- Norway Detects Radiation Near Russian Border Days After Nuclear-Powered Missile Explodes
Days after the Kremlin’s nuclear-powered missile exploded, killing seven and leading to evacuations, Norway detected tiny amounts of radioactive iodine in the air near the northern part of the country bordering Russia.
According to Norway’s nuclear safety authority (DSA), the radioactive iodine was detected between Aug. 9-12 at its air filter station in the border town of Svanhovd, just under 450 miles from the Arkhangelesk region of northern Russia where the deadly blast occurred on August 8.
“At present it is not possible to determine if the last iodine detection is linked to the accident in Arkhangelsk last week. DSA continues more frequent sampling and analysis,” said DSA.
Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear agency, said on Saturday that the deadly blast involved “isotope power sources,” with no further details given.
According to Reuters, detecting radiation is not unusual in Norway, as it’s monitoring stations routinely pick up radioactive iodine around half-a-dozen times per year from unknown sources.
On Tuesday, however, Russia’s state weather service reported a 16x spike in radiation levels in the city of Severodvinsk. Meanwhile, first responders who treated victims of the accident were rushed to Moscow for medical examination according to Russian state-owned news outlet TASS.
- The Shifting Threat Matrix In West Africa
Authored by Adam Valavanis via GlobalRiskInsights.com,
In recent years, West Africa has been considered a relative oasis of stability in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the region faces a multitude of threats that could spell a new era of insecurity. A spike in Islamist terrorism and intercommunal violence has strained governments in the area, pushing them to the brink of collapse. Ongoing issues with drug trafficking and corrupt security forces also threaten to upend the semblance of political stability.
West Africa has seen a spike in security threats in recent years. The security of West Africa has been challenged in past months, as the nations of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Nigeria have faced a surge in Islamist and intercommunal violence. The violence is spreading into coastal West Africa, a region that had for years largely been spared from the complex security threats that have characterised dominating the Sahel this decade.
In addition to Islamist terrorism and intercommunal violence, the region has long struggled with drug trafficking and abusive security forces. These issues are increasingly intertwined, resulting in a complex threat matrix that has pushed governments in the region to the brink. The solutions will need to be similarly holistic in scope. Incumbent on the leaders in the area, as well as their international partners, to take a comprehensive view of the region’s security threats. Only then will they be able to develop effective solutions and establish a durable atmosphere of peace.
Islamist terrorism
Mali has been a haven for terrorist cells in West Africa for years. Groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) rose to prominence following the Tuareg rebellion in 2012. While the rebellion was ultimately defeated with the help of French forces, the government has been unable to exert control beyond the capital and its surrounding regions. Since the rebellion and resulting insecurity, several groups, including an Islamic State affiliate, have used Mali as a launching ground for attacks in neighbouring states.
Burkina Faso has become a favoured target of such groups. Lethal attacks have become a regular feature in the country since 2015, following the deposition of longtime ruler Blaise Compaoré. Islamist groups such as Ansural Islam have expanded their operations in the country, effectively controlling its northern and eastern regions. The government based in Ouagadougou has long neglected these regions. Attacks frequently target Christian communities, who have for years lived in peaceful harmony with their Muslim neighbours. The mounting successes of Islamist groups forced the prime minister and his cabinet government from power earlier this year. The situation in Burkina Faso has become so grim that neighbours Togo, Ghana, Benin, and Côte d’Ivoire are on high alertand may have already been infiltrated by terrorists.
Intercommunal violence
Continued attacks by Islamist groups have inflamed intercommunal tensions in both Mali and Burkina Faso. Escalating retaliatory attacks between the Dogon and Fulani communities in central Mali have left hundreds dead since the start of this year. Violence between the two communities reached such a fever pitch in Mali that the Prime Minister and his government resigned, citing their failure to disarm the communities.
Islamist groups have helped inflame long-simmering tensions over land disputes between the sedentary Dogon and nomadic Fulani. Members of the Dogon group have accused the Fulani, a predominately Muslim group, of harbouring Islamists. Such violence and insecurity have served to increase the Islamists’ leverage by sowing distrust between communities. The Islamists hope to paint themselves as the right defenders of the Fulani. Similar dynamics are unfolding in central Burkina Faso, with clashes between the Fulani and other ethnic groups, such as the Mossi.
Narcotrafficking
While Islamist terrorism and intercommunal violence have dominated headlines in recent months, West Africa continues to struggle with the illegal drug trade. The region has long been the premier hub for drug smuggling from South America and Asia to Europe. Guinea-Bissau deemed a “narco-state” by the United Nations, has acutely been affected by the drug trade. More cocaine has been seized in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde this year alone than the total amount taken on the continent between 2013 and 2016. Ghana, one of the most stable democracies on the continent, is a favoured destination for South American producers.
