- Iran Celebrates National Army Day With High Tech Ground Drones
Iran’s Army, Navy, Air Force, and Khatam al-Anbiya Air Defense Base took part in a nationwide military parade last week.
In Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani and Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) officers, attended the parade near the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini, also referred to as the holy shrine.
During the parade, the Iranian Armed Forces presented new defense achievements and unveiled new military hardware for the modern battlefield.
In particular, Iranian media published several photos of a new unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) with a rocket launcher mounted on top.
Another photo shows an anti-drone rifle that is designed to disable or knock out the navigation system of an enemy drone.
TV footage also showed MiG-29, F-4 Phantom and F-14 Tomcat fighters soaring above the parade area. More footage showed AH-1 Cobra and CH-47 Chinook helicopters.
Army Day parade in #Iran. pic.twitter.com/FYZ92CrwFI
— GroundBrief (@GroundBrief) April 18, 2019
There were reports of missiles, submarines, armored vehicles, radars, and electronic warfare systems showcased at the event.
In the south, the Navy’s warships practiced attacking and defensives maneuvers in the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.
Speaking at the parade, President Rouhani criticized America’s hostile policies against Iran, the latest of which saw the Trump administration designate the IRGC — as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
The Iranian president described the designation as an “insult to all (Iranian) Armed Forces, and an insult to the great Iranian nation.”
Rouhani said Iran’s Armed Forces pose no threat against regional nations.
He added that Iran will defend the homeland against Western invaders using the weapons showcased at the parade.
Rouhani noted that the Trump administration is irritated with Iran’s Armed Forces, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters and Yemen’s Popular Committees due to their abilities to efficiently combat American proxy armies across the Middle East.
“The Americans and their stooges in the region and the Zionist regime could not imagine that regional nations with the help of Iran, its Armed Forces and the IRGC could annihilate all their proxies, i.e. terrorists, in the Middle East,” he said.
So maybe the new military hardware showcased at the parade could soon find itself on a modern battlefield fighting against American proxy armies.
- The Buried Maidan Massacre And Its Misrepresentation By The West
Authored by Ivan Katchanovski via ConsortiumNews.com,
The new Ukrainian government is faced with reopening an inquiry into evidence of an organized mass killing in Kiev that Poroshenko stonewalled…
Police in Hrushevsky Street, Kiev, Feb. 12, 2014. (Wikimedia)
Five years ago, the Maidan massacre in Kiev, Ukraine, of Feb. 18-20, 2014, was a watershed event, not only for the politics and history of Ukraine but also for world politics generally. This mass killing in downtown Kyiv set the stage for the violent overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine and a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow.
Therefore, it is remarkable that five years after this massacre shook the world, no one has been sentenced for any of the Maidan killings. This was the best documented case of mass killing in history, broadcast live on TV and the internet, in presence of thousands of eyewitnesses. It was filmed by hundreds of journalists from major media in the West, Ukraine, Russia, and many other countries as well as by numerous social media users. Yet, to this day, no one has been brought to justice for this major and consequential crime.
From the start, the dominant narrative promoted by the Ukrainian and Western governments and mainstream media has placed the blame for this tragedy firmly on the Yanukovych government. It contends that forces loyal to former President Victor Yanukovych— either snipers and/or the Berkut, a special anti-riot police— massacred peaceful Maidan protesters on the direct orders of Yanukovych himself. Such charges against Yanukovych, his ministers and commanders and a special Berkut unit—whose five ex-members were tried for the murder of 48 Maidan protesters on Feb. 20, 2014 — are generally taken at face value. With some limited exceptions, challenges to this narrative are treated dismissively.
For the most part, mainstream news media in the U.S. and other Western countries ignored trial evidence, public statements by officials and politicians and scholarly studies that put the standard narrative under question. This includes non-reporting about my own academic studies of the Maidan massacre.
Killing Protesters and Police
My work found that this was an organized mass killing of both protesters and the police, with the goal of delegitimizing the Yanukovych government and its forces and seizing power in Ukraine. Oligarchic and far right elements of the Maidan movement were involved in this massacre. For this reason, the official investigation was fabricated and stonewalled. I presented studies to support this as well as several online video appendixes with various evidence at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco in 2015 and Boston in 2018, the 2017 World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in New York in 2017, and a joint conference by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies in 2018, and published their summary in an academic press volume.
The prosecutor general of Ukraine recently announced that the investigation of the Maidan massacre is complete. He cited reconstructions of the Maidan massacre by a New York architecture company, working with a team of Ukrainian “volunteers” to provide a 3D model, as definite evidence that the Maidan protesters were massacred by the Berkut police and that snipers did not massacre the protesters.
This model was featured by The New York Times, in its May 30, 2018, report “Who Killed the Kiev Protesters?” as a proof that the Berkut police massacred Maidan protesters.
However, no expert knowledge or familiarity with the Maidan massacre or Ukraine is needed to see blatant misrepresentation of elementary data in that 3D model.
The wound locations of the killed Maidan protesters in the 3D model do not match the wound locations in the forensic medical examinations of the bodies. The reports of those examinations were used in this simulation to determine the locations of the shooters. They are published in Ukrainian and English on the linked website. According to one such report, Ihor Dmytriv was shot in the “right side surface” and the “left side surface” of the torso “from the right to the left, from the top to the bottom, and a little from the front to the back” with the entry wound 20.5cm (8 inches) higher than the exit wound. However, in the simulation, his wounds have been moved to the front and the back and made nearly horizontal.
Actual wound locations of Dmytriv and their misrepresentation.
A Maidan lawyer visually confirmed at the Maidan massacre trial that these wounds locations of were in the right and left sides. In the video of their examination of Dmytriv right after his shooting, Maidan medics also indicate such locations of his wounds with no wounds visible in the front area, contrary to the 3D model. The forensic medical reports also state that Dmytriv was wounded in his right shoulder from bottom to top direction, with this entry wound 5 cm lower, but the 3D animation also misrepresents this direction.
The wound locations of the other two victims have been similarly altered. The 3D model moved the exit wound location from around the middle line of the back of Andriy Dyhdalovych’s body in forensic medical and clothing examinations significantly to the right. It also changed a similar large vertical angle from a top and bottom direction and 17 cm difference in height of entry and exit wounds to nearly horizontal level.
Actual wound locations of Dyhdalovych and their misrepresentation.
In the case of Yuriy Parashchuk, forensic medical examinations found that his entry and exit wounds were in the back of his head on the left side. But the 3D analysis moved the entry wound location to the front area and changed its somewhat top-to-bottom direction to nearly horizontal. Frames from a videoby a French photographer shows a large bullet hole in the back of Parashchuk’s red helmet. How can he be shot in the back of his head by the Berkut police on a nearly similar horizontal level?
Changing the wound locations invalidates the entire reconstruction and, therefore, the conclusions of the SITU analysis and The New York Times article, that these and other Maidan protesters were shot from the Berkut positions.
One does not need to be a ballistic expert to see that locations of wounds in the back and on the sides and top-to-bottom directions of wounds specified in forensic medical reports and positions of these three killed protesters facing the Berkut in the videos cannot physically match with Berkut police positions located on a similar horizontal level on the ground in front of them. The forensic medical examinations conducted for the government investigation and made public at the Maidan massacre trial revealed that the absolute majority of the protesters were shot not in front and not from horizontal or near horizontal directions that are consistent with police positions. Rather, they were shot from a top-to-bottom direction and in sides or the back that are consistent with shooting from the Maidan-controlled buildings.
Government Investigation
The government investigation, conducted after the Maidan government came to power after this massacre, and which charged the Berkut police behind the barricades with killing these three protesters, raises the same concerns.
The complex medical examinations, which were published on the SITU website and which are presented by the government investigation in Ukraine as a key evidence that the Berkut police massacred the protesters, showed the same bullet trajectories as the 3D model. The text of these examinations, which are available in Ukrainian and in English translations, shows that these bullet trajectories were determined not by ballistic experts butby medical experts without any calculations or explanations.
Synchronized videos, which were used by the SITU to determine that the Berkut police behind a truck barricade killed Parashchuk, actually show that he and other protesters were in a blind spot below the line of police fire from behind a truck. It was physically impossible for the police behind the wide and tall truck to shoot at him below over the top of this truck. Dozens of other Maidan protesters who were killed and wounded around the same spot were in the same situation.
Parashchuk in the blind spot below the line of fire from the police behind the truck.
The locations of the forces of the Yanukovych government during the massacre are well known, and they are identified in my studies, the government investigation charges, numerous videos, and in the SITU 3D model.
At the time of the killings of these three protesters, Berkut policemen were behind the barricades on Instytutska Street on the government side, while the protesters who were killed were in between Berkut and the Hotel Ukraina.
Forensic examinations of bullet holes by government experts described numerous bullet holes on the second, third, and higher floors and the roof of the Hotel Ukraina on the side that faced the government forces. But they did not identify a single bullet hole on the first floor on the Berkut facing side of the hotel behind these protesters. Simple positioning of the bullet hole locations described in these forensic reports clearly shows that almost all bullets from the Berkut and other positions flew above the heads of the protesters there or targeted poles, trees, and a flower box. This is also shown in vide and photos — including some I took there after the massacre — and in videos and reports of shooting at journalists in the hotel with a Google Street View image from the first Berkut barricade.
This confirms my study findings that the special Berkut police unit and the Omega unit of snipers of Internal Troops were shooting at snipers in the Hotel Ukraina.
After five long years, the failure by the Poroshenko government’s investigation to determine bullet trajectories by ballistic experts or conduct on-site investigative experiments for the same purpose — even after the Maidan massacre trial judges ordered them two years ago to do so — is therefore hardly surprising. It is impossible to bend physical reality. In a literal cover-up, large fences were recently erected on the crime scene for the construction of the Maidan massacre memorial, which would completely alter the landscape. The fences and the memorial would make it impossible to determine bullet trajectories on-site, which still has not been done by the investigation for five years after this mass killing.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Poroshenko, outside Presidential Palace in Kiev, Feb. 5, 2015, during Kerry’s first round of meetings with the new government. (State Department via Flickr)
The SITU reconstruction also missed bullet holes that appeared in Dmytriv’s shield and in a shield of another protester in front of Dyhdalovych in videos of their shooting that were used in the reconstruction. The locations of these bullet holes are inconsistent with shooting from the Berkut barricades.
But these shields with clear locations of the bullet holes, like the helmet of Parashchuk and almost all the shields and helmets of protesters who were killed or wounded, mysteriously disappeared after the massacre, along with a lot of other crucial evidence, such as bullets and security-camera footage.
Similarly, crucial testimonies of Maidan protesters, who witnessed the killings of Dyhdalovych and Dmytriv, are ignored by the Times’ report, SITU and the official Ukrainian investigation. Dyhdalovych’s wife stated in her Ukrainian media interview that another protester told her that he saw that Dyhdalovych was killed by a sniper on the roof of the Bank Arkada. This protester was filmed following Dyhdalovych when they both went to evacuate Dmytriv after he was shot. The Bank Arkada is a tall green building in the front and to the right of both Dyhdalovych and Dmytriv, and it appears to match the apparent directions of their wounds. My Maidan massacre studies video appendices showed that it was in the Maidan-controlled area and that snipers on its roof during the massacre were reported by both numerous Maidan protesters, including many wounded who spoke at the Maidan massacre trial and investigation, and by Security Service of Ukraine commanders and snipers.
SITU diagram of victims’ locations and names.
A female Maidan medic during the massacre was pointing to the top of this green building and shouting about snipers. But her words were translated in a BBCreport as referring to six protesters killed by the snipers in that area. AMaidan protester and another Maidan medic, who were wounded near the same spot where these two protesters were killed, both testified at the Maidan massacre trial that they were shot from this building. Government ballistic experts confirmed this during on-site investigative experiments.
Western Press Silence
These revelations were not reported by any Western media. This includes The New York Times, which on April 5, 2014, profiled this wounded protester against the backdrop of an unquestioned report by the acting government in Kiev that blaming “former President Viktor F. Yanukovych, his riot police and their suspected Russian assistants for the violence that killed more than 100 people in Kiev in February.”
It also includes CNN, which filmed the shooting of this medic and attributed it to the government forces.
The government investigation simply denies that there were any snipers there and in other Maidan-controlled buildings, and refuses to investigate them. This is done despite videos of such snipers and testimonies of the absolute majority of wounded protesters at the trial and investigation and more than 150 other witnesses about snipers in these locations.
The assumption in the 3D model that Dmytriv was shot by the single bullet is also contradicted bytestimony of another protester who saw that Dmytriv was shot by “a sniper” from the Hotel Ukraina. My Maidan massacre studies and their video appendices showed that this hotel was then controlled by the Maidan forces.
The New York Times article described collaboration of the New York architecture firm with a Ukrainian “volunteer” in creating the 3D model. It did not report 2017 admissions by the prosecutor general of Ukraine on Facebook that his government agency funded the work of a group of anonymous “volunteers,” including this Ukrainian graduate student, in compiling and synchronizing various videos of the Maidan massacre in collaboration with a People’s Front party outlet.
Some of the People’s Front party leaders were accused by various Ukrainian politicians and Maidan activists, such as Nadia Savchenko, and by five ex-Georgian ex-military members in Italian and IsraeliTV documentaries, of direct involvement in this massacre. Meanwhile, the Times lauds the Ukrainian government’s investigation and Maidan lawyers for drawing on such analyses by these “citizen investigators” and treats a New York architect firm as providing key evidence in the Maidan massacre trial.
