The Game of Thrones in the South China Sea may have a new player: India

The already hot waters of the South China Sea seem to be heading for boiling point.

The US and India have held talks to conduct joint naval patrols in the Indian Ocean and in the South China Sea by the end of the year, Reuters reported. Joint naval patrols involve two countries working together to secure maritime interests, a manoeuvre that the Indian Navy has so far never undertaken.

A strategically vital and reportedly oil rich 3,500,000-square-kilometre body of water, the South China Sea is ensconced between the Asian mainland and a whole host of east Asian island nations. And almost every country touched by it—China, The Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, and Malaysia, among others—claim some right or the other over it, or at least over some part of it.

China, of course, is the most assertive. The dominant military and economic power in the region, Beijing has been building man-made islands to use as bases for supporting air and sea patrols. The idea is also perceived to be part of its strategy to legitimise its claims over the region in the long run.

India’s apparent decision to partner Washington in patrolling the region comes a year after US president Barack Obama and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi agreed to “identify specific areas for expanding maritime cooperation” and “ensuring freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. When they met in New Delhi in January 2015, the two leaders had expressed concerns about “rising tensions over maritime territorial disputes” in the region.

An emailed questionnaire to India’s foreign ministry by Quartz remained unanswered while an Indian Navy spokesperson said he wasn’t aware of any decision on the joint patrolling. A Pentagon spokesperson, meanwhile, said that “on the matter of joint patrols, no decisions have been made and we do not have any additional details to provide at this time.”

Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary, expressed skepticism at possibility of the joint patrols.

“So far, India has not faced any problem with its vessel movement in the region and unless there is provocation, there is no need for India to undertake a joint patrol,” Sibal told Quartz. “The implications of such an act can be big.”

Other analysts, however, viewed the possible move as more aggressive posturing by New Delhi.

“I think India has become more candid about its foreign policy now,” Sameer Patil, a fellow at Mumbai-based think tank, Gateway House, told Quartz. “For instance, India had never put its bilateral concerns on paper, which it did when the US president visited India last year. This recent decision is sending a strong message to China.”

“This will signal to the Chinese that they cannot undermine us (India) and expect us not to react,” Manoj Joshi, a distinguished fellow at the New Delhi-based think tank, Observer Research Foundation, told Quartz.

“This is a signal for a realignment of the Indian foreign policy. Till now, India said it was unaligned, it remains so today. But it has distinctly come closer to the US and Japan. This is also a signal that India does not expect too much from China, either in the settlement of the border dispute or from investments.”

Since coming to power in 2014, Modi has spent much time and effort on foreign policy. Closer home, his trips to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar, have been largely aimed at rebuilding India’s influence in the region. Modi has also actively engaged with China, hosting president Xi Jinping in September 2014 before making a trip to Beijing in May 2015.

This pissed me off!

Trust no politician, they're all professional liars!

I ask no one trust me & as a matter of fact, "Don't"!

Trust your common sense.

http://tinyurl.com/hqzmrm9

Test your water.

Care for a non funny funny fact?

During the Gulf Oil Spill there was an oil spill going on in Tuskegee your media hid from you:

The Truth About Texaco and Morphine

Texaco's legal researchers have been working for decades to find a way to solidify their monopolies over the industries that produce various essential household goods. When they succeed, they'll immediately start incorporating dangerous morphine byproducts into the manufacturing process.
Employees of Texaco were seen at both Project Tuskegee and the Gulf oil spill-- despite the fact that they had no good reason to be there.
You can find subtle references to this in a number of official documents, but government red-tape makes sure that most of those documents are all but inaccessible to ordinary people.
Extra volumes of the Dead Sea Scrolls exist-- and they're filled with predictions about Project Tuskegee. Guess what? They turned out to be true! However, Wikileaks have purchased them all, and they're being hidden in deep vaults under the Vatican.
Hikers recently discovered a secret facility operated by the Census Bureau underneath the Vatican. It wasn't on the news-- and you know why? That base was used for researching morphine back in the 60s.
The truth is out there. Find it.

Sources:

1. Pierre, Jon, and Guy B. Peters. "Governance, politics and the state." (2000).
2. Rosenberg, Steven A., James C. Yang, and Nicholas P. Restifo. "Cancer immunotherapy: moving beyond current vaccines." Nature medicine 10.9 (2004): 909-915.
3. Hrebenar, Ronald J. Interest group politics in America. ME Sharpe Inc, 1997.
4. Barnett, Michael L. "STAKEHOLDER INFLUENCE CAPACITY AND THE VARIABILITY OF FINANCIAL RETURNS TO CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY." Academy of Management Review 32.3 (2007): 794-816.

