- France's Richest People Have Seen Their Net Worth Rocket 35% This Year
Despite the civil unrest in France to start the year, the country’s richest citizens still had a fantastic start to 2019, according to Bloomberg.
Amidst protesters taking to the streets to demand higher wages and better pensions, the 14 people from France on the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index added a combined $78 billion to their collective net worth since the beginning of 2019. That is an astounding 35% increase. The figures will likely serve as additional fuel for protests over income inequality in the country.
France’s pace was more than double China’s richest, who saw growth of 17% for the first six months of the year. The richest in the U.S. saw their wealth grow 15% during the first half the year.
Outside of France, the other highest returns came from Thailand at 33% and Singapore, who came in at 31%. The richest in Japan saw their wealth grow 24%. The only Nigerian on the list, Aliko Dangote, saw his wealth up 60% so far in 2019.
Specifically in France, luxury businessmen Bernard Arnault and Francois Pinault, combined with cosmetics heir Francoise Bettencourt Meyersedit combined to make up $53 billion of the growth. The demand for luxury goods from China has continued even though there has been uncertainty from the ongoing trade war. Arnault’s LVMH shares are up 45% this year, making the company the second best performer in France’s CAC 40 index. He joined Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates as the only people that have fortunes of over $100 billion.
Thailand’s success was a result of Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, founder and chairman of TCC Group. Sirivadhanabhakdi’s net worth rose by $4 billion to $16.5 billion as shares of his company, listed in Singapore, were up 38%.
- In Germany, Some Hate Speech Is "More Equal Than Others"
Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,
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Although the “military arm” of Hezbollah is prohibited in the EU, the “political arm” is not, which means that in Germany, Hezbollah is free to engage in “non-military” activities — such as fundraising.
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On the one hand, the federal police conduct countrywide raids on middle-aged Germans who post their thoughts on Facebook, while on the other, members of openly lethal terrorist organizations who espouse nothing but hatred towards a specific ethnic group, the Jews, are not only allowed to march in the heart of the German capital… but are free to organize and fundraise for their purpose.
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That participants in the anti-Semitic Al Quds march have been allowed to flaunt their hatred for nearly four decades now, while middle-aged Germans are having their apartments searched for anti-Semitic and racist messages on Facebook, exposes a disturbing double standard in the application of the law.
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At the very least, it shows that German authorities appear to harbor extremely selective views of what constitutes hate speech, based, it seems, on nothing more than the identity of the group that voices it.
In June, the “Al Quds Day” march took place in Berlin. Al Quds Day, in the words of the late historian Robert S. Wistrich, is “The holiday proclaimed by Khomeini in 1979 to call for Israel’s annihilation” which “has since been celebrated worldwide…”
Pictured: Participants in the anti-Israel Al-Quds Day march wave the flag of the Hezbollah terrorist group, on July 25, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
In Germany, Al Quds Day marches have been taking place in the country’s capital since the 1980s[1], first in Bonn and since 1996 in Berlin. On Al Quds Day in December 2000, more than 2,000 demonstrators in the Kurfürstendamm — a central boulevard in Berlin — called for “the liberation of Palestine and the holy city of Jerusalem”. In November 2002, only one year after 9/11, the march featured slogans such as “Death to Israel” and “Death to the USA”. At the march in 2016, the slogans were, among others, “Death to Israel”, “Zionists kill children”, and so on.
Despite nearly four decades of such rhetoric — the kind that is arguably capable — according to paragraph 130 of Germany’s Criminal Code, which prohibits hate speech — “of disturbing the public peace” by inciting “hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins”, German authorities have continually refused to ban the Al Quds Day march. The argument is, reportedly, that the Administrative Court would overrule such a ban. “A constitutional state must act in accordance with the rule of law,” said the spokesperson for the interior administration of the city of Berlin, Martin Pallgen. “Freedom of assembly and expression also applies to those who reject the rule of law”. Instead, German authorities have prohibited marchers from being overtly anti-Semitic and inciting hatred against Jews. The exercise is a bit like telling a neo-Nazi march please to cover up the swastikas to look more presentable.
It has not helped. In 2016, police issued specific instructions for the march’s participants, banning them from expressing anti-Semitic views or inciting violence against Jews. That restriction, according to Benjamin Steinitz, the director of the Berlin-based Department for Research and Information on anti-Semitism (RIAS), curbed the undisguised hate speech somewhat, but led to the use of “coded messages”, frequently in Arabic or Farsi, which most German police do not speak. “So,” said Steinitz in 2017, “the police regulations have had some effect, but since the goal of this demonstration is the dismantling of the State of Israel, the anti-Semitic content is always there.”
Indeed, according to Der Tagesspiegel, despite the specific police instructions of previous years, in the June 2018 march, the police had to issue the following instructions to the participants:
“It is forbidden to burn dolls. There must be no open calls for kidnapping or murder. The participants should not chant, ‘Zionists into the gas’ or ‘Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone'”.
According to Der Tagesspiegel, these were all incidents that happened in previous marches — and all, presumably, violations of Germany’s hate speech laws.
