The John James Newsletter 37
20 December 2014.
May your Christmas be happy and your friendships stronger to deal with the difficult times that lie ahead. The love that waits around us will sustain our hopes, if only we let it.
Russian businessman:
Naturally, the task is simple – we need to drop the ruble to the minimum and then buy all that we can, giving away the dollars that are no longer needed and not guaranteed by anything. This will help concentrate all the rubles inside the country where we can assign their price independently. There will be a short-term increase in prices and a reduction in living standards, but – like an incision by a surgeon – it will be a little painful at first, but then you will be healthy and strong for the rest of your life.
Full scale of plastic in the world’s oceans revealed for first time
Over five trillion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans, largely deriving from food and drink packaging and clothing. While spread out around the globe, much of this rubbish accumulates in five large ocean gyres, which are circular currents that churn up plastics in a set area. Each of the major oceans have plastic-filled gyres, including the well-known ‘great Pacific garbage patch’ that covers an area roughly equivalent to Texas.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/10/full-scale-plastic-worlds-oceans-revealed-first-time-pollution?CMP=ema_632
Is Ukraine Preparing for a Nuclear False Flag to Frame Russia?
Russia’s State Advisor, Director of The Institute of Problems of Globalization, Doctor of Economics, author Mikhail Delyagin tells Anton Chelyshev on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio that Ukraine is preparing a new large-scale anti-Russian provocation
http://fortruss.blogspot.mx/2014/12/is-ukraine-preparing-for-nuclear-false.html
The Peshawar School massacre: A failure to understand
The problem with the public perception of the war in Pakistan is that we see only part of it: we see the heartrending images from Peshawar and elsewhere where terrorists have struck. But there is a war that we do not see in the tribal north.
http://maryamsakeenah.blogspot.com.au/
The small and surprisingly dangerous detail the police track about you
The crackdown on protestors in Ferguson, Missouri showed the extent to which advanced military weapons and equipment, designed for the battlefield, are making their way to small-town police departments across the US. The same thing is happening with surveillance equipment that is enabling the police to gather vast quantities of sensitive information about each and every one of us in a way that was never previously possible.
Russia and Turkey’s Gas Deal
This is a long but comprehensive analysis of the fluctuating politics and strategies of gas supply to Europe. it is worth every minute you spend reading it.
Joaquin Flores is an American expat living in Belgrade, and a full-time analyst at the Center for Syncretic Studies, a public geostrategic think-tank. His expertise encompasses Eastern Europe, Eurasia with a proficiency in Middle East affairs. Flores is particularly adept at analyzing the psychology of the propaganda wars.
Russia and Turkey’s gas deal can save Europe and the World
Did anyone notice that Australia now has a carbon trading scheme?
Senator Nick Xenophon has brought back a carbon trading scheme to Australia by inserting a ‘Safeguard Mechanism’ into the Direct Action legislation. This creates the framework for a market based methods to arrive at a price for carbon. Conceptually any company who currently emits more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 annually will be required from 1 July 2016 to keep their emissions below a predetermined baseline level or face penalties.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/anyone-notice-australia-now-carbon-trading-scheme-87832
The Media Is Focusing On the WRONG Senate Torture Report
Torture is only good at one thing: eliciting false confessions. Bush-era torture techniques, we now know, were cold-bloodedly modeled after methods used by Chinese Communists to extract confessions from captured US servicemen that they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War. So the latest revelations actually makes sense: The White House started pushing the use of torture when officials in 2002 were desperately trying to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks in order to strengthen their public case for invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 at all.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/doesnt-mainstream-media-discuss-torture-issue.html
Guess which currency has stronger fundamentals— the dollar or… ruble?
If you listen to conventional financial news, they’ll all tell you that you’d have to be insane to own anything in Russia right now—stocks, bonds, currency, etc. They’ll tell you that the ruble is in freefall, and that the dollar is the place to be.
Surprise! Guess which currency has stronger fundamentals— the dollar or… ruble?
Going to the dogs
Multi-billion dollar lending to Ukraine by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank has stopped amid growing doubts among country board directors at the two international organizations that the Ukrainian Government can meet repayment commitments and loan covenants for 2015, or deliver on reform promises and budget financing targets tabled in Kiev this week.
Your Ancestors, Your Fate
To a striking extent, your overall life chances can be predicted not just from your parents’ status but also from your great-great-great-grandparents’. We estimate that 50 to 60 percent of variation in overall status is determined by lineage. The fortunes of high-status families inexorably fall, and those of low-status families rise, toward the average — what social scientists call “regression to the mean” — but the process can take 10 to 15 generations (300 to 450 years). This is longer than most social scientists have estimated in the past.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/your-fate-thank-your-ancestors/?_r=0
A Tale of Two Girls: Malala and Nabeela
Whilst Ms Yousafzai was receiving her Nobel Prize, my attention was drawn towards the case of another young girl from Pakistan: Nabeela Rahman. Much like Malala, Nabeela too recently travelled to the West with an altogether different purpose.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40492.htm
The last great extinction a double-whammer
Scientists have long believed that heavy dust from an asteroid impact blocked out the sun, setting off a disastrous chain of events that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. But now researchers have found more evidence that major volcanic eruption began 250,000 years before the impact and continued afterwards. “We’re talking about something similar to what’s happening today: lots of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere very rapidly. Ultimately that leads to ocean acidification, killing a significant portion of plankton — the base of the food chain. If you wipe them out, then you’d have catastrophic effects.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2871421/Were-dinosaurs-killed-one-two-punch-Dates-suggest-volcanic-eruption-took-place-deadly-asteroid-strike.html