marksleboda |In religious terms, Ukraine is largely an Eastern Orthodox nation, just like Russia. Close to 70% of the population currently identifies as Orthodox Christian.
For
over a thousand years a common Orthodox Christian religion and Church
united the peoples of what are today the separate states of Ukraine,
Russia, and Belarus in faith and culture. Since the 14th century the
nominal ecclesiastic Patriarch of that common Orthodox faith was located
in Moscow. For most of that time the peoples were united politically as
well.
However
there has always been a general understanding that due to the basic
right to “freedom of religion” that this soft power is not something
that should be politically challenged or restricted. I
mean how often do you hear in the media about the state of Israel
weaponizing the “Jewish faith” or Saudi Arabia weaponizing Sunni Islam?
But whether it is “freedom of the press”,” freedom of speech, or “Freedom of religion”
is there any single thing that has made the West cast off the thin
veneer of their supposed values and show their true authoritarian colors
like Russia?
Since seizing power 2014 and accelerating dramatically in the last year, the US-backed Putsch regime in Kiev has been carrying out a very real pogrom against
the Orthodox churches and parishioners across Ukraine who do not accept
the rule and strictures of its new ly manufactured Orthodox Church of
Ukraine (OCU) , this after the older and still largest Ukrainian
Orthodox Church (UOC) officially suspended its nominal ecclesiastical tieswith the Orthodox Patriarch in Moscow after the start of the Russian intervention in the Ukrainian civil conflict in February 2014.
They even made very public statements against the Russian intervention, including a procession by its priests against the Russian and Donbass siege of the NeoNazi Azov-held Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol.
But that isn’t good enough for the Zelenskiy regime in
Kiev. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, its priests, and its parishioners
are still regarded with hostility and decried as “fifth columnists” that need to be cleansed from Ukraine.
It is believed that whatever they proclaim, deep inside they do not hold absolute loyalty to the US-backed Putsch regime in Kiev and don’t truly hate Russia and Russians enough.
orthochristian | Despite the fact that many churches of the war-torn
districts of Donbass are destroyed, the faithful keep
praying and are continuing the liturgical life on ruins of
their shrines.
On the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos
the parish of the Church of St. John of Kronstadt in
Kirovskoye gathered for the first Divine Liturgy after the
August’s shelling. The service was celebrated in the
open air near ruins of the church which cannot be
restored, reports the Horlivka and Sloviansk
Diocese’s website.
On August 23, during artillery shelling of the town one
shell broke through the roof in the center of the church
and brought down the ceiling onto the city residents who
were praying at the evening service. Three people were
killed and several more people severely injured. Among
those injured was the second priest of the church,
Archpriest Sergy Piven. During the same shelling, one
shell hit a hospital where two people were killed and many
injured.
The shelling is continuing in the town even now. According
to the church Rector, Archpriest George Tsyganov, even in
these days of the truce declared not long ago, the war is
going on. Nearly every day there are new victims among the
civilian residents and their houses are being damaged.
Now, with coming of cold weather, many families are
returning to the town in spite of the shelling.
It was decided to resume celebration of services near the
ruined church because the parish of St. John of Kronstadt
is the only church in the town. And many believers of
Kirovskoye cannot imagine their lives without Liturgy. At
the present time, Divine Liturgies are served every
Sunday: during warm weather—in the church courtyard
in front of the temple, during bad weather—in the
summer kitchen building near it.
Despite the lack of financial assets, the congregation
members are not losing heart and are continuously helping
the people who have remained in the town. There is a
humanitarian aid collection center on the territory of the
parish—warm clothes and other things for homeless
fire victims and families in need are brought here from
all over the town.
Until recently, the parish has on a voluntary basis helped
rescue families from under the shelling and taken them to
other Ukrainian towns or to the border with the Russian
Federation. A parish driver, assistant churchwarden
Vyacheslav Gusakovsky, was killed during one of such
journeys while he was driving back from the Russian
border. Later the Ukrainian media accused the slain driver
of transporting weapons and explosives.
aurelian |These problems are coming together, to some extent, with the
widespread diffusion of automatic weapons, and the spread of ethnic
organised crime groups in the suburbs of major European cities. Together
with the increasing hold of organised Islamic fundamentalism on the
local communities, this has created a series of areas where governments
no longer wish to send the security forces, because of the fear of
violent confrontation, and where these groups exert an effective
monopoly of violence themselves. Again, it’s not clear what current
military or paramilitary capabilities would be of any real use in
dealing with such situations, and there is the risk of other, non-state,
actors intervening instead. (It’s worth adding that we are not talking about “civil war” here, which is a quite different issue)
So
the existing force-structures of western states are going to have
problems coping with the likely domestic security threats of the near
future. Most western militaries are simply too small, too highly
specialised and too technological to deal with situations where the
basic tool of military force is required: large numbers of trained and
disciplined personnel, able to provide and maintain a secure
environment, and enforce the monopoly of legitimate violence.
Paramilitary forces can only help to a certain extent. The potential
political consequences of that failure could be enormous. The most basic
political question, after all, is not Carl Schmitt’s infamous “who is
my enemy?” but rather “who will protect me?” If modern states,
themselves lacking capability, but also with security forces that are
too small and poorly adapted, cannot protect the population, what then?
Experience elsewhere suggests that, if the only people who can protect
you are Islamic extremists and drug traffickers, you are pretty much
obliged to give your loyalty to them, or if not, to some equally strong
non-state force that opposes them.
In a perverse kind of
way, the same issues of respect and capability also arise at the
international level. I’ve already written several times about the parlous state of
conventional western forces today, and the impossibility of restoring
them to something like Cold War levels. Here, I just want to finish by
talking about some of the less obvious political consequences of that
weakness.
