Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Perhaps the most apt metaphor to describe the decade ahead is that investors, consumers and taxpayers will all be rafting whitewater rapids with ever-briefer stretches of calm.

Geopolitical / financial risks are proliferating and becoming more difficult to predict or hedge for a very basic reason: the era of global integration and accord has ended and the era of global disintegration and discord is heating up. In historian Peter Turchin’s terminology, when everyone finds reasons to cooperate, the result is an era of accord; when everyone finds reasons not to cooperate, the result is an era of discord.

Beneath the chaotic swirl of complex dynamics and risk, two core drivers emerge: de-globalization and de-financialization.

The 30-year era of increasing globalization has reversed, reducing the influence of markets and increasing the influence of national security. Where the globalization era led to global trade agreements which served at least a few of every participants’ core interests, the de-globalization era will be characterized by fragmentation and deals being cut between nations outside of traditional alliances and ideological camps.

In the neoliberal worldview, markets are solutions to virtually every problem: open up markets and let price discovery and innovations solve all problems. This construct is ideologically appealing, but in the real world, markets generated extremely risky supply-chain dependencies on unreliable offshore sources: yes, these dependencies were efficient and profitable, but when things fall apart, they cause dominoes to fall far beyond what “markets” anticipated or could hedge.

The 50-year era of increasing financialization has also reversed. In a nutshell, financialization optimized capital at the expense of labor / wage earners, and optimized speculation via the vast expansion of credit and leverage, enabling finance to commoditize virtually everything in the global economy: labor, capital, goods, services and yes, even risk.

But commoditized risk that can be hedged only includes the risks that are visible and known. When extremes become more extreme, the potential for risk to escape the neatly fenced corral of hedged risk increases in ways that cannot be quantified and hedged.

I tend to think many observers focus too narrowly on risks arising from financial crises, for example a crisis in the multi-trillion dollar shadowy derivatives market that could cascade as holders of derivative contracts with claims on underlying collateral (for example, the homes underlying mortgages in a mortgage-backed security) start seizing the collateralized assets embedded in the derivatives chain.

While I make no claim to understanding “The Great Taking” scenario and cannot vouch for its accuracy, the basic idea is well-established: derivatives (such as CLOs and CDOs, as well as many even more exotic concoctions) can include claims on the underlying collateral of debt-based assets such as homes or vehicles.

The risk few seem to be discussing is not the seizure itself but the political firestorm any such seizure would ignite. The public has tolerated a stinking mass of self-serving bailouts and insider dealings under the threat of “if we don’t do this, the entire system collapses in a heap” for the past 15 years, but their patience with financier stripmining may run out more quickly than the political elites imagine.

History suggests that social revolutions often start spontaneously from an apparently trivial event: the deadwood of a corrupt system rigged to funnel asymmetric rewards to the few at the expense of the many finally catches fire, and quickly becomes a conflagration.

While many commentators have noted China continues reducing its holdings of US Treasuries (UST) and the general trend of de-dollarization, i.e. offloading Treasuries and seeking payment mechanisms that do not include the US dollar (USD), few seem to ponder what risks might arise in other currency flows, for example, the capital sloshing around the global economy as Direct Foreign Investment (FDI), money that flows into an economy as investments in assets such as manufacturing, mining, housing, tourism, etc.

Just as capital flowing in or out of sovereign bonds reflects the interests of each participating nation, so too do FDI investment flows and the sales and purchases of Strategically Significant Commodities.

I would characterize this vast reshuffling of global capital flows as a direct consequence of two factors:

1. The ascendence of national security over market incentives (i.e. profits, mercantilist exports, etc.)

2. The fragmentation of broad trade agreements in favor of special deals with trading partners that include not just tariffs but access to Strategically Significant Commodities and investment capital flows.

In other words, trade is no longer about opening new markets for mercantilist exports and parking surplus dollars in Treasuries, it’s about securing essential commodities and capital flows in exchange for access to supply chains and financial markets.

