- Visualizing The World's Largest Megacities By 2100
Throughout the course of human history, the biggest cities have always seemed impossibly large.
For many millennia, it was almost unfathomable for a city to sustain more than 1 million residents. In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the largest cities globally, such as London and Beijing, were able to consistently hold populations beyond that impressive mark.
Despite this, in the modern era, we’ve quickly discovered that a city of 1 million people isn’t remarkable at all. In China alone, there are now over 100 cities with a million people today – and as such, our mental benchmark for what we consider to be a “big city” has changed considerably from past times.
THINKING BIG
Just like a city the size of modern Tokyo was hard to imagine for someone living in the 19th century, it can be an extremely difficult thought experiment for us to visualize what future megacities will look like.
Researchers at the Global Cities Institute have crunched the numbers to provide us with one view of the potential megacities of the future, extrapolating a variety of factors to project a list of the 101 largest cities in the years 2010, 2025, 2050, 2075, and 2100.
Today’s video uses this data – it’s also an extension to the previous work we did based on the report here.
THE LARGEST MEGACITIES BY 2100
According to the report, human geography will look completely unfamiliar by the turn of the century.
Here is a list of the 20 largest megacities projected for 2100:
By the year 2100, it’s estimated that 13 of the world’s largest megacities will be located in Africa. Meanwhile, India will hold three of them – and there will be zero of them found in the Americas, China, or Europe.
Here’s a final look at the top three:
#1: Lagos, Nigeria
Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, is expected to push the limits of how big a metropolis can get. Already, Lagos has seen explosive growth over the past few decades, and is growing so fast that no one really knows how many people live there. Over 2,000 people emigrate to the city every day, and current population estimates vary widely from 11 to 21 million inhabitants.Either way, by the turn of the century, Lagos is projected to have a population north of 88 million.
#2: Kinshasa, DRC
Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo is projected to be the second largest city in the world with a population of 83 million.#3: Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
Dar Es Salaam, a city on the coast of Tanzania, has a population of just 4.4 million today. By 2100, its population is projected to jump by a whopping 1,588%, putting the total at 74 million inhabitants. - Turkey: Exposing Crimes Of ISIS Is Terrorism
Authored by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,
How does Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan fight his political opponents, including those who have been working hard to expose the atrocities of the Islamic state terror group, ISIS? By throwing them into jail for allegedly “supporting terrorism.”
Since the 2016 botched coup attempt in Turkey, Erdogan has been waging a massive crackdown on his opponents and critics, including politicians, political activists, journalists and members of the Turkish security forces and army.
The latest victim of this crackdown is Eren Erdem, a former deputy of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who is known for his activities to expose the crimes of ISIS and other terrorist groups.
Erdem was recently detained on charges of “aiding a terrorist organization” and is also being investigated for “insulting the Turkish state.” He faces a prison sentence of 9 to 22 years on charges of “knowingly and willingly aiding an armed terrorist organization as a non-member”, “revealing the identity of an anonymous witness” and “violating the confidentiality of the investigation.”
The author of nine books, Erdem worked as a journalist before being elected as a CHP member of parliament for Istanbul in 2015. He appears to be the bravest MP who has exposed ISIS activities across Turkey during his tenure and has often urged the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to stop these activities and bring the perpetrators to account.
Erdem meticulously cited evidence from criminal cases, indictments and investigations by state authorities as well as news reports in his statements and parliamentary motions. On December 10, 2015, for example, Erdem made a speech in Turkey’s parliament about ISIS activities in Turkey. These included ISIS’s transfer of the ingredients of sarin gas through Turkey to Syria “with which thousands of children were murdered in the Middle East”. Referring to the investigation and indictment by the Adana office of a public prosecutor, he said:
“Some people in Turkey have contacted the members of the ISIS terrorist organization and transferred the raw material of sarin gas, which is a chemical weapon, to Syria. The prosecutor started an investigation on this. The suspects who carried out the transfer were arrested and jailed. Upon the order of the prosecutor, the telephones of all suspects were wiretapped, the details of which are in this indictment… But within a week, the case was closed, the suspects were released and allowed to leave Turkey to cross the border to Syria.”
Because of the statements he made in parliament, Erdem became the target of a smear campaign, particularly after he spoke to the international press. In December 2015, for example, he told RT: “Chemical weapon materials were brought to Turkey and put together in ISIS camps in Syria, which was known as the Iraqi Al-Qaeda at that time.”
