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Thursday 23rd of July 2020
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But this is something much harsher than realism. This is intergalactic Darwinism. @bopinion @nfergus Misc. |
"The Dark Forest," which continues the story of the invasion of Earth by the ruthless and technologically superior Trisolarans, introduces Liu’s three axioms of “cosmic sociology.”
First, “Survival is the primary need of civilization.” Second, “Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.” Third, “chains of suspicion” and the risk of a “technological explosion” in another civilization mean that in space there can only be the law of the jungle. In the words of the book’s hero, Luo Ji:
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost ... trying to tread without sound ... The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life — another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod — there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people ... any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out.
Kissinger is often thought of (in my view, wrongly) as the supreme American exponent of Realpolitik. But this is something much harsher than realism. This is intergalactic Darwinism.
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@SecPompeo claims China 'bought' @WHO chief @DrTedros @Telegraph Law & Politics |
The head of the World Health Organisation was “bought” by China, the US Secretary of State has alleged, as he claimed that the body’s failings had contributed to “dead Britons”.
Mike Pompeo made the allegations at a private meeting of MPs in London on Tuesday that Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organisation’s director-general, had struck a deal with China that helped him secure election.
Mr Pompeo said that “when push came to shove, when it really mattered most”, people had died “because of the deal that was made”.
He added that the WHO was a “political” rather than “science-based organisation”.
“WHO is not aware of any such statement but we strongly reject any ad hominem attacks and unfounded allegations. WHO urges countries to remain focused on tackling the pandemic that is causing tragic loss of life and suffering," a spokesperson for the organisation said on Tuesday night.Mr Pompeo declared in the same meeting that Washington had shared intelligence with the British Government on Chinese officials alleged to be involved in the persecution of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, and suggested that the UK should pull out of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
“This is a political, not a science-based organisation and I talk to our experts ... they will tell you that there are pieces of it that work.
“But when push came to shove, when it really mattered most, when there was a pandemic in China, Dr Tedros, who was ... bought by the Chinese government, I can’t say more, but I can tell, I’m saying this on a firm intelligence foundation, a deal was made... there was a deal making election and when push came to shove, you get dead Britons, because of the deal that was made.”
It came as trade tensions between London and Beijing appeared to escalate on Tuesday after state-controlled media reported that China was threatening to target British firms, including HSBC and Jaguar Land Rover, in retaliation over Huawei and Hong Kong.
The Global Times cited Communist Party officials as threatening a response against UK companies.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice claimed Chinese hackers broke into a British artificial intelligence start-up in April, as part of a wider cyber campaign targeting virus research.
Washington officials have charged two Chinese nationals with hacking “hundreds” of victims around the world to gain access to companies’ intellectual property.
Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi, former classmates at an electrical engineering college in Chengdu, China, illicitly accessed the corporate networks of an unnamed “UK artificial intelligence and cancer research firm” in April, according to court documents published on Tuesday.
The pair are accused of a decade-long spree of industrial espionage, including stealing software source code, weapon designs and other products.
They recently switched their focus to look for coronavirus research, targeting test kit manufacturers and biotech companies working on treatments and vaccines, Washington claimed.
John Demers, the US Justice Department’s national security chief, said: “China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provide a safe haven for cyber criminals in exchange for those criminals being ‘on call’ to work for the benefit of the state, here to feed the Chinese Communist Party’s insatiable hunger for American and other non-Chinese companies’ hard-earned intellectual property, including Covid-19 research.”
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Dear @MaEllenSirleaf & @HelenClarkNZ The starting point of your enquiry has to be precisely what is being precluded below because “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.” #COVID19 Law & Politics |
I am convinced that the only ‘’zoonotic’’ origin was one that was accelerated in the Laboratory.
There is also a non negligible possibility that #COVID19 was deliberately released – Wuhan is to the CCP as Idlib is to the Syrian Regime – and propagated world wide.
According to Daszak, the mine sample had been stored in Wuhan for six years. Its scientists “went back to that sample in 2020, in early January or maybe even at the end of last year, I don’t know. They tried to get full genome sequencing, which is important to find out the whole diversity of the viral genome.”
However, after sequencing the full genome for RaTG13 the lab’s sample of the virus disintegrated, he said. “I think they tried to culture it but they were unable to, so that sample, I think, has gone.”
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.@SecPompeo claims @WHO 'bought by China' leading to 'dead Brits' @DailyMirror Law & Politics |
Donald Trump's Secretary of State accused the World Health Organization chief of being "bought by the Chinese government" in a private rant, it's emerged.
