- Watch: Autonomous Plane Makes First Successful Landing In Germany
German researchers at Technische Universität München (TUM), located in Munich, Germany, have designed and tested an autonomous system that can land a small civilian plane without relying on ground systems. This technology could open up a new era of autonomous flight — and take the human error out of landings, reported TechCrunch
Commercial passenger planes heavily rely on ground-based systems that aid pilots in locating the runway on the final approach. This system is called the Instrument Landing System (ILS), guides a commercial aircraft to the runway. Pilots use ILS to verify their alignment and glide slope with the runway but rarely use it for an automated landing.
The new automated landing system is called C2Land, uses a set of cameras and sensors mounted in the nose of the plane to guide the airplane for final approach. The plane’s computers take over and land the aircraft on the centerline of the runway, without human reaction nor any help from ground systems. The automated system was installed on a Diamond DA42 Twin Star, a twin-engine plane that seats four, for experimental testing.
The first test flight was conducted in May as the Diamond DA42 made a successful automatic landing at the Diamond Aircraft airfield.
Test pilot Thomas Wimmer was amazed by the new landing system:
“The cameras already recognize the runway at a great distance from the airport. The system then guides the aircraft through the landing approach on a completely automatic basis and lands it precisely on the runway’s centerline.”
Automated landings without ground-based systems is a significant milestone for the proliferation of automated flight, expected to revolutionize the transportation industry in the 2020s and beyond. This means computerized landings that aren’t possible at smaller airports because ILS isn’t installed could soon have the ability to see automated landings in the coming years.
Vision-assisted navigation systems like C2Land will likely become standard on all aircraft in the future; the technology is still its infancy.
- Danish History Professor Says It's Time To Build A Wall Around Europe
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit.news,
Danish history professor Uffe Østergaard says it’s time to build a wall around Europe because integration of migrants has failed and, “Protecting borders is necessary, otherwise the population will rebel against the government”.
Østergaard is a Jean Monnet professor of European civilisation and integration at Aarhus University and professor of European and Danish history at Copenhagen Business School. He specializes in European identity history and has studied multicultural and multiethnic states such as Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire and their successor states.
Writing in an opinion piece for the Politiken newspaper, Østergaard admits that he used to be heavily in favor of multiculturalism but has since reversed his position.
“The time has come to build walls with wire fences in four lanes, floodlights and guard posts,” states the headline of his piece, which argues that if this doesn’t take place there will be a split between western and eastern Europe based on adversarial ideas on the management of immigration.
“Protecting borders is necessary, otherwise the population will rebel against the government,” writes Østergaard, asserting that the rise of no-go ghettos across Europe is a clear sign that integration has failed.
“Ghettos are a good example of parallel societies that arise. The integration has not failed for everyone, but for relatively many people,” writes the professor, demanding that “assimilation” and not “integration” should be the goal.
It is simply not possible to absorb such large numbers of people into welfare states, according to Østergaard.
The professor’s tone is somewhat similar to comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin last month.
“The ruling elites have broken away from the people,” Putin told the Financial Times, adding that the “so-called liberal idea has outlived its purpose” and some western leaders had acknowledged that “multiculturalism” is “no longer tenable”.
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- John Whitehead Exposes America's Heart Of Darkness: Sexual Predators Within The Power-Elite
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends, compensating, to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom.”
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Power corrupts.
Anyone who believes differently hasn’t been paying attention.
Politics, religion, sports, government, entertainment, business, armed forces: it doesn’t matter what arena you’re talking about, they are all riddled with the kind of seedy, sleazy, decadent, dodgy, depraved, immoral, corrupt behavior that somehow gets a free pass when it involves the wealthy and powerful elite in America.
In this age of partisan politics and a deeply polarized populace, corruption – especially when it involves sexual debauchery, depravity and predatory behavior – has become the great equalizer.
Take Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund billionaire / convicted serial pedophile recently arrested on charges of molesting, raping and sex trafficking dozens of young girls.
It is believed that Epstein operated his own personal sex trafficking ring not only for his personal pleasure but also for the pleasure of his friends and business associates. According to The Washington Post, “several of the young women…say they were offered to the rich and famous as sex partners at Epstein’s parties.” At various times, Epstein ferried his friends about on his private plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”
This is part of America’s seedy underbelly.
As I documented in the in-depth piece I wrote earlier this year, child sex trafficking—the buying and selling of women, young girls and boys for sex, some as young as 9 years old—has become big business in America. It is the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.
Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.
It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators, either.
According to a 2016 investigative report, “boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).”
Who buys a child for sex?
Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.
Ordinary men, yes.
But then there are the extra-ordinary men, such as Jeffrey Epstein, who belong to a powerful, wealthy, elite segment of society that operates according to their own rules or, rather, who are allowed to sidestep the rules that are used like a bludgeon on the rest of us.
These men skate free of accountability by taking advantage of a criminal justice system that panders to the powerful, the wealthy and the elite.
Over a decade ago, when Epstein was first charged with raping and molesting young girls, he was gifted a secret plea deal with then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s current Labor Secretary, that allowed him to evade federal charges and be given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist: allowed to “work” at home six days a week before returning to jail to sleep. That secret plea deal has since been ruled illegal by a federal judge.
Yet here’s the thing: Epstein did not act alone.
I refer not only to Epstein’s accomplices, who recruited and groomed the young girls he is accused of raping and molesting, many of them homeless or vulnerable, but his circle of influential friends and colleagues that at one time included Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Both Clinton and Trump, renowned womanizers who have also been accused of sexual impropriety by a significant number of women, were at one time passengers on the Lolita Express.