In addition to its innate destabilising influence, the drug trade in West Africa has helped empower and become so profitable that regional terrorist groups are getting in on the action. Though they are not producers, groups such as Boko Haram and AQIM are hired out by drug syndicates to assist in various stages of the trafficking process. Their compensation comes either in the form of cash or weapons.
Abusive security forces
While much of the insecurity in the region is caused by non-state actors such as terrorist cells, ethnic militias, and criminal syndicates, governments in the area have undermined their legitimacy and regional security thanks to abusive security forces. In Burkina Faso, counter-terrorism forces, in their campaign to reestablish control over the country’s northern regions, have committed human rights violations. The same can be said in Nigeria, where the military has allegedly committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in its campaign against Boko Haram.
There have been well-documented abuses committed by the police in Benin and Togoduring clashes with pro-democracy protestors. In response to a flawed election held in April, several demonstrators were killed by the police in Benin. These fatalities followed a wave of arbitrary arrests that targeted opposition officials and their supporters.
Earlier this month, the Guinean National Assembly passed a law that effectively allows security forces to shoot anyone deemed an imminent threat with impunity. Human rights advocates worry that the new law will be used to brutally crackdown on future protests against the president’s bid to amend the constitution and stand for a third term.
Outlook
Islamist terrorists, intercommunal violence, narcotrafficking, and abusive security forces are just some of the problems faced by West African governments. Human trafficking and slavery, especially in Mauritania, as well as endemic corruption, electoral violence, and kidnapping, also present severe threats to stability in the region. Many of these threats pale in comparison to the ever-present danger posed by the ongoing climate crisis, which has contributed to food insecurity in the area. In many states, corruption is lucrative for politicians and other officials, hindering efforts at reform. The same can be said of the drug trade, where the profits from the illegal market far exceed legal business.
So far, the most ambitious attempt at restoring security to the region has been the G5 Sahel Joint Force. The G5 is a military alliance between Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. It is tasked with tackling terrorist and criminal networks that criss-cross the region. Recently, it has taken up the cause of clamping down on intercommunal violence. Unfortunately, the G5 has faced chronic funding shortages and other delays, hampering efforts at rooting out these dangerous threats. Without political will and properly functioning democratic institutions, the security situation in West Africa will likely continue to deteriorate for the foreseeable future.
- Is The Geopolitical Chessboard Now Digital?
Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Geopolitics is based on the nature of politics and relations defined by the real spaces in which we live. Over time thanks to technology these spaces have changed and have become much closer. The seas that used to make a ground invasion impossible have become much smaller on a planet where a nuclear strike could hit any location in the world in a matter of hours or some would speculate minutes. Technology has also opened up new spaces onto which a geopolitical logic can be applied. In fact there is a surprising correlation between the layout of the world’s current military landscape and its digital geopolitical landscape and this is not by some bit of random chance.
If we take a look at a “Hard Power” map of the world, showing the rough locations of foreign military bases, especially those of NATO then we can see a very clear picture of the geopolitical landscape of our planet.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk (via Pinterest)
Source: Foreign Policy
Source: Swiss Institute for Peace and Energy Research (via Big Think)
We shouldn’t be so naive as to think that NATO and Russia just give out the addresses to all their bases to the press so they can compile nice infographics for Google to show in search results. Furthermore, change happens quickly and the US base in Kyrgyzstan often shown on such maps has already been closed, but in general, we are able to see a Hard Power picture of the world with the following characteristics.
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NATO: Dominates the majority of the surface of the globe surrounding Russia and China.
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China: Is the second most powerful economic nation on the planet yet it does not project much power outside of its borders, however within itself it has very solid control.
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Russia: Does try to project power outside of its borders but mostly in terms of the territories it lost as a punishment for losing the Cold War. Russia has a spread but it is very limited.
Now let’s compare this Hard Power layout and compare it to maps of the digital world (an aspect of Soft Power) to see if the picture looks any different starting with the most popular search engine/most visited site.
Source: Internet Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute (via Cogney Digital Marketing)
Source: indy100 (The Independent)
Source: The Atlantic
Although there should in theory be no correlation between military power and search engines/top sites we can see that the same tendencies of the Hard Power map ring true in the digital world. It is hard not to notice immediately that on all the maps almost all the globe is covered by “NATO” digital presence (Google, Facebook, Youtube) with Russia and China as two glaring massive blips on the radar that use their own homegrown services far more.
Let’s take a look at social network usage over the last two years to see if the correlation holds true as well.
Source: Vincos
Source: ECSM Digital Marketing
Although the infographics are a bit conflicting we yet again see an overall tendency of the world being swallowed up by NATO with China hiding behind its Great Firewall and Russia trying to project itself at least over lost territory. It should also be noted that Iran and North Korea also seem very defiant when it comes to social networks. Again these maps seem to line up with our Hard Power world layout.
If we take a look at global online content then we see another correlation, that Russians are very proud of.
