Classics that crowd our roads with their old cars!
http://www.youtube.com/embed/qxCpK1W_
Gjw?feature=player_embedded
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I leave Thursday for Miami, where I will be attending Passover with our son's in law's and extended family. To my Jewish friends and memo readers, a Happy Passover.
Yes, they do not look ordinary but if you look inside you will find beautiful hearts.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=62FQzu_1Q10
and
To my Christian friends and memo readers, I wished you a Happy Easter some weeks ago.
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Commentary on the effect of negative interest rates.
The author's conclusion, after discussing the effect with a 'fiat' expert, is what I have been writing. The consequence is deflationary! The world's economic tire is flat and you cannot re-inflate by withdrawing money from the system or air from the tire. (See 1 below.)
Meanwhile, Doug Casey compares today with the Great Depression. Time will tell whether he will be right in his predictions and comparisons but it still remains a worthwhile read and something you should allow yourself to think about.(See 1a below.)
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Is it time to take our civilization back? (See 2 below.)
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Glick argues Obama has made the world less safe and more likely to experience a nuclear confrontation. (See 3 below.)
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Doubt the Greens will talk about this. (See 4 below.)
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Today I attended a presentation by Ambassador Ido Aharoni and it was one of the most enlightened presentations I have ever attended. He spoke for about 15 or so minutes and then responded to questions.
I will do a thumbnail review of his comments and only hope I can do it justice. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)What Negative Interest Rates Actually Do to the Global Economy
By Chris Mayer, editor, Bonner Private Portfolio
Last week, I traveled to St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, with E.B. Tucker, editor of the Casey Report… to dig deeper into how this works.
We met with Warren Mosler, a legendary money manager who retired there about 13 years ago.
Mosler racked up a truly amazing track record. From 1978 through 1997, his fund was one of the top ranked in the world. And he had only one losing month – a drop of one-tenth of one percentage point.
Mosler's secret weapon was his grasp of how the "plumbing" of the modern fiat-based money system works. His specialty was exploiting other investors' misunderstanding of the fiat money system.
E.B. and I met Mosler for breakfast at the Tamarind Reef Resort. He had just come in from a game of tennis. He is a trim 67, friendly, and easygoing.
We talked for nearly two hours. And Mosler explained why lower rates don't help the economy…
As he put it, lower income payments – on either bonds or bank deposits – suck money out of the economy. This is completely contrary to what most people think.
As Bill has been warning, central bankers are laboring under a dangerous myth.
They believe lower interest rates stimulate economic growth.
But the truth is that ZIRP (zero-interest-rate policy)… and now NIRP (negative-interest-rate policy)… further depress an already weak global economy.
Lower rates simply mean the private sector earns less income than before. That means less money floating around.
That's deflationary, not inflationary.
When you realize that ultra-low… and negative… interest rates just take away people's money, the insanity of what central banks are doing becomes apparent.
Mosler believes – and E.B. and I agree – that the world economy is on the edge of a deflationary recession.
And ZIRP and NIRP are making it worse.
Mosler's advice: Bet on a stronger euro against the dollar.
Most people think the European Central Bank (ECB) will continue to drive rates lower. And that these actions will weaken currencies and spur inflation.
But this is a myth.
Governments are net payers of interest. If you hold a government bond, the interest payments are part of your income. When a central bank lowers rates, they lower that income. That's deflation… not inflation.
Lower rates mean less money floating around. It strengthens currencies. And that's what we've seen with the U.S. dollar.
And there's another reason to expect a stronger euro…
The European Union (EU) has a large and growing trade surplus. When EU exporters ship goods, they're paid in a foreign currency. But that currency has to be converted back to euros to pay their workers. This drives the demand for euros higher.
Mosler pointed out that for two decades, Japan ran large and persistent trade surpluses (and had zero interest rates). During that time, the yen was among the strongest currencies in the world.
In sum, lower income due to falling interest rates, coupled with rising exports, makes the euro harder to get… and more valuable.
So why has the euro fallen so much over the last two years?
Because almost everyone thinks that lower rates will weaken the euro. So they're selling euros. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mosler had a memorable analogy:
When the euro selling ends, the turnaround could happen quickly. So you want to be in the trade before a big move. But getting the timing right is tricky on this trade…
One clue might be some big gaining days. For example, on December 3, the euro had its biggest one-day percentage gain against the dollar in over six years.
A harbinger of things to come…
Regards,
Chris Mayer
The European Union (EU) has a large and growing trade surplus. When EU exporters ship goods, they're paid in a foreign currency. But that currency has to be converted back to euros to pay their workers. This drives the demand for euros higher.
