Weekend Economists Celebrate Harry Potter's 35th Birthday July 31st, 2015

[Demeter]

Yes, the Boy Who Lived (Twice) is now a sober 35 years old. He and his wife, the former Ginevra Weasley, have two sons and a daughter all attending Hogwarts, or soon to be. Harry and his school chums have revolutionized the Wizard government, and it's all beer and skittles.



Too bad for the Muggles, who are drowning in financial parasitism, debt slavery, and warmongering, that the magical folk among us are sworn to secrecy and non-intervention in our internal affairs.

Still, we must carry on regardless, as the Blue Moon shines on this special day for Wizard folk...






A VERY HARRY BIRTHDAY, ALL!

[Demeter]

1. England's Muggles did some nasty things....

The author Eduardo Galeano, one of Latin America’s most distinguished writers, wrote a three-volume history of the Americas, Memory of Fire, and most recently, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. He was the recipient of many international prizes, including the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, the Casa de las Américas Prize, and the First Distinguished Citizen of the region by the countries of Mercosur. He died on April 13, 2015. These excerpts are taken from his history of humanity, Mirrors, translated by Mark Fried.

The sale of people had been the juiciest enterprise in the British Empire. But happiness, as everyone knows, does not last. After three prosperous centuries, the Crown had to pull out of the slave trade, and selling drugs came to be the most lucrative source of imperial glory.

Queen Victoria was obliged to break down China’s closed doors. On board the ships of the Royal Navy, Christ’s missionaries joined the warriors of free trade. Behind them came the merchant fleet, boats that once carried black Africans, now filled with poison.

In the first stage of the Opium War, the British Empire took over the island of Hong Kong. The colorful governor, Sir John Bowring, declared:

“Free trade is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is free trade.”

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/the-previous-sole-superpower-from-the-opium-wars-to-the-origin-of-the-species.html

SO, IS THE US DOING BETTER THAN ENGLAND DID, AS A SUPERPOWER? PERHAPS NOT AS BRAZEN ABOUT IT, NOT NOW, WHEN THE GLORY AND THE POWER IS FADING.

BUT THE US HAS ITS COCAINE AND HEROIN AND SLAVERY ON ITS LIST OF SINS, TOO. JUST NOT AS OBVIOUS, NOR DIRECTLY TO BENEFIT THE CROWN...OR STATE. GOD KNOWS, THERE ARE ENOUGH TAX LOOPHOLES TO SEE THAT THE NATION BENEFITS NOT AT ALL FROM THE US'S BAD BEHAVIOR.

Debt Miracle: Why the Country that Borrowed the Most Industrialised First

http://www.voxeu.org/article/debt-miracle-why-country-borrowed-most-industrialised-first

By Jaume Ventura, Senior Researcher, CREI, Universitat Pompeu Fabra; International Macroeconomics Programme Director, CEPR, and Hans-Joachim Voth, Chair of Development and Emerging Markets at the Economics Department, Zurich University and CEPR Research Fellow.

Towering debts, rapidly rising taxes, constant and expensive wars, a debt burden surpassing 200% of GDP. What are the chances that a country with such characteristics would grow rapidly? Almost anyone would probably say ‘none’.

And yet, these are exactly the conditions under which the Industrial Revolution took place in Britain. Britain’s government debt went from 5% of GDP in 1700 to over 200% in 1820, it fought a war in one year out of three (most of them for little or no economic gain), and taxes increased rapidly but not enough to keep pace with the rise in spending.

Figure 1 shows how war drove up spending and led to massive debt accumulation – the shaded grey areas indicate wars, and they are responsible for almost all of the rise in debt. Over the same period, Britain moved a large part of its population out of agriculture and into industry and services – out of the countryside and into cities. Population grew rapidly, and industrial output surged (Crafts 1985). As a result, Britain became the first country to break free from the shackles of the Malthusian regime.

Figure 1. Debt accumulation and government expenditure in the UK, 1690-1860



Until now, scholars mostly thought of the effect of government borrowing on growth as either neutral or negative. One prominent view held that investment in private industry would have been higher had Britain fought and borrowed less (Williamson 1984). Another argument is that private savings decisions undid the potentially negative effects of massive borrowing – because debt eventually has to be repaid, private agents anticipated rising taxes in the future and neutralised the effects of debt accumulation (Barro 1990).

The Revolution That Wasn’t

In a recent paper, we argue that Britain’s borrowing binge was actually good for growth (Ventura and Voth 2015). To understand why massive debt accumulation may have accelerated the Industrial Revolution, we first consider what should have happened in an economy where entrepreneurs suddenly start to exploit a new technology with high returns. Typically, we would expect capital to chase these investment opportunities – anyone with money should have tried to put their savings into new cotton factories, iron foundries and ceramics manufacturers. Where they didn’t have the expertise to invest directly, banks and stock companies should have recycled funds to direct savings to where returns where highest.

This is not what happened. Financial intermediation was woefully inadequate – it failed to send the money where it should have gone. As one prominent historian of the British Industrial Revolution argued:

“the reservoirs of savings were full enough, but conduits to connect them with the wheels of industry were few and meagre … surprisingly little of [Britain’s] wealth found its way into the new industrial enterprises ….” (Postan 1935).

There were many reasons for this, but deliberate financial repression by the government was one of them. Usury limits, the Bubble Act, the Six Partner Rule that limited the size of banks – all of them were designed to stifle private intermediation, in part so as to facilitate access to funds for the government (Temin and Voth 2013).

Without effective intermediation, new sectors had to self-finance – rates of return stayed high because so little fresh capital entered to chase the sky-high returns. Allen calculated that the profit rate for capital rose from 10% in the 1770s to over 20% by the 1830s – capital’s share of national income more than doubled (Allen 2009).

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[Demeter]

2. HEDWIG'S THEME

[Demeter]

3. Top 10 Magical Facts You Didn’t Know About Harry Potter

[Demeter]

4. Merkel's Bavarian ally says Grexit would cause 'utter chaos'

TO WHICH I REPLY--SO HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT? AT LEAST A GREXIT WOULD HAVE AN ENDPOINT...

http://www.ekathimerini.com/200044/article/ekathimerini/news/merkels-bavarian-ally-says-grexit-would-cause-utter-chaos

A Greek exit from the eurozone would cause "utter chaos" but would have to be accepted if Athens was not willing to implement reforms, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian ally Horst Seehofer told German newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday.

"No one can predict the consequences of a Grexit other than that a lot of Greece's debts would have to be written off and at the same time monetary help would be necessary," Seehofer, state premier of Bavaria, said to the paper.

"On top of that there would be utter chaos. If Greece were not prepared to reform, a path like that would have to be accepted but one shouldn't strive for it oneself or organize it."

Seehofer's Christian Social Union (CSU) has taken a tougher stance on Greece than Merkel's party. Some CSU members have been among the most vocal in calling for Greece to leave the eurozone, with Bavarian finance minister Markus Soeder pleading last month for an "orderly" Grexit. Seehofer said he shared Merkel's view that a debt haircut for Greece should not be considered but that debt relief measures were "responsible." Asked about Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's proposal that Greece could take a five-year "time-out" from the eurozone, Seehofer said he did not consider this to be an option.

Earlier this month German lawmakers gave the eurozone the green light to negotiate a third bailout for Greece, but there was a sizable conservative rebellion. Asked if the third bailout for Greece would be the last one, Seehofer said: "If what has now been decided works and is done, we have the problems under control." He said Merkel would continue to have his full support as long as she continued to call for reforms in return for solidarity.

[Demeter]

15. The big mistake admitted by Alexis Tsipras

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2015/07/the-big-mistake-admitted-by-alexis.html

The most important statement came at the end of the recent interview with the Greek PM Alexis Tsipras. In the last question by the journalist Kostas Arvanitis, concerning his biggest mistake over the last months, Tsipras said:

"I said that in case of a collision with the dominant forces in Europe, it should be done soon. We were dragged into a negotiation which was a continuous attrition of our flesh. Of course, it was not an easy decision to say 'I will not pay', but we had always the hope that the democratic values of Europe, the solidarity, etc., would give an exit. Mistakes were made, but I feel proud for this battle. All the figures can be improved, we have a very hard road ahead of continuous struggle in order to achieve as much as we can for the popular interests."

Indeed, the hesitation to give the fight soon probably had a cost, however, no one can say surely how things would be today if the Greek government had chosen the conflict straight after the first contact with the creditors. For that reason, Tsipras may not believe one hundred percent that this was a big mistake, since all this process of the negotiations until today, despite the humiliating truce with the euro-dictatorship, resulted in a big gain: the change of attitude of the European people on Greece, as they started to realize that eurozone has become a financial dictatorship.

Additionally, this process brought the first "fractures" in the supposed solid and tough monetary union.

The biggest mistake by Tsipras was probably the fact that he didn't fully realize who was standing at the opposite side of the table. Therefore, he was not prepared fully to confront the opponent. We warned him through this blog that he was dealing with the most cruel representatives of the European plutocracy. That he should get prepared quickly for a big, tough battle. In any case, another big gain from the whole story of the negotiations was the Greek referendum which may inspire the other European people in the future. Despite the final defeat in the current battle, the Greek people marked a significant win against unprecedented propaganda and extreme psychological blackmail through closed banks. The Greek people inside such war conditions said a clear 'NO' to the neoliberal policies of destruction. This was a big defeat for the oligarchy already because it shows the road of resistance to the other Europeans who suffer from cruel austerity, but also exposed the real face of the eurozone as a financial dictatorship. This explains to a great extent why the plutocrats mobilized all their means inside and outside Greece, even to postpone the referendum, but they failed. The damage has already done for them.

On the other hand, the first clouds are gathering above the Greek government. Yesterday's SYRIZA conference showed that the radical part of Tsipras' party is very disappointed with the latest humiliating and disastrous agreement with the creditors. Many start to talk about the break up of SYRIZA which would make easier oligarchs' plans concerning the mutation of the Left. Everything will be clarified after the crucial conference of the party in September, probably after a final deal with the creditors.

The battle against the European Financial Dictatorship continues. The next battlefield will be the elections in Spain, Portugal, and, probably in Greece ...

[Demeter]

22. ARTICLE ON WHERE THE CHESSBOARD STANDS NOW

The Challenges of the Greek Crisis By Joseph Joyce

https://blogs.wellesley.edu/jjoyce/2015/07/30/the-challenges-of-the-greek-crisis/

...It is not clear how long the Greek public will endure further misery. Any form of debt restructuring may give policymakers some justification to continue with the agreement. New elections will clarify the degree of political support for the pact. But the possibility of an exit from the Eurozone has not been removed, either in the eyes of Greek politicians or those of officials of other governments.

The Greek crisis, however, is not the only hazard that the Eurozone faces. The Eurozone’s government have yet to come to terms with the effects of the global financial crisis on its members’ finances. A split prevails between those countries that ally themselves with the German position that debt must be repaid and those that seek with France to find some sort of middle ground. Other European countries with debt/GDP ratios of over 100% include Belgium, Portugal, and Italy. Weak economic growth could push any of them into a situation where the costs of refinancing could become daunting. How would the Eurozone governments respond? Would they bail out another member? If so, would the terms differ from those imposed on Greece? Would European banks be able to pass the distressed debt on to their own governments?