This year, according to a report by RIAS, “The Al Quds march did not lose any of its anti-Semitic character, despite attempts to deceive the public by the organizers”. The report mentions, as an example, the presence of anti-Semitic posters and praising Hezbollah. Protesters wearing T-shirts with the name and slogans of the terrorist group Hamas — which vows to eliminate Israel — were also present.
The refusal of the authorities to ban the Al Quds march appears even more suspect in light of the fact that around the same time of the march, on June 6, German authorities launched nationwide coordinated police raids in 13 federal states against suspects who had posted hate speech online. In a total of 38 cases, apartments were searched and suspects interrogated, the Federal Criminal Police Office reported. The suspects were alleged to have posted hate comments, including “public calls for crimes, insults of officials or anti-Semitic verbal abuse.” One of the largest operations reportedly took place in the city of Koblenz, where the apartments of 12 suspects were searched in connection to two far right-wing Facebook groups. The 12 suspects were between the ages of 45 and 68, and were believed to be responsible for the groups called “The Patriots,” and “Our Germany patriotic & free.” The groups were suspected of having made the following comment, among others, about refugee family reunification: “In my opinion all should be gassed”. The nationwide action day to combat hate postings was established three years ago and has since been held once a year. The Federal Police claim that most of the hate speech is “from the right-wing extremist spectrum” (77%), 9% from the “extreme-left” and 14% “foreign or religious ideologies or no concrete political motivation”.
While the Federal Criminal Police Office was searching the homes of middle-aged Germans posting racist comments in Facebook groups, a recent German intelligence report concluded that in 2018, the membership numbers in German for Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Iranian proxy terrorist organization, rose to a total of 1050, up from 950 in 2017. “Hezbollah denies the right of existence of the State of Israel and fights it with terrorist means,” the intelligence report noted. “In Germany, the followers of Hezbollah maintain organizational and ideological cohesion in local mosques associations that are financed primarily by donations.” The report also mentioned the travel of functionaries between Lebanon and Germany for the purpose of connecting with Hezbollah and noted that “Hezbollah is against the idea of international understanding and the peaceful coexistence of peoples”.
The presence of such a large number of Hezbollah operatives in the country does not appear to worry the German government. Although the “military arm” of Hezbollah is prohibited in the EU, the “political arm” is not, which means that Hezbollah is free to engage in “non-military” activities in Germany — such as fundraising.
In March, the German government refused to ban the terrorist organization in its entirety, and in June, a majority of the Bundestag, including the Christian Social Union, the Social Democratic Party, the Left, the Greens, Free Democrats and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) rejected a proposal by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to ban or alternatively limit Hezbollah’s operations in Germany, such as abolishing its non-profit status.
Thus, there seems to be in Germany a revealingly uneven application of hate speech laws.
On the one hand, the federal police conduct countrywide raids on middle-aged Germans who post their thoughts on Facebook. On the other hand, people who back openly lethal terrorist organizations that espouse nothing but hatred towards a specific ethnic group, the Jews, are free to organize, fundraise, and march in the heart of the German capital — if they please just omit “Zionists to the gas” or “Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone“.
Whatever one’s opinion of hate speech laws, they, like all laws, have to be applied in an equal and consistent manner. That participants in the anti-Semitic Al Quds march have been allowed literally to parade their hatred for nearly four decades now, while middle-aged Germans are having their apartments searched for anti-Semitic and racist messages on Facebook, exposes a disturbing double standard in the application of the law.
It shows at the very least, that German authorities appear to harbor extremely selective views of what constitutes hate speech, based, it seems, on nothing more than the identity of the group that voices it.
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- China's Military Closed Off Area Of South China Sea For "Anti-Ship" Missile Tests
Things are set for yet more dangerous intercepts and incidents in the South China Sea this summer given Beijing just announced it had closed off an area of the sea near the Spratly Islands for a five-day military drill which began over the weekend.
NBC News also confirmed a series of anti-ship ballistic missiles tests are underway, citing US defense officials, which said at least one missile was fired over the sea this weekend and more tests will continue through July 3rd. One US official said the drills in the hotly disputed waters which has been scene of recent incidents between China the the US and its allies like the Philippines were “concerning”.
A Chinese military rescue center on artificial Spratly island in the South China Sea, via Yahoo Singapore It’s unknown if the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted tests of next generation weaponry, like the JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile, or which capabilities were deployed; however, multiple reports suggest the PLA has been practicing sinking enemy vessels with anti-ship naval missiles.
According to Business Insider:
For ballistic-missile tests, Chinese authorities typically issue Notices to Airmen (NOTAM) identifying “temporary danger areas,” Ankit Panda, senior editor at The Diplomat, explained. Such a NOTAM was issued for the period between June 30 and July 1, marking off two locations in the South China Sea.
Beijing previously moved land-based anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), such as the YJ-62 and YJ-12B, to Chinese-occupied territories in the region, a move the US condemned.
Alarmingly, parts of the area closed off by the PLA are actually claimed by the Philippines, and the US Navy regularly conducts freedom of navigation exercises in the region; however, an official told NBC that American naval vessels are currently nowhere close to the drills.
