Raúl Ilargi Meijer
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Mind you, according to John C. Kornblum, former U.S. undersecretary of state for European affairs, who helped draft the act, it’s pretty much meaningless:
Pact With Russia Keeps NATO Bases at a Distance, But Should It?
Q: Some NATO members are against the permanent stationing of troops in Eastern Europe, arguing that it would violate the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Are they right?
Mr. Kornblum: The first important thing is that this is not a treaty. It’s not something legal. An act is an agreement of political commitments people make. It’s not legally binding. The Germans are twisting that around by saying ‘We can’t violate the act.’ But there’s nothing to violate.
Q: If it’s not binding, what was the purpose of the act?
Mr. Kornblum: The NATO Russia Founding Act was a statement by NATO and Russia as to how they were going to regulate relations. It was all done in terms of political commitments. It isn’t written in the terms of a legal commitment. It’s written as a political intention.
Q: In that case, it should be easy to cancel the agreement, correct?
Mr. Kornblum: It says if conditions change, all bets are off. There are all kinds of escape clauses if the other side isn’t sticking to its commitment. Clearly, the Russians have broken virtually all of theirs. There’s no way you can say the conditions are as harmonious as when it was signed.
Q: If it’s so clear, why do Germany and other NATO members read it differently?
Mr. Kornblum: The Germans are determined to continue following a political track. They don’t want relations with Russia to become warlike and they don’t want it to devolve into something resembling a cold war. Their view is that if you can hold onto the commitment you can still have a dialogue. So they want to avoid being seen as having violated the founding act.
Still, if that’s all it is, why should Russia stick to it? Looking only through western eyes, and on top of that only seeing what you like, seems a flimsy way of doing politics.
From a legal perspective, this evolves around the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997. NATO accuses Russia of violating this act, while ignoring the fact that things like having CIA ‘advisors’ and other personnel inside Ukraine, let alone conspiring to topple a government, is also a violation.
BTW, Anders War Party Rasmussen will leave as NATO head September 30, his term was extended only to organize the present conference. He will be succeeded by Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg, not a Russia fan either (or he wouldn’t have been picked, NATO’s a hammer looking for a nail).
Any additional interest income from higher rates will be wiped out by greater defaults.
The banks won’t wait for interest income, they have much more lucrative sources.
I don’t think the US economy can grow with a 10Y UST much above 3%.
It’s not growing now, so what’s the difference? Besides, everyone knows ultra low rates can’t last forever. Pensions funds have been getting murdered. And will be finished off by lower stock markets.
If the economy isn’t perceived to be growing, the big banks won’t be very profitable.
They can bet against the economy, and the markets, and get filthy stinking rich. All they really need to do is pull their stock portfolio’s.
I see little reason why Goldman would prefer a booming economy to a plunging one. There’s money to be made in either case. Their income from QE and low rates is now subject to diminishing returns. So higher rates is what it will be. it’s just a matter of fine tuning the timing.
Low rates and deflation is TAE’s position, right?
Deflation is. Low rates are temporary inventions.
But since IS and the House of Saud are both Sunni, the odds of SA subsidizing IS may be higher than IS destroying Ghawar pumps.
Quite a few shale drillers must be so deep into debt all they can do is go deeper as long as they can borrow even more, and then hope prices will rise, of either the land or the oil they produce. It can’t be a healthy business anymore.
If you would simply have searched ‘Assange’ on Google News, I’m sure it would have returned results. Doing that, by the by, is also a great way to get access to paid content from WSJ, FT and many others.
But he did say he’ll leave the embassy soon. Never charged with anything in either Sweden or Britain or US, everyone’s just diddling as US builds a case against him, which has taken 4 years now. UK has spent £7 million protecting the Ecuador embassy. Assange filed a criminal complaint against FBI. No movement at all in Swedish investigation. Sweden refuses to hear him in UK.
But that was just a rumor. He seems to be doing a wrap-up of all legal matters in various countries against him.
Assange to do a press conference any moment now; rumored to be so ill he’ll have to leave the Ecuador embassy to seek treatment.
