Tag: Asia

The Retreat from Japan

Goldman Sachs reverses course and exits the Japanese market:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is exiting transaction banking in Japan, less than a year after announcing plans to enter the business of managing cash flows for big companies in the country.

“We are stepping back from building out this business here in Japan,” Tokyo-based spokesperson Hiroko Matsumoto said in an emailed statement. “Consequently we are closing Goldman Sachs Bank USA Tokyo Branch whose sole function was to support transaction banking in this market.”

The bank will remain focused on growing its transaction banking operations in the US, UK and European Union, Matsumoto said.

I don’t know what this might signify, but I assume it is something important, perhaps even on the level of China’s 2015 decision to spurn Clown World’s invitation to become the new headquarters of The Empire That Never Ended.

What we know is that a decision by the Japanese government, or its replacement, to change sides and support China instead of the United States would be a global shift of tectonic proportions.

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of Liberalism

The satanic seeds of the Enlightenment have finally blossomed to the point that they are killing entire nations. We’ve already learned, much to our surprise, that Communism is less fatal to a nation than the financial capitalism, neo-liberalism, and globalism of Clown World, now we’re discovering that even the insane ideology of the Juche, the state ideology of North Korea, is observably better for a nation than the best that the modern West has to offer.

I think it’s so funny that Korean women are so done with Korean men that they’re literally just deciding to die out. Y’all heard of the 4B movement. I’m a big fan. The 4B movement stands for these four things. It’s basically Korean feminism which is cheaper and more efficient.

The 4B movement initially gained recognition on Twitter in 2019 because of course it did, through various feminist social media accounts and they are focused on envisioning a future without men because of course they are. The cornerstone of feminism is that everything is oppressive. The 4B movement had an Escape the Corset movement. The word corset is used here for the societal mechanisms that bind and repress women like toxic beauty standards. Just like in Western feminism, toxic means anything I don’t like. I need all of this from you but you need something from me, that’s toxic. Korean women literally just gave up on their men they’re like, they’re not going to change so we’re all going to go extinct.

That’s where she’s wrong. She says that Korean women are mad at Korean men, but they’re actually mad at God, and if you don’t like that word, just call it the universe or physics or whatever, it’s the same thing. This is a hierarchy of creation, it goes from God or the universe all the way down through man to woman to child to the natural world and all the way back up. It goes both ways. Basically the universe just is the way it is, you can’t get rid of gravity and men have to deal with that directly and build things from it, and we also give approval and attention and validation to women, who then provide nurturing to communities and children. Their role is to be the learners and they provide creativity and new ways in developing new things to do with the natural world, which is howwe get new things like the internet or different types of cheese or whatever, but in the same way that man cannot simply ignore the rules of gravity, women cannot simply ignore what men need from them either, otherwise we can’t do our jobs, that’s just how reality works.

S what these women are saying is I want resources and money and power and everything, I just don’t want to provide men with what they need in order to continue creating them. Usually what keeps this whole thing going is that men provide women with approval, attention, and validation, so basically if men don’t follow the rules of the universe, then they don’t get what they need from the universe. That’s just physically how life works, you need to know when to plant seeds and stuff, and usually when women don’t follow the rules made by men, and give men what they need, then men don’t provide women with what they need in return.

But now women have these cellphones that are providing them with all of this approval, attention, and validation, which makes them think “I don’t need men anymore” even though men are still making all the stuff, so because women are no longer providing this men are no longer providing that, which means no one can have any of these things and women are saying “okay we’d rather die”. that’s what quotes like this mean.

Rebellion is as the sin of Witchcraft because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being King. That means if you don’t do as the universe demands then you’re not going to get anything from it. So man has to build society according to the rules of reality and women have to fit into society according to the rules of society, and then children have get good grades or they don’t get the ice cream or whatever. It works the sameway. The Bible uses that word a lot, rebellious, and what that means is “I want the benefits but I’m not going to follow the rules,” that’s why this argument is so important. “I want you to provide me with things but I’m not going to provide anything back.”

Imagine if you were saying “I want food to grow, I’m just not going to do any farming,” that’s what this is illustrating. If you don’t do what you have to then you don’t get anything back, and if you don’t provide men with what they need in order to make food and fix buildings and stuff, then they’re not going to give you any of those things and then everyone die. I’m not saying that men don’t have work to do, I don’t know what’s going on in Korea, maybe the corset is too tight, maybe men need to start providing something new, but if it’s anything like American feminism, it’s probably all get-get-get and never “where are we getting this from” and every time you break that chain you just die off, which they literally are, by the way.

