china and russia update - 06.28.2014

6/04/2014 @ 8:10PM
In Recent Bilateral Talks, Russia Rediscovers China

Russia seems to be rediscovering China. Over the last month, major Russian energy companies have met with China’s National Petroleum Corporation to discuss joint ventures in oil and gas. And last week, Vladimir Putin was in Shanghai to discuss energy and expanding trade. He inked a 30-year gas deal during his visit.

It’s not that Russia has a lot of things that China wants. But it does have oil and gas, and China needs plenty of that. China accounts for 7% of Russia’s exports, the same as Germany, and much more than the 2% of Russian goods being shipped to the U.S.

On Wednesday, Putin’s Chief of Staff, Sergei Ivanov, hinted that the two countries might be signing yet another energy deal. This time for a gas pipeline construction project.

“Given the pace of Chinese economic growth…it is very likely that a contract could be signed in the very near future for the construction of a western route gas pipeline across Siberia,” Ivanov told reporters in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk today.


Putin with China’s president Xi Jinping. As Ukraine crisis ticks off Russia’s most important trading partners in the E.U., Xi has become Putin’s new BFF.

On Tuesday, Russia reached an agreement with China to create a joint credit rating agency and were also ironing out measures to streamline cross-border trade, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said.

Both China and Russia are distrustful of the western credit rating firms like Fitch. China has their own agency, as do most countries. But international investors, and surely American and European portfolio managers, will stick with the status quo even if the local credit agency rates debt higher than their western peers.

“In its first phase, the agency will evaluate Russian-Chinese investment projects with the goal to attract a series of Asian countries, and gradually, based on progress and reputation, we believe that it could reach a level when its opinions will attract other countries,” Siluanov reportedly said.

Russia has been touting its new found love for China for weeks now. Much of it can be linked to Russia’s troubled relationship with its main trading partner, the E.U. The two sides have been at odds all year thanks to political woes in former Soviet ally Ukraine. Europe and the U.S. have sanctioned a little over a dozen Russian politicians, banning their entry and financial transactions in the U.S. and E.U. A handful of mostly privately held companies connected to oligarchs and politicians believed to be supporting the ethnic Russian separatist movements inside Ukraine were also sanctioned. And since then, Russia has been courting the Chinese.

Siluanov also said his talks with Chinese officials included the possibility of preferential taxes for Chinese companies investing in Russia, currency swaps and trade settlement in roubles or renminbi instead of dollars.

The two countries pledged last week to increase bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015 and $200 billion by 2020 from around $90 billion currently.

here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2014/06/04/in-recent-bilateral-talks-russia-rediscovering-china/

===================================================

What Russia-China relations mean for the dollar
Matt Clinch    | @mattclinch81
Tuesday, 27 May 2014 | 9:24 AM ET

If there was one takeaway from Russia's annual economic shindig in St Petersburg last week, it was that the country is continually looking to its neighbor China for trade and investment. While the United States can't claim that it might be losing a friend with Russia's pivot east, it might be a different story for the dollar, with the alliance having the potential to undercut the domination of the U.S. currency.

"Taken alone, these actions do not mean the end of the dollar as the leading global reserve currency. But, taken in the context of many other actions around the world including Saudi Arabia's frustration with U.S. foreign policy toward Iran, and China's voracious appetite for gold, these actions are meaningful steps away from the dollar," Jim Rickards, portfolio manager at West Shore Group and partner at Tangent Capital Partners, told CNBC via email.

Speaking at a CNBC-hosted event on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined his plans for closer links with China and a new Eurasian union. This followed a high-profile deal by Gazprom, the Russian state-backed gas giant, which signed a $400 billion, 30-year deal to supply gas to China.

 The deal looks promising for Moscow, with Europe - the traditional buyer of its oil - hoping to wean itself off Russian dependency, especially with recent tensions following Russia's annexation of Crimea.

 Despite the details for the deal being scarce, many analysts predict that the oil exports would mean Chinese yuan being exchanged directly, into the Russian ruble. Thus the two countries would bypass the U.S. dollar - the traditional currency used in oil trades and considered to be the international reserve currency of choice.

more here:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101705303#.

===================================================

Drone markets open in Russia, China and rogue states as America's wars wane
The military drone market may grow to $82bn by 2022, and as the US slows its purchases, Russia and China accelerate theirs

Daniel A Medina   
theguardian.com, Sunday 22 June 2014 11.45 EDT   


An RQ-1 predator drone. Photograph: U.S. Air Force/Getty Images

Last October, in a private ceremony held at a stately mansion on the campus of the California Institute of Technology, the Aerospace Historical Society awarded the reclusive, 78-year-old CEO of General Atomics, Neal Blue, with the prestigious Von Karman Wings Award, a sort of Nobel Prize in the field, for “pioneering novel applications" of military drones.

For Blue, whose life reads like a thriller of private jets, oil profits and secret sorties to the Nicaraguan jungle, and whose company makes military drones with names like Predator and Reaper, the award capped the dominance of profits from drone manufacturing for his company and for the US drone industry at large.

That boomtime of drones – a decade-long celebration of war technology – was all largely fueled by the US military’s appetite for stealth and surveillance. Now the US military is backing off, and the drone industry is starting to look elsewhere to profits – even to some of the United States' deep-pocketed, warmongering adversaries.

For drone manufacturers, it doesn't seem to matter where the profits come from, as long as they keep rolling in. Dominated by four major US companies – Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Atomics and Lockheed Martin – the global drone-making sector is expected to reach a market value of $82bn by 2022, according to internal PowerPoint slides provided to the Guardian by a senior analyst at the leading defense and security agency IHS Jane’s.

The thorny thing is: those billions of dollars in profits are likely to be coming from some unsavory quarters.

The US market for drones is shrinking because the biggest buyer – the US government – is dropping its purchases because of budget pressures and the end of large-scale wars in Afghanistan.

To respond to market pressures, the largest four private US drone manufacturers are now actively courting foreign buyers for business, said the analyst, who requested anonymity for this article in order to speak candidly on issues related to agency clients.

more here:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/22/drones-market-us-military-china-russia-rogue-state

===================================================

This Time, Russia-China Alliance Will Last
Jun 5, 2014 11:52 AM EDT
By Leonid Bershidsky

The emerging Sino-Russian alliance looks like an opportunistic arrangement. Russia, rejecting and rejected by the West, needs a strong alternative while resource-poor China hopes to harness the potential of its huge northern neighbor. In fact, China and Russia are made for each other. Despite many cultural differences, their people have more values in common than either share with the West.

Twenty five years ago, when China quashed the student protests in Tiananmen Square and Russia allowed the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, the two countries appeared to be moving in opposite directions. China's Communist leadership tightened its grip on power. The Soviet Communist Party, by contrast, was noisily falling apart. Yet, amazingly, different paths led the two countries to the same spot.

Evidence of this can be found in the World Values Survey, a compilation of data on public attitudes by a global network of social scientists. In the last four years, they have found:

· Only 2 percent of Chinese and 2 percent of Russians identify protecting freedom of speech as among their personal goals, compared with 17 percent of Americans and 22 percent of Germans;

· Democracy is "absolutely important" to 30 percent of Chinese and 26 percent of Russians but to 59 percent of Germans and 46 percent of Americans;

· Only 45 percent of Chinese and 33 percent of Russians are "very interested" or "somewhat interested" in politics, compared with 62 percent of Germans and 59 percent of Americans;

· Just 29 percent of Chinese and 22 percent of Russians "might attend a peaceful demonstration," compared with 47 percent of Germans and 55 percent of Americans;

· A whopping 38 percent of Chinese believe that when jobs are scarce, men should have more right to them than women. In Russia, 29 percent agree, compared with 15 percent in Germany and 6 percent in the U.S.;

· For 26 percent of Chinese, 23 percent of Russians, 19 percent of Germans and just 6 percent of Americans, it is "important to be rich, to have a lot of money and expensive things."

more here:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-05/this-time-russia-china-alliance-will-last

===================================================

megacities update - 06.28.2014

A continuation of:

"megacorporations/megaregions/megacities/urbanization - the control grid"
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/04/megacorporationsmegaregionsmegacitiesur.html

===================================================

Floyd: Bring on ‘new urbanism,’ but don’t demonize suburbs
Jacquielynn Floyd jfloyd@dallasnews.com
Published: 26 June 2014 08:31 PM
Updated: 26 June 2014 09:46 PM

My husband daydreams about living in a high-rise apartment downtown. He thinks it would be paradise.