Erdogan, condemning Erdem for the RT interview, said that Erdem “has sunk in the pit of treason” and called on the CHP to dismiss him: “Shame on his party, me and my nation for letting him stay in his party.” A investigation into treason was then launched against Erdem.
Erdem then stated that after the publication of the interview, he received death threats over social media, with his home address posted by pro-government Twitter users presumably to enable an attack on his house:
“I just shared the contents of the indictment with the people… I provided them with a document… [The government] is carrying out a lynching campaign against me. Because they are disturbed by me. I have exposed their filths and exploitation of religion in my books… I have received more than a thousand death threats. My email address is filed with death threats… If something happens to me, the pro-government media and AKP deputies are responsible.”
Undeterred by the pressure and threats, Erdem has continued exposing and speaking about the activities of jihadist terror groups in the region. During a speech at Turkey’s parliament in June 2016, for instance, Erdem once again criticized the government for turning a blind eye to ISIS activities: “ISIS has sleeper cells in Turkey. These cell houses are monitored [by state authorities]… The information gained from technical surveillance on these cells has confirmed that ISIS is organized in Turkey.”
The primary suspect of ISIS’s terror attack in Ankara, Erdem said, who goes by acronym I.B. [Ibrahim Bali] “sent 1,800 terrorists to ISIS, all of whom were monitored through technical surveillance but not a single police or military operation was carried out on them… Where are the police forces? I identified 10.000 addresses [of ISIS members] in these documents of investigations conducted by prosecutors and judges…. Why are these men not in jail?”
Erdem also commented on the Turkish language online magazine published by ISIS, Konstantiniyye:
“ISIS sends these magazines to bookstores and its cell houses. The government knows this. But no police or military operation has been carried out on anywhere including the printing house of this magazine.”
Erdem then showed a photo of the “database” interface ISIS created of its injured and treated members and said that many ISIS terrorists received medical treatment in Turkey. He also called on the parliament to open a commission to investigate ISIS activities in Turkey, but the call was rejected by the votes of the ruling AKP party. A day later, at a press conference at Turkey’s parliament, Erdem said:
“If the commission we proposed were established, we would crush all of the ISIS cells across in Turkey in a few months. There would be no cell left. Because we know the addresses of these cells. We learn them from the police… We also learn from the investigation by police that ISIS members get organized in Istanbul through a magazine called ‘the Islamic World’. But there has been no police operation against them. This is not neglect. This is cooperation [with ISIS].”
Erdem also said that he received threats and curses on social media after he proposed establishing a commission for investigating ISIS. He added that he was provided with security guards by the governor as a precaution to death threats.
Eren Erdem at a June 2016 press conference. (Image source: Eren Erdem video screenshot)
In May 2018, an Islamist association demanded prosecutors to issue an arrest warrant against Erdem. He responded that he was “being exposed to yet another lynching campaign”. He then received a ban on going abroad as he was about to leave Turkey for Germany with his family on May 21. He was stopped at the Istanbul airport by authorities and his passport was seized.
When Erdem’s party, the CHP, failed to nominate him as MP candidate for June 24 elections, he lost his parliamentary seat and his immunity. On June 26, he was arrested in Istanbul.
The terror organization to which Erdem’s indictment refers is the FETÖ (Fethullahist Terrorist Organization), named after Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen. It is an organization that Erdogan and other members of the Turkish government accuse of staging a 2016 attempted coup, and often use as an excuse to arrest its critics.
A lawsuit was filed against Erdem due to his works at newspaper Karşı, where Erdem was the editor-in-chief. The accusation that he is a “FETÖ supporter” is particularly baseless given that in 2016, he published a book entitled “Nurjuvazi” that criticized Gülen and his movement.
In the meantime, a former CHP deputy announced on July 3 that CHP MPs who wanted to visit Erdem in prison were not given permission by authorities. “This,” he wrote on Twitter, “is isolation against Erdem.”
Another investigation was recently opened against him that is looking into his criticism against the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for allegedly violating Article 301 of the penal code, which prescribes prison terms for “denigration of Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions.”
In an Orwellian nightmare, a former deputy and a journalist who has so courageously dedicated his career to exposing and condemning terrorist organizations, is now being accused of “aiding terrorists”. The real terrorists he has condemned, however, remain free.
Erdem is paying the price for telling the truth in Turkey. He has risked his life to stop ISIS and help save lives. Now is the time for human rights activists and the media to defend him.