The mercantilist era has ended: so-called free trade (there is no such thing) that created critical national-security-related dependencies on frenemies is now something to avoid and reverse at all costs. Mercantilist nations that have depended on increasing exports as the source of their economic growth will find markets restricted as relocalization and glocalisation become priorities. (This includes China, Germany, Japan and other export-dependent economies.)

We can foresee deals that include access to commodities, guarantees to buy sovereign bonds, opening previously closed sectors of mercantilist economies and access to direct investment, not just trade and tariffs. In other words, the fragmentation of global trade opens the door to deals brokered between individual nations, tailored to their own interests, that cover not just interests in trade per se but in securing commodities, essentials and capital flows.

Globalisation is not dead, but it is fading: ‘glocalisation’ is becoming the new mantra.

Risk also rises when established processes break down as multiple crises emerge and reinforce each other–what’s known as polycrisis. When established mechanisms no longer resolve crises or conflicts, then leaders will naturally be tempted to try ever more extreme measures to regain control (or the illusion of control).

Every leader is prone to miscalculation, but authoritarian regimes with highly concentrated nodes of decision-making are more prone to making catastrophically bad decisions because they’ve suppressed dissent and open debate as threats to the regime’s political and narrative control.

The global trend toward authoritarianism concentrates decision-making in the hands of the few, increasing the risks of fatal misjudgments or miscalculations.

Amidst a disconcertingly expanding universe of risks, Richard Bonugli and I discuss these ten which were assembled by the consortium at CedarOwl. CedarOwl’s Table of Geo-Political Investor Risks. This graphic can be understood as a risk matrix. (My own list of 10 risks would be different, of course, but this is a worthy place to start.) Podcast: 10 Geopolitical / Financial Risks to the Global Economy:

1. Financiers Seizing Collateral in a Derivatives Crisis, a.k.a. “The Great Taking”

2. Cyber attacks

3. Tariff wars

4. Confiscation of other nation’s financial assets

5. Selling / Boycott of US Treasuries

6. Imposition of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)

7. Russia’s ban of uranium exports to the West

8. Restrictions on Strategically Significant Commodities

9. Private cryptocurrencies forcibly folded into CBDCs

10. Escalation of Ukraine war

Where does our risk assessment take us? Perhaps the most apt metaphor to describe the decade ahead is that investors, consumers and taxpayers will all be rafting whitewater rapids with ever-briefer stretches of calm.

So what do we do as individuals? De-risk our lives as much as possible and focus on increasing our problem-solving skills. This is my definition of Self-Reliance.

*  *  *

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Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Carmen Alvarez looks down at a five-year-old coffee plant and frowns. She points to the wide brown spots afflicting some of the leaves and says “Ashes are good for [dealing with] the plagues.”

Mrs. Alvarez and her husband Francisco Mamani have been working with coffee plants near Bolivia’s Amboro National Park for 30 years.

In that time, they’ve had their fair share of environmental setbacks.

Coffee has always been a fragile plant that requires specific microclimates to thrive. Controlling fungal diseases and pests are just part of the job.

Most growers within the world’s “coffee belt” nations are well-versed in dealing with these problems—every season brings a different challenge.

As one of the most traded commodities in the world, the global coffee market was valued at $138 billion last year, according to Expert Market Research. FairTrade says the industry employs roughly 125 million people in at least 70 countries.

In the United States, coffee represents 2.2 million jobs and creates more than $100 billion in wage revenue, according to the National Coffee Association.

Mrs. Alvarez said both the wet and dry seasons are becoming less predictable, most noticeably since a few years ago. Consequently, infestations and diseases affecting coffee are now becoming harder to predict and more difficult to mitigate.

The Alvarez family, which runs both a plantation and the coffee roasting company Buenavisteno, isn’t alone.