He’d trade his long daily DART ride for a walk to work. We could hop a quick shuttle to hockey games, he says, or cross the street for a burger and a cold beer. There would be a little grocery store at street level on the corner and a homey pizza cafe with tables on the sidewalk — all just an elevator ride away.

I don’t see him giving up his treasured pickup — let’s not go crazy here — but he could leave it parked in a garage for weeks at a stretch.

Me, I dream about living in a rustic house in the woods with decks and twisty wooden stairs. It would be at the end of a long dirt road with deer wandering through a yard shaded by oak trees. We would stay linked to the broader culture by occasional trips to town and a reliable Wi-Fi connection.

As an imperfect compromise, we live in a peaceful Denton County suburb. He gets — to a degree — convenience and proximity. I get — as much as possible — quiet and space and a woodsy backyard view of trees and wild grapevines.

So why do I feel so defensive? Because suburbs are the devil.

Well, they’ve been the devil for decades, but there seems to be a fresh urgency to the hostility — in these parts, anyway. As a spirit of “new urbanism” is making serious inroads in Dallas, its satellite communities are fielding the blame for a host of woes: not just freeways and sprawl but such elemental human failings as greed, bigotry and mindless consumerism.

This is a shame, because I share the excitement surrounding the changes occurring in center-city Dallas. I would love to see downtown as a destination so lively and interesting that we could jump on the train with no specific event in mind but be sure of finding plenty to see and do.

Opinions vary about how rapidly it’s happening, but central Dallas really is evolving. And I appreciate that more freeways, more subdivisions and more sprawl are the signature of our postwar past, not our future.

But please, por favor, could we dispense with the haughty stereotype of suburban cities as unenlightened wastelands? If we really want to make our lives more “walkable” and “sustainable,” we need to quit pretending there’s one narrow model for virtuous existence, and no others need apply.

There’s a lot going on in Dallas, as illustrated by the discussions that surrounded last week’s back-to-back meetings here of the New Cities Summit and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Both groups, theoreticians and politicians alike, voiced similar enthusiasm for designing cities for people rather than cars and for fostering street-level life that extends beyond office hours.

We don’t get there by building a wall at the city limits to keep the suburban parasites out or by pretending that this won’t continue to be, for the foreseeable future, a region dependent on automobiles.

I have a hard time really grasping the us-vs.-them mentality, since to me, this really is a “region,” not an amalgam of discrete municipalities. Over the last 30 years, I have lived in Dallas, Fort Worth and places in between. I have lived in a city while working in a suburb and vice versa. Like many of the 6.5 million or so residents of our metro region, I’m a veteran commuter.

It would be wonderful to be less car-dependent. The growth of transit-oriented developments near DART stations is a trend not just in Dallas but in suburban cities as well. The term “suburb,” in fact, should be used advisedly. Many of our “satellites” are full-blown, fast-growing cities with employment centers of their own.

My Flower Mound neighborhood sure isn’t the grim, conformist Zombieville the dreaded word “suburb” evokes. It’s multiethnic; it’s integrated into the town’s 33-mile network of greenbelt walking trails; we see a surprising amount of wildlife. Our local high school had the second-highest number of national merit finalists in the state this year. It’s a good place to live.

I think we’re blurring the boundaries between city and suburb, residential and commercial, high-density and low. It means more options for more people and a better life for everybody.

But there’s more than one way to live. None of us has to be the devil.

here:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/jacquielynn-floyd/20140626-bring-on-new-urbanism-but-dont-demonize-suburbs.ece

===================================================

The rise and rise of the Asian megacity (and why 'metacities' are the next big thing)
Asia's rapid urbanisation is changing the very shape and nature of what we think of as a city, writes Vanessa Collingridge, in the first of a three-part series


A FISHING VILLAGE JUST A FEW DECADES AGO, SHENZHEN IS NOW A BUSTLING MEGACITY. PHOTOS: AFP; IMAGINECHINA; REUTERS; XINHUA

Looking out from any one of the skyscrapers that dominate Shenzhen's central business district, it seems as though the city never ends.

As far as the eye can see, there's an almost unremitting jumble of shiny tower blocks and lower-rise offices, warehouses and arterial highways with their nose-to-tail traffic. These are the classic hallmarks of an urban landscape that, in the words of Disney's Buzz Lightyear, seems to stretch "to infinity and beyond!"

But what's less obvious is that this cityscape represents one of the most remarkable changes in human history - in any era. In the West, you get large cities such as London and Paris but, in Asia, witness the rise - and rise - of the megacity.

Megacities are generally defined as those with more than 10 million inhabitants. Back in the early 1950s, there were only two on Earth - New York and Tokyo; by 2010, according to United Nations figures, this number had shot up to 24 - and by 2025, the UN predicts, there will be 39 of these supersized cities. These numbers tell a remarkable story about the way we are choosing to organise our lives but, look deeper into the data, and an equally fascinating trend reveals itself: the new urban areas are growing fastest not in the traditional powerhouses of Europe and America but in Asia and the "global south".In 2010, just nine of the world's megacities were located in Asia; scroll forward 15 years and 21 of the projected 39 megacities will be situated here, with the biggest growth in population expected to take place in the new or lesser-known cities in South and East Asia.

But it's not just the rapid increase in their numbers or their sheer size that makes these megacities fascinating. They look, feel and behave differently, too.

more here:
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1530748/larger-life-rise-and-rise-asian-megacity

===================================================

Megacities of Asia Part II: Perils of the concrete jungle
Unprecedented levels of migration from rural areas have led to a host of logistical and environmental problems, writes Vanessa Collingridge.


QIANHAI, WHICH WILL HOUSE SHENZHEN’S NEW INTERNATIONAL FINANCE DISTRICT BY 2020. PHOTOS: IMAGINECHINA; BIOSPHOTO; JONATHAN WONG; CHRIS WEBSTER

One hour’s drive from Hong Kong takes you to a construction field of reddish brown mud. Here, amid the snaking tracks of dump trucks, men in hard hats discuss the transformation of 15 sq km of wasteland into what’s fast becoming known as the “Manhattan of the Pearl River Delta”.

Qianhai – or, to give it its formal title, the “Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone” – is the very model of a modern urban centre.

On paper, it looks like something out of Star Wars: an arc of skyscrapers rising from reclaimed coastal lands and standing sentinel round a circular harbour. Wide boulevards and geometric patterns proclaim a sense of order and good governance: a safe place for the world’s capital.

For this has been designated a special economic zone, the site of Shenzhen’s new international finance district by 2020 and a nascent competitor to the global greats of Hong Kong’s Central, Wall Street and the City of London.

“It’s a hot topic of debate whether Qianhai will be in competition with Hong Kong,” says Marcos Chan, head of research for Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan for real-estate multinational CBRE. “Here we have a big piece of land in Shenzhen with potentially up to some 150 million square feet of office space that effectively transforms it into a new strategic centre for commerce, finance and the professional services. And there are enormous incentives for companies to set up business here.

It’s leveraging on the fact that while it might be physically in mainland China, for the first time ever there’s a chance that Hong Kong’s legal framework can be applied in certain business aspects.”

In the past 12 months, more than 10 sites have been sold and their developers have broken ground.

“These sites are huge in scale,” says Chan, “and as a result developers are often paying very good sums – accommodation values ranging from 8,000 yuan [HK$10,000] to 28,000 yuan per square metre. And it’s not just in Qianhai that we’re seeing interest: there’s anecdotal evidence to suggest that people in Shenzhen are already speculating on the residential properties nearest to Qianhai, even though it’s still pretty much a construction site.”
more here:
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1536089/perils-concrete-jungle

===================================================

Megacities of Asia Part III: grey areas
Urbanisation is changing the face of Asia but what’s next for the continent’s city dwellers, asks Vanessa Collingridge, in the last of a three-part series


AN ARTIST’S IMPRESSION SHOWS WAVE CITY IN GHAZIABAD, A “SMART CITY” IN INDIA. PHOTOS: CORBIS; SCMP; AYONA DATTA

“Never in the history of urbanisation have we found ourselves living in cities this big!” proclaims Professor Chris Webster, dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. Despite a 30-year career studying the built environment, he still manages to sound impressed.