- 'Perpetual War' Explained In 140 Seconds
In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler warned the world that “War is a racket. It always has been…”
“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
And we ignored it.
26 years later, in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower – a retired five-star Army general – gave the nation a dire warning about what he described as a threat to democratic government. He called it the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.“
In his remarks, Eisenhower also explained how the situation had developed:
“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.”
57 years after that, we see exactly what they warned about… and as far as we can tell, only Ron and Rand Paul remain to argue against ‘war’ – even though President Trump talks of ‘peace’, the bombing continues – and so here we are today, beholden to the US war machine…
- Great Nations Are Destroyed By Being Pulled Into Wars To Defend Tiny Ones
Authored by Martin Sieff via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
NATO’s obsession with pulling in as many small, unstable and potentially extremist countries in Eastern Europe as possible makes a world war inevitable rather than deterring one.
The reason for this could not be more simple or clear: Small countries start world wars and destroy the empires and great nations that go to war to defend them.
Belgium doomed England and Serbia doomed Russia in 1914.
The Russian Empire, the largest nation in the world in terms of area and the third largest after the British Empire and China in terms of population at the time, went to war to defend Serbia from invasion by Austria-Hungary.
This was a spectacularly unnecessary and catastrophic decision: Count Witte, the great elder statesman of the czarist aristocracy was completely against it. So was the notorious, but ultimately well-meaning mystic and self-proclaimed holy man Gregory Rasputin., He frantically cabled Czar Nikolai II to not take the fateful decision.
Russia in truth owed Serbia nothing beyond a general feeling of solidarity for a fellow Slav nation. The Serbian government’s attitude towards Russia was far different. They were determined to pull Russia into a full-scale war with Austria-Hungary to destroy that empire. There is no sign that anyone in the Serbian government expressed any concern or regret then or ever afterwards for the 3.4 million Russian deaths in the war, not to mention the many millions who were killed in the Russian civil war, British, Japanese and French military interventions and the terrible typhus epidemic of 1920 that followed.
Indeed, Serbia, in modern terms, was a terrorist state in 1914. Serbian Military intelligence financed, organized and armed the Black Hand terrorist group that gunned down the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg throne in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austro-Hungarian intelligence was so incompetent they were never able to prove the connection at the time.
Britain’s descent into the chaos of World War I was even more unnecessary than Russia’s. Britain had no treaty commitment to go to the aid of France but it did have a treaty guaranteeing the security of tiny Belgium. However, that 1839 Treaty of London was 75 years old – even older than the NATO alliance is today and the British were free to ignore it.
Instead, the British therefore went to war in 1914, amid an orgy of public sentiment to defend “gallant, little Belgium.”
But the kingdom of Belgium was not “gallant” at all. A mere four years before the outbreak of war, international pressure had forced Belgium’s King Leopold to end a 30 year genocide in the heart of Africa, the Belgian Congo, later known as Zaire and today as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It was one of the worst genocides and examples of mass killing in human history. Leopold’s agents killed an estimated10 million people in the Congo over a 30 year period in order to plunder it of all forms of natural resources and wealth.
Britain therefore went to war in 1914 to protect the successors to a truly genocidal regime in tiny Belgium. Yet that conflict killed, crippled or led to the premature deaths from injuries and hardships of one in three every male Britons between the ages of 18 and 45 when the war started.
As the great British 20th century novelist C.S. Forester later observed in his book The General, Englishmen through that conflict were dying at in greater numbers and at a faster rate than at any time since the Black Death bubonic plague epidemic of the 1340s, 570 years earlier.
The lesson that obsessive concerns about small and irresponsible countries needlessly pull great nations and empires to their own destruction was retold a quarter century later when Britain and France went to war with Nazi Germany to defend Poland in 1939.
1930s Poland, British historian Paul Johnson pointed out in Modern Times was a racist regime whose systems of legal persecution against Russians, Ukrainians and Jews closely paralleled that of Afrikaaner, white supremacist South Africa in the 20th century.
Yet the Poles, who had previously waged successful aggressions to seize territories from Lithuania, Czechoslovakia and even from the Soviet Union in 1920, flatly refused to cooperate with the Soviet Union, the only nation militarily capable at the time of deterring any Nazi attack. The British and the French agreed with the Poles. Hence they failed to take the only credible action that could have prevented the war.
