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|By Elizabeth White
Article Rating:
|August 2, 2014 12:45 PM EDT
Cloud 360: The Multi-Cloud Bootcamp Early Bird Savings here
SYS-CON Events announced today the Cloud 360: Multi-Cloud Bootcamp, being held Nov 4-5, 2014, in conjunction with 15th Cloud Expo in Santa Clara, CA, delivers a real-world demonstration of how to deploy and configure a scalable and available web application on all three platforms. The Cloud 360 Bootcamp, led by Janakiram MSV, an analyst with Gigaom Research, is the first bootcamp that introduces the core concepts of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) based on the workings of the Big Three platforms - Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Azure VMs.
The Cloud360 Workshop, a two-day, interactive experience of dealing with the popular cloud platforms, will provide a big picture of cloud computing followed by a deep-dive into Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure VMs and Google Compute Engine. Based on a real-world scenario, the workshop walks you through deploying a scalable web application on AWS, Azure and the Google Cloud Platform. Attendees will not only get a clear understanding of IaaS but also the strengths and weaknesses of each cloud platform.
Concepts Covered:
- Virtual Machines
- Firewalls
- Load Balancers
- Block Storage
- Auto Scale
- Security
- High Availability
- Fault Tolerance
- IT Consultants
- Specialist (IT, security, infrastructure, services, systems, test)
- IT Developers
- System Administrators
- System Integrators
- Architects
- Consultants
- IT Management
- Basic understanding of networking
- Experience in Linux
- Basic scripting knowledge using BASH, Python
Day 1
- 9:00am to 10:30pm - Building Blocks of IaaS
- 10:30am to 10:45am - Break
- 10:45am to 12:00pm - The State of Cloud
- 12:00pm to 1:00pm - Lunch
- 1:00pm to 2:30pm - Amazon EC2 | Part 1
- 2:30pm to 2:45pm - Break
- 2:45pm to 4:30pm - Amazon EC2 | Part 2
Day 2
- 9:00am to 10:30pm - Microsoft Azure | Part 1
- 10:30am to 10:45am - Break
- 10:45am to 12:00pm - Microsoft Azure | Part 2
- 12:00pm to 1:00pm - Lunch
- 1:00pm to 2:30pm - Google Compute Engine | Part 1
- 2:30pm to 2:45pm - Break
- 2:45pm to 4:30pm - Google Compute Engine | Part 2
About the Instructor
Janakiram MSV is an Analyst with the Gigaom Research analyst network, where he covers the Cloud Services landscape.
His wide-ranging credentials establish him as one of the world's leading Cloud instructors:
- One of the first Microsoft Certified Windows Azure Professionals in India.
- One of the few professionals with Amazon Certified Solution Architect, Amazon Certified Developer and Amazon Certified SysOps Administrator
- Recognized by Google as the Google Developer Expert (GDE) for his passion towards Google Cloud Platform.
Janakiram served as Technology Evangelist with Amazon Web Services, where he joined as the first employee in India.Prior to that, he spent 10 years at Microsoft Corp., and served as a Windows Azure Cloud Architect.
Today he serves as a member of the Guest Faculty at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H) where he teaches Big Data, DevOps and Cloud Computing to graduate-level students.
A Rock Star Faculty, Top Keynotes, Sessions, and Top Delegates!
Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley, November 4-6, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
The growth and success of Cloud Computing will be on display at the upcoming Cloud Expo® conference and exhibition in Santa Clara, CA, November 4-6, 2014.
All main layers of the Cloud ecosystem will be represented at the 14th International Cloud Expo® - the infrastructure players, the platform providers, and those offering applications, and they'll all be here to speak, sponsor, exhibit and network.
Sponsorship Opportunities
for Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley
Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley "show prospectus" has shipped. Sponsorship, exhibit, and keynote opportunities can be obtained from Carmen Gonzalez by email at events (at) sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.
Early Bird Registration Options
for Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley
Cloud Expo® delegates can pre-register for Cloud Expo® Silicon Valley with Early Bird Savings here.
About SYS-CON Media & Events
SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com) has since 1994 been connecting technology companies and customers through a comprehensive content stream at www.sys-con.com - featuring over forty focused subject areas, from Cloud Computing to Web Security - interwoven with market-leading full-scale conferences produced by SYS-CON Events. The company's internationally recognized brands include among others Cloud Expo® (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), Big Data Expo (http://BigDataExpo.net), Virtualization Conference & Expo (www.VirtualizationConference.com), DevOps Summit (http://DevOpsSummit.sys-con.com), Internet of @ThingsExpo (http://www.ThingsExpo.com), SDDC Expo (http://SDDCExpo.sys-con.com), WebRTC Summit (http://WebRTCSummit.net), Government IT Conference & Expo (www.GovITExpo.com), Cloud Computing Bootcamp (www.CloudComputingBootcamp.com), and UlitzerLive! New Media Conference & Expo (http://events.sys-con.com).
Cloud Expo® is a registered trademark of Cloud Expo, Inc.
We've worked with dozens of early adopters across numerous industries and will debunk common misperceptions, which starts with understanding that many of the connected products we'll use over the next 5 years are already products, they're just not yet connected. With an IoT product, time-in-market provides much more essential feedback than ever before. Innovation comes from what you do with the data that the connected product provides in order to enhance the customer experience and optimize busi...
May. 5, 2016 06:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,339
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Klein, CEO and Co-founder of Rachio, will discuss next generation communities that are using IoT to create more sustainable, intelligent communities. One example is Sterling Ranch, a 10,000 home development that – with the help of Siemens – will integrate IoT technology into the community to provide residents with energy and water savings as well as intelligent security. Everything from stop lights to sprinkler systems to building infrastructures will run ef...
May. 5, 2016 02:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,292
Manufacturers are embracing the Industrial Internet the same way consumers are leveraging Fitbits – to improve overall health and wellness. Both can provide consistent measurement, visibility, and suggest performance improvements customized to help reach goals. Fitbit users can view real-time data and make adjustments to increase their activity. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Mark Bernardo Professional Services Leader, Americas, at GE Digital, will discuss how leveraging the Industrial Interne...
May. 5, 2016 12:45 AM EDT Reads: 1,381
The increasing popularity of the Internet of Things necessitates that our physical and cognitive relationship with wearable technology will change rapidly in the near future. This advent means logging has become a thing of the past. Before, it was on us to track our own data, but now that data is automatically available. What does this mean for mHealth and the "connected" body? In her session at @ThingsExpo, Lisa Calkins, CEO and co-founder of Amadeus Consulting, will discuss the impact of wea...
May. 5, 2016 12:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,205
Whether your IoT service is connecting cars, homes, appliances, wearable, cameras or other devices, one question hangs in the balance – how do you actually make money from this service? The ability to turn your IoT service into profit requires the ability to create a monetization strategy that is flexible, scalable and working for you in real-time. It must be a transparent, smoothly implemented strategy that all stakeholders – from customers to the board – will be able to understand and comprehe...
May. 4, 2016 11:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,268
Increasing IoT connectivity is forcing enterprises to find elegant solutions to organize and visualize all incoming data from these connected devices with re-configurable dashboard widgets to effectively allow rapid decision-making for everything from immediate actions in tactical situations to strategic analysis and reporting. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Shikhir Singh, Senior Developer Relations Manager at Sencha, will discuss how to create HTML5 dashboards that interact with IoT devic...
May. 4, 2016 09:00 PM EDT Reads: 1,431
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to massively disrupt IoT. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, AJ Abdallat, CEO of Beyond AI, will discuss what the five main drivers are in Artificial Intelligence that could shape the future of the Internet of Things. AJ Abdallat is CEO of Beyond AI. He has over 20 years of management experience in the fields of artificial intelligence, sensors, instruments, devices and software for telecommunications, life sciences, environmental monitoring, process...
May. 4, 2016 05:30 PM EDT Reads: 1,415
The demand for organizations to expand their infrastructure to multiple IT environments like the cloud, on-premise, mobile, bring your own device (BYOD) and the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow. As this hybrid infrastructure increases, the challenge to monitor the security of these systems increases in volume and complexity. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Stephen Coty, Chief Security Evangelist at Alert Logic, will show how properly configured and managed security architecture can...
May. 4, 2016 05:15 PM EDT Reads: 474
A critical component of any IoT project is the back-end systems that capture data from remote IoT devices and structure it in a way to answer useful questions. Traditional data warehouse and analytical systems are mature technologies that can be used to handle large data sets, but they are not well suited to many IoT-scale products and the need for real-time insights. At Fuze, we have developed a backend platform as part of our mobility-oriented cloud service that uses Big Data-based approache...
May. 4, 2016 03:30 PM EDT Reads: 708
SYS-CON Events announced today that Ericsson has been named "Gold Sponsor" of SYS-CON's @ThingsExpo, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York, New York. Ericsson is a world leader in the rapidly changing environment of communications technology – providing equipment, software and services to enable transformation through mobility. Some 40 percent of global mobile traffic runs through networks we have supplied. More than 1 billion subscribers around the world re...
May. 4, 2016 01:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,362
SYS-CON Events announced today that Peak 10, Inc., a national IT infrastructure and cloud services provider, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Peak 10 provides reliable, tailored data center and network services, cloud and managed services. Its solutions are designed to scale and adapt to customers' changing business needs, enabling them to lower costs, improve performance and focus inter...
May. 4, 2016 01:00 PM EDT Reads: 1,455
The IoTs will challenge the status quo of how IT and development organizations operate. Or will it? Certainly the fog layer of IoT requires special insights about data ontology, security and transactional integrity. But the developmental challenges are the same: People, Process and Platform. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Craig Sproule, CEO of Metavine, will demonstrate how to move beyond today's coding paradigm and share the must-have mindsets for removing complexity from the development proc...