Mosler pointed out that for two decades, Japan ran large and persistent trade surpluses (and had zero interest rates). During that time, the yen was among the strongest currencies in the world.
In sum, lower income due to falling interest rates, coupled with rising exports, makes the euro harder to get… and more valuable.
So why has the euro fallen so much over the last two years?
Because almost everyone thinks that lower rates will weaken the euro. So they're selling euros. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mosler had a memorable analogy:
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When the euro selling ends, the turnaround could happen quickly. So you want to be in the trade before a big move. But getting the timing right is tricky on this trade…
One clue might be some big gaining days. For example, on December 3, the euro had its biggest one-day percentage gain against the dollar in over six years.
A harbinger of things to come…
Regards,
Chris Mayer
1a)
Doug Casey: ‘The Greater Depression has started’… Comparing the 1930s and today
From Doug Casey, Founder, Casey Research:
You’ve heard the axiom “History repeats itself.” It does, but never in exactly the same way. To apply the lessons of the past, we must understand the differences of the present.
During the American Revolution, the British came prepared to fight a successful war — but against a European army. Their formations, which gave them devastating firepower, and their red coats, which emphasized their numbers, proved the exact opposite of the tactics needed to fight a guerrilla war.
Before World War I, generals still saw the cavalry as the flower of their armies. Of course, the horse soldiers proved worse than useless in the trenches.
Before World War II, in anticipation of a German attack, the French built the “impenetrable” Maginot Line. History repeated itself and the attack came, but not in the way they expected. Their preparations were useless because the Germans didn’t attempt to penetrate it; they simply went around it, and France was defeated.
The generals don’t prepare for the last war out of perversity or stupidity, but rather because past experience is all they have to go by. Most of them simply don’t know how to interpret that experience. They are correct in preparing for another war but wrong in relying upon what worked in the last one.
Investors, unfortunately, seem to make the same mistakes in marshaling their resources as do the generals. If the last 30 years have been prosperous, they base their actions on more prosperity. Talk of a depression isn’t real to them because things are, in fact, so different from the 1930s. To most people, a depression means ’30s-style conditions, and since they don’t see that, they can’t imagine a depression. That’s because they know what the last depression was like, but they don’t know what one is. It’s hard to visualize something you don’t understand.
Some of them who are a bit more clever might see an end to prosperity and the start of a depression but — although they’re going to be a lot better off than most — they’re probably looking for this depression to be like the last one.
Although nobody can predict with absolute certainty what this depression will be like, you can be fairly well-assured it won’t be an instant replay of the last one. But just because things will be different doesn’t mean you have to be taken by surprise.
To define the likely differences between this depression and the last one, it’s helpful to compare the situation today to that in the early 1930s. The results aren’t very reassuring.
CORPORATE BANKRUPTCY
1930s
Banks, insurance companies, and big corporations went under on a major scale. Institutions suffered the consequences of past mistakes, and there was no financial safety net to catch them as they fell. Mistakes were liquidated and only the prepared and efficient survived.
Today
The world’s financial institutions are in even worse shape than the last time, but now business ethics have changed and everyone expects the government to “step in.” Laws are already in place that not only allow but require government intervention in many instances. This time, mistakes will be compounded, and the strong, productive, and efficient will be forced to subsidize the weak, unproductive, and inefficient. It’s ironic that businesses were bankrupted in the last depression because the prices of their products fell too low; this time, it’ll be because they went too high.
UNEMPLOYMENT
1930s
If a man lost his job, he had to find another one as quickly as possible simply to keep from going hungry. A lot of other men in the same position competed desperately for what work was available, and an employer could hire those same men for much lower wages and expect them to work harder than what was the case before the depression. As a result, the men could get jobs and the employer could stay in business.
Today
The average man first has months of unemployment insurance; after that, he can go on welfare if he can’t find “suitable work.” Instead of taking whatever work is available, especially if it means that a white collar worker has to get his hands dirty, many will go on welfare. This will decrease the production of new wealth and delay the recovery. The worker no longer has to worry about some entrepreneur exploiting (i.e., employing) him at what he considers an unfair wage because the minimum wage laws, among others, precludes that possibility today. As a result, men stay unemployed and employers will go out of business.
WELFARE
1930s
If hard times really put a man down and out, he had little recourse but to rely on his family, friends, or local social and church group. There was quite a bit of opprobrium attached to that, and it was only a last resort. The breadlines set up by various government bodies were largely cosmetic measures to soothe the more terror-prone among the voting populace. People made do because they had to, and that meant radically reducing their standards of living and taking any job available at any wage. There were very, very few people on welfare during the last depression.
