China; Australian Math; and the War on Civilization
China; Australian Math; and the War on Civilization
Enemies of the People: Jeff Bezos
In his Editor’s Column this week, Michael Walsh looked at the People’s Republic of China, and argued about what we don’t actually need to fear in our ongoing struggle against the world’s other superpower, and what we do.
Big Trouble in Little China
In a commencement address at Notre Dame in 1977, President Jimmy Carter observed that "democracy's great recent successes—in India, Portugal, Spain, Greece—show that our confidence in this system is not misplaced. Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear." Carter was widely criticized on the right for implying that communism was not the existential danger conservatives thought it was, but it was clear from the rest of the sentence that he was instead criticizing America's enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend strategy that had led us into bed with some distinctly unsavory characters, among them the Shah of Iran. Carter went on:
For too many years, we've been willing to adopt the flawed and erroneous principles and tactics of our adversaries, sometimes abandoning our own values for theirs. We've fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is better quenched with water. This approach failed, with Vietnam the best example of its intellectual and moral poverty. But through failure we have now found our way back to our own principles and values, and we have regained our lost confidence.
That "lost confidence" quickly vanished when less than a year later the Ayatollah Khomeini appeared on the scene and by January of 1979 had driven the Shah from power, leading to the establishment of the "Islamic Republic" and ultimately to the hostage crisis that destroyed the Carter presidency and to Ronald Reagan's smashing victories in 1980 and 1984 and thus the fall of the Soviet Union. Moral: do not project your own domestic virtues and expectations onto men from other countries and other cultures, a critical variation on the time-honored principle of never underestimating your enemy by overestimating his fundamental sympathies with you regarding such malleable concepts as "human rights."
Which brings us to China: the Mysterious East, beloved by Hollywood and once an exotic fixture of the American imagination, brimming with sinister orientals, foreign adventurers, Sikhs and sheiks, and Mother Goddam herself in a 1926 play and 1941 movie directed by Josef von Sternberg. It's Not Like Us, never has been, never will be.
The Peoples Republic of China is a slave state boasting a record of military ineptitude unrivaled by any other large nation on earth, and is entirely of a piece of nearly all Chinese governments that have come before it. It has no affinity with the West, nor does it desire one. Almost congenitally incapable of creativity, innovation and exploration, it has instead adopted financial colonization as a central instrument of its foreign policy, using its own people as pawns in an international chess game only one side is playing. Today, having scorned them as an undifferentiated mass of coolies led by a handful of mandarins, we fear them, but for all the wrong reasons.
As I've often observed, based on the historical record, the only people the Chinese can defeat in combat are themselves, as the stupefyingly high body counts of the Taiping Rebellion and Mao's civil war attest. The British easily conquered China during the Opium Wars, and in the runup to Pearl Harbor, tiny but ferocious Japan whipped them twice, in 1931 and again in 1937—not to mention Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War at the end of the 19th century. In 1979, the Vietnamese gave the Peoples Liberation Army all it could handle, repelling its invasion during the Sino-Vietnam War.
Indeed, China's futility in combat with outsiders dates back as far as the Battle of Talas in 751 A.D., when the Abbasid Muslims and some Tibetan allies crushed the armies of the Tang Dynasty, halting Chinese westward expansion into central Asia. Nor could the Chinese stop the Mongol Conquest of the 13th century, nor the incursions by the Turkic Muslim Timur (Tamerlane) of the 14th. At the head of the Ever-Victorious Army in 1863, General George Gordon (who later died defending Khartoum against the Mahdi in 1885), led his peasant army defending Shanghai armed with little more than a swagger stick; they won. On the field of battle, big China is very much Little China.
Tom Finnerty blogged about environmental barbarism, and the weakness of our governing class which allows it to claim victories even when its ends and means are unpopular.
The Punk-Elite Complicity in the War on Civilization
We've previously mentioned the trend among environmentalist activists of attempting to deface timeless works of art in order to, somehow, save the planet. In the past few months their acts of vandalism have included smearing cake on da Vinci's Mona Lisa; dousing Van Gogh's Sunflowers with tomato soup; throwing mashed potatoes at Monet's Mueles; and gluing themselves to Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, while pouring soup on it.
These acts are deplorable. But, in one sense, we should be grateful for them. They have made plain the anti-civilizational barbarism of the environmentalist movement. They've broadcast to the world the fact that they despise the highest achievements of mankind. They always have, in fact, but regular people didn't notice as much when their ire was turned towards fracking or the Industrial Revolution. These targets were too abstract, and seemed so deeply embedded in our society that they couldn't be materially damaged by a bunch of hippies chanting about them, or even those hippies' highly remunerated lobbyists.