The increasing struggle to bring in a healthy crop of coffee “cherries” is part of a larger pattern affecting the world’s producers.

As weather and seasons become more erratic, diseases have become more widespread, threatening the future of growers everywhere.

The fungal disease known in the industry as coffee leaf rust is one of the primary blights that affects coffee—particularly the Arabica strains—and spreads like a pathogen.

The dreaded coffee leaf rust was detected for the first time in Saudi Arabia, a country that had harbored one of the few remaining coffee regions free of the disease, according to a study published in January.

The presence of coffee leaf rust was observed for the first time in August 2023 on plantations in the mountainous Fyfa district.

The area lies within the heart of Saudi Arabia’s coffee production region in Jazan.

The United States imports 200,000 60-kilogram (132-pound) bags of roast and ground coffee per year from the Middle Eastern nation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Due to the compounding effect of increased disease and insects, along with shifting weather patterns, one study in the journal “Science” estimates that 60 percent of all coffee species are at risk of extinction.

However, this isn’t the first time scientists have identified coffee as being at risk of extinction due to evolving and shifting climates.

One study from 2012 noted that wild Arabica strains—known for having the best taste—could be extinct “well before” the end of this century.

Currently, the United States consumes 1.62 billion pounds of coffee per year, according to data compiled by Cafely.

Facing a Triple Threat

Some in the industry predict a significant loss in coming years.

“Research shows that the number of regions best suited for growing coffee will be cut in half over the course of the next 25 years or so,” Amanda Archila, executive director of Fairtrade America, told The Epoch Times.

The organization says it works with more than 2 million farmers worldwide, giving it a finger on the pulse of coffee producers’ struggles.

Ms. Archila said countries such as Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Colombia are especially affected by changing temperatures.

“For coffee farmers, that means a dramatic change in how they farm—or whether they farm at all,” she said.

“Some may choose to grow crops better suited to the new environment. Some may relocate. Some may abandon farming altogether in search of more stable, profitable jobs.

“What we certainly know is that already unstable livelihoods are at stake, with families and communities all around the world on the line,” she said.

Ms. Archila said Fairtrade-certified farmers in Colombia have reported serious problems with irregular rainfall.

“They are waiting months for rainfall. The sun is so hot that it is drying out their wells and there isn’t enough water to irrigate crops quickly,” she said.

“Plants are smaller and thinner than they used to be, and pests and diseases are spreading more easily.”

Thriving in humid, tropical climates, coffee plants naturally require a lot of water. However, too much can be just as damaging.

Heavy rains, especially during the dry season, can lead to erosion, and soil nutrient loss, and leave saturated root systems prone to disease and rot.

Challenges aside, some have no intention of giving up on their multi-generational farms.

Mrs. Alvarez said her family is getting creative with solutions for the plagues afflicting their coffee production.

“We prepare different products to cure and protect from the diseases,” she said.

One type of insect Mrs. Alvarez described is what she called a “miner.”

The bug burrows into the coffee plants, killing it as efficiently as coffee leaf rust.

When the wet and dry seasons around her farm were stable, it was easy to predict and control the “miners.” They were part of the seasons, just like the rains.

However, with the drastic swings in rainfall and temperatures around Amboro National Park, she said the insect attacks have become a daily battle.

Then there’s what she called the “damping.”

“Damping is a plague. It’s not like a beetle that we can see and kill. It’s just crazy weather. It rains when it’s not supposed to or it’s cold when it’s supposed to be warm. It’s very difficult to protect the plants,” Mrs. Alvarez said.

The term “damping” is used throughout the region of Buena Vista to describe the effect of sudden, erratic weather changes on coffee plants.

Mrs. Alvarez said it takes a heavy toll on saplings younger than one year, but noticed that longer periods of extreme weather are starting to affect well-established plants five years and older.

“It affects the neck [stem] of the coffee. It makes the plant dry out faster,” she said.