Today
It’s hard to say how those who are still working are going to support those who aren’t in this depression. Even in the U.S., 50% of the country is already on some form of welfare. But food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, Social Security, and local programs are already collapsing in prosperous times. And when the tidal wave hits, they’ll be totally overwhelmed. There aren’t going to be any breadlines because people who would be standing in them are going to be shopping in local supermarkets just like people who earned their money. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of it is that people in general have come to think that these programs can just magically make wealth appear, and they expect them to be there, while a whole class of people have grown up never learning to survive without them. It’s ironic, yet predictable, that the programs that were supposed to help those who “need” them will serve to devastate those very people.
REGULATIONS
1930s
Most economies have been fairly heavily regulated since the early 1900s, and those regulations caused distortions that added to the severity of the last depression. Rather than allow the economy to liquidate, in the case of the U.S., the Roosevelt regime added many, many more regulations—fixing prices, wages, and the manner of doing business in a static form. It was largely because of these regulations that the depression lingered on until the end of World War II, which “saved” the economy only through its massive re-inflation of the currency. Had the government abolished most controls then in existence, instead of creating new ones, the depression would have been less severe and much shorter.
Today
The scores of new agencies set up since the last depression have created far more severe distortions in the ways people relate than those of 80 years ago; the potential adjustment needed is proportionately greater. Unless government restrictions and controls on wages, working conditions, energy consumption, safety, and such are removed, a dramatic economic turnaround during the Greater Depression will be impossible.
TAXES
1930s
The income tax was new to the U.S. in 1913, and by 1929, although it took a maximum 23.1% bite, that was only at the $1 million level. The average family’s income then was $2,335, and that put average families in the 1/10th of 1 percent bracket. And there was still no Social Security tax, no state income tax, no sales tax, and no estate tax. Furthermore, most people in the country didn’t even pay the income tax because they earned less than the legal minimum or they didn’t bother filing. The government, therefore, had immense untapped sources of revenue to draw upon to fund its schemes to “cure” the depression. Roosevelt was able to raise the average income tax from 1.35% to 16.56% during his tenure—an increase of 1,100%.
Today
Everyone now pays an income tax in addition to all the other taxes. In most Western countries, the total of direct and indirect taxes is over 50%. For that reason, it seems unlikely that direct taxes will go much higher. But inflation is constantly driving everyone into higher brackets and will have the same effect. A person has had to increase his or her income faster than inflation to compensate for taxes. Whatever taxes a man does pay will reduce his standard of living by just that much, and it’s reasonable to expect tax evasion and the underground economy to boom in response. That will cushion the severity of the depression somewhat while it serves to help change the philosophical orientation of society.
PRICES
1930s
Prices dropped radically because billions of dollars of inflationary currency were wiped out through the stock market crash, bond defaults, and bank failures. The government, however, somehow equated the high prices of the inflationary ’20s with prosperity and attempted to prevent a fall in prices by such things as slaughtering livestock, dumping milk in the gutter, and enacting price supports. Since the collapse wiped out money faster than it could be created, the government felt the destruction of real wealth was a more effective way to raise prices. In other words, if you can’t increase the supply of money, decrease the supply of goods.
Nonetheless, the 1930s depression was a deflationary collapse, a time when currency became worth more and prices dropped. This is probably the most confusing thing to most Americans since they assume—as a result of that experience—that “depression” means “deflation.” It’s also perhaps the biggest single difference between this depression and the last one.
Today
Prices could drop, as they did the last time, but the amount of power the government now has over the economy is far greater than what was the case 80 years ago. Instead of letting the economy cleanse itself by allowing the financial markets to collapse, governments will probably bail out insolvent banks, create mortgages wholesale to prop up real estate, and central banks will buy bonds to keep their prices from plummeting. All of these actions mean that the total money supply will grow enormously. Trillions will be created to avoid deflation. If you find men selling apples on street corners, it won’t be for 5 cents apiece, but $5 apiece. But there won’t be a lot of apple sellers because of welfare, nor will there be a lot of apples because of price controls.
Consumer prices will probably skyrocket as a result, and the country will have an inflationary depression. Unlike the 1930s, when people who held dollars were king, by the end of the Greater Depression, people with dollars will be wiped out.
