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In the absence of other evidence, interesting information but not confirmation of anything.
"Possibly related" would be a much better phrasing. Though additional updates seem to support that it was SEA.
A crucial thing to remember in a fog-of-war scenario is that all information becomes suspect. Your best response is to take actions that reduce uncertainty, risk, and volatility. Not which increase them.
I was wondering what was happening to the site as well. The bookmark icon for http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com changed to a generic wordpress icon just recently in my toolbar.
Is it me or would "china dumping us bonds" have absolutely no effect since the Federal reserve is already the only one buying us bonds in massive quantities ?
Yeah I don't think it would make much of a difference, with or without the Fed. They'd really have to try to spend the dollars & not just stick that money back into a bank, and the effects of that would be slow and noticeable in time for the US to react with some policy.
umm, no. It would be the end of the USD as you know it, instant hyperinflation and empty shelves in your local supermarket.
The point of dumping bonds is that they are saying they are worthless, they aren't trying to extract value from them by spending them somewhere else.
That would render other Central Bank dollar denominated reserve assets worthless too.
World trade, denominated in USD, would freeze, along with any American's relying on imported oil to warm their houses through the polar vortex.
So no, it wouldn't be business as usual...if this were a real story.
Yeah, until China hypothetically dumps its bonds, which is what is being discussed.
Good analogy though, because separating conjoined twins in a manner analogous to dumping all its bonds would kill both. The US economy would be in ruins, and the US would reply the only way it knows how, war. I suppose war is as much an economic tool as anything else. But there is another reason why China could never dump its bonds, it would destroy its biggest market, the US.
Capitalism, the biggest force for peace we have....... (If reading that last bit made you feel nauseous, imagine how I felt typing it. Im trying to kid myself it's ironic, but its not working.)
Yeah, that's what I used to think. I think that line of speculation is wrong though. Why exactly would world trade freeze? Just because China says that they don't want to value their bond holdings anymore doesn't mean that others will follow suit.
But china isn't the only one to use usd. Them saying "i don't give usd any value" doesn't means it's going to be true. At the minimum, USA will still use that currency no matter what, along with every US companies.
And since The US haven't defaulted yet on their debt, US bonds will still have at least some justifiable value.
If China dumped bonds, why would anyone buy debt from the USG when they can get it cheap on the open market that has just had 1 trillion dumped in it. The fed steps in, mops up all excess demand so Uncle Sam can keep on spending beyond its tax revenue. Very quickly, no one is going to accept USD in trade as the value plummets.
The USD being world reserve currency has been printed far beyond the needs for internal domestic trade. The US had to do this to lubricate world trade, however when the music stops all those dollars held in foreign banks will try and make their way home in order to obtain some value. A flood of dollars will then start bidding for goods and services from the US economy. Instant hyperinflation.
The US haven't defaulted on their debt because the roll over their debt with more USD.
My point was exactly what your last sentence said : they are already printing so much money and it doesn't provide inflation.
Your point i guess is that china has 1 trillion in USD, which is such a huge amount that emitting this on the market will create inflation.
I just checked the numbers, and in 2011 the second quantitative easing (aka "printing money") was 600 billions, and the third is 40 billions every month. And it doesn't have any impact on inflation (which remains a bit of a mystery to me, unless this money is instantly used by the banks just to balance banks internal debts and taken out of the economy).
Yeah, the Fed buys crazy lots of bonds, and it's pretty impressive that it hasn't caused inflation yet. A big bond dump by China may be enough to actually trigger a substantial piece of inflation - heck, maybe you'd see an instant jump in prices of a few percent overnight, and the US would have to make some painful choices about spending and debt...
But it wouldn't in and of itself cause catastrophic hyperinflation. Not on an ongoing basis, anyway. Continuing inflation requires continuing increases in the monetary base (or monetary velocity).
