- Deportation European Style: "Dear Terrorist, Please Go Home"
Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
The Algerian assailant who attacked two female Belgian police officers with a machete ignored two exportation orders. Only 40% of exportation orders are obeyed.
The above image from Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Machete Attack in Belgium.
The Financial Times reports Belgium Machete Attacker Earmarked For Deportation.
The man who injured two policewomen with a machete in a suspected terror attack in the Belgian city of Charleroi on Saturday had been earmarked for deportation.
Belgian authorities have confirmed the 33-year-old Algerian assailant had lived in Belgium since 2012 and had ignored two expulsion orders.
Deportation has become the bedrock of the EU’s migration policy, with Brussels pushing to reach agreements with countries across Africa and the Middle East to make it easier to send people with no right to stay back to their home country. Countries that agree to such deals will be able to access investment funds of up to €62bn, according to an EU proposal launched in June.
This push comes despite criticism from some migration experts that widespread removals are difficult to carry out, because of a combination of their cost and strict legal conditions. At the moment, only 40 per cent of failed asylum seekers are ever deported, according to figures from the European Commission.
Theo Francken, Belgian secretary of state for asylum and migration, in press release on Sunday insisted that the government was committed to expelling foreign criminals: “The government has already taken a series of steps to accelerate the return of these criminals. We have to continue.” [Mish translation: we have no idea what to do next.]
But Mr Francken also admitted to difficulties with carrying out expulsions to Algeria: “Forced returns to Algeria remain problematic despite years of bilateral and European negotiations.”
Belgian media reported that the that the perpetrator shouted “Allahu akbar [God is great]” during the assault.
Dear Terrorist, Please Go Home.
Is it politically incorrect to point out the officers attacked by the man with a machete were women? Reuters mentioned that several times, the Financial Times not at all.
Question aside, the European plan of action is the stern message “Dear terrorist, please go home”. When that doesn’t work, the message is repeated, presumably until it does work.
It’s likely that you are as shocked as I am that such a well thought out plan does not work.
Is there a count of deportation orders ignored, or do authorities just issue them and hope?
Clearly hope isn’t working. The authorities need tough follow-up actions. I suggest the deportation authorities need to add “pretty please” to message.
- The Chilling Thing Twitter Just Said about San Francisco’s Office Bubble
By Wolf Richter, WOLFSTREET.com
Twitter is shaking up San Francisco. It’s the city’s 10th largest employer, and second largest tech employer, after Salesforce. But it hasn’t yet figured out, despite a decade of trying, how to make money. Last October, it announced that it would lay off 8% of its workforce. A couple of weeks ago, it reported a second-quarter net loss of $107 million along with disappointing user metrics and lousy projections. Its shares have lost 74% since their miracle-IPO-hype peak at the end of December 2014.
And now Twitter is dumping nearly one third of its total office space on the San Francisco sublease market.
It leases a number of floors in the two buildings at Market Square. The four floors it put on the sublease market total 183,642 square feet of “fully furnished” office space with workstations for 1,416 employees, according to a marketing brochure by corporate real estate firm CRESA.
It’s the largest sublease space now available in San Francisco.
The largest of the floors, at 78,792 square feet, is at its 1355 Market location, the iconic former San Francisco Furniture Mart that Twitter moved into in 2012. The floor comes with “600 workstations, 49 conference rooms, multiple collaboration/lounge areas, 2 kitchens, 2 training rooms, and a Mother’s room,” according to the brochure.
It also listed three floors at the adjacent One 10th Street building that it moved into in 2014. The floors, 34,950 square feet each, are also fully furnished with similar amenities, and earned a “2016 International Interior Design Association – Honor Award,” according to the brochure. Twitter spared no expense before its IPO to dazzle investors with its buildings and show them what noble material it was made of.
San Francisco’s darling even extorted a highly controversial payroll tax exemption for six years from the city by threatening to head out of town when it was looking for larger digs in the neglected Mid-Market area.
All spaces listed are available “immediately” and rent is “negotiable,” the brochure says.
Twitter has been shrinking from its grandiose plans. In October last year, it abandoned plans to lease an additional 100,000 square feet at the building where Square is, at 1455 Market. Both companies share the same CEO, Jack Dorsey.
