Trump, Hormuz and the end of the Free Ride

Food for thought.

For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface.

The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities.

Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress.

Nate Friedman's heartfelt tribute to Charlie Kirk

 

These are the GOOD people. Those that Nate Friedman shows, above, in his tribute to Charlie Kirk, which he did at the Tribute to Charlie, apparently the biggest such ever in the United States, watched by over 100 million and attended, in person, by over 200,000. 

The Tik Tokkers dancing on Charlie's grave, horrid horrid views. Those that want to kill, to murder, to assassinate a good man, and now we know, any good person, to stop their thoughts and speech. These are the BAD people. 

Very Manichaean of me, I admit. But there we are. There are good people and there are bad people. Maybe it's in you. Or maybe it's your society that made you that way. A measure for me is: Whether or not you celebrate the death of a person whose views you know nothing of (as most of the grave dancers don't). That's one of those dividing lines for me. 

As Mao Tse-tung used to say: "One divides into two". Or, as I used to say: "There are two types of people in the world; those that divide the world into two and those that don't". 

If you can't tell good from bad. Or if you prevaricate about it -- "Charlie Kirk should not have been killed, BUT... " -- aka Salman Rushdie's "But Brigade" redux, if there's some doubt and wondering, then I can't help you. 

You can think as badly as you want of me. I feel comfortable being on the side of Free Speech, on the side of the free interchange of ideas, on the side of NOT killing people you disagree with, of engaging with young minds in the academy. 

That's the side I stand on. That's the side most of the Left used to stand on. But no longer does. 

======================

Salman Rushdie's speech (a clip), from January 2015 on Free Speech and the "But Brigade":

“So anyway, the thing that I come to—I used this phrase on TV the other day— the rise of the ‘but-brigade.’ I got so sick of the goddamn but-brigade.  And now the moment somebody says ‘Yes I believe in free speech, but,’ I stop listening. ‘I believe in free speech, but people should behave themselves.’ ‘I believe in free speech, but we shouldn’t upset anybody.’ ‘I believe in free speech, but let’s not go too far.’

“The point about it is, the moment you limit free speech, it’s not free speech. The point about it is that it’s free. Both John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela, in important speeches, used the same three-word phrase which to my mind says it all: “Freedom is indivisible.” You can’t slice it up. Otherwise it ceases to be freedom.

"5 Myths about the war in Gaza” | Sam Harris

From Sam Harris, transcript of a podcast on 30 Jan 2024, on his blog, here. My selected quotes. The whole piece is worth reading, sound moral clarity. 

/Snip:

The first point is that the problem that Israel faces with Hamas, and eventually Hezbollah, and ultimately Iran, while it is existential for Israel, and dangerous and difficult in many specific ways, is a variant of a larger problem that has nothing, in principle, to do with Israel or Jews or American foreign policy. This is a larger clash of cultures—I hesitate to follow Samuel Huntington in calling it a clash of civilizations, because I think real civilization—what we mean by “civilization” at this point in the 21st century—exists on only one side of this divide. And this clash is happening, in varying degrees, in a hundred countries.

...

However horrific, even unthinkable, sometimes war is necessary. Now, many of the decisions Israel has made in how it wages this war are certainly debatable. But there is no way of waging it without a massive loss of innocent life, as I will discuss.

...

What is the alternative to violence for Israel in its current conflict with Hamas, given what Hamas did on October 7th, and given what it has vowed to do again at any opportunity? Pacifism? Pacifism only works against a morally sane adversary. It worked against the British in India. But pacifism would not have worked against the Nazis. Had the Allies decided that war is just too awful, and they just couldn’t stomach killing any more German children, we would all be living in the 1000-year Reich.

 ...

The problem for Israel, and for the whole world, is that Jihadism is more dangerous than Nazism. Jihadists are Nazis who are certain of paradise.

Myth #1: Israel is guilty of “genocide” in Gaza.

The term “genocide” has a clear meaning—it’s the destruction or attempted destruction of a whole people. According to the 1948 international genocide convention, genocide constitutes “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” To claim that Israel has perpetrated a genocide in Gaza, or that it has attempted genocide anywhere, is patently false.

...

As for genocide, the intentions of Hamas, as declared in their founding charter, and as they have reiterated numerous times since October 7th, are explicit: They aspire to commit an actual genocide. This is something they proudly claim to want to do. And the worst part is that they don’t ultimately care about their own survival. Members of Hamas, like jihadists everywhere, routinely chant, “We love death more than the Jews, or the infidels, or the Americans, love life.”

Myth #2: International Humanitarian Law Requires that Israel’s response to Palestinian aggression be “proportional.”

The crucial distinction, which almost no one can keep in view, is that there are now two types of people in this world: those who intentionally torture and kill children and other noncombatants, to maximize horror, and those who seek to avoid doing so, however imperfectly, while defending themselves against the first sort of people. The gulf between these two groups could not be wider, and everything we care about—literally everything—exists on one side of it.

Myth #3: The Jews Are Colonizers and the Palestinians are Indigenous People.

...the UN sits in perpetual judgment of the one embattled democracy in the Middle East that is fighting for its actual survival—against a death cult that revels in atrocities and in the martyrdom of its own civilians. I know the UN sounds like it still has some gravitas—it’s the United Nations, afterall—but on this and several other points, it has become a morally bankrupt organization.

...

The word “corruption” doesn’t even begin to encompass the problems here.

