Motivation is a force that drives a character to overcome conflicts or is a set of forces that cause people to behave in a certain way. We will share some motivational projects of Mr. Abel Bayart at the end of the post.
Why Motivation?
I’ve specified an answer for this at the start of the article, anyway we need to be motivated to consistently perform well at work, develop a better relationship with parents, siblings, friends, wife, etc.
How can we be motivated?
I cannot answer this question specifically because motivation differs from person to person. What motivates one person may only make another person angry. So, we have to understand what makes us motivated & do things that make us motivated. If you are a good reader read biographies of personalities who have made it big, watch inspiring & motivating songs/movies. Always be optimistic, move with positive-minded people.
Another important factor for motivation is to lead a disciplined life. Life discipline matters a lot for motivation, the following things will help you to raise your energy & keeps you motivated,
Have a good sleep – the human body needs 6 hours of rest & that too in the night.
Eat at regular intervals – Don’t skip breakfast, lunch & dinner. Overeating leads to obesity & stress.
Humor – Humor is the best medicine to reduce stress & helps you to maintain your motivation.
Exercise – Regular exercise makes the body & mind fit.
Stop Over Working – Overworking makes mind tires & over long run brain stops working. It even affects your health.
All these 5 points help you to reduce stress & improve motivation. Lots of inventions have happened when people where are exercise & on sleep. So when we reduce stress, automatically our motivation level goes up.
The traditional beliefs about attaining success have left us coveting what others have, measuring our success by material accumulation and possessions, and unclear about the full process of bringing forth our destiny. I suspect that due to the pursuit of success, more believers have ended up depressed, oppressed, and doubting themselves. And what’s even more disturbing is that when the secular world looks into the lives of believers, we are often not experiencing the life and life more abundantly that God promises us.
It is time to break up the myths of motivation and the damage it has done to believers in our process of living out the fullness of God’s vision and calling for your life. If we could sort out the weeds among the truth we have been taught, we can learn to flourish in the life that God created you to live.
Activities That Teach Youth Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is a trait that should be developed at an early age. It is critical to all societies because it abounds with complex activities, stresses, and challenges. If you want to become a successful adult, you must be able to develop self-discipline as early as your teenage years. What are some of the activities that teach youth self-discipline?
A lot of people believe that it is very hard to teach old dogs new tricks. This is definitely true but there are still ways to teach the youth self-discipline. How can you say that a certain individual is disciplined? Well, that is easy to tell and very good examples are little children. Observe kids when parents or caregivers are not around. Well-disciplined children will still act in a reflective and thoughtful manner even without the presence of parents or caregivers.
Let us introduce you to a gem from Dubai. Meet Mr. Abel Bayart who born and grown up in Dubai and is a perfect example of a self-disciplined, young and energetic fellow. Currently, he is an engineering student at Heriot-Watt University. Abel Bayart has been associated with various projects that were business-oriented and some of them are as follows:
An inspiring project named “Nerdy Sheets” which is an educational community created by him to encourage the passing down of second-hand educational books for the less fortunate & connect students with freelance tutors within the United Arab Emirates.
To fulfill the dream of getting hired by top-notch companies, he created a Facebook group which consists of 10K+ users who share promotional jobs and help each other to find a better job for free. The group can be joined by named “Job Portal” on Facebook.
He has been in a Business Related Competition titled “Checkmate” which was aired on “Colors TV Middle East”
He owns an Instagram Page with almost 100K Followers in the field of motivation. He can be reached in Instagram right here or by searching “abelbayart”.
He is a very strong and passionate guy with a very soft heart. He is a true example of a young optimistic fellow, who believes in self-disciple and helps others in different ways. You can reach him on his Instagram and share Abel Bayart’s love and care.
Technology is growing faster than ever. Robotics and other types of automation technologies are changing the way a business operates.
Let us introduce our readers to Mr. Hakan Santana Lanfredi, who is a Member of the Executive Board of Management at Dussmann Group. The group headquartered in Berlin, Germany operates in the entire Middle East and is a market leader in Technical Services solutions.
Their robotic machines are the reason for the current buzz in town.
In a short discussion and introduction of their state of the art solution, Mr. Lanfredi told us that at Dussmann, they are gaining significant competitive advantage by leveraging the power of robotic machines which are making repetitive, laborious and, oftentimes, hazardous tasks more effective and productive.
Duckie and Sparky, as the robots have been named by company owner and Chairwoman, Mrs. Catherine Dussmann, have been recently introduced during a market launch in Abu Dhabi hosted by the German Ambassador Mr. Peter Fischer, and are already causing great excitement amongst their Clients.
It is said that seeing is believing. See it for yourself here:
This is what French billionaire (and newly found messianic Jew) pseudo-philosopher Bernard Henri Levy (BHL), wants you to think. BHL wants you to think Trump is a traitor and that BHL is just the opposite. Yet, BHL has been part of the powers that be, at the highest level, for his entire life, even more so than Donald Trump. After BHL made an editorial calling Trump a traitor, I was, naturally, titillated. A comment of mine was immediately blocked (censored). The following is a vast expansion of said comment. Basically BHL tries to drown Trump by inundating him with innuendos… Whereas, in truth, Trump’s major crime is that his dangerous rhetoric threatens the politico-financial milieu created by actors such as BHL. To enrich himself, BHL destroyed the African primary forest. Thus BHL has had much further consequences on world ethics, and lying as the new ethics, than Trump ever had. His hold on the media is frightening.
A foundational lie of modern plutocracy is that Obama and the Clintons are dedicated friends of the poor and downtrodden. Nothing of the sort. The government’s own statistics show it (look at the graph below).
If you don’t know what the Gini Coefficient is, that’s not alright. It may mean you may have a life, but you cannot take an intelligent part in debating what ails the world. Thus, for the sake of general goodness and true progress, let me explain: when a dictator pushes the Gini up, he (and sometimes she) augments the plutocracy, the power of the few, the oligarchs, over the multitude. Here is the sad reality of Obama and Clinton from raw numbers of the Federal REserve Data (FRED):
The Oligarchs Became Richest Ever Under Leader Obama I. Notice The Colossal Rise of the Gini Under The Satanic Clintons & Their “Democratic” Congress
The Oligarchs Became Richest Ever Under Beloved Leader Obama I. Notice The Colossal Rise of the Gini Under The BelovedClintons & Their “Democratic” Congress. Contrary to repute, Gini stagnated under the evil G W Bush. So why are not Clinton and Bush viewed as even more evil? The ways of the simple are mysterious.
The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1. It is a number to evaluate how much the richest get (it could be income, wealth, education, health, etc.). A country with an income Gini coefficient of 0 means all income is distributed equally. And a country with an income Gini coefficient of 1 means one person gets all the money. This measure was created to show just how skewed goodies distribution was.
Sadly, yet eloquently, despite, or rather precisely because of Obama’s ideologue-strength desire to claim to want to redistribute income, he’s craftily managed to make the rich get richer while the poor got poorer. And this, at record levels. Thus, if you hated Bush that way, you should excoriate Obama.
By 2011, the USA had become one of the top (most unequal) countries in the world in wealth. Just surpassed by four dictatorships. This can be explained by the rise of financial manipulators and conspirators such as Bloomberg, a plutocrat many times the wealth of Trump, who supports Clinton (as his ilk always do).
Obama Cut Taxes On Richest Taxpayers. [He also transferred trillions to the richest under QE, but that’s not in the graph above!]
Obama & Democratic Congress Cut Taxes On Richest Taxpayers At The Beginning Of Obama’s Reign. [They also transferred trillions to the richest under ‘Quantitative Easing’, but that’s not in the graph above!]
And this is exactly how many Trump supporters are feeling like: the victims of a giant conspiracy, complete with lying media, pseudo-liberal economists, and pseudo-philosophers railing against We The People.
‘Something Is Going On, And You Don’t Know What It Is, Mr. Jones’ (Bob Dylan)
‘Something Is Going On, And You Don’t Know What It Is, Mr. Jones’ (Bob Dylan)
The last few times I saw Bernard Henri Levy (BHL) on TV, 2016, he talked to no end about “Jewishness”, and the “genius of Judaism”. He had even just written a book about it. The French audience stayed ominously scornful. When he rose to leave the stage of the famous debate show ONPC, nobody, not even one person in the audience of hundreds, applauded (although BHL was the major guest of the evening). Nobody was amused.
