Don’t make bets you can’t afford to lose when confronting an opponent with unlimited resources who can arbitrarily change the rules.

I don't care if I follow your rules, if you can cheat, so can I.

 

 I won't let you beat me unfairly, I'll beat you unfairly first.

 

Ender Wiggin

Fictional Military Strategist

What does a carnivore look for in the face of its prey and why?

If mold continues to multiply after eating half a piece of cheese
what happens when demand exceeds supply?

Are there times when compromise isn’t appropriate?

Should you do what you need to whether you like it or not
sooner than later?

Is the definition of civilized changing again?

I don't care if I follow your rules, if you can cheat, so can I

I won't let you beat me unfairly, I'll beat you unfairly first

Ender Wiggin
Fictional Military Strategist

Why do survivors survive?

Is stability a legitimate reason to stifle justified dissent?

Think does not = Chess

If you can’t necessarily control your pieces,
can you be obliged to move and/or sacrifice when you don’t want to?

If players don’t necessarily follow the same rules,
which can change without everyone knowing,
should you break rules if your opponent does?

Everybody sooner or later
sits down to a banquet of consequences.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Can winning be not playing?

World Trade War 2010

"China to Halt Some Exports to U.S.

China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted shipments of those materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said on Tuesday.

The Chinese action, involving rare earth minerals that are crucial to manufacturing many advanced products, seems certain to further intensify already rising trade and currency tensions with the West.

...“The embargo is expanding” beyond Japan, said one of the three rare earth industry officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of business retaliation by Chinese authorities.

They said Chinese customs officials imposed the broader restrictions on Monday morning, hours after a top Chinese official summoned international news media Sunday night to denounce United States trade actions.

China mines 95 percent of the world’s rare earth elements, which have broad commercial and military applications, and are vital to the manufacture of products as diverse as cellphones, large wind turbines and guided missiles. Any curtailment of Chinese supplies of rare earths is likely to be greeted with alarm in Western capitals, particularly because Western companies are believed to keep much smaller stockpiles of rare earths than Japanese companies.

China experts said on Tuesday that Beijing’s assertive stance on rare earths might also signal the ascendance of economic nationalists, noting that the Central Committee of the Communist Party convened over the weekend.

...Industry executives said there had been no signal from Beijing of how long rare earth shipments intended for the West would be held by Chinese customs officials.

...Word of the blocked shipments emerged from industry executives on Tuesday after an official China newspaper reported earlier in the day that Beijing planned next year to further reduce its annual export quota for rare earths.

The signals of a tougher Chinese trade stance come after American trade officials announced on Friday that they would investigate whether China was violating World Trade Organization rules by subsidizing its clean energy exports and limiting clean energy imports. The inquiry includes whether China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005, along with steep export taxes on rare earths, are illegal attempts to force multinational companies to produce more of their high-technology goods in China.

Despite a widely confirmed suspension of rare earth shipments from China to Japan, now nearly a month old, Beijing has continued to deny that any embargo exists.

Industry executives and analysts have interpreted that official denial as a way to wield an undeclared trade weapon without creating a policy trail that could make it easier for other countries to bring a case against China at the World Trade Organization.

So far, China seems to be taking a similar approach in expanding the embargo to the West.

Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said on Tuesday that the Chinese government was putting new restrictions on the mining, processing and export of rare earths to protect the environment. But he said that China was not violating any W.T.O. rules in doing so and that it was not imposing an embargo or trying to use rare earths as a bargaining chip.

“With stricter export mechanism gradually in place, outbound shipments to other countries might understandably begin to feel the effect,” Mr. Wang said in an e-mail. “But I don’t see any link between China’s reasonable rare earth export control policy and the irrational U.S. decision of protectionist nature to investigate China’s clean energy industries.”

...The Chinese government office that oversees rare earth policy...has emerged as a bastion of economic nationalism.

...China reduced in July its export quota for rare earths for the second half of the year by 72 percent. Exporters had only six weeks’ of quotas left when China imposed its unannounced embargo on shipments to Japan.