In the long-term, the governments of the Eurozone face the dilemma of how to reconcile centralized rule-making with national sovereignty. The ECB, for example, has been granted supervisory oversight of the banks in the Eurozone. It will exercise direct oversight of over 100 banks deemed to be “significant,” while sharing responsibility with national supervisors for the remaining approximately 3,500 banks. The ECB has a Supervisory Board, supported by a Steering Committee, to plan and executes its supervisory tasks, which supposedly allows it to separate its bank supervisory function from its role in setting monetary policy. All these agencies must work out their respective jurisdictions and responsibilities. Meanwhile, theEuropean Commission, which oversees fiscal policies, must deal with requests for exemptions from its budget guidelines by governments with faltering growth. But if it shows flexibility in enforcing its own rules, it will be derided as weak and ineffective.

The IMF faces its own set of challenges. The IMF was sharply criticized for its response to the wave of crises that struck emerging markets in the last 1990s and early 2000s, beginning with Mexico in 1994 and extending to Turkey and Argentina in 2001. Critics charged that the IMF was slow to respond to the rapid “sudden stops” of capital outflows that set off and exacerbated the crises. When the Fund did act, it attached too many conditions to its programs; moreover, these conditions were harsh and inappropriate for crises based on capital outflows....

[bread_and_roses]

47. Yet there are still people on DU scolding and lecturing the Greeks

... all this process of the negotiations until today, despite the humiliating truce with the euro-dictatorship, resulted in a big gain: the change of attitude of the European people on Greece, as they started to realize that eurozone has become a financial dictatorship.

Read around here though and you still see lots of scolding and lecturing on how the Greeks are simply paying the piper for their profligacy .... Just like Venezuela's troubles are all of its own making - in their case the sin is Socialism.

As if - whatever errors there may or may not be - in either case the Overlords were ever going to tolerate their existence. Both are an existential threat to the hegemony of the Corporatist 1%ers.

[Demeter]

35. Merkel to run for fourth term in 2017

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/01/us-germany-merkel-idUSKCN0Q636920150801

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has governed Germany since 2005, has decided to run for a fourth term and has started planning her 2017 re-election campaign, Der Spiegel news magazine said on Saturday in an unsourced report.

Peter Tauber, secretary general of Merkel's Christian Democrat (CDU) party and effectively its campaign manager, declined to comment directly when asked by Reuters about the report.

"It's the summer silly season - haven't you noticed?" Tauber replied on Twitter when asked about the report.

Merkel, who turned 61 on July 17, has not made any public comments about whether she would run for a fourth term, although she did hint in a speech in Cologne last year she would stand again. She is on holiday hiking in the Alps.

Merkel, who has guided Europe's biggest economy through the 2008 financial crisis and euro zone turmoil, regularly ranks as one of Germany's most popular leaders, which is unusual for a sitting chancellor.

There are no term limits in Germany and the last CDU chancellor, Helmut Kohl, served for 16 years before losing his bid for a fifth term in 1998 to Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democrats (SPD). Neither were as popular among voters as Merkel.

In a country that cherishes stability, Merkel is only the eighth post-war chancellor. She has no obvious rivals in the CDU.

*************

Merkel is so popular in Germany that one SPD leader, Schleswig-Holstein state premier Torsten Albig, said recently the SPD should not bother putting up a candidate to run against her in 2017. "She's doing an excellent job," Albig told NDR TV.

[Demeter]

5. Secret TPP Treaty: State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Issues for Ministerial Guidance

https://wikileaks.org/tpp-soe-minister/

Today, 29 July 2015, WikiLeaks releases a secret letter from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP or TPPA) Ministerial Meeting in December 2013, along with a comprehensive expert analysis of the document.

The letter indicates a wide-ranging privatisation and globalisation strategy within the Agreement which aims to severely restrict "state-owned enterprises" (SOEs). Even an SOE that exists to fulfil a public function neglected by the market or which is a natural monopoly would nevertheless be forced to act "on the basis of commercial considerations" and would be prohibited from discriminating in favour of local businesses in purchases and sales. Foreign companies would be given standing to sue SOEs in domestic courts for perceived departures from the strictures of the TPP, and countries could even be sued by other TPP countries, or by private companies from those countries. Developing countries such as Vietnam, which employs a large number of SOEs as part of its economic infrastructure, would be affected most. SOEs continue to fulfil vital public functions in even the most privatised countries, such as Canada and Australia.

The TPP is the world's largest economic trade agreement and will, if it comes into force, encompass more than 40 per cent of the world's GDP. Despite its wide-ranging effects on the global population, the TPP is currently being negotiated in total secrecy by 12 countries. Few people, even within the negotiating countries' governments, have access to the full text of the draft agreement, and the public – who it will affect most – none at all. Large corporations, however, are able to see portions of the text, generating a powerful lobby to effect changes on behalf of these groups and bringing developing countries reduced force, while the public at large gets no say.

The TPP is part of the TPP-TISA-TTIP mega-treaty package, which together proposes to encompass more than two-thirds of global GDP.

WikiLeaks' editor, Julian Assange, said: "The TPP erects a 'one size fits all' economic system designed to advantage the largest transnational corporations. In this leak we see the radical effects the TPP will have, not only on developing countries, but on states very close to the centre of the Western system. If we are to restructure our societies into an ultra-neoliberal legal and economic bloc that will last for the next 50 years then this should be said openly and debated."

SOE Issues for Ministerial Guidance
December 7-10, 2013

The majority of TPP countries have supported additional disciplines on the commercial activities of SOEs and Designated Monopolies that go beyond existing obligations in the WTO and in FTAs, including obligations with respect to:

Ensuring that SOEs and monopolies act on the basis of commercial considerations and accord non-discriminatory treatment in purchases and sales;

Ensuring that SOEs comply with the obligations in the Agreement when acting under delegated governmental authority;

Providing courts with jurisdiction over claims involving commercial activities of SOEs;

Impartial regulation of commercial SOEs and private competitors;

Transparency; and

Committee to monitor and review the implementation of the Chapter.

Technical issues remain in these areas, but we expect them to be resolved at the negotiators’ level.

The discussion of effective enforcement of IP laws with respect to SOEs has been moved to the IPR group.

Four broad areas require ministerial guidance/decisions:

How to address government support for SOEs that cause adverse effects to trading partners;

The exceptions or other forms of flexibility that may be required if government support disciplines are applied broadly (i.e., to goods and services, trade and investment);

The definition of SOE and application of SOE disciplines to all levels of government; and

Dispute settlement.


Government support

All Parties already have obligations in the WTO with respect to subsidies that affect trade in goods. TPP countries are considering extending similar rules regarding government support for SOEs to a broader set of circumstances, including 1) government support affecting trade in services and 2) government support that affects competition between SOEs and covered investments within a Party’s territory (both goods and services). The proposed disciplines only limit government support for SOEs to the extent that the support causes adverse effects to the interests of another TPP country.



Exceptions and other flexibility

If broad disciplines on government support for SOEs are included, Parties will need to determine what exceptions or other flexibilities may be necessary to provide governments the appropriate policy space without undermining the disciplines. For example, there are no general exemptions for WTO subsidies disciplines with respect to trade in goods – how should the TPP deal with government support affecting trade in services? How should the TPP address flexibility with respect to disciplines affecting competition between SOEs and covered investments within a country’s territory? Parties have proposed general policy exceptions, scope exclusions, and the possibility for negotiated country-specific flexibility.


Definition of SOE and application to all levels of government

What criteria should be used to define covered SOEs for the purposes of new disciplines – i.e., government ownership, the ability to exercise control? What criteria can be best used to determine effective control?


How should the disciplines apply to SOEs and monopolies established or designated at different (sub-central and central) levels of government? Should countries take commitments with respect to sub-central jurisdictions now or as part of a built-in agenda?


Application of dispute settlement

Proponents have stressed the importance of meaningful, enforceable disciplines, which should be subject to the standard state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism used for other Chapters. Parties are considering whether an additional process of dialogue and review should be required before initiating a formal dispute under the general dispute settlement mechanism and whether additional dispute settlement elements should be included.

[Demeter]

18. Australia walks away from Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal talks

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/01/australia-walks-away-from-trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal-talks?CMP=soc_567



The trade minister, Andrew Robb, says 98% of agreement is finalised but the difficulties lie with the big four economies of US Canada, Japan and Mexico...The world’s biggest regional trade deal – Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – is still within reach despite Australia walking away empty-handed from the latest talks, the federal government says.

The trade minister, Andrew Robb, confirmed that a conclusion was not be reached on the $200bn deal during the latest round of negotiations in Hawaii.

“Australia had made some excellent progress but unfortunately some difficult issues were not resolved,” he said on Saturday.

Robb has laid the blame for the failure to come to an agreement with the “big four” economies of the US, Canada, Japan and Mexico. “The sad thing is, 98% is concluded,” he said.

YES, THAT IS SAD, AND FRIGHTENING!

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

6. HARRY POTTER FANDOM HAS TAKEN MANY FORMS

[Demeter]

7. The manufactured trucker shortage BY MATHBABE

http://mathbabe.org/2015/07/30/the-manufactured-trucking-worker-shortage/

Have you been reading about the shortage of workers in the trucking industry? Have you wondered why, in this crappy economy, they haven’t been able to find more workers? Here’s an excerpt from recent Wall Street Journal’s coverage of this worker shortage crisis:

Operators across the country are short 30,000 long-distance drivers, the American Trucking Associations estimates. The group projects the shortage could top 200,000 in the next decade. Average annual pay for long-distance drivers was $49,540 in 2013, according to ATA estimates. Hiring and wages in truck transportation have inched up this year, according to the Labor Department.

I’ve got a theory. Here’s what it is: they trucking companies aren’t paying enough. Funny how demand and supply and efficient markets go out the window when there’s a political point being served, though: Congress is considering passing a law that would allow 18-year-olds to be long-haul truckers. A terrible idea considering how younger drivers are much more dangerous.

Of course, $50K isn’t nothing. But on the other hand, truckers have to be trained, competent, and regularly spend many days on the road. Moreover, the current surveillance technology has severely degraded their quality of life, which I learned by reading about Karen Levy’s work on the industry. Also, new truckers probably make substantially less than $50K when they start.

Partly the surveillance arose from the very real risk of truckers driving too much per day – it was an attempt to make sure truckers were driving safely. But since the technology has been installed in many large-company fleets, the companies have used it to essentially harass their drivers, telling them when break is over and so on. This has worked, in the sense that larger companies with more surveillance have managed to lower costs, pushing out smaller and individual truckers. And that means that truckers who used to own their own business now reluctantly work for huge companies. For an industry that has historically prided itself for its independent nature, this change does not sit well with drivers. The turnover rates are staggering:

?w=893

When you make your workers lives worse, and you don’t compensate them with cash money to make up for it, you find your workers quitting. That’s what’s happening here.

