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fapangel · 7 years ago

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Unless the US resorted to an all out nuclear attack, there is no way that we could be certain of taking out all of NK's nuclear weapons. Any such all out attack would result in many millions of casualties in both North Korea and South Korea and almost certainly in Japan, China and Russia. Due to the fact that those US nukes would have to be detonated on the ground, in order to destroy widespread and deeply buried underground fortifications, as airbursts wouldn't be effective against deep bunkers

the resulting radioactive fallout would be particularly nasty and widespread. Not only would all of Japan (With a population of 130 million) be at risk for lethal levels of fallout, so would all of the West Coast of the USA (Alaska, Washington State, Oregon and California), as well as the coastal areas of western Canada and Mexico. Additionally, all of the Pacific fisheries would become poisoned due to the fallout and would be rendered toxic and unusable for decades to come.

Then there is the issue of sparking off a direct nuclear conflict with China and Russia. Once again, the simple reality is that the USA does not have conventional weapons that are capable of taking out all of the NK military/nuclear fortifications in one single surgical strike.

Without diving into a full argument in favor of counter-force strike, allow me to illustrate just how incorrect these misconceptions are. This isn’t your fault - everything you typed I have seen expressed, verbatim, by journalists, academics, and other people who should damn well know better.

You have been lied to, deliberately and consistently.

Lie #1:

US nukes would have to be detonated on the ground, in order to destroy widespread and deeply buried underground fortifications, as airbursts wouldn't be effective against deep bunkers

Not if the B-61-12 is used, the latest modification of the B-61 nuclear freefall bomb to make it a precision-guided, earth-penetrating, low-yield bunker buster. The precision guidance (GPS/inertial) alone makes it far more effective, as doubling the accuracy of a weapon increases its destructive potential eightfold (a simple consequence of the inverse-square law.) The earth-penetrating ability increases the “shock coupling,” i.e. the kinetic energy transferred to the earth (to collapse deep bunkers like an “earthquake bomb” does,) and of course, the low yield greatly reduces the collateral damage and fallout effects. The only publicly disclosed data on the Mod-12 puts the maximum yield at 50 kilotons, but based on prior configurations of the B-61s “physics package,” the weapon probably has a variable yield ranging from 0.3kt to 50kt. On its lowest setting, the bomb will only have a yield of three hundred tons. A sub-kiloton yield. Especially at such low yields, the earth-penetrating nature of the weapon is likely to reduce fallout, especially when hitting hard rock (less loose soil to be blown into the air; only rock actually vaporized by the very small nuclear fireball would be put into the air.) This is hard to gauge, as no declassified equations exist for working out fallout from a shallow sub-surface detonation. In fact, the excellent nukemap.com cannot calculate fallout even for a surface burst, as its equations only cover detonations of a kiloton or over.

It should be noted that the B-61-12 is in qualification testing as we speak - the weapon is finished, and given the urgency of the current crisis, could reasonably be rushed into service in low numbers.

Lie #2:

Then there is the issue of sparking off a direct nuclear conflict with China and Russia.

Even ignoring the existence of the B-61-12 described above, this claim completely ignores the bomber-based leg of the American nuclear triad, which still operates the AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile (variable yield of 5-150 kilotons) and the B-83 freefall bomb (variable yield up to 1.2 megatons,) both delivered by the B-52 strategic bomber - some of which are based on Guam (and have been since the early days of the Cold War.) The B-52 has had an unescorted deep-nuclear-strike penetration mission ever since the AGM-28 Hound Dog debeuted in 1960, a massive nuclear-armed cruise missile designed to simply vaporize SAM sites and entire Soviet fighter bases so the B-52s could reach their targets and deliver their heavy freefall bombs. The modern incarnation of this would involve B-52s carrying ALCMs or B-83s internally, and carrying MALD-J decoys and/or JASSM-ER stealth cruise missiles on their external pylons to jam, confuse, and outright destroy North Korea’s painfully antiquated air defense network before moving in to deliver their nuclear strikes. And this is without escort or assistance from fighter-bombers and/or OECM aircraft based in Japan, Okinawa or South Korea, which they would have.

It is possible - though extremely unlikely - that Russia or China would panic and assume that a low number of incoming ICBMs/SLBMs from America’s direction were actually aimed at them, and decide to commit suicide by launching a massive retaliatory attack even before the tracks of incoming warheads had been “firmed up” by radar (even though China doesn’t have a “launch-on-warning” policy.) It is not possible that they will interpret lumbering Cold-War era bomber aircraft a legitimate nuclear threat to their very capable, modern, and dense IADS - even the ALCM is a dated, non-stealth design. Even if they should construe these aircraft as “attacking them,” by sheer dint of their numbers and possible kiloton yield per aircraft alone it’d qualify as a tactical useage of nuclear weapons, not a strategic one demanding immediate massive retaliation.

There is absolutely no credible argument for the employment of tactical nuclear warheads against North Korea leading to a full-on strategic nuclear exchange between Russia/China and the United States, and anyone telling you such is a lying bastard trying to play on your emotions to avoid making a real argument.

Lie #3:

Once again, the simple reality is that the USA does not have conventional weapons that are capable of taking out all of the NK military/nuclear fortifications in one single surgical strike.

The hell we don’t.

Meet the AGM-158 JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface-Standoff Missile), a fully stealthed air-launched cruise missile that also has an ER variant (a full 600nm range) and a penetrating warhead variant for hardened targets.

The B-1B “Lancer” can carry 24 of these weapons in its internal bomb-bays. The B-1B is an intercontinental capable bomber (with suitable tanker support.) 1/3rd of the currently active US fleet (20 aircraft) can thus deliver 480 of these weapons - in a non-stop round trip direct from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, as they have done many times in sorties to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Estimates of DPRK Transporter-Erector-Launcher numbers range from 150 to 300. Even if every single one was located inside its own dispersal bunker, the JASSM would be more than capable of destroying it, as their penetration ability is enhanced by the ability to conduct a guided attack (i.e. a 90-degree dive with full engine power to enhance the kinetic penetration prior to detonation.) This is indeed the worst case scenario, as any TELs located in large facilities under mountains can be interdicted simply by collapsing the tunnel entrances with similar weaponry - a TEL cannot fire a ballistic missile though a hundred feet of solid rock, after all. This vulnerability is almost certainly why the DPRK is observably building individual dispersal bunkers in close proximity to probable (and in one case, identified) under-mountain SRBM facilities.

Note I have not touched on the TLAM-D Tomahawk and its Tactical Tomahawk Penetrator Variant warhead (which put those neat holes in the hardened shelters at Shayrat AFB,) which is carried in copious numbers by the warships of 7th fleet (and by the four converted Ohio-class boomers, each mustering a staggering 154 weapons, for a total of 616 Tomahawk missiles deliverable with complete surprise,) nor the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber (capable of delivering a pair of the uniquely powerful 30,000 pound GBU-57 “MOP” bunker-busters, among other weapons,) or B-52s (both capable of inter-continental attacks as well,) or utilizing F-35s and F-22s in the strike role (with the F-22 lobbing Small Diameter Bombs, themselves capable bunker-busters in their own right,) nor any of the tactical fighter-bomber assets already in-theater, including US Air Force F-16s and F-15s in South Korea, or Navy/Marine Hornet/Super Hornets in Japan and Okinawa, all of them capable of delivering standoff cruise missiles and the JSOW glide-bomb with either a submunition or BROACH penetrating warhead.

Even if one assumes utilization of in-theater airpower is limited by the need to hide preparations from espionage, it is foolish to claim that the United States does not have an overwhelming capacity to deliver ordinance in a SURPRISE, surgical attack, even against extensively hardened targets. The only real limit on the United States’s ability in this regard is locating the targets, but given the massive superiority in ISR assets deployed to the peninsula - including U-2S spy planes and RQ-170 stealth drones capable of operating in DPRK airspace with relative impunity, combined with the relatively compact dimensions of the Korean peninsula, this is hardly an insurmountable obstacle.

And then there is the simple fact we needn’t intercept every single missile launcher and/or WMD warhead before launch, as South Korea and Japan will both be defended by a tested, multi-layered ABM shield. South Korea is covered by the SM-3 (late exoatmospheric intercept), THAAD (very high altitude endo-atmospheric intercept,) the SM-2ER/SM-6 (mid-atmospheric terminal intercept) and Patriot PAC-3 MSE/ERINT (medium to low altitude terminal intercept.) Japan won’t benefit from THAAD, but has several of its own destroyers armed with the SM-3 and can thus provide more for its own defense - and North Korea has far fewer MRBM/IRBMs capable of ranging Japan in the first place, and they’re larger, easier-to-find targets to begin with, making it very unlikely they’ll preserve enough assets through the initial strike to overwhelm even our limited ABM capacity as it currently stands.

