today that Taiwan will most likely not be invaded by China. For one thing, China dearly would like to have it intact. More importantly, even if it was deemed necessary to act, China could quite effectively blockade the island and just wait for the inevitable.
Regarding all the dead white slave owners on US currency, not to worry. Our betters are hard at work fixing that. Harriet Tubman is supposedly going to replace "Old Hickory" on the $20 bill in 2030. The joke will be on the anti-racists, however, as the $20 by then is likely to be worth less than a "George Washington" is today.
I suppose I get your point about the sadness when you turn the final page of book. Then what?
But still I disagree with your second paragraph, about remembering your own name. I think most people get that although they don't remember there own heritage of even sadder, never knew it or don't give a damn about it.
Hi everyone,
I just added a sentence to the ending:
From balmy Vũng Tàu, I offer you these ydel thoghts. Even Chaucer fades. Words dies even as we speak. Most stories are never told, much less heard. Bits of America, improved, farcical or cheesed up, will persist thousands of miles from its spectacular death.
Linh
P.S. Bonnard was caught fixing one of his paintings already hung in a museum. Revisions can be endless. Book versions of my articles are generally better.
Hi everyone,
This paragraph will be added to book version of article:
After a nap during which I dreamt of a nondescript Paris with a Chinese sign and no French, I woke to remember we also talked about the legendary performance artist Tehching Hsieh, test wise Taiwanese students being rather dull, snitching as common even in Taiwanese prisons and how weird that even the most educated Taiwanese visit fortune tellers. One bizarre technique involves a mouse. Yu Mei found a YouTube video to show me.
Linh
For decades I was a Tai Chi student and the most impressive teacher I ever had was a Taiwanese ex soldier settled in Boston. He taught both Kung Fu and Tai Chi, the latter as a fighting art which is quite rare in the West where it's valued more for meditation or stress reduction. J-M Yang had a slew of instructional books and videos to augment his hands on teaching approach. Quite the successful entrepreneur, he was a good orator who could entertain w/ speculation and banter about fringe subjects like crypto-zoology. During one sit-down break, he noticed I was wearing an outrageous World Weekly News tee-shirt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character) He asked me in all honesty if the child was real. I knew we had made an off-beat connection.
Hi Linh, I think you're right to warn Frank and Yu Mei off going to Europe. Never mind the possibility of war, there's also the likelihood that within a few years the Europeans will be as under the technocratic thumb as any Chinese region is purported to be.
America's idea that China will invade Taiwan is just fear mongering. What possible benefit would there be to China doing such a thing and immediately creating millions of alienated countrymen? I'm sure they'll just bide their time, waiting as China's economy catches up to Taiwan's (which it already appears to have done in the cities) and then absorb the country, hopefully on beneficial terms to both.
Meanwhile Frank and Yu Mei will be dealing with a strange country, a foreign language, ever more illegal immigrants from completely alien cultures and increasing restriction of movement as the NATO-supplied armaments that have been 'misplaced' by Ukraine turn up in Europe's streets.
The 'global south' is looking ever more like a refuge from the ramifications bound to result from increasingly insane politics. I just hope it's not the sort of refuge that Neville Shute envisaged in 'On The Beach'
In an effort to withdraw from the American imperium, I emigrated to Ireland several years ago. My thinking ran like this:
- I didn't want to live in an empire any more, not even in the ruins of one, so the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France were out as options with my shiny new EU citizenship.
- I wanted to live in a small country with nothing much to steal, this to hopefully keep the US uninterested in bringing freedom to the place.
- I wanted to live in a country that still valued art and its artists, as opposed to the pure business culture of the US.
- While the English language wasn't mandatory, it was preferable, as this dog is too old to learn new language tricks.
What I've found here:
- It's true that no matter where you go, the empire will never stop finding new ways to fuck up your life.
- Living in a small vassal state does mean your nation gets yanked around by more or less every imperial whim.
- Irish politicians are forever saying true things about Israel, enraging Zionists. After decades watching American politicians snarfling the ass-cracks of the Israel lobby, this tickles me. The US does not interfere with this at all, because American politicians fear the Irish diaspora as much or more than they fear the Zionists yelling into their telephones every day.
- The country itself is cold, gray, dank, and its infrastructure and services are dilapidated. Though it does have things like national healthcare and seemingly many welfare state-style benefits, most of those benefits have tricky fine print attached to make sure you never actually qualify for them. The first time I get seriously ill here I will certainly die before getting any actual medical care. The bureaucracy here makes the American DMV seem like Las Vegas in comparison.
- 800 years of English colonialism has left a deep scar that makes the place reflexively and fiercely anti-imperialist. Though it has civil relations with the UK and US and largely tows the line, there is no actual enthusiasm for the adventures those nations are always getting up to.
- In the small heritage town I've lived in for three years, what used to be more or less homogenous streets of Irish bumpkins are now streets filled with migrants of every sort. Some days I'll go for a walk and not overhear a single conversation featuring an Irish accent, or even any English-language words. As a migrant myself, I've hardly the right to complain, though I would point to my Belfast-born Irish grandma as an actual cultural link to the place. What I can say is this quaint little town has started to feel dangerous. Having grown up in an American ghetto, my radar for street danger is highly-sensitive and it has been bleeping warnings of late.
So has the WEF got Ireland by the balls? Maybe kinda sorta, but over the long run all of that agenda will be buried here. Say what you will about the Irish, but they don't have a lot of patience with rank bullshit.