It's not pretty impressive that it hasn't caused inflation. It's exactly what we would expect based on the predictions of mainstream economic theory in our current situation. Indeed, if the Fed had to print an additional $1 trillion to cover these dumped bonds I am doubtful the inflation would tick up more than half a percent at best.
The whole thing is kind of moot since China would be committing economic suicide by doing this.
Yes, the Fed will quickly buy up all the bonds necessary to feed the USGovt appetite, allowing the USGovt to outbid any citizen for goods and services. This situation does not lead to a nice and cool inflation of 2%.
Meanwhile will the rest of the world be willing to ship real goods and services in return for promises of ever more paper IOUs from the USG, and when those paper IOUs are due, the promise of even more paper IOUs?
If this all sounds sustainable, I have a deal for you. I want to borrow $100 off you and I'll pay you $105 next year. Don't worry, I'm good for it. I'm also lending myself $200 and will pay myself back $210 next year.
So how about it?
Clearly the 5% interest rate is what has been set by the market (me) so you are getting a good deal.
Next year comes around and I hand you some paper IOUs for $110 the next year. Meanwhile, I'll borrow another $100 off you. I've been living it large and need a bit more sugar. Don't worry, I'm good for it - I'll lend myself another $200 too!
> If China dumped bonds, why would anyone buy debt from the USG when they can get it cheap on the open market that has just had 1 trillion dumped in it.
The member banks of the federal reserve are required to buy government debt if nobody else will.
No, the Fed has unlimited buying power for Treasuries, so it could prop up the price as long as it wanted.
The question is what the side effects of that would be. So perhaps I should say they can prop up the nominal price for as long as it wanted. The real price can't be manipulated so easily.
Well, a lot of banks, insurance companies, trust funds, mutual funds, pension funds, social security funds, other countries and individuals own US treasury bonds.
China's holdings are significant - over $1.3tn or around 7.5% of all US government debt. If they were to dump all of it onto the market at once (a crazy idea which they would never do), the simple excess of supply over demand would cause Treasury prices to plunge and the USD would likely drop in the foreign exchange markets too.
As soon as someone at one of the big US investment banks realised what was going on, phone calls would start being made to wake people up in London and then New York (this assumes that the sell-off starts during Asian trading hours) and eventually someone would wake up Bill Dudley (head of the New York Fed). He, in turn, would wake up Bernanke and Lew, who would call the President (who'd probably already have been woken up by the IC/military).
By that point, the markets would be in turmoil. The combination of the sell-off with a big military move (i.e. declaring the South China Sea a closed zone) is interesting, because an increased likelihood of military conflict typically causes investors to sell riskier assets and buy less risky ones, like US Treasury bonds. So, stock markets would drop across the world - I'd say at least 3%, probably more like 5%. Buying gold and oil is like a bit of a kneejerk reaction in times of geopolitical turmoil, so those would probably rise.
I doubt the increased demand from investors for Treasuries would be enough to absorb $1.3tn worth of bonds so Treasury prices would be dropping through the floor. That introduces a new dynamic because Treasuries are commonly used as trading collateral, so you'd start seeing margin calls, just like we did during the credit crunch (which is what caused Lehman Brothers to collapse).
So, Dudley would almost certainly act to stabilise the market by instructing the Fed's trading desk to start buying Treasuries. I don't know what the practicalities are of the Fed buying $1.3tn at short notice (e.g. whether they can simply create that many dollars out of thin air and credit them to their counterparties' accounts) but, assuming they could, that would support the price of US Treasuries although yields would probably still end up jumping by at least 100 basis points, and the USD would probably drop significantly against the Euro.
So, all in all, I'd be inclined to disagree with the idea that China dumping US bonds would have absolutely no effect. :-)
> I don't know what the practicalities are of the Fed buying $1.3tn at short notice (e.g. whether they can simply create that many dollars out of thin air and credit them to their counterparties' accounts)
Ah. Yes. They can totally do that.
