Russian Election : I am voting against the party of thieves and swindlers

United Russia Leads in Elections, But Its Majority Shrinks - NYTimes.com

“Today, I am not voting for someone but against someone, because there is no one appealing to vote for,” said Sergei Tarakanov, 62, who wore a leather coat and porkpie hat, in the light snow outside a school in central Moscow where he cast his ballot. “So, I am a protest voter. Today, I am voting against the party of thieves and swindlers.”

The election also seemed to mark a portentous new chapter in Russian cyberpolitics. Throughout the election voters used cellphones to record video of heavy-handed politicking, including attempts at bribery, campaign law violations and other manipulation, which they quickly distributed on the Web. There were also several attacks on political Web sites on Sunday.

Eurosceptics, beware: the euro crisis is bad for you too

 | Jackie Ashley | Comment is free | The Guardian

Mayhem. Catastrophe. Apocalypse. Chaos. A hail of brimstone. The end of the (consumerist) world. Years of misery … And that's just the more optimistic parts of the media, as they contemplate the breakup of the eurozone. Politicians wring their hands as they contemplate the changing world of ever-lower expectations.

Only one group, it seems, has cause to feel chipper – all those "told you so" Eurosceptics who inveighed against the euro and federalism all along. Surely this is the moment when the British anti-Brussels movement reaches its maturity? It has been vindicated even by Jacques Delors, who now admits the dreaded Anglo-Saxons had a point when they argued that you couldn't have a single currency without a single economy and thus a single government. Now, with David Cameron caught between his earlier pledge of a referendum if there was a treaty change and the horror of a disorderly collapse of the system, they can exert maximum influence.

Egypt Brotherhood says won't impose Islamic values

 - Yahoo! News

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, emerging as the biggest winner in the first round of parliamentary elections, sought Saturday to reassure Egyptians that it would not sacrifice personal freedoms in promoting Islamic law.

The deputy head of the Brotherhood's new political party, Essam el-Erian, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the group is not interested in imposing Islamic values on Egypt, home to a sizable Christian minority and others who object to being subject to strict Islamic codes.

"We represent a moderate and fair party," el-Erian said of his Freedom and Justice Party. "We want to apply the basics of Shariah law in a fair way that respects human rights and personal rights," he said, referring to Islamic law.

The comments were the clearest indication that the Brotherhood was distancing itself from the ultraconservative Islamist Nour Party, which appears to have won the second-largest share of votes in the election's first phase.

The Nour Party espouses a strict interpretation of Islam similar to that of Saudi Arabia, where the sexes are segregated and women must be veiled and are barred from driving.

Egypt's election commission has released few official results from the voting on Monday and Tuesday. But preliminary counts have been leaked by judges and individual political groups showing both parties could together control a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament if they did form an alliance.

The Brotherhood recently denied in a statement that it seeks to form an alliance with the Nour Party in parliament, calling it "premature and mere media speculation."

On Saturday, el-Erian made it clear that the Brotherhood does not share Nour's more hard-line aspirations to strictly enforce Islamic codes in Egyptians' daily lives.

"We respect all people in their choice of religion and life," he said.

Another major check on such an agenda is the council of generals who have run the country since President Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February. The military council, accused by Egypt's protest movement of stalling a transition to civilian and democratic rule, is seeking to limit the powers of the next parliament and maintain close oversight over the drafting of a new constitution.

Egypt already uses Shariah law as the basis for legislation, however Egyptian laws remain largely secular as Shariah does not cover all aspects of modern life.

On its English-language Twitter account, the Brotherhood said that its priorities were to fix Egypt's economy and improve the lives of ordinary Egyptians, "not to change (the) face of Egypt into (an) Islamic state."

El-Erian urged the Brotherhood's political rivals to accept the election results.

"We all believe that our success as Egyptians toward democracy is a real success and we want everyone to accept this democratic system. This is the guarantee for stability," he said.

For decades, Mubarak's regime suppressed the Brotherhood, which was politically banned but managed to establish a vast network of activists and charities offering free food and medical services throughout the country's impoverished neighborhoods and villages.

It is the best organized of Egypt's post-Mubarak political forces.

The vote for parliament's lower house is taking place over three stages, with 18 provinces in Egypt yet to vote.

Meanwhile, the swearing-in of a new temporary Cabinet was delayed on Saturday due to disagreements over key posts, including over who will lead the ministry in charge of internal security.

An official in the Interior Ministry said several high-ranking security officials have been named as possible replacements but that some have turned down the offer.

Protesters have also strongly objected to the nominations put forward by newly appointed Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri, who served in the same position under ousted President Hosni Mubarak from 1996 to 1999.

The country's ruling military general, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, appointed el-Ganzouri as a new interim prime minister last month after the previous premier's government resigned in the wake of a police crackdown on protesters that killed over 40 people.

The interim Cabinet will serve until after the parliamentary elections finish in March. A new government is to be formed after the legislature is seated.

Activist Hussein Hammouda, a retired police brigadier, is among those opposed to the names being considered for the Interior Minister post and says someone from outside the police force should be chosen instead.

Protesters in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt's protests, released a statement saying they would continue their sit-in while allowing traffic to resume normally in the area.

There were tens of thousands of protesters in the square in the days leading up to the elections, but numbers have dwindled to several hundred since then. Protesters demanding el-Ganzouri be replaced as prime minister said they will keep up another sit-in outside the Cabinet headquarters.

Animal Farm and the anti-capitalist protest

Animal Farm at St Paul's as some protesters are accused of being 'more equal than others' | Mail Online

In Orwell's 1945 novel, based on the Russian Revolution, the animals of Manor Farm overthrow the dictator farmer Mr Jones to establish a new regime based on communism.

But the system fails as some of the animals become ruthless dictators declaring that 'All animals are equal but some are more equal than others'.

The anti-capitalist protest at the Cathedral is part of a series in cities across the globe which aim to highlight the inequalities caused by mismanagement of the economy.

Rise in Asian women trafficked into China

: report - Yahoo! News

An increasing number of women from Southeast Asia are being smuggled into China and sold into marriage or forced to work as prostitutes, according to a state media report.

"The number of foreign women trafficked to China is definitely rising," the report in the China Daily quoted Chen Shiqu, director of the office for combating human trafficking in the Ministry of Public Security, as saying.

Without giving figures, he said that many trafficked women come from poor rural areas of Vietnam, Myanmar or Laos and are lured by transnational criminal gangs with promises of good jobs or marriage with rich Chinese men.

On arriving in China, the victims are often sold to villagers as brides or forced to become sex workers in underground brothels in coastal or border areas such as Guangdong and Yunnan provinces, he said.

Women are sold for between 20,000 yuan ($3,100) and 50,000 yuan each, with prices varying with appearance and nationality, Jin Yulu, an official at the Ruili border crossing to Myanmar, told the China Daily.

Some Southeast Asian women are transported as far as Hebei province in the north, which surrounds Beijing, where police have rescued 206 women since April 2009, the report quoted the provincial public security department as saying.

