Via OrientalReview.org,
Earlier this month while delivering a public lecture in Kiev, “The Challenges of an Ever-Changing World,” former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an inspiring remark for anyone who might have been thinking that life in Ukraine was bad:
“You should go to Liberia where the standard of living is much lower, and then you will be thankful.”
The Fukushima disaster was over five years ago, and may have been largely forgotten by the general public and the media (perhaps because the Japanese olympics are just four years from now), but its effects still linger. Perhaps nowhere more so than for those who took pare in the Fukushima clean up effort: as Starts and Stripes reports, sixteen U.S. ships that participated in relief efforts after Japan’s nuclear disaster five years ago remain contaminated with low levels of radiation from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump claims that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states should pay protection money to the U.S. for their military support against the Islamic State. He said that the US could stop purchasing their oil unless they reimbursed Washington for its military efforts against ISIS or send ground troops to join the fight. The Republican front-runner for the White House gave a foreign policy interview to the New York Times, saying US presidents should have “gone to the beach” instead of meddling in the Middle East.
The world will soon be facing a tsunami of defaults on bad debts. This will include municipal or local government defaults, governments “defaulting” on promises they’ve made to the people (Social Security, Medicaid), a default on the social contract between society and politicians such as the one in Cyprus (a default on the notions of private property and Democracy), stealth defaults on debts in the form of inflation and finally, of course, outright sovereign defaults.
The sovereign defaults will come last; all other options will be tried first.
Via SputnikNews' John Harrison,
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan administration, shares his view that there is a real likelihood of a nuclear war breaking out. Below are the main points covered in this radio programme.
(click image for link to full interview)