Isaac soloman wrote: <h1 itemprop="line" style="-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.16667; font-family: "Abril Titling Bold", "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Palatino Lino", "Palatino LT STD", Georgia, serif; font-size: 3rem; vertical-align: line; color: rgb10, 22, 51;">Xi Jinping's cousin a high roller as Crown comes under pressure over crime, influence</h1> <p style="-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: line; color: rgb10, 22, 51;">A cousin of Chinese President Xi Jinping was aboard a private jet for high-roller gamblers when it was searched by federal agents on the Gold Coast in 2016 on suspicion that it was involved in international money laundering. <p style="-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: line; color: rgb10, 22, 51;">The initial target of the police search of the jet’s passengers was an alleged criminal fugitive and business partner of Crown Resorts, Tom Zhou. But the search also revealed that one of Mr Zhou’s travelling companions was Mr Xi's cousin, Ming Chai.Multiple sources have confirmed that police and security agencies, including ASIO, have since made detailed inquiries about why Mr Chai - a Crown resorts “VVIP” (very, very important person) - was aboard the flight with Mr Zhou, who is an alleged crime figure and Communist Party influence operative. <p style="-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: "PT Serif", Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: line; color: rgb10, 22, 51;">A trove of thousands of leaked files from inside the Australian gaming giant shows how Crown and its high-roller agents have encouraged and facilitated the travel to Australia of several figures of interest to police and security agencieshttps://www.watoday.com.au/business/companies/xi-jinping-s-cousin-a-high-roller-as-crown-comes-under-pressure-over-crime-influence-20190726-p52b2s.html

As I just posted in the other thread, this story didn’t reveal anything surprising at all. You don’t think these types of people are hanging around The Star as well? Of course they are!

What does PM SlyMo say Isaac?

Chinese investors back major new meatworks for north Queensland

Tom Major, Monday July 29, 2019 - 12:17 EST The north west Queensland town of Hughenden hopes an economic boom and jobs boost will materialise after new deeds were signed for developing a meat processing facility.



Chinese investment company CNVM Investments has signed a business plan with Flinders Shire Council representatives to commit to the Hughenden Processing Facility, with operations commencing in 2022.

The council mayor, Jane McNamara, said the contract required reworking after previous attempts, which included two other partners.

"It's been a couple of years now since we had three partners, now it's just the Flinders Shire Council and CNVM going forward with the development of this project," she said.

"Importantly this new project will provide the opportunity to expand, develop further export channels, and grow the domestic supply chain for Queensland beef into China."

Chief executive of CNVM Investments, Miao Wang, said the success of the meatworks could lead to greater Chinese investment in the future.

"This is a very exciting project not only for CNVM and partners along the supply chain to China, but also for further developing good working relationships," she said.



Expanded plans

An application for a feedlot holding as many as 50,000 cattle will be submitted in order to provide for future growth.

"It will build up to the required number. If you get the licence for a larger number it's easier [in the long-term]," Cr McNamara said.



"With the advancement of we're hoping that some of the fodder required will be sourced locally."

Up to 1,000 head a day will be processed into quarters in Hughenden, before being snap-frozen and shipped to China from the Port of Townsville.

When complete, 200 employees will be needed to operate the works at full capacity.

Cr McNamara said the cattle for lot feeding could be sourced from as far away as the Northern Territory, where Chinese companies are circling

"We will be getting beasts from across north Queensland and the Northern Territory. It's a very good project for the whole of north Queensland," she said.



Operation timeline

The developers hope the necessary State and Commonwealth approvals will be in place by the end of 2019, with construction beginning in 2020.

"I'm sure we have great support from both Federal and State Governments on this proposal," Cr McNamara said.

CNVM Investments is planning to begin operations from the works in 2022.

Biosecurity Tasmania boss 'not aware' of cruelty investigations at Chinese dairy giant VDL

High-rolling tourists are being invited to hunt and kill wombats at a luxury hunting lodge run by a Chinese businessman who is a Crown casino partner with alleged crime links.

Appearing in English as ‘Dude Ranch’ on Google Maps, from the front the property has a driveway that, apart from security signs, doesn’t look too out of place in the picturesque Victorian shire of Murrindindi, about 100 kms north-east of Melbourne.