THE SOCIETY
1930s
The world was largely rural or small-town. Communications were slow, but people tended to trust the media. The government exercised considerable moral suasion, and people tended to support it. The business of the country was business, as Calvin Coolidge said, and men who created wealth were esteemed. All told, if you were going to have a depression, it was a rather stable environment for it; despite that, however, there were still plenty of riots, marches, and general disorder.
Today
The country is now urban and suburban, and although communications are rapid, there’s little interpersonal contact. The media are suspect. The government is seen more as an adversary or an imperial ruler than an arbitrator accepted by a consensus of concerned citizens. Businessmen are viewed as unscrupulous predators who take advantage of anyone weak enough to be exploited.
A major financial smashup in today’s atmosphere could do a lot more than wipe out a few naives in the stock market and unemploy some workers, as occurred in the ’30s; some sectors of society are now time bombs. It’s hard to say, for instance, what third- and fourth-generation welfare recipients are going to do when the going gets really tough.
THE WAY PEOPLE WORK
1930s
Relatively slow transportation and communication localized economic conditions. The U.S. itself was somewhat insulated from the rest of the world, and parts of the U.S. were fairly self-contained. Workers were mostly involved in basic agriculture and industry, creating widgets and other tangible items. There wasn’t a great deal of specialization, and that made it easier for someone to move laterally from one occupation into the next, without extensive retraining, since people were more able to produce the basics of life on their own. Most women never joined the workforce, and the wife in a marriage acted as a “backup” system should the husband lose his job.
Today
The whole world is interdependent, and a war in the Middle East or a revolution in Africa can have a direct and immediate effect on a barber in Chicago or Krakow. Since the whole economy is centrally controlled from Washington, a mistake there can be a national disaster. People generally aren’t in a position to roll with the punches as more than half the people in the country belong to what is known as the “service economy.” That means, in most cases, they’re better equipped to shuffle papers than make widgets. Even “necessary” services are often terminated when times get hard. Specialization is part of what an advanced industrial economy is all about, but if the economic order changes radically, it can prove a liability.
THE FINANCIAL MARKETS
1930s
The last depression is identified with the collapse of the stock market, which lost over 90% of its value from 1929 to 1933. A secure bond was the best possible investment as interest rates dropped radically. Commodities plummeted, reducing millions of farmers to near subsistence levels. Since most real estate was owned outright and taxes were low, a drop in price didn’t make a lot of difference unless you had to sell. Land prices plummeted, but since people bought it to use, not unload to a greater fool, they didn’t usually have to sell.
Today
This time, stocks — and especially commodities — are likely to explode on the upside as people panic into them to get out of depreciating dollars in general and bonds in particular. Real estate will be — next to bonds — the most devastated single area of the economy because no one will lend money long term. And real estate is built on the mortgage market, which will vanish.
Everybody who invests in this depression thinking that it will turn out like the last one will be very unhappy with the results. Being aware of the differences between the last depression and this one makes it a lot easier to position yourself to minimize losses and maximize profits.
So much for the differences. The crucial, obvious, and most important similarity, however, is that most people’s standard of living will fall dramatically.
The Greater Depression has started. Most people don’t know it because they can neither confront the thought nor understand the differences between this one and the last.
As a climax approaches, many of the things that you’ve built your life around in the past are going to change and change radically. The ability to adjust to new conditions is the sign of a psychologically healthy person.
Look for the opportunity side of the crisis. The Chinese symbol for “crisis” is a combination of two other symbols — one for danger and one for opportunity.
The dangers that society will face in the years ahead are regrettable, but there’s no point in allowing anxiety, frustration, or apathy to overcome you. Face the future with courage, curiosity, and optimism rather than fear. You can be a winner, and if you plan carefully, you will be. The great period of change will give you a chance to regain control of your destiny. And that in itself is the single most important thing in life. This depression can give you that opportunity; it’s one of the many ways the Greater Depression can be a very good thing for both you as an individual and society as a whole.
Crux Note: Most people have no idea what really happens when an economy collapses, let alone how to prepare…
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2) Enough With The Teddy Bears And Tears: It’s Time To Take Our Civilization Back
Teddy bears, tears, candles, cartoons, murals, mosaics, flowers, flags, projections, hashtags, balloons, wreaths, lights, vigils, scarves, and more. These are the best solutions the Western world seems to come up with every few months when we are slammed by another Islamist terrorist attack. We are our own sickness.
Since the world learned of the dozens dead, hundreds injured, and hundreds of thousands affected by Monday’s attack on the NATO and European Union capital, we have seen an outpouring of what is commonly known as “solidarity”.
