i'm not going to offer an opinion about shutting it down.

a priori, i would guess that the congressional ethics committee is probably staffed by oil industry lobbyists and that it takes in a lot of money to churn out very little of value, when it isn't producing fraudulent reports to clear corrupt politicians in exchange for cash under the table.

self-regulation at work.

i've long rejected the pessimist v optimist binary, and tend to enjoy making fun of people when they bring it up.

the way i see it is that pessimists and optimists both engage in magical thinking, and that the real binary is between magical thinking and realism.

and, i'm a realist.

i'm sorry if that makes you sad. but, you know. kill yourself, then.

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/funding-the-rebels/

yeah.

when you see "national liberation army" in southeast asia, it's almost always maoist. and if it's maoist, it's a front for the prc.

the chinese back maoist terrorist groups in most of the countries in the region, including the heavily american colonized philippines (i know this is shifting..) and even in india. the fighting picking up after the election is likely not a coincidence.

this is the real story: what's happening in the south. that's where the shipping lanes area. it's where the oil comes from. korea is strategically important, but functionally useless - it's a distraction.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/chinese-army-high-alert-after-fierce-clashes-northern-myanmar-1592551

also, fwiw...

china doesn't really have a reason to attack japan or korea or taiwan, other than for defensive reasons. and, the expansion to the southeast is likewise purely defensive.

while the island chains to the south should have long term security concerns, the only country that should be seriously concerned about real chinese aggression is myanmar. if the chinese are going to go in anywhere, that's where they're going to go in. it would solve almost all of their problems....

i did not say that the chinese will win, in the end. what i said is that they are smart and calculated, whereas america is arrogant and stupid. it may be easy to draw a false conclusion from that, but i would actually argue rather strenuously that the empirical evidence of historical fact is that brains are not necessarily an advantage over brawn. that is teleological. yes: civilization always wins in the end, but the barbarians actually usually can be converted only after they have seized power by force.

china should, and probably largely does, see the russians as the mongols - so let us not get lost in false equivalencies. the british/americans are a relatively new threat to the chinese. in the end, they may have to be conquered from the inside out.

i just want to make something clear, because this is another thing that people get binary on.

i am neither pro-american, nor pro-russian, nor pro-chinese, nor pro-nato, nor pro-assad, nor pro-iran or even explicitly pro-canadian. but i am not explicitly anti-american, or anti-russian, or anti-chinese, or anti-israeli, or anti-arab or anti anything else, either.

i am explicitly anti-statist and anti-nationalist and anti-religious and anti-insularist, which means i am pro-people and pro-science and pro-secularism. and i suppose that opens me up to criticisms of being pro-western in some capacity, but only if you hold to the racist position that the other cultures on the planet are ignorant of science and incapable of progress. i would not seek to hold the arabs of the world to islamism any more than i would seek to hold europeans to christianity: i encourage them to move forwards. and, our shared history in greek philosophy rejects the premise that this is colonialism. likewise for eastern cultures, and even for indigenous ones.

i also want to point out that i would not correct you if you were to call me a globalist, even as i argue for an alternate concept of globalization that consolidates local economies and reduces global trade to necessities, if for no other reason than to reduce emissions. i was always alter, and never anti; the latter was always a strawman created by the media, and it's very sad to see how the projection eventually became a reality.

so, don't expect me to align with existing media narratives or pick sides in global conflicts. i'm not going to.

how about this for an analysis: the russians are weak, the americans are stupid and the chinese are capable and intelligent and calculated. these are not ethnic characteristics, but characteristics of the state. and, all of the states are evil. and, they're not obscure perceptions, either - even if i'm not interested in holding back punches at any target.