But utes and tractors aren’t the most common vehicles passing through the CCTV-monitored gates. Instead, stretch limousines with blacked-out windows are often spotted coming and going.

The appearance of luxury cars on the dirt road has attracted the attention of nearby residents in the past year. Gun fire ringing out from the property had them curious.

Then a dead animal in a nearby paddock raised their suspicions.

Now, an investigation by Channel Nine media has revealed the owner of the mysterious hunting lodge to be Tom Zhou, a wealthy Chinese businessman, international fugitive and associate of Crown casinos.

Locals are scared.

Zhou has strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party and, according to the newspaper reports, is wanted in China for financial crime that has netted him tens of millions of dollars.

He is the subject of an Interpol notice and is supposed to be arrested immediately if he crosses a country’s border.

Instead, he owns luxury houses in Melbourne and the high-end shooting range on a 809-hectare (2000 acre) property backing on to Murrindindi Scenic Reserve, in the state’s north-east.

“They’re not just rich; they’re rich high-rollers coming in luxury cars,” one neighbour told The New Daily.

Tourists have tagged themselves at the Murrindindi property on Google

“These tourists are coming in as gun-toting John Waynes.”

Authorities have the property on their radar, and police are investigating whether crimes have been committed there.

“Victoria Police is aware of reports of illegal hunting at a Murrindindi property,” spokeswoman Leonie Johnson said.

On the company’s website, translated from Mandarin, Zhou’s shooting range boasts an authentic Australian tourist experience for Chinese trophy hunters.

“When we come to Australia, we should experience life that we can’t experience in China,” it reads.

“The first thing that should be felt in Australia is to be a wilderness hunter in the mountains of Australia.”

Visitors without any shooting experience need not worry – the website assures tourists that “even if you don’t have any shooting experience, it doesn’t matter”.

“With professional guidance, you will be a great shooter!” it reads.

“Hares, foxes, wombats, wild ducks, red deer, sambars (deer) … a variety of wild animals to spend a happy holiday with you.”

A screenshot of the shooting range website depicting a wombat.

A Melbourne man, who owns a property in the Shire, told The New Daily he was shocked the business was encouraging tourists to come here and shoot wombats.

“Wombats are a native animal,” he said.

“They travel at a max speed of what you and I can walk at … how can you put a picture of a wombat on the website?”

Common wombats are a protected species in Victoria, except in 193 districts including Murrindindi where the animals have been declared unprotected wildlife.

Tensions are boiling over in the tight-knit community, with neighbours reporting they feel “scared” of unlicensed and inexperienced shooters firing powerful weapons close to their properties.

Horse and cattle breeders are particularly worried, with some saying they fear their animals are being “spooked” by the regular sound of high-calibre gun fire and are struggling to breed.

Despite the concerns from locals, it appears the owners of the hunting grounds are not planning to shut down any time soon; instead, they want to expand.

A planning application submitted to Murrindindi Shire Council shows Zhou wants to build a large hotel and a function complex on the property that will include a bar, restaurant and a gym.

Residents have indicated they will lodge an objection.

Hey Isaac, how are those freedom loving youth protesters going in Hong Kong? 

Yeah but the kids in HK?

A young doctor visited China in 1959 and now his diagnosis is coming to pass in Hong Kong

Updated about an hour ago

Sixty years ago, a young Melbourne doctor did what very few Westerners did at the time. He went to China.

An adventurous soul, John Hamilton spent five years overseas, punctuating his world travels with spells as a ship's doctor.

In February 1959, as he listened to Richie Benaud's XI slug it out with Peter May's England side in the fifth and final Test at the MCG, Dr Hamilton wrote his regular weekly letter to his parents back in Dandenong, Victoria.

His observations of China, made two years into Chairman Mao's economically disastrous Great Leap Forward, were astonishingly prescient. Not just of the rise of China, but how its advance would go hand in hand with a particular brand of authoritarianism.

With Hong Kong now on a bloody precipice 22 years after it was handed back to the Chinese by the British, and with Xi Jinping's retaliation to protesters seemingly imminent, the Melbourne doctor's assessment from all those years ago is acute.

"Now for some impressions of the Chinese People's Republic, as it is called," Dr Hamilton wrote as he sailed from Qingdao to Hong Kong on the British cargo ship the MV Glenartney on February 14, 1959.