Sex selection combined with China's population control rules has led to a gender imbalance in the country, with 118.1 boys currently born for every 100 girls against a natural ratio of 105 boys for every 100 girls, according to UN figures.

Miru Kim in Art Basel 2011

Art Basel 2011: Muri Kim's 'The Pig That Therefore I Am' Exhibit | Mail Online

She admits she has a fear of germs.

But for her new art installation, Miru Kim has decided to live with pigs for 104 hours, non-stop.

The former medical student is staying in a pen at the front of one of the galleries at Art Basel Miami 2011, and visitors can watch her, naked, through the window.

Rumah Cantik Menteng is bought by Ibas aka SBY son

This president son doesn't have a real job. He is only a politician. How can this guy afford to buy the Rumah Cantik which costs US $ 1,7 million? You know the answer...it involves Machiavellian way..power tends to corrupt...
Setelah Menikah Ibas Beli Rumah 16 Milyar Rupiah - DetikForum

It has been revealed that eight months ago a protected award-winning house in Menteng, Central Jakarta, was half torn down after it was sold to one of the country’s top political figures.

Sources who learned about the transaction last year said that the house, an iconic Dutch Indische Woonhuizen (Indies Residences) style house known as “Rumah Cantik” (beautiful house), was sold for about Rp 16 billion (US$1.76 million) to Edhie Baskoro “Ibas” Yudhoyono.

The house’s front fence is now sealed off with corrugated iron panels. Recent photos of the house show that much of its roof is missing, the presence of large holes in some of the walls, and that the once beautiful garden, which was filled with colorful flowers and neatly cropped hedges, was dead.

All that remains are some tiles and the skeleton of the house.

Previously, almost everyone who passed the house, which is located on the corner of Jl. Teuku Cik Di Tiro and Jl. Ki Mangunsarkoro, Central Jakarta, stopped to admire its classic beauty.

“The house was torn down probably seven or eight months ago. I don’t know why the new owner did not continue to re-construct the house,” a nearby resident said.

The house, which has received several awards from the city administration, is protected under a 1993 gubernatorial decree on heritage buildings.

The rules permit the owner to construct new buildings, but they cannot change the original structure.

The house is thought to have been built in 1932.

Because of the beautiful and well-managed appearance, the 350-square-meter building, which sits on a 863-square-meter plot of land, was often rented out as a location for films and sinetron (soap opera), including The Big Village and Dunia Tanpa Koma (World without Comas).

Menteng was started as a housing complex for the haves in 1908 when the estate was purchased by real estate company De Bouwploeg, whose office was at the site currently occupied by the Cut Mutiah mosque.

University of Indonesia archaeologist Candrian Attahiyat said that many old buildings in Menteng had been torn down and replaced with modern houses.

“The area is divided into two: the old Menteng, where we still can see some old-style buildings standing there, and the new Menteng, where the old buildings have undergone some changes,” he said.

Candrian said that old Menteng included Jl. Teuku Umar and Jl. Lembang, and that new Menteng included Jl. HOS Cokroaminoto and Jl. Sam Ratulangi.

“Economic reasons are mostly behind the change. Many of the modern buildings have been turned into shops or offices,” he said.

Candrian also said that some of the owners of the old classic buildings used a special strategy to convert them into modern houses.

“Many of them intentionally leave the house empty for several years so that they have a reason to build with a new designs as the structure has been damaged [through neglect],” he said.

Ever since Rumah Cantik was sold, prices of houses in the surrounding area have soared, local residents said.

“Maybe it had become the benchmark for this area,” he said.

Ikhwannul Muslimin is leading in vote count

Egypt's Brotherhood leading in vote count: source - Yahoo! News

The Muslim Brotherhood has secured about 40 percent of the votes for its party list in the first round of Egypt's parliamentary election this week after counting so far, putting it ahead of other groups, a party source said on Wednesday.

Voting in Egypt's election is being held in three phases over six weeks. Of the total of 498 seats in the lower house up for grabs, two-thirds will be allocated proportionally according to party lists and the other third will go to individuals.

Official results from Monday and Tuesday's votes are expected later in the day.

(Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Ralph Gowling)

Bonus Telkomsel Menipu : Telkomsel Pencuri Pulsa Konsumen!

Hey, I also experience the same thing. Bonus telkomsel bener2 menipu. Pulsa saya sebelumnya Rp 54 ribu, tapi saat diceek tinggal Rp 50 (pukul 2 am). Padahal bonus berlaku mulai pukul 00-06am pada hari ini (29/11/2012). Kenyataannya telkomsel mencuri pulsa saya. Ini gila, praktik telkomsel yang menjijikkan, menipu konsumen dan telah berbohong. Saya dapat link berita di bawah saat saya google "bonus internel telkomsel tipu". Ternyata, banyak yang ngalamin seperti saya dan aparat hukum ga bertindak apapun sama perusahaan yang udah mencuri uang konsumen??? susah memang tinggal di negara yang polisinya juga korup....Hey telkomsel kembalikan uang yang sudah kamu curi dari akun pulsa saya... updating....

Bonus Internet 100 MB Telkomsel Menipu : Telkomsel Pencuri Pulsa @Telkomsel mohon ditanggapi... iamafanofpeace.blogspot.com/2011/11/bonus-…

— Icha(@ichaview) November 28, 2011

For my post both in twitter and blog, I got this reply from the CS Telkomsel which I found silly because telkomsel does not admit to have stolen my credit. Here is their doofus reply : Kepada yth, Ibu Icha Terma kasih telah menghubungi layanan email cs@telkomsel.co.id. Kami sampaikan permohonan maaf atas ketidaknyamanan yang dialami sehubungan dengan pengaduan Ibu Icha mengenai terpotongnya pulsa kartu simPATI dengan nomor 081XXXXXXX pada saat mengakses internet dengan menggunakan bonus gila-gilan 100MB. Setelah kami lakukan pengecekan datanya, pulsa nomor 081XXXXXX terpotong untuk biaya GPRS normal untuk mengakses internet pada tanggal 28 November 2011 antara pukul 16:02 sampai dengan pukul 16:22, sehingga tersisa pulsa Rp 50 dan pada tanggal 29 November 2011 mengakses internet tanpa dikenakan biaya karena memliki bonus gila-gilaan 100MB. Untuk pengecekan detil penggunaan pulsanya, Ibu dapat mengunjungi GraPARI Telkomsel terdekat. Demikian informasi yang dapat kami sampaikan. Terima kasih Hormat kami, cs@telkomsel.co.id
Surat Pembaca - KOMPAS.com

Telkomsel
Jebakan Bonus Telkomsel Menipu
Jumat, 11 November 2011 | 10:29 WIB

Pada tanggal 9 November 2011 saya melakukan pengisian pulsa dan mendapat bonus gila-gilaan 100 menit dan 100 MB. Pada tanggal 11 November 2011 jam 00.15 WIB saya menggunakan bonus tersebut untuk berinternet tetapi pada pukul 00.30 WIB ternyata internet tidak berjalan lagi.