Mike Pompeo dramatically ramped up US attacks on the WHO yesterday in a meeting with around two dozen MPs during his visit to the UK.
According to the Telegraph, he claimed Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus - elected as WHO Director-General in 2017 - was "bought by the Chinese government".
He is said to have added: "I can't say more, but I can tell, I'm saying this on a firm intelligence foundation, a deal was made...
"There was a deal-making election and when push came to shove, you get dead Britons, because of the deal that was made."
"You can't go make claims for maritime regions that you have no lawful claim to. You can't threaten countries and bully them in the Himalayas. You can't engage in cover-ups and co-opt international institutions like the World Health Organisation."
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China Is Getting Closer to Its Lehman Moment @bopinion China |
Wall Street’s movers and shakers are largely seen as part of the solution to the coronavirus-ravaged economy.
Chastened by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the great recession over a decade ago, they were forced to scale back businesses considered risky and clean up their balance sheets.
In this crisis, they’re no longer the problem.
The same can’t be said of China. Beijing has made martyrs of its banks and insurers, asking them to lend to the needy, forgo profits and support the animal spirits of its trillion-dollar capital markets.
But, along with brokers, they’re still a troubled bunch, far from being sturdy pillars of the financial system. If anything, Covid-19 has exacerbated credit risks.
China’s Lehman moment, when isolated events cross the line into systemic effects, is just lurking around the corner.
Last Friday, regulators took control of nine troubled firms, controlled by fallen billionaire Xiao Jianhua’s empire under Tomorrow Holding Co., totaling more than 1.2 trillion yuan ($171.5 billion) in total assets.
It's one of the largest seizures in China’s recent history. Xiao was taken from Hong Kong's Four Seasons hotel by Chinese authorities three years ago and has disappeared from the public eye since.
“The dilemma is fundamental,” as analysts at Rhodium Group wrote after the Baoshang incident.
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A idealizacao do sucesso economico Chines sempre foi uma grande farsa @TaviCosta World Of Finance |
1/12 The idealization of Chinese economic success has always been a big scam. Throughout history we have had several similar examples of communist countries that have reached unsustainable levels of internal and external debt and have suffered marked collapses.
2/12 Para elaborar nessa proposição, considere a seguinte reflexão. De acordo com o PIB publicado pelo governo chinês, a China foi responsável por mais de 60% do crescimento econômico global desde 2008.
2/12 To elaborate on this proposition, consider the following reflection. According to GDP published by the Chinese government, China has accounted for more than 60% of global economic growth since 2008.
3/12 Com isso, ela passou a ser, incomparavelmente, a maior importadora de commodities no mundo. Se caso o seu crescimento de PIB tivesse sido tão expressivo, como justificaríamos a queda geral de preços de commodities no mundo?
3/12 As a result, it has become, by far, the largest importer of commodities in the world. If your GDP growth had been so expressive, how would we justify the general drop in commodity prices in the world?
4/12 Curiosamente, esse período marcou uma das piores décadas para esse mercado na história. É incontestável a contradição entre esses números, presumivelmente mais apurados, e os números “criados” pelo próprio governo comunista Chinês.
4/12 Interestingly, this period marked one of the worst decades for this market in history. The contradiction between these numbers, presumably more accurate, and the numbers “created” by the Chinese communist government is undeniable.
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Brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and Herbert Hunt attempted to corner the world silver markets in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at one stage holding the rights to more than half of the world's deliverable silver. Commodities |
During the Hunts' accumulation of the precious metal, silver prices rose from $11 an ounce in September 1979 to nearly $50 an ounce in January 1980.[2]
Silver prices ultimately collapsed to below $11 an ounce two months later,[2] much of the fall occurring on a single day now known as Silver Thursday, due to changes made to exchange rules regarding the purchase of commodities on margin.[3]
“Hunt had a paranoid world view and it made sense to him to amass silver and hang on to it.”
Most traders buy and sell paper. The actual stuff represented by that paper is delivered to someone else. Hunt wanted the silver.
He chartered three 707 jet aircraft to haul the metal to warehouses in Switzerland and hired a dozen sharpshooting cowboys to provide security, according to Knight.
When he began buying silver with his brothers in 1973, it cost $2 an ounce and a big consumer was Eastman Kodak to make film.
