Tag Archives: sociology

Might as well face it: China isn’t a credible threat

Posted on June 6, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers:

Despite the fact the US military budget needs a second potential front we can fight wars on to justify being the war material overkill superpower we insist we are, China’s just not going to fill the bill.  Yeah, as Yahoo News reports, they’ve got a lot of military spending going on.  Whoopteedoo.

Fact is, China doesn’t win wars.  Maybe has never won a war in the entirety of Chinese history.  Didn’t win against the Japanese in WWII.  Didn’t win the Chinese Revolution thoroughly enough to take the Nationalists out of the picture.

Didn’t win the Korean War enough to make it all North Korea.  Didn’t even win in 1978-1979 against war-weary Vietnam.

Yeah, Washington and the threat-hungry news services would give a testicle if China could get out there and run someone off a piece of real estate they wanted.  But the Chinese have had their asses whipped so many times and in so many places they’re just hoping if they have to fight someone bigger than Tibet they can bluster enough to scare them off.

China ain’t going anywhere.  Might as well try to stir up some trouble with Mexico if we’re going to have a credible threat to justify a military budget capable of taking over all the banana republics and oil sheikdoms everywhere when the mood strikes us.  Even the Muslims are falling down on the job these days.

Old Jules

Leave a comment

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Busted

Posted on June 6, 2014 by | 10 comments

Hi readers.  The cardiac physical therapy nurses gave me a little counselling today after they caught me cheating on their machines.  I haven’t been sticking with the piddling little times and settings they give me on a piece of paper each session.

So I was boosting my walking speeds up as much as I thought I could get by with, staying longer, and when I saw them approaching I’d quickly adjust the settings.  Same with the como se llama arm exercizing machine and the walking while sitting down one.

But today I saw them getting cagey, trying to use their animal cunning to outsmart me.  Spang caught me trying to spend 15 minutes making circular movements with my arms instead of 10, and at heavier loads and higher speeds.

They’ve got that thing attached to me all the time, shows I-don’t-know-what, and sometimes it twigs them to tell me to pause.  If it isn’t ratting me out I figure nobody else has any business being my governor.

Well heck.  Those little bitty pissant things they put on the paper for me to do just ain’t where I want to be.  Seems to me I ought to have some say in it.  But that isn’t going to happen.  “You shouldn’t even be walking around!”  She scowled at me.  Scowled!  “You are amazing with what you were doing before you even started coming to these sessions.  But you’re going to have to go slow or you’re going to be dead.”

Screw them.

Old Jules

 

10 Comments

Posted in 2014, America

Tagged , , , , , ,

Real synthetic meat

Posted on June 6, 2014 by | 20 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Sitting around waiting rooms exposes a person to a lot of reading material he’d proabably never encounter otherwise.  Popular Science magazines are a favorite example for me.  They’ve always been great predictors of how our lives will be in the not-too-distant future.  As John Prine observed, “We’re all driving rocket ships and talking with our minds” here in this future we’re living in.

Anyway, the November, 2013 edition of Popular Science had a series of articles I found fascinating about some folks who are in the final phases of development of synthetic meats to replace those that came off living animals and poultry.  Indistinguishable from the real item.  Columbia University’s one of the places it’s happening, not because of better health, but because of the greenhouse gasses resulting from grazing livestock.

Evidently it’s so far along in getting it going they’re already producing real leather that never rode a cow for use on automobile upholstery, etc.  And they’re doing well with chicken, since almost everything tastes like chicken.

Naturally, if this doesn’t happen now it well be because the cow industry went in at night and destroyed everything they couldn’t buy up and squash.  It won’t be the fault of the lousy record Popular Science has in predicting the future.

Still, it’s nice to think of future generations being able to walk around in the woods without stepping on cow manure if they ever go outside.  And driving along rural highways in the west not having to see a yellow sign with a cow on it to warn there’s a rancher feeding his black cows on the pavement at dusk for the insurance.