It Is All Bullshit, My Friend

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Much, much, much more goes into planning a war than just this; there’s logistics, turnaround time, the need for redundancy (multiple weapon strikes for a single target, weapon duds, necessary re-strikes, Bomb Damage Assessment, the difficulty of coordinating Time on Target, communicating with/preparing one’s allies without telegraphing the blow, and so on,) but that just goes to show the most basic claims against counter-force strike that you’ve been fed by the media and the academics outright ignore known, tested military capabilities. This goes beyond saying “we can’t find TELs because we couldn’t do it 27 years ago in Desert Storm.” It requires ignoring seventeen years of hunting down elusive enemies in the mountainous and heavily-tunneled terrain of Afghanistan. This level of ignorance is willful and deliberate. When the existence of entire classes of weaponry and indeed, the staggeringly vast power-projection/deep strike ability of the United States is flatly and out-right ignored, one may well ask if a deliberate attempt to influence public opinion via lies (of omission or otherwise) is underway.

None of this means that I am right, of course - that argument will have to stand on its own merits. But I can assure you that the arguments you’ve been fed are laughably, blatantly wrong.

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opedguy · 4 years ago

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Iran Issues Arrest Warrant for Trump

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), June 29, 2020.--When 74-year-old President Donald Trump ordered the predator drone strike Jan. 3 outside the Baghdad airport that killed Iran’s 62-tear-old Revolutionary Guarads’ Al-Quds chief Qassem Soleimani and Iraq’s 62-year-old Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iran was caught flatfooted. Five days later, Iran struck Ayan al-Assad airbase with dozens of surface-to-air missiles, wounding 110 U.S. soldiers with concussive injuries stationed at the base but no casualties. Trump didn’t respond in-kind, telling Iran he would reserve the right to respond at a time of his choosing. Now Iran asked Lyon, France-based Interpol to issue an arrest warrant for Trump, revealing Iran’s feckless response to its ongoing criminal activities, whether its proxy war against Saudi Arabia, blowing up a Saudi oil refinery Sept. 14, 2019 or Limpet mining oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman June 13, 2019.

Forget about Iran’s ongoing proxy war against Israel, supplying arms and cash to Hamas terrorists in Gaza and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon to attack Israel. Yet 82-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei thinks Iran deserves an arrest warrant. When it comes to proxy wars or illegal military operations, Iran knows Interpol has no jurisdiction. Khamenei threatened to destroy Israel May 22 “Al-Quds Day,” calling Israel a cancerous tumor that must be destroyed. Khamenei likes to threaten Israel when he faces domestic unrest for Iran’s totalitarian-like crackdown of Iranian society. Interpol told Iran it wouldn’t consider its request for an arrest warrant for Trump. Trump is blamed for the rise in tensions by the U.S. press for canceling the July 15, 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], an international agreement to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment activities.

Trump cancelled the JCPOA May 8, 2018 because of Iran’s proxy war using Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack Saudi Arabia, not to mention fomenting war with Israel supplying arms and cash to Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet if you read the U.S. press, Trump should have stayed in the JCPOA because Iran was meeting certain technical provisions of the agreement, while, at the same time, waging war against Saudi Arabia and Israel. Tehran’s chief state prosecutor Ali Alqasimehr told Iran’s semi-official new agency IRNA that the request was made to Interpol to arrest Trump for the Jan. 3 predator drone strike that killed Soleimani and Muhandis. “Murder and terrorism charges” were asked of Interpol, something the agency promptly rejected, leaving Tehran few options left other that more covert attacks against the U.S. military or its allies in the Persian Gulf or Middle East.

Alqasimehr requested the “red notice” put on Trump and other U.S. officials, Interpol’s highest alert notice reserved only for the most dangerous international criminals. While Interpol works with local police departments, its arrest warrants are generally not enforceable. Alqasimehr did not identify in his arrest request anyone other than Trump, making more a PR statement than anything enforceable in any legal jurisdiction. Iran has no extradition treaty with the U.S. or any other country, making the request even more symbolic. If Interpol rejected Iran’s request to arrest Trump, what possible value other that domestic or foreign PR to request something that has zero clout. Trump’s Janl 3 decision to take out Soleimani and Muhandis was a no-brainer considering both individuals has blood on their hand killing U.S. military personnel, and continuing to plot attacks on U.S. allies.

Iran’s beef with the U.S. is political or military, not related to Interpol’s mandate to help prosecute international crime syndicates. If anything, Interpol should have told the Ayatollah Khamenei that Inter;pol should arrest high-ranking Iranian officials that continue to break international law sponsoring proxy wars or, more recently, using it military or surrogates to attack sovereign states, oil tankers or oil refineries. Interpol said its jurisdiction “would not consider requests of this nature,” referring to “political” issues that’s better left to world bodies like the United Nations. Brian Hook, U.S. special representative for Iran, dismissed Iran’s request to Interpol to for an arrest warrant for Trump. “It’s a propaganda stunt that no one takes seriously and make Iranians look foolish,” Hook said. Iran has no shame when it comes to making outrageous PR statements.

Iranian officials hope that Trump loses his reelection bid, putting foreign policy back into the Obama-Biden administration hands, most likely reinstating the JCPOA, placating Iran’s interests, despite its malign activities in the Middle East and North Africa. With Trump gone, the U.S. returns to a global approach to foreign policy, essentially working with the U.N. to determine resolution to international problems including the Israeli-Palestinian issue. With Trump gone, it’s back to usual of letting the U.N. dictate what’s best for U.S. foreign policy, not what’s best for Israel of other U.S. allies. With Iran continuing its proxy war against Saudi Arabia, returning to the JCPOA will only reinforce Iran’s proxy wars in the Mideast and North Africa. As outrageous as issuing an arrest warrant for Trump sounds, a sizable portion of the U.S. Congress doesn’t disagree.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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walkingthroughthisworld · 8 months ago

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#american tanks #inter war tanker #queue #tank #abrams

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yervand63 · 5 years ago

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Iran and Brazil Open a New Front in the Global Trade War

GEOPOLITICAL RISK, TRADE TENSIONS, IRAN TANKER– TALKING POINTS

An Iranian tanker is stranded off the eastern coast of Paranagua, Brazil

Tehran threatens to cut Brazil commodity imports if tanker cannot refuel

US sanctions against Iran creating inter-emerging market trade tensions

See our free guide to learn how to use economic news in your trading strategy!

As 2019 continues to…

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bharatiyamedia-blog · 5 years ago

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India's Iran coverage wants an intricate balancing act; New Delhi has Chabahar port, US ties at stake and China ready on sidelines