Saya cek sisa bonus internet ternyata tidak berkurang tetapi saya begitu saya cek sisa pulsa ternyata sudah menjadi Rp 50,-. Padahal sebelum memanfaatkan layanan internet pulsa masih tersisa Rp. 13.900, -. Dihitung dari pemakaian tidak mencapai 10 MB sedangkan sisa kuota bonus pada saat akan digunakan adalah 96 MB.

Lalu mengapa pulsa saya terpotong? Apakah ini merupakan trik Telkomsel mencari keuntungan dari pelanggan ? Ini merupakan kejadian kedua yang saya alami dengan bonus gila-gilaan yang diberikan oleh Telkomsel dengan kejadian sebelumnya yaitu pada tanggal 3 November 2011. Yang dinyatakan bahwa saya menggunakan internet bukan pada waktu yang sesuai dengan penggunaan seharusnya bonus tersebut, sehingga pulsa saya juga terpotong dari Rp 22.300,- menjadi tersisa Rp 50,-.

Mungkin trik ini juga dialami oleh pelanggan telkomsel yang lain juga? Sungguh sangat mengecewakan, jika Telkomsel benar-benar jujur saya harap pulsa saya yang hilang oleh bonus jebakan ini dikembalikan.

Saya sudah menghubungi kembali bagian Customer Service Telkomsel tetapi hanya dijanjikan akan dicek kembali datanya. Saya menantikan tanggung jawab dan penyelesaian dari Telkomsel. Terima kasih.

Suhut Hesaki
Dsn IV S. Batu Comp. TDKM No. 48 Sidomulyo
Deliserdang

Egypt's post-Mubarak poll peaceful, high turnout

 - Yahoo! News

Egyptians voted Monday in the first election since a popular revolt toppled Hosni Mubarak's one-man rule, showing new-found faith in the ballot box that may sweep long-banned Islamists into parliament even as army generals cling to power.

Voters swarmed to the polls in a generally peaceful atmosphere despite the unrest that marred the election run-up, when 42 people were killed in protests demanding an immediate transition from military to civilian rule.

"We want to make a difference, although we are depressed by what the country has come to," said Maha Amin, a 46-year-old pharmacy lecturer, before she voted in an upscale Cairo suburb.

The ruling army council, which has already extended polling to a second day, kept voting stations open an extra two hours until 9 p.m. "to accommodate the high voter turnout."

The Muslim Brotherhood's party and other Islamists expect to do well in the parliamentary election staggered over the next six weeks, but much remains uncertain in Egypt's complex and unfamiliar voting system of party lists and individuals.

Political transformation in Egypt, traditional leader of the Arab world, will reverberate across the Middle East, where a new generation demanding democratic change has already toppled or challenged the leaders of Tunisia, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Indon Police are Corrupt : Lihat Polisi yang Terima duit di Jalan? Catat Namanya, Laporkan!

Most Indon police are corrupt. I dislike them..and today I read this article saying that we have to report any corrupt police to the police office. Oh, this is not a new thing. The police always say that thing and they still keep corrupting...Indon police are corrupt, and this will never change!
detikNews :

Polisi tengah bergiat melakukan reformasi di internal. Polisi meminta bantuan dari masyarakat. Termasuk soal urusan praktik damai atau '86' di jalan. Bila ada polisi yang mau terima '86', catat namanya dan laporkan ke Polda Metro Jaya.

"Jangan takut untuk melaporkan. Ada anggota yang melanggar, kita tindak. Catat identitasnya, pasti kita tindak. Polisi tidak boleh begitu, seharusnya dia menjadi panutan masyarakat," kata Kabid Humas Polda Metro Jaya Kombes Pol Baharuddin Djafar di Mapolda Metro Jaya, Jl Sudirman, Jakarta, Senin (28/11/2011).

Baharuddin kembali mewanti-wanti, agar masyarakat berani. Praktik damai di jalan bisa diberantas tentu juga karena adanya partisipasi warga.

"Jangan masyarakat memberikan uang kepada petugas karena itu menjadikan kita tidak tertib," jelasnya.

Baharuddin juga mengimbau kepada petugas kepolisian di jalan agar menolak setiap tawaran damai dari masyarakat. Juga jangan sampai menawarkan jalan pintas.

"Dan anggota juga harus menolak. Polisinya juga jangan meminta, kalau pun masyarakatnya yang memberi, polisi jangan ambil," tegasnya.

Austrian Theory : government intervention in the market process as always and everywhere destructive

Why Austrian Economics Matters

The Austrian School

Also part of this mix, but in many ways apart from and above it, is the Austrian School. It is not a field within economics, but an alternative way of looking at the entire science. Whereas other schools rely primarily on idealized mathematical models of the economy, and suggest ways the government can make the world conform, Austrian theory is more realistic and thus more socially scientific.

Austrians view economics as a tool for understanding how people both cooperate and compete in the process of meeting needs, allocating resources, and discovering ways of building a prosperous social order. Austrians view entrepreneurship as a critical force in economic development, private property as essential to an efficient use of resources, and government intervention in the market process as always and everywhere destructive.

The Austrian School is in a major upswing today. In academia, this is due to a backlash against mathematization, the resurgence of verbal logic as a methodological tool, and the search for a theoretically stable tradition in the madhouse of macroeconomic theorizing. In terms of policy, the Austrian School looks more and more attractive, given continuing business-cycle mysteries, the collapse of socialism, the cost and failure of the welfare warfare regulatory state, and public frustration with big government.

High Points in the Austrian Tradition

In its twelve decades, the Austrian School has experienced different levels of prominence. It was central to the price theory debates before the turn of the century, to monetary economics in the first decade of the century, and to the controversy over socialism's feasibility and the source of the business cycle in the 1920s and 1930s. The school fell into the background from the 1940s to the mid-1970s, and was usually mentioned only in history of economic thought texts.

Carl Menger

The proto-Austrian tradition dates from the 15th-century Spanish Scholastics, who first presented an individualist and subjectivist understanding of prices and wages. But the formal founding of the school dates from the 1871 publication of Carl Menger's Principles of Economics, which changed economists' understanding of the valuing, economizing, and pricing of resources, overturning both the Classical and the Marxian view in the "marginal revolution."

Menger also generated a new theory of money as a market institution, and grounded economics in deductive laws discoverable by the methods of the social sciences. Menger's book, said Ludwig von Mises, made an economist of him, and it is still of great value.

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk was the next important figure in the Austrian School. He showed that interest rates, when not manipulated by a central bank, are determined by the time horizons of the public, and that the rate of return on investment tends to equal the rate of time preference. He also dealt a deadly blow to Marx's theory of capital and exploitation, and was a key defender of theoretical economics at a time when historicists of every stripe were trying to destroy it.

Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk

Böhm-Bawerk's greatest student was Ludwig von Mises, whose first major project was the development of a new theory of money. The Theory of Money and Credit, published in 1912, elaborated on Menger, showing not only that money had its origin in the market, but that there was no other way it could have come about. Mises also argued that money and banking ought to be left to the market, and that government intervention can only cause harm.