He'd spent about three days in Qingdao, or Tsing-Tao as he spelled it, after a week or so in Shanghai and other Chinese port cities.

"The biggest impression is one of rapid industrialisation," he wrote. "There is no-one not working — no beggars seen etc (particularly as this is a crime). Everyone wearing the same dress: blue serge buttoned up to a high collar. No distinction made between male or female in dress or in work.

"There was no laughter either, all hushed and quiet and busy. No-one would look at us even, and if small children approached their elders dragged them away. There were a tremendous number of people in uniforms of the army or navy.

"Everyone is subjected to continuous propaganda over loudspeakers installed everywhere. This is of the two main forms: (1) how they will crush the imperialists by economic means; (2) how 'great and bountiful' China was about to (become) in the next 12 years and pass the imperialists in production."

Chinese officials censoring visitors

Dr Hamilton, my late father-in-law, was a seasoned traveller by the time he visited China, having worked in New York, Trinidad and Britain in between extensive ventures through Asia, Europe and parts of Africa.

Communist China made quite the impact on 28-year-old Dr Hamilton. As he always did, he took photographs of what he saw. Not all of them survive.

He lost a roll of slide film when he was temporarily detained by an official who thought he was spying on warships in Shanghai.

But they could not censor what he saw.

"All their posters depict either imagined scenes of the future or of stimulus to greater production, or the squashing, shooting or hanging of the Imperialist, particularly ones wearing a hat marked US," he wrote.

"When we reached each port we were each personally checked then all herded into the lounge — Chinese crew and all — and then a thorough search of the ship made lasting several hours.

"The same occurred on leaving. Only those with sailor cards, as I have, were allowed ashore and although one could walk the streets one could only shop at the Seaman's Club set up by their government.

"Any photos taken had to be developed by them and viewed before one could get the negative.

"Impression — these people more than any others are to be reckoned with in 20 years. They will be able to achieve a lot because the nature of the mass of the people is submissive and always has been and there are 600 million of them."

Remember, he wrote this in 1959. Twenty years later, Deng Xiaoping introduced market-based economic principles to the anaemic Chinese economy, opening up his impoverished nation to foreign investment and, more significantly, returning the control of land back to peasants.

Deng's reforms — which enabled an economic miracle that lifted millions out of poverty — started the West's delusion that market economy reforms and exposure to the international way of doing business would inevitably democratise China. This has never materialised.

China's social contract with its people since Deng has been prosperity. In that, it has triumphed.

But this never came with a promise of political reform or progressive personal freedom. Beijing's bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, ordered under Deng, showed this.

Now the world waits anxiously to see how the Chinese Communist Party will react to the democratic uprising in Hong Kong.

Contending with the 'Dragons of the East'

Chinese President Xi Jinping was five when Dr Hamilton visited China and 26 when Deng appointed Xi's reformist father Xi Zhongxun to establish special experimental zones for economic reforms, including Shenzhen, which lies across the river from Hong Kong.

That experiment was a grand success, somewhat lost amid the extraordinary, world-changing transformation of China from communist economic laggard to global superpower.

Shenzhen, once a sleepy fishing village, has slowly sapped the lifeblood from its river cousin city.

Its economic might, inspired and sourced from the trading systems that made Hong Kong one of the Dragons of the East, saw it overtake the former British colony on economic output last year.

It has passed the production of the imperialists' former stronghold, just as those posters seen by Dr Hamilton predicted in 1959.

Xi has completed his father's transformation of Shenzhen, eroding but not eliminating Hong Kong's importance to the Chinese economy.

Chinese-directed Hong Kong crackdown looms

Hong Kong's protesters now challenge Xi's personal authority and defy the command of the Chinese Communist Party, which warned on Tuesday that the city had been pushed towards a "dangerous abyss".

"We would like to make clear to the very small group of unscrupulous and violent criminals and the dirty forces behind them: those who play with fire will perish by it," China's Hong Kong affairs office warned ominously.

Observers worry what comes next.

"I fear the current situation could end badly for Hong Kong's people," said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

It is hard not to agree. In the short arc of post-war Chinese history, its rulers have been intolerant of dissent.

