Jayeed Naseeree

[Kim Iversen 🇺🇸 @KimIversenShow]

So one Jew beat another Jew in NYC but because the winning Jew is against genocide people are panicking that this election proves antisemitism is thriving in America and a genocide is coming for Jews. Is that right?

[AIPAC Tracker @TrackAIPAC]

Even @Morning_Joe has had it with the false claims of antisemitism: "If you want to blame anybody for what happened last night, you have to blame Benjamin Netanyahu."

"The idea that you're going to be able to brutalize children and women in Gaza with bombing that looks indiscriminate on TV day in and day out for years, that you're going to be able to level half of Lebanon, that you're going to be able to continue to allow thugs to run wild in the West Bank, and brutalizing Palestinians, brutalizing Christians in Bethlehem, brutalizing Christians across that area along with Palestinian Muslims, especially Palestinian Muslims, blowing up Catholic churches in Gaza... You can blame all of this on Benjamin Netanyahu."

[Pieter Friedrich @FriedrichPieter]

The Washington Post, via reporter @jonswaine, just revealed a guru secretly scripted Tulsi Gabbard. They found one hand on her. They missed the other.

Back in 2019, I documented that other hand — how the American arm of India’s RSS, a Hindu-nationalist paramilitary, built her career from nobody to Congress. More than 100 Sangh donors. Up to a quarter of her early money. Ram Madhav flew to her wedding.

Every time I’ve said it, they’ve screamed bigotry. So I’ll say it again: Tulsi Gabbard is the princess of the RSS. Here’s the investigation that laid it out, years before this weekend’s headline.

https://t.co/Euk1QJfcJo

[Supriya Shrinate @SupriyaShrinate]

वाराणसी के दशाश्वमेध घाट पर BJP पार्षद और BJP नेताओं ने नाव पर गंगा नदी में मीट मुर्गे और शराब की पार्टी की

लेकिन, इससे किसी की भावना आहत नहीं हुईं

इसी गंगा नदी पर नाव में इफ्तार करने के लिए 12 मुसलमानों को ईद के ठीक पहले गिरफ़्तार करके 2 महीने जेल में रखा था

पाखंडी कहीं के

[Nehr_who? @Nher_who]

Varanasi Dashwamedh Ghat:

Chicken & alcohol party took place on a boat linked to BJP leader on River Ganga

This has not hurt anyone's sentiments

While 12 muslims spent 2 months in Jail just for having Iftar on a boat on river Ganga & hurting sentiments

Peak Hypocrisy!

[Mohammed Zubair @zoo_bear]

Varanasi: Video showing chicken being cooked and an alcohol party taking place on a boat in the middle of the Ganges at Varanasi's Dashashwamedh Ghat on BJP councilor's owned boat.

[Clash Report @clashreport]

Theologian JD Hall to Tucker Carlson:

The Muslim rulers didn't tax churches during the Ottoman period. They were very kind to Christians.

As a matter of fact, they took care of our holy sites. Islamic authorities rebuilt the Church of the Holy Sepulchre three different times over the centuries.

They had a law protecting Christian pilgrims on their journey. Nobody messed with the pilgrims.

[Nehr_who? @Nher_who]

Reporter: Are you funded by foreign countries

Student: Yes I got fund from Pakistan,they sent me Rs 40 so that I can travel via bus,for auto I got 20 Rs funding from U.S,when I'll return home,hope I'll get fund from Nepal

We can't get funds in India coz all are utilised by BJP"

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I often like Ray Dalio's takes on China but he gets quite a lot demonstrably wrong in this FT article on the "tribute system."

China's ancient tribute system - called 朝贡 (cháogòng) in Chinese - is typically very misunderstood in the West: we typically think it involved tributary states paying some form of "tribute" to China in exchange for protection - the way medieval vassals would pay fealty to a lord in Europe.

In reality, it had little to do with that. In fact, it was almost the opposite: in the Chaogong system, it was actually China paying the "tributary states."

The system was basically a quid-pro-quo where China would get "得名" (dé míng, literally "getting name/prestige") while tributary states would get "得实" (dé shí, literally "getting substance/material benefit") in exchange. It was about China paying huge amounts of money and other material benefits for the recognition of its centrality.

That's what makes it so alien to the Western framework, where tributary states are paying UP to the center, and security is enforced through military presence. The Chaogong system was almost exactly the inverse on both counts: China was paying DOWN and regional order was maintained not through the military but through generosity.

The core guiding principle of the system was established by the Hongwu emperor, the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty (incidentally one of the most interesting emperors in Chinese history since he is the only founder of a major dynasty who started off in life as a wandering beggar).

