#derisking

[odinsblog]

Cindy Picos was dropped by her home insurer last month. The reason: aerial photos of her roof, which her insurer refused to let her see.

“I thought they had the wrong house,” said Picos, who lives in northern California. “Our roof is in fine shape.” 

Her insurer said its images showed her roof had “lived its life expectancy.” Picos paid for an independent inspection that found the roof had another 10 years of life. Her insurer declined to reconsider its decision.

Across the U.S., insurance companies are using aerial images of homes as a tool to ditch properties seen as higher risk. 

Nearly every building in the country is being photographed, often without the owner’s knowledge. Companies are deploying drones, manned airplanes and high-altitude balloons to take images of properties. No place is shielded: The industry-funded Geospatial Insurance Consortium has an airplane imagery program it says covers 99% of the U.S. population. 

The array of photos is being sorted by computer models to spy out underwriting no-nos, such as damaged roof shingles, yard debris, overhanging tree branches and undeclared swimming pools or trampolines. The red-flagged images are providing insurers with ammunition for nonrenewal notices nationwide.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase across the country in reports from consumers who’ve been dropped by their insurers on the basis of an aerial image,” said Amy Bach, executive director of consumer group United Policyholders. 

The increasingly sophisticated use of flyby photos comes as home insurers nationwide scramble to “derisk” their property portfolios, dropping less-than-perfect homes in an effort to recover from big underwriting losses.

(continue reading)

[binimom]

Derisking

China's meteoric rise to become the world's second largest economy has important implications for international economic stability as globalization links economies more closely than ever before. As China becomes increasingly intertwined with the global economy, a new approach to managing the risks associated with this relationship is emerging. It's called derisking.

What is derisking?

"Derisking" is a commonly used term in finance, economics, and business that refers to the process of reducing or mitigating certain risks. This can include efforts to minimize risk by eliminating or managing potential risk factors in a particular investment, strategy, business plan, economy, etc. Here, "derisking" refers to the strategy of mitigating external economic risks by diversifying economic dependence on China. This approach aims to reduce potential risks in economic relations with China and build a more stable international economic environment.

Purpose of de-risking the global economy

De-risking is basically the process of mitigating external economic risks by diversifying economic relationships to reduce economic dependence on China. With the growing awareness of these risks, the Chinese government has launched a de-risking campaign targeting some of the pivotal companies in the global economy, especially in influential economies like the United States and Europe. This strategy involves implementing strict business regulations to counteract risks from external economies. Companies selected for de-risking have since refrained from a variety of potentially harmful activities and instead opted for improved risk management systems. This is partly to reduce the likelihood of losing ground to competitors like the U.S., but the underlying goal is to build a more risk-resistant economic environment. However, this approach is not without its drawbacks: the stricter regulatory oversight implied by de-risking can stall economic growth for selected companies. To navigate this challenge, it is important to continue to promote management innovation and technological development so that the Chinese economy can remain competitive.

In conclusion, de-risking offers a potential new path for managing international economic relations, especially with China. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a cautious and realistic approach to navigating the maze of interdependencies in the global economy. Its implementation requires not only strict regulation, but also the simultaneous promotion of innovation and technology. Only then can economies be competitive and resilient in an era of rapid change and unpredictable risks.

[yimsoksophors]

Cambodian digital platforms for agricultural climate services

The first objective of the Cambodia’s Agriculture Development Policy 2021-2030 is to enhance the competitiveness of agricultural value chains: Focus on productivity enhancement, diversification and profit generation in the value chains of rice, seasonal crops, rubber and other agro-industrial crops, as well as the production of livestock and other commodities with economic potential, and possible…

[argumate]

Expert policy-makers in Western capitals feel that they have to make a response to major historic challenges like climate or the rise of China, or South Africa’s energy crisis. It is their job to look to the future and to devise at least purportedly rational strategies of power. But those who make policy on such matters as sustainable development do not hold the purse-strings and have limited capacity to shift budget-constraints. Those that do set budgets, either do not care about broader global issues, prefer other tools for affecting those goals - such as military power - or are revenue constrained and unwilling to levy more revenue from their constituents for the far-flung goals favored by the policy-making elite.

There is thus never “enough money” for the softer and more complex dimensions of development and global policy. But, despite these all too obvious limitations, the policy-machine grinds on. Faut de mieux those tasked with geoeconomic policy and sustainable development cooperate to come up with programs like JET-P. The policies tick all the boxes as far as sophistication of design and conception. Powerful interests - notably high-finance - ensure that they are arranged, at least notionally, so as to offer derisking and to promote the vision of public-private partnership. The promise of “mobilizing” private money helps to paper over the lack of solid public funding.

But despite all the self-interested engagement by private finance, the fiscal constraint remains paramount. The forces interested in global development are not as powerfully engaged as they are around the military-industrial complex, oil and gas or the Wall Street nexus. The result are ambitious and professionally designed policies that whip up waves of enthusiasm in the ranks of analysts, think tanks, NGOs, pundits, but which have no prospect of materially affecting reality either with regard to the announced policy objective or the profit opportunities of Western capital.

From experience since 2021 the conclusion we must surely draw is that the one interest that such policies undeniably serve is the perpetuation of the policy circuit. Practical effectiveness is not necessarily the main driver of policy-generation. Indeed, failure may be productive in generating new policy. This not only perpetuates the machinery of policy-making. More importantly it contributes to the generation of a “state effect” - the US has a policy for x,y,z. It sustains the common sense that the world is governed and that “governance” is in some sense a coherent process.

brutal

[probablyasocialecologist]

The core defining feature of capitalism is that it is fundamentally anti-democratic.  Yes, many of us live in democratic political systems, where we get to elect candidates from time to time.  But when it comes to the economic system, the system of production, not even the shallowest illusion of democracy is allowed to enter. Production is controlled by capital: large corporations, commercial banks, and the 1% who own the majority of investible assets… they are the ones who determine what to produce and how to use our collective labour and our planet’s resources.   And for capital, the purpose of production is not to meet human needs or achieve social objectives.  Rather, it is to maximize and accumulate profit.  That is the overriding objective. So we get massive investment in producing things like fossil fuels, SUVs, fast fashion, industrial beef, cruise ships and weapons, because these things are highly profitable to capital. But we get chronic underinvestment in necessary things like renewable energy, public transit and regenerative agriculture, because these are much less profitable to capital or not profitable at all.  This is a critically important point to grasp. In many cases renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels!  But they have much lower profit margins, because they are less conducive to monopoly power. So investment keeps flowing to fossil fuels, even while the world burns.  Relying on capital to deliver an energy transition is a dangerously bad strategy.  The only way to deal with this crisis is with public planning.  On the one hand, we need massive public investment in renewable energy, public transit and other decarbonization strategies. And this should not just be about derisking private capital – it should be about public production of public goods.  To do this, simply issue the national currency to mobilize the productive forces for the necessary objectives, on the basis of need not on the basis of profit.   Now, massive public investment like this could drive inflation if it bumps up against the limits of the national productive capacity. To avoid this problem you need to reduce private demands on the productive forces.  First, cut the purchasing power of the rich; and second, introduce credit regulations on commercial banks to limit their investments in ecologically destructive sectors that we want to get rid of anyway: fossil fuels, SUVs, fast fashion, etc.  What this does is it shifts labour and resources away from servicing the interests of capital accumulation and toward achieving socially and ecologically necessary objectives. This is a socialist ecological strategy, and it is the only thing that will save us. Solving the ecological crisis requires achieving democratic control over the means of production.  We need to be clear about this fact and begin building now the political movements that are necessary to achieve such a transformation.

[mariacallous]

Last February, as the sound of automatic weapons erupted in the early hours before dawn, Amina Museni hurriedly packed a bag while her husband, Joseph, shook their three children awake. They were joining a group of neighbors fleeing their hamlet as the front line between the Congolese army and rebels of the March 23 Movement, or M23, crept closer. For days afterward, they walked across the hilly landscape of Masisi, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, before reaching one of the camps that have sprung up around Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. There, they pitched their tent, a young family of five among more than a million people displaced by the resurgence of a conflict that has ravaged Congo for nearly three decades.