This word – most commonly associated with hard-left politics, trades union activism, socialism, and poseur indie rock bands – has come to mean very little in reality. In effect, “standing in solidarity” with someone now means that you have observed the situation, changed your Facebook profile picture accordingly, and patted yourself on the back.
And if like dead bodies Facebook profile pictures lost heat, it would be accurate to say that the Tricolores that adorned the social media profiles of many had hardly become cold before we were all changing the colours of the bands on the flags. From blue to black. From white to yellow. The blood red remains.
Because nowadays, teddy bears are the new resolve. They symbolise everything we have become in response to our way of life being threatened, and our people being slaughtered on our streets: inanimate, squishy, and full of crap.
Our security services and our police, hamstrung by political correctness, are just as interested (or more?) in rounding up Twitter “hate speech” offenders than criminal, rapist, or terrorist migrants. Our borders are as porous as our brains. We refuse to realise that there are now literally millions of people amongst us who hate us. Who hate our way of life, and who will, one day, dominate our public life.
But of course, such statements are dismissed as fear-mongering, alarmist, or “out of touch with reality”. As if the data doesn’t exist, or the demographics aren’t shifting quickly enough to notice.As if vast parts of our towns and cities haven’t become ghettos, or no-go zones, or hubs of child grooming activity, or terrorism.
As if mosques, schools, prisons, and universities aren’t used as recruiting grounds for radicals.
Instead, we will now think deeply about how we can “reach out” to these populations. How we can “co-exist” and “be tolerant” of one another. As if toleration – which is actually the permittance of what is not actually approved or desired – is a healthy aspiration for a society.It is as if we model our countries on the practice of bending over and “taking one for the team”, chastising those who fail to “tolerate” the most barbaric traditions of alien cultures. It is everything this cartoon – obviously branded “racist” – suggests.
“But come on, Raheem, not all immigrants, or Muslims, are criminals, or rapists…. you’re not!”Yeah – and look at me. Excoriated daily by Islamists on Twitter. Why? Because I’ve integrated and I love my country. Because I refuse to believe that an Islamic caliphate is the best thing for Britain, or anywhere, quite frankly. Where is my white (or brown) knight? Where are the voices of the moderate Muslim world defending me?
Not that I need protection, or defence, but some people aren’t as hard headed or resolved as I am.Thusly, the albeit minority evil amongst British Muslims is thriving because good Muslims are doing nothing. At some point, we have to question why. I’m not sure most people are ready for the answers to that one.
So continue to sit there with your head in your hands. Mourning only to make yourself feel better. Missing people you never knew. Exclaiming, as the most immature of minds does: “Why can’t we all just get along?”
Expressing sympathy is no bad thing. But to be truly sympathetic towards someone under attack, one must be chivalrous, gallant, and unafraid.
It is not enough to scrawl “no fear” on a post it note, and stick it onto some £3 flowers.We must be fearless in electing leaders who we feel will best keep us safe. It is one of the few areas of our lives in which we should be able to feel comfortable. We pay our taxes, you keep us safe.
If not, then we must arm ourselves. If our governments refuse to protect us, or even begin to use the tools with which we empower them against us: surveillance, counter-terror laws, detention, then we will need to take the law back into our own hands. We cannot be afraid of doing so. It is where our societies all sprung from.
It is also time to start to make serious, wide-reaching demands of our politicians on the subject of immigration and Islamism.
When U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump said what he said about a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, the tolerance lobby went into overdrive: full condemnations across the board from politicians – including presidents and prime ministers, across the media sphere, and you will recall the House of Commons debating a petition to ban the man from the country.Now even the most politically correct of Hollywood luvvies is asking: is he really that wrong on this?
Do we leave cities with soldiers on patrol. With “peace” signs scrawled onto bomb-struck buildings? Or do we leave them safe places, with real promise for the future. Like our parents, or at least our parents’ parents, left us.
In order to confront this question, we have to get to the root cause of the problem. There is too much immigration, or at least, not enough hand-picked immigration, into the Western world today.People of my age had no choice that our post-war leaders felt the heavy hand of post-colonial guilt on their shoulders, and decided to open up our countries, and flood us with “diversity”.But we do have a choice to not make the same mistakes again. And we have a duty to correct the ones that were made.
And yes, that does mean exactly what you think it means. It means ending mass migration. It means smashing apart ghettos and no go zones. It means repealing laws that allow for Sharia councils. It means asserting what it means to be British, or European, or American, without fearing a backlash from the political left, or the media classes who scarcely see a face my colour let alone darker.
