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China Reshaping The Vital Mekong River To Power Its Expansion

CHIANG RAI – Chinese tourists account for more visitors to Thailand — and much of Southeast Asia — than from any other country.

The Thai village of Sob Ruak, at the heart of the Golden Triangle region where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet, is no exception. Tour buses routinely disgorge thousands of Chinese tourists to buy trinkets, snap selfies and tour the nearby Hall of Opium Museum. And it’s not just tourists coming from China.

About every month, a few Chinese gunboats cruise down the Mekong River through Myanmar and Laos from China’s Guanlei port. They announce their arrival with a barrage of horns, then begin a long, sweeping turn back upriver just short of Thai waters, their propellers churning the mocha-brown water. Thai patrol boats sit bobbing gently, watching.

As the Chinese border patrol boats leave, they let off one more long, loud burst of horns before heading back upriver, sometimes accompanied by a Lao gunboat.

The Golden Triangle is known for being a drug-trafficking hub. The monthly patrols aim “to make the border river safer,” according to China’s Xinhua News Agency, after the killing of 13 Chinese sailors in 2011.

But some analysts see a different interpretation: intimidation.

The Chinese gunboat presence is “just to remind neighbors of the influence they can wield and that the hard power, the sharp power they hold is increasing, and I don’t see that ebbing anytime soon,” says Elliot Brennan, a research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy based in Bangkok.

China’s economic and political influence is growing all over the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, its own backyard. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is extending that influence, with the construction of roads, high-speed trains and ports in Southeast Asia well underway, which will give Chinese goods greater access to markets in the region and beyond.

Chinese border patrol gunboats come downriver from the Yunnan province about once a month in a show of force to keep the Mekong River safe.

What’s more, China is building a series of hydropower dams on the Mekong, which analysts say will produce needed electricity while posing major threats to the environment — and will further expand its control in the region.

NPR recently reported along the Mekong River in Southeast Asian hot spots where China’s expansion is already being felt and, in many cases, feared.

“The control of both the South China Sea and the Mekong will strategically sandwich mainland Southeast Asia,” Brennan says. “Beijing’s control of Southeast Asian rivers is the other half of the so-called salami-slicing strategy in the region.”

He is referring to China’s approach to gradually reclaim and build on reefs in contested waters of the South China Sea. The United States and its allies are pressing their claim to freedom of navigation in the disputed waters near China’s newly constructed islands.

But China has a natural advantage on the Mekong. The river starts on the Tibetan Plateau in China — in Tibet, it’s called the Dzachu; in other parts of China, the Lancang Jiang — and runs nearly 3,000 miles through five Southeast Asian countries before emptying into the South China Sea.

“Unlike the South China Sea, the Mekong space does not have really other major regional powers involved,” says Thitinan Pongsudhirak of Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “So China does not have to contend with the United States like in the South China Sea or Australia or India and all the other countries.”

Damming the Mekong

For over a decade, China has been building hydropower stations on its stretch of the Mekong River. Ten dams have gone up so far, with several more planned, according to the Stimson Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C.

“This is a situation I feel can degenerate,” says Thitinan, who has been studying the Mekong and China’s growing influence along it.

“If more dams are built and water is more scarce, then … China can use its upstream position as a leverage and even as a coercive instrument,” he says.

Thitinan notes that roughly 60 million people downstream — in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam — depend on the river for most of their food and/or income. He says the dams are already affecting the region.

Phongsee Sriattana, 52, runs a fishing tackle shop in the Thai village of Sob Ruak. She says the river’s water levels and fish stocks have changed dramatically since China began building its dams. The closest one is in Jinghong, 180 miles upriver, in China’s Yunnan province.

“When I was younger, I would go to the river with my mother to catch fish,” she says. “And there were so many they just jumped into our drip net. And I’d scoop them into my bucket.”

But that is not the case since the Chinese built dams upstream, she says. “When the Chinese want to send goods downstream, they release the water,” she says. “When they don’t need to sail their boats, they keep the water in their dams.”

She says the area used to have the famed and critically endangered Mekong giant catfish, but not anymore. “The water levels fluctuate too much,” she says. “The fish can’t lay their eggs here.”

Overfishing and downstream dams have contributed to the species’ demise, biologists say. The Chinese dams also have an impact. They reduce water levels and the amount of nutrient-rich sediment needed for farming downstream.

A few miles downriver, fisherman Singkha Wantanam, 61, sits in his tiny shack on the river’s bank and frets. “I’m worried they will build more dams,” he says, “but there’s nothing to do to stop them. And then there will be even fewer fish.”

Fisherman Singhkha Wantanam complains China’s upstream dams have caused drastic changes in water levels and a reduction in the number of fish in the Mekong River.

Bigger Cargo Ships

It’s not just the dams that have people upset. China also plans to make parts of the Mekong wider and deeper to fit larger vessels and increase commerce along the river.

Right now, 100-ton boats unload cargo at Chiang Saen Port about 15 miles downriver from Sob Ruak. China wants to use ships that can carry 500 tons of goods, all the way from Yunnan province down to Luang Prabang in Laos. That would mean blowing up rocks and dredging the rapids at a narrow part of the river. Environmentalists warn that would do even more damage to the Mekong and those who depend on it.