But there is something about striking out at timeless works of beauty which provokes a visceral reaction in people. When viewing the videos of these incidents, you can't help but notice the gasps of horror and the shouts of rage of museum-goers. It is likely that these people are of various political persuasions, and one would assume that many of them are generally sympathetic towards environmentalism. But they recognize immediately that these hoodlums are striking out at the frail beauty which Shakespeare contemplates in Sonnet 65, and they -- and everyone who sees the videos that the activists themselves are posting online -- are repulsed. Clearly what these activists are doing is beyond the pale.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Make no mistake, these are desperate acts from members of a movement who can feel their influence diminishing as the west's energy crisis (for which they are more-than-partially responsible) worsens and winter approaches. That's why they've started including "fuel poverty" amongst their grievances. "People in fuel poverty, who have to choose between heating and eating, are not protected" said the Belgian thug who vandalized the Vermeer painting. But this is a non-sequitur. His own preferred solutions presumably do not include getting those people inexpensive and environmentally friendly natural gas. So who is to blame for fuel poverty? Not the oil and gas companies!
Now, thankfully, the masterpieces were protected from permanent damage by their plexiglass coverings, but if this trend continues, chances are they are going to succeed in destroying something permanently. And, unfortunately, our governing class can't bring itself to stand up to protestors. Some of them are even siding with barbarism -- in one instance the prosecution requested the vandals be sentenced to four months in prison, but the judge said she was "wary that too harsh of a sentence would deter future protests."
Deterring crimes, you say? Well we can't have that!
Peter Smith wrote about the questionable math employed by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Albo’s Airy-Fairy Electricity Fables
Recall the original message? Green energy is more costly than conventional energy. But, they said, much less costly than the climate catastrophe awaiting if nothing were done. A problem arose. Surveys showed that while people naively went along with the prospect of using green energy, they were unwilling to pay for it. I know what to do, some bright spark probably exclaimed, deep in the bowels of Renewable Energy Inc, we’ll tell them it’s cheaper.
Thus, in a far-off land called Oz, opposition leader Anthony Albanese (Albo) promised voters, no fewer than ninety-seven times, that his green plan would reduce electricity prices for families by an annual $275 by the year 2025. And so it came to pass that Albo and his Labor Party mates were elected to power in May this year.
It’s hard to get a representative national reading on electricity bills, which vary markedly between states. However, a Sydney family (Ma, Pa and two kids) would pay something like $1,800 a year. During the time Albo was campaigning, bills were already rising, putting his fanciful promise in peril. Still, he was resolute; confident in the modelling behind his plan. After all, as he kept on saying, and keeps on saying, renewables are the cheapest form of energy. Ergo, as a matter of unassailable logic, more wind and solar equals cheaper power. And don’t believe your lying eyes, whatever your bills might say.
It's not propaganda on Albo’s part. Might have started that way. Now he undoubtedly believes it. I suppose if you tell others a demonstrable lie enough times it becomes your truth. Haven’t tried it personally. Never been a politician or used-car salesman.
But the jig is up. Federal budgets in Australia are usually brought down in early May. The new Labor government couldn’t wait until next year, bringing down an interim October budget. That was probably a mistake. In the budget papers, Treasury projected that electricity prices would rise 20 percent over the balance of 2022-23 and another 30 percent in 2023-24. Yikes, that doesn’t sound like a reduction of $275.
Clever people in the media (the majority caught on eventually) realized that 20 and 30 percent compounded to 56 percent. At that rate an $1,800 bill rises by over $1000; instead of falls by $275. Not an easy discrepancy to explain away, even for practiced snake-oil salesmen. What to do? What would Biden do? Blame Trump and Putin of course. Albo and his mates didn’t disappoint. Years of mismanagement by the previous government is behind this they said, and also that slubberdegullion Putin. They didn’t actually say slubberdegullion; but they might well have, if they’d found the word as I did.
David Cavena looked into the recent G20 and COP27 gatherings, and how the details of the Great Reset new world order is becoming increasingly clear.
Your Papers Please, Comrade
And, finally, our very own acclimatised beauty Jenny Kennedy, prepares for a time-honoured British tradition.
Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Hunting
Thanks for reading, and keep a look out for upcoming pieces by Joan Sammon, Peter Smith, and Tom Finnerty. And, once again, don’t forget to order our book, Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order. Christmas is less than a month away!
All this and more this week at The Pipeline!