The country of Sri Lanka is in an economic crisis.  I am no economist and I can't explain how the situation got so dire for Sri Lanka.  But after some research, I can say for sure the Western narrative of the China debt trap is too blame is bogus.

The critics of China say that after loaning money to Sri Lanka and building its port and airport, China now owns the port and may eventually turn it into a military base!   But the debt Sri Lanka owed to China for the constructions are very small amount of its total international debt.  In fact the total amount Sri Lanka owes China is only about 10% of its total debt.  Japan is also owed 10%.  Most of the other 80% are owed to banks affiliated with the IMF, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.  The first two are controlled by the U.S. and Europe.  The ADB is controlled by Japan and the U.S.  So to say that China is using debt to control Sri Lanka is laughable.

The deal that Sri Lanka made with China during the crisis is that 70% of the port will be leased to China for 99 years and 30% to be kept by Sri Lanka.  In exchange China gives Sri Lanka 1.12 billion dollars which was used to service debt to other foreign banks.  Before the port was built, feasibility studies were done by Canadian and Dutch firms.  So it is believed that it can be profitable.  If the Chinese company that takes over now can produce profits, it will get 70% and Sri Lanka gets 30%.  Will it work?  Too early to tell but in 99 years the port will revert to Sri Lanka control.  Sort of like the British deal with Hong Kong.  Except China gives money to get the deal and not use gunboats to force the deal.

So Sri Lanka has not lost its port to China.  Certainly no military base is being built.  If 90% of the debt in owed by someone other than China, why is China being accused of a debt trap.? As I said about the accusation of Chinese debt traps in Africa, if the Western countries are so concern then just give these countries a better deal than China.  These countries are not stupid. They won't take the worse deal.

By the way, I think I wrote this before.  The only high finance guy on Wall Street who was convicted of fraud during the last economic disaster in 2008 was from Sri Lanka.  I found it hard to believe then that he was the only guilty person during the financial meltdown.  Now I find it hard to believe that no Western financial institution has anything to do with the Sri Lanka meltdown.

 Watched the hearings last night because I thought it was the finale and they will give the final conclusion.  Well, this is a few things I learned:

There will be a sequel in September!  With new witnesses and facts.  So stay tuned.

It was almost all Republicans who testified against Trump.  Those people will be attacked.  Some was already last night.  

They should have people like Hannity testify why they advised Trump to stop the riot when it was going on.  They have been silenced since and even accused the Committee as a witch hunt.  They seem to believe it was a disaster when it was happening but no big deal now.  Last night FOX didn't even air the hearing.

Trump told McCarthy that it was Antifa that was rioting, not his supporters.  If that is the case, I would think he would have ordered the military to stop it quickly.  But he let it go on.  McCarthy and Trump got into a swearing contest.  But McCarthy is kissing Trump's butt today.

Trump looked stupid and weak while trying to make videos to address the nation.  I am surprised these tapes were kept.

Pence's Secret Service people were fearing for their lives.  These people were supposedly brave enough to die to save the person they were guarding.  But the texts from Trump's Secret Service details were erased, and looks to be done so after they were asked for.  It is hard to believe that the texts were erased accidentally.  Lots of theories out there.  I believe that some of the agents were either supportive of the rioters or some of them did not want to protect Trump because he is a traitor to the country.  Either case, it shows the danger our democracy is in.

 Haven't written for about three weeks due to vacation and not finding a topic I want to write about.  I decide to write about former prime minister of Japan, Abe, who was assassinated more than a week ago.  I didn't really want to write about him after his death because in the past I have written to a newspaper editorial criticizing him.  I don't want to be critical of someone who was just murdered.  Then someone pointed out to me about the opinion I wrote about Abe and wonder if I am happy he died.  Well, not really because things are not always black and white.

I criticized Abe because as prime minister, he visited the graves of Japanese war criminals.  An American politician wrote an opinion that the Chinese should get over what happened during WWII and that it is the Japanese prime minister's right to visit the graves.  I wrote wondering if that same politicians would write the same thing if Jews were appalled by the Chancellor of Germany visiting the graves of Nazi war criminals?  Add to that, Abe's grandfather was a war criminal but was not prosecuted because the U.S. felt that he was useful as a politician who could run the agenda the Americans wanted for Japan post war.  Sort of like the U.S. helping Nazis escape prosecution if they were useful to America as scientists for example.