Let them riot. Let them cry.
I would far rather be subjected to ceaseless “direct action” by the scourges of my own society than import others.
At least if my fellow countrymen are deplorable, I won’t get called a racist for pointing it out.So put down the teddy bears, burst the balloons, and let’s start demanding again that our countries are safe and civilised. And if we can’t find people who’ll make that happen for us… let’s do it ourselves.
Raheem Kassam is the Editor in Chief of Breitbart London. He tweets at @RaheemKassam and you can follow him on Facebook here
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Donna Rachel Edmunds assisted with photo selection for this article.
3)
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This past Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima. While there meeting with this G-7 counterparts, Kerry strongly hinted that his visit was a precursor to a visit to the site of the first nuclear bombing by President Barack Obama next month. The irony of course is that for all his professed commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons, Obama is responsible for drastically increasing the chance of nuclear war. Indeed, Obama’s own actions lend easily to the conclusion that he wishes to do penance for America’s decision to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, (and so end World War II with far fewer dead than a land invasion of Japan would have required), by enabling America’s enemies to target the US and its allies with nuclear weapons. Obama views his nuclear deal with Iran – the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – as his greatest foreign policy achievement. Unfortunately for his legacy building and for global security, for the past several weeks news stories have made clear that critics of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran – who claimed that far from preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the deal would enable Iran to develop them in broad daylight, and encourage Iran to step up its support for terror and regional aggression – were entirely correct. All of the warnings sounded by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other leaders have been borne out. All of the warnings sounded by the leaders of the Persian Gulf kingdoms were correct. Every major commitment Obama made to Congress and to US allies in the wake of the deal have been shown in retrospect to have been false. Obama told Congress that while the deal did require the US to drop its nuclear sanctions against Iran, the non-nuclear sanctions would remain in place. In recent weeks, media reports have made clear that the administration’s commitment to maintain non-nuclear sanctions on Iran has collapsed. This collapse is most immediately apparent in the administration’s helpless response to Iran’s recent tests of ballistic missiles. When Obama and his advisers sold the nuclear deal to Congress last summer, they promised that the binding UN Security Council resolution that Ambassador Samantha Power rushed to pass to anchor the nuclear deal maintained the previous UN ban on Iranian ballistic missile development. This, it works out, was a lie. The resolution significantly waters down the language. Given the weak language, today the Russians convincingly argue that Iran’s recent tests of ballistic missiles did not violate the UN resolution. Then and now, Obama and his advisers argued that ballistic missiles are not part of the mullahs’ nuclear project. This claim, which made little sense at the time, makes no sense whatsoever today. Ballistic missiles of course are the Iranians’ delivery systems of choice for their nuclear warheads. This fact was driven home last week when the Iranian media reported the opening of a high explosives factory in Tehran. Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehgan participated in the opening ceremony. According to nuclear experts, HMX or octogen high explosives are suitable for building nuclear triggers. In other words, Tehran just built, in a very public manner, a new facility for its military nuclear program. As Iran’s Tasnim news service explained, HMX is a “high explosive used almost exclusively in military applications, including as a solid rocket propellant.” Last week at his nuclear conference, Obama said that Iran has been abiding by the letter, but not the spirit of the nuclear deal. But this is another lie. Last summer Obama insisted that the deal would prevent Iran from developing and building nuclear weapons by imposing an intrusive, unlimited inspections regime on all of Iran’s nuclear sites. But this was a lie. As Eli Lake noted in Bloomberg News last week, in contravention of Obama’s explicit commitments to Congress, Iran is refusing to permit UN nuclear inspectors access to its military nuclear sites. Not only were UN inspectors barred last fall from visiting the Parchin nuclear military site where the Iranians are suspected of developing nuclear warheads. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency admitted recently that far from expanding its access to Iran’s nuclear sites, the deal severely limited it. Out of fear that Iran will walk away from the deal, the US is allowing Iran to block IAEA inspectors. So while the US gave up its right to unlimited inspection of Iran’s nuclear installations, and consequently has little way of knowing what is happening inside them, the US stands back and allows Iran to develop the means to deliver nuclear warheads which the US cannot know whether or not Iran possesses because it cannot access Iran’s nuclear facilities. But for Obama, none of this is a reason to stop canceling the sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, as Obama sees things, Iran’s non-compliance with the letter of the deal seems to be a reason to cancel the non-nuclear sanctions as well. Take the dollarization of the Iranian economy. Obama administration officials pledged to Congress that in the aftermath of the deal, Iran would remain barred from using US financial institutions and so barred from trading in the dollar. Yet, in what Omri Ceren from the Israeli Project refers to as a “one-hop, two-hops” process, the administration is allowing Iran to use foreign banks to gain access to the US dollar and dollarize is transactions. Following his visit to Hiroshima, Kerry traveled to the Persian Gulf where the US’s spurned Arab allies and commanders of the US navy’s Fifth Fleet demonstrated to him how Iran has been emboldened by the deal. Since it was concluded, they noted, Iran has stepped up its support for terrorism and its regional aggression. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and other states told Kerry that since the deal was concluded Iran’s support for terrorism and insurgencies has expanded in Yemen and Syria. Naval commanders reported on the four shipments of illicit Iranian arms the navy commandeered en route to Yemen. Although slightly embarrassed, Kerry was unmoved. He merely maintained Obama’s line that Iran is keeping the letter of the agreement if ignoring its spirit. He insisted that there are moderates in the regime that support the deal – although they have no power. Then, as The New York Times reported, Kerry said the US would “continue to lift the economic sanctions against Iran that it agreed to as part of the nuclear accord, even while imposing new ones to counter Tehran’s missile launches, an effort now underway at the UN Security Council.” But again, Russia has blocked further sanctions against Iran. Moreover Russia is doubling down on its deal to sell advanced SU-30 fighters to the Iranian air force. With the S-30, Iran will be able to end Israel’s air superiority and threaten all of its neighbors in the Persian Gulf. As to air forces, Iran’s Hezbollah proxy have inherited a US-trained one. According to testimony Middle East expert Tony Badran gave before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, the Lebanese Military Forces, generously supported by the US, is now a junior partner to Hezbollah. As Badran put it, “The partnership between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Hezbollah has grown to such an extent that it is now meaningful to speak of the LAF as an auxiliary force in Hezbollah’s war effort.” At Hiroshima Monday, Kerry and his fellow foreign ministers signed a declaration reaffirming their “commitment to seeking a safer world for all and to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.” They went on to pat themselves on the back for their nuclear deal with Iran, which they insisted showed that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – which the Iran deal effectively gutted – remains “the cornerstone of the international non-proliferation architecture.” Several commentators have urged Obama not to visit Hiroshima. But really, what would it matter? Obama’s lies about his nuclear deal launched the world on a course where the worst regimes now know that all they need to do to get immunity for their aggression is to develop nuclear weapons while the Obama administration hectors US allies to deplete their own nuclear arsenals. Visiting Hiroshima and symbolically apologizing for the US strikes that ended World War II would be far less devastating to the cause of international peace than the war Obama ensured by permitting the world’s most prolific sponsor of terrorism to acquire a nuclear arsenal. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4) How Fracking Has Reduced Greenhouse Gases
The U.S. Department of Energy published data last week with some amazing revelations -- so amazing that most Americans will find them hard to believe. As a nation, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 2 percent from last year. Over the past 14 years, our carbon emissions are down more than 10 percent. On a per-unit-of-GDP basis, U.S. carbon emissions are down by closer to 20 percent.
Even more stunning: We've reduced our carbon emissions more than virtually any other nation in the world, including most of Europe.
How can this be? We never ratified the Kyoto Treaty. We never adopted a national cap-and-trade system, or a carbon tax, as so many of the sanctimonious Europeans have done.
The answer isn't that the EPA has regulated CO2 out of the economy. With strict emission standards, the EPA surely has started to strangle our domestic industries, such as coal, and our electric utilities. But that's not the big story here.
The primary reason carbon emissions are falling is because of hydraulic fracturing -- or fracking. Some readers now are probably thinking I've been drinking or have lost my mind. Fracking technology for shale oil and gas drilling is supposed to be evil. Some states have outlawed it. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have come out against it in recent weeks. Schoolchildren have been bombarded with green propaganda about all the catastrophic consequences of fracking.
They are mostly lies. Fracking is simply a new way to get at America's vast storehouse of tens of trillions of dollars worth of shale oil and gas that lies beneath us, coast to coast -- from California to upstate New York. Fracking produces massive amounts of natural gas, and, as a consequence, natural gas prices have fallen in the past decade from above $8 per million BTUs to closer to $2 this year -- a 75 percent reduction -- due to the spike in domestic supplies.
This free fall in prices means that America is using far more natural gas for heating and electricity and much less coal. Here is how the International Energy Agency put it: "In the United States, (carbon) emissions declined by 2 percent, as a large switch from coal to natural gas use in electricity generation took place."
