- "We Must Give This Land New Life": Chernobyl Sees Surge In Tourism Thanks To HBO
“We Must Give This Land New Life”: Chernobyl Sees Surge In Tourism Thanks To HBO
The last few years haven’t been kind to the Ukrainian tourism industry. But finally an unlikely tourist attraction is seeing a huge increase in visitors, thanks to HBO.
That’s right: As CNN reports, tourism to the Chernobyl power plant – including visits to the ruined control room for the doomed Reactor 4 – is booming. Thanks to the success of HBO’s five-part “Chernobyl” dramatization, people have been lining up to see the aftermath of the worst nuclear accident in human history at rates that are much higher than they have been historically.
However, for adventurous tourists, there is a catch: those who venture inside the highly radioactive area at the infamous Reactor 4 will be provided with white protective suits, helmets and masks during their visit. After leaving, visitors will be subjected to two radiology tests to measure their exposure.
In an effort to seize on the enthusiasm for all things “Chernobyl”, Ukrainian President Volydymyr Zelensky (you might remember him from his recent spate of appearances in the American press) signed a decree back in July to designate Chernobyl an official tourist attraction (to be sure, tourists have had access to the area since 2011).
Which is one way to turn a liability into an asset.
“We must give this territory of Ukraine a new life,” Zelensky said when he signed the decree. “Until now, Chernobyl was a negative part of Ukraine’s brand. It’s time to change it.”
Though tourists are already flocking to the site, the makeover isn’t yet finished. New infrastructure to support an increase in the stream of tourists must still be built.
Of course, safety is still a top concern. To that end, Zelensky recently announced a new metal dome that will be placed over the ruined Reactor 4 to prevent any more radioactive material from leaking out. That structure will be paid for by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The dome is being built to last a century, the EBRD said.
Chernobyl was once the epicenter of a 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone that was imposed after the 1986 meltdown. Soon, it will be crawling with tourists who, it must be said, will inevitably expose themselves to higher doses of radiation than is considered healthy.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/04/2019 – 02:45 - Will The Drive To Devalue The Dollar Lead To A Plaza Accord 2.0?
Will The Drive To Devalue The Dollar Lead To A Plaza Accord 2.0?
Authored by Ronald-Peter Stöferle via The Mises Institute,
The Lead-Up to the Plaza Accord
To understand the Plaza Accord, one has to look back to August 15, 1971. On this day Richard Nixon closed the gold window. This step de facto ended the Bretton Woods system, which had been created in 1944 in the New Hampshire town of the same name and was formally terminated in 1973. The era of gold-backed currency was well and truly over; the era of flexible exchange rates had begun. Without a gold anchor, the exchange rate of every currency pair was supposed to be driven exclusively by supply and demand. National central banks — and indirectly governments as well — were at liberty to make their own decisions, free of the tight restrictions imposed by a gold standard, but they had to bear the costs of their decisions in the form of the devaluation or appreciation of their currencies. While a gold-backed currency aims to impose discipline on nations, a system of flexible exchange rates enables national idiosyncrasies to be preserved, with the exchange rate serving as a balancing mechanism.
However, unlike any other currency system, the system of free-floating currencies invites governments and central banks to manipulate exchange rates practically at will. Without reciprocal agreements, which can provide planning security to export-oriented companies in particular, the danger of international chaos is very high, as the system of flexible exchange rates lacks an external anchor.
In order to prevent this chaos, a repetition of the traumatic devaluation spiral of the 1930s, and the resulting disintegration of the global economy, IMF member nations agreed in 1976 at a meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, that “the exchange rate should be economically justified. Countries should avoid manipulating exchange rates in order to avoid the need to regulate the balance of payments or gain an unfair competitive advantage.” And in this multilateral spirit — albeit under an US initiative that was strongly tinged by self-interest — an agreement was struck nine years later that has entered the economic history books as the Plaza Accord.
Macroeconomic Excesses in the 1980s?
In the first half of the 1980s the US dollar appreciated significantly against the most important currencies. In five years the dollar rose by around 150% against the French franc, almost 100% against the Deutschmark, and intermittently 34.2% against the yen (from the January 1981 low).
The significant appreciation of the US dollar was of course reflected in the US Dollar Index, which consists of the currencies of the most important US trading partners, weighted according to their share of trade with the US. The following chart, moreover, shows exchange rates in real terms — i.e., it takes price levels into account, which can vary substantially in some cases.
Real trade-weighted US Dollar Index, 03/1973=100, 01/1980–12/1989
Source: Federal Reserve St. Louis, Incrementum AG
From an interim low of 87.7 in July 1980, the index rose by about 50% to 131.6 by March 1985. Not surprisingly, the US current account balance deteriorated significantly in the first half of the 1980s as a result of this substantial dollar rally, as the following chart shows.
Current account balance, US, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Japan, in % of GDP, 1980–1989
Source: World Bank, Quandl, Incrementum AG
In 1980 and 1981 the US still posted a moderate surplus, but by 1985 this surplus had turned into a deficit of 2.9%. The trend in Germany and Japan was almost a perfect mirror image. While the two export nations had current account deficits of 1.7% and 1.0% in 1980, their current account balances turned positive in 1981 and 1982, respectively. In 1985, they already posted surpluses of 2.5% and 3.6%. Germany’s current account surplus in particular grew even further in subsequent years.
The Plaza Accord
Representatives of the US, Germany, Japan, France, and Great Britain, a.k.a. the G5 countries, met in September 1985 at the Plaza Hotel in New York under the leadership of US Treasury Secretary James Baker in order to coordinate their economic policies. Their declared aim was to reduce the US current account deficit, which they planned to accomplish by weakening the overvalued US dollar. Moreover, the US urged Germany and Japan to strengthen domestic demand by expanding their budget deficits, which was supposed to give US exports a shot in the arm.
