Thoughts on the World on This Day

 

The negotiations between Turkey and Israel are proceeding as if running uphill through thick maple syrup. The Turkish Foreign Minister claims that the next high level meeting will end with an agreement. The Israeli negotiating team in London, England stated that these most recent negotiations showed no progress and that the impasses remain. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin recently stated matter-of-factly that there can be no rapprochement between Turkey and Israel until Israel ends the naval blockade of Gaza and ends the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands. This would appear to be a deal breaker making any return of normal relation impossible. We find this wonderful news as we believe that Israel normalizing relations with Turkey, a Muslim country which plays both ends of Islam against one another, is just one more sycophantic symptom of Israeli leaders belief they must please the whole world, even or especially their enemies. This game should become fun to watch as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is to visit Turkey this week and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman is also to be in Turkey starting from Monday. The presumed leader, or at least high ranking servant of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of Shia Islam is to visit Turkey at the same time as the presumed leader of the Sunni world visiting Turkey should provide some amusement. It should end up like a man handling his mistress while on a business trip where his wife arrived to surprise him.

 

On to Iraq and the failures of its government and the surprises when viewing exactly who is upset. The thought was that the Shiite population in Iraq with the assistance from Iran would be in a virtual; perfect world. There are a few problems with this situation which were not anticipated. The biggest problem is the really, really low oil prices. This is due to Saudi Arabia’s assault on Iran through flooding the market with low priced oil knocking the profit out of much of the world’s oil production. This low price has forced the closure of numerous fracking sites as the price of reaching the oil was too expensive even though the shipping costs were minimal. The actual aim by the Saudis was Iran and their allies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. The American Fracking concerns were a secondary target which the Saudis are more than happy to see abandoned as they became economically unviable. If the United States were playing the game long term they would have stepped in and subsidized their oil and gas industry in order to send a message to the Saudis that the United States will be in this game and not abandon being internally provided and succumbing to the Saudi pressure forcing them from viability just so the Saudis can raise prices later and have everybody dancing to their tune. The additional fact that the Russians are also caught in the vice of the Saudi ploy was simply icing on the cake.

 

When the legacy for the Obama administration is being written it will hopefully have a few chapters which will require waiting until the complete story had played out in Iraq. President Obama was handed an Iraq which was mostly a done deal and took a concerted effort to completely erase all the hard work which had led to that point and somehow President Obama managed to mishandle and fumble that handoff within two years. Why two years? That was because it took that long for graft and greed to destroy all the hard work which had all but solved almost every issue. All that was left to do was oversee the government and make sure that they did their jobs and did not steal everything which was not nailed down. There was also the little thing called treating the people fairly. The initial problem which would have signaled there was a problem would have been the Kurdish areas as they already had a regional government which was up and working and thus had a means of voicing their displeasures. The next area one could look was the Sunni areas which also had a built in warning system, namely the Sunni Ministers who were arrested or fled the government before being arrested and subsequently tortured or murdered. Even had all these gone by undetected, even a blind man should have picked up on the increasingly violent Shiite demonstrations rising against the Iraqi government and the return of Moqtada al Sadr to prominence. The last item would have been the acceptance of the Islamist terrorist entity ISIS growing to such prominence unopposed initially by the government in Iraq as they had warnings galore that all was not well in the central Sunni areas which were the first to show displeasure and finally did turn to the Sunni terror state which proved to be a nightmare but were unable to receive any support fighting ISIS when they might have been most easily defeated from the central government leading to the middle of the country to simply fall into the arms of the Sunni Islamists.

 

Another area which the Obama government got wrong was Egypt where President Obama gladly backed the Muslim Brotherhood and was so infatuated with their rule that they completely ignored the Egyptian people who rose up against the Muslim Brotherhood whose mismanagement of the economy and infatuation to the point of obsession with applying the Sharia and doing so as quickly as possible that they missed all the warning signs. When even Turkey’s President Erdogan tells you that you are attempting too radical an approach and agenda and that they would be better served to slow their pace of incorporating the changes, then you might have a problem. Their refusal to adjust led directly to the coup by the military which then installed a temporary government while elections were held. The military showed more sympathy for the people than had the government of the Muslim Brotherhood. This led directly to the ouster and outright banning of the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood who had simply tried to do too much too fast and won itself the ire of the people.