So the question is whether their extant open-market operations which aim for a particular interest rate on Treasuries will in fact buy the bonds quickly enough that substantial market turmoil would be avoided. And, if so, whether the increased supply of USD would have a higher velocity than it did when China was sitting on it, which could lead to a weaker dollar or substantial inflation.
(And of course, people could just generally freak out anyway, leading to turmoil.)
Yeah, I had been thinking about how TARP required congressional approval but, of course, the _reason_ it required congressional approval was because the "troubled assets" in question were not Treasuries. A little investigation reveals that section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act authorises the Fed "To buy and sell, at home or abroad, bonds and notes of the United States".
> ..whether the increased supply of USD would have a higher velocity than it did when China was sitting on it, which could lead to a weaker dollar or substantial inflation.
Weaker dollar? Definitely. I expect the ECB and banks of England and Japan would buy dollars - both to help the US stabilise markets and to avoid their own currencies growing tooo strong - but I'd still expect to see a significant drop in the value of USD. 20%, maybe?
Substantial inflation? Inflation is a longer-term, delayed reaction sort of thing so I reckon it would depend on what happened subsequently.
The funny thing is that, having been through the turmoil of September 2008, the financial system is probably better prepared and positioned now, than it was before the Financial Crisis, to deal with the turmoil that would be caused by China dumping its Treasury holdings.
Apparently you haven't taken enough college/graduate studies to unlearn common sense. Unfortunately, that disqualifies you from being an elite.
To get those kind of jobs, you need to be for example a phd 'expert' on the great depression such that you come as close as possible to repeating it (biggest national housing and credit bubbles ever).
Welcome to Zucker's quest to make CNN relevant.... which apparently means being the online version of the supermarket check out line. The FoxNews site has more important international stories than CNN, I am assuming CNN expecting readers to click the World tab.
Out front, between Drudge and Google News I get all the leads I need.
I'm not a fan of huffpo, but considering Drudge routinely runs conspiratorial things like "Obama born in Kenya", I would not put them on the same level.
Drudge serves the same purpose as Twitter. Places like those are bad at specifics but are really good at things like "shit's going down in Boston around the marathon".
They're not good at specifics, which is how an unrelated electrical fire at the JFK Library got lumped in with the bombings.
I had not been to CNN or FoxNews websites in months, unless I get pushed there by Google News or Drudge and was surprised at the state of CNN.
Yes Drudge is a valid place for links, it all depends on what you are going there for. I go there for links to world news events and the like. To dismiss that site out of hand which so many here do is irrational at best. I learned long ago, many sites have good stories, bad stories, and bait stories.
There was also a story about the US declaring a state of national emergency, and the reporter being unable to contact anyone in the State Department. As little sense as that made.
There is a special place in hell for SEA (Syrian Electronic Army) members. In addition to hacking sites as to spew propaganda, they have been reporting nonviolent activist pages while promoting terrorist (ISIS) pages. Running a plethora of personas[0] that harass and attack while disseminating horse-shit like the Adra massacre. That Adra event saw Russia Times relaying false reports[1]. Of course phishing pretty much anyone that mentions Syria/Sham. Gotta get those admin credentials somehow right?
All this while their regime goes about talking peace at Geneva2 and dropping crude air dropped improvised explosives (ADIED) onto residential neighborhoods. From two days ago, one of the happier videos to report from these strikes, a child being pulled alive from concrete rubble[2]. In addition to the regular munitons dropped on a daily basis the rocket system used to launch chemical weapon attacks is parked at the regime's Mezzeh military airport in Damascus[3] yet SEA and company have been trying to co-opt and seed disinformation on the subject such as focusing on nosecones[4].
This "cyberwar" mess has very real ramifications, and those are heaps of tortured/executed prisoners stacked up wrapped in plastic[5] with death certificates fraudulently made by the state. Real A level war crimes stuff. I have great hatred for these electronic shills and the murder they help further.
