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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.

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China’s next leg up: the Yen-Carry trade that functions as the Plumbing of the Western Financial System

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Yen Carry Trade

China’s Next Lever vs Japan: The Bankers’ Delight Yen Carry Trade

Beijing has already cancelled flights, visas and scallop orders to punish Japan for raising Taiwan. The next lever is quieter, systemic embedded inside the balance sheets of the entire Western financial stack.

For twenty years: borrow yen at 0%, short it, buy higher-yielding assets: Treasuries, CLOs, mortgages. BOJ printed. Wall Street deployed. The position is now multi-trillion, hyper-leveraged, and fragile.

Why the Yen Carry Trade Matters

Size: 5–15 trillion USD equivalent embedded in global credit markets.

Trigger: A 2% weekly yen spike forces automated unwinds. China can create the spark by reducing FX quotas.

Timing: BOJ hiking + Fed easing = collapsing spread → systemic vulnerability.

Fallout

Yen spikes → UST yields jump → U.S. 30-yr mortgage +30 bp. Equity vol detonates. Pension funds hit margin calls. Japan forced to intervene or walk back Taiwan statements. U.S. trapped between markets and alliance commitments.

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👉 In Australia’s courts, China doves are undefeated across all major cases against China hawks, repeatedly repelling hawkish China narratives.

👉 In Australia’s courts, China doves are undefeated across all major cases against China hawks repeatedly repelling hawkish China narratives.

The pattern is now unmistakable: cases framed around claims of Chinese influence or “foreign agents” collapse when tested under defamation law’s evidentiary requirements.

China hawks courtroom defeats
  1. Chau Chak Wing v ABC/Fairfax (2021) – Comprehensive DOVE WIN ✓
    ✔ Damages: $590,000 + full legal costs
    ✔ Permanent injunction: ABC barred from republishing Four Corners episode
    ✔ Judicial finding: ABC implied Chau was a CCP agent without admissible evidence
    ✔ Significance: Set the modern standard—mere proximity to PRC officials is not evidence of covert influence

    Impact: This ruling shocked national security reporters. News Corp editorialised that the judgment produced a “chilling effect” on investigative journalism involving China. Practically speaking, it established:
    • Association is not evidence.
    • Accusations of PRC interference must be supported by direct, provable, and fact-specific conduct.
    This has become the single most powerful precedent protecting individuals accused of Chinese political influence.
  2. Marcus Reubenstein v Geoff Wade & Commonwealth (2021–2023) – DOVE WIN ✓
    ✔ Payout: ~$110,000 (confirmed in Senate Estimates via Comcover)
    ✔ Retraction: Wade stated there was “no truth” to claims Reubenstein was a foreign agent
    ✔ Government admission: Commonwealth accepted vicarious liability for a staffer’s tweets
    ✔ DPS revelation: No social media policy existed during Wade’s online attacks

    Context: Reubenstein—aligned with pro-engagement, anti-hawks commentary successfully forced a public servant and the Commonwealth to retreat.
    Why this mattered: First time an Australian government entity effectively took responsibility for an official’s hawkish “Chinese agent” accusations on Twitter.
  3. Meyer Vandenberg “China Hawks” Threat Campaign (2022) – HAWK THREAT COLLAPSES ✓
    ✔ Targets: Michael West Media, Marcus Reubenstein, John Menadue, James Laurenceson, Suzy Cong
    ✔ Result: All threats withdrawn, no filings
    ✔ Menadue: Removed articles but issued no apology
    ✔ Meyer Vandenberg: Ran a five-front legal intimidation campaign with no disclosed financier

    Critical detail: Michael West revealed that Meyer Vandenberg whose major client is the federal government was issuing high-cost speculative threats on behalf of a mid-ranking public servant with no plausible personal capacity to pay, while refusing to disclose who actually funded the operation.
    Outcome: total strategic faceplant. Not a single claim progressed to court.
  4. Geoff Wade v Michael West Media (2024–2025) – DOVE WIN ✓
    ✔ Filed: Nov 2024
    ✔ Discontinued by Wade: May 2025 (after mediation)
    ✔ Payout by West: $0
    ✔ Crowdfunding: West raised $40,000 in 24 hours
    ✔ PR impact: Michael West Media reported significant growth in subscribers and crowdfunded entire legal defence. Est Value: +$150,000 in new subscriptions and visibility
    ✔ Estimated cost burden on Wade: ~$200,000 (beyond a public servant’s means)

    Analysis: Wade one of Australia’s most vocal China hawks proceeded with a suit that rapidly became a PR disaster. West’s team prepared what he called an “ambulance-chaser defence”, effectively turning the courtroom into a referendum on hawkish narrative laundering.
    The case ended in zero damages for Wade, a public humiliation for hawkish forces, and a strengthened West readership base.

