As banks in India cut off access to cryptocurrencies, the government is rolling out a big brother financial grid complete with their own digital currency.
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JODHPUR RAJASTHAN (INTELLIHUB) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken two nasty spills during her travels to India, the most recent of which landed her a visit to the emergency room early Thursday morning after she fell in a slippery bathtub late Wednesday night, reports a local publication out of India.
In a turn of bad luck, the former Madam Secretary slipped and fell while taking a bath at the Umaid Bhawan Palace marking her second fall in just a two day span. Just one day prior, on Tuesday, Clinton had fallen on the steps of a mosque in Madhya Pradesh.
Clinton was taken to Goyal Hospital around 5 a.m. Thursday morning where she learned that she had a hairline fracture in her arm.
The post Hillary Clinton takes two spills in two days, fractures wrist after falling in bathtub appeared first on Intellihub.
A top United States Air Force general has admitted that the US is powerless against hypersonic missiles capable of killing millions of people. Air Force General John Hyten testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 20 and admitted the horrifying reality.
When asked about the effectiveness of US defenses, General Hyten revealed the country would be powerless against some state-of-the-art weapons, such as the hypersonic missiles currently in the hands of the Chinese and Russians. According to The Daily Star, hypersonic missiles can deploy warheads that travel at 20 times the speed of sound and can dodge air defenses as they loop through the skies.
“We have a very difficult – well, our defense is our deterrent capability,” said Hyten. “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us, so our response would be our deterrent force, which would be the triad and the nuclear capabilities that we have to respond to such a threat.” Hyten eluded that should the US be attacked with one such missile, that the military could respond with a nuclear attack.
These comments come as fears of a third world war continue to heighten and among the major advancements in the Russian and Chinese weapons technology. Both of these countries would be a force to be reckoned with should another world war break out.
The Russians have been accomplishing a great deal in stealth technology, especially with Kilo-class boats converted into stealth subs. Dubbed “the black holes of the Russian Navy,” these quiet refitted diesel subs with the stealth technology are starting to roll steadily off of the assembly lines.
The Chinese are also upgrading their submarine fleet from a technological perspective (the boat) and also making improvements in their missile systems. Such actions come on the heels of American positioning in the Pacific. –SHTFPlan
Zhou Chenming, a Beijing-based military observer, previously warned of the dangers posed by the sophisticated technology. “Compared to conventional ballistic missiles, HGVs are more complex and difficult to intercept,” Zhou said. “The US, Japan, and India should be worried about China’s developments in HGV technology because it can reach targets quicker and more accurately, with military bases in Japan and even nuclear reactors in India being targeted.”
Hillary Clinton’s trip to India is giving us flashbacks to the blame she instituted immediately after losing a rigged election to Donald Trump in 2016. She’s once again blaming others for the sins of the Democratic party and herself.
The infamous and corrupt Democrat made comments recently that were scapegoating at best. She blamed racism and misogyny for her loss while taking stumbles in front of the cameras, while most of the blame fell on “white men” who somehow coerced women into voting for Trump.
Back in 2016, and well into 2017, Hillary blamed anyone she could but her criminally corrupt self for losing the election, so really, this isn’t a big surprise.
During her appearance in India over the weekend, Hillary made a scene claiming she lost the 2016 presidential race in part because white women didn’t stand up to the men in their lives pressuring them to vote for Donald Trump. “We do not do well with white men and we don’t do well with married, white women,” Clinton said at a conference in Mumbai, India. “And part of that is an identification with the Republican Party, and a sort of ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever believes you should.”
Clinton had been asked why about 52 percent of white women voted for Trump, despite the “Access Hollywood” tape showing him using vulgar language in the days before the election. While being interviewed on stage by India Today editor-in-chief Aroon Purie, Clinton accused Trump of running a “backwards” campaign that appealed to racists and misogynists. “I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product,” Clinton said. “So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was looking backwards.”
She also claimed Trump’s message to voters was: “You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs. You don’t want, you know, to see that Indian American succeeding more than you are.”
Are women individuals or not, Hillary? Can they decide things on their own or not? You can’t have it both ways. If women are so independent, then they made their own decision on whom to vote for.
The world is watching the conflict in the Kashmir region of the India/Pakistan border with bated breath. Not receiving much attention in the mainstream media, is the war breaking out right now on the other side of the globe.
Just last week, Pakistan declared it was “worried” about India’s drone technology, and now the Pakistani military has declared they’ve shot down an Indian drone.
According to The Express UK, the Islamabad military issued a statement yesterday declaring that the craft had been shot down after violating Pakistan airspace. “Pakistan Army troops shot down an Indian spy drone while it violated LoC in Chirikot Sector. The drone has been taken over by Pakistan Army troops. This is 4th drone which has been shot down by Pakistan Army troops in last one year,” the statement read.
This comes just one day after Chinese president Xi Jinping flexed his military muscle in the area of Doklam, a retired lieutenant general from the Indian Army’s Special Forces has claimed. “But war is very much in the realm of reality, and India must be prepared to fight and can ill afford to let its guard down on either the Pakistani or the Chinese front. India must prepare for a two-and-a-half-front war,” said Prakash Katoch.
While Americans fight on social media over whose rights should be taken away and dope up on their antidepressants, other nations are gearing up for a horrific war. Mohammad Faisal, the Foreign Office spokesman for Islamabad, displayed heightened concerns in a weekly media briefing. “India’s development of drone technology is worrying when seen in the larger context of its buildup and expansion of military capabilities in the conventional and non-conventional domains, which are subjecting regional strategic stability to increasing strain.”
As confrontations between the two nuclear-armed nations continue to rise, Pakistan pointed the finger at New Delhi last week for committing 400 ceasefire violations in contested areas. Pakistan has vowed to seek revenge on India for their aggression, while New Delhi points the finger at Pakistan.
The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, visited India on February 15-17, and talked with the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The visit is noteworthy for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the fact that it took place at all.
For it was a significant foreign policy initiative, taken by one of the two ‘pariah states’ which, along with ‘revisionist states’ were seen, until recently, as the source of the main national security threats facing the ‘leading global superpower’.
Iran’s leadership was not intimidated by that attitude, or pressurized into keeping a low profile. In fact, Iran has achieved something very significant, and not just anywhere, but in a country that the ‘global leader’ considers to be almost an ally in its rivalry with China, one of the two ‘revisionist states’.
The key word being ‘almost’: while India’s government has clearly, and quite understandably, sought to develop its strategic relationship with Washington, it has not accepted any enforceable obligations that would tie it to America. At least, not yet. India has therefore never completely broken off its relations (although they were ‘frozen’ for a while) either with Iran or with the other ‘pariah state’ named by the USA- North Korea.
It can be confidently stated that, however mutual relations between the USA, China and India develop, India will not break off its relations with Iran. That is despite the fact that, just four or five years ago, Washington’s threats were a barrier to any improvement in those relations.