I wouldn't trust anything on Anadolu Agency which is owned by the current religious fascist Turkish government which is against Syria ONLY because they are from different Islamic fraction. The government wants to see religious fascists in power in Syria. Those things in the pictures were probably done by the barbaric islamic fundamentalist rebels.
Most Turkish people are against the government's senseless war against Syria. In last few weeks the government was caught sending military equipment to the barbaric islamic syrian rebels many times.
Sure thing hoss. Here is the story[0] associated with the photos.
"Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees, according to three eminent international lawyers.
The three, former prosecutors at the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime security forces from March 2011 to last August."
OK so you are adamant that it was not the regime who tortured and executed people, that the photos were due to those nasty Islamists. How about a report pre-dating the previous on the Assad regime's Raid Brigade, amongst others in the Damascus area. Was the industrious kidnapping and murder of detainees by military also a false flag? Branch 215, Raid Brigade - Military Intelligence Division - Damascus[1].
Yeah something should be done, and what else is better than barbaric islamic fundamentalist rebels, beheading war criminals, and bloodshed murderers, supported by international bloodthirsty, greedy media cartels.
We should support them as they are fighting against an anti-democratic regime. We will think about the other aspects, once democracy is settled, democracy first.
Way to respond with a comment that is contextual with what I said.
You really didn't conflate my detailing mass murder with support for other murderers at all there. If you did one could say it would be highly detrimental to discussion. Good thing you didn't though.
edit: I do love me tried and true tactics like what inanov and throwaway display. Anything said against a subject they feel strongly about is means to deny what is said then distort who is speaking. At the very least a lot of accusations and insinuations not relating to the original subject being discussed will be brought up adding noise to the signal. For a very topical example here is the regime's Syrian State TV split screening opposition talking at Geneva2 with stock footage of bombing carnage[0].
In turkey, current government divides people into two groups (done through media, NGO's etc.): Pro-Assad, and Anti-Assad. Even though you do not fancy the guy, one morning when you wake up, you find yourself a Pro-Assad.
Even though you scream out that you are against war, and any crimes by persons or governments should be judged by an independent court, and war is not a solution, you still are a Pro-Assad. After sometime, I found out that this is not a local situation, this applies to the whole world. I know that once these are over, no war crimes will be punished, they will be loosely covered.
I remember when turkish prime minister visited Assad, handshakes, good wills. A few months later, you see that this same prime minister, just in a moment, starts to tell exact same words with some other governments which are very impatient to start a war (as if they were reading from a paper).
I know that no government is clean, they all have hands in blood, blood of a minority, another country or nation etc. Assad is not an exception but I believe that the other side of this war is not clean either. After seeing a lot of lies being told by the Turkish government and the media, I am more sure that this is not a fair fight, and this is not about Assad torturing the Syrian citizens. And I know that supporting bloodshed beheading islamic fundamentalist murderers is far from willing goodness of Syrian people.
>> For a very topical example here is the regime's Syrian State TV split screening opposition talking at Geneva2 with stock footage of bombing carnage[0].
Then, you should come and see the major turkish media. I will gladly translate every single word for you.
For a long time, it was impossible to reach Syrian Government news agency SANA's website, as it was banned without any notice or court order.
That was when the war started, and only news Turkish people got were Turkish Government's and international war lobyyists' lies through Anadolu Agency's black propaganda.
Turkey still keeps supporting the war in Syria by sending ammunition, weapons and other stuff to rebels. Our border gates are wide open for the rebels. Some of them live in Turkey's border cities such as Hatay.
For the last few weeks there has been at least eight trucks which were intercepted. They all were later protected by turkish national intelligence agency, governors, the ministers and prime minister himself, claiming what the trucks carried were governmental secret and nobodies' business. Of course the trucks moved and people had to mind their own business.
There has been a lot of misinformation incidents in Turkey, through government's hand, and a lot of inhuman incidents by those criminal-rebel looters that we witness. Then I still sometimes get surprised when people tell about the Free Syrian Army is defending Syria against an anti-democratic regime. I don't believe that those are for democracy, and everyone knows that those lies will be revealed one day.
