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via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1f8inb4 williambanzai7

Submitted by Wei Zongyou via The Diplomat,

People around the world were astounded by Vladimir Putin’s rapid decision to annex Crimea in response to the latter’s referendum to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, which Kiev and the West view as illegal. The decision also drew worldwide criticism and vehement condemnation by the West and Ukraine, and triggered a second wave of economic sanctions from the United States, and soon afterwards Europe. Relations between Russia and the West are at their chilliest since the end of the Cold War.

So why has Putin risked Russia’s economic welfare and political space to swallow Crimea, push Ukraine out, and alienate the entire Western world? Is Putin “in another world” as German Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed he is? In my opinion, there are at least two considerations behind Putin’s decision.

The first is the realist, geo-political consideration. In Putin’s world, since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Russia has lost nearly one fourth of its geography, one half of its population, and more than half of its GDP. Among the “lost” territories are those that are strategically important or militarily advanced, such as Ukraine and the Baltic states. With the eastward expansion of NATO, and the integration of former Soviet satellite states and republics in Eastern Europe and the Baltics into Europe, the traditional buffer zone between Russia and the West is increasingly squeezed and Russia’s space for strategic maneuvering becomes smaller with each year. When Russia craved for entry into the West, this might not have been particularly worrisome or embarrassing for Moscow. But since Russian leaders decided long ago that joining the West was neither particularly helpful to Russia’s political standing nor particularly attractive in terms of economic gains, it has begun to view the expansion of the West at its own strategic expense as both ill-intentioned and threatening.

Ukraine holds a unique position in Russia’s geo-strategic consideration. First, it is crucial territory in the passage of Russia’s oil exports to Europe. Each year more than one third of the oil Russia ships to Europe travels via the Ukraine pipeline. Second, Crimea gives Russia’s Black Sea Fleet access to the Black Sea. If the pro-West Kiev government were to have decided to end its lease to the Russian naval base in Crimea, Russia would have lost its strategic gateway to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Third, Ukraine is deemed the most crucial member of Russia’s Eurasia Union project, an economic and strategic plan to closely connect Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Central Asia. If all goes according to plan, this union will integrate these former Soviet republics and now independent countries economically, politically, and diplomatically with Russia, and go some way to restoring the glory of the Soviet empire at its peak. The “coup d’état” in Kiev and the political orientation of the new government put all these things in jeopardy, if Russia remains disinterested and passive.

The second consideration is more psychological in nature. Following the end of Cold War, embracing the West was the first priority of Russian foreign policy. But to Moscow’s dismay, it found that the West still harbored strong reservations and considerable distrust. Years spent courting and wooing provided little of what Russia craved most: equal membership in the West and economic prosperity. Though Russia became part of the exclusive G8, it never enjoyed the full status and say of the other seven members, always remaining an “other.” Economically, the shock remedy proposed by the West and faithfully implemented by Boris Yeltsin didn’t bring the expected economic benefit. Instead, it took Russia’s economy into freefall, leaving the average Russian worse off than before. Russia’s look West ended in humiliation and disaster.

It was Putin who saved Russia from its miserable condition. He readjusted both Russia’s domestic and foreign policies, and distanced the country from the West, instead seeking opportunities to resurrect past Soviet glories. As the Russian economy improved, the West found that its time was passing. The 2008 economic crisis hit the U.S. and Europe hard and they found themselves more reliant on the emerging powers, Russia included. It is Britain, France, and even Germany who are now busy appealing to Russian oil bacons to buy more and invest more. The balance of power between Russia and the West has shifted. The small war in Georgia in the summer of 2008 only strengthened this trend and the response from the West impressed Russia greatly: Europe is rotten and the U.S. has become too weak to lead. Then came the Arab Spring and the Syria crisis. In the former case, the U.S. “led from behind,” and in the latter it was Russia that decided the course of the Syria civil war.

Russians, and especially Putin learned a hard lesson from the post-Cold War romance with the West: For all the talk of democracy and freedom, the fact remains that the strong dictate to the weak.