Interestingly the missile tests and closure of the maritime area occurred simultaneous to Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan on Saturday, where Xi reportedly told Trump that “at present China-US relations have encountered some difficulties, which are not in the interests of both sides”.
“China and the US should not fall into a so-called trap of conflict and confrontation, but should promote each other and develop together,” Xi said.
Over the past years the US and its allies have condemned expanding Chinese sovereign claims over much of the South China Sea, claims which Beijing has sought to bolster through a series of man-made islands and accompanying network of small military bases.
One Hong Kong-based military analyst who echoed the PLA’s position on the dispute told the South China Morning Post: “Countries outside the region continue to stir up the issue through so-called freedom of navigation operations and close surveillance, threatening China’s national security,” and added, “The Chinese military must fight back at those provocations.”
- Why Won't The Media Criticize US Interventionism?
Authored by Tom Engelhardt via TomDispatch.com,
Despite military involvement in 75% of the world, mainstream news outlets always stop short of calling out American aggressions…
Headlined “U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War,” the article was tucked away on page A9 of a recent New York Times. Still, it caught my attention. Here’s the first paragraph:
“American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, pushed by the White House to develop new options that could help deter Tehran without escalating tensions into a full-out conventional war, according to current and former officials.”
Note that “Iranian aggression.” The rest of the piece, fairly typical of the tone of American media coverage of the ongoing Iran crisis, included sentences like this: “The C.I.A. has longstanding secret plans for responding to Iranian provocations.” I’m sure I’ve read such things hundreds of times without ever really stopping to think much about them, but this time I did. And what struck me was this: rare is the moment in such mainstream news reports when Americans are the “provocative” ones (though the Iranians immediately accused the U.S. military of just that, a provocation, when it came to the U.S. drone its Revolutionary Guard recently shot down either over Iranian air space or the Strait of Hormuz). When it comes to Washington’s never-ending war on terror, I think I can say with reasonable confidence that, in the past, the present, and the future, the one phrase you’re not likely to find in such media coverage will be “American aggression.”
I mean, forget the history of the second half of the last century and all of this one so far. Forget that back in the Neolithic age of the 1980s, before Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein turned out to be the new Adolf Hitler and needed to be taken down by us (no aggression there), the administration of President Ronald Reagan actively backed his unprovoked invasion of, and war against, Iran. (That included his use of chemical weapons against Iranian troop concentrations that American military intelligence helped him target.) Forget that, in 2003, the administration of George W. Bush launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, based on false intelligence about Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and his supposed links to al-Qaeda. Forget that the Trump administration tore up a nuclear agreement with Iran to which that country was adhering and which would indeed have effectively prevented it from producing nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. Forget that its supreme leader (in fatwas he issued) prohibited the creation or stockpiling of such weaponry in any case.
Forget that the Trump administration, in a completely unprovoked manner, imposed crippling sanctions on that country and its oil trade, causing genuine suffering, in hopes of toppling that regime economically as Saddam Hussein’s had been toppled militarily in neighboring Iraq in 2003, all in the name of preventing the atomic weapons that the Obama-negotiated pact had taken care of. Forget the fact that an American president, who, at the last moment, halted air strikes against Iranian missile bases (after one of their missiles shot down that American drone) is now promising that an attack on “anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force… In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”
Provocations? Aggression? Perish the thought!
And yet, just ask yourself what Washington and the Pentagon might do if an Iranian drone were spotted off the East Coast of the United States (no less in actual U.S. air space). No more need be said, right?
So here’s the strange thing, on a planet on which, in 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to 149 countries, or approximately 75% of all nations; on which the U.S. has perhaps 800 military garrisons outside its own territory; on which the U.S. Navy patrols most of its oceans and seas; on which U.S. unmanned aerial drones conduct assassination strikes across a surprising range of countries; and on which the U.S. has been fighting wars, as well as more minor conflicts, for years on end from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Niger in a century in which it chose to launch full-scale invasions of two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), is it truly reasonable never to identify the U.S. as an “aggressor” anywhere?
What you might say about the United States is that, as the self-proclaimed leading proponent of democracy and human rights (even if its president is now having a set of love affairs with autocrats and dictators), Americans consider ourselves at home just about anywhere we care to be on planet Earth. It matters little how we may be armed and what we might do. Consequently, wherever Americans are bothered, harassed, threatened, attacked, we are always the ones being provoked and aggressed upon, never provoking and aggressing. I mean, how can you be the aggressor in your own house, even if that house happens to be temporarily located in Afghanistan, Iraq, or perhaps soon enough in Iran?
A Planet of Aggressors and Provocateurs
To mine the same New York Times piece a little more, here’s another paragraph:
“Some officials believe the United States needs [to] be willing to master the kind of deniable, shadowy techniques Tehran has perfected in order to halt Iran’s aggressions. Others think that, while helpful, such clandestine attacks will not be enough to reassure American allies or deter Iran.”
