Tuesday, March 22, 2016
The Temple of Baal, in Palmyra, Syria, in 2011. In 2015 it was razed by the Islamic State.CreditYin Bogu/Xinhua Press, via Corbis
NEXT month, the Temple of Baal will come to Times Square. Reproductions of the 50-foot arch that formed the temple’s entrance are to be installed in New York and in London, a tribute to the 2,000-year-old structure that the Islamic State destroyed last year in the Syrian town of Palmyra. The group’s rampage through Palmyra, a city that reached its peak in the second and third century A.D., enraged the world, spurring scholars and conservationists into action. Numerous nongovernmental organizations are now cataloging and mapping damaged cultural heritage sites in the region.
It will be uncanny and thrilling to see this arch from an ancient desert civilization set against the bright lights of New York. Unfortunately, facsimiles can achieve only so much. Denuded of people, stripped of the rich social contexts in which they were once embedded, antiquities appear just as evidence of the grandeur of the past, the accomplishments of another place in another time. But what did these assemblages of stone mean to the modern Iraqis and Syrians who lived with them?
For Salam al-Kuntar, a Syrian archaeologist who works at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the loss of the Temple of Baal was deeply personal. “I have a special love for Palmyra because the Temple of Baal is where my mother was born,” she said.
Ms. Kuntar’s grandfather was a policeman in Palmyra when its Roman-era ruins were inhabited. Well into the 20th century, generations of Palmyrenes made their homes in the shade of millenniums-old columns. The locals taught Ms. Kuntar’s grandmother — who was a young bride when she arrived in Palmyra — how to cook and how to bake bread.
Her daughter was among the last generation born inside the ancient city. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, French colonial authorities cleared the area of its inhabitants and dismantled their mud-brick house. That paved the way for the archaeological exploration and preservation of the site, but it also definitively ended ancient Palmyra’s habitation as well as the use of the Temple of Baal, which over the centuries had transformed into a Byzantine church, then a mosque, before eventually becoming part of the village where Ms. Kuntar’s mother was born.Photo
A picture taken in March 2014 shows the iconic arched gate in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. The Islamic State destroyed it in 2015. CreditJoseph Eid/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Credit to NYTimes
Igor Ivanov, foreign minister from 1998 to 2004 under Boris Yeltsin and current President Vladimir Putin, said the risk of a nuclear war in Europe is higher than at any time in the 1980s.
Mr Ivanov, now the head of a Russian Government think-tank, said: “The risk of confrontation with the use of nuclear weapons in Europe is higher than in the 1980s.”
Both Russia and the United States have fewer nuclear weapons than in the Cold War period but with just over 7,000 nuclear warheads each, they still have about 90 per cent of world stocks, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Talking at a Brussels event with the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland, and a US lawmaker, the ex-politician, said: “We have less nuclear warheads, but the risk of them being used is growing.”
Russia has been warned about intimidating its neighbours with talk about nuclear weapons by NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, voicing concerns among Western officials.
But Mr Ivanov blamed a missile defence shield being set up by the United States in Europe for raising the stakes.
Part of the shield is a site in Poland due to become operational in 2018 which is particularly sensitive for the Kremlin because it brings US capabilities close to Russian borders.
The US and NATO say the shield is designed to protect Europe against Iranian ballistic missiles and is neither targeted at Russia nor capable of downing its missiles.
Credit to Express.co.uk
A SUITCASE bomb packed with nails was detonated in suicide attacks at Brussels airport and a metro station leaving at least 34 dead and 230 injured.
IGPassengers flee the terminal
The evil Islamic State (ISIS) have claimed responsibility for the Brussels terror attack, according to AMAQ, the news agency affiliated with the terror group.
A statement from AMAQ, said: "Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station."
At least 14 people have been killed and another 92 injured in the two large explosions at the airport, according to firemen at the scene.
Another 20 people have been killed and 106 injured after two blasts in Maelbeek metro station in Brussels, Yvan Mayeur, the Mayor of Brussels confirmed.