As the Associated Press points out, “The arrest of the billionaire financier on child sex trafficking charges is raising questions about how much his high-powered associates knew about the hedge fund manager’s interactions with underage girls, and whether they turned a blind eye to potentially illegal conduct.”
In fact, a recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowing a 2,000-page document linked to the Epstein case to be unsealed references allegations of sexual abuse involving “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.”
This is not a minor incident involving minor players.
This is the heart of darkness.
Sex slaves. Sex trafficking. Secret societies. Powerful elites. Government corruption. Judicial cover-ups.
Once again, fact and fiction mirror each other.
Twenty years ago, Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut provided viewing audiences with a sordid glimpse into a secret sex society that indulged the basest urges of its affluent members while preying on vulnerable young women. It is not so different from the real world, where powerful men, insulated from accountability, indulge their base urges.
These secret societies flourish, implied Kubrick, because the rest of us are content to navigate life with our eyes wide shut, in denial about the ugly, obvious truths in our midst.
In so doing, we become accomplices to abusive behavior in our midst.
This is how corruption by the power elite flourishes.
For every Epstein who is—finally—called to account for his illegal sexual exploits after years of being given a free pass by those in power, there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) more in the halls of power and wealth whose predation of those most vulnerable among us continues unabated.
While Epstein’s alleged crimes are heinous enough on their own, he is part of a larger narrative of how a culture of entitlement becomes a cesspool and a breeding ground for despots and predators.
Remember the “DC Madam” who was charged with operating a phone-order sex business? Her clients included thousands of White House officials, lobbyists, and Pentagon, FBI, and IRS employees, as well as prominent lawyers, none of whom were ever exposed or held accountable.
Power corrupts.
Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.
We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.
A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs a civilian hospital and gets away with it.
Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sex crimes, government corruption, or the rule of law.
It’s the same old story all over again: man rises to power, man abuses power abominably, man intimidates and threatens anyone who challenges him with retaliation or worse, and man gets away with it because of a culture of compliance in which no one speaks up because they don’t want to lose their job or their money or their place among the elite.
It’s not just sexual predators that we have to worry about.
For every Jeffrey Epstein (or Bill Clinton or Harvey Weinstein or Roger Ailes or Bill Cosby or Donald Trump) who eventually gets called out for his sexual misbehavior, there are hundreds—thousands—of others in the American police state who are getting away with murder—in many cases, literally—simply because they can.
The cop who shoots the unarmed citizen first and asks questions later might get put on paid leave for a while or take a job with another police department, but that’s just a slap on the wrist. The shootings and SWAT team raids and excessive use of force will continue, because the police unions and the politicians and the courts won’t do a thing to stop it.
The war hawks who are making a profit by waging endless wars abroad, killing innocent civilians in hospitals and schools, and turning the American homeland into a domestic battlefield will continue to do so because neither the president nor the politicians will dare to challenge the military industrial complex.
The National Security Agency that carries out warrantless surveillance on Americans’ internet and phone communications will continue to do so, because the government doesn’t want to relinquish any of its ill-gotten powers and its total control of the populace.
Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.
Police officers will continue to shoot and kill unarmed citizens. Government agents—including local police—will continue to dress and act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies will continue to fleece taxpayers while eroding our liberties. Government technicians will continue to spy on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors will continue to make a killing by waging endless wars abroad.
And powerful men (and women) will continue to abuse the powers of their office by treating those around them as underlings and second-class citizens who are unworthy of dignity and respect and undeserving of the legal rights and protections that should be afforded to all Americans.
As Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the at the University of California, Berkeley, observed in the Harvard Business Review, “While people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing; when they start to feel powerful or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade. The powerful are more likely than other people to engage in rude, selfish, and unethical behavior.”
After conducting a series of experiments into the phenomenon of how power corrupts, Keltner concluded: “Just the random assignment of power, and all kinds of mischief ensues, and people will become impulsive. They eat more resources than is their fair share. They take more money. People become more unethical.They think unethical behavior is okay if they engage in it. People are more likely to stereotype. They’re more likely to stop attending to other people carefully.”
Power corrupts.
And absolute power corrupts absolutely.
However, it takes a culture of entitlement and a nation of compliant, willfully ignorant, politically divided citizens to provide the foundations of tyranny.
As researchers Joris Lammers and Adam Galinsky found, those in power not only tend to abuse that power but they also feel entitled to abuse it: “People with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want.”
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, for too long now, Americans have tolerated an oligarchy in which a powerful, elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots. They have paid homage to patriotism while allowing the military industrial complex to spread death and destruction abroad. And they have turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient.
We need to restore the rule of law for all people, no exceptions.
Here’s what the rule of law means in a nutshell: it means that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.
This culture of compliance must stop.
The empowerment of petty tyrants and political gods must end.
The state of denial must cease.
Let’s not allow this Epstein sex scandal to become just another blip in the news cycle that goes away all too soon, only to be forgotten when another titillating news headline takes its place.
Sex trafficking, like so many of the evils in our midst, is a cultural disease that is rooted in the American police state’s heart of darkness. It speaks to a far-reaching corruption that stretches from the highest seats of power down to the most hidden corners and relies on our silence and our complicity to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.
If we want to put an end to these wrongs, we must keep our eyes wide open.
- US Fast-Food Drive-Thrus Will Soon Use License Plate And Facial Recognition Technology
License plate recognition could be the new big thing at American drive-thrus, according to FT. Chains are now looking to deploy cameras that recognize license plates and help identify customers, personalizing digital menus and speeding up sales.
Starbucks began a pilot program in Korea last year with customers who voluntarily pre-registered their cars and now restaurants in the United States are looking to also give it a try. License plate recognition has existed since the 1970s but has mostly been associated with law-enforcement. Cameras attached to police cars or street fixtures read the license plates of passing vehicles and compare results to databases.
