We Are Closed. Australia has become corrupted by a corrosive mix of nihilism and embraced a radical liberal ideology that celebrates the rejection of anything from the past that could stabilise society including any inheritance of previous forms of culture. You just have to look at the abuse thrown towards our staff in the past few years to realise this, what is old is no longer deemed necessary & indeed something that must be replaced. We had no choice but to close.
Republic of Singapore · Public Square MonitorGeopolitics, Digital Commons & Communal Harmony
Regardless of Race, Language or Religion
AnalysisCross-Border Digital Flows · Social Cohesion
The Anti-Indian Anglosphere Spillover: How Mild Mannered Singapore’s began to follow the brat pack on Indian Mass Migration
By Civic & Digital Affairs DeskPublished in Singapore · Analytical DispatchReading Time: 5 mins
“
“For decades, Singapore carefully cultivated an international reputation as an exceptionally orderly, technocratic state where ethnic friction was tightly managed by policy and law.”
However, under the surface domestic sensitivities around Indian immigration, the Indian Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), and local demographics have long existed. Yet recent developments have exposed a sharp shift in the digital sphere, revealing that even Singapore’s traditionally guarded public square is not immune to the broader cross-currents moving through the English-speaking world.
The catalyst arrived through two separate but converging events: the tragedy following flash floods near the Nepal-Tibet border that left several Singaporeans missing, and reports surrounding Singapore Airlines considering further capital injections into Air India. What followed on mainstream social platforms was an abrupt, visible spike in hostile commentary directed at people of Indian origin, prompting high-level condemnations from Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Senior Minister K. Shanmugam, alongside police inquiries into online harassment.
Incident A · Humanitarian Crisis
Nepal-Tibet Border Flash Floods
The tragic disappearance of Singaporean climbers sparked comment threads dissecting victims’ surnames and family heritage, questioning whether state consular and rescue efforts should apply equally across perceived lines of arrival.
Incident B · Corporate Strategy
SIA & Air India Capitalization
Routine commercial portfolio evaluations of Singapore Airlines’ equity participation in Air India were rapidly re-framed into personalized attacks targeting executive leadership through ethnic stereotyping.
To understand why this friction erupted so visibly, one has to examine Singapore’s structural position as an English-primary media market and its exposure to online discourse originating far beyond its borders.
The Borderless English Ecosystem
Part I
Singapore operates primarily in English across its corporate, administrative, and educational sectors. While this status has enabled the city-state to become a global financial hub, it also leaves the domestic internet ecosystem uniquely vulnerable to content and political dynamics originating elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
Over the past three to four years, public debates in Canada and Australia concerning housing shortages, infrastructure stress, and rapid population influxes have frequently focused on large-scale immigration from South Asia. In both countries, online spaces on platforms like X, Reddit, and YouTube have seen an intense escalation in rhetoric, shifting from policy critiques of visa programs into unrestrained ethnic commentary.
Vector of Contagion: From Western Anglosphere to Singapore
1
Western Anglosphere Genesis (Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, Vancouver)
Severe domestic housing pressures and record temporary visa numbers ignite aggressive anti-South Asian memes, dog-whistles, and algorithmic rage loops across X, Reddit, and YouTube.
2
Algorithmic Convergence via Shared English Media Market
Because Singapore’s internet user base is completely fluent in English and consumes global feeds, recommendation algorithms push identical grievance videos and slang into local timelines.
3
Local Superimposition onto Domestic Grievances
Imported talking points seamlessly latch onto historic domestic flashpoints (CECA debates, MRT overcrowding sentiment, executive employment competition) in local forums.
Because Singaporean users inhabit the exact same algorithmically curated information streams, they consume the memes, vernacular, and talking points forged in Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, and Vancouver. When local economic anxieties flare up, the digital tools and narratives used to frame those anxieties are often already pre-packaged and imported from abroad.
Singapore’s Multi-Racial Compact vs Borderless Digital Feeds
Unlike Western individualist paradigms, Singapore’s foundational architecture rests on the CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others) model and proactive legal guardrails, including the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act and Penal Code provisions criminalizing acts prejudicing racial cohesion. Yet global recommendation engines operate without borders, bypassing state institutional safeguards.
The Online Backlash: From Policy to Identity
Part II
The recent wave of commentary in Singapore demonstrated how quickly global talking points can fuse with local anxieties.
