China Buying the World

From South America to the South Pacific, China has spent billion and billions of dollars to exert economic and political control over developing nations across the globe. Saddled with debt and faulty Chinese-built infrastructure, these countries are now dependent upon Beijing and have become de facto "Sino-States."

Last week, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who became president of the island nation of Sri Lanka last summer, was finally able to succeed where his beleaguered predecessor had failed: An agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reschedule $3 billion in debt.


The deal will provide Sri Lanka with an additional four years to satisfy its IMF obligations, which are crippling the nation with inflation.

It’s a good start, but the MIF deal does nothing to mitigate the country’s real debt burden, the nearly $7.5 billion it owes to China.

You’ve heard of “failed states” like Somalia, where the central government has basically ceased to exist. And then there are “narco states” where the trafficking of drugs — and often people — is the chief function of the criminal gangs that run the country.

Located from the South Pacific to South America, Sino states are countries whose ports, railroads, resources – and even governments and economies – are deep in China’s pockets.

And as Beijing further extends its military and economic reach, Sino states are multiplying. “China is on the march globally, bending dozens of countries to its will,” observes Australian defense analyst David Archibald, “and this includes here in the South Pacific, where [China] is eyeing the World War II Japanese base on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.” (Spoiler alert: Last year China lent the Solomon Islands $66 million to upgrade their telecommunications infrastructure.)

Sri Lanka is a prime example of a Sino-state, and so is Ecuador – which currently owes China nearly $4.5 billion in unpaid loans.

This sum includes billions to the Chinese construction company Sinohydro, responsible for Ecuador’s dismally faulty – and corruption-laden – Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant.

The $2.7 billion infrastructure giant – one of four built by China across Ecuador – is not only riddled with thousands of cracks but is at risk of systemwide failure, according to local engineers.  READ MORE...

Naughty Kitties

 

Websites

 

The US Dollar is in Trouble

Last week, China and Brazil reached an agreement to settle trades in one anothers’ currencies. Over the past 15 years, China has replaced the United States as the main trading partner of resource-rich Brazil, and as such that shift may have been inevitable. But within the context of recent circumstances, this appears to be another in a series of recent blows to the central role of the dollar in global trade.

As the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar is essentially the default currency in international trade and a global unit of account. Because of that, every central bank, Treasury/exchequer, and major firm on Earth keeps a large portion of their foreign exchange holdings in US dollars. And because holders of dollars seek returns on those balances, the ubiquity of dollars drives a substantial portion of the demand for US government bonds in world financial markets.

The switch from dollars to a yuan-real settlement basis in Chinese-Brazilian trade is only the latest in a growing trend. Discussions of a more politically neutral reserve currency have gone on for decades. The profound economic disruption experienced by Iran, and more recently Russia, after being evicted from dollar-based trading systems like SWIFT, however, have led many nations to consider imminent contingency plans. India and Malaysia, for example, have recently begun using the Indian Rupee to settle certain trades, and there have been perennial warnings about Saudi Arabia and other energy exporters moving away from the dollar. On that note, China also recently executed a test trade for natural gas with France settled in yuan.     READ MORE...

Beliefs

 

Aztec

 

Control

 

Thursday OpEd

 

Light Speed

 

Energy

 

Light

 

Stellarator Reactor

1. With the promise of fusion on full display after a U.S. lab achieved “ignition” late last year, fusion companies are raising capital to bring this next-gen green energy to life.
2. Magnetic confinement reactors, such as tokamaks and stellarators, are the leading fusion concept, and are designed to contain super-hot plasma long enough to sustain fusion reactions.
3. Although tokamaks are more abundant and easier to build, the company Type One Fusion just received millions to bring its stellarator reactor to market.

Fusion reactors come in all shapes and sizes, but can mostly be separated into three groups, defined by how they contain the super-hot plasma needed to combine lighter nuclei into heavier ones.

The first is gravitational reactors (a.k.a. stars), which are impossible to recreate on Earth. The second group is inertial reactors, which essentially fire a bunch of lasers at a small pellet and contain the resulting fusion reaction by sheer inertia for only 100 trillionths of a second. This is the concept that finally achieved ignition last December. But it’s the third group—magnetic reactors—that’s arguably the most promising.

Magnetic confinement fusion uses superconducting magnets to contain hot plasma long enough for a fusion reaction to take place. These magnets are absolutely critical, as they keep the plasma from touching any of the other materials in the reactor, and no known material can withstand the over-100-million-degrees-Celsius temperatures required for fusion. But even this kind of fusion divides into a further two camps: tokamaks and stellarators.   READ MORE...

The Universe

 

Stopping TIme

 

Diminishing Importance of Traditional Values

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Americans in the nation's capital reacted to the country's changing principles, with some disheartened and frightened by a recent poll that found values like patriotism and faith have become less important to the nation over the last 25 years.

"It's sad," Sherry, from Alabama, told Fox News. "They don't believe in what we stand for."

But Michelle, from Virginia, said Americans should be proud to have a country full of diverse and evolving values.

"We're supposed to be different," Michelle said. "We're not supposed to be the same."

Sherry, from Alabama, says Americans no longer believe in what the country stands for as patriotism and faith drop in importance, according to results from a March survey. (Megan Myers/Fox News Digital)

Core principles once central to Americans' values receded in importance this year, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll published Friday. The share of respondents who said patriotism was very important dropped 32 percentage points compared to a 1998 poll, and those who said the same of religion decreased by 23 percentage points.

"It seems we're moving away from some of the things we hold closer and moving towards others," Jay, from Atlanta, told Fox News. "As times move on, people want different things."

The importance of having children dropped from 59% in 1998 to 30%, according to the poll. Meanwhile, respondents who considered money a top priority increased to 43%, up from 31% a quarter-century ago.

Americans told Fox News their top values, ranging from work and family to hard work and independence. (iStock)

Several Americans walking in the nation's capital shared their top values.  READ MORE...

Temper & Pride

 

Forgiveness

 

Crock

 

We Are Getting Ready

Our winter weather lasted from mid December until mid March or about 3 months...  90 days...

Fall was not really that cool and Spring was not really that warm...  but, it is better than freezing temps and wind.

We put out our deck furniture yesterday even though we have not yet opened our pool.  While the weather is still not the best, we will probably not be spending much time out on the deck for another couple of weeks.  More than likely our pool will be opened by the end of this month.

Our first trip to Myrtle Beach will take place during the last week of May and before families start bombarding the coast.  We stay in an ocean view condo that has a bedroom, bath, kitchen, dining table, living room, balcony.  We typically eat all our meals in the condo except for dinner.

Back to East TN:    While some of the trees are still trying to get their summer leaves, the weather is mild, without humidity but has a faint breeze.  It is a perfect time to be outside working.

Our three cats are spending more and more time on the screened-in back porch with the nice weather and our walking is now done outside around the neighborhood instead of inside...  where we would walk around a concrete oval track...   16 revolutions was a mile...   and, it was boring unless one watched the pickle ball players on the basketball courts.

Senior citizens paid a dollar a day to use the facilities or they could purchase a pass for $25 that gave one 30 visits.

I spend most of the year inside the house as my treatments prevent me from gettng too much sun exposure.  I am usually wearing a T-shirt and flannel PJ bottoms...  except when it gets warm, I usually wear shorts.  Every so often I wear sweats but most of the time they make me perspire.

Being retired is an easy life and one that I would not recommend because if you are retired, then you are probably experiencing numerous health issues which ain't that much fun...  Still, I wake up when I want to and shave every other day.  I've even been known to take an afternoon nap.

DNA Responding