Month: September 2024

Via Remix News,

The German federal government has “miscalculated” billions in welfare payments, known as citizens’ money, with their initial estimate of €36 billion far short of the €46 billion reportedly needed.

In documents obtained by Bild newspaper, the German labor ministry assumes an average of 2.9 million people are in need of welfare parents in the documents for the “2025 budget,” dated from August 2024. However, this document indicates that the expenditure on standard rates and accommodation costs is expected to total €45.6 billion, which is a far cry from the €36 billion set in the 2025 citizen’s allowance budget.

The huge discrepancy has sparked outrage, but Hubertus Heil’s (SPD) labor ministry told Bild that the figures published “are not comprehensible and are methodologically based on several false assumptions… For example, a significant portion of the costs of accommodation are to be covered by the municipalities and are therefore not relevant to the federal budget in the amount stated.”

However, Heil’s denial did not specify how far off Bild’s figures were, and notably, Bild was citing internal documents from the ministry itself.

The huge sums paid out due to citizens’ money has become a politically explosive subject, first due to the enormous costs it is placing on the German taxpayers, second due to the fact that the German economy is facing a worker shortage, and third due to the huge number of foreigners taking advantage of this welfare system, as half of all recipients are foreigners and many of the others who are German citizens also have a migration background.

“Immigration doesn’t work, not even economically. And if one were to differentiate between Germans based on their migration background, the picture would be even more devastating,” MEP Maximilian Krah, who is a member of the AfD but remains unaffiliated in the European Parliament, wrote on X. He shared a graph showing how few Germans are actually receiving welfare payments.

Einwanderung funktioniert nicht, auch nicht ökonomisch. Und würde man bei den Deutschen noch nach Migrationshintergrund differenzieren, wäre das Bild noch verheerender. pic.twitter.com/2NF3bP22Mf

— Dr. Maximilian Krah MdEP (@KrahMax) September 25, 2024

However, he is not the only one calling into question Heil’s numbers. Most recently, the Federal Audit Office also cast doubt on Heil’s budget, stating that the labor ministry’s figures could only happen as budgeted if “600,000 people entitled to benefits would stop receiving them altogether” in 2025. These experts complained at the time that this was “not very realistic.”

Other parties are also attacking Heil. CDU’s group vice-chairman Jens Spahn said the matter “bordered on deliberate deception.”

Meanwhile, budget spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Christian Haase, said: “Heil is deliberately budgeting for false figures in order to conceal the problems with the citizens’ allowance,”

“This is a scandal,” he added.

CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann said the ruling left-liberal government “continues to lie to itself, the budget will blow up in its face.”

Even the Free Democrats (FDP), who belong to the ruling government, slammed the budget figures. FDP politician Torsten Herbst said he expected “the labor minister to present realistic figures in his draft budget.”

However, some of the harshest statements came from the AfD, which wrote on social media: “Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) suddenly presents a new budget gap of almost €10 billion in the citizen’s allowance. According to the minister’s documents, his department expects citizen’s allowance costs of almost €46 billion for 2025, although only €36 billion were officially reported.”

The party is now recommending mass deportations totaling 1.3 million people to plug the budget hole, which it claims would bring the welfare payments back in line with the original sum budgeted.

“It must be remembered that around half of the citizen’s allowance recipients are foreign citizens! Simply by deporting the approximately one million Syrians (as of the end of 2023) who no longer have a reason to flee, the citizen’s allowance costs could be reduced enormously. The same applies to the approximately 300,000 foreigners who are required to leave the country (as of mid-2024).

“The Federal Audit Office had already cast doubt on the Minister of Labor’s sugar-coated figures weeks ago, stating that the figures would only be correct if the number of citizens’ allowance recipients fell by around 600,000 in 2025. Either Heil really miscalculated in an amateurish way or – which is much more likely – he deliberately wants to mislead the population. In both cases, such a Minister of Labor is completely unacceptable and underlines that the SPD does not care about our country.”

Read more here…

Authored by Antonio Graceffo via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Navy has released a document outlining its plans to match and exceed Beijing’s goal of modernizing its military by 2027, aiming to be prepared for a potential conflict with the Chinese regime.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has directed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be fully modernized and prepared for war by 2027, coinciding with the PLA’s 100th anniversary. This timeline has raised concerns about a possible invasion of Taiwan, as Chinese leader Xi Jinping focuses on military reforms to ensure the PLA can deter or win a conflict over the island.