“If they blast the rocks and rapids, it means they will destroy the ecosystem,” says local environmental activist Niwat Roikaew. “When they destroy the ecosystem, it means they destroy food security for humans, for animals, for everything.”

Niwat wears a baseball cap that reads “The Mekong is Not for Sale.” Standing on the Thai side of the river, he points to one of the narrow spots China wants to blast to make the river wider and deeper.

When three Chinese survey vessels came last year to figure out how, Niwat led demonstrations against the plans. After months of protests, the Thai government put the project on hold.

But political scientist Thitinan says that “it’s a matter of time” for the plan to go ahead.

“For Thailand, this is something that China … has been demanding, and China has a pretty heavy price to exact if you don’t go along. The pressure is going to keep coming,” he says. He adds that “the pressure goes two ways,” as there are Thai businesses want more trade with China, too.

China plans to widen and deepen the Mekong near the Thai town of Chiang Khong to allow bigger Chinese cargo boats.

Chinese Phenomenon in Phnom Penh

Several hundred miles downriver, Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh is undergoing a building frenzy largely fueled by Chinese money, public and private. And the port city of Sihanoukville farther south, many Cambodians say, is being transformed into an almost completely Chinese city.

Kim Heang, the CEO of Khmer Real Estate Co. in Phnom Penh, says the Chinese “feel safe to invest in Cambodia.”

“When Chinese come here, they have protection” he says. “Nobody can do something wrong to Chinese investors because they have support of Chinese government.”

When asked whether Cambodians benefit too, he answers “yes and no.”

“The people who come to invest will get the benefit, of course,” he says. Rich Cambodians who sell them property will, too. But while some ordinary locals can get service jobs related to the investments, he explains, it isn’t the kind of work that lets them provide their family with a good future. As for the majority of Cambodians, he adds, “They are not happy.”

One certain Cambodian beneficiary is clear: Prime Minister Hun Sen. China’s backing has helped embolden him to eviscerate the Cambodian political opposition, crack down on independent media, intimidate civil society groups and extend his 33-year-long rule. When the United States and the European Union withdrew funding for Cambodia’s election held in July, China stepped in to provide $20 million for voting equipment. All that made it easier for Hun Sen and his ruling party to sweep the vote, widely condemned as a “fraud” by human rights groups and foreign governments.

But the government’s reliance on China’s largesse, critics say, leaves Cambodia at risk.

“At this stage, the fact that Cambodia has been shifting away from the West makes Cambodia almost completely relying on China for backing — domestically, internationally and economically,” says Virak Ou, head of the Phnom Penh think tank Future Forum. “Which means we are beholden to China.”

Day laborers outside Sob Ruak, Thailand, load energy drinks onto Chinese cargo boats on the Mekong for a trip upriver.

A Megadam for Cambodia, Too

Among China’s series of infrastructure bids for Cambodia, one project stands out: a megadam planned for the town of Sambor, about a six-hour car ride upriver from Phnom Penh. If built, it would be the largest mainstream dam on the lower Mekong.

But researchers and local residents fear it could do major damage.

“We don’t want to see a dam happen here,” says 47-year-old Seng Chanti, who has lived on the island of Koh Pdao, in the middle of the river, almost his entire life. He’s a fisherman but splits his time showing tourists the rare — and endangered — Irrawaddy dolphins that survive in this part of the river.

“If the dam happens, for sure, there will be no more dolphins and no more fish in the area,” Seng says.

“The location of Sambor means that if the full 2,600-megawatt project were to be built out, it would essentially destroy the fisheries in Cambodia,” says Courtney Weatherby, a researcher at the Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia program.

The California-based Natural Heritage Institute produced a highly critical study of the Sambor dam project, commissioned by the Cambodian government.

The Sambor dam could “literally kill the river” by devastating fish stocks and causing other environmental wreckage, the report’s executive summary said.

Cambodia imports most of its energy. It needs cheaper electricity than what it buys from its neighbors. That means Prime Minister Hun Sen may not heed the report’s warnings, which makes some residents worried.

“If there’s no more fishing and no more ecotourism, how will we live?” says 53-year-old Phum Saoin, another fisherman who helps run ecotourism tours around Sambor. Sure, there will be electricity, he says, “but we cannot eat electricity.”

Chinese firms have helped finance more than half a dozen other hydropower projects on Mekong tributaries in Cambodia and neighboring Laos, including Cambodia’s controversial 400-megawatt Sesan 2 dam that went online last year.

The dams already built on the mainstream Mekong in China proper have, by some estimates, reduced sediment loads downriver by more than 50 percent. With more dams planned, water levels and sediment load could drop even further.

There is also a doomsday scenario for China’s downstream neighbors.

“Long term, China, being one of the countries with the least amount of water allocation per capita in the world, is going to need water,” says Brian Eyler, the Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia project director.

“If political directives change, then perhaps engineers are going to look at ways to get that water from Mekong dams into China proper. And then we’re looking at a big problem, particularly in the dry season, when the water of the upper Mekong is all the Mekong downstream has,” he says.