Following reports of the missing travelers in Nepal, social media comment sections beneath local news feeds saw users scrutinizing names and photographs, questioning whether the victims were “authentic” citizens or merely recent arrivals holding documentation. Some comments explicitly questioned whether state resources should be expended on search-and-rescue operations for individuals perceived as outside the core national fabric.
The rhetoric moved past traditional policy critiques of labor market competition into direct targeting based on lineage and physical appearance.
Video BriefingCross-Border Media Dynamics & Online Sentiment
YouTube / Global Discourse
Singapore’s recent episode is less an anomaly than a reflection of this reality: local demographic tensions are no longer contained within national borders, but are continuously shaped, amplified, and imported via the global digital commons.
A poor country is a less safe country. No matter how much money Australia burns on AUKUS, as long as it is becoming poorer, it is becoming unsafe.
Defence & political economy: the ledger behind the hulls.
That is what Albo fundamentally doesn’t understand. History must not be kind to Albo; no amount of Indians or liberal-media lies should let him outrun the verdict of the Australian people.
01The national economy is the defence policy
This is the part nobody in the Albanese government will say plainly: national power is a composite. It is factories, ports, grids, skills, fiscal capacity, and social cohesion, with submarines somewhere further down the list. A country with a hollowed-out industrial base, a workforce that can’t afford to live near its jobs, and a federal budget structurally committed to NDIS scams is not deterring anyone. It is signalling weakness in the only currency that matters over time: the ability to sustain effort.
What national power is actually made of
1Factoriesan industrial base that can build and repair things
2Portslogistics and trade capacity
3Gridsenergy that actually works
4Skillsa workforce that can make and maintain
5Fiscal capacitymoney left over when the bills arrive
6Social cohesiona country worth defending
↓Submarinessomewhere further down the list
02The cheapest way to defeat a country
China does not need to sink an Australian submarine. It needs only to wait while Australia makes itself poorer: while living standards stagnate, productivity flatlines, debt climbs, and the political class congratulates itself on “hard-power” credentials. The cheapest way to defeat a country is to help it misallocate its wealth.
The defeat Australia is choosing for itself
↓ Living standards stagnate
↓ Productivity flatlines
↓ Debt climbs
↓ The political class congratulates itself on “hard-power” credentials
≡ A richer rival simply waits
The endurance scoreboard
Trend, not totals: security compounds like interest. Deterrence expires with the economy that funds it.
The long game
Australia
A patient rival
Factories
↓Hollowing out
↑Building steadily
Grids
↓Strained, unreliable
↑Expanding
Skills
↓Workforce gaps widen
↑Deepening
Fiscal capacity
↓Debt climbs, committed
↑Headroom grows
Living standards
↓Stagnating
↑Rising slowly
Submarines
→On order, decades out
↑In the water, in numbers
03History has already run this test
Case 1
The Soviet Union
Did not lose because it lacked submarines. It lost because it was poor.
Case 2
Britain
Spent itself into strategic irrelevance, keeping the hardware while losing the means to sustain it.
Security follows prosperity the way shadow follows light; you cannot purchase the shadow separately.
The lesson of every declining power
04You cannot deter a rising power with a shrinking one
A poor Australia is an unsafe Australia, and no submarine, new or second-hand, will change that.
The Prime Minister can announce all the “sovereign capability” he likes. But sovereignty, like safety, is something you can only buy with a strong economy.
And that is precisely the thing his government is letting slip away.
With the mass migration of Indian migrants to the country and the Indianisation of Australian society, maybe that’s what is really driving up sexual violence, not the manosphere.
ALP wins 34% primary vote, 94 seats, Albo heralds himself as the GOAT. If @OneNationAus gets 35% or more of the primary vote and can't form government due to major party preferences, the average punter will start rioting https://t.co/lzrs1hJYSh
Two Strategies, One Target. How the West’s competing visions for containing China and Russia are reshaping the global order, and why Beijing sees them as two faces of the same threat.