Despite being small population wise Russians generate the 2nd largest linguistic chunk of content over the whole world. This is a vastly distant second behind NATO tongue but it still shows a trend that geopolitical power may well transfer over to the digital space. Spanish and Arabic are absolutely massive language groups, that have nearly zero (hard) power geopolitically speaking and so they are behind Russian with Arabic distantly far. China makes its own content for itself so its isolation may skew these numbers. If we were to review all online content including the internal material in China it would surely rise to #2.
What can we take home from all of this?
Although it is possible that these tendencies are just coincidence or bad data, it would seem that there is a real correlation between Hard Power plus the geopolitical landscape of the world we live in and the Soft Power/digital landscape.
This could mean that if geopolitical victories in the traditional sense are reflected by the digital landscape then it could possibly be true that victories on the digital landscape should begin to affect the real traditional geopolitical map of the world. Meaning that the digital front should get no less attention and funding than the hard power physical front.
It is important for the survival of the emerging great powers of Russia and China to understand that their Media/Digital presence is apparently just as crucial to their survival as their military one. If we look at the internet we see a slowly collapsing yet still Monopolar World with two rising key challengers (and a few other outliers with limited power but the desire for freedom). Shattering the Monopolar state of affairs is in theory far cheaper, easier and less risky in the digital space. If Russia and China truly want a Multipolar world, the key front is probably on the Grand Online Chessboard of Digital Media and that is exactly where they need invest in their futures. This investment must include everything from search engines, online TV/video content to even video games, programs and operating systems.
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- US Views Of China Growing Increasingly Unfavorable
The Pew Research Center has released a new poll showing that U.S. public views of China have becoming increasingly unfavorable amid the ongoing trade war and continued geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea. Statista’s Niall McCarthy details that the poll comes as the Trump administration decided to backtrack on imposing new tariffs on a range of high-profile Chinese imports with some describing the move as a temporary ceasefire in the bitter trade war between the two nations.
The research found that 47 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of China in 2018 and that rose to 60 percent by spring 2019.
You will find more infographics at Statista
That’s the highest level ever recorded by Pew in the 14 years since they first asked the question. The lowest level was recorded back in 2006 when the share finding China unfavorable was just 29 percent. The polling also found that just under a quarter of Americans (24 percent) consider China a threat. That’s up on 2014 and 2007 when the share was 19 percent and 12 percent respectively.
In terms of political affiliation, a majority of Democrats and Republicans view China in an unfavorable light. Negative views are more pronounced among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 51 percent of whom held an unfavorable view in 2018. This year, that climbed dramatically to 70 percent. Unfavorability has also soared among Democrats, climbing from 49 percent in 2018 to 59 percent in 2019.
- Killing Free Speech In Canada
Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestinbe Institute,
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As has become standard in such cases, the charter contains no definition of what constitutes “hate”, making it a catchall for whatever the Canadian government deems politically inopportune. This is all exhaustingly familiar by now: Germany already has legislation that requires social media platforms to censor their users. France is working on it.
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The Conservative members of the committee… recommended instead that sanctions regarding hate crimes online or elsewhere should be dealt with under the appropriate sections of the Criminal Code. They also recommended that “The definition of ‘hate’ under the Criminal Code be limited to where a threat of violence, or incitement to violence, is directed against an identifiable group” and that “rather than attempting to control speech and ideas, the Government explore appropriate security measures to address all three elements of a threat: intent, capability and opportunity”.
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“Sickening ideologies which encourage individuals to take the lives of their fellow human beings have faced a concerning proliferation both at home and around the world. Yet sadly, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Members of this Committee have tried to use these troubling events as a way to bolster their political fortunes. They have tried to paint anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their narrow value set as an extremist.” – Conservative Party dissenting opinion in “Taking Action to End Online Hate”.
In May, Canada launched a so-called Digital Charter, meant to promote “trust in a digital world”. The charter contains ten principles, three of which deal with “hate speech and disinformation”.
The charter, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will target fake news and hate speech online.
“The platforms are failing their users, and they’re failing our citizens,” he said. “They have to step up in a major way to counter disinformation. And if they don’t, we will hold them to account and there will be meaningful financial consequences.”
“The Government of Canada,” the charter says, “will defend freedom of expression and protect against online threats and disinformation designed to undermine the integrity of elections and democratic institutions. Canadians can expect that digital platforms will not foster or disseminate hate, violent extremism or criminal content.”
“There will be clear, meaningful penalties,” it adds, “for violations of the laws and regulations that support these principles.”
As has become standard in such cases, the charter contains no definition of what constitutes “hate”, making it a catchall for whatever the Canadian government deems politically inopportune. This is all exhaustingly familiar by now: Germany already has legislation that requires social media platforms to censor their users. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint; the German government can fine them up to 50 million euros for failing to comply with the law. France is working on it.
