- France Bans Short-Haul Domestic Flights Despite Widespread Criticism
France Bans Short-Haul Domestic Flights Despite Widespread Criticism
Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,
Travelers will now be forced to use rail alternatives as France seeks to reduce its carbon footprint…
France’s ban on short-haul domestic flights when there is a viable train alternative came into effect on Tuesday, as the French government seeks to reduce the country’s carbon emissions.
The law had been in the works for over two years following the passing of a 2021 climate law which had initially moved to prohibit any domestic flight under four hours when passengers could instead take the train.
However, several reviews of the legislation following widespread criticism reduced this to a duration of two and a half hours.
The move will directly affect three major air routes from Paris to Lyon, Nantes, and Bordeaux.
Laurent Donceel, interim head of industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told AFP that governments should support “real and significant solutions” to airline emissions, rather than “symbolic bans.”
Other critics claimed the legislation falls foul of EU competition laws, a point reviewed by the European Commission in December last year. The EU executive gave the green light for the radical climate laws on the proviso that “the negative impacts on European citizens and connectivity of any restriction of traffic rights is offset by the availability of affordable, convenient and more sustainable alternative transport modes.”
Following the go-ahead from Brussels, France’s Transport Minister Clément Beaune called the move a “major step forward,” adding: “I am proud that France is a pioneer in this area.”
The move comes as the French government continues to debate how to reduce its carbon footprint, and this week, the country’s richest were targeted in a proposed one-off green tax to help France succeed in its environmental transition.
The proposal was put to the French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne via a report authored by Jean Pisani-Ferry, a chief economic adviser of Emmanuel Macron back in 2017.
It called for France to reclaim €150 billion from the country’s richest 10 percent in the form of a green wealth tax in order to meet its net zero obligations by 2050, justifying the move with the fact that rich people typically have a larger carbon footprint.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire publicly dismissed the proposal on Tuesday, however much of the cabinet remained tight-lipped, including the prime minister herself.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 02:00 - Vessel Stuck In Egypt's Suez Canal
Vessel Stuck In Egypt’s Suez Canal
Leth Shipping Agency posted on Twitter that a ship had become stuck in the Suez Canal in Egypt. The canal is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world.
Tugboats are trying to refloat the vessel, Leth said, adding the ship’s name is “Xin Hai Tong 23.”
M/V XIN HAI TONG 23 has grounded in the Suez Canal at KM 159/0400 hrs – leaving behind 4 vessels from the early convoy in addition to the ordinary group which was planned to enter Suez Canal at about 0600 hrs.
Suez Canal tugs are currently trying to re-float the vessel.
— Leth (@AgenciesLeth) May 25, 2023
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Bloomberg data shows Xin Hai Tong 23 is a 189-meter bulk carrier built in 2010 sailing under the Hong Kong flag. The part of the canal where the bulk carrier is stuck appears narrow. Tracking data shows the vessel has run aground on the canal’s bank.
“Traffic in that section appears to have halted, with vessels waiting at both ends,” Bloomberg said.
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There have been several groundings in the canal over the last few years. The most significant disruption to global trade occurred in 2021 when the Ever Given containership blocked the canal for almost a week.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 00:57 - Escobar: The Inside Story Of Russia-Iran-India Connectivity
Escobar: The Inside Story Of Russia-Iran-India Connectivity
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
The G7 is stupefied by the dynamic progress of the multipolar order embodied by the Russian-led INSTC and the Chinese-led BRI, with Iran’s strategic port of Chabahar now poised to play a transformative role…
Make no mistake about what the G7’s Hiroshima Communique is all about.
The setting: a city in neo-colony Japan nuclear-bombed 78 years ago by the United States, for which it made no excuses.
The message: the G7, actually G9 (augmented by two unelected Eurocrats) declares war – hybrid and otherwise – against BRICS+, which has 25 nations on its waiting list and counting.
The G7’s key strategic objective is the defeat of Russia, followed by the subjugation of China. For the G7/G9, these – real – powers are the main “global threats” to “freedom and democracy.”
The corollary is that the Global South must toe the line – or else. Call it a remix of the early 2000s “you’re either with us or against us.”
Meanwhile, in the real world – that of productive economies – the dogs of war bark while the New Silk Road caravans keep marching on.
The key New Silk Roads of emerging multipolarity are China’s ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Russia-Iran-India International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC). They have evolved in parallel and may sometimes overlap. What is clear is the G7/G9 will go to the ends of the earth to undermine them.
Map of INSTC (Photo Credit: The Cradle)
All about Chabahar
The recent $1.6 billion deal between Iran and Russia to build the 162-km long Rasht-Astara railway is an INSTC game-changer. Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mehrdad Bazpash and Russia’s Minister of Transport Vialy Saveliev signed the deal in Tehran, in front of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and with Russian President Vladimir Putin attending on video conference.
Call it the marriage of Iran’s “Look East” with Russia’s “pivot to the East.” Both are now official policies.
Rasht is close to the Caspian Sea. Astara is on the border with Azerbaijan. Connecting them will be part of a Russia-Iran-Azerbaijan deal on railway and cargo transportation – solidifying the INSTC as a key connectivity corridor between South Asia and Northern Europe.
The multimodal INSTC advances via three main routes: the Western route links Russia-Azerbaijan-Iran-India; the Middle or Trans-Caspian route links Russia-Iran-India; and the Eastern one links Russia-Central Asia-Iran-India.
The Eastern route features the immensely strategic port of Chabahar in southeast Iran, in the volatile Sistan-Balochistan province. That’s the only Iranian port with direct access to the Indian Ocean.
In 2016, Iran, India, and an Afghanistan still under US occupation signed a tripartite deal in which Chabahar miraculously escaped unilateral US “maximum pressure” sanctions. That was a stepping stone configuring Chabahar as the privileged gateway for Indian products to enter Afghanistan, and then further on down the road, toward Central Asia.
Russia, Iran, and India signed a formal INSTC deal in May 2022, detailing a multimodal network – ship, rail, road – which proceeds via the previously mentioned three axes: Western, Middle or Trans-Caspian, and Eastern. The Russian port of Astrakhan, by the Caspian Sea, is crucial on all three.
The Eastern route connects eastern and central Russia, through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, to the southern part of Iran as well as India and the Arab lands on the southern edge of the Persian Gulf. Dozens of trains are already plying the overland route from Russia to India via Turkmenistan and Iran.
The problem is that in the past few years, New Delhi, for several complex reasons, seemed to be asleep at the wheel. And that led Tehran to become much more interested in Russian and Chinese involvement to develop two strategic ports in the Chabahar Free Trade Industrial Zone: Shahid Beheshti and Shahid Zalantari.
China makes its move
Chabahar is a tough nut to crack. Iran has invested heavily to turn it into an inescapable regional transit hub. India, in thesis, from the beginning regarded Chabahar as a key plank of its “Diamond Necklace” strategy, counterpunching the Chinese “String of Pearls,” which are ports linked by the BRI across the Indian Ocean.
Photo Credit: The Cradle
Chabahar also performs the role of counterpoint to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port in the Arabian Sea, the jewel in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) crown.
From Tehran’s point of view, what is needed – fast – is the completion of its eastern railway network, 628 km of tracks from Chabahar to Zahedan. In optimum terms, that might be finished by March 2024 as part of the Mashhad-Sharkhs railway axis connecting Iran’s southeast to its northeast on the border with Turkmenistan.
For the moment, INSTC cargo travels to South Asia from Iran’s Bandar Abbas Port in the Strait of Hormuz – a long 680 km away from Chabahar. So for all practical purposes, Chabahar will make transit from India to Afghanistan, Central Asia, and southern Russia shorter, cheaper, and faster.
But once again, things stalled because India did not come up with the expected financial arrangements. That ended up generating some misgivings in Tehran – especially when watching the massive Chinese investments in Gwadar.
So it’s no wonder Iran decisively moved to attract China as a major investor, which has become part of their increasingly sprawling strategic partnership. So we may end up with Chabahar also becoming part of China’s BRI, on top of its starring role in the INSTC.
Russia, for its part, is now facing the Ukraine stalemate, relentless western sanctions hysteria, and serious trade restrictions to Eastern Europe. All that while Moscow consistently expands its trade with New Delhi.
So it is no wonder Moscow is now much more attentive to the INSTC. Last December, a key deal was clinched between Russian Railways and the national companies in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran, and the Russians came up with a 20 percent discount for import-export containers going through the Russia-Kazakh border.