In the Plaza Accord, the five signatory nations agreed to cooperate more closely when cooperation made sense. The criterion cited for adopting a joint approach was “deviation from fundamental economic conditions.” Interventions in the foreign exchange market were to be conducted with the aim of combating current account imbalances. In the short term the target was a 10%–12% devaluation of the US dollar relative to its level of September 1985.
The immediate outcome of the agreement was as desired. One week after the Plaza Accord had been signed, the Japanese yen gained 11.8% against the US dollar, while the German mark and the French franc gained 7.8% each, and the British pound 2.8%. However, the speed of the adjustment in foreign exchange markets continued to be the same as before the Plaza agreement, as the following chart clearly shows.
USD exchange rate vs. DEM, FRF, JPY, GBP, 01/01/1980=100, 01/1980–09/1985
Source: fxtop.com, Incrementum AG
However, the charts also show quite clearly that the depreciation of the US dollar had already begun several months before the official agreement was concluded in the heart of Manhattan. The Dollar Index had reached its peak in March of 1985, i.e., half a year before the Plaza Accord.
Plaza Accord 2.0?
Some people propose the creation of a new version of the Plaza Accord, i.e., a multilateral agreement that includes, inter alia, coordinated intervention in foreign exchange markets. The proponents of a Plaza Accord 2.0 point to the appreciation of the US dollar by almost 40% (particularly in the years 2011–2016), and to the large differences between the current account balances of the leading developed countries. However, such an agreement would represent a new turning point in international currency policy. After all, in 2013 the G8 agreed to refrain from foreign exchange interventions — in a kind of Anti-Plaza Accord.
The following chart illustrates the significant appreciation of the US dollar in recent years.
Real trade-weighted US Dollar Index, 03/1973 = 100, 01/2011–04/2019
Source: Federal Reserve St. Louis, Incrementum AG
And just as was the case thirty years ago, the US has a significant and persistent current account deficit, while Germany, Japan — and these days also China — have significant surpluses. Germany’s surplus, which intermittently reached almost 9%, is particularly striking.
Current account balances of US, Germany, France, Great Britain, Japan, China, in % of GDP, 2010–2017
Source: World Bank, Quandl, Incrementum AG
Long before Donald Trump weighed in on the issue, the US Treasury — which is in charge of the US dollar’s external value — repeatedly stressed that the dollar was too strong, especially compared to the renminbi. Time and again the US accused China, Japan, and the eurozone of keeping their currencies at artificially low levels in order to support their export industries. The fact that Donald Trump used the term manipulation in a tweet came as a bit of a surprise, as the US has not used this term officially since 1994.
In any case, such a significant adjustment in exchange rates would have to be implemented gradually; the risk of creating further distortions would be too great. An abrupt adjustment of rates might result in, for example, a significant increase in the pace of US inflation and/or a collapse of the export sectors of countries whose currencies would appreciate.
But as exchange rates — at least in the medium to long term — are mainly determined by fundamentals, exchange rates can change substantially only if underlying macroeconomic conditions (real interest rate differentials, trade and current account balances, the investment climate, and budget balances) change. Regardless of how powerful a government or how watertight an international agreement is, those who enter an agreement cannot get past this fact. As Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk has stated explicitly: “The most imposing dictate of power can never effect anything in contradiction to the economic laws of value, price, and distribution; it must always be in conformity with these; it cannot invalidate them; it can merely confirm and fulfill them.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/04/2019 – 02:00 - New Weapons & The New Tactics Which They Make Possible: Three Examples
New Weapons & The New Tactics Which They Make Possible: Three Examples
There are probably hundreds of books out there about the so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs”, some of them pretty good, most of them very bad, and a few very good ones (especially this one). For a rather dull and mainstream discussion, you can check the Wikipedia article on the RMA. Today I don’t really want to talk this or similar buzzwords (like “hybrid warfare” for example). Frankly, in my experience, these buzzwords serve two purposes:
-
to sell (books, articles, interviews, etc.)
-
to hide a person’s lack of understanding of tactics, operational art and strategy.
This being said, there are new things happening in the realm of warfare, new technologies are being developed, tested and deployed, some extremely successfully.
In his now famous speech, Putin revealed some of these new weapons systems, although he did not say much about how they would be engaged (which is quite logical, since he was making a political speech, not a military-technical report). For those would be interested in this topic, you can check here, here, here, here, here and here.
The recent Houthi drone and missile strike on the Saudi oil installations has shown to the world something which the Russians have known for several years: that even rather primitive drones can be a real threat. Sophisticated drones are a major threat to every military out there, though Russia has developed truly effective (including cost-effective, which is absolutely crucial, more about that later) anti-drone capabilities.
First, lets look at the very low-cost end of the spectrum: drones
Let’s begin with the primitive drones. These are devices which, according to one Russian military expert, roughly need a 486 CPU, about 1MB of RAM, 1GB of harddisk space and some (now extremely cheap) sensors to capture the signals from the US GPS, the Russian GLONASS or both (called “GNSS”). In fact, the “good terrorists” in Syria, financed, assisted and trained by the “Axis of Kindness” (USA/KSA/Israel) have been attacking the Russian base in Khmeimim with swarms of such drones for years.According to the commander of the air defenses of Khmeimin, over 120(!) drones were shot down or disabled by Russian air defenses in just the last two years. Obviously, the Russians know something that some “Axis of Kindness” does not.