Conclusion: we either need to improve truckers’ work experiences or pay them more. There’s no worker shortage, there’s simply an unwillingness, on the employers’ side, to face up to the facts.

[Demeter]

19. Reality Check: US Wage Rises Remain Subdued at 3% or Lower

SOMEBODY GOT A RAISE? AND THEY WEREN'T IN THE 1%?

https://www.marketnews.com/content/reality-check-us-wage-rises-remain-subdued-3-or-lower

U.S. wage growth remains subdued despite a tightening labor market and earlier signs that pay pressures are starting to grow, according to compensation consultants.

New surveys covering actual and planned pay awards by thousands of companies show flat or even declining wages overall despite some higher increases for in-demand fields like computer technology.

Ahead of the second-quarter Employment Cost Index release Friday, compensation consultants said there's no evidence employers are raising pay at a higher rate than in recent years despite steady increases monthly payrolls and a national jobless rate approaching 5%.

"There doesn't seem to be a huge upward pressure on wages," said Kerry Chou, senior practice leader at WorldatWork, a nonprofit human resources organization that tracks pay trends at about 2,000 U.S. companies. "Our data doesn't suggest that the labor market is really heating up or that wages are accelerating."

FILE THIS UNDER "NSS"

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[Demeter]

20. Solving Problems In Interviews

[Demeter]

8. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

"The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitations services and basic education to every person on the planet. And we wonder why terrorists attack us."



"If we want a peaceful and prosperous future for our children, we must recognize basic human needs; we must insist that all people -- not just those at the top -- have the right to justice and dignity."

[Demeter]

9. I appear to have made a recovery from the Spring Slump

In other words, managed to work myself to a frazzle this week. Well, I had stimulus...

Also survived two solid weeks of genuine Midwest heatwave...the kind of weather that dominated the 60's. I really hadn't missed it at all, these past 20 years. No need to come back!

But now, must take some time to recover. See you all in the morning.

Nox!

[MattSh]

10. I managed to get frazzled while getting little done.

At least little of what I wanted to get done.

Apparently, Sunday was the hottest day in Kiev in 79 years. 96F. I probably got a break because I was out of town. Didn't get much done M-W, when it turned a lot cooler, with rain, including the biggest rain of the year on Wednesday. Thought I'd get back on track for Thursday, but no.

I should know better by now. At any hint of water problems, call a professional. But my wife's father prides himself on doing as much as possible, so he made this his project. Started it late morning on Thursday. Finished it evening on Friday. Included 2 trips into Kiev and another trip locally. Included help from 2 neighbors, one who figured out the new pressure switch we bought was bad, and the second to stop a leak. Without primary water the whole time. (But had access to secondary water, not to be used for drinking or cooking). Got drinking and cooking water from neighbors. No indoor water, so no showers, but we did have access to a river, but remember the weather had cooled off. And during this time, electric for our area went out no fewer than 15 times.

This whole time, I almost forgot I needed to add funds to my internet account, or no internet today. Somewhere along the line, the local payment processors decided to stop accepting USA cards, or were told by govt decree to stop, so I couldn't pay that way. Figured I'd use my wife's local debit card for a total charge of about $8, but she only had $7 on it. Had to pay it using her father's card. Either that or wait until today, drive to town and buy these scratch-off cards, (I think that's still an option), put money on that way, and wait for Sunday for internet service.

Oh, forgot to mention the battery in our car went kaput this week too.

[MattSh]

31. Dang, I have a headache again...

OK, I feel a lot better now. Banging my head against a wall definitely helps!

So the spare battery her father had that I put in our car? It decided it wouldn't work today. So my plan to get things done today didn't happen because... 1. our car didn't work. 2. her father's car has an automatic transmission, and she doesn't drive automatics. Only manuals for her. 3. she needed my help to buy a new battery. So another promising day flushed down the drain.

[MattSh]

11. It's Really Very Simple - Club Orlov (The Old World Order)

There are times when a loud cry of “The emperor has no clothes!” can be most copacetic. And so, let me point out something quite simple, yet very important.

The old world order, to which we became accustomed over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s, its crises and its problems detailed in numerous authoritative publications on both sides of the Atlantic—it is no more. It is not out sick and it is not on vacation. It is deceased. It has passed on, gone to meet its maker, bought the farm, kicked the bucket and joined the crowd invisible. It is an ex-world order.

If we rewind back to the early 1980s, we can easily remember how the USSR was still running half of Europe and exerting major influence on a sizable chunk of the world. World socialist revolution was still sputtering along, with pro-Soviet regimes coming in to power here and there in different parts of the globe, the chorus of their leaders' official pronouncements sounding more or less in unison. The leaders made their pilgrimages to Moscow as if it were Mecca, and they sent their promising young people there to learn how to do things the Soviet way. Soviet technology continued to make impressive advances: in the mid-1980s the Soviets launched into orbit a miracle of technology—the space station Mir, while Vega space probes were being dispatched to study Venus.

But alongside all of this business-as-usual the rules and principles according which the “red” half of the globe operated were already in an advanced state of decay, and a completely different system was starting to emerge both at the center and along the periphery. Seven years later the USSR collapsed and the world order was transformed, but many people simply couldn't believe in the reality of this change. In the early 1990s many political scientists were self-assuredly claiming that what is happening is the realization of a clever Kremlin plan to modernize the Soviet system and that, after a quick rebranding, it will again start taking over the world. People like to talk about what they think they can understand, never mind whether it still exists.

And what do we see today? The realm that self-identifies itself as “The West” is still claiming to be leading economically, technologically, and to be dominant militarily, but it has suffered a moral defeat, and, strictly as a consequence of this moral defeat, a profound ideological defeat as well.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/07/its-really-very-simple.html

[Demeter]

14. The Technology Defeat is Well Underway, due to Disinvestment in the US

And the Economic Defeat of the West is being engineered by the BRICS (with the unwitting help of Western banksters who have effectively occupied and destroyed Europe and are working on the US), and the N-11, who have had quite enough of warfare by-any-other-name.

Because the USSR collapsed first, Russia is indeed starting to take over the world again, but not unilaterally. This time, Russia has friends, fellow victims of Western Imperialism. But then, Russia always tried to make friends, and the US always tried to break it up. That's why Cuba exists at all...staunchest friend of the USSR, survivor of the Coldest of wars, and now, the US, in its arrogance, thinks it's winning there.

When it comes down to it, all the US has left is the fear of its military, and the Middle East is making a mockery of that....how long before another nation or consortium of nations, takes it on?

Nobody will come to the US defense...because the US, that shining city on a hill, is now a haunted wreck of a noble idea of liberty, justice, opportunity, inhabited by the Nazgul of the 1%.

[hamerfan]

12. Musical interlude

Having read none of the Harry Potter books, nor seen any of the associated movies, I have no music for this theme.
Other than this.
It's from Italy, and this one person got 1,000 musicians together at their own expense to do a Foo Fighter song to try to bring the group to Italy. And it worked.
Anyway, Learn To Fly performed by Rockin' 1,000:

It is very cool.

[hamerfan]

13. Musical Interlude II

Okay, I lied. One more video. This has nothing to do with wizards or flying, but it's good.
Wynona's Big Brown Beaver by Primus:

[Demeter]

16. Very cool, indeed!

You can pick Magic as a theme...

[Demeter]

17. Harry Potter Cast: Where Are They Now?

[Demeter]

21. "For lack of a world central bank, we have a network of central bank liquidity swaps."

GOD FORBID WE HAVE A WORLD BANK! TYRANNY INDEED!

Testing the Global Central Bank Swap Network

http://www.perrymehrling.com/2015/07/testing-the-global-central-bank-swap-network/

WONKY, BUT IMPORTANT

[Demeter]

23. Goldman tentatively agrees to pay $270 million to settle lawsuit

YES, IT HURTS TO TAKE AN OVER-STUFFED WALLET OUT OF ONE'S BACK POCKET

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/31/us-goldman-sachs-settlement-banks-idUSKCN0Q52OF20150731?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Goldman Sachs Group Inc has tentatively agreed to pay about $270 million to settle a lawsuit by investors, according to a source familiar with the matter. Pension funds led by NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund of Illinois accused the bank of misleading investors about the risks associated with mortgage securities offerings. NECA-IBEW, an electrical workers' pension fund, owned some mortgage-backed certificates underwritten by Goldman.

Goldman and its rivals have faced many lawsuits by investors seeking to recoup losses on mortgage securities. The investors typically have claimed they were misled about the risks relating to the underlying home loans, most of which were made before or as the U.S. housing slump took hold in 2007. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs declined to comment and attorneys for the fund did not immediately return calls for comment.

Also on Friday, Goldman Sachs was among a group of banks that received court approval for a $235 million settlement related to mortgage securities reached in February, according to a court filing. Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs and UBS AG agreed to pay $235 million to settle U.S. litigation accusing them of concealing the risks of mortgage securities sold by the former Residential Capital LLC before the global financial crisis. Led by the New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund, the investors accused the banks of misleading them in registration statements and prospectuses about the quality of mortgage loans backing the securities they helped underwrite in 2006 and 2007. The bank is still awaiting potential settlements with government authorities.

On July 16, Goldman disclosed it set aside $1.45 billion for mortgage-related legal costs and regulatory matters. Goldman is among banks targeted by a federal-state working group to go after misconduct in the pooling and sale of mortgage securities in the run-up to the financial crisis. Goldman and Morgan Stanley are next in line for potential settlements, a person familiar with the matter said at the time.

Bloomberg first reported the news about the $270 million settlement on Friday.

[Demeter]

24. Wall Street ends lower as weak oil weighs

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/31/us-markets-stocks-idUSKCN0Q51CT20150731?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Wall Street ended on a sour note on Friday as a drop in energy stocks eclipsed wage data that supported expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve might hold off on an interest rate.

Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) shares dropped 4.58 percent while Chevron (CVX.N) lost 4.89 percent after reporting poor quarterly earnings due to weak oil prices. The drop in those stocks, as well as additional declines in crude prices amid oversupply concerns, contributed to a 2.6 percent decline in the energy index .SPNY, its deepest one-day drop since January.

"It’s all about rotation (between sectors). That's what this market has been about since we've been in such a tight trading range this year," said Dennis Dick, head of markets structure and a proprietary trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.

Initially helping share prices, U.S. labor costs in the second quarter recorded their smallest increase in 33 years, with the Employment Cost Index edging up a less-than-expected 0.2 percent.

"The magnitude of the miss was definitely a bit of a surprise, especially as people were really gearing up for a September hike. This definitely puts a lower probability on that," said Stanley Sun, interest rate strategist at Nomura Securities International in New York.

Earlier in the week, many investors considered positive comments by the Fed about the economy as a signal that a rate rise could come as early as September.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI ended down 0.31 percent at 17,690.46. The S&P 500 .SPX finished 0.22 percent lower at 2,103.92 after opening with a gain. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC edged down 0.01 percent to 5,128.28.

More stocks rose than fell in the S&P and Nasdaq.