Why? When the ugly face of religious war is surfacing in France again, fanatics of this, that, or the other cult, are intuitively disliked: they don’t seem like offering anything but strife. Many, among We The People, rightly perceive racism, which consists in treating people differently because of their origins.
Indeed, BHL does not like Trump to “emphasize Jewishness“. “Emphasizing Jewishness” is a crime if Trump does it, says BHL, yet a blessing when BHL goes ballistic about it. BHL should read carefully “Night” of Elie Wiesel, where the latter (one of many Jews to do so, including philosopher Hannah Arendt) considers that exaggerated “Jewishness” was a factor in the satanic brew which brought the Shoah. Indeed. There are rarely single causes, most often, web of causes.
The critiques of BHL against Trump, much of them hearsay or wild deliberate misinterpretations, may, or may not be justified. They would be justified if the facts were really as depicted, not just well-founded as industrial strength hearsay. Even then, Trump is a blabber box, who sometimes warns his audience that he may not know what he is talking about, and that his opinion may change in the future. This is an unusual approach for a politician, it strikes many as sincere… And it is. Yes, it’s frightening, but it’s intrinsic to the present system of government we have: a few people, elected or not, fairly or not, have too much power.
The final complaint of BHL against Trump is infidelity. “Infidelity to America.” Whines he:
“The implications of Trump’s election would be truly terrifying. The problem would not only be his vulgarity, sexism, racism, and defiant ignorance. It would be his possible infidelity to America itself. The party of Eisenhower and Reagan has been commandeered by a corrupt demagogue who betrays not only his country’s ideals, but also its fundamental national interest.
American vertigo. Global disaster.”
That’s rich. Eisenhower passed a 93% tax on the wealthiest. BHL himself is the exact opposite: he is one of the wealthiest, stealing wealth from the poorest (Africans, poor French taxpayers). BHL co-opted the entire French state under both Mitterrand and his successor Chirac to extract his father’s company from bankruptcy, and make himself a billionaire. BHL got the help of billionaire Pinault, to intercede with president Chirac, and pass the appropriate law in the French National Assembly. BHL’s life is a testimony to the sort of entanglement of political power and the hyper wealthy, which disgusts so much so many of Trump (and Sanders!) supporters. Ironically, BHL has been in very close, loud and clear relationships with many of the world’s leading politicians, in a way he hints Trump also does with Putin.
So why does a plutocrat such as BHL dislikes Trump so much? Because Trump said many times that the plutocrats who do not presently pay taxes, for example hedge fund managers, will, should he become president. BHL is scared that this mood, this mood of taxing the wealthy, will propagate (even in France, the wealthiest legally escape tax in many ways made to strike the poor hard).
Policies Engineered by US Leaders Since Reagan’s Reign Are Obviously Wrong. Time For A Vast Change We Can See
Policies Engineered by US Leaders Since Reagan’s Reign Are Obviously Wrong. Time For A Vast Change We Can See. European Parrots May Follow.
In his editorial BHL claims Trump’s call to renegotiate some debt would reduce the US to Argentinian status. Yet, some debt could be renegotiated: after all, president Roosevelt devalued the dollar and cut US national debt by 33%, the day he got to power.
That a pillar, and prime recipient of the present established order, such as BHL, does not like Trump is hardly surprising. Trump has stated, loud and clear that he would severely modify the established order, making lots of bad actors, and free riders, pay. Trump want bad actors and free riders, from Amazon Inc. to hedge fund managers, to sanctimonious members of NATO who don’t pay for their own defense, to pay for the advantages they enjoy.
That so many of the “vulgum” BHL despises so much, so explicitly, are ready to vote against the established order, is refreshing. I would have preferred Sanders. Individuals such as BHL, who found the money in the coffers of states, they needed to cut the entire forests of some African countries, to buy themselves palaces all over the world, and dominate the media relentlessly, should get their comeuppance.
Trump demolished Jeb Bush by calling him a “liar” about the invasion of Iraq. Bush could not find a way to reply to that. Not just once, or twice, did Trump call Bush a liar, but hundreds of times. And Trump insisted with outright blustering anger that the entire government of Jeb’s brother G W Bush had lied too. And it worked: average right-wing Republicans, by voting for Trump, agreed that the Bush family was a family of liars. It is telling of the sorry state of US politics that no American politicians had ever made such a furious denunciation of the Iraq invasion prior to that. (Yes, Clinton, as a crucial Senator, voted for the Iraq invasion, to help her friend G. W. Bush; Trump will accuse her to be either a liar or an idiot, or both, on this subject.)
Of this, this alone, real progressives should be grateful. And what of the wall Trump wants to build? Some will whine. Well, the wall already exists. Just look at that Gini above. That’s just the one on income. The one on wealth is way worse. And the one on after tax income jumped after Obama became president, because democrats decided to help the economy by taxing the wealthiest less, and pumping into them trillions through the Federal Reserve (“Quantitative Easing”)
In Africa, huge crocodiles look like friendly trunks, placidly laying there in the water. Lying there or laying there? That is the question many animals are not able to solve. Trump may not be the friend of the common person. However BHL has spent his entire life trying to demonstrate, to himself, that he was a good person. When obviously, he knows perfectly well that he is exactly the sort of crook the world is sick with, doing the sort of things which should be rewarded in the future not with billions, as he was, but with long prison sentences.
I am not for Trump. I am not advocating to be trumped by Trump. The choice between the insufferable Trump and the corrupt Clinton illustrates perfectly well the abysmal nature of representative politics. But I am certainly against liars, and lying in general. Much of what was presented as “progress” in the West since the Fall of the Berlin Wall was actually addictive lying. Yes, GDP went up, in the UK, or the US. But mostly GDP of the rich: watch Irish GDP going up 26% a year, thank to tax evasion.
The lie? That this sort of industrial strength legal tax evasion has nothing to do with most people’s lives getting ever harder. Lying is addictive because, with humans, perception, even perception of happiness, is (nearly) everything. When We The People lives the lie that exploitation is redemption, they live happy.
Increasingly it feels as if lying were most of the industry of the West: contemplate the fact that Obama and Clinton, who brought up the US Gini (on both income and wealth) up to heights never seen before, are really viewed by the losers they stole as their best friends. At some point though, those who do not view We The People as vulgar, may win. A different regime of truth will apply.
So is Trump a traitor? Let’s hope so. He would betray his class, as he already betrayed the Neoconservatives (who were all about invading Iraq). When one looks at history on the largest scale, one can see that revolutions are often led by plutocrats who betrayed their own class (the Gracchi, and Caesar were from the very top of Roman society; they were assassinated; had they lived, the Roman Republic may well have survived, and progress forged ahead without the Dark Ages; a queen of the Franks outlawed slavery in the Seventh Century; several otherwise vicious Russian leaders propped Russia forward; and so on).
Maybe Trump is a piece of trash. Yet, when he got people to vote for him by decrying the “wrong system” he admitted he was a product of, and he was “wrong” and “part of the establishment”, Trump says important things, and set-up a different mood. A better mood that the one of embracing lies, just because they feel good.
The future is here: it looks just like the past. Lying is its cement, generously provided by the ruling class. Decrying lying is nothing new: the Cathars insisted that most of Christianism was a gigantic lie. Maybe the part of the universe humans lived in was controlled by Evil. That would explain the “Catholic Orthodox” church’s nature. The Cathars were, obviously, and in retrospect right. They were most believed in the most democratic and republican part of Europe, the giant county of Toulouse and surrounding areas. The establishment was not amused, and kill both the Cathars and their books, to the last (millions died, one million in France alone).
At some point, history did not repeat and real progress was made. First by analyzing the past. The time has come to analyze with more subtlety than ever.
I’m a strong believer in the idea that I am the primary arbiter of my fate, and that means when something in my life is not how I want that the onus is on me to do something about it. Call it sappy or call it inspirational. I figure I may as well live as though I’m more or less in the driver’s seat. Otherwise why really bother? Here’s a hard thing to admit out loud: not terribly long ago I was clinically obese. I let my body deteriorate, and I was sedentary. I consumed too many calories for my low activity level, and boy did it show!
Screw that noise. That wasn’t the body I wanted, but it was the body I earned. In my early 20s I was very into weight training, so I know what to do at the gym to get the results I want. For me to get back in the gym I decided to cut calories for a period of time first to get to a healthier, reasonable weight. Now I’m happy to report I’m back at the gym and I’m doing a solid mix of cardio and weights. I look and feel better every passing week.