With Europe rotten and United States weakened, a resurgent and confident Russia will definitely not let a geo-strategically important former Soviet republic fall entirely into the West’s camp. By annexing Crimea, Putin not only secured Russia’s naval base and its strategic gateway to the Black Sea, he also sent a powerful message to Ukraine and the West: Ignore Russia’s legitimate strategic concerns at your own peril.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1pqmvYS Tyler Durden

This is the trillion-dollar question. From a common sense perspective, the simple answer is “absolutely!”

 

Since 1998, the markets have been in serial bubbles and busts, each one bigger than the last. A long-term chart of the S&P 500 shows us just how obvious this is (and yet the Fed argues it cannot see bubbles in advance?).

 

Moreover, we’ve been moving up the food chain in terms of the assets involved in each respective bubble and bust.

 

The Tech bubble was a stock bubble.

 

The 2007 bust was a housing bubble.

 

This next bust will be the sovereign bond bubble.

 

Why does this matter?

 

Because of the dreaded “C word” COLLATERAL.

 

In 2008, the world got a taste of what happens when a major collateral shortage hits the derivatives market. In very simple terms, the mispricing of several trillion (if not more) dollars’ worth of illiquid securities suddenly became obvious to the financial system.

 

This induced a collateral shortfall in the Credit Default Swap market ($50-$60 trillion) as everyone went scrambling to raise capital or demanded new, higher quality collateral on trillions of trades that turned out to be garbage.

 

This is why US Treasuries posted such an enormous rally in the 2008 bust (US Treasuries are the highest grade collateral out there).

 

Please note that Treasuries actually spiked in OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2008… well before stocks bottomed in March 2009.

 

The reason?

 

The scrambling for collateral, NOT the alleged “flight to safety trade” that CNBC proclaims.

 

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TODAY?

 

The senior most assets backstopping the $600 trillion derivatives market are SOVEREIGN BONDS: US Treasuries, Japanese Government Bonds, German Bunds.

 

By keeping interest rates near zero, and pumping over $10 trillion into the financial system since 2007, the world’s Central Banks have forced investors to misprice the most prized collateral backstopping the entire derivatives system: SOVEREIGN BONDS.

 

SO what happens when the current bond bubble bursts and we begin to see bonds falling and yields rising?

 

Another collateral scramble begins… this time with a significant portion of the interest rate derivative market (over 80% of the $600 TRILLION derivative market) blowing up.

 

At that point, rising yields is the last thing we need to worry about. The assets backstopping a $600 trillion market themselves will be falling in value… which means that the real crisis… the crisis to which 2008 was the warm up, will be upon us.

 

This is why Central Banks are so committed to keeping rates low. This is also why all Central Bank policy has largely benefitted the large financial institutions (the Too Big To Fails) at the expense of Main Street…

 

THE CENTRAL BANKS AREN’T TRYING TO GROW THE ECONOMY, THEY’RE TRYING TO PROP UP THE FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS’ DERIVATIVE TRADES.

 

To return to our initial question (is this just a temporary top in stocks or THE top?), THE top is what we truly have to watch out for because it will indicated that:

 

1)   The Grand Monetary experiment of the last five years is ending.

2)   THE Crisis (the one to which 2008 was just a warm up) is beginning.

 

For a FREE Investment Report outlining how to prepare for another market crash, swing by: http://ift.tt/RQfggo

 

Best Regards

 

Phoenix Capital Research

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1f88H0d Phoenix Capital Research

While it appears no one has a perfect bracket left after this weekend’s upsets in the NCAA Basketball, we suspect most are still perfect on the other March Madness bracket predictions…

 

 

Source: Sunday Funnies via Cagle

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1f88H04 Tyler Durden

When Gods War

By

Cognitive Dissonance

 

 

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When I entered high school back in 1969 the small town I grew up in was just introducing a more flexible, dare I say liberal, curriculum to broaden my indoctrination experience. I vividly remember the excitement exhibited by the principal as he (there were no ‘she’ high school principals in Southern New England back then) addressed the incoming freshman class about the educational wonders “We the Guinea Pigs” were about to encounter.

I for one was as excited as the principal, having grown exceedingly bored with the standard canned textbook fare that passed for a Middle School (then called Junior High) education. In fact it was so new that even though we had already selected our High School freshman classes several months earlier just before leaving for summer vacation, there were now a few gaps in the schedule we could fill with ‘electives’. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. “Electives? You mean I can pick my own poison?”

