Putin enacts law banning ‘undesirable’ NGOs (Source AFP) Russian President Vladimir Putin officially enacted a controversial law banning “undesirable” non-governmental organisations, the Kremlin said Saturday, in a move condemned by human rights groups across the board. The law allows authorities to bar foreign civil society groups seen as threatening Russia’s “defence capabilities” or “constitutional foundations” and go after local activists working with them, the Kremlin statement said. Supporters presented the law as a “preventative measure”, necessary after the wave of Western sanctions put in place over the Ukraine conflict. Under the law, passed by the Russian parliament this week, authorities can ban foreign NGOs and go after their employees, who risk up to six years in prison or being barred from the country. It also allows them to block the bank accounts of the organisations until the NGOs “account for their actions” to the Russian authorities. Lawmakers cited the need to stop “destructive organisations” working in Russia, which could threaten the “value of the Russian state” and stir up “colour revolutions”, the name given to pro-Western movements seen in some former Soviet republics over the last several years.

China state paper warns of war over South China Sea unless U.S. backs down (Source Reuters)

A Chinese state-owned newspaper said on Monday that “war is inevitable” between China and the United States over the South China Sea unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway. The Global Times, an influential nationalist tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper the People’s Daily, said in an editorial that China was determined to finish its construction work, calling it the country’s “most important bottom line”. The editorial comes amid rising tensions over China’s land reclamation in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea. China last week said it was “strongly dissatisfied” after a U.S. spy plane flew over areas near the reefs, with both sides accusing each other of stoking instability. China should “carefully prepare” for the possibility of a conflict with the United States, the newspaper said. “If the United States’ bottomline is that China has to halt its activities, then a U.S.-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,” the newspaper said. “The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’.” Such commentaries are not official policy statements, but are sometimes read as a reflection of government thinking. The Global Times is among China’s most nationalist newspapers. China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims.

The United States has routinely called on all claimants to halt reclamation in the Spratlys, but accuses China of carrying out work on a scale that far outstrips any other country. Washington has also vowed to keep up air and sea patrols in the South China Sea amid concerns among security experts that China might impose air and sea restrictions in the Spratlys once it completes work on its seven artificial islands. China has said it had every right to set up an Air Defence Identification Zone in the South China Sea but that current conditions did not warrant one. The Global Times said “risks are still under control” if Washington takes into account China’s peaceful rise. “We do not want a military conflict with the United States, but if it were to come, we have to accept it,” the newspaper said.

The Complete History of Monsanto, “The World’s Most Evil Corporation” (Source Waking Times)

Of all the mega-corps running amok, Monsanto has consistently outperformed its rivals, earning the crown as “most evil corporation on Earth!” Not content to simply rest upon its throne of destruction, it remains focused on newer, more scientifically innovative ways to harm the planet and its people.

1901: The company is founded by John Francis Queeny, a member of the Knights of Malta, a thirty year pharmaceutical veteran married to Olga Mendez Monsanto, for which Monsanto Chemical Works is named. The company’s first product is chemical saccharin, sold to Coca-Cola as an artificial sweetener.

Even then, the government knew saccharin was poisonous and sued to stop its manufacture but lost in court, thus opening the Monsanto Pandora’s Box to begin poisoning the world through the soft drink.