The Digital Charter was launched the week after Canada signed the “Christchurch Call to Action — yet another government-led drive for more censorship in the name of fighting “terrorist and violent extremist content online”.
Canada already has hate speech laws in its criminal code, according to which anyone who publicly “incites [or willfully promotes] hatred against any identifiable group” commits an indictable offence”. The “identifiable group “includes “any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.” Section 318 prohibits advocating or promoting genocide.
To some, however, the criminal code on hate speech is apparently not enough. In June, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, in a report titled “Taking Action to End Online Hate,” recommended that the Canadian government establish a “civil remedy” for those who claim that their human rights have been violated. After hearing a large number of witnesses, the majority of the Committee suggested that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act — or something similar to it — be reinstated.
Section 13 was a very controversial provision, repealed in 2013 under the Stephen Harper government after being criticized by free-speech advocates for enabling censorship on the internet. Section 13 stated that it was discriminatory for people to communicate via computer or on the internet “any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination”. [Emphasis added]
In its report, the House of Commons Committee also made a number of other recommendations to the Canadian government for the fight against “online hatred”, among them:
Increasing funding for law enforcement, crown attorneys and judges to ensure sufficient training “on the importance, and the need to combat online hatred, including being sensitive to complainants”.
Improving data collection, so that the government ensures that, “we have a more complete understanding of the extent of hatred in Canada, particularly hatred that is directed online”. This undertaking includes the establishment of “uniform pan-Canadian guidelines and standards for the collection and handling of hate crime data and hate incident data” and “a national database to retain and analyze hate crime and hate incident data”. To do this, the committee asks that the government address that “members of marginalized groups… feel more comfortable reporting hate incidents and hate crimes directly to civil society organizations which reflect their community rather than law enforcement officials… resources need to be allocated to assist in the collection of data, by both governmental institutions as well as civil society organizations”.
Crucially, police forces and other “agents of the state” who work with hate crimes must “reflect the racial, religious, LGBTQ and general diversity of the populations they represent. Police forces, particularly their hate crimes units, must work collaboratively alongside civil society organizations…”
A similar cooperative model with civil society organizations already exists in the UK, where the reportedly discredited civil society organization “Tell Mama”, for instance, has operated in cooperation with British police.
Furthermore, in order to “prevent online hate”, the government “should educate the population as to what on the Internet constitutes hate”.
Unlike many other such initiatives, the committee wants the government to formulate a definition of what constitutes “hate”, pointing out:
“It is critical that this definition acknowledges persons who are disproportionately targeted by hate speech including but not limited to racial, indigenous, ethnic, linguistic, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religious groups”.
Finally, and in line with European developments, the committee asks the government “to establish requirements for online platforms and Internet service providers with regards to how they monitor and address incidents of hate speech, and the need to remove all posts that would constitute online hatred in a timely manner”. As in Europe, the suggestion is that online platforms will be financially penalized if they fail to live up to the requirements:
“Online platforms must have a duty to report regularly to users on data regarding online hate incidents (how many incidents were reported, what actions were taken/what content was removed, and how quickly the action was taken). Failure to properly report on online hate, must lead to significant monetary penalties for the online platform”.
Not everyone, however, agrees with the proposed strategy for the Canadian government. The Conservative party wrote a dissenting opinion in the report, according to which:
“… many of the suggestions would, if implemented, have the dual impact of stifling free speech of those acting in good faith, while also serving to further radicalize bad actors by driving their communication out of the public square… Driving reprehensible ideas underground will not end them. It will merely prevent them from being debated and debunked.”
The Conservative members of the committee were against reintroducing the repealed section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. They recommended instead that sanctions regarding hate crimes online or elsewhere should be dealt with under the appropriate sections of the Criminal Code. They also recommended that “The definition of ‘hate’ under the Criminal Code be limited to where a threat of violence, or incitement to violence, is directed against an identifiable group” and that “rather than attempting to control speech and ideas, the Government explore appropriate security measures to address all three elements of a threat: intent, capability and opportunity”.
The Conservative members conclude:
“Far too many innocent individuals have been impacted by extremist violence in recent years. Sickening ideologies which encourage individuals to take the lives of their fellow human beings have faced a concerning proliferation both at home and around the world. Yet sadly, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Members of this Committee have tried to use these troubling events as a way to bolster their political fortunes. They have tried to paint anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their narrow value set as an extremist. This is dangerous. Conservatives believe that Canadian society is resilient precisely because it offers a big tent for all sort of views, but that we also must hold those accountable who distribute material that radicalizes individuals and leads to extremist violence”.
If the government proves sympathetic to the recommendations of the committee, the prospects for free speech in Canada look increasingly bleak.
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- US Army Discloses New Details About Hypersonic Weapon
The US Army has dramatically ramped up efforts to develop the next hypersonic weapon in a race with Russia and China. The goal is to have the new missile system deployed on the modern battlefield by 2023.