“What we have now is a completely new discussion about transport, communication and the structure and systems of cities; even about the meaning of international borders.”

The new urban structures to which Webster refers are what he calls “megaclusters” or “megaregions” – the startling phenomenon of supersized cities expanding into one another to create vast urban corridors from Delhi to Mumbai, or Hong Kong to the furthest reaches of the Pearl River Delta. It’s a phenomenon that is happening worldwide but particularly in Asia and the so-called “global south”, where the speed and scale of urbanisation are leaving analysts stunned and urban governments swamped.

And it’s little surprise. Four years ago, the world reached a tipping point; humans became an urban species, with more than half of us living in towns and cities. According to the United Nations, Asia’s urban population is set to soar from 1.9 billion in 2011 to 3.3 billion by 2050, while Africa and Asia combined will account for 86 per cent of the increase in the world’s urban population. It’s a shift, not only in terms of population but also in terms of potential, that has sent ripples of anxiety throughout the corridors of power.

“Because of the ambiguity of the situation and the speed of development, onlookers like the United Nations and World Bank are seriously concerned that some cities are grossing out – they’ve got too nebulous, too large – and it’s causing a kind of urban existential panic,” says Webster.

more here:
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1540813/megacities-asia-part-iii-grey-areas


===================================================

Robert Moran
Who's Your Megacity? The 21st Century Metropolis
Posted: 06/18/2014 2:09 am EDT Updated: 06/18/2014 8:59 am EDT

Although the Richard Florida vs. Joel Kotkin debate over America's urban-suburban future rages on, the future of cities is a critically important subject for American policymakers, urban planners, and citizens.

In fact, aside from global aging, one of the greatest global trends in 21st century life is urbanization. America industrialized and urbanized in the late 19th century and early 20th and then pioneered suburbanization. But, globally the story is very different. The world is urbanizing rapidly.

To better understand the implications of this as a public opinion researcher and a futurist, I attended the New Cities Summit as a representative of the World Future Society. Held this year in Dallas, Texas, the New Cities Summit is a tour de force of urban evolution.

When it comes to 21st century urbanism, there are a plethora of emerging trends, weak signals and alternative futures. There are discussions around green cities with vertical farming, resilient cities capable of taking economic and environmental shocks, walkable cities, cultural hub cities and even the city as aerotropolis -- a city built around a global hub airport.

But, on a global level, the reality of 21st century urban life is far less exotic. While the West and developed nations that made the rural to urban shift decades ago focus on the non-material aspects of city life, the Rest (developing nations) will undergo extremely rapid urbanization and focus on far more basic issues. For example, in 2014 the world's population was 50 percent urban with 23 megacities (a megacity has a population of over 10,000,000). By 2025 60 percent of the global population will be urban and the world will have 37 megacities. And it is highly likely that these megacities will not only shape their inhabitants' attitudes, but will shape national and global governance.

We see this now in America today with highly distinctive urban, suburban and rural voting patterns. But, more challenging is the rise of the globally integrated megacity. In reality, if you live in an American city today you live in either a regional, national or global city. And this makes an enormous difference in your tastes, political beliefs and the ideas you bump into. Regional cities are regional banking and health care hubs servicing a regional market and attracting a regional workforce. National cities are larger, with greater air travel service and attracting a national level workforce. But global megacities (like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.) are fully integrated into the global economy, with ample non-stop airline service to other global cities and a global workforce. And this is where it gets interesting, because these global megacities house a globally connected elite that is pulling away from the traditional nation-state. As one panelist, Arturo Sarukhan the former Mexican ambassador to the United States, observed, "we are going back to the early Renaissance where city-states are playing an increasing role." This is undoubtedly true. Megacity mayors routinely lead trade delegations and influence the political dialogue of their respective nation-states. Michael Bloomberg and Boris Johnson come leaping to mind as obvious examples.

If the idea of globally integrated megacities rivalling the nation state or the idea of megacity mayors conducting peer to peer diplomacy (what Parag Khanna called "diplomacity"), it shouldn't. The US National Intelligence Council (NIC), the long term strategic analysis arm of the Director of National Intelligence seriously considers this exact scenario in its Global Trends 2030 report under a scenario titled "Non-State World." In this scenario the nation-state is forced to share power with megacities, NGOs and transnational groups. And, quoting directly from the study, "Mayors of mega-cities take a lead in ramping up regional and global cooperation."

Richard Florida's famous book asks provocatively "Who's your City?" But, the New Cities Summit suggests that a better question is "Who's your megacity?"

source-links here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-moran/whos-your-megacity-the-21_b_5505919.html

===================================================

New Cities Summit: Cultural districts are multiplying rapidly, all over the world
By Michael Granberry
mgranberry@dallasnews.com
2:52 pm on June 18, 2014 |

It’s no coincidence that the international New Cities Summit is being held this week in the Dallas Arts District. Such districts are exploding internationally, with more than $250 billion being targeted over the next 10 to 15 years in building cultural districts around the globe.

Adrian Ellis, founder of AEA Consulting and director of the Global Cultural Districts Network, moderated Wednesday’s panel on “Cultural Districts as Engines of Urban Transformation.” They are being used as such vehicles, he said, not only in the United States but also Taiwan, Brazil, China and the Middle East.

“The motivation for much of that investment is the branding or ID’ing of cities,” Ellis said.

But the problem, say the panelists, is that regardless of where the new cultural districts are located, not all are as inclusive of the population as a whole as they should be. Nor are their creators as mindful as they should be of how to use their architecture — their “hardware” — serve the needs of the city as a whole.

Manal Ataya, director general of the Sharjah Museums Department for the government of Sharjah, cited a competition in the Middle East to build such districts, to draw in tourists but also the community at large.

Jamie Bennett, the executive director of ArtPlace America, said he found himself surprised to be on such a panel, since “in a lot of ways, the mission of my organization is to be anti-cultural district.”

For instance, he said, it’s important to concede that art “exists everywhere,” not just in the artistic cathedrals being built by private or government philanthropy in the center of cities.

“Every community in this country has artists and music and stories,” Bennett said. The danger in building cultural districts is to leave the outlying community with the feeling “that we have built a cultural ghetto. Let that happen over there.”

He prefers to see art as something shared by an entire community made up of diverse peoples.

Even so, such districts can help enormously in building cultural identity. People around the world, for instance, can identify two streets in New York City – Wall Street and Broadway.

Jeffrey Johnson, founding director of the China Megacities Lab at Columbia University and the co-founding Principal of SLAB, noted that around the world governments are investing heavily in cultural infrastructure. That in turn has led to a boom in the growth of museums, especially in China.

China, he said, has built “up to 400 museums per year over the last four years.” In the United States, even during the museum boom years of the early 1990s, the growth was around 30 per year. He, too, cited a danger in building centers that are too “top down,” that fail to embrace the entire city and its people, regardless of wealth or standing.

Ataya said another shortcoming in the growth of museums and cultural districts is that “the planning is never planned enough.” She advocates “absolute engagement” with all the people in the city but regrets the fact that “it doesn’t happen nearly enough … We so need to hear from the local population.”

Jamie Bennett praised the presence of Klyde Warren Park and the free general admission instituted by Dallas Museum of Art director Maxwell Anderson.

It’s that kind of inclusiveness, he said, that needs to be embraced by any city longing for its own cultural district.

here:
http://artsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/06/new-cities-summit-cultural-districts-are-multiplying-rapidly-all-over-the-world.html/

===================================================

If You Want to Understand Cities in the 21st Century, Read This Essay
Annalee Newitz
Thursday 6:26pm



In 2008, a young model from rural Canada was brutally murdered in a Shanghai apartment building. The story of how her assailant was (maybe) caught, chronicled by journalist Mara Hvistendahl her engrossing essay And the City Swallowed Them, reveals how 21st century cities are changing the world.