Korea has the lowest birthrates in the world but I just think that’s so funny… Korean as an ethnicity is about to go away. It works the same every time you fill your mind with entitlement, you blame somebody for what you don’t have, and then you use the government to take it away from them. When the government gives stuff to women for free, then women stop giving men support and men go “what’s the point” and then women go “what’s the point” and then well, bye-bye, Korea.

Except Korea will not die. The Korea that will survive is Best Korea. Scientific, evolutionarily-superior Korea. It’s very unlikely that South Korean women will be permitted to simply die off and end Korean civilization, the odds significantly favor them instead being enslaved and utilized by the North Koreans to ensure national survival. And the great irony is that these women will apparently be happier as slaves than as free women allowed to pursue any path they wanted, because, when given complete freedom to become anything they imagined, they consciously chose rebellion against their Creator and suicide.

Clown World is a satanic global fail.

DISCUSS ON SG

Desperately Seeking Allies

The US appears to have made at least a modest amount of headway in signing up Vietnam for its Asian NATO after Biden’s recent visit:

Vietnam and the US have agreed to dramatically upgrade their bilateral relations and strengthen defense cooperation, while hailing several major deals worth billions of dollars. The announcement comes amid strained relations between both Hanoi and Washington with China.

In a statement released on Monday following a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Vietnamese leader Nguyen Phu Trong, the White House said that the two countries elevated their relations to ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ status, the highest tier in Hanoi’s hierarchy of bilateral ties, “for the purposes of peace, cooperation, and sustainable development.”

On security, the US and Vietnamese leaders welcomed “further cooperation in defense industry and defense trade in accordance with each side’s conditions,” according to the statement. In addition, the US said that it “is committed to continuing to assist Vietnam to develop its self-reliant defense capabilities.”

Vietnam is more than happy to acquire some outside assistance, and certainly, the Vietnamese diaspora in the USA makes the rapprochement easier in some ways. However, there is no way that the Vietnamese are going to sign themselves up as a Ukrainian-style proxy army in service to the West.

Also, it is the Vietnamese, and not the Chinese, that the other Asian nations have historically feared. As Lew Kwan Yew described it, they are regarded as “the Prussians of Asia” and fundamentally more warlike and aggressive than their neighbors. China, for all its power and population, is generally not feared because the Middle Kingdom has historically been uninterested in anything outside its borders. Even the limited Chinese invasion of Vietnamese-occupied Cambodia in the 1970s was instigated at the repeated request of the other Asian nations, led by Singapore.

The Chinese are not particularly concerned, but neither are they confused about Washington’s intentions.

“Let’s be honest, if there were no China-US tensions, Washington wouldn’t be so interested and have such strong intentions of upgrading its ties with Vietnam to this level,” Lü Xiang, a US studies research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Monday.

DISCUSS ON SG

Japan Signs Up for Suicide

Or, quite possibly, not.

Now, I realize how this sounds to Western ears. And if a similar statement were released by the foreign minister of Sweden or Croatia or even Argentina, taking the words at face value would almost certainly be the correct interpretation. As we’ve witnessed time after time in the USA, when a corporation or a private organization makes a public statement about committing to diversity, it has already drunk the Kool-Aid and entered the death spiral.

But the Japanese are absolute masters about saying no in a non-confrontational manner. “It’s difficult” means “no”. “It’s complicated” means “absolutely not”. And “explaining a commitment to work to realize” means “never going to happen, roundeye”.

If Japan was truly interested in committing national suicide, it doesn’t need to sign up for diversity. It can achieve extinction a lot faster by simply declaring war against the Sino-Russian alliance, as neither nation has forgotten its defeat and humiliation at the hands of Imperial Japan in the 20th century.

DISCUSS ON SG

Chinese for “SJW”

BAIZUO is the Chinese term for SJW. Good to know in case we decide to publish Chinese editions of SJWAL and the forthcoming SJWADD.

If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immigration on a Chinese social media platform these days, it’s impossible to avoid encountering the term baizuo, or literally, the ‘white left’. It first emerged about two years ago, and yet has quickly become one of the most popular derogatory descriptions for Chinese netizens to discredit their opponents in online debates.

So what does ‘white left’ mean in the Chinese context, and what’s behind the rise of its (negative) popularity? It might not be an easy task to define the term, for as a social media buzzword and very often an instrument for ad hominem attack, it could mean different things for different people. A thread on “why well-educated elites in the west are seen as naïve “white left” in China” on Zhihu, a question-and-answer website said to have a high percentage of active users who are professionals and intellectuals, might serve as a starting point.