Interesting stuff, and it ought to get more interesting.  Human beings ought to get a lot more violent in a world where there was no real meat that needed killing to take the edge off natural inclinations.  And thus far there’s been no mention of where Kosher fits into it all.  Synthetic pork might come from the factory Kosher and Jews and Muslims could start sitting down together to a nice ham instead of shooting one another.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in America, Animals

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Korean Korean War to protect Japan

Posted on June 5, 2014 by | Leave a comment

  [The Front Line is available on Netflix]

Hi readers.  Although the Korean War wouldn’t have happened if General Douglas MacArthur hadn’t been so preoccupied about protecting Japan, the Japanese film makers have never said thank you by making a movie about it.  Although MacArthur’s, “Korea is a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan” assertion got a lot of US, British, Chinese and other soldiers killed, no Japanese died in it.  And no Japanese money, troops, anything, has supported then non-war existing during the half-century since.

Thanks to the Korean film industry and the Chinese film industry a whole new perspective on the Korean War is being handed out to anyone interested enough to watch some movies.  I’ll throw one in from the British film industry just to spread the wealth around.  A Hill in Korea was Michael Caine’s first movie role, and as it happens he was a British Army Korean War Vet.

GIs and Korean women:

A Chinese movie about a hard fought battle against US troops during the Korean War:

Two brothers are drafted into the South Korean Army during the war.  Excellent film.

Here’s one about British troops fighting in Korea to protect Japan:

But it’s just movies.  Fact is, once Japan quit slaughtering troops from all over the planet, other troops from all over the planet began dying to protect the Japanese.  And 20-30 thousand US troops are still in Korea prepared to die to protect Japan.

Thank you for your service.

Old Jules

 

Leave a comment

Posted in 1950's, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Koreans fighting alongside Japanese in the first tank battle of WWII era

Posted on June 3, 2014 by | Leave a comment

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=my+way+movie+

Hi readers:  I first saw this film on Netflix and it made a big impression on me.  Unfortunately it’s been a while.  I was in the hospital when I watched it first, so some of the details are vague to me now.  But it’s probably the first movie ever to be filmed about Khalkhin Gol.

Khalkhin-Gol: The forgotten battle that shaped WW2

In August 1939, just weeks before Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland, the Soviet Union and Japan fought a massive tank battle on the Mongolian border – the largest the world had ever seen.

Under the then unknown Georgy Zhukov, the Soviets won a crushing victory at the batte of Khalkhin-Gol (known in Japan as the Nomonhan Incident). Defeat persuaded the Japanese to expand into the Pacific, where they saw the United States as a weaker opponent than the Soviet Union. If the Japanese had not lost at Khalkhin Gol, they may never have attacked Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese decision to expand southwards also meant that the Soviet Eastern flank was secured for the duration of the war. Instead of having to fight on two fronts, the Soviets could mass their troops – under the newly promoted General Zhukov – against the threat of Nazi Germany in the West.

In terms of its strategic impact, the battle of Khalkhin Gol was one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War, but no-one has ever heard of it. Why?

http://historyofrussia.org/khalkhin-gol-battle-nomonhan/

The Korean movie industry scored a big one with My Way.  The theme or setting is two kids, one Japanese, the other Korean competing as runners in pre-WWII Japan.  But when the Japanese Kwantung Army rubs up against the Soviet Army in Manchuria both are sent there in time for the earliest tank battle of WWII era.  [Western thought about when WWII began places the battle pre-WWII]

So when the USSR kicks the ass of Japan in the battle, the two are captured and sent to a Soviet POW camp.  Eventually they’re allowed to volunteer for slave labor on the front where the USSR is fighting German troops.  And they’re captured, allowed to fight for the Germans next, because Japan, of course, was an ally to Germany.

As D Day approaches they find themselves on the beaches of Normandy constructing shore defenses.

One hell of a movie.

I see by the clips on YouTube a lot of people agree with me.  Some even say it’s the best movie they’ve ever seen.  Maybe you’ll find it absorbing.

Thank you for your service, all you young Soviets, Japanese and Koreans.