But this comes at an inopportune time for San Francisco’s office market.
According to commercial real estate firm Savillis Studley, vacant availability in Q2 rose to 8.3% (up from 7.7% in Q1), and Class A availability hit 9.2% (up from 8.4% in Q1). In the Financial District, it “spiked” to 9.8% (up from 8.6%). Despite “a flurry of large subleases and these direct deals” in Q2, with Fitbit, Lyft, and Stripe signing the largest deals, leasing activity over the past four quarters plunged 31% from the five-year average to 5.9 million square feet.
“Caution prevailed,” the report said, as “more firms coped with funding shortfalls by cutting back or considering relocations to other markets.”
After a relentless five-year boom, average asking rent, at $64.30 per square foot, according to Savillis Studley, is among the most outrageously expensive in the country and nearly twice the national average of about $33 a square foot.
That might not have made any difference to startups that were drowning in cash and faced no pressure to ever make money, or were even encouraged to burn through as much cash as possible to quickly grow into the next Facebook. But that era is now being superseded by the “post-unicorn era,” as Dropbox CEO Drew Houston called it so elegantly, and money suddenly matters.
But some of the smartest money already got out, at the peak last year.
San Francisco-based real-estate fund Shorenstein Properties acquired Market Square in 2011 for $110 million, according to The Registry. For another $200 million, it redeveloped the former Furniture Mart into a tech hub. With vestiges of hope still clinging to Twitter before the layoff announcement in October last year, and with office prices and rents soaring, Shorenstein decided to unload the property – and made a killing.
In August last year, it sold a 98% stake to JP Morgan Asset Management for $936 million, or $877 per square foot. This is what a totally crazy property boom will do, along with impeccable timing and knowing your way around city politics. It was one of the highest per-square-foot prices in the city’s history.
But the office boom faces two challenges: new office towers that are sprouting like mushrooms just when employment growth faces iffy prospects. Twitter isn’t alone. Numerous companies have started to lay off employees, even as others are still hiring. And employment has peaked.
In June, according to the California Employment Development Department, the number of jobs in San Francisco – 533,200 – was back where it had been in November last year:
I’m now getting “numerous” reports, anecdotally – up from just “one” four months ago – that people, even tech workers, beyond the age of Millennials, so folks in their early to mid-fifties, are getting laid off, and that they’re having trouble finding another job here. That doesn’t bode well at all for San Francisco’s commercial real estate bubble. When times get tougher, no one needs vast amounts of empty and utterly unproductive office space that is among the most expensive in the country.
But San Francisco is so expensive overall that a lot of people, once they lose their jobs, choose to leave and head to where life is more affordable. So this is the kind of problem San Francisco really doesn’t need at the moment. Tremors are already going through the condo market. Condo prices are under pressure. Sales volume has been down all year. The luxury end is in trouble. And now this: Read… Is the “Leaning Tower of San Francisco” the Only One?
- Retired Green Beret Blasts "Make No Mistake, Everyone Warning About Clinton Is A Target And They Are Marked"
The Obama Administration has been characterized by not only a lack of transparency on issues that surface, but a deliberate obfuscation to mask true actions and intentions. There are literally no limits to what the man and his handlers will do outside of the law to attain their ends, while simultaneously “crafting” legislation to enslave the citizenry. The fawning, lying press trumpets his victories and quietly spins his defeats: objectivity cannot be maintained by journalists on the government payroll and command.
Hence a sitting American president, a man who should have been hauled off of a stage in 2012 and clapped in irons for treason is able to do whatever he wants. Remember?
“Tell Vladimir I’ll have more leeway after the election.”
Now the Congress and the State Department labeled Iran both a “rogue state that supports terrorism” and “a supporter of Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda.” So my question is where did Obama secure the necessary Congressional approval to airlift $400 million to Iran on January 17, 2016? More: Since this was Obama’s move, did he not use his position unilaterally and without any Congressional approval to provide funding to a nation that supports (and conducts direct action missions to complement) terrorist activities? And this is with Iran, that vows to strike the U.S.?
Just as in the same vein, how can we join Russia in a bombing campaign of “boogeyman” ISIL/ISIS when we, the U.S., created it?