Without that water, the world’s largest inland fishery, which produces as much as a quarter of global freshwater catch, would be in danger. The livelihoods of tens of millions of people living in the lower Mekong would be as well, because of the loss of water, fish and sediment that helps produce the fertile soil and abundant crop — especially rice — they depend on.

For them, China’s influence isn’t a hypothetical. It’s something they’re feeling more every day along with the effects of climate change and habitat loss.

By Michael Sullivan – NPR

News

Trudeau’s Gun Grab Could Cost Taxpayers a Whopping $7 Billion

Trudeau plans to purchase 2,063 firearm from legal gun owners in Canada - Rebel News Image

A recent report indicates that since Trudeau’s announcement of his gun buyback program four years ago, almost none of the banned firearms have been surrendered.

The federal government plans to purchase 2,063 firearm models from retailers following the enactment of Bill C-21, which amends various Acts and introduces certain consequential changes related to firearms. It was granted royal assent on December 15 of last year.

This ban immediately criminalized the actions of federally-licensed firearms owners regarding the purchase, sale, transportation, importation, exportation, or use of hundreds of thousands of rifles and shotguns that were previously legal.

The gun ban focused on what it termed ‘assault-style weapons,’ which are, in reality, traditional semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that have enjoyed popularity among hunters and sport shooters for over a century.

In May 2020, the federal government enacted an Order-in-Council that prohibited 1,500 types of “assault-style” firearms and outlined specific components of the newly banned firearms. Property owners must adhere to the law by October 2023.

Trudeau’s Buyback Hasn’t Happened

“In the announcement regarding the ban, the prime minister stated that the government would seize the prohibited firearms, assuring that their lawful owners would be ‘grandfathered’ or compensated fairly.” “That hasn’t happened,” criminologist Gary Mauser told Rebel News.

Mauser projected expenses ranging from $2.6 billion to $6.7 billion. The figure reflects the compensation costs amounting to $756 million, as outlined by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).

“The projected expenses for gathering the illegal firearms are estimated to range from $1.6 billion to $7 billion.” “This range estimate increases to between $2.647 billion and $7 billion when compensation costs to owners are factored in,” Mauser stated.

Figures requested by Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs concerning firearms prohibited due to the May 1, 2020 Order In Council reveal that $72 million has been allocated to the firearm “buyback” program, yet not a single firearm has been confiscated to date.

In a recent revelation, Public Safety Canada disclosed that the federal government allocated a staggering $41,094,556, as prompted by an order paper question from Conservative Senator Don Plett last September, yet yielded no tangible outcomes.

An internal memo from late 2019 revealed that the Liberals projected their politically motivated harassment would incur a cost of $1.8 billion.

Enforcement efforts Questioned

By December 2023, estimates from TheGunBlog.ca indicate that the Liberals and RCMP had incurred or were responsible for approximately $30 million in personnel expenses related to the enforcement efforts. The union representing the police service previously stated that the effort to confiscate firearms is a “misdirected effort” aimed at ensuring public safety.

“This action diverts crucial personnel, resources, and funding from tackling the more pressing and escalating issue of criminal use of illegal firearms,” stated the National Police Federation (NPF).

The Canadian Sporting Arms & Ammunition Association (CSAAA), representing firearms retailers, has stated it will have “zero involvement” in the confiscation of these firearms. Even Canada Post held back from providing assistance due to safety concerns.

The consultant previously assessed that retailers are sitting on almost $1 billion worth of inventory that cannot be sold or returned to suppliers because of the Order-In-Council.

“Despite the ongoing confusion surrounding the ban, after four years, we ought to be able to address one crucial question.” Has the prohibition enhanced safety for Canadians? Mauser asks.

Illegally Obtained Firearms are the Problem

Statistics Canada reports a 10% increase in firearm-related violent crime between 2020 and 2022, rising from 12,614 incidents to 13,937 incidents. In that timeframe, the incidence of firearm-related violent crime increased from 33.7 incidents per 100,000 population in 2021 to 36.7 incidents the subsequent year.

“This marks the highest rate documented since the collection of comparable data began in 2009,” the criminologist explains.

Supplementary DataData indicates that firearm homicides have risen since 2020. “The issue lies not with lawfully-held firearms,” Mauser stated.

Firearms that have been banned under the Order-in-Council continue to be securely stored in the safes of their lawful owners. The individuals underwent a thorough vetting process by the RCMP and are subject to nightly monitoring to ensure there are no infractions that could pose a risk to public safety.

“The firearms involved in homicides were seldom legally owned weapons wielded by their rightful owners,” Mauser continues. The number of offenses linked to organized crime has surged from 4,810 in 2016 to a staggering 13,056 in 2020.

“If those in power … aim to diminish crime and enhance public safety, they ought to implement strategies that effectively focus on offenders and utilize our limited tax resources judiciously to reach these objectives,” he stated.

Millennials in Canada Have Turned their Backs on Justin Trudeau

Millennials in Canada Have Turned their Backs on Justin Trudeau

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP