SUBMIT OR SUFFER: StrategyPage’s latest CHINA update.

Two things are impeding Chinese efforts to achieve superpower status; economic stability and a network of powerful and reliable allies. The problems with economic stability are linked to the more serious problems with establishing stable relationships with other countries. Chinese tradition prevents both of these because China traditionally recognizes only enemies and subordinate foreigners.”>Two things are impeding Chinese efforts to achieve superpower status; economic stability and a network of powerful and reliable allies. The problems with economic stability are linked to the more serious problems with establishing stable relationships with other countries.Chinese tradition prevents both of these because China traditionally recognizes only enemies and subordinate foreigners.

This update, written by StrategyPage editor-in-chief Jim Dunnigan, includes a report that Chinese troops used a microwave weapon in a Himalayan skirmish with Indian forces earlier this year. See the November 15 entry in the update.

UPDATE: Block quote fixed.

CHINA PREPARES FOR ‘INFORMATIONIZED’ WAR:

In March 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, speaking to the National People’s Congress, declared that the Chinese military’s most important mission was “to win local wars under Information Age conditions.”

…military analysts pointed out that Wen specified a violent (kinetic) action somewhere near China that must be won. Information Age warfare required integrated electronics and weapons hardware as well as highly trained personnel. National People’s Congress delegates knew the People’s Liberation Army was no longer an infantry army. China’s defense ministry was spending billions to digitize communications, surveillance, and command and control systems. It was also integrating advanced smart weapons into the mix.

For at least two decades, Chinese military leaders have debated the idea that electronic information equipment has become the primary warfighting platform — not tanks, missiles or ships but the information equipment that connects and directs them.

Sun Tzu said you must know your enemy. It’s my latest Creators Syndicate column.

SOMEWHERE OVER AFGHANISTAN: Stunning photo of a B1-B bomber flying high above Afghanistan. The photo was taken from the KC-135 tanker that just refueled it. Note the rugged terrain and the snow below. The USAF plans to retire the B1-B Lancer before it retires the B-52. However, at times the B1-B has been the bomber of choice. It was during the height of the war with the Islamic State.

TO SERVE MAN: Vermont schools will grill students on their Thanksgiving celebrations, governor announces.

#JOURNALISM:

I WARNED DEMOCRATS THAT IT WASN’T GOING TO BE SO EASY TO GET RID OF TRUMP: 2024: Trump already tops Biden 4-1 in betting markets.

ROGER KIMBALL: Trump does the right thing by pardoning Gen. Flynn. “The case was so embarrassing that the Department of Justice eventually intervened and dropped the prosecution. That did nothing to quell the fury of the vindictive Judge Emmet Sullivan, who decided to soldier on as both prosecutor and judge in his effort to nail Gen. Flynn. All that comes to an end today.”

Sullivan has been an embarrassment to the judiciary.

TOO MANY ON THE LEFT VIEW THIS AS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG: Lives And Livelihoods Will Be Destroyed While Dems Wait Until 2021 For The Vaccine And Stimulus.

In his 2014 history of the American left, The Revolt Against the Masses, Fred Siegel wrote, “The best short credo of liberalism came from the pen of the once canonical left-wing literary historian Vernon Parrington in the late 1920s.‘Rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class.’”

The Anointed understand that it’s for their own good, of course.

DUH!  March Study Points to Pervasive Mental Illness Among White American Liberals.

BEAT ‘EM UP PREEMPTIVELY. WHO ARE THEY GONNA CALL, THE POLICE? Cornell Activists Threaten Peers Who Voted Against Disarming the Police.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER PYRE: Five books Penguin will have to ban along with Jordan Peterson.

Related: They got woke. Will Penguin now go broke?

WELL, GOOD: Insiders say GOP pols aren’t scared of Trump now — they’re scared of his supporters.

SUPREMES STRIKE DOWN CUOMO’S ANTI-RELIGIOUS COVID LIMITS: In a 5-4 decision that is full of positive implications for First Amendment litigation regarding religious freedom and practice, the Supreme Court late yesterday slapped down New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s restrictions on worship gatherings in targeted areas hit hard by Covid.

The decision acknowledged that the nine Justices on the nation’s highest court “are not public health experts,” but it went on to explain that “even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty. Before allowing this to occur, we have a duty to conduct a serious examination of the need for such a drastic measure.”