But as the cost of the software comes down, uses for LPR have grown. For retailers, LPR can help identify repeat customers, allowing businesses to link a customer’s credit card and order history up to a vehicle.
Customers who are signed up to loyalty programs or apps can load their information in voluntarily and cameras in the drive-thru lanes can also take photos of car plates. Software will then determine whether or not it belongs to a recurring customer that the restaurant has information for.
LPR start up 5Thru said that several chains in the U.S. and Canada were trying out its technology. It is expected to sign its first major contract by the end of the year.
Chief executive Daniel McCann said:
“5Thru’s technology helped restaurants process around an extra 30 cars a day, by reducing order time. The artificial intelligence-driven system also improves upselling by recommending items based on a customer’s past orders, the weather and how busy a store’s kitchen is.”
Tracking customers using cameras is just another way stores are seeking to become more efficient in the age of online shopping. Recall, we posted a couple months ago a story about how are malls were tracking people’s locations using their smartphones in order to help bolster business.
In March, McDonald’s bought a company called Dynamic Yield for $300 million that specialized in “decision logic” to help make food and upselling suggestions to drive-thru customers. Drivers are given options based on the time of day, the weather and their eating preference history. In 2017, KFC partnered with Baidu to develop facial recognition to predict someone’s order based on their age and their mood.
AT&T has reportedly received numerous requests from fast food chains looking to deploy these types of technologies via its 5G network. Michael Colaneri, vice-president of retail and restaurants at AT&T said: “We are at the advent of these capabilities, though nobody has quite pulled it all off.”
In addition to technical expertise, data driven personalization relies on information about customers. Many have criticized license plate recognition for being overly invasive and the United States has a litany of different rules, depending on the state, governing the technology.
Jason Spielfogel, director of product management at security company Identiv said:
“Although no drive-through chains in the US have yet rolled out LPR at scale, there are a lot of conversations going on.”
LPR can also take into account a vehicle’s age, make and condition to help recommend orders. McDonald’s has said, post acquisition, that the company could use LPR in the future to personalize smart menus. Xerox filed a patent in 2012 for a drive-thru tool to help track repeat customers using “vehicle and facial information”. The company hasn’t advertised that product, but Xerox offers LPR services and passenger detection tools to police. The system uses cameras to identify a vehicle and how many people are in it, while claiming to redact facial images for privacy purposes.
- Two Years Later, Trump Has Failed To Reverse America's Decline
Authored by Dilip Hiro via TomDispatch.com,
President Donald Trump was partly voted into office by Americans who felt that the self-proclaimed greatest power on Earth was actually in decline – and they weren’t wrong. Trump is capable of tweeting many things, but none of those tweets will stop that process of decline, nor will a trade war with a rising China or fierce oil sanctions on Iran.
You could feel this recently, even in the case of the increasingly pressured Iranians. There, with a single pinprick, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei effectively punctured Trump’s MAGA balloon and reminded many that, however powerful the U.S. still was, people in other countries were beginning to look at America differently at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Trump wearing MAGA cap in 2016. (Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0,via Wikimedia Commons)
Following a meeting in Tehran with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who brought a message from Trump urging the start of U.S.-Iranian negotiations, Khamenei tweeted, “We have no doubt in [Abe’s] goodwill and seriousness; but regarding what you mentioned from [the] U.S. president, I don’t consider Trump as a person deserving to exchange messages with, and I have no answer for him, nor will I respond to him in the future.” He then added: “We believe that our problems will not be solved by negotiating with the U.S., and no free nation would ever accept negotiations under pressure.”
نحن لا نشكّ في حسن نواياكم وجديّتكم لكن فيما يخصّ رسالة رئيس الولايات المتحدة، فإنني لا أعتبر أنّ شخص ترامب جدير بتبادل الرسائل وليس لديّ ردّ عليه ولن أردّ عليه. pic.twitter.com/X3WzrKrHOa
— الإمام الخامنئي (@ar_khamenei) June 13, 2019
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A flustered Trump was reduced to briefly tweeting: “I personally feel that it is too soon to even think about making a deal. They are not ready, and neither are we!”
While I very much appreciate P.M. Abe going to Iran to meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, I personally feel that it is too soon to even think about making a deal. They are not ready, and neither are we!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019
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And soon after, the president halted at the last minute, in a distinctly humiliating retreat, U.S. air strikes on Iranian missile sites that would undoubtedly have created yet more insoluble problems for Washington across the Greater Middle East.
Keep in mind that, globally, before the ayatollah’s put-down, the Trump administration had already had two abject foreign policy failures: the collapse of the president’s Hanoi summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (followed by that regime’s provocative firing of several missiles over the Sea of Japan) and a bungled attempt to overthrow the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
America’s Global Standing at a Record Low
What’s great or small can be defined in absolute or relative terms. America’s “greatness” (or“exceptional” or “indispensable” nature) — much lauded in Washington before the Trump era — should certainly be judged against the economic progress made by China in those same years and against Russia’s advances in the latest high-tech weaponry. Another way of assessing the nature of that “greatness” and what to make of it would be through polls of how foreigners view the United States.
Take, for instance, a survey released by the Pew Research Group in February 2019. Forty-five percent of respondents in 26 nations with large populations felt that American power and influence posed “a major threat to our country,” while 36 percent offered the same response on Russia, and 35 percent on China. To put that in perspective, in 2013, during the presidency of Barack Obama, only 25 percent of global respondents held such a negative view of the U.S., while reactions to China remained essentially the same. Or just consider the most powerful country in Europe, Germany. Between 2013 and 2018, Germans who considered American power and influence a greater threat than that of China or Russia leapt from 19 percent to 49 percent. (Figures for France were similar.)