Brad Samuels is a founding partner of Situ Research, the New York architecture company that produced the 3D model of the killing of three protesters, which was presented by the Times as proof that such snipers did not exist and that 49 protesters were massacred by the Berkut police.
Samuels said in a video [start at 55:16] that “…eventually, there is a consensus that there was a third party acting. It is clear from forensic evidence that people were shot in the back. Somebody was shooting from rooftops.” His striking observation was not included anywhere in the SITU 3D model report that he produced. Nor was it reported by the Times.
Cases of protesters, who were shot in the back, were omitted from the SITU model. But even in the deliberately selected cases of the three protesters, who were presented by this simulation as shot in front, their actual wound locations suggest that they were also shot from a Maidan-controlled building, which was located in front and to the right of them.
There was not a single report in English-language media concerning testimonies at the Maidan massacre trial where 25 wounded Maidan protesters, with whose shootings Berkut policemen are charged, who stated that they were shot from Maidan-controlled buildings or areas.
Video still from trial.
Major outlets likewise neglected to cover the testimonies by 30 wounded protesters who said they witnessed snipers in those locations or were told about them by other protesters. This is stunning since these testimonies are publicly available in live online recordings of the Maidan massacre trial and they are complied with English-language subtitles into an online video appendix to my study. These testimonies represent the majority of wounded protesters with whose shooting Berkut was charged. They are consistent with video testimonies by about 100 witnesses in the media and social media and at the trial and the investigation. But the official investigation in Ukraine simply denies that there were any such snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings, even though the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine previously stated that snipers massacred many protesters from the Hotel Ukraina and other buildings.
Similarly, not a single media outlet reported segments of the Belgian VRT News video that showed Maidan protesters shouting during the massacre that they saw snipers in the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina shooting Maidan protesters, pointing towards them, and asking them not to shoot. These segments were only shown to a small number of people at the Maidan massacre trial and are included in my online video appendix on YouTube. Other segments from this same video, however,were broadcast to some several hundred million viewers by major television networks in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, and Ukraine, and many other countries as evidence that the government forces massacred the Maidan protesters.
With the notable exception of an Associated Press story quoting the charismatic politician Nadia Savchenko, news agencies have ignored the public remarks of several Maidan politicians and activists who said that they witnessed the involvement of specific top Maidan leaders in the massacre.
Testimonies by five Georgian ex-military members in Italian, Israeli, Macedonian and Russian media and their published depositions to Berkut lawyers for the Maidan massacre trial have also been ignored. They stated that their groups received weapons, payments, and orders to massacre both police and protesters from specific Maidan and Georgian politicians.
They also said that they received instructions from a far-right linked ex-U.S. Army sniper and then saw Georgian, Baltic States, and Right Sector-linked snipers shooting from specific Maidan-controlled buildings.
Western media silence also greeted a recent statement by Anatolii Hrytsenko, one of the top Ukrainian presidential candidates, who was also a Maidan politician and minister of defense, that the investigation of the massacre has been stonewalled because of the involvement of someone from the current leadership of Ukraine in this mass killing.
In contrast, there were no such testimonies admitting involvement in the massacre or knowledge of such involvement by the Berkut policemen, ex-police and security services commanders; nor by ex-Yanukovych government officials. No specific evidence of orders by then-president Yanukovych or his ministers and commanders to massacre unarmed protesters has been revealed by the trials, investigations or news reporting. Nonetheless, the Western mainstream media report existence of such orders as a matter of a fact.
Yanukovych with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (President of Russia)
Not a single major Western media reported that a forensic ballistic examination, conducted by government institute experts on the prosecution request with use of an automatic computer-based IBIS-TAIS system, determined that bullets extracted from killed protesters did not match a police database of bullet samples from Kalashnikov assault rifles of members of the entire Kyiv Berkut regiment. The latter included the special Berkut company charged with the massacre of the protesters. The same concerns the forensic examination findings that many protesters were killed with hunting bullets and pellets.
There are no Western media reports, at least in English, concerning the investigation by the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine. This investigation determined, based on protester’s testimonies and investigative experiments, that almost half of the protesters (77 out of 157) were wounded on Feb. 20 from other sectors than the Berkut police and that no one was charged with their shooting.
A female Maidan medic, whose wounding on the Maidan was highly publicized by Western and Ukrainian media and politicians and attributed to government snipers, is one of them. Since the official investigation determined that government snipers did not massacre the Maidan protesters, with a single implausible exception announced recently, this implies that these protesters were wounded from the Maidan-controlled buildings and areas.
Medic sniper vicim. (Youtube)
There was Western media silence, including from the BBC, about revelations by the Prosecutor General Office that one of the leaders of far right party Svoboda, who was also a member of the Ukrainian parliament at the time of the massacre, occupied a Hotel Ukraina room from which a sniper in Maidan-style green helmet was filmed by the BBC shooting in the direction of the Maidan protesters and the BBC’s own journalists.
Similarly, there are no mainstream media reports of the visual examinations of bullet holes and their impact points by the government investigators that determined that one German ARD television room at the Hotel Ukraina was shot from the direction of the Main Post Office, which was at the time the headquarters of the Right Sector. The latter far-right group included radical nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations and football ultras. This bullet just narrowly missed a German ARD TV female producer. The government investigators also determined that another ARD room in the same hotel was shot at from the Music Conservatory building, which was then the headquarters of the Right-Sector-linked special armed Maidan Self-Defense company.
Likewise, nothing was reported about a forensic ballistic examination made public at the trial that revealed that an ABC News producer was shot in his Hotel Ukraina room by a Winchester caliber hunting soft-point bullet that did not match a caliber of Berkut Kalashnikovs.
Misrepresentation of the Maidan massacre and its investigation by Western media and governments is puzzling.
American independence leader John Adams once defended the British soldiers charged with the Boston massacre in 1770. He regarded this defense as important for the rule of law to prevail over politics. He famously stated at the Boston massacre trial that “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” He not only won this politically charged case of a crucial massacre in U.S. politics and history but became U.S. president afterwards. The question is why this dictum is not heeded almost 250 years later in the case of the Maidan massacre in Ukraine.
- China Unveils New Guided-Missile Destroyer
China has unveiled its newest high tech destroyer during Tuesday’s 70th anniversary of the Chinese PLA Navy’s founding, in an event witnessed by naval delegations from some 60 countries around the world gathered at the eastern port city of Qingdao.
President Xi Jinping reviewed the major naval parade which further had the direct participation of nearly a dozen regional navies, including Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. In hosting the major exercises, China is using the opportunity to both flex its muscle amid heightening tensions with the US in the East and South China seas, and show off its new generation of guided-missile destroyers.
Chinese Navy’s 055-class guided missile destroyer Nanchang takes part in a naval parade off the eastern port city of Qingdao on Tuesday. Image source: Reuters China’s navy has been a major focal point and beneficiary of Xi’s push for rapid modernization, which has shifted priority away from a conventional infantry in order to create a more high tech and agile force.
