Absolutely perfect illustration of what we enable with the way the media and the Western political class framed what happened in Amsterdam.

There was a football match between Israel and France yesterday and this 👇 happened at the beginning of the match: a horde of Israeli supporters openly lynched some French supporters in the stands.

Macron himself was in attendance at the match to show his commitment to "fighting antisemitism" after Amsterdam... He made no public comment that I know of on these French supporters getting lynched in front of his eyes. And the police made no reported arrests.

Had the reverse been the case, had this been some Israeli supporters getting lynched by a horde of French supporters, you can absolutely bet 100% that he (and all the French media) would have made a huge deal out of it.

You cannot overstate the absurdism of it: because we've so gaslighted ourselves around "antisemitism" and so distorted the meaning of it, Western countries would literally rather let our their own citizens get lynched on their own soil - in front of the president's eyes (!) - than face accusations being "antisemitic" in their own definition of the term. French TV interviewed after the match an Israel supporter (wearing an IDF t-shirt) who participated in the lynching, who commented that "the security [in the stadium] was magnificent. I'll even say even too much... We had a small problem in the block K, directly it was settled, the police came and directly they solved the problem".

No comment...

This is hugely important and no-one is paying attention.

Philippines President Marcos Jr. just signed 2 new bills (the "Maritime Zones Act" and the "Philippine Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act"), backed by the U.S. State Department (via a press release by the infamous Matthew Miller: state.gov/on-the-philipp…), that claim to implement "international law" but actually are a direct violation of international law in that they attempt to legitimize expansionist claims at the expense of virtually all its neighbors.

Let me explain 🧵
First, some context.

The Philippines exist as an independent country since 1946 when they gained their independence from the United States. They had never existed as a country before.

The establishment of the Philippines was officialized by the Treaty of Manilla.

This is crazy: Israeli police arrests 2 French military personnel ("gendarmes") with diplomatic status in a Christian church (the Eleona Church) that has officially belonged to France for 160 years and is protected by diplomatic immunity: x.com/sambklf/status…

To make things worse the church is located in occupied East Jerusalem - theoretically Palestinian territory - and the arrests occured as the French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot was due to visit it. He cancelled his visit due to the presence of Israeli police on site and the breach of diplomatic immunity.

Yet another unarguable proof that Israel respects absolutely zero rule. Live reaction by France's foreign minister, who looks very shaken: "I will not enter the Eleona domain today because Israeli security forces entered it armed without first obtaining authorization from France and without agreeing to leave today."
x.com/sambklf/status…

In normal language, given this is officially French territory, it's called an armed invasion of sovereign territory...

As our 2-week road-trip in China's Sichuan came to an end, time to do a small retrospective to summarize what we've done in case anyone wants to do a similar trip one day, or just needs inspiration for when they travel to China.

A small 🧵 of what we did and saw, day by day.


But before I start, a few practical observations.

I did this trip visa-free, as French nationals don't need visas anymore for stays in China of less than 15 days. Check for yourself if you need a visa.

Anyone can do this trip, we did it ourselves with 2 young kids, but I'll admit we're definitely not the relaxed type of travelers who like to tan on a beach somewhere. We like to actually visit stuff 😊

You do need a Chinese driving license to drive in China (I have one). It's really easy to procure one nowadays, in some places like Beijing you can even convert your foreign driving license into a Chinese one upon landing at the airport. Otherwise you have myriads of other ways to get around in China.

Yes, it immensely help to speak Chinese or travel with someone who does to get around in China, very few people speak English. Although I can imagine you can manage to get around with instant translation apps (never tried it myself). Most people are typically very friendly and helpful to foreign tourists.

For the most popular attractions in China make sure to think about booking tickets in advance (or ask a travel agency to do it for you) as places are limited. Typically attractions release tickets a week ahead of time, although it depends.

Lastly, if you travel to China for the first time (not at all my case, I've been coming to China for 16 years and lived during 8 years in the country) you need to be prepared to a dramatically different tech and payment ecosystems from the rest of the world. At the very least set-up WeChat before you depart on your journey and connect your debit/credit card to it, as WeChat is the ubiquitous payment method in China. Also be sure to download a VPN that works in China, or alternatively roam on your foreign sim card so the great firewall won't apply to you, and so you'll keep being able to use all your usual apps.

With that out of the way, here's what we did 👇

I'm genuinely amazed that some places like this still exist in China.

On our drive to Chongqing airport back from SanXingDui we decided to check midway a spot called "Qian Fo Zhai" ("Thousand Buddhas village") in an area named Anyui. And it turns out to be an entire hill with some amazing Tang and Song dynasty grotto carvings that are completely free to access, with virtually no tourists.

I thought that at this stage most of those had been organized in touristic attractions, similar to Dazu, Mogao or Longmen grottoes but no, turns out you obviously have a number of those which are still unorganized, which is quite an amazing experience. Probably won't remain the case for long, if only for purposes of protecting the artifacts. And at the bottom of the hill we just stumbled upon a Buddhist monastery and listened to the monks singing a beautiful prayer 🙏

Last full day of our 2-week Sichuan road-trip and we end it on a high point: a visit of SanXinDui, one of the greatest archeological discoveries of all times, anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately SanXinDui is bizarrely unknown in the West, even though it ranks on par with things like the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb or the Terracotta army in Xi'an.