When asked how she handles the “damping,” she said they’re still trying different methods. So far, she observed that wood ashes work well for plants that get sick from wild weather changes.

Beyond ashes, Mrs. Alvarez explained her family also uses laundry soap, lime, and sulfur to battle fungal diseases and pests. “That’s also why we plant Castillo [coffee], it’s more resistant.”

Read more here…

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Finland plans to offer avian influenza vaccinations as soon as the week of June 30 to some workers with exposure to animals, health authorities said on June 25. That would make it the first country in the world to do so.

The Nordic country has bought vaccines for 10,000 people, each consisting of two injections, as part of a joint European procurement of up to 40 million doses for 15 nations from manufacturer CSL Seqirus.

“The vaccine will be offered to those aged 18 or over who are at increased risk of contracting avian influenza due to their work or other circumstances,” the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare said in a statement.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, or bird flu, has circulated for decades in birds but has recently jumped to other species, including cattle in the United States.

Three humans in the United States have had confirmed infections this year, while Finland has none.

However, Finnish authorities are rolling out the vaccine to try to curb the transmission of the virus.

“The conditions in Finland are very different in that we have fur farms where the animals can end up in contact with wildlife,” Dr. Hanna Nohynek, chief physician at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, said.

The mostly open-air fur farms saw widespread outbreaks of bird flu among mink and foxes, leading to the culling of about 485,000 animals in 2023 to cut down on transmission risk.

Vaccinations are likely to start as early as next week, according to a spokesperson for the institute. People deemed at risk, including workers at the fur farms and lab technicians who handle bird flu samples, are eligible for the shots.

If any human infections are confirmed, people in close contact with the patients would also be offered the vaccine.

US Orders Vaccines

The U.S. government has ordered nearly 5 million doses of the influenza vaccine made by CSL, and manufacturing is slated to be completed by the end of the summer.

However, the U.S. government has no concrete plans yet to start vaccinating farm workers or others.

Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), said in May that government officials were “looking closely” at moving forward with vaccinations. Still, the government has made no formal announcements on the front since then.

Robert Johnson, director of ASPR’s medical countermeasures program, was asked during a call with reporters on June 25 about Finland’s choice to start vaccinating some people. He said that ASPR and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are in agreement that H5N1 is currently a low public health risk.

“Further sort of deliberations or decisions around vaccine really will require further conversations around the U.S. government,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC official, told reporters.

In a strategy document released on June 25 aimed at a pandemic caused by influenza, U.S. officials said that vaccines “could be deployed before an outbreak begins and provide immune responses to a broad range of influenza viruses [and] could enable the population to have some level of protection against H5Nx viruses prior to a pandemic.”

Officials are backing the testing of multiple experimental vaccines against influenza, including two self-amplifying RNA vaccines targeting H5N1.

Pfizer and Moderna are also in talks with U.S. officials about messenger RNA vaccines against H5N1, after developing two widely used COVID-19 vaccines.

Although three farm workers in the United States have tested positive for H5N1 recently, officials have stressed that the illnesses are believed to have come from cows and that there are no signs as of yet of person-to-person transmission.

Reuters contributed to this report.

By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com

The biggest wind and solar construction company in Europe, Statkraft, has revised its plans for the future, now expecting to build fewer new wind and solar installations than before.

The reasons for the revision are higher costs and lower electricity prices that are compromising the profitability of these projects.

“The transition from fossil to renewable energy is happening at an increasing pace in Europe and the rest of the world. However, the market conditions for the entire renewable energy industry have become more challenging,” the chief executive of the Norwegian company said, as quoted by the Financial Times.

European states have been on a building spree in wind and solar but this has had one impact on electricity prices that many apparently did not foresee. It has brought prices lower during the hours where there is abundant wind and/or solar generation, even plunging them below zero.

Over the past year, European wholesale electricity markets have seen increasingly frequent negative prices, which has become a problem for generators that cannot adjust their output to match demand.