At its simplest, relative military effectiveness
influences how you view your neighbours and how they view you. This can
involve threats and fear, but it doesn’t have to. It means, for example,
that the perception of what regional security problems are, and how to
deal with them, is going to be disproportionately influenced by the
concerns of more capable states. (Thus the influential position enjoyed
by Nigeria in West Africa, for example). This isn’t necessarily from a
crude measure of size of forces either: in the old NATO, the Netherlands
probably had more influence than Turkey, though its forces were much
smaller. Within international groupings—formal alliances or not—some
states tend to lead and others to follow, depending on perceptions of
experience and capability.
Internationally—in the UN for
example—countries like Britain and France, together with Sweden, Canada,
Australia, India, and a few others, were influential because they had
capable militaries, effective government systems and, most importantly,
experience of conducting operations away from home. So if you were the
Secretary-General of the UN, and you were putting together a small group
to look at the possibilities for a peace mission in Myanmar, who would
you invite? The Argentinians? The Congolese? The Algerians? The
Mexicans? You would invite some nations from the region, certainly, but
you would mainly focus on capable nations with a proven track record.
But in quite complex and subtle ways, patterns of influence, both at the
practical and conceptual level, are changing. The current vision even
of what security is, and how it should be pursued, is currently
western-dominated. That will be much less the case in the future.
This
decline in influence will also apply to the United States. Its most
powerful and expensive weapons—nuclear missiles, nuclear submarines,
carrier battle groups, high performance air-superiority fighters — are
either not usable, or simply not relevant, to most of the security
problems of today. We do not know the precise numbers and effectiveness
of Chinese land-based anti-shipping missiles for example, but it’s clear
that sending US surface ships anywhere within their range is going to
be too great a risk for any US government to take. And since the Chinese
know this, the subtle nuances of power relations between the two
countries are altered. Again, the US has found itself unable to actually
influence the outcome of a major war in Europe, because it does not
have the forces to intervene directly, and the weapons it has been able
to send are too few and in many cases of the wrong kind. The Russians
are obviously aware of this, but it is the kind of thing that other
states notice as well, and then has consequences.
Finally,
there is the question of the future relationship between weak European
states in a continent where the US has ceased to be an important player.
As I’ve pointed out before,
NATO has continued as long as it has because it has all sorts of
unacknowledged practical advantages for different nations, even if some
of these advantages are actually mutually exclusive. But it’s not
obvious that such a state of affairs will continue. No European nation,
nor any reasonable coalition of them, is going to have the military
power to match that of Russia, and the US has long been incapable of
making up the difference. On the other hand, this is not the Cold War,
where Soviet troops were stationed a few hundred kilometres from major
western capitals. There will actually be nothing really to fight about,
and no obvious place to do the fighting. What there will be is a
relationship of dominance and inferiority such as Europe has never
really known before, and the end of such shaky consensus as remains on
what the military, and security forces in general, are actually for.
I suspect, but it’s no more than that, that we are going to see a
turning inward, as states try to deal with problems within their borders
and on them. Ironically, the greatest protection against major
conflicts may be the inability of most European states, these days, to
conduct them. Weakness can also have its virtues.
Jamestown | Since 2008, Russia has consistently sought to adopt and introduce
command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities to the Armed Forces as part of
its conventional military modernization plans. At their core, those
efforts are rooted in developing a Russian variant of network-centric
warfare, reflecting changes in the international strategic environment
as well as accompanying transformation in the means and methods of
conducting warfare.
After many years of analysis, discussion and planning, the
Russian military is now well on the path toward the fuller formation of a
network-centric capability that will present challenges for any
potential adversary. Thus, Russia’s Armed Forces, together with their
numerous technological advances, are confidently entering the high-tech
battlespace.
Military science and military forecasting;
The character of future conflict;
Rooting future warfare in the lessons of the past;
The concept of network-centric warfare is closely tied to the RMA,
with the advances and practical application unfolding through complex
processes in the enhancement of US military combat power, particularly
in the 1990s. According to Russian military specialists, this meant new
means and methods of conducting warfare, integrating “technical
reconnaissance, automation and control of fire damage by means of
information and telecommunication networks and data transmission to
enhance the effectiveness of combat operations through harmonization and
coordination of available forces and means based on a common
information space.”
The upsurge in interest in network-centric concepts among Russian
military scientists since 2008 reflects a clear influence from the
senior military and defense leadership. In 2010, Russia’s General Staff
Academy published an extensive collection of open-source materials
dealing with the concept of network-centric warfare: Setetsentricheskaya voyna: Daydzhest po materialam otkrytykh izdaniy i SMI (Network-Centric Warfare: Digest on Materials of Open Publications and Mass Media).[67]
Moreover, the Russian military scientific community continues to
maintain considerable focus on network-centric warfare, especially
following and analyzing its evolution within the United States military.
In 2018, for example S. I. Makarenko and M. S. Ivanov published a
901-page study: Setetsentricheskaya voyna—printsipy, tekhnologii, primery i perspektivy (Network-Centric Warfare—Principals, Technologies, Examples and Perspectives).[68]
It is clear, therefore, that within the existing body of professional
Russian science, there is persistent interest in network-centric
warfare. But the emerging view of the capability in the Russian context
is cautious, and many specialists warn against the state investing too
heavily in this area, fearing wastage of resources. As such, these
experts tend to counsel against seeing its adoption as a panacea. It is
also vital to understand that Russian theorists see network-centric
warfare capability as an offensive rather than defensive capability, and
they envisage it serving as a tool against other high-technology
adversaries.[69]
In the published writings of Russian military scientists, a deep
understanding and body of knowledge exists concerning Western military
approaches to network-centric warfare; they tend to analyze the
operational experience of such operations and draw conclusions
concerning the relative strengths and weaknesses of such approaches.