Today, it is the United States that is treading down the fateful path that Czar Nikolai, the British in 1914 and the Western Allies in 1939 all followed. The United States is committed to defend Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. It has recklessly extended serious commitments to Ukraine and Georgia. In each case, the governments of these countries are often fiercely anti-Russian and prone to extreme and irresponsible nationalist pressures. These are dangerous commitments for a nuclear superpower to make.
Commitments to small nations by big ones are almost always dangerous. The tail wags the dog and the greater nation sacrifices its own interests to maintain an empty prestige among small countries that is not worth having.
Worse yet, large nations like Russia in 1914 or Britain and France in 1939 are drawn into obscure local conflicts where they have no interests of their own and from which they can gain no benefit. Yet they risk being pulled into world-spanning wars that can destroy their own countries.
It is never worth it.
- "Worst Case Scenario" Looms As Chinese Overwhelmingly Ready To Boycott US Goods In Trade War
Despite soaring trade policy uncertainty and a collapsing yuan, “the equity market has largely looked through the marginal risk from tariffs“, according to Goldman’s David Kostin recently wrote:
No clear relationship exists between reliance on imports from China and recent industry performance. Among at-risk industries, Computer & Electronic Products, which include Semiconductors, have lagged the Russell 3000, while Electrical Equipment stocks have outperformed. As our Tech Hardware and Retail analysts have noted, trade headlines may overstate fundamental risk, as companies have many tools at their disposal to minimize margin pressures. Some firms may be able to switch to other suppliers, while others will pass through costs. A basket of TMT stocks with high imported COGS has also shrugged off the risk from tariffs, matching the broader Info Tech sector’s 12% rally since March.
However, Kostin cautions that this may be a mistake, however not due to the quantitative aspects of the trade war, namely the downstream impact of tariffs, but the qualitative, and thus much more ambiguous, implications.
In other words, it’s not tariffs that investors should be worried about: as the Goldman strategist writes, “a greater risk lies in potential government intervention” and lists the following examples:
Geopolitical tension can manifest itself in ways beyond tariffs. As precedent, China publicly encouraged consumer boycotts that led to a plunge in Japanese auto sales (in 2012) and South Korean products (in 2017). Last week, China issued a temporary injunction on some of Micron’s (MU) chip sales due to alleged patent infringement. The stock fell by 6%. MU downplayed the impact on sales and the share price has since recovered.
So there we have it, instead of a 10% tariff on all US imports being the so-called “worst case scenario,” Goldman is warning that a much bigger problem for the US economy (and markets) is if the Chinese begin to boycott US goods, period.
Which is why the news today, via The Financial Times, that a new survey finds that a majority of Chinese consumers would be prepared to boycott US goods in the event of a trade war with Washington.
The survey found that 54 per cent of 2,000 respondents in 300 cities across China would “probably” or “definitely” stop buying US-branded goods “in the event of a trade war”. Just 13 per cent said they would not.
The remaining 33 per cent said they were unsure or did not at present buy US branded goods, according to the survey, conducted for FT Confidential Research (FTCR), a research unit at the Financial Times.
The survey was carried out between June 27 and July 10, mostly before the US imposed 25 per cent tariffs on $34bn of Chinese goods on July 6. The move elicited an immediate tit-for-tat response from Beijing.
To date, China has avoided calling for any boycott of US goods.
As, for now, analysts said Beijing was unlikely to do so because of fears over a backlash.
“The Chinese authorities haven’t done anything like they did with Japan and South Korean goods in the past,” said Kent Kedl, senior partner in the Shanghai office at Control Risks, a risk consultancy.
But, market continue to ignore the risk of this more ‘qualitative’ aspect of trade war. Bear in mind that Japanese car exports plunged 32% in the 12 months after China launched a boycott over disputed islands in September 2012.
We leave it once again to Goldman’s David Kostin to conclude: “All things considered, we do not think the outlook is very bright.”
- "It's Our Version Of The GFC": Aussies Face Looming 'Interest-Only' Crisis
Authored by Caitlin Fitzsimmons & Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon via The Sydney Morning Herald,
Australia’s version of the sub-prime crisis that ushered in the global financial crisis could be looming, with a significant number of the 1.5 million households with interest-only loans likely to struggle with higher repayments, experts warn.
Martin North, the principal at consultancy Digital Finance Analytics, said interest-only loans account for about $700 billion of the $1.7 trillion in Australian mortgage lending and it was “our version of the GFC”.
“My view is we’re in somewhat similar territory to where the US was in 2006 before the GFC,” Mr North said.
