Capítulo 2: O Apartamento 🔗

Leitura I 🔗

A família está no apartamento.

O apartamento está no Rio de Janeiro.
O Rio de Janeiro é uma cidade.
A cidade está no Brasil.

O apartamento não é grande.
O apartamento é pequeno.

Mas no apartamento há uma família.

No apartamento há Paulo, Ana, Lucas, Clara e Dona Lúcia.

Paulo é o pai.
Ana é a mãe.
Lucas é o filho.
Clara é a filha.
Dona Lúcia é a avó.

Capítulo 1: A Família 🔗

Leitura I 🔗

O Brasil é um país.

O Brasil não é uma cidade.
O Brasil é um país.

Rio de Janeiro é uma cidade.
São Paulo é uma cidade.
Brasília é uma cidade.

Rio de Janeiro está no Brasil.
São Paulo está no Brasil.
Brasília está no Brasil.

Brasília não é um país.
Brasília é uma cidade.

São Paulo não é um país.
São Paulo é uma cidade.

If you allow, I want to make this into an opinion piece. (Guess I can not help it.) In particular, responding to the last paragraph in the reading guide and the book. I think the American strategy in Asia has been rather shallow-minded. The book says as much, something needs to change.¹ I agree, not even just with South Korea, but seeing everything through a pro-China and anti-China lens is a constricting worldview. The People’s Republic of China is not like the USSR of old. It should not be treated the same way. In many ways the Chinese are much more intelligent and subtle than the Russians could ever be. To a degree, I have a lot of loyalty to whoever has inherited the Chinese heartland. Anybody who cares about Asia even a little should recognize China’s central role. That being said, the Chinese system as it currently exists is ruthless. China to an extent has always been like that, but the government of China is able to extract a degree of control that was not possible in the past. The good news is I do not think a fight with China is even necessary. To make a long discussion short: a country built on sandcastles can only be swept back into the sea. The Chinese did America a great service by systematically decimating their new generation through their one-child policy. You combine the artificialness of their economy and their demographics, China is not nearly as imposing as is often made out to be.

To many of us, the image that is inevitably conjured up of our image of North Korea is that of an endless march of goose-stepping soldiers, or possibly foreign receptions, maybe the launching of a rocket. North Korea is an almost comical existence to Americans – and especially so to younger generations. Yet, what is lost in this simplistic thinking is that at one point in history North Korea was seen as the country with an optimistic future. For a period of about twenty years in the 1950s up through the 1960s, vast numbers of Koreans across both borders were highly sympathetic to the Kim regime. To understand why this was the case can give us insight as to why North Korea has had such staying power. It can also explain why millions of Koreans were willing to die for it.

General MacArthur’s Final Address to Congress: 🔗

The Japanese people since the war have undergone the greatest reformation recorded in modern history. With a commendable will, eagerness to learn, and marked capacity to understand, they have from the ashes left in war’s wake erected in Japan an edifice dedicated to the supremacy of individual liberty and personal dignity and in the ensuing process there has been created a truly representative government committed to the advance of political morality, freedom of economic enterprise, and social justice…. I know of no nation more serene, orderly and industrious, nor in which higher hopes can be entertained for future constructive service in the advance of the human race.¹

Choice of Topic 🔗

To many of us, the image that is inevitably conjured up of our image of North Korea is that of an endless march of goose-stepping soldiers, or possibly foreign receptions, maybe the launching of a rocket. North Korea is an almost comical existence to Americans – and especially so to younger generations. Yet, what is lost in this simplistic thinking is that at one point in history North Korea was seen as the country with an optimistic future. For a period of about twenty years in the 1950s up through the 1960s, vast numbers of Koreans across both borders were highly sympathetic to the Kim regime. To understand why this was the case can give us insight as to why North Korea has had such staying power. It can also explain why millions of Koreans were willing to die for it.

The partition of the Bengal Presidency (for it was not Bengal Province until 1937) was a cynical ploy by the British government to maintain their power in Bengal – which was simultaneously the seat of their power and the hotbed of Indian nationalism. In December 1903, the intention of the government had become publicly known. By 1911, after mass public unrest, the announcement for the reversal of the policy was made by King George V at the Delhi Durbar. The stated intention for the partition was to make the Presidency more governable, but by statements made by Lord Curzon and others, we can see there was a more nefarious agenda behind the plan. The split would see to it that there would be a Hindu-majority West Bengal and a Muslim-majority East Bengal. The government wanted to ingratiate itself to the Muslims who would no longer be the minority. Furthermore, the attempt at dividing was also made on linguistic lines. Numerically, Bengalis under this scheme could no longer dominate Bengal numerically. Muslim elites largely supported the partition, which allowed them to later go on and establish the All-India Muslim League. The wealthy, English-educated, and high-status Hindus (Bhadralok) were outraged at this political maneuvering and launched Swadeshi.

On November 30th, 1888 the Viceroy of India Lord Dufferin gave a speech at a St. Andrew’s Day dinner. At that speech, he discussed the up-and-coming Indian National Congress and the class of people from which it arose, calling them “the product of the system of education which we ourselves have carried on… [a] microscopic minority… who may be considered to possess adequate qualifications… for taking an intelligent view of those intricate and complicated economic and political questions affecting the destinies of so many millions of men” (Grover 183). Nehru had a similar diagnosis as Lord Dufferin, identifying the class which he himself belonged to: “the English-educated class, small in numbers and cut off from the masses, but still destined to take the lead in the new nationalist movements” (Nehru, Quest 215). If we read the speech of Lord Dufferin and of Mr. Nehru, we can clearly see that on this question, they did not fundamentally disagree that the class of men who made up the early days of the Congress was a group of men who were both equally “small in numbers and cut off from the masses” as well as a “microscopic minority.” The question is then posed as to why this English-educated elite came to head the national movement. Surely this wasn’t an inevitability; history could have taken a different turn and a whole other class of men could have been the ones to claim lordship over India. The reasons why the Congress scarcely represented the people can be traced back to the very same reasons as to why Britain was able to establish its domain over India. When we fully appreciate these facts, then we can see why exactly it was that the biggest mutiny the British encountered did not in fact originate from Indian institutions, but from the very institutions which they themselves created.

So I beat both Doom Eternal and Halo Reach. I got both of them during the Summer Sale. I don’t know why everybody doesn’t just do this. All you have to do is wait a few months for games to start going on discount. Or if you wait like a couple years you can get it for like 80-90% off. Maybe it’s FOMO. Oh well, not my money. Piracy is kinda a pain too—especially on Linux. It’s just easier to buy the games when they’re on sale.

My feelings haven’t really changed. I kind of want to live somewhere else. Tried with the going to school in Japan thing but that obviously didn’t work out. Ideally, you need to get some income then figure out a way to make passive income. Whether that’s through a business, real estate, dividends, etc. I’m sick to my stomach of general “wokeness.” I know there’s people fleeing from much worse, but I am so bloody tired of it. Want to be somewhere where leftism either doesn’t much exist or is stamped out. I just do. If I ever have children in the future I don’t want them to be subjected to the same crap I was. Again, there’s proportions to this. Leftist indoctrination in America is better than many other things, but it isn’t good. I want to live somewhere safe where I don’t have to constantly monitor my surroundings. I want to be somewhere clean where the government actually works. Want to be somewhere where foreigners don’t just run roughshod over the political and cultural norms of the society.