In that book, which remains a standard work today, Mises also sowed the seeds of his business-cycle theory. He argued that when the central bank artificially lowers interest rates, it causes distortions in the capital-goods sector of the structure of production. When malinvestments occur, an economic downturn is necessary to wash out bad investments.

Along with his student F. A. Hayek, Mises established the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research in Vienna, and he and Hayek showed that the central bank is the source of the business cycle. Their work eventually proved to be most effective in combating Keynesian experiments in fine-tuning the economy through fiscal policies and the central bank.

The Mises-Hayek theory was dominant in Europe until Keynes won the day by arguing that the market itself is responsible for the business cycle. It didn't hurt that Keynes's theory advocating more spending, inflation, and deficits was already being practiced by governments around the world.

Socialist Calculation

At the time of the business-cycle debate, Mises and Hayek were also involved in a controversy over socialism. In 1920, Mises had written one of the most important articles of the century: "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth," followed by his book, Socialism. Until then, there had been many critiques of socialism, but none had challenged socialists to explain how their economy would actually work absent free prices and private property.

Mises argued that rational economic calculation requires a profit-and-loss test. If a firm makes a profit, it is using resources efficiently; if it makes a loss, it is not. Without such signals, the economic actor has no way to test the appropriateness of his decisions. He cannot assess the opportunity costs of this or that production decision. Prices and the profit-and-loss corollary are essential. Mises also showed that private property in the means of production is necessary for these prices to be generated.

Ludwig von Mises

Socialism holds that the means of production should be in collective hands. This means no buying or selling of capital goods and thus no prices for them. Without prices, there is no profit and loss test. Without accounting for profit and loss, there can be no real economy. Should a new factory be built? Under socialism, there is no way to tell. Everything becomes guesswork.

Mises's essay ignited a debate all over Europe and America. One top socialist, Oskar Lange, conceded that prices are necessary for economic calculation, but he said that central planners could generate prices out of their own heads, watch the length of lines at stores to determine consumer demand, or provide the signals of production themselves. Mises countered that "playing market" wouldn't work either; socialism, by its own internal contradictions, had to fail.

Hayek used the occasion of the calculation debate to elaborate upon and broaden the Misesian argument into his own theory of the uses of knowledge in society. He argued that the knowledge generated by the market process was inaccessible to any single human mind, especially that of the central planner. The millions of decisions required for a prosperous economy are too complex for any one person to comprehend. This theory became the basis of a fuller theory of the social order that occupied Hayek for the rest of his academic life.

Mises came to the U.S. after fleeing the Nazis and was taken in by a handful of free-market businessmen, preeminently Lawrence Fertig. Here he helped build a movement around his ideas, and most free-market economists acknowledge their debt to him. No one, as Milton Friedman has said, did as much as Mises to promote free markets in this country. But those were dark times. He had trouble finding the paid university post he deserved, and it was difficult to get a wider audience for his views.

During these early years in America, Mises worked to rewrite his just completed German-language treatise into Human Action, an all-encompassing work for English-language audiences. In it, he carefully reworked the philosophical grounding of the social sciences in general and economics in particular. This proved to be a significant contribution: long after the naive dogmas of empiricism have failed, Mises's "praxeology," or logic of human action, continues to inspire students and scholars. This magnum opus swept aside Keynesian fallacies and historicist pretensions and ultimately made possible the revival of the Austrian School.

The Revival

Until the 1970s, however, it was hard to find a prominent economist who did not share the Keynesian tenets: that the price system was perverse, that the free market was irrational, that the stock market was driven by animal spirits, that the private sector could not be trusted, that government was capable of planning the economy to keep it from falling into recession, and that inflation and unemployment were inversely related.

One exception was Murray N. Rothbard, another great student of Mises's, who wrote a massive economic treatise in the early 1960s called Man, Economy, and State. In his book, Rothbard added his own contributions to Austrian thought. Similarly, the work of two other important students of Mises, Hans F. Sennholz and Israel Kirzner, carried on the tradition. And Henry Hazlitt, then writing a weekly column for Newsweek, did as much as anybody to promote the Austrian School, and made contributions to the school himself.

Henry Hazlitt

The stagflation of the 1970s undermined the Keynesian School by showing that it was possible to have both high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. The Nobel Prize that Hayek received in 1974 for his business-cycle research with Mises caused an explosion of academic interest in the Austrian School and free-market economics in general. A generation of graduate students began studying the work of Mises and Hayek, and that research program continues to grow. Today, the Austrian School is most fully embodied in the work of the Mises Institute.

The Core of Austrian Theory

The concepts of scarcity and choice lie at the heart of Austrian economics. Man is constantly faced with a wide array of choices. Every action implies forgone alternatives or costs. And every action, by definition, is designed to improve the actor's lot from his point of view. Moreover, every actor in the economy has a different set of values and preferences, different needs and desires, and different time schedules for the goals he intends to reach.

The needs, tastes, desires, and time schedules of different people cannot be added to or subtracted from other people's. It is not possible to collapse tastes or time schedules onto one curve and call it consumer preference. Why? Because economic value is subjective to the individual.

Similarly, it is not possible to collapse the complexity of market arrangements into enormous aggregates. We cannot, for example, say the economy's capital stock is one big blob summarized by the letter K and put that into an equation and expect it to yield useful information. The capital stock is heterogeneous. Some capital may be intended to create goods for sale tomorrow and others for sale in ten years. The time schedules for capital use are as varied as the capital stock itself. Austrian theory sees competition as a process of discovering new and better ways to organize resources, one that is fraught with errors but that is constantly being improved.

This way of looking at the market is markedly different from every other school of thought. Since Keynes, economists have developed the habit of constructing parallel universes having nothing to do with the real world. In these universes, capital is homogeneous and competition is a static end state. There are the right number of sellers, prices reflect the costs of production, and there are no excess profits. Economic welfare is determined by adding up the utilities of all individuals in society. The passing of time is rarely accounted for, except in changing from one static state to another. Varying time schedules of producers and consumers are simply nonexistent. Instead we have aggregates that give us precious little information at all.

A conventional economist is quick to agree that these models are unrealistic, ideal types to be used as mere tools of analysis. But this is disingenuous, since these same economists use these models for policy recommendations.

One obvious example of basing policy on contrived models of the economy takes place at the Justice Department's antitrust division. There the bureaucrats pretend to know the proper structure of industry, what kind of mergers and acquisitions harm the economy, who has too much market share or too little, and what the relevant market is. This represents what Hayek called the pretense of knowledge.

The correct relationship between competitors can only be worked out through buying and selling, not bureaucratic fiat. Austrian economists, in particular Rothbard, argue that the only real monopolies are created by government. Markets are too competitive to allow any monopolies to be sustained.

Another example is the idea that economic growth can be manufactured by manipulating aggregate demand curves through more and faster government spending considered to be a demand booster instead of a supply reducer or government bullying of the consuming public.