In addition to the negative electricity price trend, production costs for wind and solar are still high as interest rates remain high, making borrowing costlier for industries that rely heavily on borrowed capital to build their installations. Coupled with the lower profit margins eaten away by negative electricity prices, this has made for quite a challenging environment in wind and solar.

As a result, Statkraft now plans to build between 2 and 2.5 GW of onshore wind, solar, and battery storage per year from 2026, down from an annual target range of between 2.5 and 3 GW previously. Offshore wind targets were also revised, from 10 GW in total by 2040 to between 6 and 8 GW.

Virtually all major players in the wind and solar space have tweaked their growth targets in recent months as a reaction to the market trends in their industry.

Widespread international media reports previously indicated that the first deliveries of US-made F-16 jets to Ukraine from European partners would begin at some point this summer. The hold-up has been in large part due to the significant time it takes for Ukrainian pilots to be properly trained on the advanced aircraft, given they are used to Soviet era planes such as the Soviet MiG-29, and they are about to be thrust into aerial combat in new equipment.

Russia is not waiting around for the NATO planes to arrive, but is apparently taking preemptive action, with the defense ministry (MoD) announcing Thursday its forces have struck airbases in Ukraine which were set up to house Western-supplied jets.

The MoD said it used long-range sea-based weapons to attack “airfield infrastructure of Ukraine, planned to accommodate aircraft from Western countries,” according to state media. This included the use of Kinzhal hypersonic missiles alongside drones, the statement indicated.

“The goal of the strike has been achieved. All designated targets have been hit,” the MoD added without specifying the number of locations hit.

Back in March, President Vladimir Putin said during an address to pilots, “We will destroy their warplanes just as we destroy their tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, including multiple rocket launchers.”

Putin at the time also warned against jets using NATO airfields from which to operate in Ukraine. He said, “Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, wherever they are located.”

Interestingly, Western media has already bluntly admitted the following: “But US officials have privately said the jets will not be a game changer when they eventually arrive after months of training, given the strength of the Russian air force and its defense systems.”

So essentially, aircraft worth multiple tens of millions of dollars each are being primed to get shot down in what will likely prove a major humiliation for the West. 

🚨Update: Russia has destroyed every Ukrainian airfield and air base capable of hosting NATO jet fighters. NATO said they will operate their ‘Ukrainian’ deployed fighter jets out of Poland and Romania. None will be stationed or flying off of a Ukrainian base!! pic.twitter.com/GWGcH1ULH5

— US Civil Defense News (@CaptCoronado) June 27, 2024

And already, before the jets arrive in Ukraine, Moscow is priming the battle space, ready to target these F-16s and and the ground infrastructure supporting them. The Kremlin has recently highlighted that the F-16 is technically capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, and so will treat them according to the threat level.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

A CDU politician in Germany is under investigation for hate crimes after he reacted to a knife attack by an Afghan migrant by calling for the expulsion of foreign criminals from the country.

On the opening day of the Euro 2024 football tournament, a knife-wielding Afghan migrant went on a stabbing spree in Wolmirstedt which left one person dead and multiple others injured.

Detlef Gürth, a state lawmaker for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Saxony-Anhalt, reacted by posting on X, “This pack has to get out of Germany.”

And that was literally it.

That’s all he said before subsequently deleting the tweet.

“Dieses Pack muss raus” – Linken-Politikerin verklagt CDU-Kollegen wegen Volksverhetzung

Der sachsen-anhaltinische CDU-Abgeordnete Detlef Gürth äußerte sich provokativ abwertend im Rahmen eines X-Postings zu dem Messerangriff in der Stadt Wolmirstedt bei Magdeburg. Die… pic.twitter.com/rlKPJRRKeR

— Tscheness (@tscheness) June 24, 2024

However, it was enough for left-wing state politician Henriette Quade to file a criminal complaint against Gürth for allegedly committing a hate crime, which is now being investigated by the Halle public prosecutor’s office

“The description of Afghans as a ‘pack’ who are denied the right to live in Germany is an insult to parts of the population,” Quade ludicrously claimed.