This is big and potentially huuuuge, as a certain prominent American Socialist who likely will not be pleased by it might say. But what is certain is that for those who love the First Amendment as a whole, and especially its guarantees of religious freedom and practice, this decision is something to indeed be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day 2020.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The full opinion is here. Excerpt:

At the same time, the Governor has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers “essential.” And it turns out the businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience? As almost everyone on the Court today recognizes, squaring the Governor’s edicts with our traditional First Amendment rules is no easy task. People may gather inside for extended periods in bus stations and airports, in laundromats and banks, in hardware stores and liquor shops. No apparent reason exists why people may not gather, subject to identical restrictions, in churches or synagogues, especially when religious institutions have made plain that they stand ready, able, and willing to follow all the safety precautions required of “essential” businesses and perhaps more besides. The only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there just isn’t as “essential” as what happens in secular spaces. Indeed, the Governor is remarkably frank about this: In his judgment laundry and liquor, travel and tools, are all “essential” while traditional religious exercises are not. That is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids.

Yep.

OH, NOW DEMOCRATS CARE ABOUT LEGITIMACY: “But none of Trump’s antics justify the Democrats and their partisans for how they have acted for two decades, nor does it excuse their insistence today on pretending that none of this ever happened. Oh, but they tell us today: We didn’t do exactly the same things as Trump, and we had reasons. So even the people who claim that they never said Bush or Trump were illegitimate presidents who stole their elections will, at the drop of a hat, still claim that they were right that Bush and Trump were illegitimate presidents who stole their elections. Pardon me if I don’t think any of these people actually take any of their rhetoric about legitimacy seriously. They’ve done it for years, they’re not sorry, and we all know they’ll do it again next time.”

PAULA BOLYARD: ‘Let Thy Congregation Escape Tribulation.’ “A prayer for the wounded American church — and hope for the struggling Christian.”

RETURN TO NORMALCY: Will Obama Torture Apologists Make a Triumphant Return to Joe Biden’s White House?

As far as I can tell — and I’m sure it would have been brought to my attention if it were otherwise — the Trump Administration hasn’t been torturing anyone. Note the lack of commentary from the usual suspects.

THERE’S A NAME FOR PEOPLE WHO ASCRIBE HUMAN THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS TO ANIMALS:  The truth about wild turkey sex: Inside their kinky BDSM rituals.

As a side note, we have wild turkeys in the backyard. I have yet to see one wearing leather. JUST saying.

OH, IT’S OKAY. MY MORONIC MAYOR, A BUDDY OF PASTE EATING POLIS DID THIS ONE BETTER:  Mayor calls for “zero tolerance” for Covid rule breakers, and then goes and breaks the rules hours later.

But you know what? None of this is as stupid as continuing to believe this virus with a 99.6 survival rate for those who are hospitalized, and most of the mortality concentrated in those older than 80 requires this kind of measure.  For the love of all that is sentient, people, the idiots imposing these civilization-destroying measures, world-wide, with coordinated precision, completely ignore them. Trust me, if the virus were really, really dangerous — as paste eating Polis put it in his emergency announcement beamed to my phone, if “You are in danger from this deadly virus” — the would-be elite would be taking ALL the precautions, plus some, instead of rubbing our faces in the fact that these rules are for the peasants, only.

AND SUDDENLY, JUST LIKE THAT, HUNDREDS OF NEW HOMESCHOOLS WERE BORN:  Vermont schools will grill students on their Thanksgiving celebrations.

BLM, ANTIFA, ETC. ARE JUST TODAY’S WAYS OF SAYING YESTERDAY’S ‘NEW LEFT:’ Capital Research Center (CRC) President Scott Walter offers a detailed illustration of the decades-long line of development that goes straight from bomb-throwing, cop-killing SDSers and Black Panthers to today’s Black Lives Matter and Antifa. And even more:

“In short, the radical ideas and violence associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are simply the latest eruptions of a type of left-wing politics that goes back decades, at least.

“Indeed, current movement leaders are tied directly to radical leaders and groups from a half-century of failed movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Liberation, the Weathermen, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black Panther Party.

“This unsavory political current also encompasses still more disturbing cases of extremism, including the Charles Manson cult and the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones, notorious for a mass suicide in Guyana that took over 900 lives with poisoned Kool-Aid.”

Be thankful today that these criminals, nutcases, thugs, ideological fanatics and murderers are not even more powerful than they are.

WHEN DO WE START DEEMING THE KAKISTOKRATS NON-ESSENTIAL?  Food deemed non-essential as New Mexico governor shuts down grocery stores.

(WRYLY) I CANNOT IMAGINE WHY:  Divorce court is usually quiet during holiday season — but 2020 is booming.

SPEAKING OF KAKISTOCRACY OF THOSE WHO KNOW THEY’LL GET “ELECTED” ANYWAY THANKS TO FRAUD:  Unemployment Missing? Look No Further Than Death Row!