ConBrio

https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1716932122114682972?s=20

Bono could pressure Western lenders to forgive debt back in the day. But he won’t have any say in Beijing. Beijing is proving to be much less generous than Bretton Woods system institutions and, as it is the dominant trade partner and investor in the majority of countries, what Beijing wants, it gets. The Chinese want their pound of flesh – and forgiveness of sovereign debts isn’t an agenda…

Max Boot in the Washington Post. “One of Vladimir Putin’s pseudo-justifications for his war of aggression was the supposed fear that Ukraine would join NATO. That was never likely (and still isn’t). But, as a result of his invasion, Finland just joined NATO, and Sweden should be close behind. Not only does Finland have Europe’s largest artillery force, but it also recently agreed to combine its…

Robert Bailey: “The most notoriously wrong modern prophet of Malthusian doom is Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich. My public crusade against Malthusian stupidity began with my 1990 Forbes article, “Doomsday Rescheduled,” in which I reviewed Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s book The Population Explosion. “One thing seems safe to predict: starvation and epidemic disease will raise death rates over most of…

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Russia is losing its future – Aleksandr Auzan, dean of Economics at Moscow State University on the loss of human capital in Russia.<br><br>Then again, the less open-minded people there are, the easier it is for the Russian regime. <a href=”https://t.co/nXpi5xENQG”>pic.twitter.com/nXpi5xENQG</a></p>&mdash; Anton Gerashchenko…

Following in the footsteps of Japan and India, the U.S. should establish a dedicated institution to head up its economic and cultural engagement with Southeast Asia. Such a move would give Washington a way to help quiet doubts about its long-term commitment to the…

The idea that making everything domestically builds resiliency is what @AdamPosen calls “the fallacy of self-sufficiency” & it has repeatedly been disproven. It is having diversified supply chains—including geographically—that builds resilience. The idea that making everything domestically builds resiliency is what @AdamPosen calls "the fallacy of self-sufficiency" & it has repeatedly been…

Sun-harvesting solar panels function better when they’re not too hot. But luckily researchers have now discovered precisely how to cool them down. Building solar panels at a specific height above crops can reduce surface temperatures by up to 10 °C, compared to traditional panels constructed over bare ground, they’ve found.The results, published in the journal Applied Energy, are the latest…

Bankers finally waking up to the reality that we live in a smartphone era! Just 16 years after the release of the first smartphone. Slow? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackstone-ceo-says-silicon-valley-163055755.html

“The case for a renewed Sino-Russian axis is equally unfounded. Although Putin recently hosted his “dear friend” Xi at the Kremlin, underlying this friendship is the stark reality of a deepening Russian vassalage to Xi’s China. A loss of Russian prestige and status in Ukraine, and by extension an American victory, would prove a mortal blow to Putin’s project of contesting the world order that,…

The IOC is siding with Putin’s fascism. By deciding to let Russian and Belorussian athletes return to international competition, the IOC is stating that violent aggression against peaceful states is acceptable. Why respect international borders if Putin and his fellow dictators are free to ignore them?

"History has shown that Putin uses compromise to his advantage, as he did after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. And while there are Russian boots on Ukrainian soil and Vladimir Putin remains in power, Ukraine remains in danger."

Turnbull, Rudd, Major, Brown Call For War Crimes Tribunal To Try Putin

Putin must stand trial The world needs to be made aware of the atrocities that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered in Ukraine. There are currently three ways under international law that Putin’s actions can be subjected to global scrutiny, and these can be complemented with a new body focused on the specific crime of aggression.GORDON BROWN, JOHN MAJOR, KEVIN RUDD, MALCOLM…