Defense Blog reports that the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) disclosed new details of a ground-launched hypersonic missile system during last week’s 22nd Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) is a new weapon system that is being developed by PEO Missiles and Space and the Long Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team.
The LRHW fires a new class of ultrafast, maneuverable, long-range missiles that travel at Mach 5 or greater.
According to Defense Blog, LRHW fires “a universal solid-propellant medium-range All-Up Round ballistic missile,” equipped with a hypersonic warhead of the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) that makes the flight trajectory to a target unpredictable.
LRHW is being developed by the Sandia National Laboratory of the US Department of Energy and the US Missile Defense Agency. The hypersonic warhead will be used by all US armed forces (Army, Air Force, and Navy).
“The AUR missile has a case diameter of 34.5 inches (887 mm). The missile will be launched from a transport and launch container with a length of about 10 m from a ground-based towed two-container mobile launcher with an Oshkosh M983A4 tractor unit (8×8). The launcher semi-trailer is a modified M870 semi-trailer of the Patriot SAM launcher. The missile system will use the standard American fire control system for missile forces and artillery AFATDS in version 7.0. The battery of the LRHW system will include four dual-container launchers and one Battery Operation Center,” Defense Blog wrote.
RCCTO officials told the military blog that one experimental LRHW prototype would be ready by 2023 for testing.
Pentagon officials warn that Russia and China are outpacing the US in hypersonic missile technology.
While Russia has already deployed hypersonic missiles into its arsenal and China continues to test the weapons, it seems the US is clearly behind in hypersonic weaponry development.
- According To The Feds, 19 Million Acres Of Farmland Went Un-Planted With Crops This Year
Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
If that headline sounds really bad to you, that is because the situation that we are facing is really bad.
Over the past few months, I have written article after articleabout the unprecedented crisis that U.S. farmers are facing this year. In those articles, I have always said that “millions” of acres of farmland did not get planted this year, because I knew that we did not have a final number yet. Well, now we do, and it is extremely troubling. Of course there are some people out there that do not even believe that we are facing a crisis, and a few have even accused me of overstating the severity of the problems that U.S. farmers are currently dealing with. Sadly, things are not as bad as I thought – the truth is that they are even worse. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, crops were not planted on 19.4 million acres of U.S. farmland this year. The following comes directly from the official website of the USDA…
Agricultural producers reported they were not able to plant crops on more than 19.4 million acres in 2019, according to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This marks the most prevented plant acres reported since USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) began releasing the report in 2007 and 17.49 million acres more than reported at this time last year.
So this is the largest number that the USDA has ever reported for a single year, and it is nearly 17.5 million acres greater than last year’s final tally of less than 2 million acres.
If you have been following my articles on a regular basis, then you know exactly why this has happened. The middle of the nation was absolutely pummeled by endless rain and unprecedented flooding throughout the first half of 2019, and this new USDA report shows that the vast majority of the acres that were not planted come from that area of the country…
Of those prevented plant acres, more than 73 percent were in 12 Midwestern states, where heavy rainfall and flooding this year has prevented many producers from planting mostly corn, soybeans and wheat.
“Agricultural producers across the country are facing significant challenges and tough decisions on their farms and ranches,” USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Bill Northey said. “We know these are challenging times for farmers, and we have worked to improve flexibility of our programs to assist producers prevented from planting.”
Of course the 19.4 million acres that were not planted are only part of the story.
Most farmers were able to get seeds in the ground despite the challenging conditions, but in much of the country the crops are not in good shape.
In fact, according to the latest crop progress report only 57 percent of the corn is considered to be in “good” or “excellent” shape.
Unfortunately, the nation’s soybean crop is in even worse shape. At this point, only 54 percent of the soybeans are in “good” or “excellent” shape.
In addition, only 8 percent of the U.S. spring wheat crop has been harvested so far. That is “sharply below the 30% five-year average”.
So what does all of this mean?
Well, it means that we have a real crisis on our hands. A lot less crops are being grown, and a substantial percentage of the crops that are being grown are not in good shape. Yields are going to be way down across the board, and that means that U.S. agricultural production is going to be way, way below initial expectations.
In other words, we are going to grow a lot less food than usual.
One bad year is not going to be the end of the world, but what if things don’t bounce back next year? As I keep telling my readers, our planet is becoming increasingly unstable in a whole bunch of different ways, and global weather patterns have been shifting dramatically. Many experts are issuing very ominous warnings about what is ahead as weather patterns continue to shift, and some believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the very beginning of this crisis.
Almost every day, there are new headlines about extreme weather and records being broken. For example, one community in Colorado just got pummeled by hail the size of softballs…
Monster hail fell from the sky and hammered areas of the central United States on Tuesday, shattering a state record. Earlier on Tuesday before the storms developed, AccuWeather Extreme Meteorologist Reed Timmer warned that Colorado’s state hail record could be in jeopardy given the intensity of the storms that he saw developing.