Quickly I seized upon two courses that sounded interesting, “Greek Mythology” and “Totalitarianism and Appeasement”. The guidance counselor who was assisting the planning of my cognitive conditioning was aghast, quickly informing me that oil and water do not mix. Thankfully she (guidance counselors of that era were almost exclusively female, the maternal instinct considered oh so important to my guidance) could find no published rules disallowing my choices and I would not be swayed by her stern disapproval. I was in like Flynn.  

Looking back from the vantage point of four plus decades of acquired wisdom I can better appreciate her concern for my welfare. Was I insane? Learning about the Gods of ancient Greece in conjunction with global politics during the run up to the World War Two madness was most assuredly a potent cocktail for my tender brain cells and not to be treated lightly. Our formal grade school ‘education’ is carefully planned out by ‘experts’, with one conditioning step after another explicitly designed to properly train Pavlov’s Dogs. Clearly I was messing with the secret sauce.

Similar to two classes of drugs that by themselves are ‘safe’, but when taken together are deadly, recognizing similarities between the ancient Greek War Gods and the Nuclear Gods of twentieth century Warring Earth was either going to be supremely enlightening or my cognitive subsystems would go critical and melt down. From the point of view of the masters of the universe it was the latter that befell me. As Mrs. Cog would say “I was ruint” and would never be a fit wage slave suitable for gainful exploitation….err….employment.

Two hundred years ago I would have been cast out of school on my arse and sent off to the salt mines to toil away my days till death did I part, broken by hard labor, slave wages and the foreman’s whip. Thankfully this was 1969 in New England so my sentence was commuted to two more years as a Roman Catholic altar boy and seventeen million recitals of the “Act of Contrition”. Ah, those were the blessed days my friend. “Thank you Father, may I have another?”

I suppose if I had taken both courses during the same semester my head would have exploded. Thankfully this was not the case, having elected to swim with the Gods during the first semester and then dive into the dictators during the second marking period. To this day I’m not sure exactly why I selected the Greek Gods first; though being pubescent I suspect the opportunity to gaze upon images of half naked statues of Goddesses for homework might have been a significant draw.

 

 

To be perfectly frank I didn’t quite understand what the term mythology meant since everything I had learned up to this point was taught as iron clad fact, no questions allowed. Early on in our indoctrination we are trained to question who, what, where, and when, but never ever why. One simply does not question the control system itself, only the cancerous symptoms of the control system.

One of the advantages of being ‘me’ was a last name that fell near the end of the alphabet, which nearly always assured me a seat in the back of the class. Strategically located as I was during the first day of Mythology class, as soon as the textbooks were passed out I quickly scanned the pages for images, then dog-eared each nubile no-no for rapid retrieval at any time.

I wasn’t too concerned about the disposition of my soul considering all the images were school board approved and I attended confession every Saturday and did God’s service on Sundays. Doing so assured me I was a lock, so why not dabble with the devil now and then as long as I confessed my transgressions to the proper authorities?

By the end of the first week I was thoroughly traumatized by how utterly violent, homicidal actually, and quite human-like these Greek Gods of War seemed to be. The Catholic Church assured me ‘my’ War God was all cuddles and kittens (as long as I ignored the Old Testament) so to find ‘these’ Gods sleeping around without wearing a condom, smiting the poor humans just because of a bad hair day and falling down drunk at all times of the day was, in my opinion at least, conduct unbecoming of a True God.

Even though I had not begun the “Totalitarianism and Appeasement” class, thus I had not gained that particularly unique perspective yet, the similarities between the angry spiteful Greek Gods and present day society’s duplicitous leaders were glaringly obvious and I was foolish enough to say so in my out loud voice. Since I was speaking truth to the blind I quickly became persona non grata, with even my fellow slave students turning on me.

“Just shut up and stop asking questions” I was told, then beaten about the head by the school bully-for-hire as the blunt instrument designed to drive home the message. Half way through the second week the teacher stopped answering my questions altogether and simply ignored my raised hand, regardless of if it was just a request for a visit to the comfort station. Thank the Gods of War that I had superior bladder control.