Ferguson looks pretty surreal, and out of proportion (starting with shooting an allegedly unarmed kid 6 times). To hold back a few hundred protesters, what looks like entire armies are being put on the streets. The governor just signed an order to deploy the National Guard. What are these people going to do when there are thousands of protesters, or tens of thousands?
Far as I know, Naftogaz, the monopoly pipeline company, owns them. Which is already kind of peculiar, because Russia paid for much of them. They just came with the territory when Ukraine separated from Russia, which didn’t complain too much about it, because it was under the impression that the situation guaranteed continued flow of the gas to Europe. Russia even paid a lot of money in ‘rent’ over the years. Just like they subsidized, financed, Ukraine in 100 other ways. They may regret some of that now, and they may not take the abrupt reversal of all of these deals lying down. I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin launches a huge legal claim vs Kiev sometime soon; I’m sure his lawyers are on it.
Canada Quarantines Man With Ebola Symptoms (AFP)
A Canadian hospital put a patient in isolation Friday after he arrived in the country from Nigeria with symptoms of fever and flu – possible signs he is infected with Ebola – local media said. A doctor at the Brampton, Ontario hospital, near Toronto, said the patient had a fever and other symptoms similar to those seen in Ebola cases, the news channel CP24 said. Authorities decided to place him in isolation as a precaution, though there has been no official diagnosis and there are multiple diseases that could have caused his symptoms, stressed Eileen de Villa, an official with the region’s Public Health office, according to CTV news. In addition to quarantining the patient, the hospital also enacted other strict precautionary measures, she said.
desertrat: gee, ASPO still exists? Is Sharon still on the board? Haben’t talked to her in forever.
sprocket: funny, Euan and I write regularly. The article’s a year old. Wonder if he still feels the same. I think everyone should revise their views on shale, and rapidly.
Come to think of it, what’s the use of energy in the absence of gravity? I don’t mean I want you to go, you fine first and final algorithm, I was just wondering if maybe without gravity we’d male less of a mess of things. In a purely hypothetical way, for entertainment purposes only, you know the drill.
From carbon, who has some posting issues (I don’t know why):
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Hi RaleighSociopaths hate to be exposed, that’s the way to stop them: Sociopaths in our midst.
I have met one or two in my life. Once you recognise one, you tend to be able to see them coming IMO.
Carbon
Boogaloo,
I think this is a misunderstanding. There is no anti-religious angle.
I simply don’t think politics should become a religion in and of itself.
What I criticize is the fact that US politics have become a faith-based affair: since evidence and fact finding are MIA, people have to believe politicians on their word, and they do. That is a dangerous situation, because it means they can make people believe anything, no matter how false, untrue and motivated by personal agendas. Politicians claim there is an economic recovery, and people believe them. Joe Biden says Putin has no soul (a purely religious statement), and that is – symbolically or not – taken for granted.
I am getting so sick of these people. Just saw the Dutch PM declare on TV that there will be no Dutch mission, armed or not, in the plane crash area – where Holland has taken and received the lead when it comes to such missions -, that would salvage what is left of victims and their belongings. The reason no mission will be sent is because there’s too much fighting going on there. Since all blame for everything, the crash itself and all of its aftermath, has been placed with the ‘rebels’ over the past 10 days, people will automatically assume that this, too, should be blamed on them. Which is nonsense, because it’s the Ukraine army – despite the fact that they no longer even have a government to give them orders(!) – that hugely increased its attacks in the very plane crash area, so the bodies that are still there cannot, even after 10 days, be rescued. But the Dutch PM will never tell his people that it’s our side, the Dutch, EU, West side, the one we finance and support, that make it impossible for ‘us’ to save what dignity is left for those bodily remains that are still out in the fields there. He’d much rather leave the suggestion hanging in the air that it’s the rebels, hence down the line Putin, who are responsible. Still not one word from Holland, Australia, Malaysia, the parties involved in the rescue, about asking/demanding that Kiev halt its attacks on the rebels at least long enough to allow the forensic experts to save what can be saved, be it physical remains or dignity. I’ll teal you something else: since there has been no discernible change in tone vis a vis Kiev after Yatsenyuk left, I suspect the Ukraine army hasn’t been directed from Kiev, or by Ukrainians for that matter, for quite a while. And for a PM who deliberately leads, misleads his vulnerable traumatized people when they look for his support, I have zero respect.
