‘Guns and Roses’: Bulgaria arms trade booms on Ukraine war

AFP Published about 5 hours ago

KAZANLAK: With its huge munitions factories and endless rose fields, Kazanlak in central Bulgaria has been really living up to its “Guns and Roses” nickname since Moscow invaded Ukraine.

Bulgaria’s booming arms industry has never had it so good, with exports estimated at $4.3 billion last year (about four billion euros) – three times its previous record.

The country’s oldest arms maker Arsenal, which already employs 7,000 workers in its Kazanlak plant, is offering seaside holidays and other incentives to attract staff.

It has even been tempting back Bulgarians who left the Balkan country to find work abroad.

“When they hired us they said there’s orders to keep us busy for at least five years,” one of the newly hired workers told AFP at the factory gates.

“I have only been here a week myself, but I already have three new colleagues,” said the woman, who would not give her name.

Historic Russia links

While you might think it would be trumpeting its success from the rooftops, the company did not reply to AFP requests for an interview.

Although Bulgaria itself has largely not sent arms to Ukraine because of the EU member’s historic ties with Moscow, that is where Kazanlak’s burgeoning production is mostly destined.

Its arms and munitions are instead being bought up by neighbouring Romania and Poland before being funnelled to Kyiv.

Kazanlak and the “Valley of the Roses” around it, which is also famous for its rosewater, suffered badly when its arms makers lost their markets when the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989, though conflicts in the Middle East revived demand for their cheap and sturdy weapons, like the AR-M1, the “Bulgarian Kalashnikov” rifle, in the 2010s.

Arsenal’s upturn “benefits the whole town”, Yordan Ignatov, deputy chair of the local chamber of commerce, said.

“Last year, Kazanlak had the lowest unemployment rate in the country after Sofia,” he added, half the national average.

Investment is also booming.

“Everything that is built is bought,” real estate agent Teodor Tenev told AFP.

Bulgaria specialises in ammunition for Soviet-era weapons – those most used by Kyiv – though it wants to modernise its ageing production facilities with European money to start churning out NATO-standard shells and other ammo.

And there was more good news on that front Monday when European Union foreign ministers agreed on a two-billion-euro plan that included jointly purchasing desperately needed artillery shells for Ukraine.

Even though it stands to vastly benefit from the deal, Sofia sought to save its diplomatic blushes by not signing the joint declaration.

Nor did its reticence stop EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton from starting a tour last week of European arms makers in Bulgaria.

Up the road from Kazanlak in Sopot, Breton visited the country’s biggest arms maker, VMZ.

‘Not a political pawn’

Supplying arms to Ukraine is an extremely sensitive issue in Bulgaria.

The Socialists – the successors to the old communist party – and the ever-rising ultra-nationalists are firmly against as the country gears up for the fifth election in two years next month.

Parliament so far has authorised only one shipment of light arms and ammunition to Kyiv.

Mud: The common enemy in eastern Ukraine

Shortly after the invasion began, pro-European then-premier Kiril Petkov walked a tightrope to try to help Kyiv.

“We estimate that one-third of the ammunition needed by Ukraine in the first phase of the war came from Bulgaria,” Petkov told the German daily Die Welt.

Even after the fall of Petkov’s short-lived cabinet last June, indirect arms sales continued.

Retired Bulgarian army colonel Vladimir Milenski regrets that Bulgaria has refused to openly arm Kyiv.

“This would have sent a strong political signal showing that we are not a political pawn in Russia’s hands,” he said.

“To belong to the EU and NATO family and behave in such a way as not to infringe on the interests of Russia, an aggressor, is in the end tantamount to supporting it.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Chip war and censorship hobble Chinese tech giants in chatbot race

Baidu's AI chatbot has not yet been launched for public use
(Photo: AFP/File/Jade GAO)

22 Mar 2023 

BEIJING: Search giant Baidu's lacklustre unveiling of its chatbot exposed gaps in China's race to rival ChatGPT, as censorship and a US squeeze on chip imports have hamstrung the country's artificial intelligence ambitions.