For the week, the Dow rose 0.7 percent, the S&P added 1.2 percent and the Nasdaq increased 0.8 percent. For July, gains for the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq were 0.4 percent, 2 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively.

Despite the S&P's negative close on Friday, half of the 10 major S&P 500 sectors were higher, with the utilities index's .SPLRCU 0.98 percent rise leading the advancers...With more than half of the S&P 500 companies having reported their second-quarter results, analysts expect overall earnings to edge up 0.9 percent and revenue to decline 3.3 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

...Some 6.8 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, just above the daily average of 6.7 billion this month, according to BATS Global Markets.

[Demeter]

25. Puerto Rico will fail to make Aug.1 payment, signaling default

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/01/us-usa-puertorico-default-idUSKCN0Q51V720150801?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Puerto Rico will miss a payment on debt due Aug. 1, the governor's chief of staff said on Friday, an event that will be considered a default by investors as the commonwealth lurches towards what could be one of the largest U.S. municipal debt restructurings in history.

The missed payment will mark the first default by the commonwealth and shows the depth of the island's economic and cashflow problems. Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla shocked investors in June when he said the island's debt, totaling $72 billion, was unpayable and required restructuring.

According to a 2014 bond offering statement, Puerto Rico has never defaulted on the payment of principal or interest of debt....

ANOTHER FINE MESS YOU'VE GOTTEN US INTO!

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

34. Puerto Rico Makes One Payment, to Default on Another

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Puerto-Rico-Makes-One-Payment-to-Default-on-Another-20150801-0005.html

The government said it had made a payment of US$169 million on Friday to one of its creditors as activists called for resistance against austerity. Puerto Rico faces a deadline Saturday for a debt payment of US$58 million to the Public Finance Corporation (PFC) bonds. The U.S. commonwealth territory is expected to default on this payment as the government had indicated that the territory's bank did not have enough funds to make it. However, according to the PFC regulations, as the payment's deadline falls on a weekend, the territory would have until August 3. Therefore, if it does not make the payment by then, Puerto Rico would officially default on that debt.

Meanwhile, the Government Development Bank made a US$169 million payment Friday for a debt owed. "The GDB will make the US$169 million payment for the debt service on its bonds today," GDB President Melba Acosta said in a statement released Friday. A payment on that debt was due to be made Saturday Aug. 1.

The Caribbean island’s Chief of Staff Victor Suarez told journalists last month that his country did not have enough money to pay back the US$73 billion it owned to creditors, which amounts to 102 percent of the country's GDP. He said Monday that the Puerto Rican government was looking into the possibility of obtaining some US$400 million through raising gasoline prices. "We are trying to achieve a smaller transaction with reasonable terms of some US$400 to US$500 million," Suarez said, according to Reuters.

In the face of the debt crisis in the country, activists and lawmakers are calling for resistance, saying that the government has failed the people of Puerto Rico as it continues to introduce further austerity measures.

“We should demand a real negotiation of the debts, a suspension of payments, carry out an audit, and place taxes on large U.S. corporations,” Rafael Bernabe, the leader of the newly-formed Working People's Party, told teleSUR in an interview Friday. “The very policy of taxing corporations could result in an annual return into the local economy of US$7-8 billion, which could fundamentally restructure the Puerto Rican economy”

For years, economic turmoil has rocked the island as a result of historical issues, as well as recent financial upsets affecting the United States, especially the 2007-2010 recession and housing crisis.

[Demeter]

26. Revenge of the Ideologues: Killing the Export-Import Bank JOE NOCERA

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/opinion/revenge-of-the-ideologues-killing-the-export-import-bank.html?_r=0

“Idiotic,” sputtered Heidi Heitkamp, the Democratic senator from North Dakota. “Mind-bogglingly idiotic.”

She was talking about something she has been fighting for months: the effort by conservative ideologues to prevent the Export-Import Bank of the United States from being reauthorized. The Ex-Im Bank that supports tens of thousands of good American jobs. The Ex-Im Bank that helps land deals, for both small businesses wanting to expand and giant American exporters, that would otherwise go to foreign companies. The Ex-Im Bank that in its last fiscal year generated enough in fees and interest to turn over $675 million to the Treasury. Why would anyone in their right mind want to put such a useful agency out of business?

In truth, a vast majority of senators — Republicans included — very much want to see the Ex-Im Bank live to lend another day. So do most businesspeople, no matter what their politics. This week, when a reauthorization amendment was attached to the big Senate highway bill, it got 64 votes. Jim McNerney, the chairman of Boeing, noting that the Ex-Im Bank helps keep manufacturing jobs in America, wrote recently in Politico, “I never thought I’d see the day that U.S. companies would, in effect, be penalized by their own government for not setting up shop overseas and, in the case of Boeing, expanding our domestic production and work force by billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.” Heitkamp is not exaggerating: Eliminating the Ex-Im Bank truly is mind-boggling.

You’ll recall that the bank, which had never been controversial until about three years ago, needed to be reauthorized by the end of June. That didn’t happen, as the Republican leadership, bowing to its extremist wing, allowed the date to pass without a reauthorization vote. That meant the bank had to stop underwriting new loans, though it continues to manage its $107 billion loan portfolio. Then this week, even after the overwhelming Senate vote — and knowing full well that the House would approve reauthorization if given the chance — House leaders refused to include it in their ridiculously short-term three-month extension of the highway funding bill. (Which, by the way, is another shortsighted, anti-American-jobs move.) So now supporters have to hope they can get a reauthorization vote in September, a month when the House has only 12 legislative days on the calendar. (The Senate has 15.) And if they don’t succeed? There would be no one left to manage the portfolio, which under its charter only the Ex-Im Bank can handle. Another is that the Ex-Im insurance many banks rely on will expire — and in all likelihood the banks will start calling in those loans.

Boeing, being the country’s largest exporter by dollar volume, has said that if its customers no longer have access to the Ex-Im Bank — export credit agencies are vital in aircraft deals — it might have to move some operations offshore to gain access to other countries’ export credit. Fred Hochberg, the president of the Ex-Im Bank, told me that at a recent meeting at the White House, one small-business man said that competitors were trying to poach his customers, knowing that he no longer had Ex-Im support. Another businessman, who runs a machine parts manufacturer in Erie, Pa., said many of the companies around Erie are General Electric suppliers. “If G.E. does less exporting, the whole supply chain will get less work,” he said. These are not bluffs. This is how the world actually works.

Hochberg had a few other things to say when we spoke. The argument by opponents that “most drives me crazy is that we’re a form of crony capitalism. We’re the opposite of that,” he said. “Companies come to us when they can’t get a deal done any other way. I had about 15 bankers in here yesterday, and they were thunderstruck. One banker said, ‘If I could do deals without you I would. I make more money when you’re not in the deal.’”

“In the six and a half years I’ve been in this job, the world has gotten so much more cutthroat competitive,” Hochberg added. Noting that both China’s and India’s export-credit agencies have said, in effect, they were looking forward to a world in which they didn’t have to compete with the Ex-Im Bank, he said that the effort to put it out of business “seems ludicrous.”

Heitkamp thinks that if the ideologues succeed in finishing off the Ex-Im Bank, it will be only the beginning of such efforts. “What will they do with the Small Business Administration?” she asked. “What about the other tools we provide to small business? I don’t think I’m being alarmist in saying that if they win this debate, what’s next?”

With the Ex-Im Bank, the extreme right has drawn a line in the sand. Given the very real benefits it provides exporters, the time has come for the rest of us to do the same.

[Demeter]

27. Harry Potter is NOT Great Literature

but it is a good story (until the publisher let JKRowling free of editors, it was also decent writing and plot construction). And I really can't deal with anything heavier this weekend.

If you haven't read it, it's not too heavy or silly. And the series matures in style as the characters mature...the 5th book is all adolescent angst, instead of the childlike wonder of the first.

And the legend lives on in fanfiction!

[antigop]

28. A Very Potter Musical

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC76BE906C9D83A3A

[Demeter]

29. Thank you! I hadn't seen that!

Last edited Sun Aug 2, 2015, 12:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Not bad, either.


In fact, it's TOTALLY AWESOME!

[Demeter]

30. In honor of the Blue Moon, first in 3 years

I washed the kitchen floor!

(I've washed it more than once in three years, it just doesn't look that way, once the Kid enters the kitchen).

And I started the oven cleaning cycle...4.5 hours of heat and fumes, but the day is cool enough for once and the window are open.

Taking a breather. Next impossible mission: cleaning the refrigerator.

I'll post more if I survive that.

[MattSh]

32. As seen on Amazon...

Hey, Iran has to dispose of its excess uranium somehow, correct?



Interesting Q&A and Reviews too!

http://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Inc-Uranium-Ore/dp/B000796XXM/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1392135962&sr=8-10&keywords=uranium+ore

[Demeter]

33. Incongruities in the News By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42527.htm

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS DISSECTS THE CURRENT OFFICIAL PROPAGANDA...HERE IS HIS ECONOMIC REPORT. GO SEE THE REST AT LINK

...We have an economic recovery, allegedly, one ongoing since June, 2009. Tell that to the millions of “discouraged workers” who have been unable to find a job, have given up looking for nonexistent jobs, and are not counted as among the unemployed as measured by the fake 5.3% rate of unemployment.

The stock market, not too far below its highs, is used as evidence of recovery. However, the stock market is supported by companies buying back their own shares and by the liquidity that the Federal Reserve has poured into the financial system. Dan Strumpet reported in the Wall Street Journal that a mere six companies account for more than all of the gain in market-capitalization in the S&P 500. How’s that? We have a recovery in which a mere six companies participate—Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Gilead, and Walt Disney Company.

Sounds like a rip-roaring recovery.

In the second quarter of this year the US economy contracted by 1.4%. Second quarter durable goods orders, minus commercial aircraft orders which are placed years ahead and do not reflect the state of the present economy, are in annual decline. Second quarter new home sales fell 7.3%. And Wall Street still hypes hope and recovery...

[Demeter]

36. CISA: The Dirty Deal Between Google and the NSA That No One Is Talking About

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-greer/cisa-the-dirty-deal-betwe_1_b_7883722.html

One of the things that civil liberties activists like to lament about is that the general public seems to care more about Google and Facebook using their personal data to target advertising than the government using it to target drone strikes. The reality is that both types of abuse are dangerous, and they work hand in hand. It's hard to find a more perfect example of this collusion than in a bill that's headed for a vote soon in the U.S. Senate: the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA.

CISA is an out and out surveillance bill masquerading as a cybersecurity bill. It won't stop hackers. Instead, it essentially legalizes all forms of government and corporate spying.

Here's how it works. Companies would be given new authority to monitor their users -- on their own systems as well as those of any other entity -- and then, in order to get immunity from virtually all existing surveillance laws, they would be encouraged to share vaguely defined "cyber threat indicators" with the government. This could be anything from email content, to passwords, IP addresses, or personal information associated with an account. The language of the bill is written to encourage companies to share liberally and include as many personal details as possible. That information could then be used to further exploit a loophole in surveillance laws that gives the government legal authority for their holy grail -- "upstream" collection of domestic data directly from the cables and switches that make up the Internet.