Similar threats were heard when Narendra Modi announced that he would travel to Teheran in 2016, (a visit which Hassan Rouhani returned when he travelled to India this month). The then US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Nisha Desai Biswal, said that the USA had been ‘very clear with the Indians (about) continuing restrictions on activities with respect to Iran.
But the leadership of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, headed by Narendra Modi, was already aware of its status on the international stage. It therefore ignored the new warning from Washington, and the Indian premier, who was visiting Teheran at the time, signed an agreement that was highly important for both parties and which turned out to be an important move in the political game being played out in the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions.
In a Memorandum of Understanding India agreed to extend $500,000,000 credit to Iran for the development of the Chabahar port facility, located on the Gulf of Oman, 100 km from Iran’s border with Pakistan. A 600 km section of railway between Chabahar and Zahedan,currently under construction, will link the port facility with Afghanistan’s transport infrastructure. That railway, by the way, is another joint project with India.
India is thus achieving a very important strategic goal: an access route to Afghanistan (starting with a sea crossing from Mumbai to Chabahar) that bypasses Pakistan.
India’s desire for a certain amount of say in relation to the situation in Afghanistan is not solely due to its understandable wish to oppose the partnership of China and Pakistan: it also reflects a widespread sense among India’s political elite that their country is the heir to ‘British India’. If it continues to develop at its current rate, then maybe it is not too far-fetched to imagine that one day India will be able to call itself the ‘heir to the British Empire’- something Britain is very far from being able to do.
In their comments on the Indo-Iranian Chabahar port project, experts often suggest that it may become as important for India as the port of Gwadar (also 100 km away from Iran’s border with Pakistan, but on the Pakistani side) is for China. Construction of that port facility, largely funded by China, has been under way for the past 15-20 years.
As for Afghanistan itself, just as it was 100 or 200 years ago, it is again in the center of a “Great Game’ for control over Central and South Asia- but this time it is not being played by London and Moscow, but by a new group of countries. Finding itself caught in the cross fire of their rivalries, the Kabul government, trying to find its own way in an arena of competing forces, is more or less openly siding with India.
The complex Chabahar port project is therefore particularly important for Kabul, as well. That is why, in May 2016, the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, participated in the Trilateral Agreement on the creation of a ‘transit corridor’ linking Chabahar with Afghanistan’s transport infrastructure. That last project was confirmed in a separate article of the India – Iran Joint Statement which was signed in May 2016, during Narendra Modi’s visit to Teheran.
The project will enable Afghanistan to have access to the sea through ‘friendly’ Iran, bypassing Pakistan, a country with which its relations, as Kabul puts it officially, ‘leave much to be desired’.
As for the Joint Statement adopted during Hassan Rouhani’s visit to India, it is noteworthy, like the Joint Statement issued two years ago, because of the reference to the ‘cordial atmosphere’ in which ‘wide-ranging and constructive discussions on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues were held’. The Statement also expresses satisfaction with the progress in various aspects of the cooperation between the two countries which was initiated during Narendra Modi’s visit to Tehran two years ago.
The document also refers to the completion of the first phase of the modernization of Chabahar port in December 2017, the ratification of the above-mentioned Trilateral Agreement by all of its parties, and the completed delivery of ‘the first shipment of Indian wheat’ to Afghanistan through the new infrastructure.
The joint declaration reiterates India’s and Iran’s participation in the creation of an ‘International North- South Transport Corridor’, with its end points in Saint-Petersburg and Mumbai.
The document covers almost all aspects of international relations, but the section on ‘Security and Defense Cooperation’ is particularly noteworthy. It is not long (just three short articles) but it serves to highlight once again the international context in which it appeared, which is conditioned on Iran’s being effectively declared an enemy by India’s main potential ally.
Specifically, it states that ‘both leaders welcomed the growing interaction between their National Security Councils and agreed to enhance regular and institutionalized consultations between them.’
This success in establishing close links with one of the leading countries in the Greater Middle East region is particularly important for India just now, when China is strengthening its position in countries such as Myanmar, Nepal, Sri-Lanka, and the Maldives, not to mention Pakistan.
In their commentaries, Indian experts have highlighted not only the clear benefits that India could obtain from developing its relationship with Iran, but also the hidden challenges it might face. Those challenges are connected with the complexities of the political and economic situation in Iranian society, and also with problems related to the ‘cleavages existing in the Greater Middle East’, a process Iran is directly involved in.
For example, Iran is now on the edge of a direct military conflict with Israel, a country that India has long had mutually beneficial relations with (for example, it has bought state-of-the-art military hardware from Israel). These relations were confirmed during the recent visit of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to New Delhi.
One more serious challenge for New Delhi is Iran’s worsening relationship with Saudi Arabia and the USA.
It seems clear, however, that all the possible risks connected with the rapprochement between the two countries are well understood in both New Delhi and Teheran.
The most important thing is that, as we have already stated, those risks should not prevent the leaders of both countries from increasing their cooperation on a broad range of issues, which in turn will become an important element in the complex political puzzle throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions.
Vladimir Terekhov, expert on issues relating to the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
As the world quietly goes about their business, Pakistan has vowed to get revenge on India after an attack. The tensions between the two nations are quickly spiraling out of control leading many to wonder if World War 3 will break out in the area soon.
According to the Express UK, the devastating attack from India along the contested border known as the Line of Control (LoC) as tensions between the two South Asian nations flare, a retired soldier has claimed. The LoC splits the region of Kashmir, with Pakistan owning one side and India, the other. The region of Kashmir has been contested by both countries for decades causing high levels of tensions between the neighboring states.
Fayaz Ahmad, a politician from the Kashmir region of India, stated that announcements were made over some loudspeakers on the Pakistan side of Balakote that have declared acts of “retaliation” will take place. “They said that India has killed many of our soldiers, we will take revenge for it after we bury our dead today. People are advised to take safety precautions,” said Ahmad.
Another resident in the region, Naseer Ahmad, spoke of “bombs exploding” and bullets being fired in the midst of heavy shelling. “All one could hear was the sound of bullets hitting tin or bombs exploding. The firing continued from morning till evening. We could see smoke from the hills around us. We are stressed. We don’t know what will happen when it will stop,” said the resident.
On Sunday New Delhi said that Pakistan had been “punished” for its “misadventure”, according to Brigadier Y.S Ahlawat of the Indian Army. “In a befitting reply, the Indian Army has retaliated accurately with heavy fire on the Pakistani posts which were involved in ceasefire violations,” Ahlawat said.
Although India claimed that they were responding to aggression from Pakistan, an Indian resident in the area of the violation insisted that New Delhi started firing on its neighbor first. “The firing started from our side and then the Pakistanis also opened fire,” said the Indian resident.