Craig Morgan, managing director of Independent Mortgage Planners, said one in five people who took a loan two or three years ago would not qualify for the same loan now, because of the crackdown on lending by the regulator and ongoing fallout from the Royal Commission into financial services.
“In the last six months lenders have had this lightbulb moment of what ‘responsible lending’ means,” Mr Morgan said.
Should we brace for a financial storm?
One of the triggers for the GFC was rising defaults from over-leveraged borrowers who were unable to refinance when their honeymoon rates ended. However, the sub-prime lending in the United States before the GFC included large mortgages being given to people without jobs or on minimum wage.
“This is absolutely not ‘sub-prime’ in the US definition but there were people [in Australia] who were being encouraged to get very big loans on the fact that principal & interest was impossible to service but they could service interest-only,” Mr North said.
“We also know that some interest-only loans were not investors but they are actually first-home buyers encouraged to go in at the top of the market.”
The Reserve Bank has previously warned $500 billion in interest-only loans are set to expire in the next four years, causing a significant jump in repayments of 30-40 per cent when borrowers are forced to start paying back the principal.
The banks pushed interest-only home loans – where the borrower pays interest but never reduces the loan balance – over the past five years, because they enabled people to borrow bigger amounts. They were favoured by investors who could claim the interest as a tax deduction and were often looking to pay the minimum in order to cross-leverage and buy multiple properties.
The typical structure of a such a loan has interest-only repayments for five or sometimes 10 years, at which point it reverts to being principal & interest with repayments 30-40 per cent higher. The lending criteria has tightened in the past six months to a year, so many borrowers would be unable to refinance to another interest-only loan.
Mr Morgan warned the jump in repayments could be higher than the 30-40 per cent forecast by the Reserve Bank, because many people would not qualify for a new 25 or 30-year loan and would be forced to repay the principal over a shorter period.
Mr North dismissed this risk. “Most banks are willing to lend up to the full term as if it were a new loan,” he said.
His modelling suggested $120 billion of interest-only loans would fail tighter lending criteria over the next three years; about two in three of those loans would be able to accommodate a switch to paying the principal, while one in three would be forced to sell.
Photo: Fairfax Art and Design
Mr North said a lot of households were “struggling a little bit” because wages were flat and costs were going up. “It’s enough to give a bit of a shock to the banking system here and to put a number of households under pressure,” he said.
RBA assistant governor Christopher Kent said in April the bank’s data suggested many borrowers would have savings to help them meet the higher payments, and others would be able to refinance their loans. He said only a “small minority” of customers would have trouble when their interest-only term expired.
James Keillor, a senior credit consultant at Oxygen Home Loans, said tighter lending standards meant it was “difficult if not impossible” to refinance if you had borrowed at your maximum in recent years but he was optimistic about the capacity of borrowers to absorb the higher costs.
He pointed out lenders had assessed borrowers’ capacity based on principal & interest at current interest rates plus 1-2 per cent and added that the current low interest rates had allowed many homeowners to build a buffer.
“Most borrowers in my experience generally pay more than the minimum, or utilise an offset facility to build cash reserves,” Mr Keillor said. “Most will adapt reasonably well as they are already making repayments in excess of the minimum.”
- FBI, CIA Sound Alarm Over China Cold War, Warn "Most Significant" Threat Facing US
“At the end of the day, the Chinese fundamentally seek to replace the United States as the leading power in the world.” -Michael Collins, CIA Dep. Asst. Dir. East Asia Mission Center
Forget the Russian hysteria: according to Michael Collins, the CIA’s deputy assistant director for the East Asia Mission Center, it is China that is waging a “quiet cold war” against the United States, using all its resources to try to replace America as the leading power in the world.
“Beijing doesn’t want to go to war”, he said during a speech at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Friday, but the current communist government, under President Xi Jingping, is subtly working on multiple fronts to undermine the U.S. in ways that are different than the much-publicized activities being employed by a far weaker Russia, and which the media is obssesed with.
Collins also warned that rising U.S.-China tension goes beyond the trade dispute playing out in a tariff tit-for-tat between the two nations, according to AP.
Among the numerous concerns over China subtle efforts to steal influence he cited pervasive efforts to steal business secrets and details about high-tech research being conducted in the U.S. Meanwhile, the Chinese military is expanding and being modernized even as the U.S., as well as other nations, have complained about China’s construction of military outposts on islands in the South China Sea, which Collins said he “would argue that it’s the Crimea of the East.”
