Grr-owl

Not wrong, but I’m not sure why you’re asking the question. If you want to understand a little about the CCP, read Jung Chang’s books. Note that they are in English and published in the West. You won’t find anything with credibility published in China. Many tens of millions of innocents murdered, so stop with the ‘the West is so evil’ stuff. It’s not a defence. Here’s a good analogy of the way you are looking at it: Judge: Mr Xi, you stand before the court today accused of murder. What do you plead? Mr Xi: A westerner once murdered somebody. Judge: Mr Xi, the court only accepts a plea of guilty or not guilty. Mr Xi: A westerner once murdered somebody. Judge: Mr Xi, this trial is about your behaviour, not someone else’s. D, it’s not the race or nationality or ethnicity or identity that matters, it’s the behaviour. Murder, killing, torture, suppression of dissent... you fill in the list for me.... it’s bad. The identity of the people doing it is not relevant. My posts are trying to make a point that neo-liberalism has empowered the CCP, but now that the CCP threaten Australia’s sovereignty, the reclamation of that requires state intervention in the form of administration of and investment in education and infrastructure, similar to that we used to know in eras before corporations took it upon themselves. If we want to remain free and democratic, we gotta reclaim the state so it serves the national interest, not the interest of an elite section of the population. The elitism of neo-liberalism plays into the CCP’s hands. So I think that the necessity to steer away from economic dependency on China that COVID has brought into stark relief marks the beginning of the end of neo-liberalism. It’s got a way to go yet, but I can’t see a way for the democracies to retain sovereignty without the passing of neo-liberalism. I realise my ideas are not quite sorted out. I guess what I am trying to do is sort them out here. I’ll get there. If you were to watch the links I posted, I think you’ll get what I mean. Yes, they concentrate on the relationship of the CCP to Australia, but you’ll find many markers of neo-liberalism referred to in the conversations.

Actually , that’s the wrong clip.... .. the clip I am looking for is in the long version beginning around 40m actually the whole long version is very much relevant to our conversation here. It seems to me that there is no end to neo-liberalism without a turn away from the CCP toward a state-led business culture of the kind Mitchell is on about.

Along the same lines, this clip sums up how neo-liberalism’s promotion of an elite plays into the CCP’s hands....:

AF, would love to know your thoughts on John Lee’s assessment of the Chinese economy and what that means re pivoting away from China, iron ore/clean steel opportunities, renewable energy, trade barriers etc... and the end of neo-liberalism, if you have the time ?: I sense a great confluence of ideas happening in this space...

I’m not quite as down on the poppies as Dieter. They are, after all, ordinary humans like the rest of us, and they reflect and respond to movements of ideas within society at large. They have to do so, otherwise it wouldn’t be a representative democracy. And we should remember that long before they become candidates on a ballot they are chosen to be a candidate by their party branches, so anybody who wants to represent an electorate has to first represent the people in the party branches, who are also ordinary humans with interests and ideas and things to care about like the rest of us. It’s best to think of candidates as the top block on a pyramid, like the head of a faction, a group, a bunch of people who are the supporting blocks. The fact that Australian polices have been so useless in climate policy I think reflects the fact that most Aussies actually just want more money anyway they can get it so they can pay their absurd mortgages and get their children a decent education. I am yet to meet a businessman who cared about what they sold or where it came from or how it was made; they just want to sell more of whatever it is they sell. Maybe that’s me being cynical, but that’s my experience. Thing is, these dynamics within society actually work in the favour of climate change mitigation, because as soon as it makes economic sense to save the climate, it will be saved. Coal is already on the way out. Oil is too useful to go out entirely, but it’s role in climate problems is changing as I type. As soon as this is the case, the pollies will suddenly support it because that’s what their supporters will want; they will reflect that ideological change. Shallow and fickle as that is, it’s probably not a good idea to expect pollies to ideologues. Then we end up with Hitlers. Better to just accept the bar on the conga line will always be set low, so only the slipperiest, most flexible can get through. Then they can join each other for punch, while the rest of us get on with actually making change. Sooner or later the neo-liberal economy will go bust and its ideas will be shown up once and for all to be a great con. When that happens and everyone is broke, even those who benefitted most from neo-liberalism, maybe people will realise that you need to pay people well if you want them to spend, rather than forcing everyone to borrow at interest. I think Henry Ford worked this out way back in.... oh, 1910 or something. Basically, you want people in reliable employment. Once the population gets it, the pollies will follow. They’ll have to if they want a job themselves.

I twice wrote up detailed replies to Dieter’s post but both times mi**** a link and lost them. Bloody heartbroken. In short, Toby Ord’s The Precipice is all about existential risks, including Climate Change. If the book is a bit daunting, check out his appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast. Elizabeth Colbert’s The Sixth Extinction is about the present state of things. As D has read in the fires and floods, the news ain’t good.