The West’s Spycraft Blind Spot. The Newtonian Bond vs. the Go Master

The Newtonian Bond vs. the Go Master

Ever since Isaac Newton assumed the post of Master of the Royal Mint in 1696–1699 and deployed scientific methods to dismantle coining gangs, the West has codified espionage as a linear pursuit: track, trace, verify, capture. The romantic archetype of James Bond receiving his briefing, then executing a sequence of actions to neutralize a mastermind, is so embedded in the Western consciousness that it has become synonymous with spycraft itself.

Western intelligence has long lamented a practical disadvantage: as the only P5 Security Council member without a European phenotype, China is notoriously difficult to infiltrate. Agents can’t simply blend into the crowd; the traditional model breaks down.

This complaint, however, reveals a deeper blindness. Chinese spycraft operates less like chess and more like the game of Go: it is a strategic accumulation of position. The objective isn’t to isolate and remove a single piece, but to surround, to influence, and ultimately to make the opponent’s most advantageous best move indistinguishable from your own. You aren’t hunting the player; you are guiding their hand.

This explains why Chinese intelligence appears almost invisible. Its work is subsumed into geopolitics, industrial policy, and macroeconomic strategy executed not by operatives disguised in business attire, but through a diffuse architecture where statecraft and tradecraft merge. It’s also why Chinese spycraft just feels more all encompassing. The West must learn to think in these terms—to become “metaphorically Chinese” merely to read the board correctly.

The grievance about Chinese impenetrability rings hollow. Beijing plays both games: it defends its home soil with ruthless Western learned methods of counterintelligence while advancing its own Go-like strategy globally. The West, clinging to its Bond mythology, has rendered half the board illegible, leaving itself surrounded by moves it never realized were being made.

BREAKING: Rumors swirl that Tencent Finalizes Ubisoft Buyout: “Go Woke, Go Broke” Officially Canon

BREAKING: Rumors swirl that Tencent Finalizes Ubisoft Buyout “Go Woke, Go Broke” Officially Canon

PARIS/SHENZHEN – In a move that has sent progressive game journalists into emergency therapy sessions, Tencent is rumored to have snapped up the entirety of Ubisoft for the price of a mid-tier Shanghai apartment complex.

Insiders confirm the first mandate from the new Tencent overlords:

  • All future Assassin’s Creed protagonists must now be true to historical norms — i.e. heterosexual & must now contain zero black samurai in 1600s Japan.
  • Rainbow Six Siege operators will no longer include “non-binary smoke grenade genderqueer specialist.”
  • The phrase “modern audience” has been deleted from every company Slack channel and replaced with the Mandarin characters for “profit”: 利润.

Most devastating blow: An internal memo leaked stating “no more happy places where men go around cross-dressing like women” will be allowed in any Ubisoft title.

Sources say the Rayman team immediately disbanded in protest and is currently seeking asylum in Canada.

Sweet Baby Inc. stock reportedly plummeted 400% in pre-market trading after their consultation contract was allegedly used as toilet paper in Tencent HQ.

The Liberal Party’s Doom Loop

The Liberal Party’s Doom Loop

Freedom • Enterprise • Individual Initiative

A party systematically alienating everyone under 40, trapped between housing policies that create permanent renters and climate policies that deny reality.

-20pts
Home Ownership Drop (35-39)
$136.9B
Renewable Investment at Risk
25 Years
Of Systematic Alienation

The Moderate Trap

Sold home ownership while implementing negative gearing that makes it impossible. Young Australians now rent forever, with nothing to “conserve”. No assets = no reason to vote Liberal.

The Conservative Trap

Deny climate change while Australia burns. Promise to scrap $136.9B in renewable investments and keep coal alive. Anti-science and anti-economics in one package.