When Foreign Policy visited the camp last July, Museni sat amid an undulating sea of white tarpaulins stretched over eucalyptus sticks. “When I was little, I lived in a tent with my parents,” Museni said, her youngest child, Nestor, cradled into her neck. “Now my children have to endure the same. It feels like a curse.”

Why Congo has been in a perennial state of upheaval since the mid-1990s has been the subject of much debate, but no other narrative has cut through as much as that of so-called conflict minerals. In the 2000s, the link between markets’ demand for minerals and the war in Congo helped bring attention to the conflict in an unprecedented way. Western organizations such as the Enough Project and Global Witness mobilized around the seductive proposition that the solution to one of the world’s deadliest conflicts was within the grasp of consumers and policymakers, triggering a series of laws and regulations beginning with, in the United States in 2010, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The logic behind the legislation was simple. “Armed groups finance themselves through the exploitation of cassiterite, gold, coltan,” Fidel Bafilemba, a Congolese researcher who used to work for the Enough Project, told me at the time. “By stopping the export of these conflict minerals, we dry up their resources and lessen the violence.”

Section 1502 required companies to conduct due diligence checks on their supply chain to disclose their use of minerals originating from Congo and neighboring countries and to determine whether those minerals may have benefited armed groups. The legislation didn’t outright ban the sourcing of minerals from mines contributing to conflict financing but instead intended “this transparency and its attendant reputational risk” to pressure companies to stop buying them voluntarily, according to Toby Whitney, one of the authors of Section 1502.

What followed is an important lesson for a world rushing to secure critical minerals for the energy transition. Western advocacy led to policies focused on derisking supply chains and virtue signaling to consumers, rather than improving artisanal miners’ living conditions or addressing the conflict’s root causes. That narrative continues today: An Apple store in Berlin was vandalized last week by Fridays for Future activists accusing the tech giant of sourcing so-called conflict minerals from Congo.

ITSCI, the region’s leading private traceability scheme, is facing criticism about the validity of its work—and that it has not improved the lives of artisanal miners in the region. ITSCI stresses its limited mandate and that it is working as intended. But in a cruel twist, the cost of the due diligence program has been shouldered by Congolese miners themselves, effectively asking the world’s poorest workers to pay for the right to sell their own resources to Western companies.

This week, industry leaders and activists gathering at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris for the annual Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains will need to reassess their approach. “We welcomed Dodd-Frank,” said Alexis Muhima, a Congolese researcher, during a meeting in a cramped office in Goma. “But what it did is outsource complex issues to the private sector, and we’ve been paying for it ever since.”

“The Americans didn’t think this through.”

There was a time in the 1970s when the quarries of Nyabibwe, a mining town in South Kivu province, were run with enough capital to employ 500 workers and to invest in semi-industrial machinery. Every month, the French company in charge shipped 20 metric tons of cassiterite ore—a component of tin—back to Europe for cans, wires, and solder. Safari Kulimuchi was a worker at the mines, starting at age 17, who quickly rose through the ranks to become a manager. “It was an exciting time. … Things seemed to be working out,” Kulimuchi recalled to Foreign Policy over dinner in Nyabibwe. But, he said, “it didn’t last.”

In the years that followed, Kulimuchi witnessed the economic unraveling of Congo (then Zaire), rotten under decades of rule by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who presided over the country from 1965 to 1997. Amid a global economic downturn in the mid-1980s, the French company departed, abandoning its workers to fend for themselves. “Overnight, we had no wages, no tools, no structure,” Kulimuchi said. “We used to have a stone crusher. Now we had to crush rocks with a hammer.”

Nyabibwe was far from an exception. Across the country, as investment dried up and the state abdicated its responsibilities, people resorted to making ends meet any way they could. An informal economy based on débrouillardise, or resourcefulness, sprouted in the ruins of Mobutu’s derelict regime. That informal economy is estimated to account for more than 80 percent of Congolese economic activity today. Nyabibwe grew into a town as people came from far and wide to work in the mines. They replaced the industrial machinery with picks and shovels, a low-capital, labor-intensive extraction called artisanal mining, as opposed to industrial mining. “Artisanal mining is the heart of our economy. It’s the reason Nyabibwe became this big center,” Kulimuchi said. The World Bank estimated in 2008 that up to 16 percent of the Congolese population depended on the sector. “For us, it’s a lifeline,” Kulimuchi added.

Mobutu was finally ousted in 1997 by a coalition helmed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel army led by Paul Kagame. Kagame had just seized power in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide there and was intent on chasing after Hutus responsible for the massacres, many of whom had crossed into Zaire. What became the First Congo War brought Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a Congolese rebel, to power.

Kabila’s allies in the RPF quickly turned into foes when they refused to relinquish control over an area where instability threatened their security and interests. The Second Congo War began in 1998 with the creation of the RCD, a Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed armed group that quickly gained control of a large swath of eastern Congo. The rebels began shipping cargo loads of coltan and cassiterite ores out of mines such as Nyabibwe’s into Rwanda just as the price of coltan, a key component of capacitors used in mobile phones and most electronic devices, soared with the demand for electronic goods at the turn of the century. A 2001 United Nations report estimated that Rwanda made at least $250 million during a temporary spike in prices in late 1999 and 2000. A popular formulation in Western campaigns at the time linked the violence in Congo to “blood phones.”

Many experts have criticized the advocacy of the 2000s for sometimes going so far as to suggest that conflict minerals were the root cause of the violence, painting armed actors as merely bloodthirsty, greedy militias—instead of considering real, historical grievances. The Enough Project campaigns, leaning hard on celebrities such as Robin Wright and Ryan Gosling to spread the group’s message, obfuscated the nuances of the conflict and the vital place of artisanal mining in the local economy. “The ‘conflict minerals’ label was problematic,” said Sophia Pickles, a former Global Witness campaigner and U.N. investigator. “This isn’t just about Congo—it’s a global issue.”

The campaigns succeeded in putting the issue on U.S. legislators’ agenda, but Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act was both too specific—singling out the so-called 3T minerals (tin for cassiterite, tantalum for coltan, and tungsten) in eastern Congo—and extremely vague on execution. It deferred the drafting of rules to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), leaving companies with no clear guidelines to report on their supply chain.

The law created a panicked scramble in the industry, said William Millman, a former technical director at Kyocera AVX, a leading manufacturer of electronic components and major coltan buyer. “Everybody was ignorant about the specifics. We just relied on our smelters.” Unlike an oil company directly operating its wells or a sneaker company outsourcing production to a sweatshop in Asia, electronics companies have virtually no way of knowing where the minerals in their products come from upstream of the smelters or refiners that have turned them into smooth metal—unless the smelters themselves know. “I visited all my suppliers to gather information. They knew very little because it was all largely bought on the spot market with international brokers,” Millman said. As a result of Section 1502, companies liable to fall under the SEC rule demanded that their suppliers simply stop buying from eastern Congo.

The result? A de facto embargo dropped like a bomb on the mining communities of North and South Kivu, just as the region was emerging from its latest cycle of violence. Nyabibwe had navigated two major wars mostly unscathed, but when I visited in June 2012, the town was in the midst of an existential crisis. Businesses dependent on the cash flow generated by the mines were closing down one by one, unable to sell stockpiles of rubber boots and shovels, blacksmithing services, or simply food. Tellingly, the local nightclub had shut its doors. More concerning were thousands of families’ insufficient funds to access health care, forcing women to give birth at home. One study found that the boycott increased the probability of infant mortality in affected mining communities by at least 143 percent.

Kulimuchi, who was then 54, was still managing a small team of undeterred miners. “The Americans didn’t think this through,” he said. His team had three metric tons of ore stored in a warehouse in Bukavu, South Kivu’s capital, waiting to be bought and shipped. “School is about to start again. Where are we going to find the money to send our children?”