Additionally, Russian specialists have sought to study and draw lessons
from examples of Western militaries, such as Sweden’s, that tried and
later abandoned efforts to introduce network-centric warfare—in order to
avoid these pitfalls in Russia. Russian analyses of US/NATO
network-centric capability are also closely linked to how Main
Intelligence Directorate (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye—GRU)
specialist officers follow, assess and understand the concept and the
key trends involved. An outstanding example is Colonel Aleksandr
Kondratyev.
This will be hard for Joe. He's going to Mexico -- along with clown advisors Blinken and Sullivan, Kamala
was not invited in spite of her skin color and border expertise.
AMLO is similar to Putin: stoic, polite, nerves of
steel, long memory, well informed, able to control agendas and
conversations. He and his able staff have been preparing for this
meeting with Biden and Trudeau/Freeland. They will be polite
and likely maintain a focus on border issues along with trade but the
reception already looks set up to be chilly. AMLO just informed Biden that he will need to land at an airport way outside the city which
means he'll need to endure a 60 minute ride through traffic
to get to the meeting. Same for Trudeau.
Mexican media reporting that President Joe Biden and Air Force One will NOT land next week at Mexico's new Felipe Ángeles Airport, rejecting AMLO's public request to do so.
The reason is security concerns about the drive to the city, according to Mileniohttps://t.co/GbO79Tq4Qv
"The new airport is about 30 miles north of Mexico
City’s National Palace, where the summit of North American leaders will
take place, and traffic can mean the drive can take more than an hour. The more convenient Mexico City International
Airport, which has serviced the capital since 1931, is about five miles
from the Mexican version of the White House.
Biden will visit Mexico for his first international
trip in the Western Hemisphere since taking office last year amid a
record-breaking wave of illegal immigration across the border between
the two countries. AMLO last year blamed Biden for inspiring the
border rush, saying, “Expectations were created that with the government
of President Biden there would be a better treatment of migrants. And
this has caused Central American migrants, and
also from our country, wanting to cross the border thinking that it is
easier to do so.”
NYPost | This takes air traffic control to a whole new level.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is asking President
Biden to land Air Force One at a new airport farther from the center of
Mexico City when he visits next month — describing it as a favor to quell domestic criticism of the project.
The unusual request sets up a potentially awkward start to the visit
and would require Biden’s motorcade to add time to its commute when the
president arrives Jan. 9 for talks with López Obrador and Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau.
“I am taking the opportunity to tell [Biden] that out of friendship,
out of diplomacy, we ask him that his plane land at the Felipe Ángeles
International Airport,” the 69-year-old Mexican president, known by his
initials, AMLO, said Wednesday at a press conference.
AMLO said Trudeau had already agreed to land at the more distant
airport, which opened in March, and said he was presenting his request
for Biden to the US Embassy, according to Mexico City’s Excélsior newspaper.
Biden previously visited Mexico as vice president in February 2016, when
he brought his son Hunter with him aboard Air Force Two after hosting
his Mexican business associates at the official vice presidential residence in Washington.
Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for potential crimes
including tax fraud and unregistered foreign lobbying linked to an array
of influence-peddling operations while his father was vice president
and held sway in countries such as Mexico, China and Ukraine. House
Republicans, who retake power next week, are vowing to determine Joe
Biden’s role in his family’s overseas consulting work.
Joe Biden in 2015posed for a group photo with his son and Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel
Alemán Velasco in DC. In 2016, Hunter Biden emailed Alemán’s son,
apparently from Air Force Two en route to Mexico, complaining that he
hadn’t received reciprocal business favors after “I have brought every
single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House
and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration.”
intelslava | There has been some speculation that Mexican authorities did this at the behest of the United States in the lead-up to the meeting of North American leaders next week in Mexico City. There is, however, reason to be skeptical of such; such a violent response by CDS was to be expected after the Battle of Culiacán in 2019. If Sinaloa's demands aren't met and they do follow through with their threats, the deterioration in the security situation could place the meeting in jeopardy.
Video of TSMC founder Morris Chang's remarks at the TSMC Tool-In in Arizona cannot be found anywhere online. Videos of oxygen-thieving Joe Biden and turd-burgling Tim Wise are ubiquitous, however. Who gives a flying f*ck what either of these pantloading dipshits had to say?!?!?!?
Consequently, old video of Dr. Chang at Brookings is all I've got.
interconnected | The most powerful, and somewhat uncomfortable, part of Chang’s speech is his declaration that:
“Globalization
is almost dead. Free trade is almost dead. And a lot of people still
wish they would come back, but I really don’t think they will be back
for a while.”
TSMC is arguably the one company that
most epitomizes all the forces of globalization – free trade, hyper
specialization, cross-border supply chain, and the assumption of
geopolitical stability that lets all these forces interact and
interconnect. In this world, TSMC, and manufacturers like it, would
build factories wherever it deems to make the most economic sense,
without needing to worry about adverse political consequences.
Chang
no doubt reflected on the core nature of globalization and free trade,
of which he and TSMC are beneficiaries. Witnessing TSMC’s newest fab
being built in Arizona, a location TSMC would have never chosen if
globalization were alive and well (a point he has mademany timesin the past),
it is only appropriate for Chang to somberly proclaim the death of
globalization (though he still hedged a bit with “almost”).
