Since Russia invaded Ukraine, many people have wondered if China will be motivated to invade Taiwan soon. Should that happen, will the United States and China fight a war over the future of Taiwan? In his new book War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination, retired Air Force Brigadier Gen. Robert Spalding says the United States and China are already at war, and it is a war without rules.

Spalding’s book doesn’t present any new thesis. Instead, it explains the idea presented by another book published more than two decades ago. That book was titled Unrestricted Warfare. It was written by two Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published in 1999.

In Unrestricted Warfare, the two colonels argue that China must learn not to rely on armed forces alone to achieve global dominance. Instead, future warfare is about “using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.”

The non-military means could include everything from corporate sabotage to manipulation of international laws. //

I share Spalding’s concerns that too many Americans, from political leaders to business elites, misunderstand or ignore the CCP’s war without rules. He points out that “the Biden administration, despite some positive moves, is seriously underestimating the malevolence and power of the Chinese threat,” an assessment I couldn’t agree with more.

Arguing that “the United States has never confronted anything quite like modern China,” and “we are already at war with China,” Spalding presented recommendations on what Americans should do to fight the CCP’s unrestricted warfare in his final chapter. Here his emphasis that the United States is only at war with the CCP, not the Chinese people, is laudable.

A California court sharply rebuked soft-on-crime LA County District Attorney George Gascon Thursday, ruling that he must comply with the law instead of just making his own.

“The district attorney overstates his authority,” the ruling said. “He (Gascon) is an elected official who must comply with the law, not a sovereign with absolute, unreviewable discretion.”

Their legalese might be a little better than mine, but basically what the judges are saying is, “Who the heck do you think you are?!”

The three-justice panel of the Appeals Court said in its ruling that Gascon cannot order prosecutors to refuse to charge three-strikes cases and cannot order prosecutors to drop or withdraw special circumstance allegations. The ruling upheld an earlier decision from a lower court that came to the same conclusion. //

George Gascón
@GeorgeGascon
Eliminated 8,127 years of unnecessary, excessive and expensive exposure to prison time.

Stopped seeking the death penalty in 17 cases.

Withdrew 77 pending motions to transfer kids to adult court.

Saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

All during my first 100 days.
3:17 PM · Mar 19, 2021 //

FOX 11 Los Angeles
@FOXLA
Since Gascón took office in 2020, data shows Los Angeles has seen a 34% increase in homicide, 15.5% increase in violent crimes, 6.7% increase in property crimes and 67% increase in shooting victims.
foxla.com
LA sheriff says George Gascón recall election on pace to happen: 'The country has had enough'
9:45 PM · May 5, 2022

$# Stores the number of command-line arguments that
were passed to the shell program.
$? Stores the exit value of the last command that was
executed.
$0 Stores the first word of the entered command (the
name of the shell program).
$ Stores all the arguments that were entered on the
command line ($1 $2 ...).
"$@" Stores all the arguments that were entered
on the command line, individually quoted ("$1" "$2" ...).
So basically, $# is a number of arguments given when your script was executed. $ is a string containing all arguments. For example, $1 is the first argument and so on. This is useful, if you want to access a specific argument in your script.

As Brian commented, here is a simple example. If you run following command:

./command -yes -no /home/username
$# = 3
$* = -yes -no /home/username
$@ = array: {"-yes", "-no", "/home/username"}
$0 = ./command, $1 = -yes etc.