Moderators: Zamfir, Hawknc, Moderators General, Prelates
oh, crap....gmalivuk wrote:Milo also later blamed the media for reporting on his own incitement to violence against journalists.
http://observer.com/2018/06/milo-yianno ... -down/amp/
China has spent nearly five years steering an ever-growing stream of hundreds of billions of dollars to a bold plan to gain greater global influence by funding big projects across Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa.
Now, Beijing is starting to tap the brakes.
The value of the deals that Chinese companies are striking under the country’s big global plan — called the Belt and Road Initiative — is smaller than a year ago, according to new data. Chinese officials themselves are sounding a cautious note, voicing worries that Chinese institutions need to be careful how much they lend under the program — and make sure their international borrowers can pay it back.
The Belts and Roads was Great Idea! It would give China great influence over large food producing areas and transportation of that food, it would give China large markets and enormous good will from African Nations.sardia wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/business/china-belt-and-road-slows.html
Follow up to the Sri Lanka port albatross, China wonders how much it actually loans out.China has spent nearly five years steering an ever-growing stream of hundreds of billions of dollars to a bold plan to gain greater global influence by funding big projects across Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa.
Now, Beijing is starting to tap the brakes.
The value of the deals that Chinese companies are striking under the country’s big global plan — called the Belt and Road Initiative — is smaller than a year ago, according to new data. Chinese officials themselves are sounding a cautious note, voicing worries that Chinese institutions need to be careful how much they lend under the program — and make sure their international borrowers can pay it back.
It's not really a happy story, but at least people are starting to notice when China lends them money.
well...You are not Wrong.Sableagle wrote:It also gave Chinese standards of food safety, pet food safety, toy safety, environmental protection, workplace safety and employee rights a lot of influence in Africa.
Judging by some stories I've seen, those standards are, in order: "fuck it," "fuck it," "fuck it," "fuck it," "fuck it" and "fuck them."
oh, sigh...Leave it up to FOX to crack the door on conversations about which journalists 'deserve' a bullet and which ones don't.Coyne wrote:The Annapolis shooting was probably due to the ideologies of the Capital Gazette, we must check immediately. These might be some of the journalists that deserve to be killed.
umm...I forgot her name.#JusticeforSandy ... Keep hashtagging #SayHerName. The minute you forget her name you forget her character."
Soupspoon wrote:Suspected further fall-out from the Skripal poisoning case…
Saudi woman’s new car set on fire by young men who harassed her. They told her to stop driving because it was “against the will of God”, she said. But when she chose to ignore them, they set her car on fire earlier this week.
Conservatives enter alliance with Swedish far-right in European Parliament.
The Conservatives have entered an alliance with a far-right anti-immigration party from Sweden, prompting accusations they are “worryingly comfortable in the company of right-wing extremists”.
Following meetings on Tuesday night, the Sweden Democrats party, which has its roots in fascism and white supremacy, was admitted to the Tory-led European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, set up by David Cameron in 2009.
The Swedish party, which is riding high in the polls on a wave of xenophobia ahead of elections this year, had previously sat in the EFFD group, with Ukip and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland AfD.
The Swedish group is trying to clean up its image to become more mainstream, having previously shared iconography with the UK National Front. One of its founding senior officials was a veteran of the Nazi Waffen-SS and leading members have been pictured wearing Nazi regalia.
Home Office separating scores of children from parents as part of immigration detention regime.
The Home Office is separating scores of children from their parents as part of its immigration detention regime – in some cases forcing them into care in breach of government policy.
Schools, the NHS and social services have written letters to the department begging them to release parents from detention because of the damaging impact it is having on their children.
Bail for Immigration Detainees (Bid), a charity that supports people in detention, said they have seen 170 children separated from their parents by the Home Office in the past year – and believes there are likely to be many more.
“If [name of detainee] is not released in time for the baby’s birth, the child will be accommodated in local authority care and care proceedings will be initiated to secure the long-term care planning arrangements for the child,” it states.
“This is understandably a situation Southwark Children’s Services wish to avoid to prevent family breakdown.”
Coyne wrote:The drug contamination angle, how lovely. I am imagining the discussion between the principles of the first case...
A man and woman found unconscious in Wiltshire were exposed to Novichok - the same nerve agent that poisoned ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal, police say.
The couple, believed to be Charlie Rowley, 45, and Dawn Sturgess, 44, fell ill at a house in Amesbury on Saturday and remain in a critical condition.