But both sides have been accused of engaging in violations to the ceasefire that is supposed to be in agreement along the contested border. Both sides also accuse the other of regularly violating the ceasefire agreement in the hotly contested area of the LoC. Late last month, Pakistan terrorist groups were accused of “conspiring to wage a war” against India.
Tensions between the two nations have led to actual confrontations and actions, sparking fears that World War 3 is just around the corner. Since February 22, the two South Asian nations have exchanged fire from both guns and mortars that have forced an estimated 2,600 residents in five villages to desperately flee areas of rising tensions. India recently disclosed that it was forced to evacuate “over 36,000” people from other areas along its border as ceasefire violations between itself and its neighbor continue to mount.
While people in the United States eat Tide Pods and come up with ways to destroy the rights of others, war is breaking out around key parts of the world and most are unaware. And history has shown everyone that once a war breaks out, the US war machine can’t help but make sure they add fuel the fire.
In late January 2018, the media reported that India is finalizing a document with France (apparently it would become official in early March during a visit by French President E. Macron to Delhi) on military logistics similar to the USA of August 2016, according to which the Indian fleet can use military installations in both Diego Garcia and Guam, as well as other bases in different regions of the world. It was signed after 10 years of difficult negotiations. And it seems to be contagious – the agreements with Paris will also open doors of French bases to the Navy ships of the Republic, especially in the Indian Ocean.
But admittedly, this decision of the French side is not so genuine. A few months after the signing of the agreement between Washington and Delhi in April 2017, India received a similar proposal from Australia, which even presented a draft of a future document and has an accumulated long-term experience of implementing such agreement with the United States. Today, this step was prompted by the growing concern over the marked intensification of the Chinese fleet in the Pacific and Indian oceans, especially at their junction, and in waters near the fifth continent.
Thus, the Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Peter Jennings drew the attention of experts to the appearance of not individual Chinese diesel submarines, but several flotillas with different types of military vessels. This fact was confirmed by air photographs taken on January 2, 2017. And the senior analyst of the same institute, E. Berger, noted that the Chinese, having opened a first full-scale overseas base in Djibouti in August 2017, intends to create the same near the modernized port of Gwadar soon, which can also be easily transformed into a military base that is logical in connection with the objectives of the “One Belt, One Road Initiative”.
Controversy is evoked concerning active collection of intelligence on the possibilities of participants in various sea maneuvers (e.g. RIMPAC), which is carried out not only by Chinese warships but also by the research vessels. The latter are increasingly dispatched by Beijing to study the bottom of Antarctica as well. And this could mean the close coordination of the Chinese military with the State Oceanic Administration, as well as their greater involvement in the Antarctic, a seemingly peaceful program.
Apparently, a lengthy discussion, not devoid of slyness, about whether or not to have foreign bases concluded in Beijing. Since 2015, large-scale plans to find new firm bases and ports that the Chinese would like to “develop” appear regularly in the Defense departments. Specifically, Chongjin (North Korea), Port Moresby (Papua – New Guinea), Sihanoukville (Cambodia), Koh Lanta port (Thailand), Sittwe (Myanmar), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Lagos (Nigeria), Mombasa (Kenya), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Luanda (Angola), Walvis (Namibia), Maldives, Seychelles, etc. Later it expanded and can also be pointed at Laem Chabang in Thailand, Batam in Indonesia and others (more than 18 zones in the Indian Ocean area alone).
By the end of 2015, the establishment of port networks between 10 Chinese and 5 Malaysian ports was announced. Several more are planned next in line to its connection -Kuantan, Melaka, Kedawang, etc. The ports of Australia- Williamstown, Langbridge (near Darwin), Kunavara, Townsville and others were not neglected, in which Chinese investment companies actively rebuilding the infrastructure, thus preparing a platform for strategic needs including for Maritime Silk Road (MSR) etc. As a rule, they are all located near military bases or facilities of Commonwealth of Australia or the USA. According to the estimation of a well-known specialist B. Hertz, Beijing in total intends to implement the «One Belt, One Way» project along the maritime and land lines- an extensive program of construction of military bases on the territories of more than 60 states of Asia, Europe and Africa.
In response to the appeal of the Australian authorities to strengthen “military-to-military” relationship through the proposed LEMOA pact. In the face of Beijing’s activism and certain aggression in the region, India said that it will refrain from the final decision for the time being since it would like to reach an operational level of such an agreement with Washington initially, and then raise the question of adopting other documents of this kind with other partners.
With regard to the logistics agreement with Paris, it will allow India to gain access to the base of Réunion, not far from Madagascar, as well as to the French military facilities in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, i.e. in important areas on the western flank of the Indo-oceanic zone. Almost simultaneously with the development of the agreement with France in New Delhi, the possibilities of projects for the creation of bases in Oman and the Seychelles were taken into consideration. In fact, on January 29, 2018, India established an agreement with the Seychelles authorities on the construction of military infrastructure (pier for warships and a runway for large aircraft, but without nuclear weapons on their sides) on Assumption Island and access to their use in the future.
On the east flank of the Indian Ocean, during the November 2017 meeting of the “Dialogue of Defense ministers”, India successfully signed an agreement with Singapore on expanding bilateral cooperation at sea, in particular the deployment of floating platforms and access to local military facilities (especially the Charjee Base) for a longer term, as well as joint maneuvers and extensive maritime observation missions of the Navy and the Indian Air Force in the South Korean and Andaman Seas. India’s new capabilities in its strategy of strengthening its position under the slogan “Indian Ocean should be Indian” will significantly expand the network of strong points and bases that were built earlier: an interception station in Madagascar linked to similar ones in Kochi and Mumbai; GME in Farkhor or Ayni (Tajikistan); access right to Vietnamese ports and certain military facilities; Radar installations on all 26 Maldives atolls associated with Indian radar systems. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the developing of extensive military and technical ties with Mozambique, Qatar, the construction of a satellite tracking centre in southern Vietnam, the protection of EEZ of island states, counter-terrorism measures, arms shipments to Nepal, Bhutan and other countries.
Undoubtedly, it is necessary to completely understand the difference between full-scaled military bases and strong points or separate military constructions, whose access or own construction is being targeted by the two Asian giant rivals. However, we cannot fail to acknowledge the increasingly harsh nature of this rivalry. A vivid example of their confrontation is the unpredictable situation in the Gulf of Oman around modernized ports of Chahbahar (India) and Gwadar (China). In January 2018, news broke out about Beijing negotiations with Karachi on the construction of a second foreign base in Jiwani on the border with Iran, which is 85 km from Gwadar.
Evidently, this paradox testifies not only to the raging “race for bases” in the Indo-oceanic zone, but also the apparent attempt by the Chinese military to copy the well-known Pentagon strategy “Pax Americana” to protect free trade and support global stability with the help of military bases located along strategically important lines of communication (SLOCs). According to the opinion of some experts, the Chinese model should probably be named as “Pax Sinica”.
