https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-china-america-pressure-interview/

Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting d**gged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his plane back from a three-day state visit to China.

Speaking with POLITICO and two French journalists after spending around six hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his trip, Macron emphasized his pet theory of “strategic autonomy” for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a “third superpower.”

He said “the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” while flying from Beijing to Guangzhou, in southern China, aboard COTAM Unité, France’s Air Force One.

Xi Jinping and the Chinese C*******t Party have enthusiastically endorsed Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy and Chinese officials constantly refer to it in their dealings with European countries. Party leaders and theorists in Beijing are convinced the West is in decline and China is on the ascendant and that weakening the t***satlantic relationship will help accelerate this trend.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” he said.

Just hours after his flight left Guangzhou headed back to Paris, China launched large military exercises around the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China claims as its territory but the U.S. has promised to arm and defend.

Those exercises were a response to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen’s 10-day diplomatic tour of Central American countries that included a meeting with Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy while she t***sited in California. People familiar with Macron’s thinking said he was happy Beijing had at least waited until he was out of Chinese airspace before launching the simulated “Taiwan encirclement” exercise.

Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade in recent years and has a policy of isolating the democratic island by forcing other countries to recognize it as part of “one China.”

Taiwan talks
Macron and Xi discussed Taiwan “intensely,” according to French officials accompanying the president, who appears to have taken a more conciliatory approach than the U.S. or even the European Union.

“Stability in the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who accompanied Macron for part of his visit, said she told Xi during their meeting in Beijing last Thursday. “The threat [of] the use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable.”

Xi responded by saying anyone who thought they could influence Beijing on Taiwan was deluded.

Macron appears to agree with that assessment.

“Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it,” he said.

“Europe is more willing to accept a world in which China becomes a regional hegemon,” said Yanmei Xie, a geopolitics analyst at Gavekal D**gonomics. “Some of its leaders even believe such a world order may be more advantageous to Europe.”

In his trilateral meeting with Macron and von der Leyen last Thursday in Beijing, Xi Jinping went off script on only two topics — Ukraine and Taiwan — according to someone who was present in the room.

“Xi was visibly annoyed for being held responsible for the Ukraine conflict and he downplayed his recent visit to Moscow,” this person said. “He was clearly enraged by the U.S. and very upset over Taiwan, by the Taiwanese president’s t***sit through the U.S. and [the fact that] foreign policy issues were being raised by Europeans.”

In this meeting, Macron and von der Leyen took similar lines on Taiwan, this person said. But Macron subsequently spent more than four hours with the Chinese leader, much of it with only t***slators present, and his tone was far more conciliatory than von der Leyen’s when speaking with journalists.

‘Vassals’ warning
Macron also argued that Europe had increased its dependency on the U.S. for weapons and energy and must now focus on boosting European defense industries.

He also suggested Europe should reduce its dependence on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar,” a key policy objective of both Moscow and Beijing.

“If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up … we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” he said.

Russia, China, Iran and other countries have been hit by U.S. sanctions in recent years that are based on denying access to the dominant dollar-denominated global financial system. Some in Europe have complained about “weaponization” of the dollar by Washington, which forces European companies to give up business and cut ties with third countries or face crippling secondary sanctions.

While sitting in the stateroom of his A330 aircraft in a hoodie with the words “French Tech” emblazoned on the chest, Macron claimed to have already “won the ideological battle on strategic autonomy” for Europe.

He did not address the question of ongoing U.S. security guarantees for the Continent, which relies heavily on American defense assistance amid the first major land war in Europe since World War II.

As one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and the only nuclear power in the EU, France is in a unique position militarily. However, the country has contributed far less to the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion than many other countries.

A local middle school has had four bomb threats lately. The kids write warnings on the bathroom walls, and the school has no choice but to evacuate. I found the online responses amusing. One suggestion was to give the kids ID cards that they would hang around their necks. They would use these to get access to the bathrooms and other places. Of course, the person posting didn't consider the cost of producing a thousand badges and then installing electronic card readers on many of the doors in the building. This would be the kind of high security system you see in TV shows. I wonder if the kids would find a way to disable those devices so that no one could enter bathrooms or offices. I don't see how this would keep the kids from writing on the walls, though.

Parents are annoyed that the kids are missing out on a couple of hours of education. So they should remain in class while the bomb squad searches?

I came up with a good idea. Since the schools stopped teaching cursive writing, they should take the next step and stop teaching writing altogether. Oh, that wouldn't work. They could draw a picture of an exploding bomb on the bathroom wall.

I thought it was funny that all of the online hate was being directed to the school. It's the kids who are causing the trouble. Posting an adult in the bathrooms all day long is such a bad idea that no one has suggested it - yet. I think they should have a dozen hidden cameras in each bathroom with monitors throughout the school. That would not only keep kids from writing on the walls, it would keep them out of the bathrooms.

The ridiculous online responses to this situation are great examples of why folks from the community should not be on the school board and making decisions.

EDIT: Just posted: "the kids are out of control in that school. If it was real they never would have a chance because they can’t shut up for 2 seconds and listen to what they are supposed to do !!" 🤣

I don’t trust what MAGA and GOP say anymore. BUT, something will have to be done to make SSI sustainable for current and future beneficiaries. The new depositors will always be needed to pay for recipients so there’s no clean way to exit completely. IF ONLY, there was a bi-partisan group who knows how to brainstorm, do financial and actuarial modeling, and develop communication strategies for each and every stakeholder, then something coherent and constructive will be achieved. The same needs to be said for immigration policies, but neither has a chance to happen in the dysfunctional USA.

This Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning thing is increasingly interesting as it approaches a consumer level. Adobe has been helping us photographers with improved object removal and color grading for awhile. They call it "Sensei" technology. A few days ago the released "Firefly" in a beta mode. Topaz has been making strides with "Photo AI" that finds a way to add pixels where needed.

Why are we alarmed to see AI putting words together? Google's Bard, Microsoft's Bing, and ChatGPT seem to cause more alarm than when AI is used in photography tools.

Our local school district is trying to make a tough decision. With declining enrollment, how should it allocate its buildings? We have one of the largest districts in the state. Until ten years ago, we had four elementary schools. Now we have three, and the board is trying to decide which one of them to close and where to put the kids. Around 1952, they build one large school for all the kids, K-12. That closed down the one-room schoolhouses. As enrollment grew, the four elementary schools were gradually built in four communities. I might be wrong, but I seem to remember a total enrollment of about 5,000 when we moved here fifty-six years ago. Now, enrollment is around 1,100.

Everyone wants their kids to go to the local school and have a short bus ride. No one wants to have kindergarten kids mixed in with seniors. Everyone wants lower school taxes. If a school is open, it requires light, heat, maintenance, a cafeteria staff, and cleaning. This is in addition to students and teachers. Regardless what the board decides, people will be unhappy. A question someone has to decide is how many kids would be required to keep an elementary school open?

I might be wrong, but I don't remember school busses being a thing in the 1950s. I seem to recall my mother driving me to school and me walking home afterwards. Maybe they became required when both parents started working.

This idea popped into my head many years ago - the system of how humans live worldwide.

We go to school for a good portion of our lives so we can learn enough to get a job. We work at that job for the best part of every day from youth till old age. Then, if we are lucky, we can retire. If there is another intelligent society somewhere in the universe, I wonder if they have come up with a better system, one that does not require everyone to spend most of their lives working. Money, of course, is behind it all. Without money, we can't have food or shelter, so we work to get it. If we are born into a family with lots of money, we don't have to work. "Not working" is the ideal situation.

Obviously, things have to get done, but couldn't there be a better way to structure society? This is where thinking outside the box comes in.