Just as in the same vein, how can we send a QRF (Quick Reaction Force) of our military’s finest commandos to stop the slaughter of an American ambassador and his staff in Libya…when we approved of and enabled it?
The “administration,” if you prefer that ludicrous term to the true state, the “regime,” is made of Teflon…nothing can touch it. Fast and Furious proved it. Hillary’s e-mails proved it. The cashiering of half of the admiralty and general staff of the United States Armed Forces proved it. The removal of TARS, of the scrambling of fighters, the scrapping of the A-10 Warthog, the cessation of Tomahawk production…all of these measures prove it. Obamacare steamrolling through the (at the time) Democrat-controlled Congress…enabled by Senator Olympia Snow (R, Maine) proved it. The hearings and the deciding vote.
Nothing can stop the administration. Nothing. And nothing will be able to stop the next one.
Does everyone really think that Trump will be elected? Really? Throughout the past two weeks, he has literally run on “self-destruct” and must have a lobotomized campaign manager. Haven’t we seen this before, when Romney won the first debate and made a fool out of Obama, and then turned into a neutered eunuch for the next debates?
Do not be fooled: it is all intentional.
There is no such thing as an election, only a controlled paradigm shift with a force-fed theatrical playbill that the dumbed-down public gobbles up. The two “camps” of Democrat and Republican, and the illusion of a colossal battle, a political “Clash of the Titans” between conservatism and socialism drawing the focus and attention of the people away from surrounding events nationally and in the world.
Look at Hanna, the alleged Republican…the first of the jackasses to come out and support Hillary Clinton. Look at the moneyed interests pooling behind her: Meg Whitman, Warren Buffet, and the invisible but ever-present incubus of George Soros, the man who destroys countries for a hobby and a price. Look at Hillary, the “good wife,” the “good mother,” the “good 501-C-3” member with a billion dollar “kitty” in the Clinton Foundation and three Delaware shell corporations to hide her loot. The “good speaker,” snagging $50 – 200 K dollars per speech.
The good fundraiser who raised $90 million dollars in the month of July alone.
By her campaign slogan… “I’m with Her” …by those very words are such notables as James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Houma Abedin, Debbie Wassermann-Schultz…all of them…complicit with her in the crimes she has committed. She would provoke a nuclear war with Russia in order to prevent those e-mails from coming to light.
Her “candidacy” is a degradation and an abasement, not only of the American Justice system, but of the entire Constitution of the United States and the freedom of every citizen. Those who are “with her” don’t even realize they’ll be the first ones in the gristmill when the time arrives. That time is almost here. It’s all been smoke and mirrors, but soon there won’t need to be. The obfuscations and treacherous maneuvers are masked but in a short time they’ll all be completely unveiled.
The 2nd Amendment will be completely destroyed and/or nullified. The face of this entire country is going to change, and akin to most bad things, it’ll have to happen before people realize it and take action.
Everybody who criticizes the incoming dictator is marked, make no mistake about it. We still have a little bit of time, but not much, and effects generated need to have substance, not form. No juvenile displays of occupying a shed/storage room/visitor center in a National Park or Forest. No standoffs with a disbandment and then everyone is arrested individually. The torch is being passed. Everyone who is criticizing Obama and warning about Clinton is a target and they are marked, along with countless others of the 325 million of us.
If Hillary Clinton takes the presidency, it is the end of the United States.
- Japan Orders Military To 'State Of Alert' As North Korea Accuses US Of Seeking 'Preemptive Nuclear Strike'
Just days after North Korea has accused Washington of planning a preemptive nuclear strike – following the US announcement that it would deploy its B-1 bomber in the Pacific for the first time in a decade – Japan's increasingly militarist tone just ratcheted up to '11' as defense ministry officials have ordered its military to be ready at any time to shoot down any North Korean missiles that threaten to strike Japan, putting its forces on a state of alert for at least three months.
Tensions have been running high since North Korea – officially named the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) -carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a barrage of missile launches that this month reached Japanese waters directly for the first time (via Military.com)…
Pyongyang accused Washington of "becoming all the more pronounced in their moves to topple down the DPRK by mobilizing all nuclear war hardware," using North Korea's official title.
