Category: zerohedge

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Over the weekend, Heather Linebaugh wrote a powerful Op-ed in The Guardian newspaper lamenting the lack of public understanding regarding the American drone program. Heather should know what she’s talking about, she served in the United Stated Air Force from 2009 until March 2012. She worked in intelligence as an imagery and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here are some key excerpts from her article:

Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”

 

Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.

 

I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.

What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.

Moreover, the many civilians being incinerated without a trial are not the only victims here. So are the actual drone operators themselves, many of whom end up committing suicide. Recall my article from December 2012: Meet Brandon Bryant: The Drone Operator Who Quit After Killing a Child. Of course, our so-called political “leaders” never get their hands dirty, other than to take a lobbyist bribe that is. Now more from Heather:

Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain’s secretary of state for defence, Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again.

Full article here.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/D7soUUcoNFM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Over the weekend, Heather Linebaugh wrote a powerful Op-ed in The Guardian newspaper lamenting the lack of public understanding regarding the American drone program. Heather should know what she’s talking about, she served in the United Stated Air Force from 2009 until March 2012. She worked in intelligence as an imagery and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here are some key excerpts from her article:

Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”

 

Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.

 

I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.

What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.

Moreover, the many civilians being incinerated without a trial are not the only victims here. So are the actual drone operators themselves, many of whom end up committing suicide. Recall my article from December 2012: Meet Brandon Bryant: The Drone Operator Who Quit After Killing a Child. Of course, our so-called political “leaders” never get their hands dirty, other than to take a lobbyist bribe that is. Now more from Heather:

Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain’s secretary of state for defence, Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again.

Full article here.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/D7soUUcoNFM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

One question that keeps popping up, and was addressed to some extent by NAB’s recent report, is whether all the elements of the current Bitcoin are necessary for a viable alternative currency.  And, as Citi’s Steve Englander asks (from a libertarian and pragmatic perspective), if they are not, or can be improved on, where does that leave Bitcoin’s first mover advantage?

 

Via Citi’s Steven Englander,

The libertarian streak in me likes the anonymity of Bitcoin transactions, but there  is a rational part of me that asks whether that aspect is essential if I am paying for a latte in Soho.  Similarly if the Bitcoin wallet can be made more secure by dropping  anonymity, how many transactors will give up transactional security for libertarian principle? Giving up anonymity may make Bitcoin transactions more secure, and I suspect almost all transactors will value security much more than anonymity.

Going further, Bitcoin’s decentralized nodes are not needed, if there was less concern about keeping Bitcoin outside the current payments/fiat currency system. The nodes allow transactions to be validated by the Bitcoin community, but you can have efficient transactions without the particular validation system used by Bitcoin.   The secure ledger of transactions can be centralized rather than decentralized. Bitcoin’s particular approach may be attractive for those who really want to operate outside the current financial system. There may be both legitimate and illegitimate reasons for this, but the vast majority of  transactions do not have this need. 

Going even further, if Bitcoin or an alternative currency embraced the financial regulatory system to make it more secure, how much payments efficiency is lost? You can still have secure, instantaneous transactions but inside the financial system there may be more security against fraud and more recourse if your Bitcoins are contained in your PC which gets hit by a meteor.

So there is this story about a special recipe for potato fritters (a very good recipe that I have tried). When a chef is handed the recipe, she decides to  ‘improve’ it by replacing each ingredient one-by-one with something more familiar. Having done so, she and her husband decide that the final result isn’t nearly as good as advertised and is pretty close to what they prepare all the time.  In eliminating anonymity, decentralization and non-regulation, much of the original intent of the Bitcoin developer(s) is being thwarted. The question is whether the core innovation of Bitcoin has been compromised or whether unneeded baggage is being  dropped.

For the record, mining Bitcoin is waste of resources from a social perspective. The amount of CPU and electricity needed to mine Bitcoin is high, and from a social viewpoint about as valuable as building defenses against attacks from Mars. What the mining  does is decide the allocation of the limited amount of Bitcoin produced each period and encourage the ledger to be kept. There is a  real social cost to the decentralization designed into Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin is a payments technology, much of what makes it efficient and attractive can be retained, while dropping some features that most users find unnecessary. Bitcoin may become less attractive to illicit users as a result, but that is a sacrifice many will be willing to make. Culturally, the developers of Bitcoin may find this evolution extremely unattractive, because the distrust of the financial system and of financial authorities was one of the motivations for its development. However attractive philosophically, many users will vote for pragmatism over principle and a Bitcoin clone that satisfied this pragmatic streak could be able to overcome the first mover advantage.