The PLA navy has been rapidly growing since 2000, a year ago surpassing the United States’ own in size, and compliments an already huge over 2-million strong PLA troop fighting force.
Reuters summarized Tuesday’s naval parade scene as follows:
After boarding the destroyer the Xining, which was only commissioned two years ago, Xi watched as a flotilla of Chinese and foreign ships sailed past, in waters off the eastern port city of Qingdao.
“Salute to you, comrades. Comrades, thanks for your hard work,” Xi called out to the officers standing on deck as the ships sailed past, in images carried on state television.
“Hail to you, chairman,” they replied. “Serve the people.”
In all, 32 Chinese warships are participating the anniversary exercises, including the Liaoning aircraft carrier and nuclear subs, along with destroyers, frigates, landing ships, auxiliary ships.
Air assets deployed as part of the exercise also include bombers, fighters, carrier-based fighters, and carrier-based helicopters engaged in flyovers.
The 70th anniversary exercise appeared an occasion for Beijing to reassert its own vision of “freedom of navigation” and maritime security issues with “major naval leaders” from the region at a time when the US is challenging Chinese territorial claims.
This week’s PLA Navy exercises via China.org.cn Other regional powers sent some of their advanced warships to showcase, such as a stealth guided-missile destroyer of the Indian Navy, INS Kolkata, and the Russian Caliber cruise missile-equipped frigate, the Admiral Gorshkov.
Noticeably absent from the naval parade and exercises, however, was China’s first domestically produced aircraft carrier, the Type 001A, reported to still be undergoing sea tests before its official future launch.
And though older submarines were present, China did not showcase its new nuclear submarines as previously promised, according to footage aired on state television.
- The Russian-China Polar Silk Road Challenges Global Geopolitics
Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Whether the Arctic will become a platform for cooperation or warfare has been a question often posed throughout the past 150 years.
As early as 1875, a vision for Eurasian-American cooperation was becoming realized as leading Americans and Russians alike foresaw the construction of telegraph and even rail lines across the 100 km Bering Strait crossing separating Russia from Alaska. Proponents of this policy on the American side included Lincoln-ally and Colorado’s 1st governor William Gilpin, whose book The Cosmopolitan Railway was published in 1890 showcasing a “post-imperial world” where mutual development was driven by rail lines across all the continents and featured the Bering Strait rail connection as its keystone. Many of Gilpin’s co-thinkers in Russia grew in influence and even convinced Tsar Nicholas II to endorse the project in 1905. The fact that the newly completed Trans-Siberian Railway was modelled on Lincoln’s Trans-Continental Railway and carried train cars built in Philadelphia made this concept very feasible in the minds of many people in those days… not excluding a British Empire that desperately wished to see this potential destroyed.
Although a few assassinations, a Russian revolution and Wall Street/London-funded wars disturbed this paradigm of cooperation from unfolding as it should have, hopes again ran high as Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin recognized that they had much more in common with each other than either did with the British Empire’s Winston Churchill. This partnership re-opened discussion for a Bering Strait rail connection during World War II after decades of dormancy. When FDR prematurely passed away in office and his leading American co-thinkers began to be targeted by the FBI-led “red scare”, Stalin ruminated that “the great dream had died”. Churchill’s Iron Curtain ushered in a new age of Mutual Assured Destruction whereby all talk of the Arctic as a domain of cooperation perished.
Despite efforts of certain leading figures such as John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert in America, or Enrico Mattei of Italy and Charles De Gaulle in France to establish cooperation between east and west, the growth of what has today come to be known as the “deep state” continued apace, with the creation of NATO, and technocratic infiltration of all western governments… often over the dead bodies of nationalist leaders.
While the west celebrated the collapse of Communism, and puppets like Sir Henry Kissinger and Sir George Bush ushered in the New World Order of NAFTA, NATO, the Eurozone, and WTO during the 1990s, a new alliance was forming, and soon the emergence of such institutions as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS, APEC, and later Eurasian Economic Union occurred.
With these new institutions, the designs for a Bering Strait rail tunnel were once again revived when Russia signaled its willingness to construct the century-old project in 2011 offering over $65 billion towards its funding, which only required the cooperation of the United States and Canada.
As China began to emerge as a global force, it not only petitioned to become an observer in the Arctic Council in 2012, but also soon unleashed the Belt and Road Initiative in September 2013. A year later, in May 2014, China too gave its support to the construction of the Bering Strait Tunnel. Until this period the only serious discussion of the program was found in the work of the Schiller Institute, whose founders had publicized the New Silk Road and Bering Strait rail line through thousands of conferences and publications since 1993.
While the period of 2014-present has been tense at the best of times, and close to world war at the worst of times, the potential of the Arctic as a platform for international dialogue has continued un-abated and has served as the theme of this year’s fifth International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg from April 9-10, 2019. The theme of the conference which saw the involvement of 3600 representatives of Russian, and international sectors both private and public was “Arctic: Territory of Dialogue”.
Russia’s Arctic: Territory of Dialogue
The keynote speech at the forum’s plenary session was given by Vladimir Putin whereby the Russian leader discussed the plans for Russia’s Arctic development for the coming decades stating:
“This year we are going to draft and adopt a new strategy for the development of the Russian Arctic up to 2035. It is to combine measures stipulated in our national projects and state programmes, the investment plans of infrastructure companies and programmes for developing Arctic regions and cities. All Arctic regions should be brought to the level of at least the national average in key socioeconomic indicators and living standards.”
In attendance were the heads of every Arctic Council nation (except Canada and the USA) who listened to Putin describe the upgrading of a global transportation corridor involving the Northern Sea Route, the Northern Latitudinal Railway connecting western Siberia to ports on the Arctic Ocean, a boost of freight traffic to 80 million tons by 2025 (from its 20 million tons today), and the creation of new nuclear powered ice breakers. Vast programs for resource development of LNG, oil and other minerals were announced throughout the conference and a new federal law to offer a special system of preferences for Arctic zone investments was publicized. Over 100 oil and gas extraction, infrastructure and tourism projects were finalized totalling over $164 billion.
Most importantly, a vision for this growth process was tied to the creative spirit of scientific discovery that distinguishes the human species as unique among the biosphere, as scientific and educational centers to integrate universities, research institutions and the private sector with the productive industrial processes underlying the “real economy” were announced. This last component of an Arctic vision brought into focus Russia’s partnership with China brilliantly, as a strategic agreement on scientific cooperation was signed between the two allies
The Russia-China Silk Road on Ice
China’s Belt and Road Initiative has already spread across Eurasia and Africa uplifting standards of living, cognitive potential and building mega projects along the way. The grand design is a fluid concept driven by rail development and city building on its land (road) component, with ports and shipping lanes on its sea (belt) component. A philosophical commitment to scientific and technological progress (aka: creative reason) which once animated western society is its driving power.