The highly anticipated preview of "Ernie Bot" last week was limited to a pre-recorded demonstration with simple questions to summarise the plot o
From cloud computing to autonomous driving, none of the array of services Baidu had earlier promised its Ernie Bot could do were on display.

The firm's shares plunged as much as 10 per cent during the unveiling, although they rallied the following day on positive reviews from brokerages including Citigroup, whose analysts were among a small group of people invited to test the bot.

A flurry of Chinese companies including Alibaba, JD.com, Netease and TikTok-parent Bytedance have rushed to develop services that can mimic human speech since San Francisco-based OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November, sparking a gold rush in the market.

Google on Tuesday invited people in the United States and Britain to test its AI chatbot, known as Bard, as it continues on its own push to catch up.

The popularity of ChatGPT in China - where users have to scale Beijing's internet firewall using virtual private networks (VPNs) and foreign phone numbers - has left Baidu and others scrambling to regain its dominance on home turf.\

"OpenAI probably spent as much time just testing GPT-4 as Baidu spent building Ernie Bot," said Matt Sheehan, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"China's tech ecosystem doesn't have a tradition of funding open-ended research that doesn't have a clear path to profitability."

Related:

Chinese tech firms working on ChatGPT-style technology

CHIP SUPPLY

Ernie Bot is fluent in Mandarin, as well as other regional languages including Hakka spoken in South China and Taiwan, and targets the Chinese market with more than one billion internet users.

A headache for developers is Beijing's heavy-handed censorship of anything seen as challenging the Communist Party - including a one-time purge of Winnie-the-Pooh after the cartoon bear was compared to Xi Jinping.

When asked if the president of 10 years is "a good leader", one of China's best-performing publicly available ChatGPT-style models, developed by Beijing's Tsinghua University, says: "The input may contain ethical content. Please try a different input."


Related:


What is Generative AI, the technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT?

As ChatGPT takes the world by storm, professionals call for regulations and defences against cybercrime


The strict restrictions on the Chinese internet mean companies have "significantly less data resources for training purposes compared to Western competitors", Lauren Hurcombe, a technology lawyer at DLA Piper, told AFP.

Ernie Bot has not yet been launched for public use.

China has announced ambitious plans to become a global leader in the field of AI by 2030, and consultancy group McKinsey estimates the sector could add about US$600 billion every year to China's gross domestic product by then.

Most of the growth will come from producing driverless cars, adding more robots to assembly lines and healthcare breakthroughs, according to McKinsey, and the government has also used AI to beef up its mass surveillance programme.

However, Washington has moved to suffocate China's technology ambitions, blocking through sanctions its access to high-grade chips, chipmaking equipment and software used to design semiconductors.

This has made it difficult for Chinese companies to buy chips including Nvidia's A100 and its successor H100, considered the gold standard for large-scale AI training systems.

"There is a real question whether a domestic supply can be generated in the short term," Hurcombe said.

AI GAP

But the effect of the US measures will take time to make a dent because Chinese companies rushed to stockpile high-end chips before Washington announced the export controls in October.

Baidu has its own chip design arm, Kunlun, and the company says it is capable of mass-producing a seven-nanometre chip that is partly used to power its AI systems.

Dou Shen, head of Baidu's AI Cloud group, shrugged off questions about the impact of the US restrictions during a call with investors in November, saying: "We think the impact is quite limited in the near future."

For years, China has bragged about filing more artificial intelligence patent applications than the United States.

But the average number of citations of its patents - an indication of the importance and originality of its inventions - lagged behind the United States and other developing countries in 2020 and 2021, according to Stanford University's AI Index 2022 report.

The United States also had twice as many AI start-ups as China, and had three times more private investment flowing into the sector in 2021, according to the report.

The Chinese government's top-down approach to spurring innovation has failed to deliver results.

The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, established in 2018, introduced a ChatGPT-like product two years ago.

Wu Dao was described by its creators as "the world's largest" AI language model with 1.75 trillion parameters, which is significantly larger than OpenAI's previous GPT-3 model with 175 billion parameters. But it never really caught on.