China is preparing further reductions of up to 30 percent in its 2011 quotas compared with quotas issued in 2010..."

Keith Bradsher
New York Times

How could fiscal 2009’s reported Federal Deficit be only $1.42 trillion if Total Debt increased by more than $1.88 trillion?

Date                    9/30/2008                         9/30/2009

 

Value                    $10,024,725,000,000            $11,909,828,000,000

 

 

 

 

How could the national debt have increased

 by considerably more than...the "deficit"?

  

Simple.

  

Just call the money borrowed from the Social Security trust fund

an "intragovernmental transfer,"

and exclude it from the calculation of the deficit.

 

 Corporate managers have gone to jail for less book cooking than that.

  

John Steele Gordon

A Short History of the National Debt

Wall Street Journal

On China vs. USA and Chess: If nothing doesn’t change, is not making a move moving?

All warfare is based on deception,
…when able to attack we must seem unable,
when using our forces we must seem inactive,
when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far…,
when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

Sun Tzu

China’s hawks demand cold war on the US

…almost 55% of those questioned for Global Times, a state-run [Chinese] newspaper, agree that “a cold war will break out between the US and China”.

An independent survey of Chinese-language media … has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama’s decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.

“We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela,” declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference.

He added: “We have nothing to be afraid of. The North Koreans have stood up to America and has anything happened to them? No. Iran stands up to America and does disaster befall it? No.”

…“This time China must punish the US,” said Major-General Yang Yi, a naval officer. “We must make them hurt.” A major-general in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Luo Yuan, told a television audience that more missiles would be deployed against Taiwan. And a PLA strategist, Colonel Meng Xianging, said China would “qualitatively upgrade” its military over the next 10 years to force a showdown “when we’re strong enough for a hand-to-hand fight with the US”.

Chinese indignation was compounded when the White House said Obama would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, in the next few weeks.

“When someone spits on you, you have to get back,” said Huang Xiangyang, a commentator in the China Daily newspaper, usually seen as a showcase for moderate opinion.

An internal publication at the elite Qinghua University last week predicted the strains would get worse because “core interests” were at risk. It said battles over exports, technology transfer, copyright piracy and the value of China’s currency, the yuan, would be fierce.

…American officials seem baffled by what has gone wrong and how fast it has happened.

…Diplomats say they have been told that there was “frigid” personal chemistry between Obama and the Chinese president, with none of the superficial friendship struck up by previous leaders of the two nations.

…Americans were also livid at what they saw as deliberate Chinese attempts to humiliate the president by sending lower-level officials to deal with him.

…In Beijing, some diplomats even claim to detect a condescending attitude towards Obama, noting that Yang Jiechi, the foreign minister, prides himself on knowing the Bush dynasty and others among America’s traditional white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant elite.

Michael Sheridan
Times Online

Think does not = Chess

If big print can give what fine print takes,

can winning the wrong game lose the right one?

 

Does complexity increase the likelihood of complication?

 

Is thinking rehearsing?

 

If you were who you think you were and you are what you think you are,

and some of what will, can, can’t or won’t change,

what are the chances of becoming who you think you’ll be?

Think does not = Chess

You can’t start over.

If nothing doesn’t change,

is not making a move moving?

 

Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed,

whatever follies I have witnessed…

have been the consequence of action without thought.

 

Bernard Baruch

American financier, and presidential advisor

Think does not = Chess

If opponents don’t begin with pieces of the same number and value,

and players can think they’re winning when losing ,

can influencing others’ thoughts enhance results,

and vice versa?

 

If opponents think you have more influence and power,

do you?

 

The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance

 as though they were realities,

and are often more influenced by the things that seem than those that are.

 

Niccolo Machiavelli

Think does not = Chess

Are the only two certainties,

 

that there are at least two players,

 

you and everything that’s not?

 

If truth isn’t realizable without doubt,

is skepticism the best way to confirm reality?

 

If you meet a madman

who says that he is a fish and that we are all fishes,

 do you take off your clothes

to show him that you do not have fins?

 

Milan Kundera

Think does not = Chess

Known and unknown,

you were, are and will be pieces of varying value,

in an infinite number of games.