Pretty shitty. Can't think of a theater of operation where the consensus for deployment is done with the support of the host nation's public. That is excluding the secret laws often shrouding the justification for the programs themselves.
All places where the US deploys drones has the support of the host nation's gov't at least. Drones are extremely easy to shoot down currently, and would not be effective in any hostile environment.
Not sure if that's what you meant, but it's an interesting point to consider.
So the governments of Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya all support US drones being deployed. Where would I go to verify this? Seems a reconnaissance drone was downed over Iran, who have demanded an apology[0].
Perhaps you only mean drones capable of attack.
"Acquiescence" or "compliance" may be more appropriate terms than "support" given the power imbalance in the relationships.
"Living next to [the USA] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." -- Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1969
China dumping US money, would be an actively hostile thing to do... implying they wanted to do other hostile things as well... The world would likely become a very different place, real fast.
China dumping US currency and/or bonds would be an awesome opportunity for everyone else. We could buy the wonderfully underpriced securities from China and make bank once the price pops back up a few months later.
It'd basically be suicide for the seller - in this case the central bank of China.
Sorry, in this hypothetical, china would only do something so rash if it were going to war. There would be no "making bank" there would just be war... and given the scale of said hypthetical war, I'm not sure there would even be a victor...
No offense, but China has been getting tons of gold on its balance sheet for awhile now. USA wont even let Germany have theirs for 8 years, as it'll take that long to get it... which means I question the reserve amounts the US has...
To put things in perspective, China holds approximately 7.5% of the total US debt load ($17.3 trillion). That's an estimated $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasuries. They are the largest foreign investor in US treasuries's[0] and the major holders of all USD foreign exchange reserves due to their huge trade surplus with the US. These dollars need to be invested somewhere and the U.S. Treasury market is one of the few places that China can recycle its surplus dollars.
Even during the financial crisis in 2009 and the debate around the public debt ceiling in the summer of 2011 with the subsequent downgrade of the U.S. long-term sovereign credit by S&P, China continued to increase their USD reserves while other endowment funds in regions such as the Middle East took steps to diversify their FX reserves away from the USD. China is dependent on the US Treasury market - and it's stability - because as long as China continues to hold down the value of its currency to the USD, it will have few options other than to keep investing in U.S. dollar assets.
It's late here and I've been working all day and I'm half asleep. So it took me a few seconds to realise this was a hoax.
My reaction was literally "holly shit!", Then I don't know why but my mind started racing to figure out how one would acquire gold and bitcoins at 10 to midnight on a Friday night heading into a weekend...
Thinking i need some verification before i make any move, I then realised the page was a google cache and then came back to hn to realise it was a cached hacked page.
But for a few seconds I was scared and excited at the same time...the same feeling of 9/11 actually
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] thread"Possibly related" would be a much better phrasing. Though additional updates seem to support that it was SEA.
A crucial thing to remember in a fog-of-war scenario is that all information becomes suspect. Your best response is to take actions that reduce uncertainty, risk, and volatility. Not which increase them.
So no, it wouldn't be business as usual...if this were a real story.
Good analogy though, because separating conjoined twins in a manner analogous to dumping all its bonds would kill both. The US economy would be in ruins, and the US would reply the only way it knows how, war. I suppose war is as much an economic tool as anything else. But there is another reason why China could never dump its bonds, it would destroy its biggest market, the US.
Capitalism, the biggest force for peace we have....... (If reading that last bit made you feel nauseous, imagine how I felt typing it. Im trying to kid myself it's ironic, but its not working.)
The USD being world reserve currency has been printed far beyond the needs for internal domestic trade. The US had to do this to lubricate world trade, however when the music stops all those dollars held in foreign banks will try and make their way home in order to obtain some value. A flood of dollars will then start bidding for goods and services from the US economy. Instant hyperinflation.