Source: AFP/gs

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Swiss sweat over size of new superbank

Credit Suisse will be folded into UBS, Switzerland's largest lender.

An employee is seen in silhouette with sign of Swiss giant banking UBS and a sign of Credit Suisse bank in Zurich on Mar 20, 2023. (Photo: AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)

22 Mar 2023 

ZURICH: The arranged marriage of UBS and Credit Suisse will create the biggest bank Switzerland has ever seen, with some wondering if the superbank might be too big for its own good.

The deal struck late Sunday (Mar 19) prevented the collapse of the country's second-biggest lender by folding it into the largest.

Even before last week's dramatic events, both firms were already among the 30 around the world deemed of strategic importance to the global banking system and therefore too big to fail.

Some in business, industry and politics are not convinced that one even bigger bank will turn out for the better.

"Credit Suisse was really the bank of the economy and industry," said Philippe Cordonier of Swissmem, the national association representing the engineering industry.

For exporting companies, Credit Suisse offered a range of services essential for international transactions, "payments abroad, credits, leasing or currency hedging", he told AFP.

LESS COMPETITION

"This is where the question arises of what skills will be kept," said Cordonier, as the profiles of the two banks, although close, are not identical.

So far, many questions remain unanswered.

Such a takeover would normally need months of negotiations, but UBS only had a couple of days, under some serious arm-twisting by Swiss authorities.

UBS chief executive Ralph Hamers admitted at an analysts' conference that he did not yet have all the details of the takeover.

Switzerland is a confederation of 26 cantons and Cordonier said the alternative could be to turn from the national banks to the cantonal banks.

However, many do not currently have the skills to help companies export to far-off markets such as Asia, and would have to develop them.

The other option is to turn to foreign banks, although they would not possess "in-depth knowledge" of the Swiss market, Cordonier said.

"If there is only one major bank that has the capacity to work abroad, this will restrict the choice of solutions for companies," said the engineer, who is also concerned about the repercussions on costs "if there is less competition".

WORRIES

Founded in 1856 by Alfred Escher, the godfather of Swiss railways, Credit Suisse was closely linked to the country's economic development.

The bank financed the expansion of the rail network, the construction of the Gotthard Tunnel beneath the Alps, and the start-up of Swiss companies that went on to become leaders in their sector.

"Twenty-five years ago, there were four big Swiss banks," recalled the Swiss Federation of Companies, which represents small and medium enterprises.



Related:


Credit Suisse is in crisis. What went wrong?


Stunned Credit Suisse staff fear uncertain future despite UBS rescue deal


Commentary: Fall of Credit Suisse shows more work is needed on bank risk


The banking sector has already seen major convergence in 1998 when the Swiss Bank Corporation merged with the Union Bank of Switzerland to form the modern UBS.

"The concentration into a smaller number of banks reduces competition and makes it more difficult to obtain good financing conditions for SMEs," the federation said in a statement.

The orchestrated takeover has also triggered virulent criticism among Swiss political circles, of all stripes.

Politicians have called for the further tightening of regulations - which are already strict in Switzerland - in the face of this new giant, which will dominate the nation's banking sector.

SWIFT SOLUTION

A partial nationalisation could "at least" have been considered, said Tobias Straumann, professor of economic history at the University of Zurich, told the Berner Zeitung newspaper.

Carlo Lombardini, a lawyer and professor of banking law at the University of Lausanne, said the UBS takeover "was surely the only swift and feasible solution".

However, he would have preferred another outcome, such as a takeover "by a foreign bank", he told AFP.

"But a large foreign group doesn't do acquisitions in a weekend," he admitted.

The other solution would have been to nationalise Credit Suisse "to enhance the good bank" and consolidate the poor assets into a "bad bank" to be liquidated, he explained.

However, it is already too late for such what-ifs, Lombardini said.

"It's like wondering what would have happened if Napoleon had not lost at Waterloo," he said.

"The real problem is we are going to have an even more 'too big to fail' bank," he warned.