But while I did not approve of what Abe did and what his grandfather did even more, Abe was basically a politician who tried to stay in power.  His agenda included a stronger Japanese military.  Maybe he believed it was necessary to counter the rise of China, although Japan is protected by the U.S. anyway.  He most likely called for a stronger military and visited the graves of war criminals to satisfy the far right in Japan.  At one time he actually called for better relations with China but that was probably shot down by the far right.  So yes, things are not all black or white.  So while I don't particularly like Abe, I don't feel any happiness about his assassination.  The world is not safer when political leaders are killed rather than being judged at the ballot box.

 Roe v Wade was overturned today by the Supreme Court.  This was not surprising given that the ruling was leaked several weeks ago.  Still it is a day of infamy in  American democracy.  Look, I am not for abortion but this is about the right of women.  Let's been frank.  If men are the ones who get pregnant, there will be no laws restriction abortion.  Birth controls would have been invented long ago and we would not only have plan B but also plans C, D, and E today.

This overturn of Roe v Wade demonstrate that elections have big consequences.  Trump appointed three of the justices that voted for the overturn.  He will be a hero to the conservatives just for this alone.  Majority of the country want to keep abortion legal.  Yet a guy who got less popular votes than his opponent single handily change the law of the land.  Well, he did have help from Mitch McConnell who helped the GOP steal two of those three justice seats.  So it is imperative that we get out the vote to keep the slim Senate control in November and keep the White House in 2024.  

Even if are able to accomplish that, it maybe years before we can overturn this decision.  On another note, there is gun legislation that looks to be passed.  Still, it will not go as far as the majority of the country want.  So this begs the question:  If majority of the people cannot get what we want by voting, how free are we really?

 It has been fifty years since Watergate which was the first time in my lifetime that there was a constitutional crisis in the U.S.  We were lucky that disaster was avoided fifty years ago.  But can we avoid disaster this time?

Richard Nixon, unlike what he proclaimed, was a crook.  He tried to cheat on an election and then tried to cover it up.  Donald Trump is worse.   He asked the Russians openly to help him win an election.  And when the CIA said that Russia was trying to interfere, he agreed with Putin rather than our own intelligence service.  Nixon at first refused to turn over the tapes but eventually did although with 18 minutes missing.  Trump refused to turn over records and has some records missing.  We still have not seen his taxes yet.  Some of Nixon's cronies went to jail.  Some of Trump's cronies may go to jail.  It is obvious that the scandal went all the way to the presidency in both cases.

Nixon actually won reelection and probably would have won anyway without cheating.  Trump lost fair and square and then promoted conspiracy theories about fraud in the election.  This led to the insurrection which Trump encouraged.  Nixon resigned peacefully and let Gerald Ford become president and healed the nation.  Trump did not care if the mob killed his vice president.  Trump is still at it now, trying to divide the nation.  

Back in 1972, I was glued to the tv after school for the hearings.  I didn't understand what was going on a lot of the time.  But I, like many people in the country, wanted to see the truth come out and make judgment based on facts.  Today, most people don't care to watch because they have their minds made up depending which party they are affiliated with.  Back then we have Walter Cronkite, whom everybody trusted.  Today we have the conservatives and liberal media with their own distinct audiences.

Back then, many Republicans see that Nixon's actions were bad for democracy and the country.  Today. the Republicans, with the exception of a few like Liz Cheney, only want to get power back and could careless about the state of democracy in the country.  Nixon knew that he would be impeached if he did not resign and there was a good chance he would have been convicted and kicked out of office.  Today, regardless what criminal acts Trump did, there was never enough vote to convict him in the Senate.

So that is why I believe that Trump and his followers are much worse for the democracy of this country than Nixon and his supporters were fifty years ago.  And that is also why I am much more worried about the future of our country than I did fifty years ago.

 I thought that the Jan. 6 Committee did a good job of presenting the case last week in the first of the televised hearings.  To have Ivanka Trump agreeing with Bill Barr that the election results were correct and that it was not stolen was big.  But did it change any minds?