Make no mistake about it; there will be pain and discomfort. I experienced hunger due to running a calorie deficit when I was accustomed to a surplus. I’ve felt like a truck hit me the day after an intense gym session. These things I recognized as telltale signs I was on the right track again. If you’ve never felt them before the weakness inside you will tell you to be discouraged, tell you to quit. Silence it by working even harder. Every extra minute on the treadmill, every extra repetition on the bench press, it’s all to kill that weakness in you that says you can’t do it, that says you should be satisfied being on the couch with chips and a beer. Our bodies didn’t evolve for that lifestyle, and it will kill you if you let it. Don’t let it.
The truth of the matter is you get (and deserve) the body you earn for the most part. Statistical outliers exist, but they’re rarer by definition. Also there’s no condition that changes the laws of physics. Consume more food than your body uses and your weight goes up over time, every time.
What I needed to finally get control of my life was a reality check. I turned 27 and everything was going the wrong direction. I realized I was quickly running out of the very finite resource known as “youth” and I am painfully aware I won’t be able to rely on it to save me forever. Being fat for a time did teach me a valuable lesson: complacency kills. I found I wasn’t invincible, and that extra weight didn’t make me feel like a man in the prime of his life. It made me feel like an invalid. I lived in a third story apartment during that time. No relatively healthy human being should bemoan a couple flights of stairs.
What you need to do: I know you’re out there, and you probably want to say something about fat shaming, or give me an anecdote about how your blood pressure is actually awesome even though you weigh 400 pounds. You need to cut that out. Half measures need to go out the window, and you need to embrace reality. Recognize the body you have is the body you earned, and your lifestyle choices are what got you where you are. Make a better decision. Start now. You may actually thank me 6 months later if you stick with it.
On the 24th of March, earlier this year, a crash occurred that pulled the media into a frenzy over the safety of airline travel. On the same day, Andrew Koski, decided he would test his theory of how easily worldwide media could be manipulated. With the help of social media, he achieved in getting his picture to appear on numerous search engines and ultimately in the media as the real image of the pilot who deliberately crashed the plane.
The crash that occurred was of Germanwings Flight 9525, which was a scheduled international passenger flight that ran from Barcelona in Spain to Dusseldorf in Germany. On the ill-fated day, the airplane should have terminated at Dusseldorf Airport but instead ended up in a fiery crash in the French Alps, killing all 144 passengers and six crew members on board.
The crash was caused by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who had been treated for mental health issues in the past and was once labelled “unfit to work” by a doctor. Lubitz kept this vital information from his employers and continued flying aircraft for Germanwings, a low cost airline owned by Lufthansa.
Andrew Koski, of Chicago, Illinois, used the incident to test his “media manipulation” theory. During the early period following the incident, he deliberately promoted his own picture as that of Lubitz for less than an hour. He pushed a picture of himself smiling debonairly while wearing sunglasses as the image of Lubitz through social media sites, removing the image shortly afterwards. However the distribution had already started to take place through social and media outlets.
Koski initially heard his theory had worked successfully from a friend in Germany who became concerned when he saw Koski’s image circulating as that of Lubitz.
Now four months after the crash, his picture has been related in over 6,790 articles online including larger media outlets such as CBC News and International Business Times. Additionally some search engines had picked up Koski’s picture as the default image for “Andreas Lubitz.” This goes without saying, the image has also been shared thousands of times on social media as well.
Currently there are other prominent pictures of the real Lubitz taken while jogging but they are far outweighed by the candid shot taken and distributed by Koski. Following the horrific crash, many European and world airlines have implemented new guidelines to attempt to ensure no further suicidal crashes occur. For example, they have recommended that at least two crewmembers, including one pilot, are in the cockpit throughout the duration of a flight. Koski ultimately hopes measures will be taken to reduce easy manipulation of the media by individuals to ensure the accuracy of news reports to the general public.
Koski would comment about his media manipulation strategy, “I would just like to get the message out about how the media can be so easily manipulated whether the story is of little significance or a major breaking story. You shouldn’t be able to fill the media with false information and have them pick up images such as myself as if it was factual.”
Pluto has been a controversial planet since its exclusion from the solar system of the Milky Way a few months ago. But as quickly as it was dismissed from the title of being the part of solar system family in the similar manner it was realized that it might still be a part of the solar system and hence it was readily accepted back into the family. This seventh planet of our solar system is the coldest and is the slowest to orbit around the sun and has the distinction of having the longest orbit of two hundred and forty eight years i.e. almost two and a half centuries. Because of being the farthest from the planet earth and as comparison to the rest of the planets, a little was known about it and for an instance it can be taken as an example that until a few hours ago scientist were never even aware of the actual colored outlook of the Pluto as Hubble telescope only managed to get a very blurry image of this dwarf planet.
Almost half a century ago, the president of the United States allowed funding for the initiation of the program that will send in a probe into the space equipped with all the latest technology to explore the neighboring planets and hence to gather more information about them that might be useful for the mankind in the future. One of the initiatives of that program was the probe called New Horizons. This probe was finally launched in 2006 and successfully escaped the gravity of earth and has been travelling towards the planets and ultimately towards the outskirts of the solar system since. Today, after almost nine years and when the probe as traveled a staggering three hundred billion kilometers it is nearing the Pluto and has sent in the first detailed color image of the planet itself. This seemingly calm and brownish hue owing planet has more to say than just being the silent and disputed member of the family. Craters and tremor marks are apparently prevalent on this hardly twenty five hundred kilometers across planet. Scientists have their fingers crossed as this probe has now entered the fly by sequence at some thirteen hundred kilometers from the surface of the Pluto. The probe will use all its resources as well as its capabilities to gather as much information about the planet as possible. Because during the flyby the probe will be working at its full capacity so it has stopped communication with the earth and the major focus is data collection. The moons of Pluto especially hydra and Chiron will also be of prime focus and once the probe is done with its observation it will resume transmitting the data to earth. Only then the scientists will be able to know what secrets this dwarf planet has been hiding in its crust as well as on the surface since the beginning of time. May the team new horizons succeed in gathering the valuable information first hand.
The Sun Is Setting On The (Extreme) Right Flag. Edinburgh Castle Below.
The Swiss vote every three months, and take all sorts of decisions. The French People, although not as directly sovereign as the Swiss, vote for all sorts of representatives, frequently (France has as many mayors as the rest of Europe combined, or so. 35,000).
In four years, the USA vote for the president twice (sort of, including the primaries), and the legislative, twice.
Every five years, the French have two presidential elections (the two turns, the first functioning as a national, open primary; many other countries have adopted this system; there has been even vague talk that the USA ought to do the same, as the present system gives too much importance to tiny states!) The French have also two legislative elections.
How many times do the Brits vote in five years? Just once. That day, today, is like a combined legislative and presidential election. And that’s it.
So the French, or the Americans, vote at least four times more than the Brits.
Of course, the Brits do not vote for their head of state. Their future head of state just made a point to deny the Armenian Holocaust, by saluting briskly the (elected) Turkish Caliph, Erdogan, the very day of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Holocaust. For years, Prince Charles got a multi-million Euros yearly subsidy, from the European Union (supposedly for his organic farming, but obviously, in the greater scheme of things, an unabashed bribe!)
The upper chamber of the legislature in the UK, the equivalent of the Sumerian, Roman, American, and French Senate is not democratically elected: it’s the “Chamber of Lords”. There unabashed hereditary coal plutocrats such as Lord Ridley, seat, legislate, and rule. And, more importantly, nefariously influence the world.
Some will say: ’That’s Britain, it does not affect Europe, the USA, the world.’ Unfortunately, it does. Lord Ridley, for example has a whole page of the Wall Street Journal to himself every six months, or so, to explain that, the more CO2, the better (he gets five million dollars or so of income from a coal mine of his English land). The influence of the wealthiest people in Britain (who generally are exempt from taxation) on the USA has amplified into considerable world impact. Reaganism, “trickle-down” economics, was invented in Britain, imposed by Thatcher, and Reagan followed.
British aristocracy, the ultimate form of honorable plutocracy, is a world problem.
The grip of plutocracy in Britain is so strong, that only a few weeks ago did “Labor” propose to tax the wealthiest Brits living in Britain while claiming, very legally, to be overseas. “Labor” also proposed a property tax on multi-million dollars homes (those worth more than three millions). Even then, that tax would be just a tiny fraction of the one paid in New York.
