Table of Contents (17 April, 2022)

Book Reviews

• Applebaum, Anne; Red Famine – Stalin's War Against Ukraine

• Bell, Sir Charles; Portrait of a Dalai Lama – The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth

• Chen Qingying; A History of Tibet

• Chu, Ben; Chinese Whispers

• Dorjee, Dudjom; Falling Off the Roof of the World

• Fenby, Jonathan; Will China Dominate the 21st Century?

• Friedman, George; The Next Decade

• Galleotti, Mark; A Brief History of Russia – From the Pagans to Putin

• Grey, Ian; Catherine the Great – Autocrat and Empress of Russia

• Gruber, Elmar J; From the Heart of Tibet

• Harrer, Heinrich; Seven Years in Tibet

• Kilmeade, Brian; Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

• Laird, Thomas; The Story of Tibet – Conversations With the Dalai Lama

• Lu Xun; The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Stories of China

• Luo Guanzhong; Three Kingdoms

• Jin Canrong; China's Wisdom

• Massie, Robert K. Catherine the Great – Portrait of a Woman

• Midler, Paul; What's Wrong with China?

• Montefiore, Simon Sebag; Catherine and Potemkin – The Imperial Love Affair

• Mosher, Steven W; Bully of Asia

• Musashi, Miyamoto. Book of Five Rings (Kaufman Translation)

• Norbu, Jamyang; Warriors of Tibet

• Nye, Joseph; Is the American Century Over?

• Park, Yeonmi; In Order to Live

• Rounding, Virginia; Catherine the Great - Love, Sex and Power

• Sun Hongnian, Zhang Yongpan & Li Sheng; The 14th Dalai Lama

• Summers, William C.; The Great Manchurian Plague of 1910 – 1911 – The Geopolitics of an Epidemic Disease

• Smith, Douglas; Love and Conquest – The Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin

• Smith, Warren J; Tibetan Nation – A History of Tibetan Nationalism and Sino-Tibetan Relations

• Soloveytchik, George; Potemkin – A Picture of Catherine's Russia

• Troyat, Henri; Catherine the Great

• Various Authors; Rule of Law in China

• Xi Jinping; The Governance of China, Volume I

• Xi Jinping; The Governance of China, Volume II

• Yan Jirong; China's Governance
  China Intercontinental Press's “Sinopedia” Series

• Part 1: China's History, China's Culture, China's Social Development.

• Part 2: China's Ethnic Groups and Religions, China's Laws, China's Political System

• Part 3: China's Economy, China's Geography, China's Environment

• Part 4: China's National Defense, China's Laws, China's Science, Technology and Education

End Of Year Book Tally

• 2020
• 2021

Biographies

• Sun Zhongshan (or Sun Yat-Sen)

• Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin-Tavrichevsky

Chinese Culture and History

Modern History

• My thoughts back in 2018, about the Xi regime
• China has a superstition about years ending in "9"
• Again and again, America has saved helpless little China

Ancient History

• Contrary to their propaganda, China is not 5,000 years old
• They've been aggressive for their entire existence
• They've also been brutally tyrannical for their entire history

Culture and Society

• Chinese culture is built on ethnocentrism

• Jingoism has always been the root of China's identity, and now they admit that

• The slave trade is alive and well in China (part 1)

• The slave trade is alive and well in China (part 2)

• China's counterfeit credential crisis (C4)

• Chinese tourists are NOTORIOUSLY barbaric

• China's long history of re-writing history

• China's surveillance state bears eerie Biblical similarities

• China's petulant juvenility is on display at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics

• “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” is nothing new. They've been doing it for centuries

Chinese Politics and Current Events

Bubonic Plague Returns

• Beijing admits Bubonic Plague outbreak: October, 2020

• Plague update: Thanksgiving, 2019

• The Plague rises again (along with numerous other diseases): Summer, 2019

• There is evidence that China is preparing YET ANOTHER bioweapon; an H2H transmissible hantavirus
  Covid-19

• The Chinese government's botched response, and evidence that it is manmade

• The CPC's laughable committee to fight the coronavirus

• China's attempts to portray themselves as heroes of the coronavirus fight

• How being too cozy with China doomed Italy

• America's opportunity to crush Covid-battered China
  COVID Aftermath

• ANOTHER deadly virus is loose in Beijing
  China's foreign aggression

• An early look at China's "nine dash LIE"

• The Reed Bank incident: the PLA's assault on Filipino fishermen in Philippine waters

• The case of Chemi Lhampo: China's act of war against Canada

• The case of Norman Easy: China's assassination of a US citizen

• China started 2019 by preparing for war (against Taiwan?)

• Xi Jinping has rather openly claimed the Philippines and Brunei

• China's drug war against the U.S.