What seems like a cut-and-dried crime story becomes, in Hvistendahl's capable hands, a tale of two young adults adrift in a city far from their rural homes. Diana O'Brien traveled to Shanghai from a small island off the cost of British Columbia, on a dubious modeling contract with a fly-by-night company. Chen Jun, the man convicted of her murder, was also a migrant to the city. He came to Shanghai from rural China, drifting between low-paying jobs at companies just as sketchy as Diana's modeling agency.

The story of how Diana and Chen's lives collided is as bewildering and complex as Shanghai itself, one of the world's biggest and fastest-growing megacities. Home to roughly 25 million people, the city seems like a land of opportunity to people all over the world. But as Diana's parents discovered after her murder, it's also a place where foreigners can get dangerously lost.

Looking for clues, the police discover that the modeling agency that hired Diana has disappeared overnight from its "offices" in an abandoned apartment building. But with the Olympics around the corner, they're under pressure to find a suspect — any suspect — to blame. People from rural China are often arrested for crimes in Shanghai, Hvistendahl notes, because they are far from family and have few connections. With a government that demands a set number of convictions from law enforcement each year, sometimes it's easier to convict strangers than it is to find the truth. Even after Chen confesses to the crime, we never know for sure whether he actually did it.

Hvistendahl is no stranger to difficult topics that raise thorny ethical questions. She published a fascinating book a couple of years ago called Unnatural Selection, about what happens when parents use reproductive technologies to choose the genders of their children. A large part of that book focused on China's one child policy, and Hvistendahl exhaustively researched how that policy and others led to highly skewed gender ratios in many parts of the world. In And the City Swallowed Them, she's used her familiarity with Chinese cultures and her unflinching investigative perspective to tell a story that's just as incendiary.

more here:
http://io9.com/if-you-want-to-understand-cities-in-the-21st-century-r-1596771497

===================================================

World 101 - India: The World's Largest Democracy Emerges As A Global Economic Force
June 24, 2014



Experts Saeed Khan, Lecturer in the Department of History and Near East & Asian Studies at Wayne State University and Michael Kugelman, Senior Program Associate for South and Southeast Asia Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars discuss India's current election, the real impact of India's caste system on women's issues and India as an emerging economy.

While India has the 10th largest economy in the world, it's social issues keep it on the front page of the global news. The country with the population of 2.2 billion is a patriarchal society that struggles with women's rights issues. Recent sexual assaults have made scholars look at the correlation between the caste system and rampant gang rape.

POPULOUS STATE India's population will (probably) overtake China's in 2028. According to UN estimates, India will become the most populous country in the world in just 14 years' time, when it will have about 1.45 billion inhabitants. For many in India, becoming the most populous country will be an achievement, marking the country's progress in its rivalry with China.

For others, particularly from the older generations, it represents a failure of the country's decades-old attempts to bring its population under control - which included a controversial and counter-productive mass sterilisation campaign during the 1970s. In fact, birth rates have fallen significantly in almost all parts of India, driven by female education, rising household incomes and greater availability of contraception though this has been partially offset by increased life expectancy.

India's population is likely to reach about 1.6 billion in the 2060s, before decreasing to about 1.5 billion by the end of the century. By then, according to the UN study, Nigeria may have overtaken China as the second most populous country.

audio and more here:
http://wdet.org/shows/craig-fahle-show/episode/world-101-india/

===================================================

U.S. Government Plans to Push Americans Out of Suburbs to Move in Planned Cities (video)
Jul 2nd, 2013
http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/u-s-government-plans-to-push-americans-to-leave-suburbs-and-move-in-planned-cities-video/

The Big Texas Plan to Copy Japan's High-Speed Rail Success
Texas Central Railway intends to build a Houston-Dallas line with private money.
AMY CRAWFORD @amymcrawf 7:30 AM ET
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/06/the-big-texas-plan-to-copy-japans-high-speed-rail-success/372984/

Cities, get ready — the tiny houses are coming
30 Apr 2014 8:06 AM
By Eve Andrews
http://grist.org/cities/cities-get-ready-the-tiny-houses-are-coming/

"chinese urbanization lead to WWIII? - 06.16.2013"
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/04/chinese-urbanization-lead-to-wwiii.html

Looming Financial Crisis? - 06.24.2014

I'm not predicting anything, this could all be to get a lot of investors to lose out on gold or it could be the start of something else.
To me, is just news, and prove of manipulation either way it goes.

I don't get emotional or take it personal.

When it comes to gold:

Gold (Oct'14) (@GC.2 :CEC:COMMODITIES EXCHANGE CENTRE)
* Data is delayed
http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/%40GC.2

 I ask myself
"What is George Soros doing?"

Then I take a look at the IMF and World Bank reports.

Global Financial Stability Report
Moving from Liquidity- to Growth-Driven Markets
April 2014
http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/GFSR/2014/01/index.htm

IMF Cuts U.S. Growth Outlook, Sees More Scope for Zero Rates
By Sandrine Rastello and Nina Glinski Jun 16, 2014 11:51 AM CT

The International Monetary Fund cut its growth forecast for the U.S. economy this year and said the Federal Reserve may have scope to keep interest rates at zero for longer than investors expect.

The Washington-based IMF now sees the world’s largest economy growing 2 percent this year, down from an April estimate of 2.8 percent. The IMF left a 2015 prediction unchanged at 3 percent, and said it doesn’t expect the U.S. to see full employment until the end of 2017, amid low inflation.

“We see prospects looking up for the U.S. but we also believe that attention must now turn to the kinds of policies needed to lay the foundation for growth that will be sustainable,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said at a press conference in Washington today.

video and more here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-16/imf-cuts-u-s-growth-forecast-sees-scope-for-zero-rates-longer.html

======================================================

World Development Indicators
http://data.worldbank.org/products/wdi

Tackling climate change would grow global economy, World Bank says
Findings put to rest claims that the world could not afford to act on climate change

Suzanne Goldenberg   
theguardian.com, Monday 23 June 2014 20.00 EDT   

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (R) and his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott attend a joint press conference at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada on June 9, 2014. Photograph: David Kawai/Corbis

Fighting climate change would help grow the world economy, according to the World Bank, adding up to $2.6tn (£1.5tn) a year to global GDP in the coming decades.

The findings, made available in a report on Tuesday, offer a sharp contrast with claims by the Australian government that fighting climate change would “clobber” the economy.

The report also advances on the work of economists who have argued that it will be far more costly in the long run to delay action on climate change.

Instead, Tuesday's report found a number of key policies – none of which included putting an economy-wide price on carbon – would lead to global GDP gains of between $1.8tn and $2.6tn a year by 2030, in terms of new jobs, increased crop productivity and public health benefits.

The pro-climate regulations and tax incentives would also on their own deliver nearly a third of the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions needed to keep warming below the 2C threshold for dangerous climate change, the bank said.

The World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, said the findings put to rest claims that the world could not afford to act on climate change.

“These policies make economic sense,” Kim said in a conference call with reporters. “This report removes another false barrier, another false argument not to take action against climate change.”
more here:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/24/tackling-climate-change-would-grow-global-economy-world-bank-says

==============================================

UPDATE 1-Paulson holds onto gold ETF, Soros adds gold miners in Q1
Thu May 15, 2014 6:50pm EDT

By Frank Tang

May 15 (Reuters) - Hedge fund Paulson & Co in Q1 maintained its stake in SPDR Gold Trust, the world's biggest gold-backed exchange-traded fund as bullion prices rebounded from their biggest annual loss in 32 years in 2013, while PIMCO dissolved its gold ETF investment.

George Soros raised his stake in Barrick Gold Corp and gold mining companies ETFs, suggesting the big names in hedge funds took advantage of lower gold prices to increase positions in the precious metal used by many as a hedge.

Investors pay close attention to the quarterly filings by Paulson and other notable hedge fund managers because they provide the best insight into whether the so-called "smart money" has lost faith in gold as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty.
 
"Some institutions are stepping up to buy gold this year just like you would expect them to do when they find an asset valued at these attractive levels," said Adam Sarhan, CEO of New York-based Sarhan Capital.

