China calling Belts and Roads loans, countries are nearing collapse

Gee, who didn't see this coming?

In 2013, China started the Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative, or One Belt One Road. Basically pretty much any country could ask China for many large buckets of money to build stuff: a superhighway across the country, a new deepwater port, power plants, etc. And China would build it.

And now it's time to pay the piper.

China is calling in the loans and showing zero compassion or debt forgiveness. Pakistan is shutting down a lot of power production, causing a large amount of its textile industry to shut down. That will do wonders for Pakistan's economy.

From the Fortune article: "In March, heavily indebted Honduras cited “financial pressures” in its decision to establish formal diplomatic ties to China and sever those with Taiwan.

Last month, Pakistan was so desperate to prevent more blackouts that it struck a deal to buy discounted oil from Russia, breaking ranks with the U.S.-led effort to shut off Vladimir Putin’s funds."

I saw this problem from the beginning. Is the USA going to bail them out, adding further to our debt, are they going to collapse into war, are they going to become non-contiguous Chinese territories? Or is it going to collapse the world economy?

Stay tuned! It's going to be a really big shew!

https://fortune.com/2023/05/18/china-belt-road-loans-pakistan-sri-lanka-africa-collapse-economic-instability/

https://slashdot.org/story/23/05/22/1439227/china-is-calling-in-loans-to-dozens-of-countries

RIP: Martin Amis, novelist/writer

Martin is not a commonly known writer. The only way that I know of him now is I had an interlibrary loan request for one of his books today, and another title caught my eye: Visiting Mrs. Nabokov. I pulled that book and looked at its inside jacket, and it is a collection of essays, including visiting the set of Robocop 2, Kasparov vs Karpov, the title story, Isaac Asimov, etc. Lots of interesting things. Asimov was my first read, followed by the chess article. Both were quite good. Me having worked high-level chess tournaments, and having met both Karpov and Kasparov, it was especially interesting.

One critique of have of this particular book is they put the article publication information at the end of the chapter, I would have preferred it at the beginning. But that's me.

Several of his books were turned into movies, and at least one into a BBC TV program. And he had a curious distinction of his oral exam for his degree at Exeter: he received a Congratulatory First. He walked into the room for his voce, and the examiners all complimented him on how much they liked his work and there basically was no exam!

He passed away on the 19th of May from oesophageal cancer at the age of 73, a life-long smoker. Curiously, his father died at the same age. One of his great friends, Christopher Hitchens, also died of complications from oesophageal cancer.

I saw the obit in BBC news a couple of days ago, but had no other exposure to him until today. No idea if I'll read any of his books except for Nabokov, but I am finding this one interesting. I was doing a bunch of computer updates today and was able to polish off a couple of chapters.

Remember the woman in Tacoma with the active TB? She's still untreated.

She has been "eluding" police and not responding to orders to turn herself in. Her attorney and family are not cooperating. She was under police surveillance apparently, but for some reason they didn't arrest her.

So for over three months now, she's been riding public transit, going to a casino, and who knows what else.

According to the World Health Organization, in 2021 tuberculosis killed 1.6 MILLION people worldwide.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/05/fugitive-with-untreated-tuberculosis-continues-to-stump-law-enforcement/