The Office of Education
The Ministry of Culture
The People's Republic of China
July 31, 2013
Dear Minister of Culture:
Understanding the average American is a task that should involve Americans. In particular, this task should recruit the best unbiased minds of the United States, especially educators.
The two foremost candidates I have come across in my sojourns of fifty years in the United States are Professors Sharla Hutchison and Michael F. Meade.
I have been to many sectors of America -- from its insane asylums to its best universities. I have found that literature is still the best record of its deeds. Dr. Hutchison and Dr. Meade have deep understanding of their terrain, as much as I know of the yellow mud that sprouted the rice I harvested as a five-year-old village boy in China, the land of my birth. To understand American society and the American people, we need to have the most discerning minds and the least biased souls
It is important that we learn from Dr. Hutchison and Dr. Meade. America is still a foreign land to most Chinese in China, and as a member of a large family that have emigrated to the United States for four generations, I urge China to learn from fair-minded educators like Professors Hutchison and Meade, whom I have had the honor and privilege of their unselfish instructions.
China will be better off when they learn from the best minds of America. The best minds are always open and honest minds, truth seeking, and plain speaking.
[CHRYSANTHEMUM] Chrysanthemum Literary Society --- a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit charitable corporation in the evergreen state of Washington to promote literature, education, and world peace. You can submit work for review here by email to koonwoon@gmail.com
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Friday, July 26, 2013
A True Scholar in the Secular Age
This is Dr. Michael F. Meade of the English Department of Fort Hays State University in Kansas.
I am very proud to have studied with Dr. Meade in a variety of topics ancient and modern in the various genres of English literature. Currently I am off on a private literary investigation but you can bet your last dollar that I shall not return empty-handed. Every course I had with Professor Meade was value-added. He teaches "who travels lighter travels farther."
And whoever travels lighter travels faster, and so I am leaving today in a relative way and I shall return the previous day.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
CHRYSANTHEMUM BLOOMS AGAIN!
CHRYSANTHEMUM blooms again! Please send submissions of up to five (5) poems and/or micro-fiction not to exceed ten (10) pages in length, embedded in an email to koonwoon@gmail.com
The link for E - Chrysanthemum is http://koonwoon2013.wordpress.com/
Submissions are read continuously and expected decision time is within two (2) weeks. There are no entry fees. Anyone is able to receive a free copy for the price of mailing .
We have no specific guidelines. Unfortunately we will not be able to comment on most of the submissions because of time constraints.
Chrysanthemum magazine was a print magazine that existed between 1990 (founding year in Seattle) and last published in 2006. We hope to generate enough interests so that we might be able to print a yearly anthology in print.
Sincerely,
Koon Woon
The link for E - Chrysanthemum is http://koonwoon2013.wordpress.com/
Submissions are read continuously and expected decision time is within two (2) weeks. There are no entry fees. Anyone is able to receive a free copy for the price of mailing .
We have no specific guidelines. Unfortunately we will not be able to comment on most of the submissions because of time constraints.
Chrysanthemum magazine was a print magazine that existed between 1990 (founding year in Seattle) and last published in 2006. We hope to generate enough interests so that we might be able to print a yearly anthology in print.
Sincerely,
Koon Woon
Monday, July 15, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Thursday, July 11, 2013
CHRYSANTHEMUM micro-editions
Chrysanthemum micro-editions will feature micro-fiction, short verse, and short-short
prose pieces of any style or subject. It is going to be a monthly newsletter free for the price of mailing.
Submission: Anyone may submit up to 5 poems and 5 pages of prose via email (embedded in the email) to koonwoon@gmail.com, or send via snail mail to Chrysanthemum 2012 18th Ave. South,
Seattle, WA 98144-4324
Submissions are read all year round and expected decision time within two(2) weeks.
prose pieces of any style or subject. It is going to be a monthly newsletter free for the price of mailing.
Submission: Anyone may submit up to 5 poems and 5 pages of prose via email (embedded in the email) to koonwoon@gmail.com, or send via snail mail to Chrysanthemum 2012 18th Ave. South,
Seattle, WA 98144-4324
Submissions are read all year round and expected decision time within two(2) weeks.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
One Always Need to Fight Back when Backed into a Corner
China Has World’s Most Active Missile Programs, U.S. Says
By Tony Capaccio - Jul 10, 2013 9:56 AM PT
China’s military has the world’s “most active and diverse ballistic missile program,” with an expanding inventory of nuclear warheads that can reach the U.S., according to a Pentagon intelligence report.
The arsenal includes a new submarine-launched JL-2 ballistic missile that will “for the first time allow Chinese” submarines “to target portions of the United States from operating areas located near the Chinese coast,” according to the new assessment by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.
China is expanding its missile programs as the Pentagon pursues a policy of putting more emphasis on U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region. Some of China’s weapons are “specifically designed to prevent adversary military forces’s access to regional conflicts,” according to the report.
China is “developing and testing offensive missiles, forming additional missile units, qualitatively upgrading missile systems and developing methods to counter ballistic missile defenses,” according to the “Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat” report obtained by Bloomberg News. It’s an update to one released in 2009.
“China can already target the United States with a relatively small force” of intercontinental ballistic missiles and the number of nuclear warheads “capable of reaching the United States could expand to well over 100 within the next 15 years,” it said.
The conclusions on China are part of a report that surveys world developments in ballistic-missile technology and trends, including in North Korea, Iran, India and Pakistan.
The National Air and Space Intelligence Center, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, is the Pentagon’s top provider of aerospace intelligence.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
The arsenal includes a new submarine-launched JL-2 ballistic missile that will “for the first time allow Chinese” submarines “to target portions of the United States from operating areas located near the Chinese coast,” according to the new assessment by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.