May. 4, 2016 12:45 PM EDT Reads: 952
We're entering the post-smartphone era, where wearable gadgets from watches and fitness bands to glasses and health aids will power the next technological revolution. With mass adoption of wearable devices comes a new data ecosystem that must be protected. Wearables open new pathways that facilitate the tracking, sharing and storing of consumers' personal health, location and daily activity data. Consumers have some idea of the data these devices capture, but most don't realize how revealing and...
May. 4, 2016 12:45 PM EDT Reads: 688
trust and privacy in their ecosystem. Assurance and protection of device identity, secure data encryption and authentication are the key security challenges organizations are trying to address when integrating IoT devices. This holds true for IoT applications in a wide range of industries, for example, healthcare, consumer devices, and manufacturing. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Lancen LaChance, vice president of product management, IoT solutions at GlobalSign, will teach IoT developers how t...
May. 4, 2016 12:15 PM EDT Reads: 621
There is an ever-growing explosion of new devices that are connected to the Internet using "cloud" solutions. This rapid growth is creating a massive new demand for efficient access to data. And it's not just about connecting to that data anymore. This new demand is bringing new issues and challenges and it is important for companies to scale for the coming growth. And with that scaling comes the need for greater security, gathering and data analysis, storage, connectivity and, of course, the...
May. 4, 2016 11:15 AM EDT Reads: 1,275
So, you bought into the current machine learning craze and went on to collect millions/billions of records from this promising new data source. Now, what do you do with them? Too often, the abundance of data quickly turns into an abundance of problems. How do you extract that "magic essence" from your data without falling into the common pitfalls? In her session at @ThingsExpo, Natalia Ponomareva, Software Engineer at Google, will provide tips on how to be successful in large scale machine lear...
May. 4, 2016 10:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,538
Digital payments using wearable devices such as smart watches, fitness trackers, and payment wristbands are an increasing area of focus for industry participants, and consumer acceptance from early trials and deployments has encouraged some of the biggest names in technology and banking to continue their push to drive growth in this nascent market. Wearable payment systems may utilize near field communication (NFC), radio frequency identification (RFID), or quick response (QR) codes and barcodes...
May. 4, 2016 08:15 AM EDT Reads: 1,026
You think you know what's in your data. But do you? Most organizations are now aware of the business intelligence represented by their data. Data science stands to take this to a level you never thought of – literally. The techniques of data science, when used with the capabilities of Big Data technologies, can make connections you had not yet imagined, helping you discover new insights and ask new questions of your data. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Sarbjit Sarkaria, data science team lead ...
May. 4, 2016 08:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,226
The IETF draft standard for M2M certificates is a security solution specifically designed for the demanding needs of IoT/M2M applications. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Brian Romansky, VP of Strategic Technology at TrustPoint Innovation, will explain how M2M certificates can efficiently enable confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity on highly constrained devices.
May. 4, 2016 08:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,306
You deployed your app with the Bluemix PaaS and it's gaining some serious traction, so it's time to make some tweaks. Did you design your application in a way that it can scale in the cloud? Were you even thinking about the cloud when you built the app? If not, chances are your app is going to break. Check out this webcast to learn various techniques for designing applications that will scale successfully in Bluemix, for the confidence you need to take your apps to the next level and beyond.
May. 3, 2016 12:15 PM EDT Reads: 1,629


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David Horowitz Has a ListBreaking News
Caroline Higgins is 66 years old, and at 5'2" she's not a daunting figure. Walking on the Earlham College campus last week, she ran into one of her students, a football player who very much towers over her. She mentioned that she was about to be named to a list of the "101 most dangerous academics in America."
Higgins said that her student just started laughing — and that for anyone who knows her, "dangerous" just isn't the word that comes to mind. She teaches peace studies.
But today, with the release of David Horowitz's new book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, Caroline Higgins finds herself in elite company. She makes the list along with such big name academic stars as Derrick Bell, Michael Bérubé, bell hooks, Noam Chomsky and Eric Foner. Horowitz, a one-time '60s radical, includes plenty of '60s radicals who didn't have the conversion experience he did, so Angela Davis and Bernadine Dohrn make the list, of course, along with the likes of Ward Churchill and a who's who in Middle Eastern studies.
Most of the 377-page book consists of short essays on each professor – they are in alphabetical order and are not ranked according to their relative danger levels, although there are cross-listings so a reader can jump to scholars with similar ideas.
Whether to laugh at the book, like Higgins's student, or to take it seriously, has been the subject of much discussion among academic groups and those who made the list in recent weeks. Some fear taking Horowitz too seriously will only legitimize his sometimes breathless attacks. (The book jacket promises information about professors who "say they want to kill white people," "support Osama bin Laden," and "defend pedophilia.")
Some professors worry that they really don't gain much by discussing a book that can have them explaining that, no, they are not murdering, pro-terrorist, child molesters. And several said that they hoped the press would just ignore the book. Others who are named — and academic groups that represent them — disagree. They say that a book with blurbs by Harvard professors, a Congressman, and a talk show host is going to cause a splash. With Horowitz's list likely to outsell Derek Bok's new book, academics who just view The Professors as a joke risk having their ideas distorted and losing credibility as Horowitz defines their work for large audiences of the people who don't frequent faculty clubs.
On Friday, a new coalition of academic groups — called Free Exchange on Campus — issued a joint denunciation of The Professors as "a blacklist" that was attempting to intimidate leading thinkers on campuses. The coalition includes the three groups that represent more faculty members than any other organizations: the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association. Others involved in the coalition include the American Civil Liberties Union and the United States Student Association.
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More Comments:
Michael Green - 2/15/2006
This story neglects the large number of professors who, like me, must feel devastated that a serial butcher of truth such as Horowitz has neglected to put us on the list. I shall have to return to the classroom and encourage more uprisings.
- Now it's the University of Louisville's turn to remove a Confederate statue
- A fortress built by Alexander the Great after he conquered Jerusalem has been discovered
- Yale students protest decision to keep Calhoun's name
- Six maps that will make you rethink the world
- Middle Tenn. State President Wants to Strip Confederate General's Name From Building
- The historian and cartographer Bill Rankin has developed a new way to visualize slavery
- Paula S. Fass says young Americans need required national service
- Historians are now trying to show that the gay revolution also took place in the midwest
- The Unconference Movement Grows – And Historians Are Taking the Lead
- New appeal to "Bring Back Military History"

subset: commoncrawl


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31 Comments
Realtime comments disabled
NachaJSP 2081 days ago
I LOVE YOU BOTH! :D:D:D:D awww... Trav <3<3<3<3<3<3<3
Criiiiisty 2081 days ago
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Koehn2013 2081 days ago
Yeahh I was there.. AND watched you guys do this! Go ME!
marheeb 2082 days ago
@Martinsays Post the video on Martinsays.com. It would make alot of people very happy (:
fanybecks 2082 days ago
you looked hot! am STOKED for the video :)
BLGprincess 2083 days ago
OH MY GOODNESS!!!!! this is extremely awesome!!!!!!!!!! :D
BrandiLauren94 2083 days ago
i got on one in myrtle beach! it was so fun. . if its the same thing im thinking of :)
Mizusays 2083 days ago
I Luv U two Guys.. ^-^
7sabrinadamsays 2083 days ago
OMMJ :D love this pic
ALEXIS2567 2083 days ago
Omg ! My fav 2 bands at one place equal - awsome !
maulanaBLG 2083 days ago
i love this... a picture
KelseyBLG 2083 days ago
hahaha great i wish i was there with you guyssss!
channy0123 2083 days ago
Oh my god...this looks fun. Wish I could be there!
Likeaweirda 2083 days ago
nice :)
yume_said 2083 days ago
vswimmern 2084 days ago
Hahaha you guys were great :)
montanuh 2084 days ago
ahha, adorable :) yet, not an exciting monent
WuzUpAngel 2084 days ago
Haha luv this (:!!
Flea_STACK 2084 days ago
what's a tuna melt?
rahmaSG8 2084 days ago
you look different, Martin! but still, love you <3


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Amanda Harris
For The Lancaster News
Colorful costumes, unique characters, music and choreography bring a classic story to life right in Lancaster this weekend.
The Community Playhouse of Lancaster County is taking on its most challenging production yet, "CATS," one of the longest running shows on Broadway. The musical is based on the Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Elliot and composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
KERSHAW – Brantley Ussery is leaping into college track, landing solidly at Limestone College.
The Andrew Jackson High School ace senior high jumper is taking her track skills to LC after signing with the Saints in the AJ High media center on Monday.
Ussery said after her visit to the Gaffney school, she was high on spending her college career at the NCAA Div. II school which competes in the Conference Carolinas.
The Lancaster Fatherhood Project, designed to strengthen families through father engagement, is expanding its services into York County, opening a location in Rock Hill.
The group's programs will be introduced to York County through a partnership with the S.C. Department of Social Services and the S.C. Center for Fathers and Families.
A new place to gather is coming to Lancaster's Main Street in the shadow of the Historic Courthouse. The Craft Stand, aiming to open by Aug. 1, will offer retail craft beer in bottles as well as 24 local craft beers on tap.
The Craft Stand will occupy a storefront at 105 South Main that has been vacant for four years.
Move to the back, Andrew Jackson.
Lancaster County's native son will lose his place on the front of the $20 bill, where he has resided since 1928, the U.S. Treasury announced this week.