Of course, such clandestine American attacks would, by definition, not be “aggression,” not given that they were directed against Iran. Forget the grim historical humor lurking in the above passage, since the present Iranian religious hard-liners probably wouldn’t be there if, back in 1953, the CIA hadn’t used just such techniques to overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government and install its own autocrat, the young Shah, in power.
As that Times piece also emphasizes, Iran now uses “proxy forces” throughout the region (indeed it does!) against U.S. (and Israeli) power, a tactic Americans evidently just hadn’t thought about employing themselves in this century — until now. Americans naturally have no proxy forces in the Greater Middle East. That’s a well-known fact. Just out of curiosity, however, what would you call the local forces our special ops guys are training and advising in so many of those 149 countries around the planet, since obviously they could never be proxy forces? And how about the Afghan and Iraqi militaries that the U.S. trained, supplied with weaponry, and advised in these years? (You know, the Iraqi army that collapsed in the face of ISIS in 2014 or the Afghan security forces that have been unable to staunch either the growth of the Taliban or of the Afghan branch of ISIS.)
Now, don’t get me wrong. Yes, the Iranians can (and sometimes do) provoke and aggress. It’s an ugly planet filled with aggression and provocation. (Take Vladimir Putin’s Russia in Crimea and Ukraine, for instance.) The Chinese are now aggressing in the South China Sea where the U.S. Navy regularly conducts “freedom of navigation” operations — though no provocation there, as the Pacific’s an American lake, isn’t it?
In short, when it comes to provocation and aggression, the world is our oyster. There are so many bad guys out there and then, of course, there’s us. We can make mistakes and missteps, we can kill staggering numbers of civilians, destroy cities, uproot populations, create hordes of refugees with our never-ending wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, but aggression? What are you thinking?
One thing is obvious if you follow the mainstream media: in our world, no matter what we do, we’re still the good guys on a planet filled with provocateurs and aggressors of every sort.
War to the Horizon
Now let’s think for a moment about that remarkable American comfort level, that unprecedented sense of being at home practically anywhere on Earth we choose to send armed Americans — and while we’re at it, let’s consider a related subject: America’s wars.
If, in the early 1970s, you had told me or any other American that, in the nearly half-century to come, the U.S. would fight wars and other lesser conflicts of almost every imaginable sort in startling numbers of places thousands of miles from home, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, countries most Americans couldn’t then (or now) find on a map, I guarantee you one thing: we would have thought you were nuts. (Of course, if you had described Donald Trump’s White House to me then as our future reality, I would have considered you beyond delusional.)
And yet here we are. Think about Afghanistan for a moment. In those distant days of the last century, that country would undoubtedly have been known here only to small numbers of young adventurers eager to hike what was then called “the hippy trail.” There, in a still remarkably peaceful place, a young American might have been greeted with remarkable friendliness and then spaced out on drugs.
That, of course, was before Washington’s first (covert) Afghan War, the one the CIA oversaw, with the help of Saudi money (yes, even then!) and a major hand from the Pakistani intelligence services. Do you remember that conflict, which began in 1979 and ended a decade later with the Red Army limping out of Kabul in defeat, heading for a land, the Soviet Union, which would implode within two years? What a “victory” that proved to be for America, not to speak of the groups of extremist Islamic militants we helped to fund and support, including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden.
And keep in mind as well that that was our “short” war in Afghanistan, a mere decade long. In October 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks, instead of launching a police action against Osama bin Laden and crew, the administration of George W. Bush decided to invade that country. Almost 18 years later, the U.S. military is still fighting there (remarkably unsuccessfully) against a thoroughly rejuvenated Taliban and a new branch of ISIS. It now qualifies as the longest war in our history (without even adding in that first Afghan War of ours).
And then, of course, there’s Iraq. By my count, the U.S. has been involved in four conflicts involving that country, starting with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980 and the ensuing war, which the administration of President Ronald Reagan supported militarily (as the present one does the Saudi war in Yemen). Then there was President George H.W. Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein after his military invaded Kuwait in 1990, which resulted in a resounding (but by no means conclusive) victory and the kind of victory parade in Washington that Donald Trump can only dream of. Next, of course, was President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq (mission accomplished!), a grim and unsatisfying eight-year conflict from which President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. troops in 2011. The fourth war followed in 2014 when the U.S.-trained Iraqi military collapsed in the face of relatively small numbers of ISIS militants, a group that was an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which didn’t exist until the U.S. invaded that country. That September, President Obama loosed the U.S. air force on Iraq and Syria (so you can add a fifth war in a neighboring country to the mix) and sent U.S. troops back into Iraq and into Syria where they still remain.
Oh, yes, and don’t forget Somalia. U.S. troubles there began with the famed Black Hawk Down incident amid the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 and never, in a sense, really ended. Today, U.S. Special Operations forces are still on the ground there and U.S. air strikes against a Somali militant Islamic group, al-Shabaab, have actually been on the rise in the Trump era.