Though U.S. lawmakers had struck out on their own with Section 1502, industrywide talks to create guidelines for the responsible sourcing of minerals in high-risk areas globally were already underway at the OECD. The OECD guidelines, adopted later in 2010, ended up becoming the foundation for the SEC rules, released in 2012. “The choke point in the supply chain is the smelters—everything has to go through them, and there aren’t many smelters in the world,” Millman said. “The OECD came up with a standardized protocol to audit and certify the smelters on an annual basis to know that they have control and knowledge of their supply chain.”

According to Millman, a handful of downstream companies seemed genuinely interested in doing things right and getting involved at the mine level. In 2011, together with Motorola and the Washington-based NGO Resolve, what was then AVX launched Solutions for Hope, a pilot project in Congo’s Katanga (now Tanganyika) province, where there was no conflict. They created a closed-pipe supply chain, sourcing from artisanal mines through a company that sold directly to a Chinese smelter and then onward to AVX, which manufactured components for Motorola and Hewlett-Packard.

Solutions for Hope also decided to hire the services of ITSCI. Its “bag and tag” traceability scheme set up by the International Tin Association (ITA) promised to trace minerals from the mine and guarantee their origin to buyers through a paper trail associated with sealed tags affixed on bags. According to Millman, Solutions for Hope was successful largely because its integrated supply chain bypassed traders and brought end-user companies closer to the miners. Replicating it would take time and effort. But, Millman said, “what other companies who had sat back saw was that, suddenly, with ITSCI there was a way for their CEOs and CFOs to sign off on their SEC statements. … And so everyone piled in, and it became the easy option.” ITSCI’s first project in eastern Congo was implemented in October 2012 in Nyabibwe.

“Do you think these people stopped working?”

Ten years on from when we first met, Kulimuchi came down from the mountainside where he had been working with his son on a sunny day last July, his broad smile still intact. The mining site hadn’t changed much either. Around us, men wearing flip-flops were using the same basic tools to split the earth open, with no protective equipment.

Initially, Kulimuchi recalled, the artisanal miners had been relieved when a large delegation showed up to officially launch the traceability scheme. “It meant we could finally start selling again. All my financial worries would be a thing of the past,” Kulimuchi said he thought at the time.

Instead, an elaborate public-private bureaucracy emerged, driven in part by regional governments intent on bringing the artisanal mining sector under control but quickly superimposed by foreign private sector initiatives like ITSCI, responding to market demand for paperwork required by end-user companies to file their reports to the SEC.

“We started selling again, but it’s a cacophony. There is a ton of admin, taxes after taxes, and prices have gone down. We have been weakened by all this,” Kulimuchi said.

As the de facto embargo on eastern Congo’s minerals lifted, by 2012 thousands of small sites across the region found themselves effectively outlawed by a new mine site validation process. To be able to sell, Congolese mining sites must now be inspected by a delegation of government representatives, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. At sites given the go-ahead from that audit, the Congolese artisanal mining agency carries out its own checks while also tagging and recording the minerals in logbooks for ITSCI. There are other records kept by the provincial government’s Mining Division and a regional body. Many sites are still waiting for an audit. For those that don’t conform, the consequences are devastating: “You are destroying the livelihood of hundreds or thousands of people,” said Maxie Muwonge, who was a program manager for the International Organization for Migration between 2013 and 2018 when it was tasked with coordinating the validation process. “This excludes entire communities. What are they meant to do? Do you think these people stopped working?”

In fact, even under the de facto embargo, the minerals trade never really stopped. It just went further underground. Rwanda’s export statistics, which experts say don’t match its reserves, suggest that smuggling to neighboring countries spiked during the period. While the volume of trafficked minerals has fallen with the reopening of the legal market in eastern Congo, smuggling is still an issue, not least because of the market distortion caused by heavy regulation and taxation in Congo of small businesses. “Many collapsed because they couldn’t meet the requirements, and the investment in the sector decreased. It broke down artisanal miners even further,” Muwonge said.

Joyeux Mumpenzi followed in his mother’s footsteps when he decided to become a négociant, an intermediary who buys minerals from the creuseurs, or diggers, and transports them to export companies in large cities—a reflection of the highly organized division of labor in the artisanal sector. “To begin with, we have no say regarding the going price—the London Metal Exchange sets it, and it fluctuates constantly,” he said. “Then there are all the taxes, and finally, the export company retains a penalty on my payment for ITSCI.”

Today, 99 percent of ITSCI’s revenue comes from the levies it collects from upstream actors based on the volumes of minerals tagged and exported, ITSCI program manager Mickaël Daudin said in an interview. The organization says artisanal miners are not supposed to pay for the scheme. But the cost, or at least a percentage of it, is passed down the supply chain to the négociants and ultimately to the miners. “I have no choice” in doing so, Mumpenzi said. “I end up earning little more than they do, and I take huge financial risks.” The 33-year-old trader says he earns about $300 a month, while an artisanal miner’s household makes $200 on average.

ITSCI, which operates in both Congo and Rwanda, applies differentiated levies to businesses in the two countries. Daudin said that’s because “the cost of implementation … remains much higher” in Congo than in Rwanda but declined to disclose the levies’ rates; a Congolese government official called it a “conflict tax.” The rate discrepancy effectively encourages trafficking to Rwanda for Congolese mining operators keen to increase their margins.

A report published in 2022 by Global Witness cited “[s]ome industry sources” alleging that ITSCI was in fact set up to facilitate the laundering of Congolese minerals smuggled into Rwanda. Foreign Policy hasn’t been able to confirm the claim, but the tagging system that ITSCI created does offer the perfect cover for smuggling, in Rwanda or Congo. The integrity of the scheme relies entirely on the integrity of the people implementing it; the tags themselves offer no guarantee. In a statement released in response to the report, ITSCI wrote that it “strongly rejects all Global Witness’ stated or implied allegations of wrongdoing, facilitating deliberate misuse of ITSCI systems or illegal activity.” If ITSCI had aimed to maximize smuggling into Rwanda as alleged, a spokesperson wrote to Foreign Policy in an email, “ITSCI would not have launched in Katanga in 2011 nor in any other adjoining locations at other times. During 15 years of implementation, ITSCI has continued to expand the programme in [Congo], now supporting more than 1,500 sites across 8 Provinces.”

The Global Witness report also documented how the system can be breached without ITSCI’s cooperation. For starters, the tagging is not performed by ITSCI but by Congolese government agents who earn less than the miners themselves and sometimes go for months without pay at all. From bribing agents to trading in tags, the number of ways to circumvent the system is almost limitless—as Mumpenzi demonstrated to Foreign Policy. The négociant stood up from the sofa in his living room and walked to a corner where sturdy white plastic bags had been stacked. “See the tags? The bags were sealed by an agent before I picked them up yesterday,” he said. “The mineral sand now has to be washed, so when I’ll bring the bags to the washing station, the tags will be removed. When minerals are washed, the weight goes down, so this is a perfect time to smuggle in minerals before a new tag goes on. As long as the bag weighs less than it did initially, no one will say anything.”

ITSCI doesn’t rebuke such allegations categorically. The organization says it was aware of many of the incidents documented by Global Witness and had already addressed them. “The program isn’t perfect. There are issues, and there always will be,” Daudin told Foreign Policy. “But from my point of view, it wasn’t better before.”

Kulimuchi and other artisanal miners might beg to differ. Rather than improving their living conditions, the “increasing regulation of the artisanal mining sector and responsible sourcing efforts, have rather had a negative overall effect on the socio-economic position of artisanal miners,” analysts at the International Peace Information Service (IPIS), a leading minerals research institute, wrote in 2019. Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at IPIS, told me that “working in an ITSCI or a non-ITSCI site doesn’t change anything. Conditions are dismal in both cases. There’s no difference in terms of child labor, and miners don’t earn more.”

When asked by Foreign Policy about this criticism, an ITSCI spokesperson stressed the organization’s limited mandate as a traceability and due diligence not-for-profit initiative. “It does not function as a certification mechanism,” the spokesperson wrote, and the organization’s focus “does not extend to working conditions.”

However, evidence suggests that responsible sourcing efforts have failed to shift conflict dynamics. A 2022 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), part of its mandate to evaluate the impact of Section 1502, was titled “Conflict Minerals: Overall Peace and Security in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo Has Not Improved Since 2014.” Violence has instead risen, remaining “relatively constant from 2014 through 2016 but steadily [increasing] from 2017 through 2021,” GAO wrote.