The people who believe Donald Trump's lies would not have tuned in.  After all, they would be watching Fox and other conservative news outlets.  If they had believed all those outrageous lies up to now, I don't think anything presented would change their minds.  All the people who believe Trump caused the insurrection obviously would not change their mind.  So it is like preaching to the choir.  Maybe I am being pessimistic, but it seems like we are too divided to even agree when somebody is trying to kill our democracy.  I will continue to pay attention to the hearings but I doubt the opinions of the country will change significantly.

 Peter Zeihan is a China hater who has claimed that due to low birth rates and other factors. China will have half of its current population by 2050!  He also claimed that China will collapse soon and it knows that so it will invade Taiwan soon while it still can.  He also claimed that Taiwan will have nuclear weapons at a moment's notice and will use it to turn back China.  Despite these outrageous claims, he has a lot of followers who believe he is an expert in foreign relations.  Of course, lots of people make outrageous predictions and have followers.  Gordon Chang comes to mind.  But I was shocked that with such unintelligent babble, Zeihan was deemed credible enough for our defense community to be invited to speak at the Eisenhower School of National Security.

The Eisenhower School is part of the Armed Forces education system and is highly regarded in turning out leaders in the military.  Eisenhower himself graduated from this school which had another name in the past.  So I would think the school would be careful in inviting speakers who should be credible.  It is not credible that China will lose 700 million people in population by 2050 unless there will be a war the magnitude of which we have never seen before.  There is no way that demographic extrapolations will come up with this conclusion.  I have never heard anyone else make that prediction.  

Even if China is on a downward spiral, it does not mean it will invade Taiwan.  And while Taiwan has the talent to produce a nuclear weapon, it would be unlikely that it would make even one on a moments notice, let alone multiple warheads.  Zeihan said that Taiwan can destroy Beijing and Shanghai.  Even if that is the case, China still has dozens of cities of over a million people.  

Zeihan's claims become even more ridiculous.  He said that China then will send millions across the strait in fishing boats with the hope of landing enough to overwhelm Taiwan forces.  But he believes that Taiwan and U.S. navies will destroy these boats before they land, killing millions of Chinese and thus the invasion will fail.

It is laughable what he said.  If Taiwan uses nuclear weapons on China, wouldn't China respond in kind with even more nuclear weapons?  Maybe half a dozen would destroy the whole island, so why would they bother sending people across the strait?  In fishing boats, when they have a powerful navy?  Maybe Zeihan doesn't know that China has a navy and hundreds of nuclear weapons.  If that is the case, what makes him an expert?

What bothers me is that our young officers who are learning geopolitics and military strategies are exposed to such clowns.  It is like Trump listening to his cronies instead of real experts and make idiotic decisions that cause a million American lives.  I think we can understand why Fox News keep inviting Gordon Chang and others like him to blast China.  But who in our defense department invited this fool to speak at one of our prestigious military institutions?

 Have you seen the video of Steve Kerr on the shooting in Texas?  If not, go see it because I can't write better than what he said.  He said it with emotion and anger.   I can't duplicate or even approach that on paper.  But I share the same anger.  Enough is enough!

I don't understand the greed of the members o the NRA and all the politicians who are bought off by the NRA.  Don't these people have children, grandchildren and love ones.? Don't these people and their love ones go to church, grocery stores and schools?  I wonder if these people would still back the proliferation of guns if they or their ones were the ones in that grocery store in Buffalo or that church in Laguna Woods or that school in Texas?

What kind of democracy we live in when 90% of the people want stricter gun laws and an organization can buy off politicians to prevent these laws from passing?  I guess it is the same kind of democracy where politicians follow conspiracy theories rather than science leading to deaths of over a million people in a pandemic.  It is easy to say we love freedom.  But I say the first freedom that a government should protect is the freedom of knowing you and your love ones are safe.  There is no freedom if you are six feet under.

 Yesterday marked the end of the English Premier League season.  It was a fascinating day with Manchester City coming from a two goal deficit late in the game for a 3-2 win and beating out Liverpool by one point in the final standings.  Liverpool had been tied 1-1 in their must win game when they brought in an injured Mohammed Salah in desperation.  Salah scored a goal to help Liverpool win 3-1 to delight their fans until the bad news from Manchester.  It was quite a final day.