The biggest problem: missile systems should not be used against drones
Some self-described “specialists” have wondered why Patriot missiles did not shoot down the Houthi drones. This is asking the wrong question because missiles are completely ineffective in engaging attacking drone swarms. And, for once, this is not about the poor performance of Patriot SAMs. Even Russian S-400s are the wrong systems to use on individual drones or drone swarms. Why? Because of the following characteristics of drones:
-
they are typically small, with a very special low profile, extremely light and made up of materials which minimally reflect radar signals;
-
they are very slow, which does not make it easier to shoot them down, but much harder, especially since most radars are designed to track and engage very fast targets (aircraft, ballistic missiles, etc.);
-
they can fly extremely low, which allows them to hide; even lower than cruise missiles flying NOE;
-
they are extremely cheap, thus wasting multi-million dollar missiles on drones costing maybe 10-20 dollars (or even say, 30,000 dollars for the very high end) makes no sense whatsoever;
-
they can come in swarms with huge numbers; much larger than the number of missiles a battery can fire.
From the above, it is obvious how drones should be engaged: either with AA cannons or by EW systems.
In theory, they could also be destroyed by lasers, but these would require a lot of power, thus engaging cheapo drones with them is possible, but not optimal.
It just so happens that the Russians have both, hence their success in Khmeimim.
One ideal anti-drone weapon would be the formidable Pantsir which combines multi-channel detection and tracking (optoelectronics, radar, IR, visual, third-party datalinks, etc.) and a powerful cannon. And, even better, the Pantsir also has powerful medium range missiles which can engage targets supporting the drone attack.
The other no less formidable anti-drone system would be the various Russian EW systems deployed in Syria.
Why are they so effective?
Let’s look at the major weaknesses of drones
First, drones are either remotely controlled, or have onboard navigation systems. Obviously, just like any signal, the remote signal can be jammed and since jammers are typically closer to the intended target than the remote control station, it is easier for it to produce a much stronger signal since the strength of a signal diminishes according to the so-called “inverse square law“. Thus in terms of raw emission power, even a powerful signal transmitted far away is likely to lose to a smaller, weaker, signal if that one is closer to the drone (i.e. near the intended target along the likely axis of attack). Oh sure, in theory one could use all sorts of fancy techniques to try to avoid that (for example frequency-hopping, etc.) but these very quickly dramatically raise the weight and cost of the drone. You also need to consider that the stronger the signal from the drone, the bigger and heavier the onboard power cells need to be, and the heavier the drone is.
Second, some drones rely on either satellite signals (GPS/GLONASS) or inertial guidance. Problem #1: satellite signals can be spoofed. Problem #2 inertial guidance is either not that accurate or, again, heavier and more costly.
Some very expensive and advanced cruise missiles use TERCOM, terrain contour matching, but that is too expensive for light and cheap drones (such advanced cruise missiles and their launchers is what the S-3/400s were designed to engage, and that at least makes sense financially). There are even more fancy and extremely expensive cruise missile guidance technologies out there, but these are simply not applicable to weapons like drones with their biggest advantage being simple technology and low costs.
The truth is that even a non-tech guy like me could build a drone ordering all the parts from online stores such as Amazon, AliBaba, Banggood and tons of others and build pretty effective drones to, say, drop a hand grenade or some other explosive on an enemy position. Somebody with an engineering background could easily build the kind of drones the “good terrorists” have used against the Russians in Syria. A country, even a poor one and devastated by a genocidal war, like Yemen, could very easily build the kind of drones used by the Houthis, especially with Iranian and Hezbollah help (the latter two have already successfully taken remote control of US and Israeli drones respectively).
Finally, I can promise you that right now, in countries like the DPRK, China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, etc, there are teams of engineers working on the development of very low cost drones just like there are teams of military analysts developing new tactics of engagement.
This is, I submit, the first not-so-noticed (yet) kinda-revolution in military affairs.
Second, lets look at the very high end: 5th+ generation aircraft and 5-6th generation UAVs
While some in India have declared (for political reasons and to please the USA) that the Su-57 was not “really” a 5th generation aircraft (on the pretext that the first ones were deployed with 4th gen engines and because the Su-57 did not have the same kind of all-aspect RCS which the F-22 has), in Russia and China the debate is now whether the Su-57 is really only a 5th generation aircraft or really a 5th + or even 6th generation one. Why?
For one thing, rumors coming out of the Sukhoi KB and the Russian military is that the pilot in the Su-57 is really an “option”, meaning that the Su-57 was designed from the start to operate without any pilot at all. My personal belief is that the Su-57 has an extremely modular design which currently does require a human pilot and that the first batch of S-57s will probably not fly all alone, but that the capability to remove the human pilot to be replaced by a number of advanced systems has been built-in, and that the Russians will deploy pilot-less Su-57’s in the future.
This 3rd, 4th, 5th and now even 6th generation business is a little too fuzzy for my taste, so I rather avoid these categories and I don’t see a point in dwelling on them. What is important is what weapons systems can do, not how we define them, especially for a non-technical article like this one.
In the meantime, the Russians have for the first time shown this:
What you are seeing here is the following:
A Su-57 flies together with the new long range Russian strike drone: the Heavy Strike UAV S-70 Hunter and here is what the Russian MoD has recently revealed about this drone:
-
Range: 6,000km (3,700 miles)
-
Ceiling: 18,000m (60,000 feet)
-
Max speed: 1,400km/h (1,000mph)
-
Max load: 6,000kg (12,000lbs)
Furthermore, Russian experts are now saying that this UAV can fly alone, or in a swarm, or in a joint flight with a manned Su-57. I also believe that in the future, one Su-57 will probably control several such heavy strike drones.
Flag-waving patriots will immediately declare that the S-70 is a copy of the B-2. In appearance that is quite true. But consider this: the max speed of the B-2 is, according to Wikipedia, 900km/h (560 mph). Compare that with the 1,400km/h (1,000mph) and realize that a flying wing design and a supersonic flying wing design are completely different platforms (the supersonic stresses require a completely different structural design)
What can a Su-57 do when flying together with the S-70?