Old Hickory, who served as the seventh U.S. president from 1829-37, is safe for a while. The new design won't be released until 2020 and will not be in circulation until 2030.
Parking for tonight's Relay for Life event at Lancaster County Memorial Stadium will be affected by a softball game going on at the same time.
To make sure parking is available for everyone, a shuttle bus will run every 15 to 20 minutes from the upper Lancaster High School lot next to LearnTV to the stadium from 5 p.m. until midnight.
Parking is available at the home and visitors' sides of the stadium and at the K-mart side of North Elementary. The soccer field parking will be reserved for those attending the Lancaster High softball game.
The Buford High boys soccer team is 5-10 on the season, but BHS veteran coach John Bundy is confident the Jackets can have a solid finish.
BHS, 2-2 in region play, went 1-3 in the Bryan Ostrower Soccer Showcase, which counts on the regular-season record, to open the 2016 season.
"Our losses were to Class AAAA powerhouses J.L. Mann and Nation Ford and Class AAA South Pointe," Bundy said. "Our win was against Governor's School."
A revenue race is on, with Lancaster County Council trying to decide whether to impose the maximum 2 percent hospitality tax countywide before Indian Land can become an independent city in control of its own finances.
While the idea is still only at the committee level, the county would be rewarded by winning the race for the hospitality tax in the county's growing, busy panhandle. Striking early in order to get half later seems worth the push.
Relay for Life – to most of us it is just one night, but to those with cancer it is one big fight that goes on every single minute of every day.
Lancaster's 21st Relay for Life begins Friday with a celebration as 200 cancer survivors walk the first lap around the track at Lancaster High School's Memorial Stadium. Loved ones and supporters will then take over and walk laps nonstop the rest of the night to honor loved ones battling cancer or remember someone who lost the fight.
Beginning with the 2016-17 school year, South Carolina's high school students will be graded on a 10-point scale. The South Carolina Board of Education unanimously voted last week to make the change from the current 7-point scale.
State Superintendent Molly Spearman said in a release the shift to a 10-point scale will level the playing field for Palmetto State high schoolers.
Copyright © 2016
The Lancaster News is your source for local news, sports, events, and information in Lancaster County and Lancaster, South Carolina, and the surrounding area..


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Search for "Moving Wallpaper: The Mole" on Amazon.com
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Set among a fictional production team working on real life soap opera "Echo Beach".
The lives of former lovers Daniel and Susan are complicated by teen angst, family loyalties and tested friendships.
A huntsman is punished for stumbling upon naked nymphs. A visual adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphis' telling of the ancient myth.
A London man who loses his memory when he's struck by a falling object develops a way to reconstruct his past.
Only one week to go before the marriage of Howard and Mel which quickly escalates into the week from Hell. The series follows the bumbling Howard as he lurches from one appallingly ... See full summary »
Sam and Fordy run a credit card fraud scheme, but when they steal from the wrong man, they find themselves threatened by a sadistic gangster. They need to raise £2m and pull off a daring diamond heist to clear their debt.
The private and public lives of Shirasu Jiro, an English-educated bureaucrat who served as the go-between for post-World War 2 Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru and Douglas MacArthur's G.H.Q.
When passengers on a train are attacked by a creature, they must band together in order to survive until morning.
Set in Scandinavia. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel.
Two cops break into a criminal's home, drag him out of bed and start conducting an illegal search of the premises. Cuffed to a chair, and seemingly helpless, the criminal's only chance is to play the two cops off against each other.
A renegade crew member stalks the production team of "Echo Beach" with a hand-held camera and films their most embarrassing moments.
Find showtimes, watch trailers, browse photos, track your Watchlist and rate your favorite movies and TV shows on your phone or tablet!


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This is a Noisy Book
Would I read another Gerald J. Kubicki book? Not without doing a word search.
Cindy Yeap / The Edge Malaysia discusses "What does the new frontier of negative interest rates in the global arena mean for investors?"
"For RHB Research Institute executive chairman and chief economist Lim Chee Sing, NIRP "can only be seen as a temporary expedient to hold up financial markets", albeit one that has little room to push for more economic growth in this relatively mature stage of the growth cycle.
"That means rising investment premiums and heightened market volatility will likely be the order of the day in the days ahead. Portfolio investors may have no choice but to build some degree of defensiveness into their portfolios to balance out the risks. This implies rising appetite for high-yield stocks," Lim says.
"Even dividend stocks have caveats in the days ahead, largely due to their rich valuations vis-à-vis tougher conditions to grow at the same rate as before. For example, sin stocks might have to contend with higher taxes; the fees for telecommunications spectrum refarming have yet to be revealed; and consumer stocks have to contend with the possibility of a further tightening of consumer spending. Then, there is the higher labour cost.
"The focus should be on stocks with an improved business model, reasonable earnings visibility, strong cash flow, a dividend policy and, thus, sustainable dividend payments. Of course, one cannot ignore valuations but rich valuation stocks are still susceptible to a selldown should the global economy take a turn for the worse," Lim adds.
"Gerald Ambrose, CEO of Aberdeen Islamic Asset Management Sdn Bhd, too, noted expensive valuations after a good run in recent years.
"We are keeping a close eye on notable high-yield companies, like the cellular phone companies, the brewers, tobacco companies and the REITs (real estate investment trusts). We're currently about halfway though the 4Q2015 results season and to be honest, a lot of the better-managed companies have been able to find efficiencies to enable dividend payout to remain high. However, after outperforming for over a year, a lot of the high dividend yield companies are hardly cheap," he says."
BOTTOM LINE: Focus your strategy on yield and gold. Gold is an alternative when interest rates are negative adjusted for taxes and inflation.
I came across this piece from Quandl and it got me thinking about about politics and experts and analysts. Quandl is a data site that offers information on thousands of stocks, with historical data going back decades and futures data to help you forecast trends. They created this graphic to help novice analysts get ahead in the industry.
I love to talk politics. My dad and I conversed and analysed and argued about the Vietnam War and every other thing that was worth discussing. Sometimes they were heated. College was a disappointment. I thought there were would be more conversations in depth much like the ones between dad and me. Sadly, that only occurred in the classroom … infrequently. In my adult life, once in a while there is a conversation I look back on with fondness. Those conversations with new friends or in depth conversations over a fine dinner. Today, it is hard to have conversations when each participant is holding on to biases and attaching their ego to those opinions.
I want to have conversations with great analysts.
When I was a broker, I made the most money for my clients when I could analyse the facts, and draw conclusions from those facts that were outside the norm. If you saw The Big Short you saw great analysts reach conclusions that were farseeing. The consequences of their conclusions were far reaching.made them huge piles of money.
It is one thing to develop a story about the future of Germany or Cuba if you are a citizen, another thing altogether to draw the conclusion that being Jewish in Germany is existential; it is another thing to be Cuban and realize that the door to Spain is the only escape and it will close soon.
To stand in a place and observe that a country that spends more than it takes in and builds up debt to the point that they can barely pay the interest is a good analyst. To be a great analyst it takes courage to conclude that this cannot stand and it's time to leave.
Great analysts tell stories that are believable and motivate others to take action. Strive to become a great analyst.
M 4.2 – Off the coast of Oregon
10.0 km
Book Review: Four Stars
Walking Tours of Queretaro of Santiago
By William J. Conaway
Print Length: 39 pages
Publisher: Publicaciones Papelandia; 1 edition (January 1, 2008)
Kindle Price $5.99
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
I chose to buy Conaway's book for several reasons. He came to Mexico in June of 1961 and published a series of short books about walking tours of various cities of Mexico including Guanajuato, Puebla, San Luis Potosi, Taxco, Morelia, etc. He also shares information about driving tours, Mexican food and history for Gringos.
The second reason I bought the book: four of us headed out at noon for Queretaro from San Miguel de Allende. I had a doctor's appointment at 5:30. I figured that we would have plenty of time to see a little of the city and have lunch before my appointment. However, I got lost on the way, I chose to go to Celaya then to Queretaro. Getting lost and wading our way through long construction lines took over four hours, so we didn't get to see much at all.
I want to go back and do it right.
Conaway spends the first 40% of the 39 pages telling us the history of the people who lived in the area and gives us a list of 25 places to see on the two walking tours. They can be accomplished on one day, but with so much to see, it sounds like one should spend two days. The history is very interesting as are the places to see.
I would give the book five stars for the writing and the history except for lack of maps and several errors that should be corrected. My downloaded copy has two opening pages and two bios. In addition the author's picture comes out muddled.
I would like to see more photos of the sights to see on the tour and arrange the photos so they can be seen on one page instead of being split over two pages.
I usually like the articles in Zero Hedge. This article "Hillary Clinton's Six Foreign-Policy Catastrophes" caused me to go back in history to read my blog about Honduras titled The Bravest Country in the World.
First, here is how the author thinks Hillary blundered:
On 28 June 2009, the Honduran military grabbed their nation's popular democratically elected progressive President, Manuel Zelaya, and flew him into exile.
The AP headlined from Tegucigalpa the next day, "World Leaders Pressure Honduras to Reverse Coup," and reported: "Leaders from Hugo Chavez to Barack Obama called for reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested in his pajamas Sunday morning by soldiers who stormed his residence and flew him into exile."
