Above Photo: Ryuki Yamamoto (Japan), Chaos – Spin, 2019. As we enter the new year almost two years after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, the official death toll from COVID-19 sits just below 5.5 million people. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that there is a ‘tsunami of cases’ due to the new variants. The country with the highest death toll is the United States, where the official number of those who succumbed to the disease is now over 847,000; Brazil and India follow with nearly 620,000 and 482,000 deaths respectively. These three countries have been ravaged by […]
Standard
14 posts
Above photo: Sergei Malgavko/TASS. Over the past month, in a break from its usual focus on COVID-19, the Western mainstream media has dedicated a sizeable amount of coverage to unverified claims by unnamed US intelligence officials that the Russian Federation is planning an imminent military invasion of its western neighbour Ukraine – under the rule of the successive US-EU friendly governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since 2014, when the CIA-orchestrated Euromaidan colour revolution toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych, following his November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with Moscow. […]
Above photo: “We never at all threatened human life,” said climate campaigner Jessica Reznicek in 2017, but were “acting in an effort to save human life, to save our planet, to save our resources.” Peg Hunter/flickr/cc. A tale of two damages. Why would a billion-dollar corporation which intentionally and illegally destroyed private property for profit not even get a slap on the wrist while a person who commits civil disobedience to protect the earth and its people is labeled a terrorist and imprisoned for eight years? Jessica Reznicek was sentenced to eight years in federal prison, ordered to pay millions in fines and […]
What will payments over the internet look like in 2030? A revolution in finance and payments. That’s what crypto-based platforms like Bitcoin, decentralized finance and stablecoins are attempting to do. But just because traditional money is centralized around monolithic central banks doesn’t mean that it can’t have a revolution of its own. Over the next ten years, a big bang will be unfolding in central bank land. ISO 20022, a new standard for communicating electronic payments instructions between financial institutions, will be taking over. This, combined with the emergence of real-time central bank retail payment systems, means that payments in 2030 […]
Deutsche Bank’s top credit strategist Jim Reid has described himself as “a gold bug,” and reckons “fiat money is a passing fad in the history of money,” RT’s Keiser Report recalls for the show’s viewers. It always has been a passing fad and there’s always a return to gold, ‘Keiser Report’ presenter Max Keiser agrees, explaining that “when you have fiat money printers in charge and you can pull the levers of political power with your fiat money and acquire assets with your fiat money, it gives you that God complex that we have so much of it around the world… […]
As the world grapples with Covid-19, precious metals’ prices are pushing higher. Massive moves in gold and silver are coming, according to veteran stockbroker Peter Schiff. He says silver may hit $50 per ounce. The rally will be short-lived, however, with Schiff describing the metal as “the new bitcoin.” The rise in gold and silver price is “about to explode” and this is just the beginning of a much bigger move, according to Schiff. “We’re barely getting started,” the CEO of Euro Pacific said in his podcast. He explained that is also coinciding with what’s happening to the US dollar, because […]
Thirty years ago, the landscape of American whiskey was, by today’s high standards, practically unrecognizable. For better or worse, vodka dominated the spirits industry and Long Island Iced Tea and the Cosmopolitan were the drinks of the day. “In the late ’80s, bourbon wasn’t very cool,” admits Tim Heuisler, American whiskey ambassador for Beam Suntory. Distillers were facing a very grim future with a number of brands on the verge of going out of business. But, thankfully, in rural Kentucky, out of the ashes, the rebirth of American whiskey began to take shape. It was Jim Beam’s sixth-generation distiller Booker Noe […]
As the coronavirus lockdown is gradually eased in the UK, government ministers have been seeking to get people working again and kick-start the stalled economy, with Chancellor Rishi Sunak underscoring that the top priority is “to support people, protect jobs and businesses through this crisis.” UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is reportedly to reprimand UK government departments over their handling of spending projects worth tens of millions of pounds, reports The Telegraph. “Certain parts of Whitehall”, claim sources cited by the outlet, are perceived by the minister as failing to offer sufficiently detailed spending proposals, leaving Sunak “increasingly irritated” ahead […]
Crypto exchange Coinbase is hoping to streamline how it adds new tokens to its platform. The San Francisco-based exchange rolled out a new open-source technical framework for asset listings Wednesday, making it easier for the company to integrate tokens it wants to add by giving developers a blueprint for what their projects need to provide. Dubbed Rosetta, the release began as a project aimed at helping Coinbase more quickly add assets to its platform, product manager Nemil Dalal told CoinDesk. “Each blockchain has a node software. They’re all custom and they all have different APIs that you use, and so integration […]
https://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107698/34/1076983464_0:160:3072:1888_1200x675_80_0_0_78e377ff5980b4c28ed4ae655a0d089e.jpg Sputnik International https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png Sputnik https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png https://sputniknews.com/world/202006021079502425-hong-kongs-lam-blasts-us-for-double-standard-security-law-criticism-amid-protest-repressions/ Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam sharply criticized the US on Tuesday for applying a “double standard” to the city’s new national security law being drafted by Beijing, as the US has seen widespread police repression and violence against Black Lives Matter protesters. As the People’s Republic of China moved to draft a new national security law for Hong Kong last month, US President Donald Trump accused Beijing of “smothering” the semi-autonomous city. “They broke their word to the world on ensuring the autonomy of Hong Kong,” Trump said on May 29. While Hong […]
American Exceptionalism And The Left’s China Double Standard By Danny Haiphong, Black Alliance for Peace. May 27, 2020 American Exceptionalism And The Left’s China Double Standard2020-05-272020-05-27https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/05/haiphong.jpeg200px200px The threat that the American Left sees in China aligns with the white supremacist underpinnings of American exceptionalism. “The American Left adopted a worldview that positions China as an existential threat to their goal of a better world.” The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the contradictions of U.S. imperialism, including those that continue to render the American left politically isolated and ineffectual. China has found itself at the center of this process. U.S. imperialism has […]
Standard Chartered says it’s issued the first blockchain-based international letter of credit (LC) transaction using China’s national currency, the yuan. The London-based bank said earlier this week that the transaction, for a deal between Australian mining giant Rio Tinto and Chinese steelmaker Baosteel, was carried out over the blockchain trade finance network Contour. LCs are particularly useful in international commodities, acting as sureties for the seller that goods will be paid for when they eventually arrive. Contour’s first successful LC transaction was between two major petrochemical companies, also in the Asia region, in August, when the firm was known as Voltron. […]
Securitize is rolling out a common identification system for its customers that it hopes will streamline the know-your-customer (KYC) process for all participants in the security token ecosystem. The company announced its new identification service, Securitize ID, Thursday, saying any individual who completes their KYC process with the transfer agent can use the same information when trying to onboard with any other company which adopts the service. Securitize ID will be a standard that other companies working on security token issuances can adopt, said Carlos Domingo, Securitize’s CEO and cofounder. “Within the ecosystem of the companies we work with for participating […]
A new messaging standard released today is designed to help cryptocurrency firms comply with anti-money laundering regulations from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The standard, called IVMS101, defines a uniform model for data that must be exchanged by virtual asset service providers (VASPs) alongside cryptocurrency transactions. The standard will identify the pseudonymous senders and receivers of crypto payments, with such information “traveling” with each transaction. Getting industry players to agree upon an interoperable data standard is a significant step towards a more regulated crypto space. The standard messaging format now needs to be incorporated into the various solutions being built […]