Medics from Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven, where the wounded are being treated, said their injuries are consistent with at least one of the bombs being packed with nails before it was set off.
IGTwo blasts happened on a metro near the European Parliament
Several people are still trapped in the Maelbeek metro station, confirmed Belgian health minister Maggie De Block.
A Belgian news agency also reported witnesses had said they heard gunshots and shouts of Arabic at the time of the airport explosions.
Two kalashnikov assault rifles were also found in the airport lounge.
Two men were later arrested a mile away from the Maelbeek metro station at around 11am, some two hours after the blasts tore the train apart.
A spokesman for David Cameron confirmed a UK national is among the injured and advised Britons to avoid all but essential travel to Brussels.
Weapons have been found at the blast site at Zaventem airport, according to a Belgian news agency. The information has not yet been confirmed by an official source.
Three explosive devices have been recovered at the airport, including a suicide belt which failed to detonate, according to Belgian media.
A third bomb found at the airport was destroyed by security services, the Brussels provincial governor said.
TwitterPeople run from the airport after the explosions
One explosion took place near the Brussels Airlines check-in desk while the other bomb detonated near the American Airlines check-in.
Alphonse Youla, who was close to the Brussels Airlines area when the bombs detonated, said: "I saw a woman near the escalator near the arrivals area. She looked as though she had been cut in two by the explosion.
"I got five people out. They were injured or dead. I pulled out two policemen with crushed legs. There were a lot of injured, especially people with severed legs. I was under a lot of shock."
The large explosions have taken out glass windows at the entrance and much of the airport's ceiling has collapsed.
A Belgian flag has been put alongside the Union Jack outside No.10 in Downing Street and all flags on government buildings will be at half-mast.
IGArmed police arrest two men near the metro station
The metro station targeted by the terrorists is near the European Union (EU) headquarters.
There are now fears of several coordinated attacks across the city and the entire metro system has been shut down.
The Belgian prosecutor's office has now confirmed the attacks are suicide bombs.
The Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has slammed the attacks as "blind, violent, cowardly" and has warned of more terror attacks.
Mr Michel added: "We were feared an attack and it's happened."
The Belgian leader said it was "a dark day for Belgium" and that his "thoughts go out to the victims and their families".
The French President François Hollande has called for "European unity" after the atrocities.
TWITTERA metro in central Brussels was also attacked
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: "We are at war".
Countries across Europe are tightening security following the attacks.
Emergency services are still searching for fatalities and injured in the rubble at both scenes.
An Iraq-based news agency says Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the attacks
David Crunelle TwitterInjured passengers at Brussels airport
The cause of the two blasts, which occurred at around 8am this morning at an American Airlines check-in desk, are unknown at this stage.
There are unconformed reports that a bomb had been placed next to a check-in desk.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has posted on Twitter: "We are following the situation minute by minute. The absolute priority is for the victims and people who were at the airport."
French minister of the interior Bernard Cazeneuve has said an extra 1,600 security forces and police will be deployed on the streets in France which is also under a high terror alert.
Police in Britain are also stepping up security at key locations across the country.
Belgian authorities have closed the metro in the capital of Brussels following the explosions.
The blasts occurred four days after the arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, suspected of being involved in November's Paris massacre that left 130 people dead and more than 300 injured.
Abdeslam's accomplice Najim Laacheaoui, who was in hiding with the Paris terrorist in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, is still on the run.
Belgian police had been on alert for any reprisal action.
The Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo has announced the Eiffel Tower will be lit up with the colours of the Belgian flag this evening to honour the victims of the attacks.
YOUTUBEThe airport is filled with smoke after the blast
Social media showed pictures of smoke rising from the departure hall where all windows had been shattered by the blast. Passengers were seen running away down a slipway from the departure lounge.
Rudi Vervoot, the president of the Brussels region, said: "There has been an explosion in the airport. An emergency plan will certainly be activated."