The CCP’s strategy goes beyond expanding its navy. It incorporates multi-domain precision warfare, dual-use infrastructure (like airfields and maritime militias), and an expanding nuclear arsenal—and it is supported by the world’s largest shipbuilding capacity.

The U.S. Navy’s 2024 Navigation Plan, led by Adm. Lisa Franchetti, focuses on preparing for a potential conflict with communist China by 2027. Central to this strategy is Project 33, which aims at enhancing the Navy’s long-term advantage and operational readiness. The plan prioritizes modernizing equipment and improving force deployment capabilities, particularly by scaling up the use of robotic and autonomous systems for swift, decisive responses, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.

Project 33 sets two key goals: achieving 80 percent combat readiness for ships, aircraft, and submarines by 2027, and integrating advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and unmanned systems. These initiatives are designed to strengthen the Navy’s ability to respond effectively to emerging threats, specifically focusing on maintaining superiority in the Indo-Pacific.

The U.S. Navy aims to develop three key priorities: long-range fires, non-traditional sea denial, and terminal defense. Long-range fires enable the Navy to strike from a safe distance using advanced missiles and precision-guided weapons, enhancing power projection. Non-traditional sea denial employs methods like cyber warfare, drones, and electromagnetic operations to block adversary access to strategic maritime areas. Terminal defense focuses on protecting naval assets with advanced missile and anti-aircraft systems designed to intercept threats in their final phase.

The U.S. Navy is enhancing its command-and-control capabilities by developing Maritime Operations Centers (MOCs), which are critical for fleet-level warfare. These centers serve as nerve hubs, coordinating naval forces across multi-domain environments, including land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. MOCs are essential for managing real-time information, directing fleet movements, and overseeing key functions like intelligence, logistics, and communications.

Franchetti stresses the need to mirror China’s military modernization, particularly in integrating technologies like artificial intelligence. To stay competitive in an information-driven battlespace, the Navy is developing MOCs as full-fledged warfighting systems, ensuring they are resilient, adaptable, and ready for decentralized operations. By 2027, the Navy plans to certify MOCs across all fleet headquarters, starting with the Pacific Fleet. These centers will enhance command and control, intelligence, fires, and sustainment functions, boosting decision-making and operational capabilities during crises and conflicts.

The U.S. Navy is closely studying current global conflicts to shape its approach to future sea control. Ukraine’s effective use of missiles, drones, and digital tools against Russian forces has provided key insights for U.S. military strategies, particularly for potential conflicts in the Indo-Pacific. Additionally, the Navy has observed the role drones and ballistic missiles have played in battles against Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, further informing how the Navy prepares for modern warfare. These lessons are crucial for adapting to evolving threats and ensuring readiness in an increasingly complex battlespace.

Unmanned vehicles and weapons systems have played a crucial role in modern warfare, as seen in both Ukraine and the 2020 Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict. Autonomous and remotely operated systems, like drones, have proven highly effective for reconnaissance, precision strikes, and disrupting enemy logistics, all without risking human lives. Recognizing this shift, Franchetti has prioritized integrating unmanned systems, including naval drones and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), into U.S. Navy operations.

UUVs are key technologies in modern naval operations. These systems come in two types: autonomous underwater vehicles, which operate independently, and remotely operated vehicles, which an operator controls. Often referred to as naval or underwater drones, UUVs perform tasks like surveillance, mine detection, and environmental monitoring. Franchetti views these robotic systems as the future of warfare, not just for their efficiency but for their ability to free up sailors for other vital tasks. By deploying autonomous systems for missions like surveillance or combat, the Navy can reallocate human personnel to areas where their expertise is most needed, enhancing operational flexibility and overall readiness.

The U.S. Navy’s plan prioritizes integrating robotic and autonomous systems into routine operations by 2027, ensuring their active use by commanders in carrier and expeditionary strike groups. The focus is on improving coordination between manned and unmanned teams, particularly in areas like surveillance, fires, logistics, and deception. This initiative is part of a broader strategy to enhance command, control, and overall operational effectiveness in complex, multi-domain environments.

In addition to preparing for a potential conflict over Taiwan, the Navy’s 2024 Navigation Plan prioritizes maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, ensuring critical shipping lanes like the Strait of Malacca and Taiwan Strait remain accessible for global trade.

Meanwhile, China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy aims to limit the ability of the United States and its allies to operate freely in key areas such as the East and South China Seas, particularly the Taiwan Strait. Central to China’s military doctrine, A2/AD seeks to shift the strategic balance by making it difficult for external forces to intervene in what Beijing considers its sphere of influence. Despite this, the U.S. Navy is rapidly modernizing to meet these challenges and is prepared to counter the CCP’s regional dominance efforts.