"The enemies are bluffing that they can mount a preemptive nuclear strike on the DPRK by letting fly B-1B over the Korean peninsula within two-three hours in contingency," said an English-language statement on state media.
"Such moves for bolstering nuclear force exposes again that the US imperialists are making a preemptive nuclear strike on the DPRK a fait accompli."
On July 29, the U.S. Air Force said it would upgrade its hardware on Guam by sending the B-1 for the first time since April 2006.
"The B-1 will provide U.S. Pacific Command and its regional allies and partners with a credible, strategic power projection platform," it said in a statement.
Pyongyang has repeatedly warned it may carry out preemptive nuclear strikes against South Korean and U.S. targets.
The secretive state, led by supreme leader Kim Jong-un, warned Saturday it would respond to any aggression by reducing the U.S. to a "sea of flames".
"The ever-mounting moves of the U.S. imperialists to ignite a nuclear war are pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula into the uncontrollable and catastrophic phase," said the North Korean statement.
And so, following this outburst, as Reuters reports, Abe has stepped up his military's preparedness to respond…
Japan ordered its military on Monday to be ready at any time to shoot down any North Korean missiles that threaten to strike Japan, putting its forces on a state of alert for at least three months, a defense ministry official and media said.
Up to now, Japan has issued temporary orders when it had indications of an imminent North Korean missile launch that it has canceled after a projectile had been launched.
However, because some test firings are hard to detect, it has decided to put its military on standby for a longer period. The order will be reviewed after three months, state broadcaster NHK said.
In other words, the next time Kim Jong-un launches, it may start the next war.
* * *
An increasingly militaristic Japan is something we’ve been warning about for a while. As Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger previously detailed…
In case you aren’t up to speed on your Japanese history, the nation’s post WWII Constitution prohibits military action unless it’s in self-defense. Clearly a sensible approach, which is why the current Japanese government, led by the demonstrably insane and incompetent Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, wants to get rid of it.
This story is very important. Not only will this action increase the likelihood of World War III in the Far East, but it’s another important example of a government acting against the will of the people.
Polling has indicated the Japanese public is against a pivot toward militarization and war, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing forward nonetheless. In fact, the current legislation to allow overseas military intervention has already passed the lower house of government. This prompted many Japanese to emerge from their decades long political apathy and get out into the streets. It’s estimated these protests were the largest in recent memory.
Fast forward a year, and here’s what Abe is up to now.
From the AP article, Japan Picks Defense Chief Who Downplays Wartime Past:
TOKYO (AP) — A woman who has downplayed Japan’s wartime actions and is known to have far-right views was named defense minister in a Cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday, a move that could unsettle relations with Asian neighbors with bitter memories of World War II-era atrocities.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe changed more than half of the 19-member Cabinet in a bid to support his economic and security policies, as well as push for revising Japan’s postwar constitution.
While keeping the economy as the top priority, Abe said he would do his “utmost to achieve a (constitutional) revision during my term,” which ends in September 2018.
A lawyer-turned-lawmaker with little experience in defense, Inada is one of Abe’s favorites. She regularly visits the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including convicted war criminals, a gesture seen as an endorsement of Japan’s militaristic past.
She also has defended Japan’s wartime atrocities, including forcing many Asian women into sexual servitude in military-run brothels, and has led a party committee to re-evaluate the judgment of war tribunals by the Allies.
Her link to a notorious anti-Korea group was acknowledged by a court this year in a defamation case she lost. Inada also was seen posing with the leader of a neo-Nazi group in a 2011 photo that surfaced in the media in 2014.
Finance Minister Taro Aso, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga were among key Cabinet members who retained their portfolios, while 10 ministers were replaced in the reshuffle. Many are not necessarily experts in their assigned portfolio, prompting opposition lawmakers to criticize Abe for dominating the Cabinet with like-minded supporters of his political views.
While campaigning for last month’s upper house elections, Abe promised to focus on economic revitalization in the short term, and to later seek to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution.
Since he took office in late 2012, Abe has sought to boost growth by pumping massive amounts of money into the world’s third-biggest economy. But lavish monetary easing and public works spending so far have failed to reignite growth as much as hoped.