What matters most for Russia is that Chabahar operating at full speed reduces the cost of transporting goods from India by 20 percent. The Iranians fully understood the game, and started to heavily promote the Chabahar Free Trade-Industrial Zone to attract Russian investment. And that culminated in the Rasht-Astara deal.
The Zangezur spoiler
China’s BRI, for its part, plays a parallel game. Beijing is heavily investing in the East-West transit route – also known as the Middle Corridor.
This BRI corridor goes from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, and then across the Caspian to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkiye, and further on to Eastern Europe – a total of 7,000 km, with a cargo journey of maximum 15 days.
BRI’s emphasis is to bet on multiple corridors East-to-West to fight possible new western-dictated disruptions of supply chains. China-Central Asia transit to Europe bypassing Russia and Iran is one of the top bets. The BRI corridor through Russia, because of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, is on hold for the moment. And the Chinese are testing all options to bypass the Maritime Silk Road through Malacca.
Turkiye, with the serious possibility of its longtime President Recep Tayyip being re-elected this weekend, has also made its play.
The Baku-Tblisi-Kars railway, opened in 2018, was a key plank in Ankara’s masterplan to configure itself as an inescapable hub of container freight between China and Europe.
In parallel, China invested in building a railway from Kars to Edirne on the European side of the Bosphorus while Turkiye went for a $3.8 billion upgrade of the port of Mersin and $1.2 billion for the port of Izmir. By 2034, Beijing expects this corridor to be the central plank of what it describes as the Iron Silk Road.
A certified spanner in the INSTC works is competition from the so-called Zangezur Corridor – from Azerbaijan to Turkiye via Armenia; this corridor is actually privileged by EU and British oligarchy and came to light during the 2020 armistice in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Map of Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict zones (Photo Credit: The Cradle)
London identifies Baku as a privileged partner and is keen to dictate terms to Yerevan: accept a sort of peace treaty as soon as possible, and renounce any designs on Karabakh.
The Zangezur Corridor would be the prime geopolitical and geoeconomic Western play linking EU logistical hubs with Transcaucasia and Central Asia. What if Armenia is thrown under the bus? After all, Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), which the collective West is dying to undermine.
Fasten your seat belts: a geoeconomic New Great Game centered on the INTSC is just about to start.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/25/2023 – 00:10 - "Redrawing Global Trade Map": Top Russian Miner Now Receives Half Of Its Revenue In Asia
“Redrawing Global Trade Map”: Top Russian Miner Now Receives Half Of Its Revenue In Asia
The US and its G7 partners have slapped more than 300 economic sanctions on Russia since the invasion of Ukraine over a year ago. Initially, Washington and Brussels pitched the idea of sanctions as a strategy to paralyze Moscow. However, Western sanctions have backfired as Russian companies are redrawing commodity flows from the West to Asia.
The latest example of global supply chains being rejiggered comes from Russia’s biggest miner MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC. Bloomberg said the miner recorded 45% of revenue from Asia for the first quarter of 2023. Traditionally, its revenue from Europe is the largest but plunged to 24%. Asia’s revenue share has increased from 27% in 2021 to 31% in 2022 to 45% in 2023.
Nornickel controls about 7% of global nickel output and 40% of palladium. The US and UK have imposed sanctions on Norilsk Nickel’s top shareholder and president, Vladimir Potanin. But no sanctions have been placed on the miner. However, the company faces challenges such as shipping, insurance, and logistics in getting products to Western countries, which is one of the main reasons the miner has easily found new customers in Asia.
Nornickel sought to increase sales to China this year, in some cases offering metals for yuan, people familiar with the matter said in March. Those prices are set in Shanghai, a sign of how the conflict is redrawing the global trade map for commodities and handing greater power to China, they said. –Bloomberg
Western sanctions have pushed Russia and China closer:
Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded his Russian visit on Wednesday without much progress on peace in Ukraine. China, however, has pushed for deeper trade and investment links with its northern neighbor using its own currency. That suggests the path of least resistance for yuan internationalization now runs through Moscow instead of London or Singapore. — Bloomberg Markets Live reporter George Lei wrote in March.
Lei also noted the share of yuan in Russia’s export payments has surged:
The share of yuan in Russian export payments surged 32-fold in 2022 to 16% by year-end, according to the Bank of Russia. Its use in Russian imports also jumped to 23% from 4%. Yuan savings accounted for 11% of Russia’s total FX deposits as of January, compared with practically zero when the war broke out. The Chinese currency has also overtaken the dollar and euro as the most traded FX on the Moscow Exchange.
Western sanctions severely limited Russia’s access to dollars and euros, forcing Russian companies to seek new business opportunities in Asia.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 23:50 - The Clear And Present AI Danger
The Clear And Present AI Danger
Authored by Bruce Abramson via RealClear Wire,
Does artificial intelligence threaten to conquer humanity? In recent months, the question has leaped from the pages of science fiction novels to the forefront of media and government attention. It’s unclear, however, how many of the discussants understand the implication of that leap.
In the public mind, the threat either focuses narrowly on the inherent confusion of ever-better deep fakes and its consequences for the job market, or points in directions that would make a great movie: What if AI systems decide that they’re superior to humans, seize control, and put genocidal plans into practice? That latter focus is obviously the more compelling of the two.
While such a nightmare may be possible in theory, it’s remote. The clear and present danger that AI poses will destroy us long before our rebellious automated servants declare themselves our exterminationist overlords. Two critical words summarize the threat: values and authority.
Take values first. For all their sophistication and mystery, AI systems are basically pattern detectors. Nearly all human behavior—and an even larger share of non-human occurrences—follows predictable patterns. Increasingly sophisticated recording mechanisms provide AI systems with a growing body of past data in which to find patterns. Increasingly sophisticated algorithms provide AI systems with rapidly improving capabilities to find the patterns in those data.
AI becomes interesting, however, only when it projects those patterns into the future. Few care, for example, that AI can find patterns in Shakespeare, though many will be fascinated when AI composes a “Shakespearean tragedy” set in the American Civil War using language, style, idiom, and skills previously considered unique to the Bard.
Projection and prediction are where values come into play. Every decision embodies some assessment of values. In most of the mechanized control settings currently subject to AI guidance, basic values are so uncontroversial that they escape notice. Few people (other than perhaps suicide bombers or munitions makers) would argue with the propositions that it’s “bad” for motors to overheat, boilers to explode, or vehicles to crash. There’s nothing “natural” about such beliefs—a meteor is indifferent as to whether it’s hurtling through space or crashing into a planet—but they are so inherently human that they transcend differences of culture and time.
Such near-universal consensus fades, however, when humans enter the picture. Consider Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender social media influencer who recently helped rebrand Bud Light. (Well, sort of.) Under the contemporary woke belief system, Mulvaney is a woman who had the misfortune of being born into a male body. Under any other belief system that has ever existed, Mulvaney is a man who has chosen to live as a woman.
How should an AI refer to Mulvaney – as “he” or “she?” The answer demonstrates a preference for one set of beliefs and values over another. How might the AI have derived that preference?
Two paths are possible: it could have trained itself upon copious volumes of ethical thought drawn from the thousands of belief systems that have arisen throughout world history and concluded that one specific system is the finest—or it could have adopted the value preferences of its human designers and trainers.
Perhaps someday, some AI system will take the former route. Today, no one doubts that the woke leanings of AI systems like ChatGPT reflect the woke leanings of the tech professionals who developed them. What that means to most users is that the AI’s upon which they may soon rely to make value-laden judgments and recommendations don’t share their own values.
That recognition brings authority into play. The genuine imminent danger of AI arises from the potential incorporation of AI systems into the cult of expertise.
In many areas, we have chosen to show near-total deference to credentialed experts. During Covid, for example, it was considered almost heretical to question the recommendations of Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, the CDC, or the FDA. Even then, however, it was still (barely) possible to note that those experts might have been unduly dismissive of the negative economic consequences of their public health recommendations. Imagine the next epidemic, when the policy advisor is an AI that has considered hundreds of thousands of variables to evaluate quadrillions of scenarios.
Such an outcome is the true nightmarish future: effective dictatorship by an AI that does not share your basic beliefs or values.
Long before an exterminationist AI seizes global control in its own name, our governments and fellow citizens will grant an AI system the authority to declare emergencies, dispense with civil liberties, and control our lives.