If the hallmark of conventional economics is unrealistic models, the hallmark of Austrian economics is a profound appreciation of the price system. Prices provide economic actors with critical information about the relative scarcity of goods and services. It is not necessary for consumers to know, for example, that a disease has swept the chicken population to know that they should economize on eggs. The price system, by making eggs more expensive, informs the public of the appropriate behavior.

The price system tells producers when to enter and leave markets by relaying information about consumer preferences. And it tells producers the most efficient that is, the least costly way to assemble other resources to create goods. Apart from the price system, there is no way to know these things.

But prices must be generated by the free market. They cannot be made up the way the Government Printing Office makes up the prices for its publications. They cannot be based on the costs of production in the manner of the Post Office. Those practices create distortions and inefficiencies. Rather, prices must grow out of the free actions of individuals in a juridical setting that respects private property.

Neoclassical price theory, as found in most graduate texts, covers much of this territory. But typically, it takes for granted the accuracy of prices apart from their foundation in private property. As a result, virtually every plan for reforming the post-socialist economies talked about the need for better management, loans from the West, new and different forms of regulation, and the removal of price controls, but not private property. The result was the economic equivalent of a train wreck.

Free-floating prices simply cannot do their work apart from private property and concomitant freedom to contract. Austrian theory sees private property as the first principle of a sound economy. Economists in general neglect the subject, and when they mention it, it is to find a philosophical basis for its violation.

The logic and legitimacy of "market failure" analysis, and its public-goods corollary, is widely accepted by non-Austrian schools of thought. The notion of public goods is that they cannot be supplied by the market, and instead must be supplied by government and funded through its taxing power. The classic case is the lighthouse, except that, as Ronald Coase has shown, private lighthouses have existed for centuries. Some definitions of public goods can be so broad that, if you throw out common sense, everyday consumer goods qualify.

Austrians point out that it is impossible to know whether or not the market is failing without an independent test, of which there is none outside the actions of individuals. The market itself is the only available criterion for determining how resources ought to be used.

Let's say I deem it necessary, for various social reasons, that there be one barber for every 100 people and, as I look around, I notice that this is not the case. Thus I might advocate that a National Endowment for Barbers be established to increase the barber supply. But the only means for knowing how many barbers there ought to be is the market itself. If there are fewer than one per hundred, we must assume that a larger number is not supposed to exist by any reasonable standard of efficient markets. It is not economically proper to develop a wish list of jobs and institutions that stands apart from the market itself.

Externalities

Conventional economics teaches that if the benefits or costs of one person's economic decisions spill over onto others, an externality exists, and it ought to be corrected by the government through redistribution. But, broadly defined, externalities are inherent in every economic transaction because costs and benefits are ultimately subjective. I may be delighted to see factories belching smoke because I love industry. But that does not mean I should be taxed for the privilege of viewing them. Similarly, I may be offended that most men don't have beards, but that doesn't mean that the clean-shaven ought to be taxed to compensate me for my displeasure.

Murray Rothbard

The Austrian School redefines externalities as occurring only with physical invasions of property, as when my neighbor dumps his trash in my yard. Then the issue becomes crime. There can be no value-free adding-up of utilities to determine subjective costs or benefits of economic activity. Instead, the relevant criterion should be whether economic actions occur in a peaceful manner.

Another area where Austrians differ is how the government is supposed to go about the practical problem of correcting for market failures. Grant that somehow the government can spot a market failure, the burden of proof is still on the government to demonstrate that it can perform the task more efficiently than the market. Austrians would refocus the energy that goes into finding market failures to understanding more about government failures.

But the failure of government to do what mainstream theory says it can is not a popular subject. Outside of the Public Choice schools, it is usually assumed that the government is capable of doing anything it wants to do, and of doing it well. Forgotten is the nature of the state as an institution with its own pernicious designs on society. One of the contributions of Rothbard was to focus Austrians on this point, and on the likely patterns interventions will take. He developed a typology of interventionism, and provided detailed critiques of many kinds of interventions and their consequences.

The Fortune Tellers

The question is often asked, in James Buchanan's famous phrase, What Should Economists Do? Mainstreamers answer, in part: forecast the future. This goal is legitimate in the natural sciences, because rocks and sound waves do not make choices. But economics is a social science dealing with people who make choices, respond to incentives, change their minds, and even act irrationally.

Austrian economists realize that the future is always uncertain, not radically so, but largely. Human action in an uncertain world with pervasive scarcity poses the economic problem in the first place. We need entrepreneurs and prices to help overcome uncertainty, although this can never be done completely.

Forecasting the future is the job of entrepreneurs, not economists. This is not to say that Austrian economists cannot expect certain consequences of particular government policies. For example, they know that price ceilings always and everywhere create shortages, and that expansions of the money supply lead to general price increases and the business cycle, even if they cannot know the time and exact nature of these expected events.

Government Numbers

One final area of theoretical concern that distinguishes Austrians from the mainstream is economic statistics. Austrians are critical of the substance of most existing statistical measures of the economy. They are also critical of the uses to which they are put. Take, for example, the question of price elasticities, which supposedly measure consumer responsiveness to changes in price. The problem lies in the metaphor and its applications. It suggests that elasticities exist independent of human action, and that they can be known in advance of experience. But measures of historical consumer behavior do not constitute economic theory.

Another example of a questionable statistical technique is the index number, the prime means by which the government calculates inflation. The problem with index numbers is that they obscure relative price changes between goods and industries, and relative price changes are of prime importance. This is not to say the Consumer Price Index is irrelevant, only that it is not a solid indicator, is subject to wide abuse, and masks highly complex price movements between sectors.

And the Gross Domestic Product statistic is riddled with composition fallacies inherent in the Keynesian model. Government spending is considered part of aggregate demand, and no effort is made to account for the destructive costs of taxation, regulation, and redistribution. If Austrians had their way, the government would never collect another economic statistic. Such data is used primarily to plan the economy.

Public Policy

For Austrians, economic regulation is always destructive of prosperity because it misallocates resources and is extremely destructive of small business and entrepreneurship.

Environmental regulation has been among the worst offenders in recent years. Nobody can calculate the extraordinary losses associated with the Clean Air Act or the absurdities associated with wetlands or endangered species policies.

However, environmental policy can do what it is explicitly intended to do: lower standards of living. But antitrust policy, in contrast to its stated policy, does not generate competitiveness. Such bogeymen as predatory pricing still scare the bureaucrats at Justice, whereas simple economic analysis can refute the idea that a competitor can sell below his cost of production to take over the market and then sell at monopoly prices later. Any firm that attempts to sell below the costs of production will indefinitely suffer loses. The moment it attempts to raise prices, it invites competitors back into the market.

Civil rights legislation represents one of the most intrusive regulatory interventions in labor markets. When employers are not able to hire, fire, and promote based on their own criteria of merit, dislocations occur within the firm and in labor markets at large. Moreover, civil rights legislation, by creating legal preferences for some groups, undermines the public sense of fairness that is the market's hallmark.