One must carefully consider the cultural time frame in order to appreciate the insanity I was pushing back against. A year or so removed from “The Tet Offensive” which coincided with peak United States involvement in the insanity called “The Vietnam War”, Walter Cronkite’s evening news was a grim blood and guts recital of bombs, booby traps and body counts, both ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’.

I was curious, fascinated even, about the ‘fact’ that the number of enemy soldiers killed was always two to three times ours. Kind of made you proud in a sick sort of way that our War Gods were that much more effective at squashing the puny humans then their clearly inferior junior grade war gods (please note the small ‘g’). Odd how it was that only much later did we ‘discover’ there were huge numbers of women and children mixed into that bloody body count.

 

 

While it appeared our Gods of War wanted to ‘win’ the conflict, or at least they said they did, they certainly weren’t trying very hard. Little did I know this was the new blueprint for future God like productions such as Afghanistan and Iraq. I was old enough to comprehend the facts, but much too young to fully understand the madness. Cultural insanity is learned the hard way; by brute force repetition and total immersion rather than the light touch of reason and logic.

My questions were reasonable enough by any standards…..at least for a nation that wasn’t already totally insane. “Why were the Gods Warring” I would ask mom, dad, teachers, anyone I perceived to be an authority. Terms such as collateral damage, fratricide, napalm, friendly fire, My Lai, mine fields, cluster bombs and fragging were bandied about on the TV, in the newspapers, even between family members and strangers in the same tone of voice one would use to discuss the weather, gardening or the locally beloved Red Sox. Same ole same old.

The insanity was so normalized, so integrated into everyday living, that it was rendered innocuous, harmless even, or so it was thought. Sure, ‘our’ boys were dying over there, but it was the returning walking (or wheeled) wounded you actually had to watch out for. While the dead mortals were quickly shipped home in flag draped boxes and honorably buried (“Teacher, why don’t we honor the living so they won’t be shot dead?”) those damn wounded just wouldn’t go away. They were so public, so obvious, so in your face. It was one thing to read about ‘them’ in the papers, another thing entirely to meet them face to face.

To this day I vividly remember overhearing a conversation between my father and the next door neighbor about another neighbor’s son. He had returned home after surviving his turn as cannon fodder for the Warring Gods missing ‘only’ his right arm and several fingers on his left hand. My father was irritated that this ‘wounded warrior’ was walking around the neighborhood scaring the kids half to death. Why didn’t he have the decency to remain inside during daylight hours? Out of sight, out of mind I guess.

My head still spins when I think about how people would talk about ‘The War’ without ever discussing anything significant or relevant. Always who, what, when, where and never WHY. We are only as sick as our deepest darkest secrets, those inner Uglies we’d rather not discuss collectively or individually. Best to leave the boogieman under the bed where he belongs rather than drag him out for confrontation. We were all just cannon fodder for the War Gods, so why get all worked up over it?

Patty Hearst and the SLA had not yet appeared on the scene to mirror our own inner madness, Stockholm Syndrome writ large in our hearts and minds. Embrace the insanity with a full body love hug or be consumed by our own cognitive dissonance. Besides….the Warring Gods would eventually tire from their labors and collapse into bed to sleep it off, leaving us chattel to get back to the business of living before another royal row sets up the next cattle slaughter.

 

 

Like a hot potato passed rapidly from hand to hand to avoid a nasty scorching, my Mythology instructor bestowed upon me near perfect grades, regardless of my actual classroom submissions, in order to avoid any possibility of an after school one on one for conduct unbecoming of a student peon. Mama didn’t raise no fool and she wasn’t going to put herself alone in the same room with me and my questions.

Regardless of the quality of the homework handed in or the mark received when it was returned, the report card always showed I was at the top of the class. The teacher was not going to risk a parent teacher conference for a closer inspection of the offspring’s Genesis, let alone a return for a second semester.

Of course this was shear brilliance on her part because I wasn’t going to complain about grade inflation. Besides, I wanted to believe that the higher grade was based upon my classroom participation. It seems my conditioning was working after all. I got the message and kept my head, and hand, down for the rest of the semester.

