Tag Archives: Russia

Mar 5 2018

GDPR – Are You Ready?


Armstrong Economics Blog/European Union

Re-Posted Mar 5, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The new so-called “General Data Protection Regulation” (GDPR) of the EU goes into full force on May 25, 2018. GDPR is a serious measure which is really designed to stem any criticism of the EU Commission. The claimed purpose is to stop propaganda pretending this will boost consumer confidence, revive the economy and generate billions of dollars in savings. What this is all about is the plain fact that this regulation will lay the foundation establishing a new layer of bureaucracy pretending to protect citizens but will burden the private sector since there are no specific injuries that are defined in advance leaving the enforcement arbitrary in the hands of bureaucrats at their discretion.

Across all of Europe, nobody understands exactly what is allowed and what is forbidden, who has to take what action, but the penalties of up to €20 million or 4% of your annual turnover are shocking. If you violate these uncertain rules when using personal data who can find yourself charged for simply doing normal business. This new EU regulation provides for a major threat to all companies in every field without exception. It appears to be clandestinely intended to be a revenue-raising tool that is just undefined. This regulation could be the straw that breaks the back of public patience and economic development in Europe. So far, such actions were always directed against individual industries such as the banks, which everyone else ignored since it was not their pocket being hit. This submissiveness unfolded more like the famous saying of Martin Niemoller (1892-1984) how the Nazi came for each group one at a time and nobody said anything until it was their turn and there was nobody left to ask for help.

Nobody knows if it is even okay to congratulate a customer on a birthday. If you can only send one e-mail to people who have expressly agreed in advance, can you send any sort of greeting even for Christmas? You are not allowed to send these persons any suitable e-mail or ask them for authorization by phone. A letter with a request for permission to send an e-mail is permitted. Lawyers cannot interpret exceptions in the vague formulations for even that will be just opinions that vary from one lawyer to the next. Everyone wants, everyone needs clarity but it does not exist!

This legislation is akin to the Writs of Assistance entered by King George III, which sparked the American Revolution. The defending lawyer against the King’s Writs of Assistance was James Otis (1725-1783) who pronounced these writs were “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.” Otis warned that the king placed discretion in the hands of every agent to act as he desired. Nothing has changed for the government can do whatever it desires today and it is always the burden of the citizen to prove he has any rights whatsoever.

The EU has created the very same type of act. Allowing penalties to be imposed at the discretion of government agents without any clearly defined law is extremely arbitrary. The only thing truly defined are the penalties which can be up to €20 million Euros or 4% of the gross turnover of any business. Government agencies such as the judiciary, the police, the financial and intelligence services enjoy a special status, naturally.

Lawyers cannot even agree on whether the sending of an email by a company to a person is allowed or not for a birthday or holiday. Does there have to be prior consent to receiving an email? Some lawyers have warned that you may not be able to even send an email to ask for permission to send one. A company who sends unwanted emails commits a punishable violation of the regulation. Simply requiring to have an “unsubscribe” feature fails to comply with the law.

There are the countless emails we all get from Nigeria promising you are now a multi-millionaire just send your personal details so they can clean out your account. Just how is an EU regulation going to be applied overseas? Can a company that bombards people with emails constantly every day just because they look at their site but did not buy anything could be charged in Europe even if they are sending them from the USA. There is such a thing as territorial jurisdiction, but then again there is also extradition agreements. It appears that legitimate businesses will be hunted and fined for just doing commerce. The pretend emails that are criminally intended to grab your money or hold your computer for ransom will never be caught in the process.

The entire basis of Microsoft Windows is to push advertising and to take your surfing the net without any warning they are doing it. The latest Windows version was interesting. We turned off auto-update and two separate computers crashed at the same time and forced a reboot and then took 30 minutes to install updates. This seems that you cannot even opt-out even if you pay for the Pro Version. The vagueness of this law could actually call into question Windows when it is up to the discretion of an agent.

BTW – we do not sell anyone’s names, we do not send endless solicitations every day, anything we send as to notices of posts you must subscribe to for free.

Mar 5 2018

Germany Gets a Grand Coalition


Armstrong Economics Blog/European Union

Re-Posted Mar 5, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The SPD members voted by a two-thirds majority for their party’s entry into a renewed grand coalition. The acting Social Democrats (SPD) party leader Olaf Scholz came out and said: “We now have clarity: The SPD will enter the next federal government.” The SPD had no choice. The polls showed if they returned and put it to an election, they would lose to the rising right-wing. Germany will move into a grand coalition but it truly lacks the majority support of the German people. This means that political unrest in Germany will continue to rise.