Myth #4: The atrocities committed by Hamas (and over one thousand Palestinian civilians) on October 7th were a legitimate response to oppression.

Again, we need the world’s 2 billion Muslims to honestly acknowledge this problem and find some way of moderating their faith, specifically around the doctrines of martyrdom, jihad, apostasy, and blasphemy–which put their faith in perpetual conflict with the modern world.

Myth #5: The two sides in this conflict are equally civilized, equally entitled to respect, and equally worth protecting

Jihadist organizations like Hamas, and the wider cultures that support them, don’t value human life the way we do. Again, while this might sound like wartime propaganda, it is a simple statement of fact about how religious beliefs motivate people and constrain their thinking.
...

In general, we are not talking about people who are part of the reality-based community.

...

There simply is a difference between those who are attempting to spread a cult of death to the ends of the Earth and those who are struggling to prevent this from happening, while also struggling to maintain the norms of an open society.

Earlier clip from Sam, “The bright line between good and evil”:

I’m pro-Israel. Pro-Jew. Anti-Hamas. That seems to be rare in the west. Even progressive jews attack conservative jews.

 

Click above for the video

Caroline Glick rang a bell, I knew I’d written about her early on in this blog. 

And here it is. From June 2011. 

Above, she makes a lot of good points. On the Anti-Hamas, pro-Israel side of this issue. Which is where I stand. Not many (or not any) of my friends do. I’m a lone one, here in the west, in support of Israel. Even counting the Untied States. Where Biden’s support is weakening. And where the previous bilateral support of Israel has fractured. 

Towards the end, above, Glick talks of progressive Jews, who throw less progressive Jews under the bus, and are then upset that they’re hammered by the pro-Hamas side. Shame on them. 

Friends in Israel write to me that they’re in northern Israel near the Lebanon border. I ask about the rockets and the refugees. I’d read that there are huge numbers of Israelis evacuated from near the Lebanon border because Hezbollah was firing rockets into Israel. In breach of a UN Resolution, by the way. 

They write: 

The kibbutz we stayed last night full of evacuees from hard up to the border.. we talked to a few, who are making the best of the chaos.. 300,000 evacuees, schooling & lives on hold

I reply that this is not much covered in the western media. I’ve not seen much on BBC, ABC, CNN.

My post on Caroline Glick from 13 years ago, I’ve copied below. It’s kind of ironic. I wrote that post in the wake of a Tunisian lighting himself on fire. And today it’s someone lighting himself on fire because of Israel. Which Glick talks of. Plus ça change The post below (and here): 

New info on the Lab Leak hypothesis of Covid’s origin

As Mao Tse-tung said, often: “One Divides into Two”. In Chinese: 一分为二, Yi Fen Wei Er. Mao's cutesy bit of Hegelian dialectic, which he picked up somewhere along the way, studying Marx. One divides into two: everything: man/woman, black/white, Lib/Lab, Dog/Cat. 

So we have the two theories of the origin of SarsCoV-2, the Lab Leak hypothesis (LL) and the Zoonotic Origin hypothesis (ZO). LL says it came from an accidental leak of the pathogen from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The ZO says it was passed to humans via an animal (as yet not identified) at the Wuhan Huanan wet market. 

A Senate minority report has just been published and reported in ProPublica. ProPublica is a non-profit, non-partisan online news source and winner to date of six Pulitzer Prizes. 

It’s a long read, but kind of like a detective story. Sit down and enjoy this whodunit! 

Then make up your own mind if you think the origin of Covid were more likely from an unknown animal in the Wuhan wet market, or from an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Me, I remain on the fence, though I lean to LL. If there were some solid actual evidence on the ZO side, like an actual animal with the actual disease, found around the Wuhan wet markets, then I’d change my mind. Till then, the balance of probabilities is with the LL hypothesis. In my view. 

[ADDED: A curious thing happened to some scientists who began LL then flipped to ZO. Like Kristian Andersen. Who initially said, to paraphrase: “the virus looks like it could not have arisen in the wild, so presumably it was engineered”. Then, a while later (not very long at all in Andersen’s case) said “well, I can now see how it might have arisen in the wild”. But then — and this is the curious bit — go further and say, “…and it couldn’t have been engineered”. This is a weird extra step. I’m no virologist, but many virologists most assuredly do believe that CoV-2 could have been engineered. Indeed that the evidence, admittedly circumstantial, is that it was.]

China has played a horrible part in all this. It’s kept secret. Punished any whistle blowers. Failed to cooperate with international investigations. In short, it’s made things worse for the rest of the world. While it goes its own merry way on the Zero Covid policy path, which is infuriating even its own population, docile as it usually is. 

Shame on China. And shame on the WHO for not putting more pressure on China, especially early on, when the knowledge would have been even more useful: eg, an earlier vaccine could have been developed.

We need to know the origins of Covid so we can know what best to do to avoid the next pandemic. If it’s ZO, then the wet markets need to be closed down. Across Asia. Or something. Something done with them. If it’s LL, then any gain-of-function research needs to be banned forthwith. As it had been by the US, but not by China. 

The article:

COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab. ProPublica.

Wayback Internet Archive version

PS: there’s mention in the article of “Party Speak”. This is the same as I’ve called elsewhere “Commie Speak”. The turgid, turdy, tat that Chinese apparatchiks are obliged to use. It was everywhere when I first went to China in 1976, and I even learnt how to write it, in Chinese. Then it waned over the decades, as Deng Xiaoping’s sanity took over. It’s back in major vogue since Xi Jinping, and his mania for keeping CCP party control, at whatever cost. Even linguistic sanity. 