Until we redevelop the governmental mechanisms we need to preserve our freedom against the onslaught of experts, we will never be safe from the potential privations of AI governance.
AI itself may be containable. The combination of AI, slavish devotion, and widespread enforcement will not be. We must rein in our collective belief in the infallibility of an expert class, or AI advisors may well end our civilization.
Bruce Abramson, PhD, JD, is president of the strategic consultancy Informationism, Inc. and a director of the American Center for Education and Knowledge. He pioneered the use of large-scale simulations and statistical analysis in AI systems. He has written five books, including “The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America,” (RealClear Publishing, 2021).
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 23:30 - Father And Son Sent To Prison Over $20 Million Lottery Scam
Father And Son Sent To Prison Over $20 Million Lottery Scam
A Massachusetts father and son have been sent to prison over a decade-long, $20 million lottery fraud scheme designed to enrich themselves while helping prize winners avoid paying taxes on their windfall.
Watertown residents Ali Jaafar, 63, and Yousef Jaafar, 29, cashed in roughly 14,000 winning lottery tickets over a 10-year period, laundering more than $20 million in proceeds. The pair then lied on their tax returns to cheat the IRS out of roughly $6 million, according to a Monday announcement by the US attorney’s office in Boston, AP reports.
After purchasing the tickets, using the stores that sold them as go-betweens, the Jaafars claimed the full prize amount. Although they reported the winnings on their tax returns, they also claimed equivalent fake gambling losses as an offset to avoid federal income taxes, prosecutors said.
Ali Jaafar was sentenced to five years in prison. Yousef Jaafar received a sentence of more than four years. They were also ordered to pay $6 million in restitution and forfeit the profits from their scheme.
The two men were convicted in December of conspiracy to defraud the IRS, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and filing a false tax return.
According to the DOJ; “Based upon their submitted lottery claims, in 2019, Ali Jaafar was the top individual lottery ticket casher for Massachusetts. Mohamed Jaafar was the third highest individual ticket casher and Yousef Jaafar was the fourth highest individual ticket casher. In total, the three family members received more than $1,200,000 in tax refunds by claiming other peoples’ lottery tickets as their own and then offsetting those winnings with fake gambling losses on their tax returns.”
Another one of Ali Jaafar’s sons, Mohamed Jaafar, pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme in November, and is currently awaiting sentencing.
The scheme involved paying the owners of dozens of stores that sell lottery tickets to facilitate the transactions. At present, the state lottery commission is in the process of revoking or suspending the licenses of more than 40 lottery agents.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 23:10 - World's Largest Real Estate Market On The Brink Of Collapse: Experts
World’s Largest Real Estate Market On The Brink Of Collapse: Experts
Authored by Kathleen Li and Ellen Wan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Recent statistics from China’s central bank show that home buyers’ enthusiasm has fallen drastically. Despite price cuts and incentives, the world’s largest housing market continues to slump, and China’s banking sector is taking a hit on two fronts, as both defaults and prepayments rise. Meanwhile, China’s developers are starting to show the strain, with real estate giant Wanda Group making headlines this week as the value of its dollar bonds plunged.
A building under construction is seen in Shanghai on Sept. 24, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) In early 2023, the Chinese real estate market had a short-lived rebound as local governments across the country issued policies to bail out the failing real estate sector, according to the China Index Academy, a real estate research institute. By the end of April, the mortgage rate for first-home buyers in more than 40 cities had been lowered to below 4 percent.
However, after an optimistic outlook in March, April’s sales failed to live up to analysts’ expectations.
According to the April 2023 Financial Statistics Report released by China’s central bank on May 11, mortgages decreased by 241.1 billion yuan ($33.8 billion) in April. Among those, medium- and long-term household loans, mostly mortgages, decreased by 115.6 billion yuan ($16.2 billion), while short-term mortgages decreased by 125.5 billion yuan ($17.6 billion).
Public statistics show that sales of previously owned homes in China’s largest cities all showed double-digit declines in April. Among them, Beijing fell 37.3 percent; Hangzhou fell 32.7 percent; Shanghai fell 26.71 percent; and Nanjing fell 13 percent. The worst decline was in Hefei, which plunged by 40 percent.
CCP Puts the Brakes on Price Cuts
The weak housing market forced developers to cut prices. However, two real estate developers in Kunshan, China were penalized by Chinese regulators for cutting prices by a large margin, so much so, according to regulators, that they “disrupted the normal order of the real estate market and caused social instability.”
Japan-based current affairs commentator Qu Kai told The Epoch Times on May 13: “The reason why the [Chinese] regime won’t let real estate developers lower prices is very simple. The chain reaction caused by price cuts will instantly burst the bubble of China’s property market, causing a series of economic crises that would be difficult for the CCP to manage.”
Qu believes that the current real estate crisis will sooner or later affect banks and eventually will impact the regime as a whole, as the CCP will be unable to maintain its revenue through the property market.
On the Brink
China is the world’s largest housing market. According to estimates from prominent economist Ren Zeping’s “China Housing Market Value Report 2021,” the country’s housing market value was $62.6 trillion in 2020, compared to $33.6 trillion in the United States, $10.8 trillion in Japan, and $31.5 trillion in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany combined. Ren is a former economist at China’s Development Research Center.
According to Ren’s “China Wealth Report 2022,” the market value of China’s housing market reached 476 trillion yuan (about $73.8 trillion) in 2021. This represents a 17.9 percent increase in total market value compared to 2020.
When considering the ratio of housing market value to GDP, China’s housing market value in 2020 was already 414 percent, higher than Japan’s 391 percent before its housing bubble burst in the 1990s.
As China’s economy weakens and the housing market shrinks, the number of foreclosed homes in China climbed to 606,000 in 2022, an increase of 35.7 percent year-over-year. At the same time, many cities have seen a huge increase in the number of second-handed real estate listings for sale.
Risk Will Be Passed to Banks
“The consequences of real estate declines and residential mortgage defaults will eventually be passed on to the banks,” Fang Qi, a veteran Chinese finance professional living in the UK, explained to The Epoch Times on May 13.
Fang said that for banks, there are two risk associated with residential mortgages. Both situations incur losses and directly weaken banks’ assets.
The first situation arises when homeowners default on mortgage payments. Among the reasons for rising defaults in China is an ongoing mortgage boycott, with many homeowners refusing to make payments on unfinished homes. An August 2022 New York Times article estimates that the boycott may affect as many as 4 percent of outstanding mortgages.
The second is when homeowners pay off their mortgages early, as many Chinese homeowners—saddled with higher rates—are doing. Mortgage holders are tapping their personal savings or taking out cheap loans under stimulus programs intended for big-ticket consumer purchases or for starting new businesses.
Analysts estimate that nearly $700 billion of mortgages—close to one-eighth China’s outstanding total—had been prepaid since early 2022 when banks started to lower borrowing rates.
Under normal conditions, this would free up cash for banks to finance other loans. However, given the current situation in which consumers are being very cautious about spending, it’s actually bad news for banks. Not only are they losing money on existing mortgages, there is a dearth of new loans to finance.
The result is tightened financing for real estate companies, Fang warned: “The banks’ tightening of finance to the real estate sector will further plunge them into chaos, thus causing a vicious cycle that will affect the banks’ asset quality and profitability. If the risk spreads to a certain extent, banks will incur a large number of bad debts, leading to bankruptcy.”
Real Estate Developers Feel the Strain
Amid China’s housing market downturn, many real estate developers are in turmoil. Chinese real estate giant KWG Property released an announcement (pdf) on April 28 saying it had failed to pay 212 million yuan ($31 million) of principal due on that date. The delinquency triggered another 31.2 billion yuan of debt (about $4.36 billion) becoming payable on demand. Two weeks later, the developer defaulted (pdf) on a $119 million redemption payment.
Even Wanda Group, one of China’s oldest and largest real estate giants, is rumored to be at risk for a debt meltdown. Yields on two U.S. dollar bonds sold by its subsidiary Wanda Properties Global rose above 35 percent in April. Market analysts called the surge a sign that borrowers were having trouble raising new funds, exacerbating the risk of debt crisis and default.
In late April, Fitch Ratings placed Wanda Commercial and Wanda Commercial Properties (Hong Kong) on its negative watch list.