Euan,
Yeah, it’s a curious chain of events. Not sure it confuses Putin, though; he may well have expected something like this.
The ECA (commercial airline pilots ass’n) issued a statement yesterday saying intelligence about missile systems had not been shared outside of US, UK, France, Canada, Oz (whose airlines fly other routes. Holland and Malaysia were never informed of recent developments. But even then … And then again, Ukraine air traffic control does play a role. But their tapes were confiscated by Ukraine intelligence and not heard – from – again since. It’s like the black boxes being sent to Britain, which is not exactly a neutral country.
Obama won’t go talk to Putin, because he’s got him where he wanted: western public opinion is solidly anti-Putin, and they haven’t even had to provide any proof he did anything wrong.
And the public have no idea what has been done in their name, so they feel no guilt whatsoever, but nevertheless all those thousands of dead east Ukrainians (and counting) really are directly linked to our support for Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk and the shady friends they keep.
People in the west feel something bad is being done to them, and are ignorant of what’s being done to others on behalf of them. That’s our press for you.
This is one damning video. Not even so much because Marie Harf admits the State Department relies on social media, but because she states they specifically rely on what Kiev has posted on those media. And as I wrote, no other party has been caught bluntly lying more than Kiev. For instance, Kiev has made tons of outrageous and proven untrue statements, their BUK transport video has been proven a fabrication, and there are serious doubts about the authenticity of their audio recordings of rebels and alleged Russian officials. In other words, the State Department’s case is based on nothing. Which is curious, to say the least, for a country that boasts the best equipment on the planet: why base your case on such a questionable source?
Not so fast on the back pedalling:
Ukraine Says Russian Officer Pushed The Button To Shoot Down MH17
Did a Russian fire the missile that downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17? That depends on who you ask. A top Ukrainian official says he has no doubt. Vitaly Nayda, Ukraine’s director of informational security, told CNN the person who shot down the flight was “absolutely” a Russian. “A Russian-trained, well-equipped, well-educated officer … pushed that button deliberately,” he said.
“We taped conversations” between a Russian officer and his office in Moscow, Nayda said. “We know for sure that several minutes before the missile was launched, there was a report” to a Russian officer that the plane was coming, he said. “They knew the plane was coming with constant speed, in constant direction,” and should have known it was not a fighter jet but “a big civilian plane,” he said.
There are tons of existing, often great, initiatives, some of which work well, some don’t. There are also still enormous amounts of farmers and potential clients who are not connecting to each other. What OFN is trying to do is provide a blueprint that can connect local projects globally, and thus make the success rate higher, for instance by preventing different people from making and repeating the same mistakes in different locations. Plus, of course, encourage more people in more locations to set up new projects, which they now won’t have to start from absolute zero.
Well, John, the offer stands; there is of course much more to say about a process like this, you can describe each step, you can talk about what you learned each step, and why you make the decisisons you make, why you choose what you do, and not what you don’t.
We swallow FF industry propaganda whole, which I’m guessing shows in the fact that I call them zombies?! And the blessings of renewables must be proven through a Citigroup report, who of course have no interests in the huge investment booms in solar or, for that matter, shale?! Sure ….
John, great write up of the other 800 pound underlying beastie: storage, buffering. If ever you feel like expanding on this and turning it into an article, I’m game.
Cutting energy use is the big one, Nicole cut her family’s by 90% in 2000, and only then got solar, battery bank etc. But of course, if we all would do this, the grid wouldn’t survive. It’s that grid, the centralized system, that will haunt us all the way to doomsville. The last thing we want at this point is mass and/or centralized investment into anything. We want small investments, home by home. But we will need to give up certain services no matter what. Then again, who needs an electric dryer? And ovens, there are tons of different options that don’t use electricity.