Before the Hunts were through, seven years later, they’d stockpiled more than 200 million ounces, the price was soaring past $45 an ounce and regulators were preparing to take measures to make sure nothing like what Nelson Bunker Hunt had done would ever happen again.
“They broke the ascent by basically outlawing the buying of silver,” said Knight, who blogs at slopeofhope.com. “Only liquidation orders would be accepted. It’s almost criminal what they did.”
On March 27, 1980 — what came to be known as “silver Thursday” — Comex asked Bache Group, the Hunts’ broker, for $134 million.
The three Hunt brothers had $4.5 billion in silver holdings, $3.5 billion of it profit, Knight said. But they didn’t have $134 million.
A $180 million judgment against them pushed the Hunts into bankruptcy.
All Bunker Hunt had left from his billions were a few million, a stable of racehorses and a $90 million tax bill to be paid over a 15-year period, Knight said.
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Trouble brews for India's 'royal' tea @NAR Commodities |
India's Darjeeling district is reeling from the impact of a labor crunch caused by the COVID-19 outbreak that has wrecked this year's harvest of its eponymous tea.
For Darjeeling, which lies in the misty, emerald green foothills of the Himalayas, this is an economic and social disaster. But it is also a blow to tea lovers like me.
Darjeeling tea comes in four types -- black, oolong, green and white -- but one of its oolong varieties -- Silver Tips Imperial -- is the most exclusive.
Named for its silver-hued leaves, it is the world's priciest Darjeeling variety at around $2,000 a kilogram, which means it is not everyone's cup of tea.
Growers say that Silver Tips is always harvested under a full moon by pickers from Makaibari, the oldest of Darjeeling's tea estates.
The correct alignment of the sun, moon, and other cosmic forces is thought to create optimal conditions for a harvest.
Before plucking the leaves, hundreds of workers kitted out in traditional gear gather at sunset for a ceremony.
Men pound drums as women dance and chant Vedic prayers to invoke the gods, seeking their blessing for a bountiful harvest.
Even so, Darjeeling tea's provenance is not purely Indian.
Its seeds were smuggled into India from China in the 19th century by the Scottish adventurer and botanist Robert Fortune. Known as the "tea thief," Fortune would disguise himself as a Chinese merchant to acquire seeds, and played a catalytic role in setting up the tea industry in Darjeeling, where the young plants flourished in the temperate local climate.
From a handful of plantations in the early 1880s, tea cultivation has expanded to 87 estates.
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10-MAY-2020 :: #COVID19 and the Spillover Moment World Of Finance |
―They fancied themselves free,‖ wrote Camus, ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.‖
―In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.
A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.
But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.
We are witnessing a Spill Over into EM and Frontier Geographies ―Brazil is the global epicenter of the coronavirus.
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Africa Starts to Have Second Thoughts About That Chinese Money @alonsosotoj @mattstephenhill @BBGAfrica @markets Africa |
Dipak Patel can still recall the dizzying grandeur of his 2003 visit to Beijing’s cavernous Great Hall of the People: the rows of stern guards all the same height, the state dinner that included stewed shark fin and bird’s nest soup, and the People’s Liberation Army band playing songs from Patel’s native Zambia—even singing in one of the African country’s scores of dialects.
As Zambia’s minister of commerce at the time, Patel had joined the delegation to cement ties and—crucially—secure financing for big-ticket infrastructure initiatives.
While most delegates were eager to accept anything they could get for projects such as a hydropower dam and a 50,000-seat soccer stadium, Patel urged caution.
“My view was that we needed to build a strategic partnership and think it through,” he says. “But I was one voice in the cabinet.”
His warning went unheeded, and Zambia started to take out loans from Chinese banks for airports, hospitals, housing projects, and the roads connecting them.
Chinese credit has grown to about a third of Zambia’s external debt, which has surged sevenfold over the past decade, forcing the government this year to ask creditors to reschedule loans.
Patel, now a real estate investor, is challenging in court the legality of billions in foreign money Zambia has borrowed without what he says was required consent from Parliament.
“Nobody other than the government knows the terms,” he says. The government says it didn’t need parliamentary approval.
Patel is among a growing number of African activists and policymakers questioning the deluge of Chinese credit—some $150 billion in 2018, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University—that has fueled a debt crisis aggravated by the new coronavirus.
Nigerian lawmakers are reviewing Chinese loans they say were unfavorable.
Activists in Kenya are demanding the government disclose the terms of Chinese credit used to build a 470-kilometer (292-mile) railway.