The Greek Mythology class completed, my reputation preceded me when I walked into the “Totalitarianism and Appeasement” class to start the second semester (I loved referring to it as my “T&A class”, always with a dirty smirk on my face) and was greeted with a scowl from the teacher, quickly followed by “Oh, it’s you”. Even before the other students were seated I was escorted out to the hall and verbally dressed down, in essence read the riot act for crimes against the state of education.

“I’ve heard you’re a trouble maker, and I’ll have none of that in my class,” I was informed, finger wagging two inches from my face. “You mind your P’s and Q’s and we’ll get along just fine.” I suppose that was not the time to ask my first question, but it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t know the definition of P’s and Q’s. “Don’t you be smart with me young man” was the explanation I received. Not a good start by any stretch of the imagination, and it was all downhill from there.

While Greek Mythology could always be, and actually was, explained away as fantasy story telling by toga wearing Neanderthals if some rabble rousing child started asking difficult questions, T&A was an entirely different matter. This was modern history, the reciting of horrible events barely 20 years past, massaged and managed of course to agree with generally accepted lies. Worse, the present day (1970) Godly hostilities playing out in Southeast Asia were simply a continuation of “WW(restlemania) II, When Gods Play Rough” and no freshman teacher was going to stop the flood of questions that floated to the surface of the cesspool once the top was popped open.

 

 

With the benefit of hindsight it is now clear that what really irked me about that class was the tone of the instruction, which just reflected the arrogance expressed in the textbook and of the times. Look at what those silly War Gods did back in the 30’s and 40’s, how misguided they were while power wrestling among the mortals. Too bad several million were crushed under foot over such a silly misunderstanding. Our Gods of War, the new and improved Gods of 1970, would never be so foolish as to make the same mistake again. And the teacher said all this and more with a straight face.

I was equally dumbstruck by the fact that the teacher appeared to believe what she was saying and that my fellow student slaves were lapping it up unquestioningly. I was not gifted with immense insight or great intelligence, but even at my tender young age I could recognize that the mighty War Gods had not learned the error of their ways and were in fact just playing the same old tune in a different key.

Dear teacher assured me otherwise. “It’s different this time. We’re stopping the spread of God hating commies.” Well……that explained that, and I of all people should understand the importance of his Holiness’s crusade since I was an altar boy who wore the sacred black and white vestments and could regurgitate Latin adoration upon command. “Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Translation: “My bad bro.”

We mere mortals are not properly wired to understand the wondrous ways of the War Gods, having been deeply conditioned into the slave mentality from birth. All we need to know, the one training we must embody in order to be properly assimilated and then exploited, is what’s good for the Gods of Mayhem is good for the slaves. Always remember, when the Gods feast on barbecued humanity and drink their blood wine we are blessed with God given Golden Showers.

Don’t bother yourself with trying to understand the divine madness of the God Wars, the fallout which consumes your mind and destroys your body. Just busy yourself with counting the nano angels dancing on the head of that nail driven through the palm of your hand while you follow the slave into the valley of death. One hot potato, two hot potato, three hot potatoes more. Blinders or blindfolds anyone? I’ve got plenty more where they came from.

 

 

There seems to be a general consensus among those whom you and I may consider at least somewhat ‘awake’ and those whom we might consider still deeply asleep. Sooner or later war is inevitable because the Divine Gods of War deem bloodletting to be good….or at least vitally necessary. Who needs leaches to cure our ills when we have Divine intervention?

I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of ‘We the Fragile Humans’, when encouraged to think for ourselves and to ponder the terrible destruction to our own life and limb, would agree that wars have no purpose or benefit to us personally. Then again, what good is a war machine if you ain’t gonna use it.

The next time the War Gods of finance, government, politics, industry, military, health care and especially the Divine Gods of the mainstream media implore ‘us’ to fight their wars of Peace and Godliness, just say NO. These are not ‘your’ wars, these are the Wars of Gods fought by the fragile humans of Earth for the benefit and amusement of the self appointed and self proclaimed Divine and Omnipotent. Cast off the mind meme and reject the wizard’s war ‘spell’, the claims of imminent attack and close proximity to danger. They are all lies.