The
unfortunate second-order effect of the death of globalization that no
one likes to talk about is the rising cost of all kinds of goods and
products – a future that may make persistent inflation even worse. Tim
Cook announced to much fanfare
at the same event that Apple will use chips made from TSMC Arizona.
What he did not say is whether that will make the pricey iPhones and
MacBooks even pricier to buy.
In Morris Chang’s own estimation, the chips produced from TSMC Arizona may cost “at least 50% more”
than the chips from TSMC Taiwan. Will TSMC pass on that cost to Apple
or let it eat into its margins? Will Apple pass on that cost to
consumers or let it eat into its margins? No one knows right now, but as TSMC Arizona starts churning out wafers, we will know soon enough.
To
be clear, this is not a critique of TSMC’s decision to build fabs in
America. Given the reality of the world, it is probably the right thing
to do. Morris Chang, who may be reluctant but is ultimately a
pragmatist, gave his blessing by being at the ceremony. But he did not
let the bigger lesson go unspoken.
“Offshoring” is out of fashion, and “onshoring” and “friendshoring” is the new black. Any wishful thinking that globalization will continue in its previous form is naive.
Made in America (in Taiwan)
The other uncomfortable yet thought-provoking part of Chang’s speech is this:
“...We
hired almost 600 engineers here a year and a half ago, we sent them to
Taiwan, and they were under training in Taiwan for one year to a year
and a half. In the meantime, about the same number of Taiwan engineers
underwent training in Taiwan also.
So
before we see a single wafer, we have about more than a thousand people
being trained. This, I think, is a very good sign that we are prepared.”
If
you read between the lines, what Chang is really saying is TSMC cannot
find enough qualified American talent to do the jobs TSMC needs to
operate. So it must spend extra money (more cost) to send every new hire
in America to Taiwan to get trained. Furthermore, due to this talent
shortage, additional engineers from Taiwan must be hired,
trained, and deployed to America to make TSMC Arizona function (with
doubled salaries and extra benefits to boot). These trainings are not
some two-to-four week corporate offsites, but up to one and a half years
long!
Yet, despite all this extra cost and personnel hassle,
Chang believes this is a “very good sign” and the right thing to do.
That’s because these are the “people problems” and “cultural problems”
that he learned the hard way 25 years ago when trying to open TSMC’s
first American fab, located in Camas, Washington – an experience he
called “a dream fulfilled became a nightmare fulfilled”. TSMC Arizona is
now investing up front to avoid the same mistakes.
Beyond the talent shortage problem, there is also an equipment shortage and supplier shortage problem, so much so that TSMC has been shipping
as many tools and equipment as possible, directly from Taiwan to
Arizona. TSMC has voiced these and other concerns in a letter last
month, sent to the NIST bureau
of the Commerce Department (an agency I happened to have served in
during the Obama administration). Of course, you wouldn’t hear about any
of this if you only listen to Gina Raimondo.
The wafers that TSMC Arizona will produce – and be proudly labeled “Made in America” – are looking very “Taiwanese”.
smoothiex12 |I
am constantly on record that Russian Ministry of Defense is well
supplied (due to cannibalizing of washing machines, I guess) with all
kinds of microchips, including ASIC and what have you. All this, due to
boutique production which is fully localized. Otherwise, one may ask,
how did Russians manage to manufacture now their satellites with 100%
Russian element base and how come that Russians openly state that their NTSUO main supercomputer is more powerful than anything Pentagon's NMCC has.
Translation:Russian
lithograph for 7 nm from Institute of Applied Physics of Russian
Academy of Sciences. Lithograph from National Center of Physics and
Mathematics in 2-3 years. Off we go!
As it turned out, Russia had working prototype for 30 nm in... 2011.
So,
let's summarize. In 2011 Russia already has a working prototype
lithograph for 30 nm structures. Then, in 2014 Russia unveils NTsUO and
claims that supercomputer in it is way more powerful than Pentagon's,
then Rosatom effectively builds Russia's composite materials industry,
then we have some new reactors coming on-line, and then, of course, we
have hypersonic revolution in 2018. Just this short list tells you that
this whole thing, requiring an immense computing power, hasn't been done
on Pentium 4 processors alone. But where did Russia get those hi-end
processors and, in the end, stated recently that fully Russian-made
lithography is coming very soon. Well, we are now getting some whiff of
the proceedings, which a few years ago I named a "revelation mode".
As
I am on record constantly, one has to be able to read news properly and
not miss all those important details. But above all, we need to
understand how truly high level strategic planning is done and why
Russia was able to withstand all Western sanctions and sabotage and, in
fact, benefited from that strategically. One has to assume with a very
high probability that modelling of technological, industrial, military
and, in the end, geopolitical trends has been done on something which we
didn't see yet. What is known now that it is some extremely capable
computation on something which is fully domestically made. But the signs
and clues have been around for a long time now. How do you think you
design something like 3M22 Zircon or Peresvet with Avangard. I guess,
we've got part of the answer. But I am on record, the nation which
produces all that will produce modern chip industry sooner or later.
Looks like it is going to be sooner, and don't tell me I didn't warn
you;)
reuters | The chief executive of ASML Holding NV, the Dutch semiconductor equipment maker, on Tuesday questioned whether a U.S. push to get the Netherlands to adopt new rules restricting exports to China make sense.
"Maybe
they think we should come across the table, but ASML has already
sacrificed," CEO Peter Wennink said in an interview with newspaper NRC
Handelsblad.
He
said that following U.S. pressure, the Dutch government has already
restricted ASML from exporting its most advanced lithography machines to
China since 2019, something he said has benefited U.S. companies
selling alternative technology.