Paulson & Co, led by longtime gold bull John Paulson, owned 10.2 million shares in the ETF worth $1.27 billion on March 31, unchanged from its holdings on Dec. 31, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed on Friday.

That represents a gain of around $76 million as the price of gold gained 6.5 percent in the first quarter, following a drop of around 9 percent in the fourth quarter.

This marks the third consecutive quarter Paulson has stuck to his stake in the gold ETF.

"It's a plus for the market as big players are still holding onto gold to a degree, but I don't think that's reflective of the market tone," said Bill O'Neill, partner at commodities investment firm LOGIC Advisors in New Jersey.

Gold prices were still 7.5 percent higher for the year but market watchers said the yellow metal's failure to rally on geopolitical tensions and lackluster physical demand suggested downside risks.

In the second quarter of 2013, Paulson slashed its stake by more than half when bullion prices plummeted $225 between April 11 and 15, a record two-day drop for gold.

Among large institutional investors, PIMCO has dissolved its position in SPDR Gold Trust, marking its sixth consecutive quarterly cuts. PIMCO held 6.3 million shares of the gold ETF in the second quarter of 2012.

Some institutional investors continued to remain bearish on gold investments as the metal's price came under heavy pressure from rallying equity markets and an improving economic outlook.

SPDR Gold Trust held near a four-year low at about 800 tonnes of gold at the end of the first quarter, largely unchanged from its fourth-quarter level.

Institutional investors' massive stakes in SPDR Gold Trust have tremendous influence in gold prices as redemptions of their massive ETF mean dumping the metal in the open market. (Editing by Eric Walsh)

here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/hedgefunds-filings-gold-idUSL1N0O127W20140515

==============================================

Gold Trades Below Two-Month High as Fed, Demand Weighed
By Nicholas Larkin and Glenys Sim  Jun 23, 2014 7:10 AM CT

Gold futures traded below a two-month high as investors weighed the outlook for U.S. borrowing costs to remain low and tension in Iraq against signs of weaker physical demand. Platinum and palladium declined.

Gold capped a third successive weekly advance last week after the Federal Reserve said it will keep interest rates at almost zero for a considerable time. The metal’s 12-year bull run ended in 2013 on expectations that the Fed would scale back stimulus as the economy strengthened.

Bullion is set for its first back-to-back quarterly gain since 2011, in part as escalating violence in Iraq and tension between Ukraine and Russia boosted haven demand. Militants in Iraq seized more territory and U.S. President Barack Obama warned that the crisis may spill over into other countries. There’s still “little physical interest,” Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. wrote in a report today.

The metal gained “on the back of rising tension in Iraq, dovish remarks by Fed Chair Janet Yellen” and technical-related buying, Abhishek Chinchalkar, an analyst at Mumbai-based AnandRathi Commodities Ltd., said in a report today. Demand from China is “unlikely to pick up any time soon. We expect gold to face strong hurdles in sustaining these recent gains.”

Gold for August delivery lost 0.2 percent to $1,313.60 an ounce by 8 a.m. on the Comex in New York. It reached $1,322.50 on June 20, the highest since April 15. Futures trading volume was 8 percent above the average for the past 100 days for this time of day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bullion for immediate delivery declined 0.1 percent to $1,313.83 in London, according to Bloomberg generic pricing.

more here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-23/gold-drops-from-two-month-high-as-rally-erodes-interest.html

==============================================

 6/19/2014 @ 5:46PM 8,172 views
Oil And Gold Prices Surge As Tensions In Iraq Escalate


A column of smoke rises from an oil refinery in Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi officials said Thursday that they have secured this refinery.

With tensions in Iraq escalating to the point that President Obama said he would deploy up to 300 military advisers to the country, investors sent prices of gold and oil surging in Thursday trading. Gold, the classic safe-haven trade, reached its highest point in two months as oil, whose Iraqi production could see pressure if ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) militants move the conflict to the south of Iraq, surged to its highest price of the year.

Bolstered by a drop in the dollar and the Federal Reserve’s reticence to raise interest rates — not to mention the situation in Iraq — gold gained 3.7% in Thursday trading and surged to its highest price in two months. Gold futures, which hit as high as $1,322 an ounce during its regular trading session, settled at $1,314.10 for the day, its highest level since April 14. Spot prices, too, closed at $1,314 an ounce.

Surging even more than gold on Thursday was oil: brent crude hit $115 a barrel, its highest price of the year, as WTI crude oil finished the day at more than $106 a barrel, a dollar short of the 52-week high it hit last week.

The ETFs that track these commodities – SPDR Gold Shares, United States Oil and iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Index — saw gains roughly commensurate with those of the commodities themselves. GLD finished Thursday trading with a 3.5% gain, US Oil closed 0.3% up and the iPath index finished the day with an 0.4% uptick.

Stateside, oil’s increases paired with the impending summer months and summer travel in the U.S. to send prices at the pump for a surge of their own. The national average for one gallon of gas in the U.S. is $3.68, up from $3.60 a gallon this time last year and the highest levels consumers have seen at the pump in June since 2008.

“Oil is the lifeblood of a modern economy. Estimates vary, but each $10 increase per barrel can knock off about 0.2% from economic growth,” Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network, said in a note Thursday. “With U.S. growth currently expected to fall in the 3-percent range, this is significant. Oil prices have risen by about $3 over the last month, and they could be headed higher as the conflict worsens.”

The reason for the price surge in the wake of violence in Iraq is that the country produces a not-insignificant amount of oil, and if Iraqi oil fields are taken over and closed, global oil supply could shrink and send prices even higher. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) recently projected that Iraq would be accountable for 3 million barrels of oil production a day for the second half of 2014, ranking the country as OPEC’s second-largest producer. The somewhat good news is that most of Iraq’s production occurs in the southern part of the country, and with the exception of the Baiji refinery (115 miles outside of Baghdad) — which Iraqi officials say they do have control over — ISIS has not ventured in this territory.

“[We do not] expect ISIS to make much headway in the south, where the Sunni extremist group would be running into the Shi’ite heartland,” wrote Citi analyst Seth Kleinman in a note on Thursday. He noted that investors are on edge “for good reason, as the world would struggle to replace the lost oil volumes if Iraq were to go the way of Libya.” However, he pointed to accelerating exports in the Kurdish region as well as the low likelihood that ISIS reaches the south of Iraq as reason to be less concerned about oil’s future price.

“Iraq’s key oil fields are southeast of Baghdad, and Citi does not expect ISIS to get as far as Baghdad. Some oil companies are removing non-essential staff but Basra operations and exports continue, and continue to make new highs with July loadings set at 2.8 million barrels of oil per day,” Kleinman said.

If ISIS does venture south, however, prices could rise rapidly.

“Given how fast everything has transpired, if this were to spread into the south and impact exports it could be very dramatic,” said Chad Mabry, a director and oil and production analyst at MLV and Company, in a phone interview. “This isn’t hyperbole, it could easily send global markets back into recession with the impact. We could be looking at a significant rise in prices if those barrels were taken off the world market.”

Mabry notes that due to sanctions that have limited production in Iran and violence that has limited production in Libya, “you don’t have much room for error within OPEC anymore because the burden then falls on Saudi Arabia to make up that delta.”

If there’s one bit of good news amongst all the Iraqi turmoil, it’s this: the U.S. has increased its production of oil and energy independence since the start of the last Iraqi conflict (which began in 2003), so the market’s reaction is not as bad as it would have been if this were to have happened even five years ago.

“The U.S. economy is significantly more energy efficient than it used to be, so the effects of price changes are simply smaller,” says Commonwealth’s McMillan. “Energy consumption per dollar of GDP has been cut almost in half since 1970. Although the relationship isn’t linear, any effect from rising oil prices should be materially less than it has been in the past.”

here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2014/06/19/oil-and-gold-prices-surge-as-tensions-in-iraq-escalate/

==============================================

6/23/2014 @ 10:40AM
A Gold Alternative? The Swiss Franc
Clem Chambers , Contributor

I’m a contrarian, so it is not surprising I like gold. There are lots of reasons to like gold but the key one is the distrust of inflation, or rather the belief that inflation will become rampant again.