Solving the homeless crisis in California: Tough Love vs Puppy Love

Things to know about the homeless crisis in California.

It’s been decades in the making

A lot has been spent on trying to solve it. 

A lot of money is committed to trying to solve it: 6% of the Cali budget, around $US 20 billion per year, or $500 for every man woman and child in the state. 

Yet it has only got worse. As Kenneth Meiji shows for LA. And Michael Shellenberger shows for San Francisco.

What to do? 

What do I know? Answer: nothing. What I do know is that there are different approaches. Some, the progressive ones, have been tried again and again, and have failed. At least so far. The measure of failure? That homelessness has gotten worse. Problem is data doesn’t matter. Same as with the response to “socialism has been tried and doesn’t work” which is: “well it hasn’t been tried properly”, we get the “we just have to try harder”. But getting ahead of myself. What are these main approaches to tackling the homelessness crisis in California?

The two basic approaches (my words): Tough Love vs Puppy Love. “Be responsible” vs “don’t blame the victim”.

Also known as: Systems vs Goals. Republicans think systems are better to deal with crises. Democrats think Goals are better. Also knows as “Shelter First” or “Housing First”.

“Shelter First” is: provide basic, clean bed and and chafed amenities. Work on mental health and drug addiction problems. Provide housing as a reward for steps forward. 

“Housing First” is:provide a standalone, single-occupancy dwelling. Usually there is no follow up so high rate of people drop outs back to the streets to score. This is the policy being adopted now in California. But not the rest of America. So comparisons can be made. Shellenberger looks at the issues from all angles: the homeless, the carers, the non-profits, the parents, the kids. 

Having been a progressive, environmental activist, Shellenberger is now a critic. As I said to Kenneth, well worth a read, no matter your politics. Even, ,synergies even especially, if you’re a self described progressive. 

It’s only “progressive” if it progresses things. If it moves them forward. To a better place. The problem with treating the homeless crisis in Cali via progressive policies, is that they are no longer progressive. They’re doing the thing that Einstein warned about: trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It’s like the Left’s view of socialism: “It’s only failed because it hasn’t been tried properly”. 

I’ve been re-reading San Fransicko, coz researching the County Controller candidate Kenneth Meiji, yesterday. Who strikes me as a serious and committed young man. But driven by the same progressive policies that have captured Cali and captured the homeless issue -- aka “the homeless industrial complex”. IOW, don’t think it will work. And if so, what then? Surely young folks like him have to have some success to make it worth it for them. And to have success, he may need to look at and try some tough love, instead of puppy love. 

“The ideological refusal to acknowledge evolved sex differences” | Quillette

A powerful essay from Professor Geary who knows whereof he speaks. 

This whole issue has become really fraught in the US and not just at the fringes, and especially with a small number of extremists in the trans community and the broader “non-binary” community. We know, though, how whole movements can be started and grow, with just a small percent of really committed rebels; think the Bolsheviks and how they created the Soviet Union, though only some 5% of the population. So this move to de-sex homo sapiens must be resisted. So far, it’s not looking good, all the gains in recent years having been made on the activists’ side. 

Wars, ideological wars, are being fought in the US over this, not just in social media and the academy, but also in schools, in businesses, in government departments.  Even in the Supreme Court: remember when the most recent Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson could not (or would not) answer the question during confirmation hearings: “Can you define a woman?”. She replied: “no, I can’t; I am not a biologist”.  Since when did defining the word “woman” become a trick question? A thing only a biologist could answer? I guess, since the reality-based community allowed itself to be flummoxed by the ideology-based community. 

Perhaps the reality-based is starting to get its act together. 

Example: Professor Geary brings some order to the chaos, in “The ideological refusal to acknowledge evolved sex differences”.

Shorter Geary: Remember and Repeat (especially you, Justice Jackson): 

"I have one large immotile gamete, therefore I am female” || “I have many small motile gametes, therefore I am male"

That holds for all mammals and has done for 200 million years.

You may feel you are of the other sex (aka “sexual dysphoria”).  A tolerant and well-ordered society will say: we respect your feelings on that -- we respect all your human rights and privileges. But it doesn’t make you the other sex. A trans woman is still a man. 

I’ll quote below the first and the last paragraphs of professor Geary’s essay. What’s in between is long-ish but very instructive. The first:

Much remains to be learned about the nature and origins of various sex differences, but more is known than most people realize. Much of the current confusion is generated by activists who suppress, attack, and distort information on sex differences in order to reinforce their preferred ideological narratives. These ideology-driven distortions are helpfully illustrated by a recent New York Times essay by Chelsea Conaboy, which announces that the maternal instinct is a “myth”—a social construct generated and upheld by the patriarchy to impel women to raise children and keep them out of the workforce.

And, the last:

The bottom line

The claims made in a virtual world of internet algorithms populated by ideological social media pundits, journalists, and gender studies professors contradicts common sense and rational analysis of real-world phenomena. This is a world of words and ideas fraught with wishes and desires that are not always tethered to reality, including many far-fetched beliefs about the number of sexes and the origins and malleability of any associated sex or gender differences. Much remains to be learned about these differences which leaves plenty of room for legitimate debate. But there is no scientific room for the nonsensical idea that boys and girls and men and women are infinitely malleable and merely socially constructed products of the patriarchy or some other social system.  [Read the whole essay here]

A world divided

The world divides into two: those who divide the world into two and those that don’t. 