His prediction came to fruition on Tuesday afternoon when a hailstone with a maximum diameter of 4.83″ fell in Bethune, Colorado, on Tuesday afternoon. The record was confirmedon Wednesday evening by the Colorado Climate Center and the National Weather Service office in Goodland, Kansas.
For some of my readers, this freakish incident is going to set off major alarm bells.
We are regularly seeing things happen that we have never seen before. In other words, the seemingly impossible is happening so frequently that it has become mundane.
Despite all of our advanced technology, we are still completely and utterly dependent on the weather. If the weather does not cooperate, farmers cannot grow our food, and we will not eat.
Hopefully harvest season will go smoothly, but even if that happens, food supplies will be a lot tighter in the months ahead and that means that prices will continue to rise steadily.
This is a crisis that is going to affect all of us. I wish that I could get everyone to understand this, but unfortunately there are still a lot of people out there that are not taking this seriously.
- Chinese And Saudi Shoppers Are Ditching Beverly Hills Ritzy Boutique Stores
The Hollywood Reporter is blaming a collapse in Chinese and Saudi tourist at Beverly Hills hospitality and shopping destinations on President Trump’s trade war and immigration policies.
Fewer foreigners are showing up this year at world-renowned fashion houses and one-of-a-kind local boutiques at Rodeo Drive, a two-mile-long street packed with Prada, Gucci, Valentino, Armani, Dior, and Cartier stores.
According to the International Trade Administration, Chinese travelers to the US has plunged for the first time in 15 years, down -5.7% in 2018, likely to be a lot worse in 2019.
The Hollywood Reporter blames the slowdown of tourist on “trade war-induced propaganda, with China issuing US travel alerts warning of shootings and robberies; and Trump administration visa restrictions.”
Chinese and Saudi tourist account for a sizeable share of store sales in Beverly Hills. The LA’s Tourism & Convention Board reports Chinese travelers to LA spent the most money in the city, about $3.3 billion in 2018.
Rhys Edwards, an executive director of marketing at for the luxury Beverly Hills auto dealership O’Gara Coach Co., told the paper that he’s noticed “a little dip in our Chinese and Arabic clients this year,” adding, “I presume it has something to do with the travel visa issues.”
Lauren Santillana of the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau said, “Our China business is down,” and tourist from the Persian Gulf sank in July, based on several conversations with luxury hotel managers.
“Literally half of our Gulf region clients skipped coming to America this year to go to the Mediterranean,” said luxury personal shopper Nicole Pollard Bayme. “And it’s not because they can’t get into the United States; they can’t get visas for their staff because of what Trump’s doing. Hotels are dead. Just walking down the street, the demographic is different. There’ve been years when you might have thought you were in the Gulf, walking down Rodeo, and those days are gone.”
A front end sales associate at the Coach store on Rodeo Drive said purchases by Chinese clients are down “maybe 40%” YoY this summer.
An associate at Salvatore Ferragamo said Chinese and Saudi business is down “maybe 30%” YoY.
At Ermenegildo Zegna, an employee said a “significant” drop in Chinese and Middle Eastern customers had been observed during the peak shopping season.
In a separate report by the Los Angeles Times, Chong Hing Jewelers, located in San Gabriel Square, has seen the amount of Chinese tourist plunge in the last two years.
“I had days with literally hundreds [of Chinese tourists] coming through my stores,” said David Lee, chairman and chief executive of Hing Wa Lee Group. “That changed maybe one to two years ago, and now everyone is experiencing fewer.”
Another reason for the decline of Chinese tourism to LA is due to President Xi Jinping removal of tariffs on luxury goods last summer, allows the Chinese to purchase their favorite high-end foreign products domestically rather than traveling to the West.
According to a report from Exane BNP Paribas, as recently as early 2017, luxury goods purchased in China cost 21% more than their global average. As of 2019, not anymore.
Julie Wagner, CEO of the Beverly Hills Conference and Visitors Bureau, said, “You cannot sustain double-digit growth forever. When the retailers are looking at year-over-year numbers, it’s hard for them to get their head around that because it looks like it’s falling, but really it’s just a return to normal after those crazy times.”
So maybe President Trump’s trade war and immigration policies, combined with China’s dismissal of luxury good tariffs, has created a bust cycle in Beverly Hills shopping industry that will continue to gain momentum into 2020.
- The Great Switch Is Underway
Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Conflict is popping up everywhere: A major portion of the Turkish army stands ready to invade parts of Syria (though invasion may have been averted for now); PM Modi may just have ignited the next round of Kashmir wars with Pakistan with his Hindu ‘nationalist’ putsch to annex Muslim majority Jammu-Kashmir; Japan has started a mini trade war with South Korea; Turkey is bracing for a face-off with Greece and Cyprus over energy exploration in the East Mediterranean; the Yemen war is heating up with the war increasingly being fought inside southern Saudi Arabia; the US-Iran and the Syria conflicts simmer, and Hong Kong has boiled-over into violence.