Starting a successful startup requires a great idea and a huge amount of resilience, but attending the right university – one with a strong reputation, world-class education, and influential connections – can give aspiring founders a crucial advantage.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, visualizes the top 10 undergraduate and graduate schools ranked by the number of alumni who have founded their own startups.

Every year, PitchBook ranks universities across the world by the number of alumni entrepreneurs who have raised venture capital in the last decade, by undergraduate, graduate, and MBA programs.

Only founders whose companies received a round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2013, and Aug. 1, 2024 were counted, with the data updated as of August 30, 2024. Founders can attend multiple schools and may be counted towards multiple universities.

Stanford University is a Hotspot for Entrepreneurs

Below, we show the top 10 undergraduate schools by number of alumni founders.

This table shows the top 10 graduate schools by number of founders.

Located in the heart of the Silicon Valley, Stanford University boasts an impressive track record of producing thousands of startup founders over the past 10 years.

It ranks first in the graduate category, with over 4,000 founders having attended one of its graduate programs—the highest number across all three categories—and second in the undergraduate category.

Notable founders from Stanford include OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who dropped out of school, and Robinhood co-founder Vladimir Tenev.

UC Berkeley ranked first overall in the undergraduate category, and was the top-ranked public school in the graduate category, coming in at fifth. DoorDash’s founder and CEO Tony Xu and supply chain management company Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen went to undergrad at Berkeley.

Both Stanford and UC Berkeley are located in or near the San Francisco Bay Area, which was ranked as the best startup city in the world by PitchBook.

Among PitchBook’s top 10 undergrad and graduate schools, only three non-American schools make the cut: Israel’s Tel Aviv University, and UK-based University of Cambridge and University of Oxford.

To learn more about some of the best college institutions, check out this graphic that visualizes America’s top universities as ranked by Forbes.

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Appeals judges in New York fielded multiple questions to the New York Attorney General’s Office on Sept. 26 indicating that they were skeptical of its application of an anti-fraud law to former President Donald Trump’s business practices.

The questions came during oral arguments over Trump’s claims that the state Supreme Court erred in handling the civil fraud case, which resulted in a $489 million penalty for the former president.

Trump’s attorney in the case, D. John Sauer, told a five-judge panel in the court’s appellate division that the judge and prosecutors flouted time limits on the claims involved. He noted that Attorney General Letitia James’s office pressed an overly broad interpretation of legally punishable fraud and that, regardless, the former president hadn’t committed fraud in his dealings with banks and others.

Some of the judges questioned whether the state was acting within the bounds of its authority or had a legitimate interest in bringing the suit.

Justice David Friedman pressed New York Deputy Solicitor General Judith Vale on whether there was any precedent for the attorney general suing over transactions involving sophisticated parties where neither “lost any money.”

“Every case that you cite involves damage to consumers, damage to the marketplace. … We don’t have anything like that here,” Friedman said.

Vale argued that “there was absolutely a public impact and a public interest here.”

“There are at least four different public harms from the kind of misconduct here,” she said.

Vale also said that “when risk is injected into the market, that does hurt the counterparties and it does hurt the market as a whole.”

Justice Peter Moulton asked, “How do we draw a line, or at least [put up] some guardrails to know when the AG is operating well within her broad, admittedly broad sphere of 63(12)?”

Moulton was referring to New York Executive Law 63(12), which is the statute James used in suing Trump. The statute allows the attorney general to apply for court intervention when “any person shall engage in repeated fraudulent or illegal acts or otherwise demonstrate persistent fraud or illegality in the carrying on, conducting or transaction of business.”

Part of Sauer’s argument was that the attorney general’s conception of fraud was too loose and noted that no one was victimized by Trump’s conduct.

At one point, he told the court that under existing precedent, “there has to be a capacity or tendency to deceive, or atmosphere conducive to fraud.”

“And what we’ve pointed out is that you have a situation where there were no victims, no complaints,” he said, also saying that Trump’s business partners did their due diligence.

Presiding Justice Dianne Renwick was skeptical that the statute required some kind of harm in order to prove fraudulent activity. She read the relevant portion of the statute and told Vale: “I don’t read harm or threat of harm in that, but the other side is saying that that is to be read into this statute.

“Are there any cases where the language harm or threat to harm limits the scope of the attorney general?”