 

The next boondoggle was Libya and the terrorist overrunning of the Benghazi Consulate. This required the willful blindness of both the President and the Secretary of State. Of course both of these individuals were more concerned with the reelection of President Obama which largely led to their ignoring repeated pleadings for greater security and additional people in Benghazi. Then followed the dropping of the ball through a clumsy cover-up designed to put off any bad publicity by a willful media. The needless deaths of four Americans was something which screamed to be heard and was simply too great a tragedy to be swept under the rug. That did not matter as the reelection went as planned and the revelations about Benghazi slowly emerged and by that time the American people had moved on. Nothing was going to damage the administration this late in the game, but the end of Benghazi has not been heard from as it will most definitely return loud and clear should Hillary Clinton be the Democrat candidate for President this coming election cycle. The televisions will carry wall-to-wall video of Hillary before the Senate committee investigating Benghazi stating, “What difference now does it make.” That is when Benghazi might finally be felt.

 

In Israel it is everything normal all upsides down. Israel is still being accused of colonialism by the conquerors of their homeland from in the early seventh century. The Arabs were simply the last of a whole host of colonial enterprises all attempting to dislodge the Jewish People (the Israelites) from their native ground and capital city of Jerusalem. It started with the Babylonians who were felled by the Persians who gave way to the Greeks who morphed into Rome which split into the Byzantines who lost out to the Arab Muslims and now that the aboriginal peoples are returning to claim their homelands from the greatest colonialists who spread and even outdid the British and are crying foul. If anybody can find a people who are still a viable people who predate Kings Saul, David and Solomon and predate Joshua it would be quite interesting. The Arabs broke out of Arabia in the early seventh century and have been proudly declaring their intent to conquer the globe and they are calling the Jews colonials?

 

What could be more ludicrous than that? Additionally, in order to assure he has the title President for Life and to never hold another election for the “Palestinians” Abbas has now established a Kangaroo Constitutional Court to declare election are not possible because Israel did it. He has refused to hold elections knowing a snowball would last longer in Hell than he would in office if elections were held and he has a ready-made scapegoat which the European and United Nations are more than happy to blame along with him. How the Palestinian Authority refusing to hold election in the lands where they have been unfortunately granted a semi-autonomous rule can be somebody else’s fault is beyond logic, but since when did logic ever come into play if the Jews can be blamed.

 

Meanwhile Europe is in panic mode because their great plans on inviting anybody claiming to be a refugee from a conflict in the Middle East is not working out as planned. Imagine that. Who thought for a moment allowing herds of people whose standing is living in a governmental system where fair elections are the ones where they know the outcome only days in advance of the voting instead of years and the Europeans cannot understand what went wrong. Still, the Europeans continue to demand that the Israelis allow any and everybody who desire to vote and claim residence for their elections vote for their parliament, the Knesset, and cannot understand why Israel would balk at such a demand. Some people, and by this we are referring to the people who are in power and are completely unable to see what is plainly before them. Perhaps it is time to clean house Europe.

 

The American primaries are continuing and both parties are now wishing they had a viable alternative to their frontrunners. The Democrat elite are sold on Hillary because she and Bill still have the FBI files on most of them. The Republicans had seventeen candidates so have no one to blame but themselves for not straightening things out before it became Cruz or Trump or who are you kidding from Ohio where he won you know. If we had to pick the race now it would be Bernie feel the Bern Sanders against Cruz but as long as the Democrats pull the rug out from under Hillary once again thus making her honorary Charlie Brown and the Football award winner, then Bernie wins against either frontrunner of the Republicans. Yes, the Americans know he is a socialist and really do not care as he has the most experience in government yet is probably the most outsider of them all having never joined either Party. Yep, the democrats are going to nominate an Independent over the actual Democrat in the race. What next?

 

 

 

Oh, even Putin has pulled most of his troops out of Syria leaving in as many as required to protect the naval bases they have there and leaving Assad clinging to power and Iran equally hard. The Russians never were actually fighting the Islamic State and why should they as it is not their problem and the Islamic State is not so stupid as to tug on Superman’s cape or anger Putin, there is little difference except Russian revenge is swifter. That leaves Syria as the most dysfunctional nation on earth with Iraq right behind. The next after that are Pakistan, North Korea tied with Greece and Greece has a wider glimmer of hope named German Banks. The European Union is nervously awaiting the vote this fall by the British on whether to remain even loosely attached to the European Union and the Brits are really glad they continued to hold on to the Pound Sterling and only accepted Euros in trade. Meanwhile, I am sure there are politicians worth their salt in France and Germany thinking of returning to the Franc and the Mark. If they ever actually do that, the European Union is dead, done, fini!

