Global News Synopsis | Week 27 | 1st -7th July 2018

Steemians - Check out my synopsis and curation below of significant global happenings during week 27. All sources have been provided in "Reference Links" section at the end of this synopsis. 2 new sections have been added to the weekly synopsis - Technocracy and Corporatocracy.

Let me know your feedback in the comments section below.

Geo-Politics

1. Update on Yemen War situation - As Yemeni detainees suffer from torture, sexual abuse and other kinds of ill-treatment by UAE soldiers, the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva says that it has requested access to the prisons, but has not been allowed in so far. On July 6, the Saudi-led coalition and its proxies launched a new ground attack along the western Yemen coast and captured the district center of al-Tuhayat after a series of clashes with the Houthis, according to the UAE-based al-Arabiya TV. The Sky News Arabiya TV reported that the Saudi-led coalition killed dozens of Houthi fighters during the clashes in al-Tuhayat. Coalition forces are now clearing the district center from the IEDs and mines, which had been planted by the Houthis. In response to the Saudi-led coalition advance, the Yemeni Missile Force [loyal to the Houthis] announced that it had launched a Badir-1 “ballistic missile” at the industrial city in the southern Saudi province of Jizan.

On July 7, the Saudi-led coalition announced that its warplanes destroyed a military communication network of the Houthis in the districts of Razih and Haydan in the northern province of Saada. The UAE-based al-Arabiya TV revealed that the network contained “advanced technologies.”

UN was able to confirm the deaths of 552 children last year in Yemen. Sixty-seven percent of those children, 370 in total, were found to have been killed by coalition airstrikes. The report also found that 83 Yemeni children were killed by attacks launched by the Houthi rebels and 41 killed by fighters loyal to the Saudi-backed government while the remainder were killed by the coalition’s international allies. Coalition spokesman Colonel Turki Al Malki slammed the still-unreleased report as “inaccurate” and asserted that the report’s conclusions are based upon “unreliable facts.”

2. Iran-US conflict seems to be escalating in the Gulf - Iranian military accused that a US ship carrying chemical weapons has recently anchored in the Persian Gulf and in engaged in a "dangerous plot", though not naming the particular "Gulf state" territorial waters at which the ship docked. President Hassan Rouhani also suggested Iran could stop all regional gulf oil exports in retaliation for the US seeking to collapse the nuclear deal, and in response to aggressive new US sanctions. Spokesman for the US military's Central Command, Captain Bill Urban, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that US sailors and its regional allies "stand ready to ensure the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce wherever international law allows".

3. Former Malaysian PM Najib Razak has been arrested and was charged with misuse of the funds after some $4.5 billion allegedly disappeared from 1MDB's coffers. The charges are related to SRC International, the former subsidiary of 1MDB that Razak and his family used as a personal piggy bank of sorts. The arrest could also be bad news for Goldman, which, under the guidance of former Southeast Asia head Tim Leissner (who was barred from the US securities industry late last year) helped finance 1MDB with three separate bond issues that netted the bank some $600 million. Those bond issues are now being investigated by prosecutors in Singapore, regulators in New York and the FBI after 1MDB defaulted back in 2016, as it is rumored that Razak directly pocketed some of the gross proceeds.

4. Former President of Ecuador Rafael Correa has defied an arrest order, claiming the new government is waging “lawfare” to deprive him of a political future – and even life, in an exclusive RT interview. Correa was replaced in power by his ally Lenin Moreno in April last year, after a tight national election. At the time, Correa welcomed Moreno’s victory as a “triumph of revolution,” but later branded him a “traitor” and “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Relations between the two soured after Moreno proposed a constitutional referendum to limit the number of presidential terms for one person, thus barring Correa from seeking re-election in 2021.

5. With rebel territory shrinking all the time, the Syrian government has publicly called on refugees of the war, in excess of 5 million people, to begin returning home. Looking at a map, this makes sense. The ISIS caliphate is gone. The rebels are expelled from metro Damascus, and almost all of the south. The rebels still have territory in Syria’s southwest tip, and in Idlib and Aleppo Province, but that’s virtually all.