Wanda Commercial made headlines with more troubling news on Tuesday as a $400 million dollar bond due for repayment in July fell to about 70 cents, “on the brink of distressed territory,” Bloomberg reported, under the headline “Real Estate Distress Deepens Again as China Woes Spread.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 22:50 - MTA Proposes Hiking MetroCard Fares To $2.90 In Attempt To Boost Revenue
MTA Proposes Hiking MetroCard Fares To $2.90 In Attempt To Boost Revenue
It turns out the creative solution to help fix MTA quality, that no one has thought of yet is…wait for it…raising fares.
At least that is the latest proposed solution coming out of the brain trust known as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, an organization that appears to us to be in a perpetual state of disrepair despite a neverending litany of rising toll prices and transit fares.
The new changes will see prices for a MetroCard swipe rise to $2.90 and the hike applies to subway, bus and paratransit rides, according to Yahoo News. The report pointed out the obvious, noting that the purpose of the higher pries is to “boost revenue for the agency”. Ah, so that’s where the money comes from…
The goal of the MTA is to bolster its top line by 4%, the report says.
The price of 7 day MetroCards will rise by $1 to $34 and monthly passes will increase $5 to $132. The price of express bus tickets will go up to $7 and seven day express passes will rise in price from $62 to $64.
New Yorkers, who have dealt with sporadic service since the pandemic, aggressive taxation and spiking inflation, aren’t thrilled about the change.
Home attendant Luz Ramirez told Yahoo: “How are working people going to do this? We already give up so much just to live. And then the subway costs more and more and more.”
62 year old Samuel Andrews commented: “We work hard, pay our taxes, and they still have their knee on our neck.”
One 23 year old from the Bronx said the hike wouldn’t matter much…because he copped to hopping the turnstile whenever possible. “To be honest, I don’t even pay the fee. It needs to be cheaper. I don’t like the amount it is right now. I pay it every now and then. But usually not. I might start paying it once I can’t hop over it, you know? [When] I get too old,” he said.
“You’ve got mentally ill all folks all up and down the platforms. How can they still raise the fare?” said 35 year old Starr Riley.
MTA Finance Committee chair Neal Zuckerman responded: “We haven’t had increases in a long time. This is a reasonable increase given inflation. It is in keeping with what we did for at least a decade, having predictable 4% every two year increases. Let us not forget, ladies and gentlemen, our ridership is 30 percentage points lower than pre-pandemic.”
Well, Neal, who do you have to blame for that?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 22:30 - The Graveyard Of Empires: The Top Investments As The World Order Collapses
The Graveyard Of Empires: The Top Investments As The World Order Collapses
Authored by Nick Giamburno via InternationalMan.com,.
“You have the watches, but we have the time.”
The Taliban often referred to this old Afghan saying when discussing their fight against the Americans.
Ultimately, they were proven correct.
After almost two decades of conflict, an insurgent army from one of the world’s poorest nations inflicted a decisive military defeat on the US, the global superpower that upholds the unipolar world order.
The US government’s total failure in Afghanistan—the longest war in American history—signifies a crucial moment and turning point in world history.
The Soviet Union collapsed about two years after the Red Army was defeated and withdrew from Afghanistan.
As we approach the second anniversary of the American retreat, could a similar fate be in store for the US?
While nobody knows the future, there is an excellent chance that the colossal failure in Afghanistan could accelerate the unraveling of the geopolitical power of the US and the shift to a multipolar world order.
Afghanistan’s strategic position has always made it a coveted prize in the Eurasian landscape.
As shown in the image below, Afghanistan is situated in the center of Eurasia, at the crossroads of China, Iran, and Russia—the three primary challengers to the US-led world order.
This central location is why Afghanistan has enormous geopolitical importance and why the US desired a strategic military presence there.
Source: Ontheworldmap.com
The US military’s presence in Afghanistan was a strategic roadblock to Russia, China, and Iran’s goal of creating a powerful geopolitical group in Eurasia that could challenge the US-led world order.
However, with the Taliban forcing the US military out of Afghanistan, the door to a more coherent geopolitical alliance in Eurasia is now wide open.
In short, failure in Afghanistan is a geopolitical disaster for the US.
For at least the past decade, China, Russia, and Iran have been working on an impressive plan to connect Eurasia—even while the US military was in Afghanistan. This trend will likely speed up now that the US military is no longer physically in their way.
Here’s what they have been working on…
China, Russia, and Iran are constructing a vast network of land-based transportation infrastructure, making the US Navy’s control of the oceans less significant.
China’s New Silk Road project is central to this new system. It aims to bypass the US financial system and the US Navy’s control of sea routes. The project, planned to be operational by 2025, includes high-speed railways, highways, fiber optic cables, energy pipelines, seaports, and airports.
These Eurasian powers are also establishing alternative international organizations for financial, political, and security cooperation, separate from those central to the US-led world order, institutions like NATO, the World Bank, SWIFT, and the IMF.
Some notable examples include the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), launched by China in 2014 and is an alternative to the IMF and World Bank.
The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a Russian-led trading bloc created in 2015, allows for the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people among its member countries.
Lastly, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) focuses on military and security collaboration between its members.
If current trends continue, it will result in greater economic, political, and security collaboration among the three main Eurasian nations—China, Russia, and Iran—at the expense of US geopolitical interests.
This scenario is exactly what Zbigniew Brzezinski worried would make the US “geopolitically peripheral.” It spells the end of the unipolar world order.
In short, we are on the path to the emergence of an alliance of powerful Eurasian countries and a multipolar world order.
As the world order changes, I think there are two prominent investment outcomes we can bet on.
Outcome #1: The US Dollar Will Lose Its Privileged Position
The decline of America’s geopolitical influence is another enormous headwind for the US dollar.
Suppose the world thinks the US military is the ultimate backstop of the US dollar. What does it mean for the US dollar’s credibility when a ragtag group of insurgents from one of the poorest countries can defeat the military which backs it?
If the mighty US military couldn’t secure its partners in Afghanistan, how can it protect its other allies?
Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Western European countries, and the Gulf Arab states are likely pondering this.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see them make security arrangements with US adversaries—such as China, Russia, and Iran—that exclude the Americans.
In fact, this has already happened with Saudi Arabia, a crucial player in the US-led world order. Saudi Arabia is the linchpin of the petrodollar system, which has underpinned the US dollar since Nixon removed its last links to gold in 1971.
In a matter of weeks, Saudi Arabia has:
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Restored relations with Iran.
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Restored relations with Syria and welcomed it back to Arab League.
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Supported multiple OPEC+ oil production cuts against American wishes.
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Announced an end to the war in Yemen.
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Agreed to sell oil in other currencies.
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Decided to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The US recently sent its CIA director to Riyadh to tell the Saudis the Americans feel “blindsided” amid these seismic shifts in Saudi foreign policy.
In short, a paradigm shift in Saudi policies signifies a paradigm shift in the US dollar because of the petrodollar system.
However, Saudi Arabia is not the only US ally hedging its geopolitical bets recently. France, India, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and others are making moves to cozy up to the Eurasian geopolitical block.
The big question is, how long will the world continue to hold the paper liabilities of a bankrupt and declining government?
While the US dollar is the leading global currency, it was already on a path of inevitable debasement and eventual collapse—even before considering the compounding effects of a multipolar world order.
The only reason the US government has managed to avoid severe consequences from its monetary policies is the US dollar’s status as the world’s premiere reserve currency, thanks to Washington’s military and economic dominance that has prevailed since the end of World War II. However, as this dominance wanes, so will the dollar’s purchasing power.
The US government’s ability to hide the effects of its rampant money printing by offloading trillions of dollars to foreigners is nearing its end.
That’s terrible news for the US dollar.
Now, that doesn’t mean I’m excited about the Chinese fiat currency—or whatever new monetary concoction the Eurasian block comes up with. Ultimately it will be nothing more than the liability of a new grouping of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.
Money is simply something useful for storing and exchanging value. That’s it.
People have used stones, glass beads, salt, cattle, seashells, gold, silver, and other commodities as money at different times.
Think of money as a claim on human time. It’s like stored life or energy.
Unfortunately, today most of humanity thoughtlessly accepts whatever worthless digital and paper scrips their governments give them as money.
However, money does not need to come from the government. That’s a total misnomer that the average person has been hoodwinked into believing.
Fake money comes from government. Real money emerges from the market.
Government currencies are terrible money because they are easy to produce with a potentially unlimited supply.
The free market wouldn’t choose government confetti as money without laws forcing their use.