http://tinyurl.com/y66emrdy Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second win within the Lok Sabha elections and the rising unrest within the Persian Gulf name for a cautious have a look at India’s international coverage on Iran. Such an evaluation has to consider numerous components and all of the nations within the combine, in addition to how the Modi authorities must balance often contrary, conflicting interests. Iran ties important for India Having been described as a “strategic recreation changer”, the Chabahar port settlement between India and Iran was an enormous step ahead in New Delhi’s involvement within the Persian Gulf and, by means of the port, to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The port’s place as a gateway to the Indian Ocean in addition to its landward geography in direction of Central Asia makes it a super regional transhipment hub, because it presents the shortest route to a deep water port together with Gwadar in Pakistan. The much-delayed, bold Worldwide North- South Transport Hall (INSTC) is predicted to utilize this very port. File picture of Narendra Modi and Iran president Hassan Rouhani. PTI The Chabahar port’s entry to Afghanistan and Central Asia makes Iran essential to India’s pursuits overseas, and the bilateral ties between the 2 nations is greater than only a transactional relationship of shopping for and promoting oil. India’s rising curiosity in Central Asia is evinced most just lately by its induction to the Ashgabat Settlement in 2018 (a transport and transit settlement for Central Asia and the Persian Gulf) and the India-Central Asia Dialogue, which started in January. Though this text discusses India’s coverage on Iran, the Afghanistan and Central Asian dynamic is inseparable from the cost-benefit evaluation when it comes to the commerce, connectivity and strategic positive factors a foothold in Iran provides India. The present Indian funding to attach Afghanistan with Chabahar is step one in weaning Kabul off the Pakistani dependence pressured on it, in addition to the perceived significance of Pakistan vis-à-vis Afghanistan for Western nations. So far as Central Asia is anxious, India’s coverage on the area centres round two aims — pure assets and, extra importantly, connectivity to and thru the area. A quick have a look at a map makes it clear that solely Iran has the power and wherewithal to help India on this endeavour, and if not for Iran, India can anticipate to stay disconnected from affairs in Central Asia for the foreseeable future, in addition to relegate the INSTC to the information room. The promise of low cost and quick connectivity to Afghanistan, Central Asia, Russia and Europe ensures that India has to struggle to maintain this bilateral relationship alive. India’s rising US ties Diplomats and academicians across the globe applauded the choice to nominate former international secretary S Jaishankar the Minister of Exterior Affairs. Having served at numerous positions of seniority within the MEA’s Americas Division in addition to the Indian Embassy in Washington DC, his diplomatic profession has seen a number of essential landmarks within the US-India relationship, particularly with regard to defence cooperation. Jaishankar’s appointment can, therefore, be seen as an correct indicator of India’s rising tilt in direction of the US, which is predicted to proceed over the subsequent 5 years. Whereas this bilateral relationship itself is fraught with issues of its personal (commerce, Pakistan, Russia, and so on), China’s affect is most vital to this text. India and the US each recognise that the menace from China offers impetus to their bilateral relationship. That is mirrored of their elevated defence cooperation, such because the Strategic Commerce Authorisation-1 standing accorded to India, a brand new bipartisan invoice tabled within the US Senate, and the much-touted signing of the GSOMIA, LEMOA and COMCASA agreements (foundational agreements for inter-operability between the 2 militaries). Whereas the 2 nations look like pure allies, a number of commentators and leaders on either side appear to mistakenly construe this for carte blanche within the calls for they make of one another, as stated by Suhasini Haidar just lately. With the phrases “strategic autonomy” being bandied about an important deal, Indian commentators should bear in mind the skewed nature of this dependency between the 2 nations. Within the occasion of non-cooperation, the US has different regional allies to depend on to counter China, resembling Japan and South Korea, amongst others. Whereas these will not be as efficient as a counter-weight to China, they’ve the benefit of getting present, practical defence relationships with the US, in contrast to India. India, nonetheless, has no comparable various to show to. The opposite nice energy, Russia, enjoys an in depth defence relationship with China and can’t present help in defence and intelligence in the identical league the US does. Whereas any makes an attempt to coerce the route of India’s international coverage have to be shot down, these concerns guarantee India should carry out a big balancing act in its method to Iran. Current developments After the US’ withdrawal from the Joint Complete Plan of Motion (JCPOA), India obtained a waiver for oil purchases from Iran that was in place until Could, now bringing India again to the pre-JCPOA period of sanction-dodging to buy oil from Iran. As no sanction-laden entity is concerned in working the Chabahar port yet, India’s key funding within the nation is at the moment absolved of triggering sanctions, supplied relations between the US and Iran stay the identical. Iran’s curiosity in protecting the Chabahar challenge alive is that of sustaining one of many few initiatives the place international funding and infrastructure is allowed. Due to this fact, it’s anticipated that Ayatollah Khamenei won’t enable any corporations linked with sanctions to take part within the challenge, supplied relations between the US and Iran stay the identical. This qualification, on which the success of the Chabahar challenge hinges, seems to be on the point of revision as tensions flare within the Persian Gulf. In Could, 4 ships have been attacked within the Persian Gulf, with the US saying the assaults have been “almost certainly from Iran“, whereas Iran known as the claims “laughable”. This was adopted by threats by Iran to exceed the limits on uranium enrichment positioned by the JCPOA, the US and UK blaming Tehran for assaults on two ships in June and the latest incident of Iran shooting down a US Navy drone, almost triggering a US military response. Whether or not one can anticipate these heightened tensions close to the Strait of Hormuz to scale back stays to be seen. The present proof being ambiguous concerning the identification of the aggressor, the unrest itself could be blamed on America’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA, in addition to the sub-conventional warfare the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps wages within the area, from Yemen to Syria. The US’ withdrawal from the JCPOA empowered hardliners in Iran to take extra aggressive actions within the area and in addition ensured that Iran did not obtain the financial advantages promised to it within the nuclear deal. File picture of Chabahar port. Reuters As it’s unattainable for the nations making an attempt to salvage the JCPOA to offer Iran with ensures of financial advantages within the next few weeks, this can be very doubtless Iran will break by means of the uranium enrichment limits laid down within the JCPOA and probably start producing extremely enriched uranium, as properly. Towards a backdrop of constant Iranian assaults (perceived or actual) on US pursuits within the area and the specter of additional uranium enrichment, President Donald Trump has ominously promised extra financial sanctions on Iran, the very purpose the issue started within the first place. Balancing act a should Within the absence of a everlasting mechanism to combine Iran with the world — just like the European INSTEX — Iran’s financial system will proceed to endure, pushing the nation to higher hostility within the area. It will present itself by means of elevated proxy warfare and elevated growth of nuclear capabilities, which can, in flip, push away even the remaining nations making an attempt to salvage the JCPOA. In such an occasion, anticipate the beginnings of a ‘Tanker War‘ once more and new highs when it comes to militarisation of the Persian Gulf. The sluggish ascension of the escalation ladder on this battle will likely be mirrored by a lowering chance of India persevering with operations in Chabahar and subsequently its prolonged strategic coverage in Central Asia and past. Earlier, commentators steered that India can play a bigger position in mediating between hostile nations just like the US and Iran, contemplating its cordial relations with each. This could no longer be thought-about a suggestion, however a necessity. India should act multilaterally with the P5+1 (minus the US) nations working to restore what’s left of the JCPOA and play a much bigger position in delivering guarantees to Iran to alleviate its financial woes. India should additionally interact bilaterally with the US and Iran — with the US to make sure no future protests over the Chabahar settlement and with Iran to search for methods to defuse its hostile trajectory, nuclear and regional. India may additionally be properly suited to try to defuse hostilities between the 2 nations with diplomats like Gaddam Dharmendra in play, the present Ambassador to Iran who has additionally served as first secretary within the Indian Embassy in Washington DC. Moreover, whereas India has the choice to buy oil from different nations, it should pull out all stops to make sure that it continues to supply some oil from Iran. The profit to India is that it may possibly get hold of cheaper oil in lieu of heightened tensions, however extra importantly, it offers Iran a meagre aid from the financial pressure it faces. It might additionally be sure that the bilateral relation between India and Iran doesn’t relaxation on Chabahar alone. Be in little question — if Iran feels India just isn’t doing sufficient when it comes to help bilaterally and multilaterally, it should gladly flip to China to develop Chabahar, a rustic that is not required to carry out the identical balancing act India does. China will fortunately accede to a suggestion of a foothold close to the Persian Gulf and having stake in two deep-water ports with entry to Central Asia (the opposite being Gwadar). Contemplating the draw back in not appearing proactively and extensively, one can hope India’s international coverage institution is already entrenched in numerous discussions about Iran world wide, reasonably than sitting positive the present disaster could have no ramifications for the nation. The writer is a analysis assistant with the Institute of Chinese language Research, New Delhi Your information to the newest cricket World Cup tales, evaluation, experiences, opinions, reside updates and scores on https://www.firstpost.com/firstcricket/series/icc-cricket-world-cup-2019.html. Observe us on Twitter and Instagram or like our Facebook web page for updates all through the continued occasion in England and Wales. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)} ; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '259288058299626'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.9&appId=1117108234997285"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); window.fbAsyncInit = function () { FB.init({appId: '1117108234997285', version: 2.4, xfbml: true}); // *** here is my code *** if (typeof facebookInit == 'function') { facebookInit(); } }; (function () { var e = document.createElement('script'); e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js'; e.async = true; document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e); }()); function facebookInit() { console.log('Found FB: Loading comments.'); FB.XFBML.parse(); } Source link

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maritimemanual · 6 years ago

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Oil Spills And Their Impact

What is an oil spill?

The accidental disposal of oil into the water of oceans and seas due to careless handling or human error is called an oil spill. Oil spills cause widespread destruction of the aquatic ecosystem as well as huge economic loss. The indispensability of oil in our day to day lives is unquestionable. The number of industries that are heavily reliant on oil as its source of fuel is vast. But what comes as a blessing, if not appropriately handled this blessing can turn into a bane.

Over the years with its increased usage it has become a threat to the environment. This is especially due to the improper and careless handling of oil over waterways and accidental spillage. It causes severe distress to the marine life of the region and its nearby areas. It is important to know that every ecosystem is interconnected. So, when one is disturbed, consequentially the balance in the other ecosystems is disturbed too.

Reports say that an estimated 706 million gallons of waste oil get released into the oceans yearly. The majority of this waste oil comes from land drainage and waste disposal: e.g., the deposition of motor oil that has not been treated properly.

Contribution of Drilling and Transportation

There are various stages involved in drilling, and an accidental oil spill can occur at any of these stages. Leaks may happen while production, while handling, transporting and even while storing the oil. 2.1% of the 706 million gallons of waste oil is from drilling operations. Another 5.2 comes from the transportation processes. So, we see that the amount of oil spilled during the operations is not that much it adds up, nonetheless.

The question may arise that how exactly the offshore drilling operations cause oil spillage. These are generally caused by wastes from oil-based drilling mud, leakage of pipelines and flowlines, deck runoff water, or from well failures or blowouts. While transportation the tankers and ships can end up spilling their fuel or the oil they are carrying as cargo. These oils are of several types, including crude oil, fuel oil, heating oil, etc.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

What happens when oil is spilled?

Initially, when oil comes in contact with the water, it spreads mostly over the surface. The layer of oil thus formed may remain cohesive or break up depending on how the rough the sea is. Due to the wind and current, this layer spreads to a larger area – in the open oceans, coastal regions depending on the direction of the flow of wind or current. It spreads even further into marine and terrestrial habitats.

Volatile oil loses somewhere between 20% to 40% of its mass due to evaporation. It leads to an increase in its viscosity and thickness. A small percentage of oil gets dissolved in water.

A frothy brown emulsion may also be formed on the surface of the water and get dispersed with it. Portions of the oil may sink along with some particulate matter while another portion of it may result in the formation of sticky tarballs. Over time, oil waste wears out and disintegrates by mainly two methods, photolysis and biodegradation.