Thanks to Edwards Snowden, we know that the NSA, FBI, and CIA have already been conducting this type of upstream surveillance on suspected hackers. CISA would give the government tons of new domestic cyber threat indicators to use for their upstream collection of information that passes over the Internet. This means they will be gathering not just data on the alleged threat, but also all of the sensitive data that may have been hacked as part of the threat. So if someone hacks all of Gmail, the hacker doesn't just get those emails, so does the U.S. government. The information they gather, including all the hacked data and any incidental information that happens to get swept up in the process, would be added to massive databases on people in the U.S. and all over the world that the FBI, CIA, and NSA are free to query at their leisure. This is how CISA would create a huge expansion of the "backdoor" search capabilities that the government uses to skirt the 4th Amendment and spy on Internet users without warrants and with virtually no oversight.

All of this information can be passed around the government and handed down to local law enforcement to be used in investigations that have nothing to do with cyber crime, without requiring them to ever pull a warrant. So CISA would give law enforcement a ton of new data with which to prosecute you for virtually any crime while simultaneously protecting the corporations that share the data from prosecution for any crimes possibly related to it.

There's little hope for ever challenging this system in court because you'll never know if your private information has been shared under CISA or hoovered up under a related upstream collection. In a particularly stunning display of shadyness, the bill specifically exempts all of this information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act or any state, local, or tribal law. The members of Congress who are pushing hardest for the bill, unsurprisingly, have taken more than twice as much money from the defense industry than those who are opposing it. These politicians claim that CISA is intended to beef up U.S. cybersecurity and stop foreign hackers from ruining everything, but, as their funders in the defense industry know well, it will really just give the government more data and create new opportunities for contractors to sell their data analysis services. The world's cybersecurity experts say that CISA won't stop cyber attacks, but it will create a gaping loophole for law enforcement agencies from the NSA right down to your local police department to access people's private information without a warrant. Systems like this have chilling effects on our willingness to be ourselves and speak openly on the Internet, which threatens our most basic rights.

The Internet makes a lot of good things possible, but it also makes it possible for corporations and governments to exploit us in ways they never could before. The debate over CISA is not about hackers, or China, or cybersecurity -- it's about whether we want to further normalize ubiquitous monitoring, warrantless surveillance, and unfettered manipulation of our vulnerabilities, or if we want to protect the Internet as a promising platform for freedom and self expression.

WOW! IS IT 1984 YET?

[Demeter]

37. Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do – here’s how to opt out

http://bgr.com/2015/07/31/windows-10-upgrade-spying-how-to-opt-out/

Windows 10 is amazing. Windows 10 is fantastic. Windows 10 is glorious. Windows 10 is faster, smoother and more user-friendly than any Windows operating system that has come before it. Windows 10 is everything Windows 8 should have been, addressing nearly all of the major problems users had with Microsoft’s previous-generation platform in one fell swoop.

But there’s something you should know: As you read this article from your newly upgraded PC, Windows 10 is also spying on nearly everything you do.

DON’T MISS: Windows 10: The first 5 things you need to do immediately after you install it

It’s your own fault if you don’t know that Windows 10 is spying on you. That’s what people always say when users fail to read through a company’s terms of service document, right?

Well, here is Microsoft’s 12,000-word service agreement. Some of it is probably in English. We’re pretty sure it says you can’t steal Windows or use Windows to send spam, and also that Microsoft retains the right to take possession of your first-born child if it so chooses. And that’s only one of several documents you’ll have to read through.

Actually, here’s one excerpt from Microsoft’s privacy statement that everyone can understand:

Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to: 1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; 2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone; 3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or 4.protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services – however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer’s private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement.

If that sentence sent shivers down your spine, don’t worry. As invasive as it is, Microsoft does allow Windows 10 users to opt out of all of the features that might be considered invasions of privacy. Of course, users are opted in by default, which is more than a little disconcerting, but let’s focus on the solution....

[Demeter]

38. Windows 10: The first 5 things you need to do immediately after you install it

Kill Wi-Fi sharing

By default, Windows 10 is set up to share your Internet connection over Wi-Fi. This is a nifty feature if you want it, and a dangerous one if you don’t. To be on the safe side, you should probably just disable it right from the get-go.

Open the Settings app from the taskbar or Start Menu, then open Change Wi-Fi settings and click Manage Wi-Fi settings. Now, uncheck all the boxes under “For networks I select, share them with.”

You may also want to slide the toggles to off underneath “Connect to suggested open hotspots” and “Connect to networks shared by my contacts.”
Customize the Start Menu

Ahhhhhhhhhhh! The Start Menu is back!

It’s OK, you can get excited. We won’t judge. Once you get past the simple fact that the Start Menu is there, however, it’s time to begin making the most of it.

We published a big post on Wednesday about customizing the Start Menu, and we highly suggest that you check it out. In it, you’ll learn how to add and remove tiles, how to enable and disable live tiles, how to resize the entire Start Menu and how to change its appearance.

Manage restarts

I switched from Windows to OS X as my primary desktop operating system eight or nine years ago, though I still used both for a while. Now, the only regular interaction I have with Windows (aside from testing it for BGR) is when friends and family call me for help because something is broken.

This happens all the time. As great as Windows 10 is compared to Windows 8, I don’t expect these calls to end anytime soon. And of course, four out of every five frantic calls I get are resolved with the same fix: A restart.

People… when something goes wrong with your computer, restarting is the first thing you should try. In fact, you should be restarting your computer regularly if you don’t shut it down each night. That said, automatic restarts after software updates that are unexpected can be very annoying. So here’s an important setting to tweak:

In the Advanced update section within Settings, select Advanced Windows Update options. Then, in the drop-down menu at the top, choose “Notify to schedule restart.”

This way, your computer will still restart regularly whenever updates are installed, but you’ll get a warning first.

Meet the Action Center

Microsoft’s spin on Apple’s Notification Center is called the Action Center. It might not be the most original feature in the world, but it’s quite useful and we listed it among the five best fixes for annoying problems in Windows 8. Live tiles are nifty, but having one location for all of your notifications is a welcome change.

Seriously, get to know the new Action Center.

Don’t let notifications own you

As great as the new Action Center is, however, think of it like an iPhone. If you give every app carte blanche access to notifications, you’ll lose your mind. Instead, you want to analyze things on a per-app basis and choose which apps can pop up notifications and which should stay quiet.

In Windows 10, you can adjust notifications settings by clicking the notifications icon in the system tray. The click All settings, followed by System and then Notifications & actions. Here, you’ll be able to pick and choose which apps can display notifications and which ones cannot. You’ll also be able to tweak a few additional settings pertaining to notifications.

http://bgr.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-upgrade-installation-settings/

[Demeter]

39. Mercenary Drone Operators Kill Outside US Chain of Command

http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150801/1025289723.html

Experts say that the US armed forces are using a growing number of mercenaries or contractors to operate lethal drone attacks as regular troops are increasingly unwilling to do so...

“The critical decisions of identifying ‘the enemy’ are being made by civilians who are under no official chain of command,” he added.

All drone killing remains clearly in violation of international law and US domestic law against assassination, Mottern pointed out.

Yet, “here we have the US paying civilians to do illegal killing without even the legal accountability applied to the US military,” he said. “The mercenaries are accountable only to their employers who most assuredly are encouraging high kill totals to ensure continued contracts. “

This lack of accountability and of any clear chain of command “obviously means dramatically increased jeopardy for the people under surveillance and drone attack; that is a dramatic increase in the number of people being killed and terrorized,” Mottern explained...

NOT TO MENTION:

Mottern noted the need to hire mercenaries indicates that the US military is not able, for whatever reason, to find enough people within its ranks to do such work.

“This is… because it is involving an increasing amount of killing, and, I suspect, an increasing amount of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).”

[Demeter]

40. John Perkins : The Economic Hitmen Video

[DemReadingDU]

50. Good one, I was going to post this

edit to add 24-min video

Confessions of an economic hitman

[Demeter]

41. GREECE, THE SEQUEL

The Greek Coup: Liquidity as a Weapon of Coercion By Ellen Brown

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42514.htm

“My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains, or his signature, would be on the contract.” — The Godfather (1972)

In the modern global banking system, all banks need a credit line with the central bank in order to be part of the payments system. Choking off that credit line was a form of blackmail the Greek government couldn’t refuse...Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is now being charged with treason for exploring the possibility of an alternative payment system in the event of a Greek exit from the euro. The irony of it all was underscored by Raúl Ilargi Meijer, who opined in a July 27th blog:

The fact that these things were taken into consideration doesn’t mean Syriza was planning a coup . . . . If you want a coup, look instead at the Troika having wrestled control over Greek domestic finances. That’s a coup if you ever saw one.

Let’s have an independent commission look into how on earth it is possible that a cabal of unelected movers and shakers gets full control over the entire financial structure of a democratically elected eurozone member government. By all means, let’s see the legal arguments for this.

So how was that coup pulled off? The answer seems to be through extortion. The European Central Bank threatened to turn off the liquidity that all banks – even solvent ones – need to maintain their day-to-day accounting balances. That threat was made good in the run-up to the Greek referendum, when the ECB did turn off the liquidity tap and Greek banks had to close their doors. Businesses were left without supplies and pensioners without food. How was that apparently criminal act justified? Here is the rather tortured reasoning of ECB President Mario Draghi at a press conference on July 16:

There is an article in the Maastricht Treaty that says that basically the ECB has the responsibility to promote the smooth functioning of the payment system. But this has to do with . . . the distribution of notes, coins. So not with the provision of liquidity, which actually is regulated by a different provision, in Article 18.1 in the ECB Statute: “In order to achieve the objectives of the ESCB (European System of Central Banks), the ECB and the national central banks may conduct credit operations with credit institutions and other market participants, with lending based on adequate collateral.” This is the Treaty provision. But our operations were not monetary policy operations, but ELA (Emergency Liquidity Assistance) operations, and so they are regulated by a separate agreement, which makes explicit reference to the necessity to have sufficient collateral. So, all in all, liquidity provision has never been unconditional and unlimited.

In a July 23rd post on Naked Capitalism, Nathan Tankus calls this “a truly shocking statement.” Why? Because all banks rely on their central banks to settle payments with other banks. “If the smooth functioning of the payments system is defined as the ability of depository institutions to clear payments,” says Tankus, “the central bank must ensure that settlement balances are available at some price.”

How the Payments System Works

The role of the central bank in the payments system is explained by the Bank for International Settlements like this:

One of the principal functions of central banks is to be the guardian of public confidence in money, and this confidence depends crucially on the ability of economic agents to transmit money and financial instruments smoothly and securely through payment and settlement systems. . . . Central banks provide a safe settlement asset and in most cases they operate systems which allow for the transfer of that settlement asset.