He said that while 15% of ASML's sales are in China, at U.S. chip equipment suppliers "it is 25 or sometimes more than 30%".
A spokesperson for ASML confirmed the remarks in the interview were accurate but declined further comment.
The
Biden administration issued new export rules for U.S. companies in
October aimed at cutting off China's ability to manufacture advanced
semiconductor chips in a bid to slow its military and technological
advances.
Washington
is urging the Netherlands, Japan and other unspecified countries with
companies that make cutting edge manufacturing equipment to adopt
similar rules. The Dutch trade minister has confirmed talks are ongoing.
Wennink
said it seemed contradictory that U.S. chip manufacturers are able to
sell their most advanced chips to Chinese customers, while ASML is only
able to sell older chipmaking equipment.
thecradle | Soleimani was the “keyholder” in the Axis
of Resistance, according to an Arab politician with strong ties to
decision-making circles in both Washington and Riyadh.
“Hajj Qassem,” says the politician, was
uniquely capable of making decisions and then implementing them, which
is considered a “rare advantage” among leaders. He was able to achieve
significant strategic results – rapidly – by moving freely and
negotiating directly with various statesmen, militias, and political
movements.
Examples of this are rife: The Quds Force commander persuaded
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2015 to intervene militarily in
Syria, and organized the complex ‘frenemy’ relationship between Turkiye
and Tehran through Turkish intelligence director Hakan Fidan.
Soleimani played a pivotal role in
preventing the fall of Damascus, maintained and developed important
links with Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah in Beirut, led a
region wide campaign to defeat ISIS, and successfully managed the
delicate balances between various political components in Iraq. In
Yemen, he was able to supply the Ansarallah movement with training and
arms that arguably changed the course of the Saudi-led aggression.
Together or separately, the aforementioned
points made him a desired target of assassination for both the US
government and the security establishment in Israel.
A visit to Venezuela
There may, however, be additional factors
that contributed to the US decision to assassinate Soleimani on 3
January, 2022. While some analysts cite, for instance, the storming of
the 2019 US embassy in Baghdad by demonstrators three days before the
extrajudicial killing, US decision makers were unlikely to have
mobilized its assassins in reaction to this relatively benign incident.
More significant for them would have been
Soleimani’s unannounced trip to Venezuela in 2019, which crossed
Washington’s red lines within its own geographic sphere of influence.
His visit to the South American country was
publicly revealed more than two years later by Venezuelan President
Nicolas Maduro, during an interview with Al-Mayadeen in December 2021.
Maduro stated that Soleimani visited
Caracas between March and April 2019, during which time the US launched a
cyber and sabotage attack on Venezuela, resulting in widespread power
outages. He glorified the Iranian general as a military hero who
“combated terrorism and the brutal terrorist criminals who attacked the
peoples of the Axis of resistance. He was a brave man.”
Although Maduro did not reveal the exact
date of the visit, it can be assumed that it took place on 8 April,
2019, and that Soleimani came on board the first direct flight of the Iranian airline Mahan Air between Tehran and Caracas.
At that time, the US attack on Caracas was
at its peak: Washington’s recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of
Venezuela, comprehensive economic sanctions, and then, at the end of
April, the organization of a coup attempt that succeeded only in
securing the escape of US-backed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez to the
Spanish embassy.
Brazil’s newly returned President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has
scrapped plans to sell off eight state-run corporate giants, including
the oil company Petroleo Brasileiro, known as Petrobras, Brazilian news
website G1 reported on Monday.
Lula, who was at the helm from 2003 through 2010, was sworn in as
Brazil’s president on January 1. Imprisoned for graft in 2018, Lula’s
convictions were overturned in 2019, allowing him to defeat Jair Bolsonaro in October’s election.
The decision to remove state corporations from the list of state
asset sales was one of the first official acts by the left-wing
politician.
Aside from Petrobras, the order includes Pre-Sal Petroleo, the state
firm responsible for the supervision and sale of the government’s share
of oil and gas from production-sharing contracts, along with the postal
service Correios, and the Empresa Brasil de Comunicacaooperator, which
manages the federal government’s broadcast network.
The Brazilian social welfare system’s IT services enterprise Dataprev,
state-owned nuclear company Nuclep, IT services corporation Serpro, and
the Agriculture Ministry’s National Supply Company are also off the
privatization list.
Brazil’s newly returned President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has
scrapped plans to sell off eight state-run corporate giants, including
the oil company Petroleo Brasileiro, known as Petrobras, Brazilian news
website G1 reported on Monday.
Lula, who was at the helm from 2003 through 2010, was sworn in as
Brazil’s president on January 1. Imprisoned for graft in 2018, Lula’s
convictions were overturned in 2019, allowing him to defeat Jair
Bolsonaro in October’s election.
The decision to remove state corporations from the list of state
asset sales was one of the first official acts by the left-wing
politician.
Aside from Petrobras, the order includes Pre-Sal Petroleo, the state
firm responsible for the supervision and sale of the government’s share
of oil and gas from production-sharing contracts, along with the postal
service Correios, and the Empresa Brasil de Comunicacaooperator, which
manages the federal government’s broadcast network.
The Brazilian social welfare system’s IT services enterprise
Dataprev, state-owned nuclear company Nuclep, IT services corporation
Serpro, and the Agriculture Ministry’s National Supply Company are also
off the privatization list.
The
returning president has called for “ensuring a rigorous analysis of the
impacts of privatization on the public service or on the market,”
adding that state banks and major oil companies such as Petrobras would
play a “key role” in the new economic cycle.