I frost heard “One divides into two” in China 1976, when I was told it was a phrase of Mao Tse-tung. Yi Fen Wei Er, 一分为二.  Turns out it goes back to Hegelian dialectics, but we'll leave that lie there for now.

I was taken by the phrase thinking it showed Mao’s profundity. That was before I knew more of the old reprobate, paedophile, dictator, mass murderer. His “one divides into two” was not more profound that declaring his tribe and the rest, enemies of the people, anti-revolutionaries.

Still, it is rhe way of the world, isn’t it. As long as we’re not to Manichaean about it, too “good and baddie” too “black and whitey”. 

Over the years I’ve divided the world variously into “builders and destroyers”, or “be,ievers and infidels” or “west and east” or “anglosphere and the polyglots” or “Islam and the Judeo- Christian world”. What fun!

And now the latest iteration of “one divides into two”, courtesy Covid: the “Laptop class vs. the Working Class”. Aka the salaried vs. the self-employed. Or the Laptop Class vs. the Rest. “The Rest” being self-employed — people who have to meet a payroll— gig workers, people had to go to work (could not work from home). And the Laptop Class being: government workers, academics, journalists.

What surprised Jing and me early on was the the lack of empathy of the former for the latter. Of the Laptoppers for the Workers. People happy working from home too often demonised those that couldn’t. They didn’t understand that founding a business, running a business, then losing that business by government mandate, was something horrible. Yet Dr Anthony Fauci, king of the Laptop class doesn’t recognise it.

Talking of his announced retirement Fauci said: “no one has been irreparably harmed by the lockdown”. Whaaaa? 600,000 bankrupt companies in the US alone!  Mass poverty in SE Asia result of lockdowns. Like the pic above. All this, to Fauci, is “nothing”?

The “Fauci effect”. And “The price of lockdowns”. “How Fauci fooled America”.

"Lam urges next leadership to toughen up for ‘political struggles’ “ | SCMP

I’m not a big fan of what Beijing used to call “harmonisation”. What the west calls “unity”, as opposed to horrid, and always, seemingly, increasing “divisiveness”. This sounds nice, but is not the way of the world. "One Divides into Two". As Hegel said. As Mao Tse-tung said. As PF said. 

Here, snip below, is Carrie Lam, our Chief-exec, speaking fluent Commie-talk. 

“[The government and the people] need to go in the same direction. If our thinking was too different, it’s meaningless to hold our hands and walk together,” she said.

“But now that one country, two systems is back on the right track with national security protected and the electoral system improved, this should be the best time, since the handover, for us to move forward.”

And how do we think that the “government and the people” will go in the same direction, how we will “walk together"? Why, by the people accepting what the government says, of course.

We, in the West, have decided that the adversarial system is the one that in the end gets better results, even as it’s messier along the way. People get to thrash out their differences. Enough of this “one party” idea. Hopping along with Carrie, happily holding hands, skipping along the yellow brick road, only to find, at the end, a fraudulent wizard.

By the way, this same issue is something I often wonder about in the US. There’s only one Cable station on the conservative side, Fox News, and there are many on the Left -- CNN, ABC, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, etc. Yet many on the Left want to shut down Fox, the one and only viewpoint that differs.

We need differing viewpoints.

Not “harmonisation”, not “unity”. These are today’s Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, aka, "Wizard of Oz” aka "Oz, the Great and Terrible”, Wizard the fraud.

So much hating on the US

As I expected, most comments support Chandran Nair’s article, which is pretty much all about hating on the United States. My comment at the site: 

So much hating on the US. Which gave us: winniing WW2, Marshall Plan, constitutions of Germany and Japan that allowed them to recover; stopping Stalin-inspired, China-supported North Korea invasion; then the GATT, WTO, WB, IMF, all of which China (and other AsianNations) joined; freedom of navigation for SCS and Straits of Malacca. Free for anyone. But go ahead and hate on the US. Go ahead and enable China's rule of the region!  Be careful what you wish for.   

(Final note, and a *huge* tell: What is the country that most people sitll want to emigrate to? China? Japan? Hint: no it's not them....)

You don’t have to like everything that America does or hate everything that China does. I know both of their societies. I’ve lived in both. If it’s a choice between a world dominated by the United States or a world dominated by China, I choose the United States. For all its faults, for all its failures, for all its frustrated freedoms and all its unmet ideals, I still like those freedoms and ideals, still prefer the United States' striving towards them. 

Not so with China. 

China not only doesn’t strive for freedom and democracy. It actively mocks them. China is now going all ad hominem on the US, criticising it for “systemic racism”-- the US' criticism of itself! As if China is not the most racist country in the world! So I’ll go all ad hominem on the commenters and say that those that buy into Nair’s take on this -- that America “needs to be reined in” -- are ignorant lickspittles. So there!

(prove me wrong)

ADDED: An Occasional Reader draws attention to “Blinded by self-belief” from Harvard professor Dani Rodrick: 

To those who wonder why we should care about the decline of America’s relative power, US foreign policy elites respond with a rhetorical question: would you rather live in a world dominated by the US or by China?

In truth, other countries would rather live in a world without domination, where smaller states retain a fair degree of autonomy, have good relations with all others, are not forced to choose sides, and do not become collateral damage when major powers fight it out.