Secretary Clinton, in the press conference the day after the coup, "Remarks at the Top of the Daily Press Briefing", refused to commit the United States to restoration of the democratically elected President of Honduras. She refused even to commit the U.S. to using the enormous leverage it had over the Honduran Government to bring that about. Here was the relevant Q&A:
Mary Beth Sheridan. QUESTION: Madam Secretary, sorry, if I could just return for a second to Honduras, just to clarify Arshad's point – so, I mean, the U.S. provides aid both under the Foreign Assistance Act and the Millennium challenge. So even though there are triggers in those; that countries have to behave – not have coups, you're not going to cut off that aid?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Mary Beth, we're assessing what the final outcome of these actions will be. This has been a fast-moving set of circumstances over the last several days, and we're looking at that question now. Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome. So we're looking at all of this. We're considering the implications of it. But our priority is to try to work with our partners in restoring the constitutional order in Honduras.
QUESTION: And does that mean returning Zelaya himself? You would insist on that in order to –
SECRETARY CLINTON: We are working with our partners.
She refused to answer the question, even though Zelaya had been an ally of the U.S., a progressive democrat. (Though Republicans decried Zelaya for pushing land-reform, the fact is that Honduras is virtually owned by two dozen families, and drastically needs to drag itself out of its feudal system. Doing that isn't anti-American; it's pro-American. It's what Zelaya was trying to do, peacefully and democratically.
Our nation's Founders fought a Revolution to overthrow feudalism – British – in our own country. Hillary was thus being anti-American, not just anti-democratic, here.) This is stunning. The U.S had even been outright bombed by fascists, on the "day that will live in infamy," December 7, 1941; and, then, we spilled lots of blood to beat those fascists in WWII. What was that war all about, if not about opposing fascism and fascists, and standing up for democracy and democrats? A peaceful democratic U.S. ally had now been overthrown by a fascist coup in Honduras, and yet Hillary Clinton's response was – noncommittal?
The coup government made no bones about its being anti-democratic. On July 4th of 2009, Al Giordano at Narcosphere Narconews bannered "Honduras Coup Chooses Path of Rogue Narco-State," and he reported that, "Last night, around 10 p.m. Tegucigalpa time, CNN Español interrupted its sports news programming for a live press conference announcement ('no questions, please') by coup 'president' Micheletti. There, he announced that his coup 'government' of Honduras is withdrawing from the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States. … The Honduras coup's behavior virtually assures that come Monday, the US government will define it as a 'military coup,' triggering a cut-off of US aid, joining the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, PetroCaribe, the UN and the rest of the world in withdrawing economic support for the coup regime." But that didn't happen. The U.S. just remained silent. Why was our Secretary of State silent, even now?
It certainly couldn't have been so on account of her agent on the ground in Honduras, the U.S. Ambassador to that country: he was anything but noncommittal. He was fully American, not at all neutral or pro-fascist.
Here was his cable from the U.S. Embassy, reviewing the situation, for Washington, after almost a month's silence from the Administration:
From: Ambassador Hugo Llorens, U.S. Embassy, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 24 July 2009.
To: Secretary of State, White House, and National Security Council.
This lengthy message from the Ambassador closed:
"The actions of June 28 can only be considered a coup d'etat by the legislative branch, with the support of the judicial branch and the military, against the executive branch. It bears mentioning that, whereas the resolution adopted June 28 refers only to Zelaya, its effect was to remove the entire executive branch. Both of these actions clearly exceeded Congress's authority. … No matter what the merits of the case against Zelaya, his forced removal by the military was clearly illegal, and [puppett-leader Roberto] Micheletti's ascendance as 'interim president' was totally illegitimate.
On the same day when the Ambassador sent that cable, AFP headlined "Zelaya 'Reckless' to Return to Honduras: Clinton," and reported that our Secretary of State criticized Zelaya that day for trying to get back into his own country. "'President Zelaya's effort to reach the border is reckless,' Clinton said during a press conference with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. … Washington supports 'a negotiated peaceful solution to the Honduran crisis,' Clinton said." It wasn't "the Honduran coup" – she wouldn't call it a "coup" – it was "the Honduran crisis"; so, she accepted the junta's framing of the issue, not the framing of it by Zelaya and everyone other than the fascists. She wanted "a negotiated peaceful solution" to the forced removal at gunpoint of Honduras's popular democratically elected President. Furthermore, Hillary's statement here was undiplomatic: if she had advice for what the elected President of Honduras ought to be doing, that ought to have been communicated to him privately, not publicly, and said to him by suggesting what he ought to do, not by insulting what he already was doing, publicly calling it "reckless." Such a statement from her was clearly not meant as advice to help Zelaya; it was meant to – and did – humiliate him; and diplomats around the world could see this. Manifestly now, Hillary Clinton supported the fascists. However, her boss, the U.S. President, stayed silent.
During the crucial next two weeks, Obama considered what to do. Then, on 6 August 2009, McClatchy newspapers bannered "U.S. Drops Call to Restore Ousted Honduran Leader," and Tyler Bridges reported that Zelaya wouldn't receive U.S. backing in his bid to be restored to power. Though all international organizations called the Honduran coup illegitimate, and refused to recognize the leader chosen by its junta, the Obama Administration, after more than a month of indecision on this matter, finally came out for Honduras's fascists. According to James Rosen of McClatchy Newspapers three days later, the far-right Republican U.S. Senator Jim DeMint had "placed a hold on two nominees to senior State Department posts to protestObama's pushing for ousted Honduran President Manuel Zalaya's return to power, which the administration backed away from last week." Obama, after a month of silence, caved silently. Instead of his using the bully pulpit to smear the fascist DeMint publicly with his fascism, Obama just joined him in it, silently. Why?
Perhaps it was because the chief lobbyist hired in the U.S. by the Honduran aristocracy (whose thugs had installed this new Honduran government), was Hillary's old friend, Lanny Davis. Asslate.com had said on 27 August 2008, headlining "A Day in the Life of Hillary's Biggest Fan": "When it comes to defending Hillary Clinton, Lanny Davis has no rival." He was the fascists'fixer, inside the Obama Administration. On 9 July 2009, The Hill bannered "Hondurans Lobby Against Deposed Leader," and reported that Honduras's equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which was controlled by those two-dozen families) had hired "Lanny Davis, the former special counsel to President Bill Clinton," and that, "The lobbying blitz began [6 July] Monday, one day before Zelaya met with Clinton as part of his push to be reinstated." Lanny Davis had had his input to Hillary even before President Zelaya did. Moreover, The Hill reported that, "17 Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) [and DeMint] wrote Secretary Clinton and asked her to meet with officials from the interim government of Honduras." America's Republican leadership were immediately and strongly supporting Honduras's fascists. This Republican Senators' letter attacked "the rush to label the events of June 28th a coup d'etat," and said that it instead reflected "'the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders.' In a 125-3 vote, the Honduran Congress approved of the actions taken to remove Mr. Zelaya from office and install Mr. Micheletti." (The article "2009 Honduran coup d'état" at wikipedia says that after the military seized the President on June 28th, "Later that day, the Honduran Congress, in an extraordinary session, voted to remove Zelaya from office, after reading a false resignation letter attributed to President Zelaya." A link to the forged letter was provided. To Republicans, that is how democracy is supposed to operate, not a "coup." Just masked men with machine guns, and then forged documents and well-connected foreign lobbyists.)
So, the Honduran aristocracy (mainly the Facussé, Ferrari, Canahuati, Atala, Lamas, Nasser, Kattan, Lippman, and Flores, clans) had purchased a line straight to the U.S. Secretary of State, via Mr. Davis. And Obama caved. On 13 August 2009, Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research headlined a Sacramento Bee op-ed "Obama Tacitly Backs Military's Takeover of Honduran Democracy" and he reported that the Administration's recent "statements were widely publicized in the Honduran media and helped to bolster the dictatorship. Perhaps more ominously, the Obama administration has not said one word about the atrocities and human rights abuses perpetrated by the coup government. Political activists have been murdered, independent TV and radio stations have been shut down, journalists have been detained and intimidated, and hundreds of people arrested." There was now, again as under Bush, widespread revulsion against the U.S. throughout Latin America. Also on the 13th, Dick Emanuelson, at the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, headlined"Military Forces Sow Terror and Fear in Honduras," and he described in Honduras a situation very much like that which had occurred in Argentina when the generals there took over in 1976 and rounded up and "disappeared" leaders who constituted a threat to the aristocracy's continued rule in that country.
The U.S. was now the only power sustaining the Honduran junta's government. Hillary had said "We are working with our partners," but she lied. It turned out that the U.S. was instead working against "our partners" – against virtually all of the world's democratic nations. Brazil Magazine headlined on August 13th, "Brazil Urges Obama to Tighten the Vise on Honduras to Get Zelaya Back," and reported that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had urged President Obama to come out publicly for the "immediate and unconditional" restoration of Zelaya to office. It didn't happen, however; and on Friday, August 21st, Mark Weisbrot thus bannered in Britain's Guardian, "Obama's Deafening Silence on Honduras: Seven weeks after the coup in Honduras, the US is hindering efforts to restore President Manuel Zelaya to power." Weisbrot documented lies from the Obama Administration regarding the coup; and he noted, "The one thing we can be pretty sure of is that no major US media outlet will look further into this matter." He was assuming that the U.S. had a controlled press, and it seems that he was correct, except for the McClatchy Newspaper chain, which courageously reported on the Honduran horrors.
Obama was lying – not even acknowledging that the coup was a coup – even though (as Weisbrot pointed out) "on Wednesday, Amnesty International issued a report documenting widespread police beatings and brutality against peaceful demonstrations, mass arbitrary arrests and other human rights abuses under the dictatorship. The Obama administration has remained silent about these abuses — as well as the killings of activists and press censorship and intimidation. To date, no major [U.S.] media outlet has bothered to pursue them." America's aristocracy were clearly supporting Honduras's.
Nearly a hundred scholars signed a public letter saying that if only the U.S. were to come out clearly against the coup, "the coup could easily be overturned," because only the U.S. was keeping the coup regime in power (via banking and other crucial cooperation with the coup government). The U.S. was key, and it chose to turn the lock on the Honduran prison, and leave its victims to be murdered.
During the following months, as the shamefulness of America's position on this became increasingly untenable, Obama seemed to be gradually tilting back away from the coup in Honduras. However, Senator DeMint and some other Republicans travelled to Honduras and spoke publicly there against the U.S. Government, and endorsed the coup-installed Honduran leadership. DeMint headlined in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, on 10 October 2009,"What I Heard in Honduras," and he wrote: "In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military 'coup' that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it created. After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders, … I can report there is no chaos there. … As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on." All governments in the hemisphere except the U.S. labeled the coup a "coup," but DeMint and other top Republicans such as Mitch McConnell simply denied that it was. DeMint received ovations in Washington, at the far-right Heritage Foundation, which he now heads. This U.S. Senator condemned Zelaya there as "a deposed would-be Marxist dictator," and he referred to the junta as "friends of freedom." He condemned Obama by indirection, as being the enemy, who led "an American foreign policy unmoored from our commitment to human rights and human freedom and tied instead to the President's personal ambition," perhaps communist. Obama remained silent, in the face of these lies against both Zelaya and himself.
The assertion by Republicans that the coup was not a "coup" was a blatant lie. Everyone worldwide except America's Republicans referred to it as a "coup." Furthermore, Ambassador Llorens in Tegucigalpa was constantly speaking with leaders (but only leaders) of business, religious, civic, and other organizations throughout Honduras, and everyone he spoke with stated his position in regards to the "coup." For example (from the Embassy cables),"Monsignor Juan Jose Pineda, the Auxiliary Bishop of Tegucigalpa … stated that the Church had not taken sides in relation to the coup d'etat," but "vociferously condemned the poor treatment of the Church by what he believed to be elements of the anti-coup movement." And the leaders of two conservative political parties "argued that anti-coup protests have not been peaceful." Only America's Republicans lied that it hadn't been a "coup." Not even Republicans' friends in Honduras, the fascists there, did. It was a coup. Republicans simply lied, as usual. (This is why Fox "News" has been found in every study to have the most-misinformed audience of any major news medium – they're being lied to constantly.)
On 5 October 2009, Jason Beaubien of NPR headlined "Rich vs. Poor at Root of Honduran Political Crisis," and he reported that, though Honduran conservatives were charging that Zelaya secretly intended to make Honduras into a communist dictatorship, the actual situation in Honduras was, as explained by an economics professor there, that "power in Honduras is in the hands of about 100 people from roughly 25 families. Others estimate that Honduran elite to be slightly larger, but still it is a tiny group." This professor "says the country's elite have always selected the nation's president. They initially helped Zelaya get into office, and then they orchestrated his removal" when President Zelaya pressed land- and other- reforms. If communists would ever come to power in Honduras, it will be because of fascists' intransigence there, not because of progressives' attempts to end the hammer-lock of the local feudal lords.
Adolf Hitler similarly used a popular fear of communism to persuade conservative fools to vote for himself and for other fascists; but fascists and communists are alike: enemies of democracy. This hasn't changed. Nor has The Big Lie technique that fascists still use.
Then, on 6 October 2009, The New York Times bannered "Honduran Security Forces Accused of Abuse." ("Abuse" had also been the term that the Times and other major media employed for torture when George W. Bush did it, but now they applied this euphemism to the outright murders perpetrated by Honduras's junta.) Such "abuse" was "news" to people inside the United States, but not to the people in other nations around the world, where the horrors in Honduras were widely publicized. Also on October 6th, narcosphere.narconews.com/thefieldheadlined "Poll: Wide Majority of Hondurans Oppose Coup d'Etat, Want Zelaya Back," and Al Giordano reported "the first survey to be made public since a July Gallup poll showed a plurality of Hondurans opposed the coup d'etat." This poll of 1,470 randomly chosen Honduran adults found 17.4% favored the coup, 52.7% opposed it. 33% opposed Zelaya's return to power; 51.6% favored it. 22.2% wanted the coup-installed leader to stay in power; 60.1% wanted him to be removed. 21.8% said the National Police were not "engaging in repression"; 54.5% said they were repressing. Furthermore, the survey found that "the two national TV and radio stations shut down by the coup regime happen to be the most trusted news sources in the entire country." Finally, approval ratings were tabulated for the twenty most prominent political figures in the country, and Zelaya and his wife were rated overwhelmingly above all others, as, respectively, #1 and #2, the two most highly respected public figures in Honduran politics.
An American visitor to Honduras posted online photos of the country prior to Zelaya's Presidency, and he described them: "It took me awhile to get used to the sight of heavily armed guards and policemen everywhere. … Every supermarket we visited had an armed guard, carrying a shotgun, patrolling the parking lot. Most restaurants or fast food establishments we visited, such as Pizza Hut, had an armed guard in the parking lot. … Only 30% of the people have wealth. The other 70% are poor. Being rich in Honduras can be dangerous. That is why most rich people live in walled or fenced compounds. … And they all have armed guards on the grounds." This is the type of society that Wayne LaPierre and other officials of the NRA describe as the ideal – every man for himself, armed to the teeth. Republicans, like Honduras's aristocrats, want to keep such a Paradise the way it is; but the vast majority of Hondurans do not – they want progress.
Naturally, therefore, the U.S.'s Republican Party was overwhelmingly opposed to Zelaya, and were thus opposed to the Honduran public, who didn't like their feudal Paradise. Obama remained remarkably silent on the matter. The Obama Administration brokered a supposed power-sharing deal between Zelaya and the coup government, but it fell apart when Zelaya learned that Obama actually stood with the fascists in letting the coup government oversee the imminent election of Honduras's next President – which would give the "election" to the fascists' stooge. On 5 November 2009, the Los Angeles Times headlined an editorial "Obama Must Stand Firm on Honduran Crisis: A U.S.-brokered deal to return Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to office is unraveling, and the Obama administration seems to be wavering." They closed by saying: "If the Obama administration chooses to recognize the [winner of the upcoming] election without Zelaya first being reinstated [with powers to participate in overseeing the vote-counting], it will find itself at odds with the rest of Latin America. That would be a setback for democracy and for the United States." But it's exactly what Obama did. On 9 November 2009, McClatchy Newspapers bannered "Honduran Deal Collapses, and Zelaya's Backers Blame U.S." Tyler Bridges reported that Senator DeMint now dropped his objections to a key State Department appointment, when the appointee, Thomas Shannon (and also Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself), made clear that the Obama Administration agreed with DeMint. Thus, "Zelaya's supporters, who've been organizing street protests against the [coup-installed] Micheletti regime, are down to their final card: calling on Hondurans to boycott the elections."
On 12 November 2009, the Washington Post bannered "Honduras Accord Is on Verge of Collapse," and quoted a spokesperson for U.S. Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying: "The State Department's abrupt change in policy last week — recognizing the elections scheduled for November 29th even if the coup regime does not meet its commitments under the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord — caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate." (Let's hope that Kerry will turn out to be a better Secretary of State than his predecessor was.)
A week later, on November 19th, the Latin American Working Group bannered "Honduras: Things Fall Apart," and summarized the joint culpability of the Obama Administration, and of the Honduran fascists.
On 29 November 2009, the Heritage Foundation bannered "Heritage in Honduras: 'I Believe in Democracy'," and Big Brother propagandized: "Today the Honduran people are voting in an historic election with consequences for the entire region. Heritage's Izzy Ortega is on the ground as an official election observer speaking with Hondurans practicing their right to vote. Watch his first interview below." A typical reader-comment posted there was "I want WE THE PEOPLE back in the United States. For once in my life I'am jealous of another country!" Conservatives wanted fascism in the U.S.A. – not only in Honduras. Of course, the aristocracy's stooge was "elected" in Honduras. (Zelaya wasn't even a candidate in this "election." Most democratic countries throughout the world did not recognize the results of this "election." However, the U.S. did; and so did Israel, Italy, Germany, Japan, Peru, Costa Rica, and Panama.)
By contrast, on the same day, Costa Rico's Tico Times headlined "Peaceful March Faces 'Brutal Repression' in San Pedro Sula" Honduras. Mike Faulk reported that, "About 500 people marching peacefully in the northwestern city of San Pedro Sula were repressed by tear gas and water cannons on Election Day today." The next day, Agence France Presse headlined "Conservatives Win Honduran Election," and reported that "Conservative Porfirio Lobo has claimed a solid win. … The United States was quick to underline its support." Barack Obama was the leading (virtually the only) head-of-state supporting the Honduran fascist transfer of power to their new "elected" Honduran President. The major "news" media in the U.S. deep-sixed what was happening in Honduras, but the Honduran situation was widely reported elsewhere. Typical of the slight coverage that it did receive in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal bannered on November 26th, "Honduras Lurches Toward Crisis Over Election," and their "reporter," Jose de Cordoba, opened, "Honduran President Manuel Zelaya's push to rewrite the constitution, and pave the way for his potential re-election, has plunged one of Latin America's poorest countries into a potentially violent political crisis." Rupert Murdoch's rag never reported the gangster-government's violence. Moreover, Zelaya had never pushed "to rewrite the constitution"; he had wanted to hold a plebiscite on whether there should be a constitutional convention held to rewrite the nation's existing Constitution, which everyone but the Honduran aristocracy said contained profound defects that made democracy dysfunctional there. The editors of the former U.S.S.R.'s newspaper Pravda would have chuckled at Murdoch's "reporting." By contrast, for example, blog.AFLCIO.org had headlined on 16 November 2009, "Trumka: Free Elections Not Possible Now in Honduras." The American labor movement was reporting on events in Honduras, but had been defeated by the U.S. aristocracy increasingly since 40 years earlier (Reagan), and therefore no longer constituted a major source of news for the American people. Richard Trumka was the AFL-CIO President, but was by now just a marginal character in the new fascist Amerika.
On 9 January 2010, the Honduras Coup 2009 blog translated from a Honduran newspaper published that day, and headlined "Honduras Is Broke." Honduras's Finance Minister, Gabriela Nuñez, was quoted as saying that international aid must keep coming in order for the nation to continue paying its bills, and that avoiding default is "a work from week to week."
A few months later, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs headlined on 5 March 2010, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Does Latin America," and reported that, "While in Buenos Aires, she carelessly stated, 'The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion … It was done without violence.' This is being labeled as a misguided statement considering the physical violence including murders, beatings, torture that the coup government used in order to repress the opposition. Many of these tactics are still being used. This diplomatic stumble is expected to draw significant attention to the multiple errors in the U.S. approach." Moreover, while there, she was "announcing that the Obama administration will restore aid that had been previously suspended." The commentator said that this drew attention to "a political decision that once again may have served to isolate the U.S. from much of Latin America." Furthermore, "While in Costa Rica, … Clinton said the post-coup [Honduran] government … was, in fact, democratically elected," which made a mockery of the term "democracy." That election was perhaps even less democratic than the "elections" in Iran have recently been, but it was remarkably similar, with the main difference being that in Honduras the aristocracy controlled the "election," whereas in Iran the theocracy did. Anyway, Hillary approved.
On 1 May 2010, Britain's Guardian headlined regarding Honduras, "Cocaine Trade Turns Backwater into Hideout for Brutal Assassins: The Central American nation is on the brink of becoming a fully-fledged narco-state," and reported that, "Corrupt police and drug gangs are blamed, with the government unable or unwilling to crack down on them."
The Herald of Tegucigalpa, El Heraldo, headlined on 26 January 2011, "Presidente Asigna Medalla de Honor al Mérito a J. J. Rendón," and reported that President Porfirio Lobo had decorated with the Order of Merit the master-propagandist who had deceived enough Honduran voters to "elect" Lobo (with the assistance of vote-rigging and terror). That was the same "John Rendon" (or actually Juan José Rendón) who had been hired by the George W. Bush Administration to deceive the American public into invading Iraq in 2003. This time, he was working for Barack Obama, instead of for George W. Bush, but it was fascism just the same.
Without Obama, Honduras's fascists would have been defeated. Obama's refusal to employ either his financial and banking power or his bully pulpit, and Hillary's outright support of the fascist junta, together sealed the deaths of many thousands of Hondurans. The U.S. thus, single-handedly among all nations, kept Honduras's newly-installed fascist regime in power. A U.S. professor who specialized in Honduras, Orlando Perez, said that Obama did this probably because he concluded "that Honduras' political, military and economic elite wouldn't accept Zelaya's return"; in other words, that Obama wanted to serve Honduras's aristocracy, regardless of the Honduran public, and even regardless of the increased contempt that Latin Americans would inevitably feel toward the U.S. from this matter.
The results for Hondurans were hellish. On 11 April 2011, McClatchy Newspapers bannered "Honduran Police Ignore Rise in Attacks on Journalists, Gays," and reported that within just those almost-two years, Honduras had become "the deadliest country in the hemisphere," because of the soaring crime-rate, especially against homosexuals and against journalists. The new fascist government tacitly "sends a message to the criminals, the paramilitaries and the hit men that they can do as they please." Hondurans were by then five times likelier to be murdered than Mexicans were. Honduras's aristocrats, however, were safe, because they hired their own private security forces, and also because the government's security-apparatus was controlled by the aristocracy. Only the public were unprotected.
Fox "News" Latina bannered, on 7 October 2011, "Honduras Led World in Homicides in 2010," and (since Rupert Murdoch's Fox is a Republican front) pretended that this had happened because Latin America was violent – not because Fox's Republican friends had had their way in policy on Honduras, and had thus caused the Honduran murder-rate to soar. (During the latest year, whereas homicides had declined in all of the other high-homicide nations, homicides had skyrocketed 22% in Honduras – and that's why Honduras now led the world in homicides, but Fox "News" didn't mention any of these facts.)
The actual problem was that the U.S. had a Republican government under nominal "Democratic" leadership, both at the White House and at the State Department (not to mention at Treasury, Justice, and Education). Obama not only gave Rupert Murdoch a nice foil to gin-up his hate-machine; he also gave Murdoch the most politically gifted Republican in the country: Obama, a Republican in "Democratic" clothing. It certainly was so with regard to Honduran policy, in which Obama seemed to be following Hillary Clinton's lead to the right.
On 21 October 2011, the Nation bannered "Wikileaks Honduras: US Linked to Brutal Businessman," and Dana Frank reported that, "Miguel Facussé Barjum, in the embassy's words, is 'the wealthiest, most powerful businessman in the country,' one of the country's 'political heavyweights.'" He owned a 22,000-acre palm-oil plantation, including lots of vacant land that thousands of peasants or "campesinos" wanted to farm and make their homes. "The campesinos' efforts have been met with swift and brutal retaliation," hired killers – a cost of doing business (like exterminators). Furthermore, wikileaks cables from during George W. Bush's Presidency indicated that "a known drug trafficking flight with a 1,000 kilo cocaine shipment from Colombia … successfully landed … on the private property of Miguel Facusse. … Its cargo was off-loaded onto a convoy of vehicles that was guarded by about 30 heavily armed men." The plane was burned and bulldozed into the ground, and the U.S. Ambassador said that this probably couldn't have happened without Facussé's participation. But now, the U.S. was actually on the side of such people. Not only was the U.S. continuing as before in Honduras, but "The US has allocated $45 million in new funds for military construction," including expansion of the U.S. air base that had participated in the 2009 coup. Other wikileaks cables indicated that someone from the U.S. Embassy met with Facussé on 7 September 2009. Furthermore, "A new US ambassador, Lisa Kubiske, arrived in Honduras this August. She is an expert on biofuels – the center of Miguel Facussé's African palm empire." Moreover, on 13 August 2009, hondurascoup2009.blogspot had headlined "Get to Know the 10 Families that Financed the Coup," and cited a study by Leticia Salomón of the Autonomous University of Honduras, which said that, "A fundamental person in the conspiracy was the magnate Miguel Facussé, decorated by the Colombian Senate in 2004 with the Orden Mérito a la Democracia, and who today monopolizes the business of palm oil and in 1992 supported the purchase of land from campesinos at less than 10% of its actual value." Furthermore, the coup "was planned by a business group lead [led] by Carlos Flores Facussé, ex-president of Honduras (1998-2002) and owner of the newspaper La Tribuna, which together with La Prensa, El Heraldo, TV channels 2, 3, 5 and 9 were the fundamental pillar of the coup." Moreover, on 10 February 2010, the Honduras Culture and Politics blog headlined "Mario Canahuati Goes to Washington," and reported that Honduras's new Foreign Minister, Mario, was related to Jorge Canahuati, "owner of La Prensa and El Heraldo," and also to Jesus Canahuati, who was the VP of the Honduran chamber-of-commerce organization that hired Lanny Davis. Meanwhile, Mario's father, Juan Canahuati, owned textile factories that assembled clothing for major U.S. labels, and which would thus benefit greatly from the fascists' roll-back of Zelaya's increase in the minimum wage. (Other articles were also posted to the web, listing mainly the same families behind the coup.)
So, as such examples show, the aristocracy were greatly enriched by the Honduran coup, even though the non-criminal (or "legitimate") Honduran economy shriveled. By supporting this new Honduran regime, Obama and Hillary assisted the outsourcing of clothes-manufacturing jobs, etc., to such police-states. International corporations would be more profitable, and their top executives and controlling stockholders would reap higher stock-values and capital gains and bigger executive bonuses, because of such fascist operations as the 2009 coup. If workers or campesinos didn't like it, they could leave – for the U.S., where they would be competing directly against the poorest of our own country's poor.
An article quoted Jose Luis Galdamez, a journalist for Radio Globo (a Honduran station briefly shut down by the junta) explaining how that nation's elite impunity functions: "The rich simply send you out to kill … and then kill with impunity. They never investigate into who killed who, because the groups in power control the media, control the judiciary, and now control the government [the Executive Branch] again." This is to say: In Honduras, hired killers are safe. The Government represents the aristocracy, not the public; so, aristocrats are free to kill. America's congressional Republicans like this "Freedom." It's maximum liberty – for aristocrats: the people these "Representatives" actually serve.
On 18 November 2011, Mark Weisbrot in Britain's Guardian headlined "Honduras: America's Great Foreign Policy Disgrace," and he reported that, when the junta's man "Porfirio Lobo took office in January 2020, … most of the hemisphere refused to recognize the government because his election took place under conditions of serious human rights violations. In May 2011, an agreement was finally brokered in Cartagena, Colombia, which allowed Honduras back into the Organization of American States. But the Lobo government has not complied with its part of the Cartagena accords, which included human rights guarantees for the political opposition." The frequent murders of non-fascist political and labor union leaders "in broad daylight" (so as to terrorize anyone who might consider to replace them) had continued, despite the accords. Weisbrot noted that, "when President Porfirio Lobo of Honduras came to Washington last month, President Obama Greeted him warmly" and Obama said, "What we've been seeing is a restoration of democratic practices and a commitment to reconciliation." How nice. However, Lobo did comply with one aspect of the Cartagena agreement: he let Manuel Zelaya and his wife back into Honduras.