6. The hotcake that is S400 - First it was Turkey, which openly defied Trump's threats of sanctions if it were to buy S400 from Russia. Now India is also moving towards acquiring five or more S-400 from Russia despite the threat of US retaliation. The Defense Acquisitions Council (DAC), chaired by minister Nirmala Sitharaman, last week approved the “minor deviations” in the $5.7 billion deal to purchase S-400s for final government approval, to the finance ministry and the Prime Minister’s office sources told the Times of India.

7. Just prior to a United Nations Human Rights Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this week, a UN legal expert has declared that Israel is moving closer to formal annexation of the West Bank. A statement by UN official Michael Lynk also highlighted restriction on Palestinian movement, night raids and the lack of building approvals, and what the UNHRC has called a creeping de facto annexation of West Bank territory.

Geo-Economics

1. Continued escalation of the Eagle - Dragon trade war - China is weaponizing Yuan in response to US trade tariffs. Earlier this week the Yuan tumbled to records lows, a 10 handle drop in the span of 24 hours, an unheard of move either during the Chinese devaluation phase in the summer of 2015, or the subsequent capital outflow panic in early 2016. The Yuan devaluation makes imports from the US more expensive and thus, is a hidden tax, as many observed. However, later in the week, People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang said China will not weaponize Yuan to fight sanctions (as seen in the Yuan chart below).

On Friday, July 6 US imposed 25% tariffs totaling $34 billion went into effect against Chinese exports. Beijing has retaliated with mirror measures against American import, imposed 25% tariffs on $34 billion worth of US imports.

2. Moscow has raised tariffs from 25 to 40 percent on some US imports in response to Washington’s move to impose tariffs on Russian steel and aluminum. The US imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum on major global suppliers, citing national security concerns. The trade penalties of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum took effect from June 1. China, Russia, Japan, India, Turkey and the EU have accused the US of protectionism and threatened to retaliate with levies on US goods.

3. One of the most important macro-situations that’s developing right now is the looming U.S. dollar shortage, leading to emerging market implosion. Here are some of the things that’s causing liquidity to dry up

Soaring U.S. deficits – the United States’ need for constant funding is requiring huge amounts of capital
A strengthening U.S. Dollar – which is weakening the rest of the worlds currencies
Rising U.S. short-term rates and LIBOR rates – courtesy of the Federal Reserve’s tightening
The Fed’s quantitative tightening program – unwinding their balance sheet by selling bonds

The soaring U.S. dollar, Emerging Market chaos, and depreciating Asian currencies are all effects from this.

That means global economies and stock markets will grow far more fragile – until the Fed inevitably reverses their tightening to re-liquidize global markets.

5. While Italy has the largest percentage of non-performing loans among the world's largest economies, India isn't far behind and India's economic recovery is built on an even shakier foundation. According to Bloomberg, India's $1.7 trillion formal banking sector is presently struggling with $210 billion in bad loans, most of which are concentrated within its state-owned banks. During the 2018 fiscal year, growth slowed to 6.7%, down from the previous year's 7.1%, back to its levels from 2014, before Modi came to power.

Crypto

1. More than a thousand of crypto projects are “already dead” as of June 30, 2018, according to a recent TechCrunch report. The news outlet has based its claim on data from two websites: Coinopsy and DeadCoins. As Cointelegraph reported Friday, the volume of ICOs has reached $13.7 billion in 2018 so far, which is already twice as much as the market amounted to in the entire 2017. According to TechCrunch, scam and dead ICOs raised $1 billion in 2017.

2. Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin said he is mining ethereum. Sergey Brin said “it’s really mindboggling,” refering to Zcash’s zero knowledge proofs which have also, to some extent, been incorporated in ethereum.

