Would you trust your savings to a Nigerian prince?

S&P cut Credit Suisse's rating one notch to BBB- meaning its credit is trash, worthless. Only fabulously rich Arabs are eyeing buying it. A bank lives on the confidence of the public. Those hardheaded Calvinist Swiss bankers imagined that the moneyed will trust a diverse Senegalese? Wokeness killed the bank. 

China closes down

Lei Ge, a senior media person, said in an interview with this station: "It is an integral part of Xi Jinping's vision of China's development strategy. Xi Jinping is determined to take the so-called socialist road with Chinese characteristics and fight against the mainstream of modern Western civilization in the United States. This is surrounded and blocked by European and American societies. This is the harsh reality China has faced in the past five years.”

 Immediately after the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, things start happening in China. 50,000 supply and marketing cooperatives in rural China have been re-activated. The purchase and sale of agricultural products will be completed by the supply and marketing cooperatives. Details: https://reurl.cc/oZLqVg 

The old Supply and Marketing Cooperatives were created during Mao's famine in 1959-60, to supply the cities. Internet commenters remember them as a government instrument and fear the end of free agricultural marketing and the return to mass scarcity. Although cooperatives are logical and successful in many parts, Xi's decision reminds me of Soviet collectivization and the Holodomor.  

The best mosque in Europe

 

The mosque of Cologne-Ehrenfeld. Architecturally, it is nice. The nicest churches in Hungary are former mosques of the Turkish occupation time. People are unaware that Hungary was an Islamic country. Like Spain. 

America is ending Globalization

 
China has painted itself into a corner. People now have weakened immune systems, and cannot stop the Zero COVID policy without massive deaths. 

No one is buying Chinese high-tech products. 

Xi is focused on stability and defense. He changed the list of promotions minutes before the vote and did not allow his left-hand partner to see the actual list to be voted on. Loyalty to Xi is the main requisite for advancement. 

Israel will prosper. 

Wuuttke said there used to be many "liberal" officials in the CCP who supported deepening reforms and embracing the market. But after the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, these different voices may no longer exist, and almost all major decisions need to be set by Xi Jinping, who has already stated that he would rather sacrifice economic growth to achieve national security and economic independence. . He also said there was no sign that China would soon relax its "zero policy" to prevent and control the new crown epidemic.

Excess Males in China

Conrad Hackett

@conradhackett

Most male-biased sex ratios at birth around the world from 2000-2020 (UN data) China: 115 boys per 100 girls Azerbaijan 115 Armenia 114 Vietnam 111 Albania 111 India 110

A few years ago the internet was full of speculation about the gender imbalance in some populations. War and civil unrest were to be the obvious results. That did not happen. There are 35 million more men in China than women.  This caused women to be overly privileged. Chinese women are beautiful on the outside, but very nasty on the inside...demanding and money hungry.

US Navy vs EPA

“The Navy is contesting an $8.7 million fine for Clean Water Act violations and alleged deficiencies at its Pearl Harbor–Hickam wastewater treatment system, arguing the penalty levied by the state Department of Health (DOH) is legally prohibited because the state is barred from seeking punitive damage,” Stars And Stripes reported. “DOH fined the Navy in September for 766 counts of discharging undertreated sewage into the ocean between January 2020 and July 2022, in addition to 229 counts of operational and maintenance failures at its Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam wastewater treatment plant.”

This is just the latest in several ongoing drinking water and wastewater treatment issues surrounding the Navy. Officials were recently reprimanded for their role in allowing fuel from a Hawaiin bunker to enter and contaminate local drinking water supplies, and consumers are currently suing the government as a result. And recent revelations suggest sailors are routinely subjected to jet-fuel-contaminated drinking water aboard Navy vessels as well.

We had a similar issue of a military airport spilling fuel and contaminating the aquifer. I don't know how it ended.

Israeli Arabs: Crime and Terrorism misexplained

 
Taubcenter writes: Another factor that contributes to the high rate of crime among young men in Arab society involves the emerging trends in the Arab marriage market. The average age difference between a bride and groom in Israeli Arab society is six years. Since cohorts below age 18 are smaller than those aged 18-22, this means that starting from around 2026 the number of men at the normative age for marriage will be about 5–10% greater than the number of Arab women at the normative age for marriage. This ratio does not even take into account the phenomenon of polygyny in Arab society, found primarily among the Bedouin population, which itself reduces the number of women available for marriage to never-married men.

However, in the population pyramid above I don't see that cohorts below 18 years of age are SMALLER than age 24. On the contrary. The boys are having a growing choice of younger marriageable girls.