It can be assume with great certainty that India will give its adequate response – approve an agreement with France in March 2018 on LEMOA and will continue to look for new strong points and the next candidate for a similar agreement. For instance, the UK, which by the way, in late August 2017, signed a memorandum of understanding with Oman on the access to military facilities in the Duqm port building a base for supporting joint logistics. This will be a strategic factor for the London restored course “to East of Suez” outside the Persian Gulf, as well as for joint maneuvers including SAIFSAREEA-3 in 2018. New and previous strategic opportunities of Britain in the region are at the mercy of India.
And whether there will be a winner in the next round of “race for bases” or the search for other partners in LEMOA, only time will tell.
Nina Lebedeva, a leading researcher at the Center for Indian Studies at Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.
As China continues to develop its ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative (OBOR), its main competitor in the region, India, is working on its own international infrastructure projects. These are aimed at strengthening India’s influence in the region and providing an alternative to OBOR, which India does not wish to be a part of.
India is not currently able to afford a global project on the scale of OBOR, and its main goal is to set up lasting transport and economic links with its closest neighbors in South and South East Asia. However, this will require considerable effort on India’s part as China’s influence in all these countries is steadily increasing.
Among India’s significant achievements in this field, we can highlight the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement, known in the English-language press as the BBIN MVA. The BBIN initiative (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) is an agreement between its members to enable the discussion of questions that affect them all, and the adoption of joint policies. It covers matters such as cooperation on the use of water resources, electric power and transport infrastructure.
India initially intended the Motor Vehicles Agreement to include more countries. In November 2014 it proposed the Agreement at the 18th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which includes Afghanistan, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as the BBIN countries. However, Pakistan, India’s long-term adversary, objected to the proposal and therefore the Agreement was not adopted by SAARC. India then decided to promote the Agreement at the BBIN level.
A meeting of the BBIN Transport Ministers took place in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, in June 2015, where they signed the MVA. This Agreement allows motor vehicles (including cars, goods vehicles, buses etc.) from one of the member countries to enter another member country once it has obtained the necessary electronic permit and gone through border control. This is an important step forward in the ongoing process of integration between the four countries. Thanks to the BBIN MVA, goods being transported from one of the BBIN countries to another no longer need to be unloaded and then loaded onto a new vehicle at the border. This makes transporting goods both faster and cheaper. It is likely that the Agreement will make transporting both people and goods easier, and thus promote the increase of trade and development of infrastructure in the region.
In October 2017 India, together with Bangladesh and Nepal, started acting on its obligations under the Agreement. These three countries have already ratified the BBIN MVA, unlike Bhutan. While Bhutan has signed the Agreement, the MVA still lacks the support of the Bhutanese public and the national parliament has not ratified it yet. Nevertheless, Bhutan expects to ratify the Agreement, and has agreed to allow its partners to start putting the Agreement into effect without it.
India has announced that, as part of the BBIN MVA, it intends to create new bus routes between India and major cities in Nepal and Bangladesh, and also take part in road construction in the region.
In January 2018, representatives of India, Bangladesh and Nepal reached agreement on the text of a protocol to the Agreement, setting out the border crossing procedure for passenger buses and private vehicles. The final document will be signed once it has been approved by all the parties.
It has been announced that there have already been a number of trial consignments of goods along the Calcutta-Dhaka-Agartala and Delhi-Calcutta-Dhaka routes.
There is another important project that will increase India’s links with other countries in the region: the bridge that is being built over the river Feni, which forms a major part of the border between India and Bangladesh. The bridge, which is being built near Sabroom (state of Tripura, India) will link the Indian state of Tripura and Khagrachhari district in Bangladesh.
According to the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, who visited the construction site in October 2017, this bridge will become a vital link between the peoples of India and Bangladesh. Its completion will bring about a significant growth in trade and tourism between the two countries.
The bridge is scheduled to be completed in 2020. India has provided most of the funding, and construction is being managed by the Indian National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL).
It is worth pointing out that, while these projects will clearly benefit both India and the region as a whole, they do seem very modest when compared with the Chinese OBOR initiative. As far as international infrastructure projects are concerned, it is very hard for India to compete with China, even though China’s other rivals are supporting the project. For example, the Asian Development Bank is providing technical and financial support to the BBIN MVA project. It is no secret that the leading members of that financial organization are Japan and the USA, which are supporting India in its competition with China. However, there is no news, so far, of any major Indo-American or Indo-Japanese projects that could be a serious competitor to OBOR.
Because of the long-running confrontation between India and China, the BCIM international transport corridor between Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar, proposed by China, has been on hold for many years. The BCIM corridor could link the southern Chinese province of Yunnan with India and Myanmar, via Bangladesh.
The BCIM project, under various names, has been under discussion since the 1990s, and it is now part of the OBOR initiative. If it did materialize then trade would increase considerably throughout the South Asian region, which would bring many benefits to poorer countries in the region, such as Bangladesh and Myanmar, as well as to India and China.
However, the project has repeatedly been postponed, because of the rivalry between India and China for influence in the region. Both countries think of their neighbors Myanmar and Bangladesh as part of their own private sphere of influence, and they are not prepared to accept any interference from competitors there.
India is also unwilling to take part in OBOR. It sees this initiative as an instrument for increasing China’s influence, both in Asia and globally. However, such countries as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka etc. have little interest in the geo-political rivalry between two powerful nations. They are more concerned with their own important problems, including the fight against poverty and social and economic development. In the rivalry between India and China, they will give their support to the party that can actually support their economies. That is why they are ready to agree to be a part of OBOR, which will promote the development of transport infrastructure and trade in the region, create more jobs, etc.
The BBIN MVA, the River Feni Bridge project, and other similar initiatives can be considered as successful moves by India to strengthen its relations with South Asian nations. But these projects are much smaller in scale than China’s ambitious OBOR. As a result, India is, as yet, unable to offer its neighbors in the region any real alternative to OBOR. To keep its influence in South Asia it may have to rethink its attitude to OBOR. It looks like India’s neighbors will take part in that initiative anyway, and it is up to India to decide whether it wants to get on board or not. If India continues to boycott OBOR without providing any real alternative to it, then it may find that it no longer has any significant role in its neighbors’ economies, and that China has taken its place. But if India starts cooperating with China, and also carries on developing its own infrastructure projects, it has the chance to join in OBOR as an important partner and hold onto its status in the region.
Dmitry Bokarev, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
While Big Pharma uses disinformation to fight bacterial infections and the flu in the US, they could be fueling superbugs in India while peddling bad drugs. This is becoming a global epidemic that can only be resolved by actually sharing realistic information about the drug companies.