China’s Xi with Russia’s Putin after talks in June 2019. (The Kremlin)
As for Trump, only 27 percent of global respondents had confidence in him to do the right thing in world affairs, while 70 feared he would not. In Mexico, you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn, confidence in his leadership was at a derisory 6 percent. In 17 of the surveyed countries, people who lacked confidence in him were also significantly more likely to consider the U.S. the world’s top threat, a phenomenon most pronounced among traditional Washington allies like Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.
China’s Expanding Global Footprint
While 39 percent of Pew respondents in that poll still rated the U.S. as the globe’s leading economic power, 34 percent opted for China. Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched in 2013 to link the infrastructure and trade of much of Southeast Asia, Eurasia, and the Horn of Africa to China (at an estimated cost of $4 trillion) and to be funded by diverse sources, is going from strength to strength.
One way to measure this: the number of dignitaries attending the biennial BRI Forum in Beijing. The first of those gatherings in May 2017 attracted 28 heads of state and representatives from 100 countries. The most recent, in late April, had 37 heads of state and representatives from nearly 150 countries and international organizations, including International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Leaders of nine out of 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations attended, as did four of the five Central Asian republics. Strikingly, a third of the leaders participating came from Europe. According to Peter Frankopan, author of “The New Silk Roads,” more than 80 countries are now involved in some aspect of the BRI project. That translates into more than 63 percent of the world’s population and 29 percent of its global economic output.
Still, Chinese President Xi Jinping is intent on expanding the BRI’s global footprint further, a signal of China’s dream of future greatness. During a February two-day state visit to Beijing by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Xi suggested that, when it came to Riyadh’s overly ambitious economic plan, “our two countries should speed up the signing of an implementation plan on connecting the Belt and Road Initiative with the Saudi Vision 2030.”
Flattered by this proposal, the crown prince defended China’s use of “re-education” camps for Uighur Muslims in its western province of Xinjiang, claiming it was Beijing’s “right” to carry out antiterrorism work to safeguard national security. Under the guise of combating extremism, the Chinese authorities have placed an estimated one million Uighur Muslims in such camps to undergo re-education designed to supplant their Islamic legacy with a Chinese version of socialism. Uighur groups had appealed to Prince bin Salman to take up their cause. No such luck: one more sign of the rise of China in the 21st century.
China Enters High-Tech Race with America
In 2013, Germany launched an Industry 4.0 Plan meant to fuse cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing, and cognitive computing with the aim of increasing manufacturing productivity by up to 50 percent, while curtailing resources required by half. Two years later, emulating this project, Beijing published its own 10-year Made in China 2025 plan to update the country’s manufacturing base by rapidly developing 10 high-tech industries, including electric cars and other new-energy vehicles, next-generation information technology and telecommunications, as well as advanced robotics and artificial intelligence, aerospace engineering, high-end rail infrastructure, and high-tech maritime engineering.
As with BRI, the government and media then publicized and promoted Made in China 2025 vigorously. This alarmed Washington and America’s high-tech corporations. Over the years, American companies had complained about China’s theft of U.S. intellectual property, the counterfeiting of famous brands, and the stealing of trade secrets, not to speak of the pressuring of American firms in joint ventures with local companies to share technology as a price for gaining access to China’s vast market. Their grievances became more vocal when Donald Trump entered the White House determined to cut Washington’s annual trade deficit of $380 billion with Beijing.
As president, Trump ordered his new trade representative, the Sinophobe Robert Lighthizer, to look into the matter. The resulting seven-month investigation pegged the loss U.S. companies experienced because of China’s unfair trade practices at $50 billion a year. That was why, in March 2018, Trump instructed Lighthizer to levy tariffs on at least $50 billion worth of Chinese imports.
Lighthizer, second from left with earpiece, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trump at session on the global economy at G-20 Summit, June 28, 2019, in Osaka, Japan. (White House/ Shealah Craighead)
That signaled the start of a Sino-American trade war which has only gained steam since. In this context, Chinese officials started downplaying the significance of Made in China 2025, describing it as nothing more than an inspirational plan. This March, China’s National People’s Congress even passed a foreign direct-investment law meant to address some of the grievances of U.S. companies. Its implementation mechanism was, however, weak. Trump promptly claimed that China had backtracked on its commitments to incorporate into Chinese law significant changes the two countries had negotiated and put into a draft agreement to end the trade war. He then slapped further tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports.
The major bone of contention for the Trump administration is a Chinese law specifying that, in a joint venture between a foreign corporation and a Chinese company, the former must pass on technological know-how to its Chinese partner. That’s seen as theft by Washington. According to Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Yukon Huang, author of “Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong,” however, it’s fully in accord with globally accepted guidelines. Such diffusion of technological know-how has played a significant role in driving growth globally, as the IMF’s 2018 World Economic Outlook report made clear. It’s worth noting as well that China now accounts for almost one-third of global annual economic growth.
The size of China’s market is so vast and the rise in its per capita gross domestic product — from $312 in 1980 to $9,769 in 2018 — is so steep that major U.S. corporations generally accepted its long-established joint-venture law and that should surprise no one. Last year, for instance, General Motors sold 3,645,044 vehicles in China and fewer than 3 million in the U.S. Little wonder then that, late last year, following GM plant closures across North America, part of a wide-ranging restructuring plan, the company’s management paid no heed to a threat from Trump to strip GM of any government subsidies. What angered the president, as he tweeted, caught the reality of the moment: nothing was “being closed in Mexico and China.”