Diablo,
Very good points. I have a lot more respect for a small pacific nation banning fishing in its sphere than for Obama doing some top-down thing. And a lot more suspicion of the latter.
Snuff,
Always happy to see you! Your presence here never fails to make me think there is still hope for this world. Please convey Nicole’s and my warmest greetings to Mrs Queen Bee.;-) And please call back in soon.
Variable, in 1979 no-one had a clue how crazy things could or would get debt wise.
Boogaloo, forget about hyperinflation. Not going to happen. Biggest money supply increase in history by a mile and a half, but consumer spending aka velocity of money is one on one dependent on borrowing.
That’s a very good rant, diablo, well written, true, real, the lot. Compliments. Stay angry. Write me an article like that.
We can lead very wonderful and fulfilling lives without economic growth, people have done it for 100,000 years and more.
raul, you are a tad naive.
No, I’m not. We did live those lives, or our ancestors did. What comes now is a different story. And I have zero naive or rosy ideas about that.
The Maximum Power Principle (Lotka, Odum) provides a useful point of view, albeit one that casts grave doubt on our ability to reason our way out of our more primitive brain segments. It comes very close to a definition of life itself.
In Human And Natural Systems Oppose The 2nd Law Of Thermodynamics By Importing Inputs For Replacement And Maintenance, Jay Hanson gives this definition:
The Maximum Power Principle states that all open systems (Bernard cells, ecosystems, people, societies, etc.) evolve to degrade as much energy as possible while allowing for the continued existence of the larger systems they are part of.
In 1991, Kay and Schneider explained Lotka’s (1922) suggestion that living systems will maximize their energy flow, H. T. Odum’s (1955) Maximum Power Principle for ecosystems, and Lieth’s (1976) maximum energy conductivity. https://merkury.orconhosting.net.nz/lifeas.pdf . Energy efficiency is tuned for maximum power. Energy conservation leads to more power production. https://www.uh.edu/admin/engines/epi984.htm
Odum’s Emergy principles are also important in this regard.
As for the three day work week ecosocialism seems to think is enough, I have to question that. Maybe they think imports will still be continued “as usual”. If we have to do everything ourselves, and that’s as inevitable as diminishing oil supplies, and we have these hugely larger population numbers, 7 days may not suffice. Which is probably why Jay’s newer site is called warsocialism, not ecosocialism.
Gold is not like copper, guys. Even if when it comes to rehypothecation you can do a lot of the same things with it. Zero Hedge is stuck in the gold bug mode, and though that must be a tough spot to be in with gold at $1250, I don’t see them getting out of it anytime soon. Which in turn makes objective analysis a hard thing to do. I don’t see any reason to doubt that rehypothecation, using assets as collateral, is widespread and a fully accepted business model in China. I wonder how many of the empty apartments have been put up as collateral at an $x value to procure loans for more empty apartment development. And what that will mean when prices fall to $x-1.
Raleigh, it’s the sheer size of it. For reasons of credibility, Beijing needed to raise reserve ratios and cut some forms of lending, but behind the curtain the shadow banks filled in the gaps. Profitable for everyone until the double digit growth stats vanished. Then it easily turns to cats in a sack. And consequences Beijing certainly never intended: they find their control is far less strong than they thought, since running an economy based on unbridled growth is very different from a communist total control one. To get that growth, they had to give up part of the control, and they never thought that through. Now they find that cracking down is only possible at the severe risk of halting growth. There have undoubtedly been gold schemes too, and a lot of false demand, but I’d look more at actual commodities, metals obviously, but also timber, palm oil etc.
Degringolade
My guess is not necessarily, though it’s hard to predict what happens once deleveraging and deflation take off. While many people will say that when stocks plummet, everyone will move into gold, they’d still need to have something left to purchase it with. As for PM being suppressed, it looks that way, but where I differ from gold bugs is I don’t see why it wouldn’t continue to be going forward.