Chancellor Angela Merkel finally reached a deal this past Wednesday to form a new German grand coalition government by handing the powerful finance ministry to the country’s main center-left party SPD in an agreement aimed at ending months of political gridlock. Both the CDU and SPD realized that if they failed, both would lose seats to the rising AfD. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavaria-only sister, the Christian Social Union, and the center-left SPD agreed to a 177-page deal that leads off with the promise of “a new awakening for Europe.”

Germany has already broken its post-World War II record for the longest time in its latest election on Sept. 24 to the swearing-in of a new government. That is still at least several weeks away. Merkel has been leading a caretaker government, which has not been in any position to play any significant role in the debate on the fate of the EU going forward. That spotlight has been taken by France’s President Emmanuel Macron who seems to enjoy his newfound power.

Schulz’s has taken a course in recent months that simply undermined his authority. On election night, Schulz vowed to take the party into opposition against the CDU. He reversed course in November after Merkel’s efforts to build a coalition with two smaller parties collapsed. Merkel needed only the approval of a party congress of her CDU which seems to do whatever she tells them to do. The Social Democrats are set to get the foreign, labor and finance ministries to run. The finance ministry is the major prize, for it was held by Merkel’s CDU for the past eight years. This has been a major influential position given Germany’s status as the eurozone’s biggest economy. The interior ministry, also held by the CDU, would go to Bavaria’s CSU, which has pushed hard to curb the number of migrants entering Germany.

Mar 4 2018

When Did Global Warming Theory Begin?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate

Re-Posted Mar 4, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

Back in 1967, the International Global Atmospheric Research Program was established, mainly to gather data for better short-range weather prediction, but included climate. The following year, this was the beginning of biased studies which suggested that a possibility of a collapse of the Antarctic ice sheets would raise sea levels catastrophically. They put forth the idea that a big enough rise in global temperatures would eventually melt the world’s glaciers. They then pointed to a retreat of mountain glaciers since the 19th century claiming this was very apparent in many regions. This trend, they argued with linear logic, would release enough water to raise the sea level a bit. They argued that starting during the 1960s, several glacier experts warned that part of the Antarctic ice sheet seemed unstable. If the huge mass slid into the ocean, which did not happen, the sea-level rise would wreak great harm, perhaps within the next century or two. They completely failed to point out that there had historically been cycles in climate and even the poles were not at the same location but have flipped and moved about the Earth.

We find one of the early articles that predicted the average temperature would be 9 degrees hotter by now appeared in 1970. The publication was Popular Mechanics back in January 1970. The analysis was very seriously flawed as always because they take whatever trend is in motion and project it out without end. They completely fail to comprehend that there is any cycle within anything. This is the greatest trap in forecasting. The entire Global Warming trend has been created with this very dangerous and stupid method of linear forecasting.

All of these forecasts are indistinguishable from looking at the Dow Jones Industrials and observing it has risen 5% per year since 2009 and therefore, it will never correct once again and it will continue to advance by 5% every year into the endless future. This type of analysis simply does not qualify as any valid method of analysis by taking whatever trend is in motion and forecasting it will never end. That analysis was set in motion following 1967.

We have run our models on this movement of blaming humans for climate change. Unfortunately, this crazy analysis will not reach its peak until 2032. Governments will continue to embrace it as an excuse to raise taxes. So it looks like as government needs money, they do not care about the environment. They will use this climate change as the excuse to impose new types of taxes as if lining their pockets with other people’s money will save the planet – it is only to save their power.

 

Mar 3 2018

Under Water Wonder of the World


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate

Re-Posted Mar 3, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Hello Martin and Friends,

I recently found this article about an ancient Indian burial ground found off the coast of Venice, Florida. It’s 7,000 years old.

This is another piece of evidence suggesting that rising ocean waters are not a modern phenomenon and a cyclical event like you suggested.

Have a nice day,

R

Dallas

ANSWER: Oh yes. There are the Seven Wonders of the Undersea World. One of the more spectacular sunken cities is that in China, the ancient city, which is hidden 130 feet underwater. This is popularly known as the Lion City, which was once Shi Cheng – the center of politics and economics in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

There is the ancient city of Alexandria in Egypt which is also under water. Then there are the ancient roadways underwater off the coast of Bermuda. There are numerous examples of sunken cities.