“Those designated in this way are denied their basic right to life as equal individuals in the community and their human dignity is thus attacked. Furthermore, the post cannot be interpreted with any understanding other than that all Afghans living in the country are (potential) murderers. The post also incites hatred against parts of the population,” she added.

Gürth was clearly referring to migrants who engage in violence, not all Afghans, but his relatively tame comment was reported to authorities anyway in another stunning example of how many in the German political establishment are more concerned about not hurting the feelings of migrants than they are stopping the wave of migrant-driven violence that has plagued the country for years.

Statistics released by the German government revealed that around 6 in 10 violent crimes recorded in Germany are committed by migrants.

“According to some criminal statistics, Afghans are five times more likely to commit a criminal act than native Germans,” reports Remix News.

“However, in some categories, such as sexual assaults, they are 12.5 times more likely to commit an offense than the rest of society. However, this is only a fraction of the problem that Germany has been forced to endure with regard to migrant crimes, many of which are committed by repeat offenders.”

As we document in the video below, German authorities are now handing out prison time to people who insulted a bunch of convicted gang rapists, in at least one case giving a woman more prison time than almost all of the gang rapists themselves.

Yesterday we highlighted another case of migrant violence where a 20-year-old man in the North Rhine-Westphalia town of Bad Oeynhausen was beaten into a coma by a migrant gang and later died from his injuries.

*  *  *

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It is hardly a coincidence that literally minutes after the USDJPY hit 161 for the first time in almost two generations…

… that Japan’s Nikkei reported the man who had been tasked to explain away Japan’s absolutely catastrophic currency policy, one which has made the yen the worst performing currency of the world and the envy of banana republics everywhere…

Dear @Bank_of_Japan_e congratulations, your toilet paper of a currency is now the worst performing in the world, with the lira, peso and real all stronger.

And the best part is once you finally contain it, you have a bond market crash to look forward to. pic.twitter.com/UKmKWuDq6c

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 27, 2024

… i.e., Japan’s top currency “diplomat”. Masato Kanda, has been fired.

Kanda will be replaced with Atsushi Mimura, a director-general of the Finance Ministry’s international bureau, who will take over as vice finance minister for international affairs on July 31.

Incumbent Kanda has been the main figure in handling the government’s catastrophic interventions in the foreign exchange market, which have been meant to arrest the yen’s slide against the dollar, yet despite spending a record $60+ billion two months ago on halting the yen’s implosion, the yen is now at the lowest level since the Plaza Accord.

And while no amount of intervention will prevent the yen from imploding further – to do that the BOJ will have to raise rates to 4% or higher, setting of a cataclysmic collapse of the entire Japanese bond market – the outrage among the populace at the runaway inflation in Japan in large part due to the plunging currency, is finally being addressed now that Japan is facing election in a few months, and scapegoat time has arrived.

We fully expect another intervention round in the coming days, one which sends USDJPY back to the low 150s before the pair resumes it trek higher until such time as Japan finally loses control over both its currency and bond markets. That will be the beginning of the end of the current doomed experiment in neoliberalism.

Authored by Xin Ning and Cindy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Five Eyes (FVEY) alliance announced steps earlier in June to prevent Western military aviators from training Beijing’s military and naval aviators, capabilities that military experts say are key for Beijing to be able to attack Taiwan.

On June 5, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), representing the FVEY (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), issued a joint bulletin warning evolving the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to recruit current and retired Western service members to train its military.

“To overcome their shortcomings, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been aggressively recruiting Western military talent to train their aviators, using private firms around the globe that conceal their PLA ties and offer recruits exorbitant salaries,” said NCSC Director Michael C. Casey.

