№ 646. What does it mean to discern?

Berean Research

№ 645. Tennis Legend

 

As the story goes, Serena Williams' rise began before she was born.

In 1979, her father Richard watched a women's tennis match on TV and saw the Romanian player Virginia Ruzici win $40,000 - about $4,000 more than his annual salary.

"I went and told my wife we had to have two more girls and make them tennis players," he recalled, 20 years later. "I was 37 and knew nothing about tennis but I thought we could teach them and they could win the US Open."

On 26 September 1981, Williams arrived - 15 months after her sister Venus. By the time the pair turned pro in the mid-1990s they were already making waves.

"There was a rage inside these two little kids," says Rick Macci, the Florida-based coach who helped guide them through their developmental years.

"They were just ready. I called it when they were nine, 10 years old. I said: 'They're gonna be world number one and they're going to transcend the sport.'"

№ 644. Geopolitics and Exit Strategies 3

"To provoke China into a military confrontation today is to trap it into an arena where the US is still superior. The American chess pieces of 800 overseas military bases, gunboat diplomacy in air, land, and sea, and military technology are more than 20 years ahead of China, and are further bolstered by the $850 billion proposed US defense budget for 2023. The US continues to surround China in the Indo-Pacific with bases, carrier fleets, and submarines bristling with conventional and nuclear missiles.

Fortunately, China does not want to fall into the trap that doomed the former Soviet Union in an arms race or commit the mistakes of past colonial big powers.

But this fierce geopolitical competition between the US and China inevitably involves the Philippines because of its geostrategic location. Will we continue to be a de facto US aircraft carrier and part of the US nuclear infrastructure? The Mutual Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement, and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement make us part of the offensive island chain of encirclement against neighboring China. There is now an agreement with the US-firm Cerberus for it to take over Hanjin Shipyard at Subic that will allow the regular repair, refueling, and docking of the US Navy."

№ 643. Little Brown Jug