NARHU

     Many of us lefties got some sweet relief on Sunday January 13, 2024. Taiwan held its election for President and the candidate China did not want to win, won. He has only 40% of the legislators backing him in the parliament and not a few Taiwanese officials chewing antacids, should China respond, but Taiwan is safe for a while, with its "strategic ambiguity". It was announced on the Monday, following the election, that a small island south of the equator, was dropping its diplomatic status with Taiwan. We may assume that this island is responding to pressure from China. So far, no other Taiwanese allies have followed suit and kowtowed to the PRC. This tiny spot of land (pop not quite 12000) has another, more interesting history. 

     The island of Nauru, lies south of the Phillipines just below the equator.. At one time it had strategic value. Over millions of years birds had nested on the mountain in the center of this volcanic island. It must have once been a beautiful place with a lush tropical jungle and water cascading down the mountain at its center from the frequent tropical rains. No one since the beginning of the 19th century has been able to see that magnificence. The product which the world lusted for was Guano, bird poop. The nitrogen was important for growing food, part of the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium content of fertilizer. Until the 18th century, or earlier, there was not much competition with farmers for that nitrogen. But the world needed massive amounts of nitrogen in order to make a product that could advance the blessings of civilization throughout the heathen world, gunpowder. Fortunes were made by company's like WR Grace and company, for whom I once worked in one of their restaurants. The average lifetime of a guano harvester was somewhere around 5-7 years, so someone eventually got the brilliant idea to hire Chinese labor and house them on abandoned Clipper ship hulls. Those noble vessels were replaced by the much bigger Windjammers when they became obsolete thanks to steamships. The short-lived guano harvesters were replaced much more easily by people desperate to immigrate to a more prosperous nation. A nation like the young United States of America. There were no immigration laws early on, and republicans were more tolerable, but that did not protect people of color from being oppressed by capitalism.

     I'm not sure when they stopped mining guano on Nauru, I'm pretty sure it continued into the 20th century. Someone, probably a native who had not given permission for capitalism to pursue its quest for greed on their homeland, started asking uncomfortable questions about the missing mountain that had become a hole in the islands middle, and the increasing severity of higher tides. The cynic within me believes that the corporation ended their depredations only because they were concerned for the ships which carried off this product. It would not take too many islanders to blow up one of those ships, filled with nitrogen. We can be sure they were not concerned for the islanders.

    But this created another concern for the islanders, how can they replace their lost income. Intelligent Tech was the answer: not that it was necessarily intelligent, but online gambling requires  IT, if not intelligence. Since at least the early 2000s gambling companies have installed computer equipment that allows us to transfer our paychecks to illegal gambling cartels through Nauru. We know they are there. We know they are operating an illegal business, but this little island is so remote from large land masses that it would take a navy to make arrests. Even better for them, a small flotilla of ships can be detected far over the horizon. By the time the ships drop anchor, the people running the illegal operation have disappeared on fast boats with the software. Such is the nature of capitalism today. Such is the nature of the internet era. 

     Personally, I don't give a fig what happens to Nauru from this point on. The initial crime was committed long ago, everything subsequent to that time will soon be inundated by higher sea-levels, and, since the GOP refuses to admit the reality of climate change, that is not going to stop. I do not believe anyone has found the solution to sub-surface business-as-usual. Based on the results of the voyage of the Titan Submersible last fall, I doubt that will be the answer. So China's diplomatic use of Nauru will soon disappear as did the guano. I suppose you could describe both of those as taking out the shit.

     Taiwan, on the other hand will remain to pester the Ironically-named Peoples republic of China. The world soon learned after Russia invaded Ukraine the utility of small drones. Not the nearly lifesize Predator drones we have used to kill leaders of hostile cults, and wedding parties, but small, hand-held drones that can drop a grenade on enemy troops and machinery before it is detected. The Gulf of Taiwan is narrow enough to fly a small drone undetected over its waters, but wide enough to shoot down enemy aircraft before it gets within range. If China should try using a missile to destroy Taiwan, they will have destroyed the silicon wafer production plants the world depends on, the wafers on which offshore gambling businesses depend. Besides, I imagine Taiwan has missle defenses there already, capable of neutralizing anything China launches. Better than that, they have the Phillipines, South Korea, and Japan bracketing its landmass. South Korea can be depended on, the Phillipines, with its recently-elected Son of Ferdinand Marcos, "Bongbong", may still be testing which super-power will be buttering its toast. Adding to that confusion is the intention of North Korea and its unstable letter-writer to an over-dramatic piece of shit like our former president. The one that lost several fortunes, not gambling, but by owning gambling enterprises. If he ever needs to flee this nation, Nauru might be the perfect place for him and his worthless family. And we would make them comfortable there. I would even send him some vinyl recordings by Taylor Swift and a life-size publicity still. 

     The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of trump operating a casino on a shrinking island on the equator in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. If our former authoritarian-in-chief should go bankrupt for a seventh time no one would know, or care. And sometime around mid-century the trump family would be required to take swim-lessons.