Photolysis is the chemical reaction where a chemical compound gets broken down by photons or simply put by light. Biodegradation is the disintegration of materials by bacteria, fungi, or other biological means.

Since the latter process is carried out by microorganisms, it is dependent on the availability of nutrients, oxygen, and microorganisms, as well as temperature.

The oil that spreads to the shore due to water current, waves or wind causes contamination and erosion of the beach through its gravel, rocks, and boulders. It negatively impacts the lives of both humans and animals living in the vicinity.

The sticky residue that coats the rocks and boulders are toxic to coastal wildlife and also hampers the recreational activities that are usually carried out on the shores. The coating also hinders its ability to provide nourishment to the vegetation.

Oil spills are fatal for the marine ecosystem. Fish and other aquatic creatures die due to the toxicity. This creates a chain reaction. The ecosystems of this planet are all inter-dependent. So, when one suffers, the effect can be felt in all the other ecosystems as well. The toxicity is not limited to flora and fauna present in the water only.

Some birds catch their food from the water. They no longer have access to that food. What is worse is the fact that when they come into contact with the water of the contaminated area, they get contaminated. The entire food chain is affected as a result.

There are people whose livelihood is reliant on fishing. When the fish die, there is nothing left for them to fish. It leads to a spike in the unemployment rate of the area and also the companies dealing with commercial fishing suffer.

Now let us take a look at the exact process of how the organisms are harmed. The oil spill poison not just the fish, but also sea creatures, including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds that live in or near the ocean. When these creatures ingest the oil their digestive system and even their respiratory and reproductive systems get affected. Thus, their behavioral pattern changes. The oil also causes them to suffocate. The disruption caused in the ecosystems is almost irreversible.

Coastal regions are vital not just because of the fishing industries but also because of the recreational activities, like boating, snorkeling and scuba diving, swimming, etc.

Apart from these activities’ tourists are also attracted to nature parks and preserves, beaches, etc. These form some of the significant industries near the coast. All of these get hampered when such accidents happen. So many people that were recruited by these companies lose their job.

Investors refrain from investing money in these areas. Thus, the economy of this region takes a hit. Consequentially the overall value of this area deteriorates drastically.

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What happens to the oil in the long run?

What happens to the oil, in the long run, is dependent on a large number of factors, e.g., the properties of the oil, its composition, how much oil is available on the shore, the type of beach, etc. It also depends on what kind of sediments and rocks the oil comes in contact. Different types of oil respond to the variations in seasonal and climatic conditions of a place in a different way.

Some oil creates a more significant impact on the habitats of the aquatic and marine animals while others not as much. The process of the evaporation, emulsification, and decomposition is also equally arbitrary.

Some types of oil form a tar-like substance that is extra difficult to remove and generally removal and cleaning the area contaminated by such oil can prove to be more harmful than useful.

Clean-up Process and Recovery

Most of the time the oil goes through a weathering process. But it takes time. To facilitate the process, several methods are used. They include natural and assisted biodegradation, containment and removal, and dispersion.

The last process can be achieved through skimming, filtering, or combustion. Which of these techniques would be the most appropriate to use depends on the characteristics of the environment?

The procedure used when the oil spill has occurred in an open ocean will differ from that in coastal regions and wetlands.

Wildlife species that are bigger are transported to a separate facility while the clean-up process is being carried out and when the process is complicated, they are returned to their natural habitats. The same procedure cannot be followed in the case of smaller species.

The process of choosing the correct countermeasure for an oil spill is not that easy because some things need to be kept in mind.

Care must be taken that the clean-up process and contingency plans do not create a negative impact on the socio-economy of the region. It should be made sure that while trying to remove the toxin from one place another place is not harmed.

Proper care should be taken while handling the equipment used in the process to be executed.

Success Rate

There is no guarantee as to how far the recovery process will be successful. Much of the success is dependent on nature and composition of the spilled oil, the characteristics of the area that has been affected.

Large scale recovery of the environment through decontamination and physical removal of oil waste can prove to be harmful to the substrate biomass. If the process decided upon is bioremediation then the addition of microorganisms, nutrients, and oxygen can speed up the process.

Some of the biggest oil spills in history

The world has seen a significant number of oil spills, some of which were nothing short of terribly disastrous.

The Kolva Rover Oil Spill of 1994 in the Russian Arctic ocean which was caused by a breach in a corroded pipeline is one of the most infamous oil spills. It led to a spill of nearly 84 million gallons of oil over an area of more than 180 sq. Km in the Kolva River. The cleaning process for this disaster was not an easy one.

BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill of 2010 is also in the list of some of the largest oil spills in history. It happened in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010 when a surge of natural gas blasted through a recently installed cement wall cap. This disaster led to the deaths of 11 workers, and nearly 17 were injured. About 134 million gallons of oil were spilled over an area of 2100 km. The cleanup and the compensation charges that the company had to pay were as high as 65 billion dollars.

Gulf War of 1991 in Kuwait marks one of the most massive oil spills in history where around 240 million to 336 million gallons of oil were spilled into the ocean out of which only about 59 million gallons could be recovered. This oil spill took place as a result of the Iraqi forces opening the oil valves of Kuwait. This is considered as the biggest oil spill in history.

Another major oil spill was the oil spill off the Atlantic Empress in Trinidad and Tobago in the year 1979. Nearly 88 million gallons of oil were spilled, and the disaster also led to the deaths of as many as 26 crew members.

Some more examples of significant oil spills are the Fergana Valley oil spill of 1992 in Uzbekistan, the Odyssey oil spill of 1988 off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, etc.

Conclusion

An oil spill is a costly affair in more than one way. First of all, oil is wasted. But that is not the end of it because the company now needs to pay for the clean-up of the oil and these sums are no meager amount.

Several penalties also need to be paid if such an accident occurs. But that is always recoverable if the business continues to grow. However, in addition to this, there is a considerable cost associated with the loss of marine life and other ecosystems that are in close contact with it. Exposure to contaminated soil and water is detrimental to human health. Human beings are affected not only in terms of health, but their livelihoods are also at stake.

Nowadays with specific strict rules and regulations regarding the prevention of oil spill taking certain measures has become mandatory. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was enacted by the U.S. Congress to strengthen oil spill prevention, planning, response, and restoration efforts. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund provides the clean-up funds for oil pollution incidents under the provision of the act.

The only way to prevent the oil spill is by being a little bit more careful and responsible. No one party can be blamed entirely for such an accident, be it the government, the industry or an individual, and thus it becomes the responsibility of everyone to make sure such mishaps do not happen in the future.

The post Oil Spills And Their Impact appeared first on Maritime Manual.

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mocktheright · 6 years ago

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Trump Overrules Own Experts on Sanctions, in Favor of North Korea - The US Treasury said it had acted because the companies had helped North Korea to evade international and US sanctions by engaging in ship-to-ship transfers with North Korean tankers or exporting North Korean coal. Just hours after the announcement, North Korea withdrew from the inter-Korean liaison office . It was not clear if the two events were connected, and Pyongyang did not comment on the latest sanctions. The liaison office, located in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, had allowed officials from North and South Korea to communicate on a regular basis for the first time since the Korean War. The North Korean pullout followed a failed summit between President Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, Vietnam, last month What did President Trump say? In a tweet on Friday, Mr Trump wrote: "It was announced today by the US Treasury that additional large-scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. "I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!" But there were no new US sanctions announced on Friday, leading many to believe he was referring to Thursday's measures. North Korea has been the subject of a series of US and international sanctions over Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons and missile tests. -- from Mock the Right on Facebook - bit.ly/2TKLJMe

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marilynngmesalo · 6 years ago

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At least 56,800 migrants dead and missing worldwide in 4 years: Report

At least 56,800 migrants dead and missing worldwide in 4 years: Report At least 56,800 migrants dead and missing worldwide in 4 years: Report https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

JOHANNESBURG — One by one, five to a grave, the coffins are buried in the red earth of this ill-kept corner of a South African cemetery. The scrawl on the cheap wood attests to their anonymity: “Unknown B/Male.”

These men were migrants from elsewhere in Africa with next to nothing who sought a living in the thriving underground economy of Gauteng province, a name that roughly translates to “land of gold.” Instead of fortune, many found death, their bodies unnamed and unclaimed — more than 4,300 in Gauteng between 2014 and 2017 alone.

Some of those lives ended here at the Olifantsvlei cemetery, in silence, among tufts of grass growing over tiny placards that read: Pauper Block. There are coffins so tiny that they could only belong to children.

As people worldwide flee war, hunger and a lack of jobs, global migration has soared to record highs, with more than 258 million international migrants in 2017. That is an increase of 49 per cent from the turn of the century, according to the United Nations.

Far less visible, however, has been the toll of this mass migration: The tens of thousands of people who die or simply disappear during their journeys, never to be seen again. A growing number of migrants have drowned, died in deserts or fallen prey to traffickers, leaving their families to wonder what on earth happened to them. At the same time, anonymous bodies are filling cemeteries around the world, like the one in Gauteng.