The Money Meme is failing and the Ponzi is crumbling; the central banking War Gods are losing control of the ‘faith and belief’ support that is the glue that holds it all together. Public support for the Pontificating Politicians is at all time lows, and these mid level Mayhem Muckers are desperate to distract, divide and destroy in order to divert attention from themselves and their puppeteers.

The war drums are booming and those among us susceptible to the blood lust beat are beginning to rouse. In other words, the table is set for that inevitable war everyone expects and feels powerless to stop. You and I are not responsible, nor should we be responsible, for the decisions others make unless and until we are responsible for our own.

Do not defer to the herd, to assume it is hopeless simply because the herd is surging. Refuse to be passive, to go limp in the face of insanity and a perceived lost cause. Be personally sovereign and responsible to and for yourself. Do not under any circumstances surrender your power to the Gods of War. By not preserving and conserving our power exclusively for ourselves it is slowly bled from us as if we are mortally wounded, slowly bleeding out on the battle field. Worse, we don’t die, but rather remain in a severely weakened state, near comatose and tragically incoherent.   

I have been speaking of late about personal sovereignty, of how first and foremost it is a State of Mind. The buck stops here for I alone decide if I will release the power that springs from within me and transfer it to the War Gods. If I were to do so, the sole result of this transaction would be that my power is used against me. I am a sovereign entity, a State of One, head honcho and chief bottle washer of Cognitive Dissonance. The Gods of War will not have my consent. Will they have yours?

 

03-23-2014

Cognitive Dissonance

 

www.TwoIceFloes.com is unlike anything you will find on the web, a truly unique destination. There you will find distinctive Premium Members only articles as well as discussions on wellness and health, homesteading, spirituality & philosophy and most importantly ‘safe’ forums not found anywhere else. Come by for a peek and stay a while.

 

 

Man's Best Friend – WAR

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1dg1Nuy Cognitive Dissonance

Submitted by L Todd Wood,

Since the early twentieth century, Saudi Arabia has enjoyed a close relationship with the United States. From the development of the Saudi oil fields,to the First Gulf War, this relationship has been an uneasy cooperation—each side received something out of the alliance while nervously watching the other.  So recently we have the first open break between the two powers culminating in the Saudi’s refusing a seat on the U.N Security Council due to anger with U.S. Middle Eastern policies. 

Saudi Arabia holds the world’s second largest oil reserves and the sixth largest natural gas fields.  In addition to being located in the most volatile part of the world, these energy assets make the country a strategic interest for any global power. 

The discovery of vast hydrocarbon reserves in the United States and the ability to harvest them through hydraulic fracturing techniques has radically altered the relationship between the two countries.  Ironically, even though the Obama administration has reduced drilling on Federal lands in the US and attempted to curtail hydrocarbon use overall, it is fracking which has allowed the United States to nearly gain energy independence, become a net energy exporter again, and reduced the need to buy oil from the Middle East.  This shift in the balance of power with the Saudis has made the Kingdom extremely nervous. 

American policy adds to the Saudi’s concerns.  The Saudi oil fields, located in the eastern part of the country, are the home to the country’s Shia minority.  As the guardians of the holy Muslim sites, the royal family walks a fine line between satisfying the Sunni Ulema, fighting terrorism, and keeping the Shia population in check.  Hence, their concern with America’s recent overtures to Iran. 

The Obama administration has been Hell bent to secure a deal with the Shia Islamist state regarding its development of nuclear weapons.  Now that the deal is in place, the Iranians are openly taunting the West with shouts of victory rather than assuring the world they have no intent to join the nuclear club.   John Kerry and his Dept of State have been either naive, weak, or both when it comes to negotiating with the mullahs.  The Saudis, along with the Israelis and other Gulf states, cannot tolerate a nuclear armed Iran.  There are rumors that Saudi Arabia has paid Pakistan for the development of its own nuclear deterrent and is one month away from operational capability if they saw fit. 