According to ARS Technica, in August of 2016, doctors in Washoe County, Nevada, found that one of their patients couldn’t shake a bad bacterial infection. The infection had likely taken hold years before while the local woman was on an extended visit to India. While overseas, she had undergone multiple hospitalizations and surgery for a leg injury and eventually developed a bone infection. By the time she got back to Nevada, the infection had spread. The doctors in the United States isolated her in a hospital room and threw all the antibiotics in their arsenal at the infection. It resisted all of them—26 in total, tests confirmed. In early September, the woman developed septic shock and died.
ARS Technica then went on to say that this highlights two very important points: that drug-resistant bacteria don’t stop at borders and that India is of particular concern in the fight against antibiotic-resistant infections. While cases of drug-resistant bacterial infections are rising globally, recent data shows that India has among the highest rates of such infections in the world. The country is also the largest consumer of antibiotics per capita.
But, new data is showing why India appears to be the breeding grounds for antibiotics resistant strains, and it’s all the fault of Big Pharma and their “money before people” philosophy. Drug companies (Big Pharma)are selling millions of dubious and unapproved cocktails of antibiotics in India. All of these could spur the development of drug-resistant bacteria and imperil patients. The finding, published Monday in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology by UK health experts, suggests that the country poses a risk to global health and undermines efforts to control drug resistance. But not because India is inherently unsafe, but because drug companies take advantage of India’s bacterial infections.
The study authors, led by Patricia McGettigan of Queen Mary University of London, recommend firm regulatory action within India to ban these unapproved drug cocktails. They also call for the multinational drug companies producing some of the antibiotic mixtures—such as Abbott, GlaxoSmithKline, Astra Zeneca, Pfizer, and Merck/MSD—to be accountable for their products.
Drug companies “should be required to justify the sale of products in India that do not have the approval of their own national regulators and, in multiple cases, not even the approval of the Indian regulator,” they conclude. –ARS Technica
When reading closely, it can be summarized that drug companies are responsible for the global outbreaks of the antibiotic-resistant strains of infections. But that’s not all. Dosages could also present a problem. The researchers found that drug companies sold 86 regular, so-called “single-dose antibiotics” and 118 “fixed-dose combination” antibiotics over the five-year period. Many of the 118 doses sold in India were “poorly considered,” the authors note. Some combined antibiotics that needed to be taken at different intervals to work
But expecting drug companies to care about the health of their consumers is like asking the government to care about the freedom of their people. The more people Big Pharma hooks on drugs, the more money they make. The more communists the government hooks on their totalitarian programs, the more money the government makes. Putting two and two together to get four is now up to us.
Either the elite globalists and climate alarmists think we are too stupid to understand this bold hypocrisy, or they think they are above the rules they impose on others. It’s actually probably both.
The globalist Davos summit opened with a speech from Narendra Modi, in which he identified climate change as the number one threat to civilization, and called for more wealth transfers from rich countries in order to help poorer nations “adopt appropriate technologies” for reducing climate emissions. Opposition to globalism is another major threat to the elitists, the Indian prime minister warned in his speech. This closely follows on the heels of research published on the eve of the globalist get-together which revealed that CEOs in Western Europe see populism as the biggest threat to their profits.
Pictures: Globalist Davos Summit Buried in Snow as Elites Gather to Discuss Global Warming https://t.co/1m4bhtEWCw
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 23, 2018
Yet, all of these globalists are also hypocrites. More than 1,000 private jet flights have been delivering globalist elites to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland where attendees are discussing (among other topics important to the globalists’ agenda) the “major threat” of the junk science, climate change. Airports around the Swiss ski resort will see the number of private jets spike 335 percent during the annual meeting of world elites, according to Air Charter Service (ACS).
According to Breitbart, Andy Christie, group director for executive jets at ACS, said clients last year opted for expensive “heavy jets” to their lighter, more environmentally-friendly alternatives, with Gulfstream GVs and Global Expresses both being used more than 100 times each.
“With the length of some of the journeys, these slightly larger aircraft would have been needed, but with such wealthy individuals attending, they can afford to use such aircraft from wherever they were coming – as well as the element of larger aircraft being seen as a status symbol,” he said. Research commissioned by the jet hire company found an average 218 private jet movements a day during the weeklong forum, compared to the 65 daily flights Swiss airfields usually deal with.
The mind-blowing hypocrisy of these globalists would be more than mildly amusing if they weren’t also playing chess with our lives.
Government told him if he wanted access to town, he"d have to move. So, this incredible man and father built his own road.
“While people are saying, peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
Are you, man or woman of Christian and European heritage, aware of this prophecy or do you prefer to live in a fancy world of happy-clappy wishful thinking that the brotherhood of men is about to put an end to human conflict once and for all? Though Christmastide is a time of merrymaking, it may also be a period of reflection. The Birth that we celebrate on Christmas Day was perceived by some as such a threat as to justify the Massacre of the Innocents. Peace and good will were closely intertwined with discord and hostility. Do you think we are living in better times? Do you think we are living in Fukuyama’s end of history?
War has persisted throughout history ever since the dawn of mankind. That’s probably the best indicator that it will persist for all eternity. Why should it cease? War for the purposes of this text is not merely the outright hostilities, the firing guns and resounding battle cries. It is a constant strife that is being played out on a day-to-day basis which now and again erupts into its dramatic form of the opposing armies acting on the theatre of war. Why do we broaden the definition of war? If only because casualties – and we mean loss of lives – are not necessarily the highest during the time of the roaring guns. Those sustained during the periods of peace may be just as high or even higher. Case in point: the Yeltsin era in Russia lasting for roughly ten years. Within that decade, life expectancy plummeted from 70 down to 60, which means that the country’s loss of lives amounted to the magnitude comparable to that during any war, which is millions. This loss of life was brought about by social and economic reforms i.e. steps taken supposedly to make the living standards better and these were demanded or suggested or advised by the powers outside Russia. The result? Closed down factories, laid off employees, poverty and the attendant disease and demise of many. Were these not regular hostilities?
War has persisted throughout history in one form or another, though we are only made aware of it acutely when we can smell gunpowder, see ruined buildings and maimed bodies. Yet war is the pith and core of existence. We live by it, we draw from it, and, on a more positive note, it tests our character. The Iliad, Beowulf, Chanson de Roland, Das Nibelungenlied, Jerusalem Delivered, El Cid, the Battle of Kosovo epic circle, and, and, and, to mention only European literary monuments, they are all about adversity, combat, heroic deeds or cowardly misconduct. Why haven’t our poets and bards composed works of goodness, peace and harmony? Being ones of us, they knew the human psyche and they knew that we wouldn’t feel attracted to stories of goodness and love and charity; they knew that if we had paradise on earth, peaceful coexistence and tolerance of everything, we would have nothing to write about or, to put it in modern terms, nothing to make films about.