The question has received more than 400 answers from Zhihu users, which include some of the most representative perceptions of the ‘white left’. Although the emphasis varies, baizuo is used generally to describe those who “only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment” and “have no sense of real problems in the real world”; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”; they are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”; they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”; they are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”.  

Apart from some anti-hegemonic sentiments, the connotations of ‘white left’ in the Chinese context clearly resemble terms such as ‘regressive liberals’ or ‘libtards’ in the United States. In a way the demonization of the ‘white left’ in Chinese social media may also reflect the resurgence of right-wing populism globally.

I suspect that the demonization of SJWs in Chinese social media is a reflection of the global growth of the Alt-Right. Asians in general, and the Chinese in particular, are far more intensely nationalistic than Westerners these days, as, unlike the West, they have cast off most of the cultural Marxism that Mao inflicted upon them. Since that experience of Cultural Revolution cost over 50 million Chinese lives, it is no wonder that they are not eager for more imposed cultural change.

Although there are no shortage of Chinese SJWs in the West, who are trying to use the SJW Narrative to their immediate benefit in a foreign land, the smarter Chinese are aware of how that ever-mutating Narrative will be used against them, as indeed it already is in cases such as justifying anti-Asian discrimination in the Ivy League. Being a low-trust people themselves, they will use the Narrative when it benefits them and oppose it when it doesn’t. But in neither case will they actually take it seriously, or genuinely subscribe to social justice ideals. They know SJWs for a true enemy.

Being an astute and self-conscious people, the Chinese are perfectly aware of why the West is in decline and the various parties who are responsible for that decline. It should be no surprise that they have absolutely no intention of following the West’s failed path of equalitarianism and multiculturalism, for all that the Chinese leadership presently gives lip service to globalism and free trade.

Seen from the perspective of international relations, the anti-baizuo discourse can be understood as part of what William A. Callahan calls ‘negative soft power’, that is, constructing the Chinese self through ‘the deliberate creation and then exclusion’ of Others as ‘barbarians’ or otherwise inferior. Criticisms of the ‘white left’ against the background of the European refugee crisis fit especially well with the ‘rising China’ versus ‘Europe in decline’ narrative. According to Baidu Trends, one of the most related keywords to baizuo was huimie: “to destroy”. Articles with titles such as ‘the white left are destroying Europe’ were widely circulated. 

The Chinese Alt-Right has the potential to be an extraordinarily powerful force, and if it can keep China’s historical imperialist tendencies in check, it may prove to be a vital ally to the Alt-Right in the West in the long term.

Upheaval in South Korea

Those massive protests have finally borne fruit:

Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who was removed from office earlier this month, was arrested Friday on charges related to abuse of power and accepting bribes.

“Major crimes have been ascertained and there is a concern that the suspect might attempt to destroy evidence,” Judge Kang Bu-young said in a text message to reporters. “The court recognizes the need, necessity and reasonableness of the suspect’s arrest.”

Prosecutors announced Monday that they were seeking to arrest Park on charges relating to abuse of power, accepting bribes and leaking important information. “The suspect abused the mighty power and position as President to take bribes from companies and infringed upon the freedom of corporate management and leaked important confidential official information,” said the statement from the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office.

The level of international instability seems to be getting increasingly out of control. But is it the globalists losing control, or is it instigated chaos out of which order will be ever-so-helpfully offered?

Or, as is most likely the case, is it some combination of the two?

Readersource request

So, we’ve got something big to announce on Monday. And by big, I mean something that is going to enable Castalia House to take the next serious step forward as a publishing house.

While we have had a number of successes, from blowing up the Hugo Awards to Amazon bestsellers, the one area where we have been absolutely abysmal is in informing the media of anything we’re doing; despite being covered in every media publication from the Wall Street Journal to the New Zealand Herald, we have not sent out a single press release to anyone. So, while others are talking about us, we haven’t been publicizing our side of the story.

That’s going to change. But here’s where I need your help. I have a great list of media contacts in the game industry that dates back to 1988 and consists of literally hundreds of names and email addresses. My list in the publishing industry presently consists of 17 names and email addresses. That is genuinely pathetic.