The principle he set in place was 厚往薄来 (hòu wǎng bó lái) - literally "generous outflow, modest inflow": giving out much more than you take in. This wasn't a byproduct of the system - it WAS the system. The entire architecture of Chaogong was built on this principle of asymmetric generosity.

Very concretely the way it worked is that tributary states would pay largely symbolic tribute to China (like local specialties and curiosities, the system codified that tribute should be "easy to obtain and not costly", 必易得而不贵) and they would in exchange receive 3 layers of economic benefits:
1) Immediate payback in the form of money and expensive goods (silk, brocade, porcelain, tea, silver, etc.), which value was typically dozens of times the value of the tribute received by the emperor
2) The right to trade during their tribute visit: the envoys' entourage could trade with specially licensed Chinese merchants at the Huitongguan (the official guesthouse in the capital)
3) Most importantly, and that's where the real money was, they would be granted the right to trade at Chinese ports. Under the Ming maritime prohibition, tributary status was the only legal entry point into the Chinese economy

China being China, this gave rise to some pretty funny hustles. The deal was so good that people started inventing entirely fictitious countries just to get in on it. There are several documented cases of people fabricating countries and showing up as "envoys" at the imperial court just to claim the privileges (https://t.co/nlJB8yWblv).

Another funny one is that there are several cases of Fujian merchants who would sail to Southeast Asia, get themselves appointed as minor officials by local rulers, then sail right back to China as "foreign envoys" - carrying huge commercial cargoes. In 1438, three members of Java's tribute delegation turned out to be guys from Fujian (https://t.co/QBES0IVprC).

The scam got so widespread that the Ming had to invent a credential system (勘合, kānhé) specifically to verify that tribute envoys were who they claimed to be and that the countries they came from were real.

More seriously though, the Chaogong system also led to big domestic tensions in some of China's neighboring countries, notably Japan which was permitted only one tribute mission per decade. The stakes were so high that the 2 most powerful feudal clans at the time (the Ōuchi and the Hosokawa) fought a shadow war over who controlled the trade license.

This culminated in the Ningbo Incident of 1523 (https://t.co/TgKtlc7zlO): two Japanese delegations from both rival clans arrived at the port of Ningbo and got into a dispute over whose credentials were legitimate, which ended up in a pitched battle on Chinese soil. They ended up rampaging through the city, killing Ming military officers, and altogether terrorizing the local population - all over who got to trade with China.

The aftermath of the Ningbo Incident led to the total breakdown of Japan-China trade. If that sounds familiar, it should...

Which brings back to today and Ray Dalio's description of China's tribute system, as well as his claim that we're facing some sort of modern revival of it in Asia.

First of all, some parts of his article are correct: there is indeed a significant power shift happening in Asia, with countries hedging by building closer ties with Beijing, and the US progressively withdrawing and altogether losing ground.

He is also completely right that Chinese strategic culture genuinely differs from Western strategic culture: as he writes they indeed play Go (WeiQi) and not chess.

He is however wrong to describe the tribute system as one based on pressure and intimidation. As we've just seen, it was pretty much the opposite: the basic idea was to be so generous that everyone wants in (to the extent that countries would literally fight to be tributaries), not so threatening that nobody dares leave.

He also - weirdly - seems to conflate the tribute system with the Art of War, treating them as two faces of the same Chinese playbook, when they've got strictly nothing to do with each others. They're not even from the same school of thought: the Chaogong system is fundamentally Confucian (以德服人, "winning people through virtue") whereas Sun Tzu is from an entirely different Chinese intellectual tradition - the Strategist school (兵家) - which is about as far removed from Confucian thinking as Machiavelli is from the Bible.

Mashing them together reads like someone who has picked up a handful of Chinese cliché references and treats them as interchangeable ingredients in a single "Chinese strategic culture" soup.

All in all, he makes the error WAY too many Western commentators do with Chinese concepts: he uses them as exotic wrapping paper for a fundamentally Western analysis. Strip away the Chinese terminology and his argument is actually pure Western thinking: what he is claiming is that China, as a rising power, is using its growing economic and military weight to reshape the regional order, weaker states are bandwagoning, and the declining hegemon can't stop it.

He is essentially taking Graham Allison's "Thucydides Trap," awkwardly draping it in misunderstood Chinese concepts, and presenting it as if it were Chinese thinking.

That being said, he is ironically correct - I think - that there is some form of revival of a tribute-like system but not in the way he understands it: China will (and does) use trade - its "generosity" - as a gravitational force to pull countries into its orbit. Not by threatening to cut them off, but by making the relationship too valuable to walk away from. THAT is much closer to how the actual Chaogong system worked.