Two arcs, one target: Beijing at the centre, pressure from every azimuth
Land arc Hormuz Beijing
Land arc (blue): NATO eastern flank → Caucasus → India → Indo-Pacific partners. Ties down China on land, Russia in Europe.Maritime-Energy arc (crimson): Hormuz → Indian Ocean → Malacca. Throttles the hydrocarbons that feed China’s factories.Hormuz chokepoint · 27% oil · 20% LNG Beijing
✦
The Eurasian Land Strategy
Territory · Alliances · Forward defense · 陆权同盟
India as southern anchor: population larger than China’s, third largest economy trajectory, tying down Beijing in South Asia
Network not alliance: defence pacts with Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, a “first island chain on steroids” into the Indian Ocean
NATO India dialogue: Atlantic Council urged ad hoc issue-by-issue dialogue, overlapping concerns on China
Russian front: hardened buffer Baltic to Black Sea to Caucasus, Poland and Baltics as frontline
Hormuz gambit: 27% of maritime oil and 20% of LNG transit the strait, overwhelmingly to Asia
2026 Iran war as template: strikes on Iran, strait closure, energy shock whose real target analysts say was China
China exposure: bought over 80% of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025, significant Hormuz dependence
Petrostate vs electrostate: US LNG coercion and renewable cuts vs China’s two decade solar, battery and EV dominance
Logic: cut the energy, weaken the industry◈ Hormuz · Gulf
I
The Concept · 构想
A multi-theater containment built by a divided West
There is a strategic logic emerging in Western capitals that Beijing and Moscow have come to understand, even if Western policymakers rarely articulate it in full: a multi-theater containment architecture designed to limit continental power across Eurasia, in favor of the maritime powers. What makes this moment different from Cold War containment is that the West itself is divided on how to execute it.
Broadly, two competing visions have crystallized. One, the Eurasian Land Strategy, seeks to build up India as a southern counterweight to China while hardening NATO’s eastern frontier against Russia. The other, the Maritime-Energy Strategy, aims to decapitate Iran’s regime, seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, and weaponize energy flows to throttle China’s industrial machine. Both target the same adversary. Neither trusts the other to get it right.
Concept: the two arcs converging on Eurasia · 构想图：两条弧线在欧亚大陆汇合
II
Strategy A · 战略甲
The Left’s Eurasian Land Strategy
This vision treats the problem as fundamentally territorial and alliance based. Its logic runs through the map of Eurasia: if China is to be contained, it must be contained on land as well as at sea. And if Russia is to be rolled back, it must be confronted from the Baltic to the Black Sea to the Caucasus.
⬢
India as the Southern Anchor · 以印度为南锚
The only plausible continental counterweight to China · 唯一可信的大陆制衡
The centerpiece is India. With a population now larger than China’s and an economy on track to become the world’s third largest, India represents the only plausible continental counterweight to Chinese power in Asia.
The architecture is already taking shape. Modi’s government has stitched together cooperative defence agreements with Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan, and Vietnam, not a formal alliance, but a “first island chain on steroids” that extends China’s containment from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean.
NATO, for its part, has been explicit. An Atlantic Council report urged the Alliance to explore “an ad hoc, issue-by-issue dialogue with India,” noting that New Delhi “shares overlapping concerns regarding Chinese actions and intentions” even if it has not sought deeper formal partnership.
RAND warning
“If India fails, it could seriously jeopardize the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy” and even raise “the possibility of war between two nuclear-armed powers.”
1.46B
India population
now larger than China’s
#3
Economy trajectory
on track, next decade
The network · 网络
🇦🇺 Australia🇳🇿 New Zealand🇮🇩 Indonesia🇯🇵 Japan🇻🇳 Vietnam✦ NATO dialogue
Not a treaty alliance, a lattice of overlapping defence pacts that collectively tie down Chinese military and diplomatic resources in South Asia.
The bet: A stronger India prevents Beijing from projecting power farther afield. Every division tied down on the Himalayan frontier is one less in the Pacific.
✦
The Russian Front: From the Baltics to the Caucasus · 俄罗斯战线
Forward defense along the entire western periphery · 前沿防御
Simultaneously, this strategy treats Russia as a problem to be solved through forward defence. The war in Ukraine is not merely about Ukrainian sovereignty, it is about whether NATO can establish a hardened buffer along Russia’s entire western periphery. Poland and the Baltic states have become the new frontline, while the Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, represents the southern hinge of the containment arc.
Norwegian intelligence assessed in early 2025 that “Russia and China are seeking a geopolitical division into spheres of influence,” viewing the transatlantic partnership as fracturing. The response, from this perspective, is to ensure it does not fracture, by making the eastern flank impregnable.
Baltic → Black Sea
Hardened buffer, Baltic states and Poland as new frontline. NATO forward presence tripwired.
Ukraine
Test case for whether the buffer holds. Sovereignty and strategic depth in one.
