Afghanistan

Coincidence … Or Something More?

At the moment, the Ebola virus is ravaging three countries - Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone - where it is doubling every few weeks, but singular cases and clusters of them are cropping up in dense population centers across the world. Ebola's mortality rate can be as high as 70%, but seems closer to 50% for the current major outbreak. This is significantly worse than the Bubonic plague, which killed off a third of Europe's population. Previous Ebola outbreaks occurred in rural, isolated locales, where they quickly burned themselves out by infecting everyone within a certain radius, then running out of new victims. But the current outbreak has spread to large population centers with highly mobile populations, and the chances of such a spontaneous end to this outbreak seem to be pretty much nil. The scenario in which Ebola engulfs the globe is not yet guaranteed, but neither can it be dismissed as some sort of apocalyptic fantasy: the chances of it happening are by no means zero.

With the revelations of systemic, widespread corporate criminality of banking institutions in recent years, it is clear that global Bank CEOs are becoming the new Drug Lords.

Brinkmanship, a failure of diplomacy and increasing militarism appears to have the world on the verge of a serious military conflict. Everybody should own some physical gold as a hedge and a safe haven asset to protect against the significant risks challenging us today which include bail-ins, currency wars, terrorism and war.

New Boogeyman Has ALREADY Been Debunked

Thanks to a dizzying barrage of lies, mainstream media fear-mongering and a couple of beheadings, the Obama Administration finally achieved its long sought after war in Syria. The tactic that proved most effective in mobilizing the American public back into a shivering, post-9/11 fetal position, was the same tactic used by elites in the UK to convince Scotland against voting for independence. That tactic... is fear.

You’ve got to hand it to the brain surgeons running America’s foreign policy. They possess an uncanny ability to seamlessly forge alliances, break alliances and turn former allies into existential enemies, while simultaneously demonizing regimes, making amends with demonized regimes, and then quickly forming alliances with the same bitter enemies... “I want to thank those countries who genuinely supported us. Western countries had their personal interest, the Western countries and the United States had their own personal goal,” Mr. Karzai said, adding "this war is for the personal interest of foreign policies and this is fight of outsiders in which Afghans are sacrificed."

Who is the world’s No. 3 arms exporter, after the United States and Russia? Surprise. It is Germany, a country bound by law to supply only allies and peaceable folks like (neutral) Switzerland or Sweden. Off limits are “areas of tension” — bad neighborhoods that actually need the stuff. Yet somehow, Israel and Saudi Arabia, both living in the world’s powder keg, are among Germany’s best customers. So are Algeria, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Since winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama has now bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, and now Syria. As Glenn Greenwald notes, Humanitarianism is the pretense, not the purpose.

• U.S., backed by Arabs, launches first strikes on fighters in Syria (Reuters, BBG)
• But not all all back: Turkey Bars Kurds From Entering Syria to Fight Islamic State (BBG)
• Dollar Weakens on Airstrikes; Europe Stocks Drop (BBG)
• Ready for Rate Riot? Emerging Markets Set to Follow Fed (BBG)
• White House fence jumper had ammunition, machete in car, prosecutors say (WaPo)
• El-Erian "would have done things differently" (Reuters)
• Eurozone business growth slows in September, PMI survey finds (BBC)
• Shrinking Bond Desks Taken by Journeymen as Masters Fade (BBG)
• Manufacturing Rebound Relieves Growth Concerns in China (BBG)
• Former Trader Quits Playboy Club to Open Own Restaurant (BBG)

After the end of the cold war, the United States dominated world affairs for nearly twenty years. However, the situation of a unipolar world has changed since the financial crisis of 2008 to a now multipolar world that includes China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa. These powers are influencing and manipulating the conflict zones we have today to their advantage. By analysing and dissecting the issues concerning the major conflict zones on our world map, as well as illustrating the parties involved, this article will explain what political and strategic interests are at play and how the development in major hotspots shape the big picture. This will identify the geopolitical forces that affect the European continent and what future concerns and worries await us.

Since it is almost impossible to win against guerrillas by only attacking from the air, "boots on the ground", as The Pentagon and military have advised, are needed to effectively fight IS. Obama and the American people - as a result of the Afghanistan and Iraq debacles — vehemently veto that idea. However, inserting U.S. military personnel for fighting or training locals likely would be also be counterproductive and would once again paint a big, red bulls-eye on the United States. The best option is for the U.S. government to do nothing.

"Rudderless and without a compass, the American ship of state continues to drift, guns blazing."  While critics have been questioning the legality of U.S. military campaigns consistently since the end of World War II, one trend has become increasingly clear. With each new President and each new war, we have witnessed those who hold the office act more and more like dictators, and less and less like constitutional executives. One very important, and up until recently, overlooked point about Obama’s latest “war on ISIS” is that this is not at all just more of the same. This crosses yet another very important line of shadiness, and if we as as American public allow him to do so, we will suffer grave long-term consequences to our economic future as well as our liberties. This is very serious stuff.

History did not end with the Cold War and, as Mark Twain put it, whilst history doesn’t repeat it often rhymes. As Alexander, Rome and Britain fell from their positions of absolute global dominance, so too has the US begun to slip. America’s global economic dominance has been declining since 1998, well before the Global Financial Crisis. A large part of this decline has actually had little to do with the actions of the US but rather with the unraveling of a century’s long economic anomaly. China has begun to return to the position in the global economy it occupied for millenia before the industrial revolution. Just as the dollar emerged to global reserve currency status as its economic might grew, so the chart below suggests the increasing push for de-dollarization across the 'rest of the isolated world' may be a smart bet...