As is typically the case, when all else fails on the domestic front, politicians look to get a war started.
The question is, Krieger asks ominously, what sort of war will this be? If it happens, it’ll be the first fourth turning level war since the nuclear age began. In a best case scenario, world leaders would be at least sane enough not to deploy nuclear weapons. If that’s the case, the conflict would likely focus on financial and cyber warfare. Things that can be extraordinarily destructive in their own right, but would at least avoid a destruction of the human race. Such topics will be explored further in the years ahead.
- How You Got Screwed – A User's Guide To A Rigged System
Does this describe you?
- You’re carrying huge amounts of college debt.
- You’re an adult still living with your parents because you can’t afford to move out.
- You’re not able to find a job that pays a livable amount of money.
- You want to get married, but you can’t afford it.
- Prices keep going up, but your income doesn’t follow.
- You’ve got health insurance but can’t afford medical care due to the high deductibles.
- You joined some movement like Operation Wall Street or the Tea Party, or followed a revolutionary politician like Ron Paul or Bernie Sanders, and didn’t see anything change.
- You feel that something’s not right, even though the government and the media keep telling you how great everything is.
Then this book – "How You Got SCREWED – A guide to a rigged system" – is for you…
"When I was younger, maybe 10 or 11, I remember playing a game of Monopoly with a friend. I was doing well, but I was still losing – and that’s when I realized that my friend, who was acting as the bank, was cheating by secretly moving money from the bank over to his own pile. Once I figured this out, I quit the game. Why play a game when it’s impossible to win?
In a nutshell, that’s what’s happening to you in today’s America. Throughout your entire childhood, you were told about the American Dream, and how if you worked hard and did the right things, you could build a good life for yourself. If you’re reading this, then you’ve figured out that something went wrong: Either someone’s cheating, or they changed the rules without telling you.
I’m here to tell you that this is exactly what happened.
The generations before you actually did have a real shot at achieving their dreams, but over time, so many people cheated, looking for shortcuts to achieving their own dreams, that they ended up changing the game. They rigged the game, and now that it’s your turn to play, they’ve made it almost impossible for you to win.
…
In reality, I’m a typical middle-aged guy. I’ve achieved my own American Dream, with a wife, two kids, two dogs and a house with a white picket fence in the suburbs (seriously).
I’ve pretty much got it made – but over time, as I learned about how the game is rigged, how the odds are stacked against the next generation, I’ve come to realize that my kids are going to face huge hurdles in achieving their dreams – hurdles I didn’t have to face. And it’s not just my kids: I realized that a lot of people in my generation, and the majority of people younger than me, are in the same boat.
Not only are most of them destined for a life of frustration and unfilled dreams, but the system that’s holding them down is the same system that’s choking the life out of this country. And it’s all because some of the people who came before us decided to rewrite the rules of the game, benefiting them and hurting the rest of us."
After years of observing the many corrupted systems that affect our lives, I compiled my thoughts into this book – “How You Got Screwed.” If you’d like a copy, just download the book in PDF form by clicking here .
There is no cost for the book, and you’re free to use it and share it as you see fit. I wrote it to help people understand what’s truly happening in this country, and the more people you share it with, and the more ways you think to use it, the happier I’ll be.
Full book below…
- Say Hello To Southeast Asia's New Silk Roads
Authored by Pepe Escobar, Op-Ed via RT.com,
It’s not only China vs. the US in the South China Sea. Few in the West realize that two completely different, intersecting stories are developing in maritime and mainland Southeast Asia.The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague denied China’s historic rights to waters in the South China Sea within its nine-dash line; it also ruled that the Spratly Islands are not islands, but “rocks”; thus they cannot generate 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs).
These decisions were taken in accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Now comes the real nitty-gritty – which is a mix of diplomatic ballet and classic Beijing opera.
The framework under which Beijing is ready to negotiate is somewhat detailed here. But the problem at the starting gate is that Beijing stipulates – as a precondition to any negotiation with the Philippines – that The Hague’s decision should not be discussed. Chinese nationalism has been deeply wounded in The Hague, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knows it will be very hard to tame it.