There is another cost of economic regulation: it impedes the entrepreneurial discovery process. This process is based on having a wide array of alternatives open to the use of capital. Yet government regulation limits the options of entrepreneurs, and erects barriers to the exercise of entrepreneurial talent. Safety, health, and labor regulations, for example, not only inhibit existing production, they impede the development of better production methods.

Austrians have also developed impressive critiques of redistributionism. Conventional welfare theory argues that if the law of diminishing marginal utility is true, then total utility can be easily increased. If you take a dollar from a rich man, his welfare is slightly diminished, but that dollar is worth less to him than to a poor man. Thus redistributing a dollar from a rich man to a poor man increases the total utility between the two. The implication is that welfare can be maximized through perfect income equality. The problem with this, say Austrians, is that utilities cannot be added and subtracted, since they are subjective.

Redistributionism takes from property-owners and producers and gives, by definition, to non-owners and non-producers. This diminishes the value of the property that has been redistributed. Far from increasing total welfare, redistributionism diminishes it. By making property and its value less secure, income transfers lessen the benefits of ownership and production, and thus lower the incentives to both.

Austrians reject the use of redistribution to stimulate the economy or otherwise manipulate the structure of economic activity. Increasing taxes, for example, can do nothing but harm. A shorthand for taxes is wealth destruction. They forcibly confiscate property that could otherwise be saved or invested, thus lowering the number of consumer options available. Moreover, there is no such thing as a strict consumer tax. All taxes decrease production.

Austrians do not go along with the view that deficits don't matter. In fact, the requirement that deficits be financed by the public or foreign bond holders drives up interest rates and thus crowds out potential private investment. Deficits also create the danger that they will be financed through central-bank inflation. Yet the answer to deficits is not to increase taxation, which is more destructive than deficits, but rather to balance the budget through necessary spending cuts. Where to cut? Anywhere and everywhere.

The ideal situation is not simply a balanced budget. Government spending itself, regardless of deficit or surplus, should be as small as possible. Why? Because such spending diverts resources from better uses in private markets.

We hear talk of this or that "government investment." Austrians reject this term as an oxymoron. Real investment is taken on by capitalists risking their own money in hopes of satisfying future consumer demands. Government limits the satisfaction of consumer demands by hampering production in the private sector. Besides, government investments are notorious wastes of money, and are in fact consumption spending by politicians and bureaucrats.

Money and Banking

Mainstream economists hold that the government must control monetary policy and the structure of banking through cartels, deposit insurance, and a flexible fiat currency. Austrians reject this entire paradigm, and argue that all are better controlled through private markets. In fact, to the extent that today we have serious and radical proposals for having the market play a greater role in banking and monetary policy, it is due to the Austrian School.

Deposit insurance has been on the public mind since the collapse of the S&L industry. The government guarantees deposits and loans with taxpayer money, and that makes financial institutions less careful. Government effectively does to financial institutions what a permissive parent does to a child: encourages poor behavior by eliminating the threat of punishment.

Austrians would eliminate deposit insurance, and not only allow bank runs to occur, but appreciate their potential as a necessary check. There would be no lender of last resort that is, the taxpayer in an Austrian monetary regime, to bail out bankrupt and illiquid institutions.

F.A. Hayek

Much of the Austrian critique of central banking centers around the Mises-Hayek business cycle theory. Both argued that the central bank, and not the market itself, is responsible for the cyclical behavior of business activity. To demonstrate the theory, Austrians have undertaken extensive studies of many historical periods of recession and recovery to show that each was preceded by central-bank machinations.

The theory argues that central-bank efforts to lower interest rates below their natural level causes borrowers in the capital goods industry to overinvest in their projects. A lower interest rate is normally a signal that consumers' savings are available to back up new production. That is, if a producer borrows to build a new building, there is enough savings for consumers to buy the goods and services that will be made in the building. Projects undertaken can be sustained. But artificially lowered interest rates lead businesses into undertaking unnecessary projects. This creates an artificial boom followed by a bust once it is clear that savings weren't high enough to justify the degree of expansion.

Austrians point out that the Monetarist growth rule ignores the "injection effects" of even the smallest increase in money and credit. Such an increase will always create this business-cycle phenomenon, even if it works to maintain a relatively stable index number, as in the 1920s and 1980s.

What then should policy makers do when the economy enters recession? Mostly, nothing. It takes time to wipe out the malinvestment created by the credit boom. Projects that were undertaken have to go bankrupt, employees mistakenly hired must lose their jobs, and wages must fall. After the economy is cleansed of the bad investments induced by the central bank, growth can begin anew, based on a realistic assessment of the future behavior of consumers.

If the government wants to make the recovery process work faster if, say, there is an election coming up there are some things it can do. It can cut taxes, putting more wealth into private hands to fuel the recovery process. It can eliminate regulations, which inhibit private-sector growth. It can cut spending and reduce the demand on credit markets. It can repeal anti-dumping laws, and cut tariffs and quotas, to allow consumers to buy imported goods at cheaper prices.

Central banking also creates incentives toward inflationary monetary policies. It is not a coincidence that since the creation of the Federal Reserve System, the value of the dollar has declined 98%. The market did not make this happen. The culprit is the central bank, whose institutional logic drives it toward an inflationary policy just as a counterfeiter is driven to keep his printing press running.

Austrians would reform this in fundamental ways. Misesians advocate a return to a 100% gold coin standard, an end to fractional-reserve commercial banking, and the abolition of the central bank, while Hayekians advocate a system where consumers select currencies from a variety of alternatives.

The Future of the Austrian School

Today, Austrian economics is on the upswing. Mises's works are read and discussed all over Western and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as Latin America and North Asia. But the new interest in America, where the insights of the Austrian School are even more sorely needed, is especially encouraging.

The success of the Ludwig von Mises Institute is testimony to this new interest. The primary purpose of the Institute is to ensure that the Austrian School is a major force in the economic debate. To this end, we have cultivated and organized hundreds of professional economists, provided scholarly and popular outlets for their work, educated thousands of graduate students in Austrian theory, distributed millions of publications, and formed intellectual communities, most notably at Auburn University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where these ideas thrive.

Every year we hold a summer instructional seminar on the Austrian School called the Mises University, with a faculty of more than 25, and top-flight students from around the country. We also hold academic conferences on theoretical and historical subjects, and the Institute's scholars are frequent participants at major professional meetings.

Transaction Publishers co-sponsors the Institute's scholarly Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, the only quarterly journal in the English-speaking world devoted exclusively to the Austrian School. Transaction also publishes some of our books. The Austrian Economics Newsletter is written and edited by and for Austrian School graduate students. The Free Market applies Austrian ideas to issues of government policy.

The Mises Institute assists students and faculty at hundreds of colleges and universities. We have a program for visiting fellows to complete dissertations, and for visiting scholars to pursue new research, as well as our major center for graduate students. At Auburn, the Institute's Austrian Economics Workshop explores new areas of history, theory, and policy, and the weekly colloquium brings students and faculty together to apply Austrian thought within an interdisciplinary context.

New books on the Austrian School appear every few months, and Austrians are writing for all the major scholarly journals. Misesian insights are presented in hundreds of economics classrooms all over the country (whereas just 20 years ago, no more than a dozen classrooms presented them). Austrians are the rising stars in the profession, the economists with the new ideas that attract students, the ones on the cutting edge with a pro-market and anti-statist orientation.

Most of these scholars have been cultivated through the Mises Institute's academic conferences, publications, and teaching programs. With the Institute backing the Austrian School, tradition and constructive radicalism combine to create an attractive and intellectually vibrant alternative to conventional thought.

The future of Austrian economics is bright, which bodes well for the future of liberty itself. For if we are to reverse the trends of statism in this century, and reestablish a free market, the intellectual foundation must be the Austrian School. That is why Austrian economics matters.

---------------

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., (rockwell@mises.org) is the founder and president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. This essay is based on a lecture he presented at the Heritage Foundation.

Thousands of foreign athletes will be allowed into Britain without visas for the Olympics

Lax Olympic border checks 'may let in illegal migrants' as well as thousands of athletes | Mail Online

Thousands of foreign athletes will be allowed into Britain without visas for the Olympics, a Daily Mail investigation has revealed.

The decision, rubberstamped by Immigration Minister Damian Green, could open the door to illegal migrants, MPs warned.

It is expected to spark renewed controversy over lax border controls and national security.

Iceland rejects Chinese bid for resort land

I think it is a normal response from any country which want to protect its national interest...My country should do the same as Iceland does.
- Yahoo! News

A Chinese entrepreneur's bid to create a vast nature retreat in Iceland was turned down by the north Atlantic island nation's government Friday, amid concern the deal would have handed a major chunk of territory to a foreign investor.

Iceland's interior ministry said it had rejected an application by the Zyongkun Group, a company controlled by Huang Nubo, a 55-year-old former Chinese government official, in part because no foreign buyer had ever bought so much land in the country.

Huang, one of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs, had sought to buy 30,639 hectares (120 square miles) of land on the north shore of Iceland in a deal which would have been worth about 1 billion Icelandic kronur ($8.8 million).

He had hoped the site in Iceland's northeast — which would have represented about 0.3 percent of the island's land mass — would attract about 10,000 guests a year and create scores of new jobs.

Iceland's Prime Minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, had previously said she would welcome Huang's investment, particularly as the nation recovers from the collapse of its banking industry in 2008.

Since its financial meltdown, Iceland's economy has begun to recover — with the International Monetary Fund predicting economic growth of 2.5 percent in 2012, far better than its struggling European neighbors.

However, the interior ministry confirmed it had ruled it could not lift the country's strict restrictions on the purchase of land by foreigners to allow the deal to go ahead.

"The ministry believes that it's not possible to look past how much land the company wanted to purchase," it said in a statement. "There is no precedent for land on this scale being sold to foreigners."

Referring to Iceland's law on land sales, the ministry said "it was considered necessary to limit foreigner's rights to property in Iceland to protect Iceland's independence" and to ensure that Icelandic people — rather than foreign investors — are able to benefit from the country's resources.

Some critics of the proposed deal had raised concerns that allowing Huang to purchase the land could give China a strategic toehold in the Arctic Circle, where nations are scrambling to claim natural resources and melting ice caps are expected to eventually open up new, faster global shipping lanes.

Huang previously rejected those claims, and insisted that he planned the Icelandic site to be among a chain of nature resorts in China, the United States and Scandinavia.

Halldor Johannsson, Huang's representative in Iceland, said he was surprised by the government's rebuff and claimed Icelandic law did not include limits on the size of a parcel of land an investor could purchase.

China and the United States are squaring off for a historic Indo-Pacific confrontation

Will World War III be between the U.S. and China? | Mail Online

Hugh White of the Australian National University calls it ‘a potentially risky move’. He argues that, in the new world, America should gracefully back down from its claims to exercise Indo-Pacific hegemony, ‘relinquish primacy in the region and share power with China and others’.

But Richard Haas, chairman of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, says: ‘U.S. policy must create a climate in which a rising China is never tempted to use its growing power coercively within or outside the region.’

To put the matter more bluntly, leading Americans fear that once the current big expansion of Chinese armed forces reaches maturity, within a decade or so, Beijing will have no bourgeois scruples about using force to get its way in the world — unless America and its allies are militarily strong enough to deter them.

Meanwhile, in Beijing’s corridors of power there is a fissure between the political and financial leadership, and the generals and admirals.

On the one hand, Chinese economic bosses are appalled by the current turmoil in the West’s financial system, which threatens the buying power of their biggest customers.
Allies: The U.S. made a historic agreement with Australia to station up to 2,500 U.S. Marines in the north of the country

On the other, Chinese military chiefs gloat without embarrassment at the spectacle of weakened Western nations.

As America announces its intention to cut back defence spending, the Chinese armed forces see historic opportunities beckon. Ever since Mao Tse-tung gained control of his country in 1949, China has been striving to escape from what it sees as American containment.

The issue of Taiwan is a permanent open sore: the U.S. is absolutely committed to protecting its independence and freedom. Taiwan broke away from mainland China in 1949, when the rump of the defeated Nationalists under their leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island, and established their own government under an American security blanket.

China has never wavered in its view that the island was ‘stolen’ by the capitalists, and is determined to get it back.

Beijing was infuriated by America’s recent £4  billion arms deal with Taiwan which includes the sale of 114 Patriot anti-ballistic missiles, 60 Blackhawk helicopters and two minesweepers.

When I last visited China, I was struck by how strongly ordinary Chinese feel about Taiwan. They argue that the West’s refusal to acknowledge their sovereignty reflects a wider lack of recognition of their country’s new status in the world.

A young Beijinger named David Zhang says: ‘The most important thing for Americans to do is to stop being arrogant and talk with their counterparts in China on a basis of mutual respect.’ That is how many of his contemporaries feel, as citizens of the proud, assertive new China.

But how is the West supposed to do business with an Asian giant that is not merely utterly heedless of its own citizens’ human rights, but also supports some of the vilest regimes in the world, for its own commercial purposes?

Burma’s tyrannical military rulers would have been toppled years ago, but for the backing of the Chinese, who have huge investments there.

A million Chinese in Africa promote their country’s massive commercial offensive, designed to secure an armlock on the continent’s natural resources. To that end, following its declared policy of ‘non-interference’, China backs bloody tyrannies, foremost among them that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
'Non-interference': China backs bloody tyrannies, foremost among them that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe

'Non-interference': China backs bloody tyrannies, foremost among them that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe

China, like Russia, refuses to endorse more stringent sanctions against Iran, in response to its nuclear weapons-building programme, because Beijing wants Iranian oil. Indeed, Chinese foreign policy is bleakly consistent: it dismisses pleas from the world’s democracies that, as a new global force, it should play a part in sustaining world order.

If Chinese leaders — or indeed citizens — were speaking frankly, they would reply to their country’s critics: ‘The West has exploited the world order for centuries to suit itself. Now it is our turn to exploit it to suit ourselves.’

A friend of ours has recently been working closely with Chinese leaders in Hong Kong. I said to his wife that I could not withhold a touch of sympathy for a rising nation which, in the past, was mercilessly bullied by the West.

She responded: ‘Maybe, but when they are on top I don’t think they will be very kind.’ I fear that she is right. It seems hard to overstate the ruthlessness with which China is pursuing its purposes at home and abroad.
China chose to make an example of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu by jailing him for 11 years

China chose to make an example of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu by jailing him for 11 years

The country imprisons Nobel prizewinners such as the political activist and writer Liu Xiaobo, steals intellectual property and technological know-how from every nation with which it does business and strives to deny its people access to information through internet censorship.

The people of Tibet suffer relentless persecution from their Chinese occupiers, while Western leaders who meet the Dalai Lama are snubbed in consequence.

Other Asian nations are appalled by China’s campaign to dominate the Western Pacific. Japan’s fears of Chinese-North Korean behaviour are becoming so acute that the country might even abandon decades of eschewing nuclear weapons, to create a deterrent.

A few months ago, the Chinese party-controlled newspaper Global Times carried a harshly bellicose editorial, warning other nations not to frustrate Beijing’s ambitions in the South China Sea — Vietnam, for example, is building schools and roads to assert its sovereignty on a series of disputed islands also claimed by China.

The Beijing newspaper wrote: ‘If Vietnam continues to provoke China, China will . . . if necessary strike back with naval forces. If Vietnam wants to start a war, China has the confidence to destroy invading Vietnam battleships.’

This sort of violent language was familiar in the era of Mao Tse-tung, but jars painfully on Western susceptibilities in the 21st century. China’s official press has urged the government to boycott American companies that sell arms to Taiwan.

The people of Tibet suffer relentless persecution from their Chinese occupiers

The Global Times, again, demands retaliation against the United States: ‘Let the Chinese people have the last word.’

Beyond mere sabre-rattling, China is conducting increasingly sophisticated cyber-warfare penetration of American corporate, military and government computer systems. For now, their purpose seems exploratory rather than destructive.

But the next time China and the United States find themselves in confrontation, a cyber-conflict seems highly likely. The potential impact of such action is devastating, in an era when computers control almost everything.

It would be extravagant to suggest that the United States and China are about to pick up a shooting war where they left off in November 1950, when Private Carl Simon suffered the shock of his young life on a North Korean hillside.

But we should be in no doubt, that China and the United States are squaring off for a historic Indo-Pacific confrontation.

Even if, for obvious economic reasons, China does not want outright war, few military men of any nationality doubt that the Pacific region is now the most plausible place in the world for a great power clash.

Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute declares resoundingly: ‘America’s economic health and global leadership in the next generation depend on maintaining our role in the world’s most dynamic region.’

But the Chinese fiercely dissent from this view. It is hard to exaggerate the threat which this clash of wills poses for peace in Asia, and for us all, in the coming decades.

Obama forgot to thank God during Internet Thanksgiving Speech

Obama Leaves God out of Thanksgiving Speech, Riles Critics - Yahoo! News

Critics of President Obama felt little holiday cheer after the president did not thank God in his Thanksgiving-themed weekly Internet address. They immediately took to Twitter and the Internet to voice anger and disbelief.

"Holy cow! Is that one screwed up or what?" columnist Sherman Frederick of the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote in a Thanksgiving-morning blog post.

"Somebody ought to remind Obama (and his speechwriter) that when Americans sit down around a meal today and give thanks, they give thanks to God."

Over on the website of Fox News Radio, radio host Todd Starnes also took issue.

"His remarks were void of any religious references, although Thanksgiving is a holiday traditionally steeped in giving thanks and praise to God," Starnes wrote.

"The president said his family was 'reflecting on how truly lucky we truly are,'" Starnes said. "For many Americans, though, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on how blessed and thankful they are."

The popular website of London's Daily Mail has taken the issue global, with a story under the headline "What a Turkey! Outrage as Obama Leaves God Out of His Thanksgiving Address."

Obama mentioned God once in a closing "God bless you," to Americans watching the Internet address. However, the President explicitly thanked God earlier in the week in his written Thanksgiving proclamation, which called the holiday "one of our nation's oldest and most cherished traditions," and an occasion that "brings us closer to our loved ones and invites us to reflect on the blessings that enrich our lives."

"As we gather in our communities and in our homes, around the table or near the hearth, we give thanks to each other and to God for the many kindnesses and comforts that grace our lives. Let us pause to recount the simple gifts that sustain us, and resolve to pay them forward in the year to come," Obama wrote.

Ironically, the attacks on Obama came as the Republican White House hopefuls suspended their criticism of the president on Thursday in favor of a unified message of thanks to U.S. service members and their families.

Three of the Republican presidential candidates – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum – issued Thanksgiving statements that omitted any references to God. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry mentioned God in their statements.

Obama, like his predecessors, records an address each week that focuses on an issue the White House wants to spotlight. The messages are typically posted on the Internet at the start of the weekend, but this week's address – with its Thanksgiving theme – was issued before the holiday.

In this week's address, delivered from the White House, Obama said, "We are especially grateful for the men and women who defend our country overseas," and he said, "We're also grateful for the Americans taking time from their holiday to serve in soup kitchens and shelters."

He acknowledged this Thanksgiving would be "more difficult than most" for many Americans because of the economy, but added, "No matter how tough things are right now, we still give thanks for that most American of blessings, the chance to determine our own destiny."

Apartheid row at Norwegian school

 Bjerke teachers segregate ethnic students in Oslo | Mail Online

A Norwegian school segregated ethnic minority classmates because white children were feeling 'in the minority.'

The move, at Bjerke Upper Secondary School in Oslo, divided students and parents, sparking an protests across the city.

Teachers at the school claim the segregation in one of the three general studies classes was a result of many white Norwegians changing schools after feeling they were in ‘the minority’ in classes

After authorities were alerted by concerned parents the school was forced to send a letter to parents apologising and promptly scrapping the scheme.

But Robert Wright, a Christian Democrat politician and former head of the city's schools board said authorities had been wrong to block the move claiming other Oslo schools follow Bjerke's example to stop a situation of 'white flight.'

Linkin Park - Numb

Snaptu: Honeybees can smell TB

New Zealand biologists believe that honeybees can sense the faint floral odor on the breath of people infected with tuberculosis, and are trying to find a way to train bees to help them diagnose TB: "When we tested them with the tuberculosis odours…

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Ali Abdullah Saleh is to sign in Riyadh today ..Finally you resigns...

Yemen's Saleh to sign exit plan says UN envoy - Yahoo! News

Yemen's veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh is to sign in Riyadh on Wednesday a Gulf plan under which he will finally cede power, the UN envoy to the restive country said.

"The signing ceremony will take place today in Riyadh," Jamal Benomar told AFP by telephone, confirming that the plan, signed by the opposition in April, will now be inked by the veteran leader himself after months of stalling.

Both parties will also sign a UN-crafted roadmap which sets a mechanism for implementing the Gulf plan, under which Saleh will hand power to his deputy in return for immunity from prosecution.