The US haven't defaulted on their debt because the roll over their debt with more USD.
I just checked the numbers, and in 2011 the second quantitative easing (aka "printing money") was 600 billions, and the third is 40 billions every month. And it doesn't have any impact on inflation (which remains a bit of a mystery to me, unless this money is instantly used by the banks just to balance banks internal debts and taken out of the economy).
But it wouldn't in and of itself cause catastrophic hyperinflation. Not on an ongoing basis, anyway. Continuing inflation requires continuing increases in the monetary base (or monetary velocity).
The whole thing is kind of moot since China would be committing economic suicide by doing this.
Meanwhile will the rest of the world be willing to ship real goods and services in return for promises of ever more paper IOUs from the USG, and when those paper IOUs are due, the promise of even more paper IOUs?
If this all sounds sustainable, I have a deal for you. I want to borrow $100 off you and I'll pay you $105 next year. Don't worry, I'm good for it. I'm also lending myself $200 and will pay myself back $210 next year. So how about it? Clearly the 5% interest rate is what has been set by the market (me) so you are getting a good deal.
Next year comes around and I hand you some paper IOUs for $110 the next year. Meanwhile, I'll borrow another $100 off you. I've been living it large and need a bit more sugar. Don't worry, I'm good for it - I'll lend myself another $200 too!
The member banks of the federal reserve are required to buy government debt if nobody else will.
The question is what the side effects of that would be. So perhaps I should say they can prop up the nominal price for as long as it wanted. The real price can't be manipulated so easily.
China's holdings are significant - over $1.3tn or around 7.5% of all US government debt. If they were to dump all of it onto the market at once (a crazy idea which they would never do), the simple excess of supply over demand would cause Treasury prices to plunge and the USD would likely drop in the foreign exchange markets too.
As soon as someone at one of the big US investment banks realised what was going on, phone calls would start being made to wake people up in London and then New York (this assumes that the sell-off starts during Asian trading hours) and eventually someone would wake up Bill Dudley (head of the New York Fed). He, in turn, would wake up Bernanke and Lew, who would call the President (who'd probably already have been woken up by the IC/military).
By that point, the markets would be in turmoil. The combination of the sell-off with a big military move (i.e. declaring the South China Sea a closed zone) is interesting, because an increased likelihood of military conflict typically causes investors to sell riskier assets and buy less risky ones, like US Treasury bonds. So, stock markets would drop across the world - I'd say at least 3%, probably more like 5%. Buying gold and oil is like a bit of a kneejerk reaction in times of geopolitical turmoil, so those would probably rise.
I doubt the increased demand from investors for Treasuries would be enough to absorb $1.3tn worth of bonds so Treasury prices would be dropping through the floor. That introduces a new dynamic because Treasuries are commonly used as trading collateral, so you'd start seeing margin calls, just like we did during the credit crunch (which is what caused Lehman Brothers to collapse).
So, Dudley would almost certainly act to stabilise the market by instructing the Fed's trading desk to start buying Treasuries. I don't know what the practicalities are of the Fed buying $1.3tn at short notice (e.g. whether they can simply create that many dollars out of thin air and credit them to their counterparties' accounts) but, assuming they could, that would support the price of US Treasuries although yields would probably still end up jumping by at least 100 basis points, and the USD would probably drop significantly against the Euro.
So, all in all, I'd be inclined to disagree with the idea that China dumping US bonds would have absolutely no effect. :-)
Ah. Yes. They can totally do that.
So the question is whether their extant open-market operations which aim for a particular interest rate on Treasuries will in fact buy the bonds quickly enough that substantial market turmoil would be avoided. And, if so, whether the increased supply of USD would have a higher velocity than it did when China was sitting on it, which could lead to a weaker dollar or substantial inflation.
(And of course, people could just generally freak out anyway, leading to turmoil.)
