Yet again, a command economy is derailed by human greed

 

We've seen innumerable examples, from local, state and national governments all over the world, that human greed and malfeasance can undo any amount of good that might otherwise be achieved.  It looks like a fundamental element of the human condition.

It seems that the latest country to discover (yet again) the truth of that statement is China.

In late May Chinese leaders travelled to the Zhoushan National Oil Reserve and discovered the nation’s strategic oil reserves weren’t there. For over a year, the disruption of oil supplies from Venezuela and Iran had left Chinese oil reserves reduced. Despite that, government documents indicated that China still had 1.2 billion tons of oil reserves. That’s equivalent to 8,756,117,022 barrels.

China’s strategic oil reserve, to the surprise of the government officials who went to verify the reserves in May, was instead composed of water, sludge, various debris and overflow from nearby sewer lines.

. . .

What happened to Chinese oil? It was soon discovered that corrupt government officials and oil reserve personnel had sold the oil and pocketed the proceeds. The local buyers were often operators of small, locally owned refineries that turned the oil into commercial products that were sold throughout China. Most of these oil criminals then fled, often leaving China for sanctuary states that would welcome any affluent Chinese and their new wealth. The only winners were a few conniving Chinese and the Americans, who continued to dominate the global energy system.

. . .

The theft of China’s strategic oil reserves is only the latest of several recent awful discoveries of massive corruption impeding the ambition of its leader, President Xi, to conquer Taiwan. The last one concerned military corruption in building equipment to invade Taiwan, and was discovered in 2023. Missile fuel tanks were found to be filled with water, missile silo lids could not be opened, and the protective concrete missile silos themselves were so defective they might as well have been made of wood. The air force and navy lacked sufficient spare parts for even a week of operations against Taiwan and many aircraft and naval vessels were outright inoperable. This postponed the earliest possible date for the invasion of Taiwan from 2025 to 2027.

The non-existence of China’s strategic oil reserve will probably have the same effect ... There are at least major possibilities that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan has been postponed for another two years, to 2029, and perhaps indefinitely due to further discoveries of calamitous-scale corruption.

There's more at the link.

I've been unable to confirm this article from Strategy Page through independent sources.  Other reports at about the same time don't mention missing oil reserves - only that the reserves exist.  Is the situation as bad as Strategy Page believes?  I'm not sure . . . but the history of corruption in government enterprises that has come out of China over the past few decades would suggest that there's no smoke without fire.

If true, this might help to explain why China has not been extremely vocal in its reaction to developments spearheaded by the USA in Venezuela and Iran.  If it didn't have the reserves to allow it relative independence of action, that would certainly put a crimp in China's style.

Will we ever know the truth?  I suspect it'll be carefully censored and filed away.

Peter

More adventures in the medical world, and some light relief

 

You'll recall my adventures with medical bureaucracy last month.  My pain management specialist very kindly agreed to prescribe another myelogram for me.  The first appointment was canceled on the morning of the procedure by the hospital, because they "had the wrong paperwork" and couldn't proceed without correction.  Turns out the problem was one single word that had not been inserted into the relevant form:  and without that one single word, everything ground to a halt.  At any rate, the missing word was duly provided, and a new appointment was made.  This morning it's off I go to the hospital again for another lumbar puncture, a CT scan, and sundry X-rays.  Hopefully this will be enough to persuade the medical bureaucracy to let me proceed to the next step.

(Why is it that medical bureaucrats and departments can't talk to each other?  I've already electronically checked in to the hospital, and provided my co-payment, and confirmed date and time.  Despite that, I received no less than five e-mails, text messages and phone calls, all reminding me to be at the hospital on time, and do all the pre-procedure processing I've already done.  Do these people have nothing better to do but to waste their patients' time with all this duplication of effort?  And what does it add to our costs as patients to have to pay for it all?)

I'm thoroughly frustrated with the hospital before I even show up there.  To cheer me up, and spare you from listening to my complaints, here's some light relief from Stephan Pastis.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

And, to compare and contrast two of our largest states:

There.  A midweek humor break to relax me before getting poked, prodded and photographed, inside and out.