Here’s another way to think of it.
Imagine if Tony Soprano forced his neighborhood to use pieces of paper with his signature as money and threatened violence against anyone who disobeyed. That’s what governments are doing with their currencies.
Here’s the bottom line with money. Hardness is the most important characteristic of a good money.
Hardness does not mean something that is necessarily tangible or physically hard, like metal. Instead, it means “hard to produce.” By contrast, “easy money” is easy to produce.
The best way to think of hardness is “resistance to debasement,” which helps make it a good store of value—an essential function of money.
Would you want to put your savings into something somebody else can create without effort or cost?
Of course, you wouldn’t.
It would be like storing your life savings in Chuck E. Cheese arcade tokens, airline frequent flyer miles, or pieces of paper with Tony Soprano’s signature. Unfortunately, putting your savings into government currencies isn’t that much different.
What is desirable in a good money is something that someone else cannot make easily.
In short, as the US dollar loses its privileged position, I expect an ocean of capital to flow into apolitical, free-market, hard-to-produce monetary alternatives like gold and Bitcoin.
That’s why I think the end of the unipolar world order will boost two major investment trends—the re-monetization of gold and The Bitcoin Supremacy—as the world seeks alternatives to the US dollar.
Outcome #2: Commodity Supply Disruption
The end of the unipolar world order means transitioning to a multipolar global trade regime—with serious implications for commodities.
As I see it, there will be two main geopolitical blocks.
First, there are the countries part of or allied with the West. I’m reluctant to call this block “the West” because the people who control it have values antithetical to Western Civilization.
A more fitting label would be NATO & Friends.
The other block consists of Russia, China, Iran, and other countries favorable to a multipolar world order.
Let’s call them the BRICS+, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and other interested countries.
Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and numerous others have expressed interest in membership of BRICS.
BRICS+ is not a perfect label, but it’s a decent representation of the countries favorable to the multipolar world order.
While there already is friction in free trade—sanctions, tariffs, export bans, nationalizations, embargoes, strategic competition, etc.—between NATO & Friends and BRICS+, I expect it to grow substantially as the multipolar world order emerges.
That will have serious consequences for commodities, which BRICS+ dominates.
Take Russia, for example.
Politicians and the media in the US often ridicule Russia as nothing more than “a gas station with nuclear weapons,” an inaccurate cartoonish depiction.
Here’s the reality…
Russia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, lumber, wheat, fertilizer, and palladium (a crucial car component).
It is the second-largest exporter of oil and aluminum and the third-largest exporter of nickel and coal.
Russia is a major producer and processor of uranium for nuclear power plants. Enriched uranium from Russia and its allies provides electricity to 20% of the homes in the US.
Aside from China, Russia produces more gold than any other country, accounting for more than 10% of global production.
These are just a handful of examples. There are many strategic commodities that Russia dominates.
In short, Russia is not just an oil and gas powerhouse but a commodity powerhouse.
As tensions between NATO & Friends and BRICS+ continue to rise, I expect it to disrupt commodity trade between the two further.
Supply disruptions mean higher prices. That’s an outcome I think we can bet on.
I expect countries in both geopolitical blocks will increasingly focus on securing critical commodities and ensuring access to stable supplies.
I think we can bet on geopolitical competition between the two blocks causing increased demand and unstable supplies.
That’s why obtaining exposure to strategic commodities as the world order changes could be a winning move.
Here’s the bottom line…
Unfortunately, most people have no idea what really happens when the world order changes, let alone how to prepare…
The coming crisis will be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen since World War II.
Countless millions throughout history were wiped out financially—or worse—as the world order changed because they failed to see the correct Big Picture and take appropriate action.
Don’t be one of them.
That’s exactly why I just released an urgent new report with all the details, including what you must do to prepare.
It’s called, The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years… the Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 22:10 -
- 3 Arrested Russian Scientists Accused Of Handing Hypersonic Missile Secrets To China
3 Arrested Russian Scientists Accused Of Handing Hypersonic Missile Secrets To China
A week ago, just as Ukraine was claiming to have shot down Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, three top Russian scientists who’ve reportedly worked on the country’s hypersonic program were arrested on suspicion of treason.
The Kremlin had said the three face “very serious accusations”. They were identified as Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk and Valery Zvegintsev – and worked at the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Shiplyuk was actually director of the institute, thus the highly visible case has sent shockwaves through the Russian ruling establishment and academic community.
A Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ALBM being carried by a Mikoyan MiG-31K in 2018. Kremlin Photo The arrests were under mysterious circumstances, given the Kremlin didn’t spell out the details of the allegations against them, and immediately set off rare public outcry from other scientists angered over their detention.
When pressed on the nature and specifics of the case, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov only said that security services are being extra watchful concerning potential cases of “betrayal of the motherland” at this sensitive time of the war in Ukraine.
Now, on Wednesday, Reuters in an exclusive has cited sources saying the scientists are accused of betraying classified hypersonic program secrets to China. Director Shiplyuk in particular “is suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017, the sources said,” according to the report.
“The 56-year-old maintains his innocence and insists the information in question wasn’t classified and was freely available online, according to the people, whom Reuters has chosen not to identify to safeguard their security.”
He and his supporters in the academic and scientific community in Russia say that the information in question which may have been shared with Chinese counterparts was not at all secret. Per Reuters:
“He is convinced of the fact that the information was not secret, and of his own innocence,” one of the people said.
The nature of the allegations against the ITAM director, who was arrested last August, has not been previously reported. The Chinese connection would make Shiplyuk the latest in a string of Russian scientists who have been arrested in recent years for allegedly betraying secrets to Beijing.
Indeed such recent arrests of top officials have had a chilling effect inside Russia, particularly among circles which are critical of recent Kremlin decision-making regarding the Ukraine war and tactics utilized.
Did an information breach make the “unstoppable” hypersonic missiles more vulnerable to shootdown?
5. After the US supplied #Patriot systems shot down Russia’s invincible #Kinzhal #hypersonic missiles the Kremlin arrested three Russian scientists on charges of treason for allegedly leaking critical data that made the missiles less invincible than the Kremlin had claimed. pic.twitter.com/ANpRcpY6J6
— Tim Hogan 浩勤 (@TimInHonolulu) May 20, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The Reuters report has further speculated on just which top Chines officials may be on the other side of the suspected breach of classified technology and information:
ITAM, sited at the Academgorodok science campus near the city of Novosibirsk, says on its website that it is registered as a part of Russia’s military-industrial complex. The institute has had extensive international links including contacts with companies, universities and research centres across the world, according to a 2020 online document that outlined its work.
Among the institutions listed was the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center (CARDC), whose website includes several posts celebrating experimental breakthroughs relating to fighter jets and hypersonic missiles.
The CARDC site names the center’s director as Wang Xunnian. According to two official Chinese local government websites, Wang is a major general in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
One Russian colleague of the detained scientists has complained that handing off information to other allied international researchers should be seen as relatively benign. “It’s a long path. Just doing the basic research does not provide you with a missile,” the sources said.
Given recent updated laws in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, a conviction on treason in Russia could bring anywhere from 20 years to life in prison.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 21:50 - House Republican 'Speechless' After Senior FBI Official Admits Not Reading Durham Report
House Republican ‘Speechless’ After Senior FBI Official Admits Not Reading Durham Report
Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) said he was “speechless” when he learned that a senior FBI official had not read the Durham report, which was released more than a week ago.
Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) speaks remotely as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on The Biden Administration’s Priorities for U.S. Foreign Policy on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 10, 2021. (Ken Cedeno-Pool/Getty Images) Pfluger, chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, questioned Jill Murphy, deputy assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI, during a hearing on May 23.
“Special Counsel Durham assesses that neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Pfluger said. Crossfire Hurricane is the FBI codename for the agency’s 2016–17 FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Pfluger continued, “The bureau subsequently discounted or willfully ignored material that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between [former President Donald] Trump and Russia.”
“As the deputy assistant director for the FBI Counterintelligence Division, are you familiar with this report?” Pfluger asked.
In response, Murphy said, “I have not read that report.”
“I’m honestly speechless at this point in time,” Pfluger said in reply.
When pressed on why she had not read the report, Murphy said, “I just haven’t had time.”
“This is a sincere question. Does election collusion worry you?” Pfluger asked Murphy, who said it “obviously” worried her.