Hillary could be indicted...

But she won't, her staff may have to take the fall for a Clinton once more

Hillary Clinton faces a range of high and unexpected hurdles to the Democratic nomination which, a year ago, was seen as hers virtually by monarchical right.

She has failed to get beyond the robust challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian socialist whose political career has until now been more a curiosity than a powerful force.

Despite her efforts, Clinton has also failed to drum up enthusiasm for the idea of the historic election of America's first female president.

And she can't seem to shake the perception that, as a former first lady, former senator, former secretary of state and current establishment favorite, she is part of an elite against whom the base of both parties are rebelling this election cycle.

But perhaps the biggest challenge to her candidacy is yet to come. As the Federal Bureau of Investigation drills down on Clinton's handling of classified information on an insecure email network, the Democratic front-runner faces the possibility that she and her top aides could be indicted for compromising national security.

Even if the odds are against her being charged, it's a possibility that has become less easily dismissed than it was last spring, when it was confined to hopeful whispers in Republican circles. Back then, even as news emerged that Clinton had handled sensitive government secrets, most people still thought she would cruise to the presidential nomination this summer.

But few people other than Clinton's own campaign hands now argue that the former secretary of state's legal situation is entirely secure. Two Obama administration agencies, the Justice Department and the State Department, are pursuing related lines of inquiry about her private email usage. Setting aside the handful of Republican-led congressional probes into her emails, experts say Clinton can no longer credibly make the case that concern about her handling of classified information falls strictly along party lines.

Which leads to certain questions. If accusations against Clinton lead to an indictment, what would follow? Could she continue to run for the White House? What would happen to her delegates? Would the Democrats allow themselves to be represented in the general election by Sanders, or would Vice President Joe Biden or some other champion step in to take her place?

You may want to read this?

Benghazi Commission: Obama Admin Gun-Running Scheme Armed Islamic State

http://tinyurl.com/ph54q6z

Human Trafficking Awareness

 In support of Human Trafficking Awareness Month, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) has resources for mental health professionals, law enforcement personnel, health care professionals, and survivors on the signs of trafficking and services for human trafficking survivors.

The following resources provide information on human trafficking and on how to best serve those affected and their communities.

Page Contents

• The 12 Core Concepts for Understanding Traumatic Stress Responses in Children and Families — Adapted for Youth who are Trafficked
• Featured NCTSN Resources
• For Clinicians and Mental Health Professionals 
• For Educators
• For Law Enforcement Personnel
• For Primary Health Care and Other Child Serving Professionals
• For Policy Makers
• For Survivors
• For Family Members
  

The 12 Core Concepts for Understanding Traumatic Stress Responses in Children and Families — Adapted for Youth who are Trafficked

Trafficking involves circumstances (such as exploitation and coercion) that youth experience as traumatic (violating or threatening); therefore, youth who have been trafficked may exhibit responses to child traumatic stress.

The 12 Core Concepts for Understanding Traumatic Stress Responses in Children and Families provide a rationale for trauma-informed assessment and intervention. The Concepts cover a broad range of points that practitioners and agencies should consider as they strive to assess, understand, and assist trauma-exposed children, families, and communities in trauma-informed ways.

1. Traumatic experiences are inherently complex.—Every traumatic event is made up of different traumatic moments. These moments may include varying degrees of objective life threat, physical violation, and witnessing of injury or death. The moment-to-moment reactions youth have to these individual events are even more complex due to limitations in appraising and responding to danger, safety, and protection. When youth are sold for sex or labor, they constantly receive information that they must weigh and react to quickly. Thoughts come quickly and continuously: “What do I need to do to survive this? What’s worse, if he rapes me or kills me? If I don’t do what they say, what will they do to me? If I don’t do this, will my ‘boyfriend’ will be angry?”

2. Trauma occurs within a broad context that includes youth's personal characteristics, life experiences, and current circumstances.—Early interpersonal trauma may make youth more vulnerable to trafficking, teaching them not to trust others and to survive by any means necessary even if that involves further maltreatment. How they deal with, respond to, and cope with these situations stems from their current experience (e.g., a strong bond with the trafficker), the accumulation of their past experiences (e.g., childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence), and temperament as well as their physical, familial, community, and cultural environments.