Caucasus hinge
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the southern hinge where European and Asian theatres meet.
III
Strategy B · 战略乙
The Right’s Maritime-Energy Strategy
The second vision is less interested in land alliances and more interested in chokepoints. Its proponents argue that China’s power is not primarily military but industrial, and industry runs on energy. Cut the energy, and you do not need to contain China, you weaken it from within.
◈
Iran and the Hormuz Gambit · 伊朗与霍尔木兹博弈
The narrow waterway that carries a continent’s industry · 狭窄水道，承载大陆工业
Its focal point is Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly 27% of global maritime oil trade and 20% of world LNG shipments transit this narrow waterway, with the overwhelming majority directed to Asian markets.
The 2026 Iran war brought this theory into practice. U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader and effectively closed the strait, sending global energy markets into crisis. But the strategic target was never just Tehran. As one analysis put it: “All flashpoints are connected dots in a strategy that aims to concentrate all efforts on China and the Indo-Pacific.”
China, after all, purchased over 80% of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025 and relied on Hormuz transited supplies for a significant portion of its energy imports.
What flows through Hormuz · 霍尔木兹流量
27% OIL
20% LNG
53% other
80%+
Iran oil to China
2025 shipped volume
6%
Now Hormuz share of China’s total energy
down sharply, hedging works
Reciprocal lever
“China built a stranglehold over critical supply chains to deter the US. But the Gulf war may have given the US a reciprocal lever over China’s supply chain.”
Fund manager assessment, 2026
⬡
The Petrostate vs. Electrostates · 石油国 vs 电气国
Two energy orders, one bifurcation · 两种能源秩序
There is a deeper geoeconomic dimension. The Trump administration’s approach, coercing allies to buy American LNG while cutting federal renewable funding, reflects a bet on the “petrostate” model. Meanwhile, China has spent two decades building an “electrostate,” dominating solar, batteries, and EVs.
Petrostate bet · 石油国
U.S. LNG + Gulf hydrocarbons
Coerce allies to buy American LNG, cut renewables, weaponize chokepoints. The Hormuz crisis forces importers to choose: unreliable Middle East oil or Chinese clean energy.
Electrostate hedge · 电气国
China solar + batteries + EVs
Two decades of dominance. Alt routes via North Africa and Central Asia. Fossil share of total energy falling fast. Bifurcation is the feature, not the bug.
Strait of Hormuz, the 39km chokepoint where maritime strategy meets industrial power · 霍尔木兹海峡，39公里咽喉
IV
The Contradiction · 矛盾
Two strategies in tension, not in concert
These two strategies are not complementary. They are in tension.
The Eurasian Land Strategy requires stability in the Middle East. A war in Iran that closes Hormuz disrupts global energy markets, alienates partners like India (which depends on Gulf oil), and risks pushing energy importing nations deeper into China’s arms, precisely what we saw when the Philippines, a U.S. ally, accelerated renewable projects that deepened its dependence on Chinese technology.
Conversely, the Maritime-Energy Strategy undermines the Eurasian Land Strategy by diverting resources and attention away from Europe and India. If the U.S. is bogged down in the Persian Gulf, it cannot adequately reinforce NATO’s eastern flank or the Indo-Pacific simultaneously.
Land Strategy needs · 陆权所需
Maritime Strategy does · 海权所为
Middle East
Stability. Open Hormuz, steady oil to keep India and allies aligned.
Disruption. Close Hormuz, weaponize the strait to choke China, even at cost of a price shock.
Resources
Europe + Indo-Pacific. Reinforce NATO flank and Quad lattice.
Persian Gulf. Carriers and attention swing to Gulf, thinning both other theatres.
Allies
Institutional leadership. Patient alliance building, India as partner.
Coercive leverage. Force LNG buys, tolerate disruption, demand alignment.
Risk to U.S.
Atlantic Council warning: “Should a conflict simultaneously break out with China in Asia and Russia in Europe, the United States may not be able to deploy adequate reinforcements to Europe.”
From Beijing’s vantage
Chinese state media has condemned “attempts to push for NATO-like alliances in the Asia-Pacific” as “kidnapping regional countries,” while deepening ties with Russia, Iran, and North Korea to ensure pressure in one theatre can be met with resistance in another.
V
Beijing & Moscow lens · 京莫视角
Two prongs, one assault on multipolarity
To Beijing and Moscow, these are not two separate strategies. They are two prongs of the same Western assault on the emerging multipolar order.