Well, for one thing since the S-70 has a lower RCS than the Su-57 (this according to Russian sources) the Su-57 uses the S-70 as a long range hostile air defense penetrator tasked with collecting signals intelligence and relaying those back to the Su-57. But that is not all. The Su-57 can also use the S-70 to attack ground targets (including SEAD) and even execute air-to-air attacks. Here the formidable speed and huge 6 tons max load of the S-70 offer truly formidable capabilities, including the deployment of heavy Russian air-to-air, air-to-ground and air-to-ship capabilities.
Some Russian analysts have speculated that in order to operate with the S-70 the Su-57 has to be modified into a two-seater with a WSO operating the S-70 from the back seat. Well, nobody knows yet, this is all top secret right now, but I think that this idea clashes with the Sukhoi philosophy of maximally reduce the workload of the pilot. True, the formidable MiG-31 has a WSO, even the new MiG-31BM, but the design philosophy at the MiG bureau is often very different from what the folks at Sukhoi develop and, besides, 4 decades stand between the MiG-31 and the Su-57. My personal guess is that the operations of the S-70 will be mostly full automated and even distributed along the network connecting all integrated air and ground based air defense systems. If an engineer reads these lines, I would appreciate any comments or corrections! After all, this is just my best guess.
The usual gang of trolls will probably object that the Russian computer/chip industry is so far behind the supposedly much superior western solid-state electronics that this is all nonsense; there was a human sitting inside the S-70; this thing don’t fly; the Su-57 is a 4th gen aircraft much inferior to the amazingly superb F-22/F-35; and all the rest of it. Especially for them, I want to remind everybody that Russia was the first country to deploy airborne phased array radars on her MiG-31s which, to boot, were capable of exchanging targeting data by encrypted datalinks with FOUR (!) other aircraft maintaining EM silence (while using their optoelectronics and relaying that data back). Furthermore, these MiG-31s could also exchange data with airborne (AWACS) and ground-based (SAMs) radars. And that was in the early 1980s, almost 40 years ago!
The truth is that the Soviet armed forces deployed plenty of network-centric systems long before the West, especially in the Soviet Air Force and Navy (while the Soviet Ground-Forces pioneered the use of so-called RSC “reconnaissance-strike complexes” which were the nightmare of NATO during the Cold War). Nowadays, all we need to do is parse the NATO whining about Russian Anti Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities to see that the Russians are still pioneering advanced military-technical capabilities which the West can only dream of.
Now let’s revisit some of the recent criticisms of the Su-57
So what about the fact that the Su-57 does not have all-around very low RCS? What ifthe Su-57 was never intended to spearhead the penetration of advanced and integrated air defense systems? What if from day 1 the Sukhoi designers were warned by their colleagues at Almaz-Antey, Novator, KRET or even the good folks at the OSNAZ (SIGINT) and the 6th Directorate of the GRU that “stealth” is vastly over-rated?What if it was clear to the Russians from day 1 that a low frontal-RCS did not compromise other capabilities as much as a quasi-total reliance on all-aspect low-RCS never to be detected in the first place?
The crucial thing to keep in mind is that new technological capabilities also generate new tactics. By the way, western analysts understand that, hence the new network-centric capabilities of the F-35. This is especially true since the F-35 will be a pathetic dogfighter whereas the Su-57 might well be the most capable one out there: did you know that the Su-57 has several radars besides the main one, that they cover different bands and that they give the Su-57 a 360 degree vision of the battlefield, even without using the signals from the S-70, AWACS or ground based SAM radars?). And in terms of maneuverability, I will just show this and rest my case:
Lastly, the case of the invisible missile container
Remember the Kalibr cruise-missile recently seen in the war in Syria. Did you know that it can be shot from a typical commercial container, like the ones you will find on trucks, trains or ships? Check out this excellent video which explains this:
Just remember that the Kalibr has a range of anywhere between 50km to 4,000km and that it can carry a nuclear warhead. How hard would it be for Russia to deploy these cruise missiles right off the US coast in regular container ships? Or just keep a few containers in Cuba or Venezuela? This is a system which is so undetectable that the Russians could deploy it off the coast of Australia to hit the NSA station in Alice Springs if they wanted, and nobody would even see it coming. In fact, the Russians could deploy such a system on any civilian merchant ship, sailing under any imaginable flag, and station it not only anywhere off the US coastline, but even in a US port since most containers are never examined anyways (and when they are, it is typically for drugs or contraband). Once we realize this, all the stupid scaremongering about Russian subs off the coast of Florida become plain silly, don’t they?
Now let’s look at some very interesting recent footage from the recent maneuvers in Russia:
Here is what the person who posted that (Max Fisher, here is his YT channel) video wrote about this coastal defense system, explaining it very well:
For the first time, during the tactical exercises of the tactical group of the Northern Fleet, carrying combat duty on the island of Kotelny, the coastal missile system “Bastion” was used The BRK was successful in firing a supersonic Onyx anti-ship cruise missile at a sea target located over 60 kilometers in the Laptev Sea, which confirmed its readiness to effectively carry out combat duty in the Arctic and perform tasks to protect the island zone and the Russian coast. Onyx is a universal anti-ship cruise missile. It is designed to combat surface naval groups and single ships in the face of strong fire and electronic countermeasures. On the basis of the rocket, there are two seemingly absolutely identical export options: the Russian Yakhont and the Indian BrahMos, but with significantly reduced combat characteristics. These vehicles are capable of starting from under water: they have a flight speed of 750 meters per second and carry the crushing high-explosive warhead with a weight of half a ton. The range of their flight is more than 600 kilometers. Previously, Rubezh BRK was used as the main coastal missile system of the tactical group of the Northern Fleet. At the end of August, he successfully hit two targets “Termit” missiles installed in the Laptev Sea at a distance of more than 50 kilometers from the coast.