What is going on? Is there some unifying thread connecting this sudden outbreak of widespread global tension? Of course all these conflicts have their separate background contexts. But why so many at the same time? Well, in a word, it’s all about change — about the recognition that we are at the cusp of major changes. The world is beginning to pre-position.
Take, for example, the about-turn by the UAE (heretofore, a major agitator for an Iran confrontation) reaching out to Iran. Much of this Gulf State fervour for confrontation with Iran arose on the rebound from the Obama move to normalise with Iran (through the JCPOA). The Gulf States feared losing the umbrella of the US protection which, it was believed, inoculated these monarchies as much from repression of their internal reformists, as from Iran. Then, with the arrival of President Trump, the opportunity seemed to present itself again to lock-in that US ‘guarantee’ by inciting the new President, already obsessed with his notion of Iranian ‘malignity’ into action.
But suddenly, the Gulf chimaera of Trump retarding a resurgent Iran through inflicting a couple of generations worth of missile damage on its infrastructure faded under the desert heat. When Iran took the initiative with its counter-pressures, the US finally did not react, either to Hormuz, or to the loss of its high-spec drone.
It’s not over yet: Iran remains a grave flash-point, but in the region it is understood that the US neither has the political will, nor the capacity, for protracted military action (as opposed to a quick ‘one and done’, to which Iran has promised substantial retaliation). This sense of a ‘shift’ has been reinforced by Trump’s repeat last month of his call for withdrawal from Syria, and by his almost indecent haste in trying to exit Afghanistan. The omens are plain: America is on its way out from the Middle East.
Gulf States need to re-position – and they are. They are repositioning into the security architecture being led by China and Russia. Ten days ago, via a document officially approved by the United Nations, the Russian Foreign Ministry advanced a new concept of collective security for the Persian Gulf. The Russian initiative should be interpreted as a sort of counterpart of, and mostly a complement to, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, writes Pepe Escobar.
Add to this that China is toying with giving Chinese naval protection to its own vessels in the Gulf (from US or UK-style tanker hijacking); and that Russia and Iran have agreed to mount joint naval exercises in Hormuz (which will give Russia access to the Bandar-e-Bushehr and Chabahar naval facilities), to understand that the notion of a Russo-Chinese security architecture is assuming substance. It makes sense for Gulf States to seek out a new protector. And they are.
So, how does this link to these other effusions of conflict? One aspect concerns the evolution of Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ thesis: Its lack of any major success to date has already been widely remarked. But the telling factor is that this ‘Art of the Deal’ approach lacks any means to metamorphose this US maximum ‘pressure’ into any meaningful political or strategic diplomatic path. It has attenuated down to ‘capitulate’, or we can make the pain worse. It is in short, the further radicalisation of US exceptionalism. John Bolton formulated it thus: “The greatest hope for freedom for mankind in history is the United States, and therefore protecting American national interest is the single best strategy for the world.” Or, in other words, your interests are irrelevant to me.
What may have initiated as an Art of the Deal strategy has evolved over time from ‘great-power rivalry’, into unabashed new ‘Cold War’. The consequence of this ‘to the devil with yourinterests’ approach, is that most likely now, neither China, nor Iran, nor Turkey actively want a ‘deal’ with US.
This has been particularly relevant in the case of Turkey. As a key NATO member, Turkey largely has been taken for granted in terms of the US pursuit of its own interests, but reciprocity has not recently been on offer: Turkey was simply assumed to have no interests that NATO or the United States felt duty bound to respect. NATO membership was in itself, accolade enough. And, with Turkey’s anger at the 2016 coup attempt, and with its dismay at Centcom’spursuit of its Kurdish autonomy project, NATO simply shifted to raising the NATO-positioning of (an all too willing) Greece – Turkey’s ancient nemesis. Thus, the single-minded pursuit of US interests (in Syria) has resulted in the setting-up of a new struggle between Turkey and Greece in the East Mediterranean, threatening too, to unstitch the precarious status of Greek-dominated Nicosia. Not surprisingly, Turkey is re-discovering its old role as a Eurasian power, with China and Russia according Turkey appropriate esteem. Like others, it seems to be embracing the Chinese-Russian architecture.
This is not to imply that America’s beggar-my-neighbour trade and geo-political approach, nor its shying from wars, can alone account for the present crop of troubles. The radical leverage of US interests to the point of zero-tolerance of others’ interests however does raise the question: why is there no ‘plan B’ if China, Iran, Russia and North Korea refuse to capitulate?