This distrust is on many levels. One obvious one is the disconnect between the official figures and perceived inflation every time one buys the essentials of life. There is meant to be no inflation, but that’s not what our wallets tell us.

There is also the issue of QE and massive developed world deficits and debt piles pushing the investor into worrying about the eventual outcomes of that massive long term liquidity environment. Then you can think about the fact that gold is around its cost of production.

The gold bug story is long. It sounded good when the price rose from $250 to near $2,000 an ounce and it now sounds stale as gold dibbles around below $1,300.

There are negatives too. The new fashionable one is, there is a lot of it in vaults around the world, forget production. Where was that argument when prices rose so far?

For me the big one is physical: gold is hard to own and hold. Who wants a safe deposit box or a secret stashing place for coins and bars? Alternatively, does anyone really trust banks to give you a piece of paper saying you own 10kg of gold and then honor the deal when the balloon goes up? If you hold gold for defence against crisis there is not much liquidity in a gold coin worth, say, $2,000–you can’t buy gas with an Eagle and who wants a ton of silver coins in their basement?

You can buy gold shares, of course, but mining companies make banks look like a monastery of saints by comparison to the chicanery that goes on in resource stocks.

more here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2014/06/23/a-gold-alternative-the-swiss-franc/

==============================================

PRECIOUS-Gold hits 2-month high as stocks, dollar retreat
Tue Jun 24, 2014 6:22am EDT

* Gold hits highest since early April, silver at 3-month peak

* Stocks retreat after disappointing German data

* Platinum, palladium shrug off end of SAfrican strike (Updates throughout, changes dateline, pvs SINGAPORE)

By Jan Harvey

LONDON, June 24 (Reuters) - Gold hit a two-month high on Tuesday and silver reached its highest since mid-March as a drop in European shares after soft German economic data and a weaker dollar helped the metal build on last week's gains.

Spot gold hit a peak of $1,325.70 and was up 0.5 percent at $1,323.80 an ounce at 1007 GMT, while U.S. gold futures for August delivery were up $6.60 at $1,325. Silver was up 1.3 percent at $21.09 an ounce.

Gold posted its biggest weekly rise in three months last week as the threat of escalating tensions in Iraq and the Federal Reserve's lack of commitment to raising interest rates sparked a wave of short covering.

"There are still willing buyers today as there are shorts left, and risk aversion sees fresh inflows," VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov said.

"The greenback is slightly weaker today, while European equities are extending losses from yesterday," he added. "Low volumes and technical trading will prevail this week since there is little else aside form Iraq to drive the market, with hardly any physical flows at the moment."

Gold has been boosted recently by escalating violence in Iraq, where Sunni tribes have joined a militant takeover of northern Iraq. Oil prices were pushed to 9-month highs last week, with a consequent knock-on effect on gold.

Oil slipped below $114 a barrel on Tuesday as concerns eased that escalating violence in Iraq will affect supplies from OPEC's second-largest oil producer.

Supporting gold, European stocks retreated on Tuesday, surrendering early gains, as investors were unnerved by growing signs of economic weakness in Europe.

Germany's Ifo index of business sentiment fell more than expected in June, eating into gains across Europe's major stock markets that had been racked up on merger and

more here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/24/markets-precious-idUSL4N0P523Z20140624

==============================================

Gold Euphoria Won’t Last With Yellen’s Rally Fading
By Debarati Roy, Nicholas Larkin and Glenys Sim  Jun 24, 2014 2:28 AM CT

After the biggest gold slump in three decades left investors heartbroken, they’re following Taylor Swift’s advice and never, ever getting back together.

Janet Yellen, the one person able to make the lovers reconcile, did her best. Prices surged the most since September the day after the Fed chair signaled last week that low interest rates are here to stay. Traders and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News aren’t expecting the euphoria to last. Volatility in futures is near a four-year low, at a time when trading volumes and open interest in Comex contracts are waning.

Prices will average $1,250 an ounce next quarter, about 5 percent less than now, according to the median of 15 estimates. The analysts were surveyed before and after the Fed’s June 18 outlook, and the forecast was unchanged. Even after a 28 percent plunge in 2013, the bears are emboldened by this year’s records in equity markets, and gold assets in exchange-traded products have shrunk to the smallest since 2009.

“The surge in gold can’t sustain itself,” Donald Selkin, who helps manage about $3 billion of assets as chief market strategist at National Securities Corp. in New York, said June 20. “It was a temporary spike because of a confluence of events: Iraq and Yellen. People will be looking at other areas for excitement. Holdings are down, so people are leaving gold in search of something better.”

Price Outlook

Gold for immediate delivery rose 9.5 percent to $1,315.49 an ounce in London this year, according to Bloomberg generic pricing. Bullion advanced on demand for haven assets as fighting erupted in Ukraine and Iraq.

Prices have slumped from a record $1,921.17 reached in September 2011. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI gauge of 24 commodities gained 5.1 percent since the end of December, while the MSCI All-Country World Index of equities rose 5.2 percent. The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bond Index added 2.7 percent.

The median of 15 analyst and trader estimates compiled by Bloomberg by June 18 showed gold will average $1,240 in the fourth quarter and $1,300 in the first three months of next year. By June 20, they were predicting $1,225 and $1,270 for the periods, not swayed by Yellen’s outlook for low borrowing costs and echoing the sentiment of Swift’s Grammy-nominated pop hit, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

“You’ve had a bit of safe-haven demand and a bit of inflation-hedge demand,” Georgette Boele, a precious-metals analyst at ABN Amro Group NV in Amsterdam, said June 20. “The view doesn’t change on gold, because this is temporary. The other drivers have not changed.”
more here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-23/gold-euphoria-won-t-last-with-yellen-s-rally-fading-commodities.html

==============================================

MARK HULBERT Archives | Email alerts
June 24, 2014, 6:16 a.m. EDT
This is what needs to happen for gold to rally
Opinion: The best gold-market timers are bearish, a telltale sign for the yellow metal
By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch



CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) — The top-performing gold-market timers aren’t convinced that the yellow metal’s low earlier this month marked the beginning of a new leg upward.

To be sure, with bullion $70 higher now than in early June, it certainly looks as though a bottom of at least some significance was formed at that time. Believers in that story were especially emboldened last Thursday, when gold jumped more than $40 an ounce.

But try telling that story to market timers who have the best records at calling turns in the gold market. In fact, the gold timers who are most bullish today have the worst records.

To bet on gold now, therefore, you have to believe that those who historically have been most wrong will turn out to be right — and vice versa.

The accompanying table provides the supporting data behind this depressing conclusion. When focusing on the top timers, I chose the 25% on the Hulbert Financial Digest list with the best track records; the worst timers are in the bottom quartile for performance. The table reports this best-versus-worst contrast across six time periods, ranging from the past 12 months to the past 20 years.

Notice that, regardless of the time period over which performance is measured, the best gold timers are far more bearish than the worst timers. In two of these performance periods, in fact — the past three years and the past 20 years — the consensus gold exposure level among the best timers is negative, which means they are advocating that clients be short the market.

On average across all six time periods, the best timers are essentially out of the gold market, while the worst timers’ recommended exposure level is 57%.

To be bullish right now, in other words, you have to accept some pretty odd bedfellows.

more here:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-what-needs-to-happen-for-gold-to-rally-2014-06-24

================================================

For more context on this, read the following:

Who predicted the Financial Crisis of 2008?
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/06/who-predicted-financial-crisis-of-2008.html 

UPDATE:


Gold: Don't buy the sucker's rally
By Ben Rooney  @ben_rooney June 20, 2014: 1:23 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
They say all that glitters...you know the rest.

Gold prices shot up more than 3% on Thursday, the biggest one day gain since September 2013. Prices were up slightly again Friday, with futures trading at about $1,316 an ounce.

So far this month, gold prices have risen nearly 6%.

While gold bugs have regained some swagger, analysts don't expect the metal to break out of the funk it's been in for the past year.

The recent jump in gold prices comes as turmoil in Iraq has put some investors on edge. Gold and other so-called "hard" assets often find favor in times of political and economic uncertainty.

Meanwhile, Russian forces have been massing on the eastern border with Ukraine, raising concerns about an escalation of tensions in an already volatile region.