Police say no one else has presented with the same symptoms.
There was "nothing in their background" to suggest the pair were targeted, the Met Police said.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid will chair a meeting of the government's emergency Cobra committee later to discuss the developments.
Mutex wrote:Not likely to be targets, more likely to have come across something or an area that the Russian agents used to prepare the novichok attack against the Skripals.
oh,...Soupspoon wrote:Dawn Sturgess has died following her Novichok exposure.
Soupspoon wrote:(It shouldn't be a worse dose. For one thing, the hours between one succumbing and the second indicate less exposure to at least the latter. However it was engineered to expose Sergei (and I have my unfounded suspicions that the daughters near-simultaneous exposure took some of the "If it's supposed to be lethal, why aren't they dead?" attack's potency off of her Dad), it was likely a lesser residue left. Could of course be that the first of the recent victims was the sole directly-accidental victim, and her partner only picked it up via intimate contact in dealing with her initial onset of illness.)
Soupspoon wrote:Or, in fact, I've heard it put down to being a message to other (and potential) defectors.
Soupspoon wrote:Or, in fact, I've heard it put down to being a message to other (and potential) defectors.
That, of course, puts a different spin on it. "We can give you just enough of this stuff to make you suffer…", perhaps controlling the dose, maybe aiming for LD50 and chancing on one death and one survivor (either way) with the Skripals.
And then they (presumably? Unless this was a deliberate, if 'random' follow-on) left something like the Big Mixing Bowl Of Danger somewhere, instead of dealing with it somehow (having a bonfire?). Messy. Or ineffably calculating.
Utterly hard to pin it all down. Well above my (non-existent) pay-grade, but why let that stop me?
cphite wrote:But that may have been the point. To send a message to the UK that Russia did this, and that Russia wants them to know that Russia did this. A known Russian poison, delivered in a manner that aided identification, and that took down additional targets in a seemingly haphazard manner. It would send the message that they can do this right out in the open, and that they dare the UK to do something about it.
Coyne wrote:Which, these days, doesn't mean a lot. It could be a false flag attack.
Coyne wrote:Which, these days, doesn't mean a lot. It could be a false flag attack.
The document on Chinese government website classifies the ZKZM-500 as a “non-lethal weapon”, meaning they are deemed less likely to kill a living target than something explicitly designed to do so, such as a gun.
The lasers cannot kill a target with a single shot, but if fired at a person for long enough the weapons would start to burn a hole in their body, cutting through them like a surgical knife.
(...)
Instead the document lays stress on the non-lethal applications of the technology.
For instance it says law enforcement could counter “illegal protests” by setting fire to banners from a long distance.
It also says protest leaders could be targeted by setting fire to their clothing or hair which, the document says, would mean they lose “the rhythms of their speech and powers of persuasion”.
Mutex wrote:If it was a false flag it would make more sense if it was a third party, wanting to start an internecine conflict between the UK and Russia. But... it makes way more sense that it was just Russia.
The bottom line is that far more than 40 may soon be weeded out – and it’s possible that the majority of the remaining 1,000 or so participants in the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest, or MAVNI, program will be let go before they can be cleared for duty. Additional background checks were reinforced by Secretary Jim Mattis in an October 2017 memo.
PayPal wrote to a woman who had died of cancer saying her death had breached its rules and that it might take legal action as a consequence.
The firm has since acknowledged that the letter was "insensitive", apologised to her widower, and begun an inquiry into how it came to be sent.
Lindsay Durdle died on 31 May aged 37. She had been first diagnosed with breast cancer about a year-and-a-half earlier. The disease had later spread to her lungs and brain.
PayPal was informed of Mrs Durdle's death three weeks ago by her husband Howard Durdle. He provided the online payments service with copies of her death certificate, her will and his ID, as requested.
He has now received a letter addressed in her name, sent to his home in Bucklebury, West Berkshire. It said that Mrs Durdle owed the company about £3,200 and went on to say: "You are in breach of condition 15.4(c) of your agreement with PayPal Credit as we have received notice that you are deceased... this breach is not capable of remedy."
PayPal has told Mr Durdle that it is looking into this "as a priority", and has written off the debt in the meantime.
section 15.4(c) according to second hand sources wrote:“We may close the Credit Account and demand repayment of the full amount you owe us if you die or become of unsound mind.”