Think about it. All literary and religious stuff is about conflict, serious and bitter conflict. Our play and entertainment are all about conflict. Look at the popularity of computer war games, at the popularity of sports which are but epitomes of battles and rivalries; look at the popularity of crime stories, at the popularity of – mind you – Star Wars movie series, as if world wars did not fully satisfy our militant fantasizing! We are hardwired for experiencing conflict in one way or another, much though nowadays we are trying to convince ourselves that the opposite is true. Medieval Christian chroniclers, who most often were Christian priests, i.e. preachers of love and charity, rebuked princes for idly staying at home rather than leading their warriors and knights on conquests. Islam was no better in this respect. The first two or so centuries from its inception were characterized by militant conquests: there were no apostles of Good News but rather mounted warriors wielding curved swords. It is only now that we are squeamish about armed conflicts and frown upon crusades or the conquest of the Americas. And yet we do it in a hypocritical way: we have removed words like war, military campaign or intervention from our polite vocabulary and we call these phenomena spreading or saving democracy, preventing humanitarian disasters, defending prosecuted minorities and what not. Nonetheless, by whatever name a rose is known, it is still a rose.
War runs in our blood. We are biologically designed for conflict, for struggle, for overcoming adversity. No globalization, no unification of nations, no removal of class, religious, racial, economic differences will ever do away with war. Conflict in general and war in particular is a result of (i) biology which manifests itself in (ii) economy and (iii) ideology.
(i) The otherwise scientifically-minded Western Man knows it very well as he firmly believes in the evolutionary mechanism i.e. the differentiation of species and struggle for existence. The animal world – and we are part of it, just an extension – is all about fight for survival, competing for females, guarding one’s breeding and hunting grounds. Genetically related individuals (individuals related by blood, as men of old would have said) form in-groups (families, clans, tribes, nations), where loyalty to its members has a top survival value. Heroic literature exploits the motif of loyalty and its moral counterpart, which is treason, to the full. That is how the biological mechanism of in-group loyalty and out-group exclusion has sublimated into ideas, and these have found reflection in works of art and, broadly, ideology, and in all this which is generally referred to as culture. Nations are a biological phenomenon. Ethnicity, not only race, can be determined by looking into genes! No wonder then that ethnic differences are the main fault lines along which conflicts arise. True, different human groups may from time to time exist as neighbours, never really merging with each other, but inevitably their coexistence must end in an eruption of hostilities.
A note here. Some say humans behave according to the dictates of the culture they live in or are born into, hence a change of cultural surroundings will result in the change of the individual’s behaviour, as if man were a piece of malleable stuff to be shaped at will. Wrong. Culture in its broadest sense is the sublimation of biology, not the other way round. Man creates culture; culture does not create man. Islam practised by white Europeans would look entirely different than Islam practised by Arabs and, similarly, Christianity practised by Arabs would not resemble that practised by Europeans.
(ii) In their daily struggle for survival human groups compete for the scarcity of resources and land. This economic competition is yet another powerful source of conflict and, eventually, war. Economy, i.e. the struggle to survive on a daily basis, brings into conflict also the interests of the members of the in-group. Some are employers, others are employees: some make a living from capital, others from labour. There arises a clash between the haves and the have-nots, ending up in violent revolutions. The dispossessed or simply less affluent members of society attempt to rid the well-to-do of their property, the latter defend themselves. A dream of a peaceful coexistence dictated creating a classless society where everybody’s income had to be levelled. That led to civil wars and ultimate impoverishment of whole nations, from Cuba to North Korea. The French revolutionaries, once they launched guillotining people, including their co-revolutionists, just could not stop doing it. Much the same was true of the Russian Bolsheviks: on one hand they started murdering themselves (Comrade Stalin had Comrade Trotsky killed in the far-flung Mexico where the latter had spent years in exile) and purging the party ranks, on the other they starved their own people, peasants and workers, on whose behalf they began the revolution in the first place. The “achievements” of the medieval notorious inquisition pale in comparison to the millions butchered, tortured and imprisoned in concentration camps in Soviet Russia. Think of it: all that was done for the happiness of future generations of a classless and nationless society.
(iii) Ideology, as said above, is the expression of biological instincts. If it takes the form of a religion, it becomes a weapon by means of which a nation’s dominance, conquest, or privileged position is most powerfully explained by the will of a god or gods. To a believer this religious reality is stronger than the physical one. Consider Muslim suicidal attacks or Christian executions of physicians in front of American abortionist clinics. The survival value of a religion may raise one race above others to the status of a chosen people with all attendant consequences; it may create social strata like a caste system in India which, as it has a blessing from a godhead, it is unthinkable to change; it can fossilize the relationship of dominance and subservience. The Western Man tends to disregard religions as superstition so much that he does not accept the facts that believers of whatever faith are ready to sacrifice their life for a cause.
Some of the systems have been advanced for the sole purpose of blessing the whole of humanity with a pretense of introducing an age of eternal peace and brotherhood. Recall the French and Bolshevik revolutions, globalism or economic and political unions of all types. They are all doomed to fail as they run counter to biological reality, which is constant differentiation and the resulting strife. A new ideology (religion) must first overcome the resistance of the followers of the old one(s), and then or even while ousting the old beliefs, it itself splits into new sub-movements of the first original one. Consider Christianity with its many denominations and the socialist or communist movements, Christianity’s archenemy, which ended up with as many heresies. The movement of whatever kind begins with conflict with ideological out-groups and ends up as a house divided against itself. And then, again, the biologically-conditioned in-group loyalty and out-group exclusion prevail: Catholic, Muslim or communist nations are very often bitter enemies. The shared faith or ideology lose to blood ties.
Is there a solution to wars? Everlasting peace? None, really.
Consider uniting the peoples of the earth in one “nation” (globalization) in the hope of achieving everlasting peace. Quite apart from the feasibility of such an idea and the fact that there will be resistance to it, one nation is no guarantee of a life without conflicts. After all, all homogeneous nations have experienced civil wars. Just one example. The English people were torn by the War of the Roses, then the Cromwellian revolution, then a part of the nation settled down in North America and rebelled against their brothers on the old continent only to wage a fratricidal war of secession among themselves. Much the same story can be told about all other nations around the globe. So, if a nation’s life is rife with conflict, how much more the life of an artificial one, like the Soviet or European Union?
Consider uniting the peoples of the earth by imposing on them one religion, ideology, or a universal lack thereof or indifference (which nowadays goes by the name of tolerance) to all beliefs. Again, we know from history such an attempt is doomed to fail. Remember the initially universal Christianity: one did not have to wait long till it produced Arianism and other heresies, then it split into Orthodox and Western branches; the Western branch gave rise to a number of heresies and split into Catholics and Protestants, who in turn gave rise to numerous denominations thereof. Much the same held good for political ideologies (a form of lay religion) where the socialist or communist movement kept dividing itself into opposing and hostile factions, like national or international socialism, communism, Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Eurocommunism (Gramscians), liberation theology (social Christianity)… Russian Communists used military intervention to quell the aspirations of Czechoslovak communists; Comrade Tito was hated by Stalinists, and Chairman Mao was insulted by Stalin for a purpose. Any global ideology with all-encompassing tolerance is sure to follow that way. No doubt about it.