With the one goal, Salah finished with 23 for the season to win another golden boot as the league's leading scorer for the third time.  This time he shares it with Son Heung-Min of Tottenham Spurs.  Both beat out the great Cristiano Ronaldo who finished third.  In fact, eight of the top ten scorers are either non-white and/ or born outside of England.  I guess that is why despite having the top league in the world for many years now, the English national team has not done well in international competition.  But the diversity of the Premier League is one of the reason the league is followed by fans in most countries of the world.

Son is the first Asian to win the award and is not surprising that he comes from South Korea.  South Korea had done the best among Asian nations in international competition.  They finished fourth when they co-hosted with Japan.  They beat Italy and Spain on the way to the semi-finals.  This begs the question: why South Korea, with a much smaller population, is way more successful than China in soccer?

It can' be the lack of training or competition.  China has put in a lot of money to bring coaches from all over the world and to improve facilities.  China has been successful in the summer Olympics and has even made in roads in the winter Games this year.  But it has only qualified for the World Cup once!   They had a later start than Japan and Korea but they had caught up in other sports.  Their professional leagued is not as well known as the Japanese J League but has been bringing in foreign imports in recent years to improve the level of play.  Yet I would say that Japan and South Korea is more ahead of China now than China is ahead of Vietnam and Thailand.  So what is the problem?

Well, for some reason which I can't fully explain, it seems to me the communist countries don't do as well in soccer compared to other sports.  Russia and the former USSR were world powers in many sports but they were also rans in European soccer.  East Germany had more medals in Olympics than West Germany but West Germany was way better than East Germany in soccer.  Cuba is great in baseball and boxing but is very weak in soccer.  Does communism stifle creativity and soccer demands creativity?  Is this one area that capitalism always trump communism?  Well, China can still say it can beat Taiwan and Hong Kong on the pitch although that is no consolation. 

 Three months into the war in Ukraine and it is obvious that Russia is getting itself into a quagmire.  This was predictable given that Russia and the U.S. couldn't win decisively in Afghanistan.  As I said before, Ukraine is much more advanced militarily than Afghanistan.  Ukraine is also getting a lot of military aid from NATO.  So I don't know why Putin started out advancing toward Kiev which the Ukrainians would defend to the death.  I thought if he invaded, he would have just try to take the eastern region and declare victory and go home.  He may still be doing that but I think now that some in the West has actually predicting that Ukraine may win, Putin may double down to prove those analysists wrong.  This will make this whole thing a greater tragedy.

So there are three scenarios how this will play out.  One is that Russia wins.  Given all the money and arms the West have put in to defend Ukraine, I doubt that will happen.  There is no way that Russia will take Kiev and actually run the country.  

Unlike some predictions of Western analysists, Ukraine cannot win either.   No matter how many men and tanks the Russians lose, they will always have more men and weapons than Ukraine.  Ukraine cannot drive the Russians completely out of Ukraine.  Russia will likely be stuck holding on eastern parts of Ukraine but cannot move into the western regions near the capital.  They may resort to bombing Kiev on and off.  In this way, Ukraine technically have not lost but it really isn't functioning as a country and the refugees who have left will neve come back.  So Ukraine will never be the same again.

The actual worst scenario to me is if Russia start to lose even in the eastern region.  In that case, Putin may use nuclear weapons.  When a rat is pinned against the wall, it is going to bite.  He may not use Russia's most powerful nuclear weapons but anything nuclear is going to bring massive destruction to Ukraine and kill many more people.  And then would NATO and the U.S. retaliate with nuclear weapons?  This scenario is unthinkable and I hope it will never come to it.

Regardless, all three possibilities are bad for Ukraine.  Diplomatic solution is the only possible way out.  Maybe Putin is a madman and that he will not settle for eastern Ukraine.  But Zelensky cannot possible believe that even if Ukraine fight to the last man, Ukraine will ever be the same nation as before the war.  I don't think the West should encourage Ukraine to fight to the last man.