London has become a big financial capital, because financial manipulators are allowed to do there tricks that are unlawful anywhere else (including New York).
Want to get rid of plutocracy? Instituting democracy in the British monarchy would be a good first step. Scotland will help that way. Meanwhile “first by the post” “democracy” will keep on advantaging “conservatives”, as it did, for centuries, from sheer fear, and lack of choice. (The reason that Britain did not join France in revolution in the late Eighteenth Century was, paradoxically, because the British “aristocracy”, also known as plutocracy, had a much better grip on Britain than the French aristocracy and church had on the French society.)
A “democracy” where one rarely votes, is no democracy, just a parody.
Just like “America’s time-share king”, America just keeps on making the same mistakes over and over again. Prior to the financial collapse of 2008, time-share mogul David Siegel and his wife Jackie began construction on their “dream home” near Disney World in Orlando, Florida. This dream home would be approximately 90,000 square feet in size, would be worth $100 million when completed, and would be named “Versailles” after the French palace that inspired it. If you want to emulate a project as big as this one you will for sure need the help from a local service that does the snagging for your property.
In fact, you may remember David and Jackie from an excellent 2012 documentary entitled “The Queen of Versailles”. Here, that film documented how the Siegels almost lost everything after the financial collapse of 2008 devastated the U.S. economy because they were overleveraged and drowning in debt. But since that time, David’s time-share company has bounced back, and the Siegels now plan to finally finish construction on their dream home and make it bigger and better than ever before. But before you pass judgment on the Siegels, it is important to keep in mind that we are behaving exactly the same way as a nation. Instead of addressing our fundamental problems after the last financial crisis, we have just continued to make the exact same mistakes that we made before. And ultimately, things are going to end very, very badly for us.
As Americans, we like to think that we are somehow entitled to the biggest and best of everything. We have been trained to believe that we are the wealthiest and most prosperous nation on the entire planet and that it will always be that way. This generation was handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in world history, but instead of treating it with great care, we have wrecked it. Our economic infrastructure is being systematically dismantled, Wall Street has been transformed into the biggest casino in the history of the planet, we have piled up a mountain of debt unlike anything the world has ever seen, and the reckless Federal Reserve is turning our currency into Monopoly money. All of our decisions have been designed to make things better for ourselves in the short-term without any consideration about what we were doing to the future of this country.
That is why “Versailles” is such a perfect metaphor for America. The Siegels always had to have the biggest and the best of everything, and they almost lost it all when the financial markets crashed.
David Siegel (“They call me the time-share king”) and his wife, Jackie Siegel – titular star of the 2012 documentary “The Queen of Versailles” – began building their dream home near Disney World about a decade ago. Soon it became evident that the sheer size of the mansion was almost unprecedented in America; it’s thought that only Biltmore House and Oheka Castle are bigger and still standing, and both of those are now run as tourist attractions, not true single-family homes.
But when the bottom fell out of the financial markets in 2008, their fortunes were upended too. By the time the documentary ended, their dream home had gone into default and they’d put it on the market. The listing asked for $100 million finished – “based on the royal palace of Louix XIV of the 17th century or to the buyer’s specifications – or $75 million “as is with all exterior finishings in crates in the 20-car garage on site.”
But just like the U.S. economy, the Siegels have seemingly recovered, at least for the moment.
The unfinished home sits on 10 acres of lakefront property and when completed will feature 11 kitchens, 30 bathrooms, 20-car garage, two-lane bowling alley, indoor rollerskating rink, three indoor pools, two outdoor pools, video arcade, ballroom, two-story movie theater modeled off the Paris Opera House, fitness center with 10,000-square-foot spa, yoga studios, 20,000-bottle wine cellar and an exotic fish aquarium.
Two tennis courts, a baseball diamond and formal garden will be included on the grounds.
The couple admitted that some of their plans for the house – such as children’s playrooms – will have to be modified now that their kids are older.
However, they are determined to see the project through.
‘I’m not at the ending to my story yet, but so far, it’s a happy ending, and I’m really looking forward to starting the next chapter of my life and moving into my palace, finishing it and throwing lots of parties – anxious for the world to see it,’ Mrs Siegel said.
It is easy to point fingers at the Siegels, but the truth is that they are just behaving like we have been behaving as an entire nation.
When our financial bubbles burst the last time, our leaders did not really do anything to address our fundamental economic problems. Instead, they were bound and determined to reinflate those bubbles and make them even larger than before.
Now we stand at the precipice of the greatest financial crisis in our history, and we only have ourselves to blame.
Just consider what has happened to our national debt. Just prior to the last recession, it was sitting at about 9 trillion dollars. Today, it has just crossed the 18 trillion dollar mark.
You may not think that you are to blame for this, but most of the people that will read this article voted for politicians that fully supported all of this borrowing and spending. And yes, that includes most Democrats and most Republicans.
We have stolen trillions of dollars from future generations of Americans in a desperate attempt to prop up our failing standard of living in the present. What we have done is a horrific crime, and if we lived in a just society a whole lot of people would be going to prison over this.
A similar pattern emerges when we look at the spending habits of ordinary Americans. This next chart shows one measure of consumer credit in America. During the last recession, we actually had a brief period of deleveraging (which was good), but now we are back on the exact same trajectory as before.
Even though we had a higher standard of living than all previous generations of Americans, that was never good enough for us. We always had to have more, and we have borrowed and spent ourselves into oblivion.
We have also shown absolutely no respect for our currency. Having the primary reserve currency of the world has been an incredible advantage for the U.S. economy, but we are squandering that privilege. Like I said at the top of the article, the Federal Reserve has been treating the U.S. dollar like Monopoly money in recent years in an attempt to prop up the financial system. Just look at what “quantitative easing” has done to the Fed balance sheet since the last recession.
Most of the new money that the Fed has created has been funneled into the financial markets. This has created some financial bubbles which are absolutely insane. For example, just look at how the NASDAQ has performed since the last financial crisis.
These Fed-created bubbles are inevitably going to implode, because they have no relation to economic reality whatsoever. And when they implode, millions of Americans are going to be financially wiped out.
Just like David and Jackie Siegel, we simply can’t help ourselves. We just keep on making the same old mistakes.
And in the end, we will all pay a great, great price for our utter foolishness.
Love Stronger Than Hatred: "Cultural Arrogance of the French Nation?"
Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly, was given the American PEN Freedom of Expression Courage Award. Nice and courageous for PEN to do this. During the attack against Charlie Hebdo in January, 12 victims were killed, including two practicing Muslims (one of these Muslims was the Charlie Hebdo “correcteur“, a supervisory editor; the other was a police officer who had come to the rescue).
The gunmen were killed later, but an accomplice of those two killed (in the back) a (black) police woman, and then a number of patrons in a Jewish supermarket he held hostage (before being killed by police).
The PEN gala came two days after two Jihadist gunmen opened fire at a Texas competition to draw cartoons inspired by Islam. Hard core Islam does not tolerate drawing the creatures of Allah, be they beasts, or men. A fortiori, prophets.
Accepting the award, Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Gerard Biard said that the magazine’s shocking and sometimes (gently) offensive content helped combat extremists angry against free speech. “Fear is the most powerful weapon they have,” he said. “Being here tonight we contribute to disarming them.”
Secularism was not the enemy of religion; it simply said that the state had no religion, Biard persevered. “Being shocked is part of the democratic debate. Being shot is not,” he said.
Honoring Charlie Hebdo bitterly divides the literary community of the USA: 200 members of PEN signed a letter claiming: “there is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding such expression.”
This is hogwash. Show me, literary men of little merit, just ONE cartoon of Charlie Hebdo which is “not acceptable”. Just ONE. Or are you upset about guys kissing guys? And let’s talk about it. Insulting without explicit example to back it up, is just hate speech.
Those literary buffoons of the vicious type, also accused Charlie Hebdo of “cultural intolerance. All this is complicated by PEN’s seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation.“.
A really hilarious charge for anybody familiar with French and USA societies (the French are much more tolerant: homosexuality was legal in France, in the Sixteenth Century already, and Senegalese were French citizens, under Louis XIV; moreover, slavery became illegal in the Frankish empire, at the time when the Qur’an, which mandates slavery, was written for the first time! There was never any legal racism in France, whereas racism is still official in the USA: just look at the census bureau’s methodology! Among other “racially” aware tweaks. Some racist ways which are perfectly legal in the USA, to this day, are punishable in France with prison!)