京
How Beijing and Moscow read the map · 京莫如何看这张地图
Not two strategies, one encirclement · 非两策，实一围
◈ The network of opportunistic aggression
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission documents how China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly coordinate, not as a formal bloc, but as a network where conflict in one theatre creates openings in another.
⬢ Moscow’s ambivalence
Russia does not want to be seen fomenting an Iran war, given defence ties with Tehran and commercial relationships with Gulf states, but Moscow understands Hormuz disruptions would make Russian energy exports “much more desired.”
☁ Beijing’s hedge
Systematically reduced fossil dependence, oil and gas through Hormuz now roughly 6% of total energy, down sharply, while building alternative routes through North Africa and Central Asia. The electrostate is the exit ramp.
✦ The gap to exploit
From Beijing’s perspective the division is visible and exploitable. Any Western pressure in one theatre can be met with resistance in another, precisely the “opportunistic aggression” the West fears in reverse.
Beijing’s line: the West is constructing a NATO-like lattice in the Asia-Pacific to “kidnap regional countries.” Moscow’s line: let the Gulf burn just enough to make Urals crude irresistible. Both read the two strategies as one encirclement, and both plan to slip the knot by playing one theatre against the other.
VI
The Unspoken Question · 未言之问
Who is the West when it tries to encircle?
The great western encirclement, whether conceived as a land based alliance architecture or a maritime energy blockade, faces a single insurmountable problem: the West is no longer unified enough to execute either strategy cleanly.
Norwegian intelligence noted that Russia and China “share the view that the West in general, and the transatlantic partnership in particular, are fracturing.”
The “left” strategy requires long term alliance building and patient investment in partners like India. The “right” strategy requires short term coercion, unilateral military action, and a willingness to tolerate global economic disruption. They demand different Americas, one that leads through institutions, and one that leads through energy markets and carrier strike groups.
Until the West chooses, or finds a way to synthesize these approaches, the encirclement will remain half built. And Beijing, watching from the outside, will continue to exploit the gap.
圍
Until the West chooses, the encirclement remains half built.
The land arc needs decades. The energy arc needs a crisis. One demands a steady hand, the other a closed fist. Beijing’s wager is that the West cannot be both at once.
Who Got to Australia First: A Census of Arrivals, Group by Group
Before every community was a first person, a recorded name, a ship, a year. This is the order of arrival behind the modern Census table.
First Nations · 原住民
50,000+ years of continuous presence, established by archaeological and genetic evidence long before any recorded ship.
The order of arrival
Rows are sorted by the year of the first confirmed arrival, and the first recorded person is named where a name survives. Where a “first” is contested, or no name was ever logged, it is flagged.
Group
First confirmed arrival
First major wave
2026 Census presence
Indigenous Australians
50,000+ yrs First Nations — no single “first” person
Original inhabitants
~800,000+
British (English/Scottish/Welsh/Irish)
1788 Captain Arthur Phillip, First Fleet
First Fleet, then mass migration 1820s-1860s
~11.8 million (English ~8.4m; Scottish ~2.4m; Irish ~2.4m; Welsh ~0.6m)
German
1788 German convicts (names lost); first named settler Johann Justus, 1838
Lutheran settlers to South Australia, Barossa
~1 million ancestry
Italian
1788 Giuseppe Tuzi, First Fleet convict
Sojourners 1890s-1920s; mass postwar migration
~1.1 million ancestry
Maltese
1790 John Pace, transportee (earliest possible, disputed)
Post-WWII assisted migration
~220,000 ancestry
Maori / Pacific Islander
1793 Tuki Tahua & Ngahuruhuru, taken to Norfolk Island
South Sea Islanders 1860s; NZ and Pacific migration later
~350,000 ancestry
Chinese
1818 Mak Sai Ying (John Shying), free settler
Gold rush 1848-1850s, then again post-1980s
~1.3 million ancestry
Greek
1829 Katerina Plessos, among seven Greek convicts
Postwar migration 1940s-1950s
~440,000 ancestry
Filipino
1800s “Manila men” pearl divers of Broome; 700 recorded by 1901 (no single name)
1850s Shri Pammull, Hindu Sindhi merchant — first named Indian settler