"So this could end with the People's Liberation Army marching into Hong Kong to assert their brutal authority. The only good thing is that this will expose Beijing's Leninist authoritarian regime for what it is," Mr Jennings said.

"Australian fretting about Chinese economic 'punishment' will take a back seat to global revulsion if Xi creates his own Tiananmen Square moment in the streets of Hong Kong."

As Dr Hamilton wrote all those years ago, China is indeed to be reckoned with.

A young doctor visited China in 1959 and now his diagnosis is coming to pass in Hong Kong

Updated Sun at 10:23am

Sixty years ago, a young Melbourne doctor did what very few Westerners did at the time. He went to China.

An adventurous soul, John Hamilton spent five years overseas, punctuating his world travels with spells as a ship's doctor.

In February 1959, as he listened to Richie Benaud's XI slug it out with Peter May's England side in the fifth and final Test at the MCG, Dr Hamilton wrote his regular weekly letter to his parents back in Dandenong, Victoria.

His observations of China, made two years into Chairman Mao's economically disastrous Great Leap Forward, were astonishingly prescient. Not just of the rise of China, but how its advance would go hand in hand with a particular brand of authoritarianism.

With Hong Kong now on a bloody precipice 22 years after it was handed back to the Chinese by the British, and with Xi Jinping's retaliation to protesters seemingly imminent, the Melbourne doctor's assessment from all those years ago is acute.

"Now for some impressions of the Chinese People's Republic, as it is called," Dr Hamilton wrote as he sailed from Qingdao to Hong Kong on the British cargo ship the MV Glenartney on February 14, 1959.

He'd spent about three days in Qingdao, or Tsing-Tao as he spelled it, after a week or so in Shanghai and other Chinese port cities.

"The biggest impression is one of rapid industrialisation," he wrote. "There is no-one not working — no beggars seen etc (particularly as this is a crime). Everyone wearing the same dress: blue serge buttoned up to a high collar. No distinction made between male or female in dress or in work.

"There was no laughter either, all hushed and quiet and busy. No-one would look at us even, and if small children approached their elders dragged them away. There were a tremendous number of people in uniforms of the army or navy.

"Everyone is subjected to continuous propaganda over loudspeakers installed everywhere. This is of the two main forms: (1) how they will crush the imperialists by economic means; (2) how 'great and bountiful' China was about to (become) in the next 12 years and pass the imperialists in production."

Chinese officials censoring visitors

Dr Hamilton, my late father-in-law, was a seasoned traveller by the time he visited China, having worked in New York, Trinidad and Britain in between extensive ventures through Asia, Europe and parts of Africa.

Communist China made quite the impact on 28-year-old Dr Hamilton. As he always did, he took photographs of what he saw. Not all of them survive.

He lost a roll of slide film when he was temporarily detained by an official who thought he was spying on warships in Shanghai.

But they could not censor what he saw.

"All their posters depict either imagined scenes of the future or of stimulus to greater production, or the squashing, shooting or hanging of the Imperialist, particularly ones wearing a hat marked US," he wrote.

"When we reached each port we were each personally checked then all herded into the lounge — Chinese crew and all — and then a thorough search of the ship made lasting several hours.

"The same occurred on leaving. Only those with sailor cards, as I have, were allowed ashore and although one could walk the streets one could only shop at the Seaman's Club set up by their government.

"Any photos taken had to be developed by them and viewed before one could get the negative.

"Impression — these people more than any others are to be reckoned with in 20 years. They will be able to achieve a lot because the nature of the mass of the people is submissive and always has been and there are 600 million of them."

Remember, he wrote this in 1959. Twenty years later, Deng Xiaoping introduced market-based economic principles to the anaemic Chinese economy, opening up his impoverished nation to foreign investment and, more significantly, returning the control of land back to peasants.

Deng's reforms — which enabled an economic miracle that lifted millions out of poverty — started the West's delusion that market economy reforms and exposure to the international way of doing business would inevitably democratise China. This has never materialised.

China's social contract with its people since Deng has been prosperity. In that, it has triumphed.

But this never came with a promise of political reform or progressive personal freedom. Beijing's bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, ordered under Deng, showed this.

Now the world waits anxiously to see how the Chinese Communist Party will react to the democratic uprising in Hong Kong.