Now let me ask you this: how hard would you think it would be for Russia to develop a container size version coastal defense system using the technologies used in the Bastion/Yakhont/BrahMos missile systems? Since the AngloZionists have now reneged on The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Russians have already developed a land-based version of their Kalibr missile which is ready to deploy as soon as the US deploys any such missile in Europe.
The fact is that Russia has perfected an entire family of ballistic and cruise missiles which can be completely hidden from detection and which can be deployed literally anywhere on the planet. Even with nuclear warheads.
This capability completely changes all the previous US deterrence/containment strategies (which are still halfway stuck in the Cold War and halfway stuck with low-intensity/counter-insurgency operations like what they have been doing (with no success whatsoever!) in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and in Latin America and Africa).
In the light of the above, what do you make of the steady flow of NATO ships deployed in the Black Sea to “deter” Russia? If you find it completely suicidal, I agree. In fact, all these ships are doing is allowing the Russians to train their crews on the “real thing”. But should it ever come to a shooting war, the life span of any and every NATO ship in the Black Sea would be measured in minutes. Literally!
Now lets think of Iran. As I said many, many times, Russia will not enter a full-scale war against the combined powers of the “Axis of Kindness” on behalf of Iran (or any other country on the planet). But Russia very much might get seriously fed up with the “Axis of Kindness” and sell Iran any missile the Iranians would be willing to acquire. In the past I have often written that the real sign that Iran is about to be attacked would not be the presence of USN ships in the Strait of Hormuz or along the Iranian coast, but the opposite: a flushing out of all ships from the Strait itself and a careful repositioning of the bulk of the USN ships inside sea and land based US air defenses “umbrella” available at that moment. I can only imagine the nightmare for CENTCOM if Iran begins to acquire even a small number of Bastions or Kalibers or Yakhont or BrahMos missiles
Conclusion: the “Axis of Kindness” countries are in big, big trouble!
The US and Israel have tremendous technological capabilities, and in normal times US specialists could gradually deploy systems capable of countering the kind of capabilities (not only necessarily Russian ones) we now see deployed in various areas of operations. And there sure is enough money, considering that the US alone spends more on the “promotion of kindness” than the rest of the planet combined! So what is the problem?
Simple, the US Congress, which might well be the most corrupt parliament on the planet, is in the business of:
-
Hysterically flag-waving and declaring any naysayers “un-American”
-
Making billions for the US ruling nomenklatura
Thus, to admit that the “shining city on the hill” and its “best armed forces in history” are rapidly falling behind foes which the US propaganda has described as “primitive” and “inferior” for decades is quite literally unthinkable for US politicians. After all, the US public might wonder why all these multi-billion dollar toys the US MIC has been producing in the last decades have not yielded a single success, never-mind a meaningful victory! Trump in his campaign tried to make that point. He was instantly attacked by the Dems for not supporting the “best military in history” and he quickly changed his tune. Now even the weapons the US does not even have yet are better than those already being tested and, possibly, deployed by Russia.
This “feel good” approach to military issues is very nice, warm and fuzzy. But it sure does not make it possible to even identify present, or even less so, future dangers.
Then, of course, there is the issue of money. The US, in its short history, has deployed some absolutely world class weapons systems in technologies. My personal favorites: the Willys MBm, also known as a Jeep, and the superb F-16. But there are many, many more. The problem with these, at least from the point of view of the US nomenklatura, is that they were designed for warfare, for the many and very different real-world battlefields out there. They were never designed to enrich the already fantastically rich!
Hence the country which produced the Jeep now mostly produces massive hulks of metal which drive like crap, which constantly break, but which give the narcissistic and baseball cum sunglasses hat wearing left-lane male drivers a delightful feeling of macho superiority. And, of course, the country which created and deployed the formidable, yet economic, F-16 in the thousands (well over 4000 I think) now produces the F-35 (good thing that the US colonies like Poland or Japan are willing to buy them to please their beloved Uncle Shmuel).
From the point of view of the US nomenklatura, the F-35 is a stunning, amazing, success, not a high-tech flying brick! The costs of this system are not the proof of the incompetence of US engineers, or the cluelessness of US military analysts. Rather, these costs are proof of the combined effects of infinite greed and self-worship of the US ruling class.
Sadly, one of the best ways to learn the important lessons, is by means of a painful or catastrophic defeat. The Russia of today would not have been possible without the horrors of the “democratic rule” of Eltsin in the 1990s. Think of it: during the first Chechen war, the Russians had a hard time even finding one complete combat capable regiment and they had to use “combined battalions” (сводный батальон) instead. This will probably also happen to the USA.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/04/2019 – 00:05 -
- Putin: China Ready To Buy As Much Soybeans, Wheat As Russia Can Produce Amid US Trade War
Putin: China Ready To Buy As Much Soybeans, Wheat As Russia Can Produce Amid US Trade War
There were a number of interesting comments made by President Putin today regarding Russia’s increasingly cozy relations with longtime rival China at the Valdai Discussion Club at Sochi on Thursday. “We are now helping our Chinese partners to create a missile-warning system, a missile-attack warning system,” Putin announced.
While slamming the recent US exit from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) as harming global stability, he added, “This is a very serious thing that will dramatically increase China’s defense capability, because only the U.S. and Russia have such a system now.”
