LibsEatPoop2

PS - I didn't know it was Miyazaki's debut film before watching, but looking back, I can definitely see his style.

The country, the architecture, the castle are all just so beautifully drawn. The fight scenes are incredibly fluid and energetic. It was made in 1979 and so, there are a couple of tropes that haven't aged well - specially the Damsel in Distress, but other than that, the plot is solid. The female characters, when they're present, aren't overly sexualized. It's just a very well made film. Above all, it's just so fun! The chase scenes are freaking hilarious. The villain is plain evil so you don't have to think about any morally gray areas or whatever. Just sit back, relax, laugh and have a good time.

Highly recommended.

A relatively short article with some key assertions. The first paragraph is definitely going to irritate some people here. But the main thrust of the article is presented later, which is -

China’s late Cold War role as the great anti-communist power in the East, and its subsequent role in financing the American empire as it invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

The article lays out a lot of history as it relates to the Sino-Soviet relations and shows how as a result -

The CCP picked the side of capital in the Cold War, doomed the international communist movement in the process

Most important is this paragraph w.r.t the Cold War -

The first sign of betrayal was China’s active role in supporting Pakistan during the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh By 1972, Mao’s meeting with Richard Nixon signaled that the full anti-communist pivot was complete. With this pivot, China became a close American ally and the bulwark of anti-communism in East Asia and beyond. By the middle of the decade, the CCP was giving out loans to Pinochet, supporting UNITA in Angola alongside South Africa and the US against Cuba and the Soviet Union and had opened diplomatic relations with reactionary capitalist powers, from the Marcos regime in the Philippines to Japan. Deng Xiaoping sealed this alliance by invading Vietnam in 1979 in defense of the US-backed Khmer Rouge which the Vietnamese government had been attempting to overthrow. The CCP claims to have killed 100,000 Vietnamese communists in that war, which broke the back of the communist movement in East Asia and essentially ended it as a Cold War front , thus allowing the US to fully pivot to its massacres in Latin America and Africa in addition to the defense of Europe against the USSR and domestic communist movements.

And in the post-Soviet world -

Unlike other major American bond purchasers (Japan, South Korea, Germany) who are American military protectorates and can thus even be coerced into increasing the value of their currency, China subsidizes the American war machine ... CCP funds America’s wars in order to maintain the high value of the dollar relative to the yuan, which gives China a massive competitive edge in manufacturing and is a critical source of China’s massive economic growth.

In coalition with the East Asian American military protectorates, China filled the massive budget shortfalls that resulted from the combination of the Iraq War, Bush era tax cuts, and the early 2000s recession, propping up the flailing US economy as the war commenced. Chinese bond purchases intensified with US spending in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the CCP became an eager participant in the new War on Terror by allying closely with Israel, adopting American counterinsurgency techniques and technologies from the rapidly burgeoning trade, and eventually hiring American mercenary Erik Prince for themselves for deployment in “Xinjiang.”

After talking at length about the state of fake martial arts, cults, and their consequences in America, at 19:24, he turns to China.

The story is about Xu Xiaodong, an MMA fighter who's been fighting and exposing so-called Tai chi masters for the past few years. So far so good. But the video highlights the various negative consequences he has faced as a result. He's been ostracized by the MMA community, harassed and threatened by traditional martial art believers, called a spy, had his social media accounts banned, denied access to flights/high-speed trains etc. The public, the various institutions, and the government have all tried to denounce and humiliate him.

I have no doubt that some of those things are true. But it's really hard to find any actual first-hand sources for the role of the Chinese government in his struggles. The only recent news I can find is the Chinese Wushu Association decreeing that the traditional martial arts can't call themselves masters. In addition the political views section of his Wikipedia page does highlight some interesting things that would make the government keep an eye on him.

But all that is the more recent stuff. He has been in the business of fighting these masters for years. So, yeah, what's the deal with Xu Xiadong, Tai chi, and the CCP?