Man thought that religion would overcome national sentiment. Man thought lay ideologies would overcome national sentiment. Both failed miserably. Supposedly suppressed or eradicated national feelings all of a sudden revive as was the case at the outset of the First World War, when socialist parties previously renouncing nationalism turned out to be patriotic; when international soviet communism adopted national colouring during the Great Patriotic War and so on.
Consider uniting the peoples of the earth economically. That, too, will inevitably lead to differentiation in the level of affluence and the resulting tensions between the top and the bottom dogs, sparking social unrest, violent clashes and then revolutions. And we should not forget that also here we may have a hard time deciding whether we develop our global economy according to free market ideas of Austrian school, Keynesian economics, socialist welfare and, and, and…
Eternal peace is not only impossible but also undesirable. Eternal peace and brotherhood of men would mean stagnation, lack of development, death. Yes, there is life because there is death.
All these factors – biological, ideological and economic – are prime movers behind conflict and war. Nations or social classes, ideologies or economic interests, they all exist, keep splitting and competing with each other. When present-day democracies come to blows with regimes as they call them, they only prove that war is inevitable and do not even see that those ‘regimes’ fight against democracies with precisely the same amount of conviction of waging the righteous, if not holy, war.
The modern Western man may laugh at the medieval methods of suppressing dissent or at the fatwas issued by ayatollahs, thinking himself above such measures, but he is none wiser. He moves in the same biological treadmill of eternal – internal, ethnic, sectarian, political, religious, social and even marital! – strife. The enemy is called names – heretic, fascist, racist, imperialist, colonizer, dictator – is burnt at the stake, excluded from polite society, judged by a court or becomes anathema. His right to free speech is denied by the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or political correctness or you name it. War rather than brotherhood. To feel good we all need the bad guys somewhere around. To combat the bad guys gives us a purpose in life. To think of it, only very few of us realise that we ourselves are the bad guys (kafirs, infidels, aggressors) for those whom we regard as bad guys. In a noble attempt to impose our righteous ways on others we meet with resistance. Resistance means conflict and conflict ultimately results in war. That’s the eternal circle of life and death described in The Iliad, Beowulf, Chanson de Roland, Das Nibelungenlied, Jerusalem Delivered, El Cid, the Battle of Kosovo epic circle. We have not been born for a life in liberty, equality and brotherhood. These words only reflect sentimental fantasizing enshrined in the wishful thinking of human rights, but have nothing to do with reality.
To forestall Christian believers’ opposition to the observations described above, let us remind them of Christ’s words, which read: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen.” If they are true believers, they had better repeat after the psalmist: “Praise be to the Lord, my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” The realist atheists and agnostics as scientifically-minded people should not stand in need of being convinced that war is part and parcel of our earthly existence.
Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,
China"s working age population is clearly defined as those aged 16 to 50 years old for females (55 for "white collar" females) and 16 to 60 years old for males. China mandates retirement at these outer age limits. Perhaps of some interest should be that this working age population peaked in 2011 and has been declining since. This decline will continue indefinitely as China has a collapsing childbearing population (detailed HERE), net emigration (outflow), and a still decidedly negative birthrate.
There is no evidence to believe the working age declines will abate any decade soon. As the chart below shows, China"s potential workforce will be shrinking indefinitely... and by 2030 China"s potential workforce will be over 100 million fewer than the 2011 peak (an 11% decline)...and only further down from there.
China has one of the youngest average retirement ages in the developed world. On average, according to a recent study (HERE), Chinese leave the work force by age 55 compared to age 63 in the US (Norway has the latest average departure at age 67). So, perhaps China will be raising the retirement age to curb the ballooning 60+yr/old population entering retirement (chart below)? More on that later.
Comparing the working age population versus the 60+yr/old population (chart below). A shrinking potential workforce since peaking in 2011 and a rapidly growing elderly population.
Below, that elderly growth versus the working age depopulation as a % of all adults (chart below)...think hockey stick. After nearly six decades of maintaining a consistent 60+yr/old % of the adult population...the elderly explosion is just beginning.
If we take the now declining total potential working age population vs. China"s still rising total number of employed individuals (according to Statista)...the chart below shows that if China adds just a mere million employees a year (about a third of the annual average employment growth seen from "06 through "16)...that by 2030 China"s employment will exceed 100% of the potential workforce. Wait...what?!? Or perhaps working from the premise that people who don"t exist can"t be employed...it"s time to start considering China"s employed population is set to begin falling.
This idea that there are "millions upon millions of Chinese just waiting to be incorporated into the workforce"...not so much. While a continuing shift from rural to urban is likely, China has already or will soon experience peak employment. Simply put, there will be fewer consumers of everything (homes, cars, appliances, etc.) every year than the year before.
Whatever overcapacity exists now will be joined by massive increases in excess housing, excess production, excess shopping malls as this depopulation plays out over the coming years and decades.
1) China ends one child policy, with little to no impact...
Although China implemented its one child policy in 1979 and officially phased it out in 2015, China"s birthrate was actually consistently higher than most of the other major economies in East Asia (Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore...chart below) and only N. Korea"s fertility rate is currently higher.
None of these other East Asia nations ever implemented birth restrictions. Instead, their populaces chose not to replace themselves responding to the availability of birth control, surging costs of child rearing, and inclusion of females into the workforce, etc. Simply put, the one child policy was inevitable and has now organically gone global. The phase out of this policy will have little to no impact of China"s fertility rates.
2) China to raise retirement age, but no time soon...
In early 2015, China suggested it would detail in 2017 (which I still have not seen) a gradual, multiyear process to raise the retirement age (China"s version of political suicide). Suggestions focused on slowly, incrementally, raising female retirement ages to match males and likewise, pushing retirements out by a month or two per year. However, none of this was even suggested to start within the next five years and like most things, almost surely be back-end loaded so any real impacts are overstated. Regardless Communist or "Capitalist" politicians, the game is the same. A little "razzle-dazzle" that ensures any negative policy impacts never occurs on your watch.
3) China to institute Universal Pension Plan...
In late 2015, China said "We will achieve a basic pension for all employees nationally". Currently, about 800 million of China"s 1.3 billion are eligible for state pensions. According to Sinosphere, pensions for non-state employees vary widely, as high as 3000 RMB ($480) month in Beijing to as little as 80 RMB for rural farmers. Civil Servants pensions are generally higher than those of non-state employees. The party statement said, China would be;
“Building a fairer and more sustainable social welfare system.
Implementing plans for every person to take part in social insurance.
Diverting capital from state-owned enterprises to social security funds.
Offering all urban and rural residents insurance for serious illness.”
