{"href":"http://player.captivate.fm/services/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fplayer.captivate.fm%2Fepisode%2F8079c29d-1c7d-4f6d-b405-8856857bbfa4","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Captivate.FM","provider_url":"https://www.captivate.fm","width":600,"height":200,"type":"rich","html":"","title":"Episode 215 \u2013 China and the looming NSW theocracy","description":"Hopefully we won\u2019t be swatted
\nBarely two weeks\u00a0after winning $3m at the Fortnite World Cup, Kyle \u201cBugha\u201d Giersdorf was \u201cswatted\u201d in the middle of a livestreaming session.
\nThe 16-year-old was broadcasting to his legion of fans on streaming platform Twitch as he played Fortnite with friends when the incident occurred. Swatting involves a hoax call to the police in the hope of armed officers descending on someone\u2019s home. The practice has led to the death of at least one person in recent years: in 2017 Andrew Finch\u00a0was shot and killed\u00a0by armed police responding to a fake hostage report at his home. A Los Angeles man was later sentenced to 20 years in prison for the hoax call. He had been angry after losing an online game of Call of Duty to Finch, a 28-year-old father of two.
\nAndrew Hastie on China
\nWhat did he say?
\nThis will be immensely difficult. It is impossible to forsake the US, our closest security and investment partner. It is also impossible to disengage from China, our largest trading partner. This is the central point: almost every strategic and economic question facing Australia in the coming decades will be refracted through the geopolitical competition of the US and the PRC.
\nThe West once believed that economic liberalisation would naturally lead to democratisation in China. This was our Maginot Line. It would keep us safe, just as the French believed their series of steel and concrete forts would guard them against the German advance in 1940. But their thinking failed catastrophically. The French had failed to appreciate the evolution of mobile warfare. Like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become.
\nWe must be intellectually honest and take the Chinese leadership at its word. We are dealing with a fundamentally different vision for the world. Xi Jinping has made his vision of the future abundantly clear since becoming President in 2013. His speeches show that the tough choices ahead will be shaped, at least on the PRC side, by ideology \u2013 communist ideology, or in his words, by “Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought”.
\nXi\u2019s view of the future is one where capitalism will be eclipsed and “the consolidation of and development of the socialist system will require its own long period of history \u2026 it will require the tireless struggle of generations, up to 10 generations”.
\nJosh Frydenberg on China and the USA
\nFrom The Australian
\nMr Frydenberg, who called for calm last week as the sharemarket sank on US-China trade tensions, told a dinner at the American-Australian Leadership Dialogue in Perth on Friday that it was Australia\u2019s duty to stand with the US in times of global uncertainty. \u201cIt\u2019s not only our privilege to be strong, it\u2019s our duty to be strong and this is where America\u2019s place in the world is so important,\u201d he told the audience, which included congressman Joe Courtney, US senator Roy Blunt and Labor leader Anthony Albanese.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s more important than ever that our two great nations, the United States and Australia, work more closely than ever.
\n\u201cWe need to work together in an unprecedented way across the economic, the strategic and the political realms, and to do so consistent with our values, consistent with our objectives, and faithful to our history. America, after all, is the nation of Lend-Lease, the \u00adMarshall Plan and \u201cMr Gorbachev, tear down that wall!\u201d
\nHe said \u201cthe peace and prosperity that we in the world enjoy today\u201d wa...","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/085762e2-797c-4ef4-9b10-434ecde61c07/logo2018v2.jpg"}