"There are a lot of reasons investors should own gold," said Donald Doyle, chief executive of Blanchard & Co., a precious metals dealer in New Orleans. The current geopolitical uncertainty "illustrates the metal's qualities as insurance when governments clash."

Doyle added that investors were also spooked by comments from Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen on Wednesday. Yellen reiterated that the central bank is unlikely to hike interest rates any time soon.

Some investors see gold as an alternative to the U.S. dollar, which they believe is being undermined by the Fed's policies.

But other analysts say Thursday's rally was driven by technical factors, such as "short covering."

The price of gold rose above its 50-day moving average early Thursday, which triggered a wave of buy orders and caused investors who were betting against the metal to unwind their positions, said Carlos Sanchez, a precious metals analyst at the CPM Group.

Investors have been "short" gold for at least a year, meaning they are positioned to benefit from falling prices. Analysts say that's not likely to change anytime soon.

The summer months are historically very slow in the gold market. In addition, demand from China, which has been a big consumer of physical gold, is slowing down.

While geopolitical concerns could help support the metal in the short term, "I still think gold is headed lower," said Sanchez.

That's largely because the stock market continues to hit record highs.

And despite worries about Ukraine and Iraq, investors don't appear to be that scared. The VIX (VIXAUG), a key measure of volatility, is at its lowest point since 2007. And the CNNMoney Fear & Greed Index, which looks at the VIX and six other measures of investor sentiment, is showing signs of Extreme Greed.

Investors fled the gold market last year as they chased better returns in more risky assets. Gold prices fell nearly 30% in 2013. It was the biggest decline since 1981 and the first year-over-year drop since 2000.

Gold hit an all-time high near $1,900 an ounce in 2011, as investors worried about a global economic collapse. But the metal has fallen out of favor with stocks in the midst of a five year-old bull market.

"The fact that the equity market continues to be strong doesn't give traders much incentive to get into gold," said Rob Kurzatkowski, senior commodities analyst at optionsXpress.

Gold will probably continue to trade in the range it has been in for most of the year, between $1,200 and $1,300 an ounce, Kurzatkowski added.

"Gold may just continue to grind here," he said. "There are too many factors underpinning the market for gold to collapse, but there's not enough to spark the metal higher either."

here:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/20/investing/gold-prices/index.html

Commodities
http://money.cnn.com/data/commodities/

Turing Test and the Singularity - 06.23.2014

There's been a lot of news and discussion concerning a computer pass the famous Turing Test.

What's the Turing Test you ask?

Turing test

The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. In the original illustrative example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how closely the answer resembles typical human answers. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render words into audio.[2]

The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words."[3] Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?"[4] This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against all the major objections to the proposition that "machines can think".[5]

In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticized, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.[1][6]

sources here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

made by this man:

Alan Turing



Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (/ˈtjʊərɪŋ/ TEWR-ing; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, computer scientist, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer.[2][3][4] Turing is widely considered as the "Father of Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.[5]

sources and more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

==========================================

Did the Singularity Just Happen?
· June 9, 2014
AUTHOR: PETER ROTHMAN

It has been all over the tech news for the past 24 hours, an "artificial intelligence" agent or chatbot known as "Eugene Goostman" has passed the famous Turing Test. Or did it?

Did the Singularity just happen?

Unfortunately not.

So, what really happened in this Turing Test challenge and what does it mean for the future of humanity and our machines?

The original press release states, "The 65 year-old iconic Turing Test was passed for the very first time by supercomputer Eugene Goostman during Turing Test 2014 held at the renowned Royal Society in London on Saturday." and further continues "If a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five minute keyboard conversations it passes the test. No computer has ever achieved this, until now. Eugene managed to convince 33% of the human judges that it was human."

First, some background is required in order to understand exactly what the Turing Test is and what it is not. Perhaps understandably there is some confusion over exactly what Turing said and meant as the Test.

The Turing Test originally appeared in Turing's 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" which can be found here. In the paper, Turing outlines the procedure of the Test which he calls the Imitation Game:

"The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B"

Here's exactly what Turing said that leads to confusion:

"It will simplify matters for the reader if I explain first my own beliefs in the matter. Consider first the more accurate form of the question. I believe that in about fifty years' time it will be possible, to programme computers, with a storage capacity of about 10^9, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning."

Clearly this is not a statement of a success criteria for the Test, and the statement does not appear in the section of the paper where the Test or Imitation Game is described and specified but in later section on defending the notion against objections. In the earlier section where the Imitation Game is defined, Turing arguably implies that a single instance of fooling a human would constitute passing of the Test.  In some limited sense then, the Turing Test was passed years ago and in fact the software Eugene Goostman has previously fooled judges in Turing Test competitions.

The press release actually anticipated this objection right up front, ""Some will claim that the Test has already been passed. The words Turing Test have been applied to similar competitions around the world."

However this recent test was not a single "one off" but  included a panel of 25 judges who each reviewed five competing software programs.

Turing himself was ambiguous and incomplete in describing the Test and he made various statements about the Test on different occasions. Some of these were in his technical publications but others were in broadcast interviews. For example, he never states how long the procedure should take or what other criteria might be used for ending the test in the original paper. Further, it is not well known that Turing offered a somewhat different formulation of the Test in 1952 wherein he suggested the use of a panel of randomly selected judges. In the 1952 version, Turing states that at least 50% or a simple majority is require to pass his Test. The 1952 formulation was presented in a BBC talk broadcast "Can Digital Computers Think" in which Turing also predicted that the Test wouldn't be passed for at least 100 years or not before 2050. To further the ambiguity, Turing failed to mention that there should be a human and computer participant in each trial in this presentation perhaps modifying the idea of the Test in a problematic way that introduces bias.

It seems that this idea about 30% being a passing mark is a mistaken understanding resulting from taking Turing's 1950 prediction about future computer performance out of context. The confusion is understandable since this mistaken idea is widely but erroneously reported in the literature. But if you read the original in context it is clear that Turing was predicting machine performance and not stating the success criteria for the Imitation Game.

According to the press release, "Eugene was 'born' in 2001." and he has been under continued development since. The announcement continues, "This year we improved the 'dialog controller' which makes the conversation far more human-like when compared to programs that just answer questions. Going forward we plan to make Eugene smarter and continue working on improving what we refer to as 'conversation logic'." 

Based on the press frenzy, you might have assumed that this performance was a huge leap forward for Eugene. But it wasn't.  Back in 2012 Goostman had fooled 29% of the judges meaning the 2014 result is an improvement of just 4%. And with a panel of 25 judges this means just one additional judge was fooled from the 2012 trial, hardly what we might call a great leap ahead in performance. However this test was "open ended", that is, the judges were not restricted in their questioning or question areas. While open ended tests are obviously more challenging, the actual difference here is small and possibly not due to a real advancement in "intelligence" or performance.

The press release states, " Our main idea was that he can claim that he knows anything, but his age also makes it perfectly reasonable that he doesn't know everything. We spent a lot of time developing a character with a believable personality." But beyond avoiding answering, the chatbot isn't really able to do much. The implications will therefore be quite limited.

Eugene doesn't have the ability to learn or even remember very much within the five minute test period for example. It doesn't utilize a database of domain knowledge that a real 13 year old would have. It is in essence a parlor trick. This will greatly limit the utility of this software in practice and I have to question some of the claimed application areas at least near term.

In my experience, it is trivially easy to get nonsense out of Eugene if you know what to say.

While text based agents that can reliably imitate human interactions will eventually be a big deal, this software's performance is insufficient to maintain the required illusion. Imagine using a Eugene Goostman bot as a "mindclone" to answer your office telephone while you skip out to the beach or a long lunch. I am sorry to report that this software simply isn't going to do a very good job if your boss calls and even if it fooled the caller, it couldn't explain to you what they wanted. Generally speaking this test result may say more about the gullibility of the panel of judges than intelligence or power of the machine. The absence of a control group makes it impossible to rule this out.

A stronger form of the Turing Test would include a control group and could be conducted following Turing's 1952 explanation using the Internet to gather a large pool of potential non-specialist judges from which to randomly sample. In addition the success criteria of a simple majority stated by Turing in 1952 makes some sense while the widely reported 30% threshold does not. This stronger Internet based test seems like a viable and useful idea to further AI research.