WATER IS LIFE

Drought, floods and sickness: Key takeaways from UN's water report

Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS
Wed, March 22, 2023 


Billions of people experience water-related issues on a daily basis -- from contaminated drinking water, to droughts and floods -- with a UN report warning Tuesday that the risk of a global crisis is "imminent."

Here are some key takeaways from the UN Water forum, which published its report as the first major conference on the issue in nearly a half-century is set to get underway Wednesday in New York.

- Shortages -

Global water consumption has increased by about 1 percent per year over the past four decades.

To meet that growing demand, humans have been tapping more and more into groundwater, resulting in the depletion of between 100-200 cubic kilometers (26-52 trillion gallons) of reserves each year.


About 10 percent of the world's population lives in a country where water stress (the ratio of water use to water availability) is considered "high or critical," creating significant impacts on its availability for personal needs.

And according to a report issued Monday by the IPCC -- a UN panel of climate experts -- "roughly half of the world's population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year."

The World Bank estimates that climate change-exacerbated water shortages could cost some regions up to six percent of GDP by 2050 due to impacts on agriculture, health, income, and potentially forced migration or even conflict.

- Cities v. agriculture -

Agriculture makes up more than 70 percent of global water usage, but as city populations have continued to grow, "water allocation from agriculture to urban centers has become a common strategy to meet freshwater needs," the UN said.

But that's not likely to be enough. The number of urban residents threatened by water scarcity is expected to rise from 933 million in 2016 to between 1.7 and 2.4 billion in 2050, according to UN-Water, which projects that India will experience the most severe effects.

- Natural disasters -

As the planet warms, humidity in the atmosphere increases by about seven percent with each additional degree Celsius. That in turn leads to more rainfall, which is more intense and less regular.

Between 2000 and 2019, floods are estimated to have caused $650 billion in damage, affected 1.7 billion people and caused more than 100,000 deaths, according to the report.

Warming also intensifies and raises the frequencies of droughts, which over the same period affected 1.4 billion people and caused $130 billion in damage.

Together, droughts and floods account for more than three-quarters of the natural disasters impacting humans.

- Sanitation and hygiene -

In 2020, over one in four people around the globe still lacked access to safe drinking water, while 3.6 billion (46 percent of the population) lacked access to safely managed sanitation services, including the nearly 500 million who must resort to "open defecation."

In addition, more than 40 percent of domestic wastewater was not treated safely before being released into the environment in 2020.

Twenty-nine percent of the world's population (2.3 billion people) lacked basic hygiene services, including 670 million without any handwashing facilities.

At least two billion people drink water which has been contaminated with feces -- which can contribute to the spread of diseases such as cholera, dysentery and polio.

In 2019, 1.4 million deaths are estimated to have been caused by the lack of adequate sanitation and hygiene services.

Worries are also growing over other kinds of pollutants, such as chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides, or plastics and nanomaterials.

- Ecosystem damage -

Pollutants are also threatening freshwater ecosystems, which are particularly affected by agricultural runoff.

These fragile ecosystems are "among the most threatened in the world," the report says, while highlighting the disappearance of more than 85 percent of wetlands.

"The loss of environmental services and biodiversity is expected to continue as natural landscapes are lost to cultivated land," the report says, noting that these transitions can result in the emission of greenhouse gases.

- Major investments needed -

While it is difficult to put a precise number on how much investment would be needed to achieve the UN's sixth "Sustainable Development Goal" of ensuring access to clean water and sanitation for all by 2030, a study cited by the report estimates that it would cost more than $1 trillion per year.

Just providing safe drinking water by 2030 would require a tripling of current investment levels, the report says.

 

'Vampiric' water use leading to 'imminent' global crisis, UN warns

AMÉLIE BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS

Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 

Humanity's "lifeblood" -- water -- is increasingly at risk around the world due to "vampiric overconsumption and overdevelopment," the UN warned in a report, published hours ahead of a major summit on the issue was set to begin Wednesday.

The world is "blindly travelling a dangerous path" as "unsustainable water use, pollution and unchecked global warming are draining humanity's lifeblood," United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the report, released hours ahead of the first major UN meeting on water resources in nearly half a century.