Internationally before 1971, this “settlement asset” was gold. Later, it became electronic “settlement balances” or “reserves” maintained at the central bank. Today, when money travels by check from Bank A to Bank B, the central bank settles the transfer simply by adjusting the banks’ respective reserve balances, subtracting from one and adding to the other...Checks continue to fly back and forth all day. If a bank’s reserve account comes up short at the end of the day, the central bank treats it as an automatic overdraft in the bank’s reserve account, effectively lending the bank the money in the form of electronic “liquidity” until the overdraft can be cleared. The bank can cure the deficit by attracting new deposits or by borrowing from another bank with excess reserves; and if the whole system is short of reserves, the central bank creates more to maintain the liquidity of the system. The most dramatic exercise of this liquidity function was seen after the banking crisis of 2008, when credit was frozen and banks had largely stopped lending to each other. The US Federal Reserve then stepped in and advanced over $16 trillion to financial institutions through the TAF (Term Asset Facility), the TALF (Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility), and similar facilities, at near-zero interest. Toxic unmarketable assets were converted into “good collateral” so the banks could remain solvent and keep their doors open.

Liquidity as a Tool of Coercion

That is how the Fed sees its role, but the ECB evidently has other ideas about this liquidity tool. Whether a country’s banks are allowed to “access monetary policy operations” is seen by the ECB not as mandatory but as discretionary with the central bank. And as a condition of that access, if a country’s bonds are “below investment grade,” the country must be under an IMF program — meaning it must subject itself to forced austerity measures. According to ECB Vice President Constâncio at the same press conference:

When a country has a rating which is below the investment grade which is the minimum, then to access monetary policy operations, it has to have a waiver. And the waiver is granted if there are two conditions. The first condition is that the country must be under a programme with the EU and IMF; and second, we have to assess that there is credible compliance with such a programme.

Liquidity is provided only on “adequate collateral” — usually government bonds. But whether the bonds are “adequate” is not determined by their market price. Rather, political concessions are demanded. The government must sell off public assets, slash public services, lay off public workers, and subject its fiscal policies to oversight by unelected bureaucrats who can dictate every line item in the national budget.

Tankus observes:

Europe now has a system where liquidity and insolvency problems can occur and can be deliberately generated (at least in part) by the central bank. Then the Troika can force that country into an “IMF program” if it wants to continue having a functioning banking system. Alternatively, the central bank can choose to simply “suspend convertibility” to the unit of account (i.e. cut off the supply of Euros) and force the write down of deposits (haircuts and bail-ins) until the banks are solvent again.

Pushed to the Cliff by the Financial Mafia

Were liquidity and insolvency problems intentionally generated in Greece’s case, as Tankus suggests? Let’s review...First there was the derivatives scheme sold to Greece by Goldman Sachs in 2001, which nearly doubled the nation’s debt by 2005. Then there was the bank-induced credit crisis of 2008, when the ECB coerced Greece to bail out its insolvent private banks, throwing the country itself into bankruptcy. This was followed in late 2009 by the intentional overstatement of Greece’s debt by a Eurostat agent who was later tried criminally for it, triggering the first bailout and accompanying austerity measures.

The Greek prime minister was later replaced with an unelected technocrat, former governor of the Bank of Greece and later vice president of the ECB, who refused a debt restructuring and instead oversaw a second massive bailout and further austerity measures. An estimated 90% of the bailout money went right back into the coffers of the banks.

In December 2014, Goldman Sachs warned the Greek Parliament that central bank liquidity could be cut off if the Syriza Party were elected. When it was elected in January, the ECB made good on the threat, cutting bank liquidity to a trickle.

When Prime Minister Tsipras called a public referendum in July at which the voters rejected the brutal austerity being imposed on them, the ECB shuttered the banks.

The Greek government was thus broken Mafia-style at the knees, until it was forced to abandon its national sovereignty and watch its public treasures sold off piece by piece. Suspicious minds might infer that this was a calculated plot designed from the beginning to throw Greece’s prized assets onto the auction block, a hostile takeover and asset stripping for the benefit of those well-heeled entities in a position to purchase them, including the very banks, hedge funds and speculators instrumental in driving up Greek debt and destroying the economy.

No Sovereignty Without Control Over Currency and Credit

In the taped conference call for which Yanis Varoufakis is currently facing treason charges, he exposed the trap that eurozone countries are now in. It seems there is virtually no legal way to break free of the euro and the domination of the troika. The government has no access to the critical data files of its own banks, which are controlled by the ECB. Varoufakis said this should alarm every EU government. As Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King warned in 1935:

Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation.

For a nation to regain control of its currency and credit, it needs a central bank with a mandate to serve the interests of the nation. Banking should be a public utility, serving the economy and the people.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

Treason Charges: What Lurks Behind the Bizarre Allegations

By Yanis Varoufakis

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42516.htm

The bizarre attempt to have me indicted on… treason charges, allegedly for conspiring to push Greece out of the Eurozone, reflects something much broader.

It reflects a determined effort to de-legitimise our five-month long (25th January to 5th July 2015) negotiation with a troika incensed that we had the audacity to dispute the wisdom and efficacy of its failed program for Greece.

The aim of my self-styled persecutors is to characterise our defiant negotiating stance as an aberration, an error or, even better from the perspective of Greece’s troika-friendly oligarchic establishment, as a ‘crime’ against Greece’s national interest.

My dastardly ‘crime’ was that, expressing the collective will of our government, I personified the sins of:

Facing down the Eurogroup’s leaders as an equal that has the right to say ‘NO’ and to present powerful analytical reasons for rebuffing the catastrophic illogicality of huge loans to an insolvent state in condirion of self-defeating austerity

Demonstrating that one can be a committed Europeanist, strive to keep one’s nation in the Eurozone, and, at the very same time, reject Eurogroup policies which damage Europe, deconstruct the euro and, crucially, trap one’s country in austerity-driven debt-bondage

Planning for contingencies that leading Eurogroup colleagues, and high ranking troika officials, were threatening me with in face-to-face discussions

Unveiling how previous Greek governments turned crucial government departments, such as the General Secretariat of Public Revenues and the Hellenic Statistical Office, into departments effectively controlled by the troika and reliably pressed into the service of undermining the elected government.

It is amply clear that the Greek government has a duty to recover national and democratic sovereignty over all departments of state, and in particular those of the Finance Ministry. If it does not, it will continue to forfeit the instruments of policy making that voters expect it to utilise in pursuit of the mandate they bestowed upon it.

In my ministerial endeavours, my team and I devised innovative methods for developing the Finance Ministry’s tools to deal efficiently with the troika-induced liquidity crunch while recouping executive powers previously usurped by the troika with the consent of previous governments. Instead of indicting, and persecuting, those who, to this day, function within the public sector as the troika’s minions and lieutenants (while receiving their substantial salaries from the long-suffering Greek taxpayers), politicians and parties whom the electorate condemned for their efforts to turn Greece into a protectorate are now persecuting me, aided and abetted by the oligarchs’ media. I wear their accusations as badges of honour.

The proud and honest negotiation that the SYRIZA government conducted from the first day we were elected has already changed Europe’s public debates for the better. The debate about the democratic deficit afflicting the Eurozone is now unstoppable. Alas, the troika’s domestic cheerleaders do not seem able to bear this historic success. Their efforts to criminalise it will crash on the same shoals that wrecked their blatant propaganda campaign against the ‘No’ vote in the 5th July referendum: the great majority of the fearless Greek people.

Yanis Varoufakis Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, served as Minister of Finance of Greece in 2015

[Demeter]

45. Will the IMF throw the spanner in the works? – as I feared and Dr Schäuble hoped? YANIS V AGAIN!

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/30/will-the-imf-throw-the-spanner-in-the-works-as-i-feared-and-dr-schauble-hoped/#more-9633

IMF cannot join Greek rescue, board told

… reports Peter Spiegel from Brussels in today’s Financial Times. He adds:“Some Greek officials suspect the IMF and Wolfgang Schäuble, the hardline German finance minister, are determined to scupper a Greek rescue despite this month’s agreement to move forward with a third bailout.

In a private teleconference made public this week, Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister, said he feared the Greek government would pass new rounds of economic reforms only for the IMF to pull the plug on the programme later this year.

“According to its own rules, the IMF cannot participate in any new bailout. I mean, they’ve already violated their rules twice to do so, but I don’t think they will do it a third time,” Mr Varoufakis said. “Dr Schäuble and the IMF have a common interest: they don’t want this deal to go ahead.”

The key issue, of course, is not so much whether the IMF will be part of the deal – a typical fudge could, for instance, be concocted with the IMF providing ‘technical assistance’ to an ESM-only program.

The issue is whether the promised debt relief which, astonishingly will be discussed only after the new loan agreement is signed and sealed, will prove adequate – assuming it is granted at all. Or whether, as I very much fear, the debt relief will be too little while the austerity involved proves catastrophically large.

[Demeter]

42. By the way, Next Weekend Is Devoted to the Kurds

(One less thing to worry about....check!)

Who are these people and why are they having so much trouble? We'll find out what we can.

[Demeter]

43. Why Russia Shut Down NED Fronts By Robert Parry

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42515.htm

The neocon-flagship Washington Post fired a propaganda broadside at President Putin for shutting down the Russian activities of the National Endowment for Democracy, but left out key facts like NED’s U.S. government funding, its quasi-CIA role, and its plans for regime change in Moscow.... The Washington Post’s descent into the depths of neoconservative propaganda – willfully misleading its readers on matters of grave importance – apparently knows no bounds as was demonstrated with two deceptive articles regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin and why his government is cracking down on “foreign agents.”

If you read the Post’s editorial on Wednesday and a companion op-ed by National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, you would have been led to believe that Putin is delusional, paranoid and “power mad” in his concern that outside money funneled into non-governmental organizations represents a threat to Russian sovereignty. The Post and Gershman were especially outraged that the Russians have enacted laws requiring NGOs financed from abroad and seeking to influence Russian policies to register as “foreign agents” – and that one of the first funding operations to fall prey to these tightened rules was Gershman’s NED. The Post’s editors wrote that Putin’s “latest move, announced Tuesday, is to declare the NED an ‘undesirable’ organization under the terms of a law that Mr. Putin signed in May. The law bans groups from abroad who are deemed a ‘threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation, its defense capabilities and its national security.’

“The charge against the NED is patently ridiculous. The NED’s grantees in Russia last year ran the gamut of civil society. They advocated transparency in public affairs, fought corruption and promoted human rights, freedom of information and freedom of association, among other things. All these activities make for a healthy democracy but are seen as threatening from the Kremlin’s ramparts. …

“The new law on ‘undesirables’ comes in addition to one signed in 2012 that gave authorities the power to declare organizations ‘foreign agents’ if they engaged in any kind of politics and receive money from abroad. The designation, from the Stalin era, implies espionage.”

But there are several salient facts that the Post’s editors surely know but don’t want you to know. The first is that NED is a U.S. government-funded organization created in 1983 to do what the Central Intelligence Agency previously had done in financing organizations inside target countries to advance U.S. policy interests and, if needed, help in “regime change.” The secret hand behind NED’s creation was CIA Director William J. Casey who worked with senior CIA covert operation specialist Walter Raymond Jr. to establish NED in 1983. Casey – from the CIA – and Raymond – from his assignment inside President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council – focused on creating a funding mechanism to support groups inside foreign countries that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. To partially replace that CIA role, the idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this money. But Casey recognized the need to hide the strings being pulled by the CIA. “Obviously we here at CIA should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III – as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.”