Vale said that there weren’t “as to liability and not in cases like this where what the attorney general is seeking injunctive relief and disgorgement.”

Trump is currently facing a disgorgement of $489 million with interest accruing by the day.

During oral arguments, Vale encountered multiple questions about the appropriateness of the disgorgement. Moulton told Vale that the disgorgement amount was “troubling.”

“How do you tether the amount that was assessed by [the] Supreme Court to the harm that was caused here, where the parties left these transactions happy about how things went down?” he asked.

Vale responded that “disgorgement looks at taking the gain away from the wrongdoer.” Although the amount was high, she said that “there was a lot of fraud … and illegality.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

On Wednesday, America First Legal (AFL) revealed documents that shed new light on the collaborative efforts between Facebook and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic used to censor free speech.

The documents, obtained through litigation against the CDC, expose detailed onboarding materials used to train CDC employees on a specially designed Facebook portal aimed at curbing what they labeled “Covid & Vaccine Misinformation.”

Via AFL:

These documents reveal how Facebook, on the heels of extreme pressure from the Biden-Harris White House (including from Rob Flaherty, a current senior Harris Campaign staffer) to remove specific posts, responded:

• Facebook created a new “end-to-end workflow” so that government officials could submit links for removal from Facebook;
• Facebook only gave access to the portal to approved government and law enforcement personnel;
• The new portal dramatically increased the efficiency of the censorship machine by allowing up to twenty links at a time to be referred for censoring;
• By moving from email chains to a Facebook-hosted portal, the new system also made it harder for organizations like AFL to provide oversight to individual censorship requests;
• Each censorship request automatically generated a ticket number so that the government could track if Facebook complied with its censorship demands;  
• The documents further show how Facebook explained precisely what content it would remove and what it needed from the CDC in order to censor certain narratives within the bounds of its “community standards.” 

The documents also highlight the United Kingdom’s role in shaping the Biden-Harris Administration’s approach to online censorship. Additionally, Mark Zuckerberg’s admission that Facebook only engaged in censorship after extreme pressure from the Biden-Harris White House underscores the external pressures leading to Facebook’s mass censorship.

More via AFL:

Part A: Censorship Made Easy

The documents expose an onboarding presentation given by Facebook employees to CDC staff on May 19, 2021. Facebook trained CDC staff on how to use the platform’s  “Government Reporting System.” This came in response to profanity-laden demands from senior Biden–Harris White House officials exposed by the House Judiciary Committee. As their “End-to-end workflow” described, if “Government requests,” then “Facebook processes.”

These slides show how closely the Biden-Harris Administration’s CDC and Big Tech coordinated to censor speech they disagreed with. The onboarding included a “government user experience” demo. As part of the “End–to–end workflow,” Facebook streamlined the process to make it easy for the government to censor the American people.

Step 1 – Access to Account

First, Facebook granted “Access to CRS.” These slides showed CDC employees how to sign up, register, and login to the new portal.

Only “government-issued or law enforcement email address[es]” were allowed to use this system.

Step 2 – Submit Posts with Links 

Prior to Facebook creating the portal, the CDC had been sending spreadsheets over email with links for Facebook to remove, but with this portal, post reporting would be standardized and fed into one system. Additionally, moving the censorship requests to a Facebook-hosted portal created a loophole in government recordkeeping requirements. Using this system permits government actors to evade federal law requiring meticulous keeping of federal records, thereby preventing the public from using existing tools like FOIA to see what the government is doing behind the scenes. 

At this point, CDC employees could select their “Reason for reporting.” These included “COVID Misinformation,” “Vaccine Discouragement,” and “COVID Vaccine Misinformation.”

Facebook’s system allowed users from “authorized government agencies” to refer up to twenty links at a time for Facebook to remove across its platforms. Users could also submit additional comments. 

Step 3 – Confirmation and Job Reference Number  

The third step for the new portal was called “Final landing page: transparency,” where users would get a confirmation message, a ticket or reference number, and be able to access the “Help Center.” 

The confirmation message read that “you should receive a response shortly,” which reaffirms the initial promise on the first slide: “Government requests … Facebook processes.”

Part B: Insights into Facebook’s Community Standards 

The briefing also included a summary of Facebook’s “Community Standards.” They stated that they only removed information deemed “false” by  “public health authorities.” Despite the many, many, examples of these “authorities” later being proven wrong, all it took was a government determination by the Biden-Harris administration for Facebook to begin censoring the American people’s speech.