 

China is in the midst of a quiet disaster waiting to happen as they have not met growth projections for a year and a half. They are reacting as one would expect, returning to the good old ways of managed economy with the central government reverting to their communist roots. This will simply exacerbate the problem and that will drive them further still from any capitalist economic engines and back to their five year plans. That will work exactly as it did when it drove them to try capitalism except this time it will be seen as saving them from capitalism. Somewhere along the way China came to believe that capitalism could never slow down and growth would be a constant ten percent or higher. That proved to be a tad too optimistic so they are slowly dismantling the entire effort and returning to what they know will fail, but at least they will control the failure and will blame it on capitalism and become even more draconian and this should tumble China from economic dynamo feeling a small crunch to economic basket case rushing headlong to the bottom but doing so in a controlled manner. Their controlled crash will resemble an Airbus A380 whole wings and tail rudder fell off at 35,000 feet. Anybody standing between China and rock bottom should look up and be prepared to dodge a falling giant.

 

More disjointed news next time we feel our minds slipping and have no actual subject for an entire article, Thanks for your patience.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

A World Spinning Out-of-Control

 

The first area the world is having difficulties is nothing new as finances and resources are always at a critical point somewhere, but when it spreads wide and wild, then there is a problem. The problems are about to get really tightly strung as the United States cash flow valves are about to be made even tighter until mid to late August when the money will be released to give the economy as good a feel and appearance that people will believe that President Obama’s promises to repair the economy have finally begun to work. This will be reflected in a general media message that all is finally well in the world and the United States is healthy and ready to take on the comeback of the millennia. Nothing could be further from the truth but if the economic weapon is to be taken off the table making the push to place Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton in the White House will begin in earnest. What about the e-mail scandal and the leaking of classified information and her using her own private server to remain out of sight her dealings and what about those dealings and then there is the pay-to-play cashing in on her Secretary of State position by the Clinton Foundation personal slush-fund and so much more it is impossible to keep up with it. These e-mail revelations will all be settled and forgotten by the mid-September push where the world will be all Hillary all the time should her coronation go off as planned at the democrat National Convention, which means Bernie Sanders is the court jester out to entertain the masses while all the Hillary loose ends are tied up nice and neat; then Bernie will disappear and drop out for personal and family needs. Of course he will release his support and give Hillary all his delegates at the second round unless the most unbelievable happens and Bernie Sanders becomes the man and the Democrats will dump on Hillary again and the Clintons will have it out once and for all when Bill tells Hillary that it just was never meant to be. Look for a very vindictive and messy divorce to soon follow as Bill will have not been able to provide the necessary support to assist Hillary when it became her turn. Of course it could never have been that Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton was such a set of damaged goods that anything short a miracle could have ever placed her in the White House as the President. Perhaps the truth lies in that she was better as an ornament assisting Bill and quietly out of the actual scene than she would ever be the ‘One’ herself.

 

Meanwhile American consumerism has yet to recoil from the 2007-8 recession and the United States has been languishing in the shadows making a very slow recovery on the jobs market. This has put a serious damper on American consumerism, the buying power on which much of the world economy sits waiting to serve up the goods for Americans to buy. The European one currency disaster is slowly being repaired by using Germany’s wealth and productivity to provide universal monetary relief making the European Union a full circle system where Germany pays the less affluent countries to pay off their debts to Germany and assist their less than ambitious workforce to at least take welfare and spend it on German goods. This has created a system where Germany produces the goods that the rest of Europe consume with well over half the population using German wealth to buy in, so to speak. This is a model of an economic perpetual motion and cash flow machine. The problem is friction and drag which will eventually cause all the funds to not quite reach their theoretical place and be utilized to purchase German goods. People will use a fair share of the German largesse on feeding themselves and not living on German beer, or is it bier? The governments dispensing this cash flow fungible funds will take their cut as government are known to do and other diversions prevent this perpetual cash flow machine to rather rapidly grind to a halt, then what? This was where American consumerism was to kick in and cover the difference and continue to push cash into the machine to overcome the friction and inertial problems but that did not occur right on time. Then there was supposed to be this new middle class in China ready, willing and wealthy enough to re-prime the European economic model. Another ‘no-go’ as they are spending their cash to prop up much of the Asia markets and doing that slightly better than the Germans, but that too is reaching its tipping point as China’s buying power turned out to be overrated and Japan and Australia were not capable of filling that gap so they were also turning to the American consumerism machine which remained relatively idle for reasons the rest of the world could not understand. The reinvestment in American consumerism is scheduled for lift-off later this year in order to place the next media coronation on-track to place Hillary Clinton back in the White House. Expect Bill to play his role perfectly as the supportive spouse as he provides the necessary cash for her campaign while attempting to resist any temptations which would be a true and dramatic scandal.