As for Yemen, from the first U.S. drone strike there in 2002, the U.S. had been in an on-again, off-again low-level conflict there that included commando raids, cruise missile attacks, air strikes, and drone strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, another offshoot of the original al-Qaeda. Since, in 2015, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates launched their war against Houthi rebels (backed by Iran) who had come to control significant parts of the country, the U.S. has been supporting them with weaponry, intelligence, and targeting, as well as (until late last year) mid-air refueling and other aid. Meanwhile, that brutal war of destruction has led to staggering numbers of Yemeni civilian casualties (and widespread starvation), but as with so many of the other campaigns the U.S. has involved itself in across the Greater Middle East and Africa it shows no sign of ending.
And don’t forget Libya, where the U.S. and NATO intervened in 2011 to help rebels take down Muammar Gaddafi, the local autocrat, and in the process managed to foster a failed state in a land now experiencing its own civil war. In the years since 2011, the U.S. has sometimes had commandos on the ground there, has launched hundreds of drone strikes (and air strikes), often against a branch of ISIS that grew up in that land. Once again, little is settled there, so we can all continue to sing the Marine Hymn (“…to the shores of Tripoli”) with a sense of appropriateness.
And I haven’t even mentioned Pakistan, Niger, and god knows where else. You should also note that the American forever war on terror has proven a remarkably effective war for terror, clearly helping to foster and spread such groups, aggressors and provocateurs all, around significant parts of the planet, from the Philippines to the Congo.
Addicted to war? Not us. Still, all in all, it’s quite a record and let’s not forget that looming on the horizon is another possible war, this time with Iran, a country that the men overseeing the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (including present National Security Advisor John Bolton) were eager to go after even then. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad,” so the saying reputedly went in Washington at the time. “Real men want to go to Tehran.” And it’s just possible that, in 2019, Bolton and crew will be able to act on that much delayed urge. Considering the history of American wars in these years, what could possibly go wrong?
To sum up, no one should ever claim that we Americans aren’t “at home” in the world. We’re everywhere, remarkably well funded and well armed and ready to face off against the aggressors and provocateurs of this planet. Just one small suggestion: thank the troops for their service if you want, and then, as most Americans do, go about your business as if nothing were happening in those distant lands. As we head into election season 2020, however, just don’t imagine that we’re the good guys on Planet Earth. As far as I can tell, there aren’t many good guys left.
- China Eyes Green Supersonic Civilian Jetliner Prototype By 2035
China, the rising power of the world, has transformed its country into a superpower that will likely dominate the US by the 2030s. To do this, they need to advance their aerospace industry, along with supersonic civil jetliners that could take a traditional flight of ten hours down to five.
A new report from China Central Television (CCTV), reported in English via the Global Times, says China is expected to develop an environmentally friendly supersonic civil aircraft with prototypes expected for flight tests in 2035.
China Association for Science and Technology announced on Sunday at its annual meeting held in Harbin, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, that it has started designing a green supersonic civil jetliner.
The CCTV report said supersonic air travel would take a traditional ten-hour flight down to five, would revolutionize travel between continents.
“Green supersonic civil aircraft is currently a hot research topic internationally, as well as the direction of future aerospace development,” Xu Yue, a senior engineer at the Chinese Aeronautical Establishment under the state-owned Aviation Industry of China, told CCTV.
We have extensively covered the developments of supersonic and even hypersonic technologies that are expected to revolutionize aerospace in the next decade.
Countries including the US, Japan, and some European countries have already published designs for supersonic planes, CCTV said.
In November 2018, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works started to build the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) plane, which could take to the skies in the next several years.
The QueSST is for NASA’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstration program will be flown above several US cities to measure the public’s reaction of a low-boom sound from supersonic flight.
We even reported that an Atlanta-based startup is working on the development of hypersonic jetliners.
China has already made breakthroughs in technologies for supersonic and hypersonic flight.
“We hope that, through our own technological development and continued scientific investment, we can launch our own supersonic civil aircraft prototype in around 2035,” Xu said.
A race between China and the US has developed, in who can build, test, and launch a supersonic jetliner first. For the US, this will be about defending its aerospace empire. And for China, well, it’s about becoming the world’s next greatest superpower through technological advances, starting in aerospace, then in all other industries to displace the American empire.
- Drowning Children & Democrat Denial
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
Any image of a dead child is always harrowing, for everyone but the most deranged psychopaths among us. If the child has drowned while seeking a better life it is possibly worse. The public reaction of politicians to such images, which varies from doing very little, or nothing, to solve the issues that have led to a child drowning, to trying to make cheap political gains from the image, must be the worst.
On September 2 2015, this photo of Syrian Kurdish 2 year-old Alan Kurdi, lifeless on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey, went viral. Almost 4 years later, all Europe has done is try to hide the problems that led to his death, by handing Turkey billions of euros to keep refugees inside that country. And still today conditions in Lesbos, Greece are appalling. Hardly a thing has changed.
Improvements to the situation that lead to Alan Kurdi’s death, within Syria itself, have had very little to do with European efforts. Russia had a much bigger role in that. And Syria is not the only source, or place, of troubles and refugees. Libya has turned into an open air slave market thanks to US and EU “efforts” under Obama. And Iraq is not exactly a land of milk and honey either. Or Afghanistan.