The Generational Divide

25 Years of Renewable Investment

Toolshed Visualised

Toolshed illustration

The Ultimate Irony

Both factions claim to be protecting Australia’s future. Moderates protect property values while destroying the possibility of property ownership. Conservatives protect traditional industries while ensuring Australia misses the greatest economic transition since the Industrial Revolution.

Together, they’ve created a political movement with nothing to offer anyone under forty – and no path to redemption that wouldn’t destroy the party itself. The doom loop spins on, each election bringing new evidence that the Liberal Party has become a retirement home for ideas that died decades ago, staffed by politicians who can’t understand why young Australians refuse to buy what they’re selling – mostly because they’ve made it impossible for them to buy anything at all.

Australia’s Intelligence & Security Community. There’s more to Canberra than Parliament House, Museums & Embassies

Australian Intelligence & Security Community

This single 5×5 km patch of Canberra holds one of the planet’s thickest clumps of spooks, not because Australia itself needs so many eyes, but because the West uses the city as a forward listening post for the Asia-Pacific clock.

Total Agencies
11
Total Staff
32,165
HQ Location
Canberra
Coordinator
ONI

Agency Locations – Canberra Region

Intelligence Collection
Security & Counter-Intel
Law Enforcement
Coordination
Think Tank

Intelligence Disciplines (INTs)

INT Explanation

龙游石窟 Longyou Caves – China’s Greatest Archaeological Mystery

龙游石窟

Longyou Caves – China’s Greatest Archaeological Mystery

Longyou Caves Interior View

🏛️ The Discovery

In 1992, four local farmers in Longyou County, Zhejiang Province, made an extraordinary decision that would rewrite archaeological history. They drained five seemingly bottomless ponds that had existed for as long as anyone could remember. What they found beneath the murky waters defied all expectations: 24 colossal, hand-carved sandstone caverns that had been deliberately submerged and hidden for over two millennia.

The Mystery Deepens: Despite their monumental scale and sophisticated engineering, no historical record mentions these caves. No construction tools have been recovered. No one knows where the estimated 350,000 tonnes of excavated sandstone went. The caves simply… exist, as if conjured from ancient silence.

📊 By The Numbers

24 Massive Caverns Discovered
30m Width of Largest Chamber
18m Height of Tallest Cave
350,000 Tonnes of Rock Removed
2,000+ Years Hidden Underwater
1992 Year of Discovery

🔍 Engineering Marvel

The sophistication of the Longyou Caves is breathtaking. Every visible surface—walls, ceilings, pillars, and floors—is covered with uniform, parallel chisel marks carved at precise 60-degree angles. The walls are perfectly straight and vertical. Internal rock partitions, some as thin as 50 centimeters, separate adjacent chambers without any signs of structural failure over millennia.

The caves feature advanced drainage systems, evenly distributed load-bearing pillars, and chambers positioned with deliberate spacing. This suggests not random excavation, but a coordinated, large-scale engineering project executed by a sophisticated civilization.

⚱ 龍 ⚱ 游 ⚱ 石 ⚱ 窟 ⚱

📺 Video Documentary

Explore the Longyou Caves mystery in depth:

Replace VIDEO_ID in the embed URL with your chosen YouTube video ID

Linda Chung is married with children and not happy. Asks whether giving up being a celeb worked as planned?

Linda Chung is married with children and not happy

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Linda Chung used to be on TV every other week. Now she’s on the 6:30 p.m. bus to pick up her three kids from school in Montreal, wearing the same grey hoodie she’s had since 2020.

She’s 41. Her husband Jeremy is 54. He’s a chiropractor, not the kind who cracks backs in a fancy clinic.

image

More the kind who does massage therapy at a strip-mall office with a sign that says Pain Relief & Posture Care.

He makes about CAD 180k/yr. Not bad, but just a fraction of the USD1m+ she was raking in as a HK star and crucially not enough to cover three kids, a mortgage, and the fact that Linda hasn’t worked full-time in a decade.

She gave up her acting career after they got married. Not because she didn’t love it; she did. But she thought, Maybe this is what love looks like. You settle. You build a life. She moved to Canada. Cooked dinners. Took the kids to soccer. Forgot how to say action out loud.