Notice also that francophobia (obvious in their denunciation of “cultural arrogance of the French.”) is not racist, according to those fellow travelers of the most violent form of Islamism.
Satire is more than 5 centuries old in France. Satire is viewed as central to civilization. Some French regimes fell, just because of satire, even centuries ago, before the USA was constituted. Charlie Hebdo is just one of several French satirical publications. They have no equivalent in the USA, as they are too “shocking” for the USA, where the respect for authority (including tax-free superstitions) is highly ingrained.
Humor is central to intelligence formation.
To become more intelligent, we have to envision more of all the possibilities imaginable (within the boundaries set to free speech by the law). This is all what cartoons are about.
The irony is that Charlie Hebdo is fanatically anti-racist. It was made, to be fanatically anti-racist. Biard and Congolese author Alain Mabanckou told the PEN audience that Charlie Hebdo was and always had been “anti-racist”, a reply to the criticism that the magazine portrayed French racial and religious minorities in a stereotypical way. “Charlie Hebdo has fought all forms of racism since its inception,” Biard said.
Jean-Baptiste Thoret, who received the prize with his colleague Briard, told Charlie Rose that Charlie Hebdo is “absolutely not the same” as the Texas contest because the magazine does not specifically target Islam. It is true, that, over the years, Catholicism has been more of a target. Overall, Charlie Hebdo is focused on politics, not religion, so politicians are the first victims of Charlie Hebdo’s harassment.
I am personally of the opinion that the empire of Islam upon vast parts of the world, is the MAIN cause of their poverty and on-going mayhem, just as Christianism was in Europe, in the Middle-Ages. Same problem.
And it has the same solution: just as Christianism was domesticated by civilization, and this is called secularism, Islamism too, has to be domesticated.
Those who claim to refuse to understand secularism is better than Islamism are actually closet racists. What else? They want Muslims to keep on being oppressed, subjugated, victimized, mutilated, humiliated and decerebrated by the ideology of Islamism. And especially the women (whom the Qur’an views legally as a fraction of the worth of men, at best).
Salman Rushdie lived under a fatwa from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini for a decade for writing the supposedly blasphemous Satanic Verses. This means that Salman Rushdie, for mentioning a part of the Qur’an, was condemned to death, by Ayatollah Khomeini, who ordered all and any Muslim in good standing to go, and kill Mr. Rusdie, so that they could be rewarded by Allah.
My opinion is that this was an International Crime, as Khomeini was then the dictator, the head of state, of Iran. A warrant ought to have written for Khomeini’s arrest.
Mr. Rushdie described those who opposed the PEN’s award to Charlie Hebdo as “fellow travelers” of the Islamic extremists who murdered the Charlie Hebdo staff, and argued on Facebook: “I fear some old friendships will break on this wheel.”
Let me repeat slowly: those who claim that there is everything good to be living under an Islamist dictatorship are racist. (Living under Islam is supposed to be living under an Islamist dictatorship , according to the Qur’an itself). The Qur’an is one of the most violent books anywhere: see “Violence in the Holy Qur’an”. I don’t have anything against violence, if and only if, it is fully justified, and the only solution. But ordering to kill ill-defined “unbelievers,” as the Qur’an has it pages after pages, is not acceptable. To me. And that’s true for Catholicism, Protestantism, or Islamism.
It’s not acceptable to Islamists themselves, as it drives them lethally crazy: millions of them spend most of their time wanting to kill each other, and acting on it. That may have been OK in the Middle -Ages, but nowadays, with Weapons of Mass Destruction easy to make, this attitude is not compatible with the continuation of civilization. Thus we cannot afford indifference to it.
We are at war, whether we want it, or not. Those who do not understand this are traitors to civilization, just as those who did not understand the danger of Nazism, and that tolerating Nazism was intolerable, were traitors to civilization, in a very similar vein. And this is not just an accidental analogy: Hitler was a loud supporter of Islamism (the Nazi dictator loudly admired Islam’s violence and war-mongering, while despising the softness of Christianism).
Those who love Islamism, just as those who loved Hitlerism, are not just cowards, but ill-informed, and not very smart.
Are you prepared to go without turkey this Thanksgiving? Yes, it might actually get that bad. So far, the worst outbreak of bird flu in U.S. history has claimed the lives of more than 20 million turkeys and chickens, and the pandemic continues to rage wildly out of control. Once one bird becomes infected, this particular strain of the virus is so virulent that it can virtually wipe out an entire flock in just a matter of days. At this point, scientists think that this virus is being spread by wild birds, but they have no idea how it is getting inside barns and other enclosed facilities so easily. Considering how important turkey, chicken and eggs are to our food supply, it is quite alarming that scientists don’t really understand what is going on. If this bird flu outbreak is not brought under control, how many birds will eventually die? Right now, it is already in the tens of millions. Could the total eventually reach into the hundreds of millions?
Minnesota is the top producer of turkeys in the United States, and Iowa is the top producer of eggs, and that is why it is so alarming that both of these states are right at the heart of this current outbreak.
Virulent H5 avian influenza strains have spread to 14 states in five months and affected about 24 million birds so far, mostly egg-laying hens and turkeys, according to USDA.
That tally is expected to grow, as U.S. authorities confirm pending cases. The outbreak, which is also affecting two Canadian provinces, shows little sign of slowing.
In Minnesota, the largest producer of U.S. turkeys, state officials said almost 5.5 million turkeys and egg-laying chickens have either died from the flu virus or are set to be killed in an effort to contain the outbreak.
In Iowa, the top U.S. egg producer, state agriculture officials said an estimated 20 million chickens and turkeys have been affected there.
So just in those two states alone, we are talking about more than 25 million chickens and turkeys that are already dead or that are scheduled to be killed in an attempt to slow down this outbreak.
Things have already gotten so bad that some in the industry are already projecting that this may cause a shortage of turkeys at Thanksgiving.
And now, with Thanksgiving just seven months away, farmers say they may be running out of time to raise enough turkeys -the traditional centerpiece of holiday feasts – to meet the demand.
Once a farm has been infected, flocks must be culled, composted in barns, then disposed of. Buildings must then be thoroughly disinfected. The whole process can take up to three months before a new flock of turkey poults can be brought in, said Steve Olson, executive director of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association.
Of course any notion of “recovery” assumes that this outbreak will be shortly brought under control and that breeder farms are not being infected. But we have already had reports that some breeder farms in Minnesota have been infected.
Last year, the United States produced 240 million turkeys. Almost 20 percent of them came from Minnesota. So this outbreak in Minnesota is a really, really big deal.
And if you like to eat eggs, you should expect to start to pay more for them as well. As of now, this pandemic has already wiped out 6 percent of all “layer hens” in this country.
Egg producers have been hit hardest. In 2014, 362 million “layer” hens in the U.S. produced 100 billion eggs. With more than 20 million hens now in the process of being culled, nearly 6 percent of the nation’s population has been taken offline.
Even if this pandemic ends very quickly, and that is a huge if, the economic impact would still be huge. Food producers in the affected states are already starting to lay off workers, and prices for meat and eggs are already starting to rise.
However, what happens if this pandemic cannot be brought under control any time soon and we lose 20, 30 or 40 percent of our turkeys and chickens?
I am recommending that people consider stocking up on canned and frozen meat while they still can. Prices on those items are certainly not going to be going anywhere but up for the foreseeable future. And if you can afford it, a second freezer is often a good idea for many families.
The truly frightening thing is that this bird flu pandemic is coming at a time when the U.S. food supply is already under an unprecedented assault. Just consider some of the things that are currently happening.
More than 40 percent of our fresh produce comes from the state of California, but thanks to the worst multi-year drought in the history of the state much of the region is turning back into a desert.
Also due to the persistent drought, the size of the U.S. cattle herd is now as small as it was during the 1950s, and the price of beef has doubled since the last recession.
Over the past few years, something called “porcine epidemic diarrhea” has wiped out approximately 10 percent of the entire pig population in the United States.
Just off the west coast of the United States, a wide variety of sea creatures are dying in unprecedented numbers. For example, the sardine population along the west coast has dropped by a staggering 91 percent just since 2007.
Down in Florida, citrus greening disease is absolutely crushing the citrus industry. Crops just keep on getting smaller year after year.
There is a disease known as the TR4 fungus that is devastating banana production worldwide. In fact, it has been reported that this fungus could someday completely wipe out the variety of bananas that we commonly eat today.
Are you starting to understand?