And then this week another picture of a drowned child made the frontpages -and more. That child, too, drowned due to a situation that has a long history: the US seeking to turn Central America into a dirt-poor, chaotic and unsafe environment that local people desperately want to escape. Same difference. And again, in the US and EU it is used as propaganda material.
So who do you blame for this? Trump of course. Who also gets the blame for the conditions in which children are held at the US-Mexico border, in “cages”. A disaster that caused Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to stage a scene in which she cried her heart out while looking at an empty parking lot in an expensive dress.
The truth is, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. The people who are on AOC’s side of the divide will never see the reports on her faking the scene, that’s how segregated America has become. The “appropriate media” will convey the “appropriate” message” to the “appropriate audience”. Chuck Schumer even took the photograph to Capitol Hill for some quick and easy points.
Sen. Chuck Schumer: “President Trump, I want you to look at this photo. These are not drug dealers or vagrants or criminals. They are people simply fleeing a horrible situation in their home country for a better life.” pic.twitter.com/zGJIWy3JQ0
— The Hill (@thehill) June 26, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
What Schumer et al do not mention was that the “cages” AOC -ostensibly- cried about were built by the Obama government, i.e. Schumer’s own party. And there’s a few other things he conveniently left out. Like the fact that the horrible situations in their home countries that these people face are caused by the US itself, including Democrats like Schumer.
But first, some of the press on June 26, when the pictures came out: A Grim Border Drowning Underlines Peril Facing Many Migrants
The searing photograph of the sad discovery of their bodies on Monday, captured by journalist Julia Le Duc and published by Mexican newspaper La Jornada, highlights the perils faced by mostly Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty and hoping for asylum in the United States. According to Le Duc’s reporting for La Jornada, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, frustrated because the family from El Salvador was unable to present themselves to U.S. authorities and request asylum, swam across the river on Sunday with his daughter, Valeria.
He set her on the U.S. bank of the river and started back for his wife, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, but seeing him move away the girl threw herself into the waters. Martínez returned and was able to grab Valeria, but the current swept them both away. The account was based on remarks by Ávalos to police at the scene — “amid tears” and “screams” — Le Duc told The Associated Press.
That border did not become “grim” overnight, it has been exactly that for many years. We have proof of that. But first, more easy points.
The Democratic presidential candidates rushed to condemn the “inhumane” situation on the US border with Mexico – with some directly blaming Donald Trump – after a picture of a Salvadoran father and his toddler daughter found dead in the Rio Grande shocked the nation. The photograph, which emerged on Tuesday night, showed Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 26, and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria laying facedown near Matamoros, Mexico, on the bank of the river that marks the US border – reopening a fierce debate about the scale of the crisis.
The picture, by journalist Julia Le Duc, has drawn comparisons to the 2015 image of three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Jurdi, who drowned off Kos in Greece – sparking a significant moment in the European debate over migrants and refugees. Beto O’Rourke said: “Trump is responsible for these deaths.”Writing on Twitter, the former Texas congressman added: “As his administration refuses to follow our laws – preventing refugees from presenting themselves for asylum at our ports of entry – they cause families to cross between ports, ensuring greater suffering & death. At the expense of our humanity, not to the benefit of our safety.”
Fellow 2020 hopeful senator Kamala Harris condemned the picture as “a stain on our moral conscience”. She wrote: “These families seeking asylum are often fleeing extreme violence. And what happens when they arrive? Trump says, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ That is inhumane. Children are dying.” Corey Booker, New Jersey senator and 2020 candidate, also blamed the president. “We should not look away. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s inhumane and immoral immigration policy. This is being done in our name,” he tweeted.
These people don’t appear to have any knowledge of their own history, their own party. Either that or they’re flat-out lying. Kamala Harris: “..what happens when they arrive? Trump says, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ That is inhumane. Children are dying.” Here Kamala, Corey, Beto, take a listen to what Obama said in both 2007 and again in 2014. Take your time, we’ll wait:
The illegal immigration flashback pic.twitter.com/gYR9k7P94s
— James Hirsen (@thejimjams) June 28, 2019
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2014 is not ancient history. Can someone please explain why this was not portrayed at the time as a morally abominable statement? pic.twitter.com/tUvMnFmxVs
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 26, 2019
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While it’s impossible to quantify misery, and we should not even try, perhaps the closest we can get to doing it anyway is by looking at the number of people who have died at the US Southwest border. And if you can do that over an entire 20-year period, you at least have some indication.
And what do we see? The number of deaths under Trump is not high at all, at least in relative terms. Every death is one too many, true enough. But still. Since 2000, there was only one year, 2015, in which there were fewer deaths than in the two Trump years, 2017 and 2018.
Here’s a more detailed version of this (click for larger pic in new tab):
But yes, I know how much people love to hate Trump and his administration, and often for good reason too. But this whole thing appears to be about issues that existed during the previous Obama administration- and W. Bush- just as much, if not more. When Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi already were where they are now: in positions of -real- power. So you know, what do you do when they try and blame Trump for the very things they were complicit in?