On Monday, the Sao Paulo stock index shed 3.24%, while Petrobras
shares dropped around 6% as Lula’s inauguration speech sparked investor
fears of interventionist government policies. The national currency –
the real – saw its value slide by 1.5%.
Lula’s predecessor, the populist far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, led
an administration mired in controversies ranging from corruption to
environmental devastation. Lula’s own government was brought down by
massive corruption in Petrobras, which led to the impeachment of his
hand-picked successor in 2016.
mexiconewsdaily |Overall, the magazine highlighted
that, in a year characterized by economic struggles worldwide, some
previously weak performers – such as Mediterranean countries – had
proven surprisingly resilient in the face of geopolitical uncertainty
and global supply shocks.
President López Obrador highlighted
the result at his Wednesday morning press conference, boasting that
Mexico had come out ahead of Canada, Japan, France, Italy, Belgium,
Switzerland, Britain and eventhe United States.
“We’re doing well,” he said. “2023
will be better, much better, because we already have the momentum, and
in politics momentum counts for a lot… Mexico is on the list of
countries with the most advantages to invest.”
Both AMLO and his supporters on
social media took the opportunity to hit back at The Economist for past
statements critical of the president, including a May 2021cover story that described AMLO as a “false messiah” who “pursues ruinous policies by improper means.”
“[And now] we are in sixth place in the world in economic performance,” the president said, emphasizing that The Economist “is not sympathetic to us.”
Fact-checkers were quick to point out
that The Economist’s list does not include all the countries in the
world, but only 34 of the 38 countries that make up the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Furthermore, Mexico’s continued strong performance is far from guaranteed. Themost recent figures
from the national statistics agency (INEGI) show that Mexico’s economic
growth stagnated towards the end of 2022, with the Bank of Mexico now
forecasting 2.9% growth across the whole year.Growth predictions for 2023 have been revised downwards several times, with one recent analysis forecasting 1.1%.
nakedcapitalism | But you are unlikely to hear much about Mexico’s unconventional
economic success story in the mainstream media, whether in Mexico, the
US, Europe or other parts of Latin America. After all, it might
encourage others to follow suit.
Over the past four years, the mainstream media has consistently
derided or attacked the AMLO government’s reform agenda, including its
promotion of energy security, its rewriting of the rules for outsourcing
and its nationalization of lithium. Even today, most MSM coverage
attributes the lion’s share of Mexico’s economic success in 2022 to
“external factors”, such as increased consumer demand and investment
from the US.
Every time AMLO has tried to pursue policies that generally favor
Mexico’s broader economy, dire warnings erupt that investors, both
domestic and foreign, will stampede for the exits. A case in point: one
of AMLO’s first acts in government was to cancel a $13-billion airport
for the capital that was almost one-third finished, around $5 billion
over budget, mired in allegations of corruption and posed serious
environmental downsides. In effect, he took his presidential predecessor
Enrique Peña Nieto’s legacy infrastructure project and ripped it up,
for a slew of good reasons. And in doing so, he sent a clear signal to
Mexico’s business elite that the time for “business as usual” was over.
But he also made sure that the investors holding the bonds that had
financed the unfinished project were paid in due course. And contrary to
what many economists, bankers and media pundits had warned, investors
did not rush for the exits.
Nor was there a mad stampede when the AMLO government began strong-arming
domestic and global corporations into finally settling their
decades-long tax debts with the Mexican state. Until AMLO’s arrival, no
government had even bothered to try. Coca-Cola bottler Femsa, and brewer
Grupo Modelo, a division of the world’s largest brewer Anheuser-Busch
InBev, paid hundreds of millions of dollars in current taxes and back
taxes. So too did Walmart and a host of other companies.
As a result, the government was able to raise more tax funds in 2020
than in 2019, without raising taxes on the middle classes. Again, no
rush to the exits, though some companies, such as Canadian mining giant First Majestic Silver Corp, are still refusing to pay up.
In fact, Mexico is fast becoming a magnet for foreign investment, as
corporations, particularly from the US, shift their focus from China to a
production base that is similarly cheap but closer to home. In the
first three quarters of 2022 Mexico received record levels of foreign
direct investment, much of it from the US. According to research by the
McKinsey Global Institute, American investors poured more money into
Mexico than into China last year. As the NYTkindly pointed out, for American companies moving business to Mexico location is the main driver:
Shipping a container full of goods to the United States
from China generally requires a month — a time frame that doubled and
tripled during the worst disruptions of the pandemic. Yet factories in
Mexico and retailers in the United States can be bridged within two
weeks.
A coterie of Mexican business lobbies have even suggested
that Mexico could become a vast investment hub for the whole of the
American continent. If this happens, the biggest beneficiaries, of
course, will be transnational corporations, mainly from the US. For
Mexico, it will mean even closer integration with the US economy, which
already accounts for over 85% of Mexican exports.
Just how much economic policy independence future Mexican governments
will have under such an arrangement remains to be seen, though the
answer is likely to be “not much”. The US and Canada are already locked
in a trade dispute with Mexico over AMLO’s energy reforms. It also means
that wherever the US economy goes — and signs are that it is heading
toward a recession — Mexico will quickly follow. And what was this year a
blessing could quickly become a curse.
NYTimes | “Everybody who
sources from China understands that there’s no way to get around that
Pacific Ocean — there’s no technology for that,” said Raine Mahdi,
founder of Zipfox, a San Diego-based company that links factories in
Mexico with American companies seeking alternatives to Asia. “There’s
always this push from customers: ‘Can you get it here faster?’”