It also observes that the decline "was offset by increasing emissions in most other Asian developing economies and the Middle East, and also a moderate increase in Europe." We are growing faster than they are and reducing emissions more than they are, yet these are the nations that lecture us on polluting. Go figure.
Here at home, this market-driven transition has caused a pro-natural gas celebration by the green groups, right?
Hardly. Groups like the Sierra Club and their billionaire disciples have bet the farm on wind and solar power. They've launched anti-fracking campaigns and "beyond natural gas" advertising campaigns. But wind and solar are hopelessly uncompetitive when natural gas is so plentiful and so cheap. So are electric cars.
The media also have gotten this story completely wrong. Last week The New York Times celebrated the DOE's emissions findings as evidence that governmental iron-fist policies are working to stop global warming. For the first time "since the start of the Industrial Revolution," the Times argued, "GDP growth and carbon emissions have been decoupled."
The Times pretends that this development is because of green energy, but that's a fantasy. Wind and solar still account for only 3 percent of U.S. energy.
So here is the real story in a flash: Thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling technologies, we are producing more natural gas than ever before. Natural gas is a wonder fuel: It is cheap. It is abundant. America has more of it than anyone else -- enough to last several hundred years. And it is clean-burning. Even Nancy Pelosi inadvertently admitted this several years ago before someone had to whisper in her ear that, um, natural gas is a fossil fuel.
Meanwhile, the left has declared war on a technology that has done more to reduce carbon emissions and real pollution emissions than all the green programs ever invented. Maybe the reason is that they aren't so much against pollution as they are against progress.
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5) Amb Aharoni began with a story about a journalist who took a trip with Israel's IDF Chief of Staff. After the survey the journalist asked the Israeli General to describe in two words what they had seen. The general thought for a minute and said "Good" and then followed with "Not Good."
Not Good: Israel's neighborhood is a bad one.
Good: Four things:
a) Israel has done a magnificent job of handling immigration.
b) Israel is has become self sufficient in oil and gas and will soon be selling to others..
c) Israel has developed water sources and thus can expand and occupy barren territory for their exploding population. Israel sends water to Jordan for free because of the influx of fleeing Syrians, ie 2 plus million refugees impacting a nation of 4 plus million.
d) Israel is a land of creative people and thus has become the envy of the world in terms of development of technology etc.
In answers to questions Amb. Aharoni acknowledged Israel had done a poor job of responding to untruths.
First of all, Israel has allowed the world to buy into Palestinian claims about their existence and attachment to the land. The Jews were there long before the so called Palestinians and Israel has failed to effectively rebut false claims about their treatment at the hands of Israelis.
The greatest threat to The Middle East is not the Palestinian problem but the tribal conflict between the Arabs/Muslims Sunnis and Shia populations.
To make matters even worse and more bizarre the Pc'ers amongst us have allowed relativism to take hold. They have provided the excuse that those who behead, plunder and cause mass migrations and deaths are not to be blamed. Why? Because their culture and behaviour cannot be judged as between good and evil since everything is relative. After all, they have been subjected to their own brand of punishment. Thus, they are to be given a free moral "pass go card."
He pointed out the mistake Israel made by emphasizing the negative side of their amazing story and not presenting Israel's extraordinary development as an opportunistic oasis for those who want freedom and a life full of creative and rich experiences.
Israel needs to emphasize connectivity for those reluctant to invest in Israel, to experience Israel.
Israel has allowed academic prejudice to rule the day on campuses and Israel needs to cultivate future PHD's and expose them to the real story of Israel as opposed to the false propaganda spewed by Palestinians etc.
Amb Aharoni understands the issues Israel faces, the uniqueness of this small democratic oasis surrounded by a sea of tibal hatreds that began in the 7th century and persist to this day. What i found so intriguing is that Aharoni also has common sense and rational responses to the challenges Israel faces.
He discussed the Iran Deal and pointed out that it is bringing Sunni Arab nations closer to Israel because of the "common enemy" reality.
I failed to bring a tablet and pencil to themeeting and thus, did not capture all he had to say but I hope I have hit some of the highlights.
Again, his talk was one of the finest and most enlightening I have ever heard an Israeli give regarding the pros and cons of what Israel faces and what it must do to row forward through the intractable weeds that challenge navigating The Middle East.
He knows of our cousin Sam Grundwerg who will soon occupy his post as The Israeli Consul General in Los Angeles, a position Aharoni held before assuming the one in New York.
It is a shame so many of my memo readers failed to attend.
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