3. One of the largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining companies globally, Bitmain, is now valued at $12 billion following a Series B round of funding, Chinese news outlet Caixin reports July 6.
According to Caixin, Bitmain raised between $300 million to $400 million from Sequoia Capital subsidiary Sequoia China, U.S. hedge fund Coatue, and Singapore-based governmental investment fund EDBI. In September 2017, Beijing-based Bitmain received $50 million in a Series A funding round from Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital.

Technocracy

1. Uganda has gone ahead and rolled out a controversial daily levy on citizens for using social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype, enraging many of its online citizens. The major telecom companies, MTN, Airtel, and Africell, set up special mobile money menus for users to pay the tax or be denied access to a list of 58 websites, apps and voice calling platforms.

2. Research scientists at Northwestern University in Boston spent a year trying to determine whether or not smartphone applications are secretly recording our private conversations to send personal data to advertisers. The study confirms that smartphone applications are recording video footage of our screens and taking screenshots of our activity and then passing those screen recordings on to third parties. The surreptitious filming even captures the users’ personal information — sometimes even their postcodes. They also accepted that it was still possible that they had missed instances of audio recordings being made if the apps had transcribed audio before sending it to third parties.
So, it seems we can’t fully rule out the idea that our phones are not only watching, but listening too.

3. In an unexpected move, this week the European Parliament rejected a highly controversial bill that critics claimed would stifle free speech and creativity on the internet. It tried to established a “link tax,” which would have required online publishes to pay a fee for the right to link to news organizations. Critics argued the vague language did not adequately define what constitutes a link and said the rule could easily become a tool for political abuse. Though the directive in its current form has been rejected, it will now go back to the drawing board where members of parliament can propose changes. It will be put to another vote in September.

Your memes are safe until then.

3. Al Gore, a tenured globalist and former member of the Trilateral Commission, is also the consummate Technocrat, pushing Sustainable Development, aka Green Economy or Technocracy. Gore’s role in global transformation is to use fear to stampede people into giving up their rights and resources.

On Saturday, Gore issued a warning about Earth’s “ominous” record-breaking heat.

“Another ominous record has been set,” Gore tweeted, citing a Washington Post article. “The city of Quriyat, Oman, hit an overnight LOW of 108.7 degrees on Tuesday – likely the highest minimum daily temp recorded on Earth. For those suffering from the heat in the U.S. this weekend, be safe and stay cool!”

If you want to know the real reasons for such unnatural weather, look up my series on Geoengineering here -

4. Gender Benders - Dr David Mackereth has worked for 26 years as an NHS doctor but was told he could not be employed as a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) disability assessor if he refused to identify patients as being of a sex that they did not see themselves as. He now claims his right to freedom of speech has been denied and he has been classed “unfit” to work for the department because of his religious convictions.

Corporatocracy

1. Now, employees and shareholders of Amazon.com – the world’s largest online marketer and cloud-computing provider – are demanding that chief executive Jeff Bezos halt the sale of its facial recognition or Amazon Web Services (AWS) Rekognition service to law enforcement agencies across the U.S., including to the Department of Homeland Security – Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS-ICE).

“As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build, and a say in how it is used,” the letter said. “We learn from history, and we understand how IBM’s systems were employed in the 1940s to help Hitler.

2. Saudi Aramco IPO has been put on hold, with inside sources telling the FT that plans for the IPO had been temporarily shelved, and that the process for selecting a venue for listing the shares had been put off until at least 2019. The Aramco IPO, which would've likely been the biggest offering in history given the company's valuation, is almost certainly not going to happen. According to inside sources, the death of the IPO has been all but officially announced.

Miscellaneous

1. Greenpeace activists successfully crashed a Superman-shaped drone into a French nuclear plant as part of their efforts to highlight the site’s security flaws. According to Greenpeace: “This action highlights the extreme vulnerability of this type of buildings, which contain the highest amount of radioactivity in nuclear plants.”
France generates 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power in 19 nuclear plants operated by EDF, Reuters reported.