But sadly we'll have to wait a bit longer for the Singularity to happen.

here:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2014/06/09/did-the-singularity-just-happen/

================ more here ================

No, Eugene didn’t pass the Turing Test – but he will soon
By Jamie Bartlett Science Last updated: June 21st, 2014
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/jamiebartlett/100013858/no-eugene-didnt-pass-the-turing-test-but-he-will-soon/

Google futurist Ray Kurzweil and other experts say chatbot didn't pass Turing Test
By Jacob Kastrenakes on June 11, 2014 01:44 pm



High-profile members of the tech community are pushing back against reports over the weekend that said a computer had passed the Turing Test for the first time, tricking a group of judges into believing that it was human. The feat was performed using a chatbot named Eugene Goostman that pretends to be a 13 year old writing in a second language. But though the machine clearly passed the tests put forward by the competition that it was a part of, many are arguing that this was not, in fact, an accurate Turing Test.

That's because the test doesn't define specific rules, meaning it's up to the public at large to determine whether a computer has actually passed it. Ray Kurzweil, Google's engineering director and a noted futurist, is among those saying that this isn't that moment. In a blog post addressing the reports, Kurzweil quotes an excerpt from his 2004 book, The Singularity Is Near. "Because the definition of the Turing Test will vary from person to person, Turing Test capable machines will not arrive on a single day, and there will be a period during which we will hear claims that machines have passed the threshold," he wrote. "Invariably, these early claims will be debunked by knowledgeable observers, probably including myself."

He does that now, explaining that restrictions on the test posed big problems. For one, that the bot claimed to be 13 and writing in a second language excused major flaws. Judges testing the machine were also limited to five minutes of interaction with it, raising the chances of them being momentarily fooled. "I chatted with the chatbot Eugene Goostman, and was not impressed," Kurzweil writes. "Eugene does not keep track of the conversation, repeats himself word for word, and often responds with typical chatbot non sequiturs."

read more here:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/11/5800440/ray-kurzweil-and-others-say-turing-test-not-passed

================================================

What is the Singularity?

Technological singularity

The technological singularity, or simply the singularity, is a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization, and perhaps human nature.[1] Because the capabilities of such an intelligence may be difficult for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is often seen as an occurrence (akin to a gravitational singularity) beyond which the future course of human history is unpredictable or even unfathomable.[2]

The first use of the term "singularity" in this context was by mathematician John von Neumann. In 1958, regarding a summary of a conversation with von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam described "ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue".[3] The term was popularized by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement, or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes of the singularity.[4] Futurist, and inventor of the portable reading machine for the blind, Ray Kurzweil cited von Neumann's use of the term in a foreword to von Neumann's classic The Computer and the Brain.

Proponents of the singularity typically postulate an "intelligence explosion",[5][6] where superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds, that might occur very quickly and might not stop until the agent's cognitive abilities greatly surpass that of any human.

Kurzweil predicts the singularity to occur around 2045[7] whereas Vinge predicts some time before 2030.[8] At the 2012 Singularity Summit, Stuart Armstrong did a study of artificial general intelligence (AGI) predictions by experts and found a wide range of predicted dates, with a median value of 2040. Discussing the level of uncertainty in AGI estimates, Armstrong said in 2012, "It's not fully formalized, but my current 80% estimate is something like five to 100 years."[9]



larger image here: http://i.imgur.com/1C0YwWl.jpg



larger image here: http://i.imgur.com/o4TTpoZ.png

sources and more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity





larger image here: http://i.imgur.com/p8jJOkE.jpg

In relation to Prophecy...





Newswatch Magazine: November 2013



To understand the future, you must understand the past. What will blossom in the time ahead, was a seed planted years back. A seed of rebellion, of knowledge, and of deception. The world may believe that they will and have awoken to it, but in reality its already growing. A future budding into a rancid concept of the past.

more here:
http://www.newswatchmagazine.org/magazine/november-2013/

Is this Christian?

Obama figurine placed in urinal at conservative conference
06/20/14 02:06 PM—Updated 06/20/14 05:02 PM

This is real: A small figurine of President Obama’s head was seen at the bottom of a men’s urinal at the GOP’s Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference on Friday.

The Huffington Post’s Igor Bobic originally discovered the figurine in the men’s restroom outside of the conference hall at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.



The pro-family, conservative Christian group was established by Ralph Reed, former senior adviser for the George W. Bush and Dick Cheney campaigns. The organization, according to its website, is committed to educating and mobilizing people of faith to be effective citizens. Members strive to influence public policy and enact legislation that strengthens families and protects life and marriage.

sources here:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-figurine-urinal-gop--faith-freedom-conference

Let's cut the non-sense, this group is claiming this, inviting all kinds of people who probably believe they are Christian, but the Word of God says otherwise.

Matthew 7:20
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 
23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Acts 5:32
And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.

I Corinthians 5:8
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Joshua 24:14
Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD.

Isaiah 8:20
To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Whoever did this, is basically doing he same thing that Skull n Bones members do to each other.

Best Kept Secrets of Mysterious Societies
http://vimeo.com/5859563

The Good Shepherd (film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Shepherd_%28film%29

This is why the argument that they are Christian.

You can also apply this to those who burned images of ANY President we've ever had.

That kind of behavior is of Babylon, not of Christ.

Romans 12:14
Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.

Matthew 5:44
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

If you consider the Elite your Enemy, then you just read how the Words of Jesus Christ telling you to pray for them.
I mean really.

putin and obama - the reality
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/03/putin-and-obama-reality.html

"This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility"
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/05/this-is-my-last-election-after-my.html

Cashless Society Update - 06.21.2014

Israel aims to restrict use of cash to fight money laundering
BY STEVEN SCHEER
JERUSALEM Mon May 26, 2014 9:16am EDT

May 26 (Reuters) - Cash transactions between businesses will be limited to 5,000 shekels ($1,400) under an Israeli government plan to fight money laundering and tax evasion.

Harel Locker, director-general of the prime minister's office, said Israel was likely to collect 40 billion-50 billion shekels from the move - nearly 20 percent of the country's annual budget.

"This is a lot of money and we want this money," Locker told reporters. "We want to be a leading country in the battle against tax evasion and money laundering."

Israel is about to start debating the 2015 state budget, and it is seeking ways to raise revenue and spend more on health, education and infrastructure.

Locker headed a government panel that issued its interim recommendations on turning Israel into a cashless society on Monday. These include limiting businesses initially to cash or cash-equivalent transactions of 7,500 shekels - down from 20,000 shekels currently - and no more than 5,000 shekels after a year.

Private citizens will be allowed cash deals of 15,000 shekels. The new rules would also limit the use of checks.

Many European countries have similar restrictions.

In 2012, there were 3 million unidentified cash transactions of more than 5,000 shekels for a value of 273 billion shekels, according to the prime minister's office. Locker said some of the money being laundered is used by organised crime and backers of terrorism.

"Cash and cash equivalents are the fuel of the black economy," said Locker, whose committee was appointed by prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As part of the move to reduce the use of cash, the panel recommended that banks issue debit cards. Banks now only issue credit cards, and Locker said costs would come down with debit cards since there is no credit involved.

He expressed confidence that most citizens will comply with the new rules, since violating them would be a crime and most transactions by ordinary people are for less than 5,000 shekels.

After another round of hearings, Locker's committee will issue final recommendations, which could take a couple of months. It will then require parliamentary approval. Locker expects the law to be approved by the end of 2014.

($1 = 3.4822 Israeli Shekels) (Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Larry King)

here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/26/israel-moneylaundering-idUSL6N0OC2QG20140526

another read on this:

Government Plan Would Transform Israel Into The World’s First Cashless Society
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/27/2014 20:15 -0400
read here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-27/government-plan-would-transform-israel-world%E2%80%99s-first-cashless-society

Israel’s ‘cashless society’ won’t pay, say critics
A plan to limit the use of cash contains too many logistical and legal problems, economists and attorneys say
BY DAVID SHAMAH June 2, 2014, 7:58 pm
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-cashless-society-wont-pay-say-critics/