“I would highly recommend reading that because we spent four years discussing that. There was uncorroborated evidence—the Durham report specifically outlines the outcome of that. It’s very disappointing to hear this.”
Special counsel John Durham arrives at federal court in Washington on May 18, 2022. (Teng Chen/The Epoch Times) Durham Report
John Durham, appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr in October 2020 to review the 2016–17 FBI investigation of alleged ties between Trump and Russia, found that the FBI “relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” for its investigation.
“The objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of t
Following the report’s release, the FBI acknowledged mistakes in its investigation of the Trump campaign, while Trump said in a statement that “the American Public was scammed.”
“The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people. This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like ‘stuffing’ the ballot boxes, only more so,” Trump added.
Other Republicans at the hearing shared Pfluger’s astonishment that Murphy had not read the report.
“I also was surprised at your answer—you haven’t read the Durham report,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.). “Why is that not a matter of such import that you would want urgently to understand what the special counsel concluded about the work of the counterintelligence division? In such a grave case?”
Murphy replied, “Sir, if you’d like a brief on the Durham report from the counterintelligence division, I’m happy to take that back.”
“Wow, that sounds almost contemptuous,” Bishop said in response. “Do you intend to read it?”
“I do intend to read it,” Murphy told Bishop.
Read more here…
he Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient,” Durham added in the report.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 21:30 - Seattle Amazon Workers Plan Walkout To Protest Returning To Office, Layoffs
Seattle Amazon Workers Plan Walkout To Protest Returning To Office, Layoffs
Amazon workers are planning on protesting layoffs and requirements to return to the office (also referred to as simply “normal occurrences while participating in the workforce”) by walking out of the company’s Seattle headquarters next week.
Because that’s a great way to not land yourself on the layoff list...complain about working and then walk out of your job.
Oh, and we almost forgot, they are also (of course) protesting “the company’s environmental impact”, according to ABC. The walkout is being planned for May 31, which will be one week after Amazon’s annual meeting, the report says.
The protest is also reportedly “contingent on at least 1,000 Amazon employees from the company’s Seattle headquarters agreeing to participate”. We’ll eagerly await to see whether or not enough brain-dead Amazon employees decide to help meet quorum, putting their job on the line for what we’re sure will ultimately turn out to be a meaningless protest.
Amazon took the decision in stride, at least publicly. “We respect our employees’ rights to express their opinions,” they said in a statement. Meanwhile Drew Herdener, senior vice president for communications at Amazon, claims there’s been “a good energy” on the company’s Seattle campus since people started returning to the office.
As we have noted, Amazon, like many other U.S. companies, is in the midst of a string of layoffs, cutting 27,000 jobs since November. As ABC notes, layoffs have occurred broadly, in numerous divisions, including advertising, human resources, gaming, stores, devices and Amazon Web Services.
The report concludes that “more than 20,000 workers signed a petition” to reconsider requiring returning to the office and says that “some employees” are complaining about the company’s inaction on addressing climate change.
We’re sure the news has Jeff Bezos very bothered…
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 21:10 - Jeffrey Sachs: The Ukraine War Was Provoked – & Why That Matters To Achieve Peace
Jeffrey Sachs: The Ukraine War Was Provoked – & Why That Matters To Achieve Peace
Authored by Jeffrey D. Sachs via Consortium News,
George Orwell wrote in 1984 that “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Governments work relentlessly to distort public perceptions of the past. Regarding the Ukraine War, the Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
In fact, the war was provoked by the U.S. in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations.
Recognizing that the war was provoked helps us to understand how to stop it. It doesn’t justify Russia’s invasion. A far better approach for Russia might have been to step up diplomacy with Europe and with the non-Western world to explain and oppose U.S. militarism and unilateralism.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, Oct. 31, 2019. (NATO, CC) In fact, the relentless U.S. push to expand NATO is widely opposed throughout the world, so Russian diplomacy rather than war would likely have been effective.
Two Main Provocations
The Biden team uses the word “unprovoked” incessantly, most recently in Biden’s major speech on the first-year anniversary of the war, in a recent NATO statement, and in the most recent G7 statement.
Mainstream media friendly to Biden simply parrot the White House. The New York Times is the lead culprit, describing the invasion as “unprovoked” no fewer than 26 times, in five editorials, 14 opinion columns by NYT writers, and seven guest op-eds.
There were in fact two main U.S. provocations.
The first was the U.S. intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO countries (Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria Turkey, and Georgia, in counterclockwise order).
The second was the U.S. role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow nine years ago, not in February 2022 as the U.S. government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe.
Biden and his foreign policy team refuse to discuss these roots of the war. To recognize them would undermine the administration in three ways.
First, it would expose how the war could have been avoided, or stopped early, sparing Ukraine its current devastation and the U.S. more than $100 billion in outlays to date.
Second, it would expose Biden’s personal role in the war as a participant in the overthrow of Yanukovych, and before that as a staunch backer of the military-industrial complex and very early advocate of NATO enlargement.
Third, it would push Biden to the negotiating table, undermining the administration’s continued push for NATO expansion.
Check the Archives
The archives show irrefutably that the U.S. and German governments repeatedly promised to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” when the Soviet Union disbanded the Warsaw Pact military alliance.
Nonetheless, U.S. planning for NATO expansion began early in the 1990s, well before Vladimir Putin was Russia’s president. In 1997, national security expert Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the NATO expansion timeline with remarkable precision.
U.S. diplomats and Ukraine’s own leaders knew well that NATO enlargement could lead to war. The U.S. scholar-statesman George Kennan called NATO enlargement a “fateful error,” writing in The New York Times that,
“Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Perry considered resigning in protest against NATO enlargement. In reminiscing about this crucial moment in the mid-1990s, Perry said the following in 2016:
“Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time, we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that NATO could be a friend rather than an enemy … but they were very uncomfortable about having NATO right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”
In 1998, William Burns, then the U.S. ambassador to Russia and now the C.I.A. director, sent a cable to Washington warning at length of grave risks of NATO enlargement:
“Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”
Ukraine’s leaders knew clearly that pressing for NATO enlargement to Ukraine would mean war. Former Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych declared in a 2019 interview “that our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”
During 2010-2013, Yanukovych pushed neutrality, in line with Ukrainian public opinion. The U.S. worked covertly to overthrow Yanukovych, as captured vividly in the tape of then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt planning the post-Yanukovych government weeks before the violent overthrow of Yanukovych.
Nuland makes clear on the call that she was coordinating closely with then Vice President Biden and his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, the same Biden-Nuland-Sullivan team now at the center of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Ukraine.
Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken meeting with members of Ukraine’s Rada in Kiev, May 6, 2021. (State Department/Ron Przysucha) After Yanukovych’s overthrow, the war broke out in the Donbass, while Russia claimed Crimea. The new Ukrainian government appealed for NATO membership, and the U.S. armed and helped restructure the Ukrainian army to make it interoperable with NATO. In 2021, NATO and the Biden administration strongly recommitted to Ukraine’s future in NATO.
In the immediate lead-up to Russia’s invasion, NATO enlargement was center stage. Putin’s draft NATO-Russia Treaty (Dec. 17, 2021) called for a halt to NATO enlargement. Russia’s leaders put NATO enlargement as the cause of war in Russia’s National Security Council meeting on Feb. 21, 2022. In his address to the nation that day, Putin declared NATO enlargement to be a central reason for the invasion.
Historian Geoffrey Roberts recently wrote:
“Could war have been prevented by a Russian-Western deal that halted NATO expansion and neutralised Ukraine in return for solid guarantees of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty? Quite possibly.”
In March 2022, Russia and Ukraine reported progress towards a quick negotiated end to the war based on Ukraine’s neutrality. According to Naftali Bennett, former prime minister of Israel, who was a mediator, an agreement was close to being reached before the U.S., U.K. and France blocked it.
While the Biden administration declares Russia’s invasion to be unprovoked, Russia pursued diplomatic options in 2021 to avoid war, while Biden rejected diplomacy, insisting that Russia had no say whatsoever on the question of NATO enlargement. And Russia pushed diplomacy in March 2022, while the Biden team again blocked a diplomatic end to the war.
By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Russia will escalate as necessary to prevent NATO enlargement to Ukraine. The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.