And then there’s Salvini in Italy refusing entry to a ship filled with refugees. Which pretty much says he’s trying to force captains to break age-old maritime law (or the Law of the Sea, admiralty?!). And you can say he’s an idiot for doing it, and he is, but he is also telling the EU that Italy can’t accept 10 times more refugees than other EU nations just because it happens to have a coastline.
And sure Salvini is a belligerent fool, and so is Trump, but if you want to understand what happens you can’t stop at blaming only them. It’s tempting but it’s also far too easy. Even the Dalai Lama said people should stay in their own countries. But also that they should receive help from the west. Which for many decades have only been terrorizing them. This is as true in Africa as it is in Central America.
Arguably, all we need to do to stop children like Alan Kurdi and Valeria from drowning at border crossings is to make their home countries safe from our own criminal and deathly activities. But that’s not going to be easy. I read this piece today from think tanking US professors Mark Hannah and Stephen Wertheim, and it doesn’t even make sense beyond the initial message:
Here’s One Way Democrats Can Defeat Trump: Be Radically Anti-War
The last two presidents, Obama and Trump, were unlikely aspirants to the office partly because they bucked national-security orthodoxy, blasting Middle East wars and the political class that started them. Obama and Trump won their elections partly for the same reason. Once in office, however, they struggled to deliver. Endless war continues; diplomacy is in tatters; Americans suffer from underinvestment where they live and work; and the greatest threats, like climate change, loom larger across the globe. In 2020, the candidate who not only identifies these problems, but offers real solutions, will benefit.
Problem is, the Democrats are a radically pro-war party, just like the Republicans. The writers silently admit this by not naming one Democrat who is anti-war, and by not at all naming the one presidential candidate who is, Tulsi Gabbard. Which makes one suspect that they and their backers are not so much anti-war as they are anti-Trump, but since many Americans are anti-war these days, they see it as a possibly winning platform.
Given that Wertheim is a co-founder with George Soros and the Koch brothers of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, none of this is surprising. They just want the power back, and if that takes promising no more forever war during an election campaign, hey, that’s fine with them. And then once the election’s done, they can go back to their merry ways of inciting wars. They might as well claim they’re going to save us from climate change too.
The solution to the problem of children -and adults- drowning at border crossings is dead -pun intended- simple. Stop bombing people, stop interfering in their countries altogether, stop strangling them with economic sanctions. Implementing these very easy policies, though, is far from simple. And so the problem keeps growing.
The most important take-away from all this is that the problem is not Salvini or Trump, but the EU and US, the entire “body politic” of both. Where left and right are on the same side, that of power and money, and their ‘differences’ are mere distractions that serve to entertain their audiences. And the media whipping up a blind hatred of everything Salvini or Trump, is not going to make this world a better place.
Left and right alike dance to the tunes of the arms industries and other large corporations, which profit from chaos and misery, both in ‘powerless’ countries and at home. We’re stuck with “progressives” who have no meaningful link to progress and conservatives whose very last idea seems to be to conserve anything of value.
But be critical of the left and you’re labeled right wing, and vise versa. We live in a modern version of a segregated society, not progressing anywhere and not conserving a single thing on its way there.
We need to do better, much better, if we are to prevent the next child from drowning.
* * *
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- LA Mega-Mansion Sets Record After Selling For $120 Million
The Los Angeles luxury housing market has finally gotten the shot in the arm that it needed. The Manor, a 56,000 square-foot mansion in Holmby Hills, just sold for $120 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. The sale price is the highest in LA County history.
Despite not yet appearing in the public record, the transaction appears to be a “done deal”, according to the report. It represents another “notch in the belt” for the county, where the previous sale record was $110 million.
It is the fourth sale of $100 million or more in LA ever and a third in Holmby Hills, which sold two mansions for more than $100 million in 2016, one of which was the Playboy mansion. Still, the price tag is astronomical for one of the largest single-family homes in the country.
The mansion is set on 4.7 acres and the Manor includes more than 1 acre of living space. It’s 1500 square feet larger than the White House, which is about 50,000 square feet in size. It was built in 1991 for late producer Aaron Spelling and then sold to its current owner for $85 million in an all cash deal eight years ago.
The mansion was nicknamed “Candyland” during the Spelling’s tenure there. It has 20+ custom rooms, including a flower cutting room, a humidity controlled silver storage room, a barbershop and multiple gift wrapping rooms. It also includes a French wine and cheese room that is furnished with sidewalk tables, chairs, and French music. It also supports a one lane bowling alley.
A staff of 30 is required to take care of the mansion.
The current owner, Petra Ecclestone, daughter of Formula One billionaire Bernie Ecclestone, made some changes including opting for more contemporary interiors, a lounge lined in marble and a large aquarium. A room once used for Aaron Spelling’s wife’s doll collection has been converted into a hair salon and massage parlor. The home encompasses 123 rooms, including 14 bedrooms and 27 bathrooms.