In January 2018, a Chinese white paper announced China’s northern vision with Russia “will bring opportunities for parties concerned to jointly build a ‘Polar Silk Road’, and facilitate connectivity and sustainable economic and social development of the Arctic.”
In its press release announcing the creation of the China-Russia Arctic Research Center (CRARC) on April 10, 2019, the Russian government announced:
“Joint efforts will be made in Arctic marine science research, which will promote the construction of ‘Silk Road on Ice’. In future, QNLM looks forward to more fruitful and efficient partnerships worldwide to contribute to the sustainable development of the world oceans and a shared future for mankind.”
NATO hawks Freak Out
NATO hawks have reacted to these incredible developments as if the Cold war had never ended, with James Stravridis (former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO) penning an op-ed on April 16 stating China’s polar silk road is only an “aggressive program of building influence” and that the melting arctic ice “will create shipping routes that could be geopolitically central for China’s One Belt, One Road global development strategy.” Citing the recent China-Russia joint military exercises such as the Vostok 2018 China-Russia-Mongolia maneuvers of September 11-17, 2018 that involved over 300 000 military personnel, Stravridis said “they [Russia and China] see working together as a hedge against the US and their cooperation will create significant challenges for the NATO nations with Arctic territory”. The cold warrior called on the USA and Canada to respond with their own joint military maneuvers and collaboration with NATO.
Stravridis’ words echoed those of NORAD chief US General Terrance O’Shaughnessy who spoke in Ottawa earlier calling for joint military cooperation in the Arctic saying “we must acknowledge the reality that our adversaries currently hold our citizens, our way of life and national interests at risk… we are at risk in ways we haven’t been in decades”.
While fear-mongering headlines documenting Russia’s Arctic Summit with such titles as “Putin Bolsters Arctic Presence with Anti-Aircraft Missiles” are the norm in the western press, a major Canadian Foreign Affairs Committee report published on April 11 features a valuable insight into the powerful effects of which the New Silk Road paradigm is creating even among pro-NATO countries as hostile to the BRI and Russia as Canada has proven itself to be over recent years.
The New Paradigm inspires potential change in Canadian Artic Strategy
In the report begun in June 2018 entitled “Nation Building at Home, Vigilance Beyond: Preparing for the Coming Decades in the Arctic”, a non-partisan effort was released to call for a complete reversal on the Arctic policy which has governed Canada since the Deep State-led ouster of Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1963, whose “Northern Vision” was killed with his position as Prime Minister.
While paying lip service to the “danger of Russian and Chinese interest in the Arctic”, the 140 page committee report broke with the tradition of treating the Canada’s Arctic Sovereign as somehow “threatened by outside forces” as has been the trend for decades and instead stated that “the Committee is of the view that the challenges Canada faces in the Arctic are those of security, national defence, stewardship, well-being, and prosperity. With that in mind, it seems unproductive to continue approaching these issues from the perspective of determining whether Canada is somehow losing sovereignty over land and waters that are Canadian.” Expressing an awareness that a new global system was rising the paper stated “the government must … ensure that it is not caught unprepared if the geopolitical reality changes.”
While other similar white papers published over the years have taken more aggressive stances against Russia and China’s BRI, this committee report stated “The Arctic situation now goes beyond its original inter-Arctic States or regional nature, having a vital bearing on the interests of States outside the region and the interests of the international community as a whole, as well as on the survival, the development, and the shared future for mankind.”
Ultimately, the report called for Canada to break the British-steered zero growth/post-industrial policy of the past 60 years and instead create a new federal program for Arctic infrastructure investment, cooperation with China on the Polar Silk Road, involve natives trapped in suicide-laden under-developed reservations with the opportunity to participate in growth programs, mapping of northern resources (which Canada has failed to do unlike their Russian counterparts), and importantly provide for the social integration of natives with the rest of Canada.
Of extreme importance was the call to reverse the 2016 Trudeau-Obama ban on Arctic drilling which was done to protect the ecosystem while excluding all natives who live in said ecosystems with any opportunity to have a say. The report stated “The manner in which that decision was carried out was not described warmly by the people with whom the Committee met in the North. There was a feeling that the decision had been made without consideration for the interests of the people who live and work there. One Indigenous organization received 20 minutes’ notice.”
Rather than call for confrontation, or joining NATO’s ABM encirclement of Russia as previous reports had done, the committee called for discussion, science diplomacy, dialogue and a return to an Arctic growth policy not seen in over 70 years.
While discussions of the Bering Strait rail connection between Eurasia and the Americas was absent, as was all discussion of nuclear energy, whose development is instrumental for the Arctic, it is relevant that no mention was made of “green energy” like windmills and solar panels which would serve no use in any serious national development strategy.
The fact is that the polar Silk Road is a reality. The ports and shipping lines opening up along the Northwest Passage express only the beginning phases of it, but as Russia continues to develop rail and scientific capabilities with China’s assistance across its Arctic, the rail will follow and the dream of Governor Gilpin and Tsar Nicholas II to unite both worlds new and old with rail will occur, as long as the west chooses to take history seriously and not sleepwalk into world war once more.
- Why One 18-Year-Old New Yorker Is Suing Apple For $1 Billion
An 18-year-old New Yorker is suing Apple for $1 billion, claiming he was falsely arrested and charged for a series of thefts that he did not commit due to facial recognition software that Apple allegedly uses to track theft. Ousmane Bah was arrested at his home in New York in November and was charged with stealing from Apple stores in Manhattan, Boston, Delaware and New Jersey. However, the photo that accompanied the arrest warrant showed somebody that “looked nothing like” the student, according to the Daily Mail.
Not only that, one of the thefts had occurred on the same day that Bah was attending his senior prom. He was in Manhattan for the event while one of the thefts occurred in Boston. So now, he is suing Apple for the hassle he has suffered as a result… which in his opinion is worth a solid one billion dollars.
Bah believes that a learners permit that he lost, containing his name, address and other personal information, was used for identification at Apple stores during the thefts. The thief was caught stealing $1200 worth of products from Apple in Boston on May 31, 2018. The same thief then stole from Apple stores in Manhattan, New Jersey and Delaware, while at the same time allegedly being tracked by Apple software.
Bah said he learned about the thefts the hard way: when a Boston municipal court summons arrived at his door in June. He was then arrested by the New York Police Department on November 29.
When the New York Police Department Detective who was assigned to the case examined surveillance footage from the Manhattan Apple Store, they found that the suspect “looked nothing like” Bah. Instead, the detective found that Apple’s (highly flawed) security technology had been using facial recognition to try and identify suspected thieves.
