Trump? Shocking?

No, just Trump

No, not shocking. Just all sound and fury signifying Trump. Executive brain farts.

Brian Berletic explains it all.

He makes a point, which I have raised in several of my ‘special articles” and elsewhere, that “representative electoral democracy” is only one of many forms of democratic government and hardly the best one. The Greeks famously used a form of electoral democracy but reluctantly-- they had reservations and mostly preferred sortition.

Chinese “consultative democracy” appears not only popular but highly effective.

In Western counties, representative democracy was never intended to give ordinary people a say in government— only the illusion of being heard. Now, in the US and the UK and elsewhere it is clear that government does not represent the public interest at all but that of the ruling plutocracy—a situation that the Greeks feared electoral democracy wou8d lead to .

Abroad, the US has weaponized democracy to serve its interests.

The US uses its embassies and diplomatic offices around the world as bases to actively interfere in domestic politics— conducting surveillance and subversion not only of the countries where they are located but in neighboring countries as well.

Berletic points out the role of the huge consulate in Chiang Mai coordinating terrorist operations in Myanmar.

In Japan, still an occupied country, the US embassy is HUGE – and, of course, the US has military bases in the Kanto area as well.

Recently, Prime Minister Ishiba went to the US to suck up to Trump who promised to defend Japan’s unrecognized claims to the Diaoyu Islands and help get back Japanese people abducted by North Korea in the 70s and 80s. Frankly, if the Chinese decide to take back these islands, just off Taiwan,they will wait until Taiwan returns to the fold, and then just move in. There is nothing that either Japan or the US could do to stop them.

As for North Korea, the issue of the abductees is half a century old. The Koreans returned 5 living abductees in 2002— 8 were dead. The Japanese maintain that there were other abductees, although they can not provide conclusive proof that the Koreans were responsible for their disappearance.

Given Japan’s generally hostile attitude towards North Korea and the thousands of young Korean women abducted to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese army in Korea’s colonial past, I doubt that the North Koreans are giving this matter much priority.

But this was a point Ishiba brought up – along with the Diaoyu Islands.

No mention of Takeshima Island occupied by South Korea, of course, or the Northern Islands now part of Russia. Also no mention of the huge chunks of Japan effectively owned by the US military despite the objections of local people and environmental damage.

No matter—the US expects Japan to buy billions of dollars worth of useless weaponry.—to fight whom? Ummm…North Korea?

However, prices are going up here, there is a Spring Labor offensive brewing and Ishiba is deeply unpopular. The LDP will have to ditch him . Dare we hope for change?

Probably not — the US embassy in Tokyo is hard at work trying to keep ahead of the curve,

To do this, they do not read the Japanese “official” press much, whose releases are mediated by the foreign ministry and press clubs –and publish the story lines given them by the American press — they pay attention to the Communist Party newsletter and tabloids to get a sense of what people are really thinking — or if they are thinking at all

Special articles. File not recognized problems

Some people have reported trouble opening zip files for special articles.

Windows 10 and 11 have established problems with zip files. Download a free archive manager like 7 zip or Zipware for Windows,.

For Linux, there are also various methods,

There are several archive managers available .,

Bettertechtips.com

Archive Manager (formerly known as File Roller), which is the default manager of GNOME.

Xarchiver, which is the default archive manager of lightweight desktop environments like Xfce and LXDE.

PeaZip, which is a cross-platform archive manager.

B1 Free Archiver, which is also a cross-platform archive manager.

Ark

FreeArc

Engrampa

Command line

Alternatively, you can use command-line tools like tar, gzip, and zip to manage archives in Linux.

4 Best Linux Command Line Archivers - linuxMO

https://www.linuxmo.com/4-best-linux-command-line-archivers/

If you have problems with downloads, please contact me. The buymeacoffee site is probably best since sometimes emails disappear in my spam box.

Hybrid cats

This is not a Serval. It is an F2 Serval hybrid — a Savannah cat. Of course, it looks a lot like a Serval and has some of the characteristics - but it is actually a domestic cat.

Still, it can be challenging, if only because of its size, energy, and agility. It requires a lot of special care. And it is very expensive.

Ichi and Chappy point out they can do everything this cat can do, including supervising my writing.

I am making good progress on my next special articles on Putin and Xi Jinping. Buy coffee to get on the mailing list! Click HERE!