There’s also a tanning room, solarium, game room, statues, koi ponds, swimming pool, a spa and a tennis court.
The mansion had been shopped for $150 million in 2014 and was brought to market in 2016 at $200 million. At the time it sold for $120 million, it was listed on the market for $160 million.
This looks to be a good sign for the stagnating LA real estate market. UCLA real estate professor Paul Habibi said: “If $120 million is the new benchmark, that makes it more plausible to sell a home for $75 million or $100 million.”
“They’re not looking for affordability thresholds, and they’re not dependent on mortgage rates. Estates like these have an extremely limited, idiosyncratic buyer pool,” he continued.
In Los Angeles as of June, there were about 230 sales of $5 million or more this year, down from 273 deals compared to the same period last year. For deals that have closed at $10 million or more, the market has seen a drop of more than 25% year-over-year. Sales of $20 million or more are down about 50%.
But the high-end market has heated up a little bit this summer:
Two transactions topped $40 million in May, including Adam Levine’s Beverly Hills mansion that sold to Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi for $42.5 million.
Last week, Uber co-founder Garrett Camp quietly dropped roughly $71 million on a newly built home in Trousdale Estates.
The Platinum Triangle – comprised of Bel Air, Holmby Hills and Beverly Hills – is no stranger to massive sales. This year alone, the wealthy area has seen 11 property transactions of $20 million or more, records show.
“Holmby Hills is probably the most affluent submarket in L.A. County,” Habibi concluded.
- $4.5 Trillion: The Price Tag of A Fossil Fuel-Free USA
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
Decarbonizing the U.S. grid and replacing fossil fuels with renewables could cost US$4.5 trillion in investments over the next 10 to 20 years, Wood Mackenzie analysts have calculated.
Such a move away from fossil fuels would require the installation of 1,600 GW of new solar and wind capacity, the research firm said. This compares with a total capacity of 1,060 GW across the United States, of which 130 GW renewable capacity.
Yet a lot more generation capacity is not all, either. A lot of utility-scale storage installations would also be necessary to make the power produced by solar and wind farms reliable enough to replace fossil fuels in the long run. More precisely, Wood Mac’s analysts have calculated the storage capacity needed at 900 GW.
This sort of change has no precedent, the research firm said, and would necessitate a complete overhaul of the power generation industry.
“The challenges of achieving 100% renewable energy go far beyond the capital costs of new generating assets. Most notably, it will need a substantial redesign of electricity markets, migrating away from traditional energy-only constructs and more towards a capacity market,” said Wood Mac’s head of Global Wind Energy Research, Dan Shreve.
If the complete transformation to a fossil fuel-free U.S. is to be done by 2030, this would mean adding more renewable capacity every year over the next 11 years than has been added over the last 20 years combined.
Yet, there is a middle ground: pushing the all-renewables deadline further into the future and allowing some natural gas capacity in the mix. According to Wood Mac’s analysts, if 20 percent of the energy generated in the U.S. comes from natural gas, this would cut renewable installations costs by 20 percent as well, but it will also help reduce energy storage costs by as much as 60 percent.
- Russia Releases Video Of 'Satellite Killer' Anti-Missile System Test
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced Tuesday it had successfully tested a new anti-missile system in Saryshagan firing range in central Kazakhstan, as shown by a video released by the MoD.
Though the MoD did not disclose any further information about the test, including the precise type of next generation weaponry featured in the video, the military and Middle East affairs news site Al-Masdar identified it as the A-235 so-called “Satellite Killer” based on visual similarities to a prior publicized A-235 test from last year.
Screengrab from the new missile launch test via Russian Defense Ministry/RT “The anti-missile system shown in the video is believed to be an A-235 Nudul (‘satellite killer’); it was first unveiled in 2014. The A-235 is supposed to succeed the A-135 Amur, which is still in service,” according to the report.
The Russian Aerospace Defense Forces oversaw the tests which a defense ministry spokesman described as follows: “The new anti-ballistic missile, after several trials, has reliably confirmed its characteristics and successfully fulfilled the task by striking an assigned target with precision,” according to TASS.
Other Russian media sources described it only as a “new interceptor missile” – which also comes just as the S-500 ‘Prometheus’ is being prepped for delivery to operational units.
The A-235 is part of the Kremlin’s developing supersonic arsenal, reaching supersonic speeds which are several times faster than an average rocket.
Prior tests and capabilities of the A-235 were described previously by The National Interest:
Russia has been preparing a purpose-built ASAT missile, the A-235 Nudol, for years, development of which has already included seven flight tests. The latest, on December 23, 2018, appeared highly successful, with the missile flying for seventeen minutes and 1,864 miles before splashing into its intended target area at sea. Described by Russian state-media as part of a new “space defense intercept complex,” the Nudol’s flight tests suggest an orbital ballistic intercept trajectory ideal for ASAT operations.
Below is a prior video of the A-235 being tested in December 2018:
Russia is carrying out and highly publicizing these tests at a moment when the fate of key international weapons treaties hang by a thread, especially the now all but collapsed Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty between Russia and the United States.
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