Actions by the United States and its Western partners to counter this threat include commercial restrictions on the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA), Beijing China Aviation Technology Co. (BCAT), Stratos, and other PLA providers exploiting Western and NATO personnel, as well as legal and regulatory changes to prohibit former military members from engaging in post-service employment with China.

Tony Xia, a military expert and commentator, noted that pilots with real combat experience are rare in China.

“It takes at least five years to train a fighter pilot. In fact, the pilot is required to fly for the rest of his or her service life,” he told The Epoch Times.

He added that the main reason for the CCP to hire experienced aviators from Western militaries is to plagiarise Western training systems, methods, and experience.

“In the past few decades, China’s fourth-generation fighters have hardly experienced any real-world combat experience,” he said.

CCP Preparation to Attack Taiwan

Zhang Yanting, the former deputy commander of Taiwan’s Air Force and currently a professor at the Political Warfare College of Taiwan’s National Defense University, believes that these CCP actions are preparation for a real war in the Taiwan Strait.

Retired pilots bring combat experience, which the PLA lacks. They can pass on to the CCP military their valuable experience of the whole real-world combat scenario, threats, and how to give full play to their combat power, he told The Epoch Times.

Moreover, each of them has different expertise: some of them fly fighter planes, some fly anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and some fly carrier planes.

Qi Leyi, a senior media figure and military commentator in Taiwan, noted that the CCP values practical operational experience from recruited retired Western officers.

The people on the front line are especially needed. Apart from acquiring skills, they can also get some intelligence and information, he told The Epoch Times.

CCP’s History of Recruiting Western Military

The CCP’s recruitment of Western retired pilots has been known since 2022, including cases such as the TFASA in South Africa, which was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce in June 2023.

While TFASA denied involvement in confidential military training and employing American and British citizens, Daniel Duggan, a former pilot for the U.S. Marine Corps and Australian citizen who would be extradited to the United States, was indeed a trainer for TFASA and trained Chinese pilots in the art of landing on aircraft carriers.

Mr. Duggan moved to Australia after more than 10 years of service in the U.S. military and founded a company called Top Gun Tasmania, which employs former U.S. and British military pilots to provide tourists with jets for joyriding.

Mr. Duggan, with an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence issued by the United States and Australia, has flown the AV-8B Harrier, T2C Buckeye, and A4J Skyhawk. In May, he admitted to working with Chinese spy Su Bin, who stole U.S. military secrets but denied knowing he was a spy.

In the United Kingdom, it was exposed in 2022 that as many as 30 retired British pilots have been recruited by the Chinese military with high salaries (up to about $270,000 a year). The recruitment has been carried out through third parties, including a flying academy based in South Africa, and the pilots had served across the British military, not just in the Royal Air Force.

France is also targeted by the CCP, which actively seeks skilled French instructors to guide Chinese pilots in carrier landings and learn NATO air force strategies. Other than the United States and China, France is among the few nations with catapult-equipped aircraft carriers.

The CCP recruits retired Western carrier-based aircraft pilots to train its own carrier pilots and absorb the experience of carrier combat tactics from Western countries, Ou Si-Fu, who heads the Division of Chinese Politics, Military, and Warfighting Concepts at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times.

Landing a fighter jet on a narrow carrier deck is a highly challenging task. The CCP is starting from scratch in terms of combat operations, necessitating training from Western nations, he said. Carrier combat strategies are national secrets that no country is willing to teach Beijing directly, prompting the regime to entice retired Western pilots with hefty salaries.

Mr. Xia said that in their pursuit of developing aircraft carriers, the CCP aims to realize its “Deep Blue Dream,” which is “a way to compete for regional and world hegemony.”

“For the CCP, the training of carrier pilots is basically blank. Western experience is of course very important for it,” he said. “The U.S. Navy, when observing the take-off and landing of Chinese carrier aircraft, exclaimed about their dangerous [amateurish] maneuvers.”