Image via Sputnik Immediately after his comments, which further come on the heels China’s elaborate military hardware-laden 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Foreign Policy noted what’s become increasingly apparent as both Beijing and Moscow find themselves in the US administration’s cross hairs — with the latter grappling with the uncertain effects of Trump’s trade war, and the former under various sanctions:
Most strikingly, Moscow is back in the picture, once again officially deemed to be Beijing’s best comrade-in-arms, in a throwback to the earliest years of the People’s Republic of China.
Though still in trial production, it’s expected that China will be among the first nations to acquire Russia’s S-500 anti-air missile system.
This month Chinese media touted the next generation S-500’s capabilities as “greatly exceeding any active air defense system in the world,” according to a report in Sina news portal.
Russia’s deadly S-500 SAM system, still in trial production phase, via Pravda.ru Putin also made reference to deepening economic cooperation with Beijing, going so far as to claim China stands ready to buy as much soybeans and wheat as Russia can produce.
Of course, there’s no way Russia could even come close to filling the gap left by China’s latest tariffs imposed on soybeans coming from the United States, which Putin acknowledged.
Soybean production statistics thanks to @kannbwx
“Russia’s record crop of soybeans might barely cover 2 weeks of China’s pre-ASF needs. And that’s the entire crop.” @bentleystweet pic.twitter.com/Mxk5amxXpl— SWITHUN STILL (@RussianGrainTra) October 3, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“They are ready to buy from us as much as we can produce but the issue is we are not ready for this now… not yet ready for such volumes,” Putin said.
And more generally Putin made an unprecedented defense of China over and against those seeking to “restrain” Russia’s powerful southeast neighbor.
A prior visit of Putin with China’s Xi, via the WSJ. “Regarding the attempts to restrain China: I think that by definition it is impossible. And if someone makes such attempts, he, the one who does it, will understand that it is impossible. And during those attempts, of course, will harm himself,” Putin said at Valdai’s plenary session.
“In any case, I consider such a development of events to be destructive and harmful, while joining efforts to create an environment of friendly cooperation and finding common security systems for all, is what we should work on together,” the Russian president added.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 23:45 - What's The Big Problem With Facial Recognition?
What’s The Big Problem With Facial Recognition?
Authored by Michael Maharrey via Tenth Amendment Center,
The Oakland City Council recently gave final approval to an ordinance banning facial recognition in that city. This is part of a broader movement at the state and local level to ban outright or at least limit this invasive surveillance technology.
So, what’s the big problem with facial recognition?
There are plenty.
In the first place, it’s just not very accurate, especially when reading African American and other minority facial features. It gets it wrong a lot of the time.
This isn’t just theoretical musing. During a test run by the ACLU of Northern California, facial recognition misidentified 26 members of the California legislature as people in a database of arrest photos.
But as ACLU attorney Matt Cagle said, this isn’t a problem that can be fixed by tweaking an algorithm. There are more fundamental issues with facial recognition. Government use of facial recognition technology for identifying and tracking people en masse flies in the face of both the Fourth Amendment and constitutional provisions protecting privacy in every state constitution.
Berkeley, California, City Councilmember Kate Harrison is pushing for a facial recognition ban in her city. In her recommendation of the ordinance, she pointed out the inherent constitutional problem with facial recognition.
It eliminates the human and judicial element behind the existing warrant system by which governments must prove that planned surveillance is both constitutional and sufficiently narrow to protect targets’ and bystanders’ fundamental rights to privacy while also simultaneously providing the government with the ability to exercise its duties.
Facial recognition technology automates the search, seizure and analysis process that was heretofore pursued on a narrow basis through stringent constitutionally-established and human-centered oversight in the judiciary branch. Due to the inherent dragnet nature of facial recognition technology, governments cannot reasonably support by oath or affirmation the particular persons or things to be seized. The programmatic automation of surveillance fundamentally undermines the community’s liberty.
Facial recognition puts every person who crosses its path into a perpetual lineup without any probable cause. It tramples restrictions on government power intended to protect our right to privacy. It feeds into the broader federal surveillance state. And at its core, it does indeed fundamentally undermine liberty.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 23:25 - US Army Readying Massive Order For M16A4 Assault Rifles
US Army Readying Massive Order For M16A4 Assault Rifles
Whether it’s because of the threat of war in the Middle East or maybe due to modernization efforts via the Pentagon, a new report from Defense Blog indicates that the U.S. Army Contracting Command is requesting two, 5-year fixed contracts for M16A4 assault rifles.
Defense Blog initially found the announcement posted on FedBizOpps, the U.S. government’s main contracting website, dated Sept. 27, is asking private industry to fulfill two orders for assault rifles. Each order will include anywhere from 12 to 215,000 standard configuration M16A4 with backup iron sight and adapter rail system.
Selected vendors will be required to sign a license agreement with Colt’s Manufacturing Company, LLC. and the U.S. Government before manufacturing begins. Vendors will also be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement to receive technical data on how to manufacture the M16A4.
The US Marine Corps first adopted the M16A4 assault rifle in 1998. It was the standard-issued weapon of the USMC until 2015, replaced with the M4 carbine ever since.
The M16A4 has been widely exported to U.S. allies, such as Thailand, Tunisia, and Turkey.
The weapon is a gas-operated rifle and chambers a standard NATO 5.56×45 round. It has an effective range of 550 meters.
The weapon isn’t fully automatic, has a fire mode selector that the operator can switch to “safe,” “semi-auto,” and “3-round burst”.
It’s unclear if the M16A4s are intended for U.S. service members, or will be sold to allies.
Last month, we reported that the Army is closer to deploying a new service weapon that could soon replace the M16, M4, and M249 light machine gun sometime in the early 2020s.
The Army announced in August that it selected three defense companies to deliver prototype weapons for the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) program. The new weapons must be lighter and able to penetrate the world’s most advanced body armor from at least 600 meters away, defense insiders say.