Honduras was now (even more than before Zelaya) under a "libertarian" government – a government that respected only property-rights of approved people, no personal or other rights for anyone (such as Facussé's propertyless campesinos). Paul Romer, the husband of Obama's former chief economist Christina Romer, was joining with other libertarians to promote the idea of a totally "free market" model city in Honduras. On 10 December 2011, Britain's libertarian ECONOMIST magazine bannered "Hong Kong in Honduras," and "Honduras Shrugged [a play on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged]: Two Start-Ups Want to Try Out Libertarian Ideas in the Country's New Special Development Regions." Then, on 6 September 2012, Britain's Guardian bannered "Honduras to Build New City with Its Own Laws and Tax System." However, the entrepreneur aiming to develop this new Honduran city freed from the law, the grandson of the far-right economist Milton Friedman, Patri Friedman, headlined at his Future Cities Development Inc., on 19 October 2012, "Closing Statement From Future Cities Development, Inc." and he announced that though "passing with a vote of 126-1" in the Honduran legislature, his project was ruled unconstitutional by a judge, because it would remove that land from the Honduran legal system. Patri had been fundraising for this project ever since he had publicly announced at the libertarian Koch brothers' Cato Institute, on 6 April 2009, "Democracy Is Not The Answer," and he then said, "Democracy is rigged against libertarians." He ended his statement by announcing "my proposal," which was to "build new city-states," where there would be no democracy, and only the investors would have any rights at all – an extreme gated community. Just months later, the new Honduran President, a libertarian like Patri, invited him to do it, but this judge killed the idea.
Inasmuch as Honduras was becoming too dangerous for Americans, the AP headlined on 19 January 2012, "Peace Corps Pullout a New Blow to Honduras," and reported that, "The U.S. government's decision to pull out all its Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras for safety reasons is yet another blow to a nation still battered by a coup and recently labeled [by the U.N. as] the world's most deadly country." Three days later, on the 22nd, Frances Robles of the Miami Herald, headlined "Graft, Greed, Mayhem Turn Honduras into Murder Capital of World," and reported the details of a nation where aristocrats were protected by their own private guards, the public were on their own, and all new entrants into the aristocracy were drug traffickers and the soldiers and police who worked for those traffickers. Narcotics were now by far the most booming industry in Honduras, if not the only booming industry there post-coup. Robles reported, "Everybody has been bought," in this paradise of anarchism, or libertarianism (i.e.: in this aristocratically controlled country).
On 12 February 2012, NPR headlined "Who Rules in Honduras? Coup's Legacy of Violence." The ruling families weren't even noted here, much less mentioned, in this supposed news-report on the subject of "Who Rules in Honduras?" However, this story did note that, "Many experts say things got markedly worse after the 2009 coup." (That was a severe understatement.)
Jim DeMint, who has since left the Senate, and who recently took over as the head of the far-right Heritage Foundation where he had formerly been a star, got everything he wanted in Honduras, and so did Hillary Clinton's friend Lanny Davis – the aristocrats' paid hand in the affair, on the "Democratic" side. (The aristocrats had many other agents lobbying their friends on the Republican side.) Honduras's public got only hell. Four days later, on February 16th, Reuters headlined "Honduras Under Fire After Huge Prison Blaze," and reported: "Survivors of a Honduran jailhouse fire that killed more than 350 inmates [some not yet tried, much less convicted], accused guards of leaving prisoners to die trapped inside their cells and even firing on others when they tried to escape."
This was how law operated, in a supremely fascist nation. Dwight Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers had done a similar thing to the Iranians in 1953, and then to the Guatemalans in 1954; Obama now, though passively, did it to the Hondurans. When Ike did it in Iran, who would have guessed at the whirlwind that would result there 26 years later, in 1979? (Ironically, when Ike did it, the mullahs were delighted that the elected Iranian President, Mossadegh, whom they hated, had been overthrown. America now reaps their whirlwind.)
This is the type of hypocritical leadership that has caused the United States to decline in public approval throughout the world under Obama – ironic after his Nobel Peace Prize awarded within just months of his becoming President. On 10 December 2010, Gallup bannered "U.S. Leadership Ratings Suffer in Latin America," and reported that approval of "the job performance of the leadership of the United States" had declined since 2009 in 14 of 18 nations in the Western Hemisphere. It had declined steepest in Mexico, Argentina, Honduras, and Venezuela. Honduras, however, was the only country where approval of the U.S. was now even lower than it had been under George W. Bush in 2008. This Honduran plunge since the 2009 coup had been that steep. Then, on 19 April 2012, Gallup headlined "U.S. Leadership Losing Some Status," and reported that across 136 countries, approval of the U.S. had peaked in 2009 when George W. Bush was replaced by Obama, but that "the U.S. has lost some of its status" since 2009, and that the "U.S. Image Sinks in the Americas," down one-quarter from its 2009 high, though still not yet quite as low in most countries as it had been under Bush. Then, three months later, on June 13th, the PewResearch Global Attitudes Project headlined "Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted," and reported that favorable opinion of the U.S. had sunk during Obama's first term. It declined 7% in Europe, 10% in Muslim countries, 13% in Mexico, and 4% in China. However, it increased 8% in Russia, and 13% in Japan. It went down in eight countries, and up in two, and changed only 2% or less in three nations.
The global fascist push to eliminate Zelaya's Presidency had first been well outlined by Greg Grandin in the Nation on 28 July 2009, headlining "Waiting for Zelaya." He wrote: "The business community didn't like Zelaya because he raised the minimum wage. Conservative evangelicals and Catholics – including Opus Dei, a formidable presence in Honduras – detested him because he refused to ban the 'morning after' pill. The mining, hydroelectric and biofuel sector didn't like him because he didn't put state funds and land at their disposal. The law-and-order crowd hated him because he apologized on behalf of the state for a program of 'social cleansing' that took place in the 1990s. … Zelaya likewise moved to draw down Washington's military presence; Honduras, alone among Central American countries, hosts a permanent detachment of US troops." Later that same year (2009), John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, came out with his new Hoodwinked, in which he said (p. 213): "I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president who wanted to remain anonymous, 'Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly [minimum-wage] rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom.'" The increase in Honduras's minimum wage was widely cited as having probably been the coup's chief source.
Zelaya offered an explanation as to why the U.S. helped the fascists. On 31 May 2011, "Democracy Now" radio headlined "Exclusive Interview with Manuel Zelaya on the U.S. Role in Honduran Coup," and Zelaya revealed that when he was abducted from his house, "We landed in the U.S. military base of Palmerola," before being flown from there out of the country, and that "Otto Reich started this." Reich had been the fanatical far-right Cuban-American who ran U.S. Latin-American policy for the Republican Reagan and both the father and son Bush Administrations, including Iran-Contra against Nicaragua (which helped Iran's mullahs), and the fascist 2002 coup against Venezuela's popular elected President Hugo Chavez, which coup was then peacefully overturned and reversed, due to worldwide repudiation of the junta everywhere except the U.S. Government. Zelaya said that the coup against himself had been organized via both Reich and the previous, George W. Bush-appointed, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Charles Ford, who had subsequently been appointed to "the U.S. Southern Command … in order to prepare for the coup d'etat" in Honduras. Zelaya didn't personally blame Obama. "Even though Obama would be against the coup, the process toward the coup was already moving forward. … They are even able to bend the arm of the President of the United States, President Obama, and the State Department." Zelaya portrayed a weak President Obama, not a complicit one. If this was true, then Lanny Davis was pushing against a weak leader, not against strong resistance within the then-new Democratic U.S. Administration. Hillary Clinton's press conference the day after the coup reflected unconcern regarding democracy, not (like with Republicans such as Sen. DeMint) outright support of fascism. The situation that was portrayed by Zelaya was a U.S. Government that was heavily infiltrated by fascists throughout the bureacracy, and a new Democratic President and Secretary of State who had no stomach to oppose fascists – an Administration who were mere figureheads.
On 15 March 2012, Laura Carlson, at Foreign Policy In Focus, bannered "Honduras: When Engagement Becomes Complicity," and she opened: "U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Honduras on March 6 with a double mission: to quell talk of drug legalization and reinforce the U.S.-sponsored drug war in Central America, and to bolster the presidency of Porfirio Lobo. The Honduran government issued a statement that during the one-hour closed-door conversation between Biden and Lobo, the vice president 'reiterated the U.S. commitment to intensify aid to the government and people of Honduras, and exalted the efforts undertaken and implemented over the past two years by President Lobo.' In a March 1 press briefing, U.S. National Security Advisor Tony Blinken cited 'the tremendous leadership President Lobo has displayed in advancing national reconciliation and democratic and constitutional order.' You'd think they were talking about a different country from the one we visited just weeks before on a fact-finding mission on violence against women. What we found was a nation submerged in violence and lawlessness, a president incapable or unwilling to do much about it, and a justice system in shambles."
Carlson went on to note: "Land grabs to transfer land and resources from small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, and poor urban residents into the hands of large-scale developers and megaprojects have generated violence throughout the country. Many of the testimonies of violence and sexual abuse that we heard from Honduran women regarded conflicts over land, where the regime actively supports wealthy interests against poor people in illegal land occupations for tourism, mining, and infrastructure projects, such as palm oil magnate Miguel Facusse's actions." She noted: "The United States helped deliver a serious blow to the Honduran political system and society. The United States has a tremendous responsibility for the disastrous situation." And she closed: "There's no excuse for spending U.S. taxpayer dollars on security assistance to Honduras as human rights violations pile up." She called this "A Coup for Criminals."