Manila for its part faces a constitutional problem. The Filipino constitution rules that the “state shall protect the nation’s marine wealth in its exclusive economic zone, and reserve its use and enjoyment exclusively to Filipino citizens.” It goes on to say that the state “may enter into co-production, joint venture, or production-sharing agreements with Filipino citizens, or corporations or associations,” but “at least 60 per cent of whose capital is owned by such citizens.” If President Duterte goes against this provision he may be impeached.
Enter the face-saving Asian way of doing business. A graphic example is already at hand; no one so far has urged China to remove people and/or installations from The Hague-coined “low-tide elevations” in the South China Sea.
In practice, Manila will use The Hague’s ruling as a sort of road map – while not insisting Beijing must recognize it. But that implies an extra obstacle: Beijing may still insist on Manila recognizing Chinese sovereignty over a selected bunch of “rocks”. Filipino diplomats actually hope this won’t be the case. If that happens, we’re in business.
The first step in the negotiation should be no sovereignty decision over those “rocks” – including the highly contentious Scarborough shoal. Just like what happened in the 1940s, when the then Republic of China came up with the “nine-dash line”, this should be decided in the future. In the short-term, a deal on fishing within the 12 nautical mile territorial sea around the shoal should be all but inevitable.
This means, in practice, that Beijing will not interfere with Filipino fishermen and/or Filipino oil exploration within its EEZ – while reducing its own workload in those “low-tide elevations”. That’s a tall order, but doable, because the payback will be increased business.
President Duterte knows as much as the Beijing leadership that China is absolutely essential to the development of Filipino infrastructure.
That will open the way to joint Chinese/Filipino oil exploration. Of course, constitutionally it can’t be an equal share, but China can still get a very good deal in terms of production rights. Not to mention the deal can be expanded to international waters beyond those EEZs, involving other players such as Vietnam and Malaysia.
At the same time, China will not desist from building a first-class blue water navy with global reach. That’s the rationale for the sophisticated submarine base in Hainan Island and those ultra-controversial land reclamations in the Spratly Islands. Beijing’s overall strategy is to fully control security in the South China Sea – considering whatever the hegemon may come up with.
Beijing clearly sees what the US means by “freedom of navigation”; code for the US Navy being able to blockade China’s trade routes in the South China Sea, as I analyzed here. If the US Navy gets too close to China’s southern seaboard, a blockade could be devastating. After all, the whole strategy of setting up Chinese island – or “rock” – defenses in the South China Sea is to keep the US Navy as far away as possible. This is the real deal – much more than fuzzy claims of sovereignty.
And one thing is clear. If the Pentagon goes for the monkey business option, all hell will break loose. The RAND Corporation is already on freak out mode just because the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force flew the long-range strategic bomber H-6K over those “low-tide elevations”.
Watch the Greater Mekong
One thing is the real high-stakes game being played in the South China Sea. Another thing entirely is Southeast Asian economic integration, via the ASEAN Economic Community – which implies a central strategic role for ASEAN.
The key problem is a real disconnect between mainland and maritime ASEAN. The Philippines and Indonesia are very much focused on South China Sea issues. Cambodia, Laos, Thailand – but also Brunei – lean towards accommodation with China. The others tend to sit on the fence. And then there’s Vietnam as a pivot; with an interest in the South China Sea but not keen on antagonizing China – a next-door neighbor and major trade partner.
It’s mainland Southeast Asia, not maritime Southeast Asia that should be the key driver for regional development in the near future. Some figures tell the story. The Greater Mekong sub-region – which includes the southern Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi – has more than 400 million people with half of ASEAN’s GDP of $2.5 trillion. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam bear a market of 250 million people and a GDP of $700 billion; even without Vietnam, that’s a GDP of around $500 billion and a market of 150 million people.
They are all expanding like crazy; the Mekong mainland is growing as much as six percent a year. That reminds me, as a comparison, of the early 1980s, when Vietnam was still dreaming of becoming an Asian tiger.
Expansion goes all over the place. The East-West economic corridor – promoted by the Japan-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) – goes from southern Myanmar through central and northwest Thailand and southern Laos all the way to Danang in Vietnam. The North-South corridor goes from Kunming in Yunnan, China to Bangkok and southern Thailand. The southern corridor goes from southern Myanmar to northeast Thailand, Cambodia and Vung Tau in southern Vietnam; road connections in this corridor, also promoted by the ADB, are still relatively incipient, but advancing fast.