Mr. Ou believes that the CCP penetrates Taiwanese society with a similar approach, absorbing retired military personnel to steal Taiwan’s military secrets and enticing semiconductor professionals for advanced industrial secrets.

Taiwan and democratic Western nations must remain vigilant against these illegal measures by the CCP to steal defense military and advanced industrial secrets, he said.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Two American children who were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents while trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border to go to school will be awarded over $1 million in compensation, a federal judge in California has ruled.

U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of California Gonzalo Curiel issued the order on June 21.

The order stems from a lawsuit involving Oscar Amparo Medina and his sister Julia Isabel Amparo, who were 14 and nine years old, respectively, in March 2019, when they were detained by border patrol agents at the Tijuana-San Ysidro, California, border crossing.

According to the lawsuit—filed by their parents on their behalf—the two children lived with their parents and siblings in Tijuana, Mexico, and had been on their way to school in San Ysidro when the incident occurred.

Julia was detained by officers for approximately 34 hours, and Oscar for roughly 14 hours, because officers suspected them of lying about their identities, with officers initially believing Oscar may have been attempting to smuggle or traffic his younger sister.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit had sought to hold the United States liable under the FTCA for false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence.

“Common sense and ordinary human experience indicate that it was not reasonable to detain Julia for 34 hours to determine her identity or to detain Oscar for about 14 hours to determine whether he was smuggling or trafficking his sister when multiple means of investigation were available and officers unreasonably failed to pursue them,” Judge Curiel wrote in his ruling.

In a statement provided to media outlets, a CBP spokesperson said the agency “takes all complaints seriously and makes a good faith effort to resolve all complaints justly and fairly, including complying fully with orders issued by the federal district courts.”

Identification Issues

According to the lawsuit, both children were born in the United States and are U.S. citizens; however, their mother, Thelma, is a Mexican citizen who possesses a valid U.S. Border Crossing Card, and their father does not have the legal status or a visa to enter the United States.

The two children showed their valid U.S. passport cards to agents when attempting to cross the border into the United States via the pedestrian border crossing in March 2019, the complaint states.

However, when presenting their identification cards to border agents, one of the agents noticed a “dot on Julia’s photo that appeared to be a mole on her upper lip, which was not visible on Julia in person.”

Julia also showed agents a school identification from her former elementary school in Mexico, which also “did not resemble Julia,” according to court documents.

During further interrogation, an officer then allegedly “came up with the idea that Julia was her cousin Melany, and then pressured Julia into agreeing,” the lawsuit claims.

Lawyers for the United States vehemently rejected that claim and argued that “Julia and Oscar stated that Julia was Melany unprompted and then continued to say that throughout their interviews.”

Conduct Was ‘Extreme and Outrageous’

The mother of the two children was not contacted when they were detained, according to the lawsuit.

After the children were released by border agents, they suffered mental stress, grief, anxiety, humiliation, and emotional distress, lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit.

In his ruling, Judge Curiel concluded that the United States’ conduct was “extreme and outrageous” and that it had violated the rights of the two children.

The judge also noted that one of the CBP officers who interviewed Julia in private did so without a witness or a recording of the incident, violating CBP policy. This led to a “false confession,” he said.

“Since the confession was not recorded, witnessed or even recounted in any written detail, it will never be known why a 9-year-old U.S. citizen falsely confessed to being someone she is not,” the judge wrote.

“CBP violated the directive that its officers not interview minors alone,” he added.

“Although reasonable suspicion may have existed initially to believe that Julia was making a false claim of citizenship by fraudulently using the passport card of another, the duration of her and Oscar’s detention was unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment because officers repeatedly failed to take available steps to investigate their suspicions and failed to follow CBP’s own policies and precautions regarding the treatment of detained minors,” the judge concluded.

Judge Curiel awarded $1.1 million in damages for Julia, $175,000 for Oscar, and $250,000 for Thelma.