It doesn't mean that the system is purely benevolent. The flipside of generosity is the absence of it: in the original tribute system, you could be cut off the way Japan was after the Ningbo Incident in the 16th century. And it's also what's happening - to some extent - to Japan today: after PM Takaichi declared that Japan would go to war with China over Taiwan, China has systematically restricted trade with Japan. Same story with what happened, for instance, to Australia in 2020 over PM Morrison's declarations on Covid.

The pattern is the same: the reward for participation is trade, and the punishment for hostility is its withdrawal. Essentially in the tribute system there is no stick, just a carrot: the stick is taking the carrot away.

Which, incidentally, is why you can be extremely confident that China will go to enormous lengths to develop its internal market, and why the current situation where China runs huge trade surpluses is facing mounting pressure to change from within China itself. If countries don't feel they're benefiting enough from trade with China, the entire logic collapses. That's why developing domestic demand isn't some target China sets itself to assuage Western demands, as some claim: it's genuinely a strategic imperative.

It's also why it's ironic that the West is so keen on pushing China to boost domestic consumption: in effect, it means we're already in a de-facto Chaogong-like system and they're asking that the carrot be bigger.

-----

I also wrote a Substack version of this post, which you can find here: https://t.co/jBUIVbDT9C

[Clifton D' Rozario @clifroz]

Hindutva needs Muslims as a permanent enemy to survive. This constant manufacture of hatred, reveals its own bankruptcy.

Will Yoga replace Durga Pooja, Ganesh festival, Navaratri garbas, on the roads?

[Nehr_who? @Nher_who]

Reminder:

Road blockage was never the issue

Muslims celebrating their festivals were.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

"[T]he problem the Free Press has with Parsi is not his alleged ties to the Iranian state (which is just a nonsensical conspiracy theory) but rather his real influence in Washington. Bari Weiss knows she is losing in the court of public opinion. Since she can’t effectively debate her ideological opponents, she prefers to deport them."

https://t.co/SNzOI0gf3X

[Ian Miles Cheong @ianmiles]

Hieronymus Bosch’s Vision of Hell lives on in this Indian theme park.

[Asaduddin Owaisi @asadowaisi]

There has been a wave of demolitions targeting mosques, dargahs, and other Muslim religious sites across Rajasthan’s border districts of Bikaner, Phalodi, Jaisalmer, and Barmer.

I spoke to AIMIM Bikaner District President Shafi Jameel Qasmi, who stated that four mosques in Bikaner and nine mosques and dargahs across Phalodi, Jaisalmer, and Barmer have already been demolished. Notices have also reportedly been issued to hundreds of other religious sites. Among those facing action is the approximately 250-year-old dargah of Hazrat Mahmood Shah Jilani on the Ramgarh–Tanot Bypass Road in Jaisalmer.

These demolitions are being justified on national security grounds. However, none of the people in these areas have ever been involved in any such activities. Only Muslim places of worship are being targeted.

Authorities have alleged that some structures are built on grazing land. In cases where it has been shown that the structures stand on private property, the allegation has reportedly shifted to a lack of permissions or approvals.

@AmitShah, these discriminatory and targeted demolitions are illegal and must be stopped immediately.

[The DeshBhakt 🇮🇳 @TheDeshBhakt]

Usually Israeli propaganda is slicker - stuff that Goebbels would be proud of - but this is a sign of desperation.
🚨OFFICIAL @IsraelMFA handle is frothing in the mouth because Israeli solders are being killed (without mentioning that they died while invading Lebanon)
🚨WORSE - they are using exact footage from April to play the victim card in June (that isn't working anymore)
If this is happening from official accounts - image what is happening from the non-official ones.

[Ashok Swain @ashoswai]

Modi is demolishing this 1000 year old mosque in Varanasi India! The world was in uproar when Taliban had destroyed a Buddha statue, the same world doesn’t notice while Modi is destroying one historical monument after another for the last 12 years.

[Ansar Imran SR @ansarimransr]

क्या आई लव मुहम्मद कहना अब अपराध बन चुका है जिसके लिए आपराधिक मुकदमा दर्ज होगा?

संभल के केसरवा गांव में मस्जिद शहीद करने के बाद वहां से आई लव मुहम्मद के पोस्टर को बरामदगी दिखा कर मुकदमा दर्ज करने वाले SP महोदय का जवाब सुन लीजिए!

निष्पक्षता का ढोंग खत्म हो चुका है!

[Jotti Verma @Jotti__Vr]

She was only a little girl. What are Modi's Bhakat trying to prove by intimidating and frightening a child?
The BJP seeks to keep people fearful and submissive at home, while abroad it appears willing to go to any lengths,even dancing to the tune of Netanyahu to advance its political interests.
#भरत_तिवारी_अमर_रहे