I have puzzled over the dramatic changes to Ireland and the speed to which those changes were happening especially the replacement of the heritage population.
I was shocked, absolutely shocked, to find that they originated with a female Jewish academic who has inspired the elite with the ideas that there is no such thing as race and anyone can be Irish.
It reminds me of how those dreadful anti Semites who hate Jews for no reason say every, single time.
It is astonishing the enthusiasm so many whites, especially uni educated women, have for replacing their population.
It is extra weird in Ireland because they spent so many years fighting the British only to let their whole country be given away.
As I said, the WEFster cultists are certainly skulking about here, but they keep getting smoked out. If there were not larger World War III fish to fry, Irish democracy would surely be attacked and dismantled to the point it sang the mandatory "We Love Israeli Genocide" hymns and banned heterosexual relations for all purposes other than producing soldiers to go fight Iran:
Ian O’Doherty: Hate-speech bill finally bites the dust, but why was it brought to life in first place?
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/ian-odoherty-hate-speech-bill-finally-bites-the-dust-but-why-was-it-brought-to-life-in-first-place/a2070320675.html
I don't think the Irish have been forgotten about by the WEF acolytes in the rush towards war elsewhere. It's true that some of the Irish have recently started to display resistance to the massive immigration that will change the demographic within a generation but I think this is a short hiatus before attention gets turned elsewhere. I hope not, but having spoken to some expatriate Irishmen in the 30 to 40 age bracket, they seem pretty sanguine about it - saying that Irish have emigrated all over the world and so Ireland should accept the immigrants.
My answer to Ian O'Doherty asking why the hate speech bill was brought to life is - it was to test the waters. Just as 'covid' was testing the waters (and far too many were found wanting) so too the hate speech bill actually found it's way into public debate, instead of being killed at birth. It demonstrates that the Overton window is real and I'm pretty sure we'll see it's return in a few years - perhaps in some different guise of 'safety for refugees' from WW3.
On a lighter note, Dave Allen's version of the Overton window is a classic
https://youtu.be/h82D5ZvcALM?si=sIaQjr0mQYV-V2Ko
Just before I moved to Shanghai almost nine years ago, I spent several days in Taiwan - mainly in Taipei and Hualien. The centre of Taipei had the vibe of an Asian city that made it in the 90s but had not progressed since, while the rest of the places I visited had not moved beyond the 80s, sharing a similar atmosphere with older parts of Singapore and Malaysia.
Soon after that I found myself in Shanghai and started traveling around the Eastern seaboard of China. The difference in the level of development across the straits was striking, and this rift I suspect is growing larger every year.
A young Taiwanese friend made a visit to the Mainland early this year to see things for herself instead of listening to the news; sharing videos of her travels on Instagram. She spoke of how it hasn't been easy to find employment, echoing sentiments from a friend who moved to Taiwan last year. It's not a walk in the park on the Mainland either, but if one is willing, one can walk into a factory to ask for a job and start from the bottom, or set up a business with a potential domestic audience that consists of a few hundred million internet users. It's not as easy to do that on a small island with limited resources, almost-stagnant manufacturing sector (with the exception of semi-conductor and electronics) and a market that is unwilling to part with their hard-earned money.
When push comes to shove, there will be plenty more young Taiwanese wanting to discover China for themselves and explore the work opportunities available. In time, Taiwanese will understand that they're not so different from their brothers and sisters in Fujian, Guangdong and Hong Kong. Neither side wants a war, the only ones who do are corrupt politicians betraying their own countrymen for money and promises of glory.
Although not forgotten, Chiang is slowly being erased from his god-like perch in Taiwanese history. I believe Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall has been renamed, and his statues mostly removed. An interesting thing NOT being erased is 2-28 and the subsequent "White Terror" visited on the Taiwanese by their Nationalist "brothers" from the mainland back in 1947 when they first showed up, on the run from the Communists. If you had had more time, you would likely have found a visit to the 2-28 National Memorial Museum interesting, and with plenty to write about.
One could argue that far from saving the country, Chiang could actually be blamed for the dilemma Taiwan finds itself in today. It is largely attributable to him that Taiwan stubbornly insisted on maintaining its claim, far beyond its shelf life, that it was the sole legitimate government of China. If instead he had accepted the inevitable fairly early on, it's quite possible we would have China and Taiwan peacefully if uneasily co-existing as two internationally recognized countries, with Taiwan in much better shape geopolitically. The situation where countries around the world were forced to recognize one or the other, but not both, got them where they are today.
I agree with others commenting today that Taiwan will most likely not be invaded by China. For one thing, China dearly would like to have it intact. More importantly, even if it was deemed necessary to act, China could quite effectively blockade the island and just wait for the inevitable.
Regarding all the dead white slave owners on US currency, not to worry. Our betters are hard at work fixing that. Harriet Tubman is supposedly going to replace "Old Hickory" on the $20 bill in 2030. The joke will be on the anti-racists, however, as the $20 by then is likely to be worth less than a "George Washington" is today.
The best line in piece obviously, as it is so true...Most stories are never told, much less heard.
I suppose I get your point about the sadness when you turn the final page of book. Then what?
But still I disagree with your second paragraph, about remembering your own name. I think most people get that although they don't remember there own heritage of even sadder, never knew it or don't give a damn about it.