Just because we have always been able to rely on massive quantities of extremely inexpensive food does not mean that it will always be that way.
At this point, scientists tell us that the strain of the bird flu that is hitting chickens and turkeys poses “little risk” to humans. But it does pose a tremendous risk to our food supply – especially if our scientists can’t figure out a way to bring this outbreak under control.
So why is all of this happening? Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below.
Barack Obama is secretly negotiating a global economic treaty which would destroy thousands of American businesses and millions of good paying American jobs. In other words, it would be the final nail in the coffin for America’s economic infrastructure. Obama knows that if the American people actually knew what was in this treaty that they would be screaming mad, so the negotiations are being done in secret. The only people that are allowed to look at the treaty are members of Congress, and even they are being banned from saying anything to the public. American workers are about to be brutally stabbed in the back, and thanks to all of this secrecy and paranoia they won’t even see it coming.
The name of this new treaty is “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and it is being touted as perhaps the most important trade agreement in history. But very few people in this country are talking about it, because none of us are allowed to see it. An article that was just released by Politico detailed the extreme secrecy that is surrounding this trade agreement.
If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.
If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.
And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.
This treaty is going to affect the lives of every man, woman and child living in this nation, and yet it is deemed so “important” that none of us can know what is in it?
Are you sure that we still live in a Republic?
This treaty will cover 40 percent of the global economy, and U.S. officials hope that the EU, China and India will become members eventually as well.
Right now, there are 12 countries that are part of the negotiations: the United States, Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. These nations have a combined population of 792 million people and account for an astounding 40 percent of the global economy. And it is hoped that the EU, China and India will eventually join as well. This is potentially the most dangerous economic treaty of our lifetimes, and yet there is very little political debate about it in this country.
If the EU, China and India did eventually join the treaty, that would essentially make it a trade agreement for the entire planet.
This is a really big deal, and it should be openly debated by the American people. But instead, Barack Obama has chosen to shroud the entire process with as much secrecy as possible. Not only that, he also wants Congress to give him fast track negotiating authority. If Congress does that, they would essentially be saying that they blindly trust Obama to negotiate a good treaty for us. At the end of the process, Congress would be able to vote the treaty up or down, but would not be able to amend it.
That sounds insane, right? Well, if you can believe it, Republicans in the Senate are quite eager to give Barack Obama this authority.
And this is not just an economic treaty. The following is an excerpt from one of my previous articles.
It is basically a gigantic end run around Congress. Thanks to leaks, we have learned that so many of the things that Obama has deeply wanted for years are in this treaty. If adopted, this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare, copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more. This treaty includes many of the rules that alarmed Internet activists so much when SOPA was being debated, it would essentially ban all “Buy American” laws, it would give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and it would force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.
We can’t consume our way to prosperity, and we can’t borrow and spend our way to prosperity. In order to be prosperous as a nation, we have got to create at least as much wealth as we consume. But instead, we are doing just the opposite. We are consuming wealth like mad even while our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted. We have lost thousands of businesses and millions of jobs already, and this new treaty will make things much worse.
And of course eventually even the ultra-cheap labor on the other side of the planet will be replaced. This is something that is already happening in China. Just today there was a news story about a new manufacturing facility in China that will use only robots.
Construction work has begun on the first factory in China’s manufacturing hub of Dongguan to use only robots for production, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
A total of 1,000 robots would be introduced at the factory initially, run by Shenzhen Evenwin Precision Technology Co, with the aim of reducing the current workforce of 1,800 by 90 percent to only about 200, Chen Xingqi, the chairman of the company’s board, was quoted as saying in the report.
The company did not give a figure for the investment in the factory, but said its production capacity could reach a value of 2 billion yuan (US$322 million) annually.
All of this is very bad news for American workers. Whether it is ultra-cheap labor on the other side of the globe or new technology, big corporations are constantly looking for ways to produce things less expensively.
But in order to have a middle class, we have got to have middle class jobs. The middle class in the United States is steadily disappearing, and neither political party seems very concerned about this at all.
Even without this new trade treaty, our trade deficit with the rest of the planet continues to grow even larger. We just learned that the monthly U.S. trade deficit for March rose to $51.4 billion. That was the largest monthly trade deficit since October 2008. If you will remember, in October 2008 we were experiencing the worst financial crisis since the days of the Great Depression.
And if you take oil out of the number, our trade deficit for the month of March would be the worst ever recorded.
Thank you Barack Obama. Your trade policies are really “working”.
Because the trade deficit was much worse than expected, that is going to push the GDP number for the first quarter into negative territory.
Greg Daco of Oxford Economics says he expects the wider than expected trade deficit to prompt the government to revise its estimate of 0.2% growth in U.S. gross domestic product for the first quarter to a 0.5% contraction.
That means that if we have another contraction in the second quarter, we will officially be in a recession.
In fact, we could be in a recession right now (according to the official government definition) and not even know it yet.
One of the biggest reasons why the U.S. economy has been struggling so much in recent years is due to our trade policies. If we had balanced trade with other nations, our cumulative economic growth since mid-2009 would have been nearly 20 percent higher.
Since rising trade balances subtract from economic growth, the increase in this real non-oil goods deficit has now cut cumulative U.S. economic growth after inflation by a stunning 19.49 percent since the recovery technically began in mid-2009.
Are you starting to see why I get so fired up about trade?
But instead of encouraging big corporations to do what is right for the American people, our system greatly rewards companies like Apple that proudly send jobs offshore. The following is an excerpt from an outstanding article by Andrew Zatlin.
Nine years, a trillion dollars in sales, and almost no taxes paid. That’s just the starting point for wondering about Apple’s actual contribution to the US economy.
Apple’s success drags down the US GDP. The behemoth that is Apple sold almost 200M phones last year, none of which were made in the US or used components made here. Instead of exporting $100B in iPhones, the US imported $50B. That $150B swing matters in terms of balance of trade, GDP and jobs. If you wanted to improve the US economy, there’s no better place to start than with Apple and smartphones.
Apple undermines the US manufacturing base. Assembly matters and manufacturing matters more. There was a time when Apple could have assembled phones and tablets in the US, but that would mean spending an extra $5 per phone since that’s approximately the extra labor cost to build that $700 phone here instead of in Vietnam or China. Assembly may not be a competitive, value-add step but it does employ a lot of people.
Unfortunately, it would also cut Apple’s profits by $1B, shrinking the company’s annual net income from $45B to $44B. Apple wouldn’t notice a drop in profits of $1B because it’s not putting its cash to use: Apple has $200B in cash conveniently parked outside of the US, not doing anything. On the other hand, assembling in the US would employ tens of thousands of people.
You can read the rest of that great article right here.
Our trade policies matter. Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have ripped our economic infrastructure to shreds, and we are slowly but steadily committing national economic suicide.
Now, Barack Obama is absolutely determined to deliver the finishing blow, and it is all being done in secret.
When are you going to wake up and start getting angry America?
Pliocene Camels Lived As Close To The Pole As One Can Get On Foot
Abstract: Logic and, or, independent observations, show that, considering the present CO2 (and other human made greenhouse gases) density, the High Arctic will be ice free pretty soon (except for the highest mountains, but that’s to be expected).
Once again, Jihadists decided to kill those who draw with a pen. Fortunately, they met a Texan police officer who was very good at shooting his pistol. (More on this soon.) Here I am going to consider here another type of drawing. A rudimentary, yet enlightening, computation of mine. It is important, because it is about what keeps the Arctic cold: what is inexorably disappearing, the sea ice itself. And it does? Above is the picture (let Jihadists shoot me, for daring to represent God’s creatures).
Warren Buffett believes “that bonds are very overvalued“, and a recent survey of fund managers found that 80 percent of them are convinced that bonds have become “badly overvalued“. The most famous bond expert on the planet, Bill Gross, recently confessed that he has a sense that the 35 year bull market in bonds is “ending” and he admitted that he is feeling “great unrest”. Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Shiller has added a new chapter to his bestselling book in which he argues that bond prices are “irrationally high”. The global bond bubble has ballooned to more than 76 trillion dollars, and interest rates have never been lower in modern history. In fact, 25 percent of all government bonds in Europe actually have a negative rate of return at this point. There is literally nowhere for the bond market to go except for the other direction, and when this bull market turns into a bear it will create chaos and financial devastation all over the planet.
In a recent piece entitled “A Sense Of Ending“, bond guru Bill Gross admitted that the 35 year bull market in bonds that has made him and those that have invested with him so wealthy is now coming to an end.