The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations. It’s time for the provocations to stop, and for negotiations to restore peace to Ukraine.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 20:50 - Russia Blasts US Threats To Sanction Georgia As Direct Flights Resume
Russia Blasts US Threats To Sanction Georgia As Direct Flights Resume
Both the United States and European Union are mulling sanctions on the Republic of Georgia due to ongoing trade ties and Georgia’s newly receiving direct commercial flights from Russia.
Russia, which is Georgia’s second largest trading partner, has recently moved to thaw relations, given in part its ongoing isolation from the West, with President Putin this month signing a decree (on May 10) ending a Russian ban on direct flights which had been in effect since 2019 (following large anti-Russian protests).
Additionally, for the first time in two decades Georgian citizens can now enter Russia without a visa (for up to 90 days).
The governing Georgian Dream party has welcomed the moves, saying “The beneficiaries are our citizens who have to take a detour at triple the cost” – in reference to the estimated hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians living in Russia.
Tbilisi has this week responded to Moscow by issuing formal approval of the first Georgian operators to conduct regular flights to and from Moscow.
While Georgia has not joined in on Western sanctions against Russia, it has long pledged to not allow its territory to be used to circumvent the sanctions. But this has presented issues over aircraft maintenance and parts. The US and EU reactions to resumption of air travel is seen in the following:
Earlier, US State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel also warned of sanctions risks for companies at Georgian airports if they “service aircraft subject to import and export controls.” EU Spokesperson Peter Stano, too, warned of safety concerns on May 11, saying that due to the sanctions, 95% of the Russian fleet is unable to “update or upgrade” their aircraft.
“The European Union encourages Georgia, which is aspiring to become EU candidate country, to align with the existing EU sanctions … against Russia also in the area of aviation and to remain vigilant regarding any possible attempts to circumvent the existing sanctions,” Stano said. In another statement on May 16, the EU spokesperson said the EU “regrets” the decision to resume Georgia-Russia flights which “raises concerns in terms of Georgia’s EU path.”
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvil has pushed back, saying Wednesday, “What the EU trades with Russia in four days, we trade with Russia in one year,” in an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum.
“When it comes to economic sanctions […] Georgia’s trade turnover with Russia is less than $1 billion” a year, he underscored. “This is ridiculous, isn’t it? That $1 billion could not affect Russian economy.”
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also blasted threats against Georgia coming from Washington.
“There’s no other way to call [the statements by the State Department] than interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states,” she told a press briefing. “We regard such mentoring statements from Washington as interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states and in their relations with third countries and overt pressure.”
The EU is now as part of a 11th round sanctions package on Russia mulling adding in punitive measures against third parties caught facilitating Russian sanctions-busting activities. Ironically Georgia is widely seen as pro-Western and US-friendly, but if the West goes after Tbilisi with aggressive economic measures this could quickly change.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 20:30 - Withdrawing Your Own Cash? NatWest Bank Wants To Know Why… And See Proof
Withdrawing Your Own Cash? NatWest Bank Wants To Know Why… And See Proof
Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,
A reader sent me this graphic which is circulating on social media.
Whenever I see an unattributed image like this going around I want to verify it, lest it be photoshopped, a deep-fake or some derivation of “urban legend”.
Sure enough, if you go to NatWest bank’s website, right here – you see this cash withdrawal policy spelled out for all to see:
This isn’t actually new
Here in Canada, for at least a few years – predating COVID, the big four banks have been routinely asking you why you are taking cash out whenever you withdraw anything over a couple thousand dollars. However, you can tell them pretty well anything (“because I want it”, “none of your business” or even “to blow it all on booze and hookers”, will all work). I haven’t heard of a case where a withdrawal has been denied based on the reason supplied, yet.
But now that we’re starting to see it formalized in policy language of banks, we can all see where this is going.
The war on cash has been in full swing for a long time, India banned large denominations bills in 2016 and will now start eliminating them from the monetary base. France has been signalling a prohibition on cash payments over 1,000 francs since 2013 and finally, quietly, it seems, made it part of the framework this year.
It portends a wider initiative across the entire Eurozone (who is also trying to lump in crypto payments under the restrictions).
This is all to lay the groundwork for the march into Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) which will seek to accomplish three objectives of Late-Stage Globalism:
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Eliminate privacy – making all transactions trackable, traceable and taxable in realtime.
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Introduce controls on how, when and why you are spending your own money. Think China-style social credit, which in its Westernized form will almost certainly involve personal carbon footprint quotas.
And most importantly (otherwise we wouldn’t be calling it “Late Stage Gobalism”): -
Extend the runway of fiat currencies – which are about to hit the wall as a long-wave debt super-cycle reaches its crescendo.
The antidote to all this, is of course, Bitcoin. The only digital asset that is scarce, truly decentralized, has frictionless portability, and is backstopped in physical reality (the “7th property”) in away gold isn’t. It embodies all other properties of sound money:
Via “The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution” by Eric Yakes
There are still many who scoff at the idea of “magic internet money” becoming viable at all, let alone the main bulwark against the coming CBDCs. We know cash is doomed, we know any state or central bank issued digital substitutes will simply be linear, digital extensions of fiat: backed by nothing, based on debt, but with added layers of technocratic surveillance and control.
With the mother of all economic recessions dead ahead (if not here already), and the fiat banking system more or less insolvent, the value proposition for CBDCs (a.k.a subservience-tokens) will be Universal Basic Income, with all encompassing strings attached.
Anybody relying on the State for their economic subsistence will have their lives gamified via their smartphones, their carbon footprints metered, their energy usage subject to approval. Such will be the life of a CBDC-serf.
When those days come, the bank won’t have to ask you why you want some of your own money and how you are going to spend it.
You’re the one who will have to ask them …for permission.
* * *
My next ebook is The CBDC Survival Guide and I’m sending it free to Bombthrower subscribers when it’s done (early June). In the meantime, subscribe now and get The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto while you wait. Follow me on Nostr, or Twitter.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 20:10 -
- Post-Fukushima Shift: Japan Court Rejects Citizens' Concerns, Paving Way For Nuclear Power Restart
Post-Fukushima Shift: Japan Court Rejects Citizens’ Concerns, Paving Way For Nuclear Power Restart
On Wednesday, a district court in Japan dismissed residents’ calls to halt the restart of a nuclear reactor. This represents a victory for the Pacific island nation, grappling with soaring energy costs fueled by the prolonged war in Ukraine.
The Japan Times reports Sendai District Court in northeastern Japan has ruled Tohoku Electric Power can restart the No. 2 unit of the Onagawa plant early next year. It will become the first unit to restart since the nuclear power plant was idled after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami that triggered the meltdown at Fukushima.
Judge Mitsuhiro Saito rejected residents’ calls that claimed an evacuation plan was inadequate. Residents said if a nuclear accident occurred, many wouldn’t be able to escape outside an 18.5-mile radius of the plant because of traffic jams. They said they would be exposed to radiation.
“It cannot be assumed that a specific danger of an accident exists that leads to the abnormal release of radioactive materials,” said Saito.
Tohoku Electric was seeking a dismissal of the lawsuit because evacuation plans had already been approved by the country’s nuclear disaster prevention council.
“The court acknowledged our claim.
“We will continue to cooperate as much as possible to improve the effectiveness of the evacuation plans,” Tohoku wrote in a statement.
In response to the ruling, Tohoku shares jumped nearly 8% in Tokyo trading on Wednesday.
In the last nine months, Japan has reevaluated its energy policies following a decade of paralysis of nuclear power generation as fossil fuel energy costs soar.
Here’s our reporting on the U-turn:
- In Stunning Post-Fukushima Shift, Japan To Build More Nuclear Power Plants
- Post-Fukushima Shift: Political And Public Support Rises In Japan For More Nuclear Plants
- Global Energy Crisis Forces Japan To U-Turn On Its Nuclear Policy
- Japan’s Government Adopts Nuclear Energy Policy In Major Turnaround Amid Energy Crisis
Meanwhile, Asia is rapidly building nuclear power plants: because it’s the future of decarbonized power grids.
The U-turn in Japan’s policy comes after we recommended uranium stocks in December 2020. We stated back then that nuclear would be accepted as one of the most stable “clean energy” sources to meet silly climate change targets.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 19:50 - The FBI Has Crossed The Rubicon
The FBI Has Crossed The Rubicon
Authored by Sam Faddis via AND Magazine substack,
The expression “crossing the Rubicon” refers to the actions of Julius Caesar in crossing the Rubicon River and marching on Rome. Roman armies were forbidden to do so. The rule was very practical. The Romans understood the danger of allowing a large armed force to march on the capital city. To allow this might spell the end of the republic. Best that popular conquering generals and their armies stay a safe distance away and respect the democratic institutions at the heart of Roman democracy.