LEVY: 'Irregular' migrants continue to flock into Toronto

SHOCK REPORT: 30,000 desperate migrants die in desert

Trump: Number of troops sent to U.S.-Mexico border could reach 15,000

In most cases, nobody is keeping track: Barely counted in life, these people don’t register in death, as if they never lived at all.

An Associated Press tally has documented at least 56,800 migrants dead or missing worldwide since 2014 — almost double the number found in the world’s only official attempt to try to count them, by the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration . The IOM toll as of Oct. 1 was more than 28,500. The AP came up with almost 28,300 additional dead or missing migrants by compiling information from other international groups, requesting forensic records, missing persons reports and death records, and sifting through data from thousands of interviews with migrants.

The AP’s tally is still low. Bodies of migrants lie undiscovered in desert sands or at the bottom of the sea. And families don’t always report loved ones as missing because they migrated illegally, or because they left home without saying exactly where they were headed.

The official U.N. toll focuses mostly on Europe, but even there cases fall through the cracks. The political tide is turning against migrants in Europe just as in the United States, where the government is cracking down heavily on caravans of Central Americans trying to get in. One result is that money is drying up for projects to track migration and its costs.

For example, when more than 800 people died in an April 2015 shipwreck off the coast of Italy, Europe’s deadliest migrant sea disaster, Italian investigators pledged to identify them and find their families. More than three years later, under a new populist government, funding for this work is being cut off.

Beyond Europe, information is even more scarce. Little is known about the toll in South America, where the Venezuelan migration is among the world’s biggest today, and in Asia, the top region for numbers of migrants.

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The result is that governments vastly underestimate the toll of migration, a major political and social issue in most of the world today.

“No matter where you stand on the whole migration management debate….these are still human beings on the move,” said Bram Frouws, the head of the Mixed Migration Centre , based in Geneva, which has done surveys of more than 20,000 migrants in its 4Mi project since 2014. “Whether it’s refugees or people moving for jobs, they are human beings.”

They leave behind families caught between hope and mourning, like that of Safi al-Bahri. Her son, Majdi Barhoumi, left their hometown of Ras Jebel, Tunisia, on May 7, 2011, headed for Europe in a small boat with a dozen other migrants. The boat sank and Barhoumi hasn’t been heard from since. In a sign of faith that he is still alive, his parents built an animal pen with a brood of hens, a few cows and a dog to stand watch until he returns.

“I just wait for him. I always imagine him behind me, at home, in the market, everywhere,” said al-Bahari. “When I hear a voice at night, I think he’s come back. When I hear the sound of a motorcycle, I think my son is back.”

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EUROPE: BOATS THAT NEVER ARRIVE

Of the world’s migration crises, Europe’s has been the most cruelly visible. Images of the lifeless body of a Kurdish toddler on a beach, frozen tent camps in Eastern Europe, and a nearly numbing succession of deadly shipwrecks have been transmitted around the world, adding to the furor over migration.

In the Mediterranean, scores of tankers, cargo boats, cruise ships and military vessels tower over tiny, crowded rafts powered by an outboard motor for a one-way trip. Even larger boats carrying hundreds of migrants may go down when soft breezes turn into battering winds and thrashing waves further from shore.

Two shipwrecks and the deaths of at least 368 people off the coast of Italy in October 2013 prompted the IOM’s research into migrant deaths. The organization has focused on deaths in the Mediterranean, although its researchers plead for more data from elsewhere in the world. This year alone, the IOM has found more than 1,700 deaths in the waters that divide Africa and Europe.

Like the lost Tunisians of Ras Jebel, most of them set off to look for work. Barhoumi, his friends, cousins and other would-be migrants camped in the seaside brush the night before their departure, listening to the crash of the waves that ultimately would sink their raft.

Khalid Arfaoui had planned to be among them. When the group knocked at his door, it wasn’t fear that held him back, but a lack of cash. Everyone needed to chip in to pay for the boat, gas and supplies, and he was short about $100. So he sat inside and watched as they left for the beachside campsite where even today locals spend the night before embarking to Europe.

Propelled by a feeble outboard motor and overburdened with its passengers, the rubber raft flipped, possibly after grazing rocks below the surface on an uninhabited island just offshore. Two bodies were retrieved. The lone survivor was found clinging to debris eight hours later.

The Tunisian government has never tallied its missing, and the group never made it close enough to Europe to catch the attention of authorities there. So these migrants never have been counted among the dead and missing.

“If I had gone with them, I’d be lost like the others,” Arfaoui said recently, standing on the rocky shoreline with a group of friends, all of whom vaguely planned to leave for Europe. “If I get the chance, I’ll do it. Even if I fear the sea and I know I might die, I’ll do it.”

With him that day was 30-year-old Mounir Aguida, who had already made the trip once, drifting for 19 hours after the boat engine cut out. In late August this year, he crammed into another raft with seven friends, feeling the waves slam the flimsy bow. At the last minute he and another young man jumped out.

“It didn’t feel right,” Aguida said.

There has been no word from the other six — yet another group of Ras Jebel’s youth lost to the sea. With no shipwreck reported, no survivors to rescue and no bodies to identify, the six young men are not counted in any toll.

In addition to watching its own youth flee, Tunisia and to a lesser degree neighbouring Algeria are transit points for other Africans north bound for Europe. Tunisia has its own cemetery for unidentified migrants, as do Greece, Italy and Turkey. The one at Tunisia’s southern coast is tended by an unemployed sailor named Chamseddin Marzouk.

Of around 400 bodies interred in the coastal graveyard since it opened in 2005, only one has ever been identified. As for the others who lie beneath piles of dirt, Marzouk couldn’t imagine how their families would ever learn their fate.

“Their families may think that the person is still alive, or that he’ll return one day to visit,” Marzouk said. “They don’t know that those they await are buried here, in Zarzis, Tunisia.”

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AFRICA: VANISHING WITHOUT A TRACE

Despite talk of the ‘waves’ of African migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean, as many migrate within Africa — 16 million — as leave for Europe. In all, since 2014, at least 18,400 African migrants have died travelling within Africa, according to the figures compiled from AP and IOM records. That includes more than 4,300 unidentified bodies in a single South African province, and 8,700 whose travelling companions reported their disappearance en route out of the Horn of Africa in interviews with 4Mi.

When people vanish while migrating in Africa, it is often without a trace. The IOM says the Sahara Desert may well have killed more migrants than the Mediterranean. But no one will ever know for sure in a region where borders are little more than lines drawn on maps and no government is searching an expanse as large as the continental United States. The harsh sun and swirling desert sands quickly decompose and bury bodies of migrants, so that even when they turn up, they are usually impossible to identify .

With a prosperous economy and stable government, South Africa draws more migrants than any other country in Africa. The government is a meticulous collector of fingerprints — nearly every legal resident and citizen has a file somewhere — so bodies without any records are assumed to have been living and working in the country illegally. The corpses are fingerprinted when possible, but there is no regular DNA collection.

South Africa also has one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime and police are more focused on solving domestic cases than identifying migrants.

“There’s logic to that, as sad as it is….You want to find the killer if you’re a policeman, because the killer could kill more people,” said Jeanine Vellema, the chief specialist of the province’s eight mortuaries. Migrant identification, meanwhile, is largely an issue for foreign families — and poor ones at that.

Vellema has tried to patch into the police missing persons system, to build a system of electronic mortuary records and to establish a protocol where a DNA sample is taken from every set of remains that arrive at the morgue. She sighs: “Resources.” It’s a word that comes up 10 times in a half-hour conversation.

So the bodies end up at Olifantsvlei or a cemetery like it, in unnamed graves. On a recent visit by AP, a series of open rectangles awaited the bodies of the unidentified and unclaimed. They did not wait long: a pickup truck drove up, piled with about 10 coffins, five per grave. There were at least 180 grave markers for the anonymous dead, with multiple bodies in each grave.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is working with Vellema, has started a pilot project with one Gauteng morgue to take detailed photos, fingerprints, dental information and DNA samples of unidentified bodies. That information goes to a database where, in theory, the bodies can be traced.

“Every person has a right to their dignity. And to their identity,” said Stephen Fonseca, the ICRC regional forensic manager.

————————

THE UNITED STATES: “THAT’S HOW MY BROTHER USED TO SLEEP”

More than 6,000 miles (9,000 kilometres) away, in the deserts that straddle the U.S.-Mexico border, lie the bodies of migrants who perished trying to cross land as unforgiving as the waters of the Mediterranean. Many fled the violence and poverty of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador or Mexico. Some are found months or years later as mere skeletons. Others make a last, desperate phone call and are never heard from again.

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In 2010 the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and the local morgue in Pima County, Ariz., began to organize efforts to put names to the anonymous bodies found on both sides of the border. The “Border Project” has since identified more than 183 people — a fraction of the total.

At least 3,861 migrants are dead and missing on the route from Mexico to the United States since 2014, according to the combined AP and IOM total. The tally includes missing person reports from the Colibri Center for Human Rights on the U.S. side as well as the Argentine group’s data from the Mexican side. The painstaking work of identification can take years, hampered by a lack of resources, official records and co-ordination between countries — and even between states.