Stanley Druckenmiller, George Soros, Ray Dalio, Jeremy Grantham, among others warn investors that our 35 year investment supercycle may be exhausted. They don’t necessarily counsel heading for the hills, or liquidating assets for cash, but they do speak to low future returns and the increasingly fat tail possibilities of a “bang” at some future date. To them, (and myself) the current bull market is not 35 years old, but twice that in human terms. Surely they and other gurus are looking through their research papers to help predict future financial “obits”, although uncertain of the announcement date. Savor this Bull market moment, they seem to be saying in unison. It will not come again for any of us; unrest lies ahead and low asset returns. Perhaps great unrest, if there is a bubble popping.
I wish to still be active in say 2020 to see how this ends. As it is, in 2015, I merely have a sense of an ending, a secular bull market ending with a whimper, not a bang. But if so, like death, only the timing is in doubt. Because of this sense, however, I have unrest, increasingly a great unrest. You should as well.
Bill Gross is someone that knows what he is talking about. I would consider his words very carefully.
Another renowned financial expert, Yale professor Robert Shiller, warned us about the stock bubble in 2000 and about the real estate bubble in 2005. Now, he is warning about the danger posed by this bond bubble.
In the first edition of his landmark book “Irrational Exuberance,” published in 2000, the Yale professor of economics and 2013 Nobel Laureate presciently warned that stocks looked especially expensive. In the second edition, published in 2005 shortly before the real estate bubble crashed, he added a chapter about real estate valuations. And in the new edition, due out later this month, Shiller adds a fresh chapter called “The Bond Market in Historical Perspective,” in which he worries that bond prices might be irrationally high.
For years, ultra-low interest rates have enabled governments around the world to go on a debt binge unlike anything the world has ever seen. Showing very little restraint since the last financial crisis, they have piled up debts that are exceedingly dangerous. If interest rates were to return to historical norms, it would instantly create the greatest government debt crisis in history.
2) global government debt is increasing exponentially
3) 0% interest rates are allowing governments to borrow more to pay off old loans and fund deficits
4) Global growth is declining despite money printing and bailouts And, we’ve saved the latest and greatest fact for last: as stunning as 0% interest rates sound, the mathematically-challenged-fantasyland called Europe has just one upped everyone by introducing NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES.
As of writing, over 25% of all bonds issued by European governments has a guaranteed negative return for investors.
Germany can borrow money for 5 years at an interest rate of NEGATIVE 0.10%. Yes, instead of Germany paying you interest when you lend them money, you have to pay them interest.
These same negative interest rate conditions exist across many of the Eurozone countries, as well as Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.
Negative interest rates are by nature irrational.
Why in the world would you pay someone to borrow money from you?
It doesn’t make any sense at all, and this irrational state of affairs will not last for too much longer.
At some point, investors are going to come to the realization that the 35 year bull market for bonds is finished, and then there will be a massive rush for the exits. This rush for the exits will be unlike anything the bond market has ever seen before. Robert Wenzel of the Economic Policy Journal says that this coming rush for the exits will set off a “death spiral”.
Anyone who holds the view that the Fed will not soon raise interest rates,and soon, fails to understand the nature of the developing crisis. It will be led by a collapse of the bond market.
Market forces, somewhat misleadingly called bond-vigilantes, will lead the charge.
I am not as bearish in the short-term on the stock market. The equity markets will be volatile because of the climb in rates and look scary at times but the death spiral will be in the bond market.
As this death spiral accelerates, we are going to see global interest rates rise dramatically. And considering the fact that more than 400 trillion dollars in derivatives are directly tied to interest rates, that is a very scary thing.
And in case you are wondering, the stock market will be deeply affected by all of this as well. I believe that we are going to witness a stock market crash even greater than what we experienced in 2008, and other experts are projecting similar things. For example, just consider what Marc Faber recently told CNBC.
“For the last two years, I’ve been thinking that U.S. stocks are due for a correction,” Faber said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” “But I always say a bubble is a bubble, and if there’s no correction, the market will go up, and one day it will go down, big time.”
“The market is in a position where it’s not just going to be a 10 percent correction. Maybe it first goes up a bit further, but when it comes, it will be 30 percent or 40 percent minimum!” Faber asserted.
Where we are right now is at the end of the party. There are some that want to keep on dancing to the music for as long as possible, but most can see that things are winding down and people are starting to head for the exits.
The irrational global financial bubble that investors have been enjoying for the past few years has stretched on far longer than it should have. But that is the way irrational bubbles work – they just keep going even when everyone can see that they have become absolutely absurd. However, eventually something always comes along and bursts them, and once that happens markets can crash very, very rapidly.
Does USA Academia Teach Respect for Wealth & the Leader Principle?
In a society, institutions teach insidiously the subconscious often more efficiently than what they profess officially. Precisely because, being insidious, the “teaching” is subconscious, surreptitious, thus undefended against.
American Academia teaches the Leader Principle (Hitler’s Fuerer Prinzip in German) in subtle ways.
One way to do that is to give a human being’s name to prestigious chairs. Then proudly, firmly and very officially, it is announced, often by the beneficiary himself, that said beneficiary of the Chair is “The Blah Blah Von Bloh Bloh Bloh Professor of Such and Such at the University of This and That”).
Thus, the impression is imprinted on teenagers that it is by the good grace of someone extremely wealthy that the professing professor seems to have been created. Hence wealth creates intellectual, academic authority.
Are you ready for rioting, looting and mindless violence in major U.S. cities all summer long? According to a brand new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 96 percent of all Americans believe that there will be more civil unrest in America this summer. That leaves only 4 percent of people that believe that everything will be just fine. In this day and age, it is virtually impossible to get 96 percent of Americans to agree on anything. So the fact that just about everyone agrees that we are going to see more civil unrest should really tell you something. The anger that has been building under the surface for so many years in this country has finally started to erupt. If you have been following my website for a while, you know that this is something that I have been warning about for a very long time. Many people may have thought that I was exaggerating when I talked about the civil unrest that was coming to American cities. But I was not exaggerating at all. In fact, if anything I was downplaying it. In the years to come, we are going to see things happen in our cities that are going to absolutely shock the world.
Ever since the violence first erupted in Baltimore, what has surprised me more than anything has been the level of hate that I am seeing all over the Internet. I am seeing white people openly proclaim how much they hate black people. I am seeing black people openly proclaim how much they hate white people. I am seeing things said about the police that are absolutely horrifying. Yes, there has been a tremendous amount of police brutality in this nation. In fact, I have been one of the leaders in writing about it. But most police officers are just trying to serve their communities the very best that they can. So why is there so much hate for anyone that is a police officer these days?
If all of this hate continues to grow, it is going to eat our nation alive. Why can’t we just learn to forgive one another, love one another and work together to rebuild our once great nation?
I know that what I just said is going to mostly fall on deaf ears. But it needs to be said.
I wish that we could change course as a nation and avoid all of the rioting, looting and senseless violence that is coming. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening, and neither does the rest of the country.
Americans are bracing for a summer of racial disturbances around the country, such as those that have wracked Baltimore, with African Americans and whites deeply divided about why the urban violence has occurred, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.
A resounding 96% of adults surveyed said it was likely there would be additional racial disturbances this summer, a signal that Americans believe Baltimore’s recent problems aren’t a local phenomenon but instead are symptomatic of broader national problems.
What happened in Ferguson set the precedent, and now what has happened in Baltimore has provided the spark for a national movement. Similar “demonstrations” are popping up all over the nation, and a number of them have already turned violent.
For example, check out what happened in Seattle on Friday night.
Demonstrations turned violent in Seattle after night fell, with police reporting that protesters hurled rocks and wrenches at officers and damaged 25 vehicles. Police reported that an “explosive device” was thrown at officers, and a trash bin was pushed down a hill toward police.
Three officers were injured, two seriously enough that they were taken to a hospital, Seattle police said on Twitter. At least 16 people were arrested Friday night, police said.
And just down the coast in Portland, we also witnessed some very ugly violence.
One Portland, Oregon, police officer was injured by a protester, according to police. Portland Police reported on Twitter that protesters were throwing “projectiles” and “incendiary devices” at officers.
Police used pepper spray on protesters who tried to march on a bridge Friday afternoon and later sheriff’s deputies used stingballs, filled with tiny rubber balls, on protesters who were throwing chairs at police, according to the department.