Of course there are still myriad problems – related to road construction, border crossings, stifling bureaucracy, the language barrier, internet speed. But that’s the way of the future.
And all that action also ties in with China positioning itself as a de facto high-speed rail power in Southeast Asia. That happens to be a key plank of One Belt, One Road (OBOR); the Southeast Asian branches of the New Silk Roads. China Railway Group Limited (CREC) is very well positioned to build the Malaysia-Singapore high-speed rail, against Japanese and Korean competition.
The 417 kilometer high-speed rail – stretching between Yunnan province and Vientiane in Laos – is already being built, while the China-Thailand high-speed rail project is also back on track after a few bumps on the financial road. In practice, we’re talking about over 3,000 kilometers of high-speed rail from China’s Yunnan to Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore; the Southeast Asian stretch of the New Silk Roads, eventually connected to central China, Central Asia, Southwest Asia – and Europe.
So watch Southeast Asia. The whole show is not only about maritime Southeast Asia – which is a hostage of the complex, conflicting big power China-US relationship; quite a few key geopolitical implications will derive from the development push of the Greater Mekong sub-region – and the progressive integration of mainland Southeast Asia.
- Pokemon Go Claims Its First Fatality
We recently posted a light-hearted piece highlighting a Chinese public service announcement on the public dangers of playing Pokemon Go (see: "China Unveils 'Pokemon Go Danger' Public Service Announcement"). Turns out we didn't take the warning seriously enough. According to reports from San Francisco the popular game has claimed its first fatality. College student Calvin Riley was shot in the back while playing the game at around 10pm in a park near San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. According to the New York Daily News:
A 20-year-old man was shot dead while playing Pokémon Go at a dark San Francisco park late Saturday, relatives said.
The armed assailant allegedly watched San Joaquin Delta College student-athlete Calvin Riley from afar as he and his friend played the popular game in the Aquatic Park near Fisherman’s Wharf at around 10 p.m., according to KGO-TV.
The duo paid no mind to the suspicious person and went back to catching the fanciful creatures on their phones.
Moments later, the San Mateo, Calif., man was fatally shot after wandering ahead of his friend, said John Kirby, who spoke to the television station on behalf of the victim’s parents.
"From what we know, there was no confrontation. There was nothing said back and forth,” Kirby said. “It was just senseless … just came up and shot in the back and ran away for nothing.”
- Federal Agency Says Wearing "Don't Tread On Me" Hat Might Be Racist
Submitted by Andrew Stiles via HeatSt.com,
Wearing a Gadsden Flag hat to work could be considered racial harassment, according to the Equal Employment Commission, the government body that oversees “hostile work environment” harassment claims against federal agencies.
Earlier this year, the EEOC received a complaint from a “Shelton,” an African American, who charged that his employer (the federal government) had subjected him to racial discrimination when a coworker “repeatedly wore a cap with an insignia of the Gadsden Flag.”
Shelton (not his real name) said he found the cap to be “racially offensive” because the man who designed it in 1775, Christopher Gadsden, was a slave owner and because the insignia was a “historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party.”
The EEOC acknowledged that the flag did not originate with the Tea Party movement, and was created centuries ago “in a non-racial context.” However, the commission also found that the Gadsden Flag could be “interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts,” citing as an example a 2014 shooting spree in which white supremacists draped Gadsden Flags over the bodies of two murdered police officers.
“Certainly, Complainant ascribes racial connotations to the symbol based on observations that it is sometimes displayed in racially-tinged situations,” the commission wrote.
The commission concluded that the claim “must be investigated to determine the specific context in which [the hat-wearing coworker] displayed the symbol in the workplace,” and called for the gathering of “evidence that would illuminate the meaning conveyed by [the coworker’s] display of the symbol.”
Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post writes that even the threat of legal liability in such case is likely to prompt employers to crack down on free expression as a mere precautionary measure, even if such speech is protected by the First Amendment.