And Tanzanian President John Magufuli calls an agreement his predecessor made with Chinese investors, to build a $10 billion port and economic zone, a deal “only a madman would sign.”
While it will be tough for cash-starved African governments to win many concessions, a wave of looming defaults poses the biggest test ever for China’s influence in the region.
“This has the potential to produce the most profound change in relations since China became a major economic player on the continent,” says Chris Alden, an international affairs professor at the London School of Economics.
“African governments and society are increasingly asking China to come up with answers to this problem.”
Chinese lending to Africa dates at least to the 1960s, when Mao Zedong channeled arms and training to rebels fighting for independence from European colonial powers.
The support was limited, because China was as poor as many African countries, but it has since grown into an economic superpower in need of new markets and raw materials and seeking to boost its global political standing.
In the past two decades, Beijing has handed out loans to developing countries at a speed and scope not seen since the U.S.-financed Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II.
In Africa, Beijing was eager to fill the vacuum left when U.S. and European interest in the continent waned following the end of the Cold War.
Governments there were hungry for loans not tied to austerity programs imposed by Western financial institutions, and China was quick to approve credit, with scant concern about the money going to regimes accused of corruption or human-rights violations.
“For China, as the newest power on the block, the only region of the world that was uncontested was Africa,” says Gyude Moore, Liberia’s former minister of public works and now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington.
“When people complain about Chinese loans, it’s not as if most African countries have a plethora of options.”
It’s hard to miss China’s footprint in Africa. In tiny Guinea-Bissau, the exit signs in a government building are written in Chinese characters.
In Mozambique, Chinese money paid for a 2-mile-long suspension bridge, the longest on the continent, that links the capital with beach resorts and neighboring South Africa.
China helped foot the bill for Senegal’s Museum of Black Civilizations—which until recently included Chinese art in its exhibits.
It’s become the largest financier of infrastructure in Africa, with the likes of the China Export-Import Bank and the China Development Bank funding a fifth of big projects, according to consulting firm Deloitte.
To guarantee a quarter of that debt, African countries have effectively mortgaged future earnings from exports of commodities such as oil, cocoa, and copper.
While loans by private investors from around the world still make up more than half of Africa’s external public debt, Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy says China has lent more than the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Club of Paris, a group of wealthy countries, combined.
And many loans aren’t made public, prompting suspicions that Africa’s debt to China is bigger than estimated.
The Kiel group says as much as half of all Chinese lending to developing countries, or about $200 billion, hadn’t been reported to the IMF and World Bank as of 2016.
The Chinese loans have drawn parallels to the lending boom of the 1970s that led to a crippling debt crisis across the developing world a decade later.
“We’ll see a wave of defaults,” says Christoph Trebesch, an author of the Kiel study. “It’s just a question of whether it will be a huge wave or a small wave.”
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19-APR-2020 :: The End of Vanity China Africa Win Win Africa |
Lets Turn now to the defining Engagement of the last two decades for SSA – The SSA China relationship.
And the entire China Africa relationship has been an extraordinary exercise in Narrative Framing and linguistic control, accompanied by a chorus of Party Hacks chirruping Hosannas at every turn amplifying largely meaningless feel good Phrases artfully placed in the mouths of our Politicians and our Newspapers. It is remarkable.
I reference excerpts from Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech at the opening ceremony of 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit
September has just set in Beijing, bringing with it refreshing breeze and picturesque autumn scenery. And we are so delighted to have all of you with us, friends both old and new, in this lovely season for the reunion of the China-Africa big family at the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
"The ocean is vast because it rejects no rivers."
"The red rising sun will light up the road ahead." I am confident that the baton of China-Africa friendship will be passed from one generation to the next and that China and Africa, working together, will build an even more vibrant community with a shared future.
The day will surely come when the Chinese nation realizes its dream of national renewal and Africa realizes its dream of unity and invigoration!
Interestingly, At that 2018 FOCAC Meeting Xi Jinping also delivered a thinly veiled warning
China's Xi says funds for Africa not for 'vanity projects' Reuters #FOCAC2018
Our African Leaders did not take notes and that Warning was missed.
2-SEP-2019 :: the China EM Frontier Feedback Loop Phenomenon. #COVID19
This Phenomenon was positive for the last two decades but has now undergone a Trend reversal.
The ZAR is the purest proxy for this Phenomenon. African Countries heavily dependent on China being the main Taker are also at the bleeding edge of this Phenomenon.