SanXinDui used to be the capital of China's ancient Shu kingdom which ruled here between 1,700BC and 1,200BC so everything in the museum is 3,000 to 4,000 years old.
The artifacts found here - and they uncovered an incredible 17,000 objects already - are beyond extraordinary, almost otherworldly, revealing a unique culture unlike anything that had been found in China before. And a culture much more advanced for that time period of Chinese history than had been assumed before.

Here you can see 4 pieces we just saw in the museum:
- A monumental bronze mask in pure SanXinDui style, with protruding eyes that archeologists believe symbolizes a far-sighted leader or shaman
- A typical SanXinDui mask with a gold plated mask on top of it
- A monumental 4m tall bronze "tree" with dragons for its roots and birds with 9 fruits and birds on its branches
- A wheel with 5 beams thought to represent the sun

More artefacts we saw in the museum in the 🧵 below 👇


You can see many, many bronze masks, all with similar features but all unique

Genuinely incredible experience in China today, straight out of a movie.
So we're in E Mei Shan in Sichuan, one of the 4 sacred Buddhist mountains in China, and I was told by my friend @ZhaiXiang5 of this temple called "Sacred Water Temple" that's hidden from tourists and especially beautiful.

We had high expectations but we still were blown away, this place is truly the hidden gem of E Mei Shan, incredibly charming!

This is us arriving at the place 👇 (the rest in the 🧵) Look how amazingly pretty the inside of the temple is!

Status update: having a hotpot in a bomb shelter, served by robots. Only in Chongqing 😅 For the folks confused about what's happening: Chongqing has thousands of bomb shelters from the time the Japanese were bombing the city when the government was here.

Many of these shelters are today converted into shops or restaurants.

Very special dinner tonight in Chongqing in Dadong, one of the most luxury restaurant brands in China (especially famous for its duck).

I went through the whole menu for you 👇 so you can see how beautiful their dishes are.

I'll also post all the dishes we eat one by one as a 🧵 below as we receive them. To start with, the duck!

A lot of sensationalist stuff gets written on China, and most of it is horsesh*t.

But rarely, some of it is true.

This is the story of a project on which 60,000 Chinese soldiers worked during 18 years in complete secrecy. It was simply known as the "816 project".

A 🧵 I came across it yesterday, when looking for spots to visit around Chongqing.

About 150km East of the city, I noticed a place in the middle of the countryside simply called "816 Nuclear Military Plant".

My curiosity piqued, I looked into it and could barely believe it.

The resolution just passed by the EU Parliament on Ukraine is a sad illustration of how undemocratic and dangerously deluded it's become.

Undemocratic because it acts against the will of the people. Deluded because it asks for things everyone knows are impossible.

A short 🧵 First of all, what do Europeans want? All the surveys are crystal clear (for instance this recent one by @EurasiaGroup 👇): approximately two-thirds of Europeans want their leaders to "push for a negotiated settlement for the war in Ukraine".

Interestingly, there's a Taiwan angle to the pager terror attack by Israel: according to the NYT () the pagers were made in Taiwan and Hezbollah had ordered the pagers from a Taiwanese company called "Gold Apollo".

Israel and Taiwan have been forging a closer relationship lately (see this interesting article about it: ), mostly because their fate is in many ways closely linked, as Mao once said "Israel and Taiwan are bases of operation for imperialism in Asia. They created Israel for the Arabs and Taiwan for us. They both have the same objective". And I think they are each well aware that the fall of one would make the position of the other more fragile, as it would set a precedent.

So not too big a stretch to think that Taiwan could have assisted Israel in this terror attack. Although it of course needs to be confirmed (and probably never will be...).

And by the way, yes, it absolutely is a terror attack, although obviously no Western media is going to call it that:
- There was obvious intent to inflict maximum casualties and psychological impact
- The attack was indiscriminate in that Israel had no way of knowing who was in the vicinity of all the devices were when they got detonated, and as a matter of fact the attack did cause many civilian casualties (the dead include a 10 year old girl, and the wounded hundreds of civilians)
- It occurred outside of a war zone and was a blatant violation of another state's sovereignty (Lebanon) in an action obviously not sanctioned by the UNnytimes.com/2024/09/17/wor…
middleeasteye.net/news/israel-ta…
Update, the founder of Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese company says they didn't make the pagers: "The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it." ()

He said that the model was produced and sold by a company called "BAC" and "declined to comment on BAC's location" 🤷‍♂️reuters.com/world/middle-e…

Just finished reading "Alone on the Great Wall" by William Lindesay, a Brit who ran the entire Great Wall in 1987.

A fascinating read in so many ways, mostly because it illustrates the immense changes in China since then, but also what remained the same.

A small 🧵 The story, to summarize it in a few words, is about him attempting (and succeeding!) to run the entirety of the Great Wall, from the fortress of Jiayuguan in the West of China all the way to Shanhaiguan on the Yellow Sea in the East of the country, some 2,500km.

