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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>…</b>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Will Steinberg via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] commies vs marxists was: RE: chinese fires, was:RE: book review<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>>…I think we're at an impasse regarding the political stuff. I'm not left wing or right wing, and while I agree with some of what you are saying, I disagree highly with some of the other stuff, and with the presentation in general. So I think I will refrain from discussing it now…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Fair enough. After I began pondering your comments on an earlier thread, I realized there is some context that many here may not know, but Adrian and I do: that incident happened in San Francisco. Cities all over America solve their homeless and crazies situation by buying them one-way bus tickets to San Francisco. It really isn’t the kind of place where one lives in a house in which any random crazy can punch his way in using a hammer. One doesn’t even live there in a home where a random crazy can shoot his way in. Anyone who owns 8 digits of net worth lives in a home which cannot be physically entered with anything less sincere than a bulldozer.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>With that context, you may now understand why when I heard the story some time after the fact, I laughed and asked OK what’s the real story? How did the bad guy get in there? How did that whole “greet the officer” business play out when these guys were in the process of struggling over a hammer? What did they do, call a temporary truce? Hey it happens:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=the+phone+is+ringing+pink+panther&sxsrf=ALiCzsbMAAdlAMQLC-KLtrvOngOhs6OrYA:1670282792720&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjIgKOk0OP7AhVbJjQIHUlJDecQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1159&bih=1046&dpr=1#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:90fc2f41,vid:82mN5T5KV-A">https://www.google.com/search?q=the+phone+is+ringing+pink+panther&sxsrf=ALiCzsbMAAdlAMQLC-KLtrvOngOhs6OrYA:1670282792720&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjIgKOk0OP7AhVbJjQIHUlJDecQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1159&bih=1046&dpr=1#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:90fc2f41,vid:82mN5T5KV-A</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>But… doesn’t that seem weird to you Will? We read an FBI report that makes little sense and one is told one is a conspiracy theorist if one even asks the most glaringly obvious questions, in which case one is a conspiracy theorist without an actual theory.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Notice that there is nothing political in any of that. The victim here holds no office. Granted he owns a pile of money, but so do the others in that neighborhood, and you can bet they have a well-thought out security system, and a well thought out nine millimeter beside the bed should those security measures fail.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>>…As for geopolitics, that's different. Taiwan has a lot of defense itself and a lot of allies that will defend it…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>OK Will, you have my full and undivided with that one. Is Taiwan assuming the USA will leap to her aid? I fear she is, and if so what happens if the USA cannot come to her aid because we are out of money?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>>…It is about 100x more important to the global economy than Ukraine, and to US/NATO hegemony, too…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I agree there, but what if… we shot our wad on Ukraine and have nothing left to give? What if no one buys those war bonds? That almost caused the USA to give up in the war on Japan in 1945.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>>…I think an invasion will result in the Fujian coast getting glassed to oblivion, and more. It's a war of attrition that the CCP can't afford, especially with the fact that places like Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia are practically not even China anymore…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>So… are we at the point where we recognize the USA cannot afford a sea war, so we are hoping the nuclear deterrent will dissuade an increasingly desperate Xi hoping to not be deprived of his Dear Head by his own Dear People? Oh dear. The more we rely on the nuclear bomb as a weapon, the less effective it becomes as a deterrent.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>>…That is coming for China. The big reason it hasn't happened already is the nukes, I think…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I think you are right on that, but I have the sobering thought of the day: one of the known hazards of the H Bomb was that we would eventually begin to think of it as a weapon of war rather than an unthinkable doomsday deterrent. I have witnessed what feels like a steady erosion of military capability (in the form of uncontrollable government debt) which steadily increases reliance on nuclear weapons. This is a bad thing.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></body></html>