This Pressure Point will not ease soon but will continue to intensify
I said this in an Interview with Aljazeera in 2018
“China had a singular and positive influence on Africa. It rebalanced the demand side for Africa’s commodities and also bought those commodities on a long-term basis. It was this which triggered the African recovery some two decades ago,
However, since then a freewheeling China has favourited elites, has facilitated large-scale looting via inflated infrastructure, some of which were white elephants and has lumped the African citizen with the tab. How this plays out is now the key to Sino-African relations going forward. A Hambantota scenario would be problematic,” referring to the Sri Lankan port which has been leased to China for 99 years.
Tavi Costa tweeted
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Africa has a Problem COVID-19 pandemic in Africa is now reaching ‘full speed’ @AP #COVID19 Africa |
Africa has a Problem COVID-19 pandemic in Africa is now reaching ‘full speed’ @AP #COVID19 and it’s good to prepare for the worst-case scenario, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief said
’We’ve crossed a critical number here,” he said of the half-million milestone.
“Our pandemic is getting full speed.”
Cumulative total of *reported* #COVID19 cases in Africa @Covid_Africa
From 1st case to 100,000 cases: 98 days 100,000 to 200,000 cases: 18 days 200,000 to 300,000 cases: 12 days 300,000 to 400,000 cases: 9 days 400,000 to 500,000 cases: 7 days
South Africa is the Precursor for the rest of Africa
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02-MAR-2020 :: The #COVID19 and SSA and the R Word Africa |
We Know that the #Coronavirus is exponential, non linear and multiplicative.
what exponential disease propagation looks like in the real world. Real world exponential growth looks like nothing, nothing, nothing ... then cluster, cluster, cluster ... then BOOM!
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Egypt/Ethiopia: ‘I will vote for a war’ – @NaguibSawiris @TheAfricaReport Law & Politics |
About the GERD [Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam], what rights does Egypt have to it?
The Nile comes to us, the water comes to us through four or five African countries with which we – with the exception of one [of which] we have a bad relation with – the rest we have good relations.
And if you look at Africa, Egypt is the North Pole. And South Africa is the South Pole.
You mentioned earlier a possible war between Egypt and Ethiopia, presumably over the dam. A few weekends ago, you circulated a petition entitled ‘Egyptians right to water of the Nile’. Do you think military action is feasible? Is that reasonable?
It’s not reasonable. But let me ask you a question. Imagine someone locks you in your house and suddenly you don’t have food and you’re out of food. There is no food because Egypt depends 100% on the Nile for its water. So someone decided to go out and close the tap.
So suddenly, all your land agriculture dries up and your people are starting to die. So what can they do? Just watch themselves die? Or go fight for their right?
So if we are going to be blamed that we started a war against Ethiopia, the one who should be blamed is Ethiopia because they closed the tap, after years, hundreds of years of history from the pharaohs, the Nile….I personally as an Egyptian, I will vote for a war if they close the walls around us.
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Kenya's flower industry rebounds as lockdowns ease @ReutersUK Kenyan Economy |
Demand for Kenya’s flowers has recovered to around 85% of pre-coronavirus levels as European markets open up after lockdowns, an industry body said, spurring hope that the industry could see a full rebound by next year.
Kenyan farmers were forced to throw away millions of roses in March as Europe sealed borders and residents put weddings and funerals on hold.
But demand is coming back as restrictions ease and growers are hoping it will recover fully by next year, said Clement Tulezi, chief executive of the Kenya Flower Council.
“We are better than we were two months ago, demand is almost at 85%,” Tulezi told Reuters. “From our major markets in Europe and elsewhere, we are seeing orders.”
Europe accounts for nearly 70% of Kenya’s cut flower exports and coronavirus restrictions had slashed daily orders by half, threatening thousands of jobs in East Africa’s richest economy.
Kenyan farmer Inder Nain, whose company Xflora group used to export 350,000 roses a day, saw exports plunge to 50,000 a day in March. Now, that’s rebounded to about 250,000, he said, and his 2,000 employees are back at work.
“We are seeing good and steady recovery,” Nain told Reuters.
Flower exports are one of Kenya’s top three foreign exchange earners and generated nearly a billion dollars in sales in 2019.
But like all nations, the coronavirus has battered the economy. Growth is projected to slow to 2.5% this year from 5.4% last year.
Flower sellers are still nervous about high freight costs caused by a drop in airline traffic and uncertainty over whether there will be a second coronavirus wave in Europe, Nain said.
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