Arguably, some measure of progress has been achieved at the 3T mining sites targeted by Dodd-Frank, where the presence of armed groups has decreased. But while ITSCI claims to have played a role, de Brier says the scheme merely implanted in sites where the situation was already better. Overall, this demilitarization has largely been the result of Congolese policies and the evolution of conflict dynamics themselves: The defeat of the M23 rebellion in 2013 (the armed group changed names multiple times as it successively integrated into and rebelled against the national army) led to the dismantling of one of the country’s most predatory mafia networks. Today, for instance, Bisie, once an iconic mining site under the control of Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, is operated by the Canadian company Alphamin. (Ntaganda is serving a 30-year prison sentence in Belgium following his conviction by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.)

Now though, with the resurgence of the M23 rebellion since November 2021—which has displaced Museni, her family, and more than 2.5 million others—even that small measure of progress is under threat.

“This is how the armed groups are paid.”

Belgian colonial administration profoundly altered the Congolese relationship with the land, introducing private ownership and displacing people for commercial exploitation. Since independence, who has the right to own land—and by extension its resources—has remained an unresolved existential question. “The main resource driving conflict isn’t coltan,” said Onesphore Sematumba, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “It is the land. It’s material ownership, of course, but also who has a legitimate right to be here.”

In the borderlands of eastern Congo, these questions have been exacerbated by intertwined histories with neighboring countries. Hutus and Tutsis, who arrived from Rwanda in successive waves throughout the 20th century—first brought by Belgian colonialists to work on plantations in the territories of Rutshuru and Masisi—have struggled to find acceptance and secure land rights. Rwanda, meanwhile, a small, densely populated country with little resources of its own, largely depends on economic ties and access to Congo’s resources. These two dynamics have helped create the vicious circle of the last three decades. Backed by Rwanda, the RCD rebellion and its successors claiming to fight for Tutsis’ rights have helped entrench tensions along ethnic lines while facilitating land grab by a small elite.

“Indigenous communities in Masisi were dispossessed of their land during the war,” said Janvier Murairi, a Congolese researcher. “Today’s farm and mine owners are people who had links to the RCD. Everything from Mushaki to Masisi town belongs to hardly more than 10 people.”

One such owner was Edouard Mwangachuchu, an aspiring Tutsi politician and a member of the RCD’s political branch, who was awarded a concession covering seven mines in Rubaya by the rebel administration in 2001. Two years later, the Sun City Agreement, a peace deal negotiated between rebel factions with little regard for social justice or community grievances, endorsed Mwangachuchu’s ownership over the mining sites as a prize of war for the RCD, granting his company, MHI (now SMB), control over what have become the most productive sites at Congo’s largest coltan mine. Today, Rubaya accounts for about 15 percent of global coltan production.

Rubaya is emblematic of the way ITSCI, and more broadly due diligence as it is practiced today, treats “conflictual issues, such as concessions and land ownership, … as a black box,” Christoph N. Vogel writes in his 2022 book, Conflict Minerals Inc., turning a blind eye to political issues around social justice and equity, even as those are drivers of the violence it means to help prevent.

In Rubaya, Mwangachuchu’s plan to turn the quarries into an industrial mine spurred a backlash from local communities. “The artisanal miners didn’t accept that this family [the Mwangachuchus] who had come into the possession of the mines through the conflict could take away their livelihood,” Murairi said. The government mediated a deal: The miners were allowed to continue mining SMB sites but had to sell exclusively to the company.

ITSCI began operating in Rubaya in 2014, tagging minerals from both SMB and peripheral sites belonging to a state-owned mining company, SAKIMA. But the situation unraveled as the scheme was embroiled in a tit-for-tat commercial war in the years that followed.

Suspecting that ITSCI’s tags were being used to launder the sale of its minerals to a rival trading company, SMB eventually turned to ITSCI’s main competitor in the tag-and-bag business, Better Mining. The move should have represented a major financial blow to ITSCI, the loss of roughly half its revenues for Congo. Instead, as production at the SAKIMA sites kept growing while SMB’s dwindled, ITSCI’s business was preserved. According to an internal U.N. report provided to Foreign Policy, “Only about seventeen percent of the production that officially originates from the SAKIMA concession has in fact been mined there.” The report noted that “[s]uch discrepancy between official data and reality is only conceivable if a structured mechanism of fraud is established.”

Daudin, the ITSCI program manager, responded that ITSCI is “confident about its data.” He argued that the production increase was due to the higher level of investment going to SAKIMA sites when local miners turned away from SMB.

The M23’s resurgence dealt the last blow to Mwangachuchu, who was arrested in March 2023 and charged with treason after weapons were allegedly found on the grounds of his company’s facilities in Rubaya. According to the prosecutor, Mwangachuchu intended to support the M23 rebellion. The government has since revoked SMB’s mining permits. Few people in North Kivu will feel sorry for Mwangachuchu, “but one of the protagonists was pushed out in favor of the other, and that never works,” said Achile Kitsa, a former private secretary to the provincial mines minister.

The Congolese army took full control of Rubaya last spring, leaving the former SMB concession at the mercy of local armed groups it used as proxies on the front line against the M23. “This is how the armed groups are paid,” said a Congolese researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity. ITSCI resumed its operations in June, tagging minerals from the SAKIMA perimeter up until November, when the road was cut off by the fighting, according to Daudin. “We relaunched our activities after evaluating each site with the government services,” he said in July. “There are no nonstate armed groups in our sites.”

In a December report, the U.N. Group of Experts on Congo contradicted Daudin, establishing that between June and November, the “production from [the former SMB] sites was either smuggled to Rwanda or laundered into the official supply chain using [ITSCI] tags for minerals produced in [the SAKIMA concession], where mining activities were still authorized.”

“ITSCI recognizes that there have been, and remain, ongoing risks regarding fraud and presence of both non-state and state armed groups in the area of Masisi territory, North Kivu,” the ITSCI spokesperson wrote. “These risks are regularly reported through ITSCI’s OECD-aligned systems.”

Muhima, the Congolese researcher, sees the possibility of tainted minerals in the ITSCI supply chain as inevitable, given its built-in conflict of interest. “Their income depends on the volume they export. They cannot stop tagging minerals, or their business will collapse.”

“We don’t need another scheme.”

Congolese activists were not pleased with the Global Witness report exposing the shortcomings of ITSCI when it was published in 2022. They felt that the research mostly rehashed criticisms and evidence that they had presented for many years without being listened to and that the report failed to draw the necessary conclusions, ending with tepid recommendations to reform ITSCI or consider options to replace it with another independent scheme. “We don’t need another scheme,” Murairi said. “We don’t need more foreigners who think Congolese can’t do anything.”

Global Witness’s cautiousness should perhaps not come as a surprise. The activist organization played no small part in paving the way for today’s conundrum, and the risk of triggering another de facto embargo on Congolese minerals hangs heavy. “We’ve learnt some very difficult lessons, and as an activist, I’m not the one who bore the consequences of bad policymaking,” said Pickles, the former Global Witness campaigner.

When I pressed Daudin last July about ITSCI’s resumption of its activities in Rubaya, even as armed groups were swarming the mining area, he dodged: “If we don’t start tagging again, mining communities will be the first ones to suffer from not being able to carry on their activities.”

ITSCI suffered a major setback in October 2022, when the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), a member association of more than 400 of the world’s largest corporations, announced that it was taking the scheme off its list of recognized upstream due diligence mechanisms. ITSCI had failed to submit an independent assessment of its alignment with the OECD guidelines in time. When the organization eventually released an independent audit in June 2023, it failed to assess ITSCI’s activities in Congo, focusing solely on coltan production in Rwanda. The RMI has offered to pay for three site visits in Congo, including in Rubaya, but ITSCI has so far not agreed. (“Site visits outside alignment assessments are not explicitly required,” said the ITSCI spokesperson, who noted the terms of such a visit are nonetheless under negotiation with RMI.)