The investigator suspected that the thief had presented Bah’s learners permit during one of the multiple thefts. Bah then was forced to respond to all of the false allegations which led to ‘severe stress and hardship’ and left him ‘feeling humiliated, afraid, and deeply concerned’. In his lawsuit, he claims:
‘[Apple’s] use of facial recognition software in its stores to track individuals suspected of theft is the type of Orwellian surveillance that consumes fear, particularly as it can be assumed that the majority of consumers are not aware that their faces are secretly being analyzed.’
While the charges in most states have been dropped against him, the ones in New Jersey are still pending. Apple has claimed it “does not use facial recognition technology in its stores.”
- How To Survive A Nuclear Disaster
With the advent of nuclear technologies – the threat to everyone is unfortunately very real. If you are truly going to prepare for the nuclear threat, you must understand all the possible outcomes to be best prepared.
When you hear the words nuclear disaster, most people start thinking about a nuclear strike from a foreign country.
However, the threat of a nuclear disaster is much more than just nuclear weapons and war. In fact, you could have a serious nuclear threat right in your backyard.
If that’s the case, you need to know how to react and what you need on hand to stay alive through the radiation and fallout.
Top 3 Known Threats Of Nuclear Disaster
1) Nuclear Power Plants
There are nearly a hundred active nuclear power plants in our nation. These power plants supply millions of Americans with power each day and they are simply benign in the landscape and in how they affect our daily lives.
However, the greatest nuclear disasters of the 21st century did not happen on the battlefield.
Rather, they happened at a nuclear powerplant in Japan (Fukushima in 2011), and of course Chernobyl in 1986. Both are catastrophic nuclear accidents that have left irreparable damage to their surrounding areas.
Source: Wikipedia
Experts estimate it will take 20,000 years before the 19-mile radius around Chernobyl is safe for habitation by humans.
2) Terrorists
While the threat of terrorists is very real, their current capacity seems to be limited to things like guns and trucks. Do you think it will be that way forever? Sad to say, but the day may come when we see an American city attacked by a dirty bomb.
The dirty bomb is an explosive device that contains radioactive material and is used to spread that radiation over a small area. It pales in comparison to the destruction and affect of a nuclear bomb but in a small crowded area the dirty bomb can do plenty of damage.
The time may come when terrorists figure out how to incorporate nuclear capabilities into their arsenal, so take note.
3) War
Of course, we are still facing the threat of nuclear war. Even after all these years and the understanding that an all-out nuclear war could mean the end of humanity. Its hard not to envision a future war where both sides are pushed to the brink and start lobbing nukes at one another.
Whether we are facing the growing contingent of radical dictatorial leaders or some other nation state, nuclear war is far from a thing of the past.
How Far Reaching Is Nuclear Fallout?
We all need to get real when it comes to the conversation of radioactive fallout. While it can be very dangerous, fallout itself requires the right conditions. Of the various nuclear threats we face only one version is going to produce a large cloud of nuclear fallout.
According to Dave Jones, a long-time military man and expert in the field, a surface detonated nuclear bomb is the only tool that is going to send that plume of radiated material high enough into the sky that it will rain down for miles.
Dave also mentions that the most likely form of detonation in a large city, in America, would be in a delivery truck at ground level. So, there is validity in being prepared for fallout depending on how far from a city you might be.
One of the best ways for a civilian to understand the affect or radioactive fallout on their town is to use NUKEMAP. This is a free service that allows you to simulate a detonation of powerful nuclear weapons across a map of your area.
Aside from offering up information on immediate damage it also shows the full scope and direction of radioactive fallout. You can detonate powerful weapons in the most populated city or army base in your area and see if the fallout reaches your home. You may be out of range of this threat altogether.
What Happens If You Are Exposed To Nuclear Fallout?
As bad as nuclear fallout sounds, you may be surprised at the simple methods that can be used to mitigate the risk and exposure.
If you find yourself exposed to nuclear fallout (ash, rain, radiation, etc.) – it can be managed by simply removing your clothes and leaving them outside or in a rubber made container and promptly taking a soapy shower. Doing this with a protective respirator on will assure the fallout doesn’t get inside the body.
Once you have been washed off you are free of the debris that has been touched by the radiation. Thus, the radioactive fallout is gone. Only when you are trapped outside in the fallout does it really become an issue.
Symptoms Of Radiation Sickness
If you or someone you love has been affected by nuclear fallout you should know how to identify the symptoms. You are going to be feeling a lot of things in a nuclear disaster. Feeling sick from stress, emotional drain and downright terror could all make you feel like sick.
Source: Wikipedia
This is a list of symptoms attributed to radiation sickness.
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Extreme fatigue
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Ringing in your ears
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Frequent colds or increased infections
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Unexplained bleeding or small red spots on your skin
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Fever or burns
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Headache or confusion
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Nausea, vomiting, or bloody diarrhea
Setting Up A Radiation Shelter In Your Home
SWhile you might think that the only way to survive the effects of nuclear fallout is buried deep in an emergency shelter, you are wrong. In fact, every American is completely capable of setting up their own in-home fallout shelter and waiting out the radiation.
Just to be clear I am talking about surviving nuclear fallout not a nuclear blast. If you find yourself in the blast area, unfortunately there is nothing you can do to survive.
Beyond the blast radius, radiation from a blast will not last forever. Contrary to popular belief. In fact, levels can seriously decrease in a matter of hours. Check out FEMA’s guidelines on the 7:10 rule.
The 7:10 Rule of Thumb states that for every 7-fold increase in time after detonation, there is a 10-fold decrease in the exposure rate. In other words, when the amount of time is multiplied by 7, the exposure rate is divided by 10. For example, let’s say that 2 hours after detonation the exposure rate is 400 R/hr. After 14 hours, the exposure rate will be 1/10 as much, or 40 R/hr.
As you can see radiation will decrease over time, but you need to be insulated from it during the decrease period. The best way to do this is to think about insulation. Things like mattresses, cushions, and thick blankets can provide you with this insulation. Even plastic sheeting taped along doors, windows, and any other opening to the outside will provide substantial protection.
You will want to find a location near the core of your home, away from windows and air flow from the outside world. Here you can create an insulated shelter in a closet or hallway that will put the maximum distance between yourself and the fallout outside.
Source: Business Insider
Into this shelter you should bring things like food, water, entertainment and an emergency radio. As you can see, you might be holed up in there for a while to avoid as much radiation as possible!
So be prepared for that. Listen to the radio so you can stay on top of radiation levels and how your area is being affected. These broadcasts will also tell you when its safe to go outside again.
Addressing Demands That Follow A Nuclear Disaster
A nuclear disaster is a very scary thought! Depending on the size and scope of nuclear disaster we could see a variety of failures in public service. These will have the biggest impacts on life after the disaster. If we see critical infrastructure like water treatment, power and waste management services disrupted you will quickly feel the effects.
Contrary to popular belief, a nuclear blast (assuming it is a single event) is much more manageable afterwards than other types of events. In situations like Chernobyl and Fukashima – radioactive waste is dumped for days at a time, or longer, in massive quantities.