Old Jules

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment

Posted in 1940's, 2014, History

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Korean kids are higher quality stupid than US kids

Posted on June 3, 2014 by | 13 comments

Hi readers.  I saw the entire movie, Attack the Gas Station 2, on Netflix and found it fascinating.  It ain’t the same Korea I spent 14 months in back in 1963-’64.  Hell, it ain’t even a 3rd world country anymore.

jackjeepkorea2

When this photo was taken near Camp Howze, Korea [Pong Il Chon], I can say with authority there was a rice paddy somewhere nearby where people toiled from daybreak to dark. Somewhere nearby men were carrying a-frames loaded with firewood several times their own weight. Probably somewhere in Korea there was affluence staying well hidden, but the ‘average’ Korean made a few dollars per month and most would never expect to be able to afford a bicycle anytime during their lives.

But several things impressed me about the Korean film.  First, it’s the best photography I’ve seen in any of the foreign films I’ve watched on Netflix lately.  Secondly, the characters are wealthy in the middle-class way US citizens,  even the poor ones, are wealthy by standards of the 1960s.

Secondly, the kids are easily as stupid as US kids, but it’s a higher quality stupidity.  I suppose it hasn’t had time to mature, to become as decadent as US kids manifest constantly in public.  Stupidity of Korean kids has the quality of an over-ripe apple that hasn’t yet begun to rot.

And thirdly, the amazing wealth.  Look at that gas station, the cars and the people driving them.  The motorcycles those kids are riding and the clothes they’re wearing.  Observe the body-fat.  Those people might well be Americans in  the better neighborhoods.

By comparison, consider another Netflix foreign film, this one from Russia.  The Suit.  Some Russian youngsters fall in love with a Gucci suit in a store window and the adventures they go through to acquire it.  And what happens once they have it in their possession.

The Suit is a damned eye-opening good movie, well done and fun to watch, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Attack the Gas Station 2.  The Russian kids are smarter, incidently, and not so wealthy.

Anyone who tells you different is wrong.

Old Jules

 

13 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America, Art

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

That reincarnated kid video

Posted on June 2, 2014 by | 6 comments

Hi readers.  When you think about it the surprise is the Internet isn’t full of what?  Stories?  Reports?  Incidents?  Descriptions of this phenomenon and people for whom the experience is as real as their lives.

But you won’t come across it often.  There’s the 300 cases in India a European physician researched and wrote a book about a decade-or-so ago, and a lot of conjectures and suppositions.  And the million-or-so people who go around telling anyone who will listen which famous person in history they used to be.

That’s why this case comes across so strongly, I reckons.  That, and the fact the kid is from the US, whereas most research into the phenomenon has been elsewhere.

But this one was a US fighter pilot over Japan reincarnated as a kid in the United States.  Maybe nothing can be concluded from it beyond something I’ve never doubted anyway, that reincarnation happens.  But it’s possible if a person knew which parts of this not to draw any conclusions from a lot might be learned from it.

On the other hand, the human way is to draw all manner of conclusions from every shred of it, construct a doctrine and sand-cathedral from it, and figure out away to make money as a cash cow.

Glad to see the kid didn’t get any wisdom out of the ordeal.  Ought to be interesting to watch him along about time when he could volunteer for the US military.

Old Jules

 

6 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Five Freedom Fighters for One GI

Posted on June 2, 2014 by | 5 comments

Hi readers.

The old guys down at physical therapy are pissed.  Evidently five of the Arab freedom fighters the US has been holding captive somewhere are going to be released so’s to get back one GI Arabs captured.  Hell of a deal, seems to me, though some might argue a GI is worth ten of anyone else anywhere.

But there are a lot of different ways of looking at the matter.  Elected officials are afraid we didn’t get our moneys worth on the deal.  I’d have to suspect they think after five years captivity that GI isn’t going to be much use to anyone, which might be their rationale.

On the other hand, people get out of prisons all the time after being gang-raped repeatedly the way that GI almost certainly has been in captivity.  And it doesn’t hold them back.  Ex convicts are almost all able to stick up convenience stores, steal cars, sell drugs, do a little rape and mayhem.  Being gang raped in prison hardly slows them down at all.

So my gut feel is this guy’s probably going to be okay and if he plays his cards right maybe he can sit on top of a building with a rifle somewhere and plink off a dozen-or-so anonymous people of one sort or another.  Plenty of ex-GIs are doing that nowadays anyway who haven’t even been gang-raped that we know of.