“They are holding everyone hostage,” an industry insider close to the RMI process told Foreign Policy. “There is so much pressure on the RMI to capitulate and say we need this system. But this isn’t a technical issue.” To many experts and industry insiders, the resurgence of the M23 conflict has at least had the benefit of clarifying the situation. “The system cannot withstand what it was built for. It can’t withstand the conflict. We are back to square one.”

Breaking ITSCI’s quasi-monopoly is often presented as the solution in minerals circles, but SMB’s switch to Better Mining solved none of the problems in Rubaya and only created more confusion. Better Mining’s for-profit business model and its reliance on technology make it hard to scale and mean it is explicitly designed for larger companies with capital, not artisanal miners. “The problem with all these initiatives is that no one is there to control them,” said de Brier, the IPIS researcher.

Who is supposed to exert this control is part of the problem. Much like the fragmented nature of the supply chain, the nebulous ecosystem of public and private actors involved in responsible sourcing means that responsibility befalls no one in particular. In a July 2023 report, the GAO noted that the number of companies filing conflict minerals disclosures to the SEC had been steadily declining year-on-year since 2014, in part because “companies perceive that they are unlikely to face enforcement action by the SEC if they do not comply.”

Pickles noted that, unlike Dodd-Frank, the European Union’s own conflict minerals regulation, which came into force in 2021, avoided the trap of focusing only on Congo but equally fell for industry schemes such as ITSCI. “I’ve spoken to the competent authorities of three member states, and they said that the reports they receive from companies don’t tell them anything. They don’t actually know what’s happening along the supply chain,” she said. “So where does that leave us?”

For Congolese, ending this hypocrisy is a necessary first step but requires trust and support on the part of international partners. “The Congolese government has its own traceability system. All the necessary documents are delivered by Congolese state agencies. They tell you where the minerals come from just as reliably as ITSCI’s tags, which is to say it’s not perfect but it’s no worse,” Muhima said. “The same state agents deliver these documents and implement ITSCI’s program—for free I might add, since ITSCI doesn’t pay for them. What needs to be improved urgently is their payment.”

These lessons are relevant beyond the specifics of the 3T supply chain. The attention around cobalt—the conflict mineral du jour thanks to its use in electric vehicle batteries—is a case in point. While there is no conflict in the area where cobalt is extracted, working conditions and child labor have been discussed in much the same way as conflict minerals were back in the 2000s: in decontextualized and sometimes inaccurate reports that fail to examine the complex ways in which minerals interact with people’s livelihoods. Instead, such reports paint artisanal mining as illegitimate, something to eliminate. They have been used to justify land grab by large mining companies whose supply chains are easily traceable for end-user companies.

“We haven’t learned from our experience with diamonds or 3T minerals. With cobalt, it’s as if those experiences never existed,” said Joanne Lebert, the executive director of IMPACT, a nonprofit organization working on natural resource governance. “Instead of supporting communities, we’re just monitoring. There is no connection in my view between a clean supply chain and governance and security outcomes. Maybe you take kids out of your supply chain, but they’ll go to agriculture, to domestic work. They’ll go to another mine. They’ll sneak in at night. Clean supply chain is about eliminating the risk and not necessarily about doing good. And it’s the doing good we have to get at.”

Following the same pattern, an EU law aimed at preventing products linked to deforestation from entering the European market is pushing coffee companies toward industrial producers able to generate the paperwork and sidelining small farmers from Ethiopia to Brazil. Private companies will always take the shortcut, while black markets, exploitation, and conflict feed on exclusion.

Whether Western consumers like it or not, artisanally mined minerals will continue to find their way into the supply chains that fuel the energy transition and consumer products. Investing in mining communities’ welfare, education, and businesses is indispensable.

Museni is still living in the refugee camp on the outskirts of Goma with her husband and young children. Surrounded, the provincial capital has been struggling to absorb and provide for the constant new waves of displaced families reaching the city as the M23 is inching closer.

Even as evidence of Rwanda’s support to the rebellion has been mounting, the country has still not been sanctioned. In February, the EU signed an agreement “to nurture sustainable and resilient value chains for critical raw materials” with the Rwandan government, calling the country “a major player on the world’s tantalum extraction.” Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi described the deal as a “provocation in very bad taste.”

In Nyabibwe, Kulimuchi took me on a final walk around the town, waving around at the myriad businesses and hard-working people in the streets. “No one here has a bank account, for example. We can’t save. We can’t build,” he said. “We don’t require much—a road to Bukavu, a little boost, you know. Then, we’ll take it from there.”

[vaningyen]

2024: a globalizáció vége

Megjósolni a jövőt nyilván nem annyira egyszerű, úgyhogy egész jó esélye van annak, hogy faszságokat fogok írni, de az is lehet, hogy pár meglátásnak azért lesz értelme.

a wto adatai szerint már 2018 után is csak alig nőtt a világkereskedelem tonnákban mérve, aztán jött a covid, putyin háborúja, ami a középpontba helyezte egyre több helyen a decoupling, a derisking és a friendshoreing fogalmát. ez pl. azon is látszódik, hogy a legfrissebb adatok szerint az usa legfontosabb kereskedelmi partnere mexikó, amit kanada követ, míg kína csak a harmadik. a trump alatt bevezetett vámok ma is élnek, sőt azokhoz újabb kereskedelmi korlátozások kapcsolódtak. az ira és a chips act egészen nyilvánvalóan protekcionista lépések, melyek célja az importhelyettesítés.

európa ugye leginkább az orosz kapcsolatot vágta el, de azért miután kiderült, hogy nem versenyképes az elektromos autók terén, egyre inkább hajlik arra is, hogy kína felé is korlátozza piacát és inkább csak hisztizik amiatt, hogy amerika mennyi támogatást önt a saját iparára. meg persze van a karbonvám és társai, ami a klímára hivatkozva védené az európai piacot. azonban európa nem igazán rendelkezik nyersanyagokkal és azt is örömmel veszi, ha a szennyező iparágak valhol máshol vannak.

kína az ingatlanszektor válságára azt a választ találta ki, hogy növeli az exportját, mert hszi szerint a fogyasztói társadalom valami rossz, nyugati, dekadens dolog, így a belső kereslet élénkítéséről szó sem lehet. a kínai feldolgozóipar és gazdaság ráadásul szintén brutális nyersanyagimportra szorul. szóval kína szívesen folytatná a globalizációt, ahol az állami vagy államilag támogatott kínai cégek versenyelőnyben vannak az állami be nem avatkozás politikáját vivő nyugati cégekkel szemben.

gazdasági értelemben ez a világ jóval több mint fele, a többiek - japán, india, oroszország, közel-kelet - egész egyszerűen nem tényezők vagy csak bizonyos területeken fontosak, mint tajvan és a csipek vagy szaúdarábia és oroszország, meg az olaj. ezen gazdaságok többsége azért inkáb kereskedne, mint kelet és dél-kelet-ázsia vagy a nagy nyersanyagtermelők, mint az oroszok, kanada, ausztrális és a közel-kelet. mindegy is, ez a bekezdés inkább csak mellékszál, de mondjuk india azért annyira nem akar kinyílni, ha nem muszáj.

az sem olyan nagyon meglepő, hogy a világkereskedelem nagyja a tengeren zajlik, ahol azért van egy pár pont, aminek a lezárása komoly gondokat okoz. ilyen a szuezi csatorna és a vörös-tenger másik végén található bab-el-mandeb-szoros, amit ha jól értem a húsziknak többé-kevésbé csak sikerült lezárni, bár talán az indiába és kínába tartó orosz tankereknek nincs miért aggódniuk. ugyanez azonban már nem biztos, hogy igaz az európába tartó, kínai árut szállító dán konténerhajókra.

van persze előnye, ha az ember előbb nézi meg az adatokat és utólag kezd el okoskodni, de szerencsére én képes vagyok megmagyarázni ezt is. szerintem a kereskelem arányának 2022-es megugrása csak statisztikai hiba, az egyre szaporodó korlátozások miatti kerülőutak eredménye. én legalábbis nem nagyon találkoztam olyan információval, ami alapján 2022-ben hihetetlenül nagy új lendületet kapott volna a világkereskedelem. mindegy.

a tézisem nagyjából az, hogy egy egyébként is deglobalizálódó világban, ahol egyre több ország vezet be protekcionista intézkedéseket, a vörös-tenger blokádja tovább ront a helyzeten. mindez európának különösen rossz, magyarországnak meg még annál is inkább. most talán úgy tűnik, hogy a konvojosdi nem működik a vörös-tengeren, de abban biztosak lehetünk, hogy egy trump vezette amerika meg se próbálná megvédeni az eu-kína kereskedelmet.

azt meg remélem nem kell bővebben kifejteni, hogy a bezárkózás egyre több szereplő részéről miért nem ígér sok jót a jövőre nézve. boldog új évet mindenkinek, remélem végül nem lesz igazam

[darkmaga-returns]

Yesterday I had two guests on the podcast, 

Karst Research and Dylan (aka Jake LaMotta, aka Raging Bull Capital), to talk about Calumet CLMT 0.00%↑. You should all go check out their Substacks below. You can also find them on Twitter (here and here). It was an interesting conversation on a stock that has several catalysts lined up in the near future. We talked about the DOE loan that is expected to close before year end, the different segments of the business, and more.