Bombs and power plant disasters are two very different things. If you are in an area facing a meltdown of a power plant, you must leave immediately. The condition of the land and water will be so bad, it is irrelevant.
However, if you find yourself managing fallout from a nuclear blast you should consider these 4 things to be best prepared.
Food and Water
You can count on your sealed food and water in a nuclear disaster (like these). They will be fine to eat and drink. Don’t grab food from your garden or water from your rain barrels. These will have nuclear particles on them for some time.
Backup Power
The effect on your local power grid is going to be substantial. Multiple city blocks will be obliterated. Don’t look for power to be back on for some time. The same can be said for WIFI signals. Be sure that you have other options like solar or a generator.
Security
Unfortunately, in times of severe distress people may act in their own self interest and try to take things. Even a nuclear bomb won’t keep the bad people away. You need to have a means to secure that food, water and backup power.
I will let you decide how you plan to do that, but my first option is a 12-gauge shotgun deterrent.
First Aid
Emergency services are going to be busy, to say the least. The more self sufficient you can be when treating illness and injury the better off you will be. This doesn’t mean avoiding the proper care if you need it but just be prepared to be turned away and have another option. Consider reading this if you have a medical condition.
5 Nuclear Specific Preps
There are certain preps that really lend themselves to prepping for a nuclear disaster. Take a minute to explore these 5 below. You might find that you are more prepared for a situation like this than you thought.
1) Potassium Iodide Tablets (PI Tabs)
These tablets find a home in the nuclear disaster kits of most preppers. These small pills are used to saturate your thyroid which will keep your body from allowing radiation to spread throughout it. These tabs are cheap and are easy to get your hands on. They are not top-secret stuff anymore – be sure you have enough for your family and maybe some extra to spare. The benefits of these tablets are immeasurable immediately after a nuclear disaster.
2) Radiation Counters
A much larger investment than the PI Tabs a radiation counter or radiation measurement device is going to tell you exactly how much radiation is in the air. There will be no guessing here. While these are expensive preps, I think if you are near a nuclear power plant it might be worth having. You never know when you might need it.
3) Baking Soda
Baking soda or soap and water are the key to radiological decontamination. You know, its not like you need a secret serum to decontaminate yourself. You will need something to scrub your hair and body with. Baking soda is a pretty common prep and you are likely storing it already.
4) Respirator Masks
While fallout on the body can be washed away, fallout in the body is going to do serious damage. If you inhale micro fallout particles its going to affect your lungs first and your whole body over time. A quality respirator is a very important prep to have on hand in case of a nuclear disaster. Check out these respirators to add to your stash (link).
5) Eye Protection
Eyes are another area that can be affected by fallout. Maybe you rub your eyes with a sleeve and not understand what you are doing. This is very dangerous and will spread that material throughout your body, as well. Be sure to have something to cover your sensitive parts immediately after a nuclear event.
Make Sure You Are Ready NOW!
The threat of a nuclear disaster is more complex than most people think. Every radiological disaster is different. The most important takeaway is to understand what items you need to add to your inventory to assure you can respond to such a disaster.
The one thing that all nuclear disasters have in common is that they inflict serious damage either from blast radius, radiation or both. No matter what the situation, you must act in a nuclear disaster.
Having the knowledge and the right preps will help but in most instances of fallout and radiation you are going to fall back on two major skills. The first being patience. You can safely wait out radioactive fallout. That is the best move if you are on the outskirts of the disaster.
The other skill is going to be your evacuation or bugout skills. If you are too close to an area and the radiation is hazardous, well, you have no choice but to leave.
For those in the blast radius of a modern-day nuclear weapon, well, there aren’t really any preps that will help you. The best thing you can do is be prepared for the worst and hope and pray for the best!
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- Big Pharma Distributor Faces Federal Criminal Charges Over Opioid Crisis
The nation’s sixth-largest pharmaceutical distributor is facing federal criminal charges over its role in the opioid crisis sweeping the country, according to the New York Times.
Rochester Drug Cooperative and two former company officials were charged on Tuesday with defrauding the federal government and conspiracy to distribute drugs. The case was brought by the US attorney’s office in Manhattan. The former RDC officials charged are former CEO Laurence F. Doud III and former chief of compliance, William Pietruszewski, according to the Times. Doud is expected to surrender to DEA agents and appear in US District Court in Manhattan later Tuesday.
Rochester Drug Cooperative, a major pharmaceutical distributor, and two of its former executives are facing federal criminal charges over its role in the opioid crisis.CreditCreditMustafa Hussain for The New York Times The criminal charges leveled at the drug distributor and its former executives marked a new tactic for the government in tackling the nation’s epidemic of addiction to prescription painkillers, like oxycodone.
Prosecutors applied the same criminal statutes to charge the distributor and its former executives as have been used against illicit street dealers and cartel chiefs who traffic in fentanyl and oxycodone.
The charges stem from a two-year investigation by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration that began after the company violated the terms of a civil settlement. –NYT
The company admitted in a civil case that it had failed for years to report thousands of suspicious opioid orders from pharmacies – many of which far exceeded ordering limits, and catered to doctors who ran “pill mills” according to the Times report.
Rochester Drug Cooperative acting CEO John Kinney appeared on behalf of the company during a brief court proceeding Tuesday morning in front of Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the US District Court in Manhattan. Kinney signed a deferred prosecution agreement in which the company – which operates in 10 states – effectively admitted to committing the crimes. “The agreement, along with a civil consent decree, were both approved by Judge Buchwald,” notes the Times.
Together, the agreement and the decree will allow the company to continue operating and set standards for its conduct, as well as providing for continued oversight, according to a court document. –NYT
“We made mistakes,” said company spokesman Jeff Eller. “and RDC understands that these mistakes, directed by former management, have serious consequences.”
According to federal authorities, despite signing consent decrees and paying fines, drug distributors have continued to ship thousands of doses of opioids to pharmacies which have been red-flagged.
Since the Sackler family – which controls Purdue Pharma – launched OxyContin in the late 1990s, deaths involving prescription and illegal opioids have quadrupled from 2.9 per 100,000 in 1999 to 13.3 per 100,000 in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So far, 36 states and 1,600 cities and counties have filed lawsuits against Purdue. As noted previously, Purdue is contemplating filing for bankruptcy amid the barrage of lawsuits.
- 28 Years Ago, Our Enslavement Was Predicted… And We're Still Not Listening
Authored by Yosel Del Valle Pulgarin via Hackernoon.com,
“An untold future lies ahead, and for the first time, I face it with a sense of hope. For if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life; maybe we can too.” — Sarah Connor
I was a kid when I first heard this quote, and It was shocking how we could even think of machines having feelings. Even more, it was interesting the idea in that quote referring that human beings don’t appreciate life.