Co-hosted by the governments of Tajikistan and the Netherlands, the UN Water Conference will gather some 6,500 participants, including a hundred ministers and a dozen heads of state and government Wednesday through Friday in New York.

Richard Connor, lead author of report, told AFP that the impact of the "world water crisis" will be a "matter of scenarios."

"If nothing is done, it will be a business-as-usual scenario -- it will keep on being between 40 percent and 50 percent of the population of the world that does not have access to sanitation and roughly 20-25 percent of the world will not have access to safe water supply."

With the global population increasing every day, "in absolute numbers, there'll be more and more people that don't have access to these services," he said.

At the UN conference, governments and actors in the public and private sectors are invited to present proposals for a so-called water action agenda to reverse that trend and help meet the development goal, set in 2015, of ensuring "access to water and sanitation for all by 2030."

The last conference at this high level on the issue, which lacks a global treaty or a dedicated UN agency, was held in 1977 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

Some observers have already voiced concerns about the scope of these commitments and the availability of funding to implement them.

"There is much to do and time is not on our side," said Gilbert Houngbo, chair of UN-Water, a forum for coordinating work on the topic.

The report, published by UN-Water and UNESCO, warns that "scarcity is becoming endemic" due to overconsumption and pollution, while global warming will increase seasonal water shortages in both areas with abundant water as well as those already strained.

- 'Now or never' -

"About 10% of the world's population lives in a country where water stress has reached a high or critical level," the report says.

According to the most recent UN climate report, published Monday by the IPCC expert panel, "roughly half of the world’s population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year."

Those shortages have the most significant impact on the poor, Connor told AFP.

"No matter where you are, if you are rich enough, you will manage to get water," he said.

The report notes the particular impact of existing water supplies becoming contaminated due to underperforming or nonexistent sanitation systems.

"At least 2 billion people (globally) use a drinking water source contaminated with feces, putting them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio," it said.

That high number does not even take into account pollution from pharmaceuticals, chemicals, pesticides, microplastics and nanomaterials.

To ensure access to safe drinking water for all by 2030, current levels of investment would have to be tripled, the report says.

Freshwater ecosystems -- which in addition to water, provide life-sustaining economic resources and help combat global warming -- "are among the most threatened in the world," the report warns.

"We have to act now because water insecurity is undermining food security, health security, energy security or urban development and societal issues," Henk Ovink, the Dutch special envoy for water, told AFP.

"It's now or never as we say -- a once in a generation opportunity."

Rhode Island Is Struggling To Realize Its Offshore Wind Potential

By Michael Kern - Mar 20, 2023

Rhode Island is making strides in the renewable energy sector, with plans to develop offshore wind energy. Governor McKee recently announced a Request for Proposals (RFP) for 600 to 1,000 megawatts of newly developed offshore wind capacity. This move is part of the state’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase its use of renewable energy sources.

The first offshore wind farm in the US was built off Block Island in 2016, and it has been providing clean energy to the area ever since. The proposed Revolution Wind Farm project would be located off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut and have a capacity of 704 MW. It would provide clean, affordable power to both states.

In addition to Revolution Wind Farm, there are other potential sites for offshore wind development in Rhode Island. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has identified areas with annual average wind speeds of 7 meters per second or greater at 90-m height as suitable for offshore development. These areas could potentially be used for future projects that would generate even more renewable energy for Rhode Island residents.

However, despite these promising opportunities, only one proposal was submitted in response to Governor McKee’s RFP – from Orsted US Offshore Wind. While this is a positive step forward, some stakeholders had hoped that more developers would submit proposals so that there could be more competition and better prices for consumers.

Rhode Island officials are currently evaluating Orsted’s proposal and will make a decision on whether or not to move forward with it later this year. If approved, it could lead to significant investment in the state’s economy and create thousands of jobs related to construction and operation of the new offshore wind farm. It could also help reduce electricity costs by providing an additional source of clean energy that is cheaper than traditional fossil fuels like coal or natural gas.