What Trump simply can’t accept is this: after nearly two decades of supply-chain restructuring and global economic integration, China has become thekey industrial supplier for the United States and Europe. His attempt to make America great again by restoring the economic status quo of before 2001 — the year China was admitted to the World Trade Organization — is doomed to fail.
In reality, trade war or peace, China is now beginning to overtake the U.S. in science and technology. A study by Qingnan Xie of Nanjing University of Science and Technology and Richard Freeman of Harvard University noted that, between 2000 and 2016, China’s global share of publications in the physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics quadrupled and, in the process, exceeded that of the U.S. for the first time.
In the field of high technology, for example, China is now well ahead of the United States in mobile payment transactions. In the first 10 months of 2017, those totaled $12.8 trillion, the result of vast numbers of consumers discarding credit cards in favor of cashless systems. In stark contrast, according to eMarketer, America’s mobile payment transactions in 2017 amounted to $49.3 billion. Last year, 583 million Chinese used mobile payment systems, with nearly 68 percent of China’s Internet users turning to a mobile wallet for their offline payments.
Russia’s Advanced Weaponry
In a similar fashion, in his untiring pitch for America’s “beautiful” weaponry, Trump has failed to grasp the impressive progress Russia has made in that field.
While presenting videos and animated glimpses of new intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-powered cruise missiles, and underwater drones in a March 2018 television address, Russian President Vladimir Putin traced the development of his own country’s new weapons to Washington’s decision to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with the Soviet Union. In December 2001, encouraged by John Bolton, then under secretary of state for arms control and international security, President George W. Bush had indeed withdrawn from the 1972 ABM treaty on the spurious grounds that the 9/11 attacks had changed the nature of defense for America. His Russian counterpart of the time, the very same Vladimir Putin, described the withdrawal from that cornerstone of world security as a grievous mistake. The head of Russia’s armed forces, General Anatoly Kvashnin, warned then that the pullout would alter the nature of the international strategic balance, freeing up countries to restart arms buildups, both conventional and nuclear.
As it happened, he couldn’t have been more on the mark. The U.S. is now engaged in a 30-year, trillion-dollar-plus remake and update of its nuclear arsenal, while the Russians (whose present inventory of 6,500 nuclear weapons slightly exceeds America’s) have gone down a similar route. In that televised address of his on the eve of the 2018 Russian presidential election, Putin’s list of new nuclear weapons was headed by the Sarmat, a 30-ton intercontinental ballistic missile, reputedly far harder for an enemy to intercept in its most vulnerable phase just after launching. It also carries a larger number of nuclear warheads than its predecessor.
Putin meets in 2014 with young researchers at Russian Federal Nuclear Centre – All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, a key facility in Russia’s nuclear military complex. (President of Russia)
Another new weapon on his list was a nuclear-powered intercontinental underwater drone, Status-6, a submarine-launched autonomous vehicle with a range of 6,800 miles, capable of carrying a 100-megaton nuclear warhead. And then there was his country’s new nuclear-powered cruise missile with a “practically unlimited” range. In addition, because of its stealth capabilities, it will be hard to detect in flight and its high maneuverability will, theoretically at least, enable it to bypass an enemy’s defenses. Successfully tested in 2018, it does not yet have a name. Unsurprisingly, Putin won the presidency with 77 percent of the vote, a 13 percent rise from the previous poll, on record voter turnout of 67.7 percent.
In conventional weaponry, Russia’s S-400 missile system remains unrivalled. According to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, “The S-400 system is an advanced, mobile, surface-to-air defense system of radars and missiles of different ranges, capable of destroying a variety of targets such as attack aircraft, bombs, and tactical ballistic missiles. Each battery normally consists of eight launchers, 112 missiles, and command and support vehicles.” The S-400 missile has a range of 400 kilometers (250 miles), and its integrated system is believed to be capable of shooting down up to 80 targets simultaneously.
Consider it a sign of the times, but in defiance of pressure from the Trump administration not to buy Russian weaponry, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO, ordered the purchase of batteries of those very S-400 missiles. Turkish soldiers are currently being trained on that weapons systems in Russia. The first battery is expected to arrive in Turkey next month.
Trump talks with Turkey’s Erdogan at G-20 Summit, June 28, 2019, in Osaka, Japan. (White House/ Shealah Craighead)
Similarly, in April 2015, Russia signed a contract to supply S-400 missiles to China. The first delivery of the system took place in January 2018 and China test fired it in August.
Expanding Beijing-Moscow Alliance
Consider that as another step in Russian-Chinese military coordination meant to challenge Washington’s claim to be the planet’s sole superpower. Similarly, last September, 3,500 Chinese troops participated in Russia’s largest-ever military exercises involving 300,000 soldiers, 36,000 military vehicles, 80 ships, and 1,000 aircraft, helicopters, and drones. Codenamed Vostok-2018, it took place across a vast region that included the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Sea of Japan. Little wonder that NATO officials described Vostok-2018 as a demonstration of a growing Russian focus on future large-scale conflict: “It fits into a pattern we have seen over some time — a more assertive Russia, significantly increasing its defense budget and its military presence.” Putin attended the exercises after hosting an economic forum in Vladivostok where Chinese President Xi was his guest. “We have trustworthy ties in political, security and defense spheres,” he declared, while Xi praised the two countries’ friendship, which, he claimed, was “getting stronger all the time.”
Map of Northern Sea Route along the coast of Russia. (Mohonu at English Wikipedia, via Wikimedia Commons)
Thanks to climate change, Russia and China are now also working in tandem in the fast-melting Arctic. Last year Russia, which controls more than half the Arctic coastline, sent its first ship through the Northern Sea Route without an icebreaker in winter. Putin hailed that moment as a “big event in the opening up of the Arctic.”