Facebook’s policy was to censor statements that made “false claims about masks” (now shown to have been nearly useless), which discouraged “social distancing” (now known to have been fabricated by Dr. Anthony Fauci). If an individual was a “repeat offender” of the government’s ever-shifting determinations on “misinformation,” their account’s reach would be reduced or removed from their site altogether. 

Facebook bragged that since the beginning of the Pandemic, which began only a year before the presentation, they had removed more than “16 million pieces of content.” 

Remember — Facebook’s policy was only to remove posts if the government had declared something to be false. 

The Constitution prohibits the government from censoring the American people, but Facebook and other social media companies went out of their way to make it easy for the Biden–Harris administration to “flag” posts for censoring. With a custom portal allowing the government to submit up to twenty links at a time, the Biden-Harris Administration and Facebook worked together to violate the First Amendment rights of countless Americans. 

Statement from Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Executive Director:

“These documents show–definitively–the architecture behind the systems that political appointees and governmental bureaucrats used to unconstitutionally censor the free speech of Americans online. The right to speak–to even question authority–is so fundamental to our national identity, yet in the name of a public health crisis, Biden Administration officials worked with major companies to silence dissent. The American people need to review these documents and understand just how far our leaders in Washington went to violate the First Amendment to our Constitution,” said Gene Hamilton.

See the full slide deck here.

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

Rudy Giuliani, the embattled former adviser to former President Donald Trump, has been disbarred in Washington following a disciplinary board’s criticisms of his reactions to the 2020 presidential election.

A three-judge panel on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ordered Giuliani’s disbarment on Sept. 26. The brief order noted, among other things, Giuliani’s disbarment in the state of New York, where an appeals court similarly accused Giuliani of making “demonstrably false and misleading statements to the courts, lawmakers, and the public at large.”

The case came before Judges Eric T. Washington, Roy McLeese, and Joshua Deahl. In June 2023, the District of Columbia Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility issued a report stating that Giuliani “claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it.”

The board added that while it considered Giuliani’s “conduct following the September 11 attacks as well as his prior service in the Justice Department and as Mayor of New York City,” it said “all of that happened long ago.”

His conduct during the 2020 presidential election “transcends all his past accomplishments,” the board said, adding, “It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect.”

Legal Battles

Giuliani’s law licenses in Washington and New York were suspended in 2021. After the New York decision, Giuliani said: “America is not America any longer. We do not live in a free state. We live in a state that’s controlled by the Democrat Party, by [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo, by [New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio, and the Democrats.”

Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, called the Sept. 26 appeals court decision “an absolute travesty and a total miscarriage of justice.”

Giuliani has argued that he believed the claims he was making on behalf of the Trump campaign were true.

“Members of the legal community who want to protect the integrity of our justice system should immediately speak out against this partisan, politically motivated decision,” Goodman said in a text message.

Giuliani, 80, is currently facing financial ruin and legal challenges related to the 2020 election.

He has pleaded not guilty to nine felony charges in the Arizona case alleging he spread false claims of election fraud there after the 2020 election. He has separately been charged in Georgia along with Trump and other allies of the former president with trying to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.

A jury last year awarded two Georgia election workers $148 million in damages in a defamation suit they brought against Giuliani.

Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official during the Trump administration, similarly faced disciplinary proceedings over his role in the administration’s response to the 2020 election.

In an Aug. 1 report, a three-member panel of the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility said that Clark “attempted dishonesty and did so with truly extraordinary recklessness.”

Giuliani also reached a last-minute deal in his bankruptcy case in August. After the dismissal of his bankruptcy case in Washington, the two election workers filed a motion seeking control over his assets.

According to the filing, Giuliani disclosed that his New York apartment was valued at $5.6 million and his Florida condo at $3.5 million. The former Trump adviser also testified that the Trump 2020 campaign and Republican National Committee owed him “about $2 million.”

The Aug. 30 filing repeatedly noted Giuliani’s refusal to cooperate with court orders.

In his financial filings, Giuliani said he had about $94,000 cash on hand at the end of May, while his company, Giuliani Communications, had about $237,000 in the bank. A main source of income for the 80-year-old former mayor has been a retirement account with a balance of just over $1 million in May, down from nearly $2.5 million in 2022.

Authored by James Durso via OilPrice.com,

• Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front, aims to defeat the Taliban.

• Afghanistan’s neighbors want to avoid civil war and its economic consequences.

• Afghanistan and Central Asian nations are collaborating on trade, infrastructure, and water management projects, but regional tensions are rising due to Afghanistan’s controversial water diversion projects.

Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, recently declared he will defeat the Taliban “no matter the odds.” 

For Massoud to mount a military threat to the Taliban, he would need the cooperation of the Central Asian republics, Iran or Pakistan (among others) to do the job. However, Afghanistan’s neighbors have no interest in another civil war in Afghanistan, as the violence and refugees would spill over their borders and cause economic dislocation and unrest all the way to Europe.

After two decades of U.S.-sponsored mayhem in the Hindu Kush, all the region wants is to recoup the missed opportunities of the “lost decades” of 2001-2021.  

None of Afghanistan’s neighbors prefer the Taliban to any other group, and they object to the regime’s unrepresentative government and policies toward women. That said, their leaders must solve today’s problems despite their distaste for the Taliban’s retrograde ways. 

The republics’ approach to Kabul has long been “neighbors forever” — or, for the pessimists, “captives of geography.” Kazakhstan removed the Taliban from its terrorist list in December 2023; Uzbekistan never declared the Taliban an extremist group, and in 2018 it publicly encouraged the Taliban to start negotiations with the Islamic Republic. Turkmenistan was mum on the topic of the Taliban in line with its policy of?permanent neutrality. In September 2024, the chief of Tajikistan’s security service visited Kabul for talks that were described as “productive,” and the same month the Kyrgyz Republic removed the Taliban from its list of terrorist organizations.   

Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors are collaborating to ease trade and transport; renovate Afghanistan’s roads and railroads; help Afghanistan improve irrigation projects; ship natural gas from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India; build a railroad from Uzbekistan to Pakistan’s seaports; and build a multi-modal transport corridor from Kazakhstan to Pakistan, terminating in the United Arab Emirates.

Economic growth depends on an adequate supply of water; Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains form the headwaters of the region’s basins.   

In March 2022, the Taliban launched construction of the 285-km Qosh Tepa canal, which will divert 10 billion cubic meters of water annually from the Amu Darya River, relied on by water-starved Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. They will suffer a 15 percent cut in the current supply. The project will cost $684 million, but it will irrigate 2100 square miles and create 250,000 jobs. Kabul feels it is critical to ensure food security for the emirate.

Tashkent and Ashgabat are unhappy with the project, but the Uzbeks offered technical assistance to Afghanistan to ensure the construction is “in accordance with international norms.” Now is a good time to consider inviting Afghanistan to join Central Asia’s regional water management organization, the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia.  

Afghanistan also has unresolved water issues with Iran and Pakistan; those projects would be endangered, or further delayed, by a civil war. 

According to the United Nations, there are now 7.6 million Afghans in Iran and Pakistan, most of them refugees. In 2023, Pakistan expelled over 540,000 Afghan refugees, and the next phase of the plan may see 800,000 more Afghans deported. Increased violence will likely reverse these flows and burden Iran and Pakistan, who cannot afford to support the refugees they have now.

China recently warned Pakistan it must get control of the violence that is endangering the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor . More violence north of the Durand Line will further delay the corridor, which may be seen as a strategic “win” in Washington but will hurt Central and South Asia.  

In April 2022, the Taliban banned poppy cultivation and methamphetamine production. This benefits Iran, which has the highest rate of opium abusers in the world, according to the World Health Organization. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “More than 3,700 national law enforcement officials have been killed and over 12,000 have been maimed in counter-narcotics operations over the last three decades.”   

That’s good news, but if Afghanistan must fund a war against groups like the National Resistance Front (and its foreign confederates), the ban on drugs may go by the wayside.

In fact, if the Taliban suspect a foreign hand in an attack, will it encourage al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to strike foreign targets? Sure, that will violate the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, where the Taliban agreed “Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies,” but the Taliban will note the Americans pledged, “The United States and its allies will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.”   

Is the Taliban isolated? No, Seventeen countries, including every country that borders Afghanistan plus the European Union, maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul. Aaron Zelin reports “between August 2021 and February 22, 2024 the Taliban has publicly announced 1,382 diplomatic meetings with at least eighty countries.” China and the United Arab Emirates have accepted the credentials from Taliban ambassador to their capitals.  

Pragmatism may be winning, regardless what governments or their citizens think of Taliban policies.

After Shohna ba Shohna (Shoulder to Shoulder) proved weak, it is time for the locals to lead, though Washington and Brussels can help by facilitating diplomatic and economic support of beneficial projects. The Americans, in particular, will need a broad aperture to understand the needs and opportunities of the region instead of obsessing about what might have been.   