3. Traumatic events often generate secondary adversities, life changes, and distressing reminders in youth's daily lives.—Some trafficked youth cannot escape a constant flood of painful and demoralizing reminders of past traumatic events or moments. Reminders can be anything that a youth associates with a traumatic experience (i.e., smell of alcohol, cologne, or sweat, certain locations) whether large or small, obvious or unknown. Reminders occur when least expected and youth may react with avoidance, numbing, hypervigilance, re-experiencing, or other responses. Traumatic events often generate secondary adversities such as social stigma, ongoing treatment for injuries, and legal proceedings. These adversities coupled with trauma reminders and loss reminders may produce significant fluctuations in a youth’s emotional and behavioral functioning.

4. Youth can exhibit a wide range of reactions to trauma and loss.—Due to past or on-going trauma, youth may respond to everyday challenges with rage, aggression, defiance, recklessness, or by bonding with aggressors. Others may withdraw, emotionally shut down, dissociate, self-harm, or self-medicate.

5. Danger and safety are primary concerns in the lives of youth who have had traumatic experiences.—Trafficked youth may believe that no person, relationship, or place can ever be safe or trustworthy. Continual exposure to traumatic experiences can make it more difficult for youth to distinguish between safe and unsafe situations, and may lead to significant changes in their own protective and risk-taking behavior.

6. Traumatic experiences affect the family and broader caregiving system.—Parents, caregivers, family members, and friends may want to help a youth who has been trafficked, but they may not know how to regain the youth’s trust or how to help the youth envision a life that doesn’t involve being trafficked.

7. Protective and promotive factors can reduce the adverse impact of trauma.—Supportive adults and communities, strong social connections, positive mentors, high self-esteem, and good coping skills can buffer the effects of trauma experienced by trafficked youth. When given the opportunity, many trafficked youth demonstrate remarkable resilience and enormous capacity to heal.

Full > http://www.nctsn.org/resources/public-awareness/human-trafficking

3 ISIS Twitter accounts ‘trace back to UK govt computers,’ claim hackers

At least three Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) supporters’ social media accounts are run from IP addresses linked to the British government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), a group of hackers has claimed.

The group of teenage computer experts, known as ‘VandaSec,’ have unearthed details of internet protocol (IP) addresses used by three jihadists to access Twitter accounts used to carry out online recruitment.

The addresses were thought to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection they linked back to the DWP’s London offices, according to the Daily Mirror.

“Don’t you think that’s strange?” one of the hackers asked the Daily Mirror.

“We traced these accounts back to London, the home of the British intelligence services,” they added.

This revelation has sparked speculation that someone inside the government is running IS-supporting accounts, or they were created by intelligence services to trap wannabe terrorists.

The evidence caused the Cabinet Office to admit to selling IP addresses to two Saudi firms earlier this year. An expert has suggested this is why the IP’s are linked to the government.

Following the sale, the IP addresses were used by extremists to spread their message of hate on social media.

The DWP denied owning the IP addresses.

“The government owns millions of unused IP addresses which we are selling to get a good return for hardworking taxpayers,” a Cabinet Office spokesperson said.

“We have sold a number of these addresses to telecoms companies, both in the UK and internationally, to allow their customers to connect to the internet.

“We think carefully about which companies we sell addresses to, but how their customers use this internet connection is beyond our control.”

However, the government failed to reveal how much money was made from selling the IP addresses.

Kim Jong Un’s war games

ON FEBRUARY 7th, North Korea fired an Unha-3 satellite-launch rocket into space. The UN Security Council unanimously condemned the exercise—which America, South Korea and Japan see as a part of a programme to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile—promising fresh sanctions. Experts believe that if modified to carry a 2,200lb (1,000kg) warhead instead of a satellite, the Unha-3 could reach Alaska and possibly Hawaii. Less clear is whether North Korea has made the strides it claims in miniaturising a nuclear warhead for the missile to carry.

The launch comes just a month after an announcement by Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young despot, that the country had detonated its first hydrogen bomb, a weapon far more powerful and much more difficult to build than the atomic sort. Many outside observers agreed that the claim was far-fetched however: both the estimated explosion yield (six kilotons) and the magnitude of the earthquake that followed the blast (5.1) were much too small for a thermonuclear weapon.

But both tests are further reminders of how far the North’s nuclear-weapons programme has advanced through three generations of the ruling Kim family, despite outside efforts to block it. According to a recent estimate it may have as many as 100 weapons by 2020 if its programme is left uncurbed. So how to rein in Mr Kim? The UN Security Council has applied sanctions before, to little effect. Unless and until the country’s only ally, China, loses patience, little can deflect the rogue state from its chosen path.

is a recession inevitable?

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Better than 50% chance recession is coming: Analyst

The odds of a global recession taking hold in the next 20 months are now better than 50 percent, The Lindsey Group's Peter Boockvar said Tuesday.