Peter

Quote of the day

 

From Theodore Dalrymple, writing in City Journal about the abysmal architecture of American embassies:

The new American embassy in Maputo (Mozambique) ... [has] a facade that looks as if a giant Parmesan cheese is expected to fall from the sky at any moment and will need grating as it lands.

The offending building (click the image for a larger view from the US State Department's Web facilities):

One can only cringe in sympathy with Mr. Dalrymple . . .

Peter

A misuse of AI that I hadn't foreseen

 

We know artificial intelligence (AI) can be a very useful tool for good.  Sadly, it can be used for evil as well.

Police have launched a criminal investigation into an officer accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) systems to "create evidential material in a number of cases".

The Derbyshire Police officer has been removed from front-line duties, pending the outcome of the investigation, the force said.

The officer is alleged to have perverted the course of justice, but no arrests have been made, police added.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said they were working with police, adding: "We are engaging with defence teams and the courts in appropriate cases."

There's more at the link.

I hadn't given this enough consideration, but thinking about it, it's potentially a very serious problem.  Perverting the course of justice is bad enough, but think about how a group with a particular ideology can fabricate "evidence" to persuade their government to act in a certain way towards another country?  The neocon outrage at President Trump's announcement of a deal with Iran is a good example.  What if the outspoken pro-war ideologues could concoct their own evidence to "show" that the deal is a lousy one, and should be abandoned?  What if they could "create" evidence to persuade Iran to start hostilities again, because it was convinced America was about to attack it again?

This adds a very worrying dimension to AI.  It will probably be almost impossible for a non-specialist to figure out whether or not the evidence presented is authentic or fabricated.  Indeed, it may contain just enough truth to be persuasive, and add enough falsehood to lead to a wrong conclusion.  How would one prove it false when it contains at least some truth?

This adds new complexity to the issue of censorship - of news, of social media, of whatever.  First Street Journal gives us examples.

It was just over four years ago that we wrote about The New York Times publishing an article by a member of their own Editorial Board, Greg Bensinger, telling readers of that august supporter of Freedom of the Press that it was bad, bad, bad that Elon Musk was trying to buy Twitter, and that his promise to make the social media service an “inclusive arena for free speech” and that “Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place.”

. . .

We pointed out that The New York Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy[2] to claim that restrictions on speech actually promoted freedom of speech. They also published articles claiming that Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence ... And today? There were riots in Belfast, Northern Ireland, following the attempted beheading of a Scotsman by a Sudanese asylum seeker, and the Usual Suspects complained not about the attack, but about Twitter not censoring people writing about it! There’s more of that here and here and here.

The United Kingdom’s Secretary for Northern Island Hilary Benn said, following the knife attack in Belfast:

Social media companies have a very heavy responsibility. It’s why we’re going to bring forward new powers next week to make it clear that social media companies need to take down illegal content, particularly when we are facing circumstances such as the ones we’ve seen in Northern Ireland over the last two days.

It’s simple: our good friends on the left are afraid, deathly afraid, that if the people in general have the information Our Betters would rather not see disseminated, people might, horrors! draw conclusions from that information of which the left would disapprove!

Again, more at the link.

Imagine that the sources quoted by First Street Journal had been "massaged" by AI to give a rather different emphasis to the news than the reality?  For that matter, what if the journal itself used AI to give a particular propaganda twist to its presentation of the news?  Merely by selecting words and phrases that "shaded" the presentation in one direction or another, its impression on readers could be significantly altered;  and AI systems, with their vast resources of language, facts, figures and news, would be in an ideal position to shape and form that impression.

Hmmmm . . .

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 316

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

I've played this track before, but it's just so good I can't resist playing it again.  It's perhaps the definitive example of how a master of hard rock can take the electric guitar to a whole new level, a master class in expressive musical genius.  Here's Steve Morse and Deep Purple at the Montreux Festival in 1996, playing "When A Blind Man Cries".

Sheer rock guitar genius!  To think that was 30 years ago, this year . . .  Steve Morse retired from Deep Purple a few years ago, to take care of his wife during a long illness.  Sadly, she died in February 2024.  Morse is now back in the saddle with his own group.

Peter