NED Is Born

The National Endowment for Democracy took shape in late 1983 as Congress decided to also set aside pots of money — within NED — for the Republican and Democratic parties and for organized labor, creating enough bipartisan largesse that passage was assured. But some in Congress thought it was important to wall the NED off from any association with the CIA, so a provision was included to bar the participation of any current or former CIA official, according to one congressional aide who helped write the legislation. This aide told me that one night late in the 1983 session, as the bill was about to go to the House floor, the CIA’s congressional liaison came pounding at the door to the office of Rep. Dante Fascell, a senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a chief sponsor of the bill. The frantic CIA official conveyed a single message from CIA Director Casey: the language barring the participation of CIA personnel must be struck from the bill, the aide recalled, noting that Fascell consented, not fully recognizing the significance of the demand.

The aide said Fascell also consented to the Reagan administration’s choice of Carl Gershman to head the National Endowment for Democracy, again not recognizing how this decision would affect the future of the new entity and American foreign policy. Gershman, who had followed the classic neoconservative path from youthful socialism to fierce anticommunism, became NED’s first (and, to this day, only) president. Though NED is technically independent of U.S. foreign policy, Gershman in the early years coordinated decisions on grants with Raymond at the NSC. For instance, on Jan. 2, 1985, Raymond wrote to two NSC Asian experts that “Carl Gershman has called concerning a possible grant to the Chinese Alliance for Democracy (CAD). I am concerned about the political dimension to this request. We should not find ourselves in a position where we have to respond to pressure, but this request poses a real problem to Carl.” Currently, Gershman’s NED dispenses more than $100 million a year in U.S. government funds to various NGOs, media outlets and activists around the world. The NED also has found itself in the middle of political destabilization campaigns against governments that have gotten on the wrong side of U.S. foreign policy. For instance, prior to the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing an anti-Russian regime in Kiev, NED was funding scores of projects.

A second point left out of the Post’s editorial was the fact that Gershman took a personal hand in the Ukraine crisis and recognized it as an interim step toward regime change in Moscow. On Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman published an op-ed in the Washington Post that called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and explained how pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Putin.

“Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” In other words, NED is a U.S. government-financed entity that has set its sights on ousting Russia’s current government.

A third point that the Post ignored is that the Russian law requiring outside-funded political organizations to register as “foreign agents” was modeled on a U.S. law, the Foreign Agent Registration Act. In other words, the U.S. government also requires individuals and entities working for foreign interests and seeking to influence U.S. policies to disclose those relationships with the U.S. Justice Department or face prison. If the Post’s editors had included any or all of these three relevant factors, you would have come away with a more balanced understanding of why Russia is acting as it is. You might still object but at least you would be aware of the full story. By concealing all three points, the Post’s editors were tricking you and other readers into accepting a propagandistic viewpoint – that the Russian actions were crazy and that Putin was, according to the Post’s headline, “power mad.”

MORE

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

[Demeter]

46. US imposes further sanctions on Russia over Crimea, east Ukraine conflict WARFARE BY $$$$

http://www.rt.com/business/311201-us-expands-russia-sanctions/

The United States has imposed further sanctions against Russia over the events in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Eleven more people and 15 more companies have been put on the sanctions list.

Among the newly included firms are affiliate companies of Russian oil giant Rosneft, as well as several organizations linked to one of the country’s major banks - Vnesheconombank.

Sanctions were also imposed against five Crimean commercial ports located in the towns of Sevastopol, Feodoisa, Kerch, Evpatoria and Yalta, as well as the Kerch ferry service.

The US embassy to Russia said that Washington regards the new sanctions not as an escalation of tensions between the countries but rather as a "routine step" in strengthening current US policy....The embassy said the restrictions are not linked to Russia vetoing the resolution on an MH17 tribunal.

MORE

Moscow vows to retaliate against latest US sanctions

http://www.rt.com/news/311275-russia-slams-us-sanctions/

Russian Foreign Ministry has slammed fresh US sanctions, saying that Washington wants to aggravate tensions with Moscow and added that the move “would not be left without our reaction."

"Having imposed new sanctions against Russian citizens and companies, the US has once again demonstrated that it has opted for aggravating confrontation," the ministry said in a statement Friday.

“Continuing to cite the situation in Ukraine, Washington continues to expand the anti-Russia sanction campaign instead of pushing Kiev towards the implementation of Minsk agreements."

Moscow stressed that such “provocations” do not just harm Russia-US relations but also hamper cooperation on resolving other global issues.

“Of course, such a move would not be left without our reaction," the statement said....

[MattSh]

52. Sanctions Have Failed. 'Buy Russian' Is Working

By Gilbert Doctorow

It is now more than a year that Russia imposed its food embargo on the EU and other states which had applied sanctions to it over its absorption of Crimea and intervention in southeastern Ukraine. The results of the change-over in overseas suppliers and rising import substitution through the efforts of domestic producers have now become fairly clear.

In this brief report based on visits to retail outlets ranging from convenience stores and market stalls to hypermarkets and from the St Petersburg city center to hamlets 80 km away in the hinterland, I will try to make some sense of what has occurred, how Russians’ shopping basket has changed so far and where the trend lines are leading. Put another way, I will start with a number of small and specific observations and end with some generalizations and forecasts of what broad processes are underway and how they can affect the global food trade.

The provenance of food in Russia’s retail chain is fairly easy to determine. Many sellers across the retail distribution universe identify the foreign country or domestic region responsible for any given product. And at the popular level of municipal markets, the vendors go a step further, acting as hawkers for certain producing areas that are in the public eye. Today this means in particular Crimean products like wines, strawberries, tomatoes and the like. Then there are the especially profitable early fruits and vegetables (primeurs) coming from the Russian South, meaning from Rostov-on-Don down into the enormously fertile Krasnodar region. A very unsentimental lot, the market stall vendors are pitching to the self-reliant, patriotic mood that is very much in the air across Russian society today.

In this regard, it was particularly instructive to spend some time at one of the most prestigious municipal markets in downtown St Petersburg, the Maltsevsky Rynok. Fish mongers there were both well informed and talkative on my several visits. Their assortment has changed dramatically since the introduction of the embargo. Greek farmed dorade and sea bass are gone. Russian sourced fish has stepped up its presence. Europe’s largest fresh water lake, Ladoga, located just 40 km from the Northern Capital, is now a big factor in the wild fish varieties on offer, meaning the whitefish (sig) that otherwise is a favored lake fish in neighboring Finland and large lake trout that approach the size of a salmon. Farmed trout from the republic of Karelia that abuts the Leningrad oblast on Ladoga’s northern and eastern coasts are also featured.

Complete story at - http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/sanctions-have-failed-buy-russian-working/ri9050

[Demeter]

53. In other words, the continental Russia is become the continental US

and the US has become a wholly-enslaved colony of the Corporate Global Empire....

It's gonna take a revolution....

So you say you don't want a revolution?

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/07/so-you-say-you-dont-want-revolution.html#more

Over the past few months we have been forced to bear witness to a humiliating farce unfolding in Europe. Greece, which was first accepted into the European Monetary Union under false pretenses, then saddled with excessive levels of debt, then crippled through the imposition of austerity, finally did something: the Greeks elected a government that promised to shake things up. The Syriza party platform had the following planks, which were quite revolutionary in spirit.

Put an end to austerity and put the Greek economy on a path toward recovery
Raise the income tax to 75% for all incomes over 500,000 euros, adopt a tax on financial transactions and a special tax on luxury goods.
Drastically cut military expenditures, close all foreign military bases on Greek soil and withdraw from NATO. End military cooperation with Israel and support the creation of a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders.
Nationalize the banks.
Enact constitutional reforms to guarantee the right to education, health care and the environment.
Hold referendums on treaties and other accords with the European Union.

Of these, only the last bullet point was acted on: there was a lot made of the referendum which returned a resounding “No!” to EU demands for more austerity and the dismantling and selling off of Greek public assets. But a lot less was made of the fact that the results of this referendum were then ignored.

But the trouble started before then. After being elected, Syriza representatives went to Brussels to negotiate. The negotiations generally went like this: Syriza would make an offer; the EU officials would reject it, and advance their own demands for more austerity; Syriza would make another offer, and the EU officials would reject it too and advance their own demands for even more austerity than in the last round; and so on, all the way until Greek capitulation. All the EU officials had to do to force the Greeks to capitulate was to stop the flow of Euros to Greek banks. Some revolutionaries, these! More like a toy poodle trying to negotiate for a little more kibble to be poured into its dish, if it pleases the master to do so. Stathis Kouvelakis (a Syriza member) summed up the Greek government's stance: “Here’s our program, but if we find that its implementation is incompatible with keeping the euro, then we’ll forget about it.”

It is not as if revolutions don't happen any more. Just one country over from Greece there is a rather successful revolution unfolding as we speak: what used to be Northern Iraq and Syria is controlled by the revolutionary regime variously known as ISIS/ISIL/Daash/Islamic Caliphate. We can tell that it is a real revolution because of its use of terror. All revolutionaries deserving of the name use terror—and what they generally say is that their terror is in response to the terror of the pre-existing order they seek to overthrow, or the terror of their counterrevolutionary enemies. And by terror I mean mass murder, expropriation, exile and the taking of hostages.

Just so that you understand me correctly, let me stress at the outset that I am not a revolutionary. I am an observer and a commentator on all sorts of things, including revolutions, but I choose not to participate. Remaining an observer and a commentator presupposes staying alive, and my personal longevity program calls for not being anywhere near any revolutions—because, as I just mentioned, revolutions involve mass murder.

...The American revolution wasn't a revolution at all because the slave-owning, genocidal sponsors of international piracy remained in power under the new administration. Nor does the February 2014 putsch in the Ukraine qualify as a revolution; that was an externally imposed violent overthrow of the legitimate government and the installation of a US-managed puppet regime, but, as in the American Colonies, the same gang of thieves—the Ukrainian oligarchs—continue to rob the country blind just as before. But if the Nazi thugs from the “Right Sector” take over and kill the oligarchs, the government officials in Kiev and their US State Dept./CIA/NATO minders, and then proceed with a campaign of “brown terror” throughout the country, then I will start calling it a revolution.

* * *

The fact of mass murder does not automatically a revolution make: you have to make note of who is getting killed. So, if the dead consist of lots of volunteers, recruits, mercenaries, plus lots of nondescript civilians, that does not a revolution make. But if the dead include a good number of oligarchs, CEOs of major corporations, bankers, senators, congressmen, public officials, judges, corporate lawyers, high-ranking military officers, then, yes, that's starting to look like a proper revolution.