 

Then we come to the rest of the world. Saudi Arabia is sitting on that valve with the exception of Iran and the one-hundred-billion-plus bribery to permit them to sit in a really plush hotel suite and dictate their dream nuclear treaty and for President Obama and Secretary of State John François, did we mention he was French, Kerry to appear to be writing and crafting a cleverly devious set of rules and stipulations which would prevent Iran from building any nuclear weapons, especially deliverable ones as they also were writing a prevention to test missiles and related technologies into the treaty. They were terrible actors or at least other than the carefree unconcerned President completely trusting his competent yet bumbling Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the French Sûreté Kerry to bring in the play of the century and deliver the ultimately understated but effective treaty. The entire act failed as none of the parts were played by the late Peter Sellers and thus masterly failing and flailing to the best solution through erroneous thinking always overcorrecting just enough to get the criminal in the end was not pulled off. The Iranians were playing three dimensional chess, or possible a number of dimensions higher, while Obama and Kerry were playing the ever so complicated game of Noughts and Crosses, how so ever European of them. The nuclear path to Armageddon arranged, paved, and decorated by the United States gift wrapped and delivered to the Iranians set Saudi Arabia even further on edge. The Saudis are playing their one card and playing it to its utmost capacity pumping oil from the ground at a pace previously unheard of to crash the market and push prices down as far as it can go.

 

This has had effects all desired and planned by the Saudi government, aka the Saudi Royal Family. The low prices means that the lesser grade or difficult to extract barrels of oil produce little if any profit and even losses for certain lower grade oils less desirable than the light, sweet oil of the Saudi oil field production. This was intended to bankrupt the Iranian oil market which is likely not producing the cash flow which makes Iran operate but fear not, the Obama administration has taken care of that with the unfreezing of over one-hundred-billion-dollar present right into the Mullahs of Iran’s pockets which will neatly finance their missile and nuclear research and production placing their nuclear and missile programs on the fast track for a five year target date which may be even less in the distance than all except soon to be out of office and thus not blamed for what happens next. The low price of oil is also killing any additional fracking or other fairly expensive to initiate oil fields exploration thus slowing the United States ability to develop these technologies until further notice. The final effect is against Iran’s favorite former and soon to be again super power, Russia. Russia is getting next to nothing in profits from oil sales and is likely depending on vodka profits, a real let down.

 

The Russian government is next to broke but this is where gifts from President Obama roll in. Remember that hundred-billion-plus monetary reward the United States is about to turn over to Iran? Well, guess what they are going to do with a goodly amount of that largesse? That’s the ticket; we knew you would figure that out, of course they will be buying tons of military equipment from Russia. Expect the Iranians to repaint those units tan, beige and brown and then claim they designed and manufactured them within the first year. These military sales may end up being the life’s blood, the mother’s milk for the Russian economic engine. So, Iran gets advanced military equipment and will reverse engineer it or also buy production rights and for the Russians to build the factories as well to produce the missiles and other equipment in Iran. This will provide Russia with the funds to operate for a decade longer providing military goods to Iran. What could conceivably go awry?