A witness said: "I was in the check-in queue and I heard an explosion. I saw smoke, I saw people panicking and running towards the exit. There was a second explosion much closer to me.
"Everyone left the airport in panic, most people left their baggage."
Credit to Express.co.uk
It’s an unfortunate historical anomaly that people think about the paper in their wallets as money. The dollar is, technically, a currency. A currency is a government substitute for money. But gold is money.
Now, why do I say that?
Historically, many things have been used as money. Cattle have been used as money in many societies, including Roman society. That’s where we get the word “pecuniary” from the Latin word for a single head of cattle is pecus. Salt has been used as money, also in ancient Rome, and that’s where the word “salary” comes from; the Latin for salt is sal (or salis). The North American Indians used seashells. Cigarettes were used during WWII. So, money is simply a medium of exchange and a store of value.
By that definition, almost anything could be used as money, but obviously, some things work better than others; it’s hard to exchange things people don’t want, and some things don’t store value well. Over thousands of years, the precious metals have emerged as the best form of money. Gold and silver both, though primarily gold.
There’s nothing magical about gold. It’s just uniquely well-suited among the 98 naturally occurring elements for use as money…in the same way, aluminum is good for airplanes or uranium is good for nuclear power.
There are very good reasons for this, and they are not new reasons. Aristotle defined five reasons why gold is money in the 4th century BCE (which may only have been the first time it was put down on paper). Those five reasons are as valid today as they were then.
When I give a speech, I often offer a prize to the audience member who can tell me the five classical reasons gold is the best money. Quickly now – what are they? Can’t recall them? Read on, and this time, burn them into your memory.
If you can’t define a word precisely, clearly and quickly, that’s proof you don’t understand what you’re talking about as well as you might. The proper definition of money is as something that functions as a store of value and a medium of exchange.
Government fiat currencies can, and currently do, function as money. But they are far from ideal. What, then, are the characteristics of a good money? Aristotle listed them in the 4th century BCE. A good money must be all of the following:
• Durable: A good money shouldn’t fall apart in your pocket nor evaporate when you aren’t looking. It should be indestructible. This is why we don’t use fruit for money. It can rot, be eaten by insects, and so on. It doesn’t last.
• Divisible: A good money needs to be convertible into larger and smaller pieces without losing its value, to fit a transaction of any size. This is why we don’t use things like porcelain for money – half a Ming vase isn’t worth much.
• Consistent: A good money is something that always looks the same so that it’s easy to recognize, each piece identical to the next. This is why we don’t use things like oil paintings for money; each painting, even by the same artist, of the same size and composed of the same materials is unique. It’s also why we don’t use real estate as money. One piece is always different from another piece.
• Convenient: A good money packs a lot of value into a small package and is highly portable. This is why we don’t use water for money, as essential as it is – just imagine how much you’d have to deliver to pay for a new house, not to mention all the problems you’d have with the escrow. It’s also why we don’t use other metals like lead, or even copper. The coins would have to be too huge to handle easily to be of sufficient value.
• Intrinsically valuable: A good money is something many people want or can use. This is critical to money functioning as a means of exchange; even if I’m not a jeweler, I know that someone, somewhere wants gold and will take it in exchange for something else of value to me. This is why we don’t – or shouldn’t – use things like scraps of paper for money, no matter how impressive the inscriptions upon them might be.
Actually, there’s a sixth reason Aristotle should have mentioned, but it wasn’t relevant in his age because nobody would have thought of it…it can’t be created out of thin air.
Not even the kings and emperors who clipped and diluted coins would have dared imagine that they could get away with trying to use something essentially worthless as money.
These are the reasons why gold is the best money. It’s not a gold bug religion, nor a barbaric superstition. It’s simply common sense. Gold is particularly good for use as money, just as aluminum is particularly good for making aircraft, steel is good for the structures of buildings, uranium is good for fueling nuclear power plants, and paper is good for making books. Not money. If you try to make airplanes out of the lead, or money out of paper, you’re in for a crash.