4) Chinese wages & average per capita disposable income rising but gains are hugely variable...
While Chinese factory wages in tier 1 urban areas are now inline with Portugal or S. Africa, this terrific rise has created it"s own problems. The rise in wages has been met with inflationary spikes in rents, fuel, food, etc. etc. Average disposable income has risen in the urban areas but flat at best across rural China. However, the response of employers to the spectacular rising wages has been automation, a shift away from labor intensive production, and outsourcing to lower cost countries. This is at odds with the generally low skill/low education rural population looking for opportunity in the urban areas. The breadth and size of further gains in disposable income is likely to be limited. Economically, a declining total number of workers making marginally more money will not provide the desired growth.
5) China cannot export its way out of this...
The annual change to the 0-64yr/old combined populations of the 35 OECD nations (US, Canada, Europe, Japan, S. Korea, Australia/NZ) plus China, Brazil, and Russia begin declining in 2018 (chart below). The core populations of the nations responsible for consuming 80%+ of all Chinese exports have peaked and begin shrinking. Fewer consumers every year than the year before, indefinitely. As for the nations that are doing all the growing, India and Africa, they consume about 4% of all Chinese exports. BTW, the chart below shows when each nation/region 0-64yr/old population began declining.
Simply put, China is offering to increase and broaden it"s pension system to a ballooning population of elderly but will have a decreasing potential number of employees from which to pay for that increase?!?
How will China achieve this? Well, as the chart below shows, as Chinese core population growth has been decelerating, Chinese debt growth has been accelerating.
While China"s GDP and energy consumption have led the world, they have not responded in kind to China"s debt explosion and exponentially more will be necessary to continue to show "growth". Over a third and perhaps half of all the debt has been mal-invested in a housing bubble for a population that is never coming.
What comes next isn"t going to be good for China nor the rest of the world as China looks to flood a depopulating nation with new debt only creating more housing overcapacity... China will look to beat the Japanese at the debt game.
For instance, the Chinese public-pension system as of 2014, took in 2.33 trillion yuan in revenue and paid out almost 2 trillion...with 3 trillion in net funds. The net outflows and drawdown of those net funds is imminent.
But not to worry, the Communist Party explained that..."We will look at some opportunities with higher yields but will contain risk". Again, no details were offered. However, one asset it is clear the Chinese will not be buying...US Treasury"s (chart below, showing the net purchases since the debt ceiling debate of July 2011 according to TIC). Since that date, China has been a net seller of US Treasury debt despite running record US dollar surplus" (BLICS = Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Cayman Island, Switzerland).
From 2000 "til July 2011, China recycled 50% of its dollar trade surplus into US Treasury debt accumulating over $1.3 trillion. Since July 2011, China has net sold over $100 billion and as of October, held about $1.2 trillion (chart below).
But I"m pretty sure those dollars aren"t sitting fallow and are finding their way into some asset, probably one in particular that is selling on the cheap about right now.
Authored by Kenneth Tan via Hackernoon.com,
2017 has been an amazing year for Ethereum.
Prices has hit an all time high of $800, and it is now the processing nearly double the number of transactions of bitcoin at a million a day.
As we enter 2018, I think Ethereum will be the next Facebook due to the massive amount of use cases that i am finding in major industries that benefit greatly from decentralization & transparency.
Ethereum is basically the app store for blockchain.
It allows creators to build and run apps without having to worry about the underlying “operating” system just like Apple.
Here are some of the areas to look out for:
ICOs are the largest real world use case for ethereum. Traditionally, to fund your idea, you would have to borrow money from a bank, give up a lot of equity to a VC, or get an expensive loan from people lending sites. Basically, ICOs is a kickstarter on steroids.
As the founder of fundyourselfnow.com, I have worked with entrepreneurs all over the world on their product to get it ready for their ICOs. Many come from developing nations such as Indonesia (EagleCoin) and India (WandX) where it would have been extremely hard to raise significant funding for their idea due to lack of local investors.
ICOs are democratizing funding and spawning the next wave of innovation from young hungry entrepreneurs all over the world who will eventually contribute back to their local communities for a better future.
Currently, the crypto-currencies are quite hard to spend. Crypto credit card companies such as TenX, Monaco, Tokencard are stepping in to fill in the gap. All of them are built on the ethereum network. I personally hold a TenX Card and have used it to spend on daily goods and services using bitcoin.
Monaco in particular, has gotten official approval from VISA to issue cards to Singapore residents. Expect to see a huge increase in actual cryptocurrency spending & adoption 2018 as many of these crypto-card companies get official approval from VISA or MasterCard.
There has also been a rise of ethereum based lending solutions, such as SALT lending and ETHLend. The interest rates are expected to be fairer than getting from a bank, and people globally can gain access to financing even without a bank account.
I expect that 2018 will be the year where we will help lot of the unbanked get included in this new digital world.
The gambling industry is ripe for disruption. 2017 started off with a very simple dice game, etheroll. You send ether to a smart contract and winnings are sent to you in a matter of minutes. Etheroll has over 260,000 ethers wagered so far (Around 2000m USD), which is incredible considering how simple and basic the game is.
Keep an eye out on Edgeless and Funfair in 2018 as one of them could potentially grow to become the largest online global casino. They have significant advantages over traditional real world casinos:
The virtual nature of gaming lends itself incredibly well for the blockchain. Many successful gaming companies have started to include tokens in their games/product to fund their gaming ecosystem.
Here are some of the interesting ways tokens are used (not exhaustive):
Decentraland?—?Buy Land in their virtual world. Virtual worlds has been around since 2003 with Second Life and Ethereum might be the fuel that makes it finally takes off
Engin Coin?—?Used to create virtual goods that people that can on their marketplace. Instead of using “gold” in most games, expect games in 2018 to require you to use their own Ethereum game token to make & trade items.
CryptoKitties?—?Tokens represents a digital cat in the blockchain. Over 17m worth of cats were transacted since they launched early Dec , with the most expensive cat sold for more than 100k USD.
What more interesting is that with the use of Ethereum tokens for games, this could potentially mean that you could eventually trade items across games. For example, you can trade an Enjin Coin Item for land in decentraland through decentralized exchanges using the ENJ/MANA trade pair. Virtual worlds economies which are currently “silo-ed” could potentially change with the ability to “trade” across worlds.
I see the money flowing into Ethereum and the overall cryptocurrency market as a positive. The technology underpinning Ethereum has a lot of real world usage that has yet to be unlocked and money is being funneled into innovative ethereum projects via ICOs at an incredible rate.
Mark Zuckerburg started facebook at the young age of 20 about 13 years ago, and it has completed changed the way we interact with our friends and family.
Vitalik, founder of Ethereum, started Ethereum also at the young age of 20 too about 3 years ago. I strongly believe that within the next 10 years, Ethereum will radically change the we interact with our world.