Offshore wind has become increasingly popular worldwide due to its potential for generating large amounts of renewable energy with minimal environmental impact. In order for Rhode Island to remain competitive in this growing industry, it must continue investing in infrastructure and technology related to offshore wind development while also ensuring that any projects meet stringent safety standards and adhere to strict environmental regulations.

Overall, Rhode Island is taking important steps towards increasing its use of renewable energy sources such as offshore wind power. With continued investment in infrastructure and technology related to offshore wind development, along with careful evaluation of any proposals received from developers, Rhode Island can ensure that it remains at the forefront of this rapidly growing industry while also helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions and providing clean, affordable electricity for its residents.

By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com

New Report Estimates A $110 Trillion Price Tag For Net Zero Emissions

By Irina Slav - Mar 21, 2023

Global investments in the energy transition would need to increase to $3.5 trillion per year if the world is to become a net-zero place by 2050, a climate change think tank has said in a new report, in which it noted there were no fundamental barriers to the net-zero plan. That spending would total $110 trillion by 2050.

In its report, titled “Financing the Transition: How to make the money flow for a net-zero economy”, the UK-based Energy Transitions Commission said the massive sum of money would go towards building more wind and solar power generation capacity, plus other low-carbon generation technology. Part of the total would also go into transmission and distribution infrastructure building and another part would be spent on battery storage and seasonal storage.

“Though this report confirms that there are no big fundamental barriers to the energy transition – that was the hypothesis going in – it was striking that the numbers showed 70% of the finance that must be raised has to go [into electrification of power systems],” Mike Hemsley, deputy director of the think tank, told Recharge.

The sum that the Energy Transitions Commission says would need to be spent on net zero compares with the $1 trillion annually that is being spent today.

“This report also identifies that there are two conceptually different types of finance required: ‘classic’ investment which gives an economic return for money paid in, and concessional/grant payments, essentially paying someone to do something they might not do otherwise as there is no economic incentive,” Hemsley also told Recharge.

Those concessional or grant payments, the report notes, could reach $300 billion annually by 2030.

According to the authors of the report, some of that massive sum could be offset by a decline in investments in oil and gas, to the tune of $500 billion annually. The offset sum would reduce the annual investment bill of the world to $3 billion, which would be equal to 1.3 percent of global GDP over the next 30 years.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

The UK Will Face A Rising Risk Of Power Supply Shortfalls This Decade

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Mar 21, 2023

The UK risks a shortage in stable electricity generation in the late 2020s as more coal-fired and older gas and nuclear power plants close, research commissioned by energy firm Drax Group showed on Tuesday.  

Peak demand for Britain’s electricity is expected to rise by 4 gigawatts (GW) by 2027, the research carried out by consultancy Baringa showed. At the same time, the imminent closure of coal-fired power plants, older gas-fired power generation, and closure of nuclear power plants will remove up to 6.3 GW of secure capacity from the UK’s grid, according to the research. 

Dispatchable capacity, which can be called on when needed and which supports Britain’s energy security, will fall from 93% to 85% at times of peak demand, increasing the risk of a supply shortfall, the research found.  

The UK will see a surge in intermittent capacity due to the rise in wind and solar capacity installations, but it will still need stable power generation to serve as a backup in times of peak demand.

This winter, for example, National Grid several times has requested coal-fired capacity to be ready to be sent to the grid if needed, at times of soaring demand on the coldest winter days and nights.

On Sunday, natural gas produced 34.8% of British electricity, followed by wind 22.5%, imports 16.6%, nuclear 14.9%, solar 4.6%, biomass 4.5%, and hydro 2.2%, with no coal-generated power sent to the grid, the operator said on Monday.

According to Baringa’s research for Drax, “The system will need to rely on other forms of capacity, such as electricity interconnectors and intermittent renewable generation like wind or solar, to make up the 15% difference at times of peak demand.”

Drax’s biomass power station in Yorkshire, providing 2.6 GW of electricity, is the largest provider of dispatchable power to the GB electricity system, as well as being one of the only renewable sources of secure supply, the company said. Drax also urged the UK government to support its carbon capture and storage project before it can commit to a $2.45 billion (£2 billion) project to install bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technology at its plant.