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| Lol. From the pens of the Babylon Bee guys |
Aaron Sarin on China. I can’t vouch for Sarin. Neither can I say he’s not sound. He’s on Quintette, which does close vetting of its contributors.
In any case, there’s lots to chew on here, much of it objectively factual:
Is Washington trying to provoke World War III? Xi Jinping believes so, or at least, he claims to believe so. In recent days, it has emerged that he warned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen about the US political establishment goading Beijing to attack Taiwan, presumably as part of a grand plan to bring about Chinese collapse. Xi, fortunately, has seen through these schemes, and he is not about to take the bait.
A planned invasion of Taiwan is certainly no American fabrication. In Fujian province, just across the water from Taiwan, the Communist Party is busy building air-raid shelters and emergency hospitals. Military recruitment centres have been opening all over China. Banks, utility firms, and property companies now host workplace militias. Beijing appears to be sanction-proofing the nation’s economy. Over the past 18 months, China’s gold reserves have skyrocketed, reaching an estimated value of $170 billion, while Chinese investment in Saudi Arabia (an indispensable oil supplier) saw a sharp increase from $1 billion in 2022 to $16 billion in 2023. However we choose to interpret them, these are the facts. Read on...
One quick comment is: China gold reserves of $170 billion is like nothing. China's forex reserves, at last count, are $US 3.2 Trillion. So 5% in gold. Who wouldn’t these days be putting some assets in gold. And if China goes ahead and attacks Taiwan, and the global economy tanks, as it would, what’ the worth of gold anyway? There always needs to be a market for it, and what’s the market it you’ve fried the world?
And the memory hole of the Internet. Something I’ve talked about before. The memory hole. Where people no longer know of the Gang of Four. No longer know of what happened in Tibet. No longer know of the Tiananmen massacres of June 4th. All memory holed. And now the internet memory hole:
At the same time as government workers find that the country’s borders have suddenly become the edges of the world, the Chinese internet has also begun quietly shrinking. Nearly all information posted on forums, blogs, and news portals back in the early days (1995–2005) can no longer be accessed. It’s not just the content that’s vanishing. In 2017, there were 5.3 million Chinese sites in existence; by 2023, the figure stood at 3.9 million. “It seems that there is a monster that devours web pages,” says a Chinese blogger, “and it swallows along the historical timeline, from the past to the present.” For millions of Chinese, a shrinking internet achieves the same end as an overseas travel ban: they are losing valuable information sources. Not just information about the outside world, but also information about China.
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| Click above for the video |
That’s how I knew that the Hunter Biden Laptop story was true, way back in 2019. When the New York Times only found out this year. Because I also read the New York Post. And I knew that 51 ex intelligence official lied when they said it was “Russian disinformation”. And that so did Joe Biden in the 2020 debate. Anyone with two brain cells would know that the Laptop was genuine, because all you had to do was to check the addressees of a couple of emails from the Hunter laptop, to see if they had received them. Simple. But you wouldn’t have known that if you only looked at CNN or MSNBC, or the New York Times.
That’s how I knew that the Trump Russia collusion story was a hoax, way back in 2016, when the rest of the liberal media has only acknowledged with the publication of the Mueller Report, and sometimes not even then (so deep is the hoax virus). Because I also followed right-of-centre blogs.
That’s how I knew that Trump did not say that Nazis and White Supremacists are “fine people”. Not only because I saw the actual speech, but because I saw subsequent debunking, all on conservative media. And that’s why liberals on the Left only knew that June this year, when the left-leaning fact-checking outfit Snopes, acknowledged it last month. But only last month. (Remember how important this was: Joe Biden said it was the main reason that he entered the 2020 race. IOW, on the back of a false story. Which, btw, he retailed yet again during last week’s presidential debate).
That’s how I know that the criminal cases brought against Trump are bogus “Lawfare” cases: as is (belatedly) acknowledged even on the Left, by such luminaries as ex-Democratic Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, CNN senior editor Fareed Zakaria and legal scholar, and lifetime Democrat voter Alan Dershowitz. And yet Left leaning super-pods like “Pod Save America” demand should have been a focus of last week’s debate. WTF?).
So, in short, you have to read both sides of the aisle, both Left and Right. Sometimes it’s tough to do, because you don’t like to hear what “the other side” says. But you have to.
And that’s the case with Steve Bannon in the talk with Megyn Kelly above. I don’t like Bannon one little bit. But I know that he’s a smart cookie and has some good insights. He’s a smart tactician. Like his equivalent on the Dem’s side James Carville, who I also follow. And that’s why I’m watching the video above.
In the immediate aftermath of the now-(in)famous presidential debate last week, Dems were saying that “Joe has to go”. The whole nine-member squad of commenters on the CNN panel after the show, with major Dem luminaries, were all united in how awful Joe Biden’s performance was, how it was “panic stations”, and how he had to be ditched.
Since then -- and things are moving fast in the post-debate Democratic world -- the Dems seem to be coalescing behind not ditching Biden, but giving him another chance. A major factor here being his wife Jill Biden. And some of the Left -- like the “Pod Save America” podcast -- are saying that the Debate was “unfair". Because it wasn’t biased enough towards Biden (!). Whereas all of us who watched it thought it was a pretty good new format, which worked well and was fair to both sides. Just that Joe stumbled and fell.
Let’s see. I think it’s better for Trump if Biden remains the Dem candidate. And better for Trump if they have another debate. I don’t like Trump's chances against the likes of Michele Obama or even of Gavin Newsome.
And that’s what Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon, two super-smart political pundits, discuss above. Well worth the time to listen, if you’re into this sort of stuff. Which we rather are, here in this family.
Where else is there such interest in an election? Answer: nowhere. There’s a British election in a few days time. Who cares? No-one. It’s a given Leftward tilt to Labour. Yawn. There were European elections a month ago. Who cared? No-one, except for noting the right-ward tilt. There’s an election in Australia early next year; who cares? No-one. Save we who care about Nuclear. Point it: the United States presidential elections are an on-going fascination-fest. They are just so interesting. And the latest is just the latest in tilts and turns and surprises.
Why does it have to be so tribal? Why can’t we just discuss the issue: should we have nuclear? Without going bananas and accusing the other side of being “wicked”?
Why does it have to be like this? Especially as it’s said to be “an existential issue” for us. For humanity. Meaning that our very existence is at stake. And yet we argue from our camps, from our tribes. Why?
It’s not the Opposition party that’s making it tribal. What they’ve done is to put some ideas out there, of nuclear power to be a part of the solution for Australia. And instead of saying “ok, we don’t really like nuclear power, but let’s at least discuss it”, the Labor party goes on the attack and makes it tribal.\\
Below are some figures, some data, that show how Renewables are not so cheap. And how Nuclear is a viable solution in places other than Oz, so why not Oz? There’s no reason Oz should not be a part of this nuclear future.
There is no major economy that’s powered only by Renewables. Because the more Renewables you have the more you have to have excess capacity and storage and these add to the overall cost of Renewables.
The whole issue is not as simple as saying “let’s go full on Renewables”, which is the current Labor Party policy under PM Anthony Albanese and Climate Czar Chris Bowen.
Fun facts about Nuclear:
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| Scandanavia, about the population of Australia: High amounts of Nuclear power. Denmark, with the lowest has highest electricity costs |
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| The more Renewables Australia has, the higher the cost of electricity |
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| The more Renwables, the higher the cost of electrity for all European countries |
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| Nuclear waste problem has been solved |
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| Nuclear costs: from lowest to middle of the pack |