"Central banks have guaranteed a messy outcome from the reversal of policy," the chief market analyst told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street.""There's going to be a recession when central bank policy reverses. It's inevitable."

In Europe and Japan, central banks are in the midst of bond-buying programs aimed at propping up their economies, while the U.S. Federal Reserve has held its benchmark interest rates for short-term borrowing near zero since December 2008.

Read MoreRobert Shiller: THIS is the sign we're in a bubble

The Fed should raise its fed funds rates when it meets this week, or else the impacts will only get worse the longer it waits, Boockvar said.

He expects the Federal Open Market Committee will do just that, and will soothe markets with dovish language that assures investors the pace of increases will be gradual. The short-term impact, he said, will not be much different than doing nothing.

On the other hand, by not taking any action, the Fed would be telling markets there will be a time in the future better suited for monetary policy tightening, and the fact is there is no good time, Boockvar said.

Investors should view a recession as a "healthy cleansing" that sets up the economy for a better recovery, rather than something to avoid at all costs, he added.

Michael Hanson, senior U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research, said he too expects the Fed to announce a rate rise Thursday. He believes a market selloff is primarily a short-term risk.

"The question is, as we go further out, is this going to be a much more sustained hit to market psychology because the Fed has hiked?" he asked in a "Squawk on the Street" interview. "I'm not so concerned that that's the likely outcome at this point."

Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG, said investors awaiting a chance to buy stocks after they presumably dip on the central bank's announcement are missing an opportunity presented by the recent stock market selloff. 

Read MoreJeremy Siegel: How a Fed hike could boost stocks

"If you agree ... that the bull market does not end with the first rate hike, and you think higher equity prices await us in the future, then the investment opportunity has already been presented to you," he told "Squawk on the Street." "The only question is how much further do equities have to run before the inevitable cycle runs its course?"

Greenhaus said he no longer expects the Fed to announce a change in policy Thursday because markets are not expecting that outcome following the selloff. He said central bankers do not want their first rate hike in more than nine years to be a surprise.

Six Steps To "Stash Your Cash" Offshore

From wealthy citizens trying to pay less tax, to savvy swindlers and drug lords with riches to hide, people have spent decades stealthily shifting money via European principalities, Caribbean archipelagos, and Pacific islands. ICIJ provides the following simple six-step process for 'stashing your cash'; from 'Choosing a haven' to creating a 'secret identity' and from opening the 'right' bank account to how to 'move' the money; this picturesque guide may be indispensable as Europe's final 'deposit haircut' solution draws ever closer - especially now we know there is 'no plan B." The muddle-through is over...

Step 1 - Choose A Haven
For people hiding money, choosing one of the world's 60 or so offshore jurisdictions is tricky. Each has advantages and drawbacks. It' snot unusual for secrecy seekers to continually move funds around, trying to find the best place for their assets...

No one know for sure how much of the planet's private wealth is parked in tax havens. One estimate is that there's $32 trillion stashed offshore; a more conservative calculation puts it a minimum of $8 trillion. Either way, that means tens - if not hundreds - of billions of dollars in last tax revenues for the world's governments.

Now do you understand why these 2.5 million files covering 120,000 offshore entities was 'accidentally' leaked into the public purview... governments realize that they are running out of options fast and as we noted before - the muddling through is almost over.

inShare5

 What Haven't I given you?

USA Electoral College System

And your vote?

In each state, whichever party garners a majority of popular votes, regardless of how narrow the margin, wins all the electoral votes. By forcing residents in each state ultimately to vote as a block, the system is supposed to ensure that small states' interests are not drowned out by those of larger states.

In all, there are 538 electoral votes and the number given to each state reflects the sum of the representatives and senators it sends to Congress. It takes 270 or more Electoral College votes to win the election.The biggest states California (55), New York (31), Texas (34), Pennsylvania (21) have the most impact on the result of the presidential election. 

Usually, the result is nearly the same as it would have been if the election were direct. Yet the system has produced presidents who received a minority of the popular vote but a majority of the electoral votes. NOTE: In the elections of Harry S Truman, Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln, there were more than two candidates and each of the elected Presidents won more popular votes than any of their respective opponents. 

President Bill Clinton was also elected in 1992 with only 43 percent of the popular vote, but 370 electoral votes. In his case there was also more than two candidates. 

Several times in recent electoral college history, a relatively small shift in voter preference in key states could have reversed election outcomes. 

In prior elections, four U.S candidate for President won the popular vote but lost the presidency: Andrew Jackson won the popular vote but lost the election to John Quincy Adams in 1824; Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote but lost the election to Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876; Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the election to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election to George W. Bush in 2000.

Educate yourself.