Finally, we leave it to SHTFPlan.com's Mac Slavo to conclude so eloquently:
It is completely outrageous. It is a Rorschach test for being offended. This case is the first of what will be many in an formal exercise in absurdity and arbitrary loss of rights. Apparently it is doesn’t matter what the symbol that offends actually stands for, or what the person wearing/associated with it actually intended to express.
Instead, the door is now wide open for anyone to be fired, disciplined or put on a list even though they may have done nothing at all except express their free speech. We’re not even talk about real substantial cases here… everything is racist; everything is potentially terrorist; and absolutely everything is offensive. Don’t even try to express yourself at all.
- In First Autopilot Crash In China, Tesla Model S Driver Crashes In Beijing With Autopilot Engaged
Just two months after Elon Musk was engaged in major damage control over a scandal involving a Tesla Model S which crashed while in self-driving mode, killing its driver, China Daily reports that a Tesla Model S crashed in Beijing on August 2, while the car had its autopilot on and the driver had both hands off the steering wheel.
This is the first autopilot crash in China, in which luckily nobody was killed or injured.
Luo Zhen, the driver of the car, has been driving for seven years, and has never been involved in any accident before. “My car hit the right side of a black Santana that was parked in the inner lane of the road after it had developed some mechanical problem,” he said.
He added that before the crash happened, he could see almost half of the Santana’s back and there was a reaction time of around five seconds, but Tesla’s Autopilot system failed to spot the vehicle and crashed into it, while another car that was initially in front of him bypassed it successfully.
“After the accident, I had to manually stop the car, otherwise it would have kept going, as if it had just hit a speed bump,” Luo said.
A video of the incident was posted on CarNewsChina, in which as Jalopnik observes, the Tesla is moving quite slowly when a disabled Santana on the left comes into view, about 100 feet after a warning triangle. The car in front of the Tesla has no issue scooting over in its lane to make room. The Tesla, for some reason however, makes no such move.
As Jalopnik puts it, “It all seems fairly avoidable to me.”
Cited by Xinhua, Luo said that he thought the car’s reaction was confusing because it did not conform to the car’s priority reaction of automatically turning right and following the vehicle in front. Instead it kept going.
The Santana’s taillight and reflectors were damaged, while the Tesla Model S’s left front bumper, left front headlight, left front fender and left mirror were crashed.
The accident has cost Luo 50,000 yuan ($7,525) on repairs. And when he bought the car, he spent more than 20,000 yuan on the optional Autopilot Convenience Features.
Believing there are technical bugs in the system of Autopilot, Luo said Tesla should take half of the responsibility, while the other half should be paid by the Santana’s driver for illegal parking. However, there is no law in China and many other countries that clearly states who should be held responsible in case a self-driven vehicle is involved in an accident.
“There are not many self-driven cars at the moment, so it is unrealistic to expect a law,” said Fu Yuwu, chairman of Society of Automotive Engineers of China, according to a report by National Business Daily.
After contacting Tesla and only getting the contact detail of the insurance company, an angry Luo posted an article telling details of the accident and his opinions on Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Wednesday, which has drawn dozens of comments and discussions. Luo criticized Tesla for exaggerating the automatic driving function but only using a small space on the manual to warn users that it is only an assistance driving system.
However, adding insult to (monetary) injury, a comment on his post said Tesla’s manual specifically warned drivers not to remove their hands from the steering wheel, adding that it is illegal to do this in China.
Luo said a lawyer team has contacted him to support him to sue Tesla for false advertising, but he has not decided whether to do it yet. Duan Zhengzheng, public relation manager at Tesla China, declined the telephone interview request to comment on.
While we doubt Tesla’s reputation will take a big hit as a result of this incident, what is more curious is the revelation that driving in China without having one’s hands on the steering wheel is illegal: if accurate, this means that the concept of driverless cars in China can be put indefinitely on hold at least until such time as the law is changed. However, for that to happen, a lot of palms will have to be greased, and also begs the question whether Uber, which lately has been also betting its future on a vision of self-driving cars taking over the world, figured out just how major the hurdles would be for its grand design when it comes to the most deisrable market of all, and is why last week it conceded the race for Chinese marketshare to its local competitor, Didi.
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