The defeat of the U.S. and NATO may have seen the end of the era of empires in Central Asia and Afghanistan, after the Russian Empire (1713-1917), the British interventions (1839-1919), the Soviet empire (1917-1991), and the American empire (2001-2021).  

Some questionable characters will make a few bucks along the way, but that’s the price of repairing the damage caused by the crusade to reform Afghan culture as part of Washington’s post 9/11 war on terror, the “first grand global experiment of the twenty first century.”

With insured monetary losses of $65 billion at the time and $102 billion adjusted for 2023 inflation, Hurricane Katrina was the costliest for insurers in U.S. history.

Apart from Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in 2022 and was the deadliest hurricane in Florida since 1935, insured losses of previous destructive storms like Sandy, Harvey and Maria amounted to around half of Katrina’s each.

As Statista’s Florian Zandt reports, based on data from Aon published by the Insurance Information Institute, half of the costliest hurricanes for insurance companies took place in the past ten years, with another three occurring in the 2000s. The 2024 edition, which is current as of January 2024, includes “losses sustained by private insurers and government-sponsored programs such as the National Flood Insurance Program”. The latter was excluded up until the 2018 edition of the ranking.

Looking at overall cost estimations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Katrina was the costliest hurricane to ever hit the U.S., with total economic losses as high as $200 billion in 2023 dollars.

Only four hurricanes exceeded the $100-billion-dollar mark in inflation-adjusted cost in the country’s history, all of which occurred after the year 2004.

You will find more infographics at Statista

While it’s unclear if Tropical Storm Helene, which is expected to make landfall this week in Florida as a full-blown hurricane and will likely spread through large parts of the Southeastern U.S. according to CNN reporting, will enter the list of the costliest hurricanes both to insurers and in total, the state of Florida is preparing for the worst: A flood watch has been issued for over 20 million people in the region, both Florida State Guard and Florida National Guard are being activated and evacuation orders are already in place in many of the counties thought to be most affected by Helene.

Authored by John Miles,

“In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Such were the words of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a moderate Republican who previously served in the US Army as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. Like Major General Smedley Butler, who served in the armed forces one generation before him, Eisenhower saw the nexus of private profit and military might firsthand. His successive political experience led him to coin his now-famous term for the phenomenon, which in earlier drafts of his farewell address he called the military-industrial-Congressional complex.

The scourge of war profiteering was already well understood in Eisenhower’s day, with journalists having castigated the merchants of death who armed all sides in World War I and the War of the Pacific, but economic developments since the 1940s have accelerated the trend with military contractors and private mercenaries siphoning off billions of dollars in taxpayer funds.

The military-industrial complex now threatens not only public investment but human civilization itself, according to author and professor Dr. Ken Hammond.

The expert in East Asian and Global History joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Tuesday to discuss how the influence of weapons manufacturers has brought the world to the brink of war with Russia and China.

“It’s a money laundering scheme in a number of ways,” said Hammond, responding to news that the Biden administration is preparing to ship $567 million in lethal aid to authorities in Taiwan.

“Stuff that’s laying around in military warehouses – obsolete equipment – they’re going to ship that off to Taiwan as part of the ongoing efforts to poke China in the eye, provoke situations there, create a lot of public consciousness of tension and conflict and fear about the situation between the United States and China.”

“They’re basically giving away these weapons to Taiwan, and then they’re going to turn around and buy new ones to replace those,” he explained.

“So that, too, is a giveaway to the defense industry, the so-called defense industry – the war industry, really. It’s part of an ongoing relationship between the military-industrial complex and their control of the American government. So there’s really no surprise here.”

The United States has committed to recognizing the territory of Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China in at least three formal declarations, including the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué negotiated under former President Richard Nixon and two subsequent agreements in 1979 and 1982. The issue represented an important part of the diplomatic efforts necessary to normalize relations with Beijing, opening the country up to global capital and manufacturing. But the US has increasingly sought to provoke China on the sensitive issue in recent years, shipping arms to Taiwanese authorities and dispatching ships to the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing has called for the United States to respect Chinese sovereignty and refrain from interfering in the internal matter. China considers Taiwan an inalienable part of its sovereign territory and opposes any official contacts between the island and foreign countries. Beijing has repeatedly said that the One-China principle is a political foundation of China-US relations and that violations by Washington of its own obligations have been jeopardizing cooperation between the two countries, threatening peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

Moscow has backed China on the issue, reaffirming its commitment to the One-China principle and recognizing Taiwan as an inalienable part of China in a number of official statements.