Contending with the 'Dragons of the East'

Chinese President Xi Jinping was five when Dr Hamilton visited China and 26 when Deng appointed Xi's reformist father Xi Zhongxun to establish special experimental zones for economic reforms, including Shenzhen, which lies across the river from Hong Kong.

That experiment was a grand success, somewhat lost amid the extraordinary, world-changing transformation of China from communist economic laggard to global superpower.

Shenzhen, once a sleepy fishing village, has slowly sapped the lifeblood from its river cousin city.

Its economic might, inspired and sourced from the trading systems that made Hong Kong one of the Dragons of the East, saw it overtake the former British colony on economic output last year.

It has passed the production of the imperialists' former stronghold, just as those posters seen by Dr Hamilton predicted in 1959.

Xi has completed his father's transformation of Shenzhen, eroding but not eliminating Hong Kong's importance to the Chinese economy.

Chinese-directed Hong Kong crackdown looms

Hong Kong's protesters now challenge Xi's personal authority and defy the command of the Chinese Communist Party, which warned on Tuesday that the city had been pushed towards a "dangerous abyss".

"We would like to make clear to the very small group of unscrupulous and violent criminals and the dirty forces behind them: those who play with fire will perish by it," China's Hong Kong affairs office warned ominously.

Observers worry what comes next.

"I fear the current situation could end badly for Hong Kong's people," said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

It is hard not to agree. In the short arc of post-war Chinese history, its rulers have been intolerant of dissent.

"So this could end with the People's Liberation Army marching into Hong Kong to assert their brutal authority. The only good thing is that this will expose Beijing's Leninist authoritarian regime for what it is," Mr Jennings said.

"Australian fretting about Chinese economic 'punishment' will take a back seat to global revulsion if Xi creates his own Tiananmen Square moment in the streets of Hong Kong."

As Dr Hamilton wrote all those years ago, China is indeed to be reckoned with.

What are the communist capitalists up to now?

The plants scientific name is Xanthoparmelia scabrosa, and while it could have some properties that are similar to Viagra, Knight said, it can also be “somewhat toxic”.

Lichen found on footpaths can also be tainted by inner-city pollutants such as dog urine and excrement, car exhaust, arsenic, mercury and lead.

The lichen in question is a species that only grows in New Zealand and the Pacific, most often in urban areas, and there are hundreds of products selling it in pill and powder form on the Chinese online marketplace Alibaba, retailing for anywhere between US$12-300 per kilogram.

Knight said most of the products available online were made up of 80% Viagra and 20% grass clippings. To her knowledge no rigorous testing had been done of the “sexy pavement” lichen to prove its efficacy or safety for human consumption.

Knight’s tongue-in-cheek name for the species has been adopted by website inaturalist, a popular global scientific initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society which describes itself as a place to “identify the plants and animals”.

“It hasn’t ever really been tested, and it is somewhat toxic, so it is not advisable to consume it. But it is a precursor to Viagra, however large quantities could indeed be very harmful” Knight told the Guardian.

New Zealand botanist Dr Peter de Lange also derided the therapeutic qualities of the plant, telling the Newsroom website that its effect on sexual function could be opposite of what was hoped for.

But Knight said lichen could have huge health benefits. “It doesn’t occur all over the world, it doesn’t even occur in China where all these vast quantities are coming from. But lichen does have huge potential, and there is a lot of research underway to see how they can be used for the next generation of antibiotics to replace the ones we are becoming resistant too.”

There are at least 20,000 varieties of lichen known worldwide, 2,000 of which grow in New Zealand, especially on shady footpaths, the trunks of fruit trees and in native forests. Like much of New Zealand unique flora, some varieties and species of lichen are now endangered or under threat.

“It is nice to focus people’s attention on lichens, I always say they are hidden in full view,” said Knight

“They tend to be understudied and underreported. They’re under-recognised, and they’re very important because they are the colonisers – they are the first things that will colonise bare rock. When life came out of the ocean … there was lichen.”https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/new-zealanders-warned-about-the-consumption-of-sexy-pavement-lichen/ar-AAFPCh7

China’s Dire Straits: No Brothers in Arms – Part One

Paid pro China student agitators at State Library demonstration the other day.

My nephew is going to Vietnam next week. I will warn him to check the dress code.