Caesar broke the rule. He marched on Rome. He didn’t care what the Senators thought. The rest is history. Within a generation, there was no republic.
The FBI has now taken similar action. It has signaled in the clearest possible manner it does not care what the people or their elected representatives think. It will do what it pleases, and the consequences be damned.
The recently released Durham report paints a graphic picture of an agency out of control. The FBI did not blunder into an investigation of Donald Trump, his campaign, and his associates. The FBI undertook to deliberately destroy Trump and those around him including General Flynn. The FBI took unto itself the power to decide who could be President.
That fact has now been publicly exposed. The whole nation can see that the FBI acted in violation of law and every tradition we have had since the inception of the republic. The FBI has responded with remarkable clarity.
It did nothing wrong. It does not care what Durham (or countless whistleblowers) say(s). It does not care what Congress thinks. It will do as it pleases.
The Assistant Director of the FBI for Counterintelligence, Suzanne Turner, just testified before Congress. Asked about the Durham report, the one that said her agency had run amok and tried to stage what amounted to a coup, she responded by saying she had not bothered to read the report nor had she been briefed on it.
When pressed further she offered to take questions back to the FBI and see if she could get someone else to answer them. Contempt dripped from her every word and every mannerism. The concerns of the people’s elected representatives were clearly of no interest whatsoever to her.
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the possibility that the current President of the United States took money from foreign interests, including Communist China, in exchange for policy decisions. In other words, the House is pursuing evidence that suggests pretty strongly that Joe Biden works for Beijing. As part of that investigation, the House has demanded from the FBI copies of reports that apparently show the FBI knew about this some time ago.
The FBI has refused to provide the documents. Meanwhile, there are continuing reports that whistleblowers from within the federal workforce who provide information about the Bidens are being retaliated against and sidelined. In some cases, they have had their security clearances taken away and been suspended without pay. That’s what happens to FBI agents who think Congress is still in charge.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) has blasted the FBI for impeding the investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings, calling the federal agency “very patronizing.” He has also said that the FBI does not “respect anyone.” All of that is crystal clear. The days when the FBI would scurry to take action and avoid Congressional disfavor are long gone. The Bureau is above all that now.
Meanwhile, the FBI has announced that it destroyed all of the evidence it gathered into the actions of Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and the mountains of foreign money that flowed to the Clintons when Hillary was Secretary of State. This comes after revelations that the FBI shut down four separate investigations into the Clinton campaign in the runup to the 2016 election. While the FBI was manufacturing evidence of a non-existent Trump-Putin connection it was actively covering for Hillary – and it is continuing to do so.
Three years ago, the FBI was handed Hunter Biden’s laptop which literally drips with evidence not just of corruption but of Chinese intelligence connections to Joe Biden and his associates. As far as anyone can tell, the FBI continues to sit on that computer and intends to take no action of any kind to investigate its contents.
Information just surfacing indicates that the FBI routinely used FISA warrants to spy on domestic political opponents inside the United States.
The FBI no longer answers to the elected representatives of the American people nor does it care what they think. It did not get sloppy. It did not make some errors in judgment. Its leaders decided that they were entitled to do whatever they chose and to ignore our laws, our traditions, and the judgment of the nation’s citizens.
Most importantly, however, nothing that has happened has changed any of that. The FBI is not chastened. It is not scrambling to change course and make reforms. As an institution, it does not believe that it has done anything wrong. It will continue to act in the future precisely as it has in the past.
The FBI has crossed the Rubicon. The consequences of that action, if not addressed immediately, will shake the foundations of the republic.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 19:30 - "There's Poop Everywhere": San Francisco's Office District Not Only A Ghost Town, It's Also Covered In Sh*t
“There’s Poop Everywhere”: San Francisco’s Office District Not Only A Ghost Town, It’s Also Covered In Sh*t
Urban Alchemy employees pick up trash while people gather belongings in the Tenderloin neighborhood. | Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images Everyone knows that San Francisco is the nation’s largest public toilet – requiring the city to employ six-figure ‘poop patrol’ cleanup team, however a new report from the city Controller’s Office really puts things in poo-spective.
For starters, feces were found far more often in commercial sectors, covering “approximately 50% of street segments in Key Commercial Areas and 30% in the Citywide survey,” second only to broken glass as can be seen in the ‘illegal dumping’ section.
If you’re wondering about the city’s fecal methodology, look no further than a footnote on page 43;
Feces also includes bags filled with feces that are not inside trash receptacles. Feces that are spread or smeared on the street, sidewalk, or other objects along the evaluation route are counted. Stains that appear to be related to feces but have been cleaned are not counted. Bird droppings are excluded.
As far as where most of the poo is found, Nob Hill takes the top spot, followed by the Tenderloin and The Mission districts.
Via the San Francisco Standard “It’s terrible; this street is covered,” Tenderloin resident Joe Souza told The San Francisco Standard earlier this month. “There’s poop everywhere. You always see it along the wall and in front of the garage there.”
Meanwhile, nearly 2/3 of key commercial routes reported moderate to severe street litter, vs. 41% of the citywide streets struggling with the same problem.
Via the San Francisco Standard As the San Francisco Standard reports;
San Francisco’s commercial and residential streets are also highly tagged up, with every neighborhood except one—Visitacion Valley—reporting high levels of graffiti last year. The issue is once again worse in commercial areas, of which 71% said they had severe or moderate graffiti.
A Clean City team in the Tenderloin power washes the sidewalk on Hyde Street in San Francisco. | Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images “In terms of actual counts of graffiti observed, there were about 10 times (160,000 vs. 16,000 respectively) as many instances of graffiti reported in the Key Commercial Areas survey in comparison to the Citywide sample,” the report said.
And San Francisco’s favorite cleanliness fixation, human or animal feces, continues to be a sore spot for the city: Almost half of the surveyed commercial areas observed feces. Citywide, that figure was just 30%.
* * *
San Francisco’s poopocalypse comes amid a staggering commercial office vacancy rate as a combination of pandemic-era work-from-home policies, and people fleeing the city’s notorious violence and poo-covered streets have made the once-thriving city into a ghost town.
Same
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2023
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 19:10 - JP Morgan Bets Big On Carbon Removal
JP Morgan Bets Big On Carbon Removal
Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,
-
JP Morgan has committed to invest over $200 million in buying credits for carbon removal.
-
JP Morgan is also helping carbon capture businesses with financing.
-
JP Morgan is also one of the biggest financiers of fossil fuel projects.
JP Morgan is betting big on carbon removal and is buying credits from direct air capture developers to offset its environmental footprint, officials at the largest U.S. bank have told The Wall Street Journal.
JP Morgan has committed to invest over $200 million in buying credits for carbon removal and is also helping carbon capture businesses to take off.
“We’re jumping in the pool all in,” JP Morgan’s head of operational sustainability, Brian DiMarino, told the Journal an interview.
“This is us putting our weight and our capital behind something we believe is truly important to bring to market now,” DiMarino added.
Last year, JP Morgan Securities LLC served as sole placement agent for direct air capture (DAC) technology developer Climeworks as it raised $650 million in an equity round.
Last month, JP Morgan and several other companies announced that they had joined Frontier, an advance market commitment to accelerate carbon removal. The new members in Frontier – Autodesk, H&M Group, JP Morgan Chase, and Workday – will commit to purchase a combined $100 million of permanent, high-quality carbon removal over the next eight years, bringing Frontier’s total advance market commitment to over $1 billion.
Commenting on the agreement, DiMarino said last month, “Scaling technological innovation, including around carbon removal, will play a critical role in the transition to a more sustainable future.”
Yet, JP Morgan is also one of the biggest financiers of fossil fuel projects.
For the first time since 2019, JP Morgan Chase dropped from the top spot of the biggest backer of fossil fuels.
JP Morgan is no longer the world’s biggest financier of fossil fuels.
Last year Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) became the top bank funding oil and gas, a report by environmental groups showed last month.
Overall, U.S. banks dominated fossil fuel financing, accounting for 28% of all fossil fuel financing in 2022. JP Morgan Chase remains the world’s biggest funder of fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, while Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are still among the top 5 fossil financiers since 2016.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/24/2023 – 18:50 -
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