Other than big huge pools of blood littered with the corpses of high-ranking representatives of the ancien régime, a revolution also requires an ideology—to corrupt and pervert. In general, the ideology you have is the ideology you make revolution with. It stands to reason that if you don't have an ideology, it's not really a revolution. For instance, the American Colonists had no ideology—just some demands. They didn't want to pay taxes to the British crown; they didn't want to maintain British troops; they didn't want limits on the slave trade; and they didn't want restrictions on profiting from piracy on the high seas. That's not an ideology; that's just simple old greed. With the Ukrainian “revolutionaries,” their “ideology” pretty much comes down to the statements “Europe is wonderful” and “Russians suck.” That's not an ideology either; the former is wishful thinking; the latter is simple bigotry.

Taking the example of ISIS/ISIL/Daash/Islamic Caliphate, they are Islamists, and so the ideology they corrupt and pervert is Islam, with its Sharia law. How? Islamist scholars have been most helpful by compiling this top-ten list:

1. It is obligatory to consider Yazidis as “People of the Scripture.”
2. It is forbidden in Islam to deny women their rights.
3. It is forbidden in Islam to force people to convert.
4. It is forbidden in Islam to disfigure the dead.
5. It is forbidden in Islam to destroy the graves and shrines of Prophets and Companions.
6. It is forbidden in Islam to harm or mistreat Christians or any “People of the Scripture.”
7. Jihad in Islam is a purely defensive struggle. It is not permissible without the right cause, the right purpose, and the right rules of conduct.
8. It is forbidden in Islam to kill emissaries, ambassadors, and diplomats — hence it is forbidden to kill journalists and aid workers.
9. Loyalty to one’s nation is permissible in Islam.
10. It is forbidden in Islam to declare a Caliphate without consensus from all Muslims.

But, as Lenin famously put it, “If You Want to Make an Omelet, You Must Be Willing to Break a Few Eggs.” And if you want to make a revolution, then you must be willing to pervert your ideology. Those Islamist scholars who eagerly exclaim “That's not Islam! Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance!” are missing the point: the ideology of ISIS/ISIL/Daash/Islamic Caliphate is still Islam—revolutionary Islam.


...Let us pause for a second to consider why revolutionary terror is necessary. A revolution is a drastic change in the direction of society. Left alone, society tends to worsen its worst tendencies over time: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the police state becomes more oppressive, the justice system becomes more riddled with injustice, the military-industrial complex produces ever less effective military hardware for ever more money, and so on. This is a matter of social inertia: the tendency of objects to travel in a straight line in absence of a force acting at an angle to its direction of motion. The formula for inertia is

p=mv

where p is inertia, m is mass and v is velocity.

To make a radical course change, revolutionaries have to apply force, counteracting the social inertia. To make it so that it is within their limited means to do this, they can do two things: reduce v, or reduce m. Reducing v is a bad idea: the revolution must not lose its own momentum. But reducing m is, in fact, a good idea. Now, it turns out that, with regard to social momentum, most of the mass that gives rise to it resides in the heads of certain classes of people: government officials, judges and lawyers, police officers, military officers, rich people, certain types of professionals and so on.

The rest of the population is much less of a problem. Suppose some revolutionaries show up and tell them that

they don't have to worry about paying taxes (because we are confiscating the property of the rich),
medicine and education are now free,
those with mortgages can stop making payments; they automatically own their real estate free and clear
renters now automatically own their place of residence,
employees are automatically majority stockholders in their businesses,
they should fill out an application if they want a free (newly liberated) parcel of land to farm,
there is a general amnesty and their loved ones who have been locked up are coming home,
ration cards are being issued to make sure that nobody ever goes hungry again,
the homeless are going to be moving in with those whose residences are deemed unduly spacious,
they are now their own police and are in charge of patrolling their neighborhoods with the revolutionary guards available as back-up, and
if any non-revolutionary authorities, be they the former police or the former landlords, come around and bother any of them, then these traitors and impostors shall face swift, on-the-spot revolutionary justice.

Most regular people would think that this is a pretty good deal. However, government officials, the police, military officers, judges, prosecutors, rich people whose property is to be confiscated, corporate officers and shareholders, those living on fat corporate or government pensions, etc., would no doubt think otherwise. The revolutionary solution is to take them as hostages, exile them, and, to make an example of the most recalcitrant and obstructive, kill them. This dramatically reduces m, allowing the revolutionaries to effect drastic course changes even as v increases. I compiled this list because it would be such an easy sell—piece of cake, a slam-dunk, a no-brainer. But I lack the uncontrollable desire to smash eggs and the insatiable appetite for omelets. As I mentioned, I am no revolutionary—just an observer....

Given that the price is so high, perhaps it would be better after all if we just sat quietly, allowed the rich get richer as the poor get poorer, watched listlessly as the environment got completely destroyed by capitalist industrialists in blind pursuit of profit, and eventually curled up, kissed our sweet asses good-bye and died? Good luck selling that idea to young radicalized hotheads who have nothing to lose—except maybe you, if you happen to stand in their way as they change the world! No, revolution is here to stay, and one of its main weapons is terror. No matter how well we remember, the annihilation of counterrevolutionary social elements is bound to recur.

* * *

Getting back to Greece and Syriza: what if Syriza were not just a particularly fluffy breed of miniature Europoodle but actual honest-to-goodness revolutionaries, ready to do whatever it takes? How would they act differently? And what would be the result?

Well, one thing that comes to mind immediately is that they wouldn't try to stay in the Eurozone—they would seek to destroy it. The solution is simple: no Eurozone—no Euro-debt—no problem. There is a general principle involved: never accept responsibility for that which you cannot control. Speaking from experience, suppose you invite a plumber to fix your toilet, and the plumber finds that the toilet has been Mickey-moused in multiple ways by an incompetent amateur. In this situation, the professional thing for the plumber to do is to completely obliterate that toilet. Now the solution becomes simple: install a new toilet.

Here's a very simple one-two punch which Greece could have delivered instead of futile attempts at negotiation:

1. Immediately announce an open-ended moratorium on all debt repayment, taking the position that Greece has no legitimate creditors within the Eurozone—it's all financial fraud at the highest levels. After a few months, the fake bail-out financial entities that magically convert garbage Eurozone debt into AAA-rated securities (because they are guaranteed by Eurozone governments) are forced to write off Greek debt. In turn, Eurozone governments, being pretty much broke, balk at refinancing them out of their national budgets, showing to the world that their guarantees aren't worth the paper they are written on. There follows a bond implosion. Shortly thereafter, the Euro goes extinct, and along with it all Eurozone debt.

2. Start printing Euros without authorization from the European Central bank. When accused of forgery, make the forgery harder to detect by changing the letter at the front of the serial number from Y (for Greece) to X (for Germany). Flood Greece and the rest of the Eurozone with notionally counterfeit (but technically perfect) Euro notes. As the Euro plummets in value, institute food rationing and issue ration cards. Eventually convert from the now devalued and debased Euro to a newly reintroduced Drachma and reestablish trade links with the now “liberated” former Eurozone countries using trade deals based on barter and local currency swaps with gold reserves used to correct any minor imbalances.

Could this have been done without any “red terror”? I doubt it. Greece is very much oligarch-ridden; even the celebrated former Syriza FM Yanis Varoufakis is the son an industrial magnate. The Greek oligarchs and the rich would have had to be rounded up and held as hostages. Numerous people in the government and in the military have a split allegiance—they work for Europe, not for Greece. They would have had to be sacked immediately and held incommunicado, under house arrest at a minimum. No doubt foreign special services would have run rampant, looking for ways to undermine the revolutionary government. This would have called for drastic preemptive measures to physically eliminate foreign spies and agents before they could have had a chance to act. And so on. This wouldn't have been a job for fluffy mini-poodles. As Stalin famously put it, “Cadres are the key to everything.” You can't make a revolution without revolutionaries.

But is this a job for anyone? Anyone at all? I leave this question as an exercise for the reader.

[Demeter]

44. Trump Says He Would 'Get Along Very Well' With Putin

I DOUBT IT

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-says-he-would-get-along-very-well-putin-n401051

"I think I would get along very well with Vladimir Putin. I just think so. People say, 'What do you mean?' I think I would get along well with him," Trump told reporters in Glasgow, Scotland, where he is attending the women's British Open being played at a golf course he owns.

"He hates Obama, Obama hates him. We have unbelievably bad relationships. Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. She was the worst secretary of state in the history of our country. The world blew apart during her reign. Now she wants to be president," Trump added.

[Demeter]

48. On That Note Of Irrelevant Insanity, I rest from my Labors

The remaining posts will have to go to Monday's SMW. Have a good week, everyone!

[bread_and_roses]

49. Now this would be magical ... The end of capitalism has begun

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun?CMP=share_btn_tw

I think the author is far too optimistic ... for one thing, he never seems to consider natural resource scarcity or the ecological disaster we've created. Also he refers to a "new kind of human being" - there are no new kinds of human being.

Still, some interesting ideas, and what is to some degree what is happening on a very micro scale here and there.

The end of capitalism has begun

Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism.

As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.

Postcapitalism is possible because of three major changes information technology has brought about in the past 25 years. First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. The coming wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.

Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.

Third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue.

Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swaths of economic life are beginning to move to a different rhythm. Parallel currencies, time banks, cooperatives and self-managed spaces have proliferated, barely noticed by the economics profession, and often as a direct result of the shattering of the old structures in the post-2008 crisis.

You only find this new economy if you look hard for it. In Greece, when a grassroots NGO mapped the country’s food co-ops, alternative producers, parallel currencies and local exchange systems they found more than 70 substantive projects and hundreds of smaller initiatives ranging from squats to carpools to free kindergartens. To mainstream economics such things seem barely to qualify as economic activity – but that’s the point. They exist because they trade, however haltingly and inefficiently, in the currency of postcapitalism: free time, networked activity and free stuff. It seems a meagre and unofficial and even dangerous thing from which to craft an entire alternative to a global system, but so did money and credit in the age of Edward III.

[Demeter]

51. There Is a Degree of Scale to Criminality World-Wide that We've Not Seen Since WWII

Consider the Drug Industry/War, the Finance Industry/War, the Intelligence Industry/War,
the Corporate Industry/War.

Is there any endeavor that isn't touched by some form of warfare, today?

Education has fallen to the Intelligence War--exterminating intelligence at its source.
Agriculture has fallen to the Corporate Wars--between the GMO and pollution, hoarding/starvation, and poisoning through fraud for things like pet food and baby formula...

Has the world ever seen such Greed-driven madness?

And given technology's progress, the tools of oppression, theft, destruction and death are so much more effective, powerful, and controllable than they have ever been.

Religion used to be the only restraint...Christian religion, specifically--and that has fallen to greed, as well.

The USA did serve to mitigate/stymie some of the greed in the world, and now it is the leading source of the madness through its bankster-driven foreign and domestic policies.

This time, it IS different...so much worse than it's ever been before. It feels like that episode from the Star Trek original series: "A Piece of the Action", where an entire planet organized itself on Mafia principles. The only saving grace was that the planet didn't internalize the brutality...it wasn't part of the ethos. The people were trainable...willing to deal.

So, where is our Captain Kirk, to re-educate our 1%? Or at least, eliminate it?