• China's drug war against the Philippines

• China's attempts to control the media in Australia

• The Confucius Institute has been a weaponized propaganda tool from the beginning

• China's Eco-Piracy and Mass Plundering of the Seas

• China's fake sympathizers (Laurene Beaumond and Wilson Edwards

• China tried to pretend Russia's “US bio-weapons in Ukraine” story made sense. (Also published under “Russia”)

China's weaknesses

• My early examination of China's weak status
• China has covered its weaknesses using bluster for a long time
• They were already having a food shortage in 2019
• China's disastrous air safety record
• The Wenchuan Quake cover-up
• Why I'm not the slightest bit worried about China's DF-41 (if they even have it)
• The fallacy of China's laughable claim of "victory over poverty"

The world is waking up to China

• China is making more enemies than they can handle
• The Party is actually trying to make the world hate China, and here's why
• The Hong Kong protests have galvanized Taiwan
• The Pacific Islands Forum told China to kick rocks in 2018
• And ASEAN followed suit
• China's humiliation at Apec 2019
• After his defeat at APEC, Xi prepared for a showdown in Buenos Aires
• The 2019 BRI Summit humiliated China in their own capital city
• It was China that started a "New Cold War," and they did it in 1991
• The "Quad-Alliance"

Regarding Tibet

• Contrary to China's propaganda, the Tang Dynasty did NOT conquer Tibet

• China's claim of sovereignty over Tibet based on the Yuan Dynasty is equally idiotic

• China's claim of Ming Sovereignty is perhaps the thinnest of all

American Politics

• Henry Kissinger is a stain on America's record

• The 2018 "mail bomb" hoax the Democrats hoped people would fall for

• The 2020 rioters in America don't have a damned clue what they're protesting about

• The American Left's actions after their January 2021 coup are a mirror image of the “Culture Revolution” in China

• After Ukraine, it's time for American conservatives to give up on Putin and Russia

World Politics

Japan's Resurgence

• China is awakening Japan and may soon regret it
• A new emperor means a new era

North Korea

• China's threats to North Korea in the weeks leading up to the Singapore Summit

• The Trump/Kim summit: what was accomplished and what was not

• China's media panic after the Singapore Trump/Kim summit
  Russia

• The Trump/Putin summit in Helsinki

• The day Biden swore Russia would invade Ukraine

• Biden's second attempt to predict a Russian invasion of Ukraine

• Okay, NOW Russia invaded Ukraine (Also posted under “Personal Journal”)

• The US's inaction in Ukraine disillusioned Ukraine about ever joining NATO (Also published under “Personal Journal)

• China tried to pretend Russia's “US bio-weapons in Ukraine” story made sense. (Also published under “China's Foreign Aggression”)

• And Russia's failure in Ukraine has now left them as a Chinese client-state
  Other

• The end of the US-Pakistan alliance was a trap for China

• Rodi Duterte, the Tsina Makipili ng Malacanang

My Travel Map

• February 8, 2002

Personal Journal

• My introduction

• Early experiences with China's crooked cops

• Thoughts from a vacation to Bali

• Recollections on my last night in Bali

• Wondering if Shanghai is losing its magic

• When a Chinese school administrator told me "let them fail; they don't matter"

• One of my students shows she's cleverer than her countrymen

• The 306th PLA hospital crisis (part 1)

• The 306th PLA hospital crisis (part 2)

• The 306th PLA hospital crisis (part 3)

• Trapped in Beijing (April, 2019)

• The 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, seen from Beijing

• Learning the hard way that in China, proving your innocence is a crime

• Independence Day reflections amid the Hong Kong riots

• Escape from China (and reluctant return)

• Looking back on 2019 after returning, reluctantly, to China

• Thanksgiving reflections in China

• A teller at a Chinese bank tried to steal my passport; and the cops didn't help

• My final, miserable Christmas in China

• The week I left China once and for all

• Shedding my "secret identity" upon leaving China

• Gofundme page setup for my children in the Philippines amid the Chinavirus-19 crisis

• Final reflections (and closure) on my nightmarish time in Beijing

• Why did I shift from China commentary to book reviews?

• Reflecting on 9/11, in the wake of the Chinavirus-19 crisis: What if it happened today?

• My first Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. since 2013

• Rewriting Chely Wright's “Shut Up and Drive:” the end of the last dream of 2020

• Moving to Ukraine (and getting back to the front lines of the war against China's propaganda)

• I tried to get my belongings shipped out of China, and Chinese incompetence made it a nightmare

• Recalling a fateful day at the end of 2019

• An entry comparing my 38th birthday to the day I was born

• Last days in Kharkiv (under Russian guns) (Also listed under “Russia”)

• The long trip from war-stricken Kharkiv to Warsaw

• Watching the West (especially the US) do NOTHING to help Ukraine (Also listed under “Russia”)

Miscellaneous

• Some memes

• China trolls themselves and doesn't even realize it

• A scene from a semi-autibiographical novel I was writing, turned into a short story