So, if you’re interested in helping Castalia, what I would appreciate is if each of you would find ONE name of a journalist or blogger who regularly covers books or writes book reviews, and then email the following information to me:

NAME
PUBLICATION/SITE
EMAIL ADDRESS

Once you’ve done that, post the name and publication here so that others can see they’re checked off the list. And yes, it would be very funny indeed to send me John Scalzi’s email, but I’ve already got it, so you needn’t bother with that.

One useful trick, if you’re looking for the more esoteric publications such as military journals, is to see who has written about an author, or a similar author, before. For example, that list of 17 consists solely of journalists who have written about Martin van Creveld. If you happen to find a journalist that way, please mention the reference author and/or work as well. Thanks very much. I do appreciate it.

Also, Brainstorm Annual members, don’t forget that tonight’s event will feature Mike Cernovich talking about his latest book, Danger and Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity. The event will begin at 5 PM Eastern.

Optimistic

It would appear that Spengler, for one, has been listening to the Learned Elders of Wye. His article makes it appear as if the precious golden geese who have healed America with prosperity are in the early stages of preparing to take flight once more. David Goldman has what strikes me as a remarkably optimistic article on how much the Chinese like and admire the Jews because they have so much in common.

There is no greater compliment to any culture than to be admired by Chinese, who with some justification regard their civilization as the
world’s most ancient and, in the long run, most successful. The high
regard that the Chinese have for Jews should be a source of pride to the
latter. In fact, it is very pleasant indeed for a Jew to spend time in
China. The sad history of Jew-hatred has left scars on every European
nation, but it is entirely absent in the world’s largest country. On the
contrary, to the extent that Chinese people know something of the Jews,
their response to us is instinctively sympathetic.

“I am always surprised by the expressions of affection that the
Chinese show for the Jews. Both cultures, the Chinese emphasize, share
respect for family, learning and, yes, money,” wrote the journalist
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore last year. ‘”Most Chinese will think Jews are
smart, clever or good at making money, and that they have achieved a
great deal,’ Professor Xu Xin, director of the Institute of Jewish
Studies at Nanjing University (one of over half a dozen centers in China
dedicated to studying Judaism) told me last week,” she wrote. “This
logic — that the Jews are admired for their success despite their small
numbers and historical oppression — has also led to a burgeoning
industry of self-help books that use Jewish culture and the Talmud to
preach business tips.”

Family, learning, respect for tradition, business acumen: these are
Jewish traits that the Chinese also consider to be their virtues. All
this is true as far as it goes. One might also mention that China never
has had reason to view the Jews as competitors for legitimacy.

Christianity began as a Jewish sect and has vacillated between the
claim that is has superseded Judaism and the view that it is a daughter
religion that should honor its parent. Islam claims that Jews and
Christians falsified the revelations given to them and that their
scriptures are a perversion of God’s true message, which Mohammed
restored to its original integrity. But by no stretch of the imagination
could China view the Jews as a threat to the legitimacy of its
civilization.

The Chinese, in short, have no reasons to dislike or fear the Jews,
and a number of reasons to admire them simply because Jews display
traits that Chinese admire among themselves.

Now, it’s possible that Goldman is correct. I’m an East Asian Studies major, I’m not Chinese. Perhaps the Chinese will welcome the Jewish people with more or less open arms the way the American people did following the large-scale Jewish retreat from the European continent. On the other hand, there is also the possibility that the Chinese will look at the historical track record of the Jewish people, see what they have done to the United States of America during the post-WWII period, and view them as a parasitical threat.

Perhaps Goldman doesn’t view the financial rape of the USA or the fact that China is sitting on $1.304 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds that could be rendered worthless overnight as a reason for the Chinese to dislike or fear the Jews, but I am a little less sanguine on the prospect. I also think Goldman underestimates the ruthlessness of the Chinese in matters tribal and nepotistic.

The survival strategy that worked so well in the Middle Ages, where the Jews would be expelled from a country, then quietly return until they were banished once more, doesn’t seem likely to work quite as well in an age of global communication. Hitler’s complaints about the Jews sounded entirely mad to Americans. They sound mad, and manufactured, even today. But in the event of the sort of economic catastrophe and political breakdown that so concerns the Elders of Wye, I tend to suspect the Chinese will take the accusations of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert
Camacho a little more seriously.

Especially considering that the Chinese would like nothing better than to see a US political breakdown that would free them to claim the regional supremacy and world leadership they believe to be their civilizational birthright. I agree with Goldman that China does not view the Jews as a threat to the legitimacy of its
civilization; my understanding is that the Chinese already view them as a rival.

