Australian school children protesting for Palestine will gladden the hearts of the Crinks. The Crinks is not a new millennial boy band or brand of potato chips, it is the alliance of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (Crinks).

In essence, the Crinks is an expanded Axis of Evil, a term first used by President George W Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address to refer to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, dangerous countries but economic basket cases. Some 21 years later the Crinks are far more formidable, driven by the greatest adversary the West faces, communist China.

At the 2023 Halifax International Security Forum last week, Andrew Coyne, a columnist at the Globe and Mail summed up the goal of the Crinks with three ‘d’ words – ‘to divide, demoralise and ultimately displace the democracies’.

China’s ‘Crinky’ strategy at present seems to be to avoid confronting the West directly while wearing it down in not one but two proxy wars – in Ukraine and Israel. While China claims to be neutral it profits by supplying a range of dual-use or non-lethal supplies from drones to bulletproof vests. And China doesn’t just supply dual-use technology. In 2021 and again this year, the U.S. Navy seized Chinese weapons in transit to the Houthis in Yemen.

There is a military trickle down from China to Russia to Iran, and then to Hamas, Hezbollah, terror groups in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and terror groups in Latin America. It works in other directions as well. For example, Iran is manufacturing and selling kamikaze drones to Russia.

Yet the Crinks seem to be able to count on an extraordinary ally – call him the Crinkly Crink-in-Chief, no lesser personage than the President of the United States.

In her book, The Laptop from Hell, published in November 2021, Miranda Devine exposed the evidence that President Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business and influence-peddling ventures in China and Ukraine.

This was followed by Peter Schweizer’s book Red Handed – How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, published in January 2022, which exposes the American elites helping China in its quest for global hegemony by building China’s military, technological, and economic might. These elites include not just Ivy League universities, Silicon Valley gurus, Wall Street high rollers, and former military officers but politicians and their relations including the Biden family.

And so it seems, by both accident and design, President Biden has been the Crinks’ best friend. The Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan undoubtedly emboldened President Putin to invade Ukraine, convinced that the US didn’t have the ticker to defend the country.

That the cakewalk to Kiev has turned into a quagmire has harmed Russia, Europe, and America but it’s been great for China in more ways than one. China profits from arming other Crinks, and every bullet or weapon used in Israel or Ukraine depletes US reserves that it will need if it is called upon to defend Taiwan.

In addition, for reasons that perhaps only former President Barack Obama understands, the Biden administration has been the great enabler of Iran, which just happens to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

The Iranian nuclear program has accelerated unimpeded on Biden’s watch with a UN report stating in February that Iran was enriching uranium up to 90 per cent – the level needed for weapons. A former Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi boasted that, ‘It’s no secret that we have become a quasi-nuclear state.’

But it’s not just Iran’s nuclear program that has advanced. Since Biden took office and removed the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, Iran has been able to earn close to $60 billion in oil and gas exports.

Then, when the Biden Administration agreed on August 10 to pay $6 billion dollars for the release of five Iranian-Americans imprisoned in Iran – a deal that put the price for each prisoner at more than a billion dollars – they undoubtedly incentivised hostage-taking.

Iran didn’t need that much incentivising. It’s just over 44 years since Iranian students who supported the Ayatollah’s Islamic revolution stormed the American Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979 and took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostages. The mullahs have been bartering hostages ever since. Australia had a taste of this in securing the release of Kylie Moore-Gilbert.

But sure enough, when Hamas, funded by Iran, invaded Israel last month, it didn’t just murder over 1,200 Israelis and wound over 4,500 Israelis while committing hideous atrocities, it took more than 240 people hostage .

And while the hostages in Gaza are released in dribs and drabs, there is an endless supply of fresh victims. This week, for example, Houthi terrorists, funded by Iran, hijacked an Israeli-owned ship and took the 25 crew members hostage.

So as school children gather to rally for the liberation of Palestine, perhaps someone should mention to them that if Palestine is liberated by Hamas it will become yet another Iranian-backed terror state.

Someone should also mention to the Australian government, which has just granted almost 900 Palestinians temporary visas since Hamas’s October 7 attacks, that an opinion poll conducted in Gaza and the West Bank by Arab World for Research and Development on November 14 found that 75 per cent of those surveyed supported Hamas’s October 7 atrocities and 80 per cent support the destruction of Israel.

That should surprise no one. As Bassam Tawil writes for the Gatestone Institute, ‘The Palestinian Authority and Hamas have raised an entire generation of Palestinians on the glorification of terrorism and the imperative of murdering Jews and eliminating Israel.’

If the Middle East seems far away to the protesting students they should perhaps think about the fact that, according to Schweizer, the American elites backing China apparently believe that the China’s dictatorship is superior to American and presumably Australian democracy, which probably explains the push to adopt Chinese-style authoritarianism in the West.

If students want a taste of what that might be like Chinese dissident Songpinganq posted footage on X (Twitter) of Chinese 15-minute cities where your digital ID, facial ID, digital wallet, and social credit score are all linked and required to enter and leave your neighborhood. Step out of line and you won’t step out of your neighbourhood, while a fine is automatically debited from your bank account. If the Crinks win the war on the West, it will be coming soon to a city near you.