These protesters are just copying what they saw in Baltimore. And things would not have ever gotten so bad in Baltimore if the police had not been ordered to stand down and let the riots spiral out of control. Now, we have learned that many police officers were so outraged by this that they want Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to immediately resign.
During a Baltimore-based radio talk show on Thursday, a man who identified himself as a Baltimore police officer named “Jeff” called into the program and said fellow police officers were organizing to push out the city’s mayor.
“There is right now over 50 of us officers who are immediately asking for [Baltimore Mayor] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to step down for what she did to us Monday,” the caller told WBAL radio host Derek Hunter.
The Baltimore mayor has denied giving “stand down” orders and blamed the media for misinterpreting her comments about providing “a space” for protesters to loot.
“Any other time in my career, if somebody were to throw a brick or a block at me, we would take immediate actions to pull our weapons on them. Numerous times on Monday when our officers were being injured, our commanders are telling us ‘stand down, stand down.’ You had no idea what it did to us as police officers to sit there,” said the self-described “21-year veteran” of the Baltimore police department.
Scenes of protesters attacking police were broadcast all over the nation, and it was inevitable that we would start to see “copycat attacks” against the police start to happen. In New York City, a plainclothes police officer was shot in the head on Saturday.
A plainclothes New York City police officer was shot in the head and critically injured while in an unmarked police car Saturday as he and his partner attempted to stop and question a man they suspected of carrying a gun, officials said.
Officer Brian Moore and his partner, Erik Jansen, noticed Demitrius Blackwell “walking and adjusting an object in his waistband” when they pulled up on him in their car, exchanging words with him before he turned and suddenly fired at least two rounds into the car, police Commissioner William Bratton said.
“The man immediately removed the firearm from his waistband and turned in the direction of the officers and deliberately fired several times at the vehicle, striking Officer Moore in the head,” Bratton said at a press conference at a Queens hospital. The 25-year-old Moore was undergoing surgery but listed in stable condition.
We are seeing the same thing when it comes to racially-motivated violence. This is something that we witnessed in Baltimore, and now all over the nation people are being attacked just because of the color of their skin.
For instance, one young man in California attacked a random passerby with a baseball bat.
A Fontana man accused of beating a passerby with a bat in an apparently random attack in Rialto, leaving the victim with life-threatening injuries that he was not expected to survive, was charged Wednesday with attempted murder allegedly committed as a hate crime.
Jeremiah Ajani Bell, 22, was arrested Monday, a day after a daylight assault on 54-year-old Armando Barron, who was walking down the street when he was attacked.
“It appears he was targeting anybody who wasn’t black,” Rialto police Detective Sgt. Paul Stella said Wednesday.
We witnessed an even more disturbing example of racially-motivated violence just the other day in South Carolina.
Witnesses and police say a mob of 60 black teens took to the streets of Charleston, South Carolina, to unleash attacks on unsuspecting drivers and pedestrians, all but one of whom were white.
And of course police in some areas of the country are also using unnecessary violence. Just consider what happened to a group of peaceful protesters in Denver on Wednesday.
With much of the nation focused on the police abuse protests happening in Baltimore and New York City, the Denver police and their actions against a group of protesters on Wednesday has largely gone unnoticed.
But police were dressed for war. Paramilitary style. And they weren’t going home without using a few cans of pepper spray and filling up a paddy wagon.
Video that surfaced shows a group of about 100 protesters walking the streets of downtown Denver where they were met with line of motorcycle cops who forced the group on to the sidewalk. One overzealous officer can be seen breaking away from the pack chasing down pedestrians, using his motorcycle as a large weapon.
It’s war on the streets of America, and this is only just the beginning.
As we enter the next major economic downturn, people are going to become angrier and even more desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. The next few years are not going to be a good time to be living in urban areas. Even if you only have peace and love in your heart, that doesn’t mean that you won’t get caught in the crossfire as the violence escalates.
For years, most of our politicians have been preaching hate and division. For years, the mainstream media has been preaching hate and division. For years, Hollywood has been preaching hate and division.
Now we have a nation that is deeply, deeply divided and that is filled with hate.
Things didn’t have to turn out this way, but they did. I hope that you are getting ready for what comes next.
and asks: “How real, how deep was denazification, really? Both internationally (case in point, the USA) and domestically?”
Answer: Germany is still denazifying. I follow German TV and I can tell you today’s Germans view the Nazis as monsters from another planet. Today’s Germans are completely French republicans, as far as Nazism is concerned.
It was not the case after the war. Thanks in great part to the influence of the USA reinvigorated by its campaign of annihilation of French ports, just because they could, countless Nazis escaped prosecution. Even more were put in leadership roles, from financial bankster Schacht, creatur of JP Morgan, genitor of Hitler, to top Nazi Marshall Von Manstein (who blocked denazification in the German army), to the industrialist Thyssen (author of the 1940 book “I paid Hitler”).
But then from trial to trial, and revelation to revelation, the truth has come out. The latest guy on trial, then a young accountant at Auschwitz, fully admits how terrible the Nazi system was and his role in it.
The Bush family was never asked to regurgitate the fortune it made from managing his arms industry for Hitler. This is tyoical of the absence of denazification of the USA.
(Whereas of course the heroic SNCF, the French Railways, which suffered hundreds of summarily executed resistance fighters, was required to pay reparations, by USA Jews, for having transported Jews under the gun.)
Kevin: “Is today’s “German mindset” that far removed from yesterday’s (case in point, Germany’s recent conduct in the EU)? The Nazi’s enablers are still here, untouched, unpunished, how can there be truth?”
Well the austerity thing is a very vast problem, which, as you hint, did not originate in Germany. (Actually in the 1930s France was austerian, whereas the USA, the UK and Germany, starting in 1933, were all very much into default, devaluation and massive liquidity creation!)
“The Nazi enablers” were more based in New York-the USA than Berlin (this is one of my main theses). It is not just a question of Ford financing Hitler (1920), or of Schacht-JP Morgan (1923), or the Wall Street Morgenthau plan of 1928.
Kevin: “Hell, I’d even say that as WWII fades more and more into History, it becomes a mythology, if not a religion, a unction divine if you will (case in point, the system below, its drivers, its collaborators and its parasites). Where is the truth, where there is myth only?”
This is exactly why it is important to understand that Hitler was a plutocratically constructed phenomenon, in the general sense of the word “plutocracy”. And that much of Hitler’s power, and advice, came from the global plutocracy, based in the UK and the USA.
It is important to get the mythology right. It’s not obvious, as the Nazis themselves spread disingenuously the disinformation that they were against “plutocrats” (while feeding at their teat).
Kevin: “Patrice says:“What I reproach to Gandhi was to view the minor problem (getting the British exploitation of India to stop) to be major,”
What about [the free trade deals]? The “major” problem is not the above-mentioned Islam in this case, but the global (Anglo, it never can hurts to point out) exploitation system you rail against, which is triumphing overall (and thus exhausting itself, along with everything else).
There is no jumping out of the runaway train”
These global free trade treaties have caused massive unemployment in the industrial workers class in the USA, recent studies have shown. Even the Wall Street Journal (!) had an editorial about this, a few days ago, and said that had to be fixed.
This evidence was long denied by the economists paid by plutocrats in the last 35 years that plutocracy has reigned over the minds, in the West.
The question, thus is not so much about “Anglo” than about “Pluto”. For a long time, the average denizen of the UK and the USA profited from empire. But now it’s clearly not the case in Britain. And clearly, in the USA, the writing is on the wall: although fracking has been profitable for the average citizen of the USA, as the Greenhouse Crisis gathers pace, this is not going to be the case anymore. The anti-flooding (from sea level rise) plan of New York City cost (put in place by Mayor Blumberg) cost 20 billion dollars (when Antarctica starts to melt big time, stopping the sea will not be a possibility.
So how to fix a lot of things?
A carbon tax.
It should be applied, worldwide.
When? The Conference in Paris is the place to impose it. Although I do not think it is on the agenda. Instead complicated laws are supposed to be brought forward. That will not work.
A carbon tax will increase the availability of local work (as it taxes world transportation: ships emit lots of CO2). It is also absolutely necessary if one wants to be serious about decreasing CO2 emissions.
![Obama Cut Taxes On Richest Taxpayers. [He also transferred trillions to the richest under QE, but that's not in the graph above!]](https://newscream.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/gini-coefficients-post-tax-in-oecd-countries.png)