 

Where does all of this end? Who knows? Sure, we’ll take a stab at it. Even the military equipment will not save Russia from their adventurisms. Propping up Bashir al-Assad is an expensive business and gets all the worse with every downed aircraft, exploded tank and even every bullet shot and supplies shipped to Syria all costs but things could be worse. Turkey is a wary acquaintance with a love-hate relationship with Iran. Should Turkish-Iranian relation devolve back to animosity stages then Turkey might decide to push back closing the Bosphorus thus separating the Mediterranean Sea from the Black Sea and making the bulk of the Russian fleet all but useless. This would also mean resupplying the Russian units in Syria far more expensive as they would all need to go by air routes around Turkey. With the Russian economy still weak and near collapse, such additional expense would be just the impetus that Russia might require to take care of the Turkish problem and take the Bosphorus straights on both sides including Constantinople, well, returning Istanbul to its former name might be part of the plan, couldn’t it? This more than likely would result in an all-out war between Turkey and Russia which might not end with Turkey. The Russians would not even blink when it would come to also raking-in the Kurdish areas of Syria and Iraq taking the northern parts of Syria down as far as Aleppo. Where such aggressions might lead is a troubling thought. Russia, under Putin, might fabricate an insult or problem from the Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia and many of the old nations, especially those in Central Asia, reestablishing the smaller and more vulnerable nations all in the name of protecting them from untold horrors threatening their futures. Now under the protection of Russia they need not spend anywhere near as much on their fears. It has all been crystalized down to one concern; the big brown ten-thousand-ton bear in the living room.

 

 

Ukraine Was Already a Conflict Spinning Out of Control
and in at Least One Possible Future
This Will Become a Picture of the Calm Before the Storm

 

 

The hard truth is financial matters on a global scale are similar to the financial situation in Europe right before World War I. Far Eastern Asia such as China was not one of the main conditions as their economy was not producing great amounts of wealth and thus was not part of the purchasing consumer world. Russia was faltering as the Czars were overthrown and the democratic first elected governance was unable to instantly produce a functioning and burgeoning economy such as had been witnessed in the booming economies right after the turn of the century in Europe and the United States. That brought on another governance and government change and the Communists took over and immediately cowed the people and put them under a harder and more forceful boot that the Czars had done, Europe was facing an economic stall as if somebody had mucked up the flow of money and without money flowing the economic sails drooped and became dead weight and unproductive. This was not as true in the United States but the American economy drove American business and the main imports by the United States were exotic fruits from South America and coffee from South America plus America was still growing though far slower than before. The Ottoman Empire, a long deceased empire staggering, was being largely propped up by the Europeans as nobody desired these lands which were tribal, primitive, unproductive deserts.

 

By every measurement, Europe was a tinderbox awaiting a single spark. The Ottoman Empire was an even more volatile place and the Balkans were the Balkans with the different religious conflicts, the tribal conflicts, largely inert economies, no overriding force of arms keeping the lid on and everything in a kind of lingering limbo slowly devolving into Machiavellian might makes right situation where many thought they had the might and were waiting for the time to be right. Well, the time never got around to being right as firing a gun with the tinderbox that was Europe was frightening enough, what followed was simply the explosion that set the world ablaze. On June 28, 1914, then, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were touring Sarajevo in an open car, with surprisingly little security, when Serbian nationalist Nedjelko Cabrinovic threw a bomb at their car; it rolled off the back of the vehicle and wounded an officer and some bystanders. Later that day, on the way to visit the injured officer, the archduke’s procession took a wrong turn at the junction of Appel Quay and Franzjosefstrasse, where one of Cabrinovic fellow revolutionaries, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, laid waiting. Leaping towards the car the assassin fired into the rear seat shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at point-blank range. The would-be martyr then attempted to turn the gun on himself but was wrestled to the ground and was basically saved by the arresting officers. The rest is history, no, really, history, literally and exactly World War I history. Nedjelko Cabrinovic was an anarchist and belonged to a subversive group who desired revolution called the Black Hand which was later connected to the Freemasons though there is little evidence we could find of an actual link. Any input either way would be appreciated and allow us to say thanks in advance. Meanwhile, our other conspirator, Gavrilo Princip, was raised in a home of Serbian Orthodox Christian parents though many conspiracy theorists claim because of his appearance he had to be a Jew, the actions of assassinating the Archduke and his wife just sealed the deal on his religious origins had to be Jewish despite all evidence to the contrary. Hopefully there will be no rulers of the Austria-Hungary Empire riding through the Balkans in an open car with a maximum speed of almost seventy miles per hour in the next few weeks having a bang up time at the expense of the downtrodden masses; that would just be tempting fate, now, wouldn’t it. Kidding aside, the world does seem to be picking up speed as if there may be a crashing event in the near future and that is not a happy thought. Really nothing to add to that except the list of national and international leaders vulnerable to some revolutionary anarchist or other form of fanatic is not that far-fetched and that is frightening.

 

Beyond the Cusp