Is it then, that a pathway to a ‘deal’ was never what some in Washington wanted? Is it that the objective from the outset was to use tariffs to break Asian supply lines – and to force them, via tariffs, to be reconstructed in the US. Is it that a new ‘nuclear deal’ with Iran was never actively sought by certain DC constituencies: that it was always about regime change?
The other, wider factor, accounting for this sense of a world in metamorphose precisely is the western cultural implosion, or ‘Great Switch’ (as the founder of the Rousseau Institute terms it). So little time ago, the western liberal, cultural and economic vision was at its apogee. It seemed inevitable. It seemed irrefutable. It stood as the western centre of gravity. But as President Putin recently observed, (so few years later), liberalism and the European so-called Enlightenment is viewed as ‘obsolete’ by much of the world. This quite sudden Great Shift has left the Liberal camp – that was partying ‘on top of the World’ – distraught, angry and apprehensive. In the polarised US and the UK, the antagonisms are causing people to eat each other alive.
The ‘civil war’ within the western paradigm allows other (non-western) states new space to find their own path. Sometimes this path can be potentially destructive — as in Modi’s Hindu-nationalist annexation of Jammu-Kashmir (during the Bush Administration Modi was denied a visa on grounds that he supported Hindu extremism during anti-Muslim riots in 2002). But the reality is that there is no longer any need to pay obeisance to the western moralising Shibboleths, when they are being violently challenged within the liberal citadels themselves. In short, if the West is fighting over its values, what price these values as the basis for the western-led Global Order?
We are indeed at a point of inflection. Some westerners may muse that the status quo ante is somehow recoverable (if only Trump is gone, and the ‘populists’ contained). That is delusional. The external world is transforming. China, Russia and Asia will replace US hegemony – not with another hegemony – but with a loose coalition of states espousing a different values and civilizational model. And with their values differing from the Protestant paradigm of the John Locke, John Hume and Adam Smith, they will arrive at other economic perspectives.
And the status quo ante will not be available even domestically in the West. For, the western party political system itself is in irreversible transformation, too. Western politicians of all spectra are trying to adjust to a public life in which the old world is still around, whilst the new one is only emerging.
The post-war party political system of family and community ties to either Centre-Left and Centre Right (with not a great difference between the two) is dying in western democracies.The Centre-Left is expiring because its original mission is no longer relevant to a large enough proportion of the electorate. What is the point of parties that existed to represent the interests of trade unions and the industrial proletariat when mass employment in heavy industry has come to an end? Post-industrial economies are a global phenomenon.
“The popular conscience today is not exercised by the plight of great numbers of workers being exploited by factory owners. It is more concerned, if anything, by the prospect of factory closures. The old Left-wing battles over working conditions and pay are largely over. The new problem is much more subtle, and less amenable to socialist solutions: how to maintain an industrial sector which offers large-scale employment particularly to those with low (or no) skills. Globalisation has a great deal to do with this, but the decline of the factory-based economy is at the very heart of it” (as in Trump’s appeal to the ‘deplorables’ from a stance on the Nationalist-Right, rather than the Left, strongly suggests), writes Janet Daley.
So here we are at the western dilemma: The moderate forces of Centre-Left and Centre Right are still hoping to represent the people they always have: middle class voters who want to display their decency by voting for a party that espouses some notion of ‘social concern’. But, as the preoccupations of the élite, metropolitan consciousness have turned to more specific ‘disadvantaged’ groups – ethnic minorities, women, and gender non-conformists – the less likely it is that they will give any regard or understanding to the everyday impact of failed mass immigration and multiculturism on the majority (the ‘Sixty-Percent’). And so the polarisation grows, with each group retreating into its enclave. And the Centre Parties wane, in line with a shrinking, economically-struggling Middle Class.
Three major political forces are gathering strength in this political environment where global warming (for the former Centrists), and immigration (for the sixty per centers) are the new defining issues.
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Nationalist right-wing parties, once marginal, are now a structural element of Europe’s political landscapes.
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The Centre is struggling everywhere,
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and the third force is becoming the Green movement. Its spectacular rise – as voters reject the traditional parties and press their leaders on the urgency to act against climate change – is mostly attributable to a mobilisation of the young.
It is this cloistered élite ‘blind spot’ of discounting the adverse effects of globalisation on the ‘Sixty-Percenters’, in favour of pursuing their ephemeral identity preoccupations, that has become toxic for what remains of the old working class. Daley suggests this blind spot “probably cost Hillary Clinton the presidency: women in the depressed rust belt states were not worried about “glass ceilings”, they were worried about putting food on the table and whether their men would ever work again. What happened next? They voted, as the angry and disenfranchised are inclined to do, for a demagogue who did not regard them with contempt, and who gave voice to their frustration”.
The status quo ante is no longer available – even domestically – in the West, let alone externally. The Great Switch is underway. Society has lost its cultural centre of gravity. The old way of life is fading, and is close to extinction.
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