At that moment I wasn’t a big fan of terminator and to be honest I’m still not the biggest follower, yet, that bit of the end of the movie was nailed into my memory even -especially these days- several years after.
Some years after Terminator, the first movie of The Matrix was released and from the very first time, I was hooked into the whole concept, the world, the characters, the problem though never stopped to think about some of the reasoning behind that movie, just thought, “man, that’s cool!”
There was no literal messaging, just the whole concept to me was exciting and in part was what took me interested in programming and to be honest to try to be “different” because, you know, it felt good at that age to be Neo and I’m not going to lie it still does!
I’ve watched The Matrix so many times, but never really thought to myself what it meant to me or how I would connect it to The Terminator until these days.
It has been more than a year that I’ve been commuting to work. Takes me around 30 to 60 min to get there, during which I do some headbanging at the sound of metal music, read tech books or stare at the traffic jams going on the city. One thing I do from time to time is to watch other people behaviors while listening to music, just because sometimes is a good way to keep your mind away from work, to think of something else for a change. One of those days I started experiencing that the more people jumped into the train, the more evident was a particular behavior: Everyone on the train was holding their phones! I was shocked seeing how everyone would go through whatever they were seeing with just barely blinking. The most concerning part to me is I ignored this before because I was looking down to my phone.
You may think, well it’s 2019, it’s been like that for a couple of years now, so what’s the big deal?
One of my objectives for the previous year for me was to be more in contact with the external world. Doing so took me to really notice how bad it is. What I think it is sad, is that from the moment I forced myself to lay down my phone, was the moment I realized how the world looks like, how all these situations deeply connect with movies that date back at least 20 years behind the current times.
It’s more common now that I find myself watching others during commute just because I want to see how smartphones are influencing normal human behaviors. Every day you can see things like people bumping into each other without apologizing. Parents so into their phones that they forget to watch their kids, couples that won’t cross a single word for a whole 30 more min ride and going to touristic places is a bit of a nightmare especially when everyone wants the same selfie to post it to Instagram.
In 2019 we can say there is a fair amount of technological advances in software development, all of them at our reach thanks to our ever-connected smartphones. Apps and tools, in general, are getting smarter to provide more profound or more personalized experiences to users but none of them is even close to creating something so bright that would or could outreason a human being (At least not yet).
Thanks to smartphones, humankind is being alienated of its true nature, and the best part of that is it didn’t require machines to be self-aware, feel or think but a bunch of brilliant, hard-working developers. We are preferring contact through limited voice messages rather than having a real talk. We are interrupting real conversations to read what someone else texted you. We are caring more about the unknown folk cat rather than the friend in front of us looking for advice. We seek to be more connected to people “we care about” creating connections that are meaningless or superficial. We are caring too much about how others see our “perfect” lives, and all this is more accessible thanks to the apps we love and use on our daily basis.
Human beings are a social species by design, and in my opinion, and it’s natural to try and find connections or to look for a tool that makes us socialization simpler. But the way we are “socializing” is not the best way. If we care more about the digital world than the real one, our reality can be easily replaced by an idea that would not necessarily be the truth just only what we want to see. We are digging our own tombs and allowing controlling mechanisms. We are the ones that are creating these situations, and if we don’t change that, we will be seating on chairs with screens on our faces all day (Wall-E?), or is that happening already?
Movies like The Matrix, Terminator or any other film in that genre is they all refer to the times (in a made-up future) where there is a machine take-over and we humans are enslaved to their will. Even with a slight difference in their main argument, they all seem to concur to the fact that controlling humans is best for the sake of the world.
- Why Chinese Banks Are Running Out Of Dollars
Following the biggest quarterly credit injection in Chinese history, it is safe to say that China’s banks are flush with yuan loans. However, when it comes to dollar-denominated assets, it’s a different story entirely. As the WSJ points out, in the past few years, a funding problem has emerged for China’s biggest commercial banks, one which is largely outside of Beijing’s control: they’re running low on US dollars so critical to fund operations both domestically and abroad.
As shown in the chart below, the combined dollar liabilities at China’s four biggest commercial banks exceeded their dollar assets at the end of 2018, a sharp reversal from just a few years ago. Back in 2013, the four together had around $125 billion more dollar assets than liabilities, but now they owe more dollars to creditors and customers than are owed to them.
The reversal is the result of just one bank: Bank of China, which for many years held more net assets in dollars than any other Chinese lender, ended 2018 owing $72 billion more in dollar liabilities than it booked in dollar assets. The other “top 3” lenders finished the year with more dollar assets than liabilities, even though their net dollar surplus has shrunk substantially in the past five years.
And yet, as everything else with China, there is more than meets the eye: as the WSJ reports looking at Bank of China’s annual report, the bank’s asset-liability imbalance is more than addressed by dollar funding that doesn’t sit on its balance sheet. Instruments like currency swaps and forwards are accounted for elsewhere.
This is reminiscent of the shady operations discussed recently involving Turkey’s FX reserves, where the central bank has been borrowing dollar assets from local banks via off balance sheet swaps, which it then used to prop up and boost the lira at a time of aggressive selling of the local currency. It is safe to assume that the PBOC has been engaging in a similar operation.
Additionally, as the WSJ observes, such off-balance-sheet lending “can be flighty”, and citing a recent BIS study, the vast majority of currency derivatives mature in under one year, meaning they are up for constant renewal and could evaporate during times of pressure.
Of course, as we noted last week, the Turkish central bank got the idea to manipulate its currency using swaps from China, where currency swaps, meant to protect banks from liquidity crises when they lend in currencies other than their own, have boomed in recent years…. even if it still does not have “the most crucial of all” swap line – one with the Federal Reserve.
The good news is that unlike Turkey, whose net foreign asset position may be as low as just $10 billion, the imbalance at Bank of China is small relative to its balance sheet, so it shouldn’t be seen as an imminent threat. As a reminder, China has roughly $3.1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves (gross of swaps), which remain a safety backstop in case of a crunch or funding crisis, but as the WSJ notes, it is unclear how bad things would have to get before Beijing would permit its use by major commercial banks; meanwhile, in a worst case scenario, “a heightened need to help the big four lenders also makes that hoard of reserves seem somewhat less formidable.”
As for who is soaking up all the local bank’s dollar assets, one culprit is China’s Belt-and-Road projects, which are overwhelmingly financed in the U.S. currency, and are sending dollars overseas in the form of Chinese loans. Additionally, Chinese property developers have a rapacious demand, too.
But at the heart of this funding mismatch there is a simple cause: as the WSJ’s Mike Bird notes, “Beijing would like to be a major financial player overseas, but few borrowers have any interest in the yuan. Most international trade is accounted for in dollars, the yuan is difficult to convert and foreign owners of Chinese assets have at best an uncertain relationship with the country’s legal system.”
Until that changes, expect to see the banks’ net dollar funding position continue to turn increasingly negative.
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