There is the ancient Etruscan city of Spina, which also sunk. There are many Italians with the name of Spina which refer to their original origin. Spina was an Etruscan port city, established by the end of the 6th century BC. It was a lost city until 1922 when it was discovered when drainage schemes in the delta of the Po River were carried out. This is the same lagoon that eventually became the location of Venice. Spina was a major international trade center whose main trading partner was Athens. For almost two thousand years the city laid forgotten under the mud of the Po lagoon. The excavations have thus brought to light an impressive wetland settlement, with regular Greek-style urban planning, including rectangular blocks and houses, entirely realized with timber and logs much as we see in Venice itself. Obviously, the technology dates back much further than most suspected. The ancient city of Spina was known for its trade, but it sank below the water and its location became lost. Today, they blame the sinking of Venice on Global Warming without ever mentioning that the previous city had sunk as well without Global Warming caused by humans.

The Etruscans lost power with the revolution in Rome and the beginning of the Roman Republic in 509BC which rejected the Etruscan kings. Then soon afterward, the Etruscan naval supremacy also collapsed when the ships of the ambitious Hieron I of Syracuse inflicted a devastating loss on their fleet off Cumae in 474 BC. This was the final blow to the Etruscan cities of Campania. The name Spina is found in Sicily, for it is clear that most inhabitants of Spina appear to have migrated to Sicily following their defeat by Hieron I.

 

Mar 1 2018

Why Not Take More?


A professor at UCLA seems surprised that poor people in America don’t vote for more redistributive policies. Maybe they have more moral fiber than intellectuals give them credit for.

Mar 1 2018

“Ice Age Conundrum: Factors Contributing…” w/ Cogent Randall Carlson in the Classroom


Mar 1 2018

The New German Political Hawk?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Germany

Re-Posted Mar 1, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen was being touted as a possible successor to Merkel. She has spoken at the Munich Security Conference stating that there must be “the common will to actually use the military weight when circumstances require it.” Leyen has come out saying that Germany should no longer hide behind its history, but must accept that soldiers must fight for the security of the nation and the freedom of the people. Leyen’s French colleague, Florence Parly, has also called for closer European military cooperation.

The NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has warned against risks that confront Europe as a whole. He came out and said: “The truth is: the European Union cannot protect Europe alone.”

France has been stating that Europe must be militarily independent of the USA. Nonetheless, t defense of Europe without the help of Norway, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, would actually be very hard to imagine.

The scuttlebutt is that Leyen is a hawk who would have little problem going to war against Russia. She was seen as on the short-list of successors to Merkel, but she is going to NATO instead. The Hessian Prime Minister Bouffier is surprisingly distant to Chancellor Merkel as the dissatisfaction with Merkel rises.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is also being talked about as a successor to Merkel. She is the first woman to lead the government of Saarland and only the fourth woman to govern any German state.
Feb 28 2018

Catastrophe at 12,900 BP (excerpt from Cosmic Grail series) w/ Randall Carlson (2015)


 

Feb 27 2018

“IceAge Shift:10,000-yr Collection of Clues to decode a Holocene Mystery” w/ Randall Carlson (2008)


Visit http://awarestate.com/exclusive to receive direct email announcements about new articles, books, classes, online appearances, videos, etc… In Randall’s engaging circuitous speaking style, he loops around linking various fascinating factors to foster comprehension of real, natural, sudden and serious climatic shifts, including: how the ‘Little Ice Age’ gave clues that there was a ‘Big’ ice age; that catastrophic events tend to erase evidence of prior catastrophes; the difficulties with explaining glacial/inter-glacial cycles; the message of the Greenland ice cores; societies that don’t adapt go extinct like during the literally ‘Dark’ Ages; the ‘Titanic Effect’ and preparing for the inevitable next catastrophe; what effect the entire nuclear arsenal would have on Antarctica; the unresolved ‘Energy Paradox’ and other simultaneous shifts that comprise the ‘Holocene Mystery’

Feb 27 2018

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Global Warming


Steven F. Hayward, Pepperdine University This lecture is part of Hillsdale College’s 2014 CCA series. To learn more about Hillsdale College and the CCA programs, visit http://www.hillsdale.edu/outreach/cca