10,000 Troops Prepare to Invade Ukraine as US Withholds $200M from Ukrainian Allies? 9/11 NOT the biggest world-changing event in 2001? Amazon Management Error Killed 6 in IL? (The Five for 12/14/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Just a quick note about the schedule.
Next week:
December 21st: Special News Edition—The Five Biggest Stories of 2021.
December 24th: Special Culture Edition—The Top 5 (Movies, Music, TV, Books, etc)
No publications Christmas-New Years…then we’ll pick back up in 2022.
Thanks for engaging with this news outlet, and for your incredible support this year!
Now let’s get into the news.
[one]
The big “20th Anniversary” moment this year happened on 09/11/21, but there’s an argument to be made that 9/11 wasn’t the event in 2001 that had the biggest global impact.
At the end of 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization, which has dramatically reshaped the world.
An army of cheap Chinese labour began to produce the goods that underpin Western living standards, as China seamlessly inserted itself into the supply chains of the world's biggest companies. Economists call it a "supply shock", and its impact certainly was shocking. Its effects are still reverberating around the world.
China's integration into the world economy has seen significant economic achievements, including the eradication of extreme poverty, which stood at 500 million before WTO membership and is now basically zero as the value of the economy, in dollar terms, increased 12-fold. Foreign exchange reserves increased 16-fold to $2.3 trillion, as the world's purchases from China's workshops were banked by the Chinese state.
In 2000, China was the seventh-largest goods exporter in the world, but it quickly reached the number one spot. China's annual growth rate, already at 8%, went stratospheric at the height of the world boom, peaking at 14%, and stabilised at 15% last year.
George W. Bush was the President when China entered the WTO, who shared the view with his predecessor that Democracy could be “exported.”
Dubya thought we could turn Afghanistan into a modern Democracy via war, and Clinton thought we could turn China into a modern Democracy by giving them a taste of Capitalism and individual freedom.
"When individuals have the power not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say,” Clinton famously said.
The capitalism-style growth arrived to China, which is best summed up in this before/after pic of Shanghai, but the freedom never arrived.
Clinton didn’t make China free.
Bush didn’t make Afghanistan independent.
Clinton shipped American jobs overseas.
And Bush started a war that resulted in the Biden Administration infamously equipping the Taliban with hundreds of millions of dollars of American weapons, and more than 100 combat helicopters.
And now the two nations are in an anti-American military alliance.
Meanwhile, places like Youngstown, Ohio, formerly a manufacturing hub, look like this…while enduring one of the highest opioid addiction rates in the nation.
As I’ve stated in previous newsletters…on 9/11, for several hours I thought my uncle had died in New York, and one of my high school best friends thought his dad had died in the Pentagon…so far be it from me to downplay the horrors of September 11.
But there’s a good case for China entering the WTO to be the more consequential event that occurred in 2001.
[two]
Russian troops practicing for invasion. Photo taking in April.
The Washington Post ran an opinion column that Russia is poised to invade Ukraine, because [clutches pearls] Donald Trump:
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s path toward threatening an invasion of Ukraine is marked by reckless actions. In this move toward defiance of international norms, Putin has been subtly encouraged by former president Donald Trump, a fellow traveler in recklessness.
We don’t need any conspiratorial analysis of Trump’s links with Russia to make this case. We just need look at the facts. Trump has been sympathetic to Putin in public statements for nearly a decade. As for Ukraine, Trump was so heedless of its security that he conditioned U.S. military aid on political favors in the famous 2019 phone call that resulted in his first impeachment.
Maybe we should do a quick history lesson here.
Ukraine was previously ruled by Russia, who intentionally starved 7-10 million Ukrainians to death in the Holodomor of 1932-1933.
Putin has been toying with re-invading for the better part of a decade, long before Trump was even a long shot Primary candidate.
Thankfully, NPR did much better reporting:
Ukraine, which was part of the Russian empire for centuries before becoming a Soviet republic, won independence as the USSR broke up in 1991. The country has moved to shed its Russian imperial legacy and forge increasingly close ties with the West.
A decision by Kremlin-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to reject an association agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow sparked mass protests that led to his ouster in 2014. Russia responded by annexing Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind a separatist insurgency that broke out in Ukraine's east.
Ukraine and the West accused Russia of sending its troops and weapons to back the rebels. Moscow denied that, charging that Russians who joined the separatists were volunteers.
More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting that devastated Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland known as Donbas.
A 2015 peace agreement brokered by France and Germany helped end large-scale battles, but efforts to reach a political settlement have failed, and sporadic skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact.
Earlier this year, a spike in cease-fire violations in the east and a Russian troop concentration near Ukraine fueled war fears, but tensions abated when Moscow pulled back the bulk of its forces after maneuvers in April.
To recap: the major events in Ukraine were in 1991 (independence), 2015 (cease fire with Russia) and 2021 (ramped up Russian aggression).
Trump wasn’t President any of those years…and furthermore, the U.S. wasn’t involved in any of it. Ukraine won their own independence. France and Germany brokered the peace deal…and Putin has tried everything he thinks he can get away with.
At one point, I had a lot of faith in both the Washington Post and New York Times, widely considered to be the authoritative papers for the nation.