Podcast Summary

We talked about the 30,000 foot view of Calumet, which has transitioned from a busted MLP with no dividend to a C-corp earlier this year.

The terms of the DOE loan, which was announced in October, and expected to close by year end.

Why Karst views the DOE loan as a balance sheet event, and the deleveraging and reduction in interest expense that will happen as a result of the loan.

How Dylan thinks the DOE loan derisks the business for the next couple years.

What SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) expansion might look like for Calumet.

I play devil’s advocate questioning the long-term viability of SAF.

Their thoughts on what a potential monetization event might look like (and its timing), whether it’s an IPO of the Montana Renewables segment, or a sale of one of the other segments.

If there are any risks to Calumet from the incoming Trump administration.

Book Recommendation from Dylan: How The World Really Works by Vaclav Smil.

Book Recommendation from Karst: Throne of Grace by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin.

[garyh2628]

Modern Selfcare is the new global Profit Pool.

INVESTING IN PEOPLE, TRUST AND DERISKING, AND HEALTHY

Opportunity, Affordability, and Equality—this is Your Story

We Discover. We Make. We take the Lead - Redefining the Boundaries of Ambition

We are the world’s most Valuable Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Healthcare Asset, Brand, Culture and Mega force for Progress

Modern Selfcare is a Big name for many segments.

Welcome to the Global Modern Selfcare, Consumer Health and Consumer Product neighbourhood in service to Health, Development, and a Culture of Triumphant Living www.theglobalstructurenetwork.com has Design. 

We are a Globally Commercially Driven Enterprise.

Modern Selfcare, Consumer Health and Consumer Products, Services, and Capital in you the Consumer interest for Health, Development, and Wealth Creation.

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy will be the first ever Life Science, Finance, Insurance, and Academia led Modern Selfcare and Consumer Health enterprise.

The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy, and The Global Structure Network Limited are trusted to lead—by Consumers, CEOs, Stakeholders and Industry. 

Investors, Stakeholders and Brands can directly contact us here: 

info@theglobalstructurenetwork.com or gary@theglobalstructurenetwork.com 

https://theglobalstructurenetwork.com/how-to-engage-us

Modern Selfcare Economies:

(Consumer Health and Development, Nutraceuticals, Nutrition, Agriculture, Complementary and Integrative Health, Value-Based-and-Integrated Care, Food is Medicine, Medically Tailored Meal Programmes, Life Science OTC, Wellness, Wellness Infrastructure and Human Services upstream and downstream interventions  just to name a few)

Opportunity, Affordability, and Equality - For the latest Sector News, click here: https://www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk/news

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The Global Structure Network Limited, The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk, and our Value Proposition—powered by my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy—serve as the driving megaforce and essential assets for Modern Selfcare. We bring commercial life to Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health Branded Products, Services, and Capital, fuelling Wealth Creation, Health, and Development to support a Culture of Triumphant Living. 

We are also the leading Consumption Superpower in Modern Selfcare, Consumer Health, and Consumer Goods, advancing Health, Development, and Wealth Creation to sustain a Culture of Triumphant Living.

When we began, many of today’s key players had not yet entered the scene, and the industry was nowhere near the scale it has reached today.

Our Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health in service to Wealth Creation, Health, Development to support a Culture of Triumphant Living Domains:

A Culture of Triumphant Living, The Quantified Self, & Operational Resilience     

Disease Prevention, Health Promotion, Cultural Transformation, and Quality Enhancement   

Knowledge, Healthy Resilience, Healthy Longevity, Operational Resilience and Efficacy.  

We embraced a long-term vision in our planning, and today, The Global Structure Network Limited, The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk serve as the foundational framework for Modern Selfcare initiatives, driving Consumer action in towns and cities worldwide. 

When we introduced The Global Structure Network Limited, powered by my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy, Modern Selfcare had not yet achieved the significance or scale it enjoys today. From the outset, our focus on Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health—driven by a commitment to Wealth Creation, Health, and Development in support of a Culture of Triumphant Living—proved to be a transformative force. 

Our Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health agendas, in service to Wealth Creation, Health, and Development, support a Culture of Triumphant Living, anchored in my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy, quickly emerged as a powerful catalyst for advancing the global economic and social agenda and adding long-termism and a focus on a Culture of Triumphant Living to the agendas of the CEOs and stakeholders who are investing in us. It has also become a compelling Value Proposition for Investors seeking long-term profit and impact.

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy have weathered challenges to achieve significant progress toward our goals of democratising Modern Selfcare and embedding our Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health agenda within the global corporate landscape. This effort has placed Consumers at the centre of all Culture of Triumphant Living agendas. Today, the Modern Selfcare economies are widely recognised as key drivers of growth and productivity worldwide.

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk, with Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health in service to Health, Development, and Wealth Creation most consequential success and assets, stand as Transformative forces and Valuable Assets. Our success has enabled Modern Selfcare to achieve prominence globally, both at the policy and commercial levels, serving as a strategic gateway to commercial opportunities within the Modern Selfcare economies and megatrends our Value Proposition has enabled. 

There is a lot of momentum around our Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health Value Proposition and my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience and Efficacy. There is a lot happening all over the world around our Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods and Consumer Health Value Proposition powered by my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy and the megatrends it has enabled. 

The focus of the Modern Selfcare economy has changed, Consumers' focus has changed, and a lot of things are different now because of our Value Proposition, our Modern Selfcare Framework, Major Areas of Foci; powered by my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, Efficacy, and our commercial agenda. It is opening new commercial opportunities to build a robust global Modern Selfcare economy that will support the economic and social agendas of CEOs who are investing in us and our expansion. 

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy is a critical hub for the core global Opportunity, Affordability, and Equality of Opportunity agenda taking shape all across the world because of our Value Proposition, Modern Selfcare Framework, Major Areas of Foci powered by my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy and the megatrends it catalysed. 

We are dedicated to preserving the power of The Global Structure Network Limited, The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk—Consumer Goods, Consumer Health, and Modern Selfcare in support of Development, Health, and Wealth Creation in order to foster a Culture of Triumphant Living.

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk are the Big Action in the Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health Economies:     

Consumer Health and Development

Nutraceuticals  

Nutrition

Agriculture

Complementary and Integrative Health

Value-Based-and-Integrated Care

Food is Medicine

Consumer Goods

Medically Tailored Meal Programmes

Life Science OTC

Wellness, and Wellness Infrastructure

Human Services upstream and downstream interventions, just to name a few)

Your great ideas should and can come to life with us on your side. The Global Structure Network Limited, The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy power the global Modern Selfcare economies.