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This year, she started working again. Not for fame. Not for a comeback. Just because bills don’t pay themselves. She took a small role in a Hong Kong web drama. Did a charity concert. Even agreed to appear at a fan meet-up in Tsim Sha Tsui, even though she had to fly economy, sleep on her sister’s couch, and get up at 4 a.m. to catch the flight back so she could be home for breakfast.

People noticed. Some said, She’s desperate. Others said, She’s just trying to survive. Turns out, she might be both.

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Last month, she posted a screenshot of her prenup online, not to be dramatic, but because she was tired of being told she was overreacting.

She didn’t read it all. She trusted him. She thought it was just paperwork. Now she’s in court trying to get it overturned.

Jeremy says she’s violating the agreement by talking about it.

She’s not rich. She’s not poor. She’s just stuck.

She still loves her kids. She still loves the quiet of their house. She still makes their lunches with the exact amount of cheese they like, not too much, not too little.

But she doesn’t love her husband anymore. Not the way she used to.

And now she’s working two jobs, flying across the world for a few thousand dollars, and sleeping on couches just to afford a lawyer who doesn’t charge by the hour in Canadian dollars.

Her friends say she’s changed. She used to laugh loud. Now she just smiles and says, I’m fine. Her kids think she’s tired. They don’t know why. And honestly? Neither does she.

She didn’t sign up for this. She didn’t think marriage meant becoming a paycheck with a mom hat. She just wanted to be someone’s wife. Now she’s just trying to be someone’s mother. And maybe, one day, someone’s self again.

No one’s sure what’s going to happen next. But if you’ve ever been married, you know: Sometimes the biggest drama isn’t the fight. It’s the silence after.

Sanae Takaichi is openly cos-playing Shinzo Abe & Taiwan is her stage-prop

Takaichi never hid the script: she calls herself “Abe’s political daughter.”

  • Economic plank: re-heat Abenomics verbatim: ultra-loose money, public-works splurge, weak-yen export boosterism.
  • Personnel: she kept Abe’s old finance & security team in place and even uses his speech-writers.
  • Shrine visits: Yasukuni within weeks of taking office, the first sitting PM to do so since Abe 2013.

The message is deliberate: “If it still polls well, why re-brand?”

2. Taiwan as Abe’s unfinished chapter

Taiwan geopolitical image

Abe’s most explosive line — “A Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency” — was uttered after he quit, because even he feared the diplomatic fallout while in office.

Takaichi jumped the gate: in her first policy speech she declared Japan would treat a cross-strait conflict as a “survival-threatening situation” under the security laws Abe himself rammed through in 2015.

Why?

  • Instant hawk credibility: reminds the LDP right that she finished the homework Abe left on the desk.
  • Distraction economics: core inflation is >3% and real wages are still falling; nothing rallies the base like an external “threat.”
  • Trump card: Donald Trump arrives Tokyo 27 Oct; mirroring Abe’s 2016 bear-hug gives her the photo-op she needs to look “statesmanlike” despite leading a minority government.

3. The risks of cos-play without the safety net

Abe had two things Takaichi lacks:

  • A super-majority in both Diet houses.
  • A friendly (or at least predictable) Beijing that swallowed many provocations to keep supply-chains open.

Today China is hitting back in real time:

  • Tourism boycott already signaled; Chinese carriers cutting Japan routes.
  • State media calling her “the worst PM for destroying peaceful diplomacy.”
  • Even coalition partner Kōmeitō is nervous; business lobbies begged her to “tone it down.”

4. Bottom line

Takaichi is running the ultimate “fake it till you make it” premiership: borrow Abe’s brand, borrow his rhetoric, borrow his enemies & hope the performance alone convinces LDP factions she deserves a real mandate at the next election.

14 Peaks in & around China’s Tibetan Plateau “Roof of the World” ranked by Fatality Rate and Cost to Summit

Total Peaks
14
Total Deaths
1,199+
Total Summits
22,735+
Avg Cost
$25k

Himalayan & Karakoram Range

Low Risk (<5%)
Medium (5-10%)
High (10-20%)
Extreme (>20%)

#1

Cho Oyu

Nepal/Tibet

Fatality Rate: 1.2%
Height
8,188m
(3,600 summits, 44 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$20,000–$30,000
#2

Lhotse

Nepal

Fatality Rate: 2%
Height
8,516m
(1,000 summits, 20 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$25,000–$35,000
#3