Merchants and hawkers; professionals post-1960s
~1.4 million+ ancestry
Dutch
1850s Dutch seamen and gold-rush miners (no single named first)
Explored 1606-1644 but never settled; East Indies refugees in WWII; mass migration post-1945
~380,000 ancestry
Sikh / Punjabi / Pakistani
1860s Cameleers and hawkers (no single name recorded)
Early hawkers; skilled migration post-2000s
~250,000+ (Sikh/Punjabi)
Sri Lankan
1860s Ceylonese merchants and hawkers (no single name recorded)
Post-1980s civil-war humanitarian and skilled migration
~150,000 ancestry
Lebanese / Arab
1870s First Syrian/Lebanese hawkers (no single name recorded)
Hawkers and merchants; wave post-1947
~300,000 ancestry
Japanese
1871 First Japanese settler recorded 1871 (name not recorded)
Pearl divers at Broome; luggers from 1897
~75,000 ancestry
Korean
c. 1920 No named first arrival
Skilled and student migration from 1980s
~120,000 ancestry
Vietnamese
1976 First refugee boats (no single name recorded)
Post-1975 refugee boats and resettlement
~360,000 ancestry
Somali / South Sudanese
1988 First Somali community in Victoria, 1988 (no single name)
Humanitarian resettlement
~90,000 combined
The eras behind the table
Gold Rush · 淘金潮
The 1850s gold rushes brought the first great non-British waves, Chinese miners above all, and set the pattern of chain migration that every later community followed.
Postwar · 战后
After 1945 Australia rebuilt itself with assisted migration: Greeks, Italians, Dutch, Maltese and Croats arrived by the tens of thousands, transforming the country’s idea of itself.
Indo-China · 印度支那
From 1976 the first Vietnamese refugee boats began a resettlement program that became one of Australia’s largest humanitarian chapters.
Modern Skilled Migration · 现代技术移民
Since the 2000s the skilled-migration program has driven rapid growth in Indian, Filipino, Chinese and Sri Lankan communities, making them among the fastest-growing in the Census.
Disputed firsts
Some “firsts” are less certain than the table suggests. The 1788 German and Italian rows rest on real but often nameless records — German and Italian convicts sailed with the First Fleet, but no German convict’s name survives, the first named German settler being Johann Justus in 1838. The Indian “first”, the Sindhi merchant Shri Pammull in the 1850s, is the earliest named Indian. The 1818 record of the Chinese settler Mak Sai Ying (John Shying) rests on fragmentary shipping and parish documents, and earlier informal visits may never be recovered. The Maltese “first”, John Pace in 1790, is disputed — the first certain Maltese arrivals were convicts around 1810, and the first free immigrant was Antonio Azzopardi in 1838. For the Filipinos, Japanese, Lebanese, Koreans and Vietnamese, no single first name survives in the archives. Where records are thin, this article says so rather than guessing.
The bottom line
Before every community was a first person, a recorded name, a ship, a year. This is the definitive order of arrival behind the modern Census table.
“Every ancestry group in the Census began with a first confirmed arrival, a documented person stepping ashore before the waves of migration that followed.”
Real estate agents across Australia are complaining about the property slump: the REB Top 100 Agents 2025
A lot of these people are surprisingly not all that good looking, given that they need less training than an actual builder and are selling their image; in a downturn should people first try selling their homes privately by listing on real estate portals?
A glacial outburst surge along the Bhotekoshi / Lhende Khola struck the Rasuwa-Gyirong border corridor. 47-54 US and 34 Australian tourists reported missing, most likely along the Yatra route crossing at Rasuwagadhi / Gyirong Port.
US: 47-54 tourists reported missing
Australia: 34 tourists reported missing
Likely locations of Australian & American nationals reported missing
Primary Route – Kailash Mansarovar Yatra (most likely location for majority of missing tourists)
Kathmandu to Dhunche to Syabru Besi to Rasuwagadhi (28.28N, 85.38E) to Gyirong Port (28.28N, 85.38E) to Saga (29.33N, 85.23E) to Darchen (30.68N, 81.32E) to Mount Kailash (31.07N, 81.31E) to Lake Mansarovar (30.65N, 81.45E).
The flood struck the Rasuwa-Gyirong border corridor where this route crosses from Nepal into Tibet. Tourists would most likely have been in the vicinity of Rasuwagadhi / Gyirong Port (28.28N, 85.38E) or transiting through Syabru Besi (28.16N, 85.34E) and Timure (28.25N, 85.39E) when the Bhotekoshi / Lhende Khola surge hit.