Collins’ comments track warnings about China’s rising influence issued by others who spoke earlier this week at the security conference. The alarm bells come at a time when Washington needs China’s help in ending its nuclear standoff with North Korea.
* * *
Earlier in the week, FBI Director Christopher Wray also underscored US concerns about China, which he said represents the “broadest and most significant threat America faces.” During an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt at the Aspen Ideas Forum on Wednesday, Wray said that the FBI has economic espionage investigations in all 50 states that trace back to Chinese activity.
“It covers everything from corn seeds in Iowa to wind turbines in Massachusetts and everything in between,” said Wray. “The volume of it. The pervasiveness of it. The significance of it is something that I think this country cannot underestimate.”
And yet, when Trump cracks down on Chinese policies across various fields including trade and theft of various trade, military, government and corporate secrets (i.e. espionage), he gets promptly vilified.
The chorus of anti-China sentiment grew to three when National Intelligence Director Dan Coats also warned of rising Chinese aggression, warning that the U.S. must stand strong against China’s effort to steal business secrets and academic research.
Others joined in: Marcel Lettre, former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said China has the second-largest defense budget in the world, the largest standing army of ground forces, the third-largest air force and a navy of 300 ships and more than 60 submarines.
“All of this is in the process of being modernized and upgraded,” said Lettre, who sat on a panel with Collins and Thornton.
He said China also is pursuing advances in cyber, artificial intelligence, engineering and technology, counter-space, anti-satellite capabilities and hypersonic glide weapons. Army Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a congressional committee earlier this year that China is developing long-range cruise missiles — some capable of reaching supersonic speeds.
“The Pentagon has noted that the Chinese have already pursued a test program that has had 20 times more tests than the U.S. has.”
Franklin Miller, former senior director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council, said China’s weapons developments are emphasizing the need to have a dialogue with Beijing.
“We need to try to engage,” Miller said. “My expectations for successful engagement are medium-low, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
* * *
Here we bring readers’ attention back to what we wrote back in May when we said that for all the talk of the escalating confrontation between the US and China, Bank of America’s Chief Investment Officer Mike Hartnett believes that the “trade war” of 2018 should be recognized for what it really is: the first stage of a new arms race between the US & China to reach national superiority in technology over the longer-term via Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Hypersonic Warplanes, Electronic Vehicles, Robotics, and Cyber-Security.
This is hardly a secret: China’s long-term strategy is laid out in its “Made in China 2025” blueprint: It aims to transform “China’s industrial base” into a “smart manufacturing” powerhouse via increased competitiveness and eroding of tech leadership of industrial trading rivals, e.g. Germany, USA, South Korea; this is precisely what Peter Navarro has been raging against (even if his message is in need of some refinement) and hoping to intercept China’s ascent early on while it’s still feasible.
At the forefront of China ambitious growth plan, Beijing’s investments in “advanced internet and communication technologies, embedded systems and intelligent machines” aim to ensure that 40% of China’s mobile phone chips, 70% of industrial robots, 75% of basic core components and 80% of renewable energy equipment are “Made in China” by 2025.
Meanwhile, the China First strategy will be met head-on by an America First strategy. Hence the “arms race” in tech spending which in both countries is intimately linked with defense spending. Note military spending by the US and China is forecast by the IMF to rise substantially in coming decades, but the stunner is that by 2050, China is set to overtake the US, spending $4tn on its military while the US is $1 trillion less, or $3tn.
This means that some time around 2038, roughly two decades from now, China will surpass the US in military spending, and become the world’s dominant superpower not only in population and economic growth – China is set to overtake the US economy by no later than 2032 – but in military strength and global influence as well.
And as Thucydides Trap clearly lays out, that kind of unprecedented superpower transition – one in which the world’s reserve currency moves from state A to state B – always takes place in the context of a real – not trade, not currency – war.
Which explains BofA’s long-term strategic recommendation: “We believe investors should thus own global defense, tech & cybersecurity stocks, particularly companies seen as “national security champions” over the next 10-years.”
And here’s the reason why:
Because one might as well make some money before the next world war breaks out…
- Disaster For Theresa May: Brits Overwhelmingly Reject New Brexit Plan; Turn To Boris, Farage (And Bannon?)
It’s been a dreadful, torrid month for UK PM Theresa May whose cabinet has been on the rocks ever since her revised Brexit proposal was revealed, barely scraping by with just a 3 vote margin last week, amid an exodus of key Brexit voices and a scathing Donald Trump interview.