But whatever you think of Trump in general, claiming The Donald is responsible for a conflict that began with a genocide in the 1930’s, says nothing about the 45th President and a lot about the standards at the Washington Post.
UPDATE: According to ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Putin pushed 10,000 more troops to the Ukranian border after a call with Biden last week in which Biden threatened “economic consequences like you’ve never seen” if Russia does invade.
As of Sunday, the Biden Administration is still withholding $200M in military assistance from Ukraine.
NPR reports that Ukraine’s military is “long on morale but short on weaponry,” and may currently lack the resources to repel a Russian invasion.
[three]
A new study shows consumer prices for goods are up 10% from a year ago.
Yahoo reports:
Prices charged by producers jumped in November and rose nearly 10 percent over the past year, according to data released Tuesday by the Labor Department.
The producer price index (PPI) for final demand, which tracks prices charged for goods and services that are not a part of other products, rose 0.8 percent in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, accelerating from a 0.6 percent increase in October.
The PPI for final demand rose 9.6 percent annually in November, marking the fastest annual growth in the index since the Labor Department began calculating in 2010. Without food, energy and trade services, PPI for final demand rose 0.7 percent in November and 6.9 percent annually, another record.
The November surge in producer prices came as manufacturers, shipping companies and retailers struggled to meet intense consumer demand.
Yahoo also reports that half of small businesses are taking out loans because of inflation.
The “recovery” seems to have hit Wal-Mart, Costsco and Amazon a lot better than the local mom-and-pop shop.
[four]
Tragedy struck close to home over the weekend when an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, IL (20 minutes from my house) partially collapsed due to a tornado, trapping more than 150 and killing six.
The girlfriend of one of the victims said Amazon didn’t allow the employees to leave.
One of the victims who was killed when a tornado collapsed an Amazon warehouse in Illinois texted his girlfriend before the deadly tornado struck saying that the company had ordered him to hold off driving home and stay put until the storm passed.
Larry Virden, 46, was killed Friday night when the roof came down at a massive Amazon facility.
“I got text messages from him. He always tells me when he is filling up the Amazon truck when he is getting ready to go back … I was like ‘OK, I love you.’ He’s like, ‘well Amazon won’t let me leave until after the storm blows over,’” his girlfriend of 13 years, Cherie Jones, told The Post on Sunday.
She said the text was sent around 8:23 p.m., 16 minutes before the tornado reportedly touched down at 8:39. The couple lived in nearby Collinsville, which Jones said is about 13 minutes away from the warehouse.
If this allegation is true…it raises the question as to the ethics of the world’s largest corporation…essentially holding it’s workforce hostage during a natural disaster.
Larry Virden was a veteran of the Iraq war, and survived a close missile hit in combat. He leaves behind four children.
[five]
A study from a Johns Hopkins University M.D. and a Princeton PhD. claims to have found a new disease—at least in horses. “Wind Turbine Syndrome” appears to be crippling horses who live near the giant windmills are coming up crippled:
On this stud farm, the owner has been breeding normal and physically sound horses since 2000. There were no changes in diet, exercise or any other significant alteration in management. Until in 2008, wind turbines were installed adjacent to the property and grazing paddocks. Since this date, a good number of foals and yearlings have developed deformities.
The subjects of the study were: 11 Lusitano horses. Age between 0 and 48 months old. 6 males and 5 females . 9 were born at the stud farm, 2 were acquired from a different breeder.
There’s also evidence Wind Turbines cause adverse effects in people who live and work near them as well.
From the a paper published with National Institute of Health:
Canadian family physicians can expect to see increasing numbers of rural patients reporting adverse effects from exposure to industrial wind turbines (IWTs). People who live or work in close proximity to IWTs have experienced symptoms that include decreased quality of life, annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, headache, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction. Some have also felt anger, grief, or a sense of injustice. Suggested causes of symptoms include a combination of wind turbine noise, infrasound, dirty electricity, ground current, and shadow flicker.1 Family physicians should be aware that patients reporting adverse effects from IWTs might experience symptoms that are intense and pervasive and might feel further victimized by a lack of caregiver understanding.
The bill proposes funding supportive of offshore wind development, including $110 billion in incentives for clean energy technology, manufacturing, and supply chains, and $320 billion in clean energy tax credits. The bill would also require the U.S. Department of the Interior (Interior) to pursue offshore wind leasing in certain areas, including in U.S. territories where it had no prior jurisdiction.
Observations:
A. Considering the world is already experiencing issues with overfishing, it’s probably worth finding out if we’re going to be killing or maiming a bunch of marine wildlife before dropping a bajillion of these things in the ocean.
B. Wind turbines froze during the Texas storm last year that resulted in at least 69 deaths.
C. I’m not against renewable energy in general, just the stuff that isn’t working. And wind turbines have significant issues that need solving. There are certainly better solutions out there than “renewables” that require fossil fuels, catch fire…
…and are non-recyclable, resulting in a massive turbine graveyard in Casper, WY.
Keep in mind, I’m not the one disagreeing with spending $110 billion on Wind Turbine power…
…the government (specifically the NIH) is, in the paper I cited above.
Perhaps that $110 billion would be better spent developing new tech, like these “sea dragons,” underwater kites that produce energy from the tides.
Until the next one,
-sth