For many families of the missing, it is their only hope, but for the families of Juan Lorenzo Luna and Armando Reyes, that hope is fading.

Luna, 27, and Reyes, 22, were brothers-in-law who left their small northern Mexico town of Gomez Palacio in August 2016. They had tried to cross to the U.S. four months earlier, but surrendered to border patrol agents in exhaustion and were deported.

They knew they were risking their lives — Reyes’ father died migrating in 1995, and an uncle went missing in 2004. But Luna, a quiet family man, wanted to make enough money to buy a pickup truck and then return to his wife and two children. Reyes wanted a job where he wouldn’t get his shoes dirty and could give his newborn daughter a better life.

Of the five who left Gomez Palacio together, two men made it to safety, and one man turned back. The only information he gave was that the brothers-in-law had stopped walking and planned to turn themselves in again. That is the last that is known of them.

Officials told their families that they had scoured prisons and detention centres, but there was no sign of the missing men. Cesaria Orona even consulted a fortune teller about her missing son, Armando, and was told he had died in the desert.

One weekend in June 2017, volunteers found eight bodies next to a military area of the Arizona desert and posted the images online in the hopes of finding family. Maria Elena Luna came across a Facebook photo of a decaying body found in an arid landscape dotted with cactus and shrubs, lying face-up with one leg bent outward. There was something horribly familiar about the pose.

“That’s how my brother used to sleep,” she whispered.

Along with the bodies, the volunteers found a credential of a boy from Guatemala, a photo and a piece of paper with a number written on it. The photo was of Juan Lorenzo Luna, and the number on the paper was for cousins of the family. But investigators warned that a wallet or credential could have been stolen, as migrants are frequently robbed.

“We all cried,” Luna recalled. “But I said, we cannot be sure until we have the DNA test. Let’s wait.”

Luna and Orona gave DNA samples to the Mexican government and the Argentine group. In November 2017, Orona received a letter from the Mexican government saying that there was the possibility of a match for Armando with some bone remains found in Nuevo Leon, a state that borders Texas. But the test was negative.

The women are still waiting for results from the Argentine pathologists. Until then, their relatives remain among the uncounted.

Orona holds out hope that the men may be locked up, or held by “bad people.” Every time Luna hears about clandestine graves or unidentified bodies in the news, the anguish is sharp.

“Suddenly all the memories come back,” she said. “I do not want to think.”

—————-

SOUTH AMERICA: “NO ONE WANTS TO ADMIT THIS IS A REALITY”

The toll of the dead and the missing has been all but ignored in one of the largest population movements in the world today — that of nearly 2 million Venezuelans fleeing from their country’s collapse. These migrants have hopped buses across the borders, boarded flimsy boats in the Caribbean, and — when all else failed — walked for days along scorching highways and freezing mountain trails. Vulnerable to violence from drug cartels, hunger and illness that lingers even after reaching their destination, they have disappeared or died by the hundreds.

“They can’t withstand a trip that hard, because the journey is very long,” said Carlos Valdes, director of neighbouring Colombia’s national forensic institute. “And many times, they only eat once a day. They don’t eat. And they die.” Valdes said authorities don’t always recover the bodies of those who die, as some migrants who have entered the country illegally are afraid to seek help.

Valdes believes hypothermia has killed some as they trek through the mountain tundra region, but he had no idea how many. One migrant told the AP he saw a family burying someone wrapped in a white blanket with red flowers along the frigid journey.

Marta Duque, 55, has had a front seat to the Venezuela migration crisis from her home in Pamplona, Colombia. She opens her doors nightly to provide shelter for families with young children. Pamplona is one of the last cities migrants reach before venturing up a frigid mountain paramo, one of the most dangerous parts of the trip for migrants travelling by foot. Temperatures dip well below freezing.

She said inaction from authorities has forced citizens like her to step in.

“Everyone just seems to pass the ball,” she said. “No one wants to admit this is a reality.”

Those deaths are uncounted, as are dozens in the sea. Also uncounted are those reported missing in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. In all at least 3,410 Venezuelans have been reported missing or dead in a migration within Latin America whose dangers have gone relatively unnoticed; many of the dead perished from illnesses on the rise in Venezuela that easily would have found treatment in better times.

Among the missing is Randy Javier Gutierrez, who was walking through Colombia with a cousin and his aunt in hopes of reaching Peru to reunite with his mother.

Gutierrez’s mother, Mariela Gamboa, said that a driver offered a ride to the two women, but refused to take her son. The women agreed to wait for him at the bus station in Cali, about 160 miles (257 kilometres) ahead, but he never arrived. Messages sent to his phone since that day four months ago have gone unread.

“I’m very worried,” his mother said. “I don’t even know what to do.”

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ASIA: A VAST UNKNOWN

The region with the largest overall migration, Asia, also has the least information on the fate of those who disappear after leaving their homelands. Governments are unwilling or unable to account for citizens who leave for elsewhere in the region or in the Mideast, two of the most common destinations, although there’s a growing push to do so.

Asians make up 40 per cent of the world’s migrants, and more than half of them never leave the region. The Associated Press was able to document more than 8,200 migrants who disappeared or died after leaving home in Asia and the Mideast, including thousands in the Philippines and Indonesia.

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Thirteen of the top 20 migration pathways from Asia take place within the region. These include Indian workers heading to the United Arab Emirates, Bangladeshis heading to India, Rohingya Muslims escaping persecution in Myanmar, and Afghans crossing the nearest border to escape war. But with large-scale smuggling and trafficking of labour, and violent displacements, the low numbers of dead and missing indicate not safe travel but rather a vast unknown.

Almass was just 14 when his widowed mother reluctantly sent him and his 11-year-old brother from their home in Khost, Afghanistan, into that unknown. The payment for their trip was supposed to get them away from the Taliban and all the way to Germany via a chain of smugglers. The pair crammed first into a pickup with around 40 people, walked for a few days at the border, crammed into a car, waited a bit in Tehran, and walked a few more days.

His brother Murtaza was exhausted by the time they reached the Iran-Turkey border. But the smuggler said it wasn’t the time to rest — there were at least two border posts nearby and the risk that children far younger travelling with them would make noise.

Almass was carrying a baby in his arms and holding his brother’s hand when they heard the shout of Iranian guards. Bullets whistled past as he tumbled head over heels into a ravine and lost consciousness.

Alone all that day and the next, Almass stumbled upon three other boys in the ravine who had also become separated from the group, then another four. No one had seen his brother. And although the younger boy had his ID, it had been up to Almass to memorize the crucial contact information for the smuggler.

When Almass eventually called home, from Turkey, he couldn’t bear to tell his mother what had happened. He said Murtaza couldn’t come to the phone but sent his love.

That was in early 2014. Almass, who is now 18, hasn’t spoken to his family since.

Almass said he searched for his brother among the 2,773 children reported to the Red Cross as missing en route to Europe. He also looked for himself among the 2,097 adults reported missing by children. They weren’t on the list.

With one of the world’s longest-running exoduses, Afghans face particular dangers in bordering countries that are neither safe nor welcoming. Over a period of 10 months from June 2017 to April 2018, 4Mi carried out a total of 962 interviews with Afghan migrants and refugees in their native languages around the world, systematically asking a series of questions about the specific dangers they had faced and what they had witnessed.

A total of 247 migrant deaths were witnessed by the interviewed migrants, who reported seeing people killed in violence from security forces or starving to death. The effort is the first time any organization has successfully captured the perils facing Afghans in transit to destinations in Asia and Europe.

Almass made it from Asia to Europe and speaks halting French now to the woman who has given him a home in a drafty 400-year-old farmhouse in France’s Limousin region. But his family is lost to him. Their phone number in Afghanistan no longer works, their village is overrun with Taliban, and he has no idea how to find them — or the child whose hand slipped from his grasp four years ago.

“I don’t know now where they are,” he said, his face anguished, as he sat on a sun-dappled bench. “They also don’t know where I am.”

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the-connection · 6 years ago

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The true story of how the City of London invented offshore banking and set the rich free

Every January, to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Oxfam tells us how much richer the worlds richest people have got. In 2016, their report showed that the wealthiest 62 individuals owned the same amount as the bottom half of the worlds population. This year, that number had dropped to 42: three-and-half-dozen people with as much stuff as three-and-a-half billion.

This yearly ritual has become part of the news cycle, and the inequality it exposes has ceased to shock us. The very rich getting very much richer is now part of life, like the procession of the seasons. But we should be extremely concerned: their increased wealth gives them ever-greater control of our politics and of our media. Countries that were once democracies are becoming plutocracies; plutocracies are becoming oligarchies; oligarchies are becoming kleptocracies.

Things were not always this way. In the years after the second world war, the trend was in the opposite direction: the poor were getting richer; we were all getting more equal. To understand how and why that changed, we need to go back to the dying days of the conflict, to a resort in New Hampshire, where a group of economists set out to secure humanitys future.

This is the story of how their dream failed and how a London bankers bright idea broke the world.