What Iran and Guatemala became to the historical record of Eisenhower's Presidency, Honduras will be to that of Obama. Sometimes even a small country, even a banana republic, can leave a big black mark on a President's record. Though Czechoslovakia was just a small and weak country, it's even what Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is primarily remembered for nowadays – his yielding it to the fascists in 1938.
In November 2013, the Center for Economic Policy Research bannered a study, "Honduras Since the Coup," and among the highlights they reported were:
"Economic growth has slowed since the 2009 coup. From 2006-2008 average annual GDP growth was 5.7 percent. In 2009 Honduras' GDP, as with most countries in Central America, contracted due to the world recession. From 2010-2013, average annual growth has been only 3.5 percent."
"Economic inequality, which decreased for four consecutive years starting in 2006, began trending upward in 2010. Honduras now has the most unequal distribution of income in Latin America."
"In the two years after the coup, over 100 percent of all real income gains went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Hondurans."
"Poverty and extreme poverty rates decreased by 7.7 and 20.9 percent respectively during the Zelaya administration. From 2010-2012, the poverty rate increased by 13.2 percent while the extreme poverty rate increased by 26.3 percent."
"The unemployment situation has worsened from 2010-2012."
Crime rates and other non-economic factors were unfortunately ignored in this study, but it indicated clearly that, from at least the economic standpoint, the public in Honduras suffered while the elite did not. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had done to Honduras something rather similar to what George W. Bush and his team did to Iraq, but with this major difference: Zelaya was a good and democratic leader of Honduras, whereas Saddam was a tyrant (though Iraq was even worse after his reign than during it). This "Democratic" U.S. Administration turned out to support fascism, much as its Republican predecessor had done.
The soaring murder-rate after the U.S.-supported coup caused a soaring number of escapees from the violence; they're flooding into the U.S. now as illegal immigrants.
Honduran Constitution contains eight articles that cannot be amended, one of them being term-limiting the presidency. Article 239 states:
No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President.
Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those who support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.
Yet Zelaya began insisting earlier this year on holding a National Referendum to overturn this un-overturnable constitutional prohibition. The entire country saw this as a blatantly illegal attempt to become president-for-life, exactly as Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela.
The ballots for the referendum were printed in and shipped from Venezuela. The Supreme Court declared the referendum constitutionally illegal and ordered the ballots destroyed. Zelaya led a mob of his Chavez-paid followers to physically seize the ballots, at which point the Supreme Court ordered Zelaya's arrest and removal from office as article 239 specifies.
The army followed the Supreme Court's order, but instead of jailing Zelaya, he was put on a plane to Costa Rica – in hindsight a big mistake. The National Congress voted to have its Speaker, Roberto Micheletti, to replace Zelaya as the constitution specifies as next in presidential succession.
Instead of being applauded for adhering to its democratic laws and avoiding their demise, much of the so-called Free World – the UN, the EU, and the US via the White House – joined with the Communist World led by Chavez and Castro to hysterically denounce Honduras instead.
This, folks, is a terrifying wake-up call as to the extent the forces of darkness are gaining strength, and the forces of freedom are cowering in retreat. All of sudden out of nowhere, little Honduras catalyzes this process and becomes a pivot point in the struggle between good and evil on earth.
Let's take a look at those who lead the forces of darkness arrayed against Honduras.
On June 30, two days after Zelaya's removal, the UN General Assembly passed by acclamation a resolution that condemned the removal of Mr. Zelaya as a "coup" and demanded his "immediate and unconditional restoration" as president.
The President of the UN General Assembly is a Sandinista Communist, Miguel D'Escoto, who was Danny Ortega's Foreign Minister in the 80s and won the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1985. Under his leadership, the UN has become even more virulently suffused with a hatred of America.
On July 5, the Organization of American States (OAS) suspended Honduras from its membership, denounced the government of Roberto Micheletti, and demanded Zelaya be reinstated.
Since 2005, the president of the OAS is a left-wing Chilean politician, Jose Miguel Insulza. He has been bribed by Chavez to publicly denounce the Micheletti government as a "dictatorship" and endlessly threaten Honduras with "sanctions." Prior to this, Chavez was bribing him to crusade for the OAS to accept Cuba as a fully democratic member.
A radical Marxist Chilean academic, Arturo Valenzuela, is President Zero's nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere. Valenzuela has a long history of defending corrupt Latin American regimes such as Mexico and Argentina, and of groveling support for Hugo Chavez.
After Valenzuela denounced Zelaya's removal as an "illegal coup" in his Senate testimony this week (7/20), then refused to discuss the Honduran situation in detail, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) placed a hold on his confirmation.
"Why is Washington on the same side as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro in the Honduran crisis?" asked DeMint. Valenzuela had no answer.
The Zero White House is so deep in bed with Chavez and Castro that it had Hillary Clinton interrupt her visit to India and telephone Honduran President Micheletti (7/20). In her official capacity as Secretary of State, she was rude, insulting, and abusive, threatening Micheletti with "serious consequences" if he didn't turn power back to Zelaya.
Micheletti stood his ground. "Under no circumstances will we accept these pressures," he informed Mrs. Clinton. "Under no circumstances will Mr. Zelaya be returned to power."
The World Bank has suspended aid to Honduras, as has the EU. Zero has cut off military aid. Oscar Arias of Costa Rica is playing his role of gutless neutrality to the hilt, trying every conman ploy in the book to get Zelaya back in power. Ortega is sending hordes of Nicaraguan agents across the border to foment violent protest (while at the same time trying to get himself elected president-for-life straight out of the Chavez-Zelaya playbook).
All of this is an astounding demonstration of how pro-Communist and anti-freedom much of the world has become. It's not just Zero.
It's also a demonstration of how intimidated anti-Communist leaders have become. You would think that Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, Panama's Ricardo Martinelli, and Peru's Alan Garcia would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Roberto Micheletti in Tegucigalpa's Morazan Square.
Joining them in support would be all members of the Supreme Court, virtually all members of the National Congress, all major Honduran business leaders, and vast numbers of Hondurans who want freedom not Chavez-style dictatorship.
It would be an ideal moment to announce the formation of an anti-ALBA alliance of pro-freedom Latin countries between these leaders and invite Honduras to join.
But no. These three guys remain silent and sequestered in their presidential palaces in Bogota, Panama City, and Lima. The best even Uribe can muster – the guy who is defeating the FARC narco-communist guerrillas – is to secretly (or "informally" as he put it) meet with Honduran Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez in Bogota (7/20).
No diplomatic recognition, no flying to Tegucigalpa, just a whispered hint he, Uribe, might be "sympathetic" to Micheletti.
Honduras is alone against the forces of darkness. That the President of the United States is one of those forces is more than acutely embarrassing – it is acutely dangerous to us, to freedom in the world, and to a brave little country that should be an inspiration to all.
As of this morning (7/23), Honduras is still standing firm, having rejected yet again Arias' latest "final offer."
That's the question that Phoenix Capital Research asks.
For six years, the world has operated under a complete delusion that Central Banks somehow fixed the 2008 Crisis.
All of the arguments claiming this defied common sense. A 5th grader would tell you that you cannot solve a debt problem by issuing more debt. Similarly, anyone with a functioning brain could tell you that a bunch of academics with no real-world experience, none of whom have ever started a business or created a single job can't "save" the economy.
However, there is an AWFUL lot of money at stake in believing these lies. So the media and the banks and the politicians were happy to promote them. Indeed, one could very easily argue that nearly all of the wealth and power held by those at the top of the economy stem from this fiction.
So it's little surprise that no one would admit the facts: that the Fed and other Central Banks not only don't have a clue how to fix the problem, but that they actually have almost no incentive to do so.
So here are the facts:
1) The REAL problem for the financial system is the bond bubble. In 2008 when the crisis hit it was $80 trillion. It has since grown to over $100 trillion.
2) The derivatives market that uses this bond bubble as collateral is over $555 trillion in size.
3) Many of the large multinational corporations, sovereign governments, and even municipalities have used derivatives to fake earnings and hide debt. NO ONE knows to what degree this has been the case, but given that 20% of corporate CFOs have admitted to faking earnings in the past, it's likely a significant amount.
4) Corporations today are more leveraged than they were in 2007. As Stanley Druckenmiller noted recently, in 2007 corporate bonds were $3.5 trillion… today they are $7 trillion: an amount equal to nearly 50% of US GDP.
5) The Central Banks are now all leveraged at levels greater than or equal to where Lehman Brothers was when it imploded. The Fed is leveraged at 78 to 1. The ECB is leveraged at over 26 to 1. Lehman Brothers was leveraged at 30 to 1.
6) The Central Banks have no idea how to exit their strategies. Fed minutes released from 2009 show Janet Yellen was worried about how to exit when the Fed's balance sheet was $1.3 trillion (back in 2009). Today it's over $4.5 trillion.
We are heading for a crisis that will be exponentially worse than 2008. The global Central Banks have literally bet the financial system that their theories will work. They haven't. All they've done is set the stage for an even worse crisis in which entire countries will go bankrupt.
The situation is clear: the 2008 Crisis was the warm up. The next Crisis will be THE REAL Crisis. The Crisis in which Central Banking itself will fail.
If you're an investor who wants to increase your wealth dramatically, then you NEED to take out a trial subscription to our paid premium investment newsletter Private Wealth Advisory.
Copyright © 2007 Mover Mike. Design by Anthony Baggett.


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Do This Type Of Workout During Commercial Breaks
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Here are a few ways to up your motivation and get your best workout ever.
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