Yeah, I had been thinking about how TARP required congressional approval but, of course, the _reason_ it required congressional approval was because the "troubled assets" in question were not Treasuries. A little investigation reveals that section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act authorises the Fed "To buy and sell, at home or abroad, bonds and notes of the United States".
> ..whether the increased supply of USD would have a higher velocity than it did when China was sitting on it, which could lead to a weaker dollar or substantial inflation.
Weaker dollar? Definitely. I expect the ECB and banks of England and Japan would buy dollars - both to help the US stabilise markets and to avoid their own currencies growing tooo strong - but I'd still expect to see a significant drop in the value of USD. 20%, maybe?
Substantial inflation? Inflation is a longer-term, delayed reaction sort of thing so I reckon it would depend on what happened subsequently.
The funny thing is that, having been through the turmoil of September 2008, the financial system is probably better prepared and positioned now, than it was before the Financial Crisis, to deal with the turmoil that would be caused by China dumping its Treasury holdings.
Apparently you haven't taken enough college/graduate studies to unlearn common sense. Unfortunately, that disqualifies you from being an elite.
To get those kind of jobs, you need to be for example a phd 'expert' on the great depression such that you come as close as possible to repeating it (biggest national housing and credit bubbles ever).
Out front, between Drudge and Google News I get all the leads I need.
They're not good at specifics, which is how an unrelated electrical fire at the JFK Library got lumped in with the bombings.
I had not been to CNN or FoxNews websites in months, unless I get pushed there by Google News or Drudge and was surprised at the state of CNN.
Yes Drudge is a valid place for links, it all depends on what you are going there for. I go there for links to world news events and the like. To dismiss that site out of hand which so many here do is irrational at best. I learned long ago, many sites have good stories, bad stories, and bait stories.
[0] http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/tech/cnn-accounts-hacked/
All this while their regime goes about talking peace at Geneva2 and dropping crude air dropped improvised explosives (ADIED) onto residential neighborhoods. From two days ago, one of the happier videos to report from these strikes, a child being pulled alive from concrete rubble[2]. In addition to the regular munitons dropped on a daily basis the rocket system used to launch chemical weapon attacks is parked at the regime's Mezzeh military airport in Damascus[3] yet SEA and company have been trying to co-opt and seed disinformation on the subject such as focusing on nosecones[4].
This "cyberwar" mess has very real ramifications, and those are heaps of tortured/executed prisoners stacked up wrapped in plastic[5] with death certificates fraudulently made by the state. Real A level war crimes stuff. I have great hatred for these electronic shills and the murder they help further.
[0] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Persona_Management
[1] http://www.interpretermag.com/the-massacre-in-syria-that-was...
[2] http://youtu.be/-m_IgNakiXc
[3] http://imgur.com/gallery/C45Cw
[4] http://whoghouta.blogspot.com/2013/09/umlaca-simulation.html
[5] https://twitter.com/anadoluagency/status/426287533689815040
edit: See helpful comment regarding naming below.
Most Turkish people are against the government's senseless war against Syria. In last few weeks the government was caught sending military equipment to the barbaric islamic syrian rebels many times.
"Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees, according to three eminent international lawyers.
The three, former prosecutors at the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime security forces from March 2011 to last August."
OK so you are adamant that it was not the regime who tortured and executed people, that the photos were due to those nasty Islamists. How about a report pre-dating the previous on the Assad regime's Raid Brigade, amongst others in the Damascus area. Was the industrious kidnapping and murder of detainees by military also a false flag? Branch 215, Raid Brigade - Military Intelligence Division - Damascus[1].
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/20/evidence-indust...
[1] http://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/en/reports/1380463510#.UuIv...
We should support them as they are fighting against an anti-democratic regime. We will think about the other aspects, once democracy is settled, democracy first.