I'm still reading, so I won't say much in relation to Mitchell and Fazi yet except, Yes. I know jack-s@#! about economics, so the technical stuff is a little confusing, but the ideas chime with mine. So good to find out I have been right all these years..... ; ) I think the worm is turning. Let me know what you think of this: Globalization suits the neo-liberals in the pursuit of higher profits because it allow corporations to have things made in the place where labour and other costs are cheapest. And in the age of global products, iPhone for instance, which are manufactured by the billions, China is at a massive advantage because of its huge labour pool not only of workers but of engineers, and because it's Confucian systems of government over many millennia had impoverished everybody except a minuscule elite. And so China has risen in the neo-liberal age. However, there has been cost in terms of sovereignty as the CCP has at a central mission to encroach on the sovereignty of its partners, as recent events highlight: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/party-speaks-you https://www.aspi.org.au/report/chinese-communist-partys-coercive-diplomacy https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cyber-enabled-foreign-interference-elections-and-referendums So Australia needs to push back against this by reclaiming its sovereignty. But how? Well, any government who wanted to change the status quo would need people to vote for it, and that mean the middle and lower class or wage earners to do that, so there would have to be jobs in it to gain such people's vote. So the equation is: maintaining sovereignty equals shutting china out (at least somewhat, though profoundly) equals jobs for Australians. Well, China will source its iron ore from West Africa sooner or later, so Aus will need new customers, so the hydrogen idea and manufacturing steel in alliance with strategic allies such as Japan, Germany and US makes sense: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/iron-or-getting-energised-about-reducing-australias-trade-dependence-on-china/

Still reading. Making progress. In the meantime, I’d say there’s potential in this. Be interested in what you think. Seems to combine a few positives while eliminating some negs: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/iron-or-getting-energised-about-reducing-australias-trade-dependence-on-china/

You got me.

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Who goes to the city anymore? Tourists?

Last time I thought the door was ajar, LSD was involved. BOOM! BOOM!

A bit harsh, don’t you think?

No. The culture is fundamentally not western. I reckon that case could be made creditably made in relation to most of Italy and Spain and Portugal, too, even though they are Catholic. One of the major reasons that Europe will fail, but I don’t want to go into that. I’ll take the Souvlaki, though...

Neo liberalism has to go. See the thread about it. AF has interesting things to say....

Maybe it's a good idea to stop looking for things to believe?

It was Christian throughout the communist period. The impulses and idea that drove both are the same - uncritical acceptance of ideas. Dogma. The desire for a savior.... etc...

Education is the answer, and once the neo-liberals are gone, we might get some of that.

It's not the West, mate. No Orthodox country is Western....

I'm not sure why you bring all this up. No doubt he's right on some points, and certainly deluded on others; I love bluesy rock n' roll for instance. In any case, I'm not arguing .... Let me put it this way: Let's say it's hot out, 40 degrees or so. You have to go out and there's two cars in the driveway. Identical Datsun Sunnys. They are beaten up and broken in exactly the same way. The tires need some air. The window winders don't work. Everything is the same except for one thing: one has airconditioning and the other doesn't. Which one are you going to take to the shops? To argue that life in the USSR was better than life in the West over the equivalent period is just absurd.

We have this thing called science. It includes techniques to guard against bias. If you want to pick on the research, then come up with some evidence that it is wrong. Argue against it, for sure. That is your right. But gimme evidence. Debate is good and constructive.

I'll check this out. Though as you argue elsewhere that Russia is the West, perhaps what Solzhenitsyn really did was document how awful life was in the West, went to the West, then returned to the West cleaned of his illusion that the West was better. ??? To argue that life in the USSR was better than life in the West during an equivalent period is just a fantasy. In any case, as long as nobody tells me what I can write or draw or read or watch, I'll argue that life in the West is better than elsewhere, even given the litany of atrocities.

In reality. The West is pluralistic. Descended primarily from Protestantism, with a slug of Catholicism remaining, but with a big chunk of secularism driving it, and that's the most important bit if the discussion is about colonialism, capitalism, freedom of expression and what not. Russia is not Western in any sense. https://books.google.ae/books/about/Dominion.html?id=CWyGDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y https://books.google.ae/books?id=YhWtCJSSv2cC&dq=civilization+the+west+and+the+rest&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi31emTks_tAhUipnEKHapYDfYQ6AEwAnoECAIQAg

No problems. Well aware of these. Doesn't mean their wok is biased or wrong; simply means you need to take into account their characteristics as an organization, as is advisable in every instance when it comes to media. Skepticism is good. Cynicism is not, and neither is prejudice. Judge things on their merits.

In case anyone is interested in some issues relevant to this discussion, here's a couple of links to carefully composed and constructed articles: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cyber-enabled-foreign-interference-elections-and-referendums https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mind-your-tongue