Beijing’s Arctic policy, first laid out in January 2018, described China as a “near-Arctic” state and visualized the future shipping routes there as part of a potential new “Polar Silk Road” that would both be useful for resource exploitation and for enhancing Chinese security. Shipping goods to and from Europe by such a passage would shorten the distance to China by 30 percent compared to present sea routes through the Malacca Straits and the Suez Canal, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars per voyage.
Icebreaker Yamal, August 2013. (International Maritime Organization via Flickr)
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic holds petroleum reserves equal to 412 billion barrels of oil, or about 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered hydrocarbons. It also has deposits of rare earth metals. China’s second Arctic vessel, Xuelong 2 (Snow Dragon 2), is scheduled to make its maiden voyage later this year. Russia needs Chinese investment to extract the natural resources under its permafrost. In fact, China is already the biggest foreign investor in Russia’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in the region — and the first LNG shipment was dispatched to China’s eastern province last summer via the Northern Sea Route. Its giant oil corporation is now beginning to drill for gas in Russian waters alongside the Russian company Gazprom.
Washington is rattled. In April, in its latest annual report to Congress on China’s military power, the Pentagon for the first time included a section on the Arctic, warning of the risks of a growing Chinese presence in the region, including that country’s possible deployment of nuclear submarines there in the future. In May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used a meeting of foreign ministers in Rovaniemi, Finland, to assail China for its “aggressive behavior” in the Arctic.
In an earlier speech, Pompeo noted that, from 2012 to 2017, China invested nearly $90 billion in the Arctic region. “We’re concerned about Russia’s claim over the international waters of the Northern Sea Route, including its newly announced plans to connect it with China’s Maritime Silk Road,” he said. He then pointed out that, along that route, “Moscow already illegally demands other nations request permission to pass, requires Russian maritime pilots to be aboard foreign ships, and threatens to use military force to sink any that fail to comply with their demands.”
Leaders of the Arctic Council meet in Rovaniemi, Finland, May 6, 2019. (State Department/Ron Przysucha)
American Downturn Continues
Altogether, the tightening military and economic ties between Russia and China have put America on the defensive, contrary to Trump’s MAGA promise to American voters in the 2016 campaign. It’s true that, despite fraying diplomatic and economic ties between Washington and Moscow, Trump’s personal relations with Putin remain cordial. (The two periodically exchange friendly phone calls.) But among Russians more generally, a favorable view of the U.S. fell from 41 percent in 2017 to 26 percent in 2018, according to a Pew Research survey.
There’s nothing new about great powers, even the one that proclaimed itself the greatest in history, declining after having risen high. In our acrimonious times, that’s a reality well worth noting. While launching his bid for reelection recently, Trump proposed a bombastic new slogan: “Keep America Great” (or KAG), as if he had indeed raised America’s stature while in office. He would have been far more on target, however, had he suggested the slogan “Depress America More” (or DAM) to reflect the reality of an unpopular president who faces rising great power rivals abroad.
- Chinese Security Cameras Banned For Spying Are Nearly Impossible To Identify And Remove
Federal agencies are rushing to meet a deadline to rip out Chinese made surveillance cameras in order to comply with a congressional ban, but as Bloomberg reports, the task isn’t quite as easy as it seems: thousands of the devices are still in place and it’s looking as though most won’t be removed before the August 13 deadline. A complicated supply chain is making it difficult for authorities to understand whether security cameras are actually made in China or contain components that would violate US rules.
The National Defense Authorization Act included an amendment for fiscal 2019 that would ensure federal agencies don’t purchase Chinese made surveillance cameras. Zhejiang Dahua Technology and Hikvision are two companies named specifically because they have both raised security concerns in the US. Hikvision is 42% controlled by the Chinese government and Dahua was found in 2017 to have cameras with software backdoors that allowed unauthorized people to view them and send information back to China.
Despite Dahua saying they fixed the issue, the US government is still considering imposing further restrictions by banning both companies from purchasing American technology.
Representative Vicky Hartzler, a Republican from Missouri said: “Video surveillance and security equipment sold by Chinese companies exposes the U.S. government to significant vulnerabilities. Removing the cameras will ensure that China cannot create a video surveillance network within federal agencies.”
Dahua didn’t comment on the ban and Hikvision said it complies with all applicable laws and regulations. A company spokesperson also said the Chinese government isn’t involved in day-to-day operations of the company. “The company is independent in business, management, assets, organization and finance from it’s controlling shareholders,” the spokesman said.
Of course it is.
And despite the coming deadline, there’s at least 1,700 of these cameras still operating in places where they have been banned. According to Katherine Gronberg, vice president of government affairs at Forescout, the actual number could be higher because only a small percentage of government offices know what cameras they’re operating.
“The real issue is for organizations that don’t have the tools in place to detect the banned devices,” she said.
A couple of years ago, the Department of Homeland Security tried to force federal agencies to secure their networks but, as of December, only 35% of required agencies had fully complied with the mandate. As a result, US federal agencies still don’t know how many, or what type of devices, are connected to their networks. This means they’re left to try and identify the cameras manually – one by one.
Those charged with complying with the ban have discovered that it is more complicated than just switching off the cameras. Not only can Chinese cameras come with US labels, but many of them might also contain parts from Huawei.
Peter Kusnic, a technology writer at business research firm The Freedonia Group said: “There are all kinds of shadowy licensing agreements that prevent us from knowing the true scope of China’s foothold in this market. I’m not sure it will even be possible to ever fully identify all of these cameras, let alone remove them. The sheer number is insurmountable.”