In addition, the Kingdom is furious with U.S. refusal to arm Sunni rebels fighting the Iranian backed Syrian regime.  The uneasy trust between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia has been broken.  This opens up the playing field for other global powers such a China or Russia to make inroads where the U.S. once enjoyed hegemony.  It also opens up the world to a possible nuclear arms race in the Middle East.  In fact, this is already happening in Egypt, another broken U.S. relationship, who just closed a major arms deal with Russia in a slap in the face to the Obama Administration’s decision to cut military aid.  China would like nothing better than to gain access to a secure source of Saudi oil and strategic American built bases as well.

There have been calls from many quarters for the U.S. to mend fences with Iran in order to prevent a conflict and counter the Sunni influence in the region.  It seems obvious that for this to happen, Iran needs to show real progress in addressing the world’s fear that they intend on acquiring the bomb and have plans to use this threat to destroy Israel and/or the interests of the United States.    But alas, this will probably not happen with the current Iranian government.

It is foolish for America to offend and promote distrust with another ally in a long list of broken long-standing relationships.  These include Poland, United Kingdom, Israel, Egypt, etc.  One wonders whether the results of American diplomacy  stems from extreme incompetence or is evidence of a much darker agenda.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1dg1Lmt Tyler Durden

Preface:  The scientific method requires allowing a free-for-all of hypotheses, which then rise or fall based upon the results of actual experiments.  In other words, science means that you throw out theories – no matter how good they look on paper – that are disproven by experimental results, and adopting those confirmed by the results. [Economics is supposed to do that, too … but hasn't.]

For example, putting Galileo to death because he didn’t agree with the “accepted” consensus that the Sun revolved around the Earth was not a great example of the scientific method. Instead of conducting experiments to see whether the Earth or Sun were the center of the Solar System, those with the prevailing view simply silenced the dissenter.

Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that many theories that were universally accepted and “known” to be true turned out to be false.   See, for example, these examples from the Houston Chronicle and the Guardian.

 

Noam Chomsky said years ago that he would submit to fascism if it would help combat global warming:

Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there’s just no other alternatives right now.”

In 2006, Grist called for Nuremberg-style trials for climate skeptics.  (The article was later retracted.)

Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at global warming skeptics in 2007, declaring “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.”

In 2007, a UN official – Yvo de Boer – warned that ignoring warming would be ‘criminally irresponsible’ Excerpt: The U.N.’s top climate official warned policymakers and scientists trying to hammer out a landmark report on climate change that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be “criminally irresponsible.”

The same year, another UN official – UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland – said “it’s completely immoral, even, to question” the UN’s scientific consensus on climate.

In 2008, prominent Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki called for government leaders skeptical of global warming to be “thrown into jail.”

The same year, British journalism professor Alex Lockwood said that writers questioning global warming should be banned.

In 2009, a writer at Talking Points Memo advocated that global warming “deniers” be executed or jailed. (He later retracted the threat.)

James Lovelock – environmentalist and creator of the “Gaia hypothesis” – told the Guardian in 2010:

We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.

 

But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

Earlier this month, an assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology said he wants to send people who disagree with him about global warming to jail.

And there are many other examples of threats made in regard to the climate debate.

Postscript:  If we can’t have free speech and an open scientific debate, then we are no longer living in a democracy or a society which follows the scientific method. Threatening scientific debate is anti-science and anti-liberty.

It is especially troubling given the background of climate discussions.  Specifically, in the 1970s, many American scientists were terrified of an imminent ice age.   Obama’s top science advisor – John Holdren – was one of them.  Holdren and some other scientists proposed pouring soot over the arctic to melt the ice cap and so prevent the dreaded ice age.   Holdren warned of dire consequences – including starvation and the largest tidal wave in history – if mankind did not rally on an emergency basis to stop the coming ice age.

Were those who questioned the likelihood of an imminent ice age also threatened with death or imprisonment?

Moreover, it is also concerning that many of the “solutions” proposed to combat a changing climate could do more harm than good (and see this).    That’s sort of like invading Iraq after 9/11 because we had to “do” something…

Let’s say that – hypothetically – 100% of all climate scientists reached a consensus that manmade global warming from carbon dioxide was an imminent threat.   Shouldn’t we choose approaches that actually work – and which do more good than harm (more) – instead of messing things up even further?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/OPgoBT George Washington

Following China’s unwillingness to vote against Russia at the UN and yesterday’s news that China will sue Ukraine for $3bn loan repayment, it seems Russia is returning the favor. Speaking at the Chinese Economic Development Forum, ITAR-TASS reports, the Chief Economist of Russia’s largest bank stated that “China’s Yuan may become the third reserve currency in the in the future.”