Protocols of the Learned Elders of Wye

I thought this 2006 article on Haaretz by Shmuel Rosner
concerning a conference discussing the survival of the Jewish people was intriguing, both for what it suggested in terms of what the future holds in store for America as well as what it implied about the Jewish perception of the transience of their relationship with America:

Two groups of Jews gathered together last weekend
at Wye Plantation, Maryland for a long discussion on the situation of
the Jewish people. The first group, which met Wednesday and Thursday,
consisted of the heads of 15 Jewish organizations such as the
Presidents’ Conference, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League, the Union of Orthodox Jewish
Congregations, the American Jewish Committee and others. In the second
group were the “thinkers,” as the organizers termed them: Natan
Sharansky from Israel, Charles Krauthammer from The Washington Post,
former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler, former Jewish Agency head
Sallai Meridor and many others….

The fear expressed that “a real decline of the West,
particularly the United States, would have dramatic consequences for the
Jewish people,” also led to controversy. Brandeis University president
Jehuda Reinharz agreed that this type of decline can be expected “in the
coming two decades” – but Stuart Eisenstadt was less emphatic about it.
He believes the United States will remain the leading power. In all
events, it was agreed the Jews “should strengthen cultural links with
non-Western civilizations, particularly China and also India,” powers
that are on the ascent. This is not a question of preference or
closeness; it is a question of survival, of readiness for the future.

I am very curious to know if there was any recognition that the observed decline of the West has any connection to a number of the policies that these organizations have supported for the last 50+ years? I also wonder why the targeted non-Western civilizations which are supposedly on the ascent, (raising some real questions about the participating economists given the ongoing Chinese meltdown), would be interested in stronger cultural links given the questionable consequences of those cultural links on the United States. The Indians might be amenable, but Chinese history suggests that the Han wouldn’t even blink before taking actions that would make Hitler look like a Righteous Gentile.

As an East Asian Studies major who is neither philo- nor antisemitic, I suggest the Elders of Wye might want to seriously rethink the potential of China as a safe landing place. Japan and Korea, too, are likely out.

The article tends to leave one with the unfortunate impression of rats congregating in order to contemplate the right time to leave a sinking ship. Or, to use a less ominous metaphor, magical golden geese who graciously convey manifold benefits and blessings on those with the courtesy to accept them discussing the right time to stop laying eggs and fly away before being greedily dissected. But regardless of whether one considers those discussing the timing of their exit as rats or golden geese. the mere fact that they are discussing the imminent sinking of the ship should be of no small concern to those who happen to be aboard it.

And before any philosemites feel led to cry holocaust, try to keep in mind that I didn’t forge the freaking article. If there is some non-pejorative way to view these discussions by a group of people actively making ready for an incipient American decline, by all means, feel free to share your interpretation. Regardless, it would be hard to deny that the conference participants do not see themselves as being a part of the American people.

The end of anti-racism

I’m not sure what is funnier, Day Above Ground’s song Asian Girlz or the hysterical reaction of the Huffington Post and all right-thinking anti-raciss individuals to it:

Today in horrible people doing horrible things: Day Above Ground released a song called “Asian Girlz,” and it’s about as bad way worse than you could possibly imagine. Judging by the reactions, “Asian Girlz” is either the most racist thing ever or just the most racist thing you’ll see all day.

Here’s what happens in the music video: The band is trapped in a bird cage while an Asian model strips out of a prim outfit to reveal lingerie and tattoos, while said band sings about things like fried rice and “buttf–king all night.” As Buzzfeed noted, the fourth verse is actually just a list of Asian stereotypes. While this is happening, every member of the band goes on a date with an Asian girl, nights chronicled in Polaroid snapshots. THEN, the model in question picks up the bird cage and takes it (and the band) to the bathroom where she — of course — draws a bubble bath and lets the miniature non-musicians out for a dive into the water….

Not only is there plenty of racist stuff to get one’s blood boiling, there’s also this actual lyric: “17 or 23, it doesn’t matter to me!”

Speaking as an East Asian Studies major, an Official Person of Color with an Asian grandfather, and a Japanese scientist, all I have to say is that the song is hilarious.  Especially the little pseudo-Chinese keyboard riff.  As for the stereotypes, they exist for a reason. 

It is observable that whites in general, and young white males in particular, are increasingly over the idea that racism is the worse of all possible evils.  And now that diversity is a central tenet of the establishment, it should come as no surprise that the young and rebellious fail to regard it as the holy of holies.