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk power the Global Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health in service to Health, Development and Wealth Creation Economies:  

Consumer Health and Development

Nutraceuticals  

Nutrition

Agriculture

Complementary and Integrative Health

Value-Based-and-Integrated Care

Food is Medicine

Consumer Goods

Medically Tailored Meal Programmes

Life Science OTC

Wellness, and Wellness Infrastructure

Human Services upstream and downstream interventions, just to name a few)

I extend an invitation to CEOs, Stakeholders, Brands, and Investors to join me in this Commercial venture. Together, we can seize the opportunities that our success has created and provide new and innovative Consumer Goods, Consumer Healthcare, Wellness and Wellness Infrastructure and Modern Selfcare Products, Services abd Capital with unique and distinct Value Proposition. 

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond international and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk stand at the core of commercial competition within the global Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health markets. We are unlocking a $5 trillion dollar industry.        

Our Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health Agenda, our Value Proposition, Major Areas of Foci powered by my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience and Efficacy are seen by CEOs and Stakeholders all over the world as the only Consumer Power able to change the global paradigm at the consumer level to deliver Highly Impactful Assets to act within the global social and economic context, which are centred around our strategic priorities.  

The Global Structure Network Limited, The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy are recognised by Consumers as the go-to platforms for all things Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health in support of Wealth Creation, Development, and a Culture of Triumphant Living. We are the most powerful Consumer interest platforms in the world - Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health—empowering Wealth Creation, Health, and Development to foster a Culture of Triumphant Living.    

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk is the global Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods and Consumer Health in service to Wealth Creation, Health and Development Parenting Advantage. The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk hold unrivalled market POWER in the sectors of Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health, driving Health, Development, and Wealth Creation. Our positioning and structure enable us to engage at every level of the Modern Selfcare experience, from initial engagement through to outcomes.  

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk are key to ensuring enhanced Investment Returns for those Investing in the global Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods and Consumer Health in service to Wealth Creation, Health, and Development economy and for our portfolio of Brands to stay ahead of the pacing commercial competition from their competitors, who are seeking to secure Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods and Consumer Health commercial advantages. 

The Global Structure Network Limited, The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy serve as the global consumer Storefront for Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health—empowering Wealth Creation, Health, and Development to foster a Culture of Triumphant Living.   https://theglobalstructurenetwork.com/f/investing-in-selfcare-offers-differentiated-returns-at-scale  

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy are the Assets enabling the global Modern Selfcare Economies in service to Wealth Creation, Health, and Development to Play Big because Scale Matters.  

The Global Structure Network Limited and The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy are the Structures allowing Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods and Consumer Health in service to Wealth Creation, Health and Development to go fast and go far. Enabling Modern Selfcare Research, Innovation and Knowledge in the interest of the Consumer to support a Culture of Triumphant Living.  

Our Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health Value Proposition, Framework, and Major Areas of Foci, all powered by my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy and the power it embodies, is big and weighty, truly seminal, economic, and policy-rich, i.e.,  

The Indispensable Assets in Modern Selfcare, Consumer Health, and Consumer Goods in service to Health, Development and a Culture of Triumphant Living sectors

Disruptors in these fields

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Leading Brands in these sectors

Consumption Superpower in Modern Selfcare, Consumer Health, and Consumer Goods in      service to Health, Development and a Culture of Triumphant Living

It is the driving force that breathes commercial life into Modern Selfcare,  Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health Branded Products, Services, and Capital—fueling Wealth Creation, Health, and Development to support a Culture of Triumphant Living.

Mega Force for Progress - (We turn complex policy issues into engaging, accessible copy)

Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, Wellness and Wellness Infrastructure and Consumer Health Trends: 

Resilience:  A structural investment

Value-Based Care Practices and Actions

Complementary and Integrative Health

Integrated Care

Precision Nutrition

Food is Medicine

Medically Tailored Meal Programmes et al.

Consumer Products: The creation of entirely new product lines that offer unique value propositions.

Consumer Health: New products that meet evolving consumer demands and to capitalise on new and emerging trends.

Consumer Development: The Quantified Self

Human Services: People-Centred Practices

These advantages will allow us to revolutionise the global landscape for Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health, spanning Branded Products, Services, and Capital—from over-the-counter Consumer Health and Modern Selfcare items to food, clothing, cosmetics, and beverages, just to mention a few. 

We are prioritising High-Value Proprietary connections and partnerships in the interest of The Global Structure Network Limited, the Financial Revolution of The Global Structure Network Limited, our Value Proposition, Major areas of Foci, and my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy.  

We are focused on purposeful dialogue in the interest of our Commercial Agenda, translating Our Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health Framework; Our Value Proposition; my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy, and our Modern Selfcare achievements into successful commercialisation so that opportunities created by this innovation can be maximised in a way that supports economic activity and strengthens further my more than 20 years of Healthy Structural Performance, Operational Resilience, and Efficacy.     

We adopted a long-term perspective in all our planning, and today, The Global Structure Network Limited, The Global Structure Diamond International, and Advocacy serve as the foundational framework for consumer activities in towns and cities across the globe.

The future of economies worldwide will depend on investments in the Modern Selfcare and Consumer Health sectors. The Global Structure Network Limited, along with The Global Structure Diamond International and Advocacy www.gsdiandadvocacy.co.uk, are driving the development of stronger Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health markets.  

Our focus remains on eliminating bottlenecks to Opportunities and strategically investing our accumulated Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods and Consumer Health Capital in the Global Consumer Infrastructure, ensuring that Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods and Consumer Health remain relevant, accessible and efficacious.      

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The Founder’s Gallery (Centre for Modern Selfcare including Human Services Commercial Excellence)– Disease Prevention, Health Promotion, Cultural Transformation, and Quality Enhancement -  (Policy Chair for Global Modern Selfcare, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Health, dedicated to Wealth Creation, Health, and Development in support of a Culture of Triumphant Living.)  

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[blockinsider]

Bitcoin Stabilizes Around $68K as Big Investors Reduce Holdings

Key Points

Bitcoin has been consolidating near $68K, with a slight dip to $66K due to increased exchange inflow.

Whales have been trimming their long positions, indicating a decrease in whale-long positions.

Bitcoin (BTC) has been hovering around the $68K mark since October 16, following a surge early in the week driven by robust spot market demand.

However, it seems some holders have been cashing in on the price rally, as indicated by spikes in exchange inflow.

Bitcoin’s Slight Dip

This rise in exchange inflow means more BTC was being moved into centralized exchanges for sale, potentially explaining the minor dip to $66K observed on Thursday.

Interestingly, this slight pullback to $66.6K was also marked by whales reducing their long positions.

This trend was highlighted by a slight decrease in the Whale vs Retail Delta on Binance exchanges.

This metric tracks whale accumulation relative to retail traders. Its decline suggests a reduction in whale-long positions, a trend that aligns with BTC price pullbacks.

In other words, the recent reading showed that smart money on Binance was slightly derisking, possibly fearing that the drop could extend beyond $66K.

Week’s Pump Reinforces Bullish Outlook

Despite this, the week’s pump has reinforced the bullish ‘Uptober’ outlook after a disappointing start to the month.

The risk-on and bullish sentiment was also apparent among US spot ETF products, which have been on a four-day winning streak since October 11.

On Thursday, these products recorded $470.48 million net inflows.

According to QCP Capital, a Singapore-based crypto trading firm, these strong flows could push BTC towards its March all-time high.

“The strong and growing inflows may be a leading indicator of further rallies as BTC heads back to its all-time high of $73,790,” the firm noted in its daily update.

The trading firm also observed increased buying for long-dated options, particularly those expiring in March 2025.

“The desk saw heavy buying on long-dated 28 Mar options during US trading hours, with 600 contracts at 120k strike. This signifies that optimistic, long-shot buyers are returning amid this rally,” QCP Capital added.

This suggests that options market traders are bullish on BTC price prospects in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. However, short-term market uncertainty remains due to the earnings season and the upcoming US elections.

Considering BTC’s positive correlation with US stocks, the earnings season could influence asset price action, especially MicroStrategy’s earnings, scheduled for October 30th.

The liquidation heatmap showed significant short positions were building at around $68.6K and long positions at $66.4K.

Market makers typically use these liquidity clusters to manipulate prices and tend to steer BTC price direction towards them. Therefore, these could be key levels to monitor in the short term.