Note: the map’s “Gyirong County (border zone)” marker sits in the southern border zone near Gyirong Port where the flood hit. The 265+ missing were in this border zone.
Secondary Route – Gosaikunda Trek
Dhunche (28.09N, 85.29E) to Syabru Besi (28.16N, 85.34E) to Gosaikunda Lake (28.08N, 85.42E). 62+ Nepali citizens were trekking here during the Janai Purnima festival; some foreign trekkers may also have been present.
Key Flood Trigger Points
Bhotekoshi River / Lhende Khola: Glacial ice-rock avalanche blocked the river, releasing a sudden surge downstream.
Trishuli River: Water levels rose by as much as 9 metres in 30 minutes through Nuwakot district.
Brisbane 2032 Will Be the Worst Financial Disaster in Australian Sporting History
Sydney 2000 is remembered with fondness. The 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games came in on budget. Brisbane 2032 will complete the set in the opposite direction: A$15.5 billion committed, warnings of A$20 billion, and the bill is climbing before a single brick is laid for a two-week party.
MMXXXII
Exhibit A: The Bill So Far
Queensland, Australia
Cost Category
Amount
Operating budget (OCOG)
~A$4.9 to 5.8 billionroughly US$3.2 to 3.8 billion, before the inevitable overruns
Venue and infrastructure capital
A$7.1 billionroughly US$4.6 billion of stadiums, villages and transport upgrades
Combined total budgets
A$15.5 billionroughly US$10 billion, and climbing
Expert warnings, ceiling scenario
up to A$20 billionroughly US$13 billion: the number historians may end up writing down
Spread across Queensland’s population, A$15.5 billion works out to roughly A$2,800 per resident, every man, woman and child, for three weeks of sport.
Exhibit B: Meanwhile, in Beijing
Beijing, China
Cost Category
Amount
Estimated annual cost
US$15 to 50 millionan entire international Games: 500 to 2,000+ humanoid robots, global teams, broadcast, security and ceremonies, staged in existing venues
The Hall of Shame
Where Brisbane sits among the Games that broke the bank
Games
What It Cost
The Aftermath
Montreal 1976
C$1.5 billion debt on a C$120 million original budget
Taxpayers paid it off for 30 years, finally clearing the books in 2006. The original cautionary tale.
Athens 2004
Roughly €9 billion, heavily state-funded
Legacy venues left to rot; the bill helped load the pistol of Greece’s later debt crisis.
Rio 2016
About US$13 billion public and private
Olympic Park largely abandoned within years; a textbook white elephant.
Tokyo 2020
~US$13 billion official, audited far higher
Almost entirely public money, no spectators, minimal tourism payoff. Quietly one of the costliest ever.
Brisbane 2032 (projected)
A$15.5 billion committed, warnings of A$20 billion+
Not yet built, yet already outspending every Australian sporting event ever staged. On this trajectory it does not join the Hall of Shame. It tops it.
Exhibit C: See It for Yourself
Two Games, two spectacles, one on each continent
The Canyon Between
×200–×800
That is how many times more expensive Brisbane’s Games are than Beijing’s robot games, depending on where each estimate lands. One city hosts a global spectacle for the price of a shopping centre. The other is building a monument to cost inflation.
Brisbane 2032 combined budgets~US$10 to 13 billion
Beijing humanoid robot games~US$15 to 50 million
Drawn to true scale: the robot games bar is under half a percent as wide as Brisbane’s. It is drawn thicker here only so you can see it at all.
Two Games, Two Philosophies
One borrows, one builds. Only one risks ruin.
Brisbane 2032 Olympics
Beijing Robot Games
Total cost
~US$10 to 13 billion
~US$15 to 50 million
Duration
2 to 3 weeks, one-time
Annual recurring event
Venues
17+ new or upgraded venues across Queensland
1 to 2 existing Olympic venues (Bird’s Nest, Ice Ribbon)
Athletes and participants
~10,500 human athletes
~2,000 robots (2026)
Infrastructure built
Stadiums, athlete villages, rail and road upgrades
British (English/Scottish/Welsh/Irish)
German
Italian
Maltese
Maori / Pacific Islander
Chinese
Greek
Filipino
Croatian
Indian
Dutch
Sikh / Punjabi / Pakistani
Sri Lankan
Lebanese / Arab
Japanese
Korean
Vietnamese
Somali / South Sudanese