Sales of security video cameras are expected to climb to $705 million in 2021 from $570 million in 2016. Hikvision is the world’s largest video surveillance provider and has cameras installed in places like US businesses, banks, airports, schools, army bases and government offices. The cameras produce sharp images and use artificial intelligence and 3-D imaging to power facial recognition systems.
These cameras can also be sold under brands like Panasonic and Honeywell. They are bought by intermediaries, like security firms, who then go on to sell them to government agencies and private businesses. The NDAA covers the companies’ extensive agreements with original equipment manufacturers, which sweeps up any vendor who resells the devices.
Theoretically, two cameras running identical Hikvision firmware could carry two completely different labels and packaging. This means it is nearly impossible to figure out which cameras installed across the country are relabeled Chinese devices. Honeywell said they couldn’t track these re-labeled products and Panasonic didn’t respond to questions.
This convoluted supply chain web is making it difficult for government agencies to actually obey the law. Hikvision has about 50,000 installation companies and integrated partners.
A worker at the Department of Energy said: “We’ve been trying to get our arms around how big the problem is. I don’t think we have the full picture on how many of these cameras are really out there.”
The article closes by noting that if somebody is routinely tapping into cameras to spy on federal agencies, they could likely easily determine identities of those who work in government departments… such as CIA.
- Joe Biden: Protector Of The Deep State
Authored by Jeremy Kuzmarov via Counterpunch.org,
Kamala Harris surged in the polls after attacking frontrunner Joe Biden during the first Democratic Party debate for opposing federal busing programs in the 1970s that were designed to desegregate public schools. Bernie Sanders in the debate also criticized Biden’s support for the Iraq War. Left overlooked, however, were some other skeleton’s in “lunch bucket” Joe’s closet, including his history of advancing the interests of the “deep state.”
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Biden sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which was established upon recommendation of the 1975/1976 Pike committee to provide “vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Biden himself admitted that the Senate Intelligence Committee failed at this latter task, telling The New York Times in 1982 that its performance was “barely adequate. There is a lack of prudent and consistent oversight…. and a willingness to accept blanket findings and to give indefinite approval for conducting operations.”
With the Vietnam anti-war movement going strong, the slick young Biden had supported a 1974 bill that called for banning all covert operations. Sensing which way the political winds were blowing, Biden, however, told the Senate Committee in 1976 that he had “no illusions about Soviet intentions and capabilities in the world” and expressed agreement with neoconservative Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) that “isolationism was a dangerous and naïve foundation upon which to rest our foreign policy or the intelligence community which must serve that policy.”
By the 1980s, Biden was supporting increases in intelligence and counterintelligence funding after Jimmy Carter had tried to cut the CIA’s staff by a third. In 1980, he voted to approve as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William Casey, a staunch anticommunist who ramped up covert arms supplies to the Afghan mujahidin, Nicaraguan Contras and Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA forces in Angola. While opposing the Contras use of terrorism and the FBIs illegal surveillance of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Biden supported Reagan’s War on Terrorism, whose double-standards were significant, and was a staunch proponent of the War on Drugs, even though he reviewed DEA reports on the illicit drug trade which would have pointed to the corruption of CIA allies.
In 1978, Biden helped to write the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which permitted electronic surveillance by the President to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period of up to one year without a court order and sanctioned secret court proceedings.
A year earlier, Biden had been part of a joint investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), on unethical government drug testing programs during the early Cold War.
One of the witnesses was Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the CIAs “Dr. Death” who had spearheaded the Operation MK-ULTRA in which Lysergic Acid Diamelythide (LSD) was given to unwitting human guinea pigs as part of an effort to develop novel interrogation methods.
Gottlieb was asked about Dr. Frank Olson, a CIA biochemist at the army biological warfare center at Ft. Detrick Maryland and member of the CIAs Special Operations Division (SOD), who was thought to be a victim of MK-ULTRA. In November 1953, Olson was allegedly given LSD at a CIA retreat, and after a bad reaction, jumped to his death from the 13th floor of the Statler Hotel in New York City.
Forensics investigation, however, later determined that the cause of Olson’s death was blunt force trauma to the head. According to researcher Hank Albarelli Jr., two CIA hatchet men snuck into his hotel room through a side door and threw Olson out of the window while framing his death as a drug-induced suicide.
At the 1977 hearing, Dr. Robert Lashbrook, Olson’s hotel roommate and SOD colleague, committed perjury. Neither Biden nor his colleagues, however, challenged him in any way. The same was true of Dr. Gottlieb who perjured himself after being granted legal immunity in exchange for his testimony. Senator Edward Kennedy, the “liberal lion” concluded that his hearings “closed the book on this sorry chapter [the Olson affair]” which was framed as a “tragic accident.” The book was anything but closed though, and it was not an accident, but likely state sponsored murder of a man who threatened to blow the whistle on state secrets.
Biden should be judged as part of a generation of lawmakers who failed to reign in the “deep state.” Joe’s conversion from an opponent to a protector of the CIA in the 1970s set the groundwork for his Vice Presidency – and would do so for his presidency.
In the 2009 debate over the “surge” in Afghanistan, Biden characteristically wanted a small troop increase and more air strikes and drone attacks – the approach favored by the CIA. Biden also supported the CIA’s operations in Libya, Ukraine, Honduras, Venezuela and Syria, and backed the expansion of the private military industry under Obama, which is heavily dominated by the CIA.
In the next debate, Joe’s sparring partners should call him out for his dubious record on foreign policy and vow to work to curtail the power of the Executive Branch and “deep state.”
This would mark them as the real people’s choice.