Anyway, people who are against the trade still ought to feel good knowing an American is worth five Arabs.  I can’t help wishing it was ten, though.  Would have been ten back during WWII when it was Japanese, I’m guessing.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Don’t let the fact you can’t read either of their alphabets fool you

Posted on June 2, 2014 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

If you’re harboring any sweetness and light illusions that the Chinese have forgotten the Rape of Nanking et al, and that they’ve bought into the US post WWII dedication to venerating the Japanese, forget it.  Just go over to Netflix and have a look at what comes out of the Chinese movie industry these days.

Naturally they find a lot of opportunities to make films about Nanking days and the countless dramas played out at the end of Japanese bayonets, downrange from Japanese artillery, rifles and pistols, and underneath Japanese bombers.  That’s to be expected.  Murdering, raping and generally having an orgy of plundering a few hundred thousand people lingers on the minds of their progeny.  Native Americans do the same thing.

But the Chinese make a lot of films about all manner of subjects and genres.  It’s inevitable there’ll be Japanese in some.  Military men, of course.  Business men, martial arts masters, you name it.

But what’s fun about Chinese depiction of Japanese is the consistent, mean, evil, ugly, portrayals whenever a Japanese person rears his ugly head in a Chinese movie.  And incidentally, how much better Chinese-martial artists fare against Japanese martial artists, you name the weapon or method.

I’d almost bet there hasn’t been a Japanese person depicted in a Chinese film since WWII that was anyone you’d wish to meet in a dark alley, or want to marry your daughter.

We in the US accepted the US government approach at the end of WWII, that the Japanese were the best people in Asia whom we loved the most of all of them.  Went about making them richer than they were back when they were killing Chinese with abandon, enslaving the Koreans, and charging US Marine machine gun positions with bayonets.

We rebuilt Japan backward forward and sideways while we helped the Chinese further destroy Korea better than the Japanese ever got around to, then moved down and tried to flatten Vietnam because the Japanese hadn’t really focused on them.

But the Chinese didn’t buy that.  Maybe they have WE WILL NEVER FORGET banners out in the rural towns the way the US used to say about Pearl Harbor, the Alamo, and Little Bighorn.  And the sinking of the Maine and the Lusitania.

Wonder if there are any countries remember us that way.  Besides the Indians, I mean.

Old Jules

 

 

2 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America, History

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Post card art, lousy dreams and cats

Posted on June 2, 2014 by | 15 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.  Jeanne’s about to zoom away on her morning bicycle ride, trying to find something long sleeved to block something just this side of the morning chill.    She says she had a lousy dream last night, dreamed Leonard Cohen died.  Bummer.

I recall dreaming Al Jolson died sometime a few years ago, but the fact he’d been dead several decades already took the edge off it.  Not a good dream, but better than when he actually did it.  I was in grammar school at the time and it’s the first time someone I really liked died, I think.  He had just come back from a USO tour visiting troops in Korea and went kerplunk.  Lousier than dreaming about it.

Anyway, in spite of myself I’ve been allowing my mind to wander into Jeanne’s Library job postcard art project.  http://librarymailart.wordpress.com/

Trying to think of something that could be forced down the throat of the post office as a post card and sent over there to be forced down their thoats disguised as art.  I’m considering gluing a 78 rpm record to a 33 rpm LP, a 45 rpm single, and a CD and putting address and stamps on the whole shebang.  Might do it yet if I can find the 78 and 33.

But I wanted to sneak around and tell you about cats, mostly.  That cat documentary at the top got me thinking about Hydrox and might have given me a dream about Niaid last night, or maybe she was just saying hi.  A lot better than dreaming about Al Jolson or Leonard Cohen.

Hydrox, by the way, is hanging in there, and I’m including him in my gratitude affirmations numerous times every day.  Been spending portions of almost every night outdoors doing what cats do.

And I’m about to toodle off to physical therapy to do what old human guys do when they’re hanging in there day to day, including themselves in their own gratitude affirmations numerous times every day.

Old Jules

 

 

15 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,