In the years after the first world war, money flowed between countries pretty much however its owners wished, destabilising currencies and economies in pursuit of profit. Many of the wealthy grew wealthier even while economies fell apart. The chaos led to the election of extremist governments in Germany and elsewhere, to competitive devaluations and beggar-my-neighbour tariffs, to trade wars and, ultimately, to the horrors of the second world war.

The allies wanted to prevent this ever happening again. So, at a meeting at the Bretton Woods resort in New Hampshire in 1944, they negotiated the details of an economic architecture that would in perpetuity stop uncontrolled money flows. This, they hoped, would keep governments from using trade as a weapon with which to bully neighbours, and create a stable system that would help secure peace and prosperity.

Under the new system, all currencies would be pegged to the dollar, which would in turn be pegged to gold. An ounce of gold cost $35 (thats about $500/394 today). In other words, the US Treasury pledged that, if a foreign government turned up with $35, it could always buy an ounce of gold. The United States was promising to keep everyone supplied with enough dollars to fund international trade, as well as to maintain sufficient gold reserves for those dollars to be inherently valuable.

To prevent speculators trying to attack these fixed currencies, cross-border money flows were severely constrained. Money could move overseas, but only in the form of long-term investments, not to speculate short term against currencies or bonds.

To understand how this system worked, imagine an oil tanker. If it has just one huge tank, then the oil can slosh backwards and forwards in ever greater waves, until it destabilises the vessel, which overturns and sinks. At the Bretton Woods conference, the oil was divided between smaller tanks, one for each country. The liquid could slosh back and forth within its little compartments, but would be unable to achieve enough momentum to damage the integrity of the vessel.

Strangely, one of the best evocations of this long-gone system is Goldfinger, the James Bond book. The film of the same name has a slightly different plot, but they both feature an attempt to undermine the wests financial system by interfering with its gold reserves. Gold and currencies backed by gold are the foundations of our international credit, a Bank of England official named Colonel Smithers explains to 007.

Sean Connery as James Bond and Harold Sakata as Oddjob in Goldfinger (1964). Photograph: Getty

The trouble is, the colonel continues, that the Bank is only prepared to pay 1,000 for a gold bar, which is the equivalent of the $35 per ounce price paid in America, whereas the same gold is worth 70% more in India, where there is a high demand for gold jewellery. It is thus highly profitable to smuggle gold out of the country and sell it overseas.

The villain Auric Goldfingers cunning scheme is to own pawnbrokers all over Britain, buy up gold jewellery and trinkets from ordinary Brits in need of a bit of cash, then melt them down into plates, attach the plates to his Rolls-Royce, drive them to Switzerland, reprocess them and fly them to India. By doing so, Goldfinger will not only undermine the British currency and economy, but also earn profits he could use to fund communists and other miscreants. Hundreds of Bank of England employees are engaged in trying to stop this kind of scam from happening, Smithers tells 007, but Goldfinger is too clever for them. He has secretly become Britains richest man, and has 5m-worth of gold bars sitting in the vaults of a bank in the Bahamas.

We are asking you to bring Mr Goldfinger to book, Mr Bond, and get that gold back, says Smithers. You know about the currency crisis and the high Bank rate? Of course. Well, England needs that gold, badly and the quicker the better.

By modern standards, Goldfinger wasnt doing anything wrong, apart perhaps from dodging some taxes. He was buying up gold at a price people were prepared to pay for it, then selling it in another market, where people were prepared to pay more. It was his money. It was his gold. So what was the problem? He was oiling the wheels of commerce, efficiently allocating capital where it could best be used, no?

No, because that wasnt how Bretton Woods worked. Colonel Smithers considered the gold to belong not only to Goldfinger, but also to Great Britain. The system didnt consider the owner of money to be the only person with a say in what happened to it. According to the carefully crafted rules, the nations that created and guaranteed the value of money had rights to that money, too. They restricted the rights of money-owners in the interests of everybody else. At Bretton Woods, the allies desperate to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the inter-war depression and the second world war decided that, when it came to international trade, societys rights trumped those of money-owners.

All this is hard to imagine for anyone who has only experienced the world since the 1980s, because the system now is so different. Money flows ceaselessly between countries, nosing out investment opportunities in China, Brazil, Russia or wherever. If a currency is overvalued, investors sense the weakness and gang up on it like sharks around a sickly whale. In times of global crisis, the money retreats into the safety of gold or US government bonds. In boom times, it pumps up share prices elsewhere in its restless quest for a good return. These waves of liquid capital have such power that they can wash away all but the strongest governments. The prolonged speculative attacks on the euro, the rouble or the pound, which have been such a feature of the past few decades, would have been impossible under the Bretton Woods system, which was specifically designed to stop them happening.

And the system was remarkably successful: economic growth in most western countries was almost uninterrupted throughout the 1950s and 1960s, societies became more equal, while governments made massive improvements in public health and infrastructure. All of this did not come cheap, however. Taxes had to be high to pay for it, and rich people struggled to move their money out of the taxmans reach thanks to the separate compartments in the oil tanker. Fans of the Beatles will remember George Harrison singing on Taxman about the government taking 19 shillings for every one he could keep; that was an accurate reflection of the amount of his earnings that was going to the Treasury, a 95% marginal tax rate.

It wasnt only the Beatles who hated this system. So did the Rolling Stones, who relocated to France to record Exile on Main St. And so, too, did Rowland Baring, scion of the Barings bank dynasty, third earl of Cromer and between 1961 and 1966 the governor of the Bank of England. Exchange control is an infringement on the rights of the citizen, he wrote in a note to the government in 1963. I therefore regard [it] ethically as wrong.

One reason Baring hated the restrictions was that they were killing the City of London. It was like driving a powerful car at 20 miles an hour, lamented one banker, of his spell in charge of a major British bank. The banks were anaesthetised. It was a kind of dream life. In those days, bankers arrived at work late, left early and frittered away much of the time in between having boozy lunches. No one particularly cared, because there wasnt much to do anyway.

Today, looking over its glass-and-steel skyline, it is hard to imagine that the City of London once almost died as a financial centre. In the 1950s and 1960s, the City played little part in the national conversation. Yet, although few books about the swinging 60s even mention the City, something very significant was brewing there something that would change the world far more than the Beatles or Mary Quant or David Hockney ever did, something that would shatter the high-minded strictures of the Bretton Woods system.

Bankers dining at Pimms snack bar in the City of London, 1951. Photograph: Getty

By the time Ian Fleming published Goldfinger in 1959, there were already some leaks in the compartments of the oil tanker. The problem was that not all foreign governments trusted the US to honour its commitment to use the dollar as an impartial international currency; and they were not unreasonable in doing so, since Washington did not always act as a fair umpire. In the immediate post-second-world-war years, the US government had sequestered communist Yugoslavias gold reserves. The rattled eastern bloc countries then made a habit of keeping their dollars in European banks rather than in New York.

Similarly, when Britain and France attempted to regain control of the Suez canal in 1956, a disapproving Washington froze their access to dollars and doomed the venture. These were not the actions of a neutral arbiter. Britain at the time was staggering from one crisis to another. In 1957, it raised interest rates and stopped banks using sterling to finance trade in an attempt to keep the pound strong (this was the currency crisis and the high bank rate that Smithers told Bond about).

City banks, which could no longer use sterling in the way they were accustomed, began to use dollars instead, and they obtained those dollars from the Soviet Union, which was keeping them in London and Paris so as to avoid becoming vulnerable to American pressure. This turned out to be a profitable thing to do. In the US, there were limits on how much interest banks could charge on dollar loans but not so in London.

This market the bankers called the dollars eurodollars gave a bit of life to the City of London in the late 1950s, but not much. The big bond issues were still taking place in New York, a fact which annoyed many bankers in London. After all, many of the companies borrowing the money were European, yet it was American banks that were earning the fat commissions.

One banker in particular was not prepared to tolerate this: Siegmund Warburg. Warburg was an outsider in the cosy world of the City. For one thing, he was German. For another, he hadnt given up on the idea that a City bankers job was to hustle for business. In 1962, Warburg learned from a friend at the World Bank that some $3bn was circulating outside the US sloshing around and ready to be put to use. Warburg had been a banker in Germany in the 1920s and remembered arranging bond deals in foreign currencies. Why couldnt his bankers do something similar again?

Up to this point, if a company wanted to borrow dollars, it would have to do so in New York. Warburg, however, was pretty confident he knew where he could find a significant chunk of that $3bn Switzerland. Since at least the 1920s, the Swiss had been in the business of hoarding cash and assets on behalf of foreigners who wanted to avoid scrutiny. By the 1960s, perhaps 5% of all the money in Europe lay under Switzerlands steel mattresses.

For the Citys most ambitious financiers, this was tantalising: there was all this money squirrelled away, doing nothing much, and it was exactly what they needed in their quest to start selling bonds again. As Warburg saw it, if he could somehow access the money, package it up and lend it, he would be in business. Surely, Warburg thought, he could persuade the people who were paying Swiss bankers to look after their money that they would rather earn an income from it by buying his bonds? And surely he could persuade European companies that they would rather borrow this money from him and avoid paying the steep fees demanded in New York?