And it’s about to get even worse because according to a new poll, May’s plans to leave the European Union are overwhelmingly opposed by the British public. Worse, more than a third of voters would support a new right-wing political party committed to quitting the bloc and headed by, guess who, Nigel Farage.
According to the YouGov poll conducted for the Sunday Times, voters would prefer Boris Johnson, who quit as her foreign minister two weeks ago, to negotiate with the EU and lead the Conservative Party into the next election. And in the latest disaster for May, only 16% of voters say the Prime Minister is handling the Brexit negotiations well, compared with 34% who say that Johnson would do a better job.
Only one in 10 voters would pick the government’s proposed Brexit plans if there were a second referendum, according to the poll, while almost half think it would be bad for Britain.
But while the poll is a damning testament to her policies, May faces far greater challenges in the near-term. Her revised plan to keep a close trading relationship with the EU thrust her government into crisis this month and there is speculation she could face a leadership challenge after her most senior ministers, Davis and Johnson, resigned in protest.
But in what may be the best news for libertarians, and those disenchanted with the legacy two-party system in the UK as well as everywhere else, the poll found voters are increasingly polarized, with growing numbers of people alienated from the two main political parties. Meanwhile, as in recent polls, half of voters would support remaining in the EU if there were a second referendum, the poll found. Which of course, means a Brexit is guaranteed – again – as polls prior to the first Brexit vote predicted an avalanche victory for Remain.
But here is the real shocker.
38% of respondents said they would vote for a new right-wing party that is committed to Brexit, while almost a quarter would support an explicitly far-right anti-immigrant, anti-Islam party, the poll found.
According to the Sunday Times, Brexit veteran Nigel Farage, who has vowed to return to politics if May’s “Brexit betrayal is not reversed”, and Steve Bannon are in discussions about forming a new right-wing movement.
So, one wonders, how long before Europe’s relentless populist wave means that this person is the UK’s next prime minister?
- The Black Belt Strategist
Authored by Robert Gore via StraightLineLogic.com,
Putin has made many of his critics look like fools, thus the rage and hysteria…
Vladimir Putin is a black belt in judo, the only Russian and one of the few people in the world to be awarded the rank of eighth dan. He also practices karate.
A fundamental principle of martial arts is using an opponent’s size and momentum against him. This is Putin’s strategic approach. Westerners demonize Putin, but few try to understand him. Trying to understand someone else is regarded as a pointless in narcissistic America, selfie-land. Perhaps 90 percent of the populace is incapable of grasping anything more subtle than a political cartoon.
That’s a pity, because Putin has accomplished a geopolitical triumph worthy of study. He’s catalyzing the downfall of the American empire, and it has nothing to do with subverting elections or suborning Trump.
Putin became acting prime minister in 1999, then president in 2000. The Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse devastated Russia. The economy shrunk and life expectancies fell. A group of rapacious oligarchs, many with Western backing, acquired Soviet industrial and commercial assets at fire sale prices.
Putin coopted the most important oligarchs, letting them hold on to their loot and power in exchange for their allegiance. This bargain has been a bulwark of both his continuing political support and his reportedly immense personal fortune. He quelled a long-running insurrection in Chechnya and stabilized the situation there, exchanging a measure of autonomy for a declaration in the Chechen constitution that it was part of Russia. During his first two terms, from 2000-2008, the economy began recovering from the 1990s. Projecting a law and order image while stifling critics, he solidified what has become his unwavering support, winning 72 percent of the vote in the 2004 presidential election.
A coterie of highly placed idiots in the US and Europe insist that Putin’s ultimate goal is to reconstitute the former Soviet Union on his way to global domination. Russia’s GDP, after 18 years of recovery, is $1.4 trillion, compared to almost $20 trillion for the US and over $17 trillion for the European Union. Russia’s military budget is $61 billion, versus $250 billion for NATO nations (excluding the US) and over $700 billion for the US. The scaremongering screeds never say where Russia will get the money to invade and conquer former Soviet provinces, much less conquer the world. Putin, unlike America’s high and mighty, realizes from Soviet experience that empires drain rather than augment an empire’s resources.
Conquering the world is one thing, throwing the American empire to the mat another. Putin must have smiled when George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, purported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. The US’s hubristic rage led it into what has been a quagmire at best, a graveyard at worst, for a string of invaders, including the Soviet Union.