China is expanding its missile programs as the Pentagon pursues a policy of putting more emphasis on U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region. Source: AFP via Getty Images
A Chinese boy stands on a boat carrying sea-to-air missiles at the Military Museum in Beijing. Photographer: Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images
China is “developing and testing offensive missiles, forming additional missile units, qualitatively upgrading missile systems and developing methods to counter ballistic missile defenses,” according to the “Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat” report obtained by Bloomberg News. It’s an update to one released in 2009.
“China can already target the United States with a relatively small force” of intercontinental ballistic missiles and the number of nuclear warheads “capable of reaching the United States could expand to well over 100 within the next 15 years,” it said.
The conclusions on China are part of a report that surveys world developments in ballistic-missile technology and trends, including in North Korea, Iran, India and Pakistan.
The National Air and Space Intelligence Center, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, is the Pentagon’s top provider of aerospace intelligence.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
BLIND FAITH
Commentary
Is the Pentagon preparing for war with China?
By Bernie Lopez
Philippine Daily Inquirer
The probability is based on the emerging threat of China’s “antiaccess/antidenial capabilities (A2/AD),” or new weapons that will make it difficult for US carriers to ply China-Taiwan waters.
In 1996, China conducted missile tests and military exercises in the Strait of Taiwan. The United States responded by sending two aircraft carriers to the South China Sea. To America the issue was, hardly Taiwan’s independence, but US military superiority and pride. The US show of force was to remind China of America’s vast superiority. The move was a “deterrence” to China’s aggressive posture.
Alas, the move backfired. Instead of deterring, it triggered an arms race. Realizing its weakness in its own backyard, China had to move in the name of survival. It embarked on an aggressive weapons program to bridge the gap.
Even earlier, China was investing in sophisticated but low-cost weapons, such as “antiship missiles, short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, stealth submarines, and cyber and space arms.” The Pentagon called these “asymmetric weapons,” meaning cheap bullets threatening expensive tanks. It saw threats against fixed US bases in Japan and Guam, and mobile carriers. Six decades earlier, the United States had “unrivaled naval and air power.” Now, all of a sudden, it can be denied access to Taiwan waters by antiship missiles.
The Pentagon’s goal was to respond to the “Chinese threat.” In truth it was a “US threat” on China’s turf. The Pentagon had a misguided mindset that America had a right to intrude into any territory on the planet—in layman’s terms, hegemony. There were two hurdles to a greater response. The first was the absence of a consensus from the civilian government, which pooh-poohed the Pentagon’s urgent cry of “Wolf! Wolf!” The second was the prospect that the cost of such an expensive war would dwarf that of US military interventions combined, and serve as the coup de grace for a US economic collapse. The Pentagon saw that China’s A2/AD would “raise the human and economic cost of [US presence] in the region to prohibitive levels.”
Two strategists, Andrew Marshall and Andrew Krepinevich, have been raising the alarm about China’s new capabilities since the early 1990s. A sophisticated US Air Force simulation war game in October 2008 called “Pacific Vision” triggered the conceptualization of the Air/Sea Battle (ASB) that could “execute networked, integrated attacks-in-depth to disrupt, destroy, and defeat the enemy (A2/AD).” The ASB strategy is a “blinding attack” on “Chinese antiaccess facilities, including land- and sea-based missile launchers, surveillance and communication platforms, satellite and antisatellite weapons, and command and control nodes.”
But Pentagon officials knew that such an aggressive plan of hitting mainland China facilities, not to mention the collateral damage on population centers, had “escalation implications” because China was likely to respond by going for the jugular—that is, using nuclear weapons. Some US generals believe that China will never go to that extent, but others know there are possibilities. This is why the US civilian government today is wary. The victory that the Pentagon is seeking is the same as Gen. Douglas MacArthur asking permission to nuke Shanghai and Beijing to end the Korean War, or Gen. William Westmoreland asking permission for saturation bombings resulting in genocide to end the Vietnam war in two months.
The Pentagon is full of disillusioned generals who are blind to the consequences of their actions. They see only the vision of defeating an enemy. No matter how small China’s nuclear arsenal is, it will be a war without winners. Nukes are an equalizer of superiority. If the ASB unleashes Armageddon, it will take just one tiny five-megaton bomb, 10,000 times the Hiroshima bomb, to wipe out the Big Apple in a blink.
Says Australian strategist Hugh White: “We can be sure that China will place a very high priority indeed on maintaining its capacity to strike the United States, and that it will succeed in this.” The ASB will surely accelerate Chinese response, as in the 1996 affair.
Joshua Rovner of the US Naval War College comments that “deep inland strikes could be mistakenly perceived by the Chinese as preemptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma.” And since the ASB cannot be tested or simulated, it will forever be on the hypothetical plane. Its success will never be known until there is a real war.
Given that the ASB, with the capability to induce a nuclear war, will be scrapped in the name of humanity, just as MacArthur and Westmoreland were denied, China will now push to bridge the gap even more, to whittle down US superiority. This will in turn make America come up with new weapons as counterresponse, which is already happening.
What is scary is that despite the futility of the ASB in the eyes of the civilian government, Gen. Norton Schwartz writes that: “The first steps to implement Air-Sea Battle are already underway here at the Pentagon. In our FY 2012 and FY 2013 budgets we increased investment in the systems and capabilities we need to defeat access threats.” In other words, the Pentagon may be proceeding without the go-signal of the civilian government.
Bernie Lopez (eastwindreplyctr@gmail.com) has been writing political commentaries for the past 20 years. He lists the source for this piece as the writings of Amitai Etzioni, professor of international affairs at George Washington University and a senior advisor to the Carter White House.
Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/55817/is-the-pentagon-preparing-for-war-with-china#ixzz2Yc9V9FTi
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