You really didn't conflate my detailing mass murder with support for other murderers at all there. If you did one could say it would be highly detrimental to discussion. Good thing you didn't though.
edit: I do love me tried and true tactics like what inanov and throwaway display. Anything said against a subject they feel strongly about is means to deny what is said then distort who is speaking. At the very least a lot of accusations and insinuations not relating to the original subject being discussed will be brought up adding noise to the signal. For a very topical example here is the regime's Syrian State TV split screening opposition talking at Geneva2 with stock footage of bombing carnage[0].
[0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BekwsuACIAA2gQr.jpg:large
Even though you scream out that you are against war, and any crimes by persons or governments should be judged by an independent court, and war is not a solution, you still are a Pro-Assad. After sometime, I found out that this is not a local situation, this applies to the whole world. I know that once these are over, no war crimes will be punished, they will be loosely covered.
I remember when turkish prime minister visited Assad, handshakes, good wills. A few months later, you see that this same prime minister, just in a moment, starts to tell exact same words with some other governments which are very impatient to start a war (as if they were reading from a paper).
I know that no government is clean, they all have hands in blood, blood of a minority, another country or nation etc. Assad is not an exception but I believe that the other side of this war is not clean either. After seeing a lot of lies being told by the Turkish government and the media, I am more sure that this is not a fair fight, and this is not about Assad torturing the Syrian citizens. And I know that supporting bloodshed beheading islamic fundamentalist murderers is far from willing goodness of Syrian people.
Then, you should come and see the major turkish media. I will gladly translate every single word for you.
That was when the war started, and only news Turkish people got were Turkish Government's and international war lobyyists' lies through Anadolu Agency's black propaganda.
Turkey still keeps supporting the war in Syria by sending ammunition, weapons and other stuff to rebels. Our border gates are wide open for the rebels. Some of them live in Turkey's border cities such as Hatay.
For the last few weeks there has been at least eight trucks which were intercepted. They all were later protected by turkish national intelligence agency, governors, the ministers and prime minister himself, claiming what the trucks carried were governmental secret and nobodies' business. Of course the trucks moved and people had to mind their own business.
There has been a lot of misinformation incidents in Turkey, through government's hand, and a lot of inhuman incidents by those criminal-rebel looters that we witness. Then I still sometimes get surprised when people tell about the Free Syrian Army is defending Syria against an anti-democratic regime. I don't believe that those are for democracy, and everyone knows that those lies will be revealed one day.
Not sure if that's what you meant, but it's an interesting point to consider.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/when-us-dron...
As you point out, this is for drones capable of attack, not reconnaissance drones.
"Living next to [the USA] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." -- Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1969
The GP specifically said "host nation's public".
I can only hope that a treaty over the use of online warfare gets made[1]. Until then, I will expect to see this happen more and more regularly.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/we-need-a-geneva...
US declares return to gold standards.
Chinese economy crashes.
World experiences significant economic downturn but soon recovers.
China dumping US money, would be an actively hostile thing to do... implying they wanted to do other hostile things as well... The world would likely become a very different place, real fast.
It'd basically be suicide for the seller - in this case the central bank of China.
If/when USD looses its position as a reserve currency, the price of gold will skyrocket and China will be looking smug.
Even during the financial crisis in 2009 and the debate around the public debt ceiling in the summer of 2011 with the subsequent downgrade of the U.S. long-term sovereign credit by S&P, China continued to increase their USD reserves while other endowment funds in regions such as the Middle East took steps to diversify their FX reserves away from the USD. China is dependent on the US Treasury market - and it's stability - because as long as China continues to hold down the value of its currency to the USD, it will have few options other than to keep investing in U.S. dollar assets.
[0] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/ti...
My reaction was literally "holly shit!", Then I don't know why but my mind started racing to figure out how one would acquire gold and bitcoins at 10 to midnight on a Friday night heading into a weekend...
Thinking i need some verification before i make any move, I then realised the page was a google cache and then came back to hn to realise it was a cached hacked page.
But for a few seconds I was scared and excited at the same time...the same feeling of 9/11 actually