The Army will test AAI/Textron, G.D., and Sig Sauer assault rifles in a 27-month test. The Army is expected to wrap up the test in 1H22 when it’s supposed to announce the winning design. By 2H22, the Army could start fielding the new weapons to combat units.
For those that missed the reveal months ago, here’s AAI’s (@Textron subsidiary) prototypes for the #USArmy‘s NGSW program. The first pic is the offer for the NGSW-R segment (M4 rifle replacement), the 2nd pic shows the two NGSW-AR prototypes (M249 SAW replacement), both in 6.8mm. pic.twitter.com/SsUIhCgeku
— Parthu Potluri (@Parthu_Potluri) June 18, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And with that being said, the new M16A4s are likely for export to allies rather than U.S. service members.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 23:05 - Trump Administration Provides New Evidence For A Saudi Connection To 9/11
Trump Administration Provides New Evidence For A Saudi Connection To 9/11
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The debate over what actually occurred on 9/11 and, more to the point, who might have been behind it, continues to preoccupy many observers worldwide.
There is considerable legitimate concern that the commission that reviewed the incident engaged in a cover-up designed either to excuse a catastrophic failure on the part of the United States’ national security apparatus, or even connivance of federal agencies in the attack itself.
And then there is the issue of possible foreign government involvement. The roles of the Saudi Arabian, Israeli and Pakistani governments and security services has never been adequately investigated in spite of the fact that all three countries had clear involvement with the mostly Saudi individuals who have been identified as the attackers. Beyond that, Israel had intelligence operatives that appeared to be celebrating the fall of the twin towers in real time, an involvement in what took place that has never been comprehensively looked at by law enforcement due to unwillingness to offend the Israelis.
It was Saudi Arabia which had the most sustained and personal contact with some of the alleged hijackers. For years, families of victims have been seeking to find out more about the possible Saudi role, admittedly so they can sue the Kingdom in US courts under existing anti-terrorism legislation that dates from 2016 and is referred to as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. The Act permits lawsuits in the US directed against any country whose government supports international terrorism.
The plaintiffs have won something of a victory recently with the Trump administration decision to declassify a key name of a Saudi official who has been long sought by the relatives of the victims. Under the terms of the information release, the government as well as the victims’ lawyers, who received the name under a “protective order,” have not been allowed to expose the name publicly.
The declassified name, which came from an FBI investigative file, is, however, only a partial victory for the group that goes by the name 9/11 Families & Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism. The release of other documents relating to the Saudi role is pending, possibly due to the Trump White House’s insistence on maintaining good relations with the Kingdom and more particularly with its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but the plaintiffs wonder how it is possible that information on the attack should still be classified more than eighteen years after the fact.
The name of the official is nevertheless important, even a “top priority,” because it is believed that he was a senior intelligence officer who was meeting with two men who may have assisted the alleged hijackers. The FBI even refers to it as “the primary piece of information that the plaintiffs in the 9/11 litigation have been seeking.”
The Saudi Embassy in Washington has not commented on the report and the White House referred inquiries to the Justice Department, which did not comment beyond stating that it had been a top-level decision not to invoke the so-called “state secrets” privilege to keep the information classified.
Previous exposure of a possible Saudi role in 9/11 came with the release of the redacted “28 pages” of the 9/11 report on July 15, 2016. To be sure there were extensive deletions from the text to protect names and sources, but the document produced by the White House was at the time reported to be largely complete. CIA Director John Brennan provided some damage control prior to the release by arguing that much of the information contained in the redacted section consisted of “raw” and untested information, suggesting that it might not be completely reliable, while some who had seen the full document revealed through leaks that there would be no “smoking gun” exposing direct Saudi involvement in 9/11.
The release of the document produced a brief flurry in the media but, perhaps intentionally, the story disappeared amidst the avalanche of political convention reporting that summer. There was a great deal of new information, though most of it served to corroborate or expand on what was already known and reported. One snippet that was particularly interesting recounted how in 1999 two Saudi men on a flight from Phoenix to Washington DC for an alleged visit to the Saudi Embassy to attend a party asked numerous questions about the plane’s security and tried several times to enter the cockpit. They claimed their tickets were paid for by the Saudi Embassy.
There is a direct link between some of the 9/11 hijackers and presumed agents of the Saudi government but the 28 pages do not provide any conclusive evidence demonstrating collusion. In fact, the snippets rather suggest that the Saudis were more likely keeping tabs on some citizens whom they quite rightly might have suspected as threatening to their own national security. There are several hints in the text that the Saudis were quite aggressively running their own operations against their diaspora citizens. It was noted several times that they failed to fully cooperate with US counter-terror investigators prior to 9/11, which would not be surprising if they were simultaneous acting independently.
The key player in the story who directly assisted some hijackers, one Omar al-Bayoumi, has been described as a “non-official cover” intelligence officer, but the way his funding from the Embassy and other official sources fluctuated to pay him sometimes irregularly rather suggests that he might have been a source or informer, not an actual government case officer. Several other Saudis identified in the 28 pages also fit the same profile. Bayoumi was in regular contact with Fahad al-Thumairy, an employee of the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, who may have been an actual intelligence officer and his controller.
There was also considerable evidence that Saudi government-funded charities, some linked to the Royal Family, did fund the alleged hijackers but the FBI did not find evidence that the government or senior Saudi officials were involved. The US government concluded that the document did not demonstrate any intent by the government in Riyadh to enable its citizens to carry out a terrorist attack on US soil nor knowledge that anything like that might be developing.