[spacenutspod]

We might be a little late on reporting for this one – the space exploration community is large, and sometimes, it’s hard to keep track of everything happening. But whenever there is a success, it’s worth pointing out. Back in June, two teams successfully completed the latest stage of the Break the Ice Challenge to mine water from the Moon. The Break, the Ice Challenge is one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, which aims to tackle technologies useful in later space exploration. The Centennial Challenges have been around in different guises for almost two decades. Still, recently, they have narrowed their focus to three challenges, mainly pertaining to the upcoming Artemis moon missions. However, nearly every year, they have a challenge that pushes the boundaries of known technology closer to the end-use case for a mission. This year, the competition took place at Alabama A&M’s Agribition Center in Huntsville, near NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center. It took place on June 11th and 12th and featured seven teams that had made it to the finals by passing tests in earlier stages. NASA released a video of the competition at Alabama A&MCredit – NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center YouTube Channel Break the Ice has been a repeating challenge since 2020; however, it had similar predecessors going back to 2007, when it was known as the Regolith Excavation Challenge. This year’s challenge involved traversing rugged terrain, mining material from lunar regolith simulant, and seemingly dispersing it, as seen in a YouTube video released by NASA. There must be something about this challenge structure because the team’s lead engineer who won the competition this year, Todd Mendenhall of Terra Engineering, also competed in the 2007 challenge. Almost 20 years later, he and his wife are still working on autonomous lunar excavator technologies and are very successful at it. Terra Engineering’s rover, Fracture, completed most of the challenges before it, taking home a grand prize of $1 million. Starpath Robotics, a small start-up based near SpaceX’s facility in Hawthorne, California, took second in the competition and $500,000 in award money. Another team from Michigan Technological University completed the group of three that passed enough of the challenges that they were invited to test their rovers in the Thermal Vacuum Chamber at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center. Terra Engineering’s Fracture Rover completed a 15 day endurance test as part of the challenge, as seen here.Credit – Terra Engineering YouTube Channel Testing would be necessary if these rovers ever see adoption into a fully-fledged lunar mission. However, NASA hasn’t been great at pipelining the technologies developed as part of these challenges into actual field-ready hardware. The challenges usually provide a fun engineering task for teams, but further effort to turn it into a real mission concept isn’t forthcoming. Other challenges, ranging from space tether robots to the original regolith challenge participants, have come and gone, with almost none of the technologies they’ve worked on making it through for use in an actual mission. It’s unclear whether the Break the Ice Challenge participants will suffer the same fate or if the challenge will return again next year. Theoretically, it should be possible to derisk the technology to a point where NASA gets a fully functional autonomous lunar excavator simply by continuing the challenge series for long enough. There hasn’t been an announcement about the next round of competition; however, the impressive displays of engineering from the various teams are viewable on YouTube if you’re interested in seeing how far they’ve come. Learn More:NASA – California Teams Win $1.5 Million in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar ChallengeUT – NASA and HeroX are Looking to Light Up the Moon!UT – We Could Get Material On The Moon By Shocking It With LightningUT – Some Lunar Regolith is Better for Living Off the Land on the Moon Lead Image:Valerie and Todd Mendenhall (front) are presented with a $1M check and trophy for winning NASA’s Break the Ice Challenge, supported by executives from Alabama A&M and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.Credit – NASA The post The NASA Break the Ice Challenge Awards $1.5M to Two Start-Ups appeared first on Universe Today.

[whattheabcxyz]

2024-07-11

Singapore

DBS Bank & JP Morgan ranked best bank employers in here in survey

Commuters can now reserve shared bikes for 1st-/last-mile trips

More teens under 16 caught abusing drugs so far this year

About 50 resale listings removed from HDB Flat Portal for unrealistic pricing/misinformation

Authorities considering next steps in investigations against Kenneth Jeyaretnam - sigh 😔

Number of millionaires here rose to more than 333K last year, even as global tally shrank - did their funds all come from money laundering or other illegal avenues?! 😒

Over 600kg of smokeless tobacco seized in Little India - 27 people under probe

Singapore wins more investments from major chipmakers as they seek to derisk supply chains

NTUC to be designated as "politically significant person" under foreign interference law

Health

Hospitalisation numbers on the rise among young people in Vietnam due to e-cigarette poisoning - if you're dumb enough to vape, you should face the consequences!

Maritime

Singapore: 2 crew members evacuated as supply craft sinks off Bedok Jetty

Art

^ How cigarette cards originated - they should rightfully be banned, as should cigarettes themselves!

Travel

Denmark is rewarding tourists for being green

[yimsoksophors]

The Regional Legacy Workshop of the “Applying Seasonal Climate Forecasting and Innovative Insurance Solutions to Climate Risk Management in the Agriculture Sector in SE Asia (DeRISK SE Asia)”

The project “Applying seasonal climate forecasting and innovative insurance solutions to climate risk management in the agriculture sector in Southeast Asia” (2018-2022), known as “DeRISK SE Asia” is currently in its final stage. The project was led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), in collaboration with the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) and the Alliance of Bioversity…

[xtruss]

Former French Prime Minister: We Need To Replace Confrontation And Conflict With Peace

— Su Yaxuan and Wang Zixuan | July 06, 2024

Former French Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin. Photo Credit: Su Yaxuan/Global Times

"Because of the insecurity of the world, the movement of 'derisking' might continue. One of the important factors we should have in mind is the fact that the political input may create a situation, not only of tension, but of partition of globalization," former French prime minister Dominique De Villepin told the Global Times at a press conference. We hope to live in a "more stable and secure world," he said.

The opening ceremony of the 12th World Peace Forum (WPF) was held at Tsinghua University on Saturday. The theme of this year's WPF is "Improving Global Security Governance: Justice, Unity, and Cooperation."

"One of the biggest difficulties for the world today is to show that there is an alternative to confrontation. This has to be shown concerning peace," De Villepin said.

He noted that all the crises facing the world today are deadly. If wars continue to escalate, they could become global wars, which could bring destructive risks to the entire planet. The urgent task is to resolve, predict, and control various crises, such as the Ukraine crisis, the Gaza crisis, and so on. He urged at the opening ceremony to maintain our reputation by avoiding double standards in dealing with the Gaza crisis.

In addition to "Peace," another word frequently referenced by De Villepin is "cooperation." When asked about the "overcapacity" issue and current trade protectionism in Europe, the former French leader called for a win-win situation through cooperation between countries. He noted that we should work together and try again to set new situation in which we will show the possibility of finding solutions.

"There is a strong leadership that China has on some technologies like electric cars and solar panels. They are more technically advanced and they are cheaper in most of the time. And that explains why they are so competitive and why they create fear. That's why we should try to find the best way for everybody to get benefits from these new trends," he added.

Recently, during the visit of Chinese leaders to France, it was announced that China has decided to extend visa exemption entry for citizens from more countries, including France, on short-term visits to China until the end of 2025, which is a new effort by China to further open-up and strengthen cooperation with other countries.

Regarding the visa-free policy, the former French prime minister said: "I believe that encouraging tourism and encouraging foreign students to go and visit another country is something decisive. In Europe, we've been testing what are the policy that have been working the best in the last years, and I think this is the key for tomorrow."

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France and is also the China-France Year of Culture and Tourism.

He said, "when you don't know a country, of course, you have what's written in the press, but in many regards, sometimes it is not always the reality of a foreign country that is expressed. So you need to see by yourself." De Villepin stressed that this would change the global mentality and create direct links.

France was one of the first Western countries to establish diplomatic relations with China, and both countries have ancient civilizations. "We know that Europeans in China hope for peaceful relations between the two sides, and we must respond to this demand and further explore the possibilities of cooperation and success," De Villepin said.

[leprivatebanker]

Nike nearer-term financial expectations now largely 'derisked'

[virtualcurrencyspace]

Bitcoin ETF’s Witness $200M In Outflows

U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw a second-straight day of outflows as traders likely derisked ahead of key macroeconomic reports scheduled for later Wednesday.

Data from SoSoValue shows the eleven ETFs recorded $200 million in net outflows on Tuesday, the highest since May 1 figures of $580 million. Redemptions came amid a BTC sell-off, during which the asset briefly tumbled to $66,200 before recovering.