To which: sure. No argument. It’s just that that’s not the way of the world works and hasn’t done in recorded history… thinking Greece, Sparta, the Moors. Even China, back in the Song, the Ming. Australian, now living here at a crossroads between East and West, I’d sure like it if it were not so binary; wouldn’t we all? Just that “One divides into two”. 

Pedant's Corner: I’m not sure it’s a “rhetorical” question in the quote above. It does need an answer. In this  part of the world there are plenty, some I know personally, who would answer “China”.

 

Things I got wrong about Covid

I look back over a few weeks of posts and they’re almost all about Covid and Omicron. Why?

I guess because we’re entering our third year and I thought it would be over in one. I’d never imagined we’d still be under lockdown by now. I thought we’d be over it in 2020, in time for our Alaska trip.

I wasn’t so optimistic for nothing. We’d been through the SARS epidemic in 2003, as owners of a customer-facing business, going though the social distancing, hand sanitisers, masking, etc. We survived those testing times, but they were over in six months. 

The new virus is also a SARS virus  — SARS CoV-2 — so it wasn’t silly to think, or hope, or expect, or predict, or imagine, or pray, that it would be over in six months too. Which is why I kept a spreadsheet of cases: I’d done that for 2003 SARS and had predicted the last case in Hong Kong almost to the day. 

Sadly, that wasn’t to be with SARS CoV-2.

Many other things I got wrong about this pandemic. I thought other countries would take the cue from China and take quick action. That didn’t happen. All countries, especially western, were slow to act. 

I thought vaccines would be a lot longer coming. Based, by the way, on Bill Gates’ predictions. So it was great they came so quickly.

Then I assumed that everyone would welcome the vaccines and rush to get jabbed. For some yes, but for many no, to this day. 

I thought when politicians said we must  “follow the science” they would … well, follow the science. Yet they staunchly ignored key facts — the science — about this virus, and do so this day: mainly (1) that there is a steep age curve — it affects old people far more than young. And (2) that the vast majority severely affected have comorbidities. Failure to acknowledge these two key facts has warped public health measures around the world. And does so to this day.

I never imagined how tribal it would all become. Early on it was “we’re all in this together” but that spirit quickly evaporated. People quickly got back to calling each other names, but worse than ever, including “you have blood on your hands” if one had a different opinion. (I got accused of this, early on). I should have known; I’ve written often about how “One divides into two”, a kind of rule of life. (一分为二, Yi Fen Wei Er. A Hegelian dialectic much beloved by Mao).

I didn’t expect the world would adopt such very different approaches. Which is another reason for my current obsession. That here in Hong Kong we’re adopting a very different approach — Zero Covid — to the rest of the west. As it goes on, I’m now just recording, for posterity as it were. Not making any predictions. Except the ones that are safe to make because some countries (South Africa) have the experience before others (us here in Hong Kong). And Hong Kong, in headline news today, acts like it knows nothing of Omicron experience elsewhere. Like we’re in an information bubble, as well as various vaccine bubbles.

I never imagined our government would be so stupid as to give away $HK5,000 to every resident, withiout demanding they take the vaccine to qualify. That’s right! our government handed out $US 800 to every man,woman, and child in Hong Kong, gratis. Cash. Not a single syringe attached.... ADDED: The government is making the same mistake in 2022, with a no-strings-attached $HK10,000 giveaway. Go figure…)

Another thing: just as there are waves with the pandemic so there are waves in countries’ performance. Some have been heroes then zeros then heroes again. Germany was an early hero; became a zero and is now somewhere in between. We here in HK were early heroes, now just weirdos. China have been between heroes to less than zeros to weirdo to wicked, all in waves. Ditto UK, US. And Australia went from early heroes to deep authoritarian to somewhere rational now, with some state-based “zero-ism” verging in a kind of lunacy. Waves within waves. It’ll be fertile territory for study of mass … what? … psychosis?… well, mass something, no doubt the subject of many a future PhD thesis. 

ADDED: I didn’t know or expect the “Long Covid” thing. TBF, no one did, early on. But it certainly is a thing and could go on impacting our societies for years, perhaps decades.

“One Divides into Two” redux

Zuby: a British rapper and heterodox thinker.
Click above to go to tweet thread

Some non-binaries of mine: 

• I’m fully pro-vaccine; I’m against vaccine mandates. [ADDED: doesn’t make me “anti-vaxxer”]
• I wear a mask when mandated; the science shows they are of limited use. 
• I have accepted lockdowns; though lockdowns are of limited effect. 
• I believe in the coronavirus; but Zero Covid policy is not the best way to stop it.
• White Supremacy is horrid; Kyle Rittenhouse is not a white supremacist. 
• "Black lives matter” (lower case); Black Lives Matter (upper case) doesn’t help improve their lives. 
• Social justice is important; woke-ism makes it worse.

Another thing. Which is in the “things I don’t get” category. The MSM, which is almost all on the Left (in the 2016 election, 93% of print media who endorsed chose Hillary Clinton), often calls for Fox News -- the only MSM outlet on the Right -- to be shut down. That’s despite the fact that they denounce countries where there is only one source of media, places like China or Russia. 

But what then? What if they succeeded, got rid of Fox and there were only voices on the Left? They would probably coalesce between more Left and less Left, and the ones to the right of the Left would likely drift further right, and the ones to the Left further left. 