Mount Everest

Nepal/Tibet

Fatality Rate: 3%
Height
8,848m
(11,000+ summits, 335 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$40,000–$70,000
#4

Gasherbrum II

Pakistan

Fatality Rate: 3%
Height
8,035m
(930 summits, 30 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$12,000–$18,000
#5

Broad Peak

Pakistan

Fatality Rate: 9%
Height
8,051m
(445 summits, 40 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$13,000–$20,000
#6

Manaslu

Nepal

Fatality Rate: 5.7%
Height
8,163m
(2,000+ summits, 100+ deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$24,000–$30,000
#7

Makalu

Nepal/Tibet

Fatality Rate: 7%
Height
8,485m
(525 summits, 35 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$25,000–$35,000
#8

Shishapangma

Tibet

Fatality Rate: 8%
Height
8,027m
(350 summits, 30 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$22,000–$28,000
#9

Gasherbrum I

Pakistan

Fatality Rate: 9%
Height
8,080m
(350 summits, 30 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$14,000–$20,000
#10

Dhaulagiri

Nepal

Fatality Rate: 13%
Height
8,167m
(500+ summits, 70 deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$25,000–$35,000
#11

Kangchenjunga

Nepal/India

Fatality Rate: 18%
Height
8,586m
(<500 summits, 85+ deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$25,000–$35,000
#12

Nanga Parbat

Pakistan

Fatality Rate: 20%
Height
8,126m
(450 summits, 85+ deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$20,000–$30,000
#13

K2

Pakistan/China

Fatality Rate: 26%
Height
8,611m
(520 summits, 135+ deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$30,000–$45,000
#14

Annapurna

Nepal

Fatality Rate: 30%
Height
8,091m
(365 summits, 110+ deaths)
Price to Summit Peak
$28,000–$40,000

France’s Imperial Dilemma: Debt vs. Dominion. The Real Prize? New Caledonia

France Geopolitical Map
French Overseas Territories & EEZ

Beneath the grandeur of its global presence, France faces a profound contradiction. The nation maintains the world’s most extensive maritime empire, with naval commands spanning every ocean and timezone a testament to its enduring status as a blue water power.

Yet this strategic footprint is underwritten by an economy straining under severe sovereign debt, creating an unsustainable tension between global ambition and financial reality.

Paris now seeks a compromise that would preserve its imperial stature while easing its fiscal burdens. The proposed solution: offering China the remote, scientifically valuable Kerguelen Islands for USD 60 bn. This strategic archipelago in the Southern Ocean represents the perfect bargaining chip sovereign territory with minimal political cost, yet valuable enough to substantially reduce France’s debt pressure while keeping its more crucial territories intact.

However, Beijing has demonstrated its characteristically long term strategic calculus. While willing to acquire the Kerguelen Islands and their extensive maritime rights, Chinese negotiators have made it clear that their true objective lies elsewhere: New Caledonia.

This Pacific territory represents everything China seeks strategic positioning, vast nickel reserves critical for high tech manufacturing, and a established population center that would provide an immediate foothold in the Pacific.

The standoff reveals fundamentally different approaches to power. France attempts a tactical retreat, hoping to trade peripheral territories for breathing room to maintain its broader empire. China, meanwhile, plays a strategic game, recognizing that New Caledonia would represent not just another acquisition, but a decisive breach in Western Pacific dominance.

Paris finds itself in the precarious position of trying to save its empire by selling pieces of it, only to discover the buyer intends to select the very heart of France’s Pacific presence.

DJI China Supply Chain. Manufacturing + R&D Network

Geographic Distribution

Manufacturing Sites

Site Color Province Products

Product Categories

Manufacturing Ecosystem

Headquarters & R&D (Nanshan): DJI’s global HQ drives research, design and advanced product development, supported by a dense supplier network enabling rapid iteration.

Mass Production (Bao’an): DJI’s main factory produces consumer drones and imaging hardware with vertically integrated control.

Precision Components (Dongguan): High-accuracy CNC and structural components originate from Songshan Lake’s advanced machining sector.

Emerging Hubs (Hubei): Wuhan and Xianning supply motors, ESCs, controllers and sub-assemblies.

Specialized Components: Co-located suppliers such as Grepow Battery produce high-performance LiPo power systems for drones.

6
Manufacturing Sites
3
Provinces
30k+
Component Suppliers
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