That gold is money is simply the result of the market process, seeking optimum means of storing value and making exchanges.
Reprinted with permission from Casey Research.
Credit to LewRockwell.com
The automation of the global workplace is spreading and, as Pew recently found, 65% of Americans now believe their job will inevitably be done by robots.
In a low-growth world, every low-skill job is up for grabs by the robot/drone horde as the need to cut costs is core business for every CFO (aside from share buybacks) as minimum wage mandates have forced these cost-cutting CFOs to look for alternatives.
Three months ago we warned that it was not just fast-food order-takers and burger-makers that were at risk (a truly terrifying thought for those left in the US economy who are not bartenders or waitresses).
And while McDonalds has already made the move into automation...
The latest 'fast food' outlet to snub humans (and their annoying demands and unreliability) is Domino's Pizza which just unveiled it robot-pizza-delivery plans...
Pizza delivered by a robot? It may seem out of this world, but for one pizza company, the idea may be closer to reality than ever.
Meet ‘DRU,’ Domino’s first-ever automated pizza delivery bot that brings your pizza order directly to your door.
Domino’s unveiled DRU (short for Domino’s Robotic Unit) in several countries across the globe earlier this week, including Australia, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, German, Japan and New Zealand.
The project is a collaborative effort from Domino’s and Australia-based robotic company Marathon Targets, which created the first autonomous robotics for the Australian defense force in the late 2000s.
As Forbes reports, DRU is reportedly fully autonomous, and sports a water-tight, weather-proof acrylic plastic exterior and aluminum and mild steel interior for keeping orders at their best. Like today’s self-driving cars, it uses LIDAR laser-light sensory technology to detect and navigate around obstacles along its journey, and also has a back-up system of traditional sensors (such as you’d find on home cleaning-bots) to ensure it reaches its destination safely.
So far, DRU has been tested on approved pathways and roads Down Under–the same territory, incidentally, in which McDonald’s first began testing its own delivery model–and its size, speed, and autonomous navigation mean it won’t be hitting regular streets or highways soon. If the makers of DRU and its autonomous delivery-brethren keep tweaking their tech while pushing to meet food and road safety guidelines, however, the little bot’s Google Maps- and GPS-powered guidance systemmight soon be delivering it to neighborhoods worldwide before too long.
Credit to Zero Hedge
When panic and fear dominate financial markets, gold and silver both tend to rapidly rise in price. We witnessed this during the last financial crisis, and it is starting to happen again. Because I am the publisher of a website called The Economic Collapse Blog, I am often asked about gold and silver when I do interviews. In fact, just a few days ago I was sitting right next to Jim Rickards during the taping of a television show when this topic came up. Jim expressed his belief that investing in gold is superior to investing in silver, but I had the exact opposite viewpoint. In this article, I would like to elaborate on why I believe that silver represents a historic investment opportunity right now.
I should start out by disclosing that my wife and I have been able to put away a little bit of silver over the years. I wish that it could have been a lot more, but so often there are other priorities that need to be addressed. For example, I have always said that people need to take care of their emergency food storage first before even thinking about any kind of investments.
But if you have money left over after taking care of the basics, I am fully convinced that silver is a wonderful investment for the mid to long term. In this article, I am going to explain why this is the case. However, I have always warned that you have got to be ready for a rollercoaster ride if you get into precious metals. So if you can’t handle the ups and downs, you should probably avoid them altogether.
As I write this article, the price of gold is sitting at $1254.30 an ounce.
Meanwhile, the price of silver is sitting at just $15.81 an ounce.
That means that the price of gold is currently more than 79 times higher than the price of silver. For the ratio between gold and silver to be this high is truly unusual.
You see, the truth is that there is only about 17 times as much silver as there is gold in the Earth’s crust. And currently silver is being mined at about an 11 to 1 ratio to gold.