It should also be noted for what it’s worth that the Bush Administration clearly regarded Saudi Arabia as a special friend and directed the FBI and CIA to “back off” from aggressively investigating its intelligence operations in the US and globally. Whether that made any difference in terms of what subsequently transpired cannot be determined, just as the surfacing of a new name for the families of victims may not prove to materially affect the viability of a lawsuit directed against Saudi Arabia.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 22:45 - "Dramatic Change" Ahead: Robots Are Coming For 200,000 US Banking Jobs
“Dramatic Change” Ahead: Robots Are Coming For 200,000 US Banking Jobs
A new report by Wells Fargo & Co., warns that nearly 200,000 US banking jobs are at risk of being displaced by robots.
As we’ve explained in the past, accelerating technological advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have the potential to reshape the world in the 2020s through 2030. The collision of these forces could trigger economic disruption far greater than what was seen in the early 20th century.
Across the financial industry, a new wave of investment, somewhere in the tune of $150 billion per year, is being spent on technology, that will “lead to lower costs, with employee compensation accounting for half of all bank expenses,” said Mike Mayo, a senior analyst at Wells Fargo Securities LLC.
The Wells Fargo study, which was first reported by Bloomberg, indicates 20% to 33% of banking jobs will be slashed by 2030. Most affected will be back office, bank branch, call center, and corporate employees. Jobs related to tech sales, advising and consulting will be less affected, according to the study.
“It will be a dramatic change in contact centers, and these are both internal and external,” Michael Tang, a Deloitte partner who leads the consulting firm’s global financial-services innovation practice, said in the Wells Fargo report. “We’re already seeing signs of it with chatbots, and some people don’t even know that they’re chatting with an A.I. engine because they’re just answering questions.”
Wells Fargo joins a handful of other major banks that have already detailed plans to cut a majority of their workforce by 2030 amid the rapid adoption of automation and artificial intelligence.
According to Coalition Development Ltd. data. R. Martin Chavez, an architect of Goldman Sachs’ push to automate its workforce, said last month, front-office headcount for investment banking and trading declined for the fifth consecutive year in 2018.
In an earlier piece, we described how tens of millions of jobs across the world, and across various industries, would be lost because of robots by 2030.
The 2020s will be known as the great transformation period where corporate America abandons its workforce for automation. The coming job losses, due to automation, will be on par with the automation revolution of agriculture (the transition of farm workers into the industrial sector) from 1900 to 1940.
Robots have so far increased three-fold since the Dot-Com bust. Momentum in automation trends suggests robots will multiply even quicker through the 2020s. The collision of automation in the economy will lead to more volatility, economic swings, and social unrest.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 22:25 - Scientists Baffled: Unidentified Object Falls From Sky, Ignites Number Of Fires
Scientists Baffled: Unidentified Object Falls From Sky, Ignites Number Of Fires
Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,
Typically when one hears about flaming, bright objects falling from the sky, one comes to a very simple conclusion—it must be a meteorite, burning as it falls through the Earth’s atmosphere.
However, last week in the south of Chile, residents on the island of Chiloe were shocked when a fireball plummeted all the way down to the ground, starting a number of fires, CNET reports.
Local property owner Bernardita Ojeda was among the residents impacted by what many assumed was a meteorite when a brush fire was sparked by the burning object.
However, on Saturday, officials from the country’s National Geology and Mining Service (Sernageomin) reached the preliminary conclusion that the object could not have been a meteorite—for the simple reason that no evidence of any form of space rock could be found where the fires were started by the “luminous and incandescent object in the sky that fell in that location.”
In a statement, the agency wrote:
“Once in the Dalcahue area, geologists went to the site to examine the area of the supposed impact. They worked at seven points corresponding to the burnt bushes, where they found no remains, vestiges or evidence of a meteorite falling.
Likewise, and as part of the investigation, they interviewed local residents, who said they had not seen the fall of the supposed object or heard noises associated with the fall of a body of this nature.
Preliminarily, professionals are ruling out the fall of a meteorite in this sector and, therefore, that the cause of burning thickets, has corresponded to that situation.”
So if Chile’s authorities are ruling out a meteorite, what could the falling heavenly body possibly be?
As CNET correctly notes, these are by definition, UFOs:
“Technically, we’re talking about unidentified flying objects. Yes, UFOs. Although nothing big or well-piloted enough to reopen The X-Files for, it would seem.”
So this definitely wasn’t a flying saucer, if only because then we’d have some alien technology lying around, perhaps. Then was it a bit of litter that escaped the near-to-low-Earth orbit, a zone of space that’s known to be teeming with “zombie” satellites, shards from rockets, and all sorts of other debris left behind by the world’s space agencies?
As Nature journal wrote last September:
“Since the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, the number of objects in space has surged, reaching roughly 2,000 in 1970, about 7,500 in 2000 and about 20,000 known items today. The two biggest spikes in orbital debris came in 2007, when the Chinese government blew up one of its satellites in a missile test, and in the 2009 Iridium–Cosmos collision.”
In this case, a bit of flaming space junk appears to be the most plausible scenario, and one that leading Chilean astrophysicist Jose Maza told to national broadcaster TVN.
The Sernageomin concluded:
“In parallel, geologists collected soil samples for a more thorough and detailed analysis in the institution’s laboratory. Final conclusions will be announced in the coming weeks.”
We wouldn’t be surprised if geologists manage to find small bits of metal and other human-manufactured bits of garbage, be it from old rocket boosters or from the hundreds of dead satellites spinning around our planet. And luckily, space debris very rarely hits the ground—although this may well have been an exception to the rule.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/03/2019 – 22:05
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://i0.wp.com/www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/putin%20valdai.jpg?ssl=1){kind=link}
![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://i0.wp.com/www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/s500%20SAM.jpg?ssl=1){kind=link}
![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://i0.wp.com/www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/xiputin.jpg?ssl=1){kind=link}