During
the first 10 months of last year, Mexico exported $382 billion of goods
to the United States, an increase of more than 20 percent over the same
period in 2021, according to U.S. census data. Since 2019, American imports of Mexican goods have swelled by more than one-fourth.
In
2021, American investors put more money into Mexico — buying companies
and financing projects — than into China, according to an analysis by
the McKinsey Global Institute.
China
will almost certainly remain a central component of manufacturing for
years to come, say trade experts. But the shift toward Mexico represents
a marginal reapportionment of the world’s manufacturing capacity amid
recognition of volatile hazards — from geopolitical realignments to the
intensifying challenges of climate change.
“It’s not about deglobalization,” said Michael Burns, managing partner
at Murray Hill Group, an investment firm focused on the supply chain.
“It’s the next stage of globalization that is focused on regional
networks.”
That Mexico looms as a potential means of
cushioning Americans from the pitfalls of globalization amounts to a
development rich in historical irony.
Three
decades ago, Ross Perot, the business magnate then running for
president, warned of “a giant sucking sound going south” in depicting
Mexico as a job-capturing threat to American livelihoods.
“The
reality is that Mexico is the solution to some of our challenges,” said
Shannon K. O’Neil, a Latin America specialist at the Council on Foreign
Relations in New York. “Trade that is closer by from Canada or Mexico
is much more likely to create and protect U.S. jobs.”
Given
that the United States, Mexico and Canada operate within an expansive
trade zone, their supply chains are often intertwined. Each contributes
parts and raw materials used in finished goods by the others. Cars
assembled in Mexico, for example, draw heavily on parts produced at
factories in the United States.
Overall,
some 40 percent of the value of Mexico’s exports to the United States
consists of parts and components made at American plants, according to a
seminal research paper. Yet only 4 percent of imports from China are American-made.
citizen | The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was sold to the people of all three countries with grand promises. Mexicans were promised NAFTA would raise their wages and bring Mexicans’ standards of living closer to the United States and Canada. Instead, after 25 years, real wages in Mexico are down from already low pre-NAFTA wages, two million Mexicans engaged in farming lost their livelihoods and lands, tens of thousands of small businesses have gone bankrupt as American big-box retailers moved in, and poverty remains widespread. And, Mexican taxpayers have paid foreign investors more than $204 million in compensation following Investor-State Dispute Settlement attacks.
Prior to NAFTA, 21.4 percent of Mexico’s population earned less than the minimum income needed for food, a share that has barely budged in the 25 years since NAFTA’s implementation. Today, over half of the Mexican population and over 60 percent of the rural population still fall below the poverty line, contrary to the promises made by NAFTA’s proponents. On the 10-year anniversary of NAFTA, the Washington Post reported: “19 million more Mexicans are living in poverty than 20 years ago, according to the Mexican government and international organizations.”
Before NAFTA, Mexico only imported corn and other basic food commodities if local production did not meet domestic needs. NAFTA eliminated Mexican tariffs on corn and other commodities. NAFTA terms also required revocation of programs supporting small farmers. But NAFTA did not discipline U.S. subsidies on agriculture. The result was disastrous for millions of people in the Mexican countryside whose livelihoods relied on agriculture. Amid a NAFTA-spurred influx of cheap U.S. corn, the price paid to Mexican farmers for the corn that they grew fell by 66 percent, forcing many to abandon farming. From 1991 to 2007, about 2 million Mexicans engaged in farming and related work lost their livelihoods. Mexico’s participation in NAFTA was conditioned on changing its revolutionary-era Constitution’s land reforms, undoing provisions that guaranteed small plots (“ejidos”) to millions of Mexicans living in rural villages. As corn prices plummeted, indebted farmers lost their land, which newly could be acquired by foreign firms that consolidated prime acres into large plantations.
According to a New Republic exposé: “as cheap American foodstuffs flooded Mexico’s markets and as U.S. agribusiness moved in, 1.1 million small farmers – and 1.4 million other Mexicans dependent upon the farm sector – were driven out of work between 1993 and 2005. Wages dropped so precipitously that today the income of a farm laborer is one-third that of what it was before NAFTA.” The exposé noted that, as jobs and wages fell, many rural Mexicans joined the ranks of the 12 million undocumented immigrants competing for low-wage jobs in the United States.
As I've previously reported, the Department of Homeland Security's new definition of "domestic extremist" includes not only anti-government groups on the right but also anti-establishment left-wing groups such as animal rights and environmental activists:https://t.co/7INcvJjjk8pic.twitter.com/JOaHpeoPEh
piie | This paper is about the critics of the “doers” of globalization. It describes who they are, where they came from, what they want, how economists, policymakers, and others might understand them better, and where globalization might head from here. Many critics are themselves strongly internationalist and want to see globalization proceed, but under different rules. Some, particularly the protesters in the streets, focus mainly on what is wrong with the world. But some of them put forward broad alternative visions and others offer detailed recommendations for alleviating the problems they see arising from status quo globalization. Most of them have roots in long-standing transnational advocacy efforts to protect human rights and the environment and reduce poverty around the world. What brings them together today is their shared concern that the process by which globalization’s rules are being written and implemented is undermining democracy and failing to spread the benefits broadly. This paper sketches the key issues and concerns that motivate the critics in a way that is broadly representative and intelligible to economists. It finds more resonance for the critics’ agenda in economics than they commonly recognize. And it attempts to capture the concerns of Southern as well as Northern critics and to analyze the issues that divide as well as bring them together. Finally, it evaluates those issues and alternative proposals on which even globalization enthusiasts and the critics might come together cooperatively.
greenwald |“Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021,” the March 1 Report
from the Director of National Intelligence states that it was prepared
“in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland
Security—and was drafted by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC),
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).”