Defenders fighting on their own turf have huge advantages over occupying forces, rendering conventional invasions virtually obsolete. Relatively inexpensive grenades, mines, IEDs, and shoulder-launched missiles, often supplied from outside the country, take out expensive tanks, artillery, aircraft, and military personnel. The insurgents know the language and territory, they’re supported by the local populace, they can set off remote bombs and blend in with the civilians. They aren’t going anywhere and can wait out the invaders, sapping their morale and political support back home.
Eighteen years after the Afghanistan invasion, Putin is still smiling. With each military failure since, the US became more stupidly belligerent, bearing massive costs in blood and treasure. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia: talk about letting the enemy defeat itself! And as the US plunged into one inextricable morass after another, it plunged ever deeper into debt.
Russia, meanwhile, has one of the developed world’s lowest debt ratios, stockpiles gold, and is divesting its US debt. It has teamed up with China on the Belt and Road Initiative. That series of projects, financed primarily by the Chinese, advances Russia’s and China’s interests and influence across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. This approach seems to garner more support than US bullets and bombs.
Russia’s one military foray in the Middle East has been Syria. Obama’s hapless strategy (regime change? terrorist eradication?) left the US at cross-purposes with itself. Putin suffered no such confusion, helping Bashar al-Assad turn the tide against the insurgents. The US pretends to have done the same. Putin strengthened the Shiite axis—Iran, Iraq, Alawite Syria, and Hezbollah—about which Israel, Saudi Arabia, and US neoconservatives have fretted for years. The insurgents are on the run and all the US can do is shout: “And we helped!”
Putin scored a geopolitical coup. He effectively stood by his allies, in contrast to America’s ineptitude and ever-shifting alliances and objectives. The conflict sent hundreds of thousands of refugees to Europe. Russian intervention reversed the flow. Saner souls in Europe have to be questioning European subservience to the US and NATO.
Putin has expressed his consternation at NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders, especially the prospect that NATO could incorporate Ukraine. While that’s an understandable concern, the expansion hurts the US more than Russia. The US didn’t intervene when Russia got involved with Georgia, the Crimea, or Ukraine. Why? Somebody in Washington looked at a map and determined that with Russia’s decided geographical advantage, the game wasn’t worth the candle.
NATO leaves its members hostage to the likes of Lithuania, Montenegro, and Croatia. It’s always at the borders that empires first falter. The US is treaty-bound to go to war to defend tiny, far-flung states that are a stone’s throw from Russia. The US lays out the lion’s share of the money, stations soldiers, and maintains bases pretending that it would actually defend these geopolitical midgets. Putin must smile at the effort wasted on the nonexistent possibility that he’ll invade.
Often, he doesn’t even need to lift a finger to body slam the US. The Democratic party and neoconservatives, and their toadies in the media and intelligence community have rabidly peddled an evidence-free concoction that he and Trump colluded to deny Hillary Clinton her ordained presidency. It’s emblematic of America’s deranged politics.
“Masculine” is now a pejorative. Identity is everything, merit nothing. A military that hasn’t won anything in 73 years is widely honored. Men in dresses enter women’s restrooms. Confronted by intellectual challenge, college students retreat to safe spaces. People who illegally enter the country are given most of the privileges of citizenship, including state-provided benefits. Americans watch an average of five hours of TV a day. Over 60 percent are obese and an opioid epidemic kills tens of thousands. Even mainstream media pundits fret about an impending “civil war,” and for once they might be right. None of this is Putin’s doing, but he’s undoubtedly amused at all this decadence and division.
Trump is determined to pick America up off the mat. SLL has said repeatedly that his foes are most worried about their own criminality being exposed and prosecuted. That’s essential if the country is ever to regroup and recover. Trump’s summit with Putin and subsequent press conference performance left his foes foaming at the mouth, bandying terms like “disgraceful” and “treason.” That he braved the idiotic torrent before and after the summit, seemingly unperturbed except for a few acerbic tweets, suggests that he’s got something up his sleeve. Judging by their insane hysterics, the opposition knows it. As always, their tactics betray desperation and weakness, not strength.
That something up Trump’s sleeve may well be the initiation of criminal proceedings against a long list of suspects for everything from obstruction of justice to conspiracy and treason, just in time for the midterm elections. That’s more a hunch than a hypothesis. However, it won’t be a bolt out of the blue if it happens. If it doesn’t happen by the midterms, it most likely never will.
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