1920s: Monsanto expands into industrial chemicals and drugs, becoming the world’s largest maker of aspirin, acetylsalicyclic acid, (toxic of course). This is also the time when things began to go horribly wrong for the planet in a hurry with the introduction of their polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). “PCBs were considered an industrial wonder chemical, an oil that wouldn’t burn, impervious to degradation and had almost limitless applications. Today PCBs are considered one of the gravest chemical threats on the planet. Widely used as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, waterproof coatings and liquid sealants, are potent carcinogens and have been implicated in reproductive, developmental and immune system disorders. The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state.” Even though PCBs were eventually banned after fifty years for causing such devastation, it is still present in just about all animal and human blood and tissue cells across the globe. Documents introduced in court later showed Monsanto was fully aware of the deadly effects, but criminally hid them from the public to keep the PCB gravy-train going full speed! 1930s: Created its first hybrid seed corn and expands into detergents, soaps, industrial cleaning products, synthetic rubbers and plastics. Oh yes, all toxic of course! 1940s: They begin research on uranium to be used for the Manhattan Project’s first atomic bomb, which would later be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese, Korean and US Military servicemen and poisoning millions more. The company continues its unabated killing spree by creating pesticides for agriculture containing deadly dioxin, which poisons the food and water supplies. It was later discovered Monsanto failed to disclose that dioxin was used in a wide range of their products because doing so would force them to acknowledge that it had created an environmental Hell on Earth. 1950s: Closely aligned with The Walt Disney Company, Monsanto creates several attractions at Disney’s Tomorrow land, espousing the glories of chemicals and plastics. Their “House of the Future” is constructed entirely of toxic plastic that is not biodegradable as they had asserted. “After attracting a total of 20 million visitors from 1957 to 1967, Disney finally tore the house down, but discovered it would not go down without a fight. According to Monsanto Magazine, wrecking balls literally bounced off the glass-fiber, reinforced polyester material. Torches, jackhammers, chain saws and shovels did not work. Finally, choker cables were used to squeeze off parts of the house bit by bit to be trucked away.” 1960s: Monsanto, along with chemical partner-in-crime DOW Chemical, produces dioxin-laced Agent Orange for use in the U.S.’s Vietnam invasion. The results? Over 3 million people contaminated, a half-million Vietnamese civilians dead, a half-million Vietnamese babies born with birth defects and thousands of U.S. military veterans suffering or dying from its effects to this day!  Monsanto is hauled into court again and internal memos show they knew the deadly effects of dioxin in Agent Orange when they sold it to the government. Outrageously though, Monsanto is allowed to present their own “research” that concluded dioxin was safe and posed no negative health concerns whatsoever. Satisfied, the bought and paid for courts side with Monsanto and throws the case out. Afterwards, it comes to light that Monsanto lied about the findings and their real research concluded that dioxin kills very effectively. A later internal memo released in a 2002 trial admitted that the evidence proving the persistence of these compounds and their universal presence as residues in the environment is beyond question … the public and legal pressures to eliminate them to prevent global contamination are inevitable.

Section of expansive 2,000-year-old lower aqueduct exposed in east Jerusalem (Source jpost.com)

A section of ancient Jerusalem’s lower aqueduct, which conveyed water throughout the city more than 2,000 years ago, was recently exposed during an excavation in east Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Thursday. The discovery was made in the Umm Tuba quarter near Har Homa during the construction of a sewage line in the neighborhood by the Gihon Company to install a modern sewer system for area residents, the IAA said. According to the excavation’s director, Ya’akov Billig, the lower aqueduct was constructed by Hasmonean kings for mass water distribution in the capital, and operated intermittently until about 100 years ago. “The aqueduct begins at the En Eitam spring, near Solomon’s Pools south of Bethlehem, and is approximately 21 kilometers long,” said Billig. “Despite its length, it flows along a very gentle downward slope, whereby the water level falls just one meter per kilometer of distance. “At first, the water was conveyed inside an open channel, and about 500 years ago during the Ottoman period, a terra cotta pipe was installed inside the channel in order to better protect the water.” Billig noted that the aqueduct’s route was built in open areas in the past, but with the expansion of Jerusalem in the modern era, it now runs through a number of neighborhoods, including Umm Tuba, Sur Bahar, East Talpiot and Abu Tor. “Since this is one of Jerusalem’s principal sources of water, the city’s rulers took care to preserve it for some 2,000 years, until it was replaced about a century ago by a modern electrically operated system,” he explained. “Due to its historical and archaeological importance, the IAA is taking steps to prevent any damage to the aqueduct, and is working to expose sections of its remains, study them and make them accessible to the general public.” Billig said the Umm Tuba section of the aqueduct has been documented, studied, and covered up again “for the sake of future generations.” “Other sections of the long aqueduct have been conserved for the public in the Armon Ha-Natziv tunnels, on the Sherover promenade, around the Sultan’s Pool, and additional projects are planned whose themes include the lower aqueduct,” he added. Billig commended the Gihon Company’s cooperation during the discovery, and subsequent excavation, as exemplary.

Russia Wins: Military, Economic and Political Alliance with China Will Fundamentally Alter the World (Source globalresearch.ca) The leaders of the greatest land and people masses in Eurasia are forging a military, economic and political alliance that will fundamentally alter the world in both the near and long term. Meanwhile, the U.S. remains the bully that many fear, but no one trusts. “America will always turn friends to enemies and suddenly declare that enemies are friends because it is not a true friend to anyone.” Every year on May 9th millions of people throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics commemorate their victory over Germany in World War II. Foreign leaders attend the ceremonies in Red Square, as George W. Bush did in 2005. Barack Obama and David Cameron and Francois Hollande weren’t in Red Square in 2015, but Chinese president Xi Jinping was and he never left Vladimir Putin’s side. Xi Jingping and Putin were literally cheek to cheek during the Victory Day parade. The two nations are holding war games in the Mediterranean Sea and have announced energy partnerships while the United States props up the failed state of Ukraine with billions of dollars. Russia has also announced pipeline deals with Turkey, another U.S. ally. While Americans suffer from government and media propaganda telling them that Russia is isolated, their country is isolated too because it insists on being the world’s biggest bully. The Chinese have forged ahead with their Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to compete with the World Bank and IMF. Washington has to watch as allies such as France and the United Kingdom are among the 57 founding members. The United States has worn out its welcome even among its friends. Angela Merkel may have missed the parade but she met Putin the day after and repeated her belief that the only solution to the Ukraine crisis is a diplomatic one. Merkel and other Europeans are facing pressure to stand up to the Americans and stop cutting their own throats.