So far I have ignored Bitcoin as a store of value, but the proponents of Bitcoin as a store of value/speculation crucially need Bitcoin to be unique and have strong barriers to entry, despite the replicability of the technology. If it turns out that investors/miners will arbitrage between Bitcoin and other mined alternative currencies, the outcome will be that there are many perfect or near perfect substitutes for Bitcoin, and the effective supply will be much larger than would be suggested by the gradually increasing and ultimately capped supply of the original Bitcoin.  This will mean that valuations will be very fragile because in the long-term there will be no ability to limit the supply of Bitcoin lookalikes … unless some subset of Bitcoin-like currencies gain government/central bank endorsement which gives them an advantage over non-endorsed Bitcoin-like currencies.

Further, the Fed is now started on tapering and the BoE is talking about tightening, however slowly. Whatever sins major central banks commit, they are forgiven rapidly when they show any sign of moving back to orthodoxy,  provided they have not hugely compromised price stability, and sometimes even when they have. Improved confidence in some G4 fiat currencies is giving gold bad days, and the willingness to take the risk on alternative currencies may be inverse to how unrestrained major central banks are in their reserves creation.  Investors and central banks are looking for improved stores of value beyond fiat currencies, and Bitcoin possibly may be one of them. There are scenarios in which it could work as a store of value  but there are clearly many, many outcomes in which Bitcoin is one of a bunch of alternatives with a very indeterminate value.

Bottom line, there is the possibility that Bitcoin represents a big step forward in payments technology, but there are also seem to be straightforward ways to improve on its security, make it less attractive to criminals and more attractive to governments. It is far from guaranteed that that it will emerge as a stable store of value. Either function would be enhanced if it were within the financial system and embraced by the authorities, but it is unclear whether the Bitcoin philosophy will change fast enough or whether an alternative alternative will pip Bitcoin’s original first mover advantage.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/-jKzrGa7PR0/story01.htm Tyler Durden

For the first time in a week, the PBOC has decided not to intervene in the interbank liquidity market… the result so far… 7-day repo jumped 157bps to 6.5%… yep, clearly the "liquidity crisis" is behind us… as long as China does not "taper" on any given day by doing nothing instead of injecting liquidity.

 

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/KE6NMwxNQzc/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Harry Kazianis of The Diplomat,

Without question, 2013 was a jam-packed year for national security, defense and foreign policy watchers in the Asia-Pacific. What will 2014 bring? Look for next year’s major flashpoints to include mostly familiar themes from the last few years – and almost all include China, one way or another. Below are my top four flashpoints to watch out for in 2014, in ascending order.

4. North Korea Once Again Sparks Tensions: Next year offers countless possibilities for Pyongyang to raise tensions in Northeast Asia – and all are disturbing. From another nuclear or missile test, some sort of aggressive act that sparks a regional crisis (like another ROKS Cheonan incident, or worse) or just an outright collapse, North Korea always has the potential to plunge Northeast Asia and the wider region into a state of chaos. Last year, the actions of Kim Jung-un left me with many sleepless nights as editor of these pages. One can only hope in 2014 that Pyongyang will stick to filling the news cycle with trips by Dennis Rodman – but don’t count on it.

3. U.S.-China Tensions Continue to Grow: The rise of China is certainly a global story with worldwide ramifications. In 2014, look for China’s rise to take a new twist, sparking greater competitive tensions with the United States that are much more out in the open than in years past. From more incidents at sea like the near collision with the USS Cowpens, trade disputes and new trade blocs (perhaps the TTP?), allegations of more spying but from both sides (calling Edward Snowden?), there is no easier prediction to make than that 2014 will not be an easy one for U.S.-China ties.  While China talks of creating a new type of great power relations and seeking win-win ties and U.S. President Barack Obama is eager to foster a peaceful relationship, tensions seem to be too great to allow for wishful thinking.