Because "One Divides into Two”, a favourite saying of Mao Tse-tung and which I first heard in 1976. 一分为二，Yi Fen Wei Er. Which we ought resist, despite its pull. Most things are not binary. And thus resist moves to limit the range of views. 

Sitting in my office, contemplating revolutions ...

View from my office chair, Siena One, Hong Kong

I’m contemplating revolutions from this angle: how many in human history have been successful? 

I’m reading “The Temptations of Tyranny” by Peter Hughes, how revolutionary agitators see their ideas collapse into their opposite.

And I’ve just read about revolutions proposed by Biden’s candidate to oversee US Banking, Saule Omarova, in “Thus spake Omarava”, by Matthew Continetti, which I got to via a Josh Kraushaar tweet: "Since January, America has slowly awakened to the reality that it elected Joe Biden president only to be governed by Elizabeth Warren”.

And Omarova talks of revolutions by “... radically redefining the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a democratic economy—the People's Ledger”.

Matthew Continetti makes a point that I relate to, having moved to China in 1976, straight out of Uni, where I was, of course, a leftie, and saw what ultimate leftism, aka socialism, aka Marxism, does to a people, to an economy: 

What's striking is that immigrants from the former Soviet Union and its satellites tend to be viscerally anti-communist and anti-socialist: Having lived under totalitarian regimes, they are especially attuned to infringements of personal and economic liberty and are mindful of human-rights abuses conducted in the name of "People's Republics.” [my emphasis]

One: run for a mile whenever you see something with the word “People’s”, with a capital “P”. It’s bad news.

Two: Omarava is not at all “viscerally anti-communist". She’s still in thrall to the Soviet Union, as Continetti and her Tweets show. Like the revolutionary agitators in Hughes’ piece above, the failure of Soviet Socialism, of Socialism in every country over all time since Marx, does not dim its shine for Omarava. Even this failure does not damage the certainty with which she clings to this zombie idea.

And Biden plans to put her in charge of the US dollar? And oversight of the FED??? As an OR said “she’s poison”. As Continetti said, she is "… an activist intellectual who is—and I say this in the kindest way possible—a nut.”

But back to the original contemplation: how many revolutions in world history have been successful? The answer I have not, but it’s surely not a majority. You can wiki it, then it’s up to your priors how you decide which have been successful, or not. For example: is China’s 1949 revolution successful, or not? Many would say Yes. I’d be inclined to think No. The counterfactual is what if there had been a democracy all along, even after the corrupt Chiang Kai-shek version, might it not also have matured and squeezed out its corruption and given us a more open and tolerant China than the one we have today? 

Hong Kong border with mainland China to fully reopen to quarantine-free travel by June

Our “World City” international airport is a ghost town
(Click on his mask to go to the article)

By doing this our dear leader, chief executive Carrie Lam, has cemented Hong Kong’s future as GBA vs GFC. That is with the Greater Bay Area rather than as the Global Financial Centre. Looking inwards rather than outwards. Looking to the Belt and Road rather than the Buck and Euro. Though I wonder if it needs to be a binary. Can we be smart enough to become the key finance and services player, the bridge to the west, out of the GBA?

By the way, even with borders “fully reopen” by June, it’s not going to be easy. The front page article above says that a local Chinese phone number will may be needed. For tracking purposes. But you can only get one of those if you have either a company or relatives in China. We have the latter, but for historical reasons we can’t go that route… [LATER: an OR asks about the reasons. I can’t go into the them here, but can say a bit more if you email, link at right]

ADDED: From the comments, people are getting pissed off at our Zero Covid policy. It wasn’t all that long ago that everyone was in favour. Now they’re asking “is it worth it?” And answering “no”. Far as I know China and Hong Kong are the only places in the world still on a zero Covid path. Maybe Iceland too, but can’t be bothered to check…. [Still: Zero Covid resistance in China]. 

China is probably the only country in the world that has the surveillance apparatus capable of going zero Covid. And they’re sucking Hong Kong along. And our Carrie Lam is the willing dupe. Shame on her. But that’s the way of the future. We are Eeyore to Winnie-for-life.

ADDED: A China resident says “under this dude and his henchmen things are going backwards again”

‘Canberra picks sides’ | SCMP

Online here

“Canberra picks sides” says the print headline. And the right side, in my view. If indeed it’s quite true that a side has been finally and irrevocably chosen. After all, no matter how much Beijing tries to browbeat Australia because we’ve had the gall to call for an international investigation into the source of Covid 19, we still have a robust trade relationship. We still have a major embassy in Beijing overseeing relations across a broad area, including science, culture, education and even defence. We maintain our military attaché office there. 

David Morris, a PhD candidate, makes the the mistake of assuming that because he hasn’t read about it, it hasn’t happened. That because Indonesia claims it was shocked by the submarine deal — shocked, I tell you! — means it hadn’t heard of it before via diplomatic channels. Ditto France. They had. They’re crying crocodile… not tears, what?… umbrage? So that Beijing takes notice. Behind the scenes where most diplomacy should and does take place, there’s plenty going on and plenty being briefed. Morris as an ex diplomat ought to know that; maybe he does but it suits his argument to pretend he doesn’t.