So it makes sense that throughout history gold has typically sold at about a 15 to 1 ratio to silver.
During the years to come, I do believe that gold will multiply in price.
But I am also convinced that the price of silver will go up much, much faster.
As they both skyrocket in price, the price ratio between gold and silver will shift very quickly from 79 to 1 in the direction of 15 to 1.
Perhaps we may never even get all the way back to 15 to 1, but if we even got to 40 to 1 or 30 to 1, what that would mean for silver would be history making.
Let us also keep in mind that unlike gold, silver is constantly being used up in thousands of different industrial applications. The following comes from Jeff Nielson…
Over the past quarter century, more silver-based patents have been created than with any other metal on the planet. But not only does silver have unparalleled versatility, it is an extremely potent metal, meaning that in many of its commercial applications it is used in only trace amounts.
Why is this of significance? Because in such tiny quantities it is economically impractical to ever recycle any of this silver, at prices anywhere near the (absurd) levels of recent decades. Thus this silver is being consumed in tiny amounts, but in billions and billions of consumer products, over a span of decades.
Unlike gold, our stockpiles of silver are disappearing. As previously mentioned, for at least the last thirty years, the only way that our strong demand for silver could be satisfied has been through consuming portions of these stockpiles.
It has been estimated that approximately one billion ounces of silver have been used in consumer products over the past ten years alone.
Even if the world could somehow avoid the great financial turmoil that has already begun, the truth is that eventually a great demand crunch for silver would come just based on how much of it we are steadily consuming.
At less than 16 dollars an ounce right now, silver is ridiculously undervalued.
Those that are wise see this, and they are stocking up on silver coins at an unprecedented level. Just check out these numbers…
Silver Eagle sales will likely jump by 25% in the first quarter due to deteriorating market conditions. During the first three months last year the U.S. Mint sold 12 million Silver Eagles. Already, sales of Silver Eagles have reached 13 million. There are two weeks remaining in March and the U.S. Mint will likely sell another two million. This will put total Silver Eagle sales for the first quarter at 15 million….. the highest ever.
I have always said that I believe that the price of silver will eventually go over $100 an ounce.
When that happens, those that got in today will be exceedingly happy with their returns.
Others are projecting even greater gains. For instance, investing legend Egon von Greyerz believes that the price of silver could ultimately go as high as $660 an ounce, and Jeff Nielson believes that $1,000 an ounce for silver would be a fair price.
But once again, don’t even think about getting into precious metals until you have the basics squared away. It is often said that you can’t eat gold or silver, and that is very true.
In our new television show, my wife and I are always going to tell it to you straight. A lot of people out there are relaxing right now because they think that the recent stock market rally means that the crisis is over. What they don’t understand is that this new financial crisis is just in the very early chapters. There are going to be more ups and more downs, and the shaking that we have seen so far is just the beginning.
Many of you may not want to believe me at this moment, but by the end of 2016 life in America is going to look dramatically different than it does right now. So please get prepared while you are still able to do so.
Credit to Economic Collapse
Russian President Vladimir Putin is deploying nuclear-armed submarines "dangerously close" to the United States and European allies, a Senate Democrat said following a trip to the Arctic Circle.
"No one is suggesting that Putin is contemplating a nuclear launch against a NATO country, but it's not clear how tethered to reality Putin is," Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Monday. "And it should make us nervous that many of his submarines are starting to get dangerously close to the U.S. and our allies."
Murphy made the comments while arguing that the Navy needs to pursue an aggressive plan to replace aging American submarines, which can thwart rival countries from gathering intelligence and maintain the security of global shipping lanes.
In recent years, Putin's navy has pursued a more aggressive strategy even than during the Cold War, according to Murphy. "Russian submarines have been pushing out to the very precipice of NATO-ally waters," he said. "We have seen Russian boats coming closer to the U.S. and to our European partner ports than ever before, in immensely provocative ways — in ways that were rare even during the days of the Cold War."
Credit toWashington Examiner