“Between these different [arms] shipments… this adds up to about a billion dollars,” said Hammond of recent US guarantees to Taiwanese authorities.

“What could they be doing with that billion dollars to house people who are living in tents and cardboard boxes on the streets of our cities? What could they do with that billion dollars to improve health care in this country? What could they do with a billion dollars to help out kids in our schools so they get a better education?”

“This is just pouring good money after bad down the drain of warfare and warmongering that doesn’t serve the interests of the American people and ultimately doesn’t even serve the interests of the people of Taiwan,” he said, claiming the Democratic and Republican parties are in a competition to see “who’s going to be the most warlike in our relationship with China.”
“[Taiwanese people] don’t want a war… but that’s what the United States is trying to provoke,” noted Hammond.

The Donbass conflict has provided another major opportunity for arms manufacturers to rake in record profits, transforming Ukraine into a de-facto member of NATO by pumping the country full of Western armaments. Critics claim the US-led bloc has sought to expand for the sake of weapons manufacturers, with each new member state required to upgrade its military equipment to ensure interoperability with its neighbors.

NATO has grown dramatically since the end of the Cold War, adding 16 more member states from 1999 through 2024. Many new members are former Eastern Bloc countries, threatening both Moscow’s trade relationships and its security as the hostile bloc expands towards Russia’s border. US officials have recognized the destabilizing potential of NATO expansion, but private profit has continued to provide a powerful incentive for the bloc to march eastward.

“They just blindly charge ahead with this stuff that’s clearly in violation of our own stated policy,” noted Hammond.

“They don’t care. They’re just doing that. So they can say one thing, but what matters is that they do another. And the thing that they do is directly opposite to this rhetoric.”

“It’s the same with Gaza. Oh, we wring our hands about the situation in Gaza. They could stop the war tomorrow by cutting off all assistance to Israel, but they will never do that… until a change is made in the way that our country works.”

A senior US defense official has said in a Wall Street Journal bombshell report that China’s newest highly touted and cutting edge nuclear-powered submarine has sank at a shipyard near Wuhan. It was to be the newest sub to join China’s fleet of six nuclear-powered attack subs.

The sinking, which reportedly occurred in either May or early summer, constitutes a serious setback for the People’s Liberation Army which has rapidly sought to expand its naval power and technology. President Xi has for years been overseeing a modernization of the PLA Navy.

The US official has further said China is seeking to cover up the incident. “It’s not surprising that the PLA Navy would try to conceal the fact that their new first-in-class nuclear-powered attack submarine sank pierside,” the senior US defense official, who remains anonymous, told the WSJ.

“In addition to the obvious questions about training standards and equipment quality, the incident raises deeper questions about the PLA’s internal accountability and oversight of China’s defense industry — which has long been plagued by corruption,” the official said.

Satellite photos by Planet Labs appear to confirm that the submarine sank. The WSJ report details further, “The Zhou-class vessel that sank is the first of a new class of Chinese nuclear-powered subs and features a distinctive X-shaped stern, which is designed to make the vessel more maneuverable.”

“The sub was built by China State Shipbuilding Corp., a state-owned company, and was observed alongside a pier on the Yangtze River in late May when it was undergoing its final equipping before going to sea,” the report continues.

-Pentagon confirms #China lost its Zhou-class nuclear submarine alongside in May this year
-I reported this in Jul
-In Aug 2023 also China lost a submarine when #XiJinping unexpectedly skipped a BRICS meeting
-Such poor standards set #Chinese navy many years back#IndianNavy pic.twitter.com/nhh7rQExEU

— Insightful Geopolitics (@InsightGL) September 26, 2024

Large floating cranes have been observed engaged in a salvaging mission at the site. Something else of concern is whether or not it was carrying nuclear fuel at the time of the sinking, with analysts cited in the WSJ saying that yes it was ‘likely’.

Neither the Chinese government nor the PLA military have commented on the loss of the sub, and are unlikely to.

Regional tensions have soared given the US has recently inked a controversial defense deal to bolster Australia’s naval defense amidst Western nations’ mounting anxiety over China’s military expansion.

The agreement centers on the US selling Australia three U.S. Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines, projected to be delivered in 2030s, and two more at a later point if needed.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Beijing has sharply criticized the move, saying it was encouraging an arms race. Increasingly Russia and China have patrolled Pacific regional waters together in order to flex their collective muscle against the US and its allies.