I don’t like binaries. Who does? But again I’m reminded of Mao Tse-tung’s “One divides into two” (一分为二, Yi fen wei er). And if it is a choice, then I’m for the freedom way, flawed and all as it may be. Those flaws are on full show because of that very openness. China’s flaws — do we imagine they have none? — are never in show because they don’t allow them to be. We know the extent to which we can be influenced by media coverage, whether we admit it or not. So how can we not be influenced by relentlessly negative media around the US, and give a pass — or more, openly praise — the government of China. Because it “eradicated poverty” or some such. Sure, and also… repressing Xinjiang Uygurs, for just one. Where we don’t hear the full story. And now memorials of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacres are banned here as well, so that’s cropped into the memory hole. We just don’t know the full extent of Beijing’s wrongdoings, whereas every one by Washington is in full, deep, extensive, thorough display. 

Comments on the art Joe online not running quite so anti-Australia as I’d imagined. Perhaps the 50-cent army have been withdrawn and sicked into different targets, Taiwan perhaps. 

A comment from a “Jing L” (click to enlarge):

After which comment from a “Peter F”:

"Figuring things out on the spot"

Julia Galef on Richard Dawkins in 2015

Richard Dawkins (a hero of mine) had his recent "transphobe" imbroglio. He tweeted the above yesterday (click screenshot to go to vid as something of what he was trying to do. Fair enough. And good, too. Hos tweet.

Dear Richard, how about figuring out also why it is the "one divides into two", that democratic nations have electorates that divide into two, almost equal blocks? Can one side be fully virtuous and the other side fully wicked? 

Discuss. …

(Dawkins seems to have a blind eye when it comes to Republicans. To him, as far as his tweets attest, they are nothing but "deplorables", pig-ignorant troglodytes only to be despised. I say that's a blind spot in this otherwise spotless mind).

What the Left and Right look at and read | “The Left as a rule doesn’t want to hear thoughtful disagreement"

 

The masthead at the Blendle online site

I had a chat recently with an Occasional Reader (OR) who said she read widely. "I get Blendle as well, which gets me access to articles across the board", she (kind-of) boasted. I've also subscribed to Blendle for some years. 

Blendle not quite an aggregating site. It's a place where you can read one or two articles and just pay for them one at at time, like 25 or 50 cents per. I'd thought of this business model myself, a way long time ago, and thought it a great business potential. Others thought so too, and created Blendle. How many folks would be happy to pay a quarter or up to a buck to read a single article, but don't want the hassle of a monthly sub to the paper? Many, I'd bet. And here's Blendle to do it for you. (My twist on it, which I think is better is: pay for each article by mobile phone number, each of which is unique and has the capacity for small individual payments. But that's another thing...).

Well, above is the masthead of Blendle, proclaiming that "Blendle is the biggest platform of premium journalism in the country."

But it's clear that to Blendle "premium" means Left of centre. Every single one of those sources of "premium journalism" is Left to Far Left of centre. There's not a single respectable conservative voice there amongst those fourteen: not a Nation Review, not a New York Post, not even a Wall Street Journal.  How can this be the "biggest platform"? And if it is, shame on us.

In all democracies in the world, the electorates are divided pretty much 50/50. One Divides into Two. 

So, by taking only the Left as "premium journalism", Blendle are ignoring the thoughts, values and ideals of at around half the human population. Are they all "deplorables"? (Sadly, many Democrats, including ones I admire, really seem to think so).

Thing is: polls tell us this skewed media access is common: The Left reads and watches almost exclusively media on the Left. The Right reads and watches mostly on the Right, but also watches and reads media on the Left. Conservatives watch about six times more liberal media than liberal watch conservative media. Look at this Gallup poll:

From "Bubbles and Vortexes"

Partly, I guess, that's because they have to, since Left media is so dominant. But partly too it's surely down to a curiosity about what drives that much maligned "other", their political opponents. Whereas liberals see conservatives as “racist or bigoted or sexist" twice as much as the other way around, and we have the Editor of the New York Times, Dean Baquet, admitting, in an unguarded moment "the Left as a rule doesn't want to hear thoughtful disagreement".*

That's not the case on the Right. I know many conservative podcasters who would love to have Democrats on their shows, but find no takers. Podcasts and cable TV on the Left never ask conservative guests on their shows (a few notable exceptions: like Bill Maher having Ben Shapiro on). When conservatives are asked to appear on liberal media, they always do. When liberals are asked to appear on conservative shows, they never do. 

So, how, Joe, are we supposed to "come together" and "unify", if the Left won't even engage?  (I'm thinking here of old Joe's speech last night to Congress). 

*****************************

*“The Left as a rule doesn’t want to hear thoughtful disagreement,” [NYT Editor Dean Baquet] pointed out." [here]

~~ May 30, 2017. (Things have only got worse since] 

US-China relations: a good-versus-evil world view does no one any good

 

I'd really like to believe, as does Tom Plate and the man he admires here, Richard Falk, that being nice and hoping for peace will bring it. 

Is China pushing hard in the South China Sea because it feel threatened by the US? Or is the US muscling up in the same sea because it perceives a unilateral Chinese ambition to grow its world power? Times are tense. There is talk of the US' actions pushing China to invade Taiwan. All because it's a national imperative, because they must make up for the century of humiliations -- the invasions, the colonies on Chinese soil, turning its young men into opium addicts. And all these are true. So they can't give up on Taiwan and Xi Jinping has made it a central feature of his presidency. But does that make it right? Does that make it inevitable? Does that make it right for the broad masses of the Chinese people, save for those on the mainland who won't be affected in any way by it, save to bask in the glow of renewed Chinese dominance?