WAR ON CASH BECOMES OFFICIAL IN GERMANY (Source Wolf Street) Peter Bofinger is a member of the German Council of Economic Experts – the “Five Sages on the Economy” – which in its official function advises the government and parliament on economic policy issues. In Denmark, a new law was proposed that would allow shops to refuse cash payments. Officially, it’s to reduce the “administrative and financial burdens” of handling cash. Since it’s up to the shop to decide, the law sounds innocuous. But it would be another step to making money a purely electronic entity that can be seamlessly tracked anywhere. It would also be another step in granting the central bank the absolute power to inflict confiscatory monetary policies on any entity or person with money in the bank. This law would come in handy. Danmarks Nationalbank has imposed a negative deposit rate of -0.75%. But to evade the wrath of negative deposit rates, savers can pull cash out of the bank and store it under their mattress. And this must be stopped – by making cash useless. “With today’s technical possibilities, coins and notes are in fact an anachronism,” Bofinger said. “They made payments incredibly difficult,” with people wasting all sorts of time at the cashier as they wait for the person ahead of them to dig through their belongings to find some cash, and for the cashier to render change (rather than, for example, waiting for someone to find the right credit card, complete the transaction, and wait for approval). This sort of dubious, government-mandated timesaver was even too shaky for Bofinger. “But the additional time is not the largest benefit of the elimination of cash,” he said. “It dries out the markets for moonlighting and drug trafficking. Almost a third of the euro cash in circulation consists of 500-euro notes. No one needs those for shopping; light-shy figures use them for their activities.” To forestall that these criminal elements switch to other currencies, he said that “it would be better if the Eurozone, the US, Great Britain, and Switzerland give up cash at the same time.” And then he added the real reason for abolishing cash in such a coordinated, wide-ranging manner: “It would be easier for central banks to impose their monetary policies. At this time, they cannot push interest rates appreciably below zero because the savers would hoard cash. If there is no cash, the zero bound is eliminated.”

40 Volcanoes Are Erupting Right Now, And 34 Of Them Are Along The Ring Of Fire (Source theeconomiccollapseblog.com) You may not have noticed, but our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  According to Volcano Discovery, 40 volcanoes around the globe are erupting right now, and only 6 of them are not along the Ring of Fire.  Nepal was just hit by the worst earthquake that it had seen in 80 years, and scientists are telling us that the Himalayas actually dropped by an astounding 3 feet as a result of that one earthquake.  How much more does our planet have to shake before people start paying attention? Of course the things that we have been seeing lately are part of a much larger long-term trend.  Seismic activity appears to have been getting stronger over the past few decades, and now things really seem to be accelerating.  The following is how one news source recently summarized what we have been witnessing. If it seems like earthquakes and erupting volcanoes are happening more frequently, that’s because they are. Looking at global magnitude six (M6) or greater from 1980 to 1989 there was an average of 108.5 earthquakes per year, from 2000 to 2009 the planet averaged 160.9 earthquakes per year: that is a 38.9% increase of M6+ earthquakes in recent years. Unrest also seems to be growing among the world’s super-volcanoes. Iceland (which is home to some of the most dangerous volcanoes on the planet), Santorini in Greece, Uturuncu in Bolivia, the Yellowstone and Long Valley calderas in the U.S., Laguna del Maule in Chile, Italy’s Campi Flegrei – almost all of the world’s active super-volcanic systems are now exhibiting some signs of inflation, an early indication that pressure is building in these volcanic systems. But of course most Americans are never going to care about any of this until it starts affecting them personally. Well, perhaps they should start paying attention to the warning signs.  In recent weeks we have seen significant earthquakes in Michigan, Texas, Mississippi, California, Idaho And Washington.  In addition, it is being reported that pressure is building in dormant volcanoes in Arizona and California.  Just because we have not had a killer earthquake or a large volcanic eruption in the U.S. in recent years does not mean that it will always be that way.  Right now the entire planet appears to be waking up, and this especially seems to be true of the Ring of Fire. If you are not familiar with the Ring of Fire, just imagine a giant ring that runs around the outer perimeter of the Pacific Ocean.  Approximately 90 percent of all earthquakes and approximately 75 percent of all volcanic eruptions occur within this area, and the entire west coast of North America is considered to be part of the Ring of Fire. For so long, the west coast has been incredibly blessed not to have experienced a major seismic event.  But scientists tell us that it is only a matter of time. And right now, just about every other part of the Ring of Fire is shaking violently. For example, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake just hit Japan.