 

Managing Director and Chief Economist of investment company Sberbank Yevgeny Gavrilenkov said at the 15th governmental Chinese economic development forum in the Chinese capital on Sunday (via ITAR-TASS):

“China’s yuan (renminbi) may become a third reserve currency in the world in the future“

 

“This forecast can be made on figures of domestic economic growth. Probably the country will keep high GDP growth rate and the GDP volume will increase to around 14-16 trillion U.S. dollars for a brief period of time, the indicators comparable to the European Union and the United States.

 

Meanwhile, Chinese securities are more attractive for the countries that have a surplus in economy, particularly the Middle East states; and China will obviously follow the path of securing the country’s assets,”

The forum which opened in the Chinese capital on March 22 discusses a broad range of issues of economic reforms and China’s stronger role as the second largest world economy. First Deputy Prime Minister of the Chinese State Council Zhang Gaoli, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde and top managers of major world corporations participate in the forum as honorary guests.

Of course, as we noted previously, nothing lasts forever…

 [12]

 

and with Friday’s “Petrodollar Alert” perhaps things are moving faster than many assumed.

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"I'm here to fight for my children's future," exclaims one father as Spaniards rallied in Madrid against poverty and EU-imposed austerity. As Reuters reports, the largely peaceful protest later marred by violent clashes in which police fired rubber bullets. The so-called "Dignity Marches" brought hundreds of thousands to the capital with banners making it clear what their feelings about record 26% unemployment were – "Bread, jobs and housing for everyone" and "Corruption and robbery, Spain's trademark." One protester summed up the people's views of the government, "I'm sick of this system they call democracy… I want things to change."

 

 

 

Via Reuters,

The so-called "Dignity Marches" brought hundreds of thousands to the capital, according to estimates of Reuters witnesses. Travelling from all over Spain, they were protesting in support of more than 160 different causes, including jobs, housing, health, education and an end to poverty.

 

 

…Spaniards rallied in Madrid on Saturday against poverty and EU-imposed austerity in a largely peaceful protest later marred by violent clashes in which police fired rubber bullets.

 

 

Some protesters started to throw stones and bottles at the large numbers of riot police present and attacked cashpoints and hoardings. The police fired rubber bullets to disperse them, according to video footage seen by Reuters.

 

Central government representative Cristina Cifuentes said 19 protesters had been arrested and 50 police officers had been injured, one of them very badly, in the clashes.

Once again the issue is government corruption combined with austerity (or at least slowing growth in spending to be perfectly clear) – a combination that we have discussed numerous times tends to end in social unrest…

A housing bubble burst more than five years ago, forcing a 41-billion euro ($56 billion) bailout of Spain's banks, squeezing homeowners and throwing millions out of work.

 

 

The government introduced public sector austerity to whittle down the deficit, provoking widespread anger amongst middle- and low-income families as dozens of cases of corruption in the ruling class are investigated by judges.

The people's feelings were clear as the OECD says the economic crisis has hit Spain's poor harder than in any other country in the euro region.

Banners urged the conservative government not to pay its international debts and to tackle Spain's chronically high unemployment of 26 percent.

 

"Bread, jobs and housing for everyone", read one banner, "Corruption and robbery, Spain's trademark," said another.

 

"I'm here to fight for my children's future," said Michael Nadeau, a 44-year-old entrepreneur.

 

"For those who are in power we're just numbers. They value money more than they value people," he said, shouting to be heard above the din of chanting, whistling and drumming.

 

"(I'm here because) I'm sick of this system they call democracy," said Jose Luis Arteaga, a 58-year-old teacher whose wage has been cut 20 percent. "I want things to change."

It seems that almost record low bond yields and high stock market levels did not appease the people of Spain either…Time for that IMG income inequality equalizing wealth redsitriburion it would seem…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1gOGE5H Tyler Durden