My prediction for 2014 when it comes to Washington and Beijing: Look for the tone of this relationship to get much more competitive, tense, and filled with frank statements of intent from both sides, who will be less eager to please and more confrontational.

2. Drama in the South China Sea: It seems tensions here are never ending. Look for next year to continue a familiar pattern. Considering the number of claimants to the various islands, reefs, inlets and rocks along with the natural resources that are thought to lie beneath them, 2014 should provide plenty of stressful headlines. Look for Beijing to continue to press its claims through what fellow Diplomat author James Holmes calls “Small Stick Diplomacy,” but with a stick that might get a little bit bigger. With Beijing recently deploying its new, but non-functional, aircraft carrier to the region for maneuvers after declaring a new air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, look for China to keep the pressure on in areas like Second Thomas Shoal.

1. Drama in the East China Sea: Forget Syria’s civil war, Iran’s nuclear program or America’s drawdown in Afghanistan – there is no more important international hotspot in the world today than in the East China Sea, where tensions between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands are ongoing. Given that the world’s second and third largest economies are locked into a cycle of increasing tensions that could conceivably draw in the U.S., the stakes could not be any higher. With China continuing to probe the area with naval and air assets and declaring an ADIZ over the area, while Japan seeks to enhance its armed forces with a focus on defending this disputed area, a deadly witches brew seems to be taking shape. Could naval and air assets come close enough that an incident occurs? What happens then? In 2014, we might just find out.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/WVGXDnP60FI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

We’ve previous documented that seals, sea lions, polar bears, sea stars, turtles, sockeye salmon, herring, anchovies and sardines on the West Coast of North America are all suffering mysterious diseases … which are killing many.

We’ve asked whether this is related to massive releases of radiation from Fukushima. Update.

Sadly, we can now add other wildlife to the list.

EneNews reports:

Los Angeles Times, Dec. 29, 2013: Bald eagles are dying in Utah — 20 in the past few weeks alone — and nobody can figure out why. […] Many suffered from seizures, head tremors and paralysis […] Many of the eagles were brought to the mammoth Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah […] Within 48 hours, most were dead. […] State wildlife specialists are baffled. For weeks, officials have sent birds for necropsies […] At first, the agency’s disease scientists guessed the illness could be encephalitis, which is caused by the West Nile virus, but later ruled out that possibility. […] Officials suggest the die-off is possibly connected to the deaths of thousands of eared grebes that began in Utah in November. […] Officials still don’t know why the shore birds became sick. […] Officials at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center have their own theories. Some point to radiation from Japan after the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. […] A call from Idaho shed new light: A wildlife official said bald eagles there were also getting sick, suggesting the birds were arriving in Utah already in bad health.

 

Buz Marthaler, Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah co-founder: “It’s just hard to have your national bird in your arms, going through seizures in a way it can’t control — when you can see it’s pain but don’t know what’s happening to it. As a human being, you just have problems with that. And when you lose one, it just grabs your heart. […] In an average year, we might get one or two, but we’ve received nine so far, and five of those have died. The other four are still in our care. […] We aren’t ruling out anything.”

 

***

 

Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2013: […] “This is really concerning to us,” says [Leslie McFarlane, the wildlife disease program coordinator for the state’s Division of Wildlife Resources]. She has been program coordinator for 10 years and describes the recent deaths as “very unusual.” […] The symptoms noted in the recent spate of deaths—and the broad geographical area in which they have cropped up—are what has officials concerned.

 

Listen to the public news service report here

In a second article, EneNews notes:

Juneau Empire, Dec. 29, 2013: […] the king [chinook] salmon — has fallen from its throne. […] Alaska has seen unprecedented declines in recent years […] scientists like Joe Orsi and Jim Murphy, both fisheries research biologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are digging deeper into […] the cause of the startling downward trend. […] When asked about the potential impact Fukushima may be having on king salmon stocks in the Gulf of Alaska and elsewhere in the state, Orsi would not comment. “I’ve been told to refer you to the (Environmental Protection Agency),” he said, “Because I’m not an expert on the topic.” Calls and emails to the EPA were not returned in time and digging on the federal agency’s site revealed no current information on radiation from the Fukushima disaster. The last posted monitoring results occurred in June of 2011.