 

You may or may not be playing the games you think.

 

The chess board is the world,

the pieces are the phenomena of the universe,

the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature,

the player on the other side is hidden from us.

 

Thomas Huxley

Politics = Chess III

In chess, a fork is a tactic

that uses one piece to attack two or more of the opponent's pieces

at the same time,

hoping to achieve material gain

 (by capturing one of the opponent's pieces)

 because the opponent can only counter one of the two (or more) threats.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(chess)

 

If big print can give what fine print takes

can winning the wrong game lose the right one?

How can a relatively unknown and underfunded candidate, who refuses to accept donations larger than $100 per person, or donations from Lobbyists or PACs, win a local election against a well known, financially entrenched incumbent?

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change

and a greater evil than this

 

The conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder

 

Frederic Bastiat

 

If a few contribute the majority of large campaign donations that many can’t afford, who works for whom, and what do the few expect in return that most probably won’t receive?

Why would who want some neighborhoods to believe Urban Loop noise won’t be more than advertized?

…Highway planners use badly flawed techniques...

 

…the “A-weighting” scale used by officials to rate traffic noise…developed in the 1930s…ignores huge volumes of sound, the kind of low-frequency rumbling from trucks that pierces walls like they aren’t even there.

 

…State DOT doesn’t dispute that the A-scale misses lower-frequency sound.

 

…Daniel Maguire, a well-known noise expert… found…A-weighting as an arbitrary system never meant to be applied in the way federal authorities now use it.

 

Numerous studies show that low-intensity noise is at least as disruptive and potentially harmful to health as higher tones, he said.

 

Taft Wireback

Greensboro News and Record

Politics Does Not = Chess IV

You are so intent that you believe

 only what you believe that you believe

 that you remain utterly blind to what you really believe

without believing that you believe it

 

Orson Scott Card

 

If big print can give what fine print takes

can winning the wrong game lose the right one?

City of GreensboroCity Council Candidate Information Request V

If all City Council Candidates receive information

from all City Council inquiries after the campaign filing deadline,

what information has been provided to Council incumbents,

that the challengers have not received

since July 17, 2009?

 

How many other North Carolinian municipalities

require all candidates to receive all answers to campaign inquiries?

 

Why does the City of Greensboro believe the policy

helps ensure that incumbents would not have an advantage

over anybody attempting to run for city council?

Hat Tip – Ben Holder

Politics Does Not = Chess V

The first rule is not to lose

 

The second rule is not to forget the first rule

 

Warren Buffett

 

You can’t start over

 

Can winning be not playing?

 

A life making mistakes is not only more honorable

 but more useful than a life spent doing nothing

 

George Bernard Shaw

 

If nothing doesn’t change

is not making a move moving?

Politics Does Not = Chess II

Everybody sooner or later

sits down to a banquet of consequences

 

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

If you can’t necessarily control your pieces

can you be obliged to move and/or sacrifice

when you don’t want to?

 

If players don’t necessarily follow the same rules

which can change without everyone knowing

should you break rules if your opponent does?

 

I don't care if I follow your rules, if you can cheat, so can I

 

 I won't let you beat me unfairly, I'll beat you unfairly first

 

Ender Wiggin

Fictional Military Strategist

Politics does not = Chess

All animals are equal

but some animals are more equal than others

 

Some of George Orwell’s Pigs

 

Known and unknown

you were, are and will be pieces of varying value

in an infinite number of games

 

You may or may not be playing the games you think

 

The chess board is the world

the pieces are the phenomena of the universe

the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature

the player on the other side is hidden from us

 

Thomas Huxley

Politics Does Not = Chess III

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding

because I think, well, if they attack one personally

it means they have not a single political argument left

 

Margaret Thatcher

 

If opponents don’t begin with pieces of the same number and value

and players can think they’re winning when losing

can influencing others’ thoughts enhance results

and vice versa?

 

If opponents think you have more influence and power

do you?

 

The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance

 as though they were realities

and are often more influenced by the things that seem than those that are

 

Niccolo Machiavelli