China, Brazil, unveil multibillion trade, investment deals (Source AFP) Chinese Premier Li Keqiang lifted the wraps Tuesday on a multibillion-dollar series of trade and investment deals with Brazil, as Beijing looks to invest $53 billion in South America’s largest economy. The news unveiled at the start of Li’s first official visit to Latin America is a huge boon for Brazil as it endures a fifth straight year of low growth after a period of rapid expansion fueled by Asian demand for commodities that has since slowed. Li’s host, President Dilma Rousseff, hopes Brazil can direct Chinese cash to overhaul decaying infrastructure as the country’s tourist magnet Rio de Janeiro prepares to host South America’s first ever Olympics next year. Headlining 35 deals on Li’s first official visit to Latin America were a pair of finance and cooperation agreements worth $7 billion for Brazil’s state-owned oil firm Petrobras. Rousseff, who will make a state visit next year to China, spoke of a “new intensity in our relations.” “China and Brazil are playing a leading role in the construction of a new global order,” she added. Rousseff, re-elected in October, has been battling a welter of negative economic data as well as fallout from a huge graft scandal at Petrobras. Li pointed to China’s “rich experience” in building infrastructure, saying Beijing “would like to cooperate with Brazil in reducing its costs.” Despite a multibillion-dollar kickbacks scandal battering its reputation as Brazil’s flagship company, Petrobras had earlier this year received another Beijing boost in signing a $3.5 billion financing deal with the China Investment Bank. Despite becoming Brazil’s number one trading partner in 2009, amid an exponential rise in two-way trade, China currently ranks only 12th in terms of actual investment in Brazil, prompting Brasilia to seek deeper economic ties.

HSBC Chief Economist Equates Global Economy to the Titanic (Source thetrumpet.com)

An economist from the world’s third-largest bank has compared the global economy to the Titanic.

In a note to clients on Wednesday, HSBC chief economist Stephen King said, “The world economy is like an ocean liner without lifeboats.” By this he means that if another recession hits, governments do not have the reserves to prop up the economy like they did in 2008. Global debt has soared by 40 percent since the Great Recession. It is now over $200 trillion, or almost three times the size of the global economy. It could be a “truly titanic struggle” for policymakers to right the economy, King said. The world’s central banks have increased debt in an effort to fight a crisis brought about by too much debt. They see it as a better alternative than austerity, which would result in years of low growth associated with paying down debt, even though a more healthy and vibrant economy would emerge. This is a risky strategy, but it was probably adopted because it mostly benefits the financial sector, an increasingly important part of America’s service-oriented economy.

America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. That debt appears manageable to some people because interest rates are at historic lows. As 90-year-old market veteran Richard Russell said, “the only thing worse than unmanageable debt is debt that is compounding.” Expect the Federal Reserve to do everything possible to keep rates low for as long as possible, even if it starts to gradually raise rates. Unfortunately, the longer rates stay low, the greater the debt bubble.

Mortar attack on Russian embassy in Damascus an ‘act of terror’ – Moscow (Source RT) The Russian embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus was shelled on Tuesday, with Moscow stating that it considers the attack on its diplomatic mission an act of terror. Two mortar rounds landed on the premises of the Russian Embassy in the afternoon, “one of them fell near the main entrance, the other hit an administrative building,” Asiya Turuchiyeva embassy’s spokeswoman, told RIA Novosti. There were no fatalities or injuries as a result of the mortar attack as it happened during the lunch break, the spokeswoman added. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the shells were fired from the Jobar district of Damascus, which is controlled by “illegal armed groups.” “We treat the incident as terrorist act, aimed against the Russian Embassy. We strongly condemn its perpetrators, organizers and instigators. We reaffirm our solidarity with the Syrian authorities in their efforts to combat the terrorist threat in the territory of Syria,” Aleksandr Lukashevich, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said. Moscow urged the international community “to give due assessment to the terrorist attack against the Russian diplomatic mission” and demanded “an immediate cessation of such acts” from all parties with influence on the extremists in Syria, he added. Syrian authorities were quick to respond, promising to boost security and ensure the Russian Embassy’s safety. It’s the second time the Russian embassy in Damascus has been shelled this year. The previous incident occurred in January when a shell hit the roof of the consulate’s building.