Unfortunately, the American and Japanese governments are doing everything they can to cover up the severity of the Fukushima disaster.  Indeed, anytime government or big corporations screw up, the government works to cover it up … instead of actually fixing the problem. And see this.

EneNews continues:

Bellingham Herald, Dec. 5, 2013: “[…] we see from test fisheries that the Chinook numbers returning to the Fraser River system were at a record low,” explained Ken Balcomb, executive director and principal investigator for The Center for Research and a science advisor to the whale watch association. […] [An] alarming decrease of an important identified food resource […]

 

Islander Sound, Dec. 25, 2013: [A] dismal return of Chinook salmon to the Fraser River.

 

Salmon Fishing in British Columbia, Canada: There are two major salmon runs of Chinook that are targeted by anglers; the Fraser river [and] Harrison River.

 

December 2013: Previously unpublished map from gov’t scientists shows Fukushima plume already at Alaska coast (PHOTO)

 

November 2013: CBC Headline: Radiation from Fukushima arrives on Alaska coast — University scientists concerned — “Is the food supply safe?… I don’t think anyone can really answer that”

 

September 2013: US Gov’t: Alaska island “appears to show impacts from Fukushima” — “Significant cesium isotope signature” detected — Scientists anticipate more marine life to be impacted as ocean plume arrives (VIDEO)

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/uXE1kvBClHE/story01.htm George Washington

Just Do Da Maf…

 

 

(h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer)

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/aqeuiFmaZ3k/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Just Do Da Maf…

 

 

(h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer)

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/aqeuiFmaZ3k/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The following brilliant collage of actual photos put together by Frank Schallmaier at the Dutch Volkskrant, shows two things: a narcissistic, megalomanical, self-absorbed supreme ruler of a socialist paradise and another guy who apparently has an identical taste in propaganda pics.

Source

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ABegDRnYu1c/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Despite Shinzo Abe proudly proclaiming at the Tokyo Stock Exchange that “Abenomics will be a ‘buy’ next year as well,” Bloomberg notes surveys of economists believe his policies will fail to spark the wage increases required to outpace inflation. In fact – due to the collapsing JPY – those surveyed expect consumer prices to rise 3% next year – 5 times faster than wage growth at a mere 0.6%. Officials are concerned; Japan can’t wait one or two years for salary gains, which are needed sooner for the economy to enter a virtuous cycle of rising profits, wages and growth, Deputy Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said. But, any increase in wages depends on a pick-up in demand, not just pleas by Abe for companies to do their part for economic recovery.

 

Via Bloomberg,

Japanese employers will fail in the next fiscal year to heed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s goal of wage increases that outpace inflation, highlighting risks that the nation’s recovery will stall, surveys of economists show.

 

Labor cash earnings, the benchmark for wages, will increase 0.6 percent in the year starting April 1, according to the median forecast in a poll of 16 economists by Bloomberg News. Consumer prices will climb five times faster, increasing 3 percent, as Japan raises a sales tax for the first time since 1997, a separate Bloomberg survey shows.

 

The squeeze on consumers from higher prices risks undermining public support for Abenomics and dragging on retail spending, unless Abe can convince companies to boost wages to cushion the blow.

 

…

 

“Wage increases will be slower than the rise in prices at least until 2015, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Abe,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief economist at Itochu Corp. in Tokyo. “It will take a while for companies to change their mind-set, which is still mired in deflation.”

 

…

 

Abe said today at a Tokyo Stock Exchange closing ceremony that Abenomics will be a “buy” next year as well.

 

The prime minister has pressed Japan Inc. to pass some of the windfall to workers through higher base pay, in meetings with business and union leaders since September. The three sides said in a joint statement this month that increased profits should be linked to wages. Japan can’t wait one or two years for salary gains, which are needed sooner for the economy to enter a virtuous cycle of rising profits, wages and growth, Deputy Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said.

 

…

 

Any increase in wages depends on a pick-up in demand, not just pleas by Abe for companies to do their part for economic recovery, said Kaoru Yosano, a former finance minister, in an interview in October.

Now, where’s the anti-diarrhea medicine?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/WTbEhTUiW_I/story01.htm Tyler Durden