Yet another exceedingly bad China take by Noah Smith. I remain genuinely puzzled how anyone still gives the light of day to someone so consistently wrong 🤷

Here's why he's wrong here on Tesla in China 🧵 First of all, as Elon Musk himself writes in a reply to his post 👇, his premise is wrong: Tesla's gigafactory in Shanghai is running at max capacity.

Can't really do more than that...

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1832641214539002220

This is genuinely extraordinary: the latest ASPI Critical Technology Tracker is out and China is now in the lead for an incredible 57 out of the 64 key technologies of the future, i.e. 90% of the technologies.

The US leads the other 7.

A small 🧵 of what's in the report First of all, what's ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute)?

It's a quasi-governmental Australian defense think-tank that's largely funded by the Australian and US military-industrial complex.

In other words, they're very much NOT pro-China, quite the contrary...

Quite an incredible move in French politics today that might reveal that we're in fact witnessing nothing less than a coup by Macron.

Let me explain 🧵 You'll remember that on the 7th of July France held elections that Macron lost badly, and which the left's "New Popular Front" won.

A synagogue was set on fire yesterday in France and that's an image of the suspect 👇

He's either the world's most idiotic Palestinian supporter or it's someone who really wanted to impress upon people that it was done by a Palestinian supporter... Only thing missing is a "I love Hamas" t-shirt for a perfect setup 😅

Anyhow French media don't even ask themselves the question, they're all shouting "look it was a Palestinian supporter"... French Twitter doesn't buy it, at all. So many memes already 😅

https://x.com/Mmk91466160/status/1827342592415039981

Something quite extraordinary is happening in Australia.

Over the past few weeks, many key authoritative figures - former PMs, top strategists, etc. - came out against AUKUS and US imperialism, in favor of Australian independence.

A small 🧵 listing the various key statements First of, Paul Keating, former Prime Minister, describing AUKUS as the “worst deal in all history” and saying it will turn Australia into the 51st state of the US.

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1821827972057137180

That's incredible: Baidu last year set up a driverless taxi service in Wuhan and a few other places called "Carrot Run" (萝卜快跑), and the experiment is proving super popular with already 6 million rides completed with a fleet of just 1,000 cars.

The main reason is cost: without a driver and able to operate 24/7, it costs only 1/3rd of the price of a taxi or Uber. The cost paid by users is between RMB0.5 to RMB1.0 per km ($0.07 to $0.14) which is INSANELY cheap. With such a service, a drive between Boston and NYC (348 km) would set you back between $24 and $48, in your own private taxi!

Another added benefit is that they've set up the cars so that customers can sing karaoke or watch movies in the back (something you can't exactly do in a typical Uber). And safety-wise it's also proving much better than human drivers with no major accident in 100 million kilometers travelled.

So obviously a better experience from a consumer standpoint and it'll doubtlessly become the norm in a few years. Which of course raises questions with regards to jobs: millions if not tens of millions of people in China live off driving (taxis, delivery, etc.) so we're looking at quite a disruption if all those jobs get replaced by AI. And at the pace at which China moves, it's going to happen sooner rather than later.

Sources

mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU2OT…
wap.xxsb.com/content/2024-0… More details 👇 In Wuhan they're allowed to cover 40% of the city

https://x.com/Forward_2020/status/1810304127945109925?t=-iXGYV4ZKa-_3MANlVpaEQ&s=19

The most important event in the world yesterday wasn't the disastrous presidential debate in the US, but it was the 70th anniversary of the 5 Principles of Peaceful Coexistence happening in Beijing.

I was lucky enough to be attending in person.

A 🧵

First of all, what are the 5 principles of peaceful coexistence, and why do they matter?

The principles were first proposed by China for the purpose of the 1954 Sino-Indian Agreement, also called the Panchsheel Agreement.

They are:

Whenever I want to be reminded of what a wise politician sounds like, I listen to George Yeo, the former Foreign Minister of Singapore (he was Singaporean cabinet minister during 21 years!).

A small 🧵 with video extracts from a talk he made at @AsiaSocietyNY recently.

Here he explains why it's "troubling" that the US keeps making the remark that they won't become number 2, "because it suggests that the US will do everything it can to prevent China from being number 1".

All the more troubling because:
- "China is prepared to accept the US for what it is"
- "It is completely unrealistic" for the US to think it can "change China". He sees US aspirations to change China as "hope built on an illusion [which] can only lead to one outcome: to tragedy".
- "China doesn't want to be number one politically, [...] it doesn't want to take on the burden of being the global hegemon, the global policeman". So "in a multipolar world, the US can still be Primus Inter Pares, first among equals, because of the English languages, because of standards, because the US itself is a metasystem." Here Yeo relates a powerful anecdote where the Secretary to Pope John Paul II wrote in a speech: "despite our diversity, we are one".

The Pope asked to replace the word "despite" with "because". Yeo interpreted it as meaning: "we are one only because we respect that each of us is unique, that each culture is unique, that each country is unique. If we want as a condition of the relationship that the other person should be like us, that's not a relationship, that's a dictatorship."