Its primary point is this: “The IC [intelligence community] assesses
that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of
ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the
United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.” While
asserting that “the most lethal” of these threats is posed by “racially
or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent
extremists (MVEs),” it makes clear that its target encompasses a wide
range of groups from the left (Antifa, animal rights and environmental
activists, pro-choice extremists and anarchists: “those who oppose
capitalism and all forms of globalization”) to the right (sovereign
citizen movements, anti-abortion activists and those deemed motivated by
racial or ethnic hatreds).
The U.S. security state apparatus
regards the agenda of “domestic violent extremists” as “derived from
anti-government or anti-authority sentiment,” which includes “opposition
to perceived economic, racial or social hierarchies.” In sum, to the
Department of Homeland Security, an “extremist” is anyone who opposes
the current prevailing ruling class and system for distributing power.
Anyone they believe is prepared to use violence, intimidation or
coercion in pursuit of these causes then becomes a “domestic violent
extremist,” subject to a vast array of surveillance, monitoring and
other forms of legal restrictions:
This year began on February 24. Without prefaces and preludes. Sharply. Early. At 4 o'clock.
It was dark. It was loud. It was hard for many and scary for some.
311 days have passed. It can still be dark, loud, and complicated for
us. But we will definitely never be afraid again. And we'll never be
ashamed.
It was our year. Year of Ukraine. Year of Ukrainians.
We woke up on February 24. Into another life. Being another people.
Another Ukrainians. The first missiles finally destroyed the labyrinth
of illusions. We saw who was who. What friends and enemy are capable of,
and most importantly, what we are capable of.
On February 24, millions of us made a choice. Not a white flag, but a
blue and yellow flag. Not escaping, but meeting. Meeting the enemy.
Resisting and fighting.
The explosions on February 24 stunned us. Since then we have not
heard everything. And we don't listen to everyone. We were told: you
have no other option but to surrender. We say: we have no other option
than to win.
On February 24, we began to create our victory. From many bricks – hundreds of other victories.
We have overcome the panic. We did not run away but united. We have
overcome doubts, despair, and fear. We believed in ourselves and in our
strength. The Armed Forces of Ukraine. Intelligence. National Guard.
SBU. Special Operations Forces. Border guards. Territorial defense
forces. Air defense forces. The police. The State Emergency Service. All
our defense and security forces. I am proud of you all, our warriors!
This year can be called a year of losses for Ukraine, for the whole
of Europe, and the whole world. But it's wrong. We shouldn't say that.
We haven't lost anything. It was taken from us. Ukraine did not lose
its sons and daughters – they were taken away by murderers. Ukrainians
did not lose their homes – they were destroyed by terrorists. We did not
lose our lands – they were occupied by invaders. The world did not lose
peace – Russia destroyed it.
This year has struck our hearts. We've cried out all the tears. All
the prayers have been yelled. 311 days. We have something to say about
every minute. But most of the words are superfluous. They are not
needed. No explanations or decorations are needed. Silence is needed to
hear. Pauses are needed to realize.
More #Ukranian soldiers telling their president that they are coming for him and all the other politicians if they can only survive this. pic.twitter.com/S30gKpdtAR
Pravda |Background: On 13 December, the Verkhovna Rada approved
and directed the President to sign draft law No. 8271, which
significantly strengthens the criminal liability of the military. A
petition asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy to promise this law gained more than
25,000 votes in a day.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,
stated that he supports the law No. 8271, which increases the criminal
liability of military personnel for disobeying combat orders, deserting
the battlefield or a military unit.
Quote: "Today I have to raise a rather difficult
topic: increased responsibility [of military personnel — ed.] for
voluntarily leaving a military unit or place of service, desertion,
voluntary leaving the battlefield or refusal to act with weapons,
disobedience, and failure to comply with combat orders.
I support the relevant amendments to the legislation adopted by the
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [Ukrainian Parliament — ed.] and ask the
President to sign the law. My opinion clearly reflects the position of
commanders of groups and military units, who demanded a systematic
solution to this set of issues."
Details: The army exists on discipline, Zalyzhnyi empasised.
And if gaps in the legislation do not ensure its compliance, and
"refuseniks" can pay a fine of up to 10% of combat pay, or receive a
probationary sentence, this is unfair, the Commander-in-Chief believes.
Quote: "Furthermore, this is key: exposed areas of
the front are forced to be covered by other servicemen, which leads to
increased losses of personnel, territories, and civilians on them.
Often, lost positions have to be restored by assault actions at a very
high cost. This should not be the case."
BBC | Speaking
after Vladimir Putin delivered a New Year address flanked by people in
military uniform, Mr Zelensky said the Russian president was hiding
behind his troops, not leading them.
At least one person died and dozens were injured in the attacks.
The
head of Ukraine's armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhny, said air defences had
shot down 12 of 20 Russian cruise missiles on Saturday.
There
were further missile strikes on Kyiv just hours into the New Year on
Sunday, officials said. The Ukrainian Air force said it had shot down 45
Iranian-made kamikaze drones overnight.
But
the strikes, which came in the opening hours of 2023, fuelled anger and
hate among Ukrainians already tired of Russia's unrelenting air
campaign.
As
explosions rocked the capital, some residents sang the national anthem,
while officials accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians
while they gathered to celebrated the New Year.
Andriy
Nebitov, the head of the Kyiv police, posted an image to social media
of a downed drone with the words "Happy New Year" scribbled across it in
Russian.
"That
is everything you need to know about the terror state and its army," he
wrote on Facebook, adding that the remains had crashed in a children's
playground.
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