- 'They Waited For Failure': Report Exposes PG&E's Inability To Replace Equipment That Sparked Deadly Wildfire
The now-bankrupt PG&E has put together a contingency plan that would plunge millions of unsuspecting Californians into rolling blackouts reminiscent of the early 2000s (when the utility was last pushed into bankruptcy protection thanks to the market-manipulation hijinx of Enron and other electricity brokers), but as WSJ revealed in an explosive report published Wednesday – a report that was probably the result of months of battles between the paper’s lawyers and California’s Freedom of Information Commission – PG&E’s long history of deterring maintenance on its lines and towers, a practice that directly contributed to causing the deadliest forest fire in California history.
The utility knew for years that hundreds of miles of high-voltage lines running in high-risk fire areas were at risk of failing and sparking a fire. And instead of acting swiftly to make the necessary upgrades, it appears the company routinely failed to identify the infrastructure most in need of maintenance.
Last year, a 100-year old line failed and sparked the Camp Fire, which eventually caused the deaths of 85 people. Documents obtained by WSJ – mostly internal emails and reports – revealed that the utility knew that 49 of the steel towers that carry the electrical line that failed needed to be replaced entirely.
For years, PG&E, which operates one of the oldest long-distance electricity transmission systems in the world, much of it having been built in the early 1900s, was able to get away with neglecting its lines and towers. But that changed in 2013, when California entered a punishing and prolonged drought.
It dried out much of the state, exponentially amplifying the risk of wildfires. In a 2017 internal presentation, PG&E said it needed a plan to replace towers and better manage lines to prevent “structure failure resulting [in] conductor on ground causing fire.” But inscrutably, the company opted instead to focus its efforts (and billions in capital) on upgrading substations, and instead labeled many of its transmission lines as low-risk projects.
Now, let’s look at the Caribou-Palermo line, the line that failed and caused the Camp Fire. PG&E delayed work on that line for more than five years, despite acknowledging that it, and dozens of aluminum lines and towers, needed urgent work “due to age.”
Similarly, PG&E’s regulators did nothing to change the company’s plans because no regulator keeps a close eye on these projects. PG&E told federal regulators it planned to overhaul the Caribou-Palermo line in 2013, yet no improvements had been made when a piece of hardware holding a high-voltage line failed last November, sending sparks into nearby dry grass and sparking the fire.
What’s worse, the company appears poised to make these same mistakes again as wildfire season progresses. PG&E has delayed maintenance work on several lines in Northern California’s highest-threat fire areas, including at least one near the Plumas National Forest, according to documents obtained by WSJ.
The company hasn’t detailed the scope of the work needed for each line, but it has disclosed that some require upgrades similar to those needed on the Caribou-Palermo line. Across northern California, WSJ able to identify dozens of lines in high-risk fire areas that were as old or older than Caribou-Palermo, and need similar types of maintenance.
One researcher at the University of Pittsburgh offered a damning assessment of their business model: “We have known for a long time that we are dealing with aging and antiquated infrastructure,” he said. “In a lot of cases, the business model was to wait for a failure and then respond.”
Unfortunately, forcing the company to make these repairs can be difficult without intense public scrutiny, given that none of the agency’s regulators has authority over the utility’s projects and maintenance work.
Whether this WSJ report spurs the state to act remains to be seen.
- Big Pharma Hikes Drug Price 879% And That's Just One Of 3,400 So Far This Year
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Big Pharma continues to jack up the prices on the drugs they peddle. The price of one drug was hiked 879%, and that’s only ONE of the 3,400 price increases that have occurred so far this year.
Pharmaceutical companies raised the prices of more than 3,400 drugs in the first half of 2019, surpassing the number of drug hikes they imposed during the same period last year, according to an analysis first reported by NBC News. While the average price increase per drug was 10.5%, a rate around five times that of inflation, about 40 of the drugs saw triple-digit increases. That includes a generic version of the antidepressant Prozac, which saw a price increase of 879%.
ARS Technica reported that the surge in price hikes comes amid ongoing public and political pressure to drag down the sky-rocketing price of drugs and healthcare costs overall. In May of 2018, President Donald Trump boldly announced that drug companies would unveil “voluntary massive drops in prices” within weeks, however, Big Pharma didn’t announce any big drops or actually reduce their prices. Trump then went on to publicly shame Pfizer for continuing to raise drug prices. The company responded with a short-lived pause on drug price increases mid-way through last year, but it resumed increasing prices in January along with dozens of other pharmaceutical companies.
“Requests and public shaming haven’t worked,” Michael Rea, chief executive of RX Savings Solutions, told Reuters last December. His company helps health plans and employers seek lower-cost prescription medicines. It also conducted a new analysis of some drug prices.
It really isn’t a surprise that people are losing faith in western medicine in record numbers in favor of a more natural and holistic approach. Cost is certainly one problem, but many experience debilitating side effects from Big Pharma’s drugs – and they then seek relief from those side effects by using other drugs laced with different synthetic chemicals. It’s a vicious cycle, and no one should be surprised by the rise in things like herbal tinctures, medicinal teas, and CBD oil.
The more than 3,400 drug price increases in the first half of 2019 is a 17% increase over the number of drug price hikes in the first half of 2018. So price increases are skyrocketing instead of going down. In addition to the Prozac generic, the drugs that saw triple-digit increases included the topical steroid Mometasone, which had a price increase of 381%. A pain reliever and cough medication (Promethazine/Codeine) saw a 326% hike while the ADHD treatment Guanfacine 2mg saw its price rise 118%.
The Trump administration has finalized a new rule that goes into effect this summer, and it states that drug companies must include the prices of their product in advertisements on TV. At that point, when the general public understands just how much these companies are ripping them off, they may make a more permanent turn away from Western medicine’s chemical treatments.
It’s difficult to say if the Trump administration’s rule will have any effect on drug prices or not.
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