I'd like to believe we could get back to a cooperative path, US and China. But it's surely a two-way path and Plate looks only at the one side. As does his hero here Richard Falk. It's yet another version of how it's all America's fault. They're softer Chomsky-ians, not as crude, not as crazy left, but in that territory. Chomsky-adjacent, we'd say today. 

Snip:

Understanding China, [Richard Falk] believes, requires a special effort. The good-versus-evil bifurcation produces policy astigmatism that clouds judgment. Naval-gazing – at China’s build-up in the South China Sea – need not trigger regional warfare if China’s motive is understood as strategically defensive rather than offensive, and if issues are negotiated, not militarised. MORE...

When Harry talked to William...

… it didn’t go so well, apparently.

Britain’s Prince Harry has spoken to his elder brother Prince William for the first time since he and his wife Meghan’s Oprah Winfrey interview but the talks were “not productive”, a friend of the couple said on Tuesday.

Hmm… not that I’m that interested in this saga, but still. The way the aftermath has panned out its a classic case of “one divides into two”. Democrats are mostly sympathetic to the couple and especially to Megan, while Republicans not so much. 

There’s also a divide across the Atlantic. Americans are sympathetic overall; in Britain, the couple’s popularity has plunged. 

That means people in the U.S. have bought into the narrative, despite years of “fake news".  No double checking, no desire to Call the Bullshit.

My comment at the site (typos and all...):

Which reminds me, the "fake news" bit: the AstraZeneca vaccine is being delayed in many countries because “blood clots”. Individual cases have brought vaccination to a halt. But: in Britain they’ve jabbed 11 million with the AZ, and had 37 folks with blood clots. 

That’s less than the number of blood clots one would expect in an equivalent population. And in tests, there were more clots in the placebo group so it makes zero sense to stop jabbing cause of that. But they do, despite saying endlessly, “we follow the science”. A hypocrisy I don’t get.

 (LATER: they've now restarted in the EU with the AstraZeneca vax).

ADDED: A good explanation of how to read numbers and unmask bullshit numbers.  

I have another example. A year or so ago, there was the horrifying news that eating cured meats, like bacon, led to a 20% increase in colon cancer deaths, in the UK. Yikes! 

Delve into the figures, however, and you find that that eating massive amounts of bacon (ten rashers a day) led to a few more people dying of colon cancer. The number went up from 247 per million per year to 297 per million per year. Sure, that's a 20% increase. It's also: an extra 50 people who might die per year, from a massive increase in consumption of bacon. In a population of 67 million, does a 0.000074% increase in the number of deaths really warrant the headline of "20% increase", even if it's correct on a facile level?

An example of: "True but misleading". 

Glenn Greenwald. Boom!

Hunter and Hunted?

What a huge Glenn Greenwald story!

I’ve known Glenn Greenwald’s writings for quite a while. I went off him a bit a few years back when he got involved in a nasty spat with Sam Harris over Islam, where I felt Greenwald was rather wrong. But, like Sam, he’s an independent spirit. A man of the Left — he wrote for The Guardian and Salon — but, also like Sam, infuriated by some of the shenanigans on the Far Left.

He’s the guy who broke the Snowdon-NSA papers in the Guardian. And most recently the corruption in Brazilian President Bolsonaro’s government, in the news source he co-founded, The Intercept. And now he’s left it in a big huff. He’s no lover of Trump…

And yet… and yet… he wrote a long article on the Hunter Biden / Joe Biden emails imbroglio (why is it always emails that trip up the Dems?) and of the cover up of the story by big Tech (mainly FB and Twitter). This story was censored by The Intercept, a news outlet he he-cofounded in 2014, despite his having a contract that explicitly allows him to publish anything he wishes. And as a result he has resigned. 

The Intercept editors dispute that he was “censored”. So Greenwald has published his draft article on Substack. “Article on Joe and Hunter Biden censored by The Intercept”.  Pretty much all you’d want to know about the Bidens’ doings in Ukraine and China, and the MSM response (or lack thereof). Greenwald has also published his email exchange with the editors of The Intercept, so we can make our own decision as to whether he was indeed censored. 

Greenwald quotes a New York Times article pointing out that financial support for Biden is mainly from people above the average wage. Below the average wage, contributions favour Trump. So apart from all the other divisions, it’s also a rich-poor division. 

One of the first comments in the article is from one  “Alex G”, saying he doesn’t care that the media have buried the story because “the people are rubes” amd would just vote Trump back in  — which I find a pretty disgusting view, rather too widely held: just a step away from votes saying should be limited to the elite. “Alex” despises “the people”. They’re just Hillary’s “deplorables”. Where is the concern for the poor? That used to be something Dems did, worry about the poor, the working classes. No longer, alas. There  in it for the top of the meritocracy.

Another interesting Greenwald observation: that the reason the MSM has spent the last four years beating up Russia collusion with Trump, and now “Russian disinformation” with Biden, is because the MSM (NYT, WaPo, Boston Globe, LA Times) are exclusively in the beltways populated by Trump haters who blame the media for having too closely criticised Hillary, while not having closely enough criticised Trump, back in 2016. That is, journalists’ neighbours in New York, in Washington, in Boston, in LA excoriated them for the ascent of Orange Man Bad. The media are trying to make it up to their neighbours. They don’t want to be embarrassed again. Remember how early in post 2016 FB was hammered for allegedly allowing Russian propaganda on their platform. They don’t want to make that mistake again. So nothing about Hunter-Joe is allowed until it’s “fact-checked”.