Big Business Betrays Us All

Many big businesses were all-too-willing to deal with Hitler’s Third Reich. They faced little to no censure, let alone punishment, after the war. Their miserable successor quislings are likewise facing almost no consequences for selling their country – often literally, by the shipload – to a communist dictatorship whose crimes often make the Nazis’ pale in comparison. They can’t even, like the greedy corporates of the 1930s, plead ignorance.

These scumbags know exactly what communist China is – and they’re still lining up with their hands out.

When Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Volkswagen chairman Oliver Blume and the heads of Nestle, Pfizer, chip-maker Broadcom and Rio Tinto converge on Beijing, the message is clear: China still commands the attention of the world’s most powerful executives.

And Hitler won Time’s “Man of the Year” and did a huge trade with everyone from IBM to Kodak. Not to mention literally creating Volkswagen. What’s your point?

Now in its 26th year, the China Development Forum represents the gold standard of access to Beijing’s leadership – a meticulously choreographed two-day event where the CEOs of trillion-dollar companies sit across the table from ministers, vice-premiers and architects of the world’s second largest economy.

You mean, the leaders of the world’s sole remaining communist superpower.

This year’s forum, which opened on Sunday, drew an impressive roster despite the urgency of geopolitical tensions that kept some Middle Eastern representatives away. Mr Cook, the forum’s co-chair, gave a speech at the opening ceremony, signalling Apple’s continued commitment to its largest manufacturing base.

You mean, the world’s largest slave-owning economy. Just like Kodak knowingly profited from forced labour in Nazi Germany.

Few of these unconscionable traitors selling their souls and their countries to the increasingly bellicose communist giant, though, hold a candle to Australia’s very own quisling. When it comes to sheer, brazen, hypocrisy and soulless greed, Andrew Forrest is in a league of his own.

Calling fossil fuels a “weapon of war” and green energy a “weapon of peace”, Mr Forrest raised the spectre of the US president’s threat to “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants – “starting with the biggest one” – if Tehran refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He compared the prospect of targeting a nation’s power supply, and its energy sovereignty, with the starvation tactics Russia employed against Ukraine in the 1930s.

What on earth is this billionaire traitor babbling about? One can almost imagine Xi Jinping’s hand jammed firmly up his arse, manipulating with a sock puppet, while he parrots a script straight from the Central Committee.

He warned the room full of executives – many of whose companies depend on stable energy markets – that years of war and severe economic consequences could result from a strike. Iran’s response, he suggested, would be “incredibly well prepared” and the retaliation would “likely no longer be surgical”.

Since when is slamming drones into hotels, and flinging unguided rockets at civilian areas ‘surgical’? Forrest only opens his mouth to change which murderous authoritarian regime’s hole he’s sticking his tongue into.

Since the start of the war, Iran’s attacks have included missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure across the region, and strikes that have killed civilians in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, where ballistic missiles have killed at least 15 civilians. Cluster bomb attacks are now launched every few hours by Iran against Israeli residential neighbourhoods.

But Forrest wants to talk about that even less than this ‘anti-slavery advocate’ does China’s vast slave economy. The same slave economy that has made him a billionaire.

There were some notable absences.

BHP remains locked in a bitter dispute with China Mineral Resources Group over iron ore supply contracts. CMRG, a state-backed purchasing consortium established in 2022, is accused of using hardball tactics to force BHP into a new pricing framework, including instructing Chinese steel mills and traders to halt or restrict BHP purchases. BHP did not respond to a request for comment on why its leadership did not attend the event.

Japanese executives were similarly absent as tensions percolate between Beijing and Tokyo. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested last year that Japanese armed forces could be deployed if China invaded Taiwan, a red line for Beijing that appeared to make this year’s forum politically fraught for Japanese multinationals.

It’s too much to hope, of course, that BHP has learned its lesson: China is not just a murderous communist dictatorship, but a lying, deceitful bully whose words might as well be written on wind. As soon as Beijing waves the cash, BHP will come grovelling back, just like Australia’s winemakers, fishermen, and beef and barley producers.

Only to whine like smacked children again when China summarily shafts them – again.

But whichever scorching corner of Hell Forrest occupies when his demise deservedly comes, he’ll hopefully share it with the political elites who just keep selling out the national interest for a few measly renminbi.

A company headed by Labor powerbroker Wayne Swan and given approval by the Albanese government to fast-track a $10bn project to mine silica sand to turbocharge the domestic solar energy industry will instead be exporting the product to Chinese and other foreign buyers.

The Northern Silica Project, planned at Cape Flattery on Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula by Brisbane-based Diatreme Resources, in June was awarded Major Project Status by Industry Minister Tim Ayres, who promised the project would boost Australia’s renewables sector.

The company has signed up to supply the silica to one of China’s biggest solar energy product suppliers. A second renewables project connected to Mr Swan, the $11bn Star of the South wind farm in Victoria, has also been awarded the coveted fast-tracking status.

Diatreme Resources has an agreement with Chinese solar giant Flat Glass Group to facilitate long-term binding offtake arrangements to supply silica from Cape Flattery. China is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. No such agreements have been reached with Australian operators.

We haven’t tarred and feathered, let alone hung, traitors for far too long.