It was a great idea, but there was a problem: the compartments of the oil tanker were in the way. It was impossible for Warburg to move that money from Switzerland via London to clients who wanted to borrow it. But he took two of his best men and told them to get it done anyway.

They began their efforts in October 1962, the same month that the Beatles released Love Me Do. The bankers finalised their deal on 1 July the following year, the same day that the Fab Four recorded She Loves You, the song that sparked global Beatlemania. That extraordinary nine months not only revolutionised pop music, but also geopolitics, since they included the Cuban missile crisis and John F Kennedys Ich bin ein Berliner speech. Under the circumstances, it is understandable that a simultaneous revolution in global finance passed little remarked.

Warburgs new bond issue these bonds became known as eurobonds, after the example set by eurodollars was led by Ian Fraser, a Scottish war hero turned journalist turned banker. He and his colleague Peter Spira had to find ways to defang the taxes and controls designed to prevent hot money flowing across borders, and to find ways to pick and choose different aspects of different countries regulations for the various elements of their creation.

If the bonds had been issued in Britain, there would have been a 4% tax on them, so Fraser formally issued them at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands. If the interest were to be paid in Britain, it would have attracted another tax, so Fraser arranged for it to be paid in Luxembourg. He managed to persuade the London Stock Exchange to list the bonds, despite their not being issued or redeemed in Britain, and talked around the central banks of France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Britain, all of which were rightly concerned about the eurobonds impact on currency controls. The final trick was to pretend that the borrower was Autostrade the Italian state motorway company when really it was IRI, a state holding company. If IRI had been the borrower, it would have had to deduct tax at source, while Autostrade did not have to.

The cumulative effect of this game of jurisdictional Twister was that Fraser created a bond paying a good rate of interest, on which no one had to pay tax of any kind, and which could be turned back into cash anywhere. These were what are known as bearer bonds. Whoever possessed the bond owned them; there was no register of ownership or any obligation to record your holding, which was not written down anywhere.

Frasers eurobonds were like magic. Before eurobonds, hidden wealth in Switzerland couldnt really do much; but now it could buy these fantastic pieces of paper, which could be carried anywhere, redeemed anywhere and all the while paid interest to their owners, tax free. Dodge taxes and make a profit, worldwide.

Gold deposits at the Federal Reserve in New York, 1968. Photograph: Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty

So, who was buying Frasers magical invention? Who was providing the money he was lending to IRI, via Autostrade? The main buyers of these bonds were individuals, usually from eastern Europe but often also from Latin America, who wanted to have part of their fortune in mobile form so that if they had to leave they could leave quickly with their bonds in a small suitcase, Fraser wrote in his autobiography. There was still a mass migration of the surviving Jewish populations of central Europe heading for Israel and the west. To this was added the normal migration of fallen South American dictators heading east. Switzerland was where all this money was stashed away.

Later, historians tried to downplay Frasers account a little, and to claim that corrupt politicians those fallen South American dictators made up just a fifth or so of the demand for these early bond issues. As for the remaining four-fifths of the money that bought up the bonds, this came from standard tax dodgers Belgian dentists, the bankers called them high-earning professionals who steered a chunk of their earnings to Luxembourg or Geneva, and who welcomed this lovely new investment.

The eurobonds set wealth free and were the first step towards creating the virtual country of the rich that I call Moneyland. Moneyland includes offshore finance, but is much broader than that, since it protects every aspect of a rich persons life from scrutiny, not just their money. The same money-making dynamic that enticed Fraser to defang capital controls on behalf of his clients, entices his modern-day counterparts to find ways for the worlds richest people to avoid visa controls, journalistic scrutiny, legal liability and much more. Moneyland is a place where, if you are rich enough, whoever you are, wherever your money comes from, the laws do not apply to you.

This is the dirty secret at the heart of the Citys rebirth, the beginning of the process that eventually led to todays stratospheric inequality. It was all made possible by modern communications the telegram, the phone, the telex, the fax, the email and it allowed the worlds richest people to avoid the responsibilities of citizenship

That first deal was for $15m. But once the way to sidestep the obstacles that stopped cash flowing offshore had been identified, there was nothing to stop more money following behind. In the second half of 1963, $35m of eurobonds were sold. In 1964, the market was $510m. In 1967, the total passed $1bn for the first time, and it is now one of the biggest markets in the world.

The result was that, over time, the system created at Bretton Woods fell apart. More and more dollars were escaping offshore, where they avoided the regulations and taxes imposed upon them by the US government. But they were still dollars, and thus 35 of them were still worth an ounce of gold.

The trouble that followed stemmed from the fact that dollars dont just sit around doing nothing. They multiply. If you put a dollar in a bank, the bank uses it as security for the money it lends to someone else, meaning there are more dollars your dollar, and the dollars someone else has borrowed. And if that person puts the money in another bank, and that bank lends it, there are now even more dollars, and so on.

And since every one of those dollars was nominally worth a fixed amount of gold, the US would have needed to keep buying ever more gold to satisfy the potential demand. If the US did that, however, it would have to have bought that gold with dollars, meaning yet more dollars would exist, which would multiply in turn, meaning more gold purchases, and more dollars, until the system would eventually collapse under the weight of the fact that it didnt make sense; it couldnt cope with offshore.

Banker Siegmund Warburg, 1968. Photograph: Getty

The US government tried to defend the dollar/gold price, but every restriction it put on dollar movements just made it more profitable to keep your dollars in London, leading more money to leak offshore, and thus more pressure to build on the dollar/gold price. And where the dollars went, the bankers followed. The City had looser regulations and more accommodating politicians than Wall Street, and the banks loved it. In 1964, 11 US banks had branches in the City of London. In 1975, 58 did.

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, who administered the federal banking system, opened a permanent office in London to inspect what the British branches of American banks were up to. But the Americans had no power in the UK and got no help from the locals. It doesnt matter to me, said Jim Keogh, the Bank of England official responsible for monitoring these banks, whether Citibank is evading American regulations in London.

By that time, however, Washington had bowed to the inevitable and stopped promising to redeem dollars for gold at $35 an ounce. It was the first step in a steady dismantling of all the safeguards created at Bretton Woods. The philosophical question over who really owned money the person who earned it, or the country that created it had been answered.

If you had money, thanks to the accommodating bankers of London and Switzerland, you could now do what you wanted with it and governments could not stop you. As long as one country tolerated offshore, as Britain did, then the efforts of all the others came to nothing. If regulations stop at a countrys borders, but the money can flow wherever it wishes, its owners can outwit any regulators they choose.

The developments that began with Warburg did not stop with simple eurobonds. The basic pattern was endlessly replicable. Identify a line of business that might make you and your clients money. Look around the world for a jurisdiction with the right rules for that business Liechtenstein, the Cook Islands, Jersey and use it as a nominal base.

If you couldnt find a jurisdiction with the right kind of rules, then you threatened or flattered one until it changed its rules to accommodate you. Warburg himself started this off, by explaining to the Bank of England that if Britain did not make its rules competitive and its taxes lower, then he would take his bank elsewhere, perhaps to Luxembourg.

Hey presto, the rules were changed, and the tax in this case, stamp duty on bearer bonds was abolished. The worlds response to these developments has been entirely predictable as well. Time after time, countries have chased after the business they have lost offshore (as the US did by abolishing the regulations the banks were dodging when they moved to London), thus making the onshore world ever more similar to the offshore piratical world that Warburgs bankers created.

Taxes have fallen, regulations have relaxed, politicians have become friendlier, all in an effort to entice the restless money to settle in one jurisdiction rather than another. The reason for this is simple. Once one jurisdiction lets you do what you want, the business flows there and other jurisdictions have to rush to change, too. It is the Moneyland ratchet, always loosening regulations for the benefit of those with money to move around, and never tightening them.

Different nations are affected by Moneyland in different ways. Wealthy citizens of the rich countries of Europe and North America own the largest total amount of cash offshore, but it is a relatively small proportion of their national wealth, thanks to the large size of their economies. The economist Gabriel Zucman estimates it to be just 4% for the US. For Russia, however, 52% of household wealth is offshore, outside the reach of the government. In the Gulf countries, it is an astonishing 57%.

Its very easy for oligarchs of developing countries, non-democratic countries, to hide their wealth. That provides them with huge incentives to loot their countries, and theres no oversight, says Zucman.

Come January, we will get another update of how much more of the worlds wealth these oligarchs have taken for themselves: the only surprise will be the precise volume of their new acquisition, and how little they have left for the rest of us. But we shouldnt wait until then to grasp the urgency of the situation.

We need to act now to shine a light on their wealth, on the dark matter whose gravitational power is bending the fabric of our societies. We may have been ignoring Moneyland, but its nomad citizens have not been ignoring us. If we wish to take back control of our economies, and our democracies, we need to act now. Every day that we wait, more money is stacked against us.

Adapted from Moneyland: Why Thieves & Crooks Now Rule The World & How to Take It Back by Oliver Bullough, published by Profile Books

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