De-Dollarization Du Jour: Russia Backs BRICS Alternative To SWIFT

On the one hand, the plan represented yet another move towards global de-dollarization but on the other, was borne out of necessity when Russia began to believe it may be expelled from SWIFT as punishment for its support of rebels in Ukraine. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned of “unlimited consequences” if the West decided on a punitive SWIFT freeze.

Two months later, Moscow would receive a seat on the SWIFT board.

Now, Russia is taking de-dollarization a step further by suggesting that a BRICS alternative to SWIFT may be in the cards. RT has more:

The Central Bank of Russia has proposed a discussion about establishing an analogue to the SWIFT global network for transmission of financial information that processes $6 trillion worth of communiqués daily. 

The CBR hopes to cut the risks of possible disruptions.

"Seriously speaking, there is no analogue to SWIFT at the moment in the world, it is unique. The only topic that may be of interest to all of us within BRICS is to consider and talk over the possibility of setting up a system that would apply to the BRICS countries, used as a backup,"said Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Olga Skorobogatova on Friday.

This comes as Russia (which, incidentally, is the second heaviest SWIFT user) is set to convene a BRICS summit in Ulfa on July 8-9 where the $100 billion BRICS bank will officially be launched along with a $100 billion currency reserve. Much like the China-led AIIB, the BRICS bank is in many ways a response to the failure of US-dominated multilateral institutions to meet the needs of modernity and offer representation that’s commensurate with the economic clout of its members.

This state of affairs isn’t likely to change anytime soon, because, as we discussed earlier this month, the The White House has signaled it will be unwilling to give up US veto power even if it means setting up and end-around that would allow the Fund to be reformed without the approval of congress. The Washington Post summarized the situation nicely after the 6th BRICS Summit last summer:

Although the BRICS comprise over one-fifth of the global economy, together they wield about 11 percent of the votes at the IMF. But reform to the governance of the Bretton-Woods institutions has encountered a number of roadblocks. In 2008 and again in 2010, quota reform at the IMF was intended to double total financial commitments from all member countries, while at the same time giving BRICS countries larger voting shares. Because this required additional contributions by member governments of richer countries, several balked for different reasons.

Russia is also pressing ahead with plans to establish a Eurasian currency union, something we first discussed a few months back. Here's what we said in March:

One person who is paying attention to the failure of the US to grasp that the unipolar world of the 1980s is long gone, is Russia's Vladimir Putin, who earlier today proposed creating a "Eurasian" currency union which would have Belarus and Kazakhstan as its first members, which already are Russia's partners in a political and economic union made up of former Soviet republics.

Sputnik News has the latest:

Russia is ready to consider the creation of a currency union with other members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday.

"In this [EEU] format it would be possible to consider the possibility and conditions of eventually creating a monetary union,” Medvedev said.

The prime minister is currently in Kazakhstan for a session of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council.

The EEU, which officially came into force January 1, 2015, comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. The bloc seeks to achieve greater economic integration, including the free flow of goods, services, capital and labor across its member states.

With that, we have triple-dose of de-dollarization, as Russia moves to undercut a critical financial communications link by creating an alternative system backed by the world's rising EM powerhouses who are set to officially launch their own development bank when they convene in July. At the same time, Moscow will consider cementing its economic ties with regional allies via the establishment of a currency bloc. 

Paging King dollar: your grip on the throne grows weak.

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The criminalization of homelessness

© Spencer Platt / Getty Images / AFP

    

For the past 25 years, the criminalization of the homeless in the United States has been increasing.

As the National Coalition of Homeless points out, criminalization of homeless refers to laws that prohibit life sustaining activities "sleeping/camping, eating, sitting, and/or asking for money/resources in public spaces" and include criminal penalties if someone violates the ordinances.

This issue, while not dormant, I believe came to light more when Pastor Dwayne Black along with pastor Mark Sims and 90-year-old Arnold Abbott were arrested for feeding the homeless in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2014.

"We fed about six or seven people when the police approached," Black told The Christian Post. "We actually said a prayer and then gave communion to the homeless. If feeding them is going to get me arrested, let me get arrested for giving them communion. The police stayed off to the side, but then they suddenly made a move forward, and Abbott and I stayed."

Black further expounded, "We didn't want the homeless to get arrested. Finally, we fed everybody and started to clean up. I honestly thought the police would let us go that evening, but then they made a move, and the reporters moved to circle us. I went to the police and said, 'If you're going to cite him [Abbott], you're going to have to cite me too."

"They said, 'We don't want to cite you,' and I don't know why — perhaps it was because I was clergy — but they eventually did cite me. And we will be back serving the people again on Sunday and Wednesday as well. We tried to explain to the police — this is my religion — this is deep within the DNA of my Christian church. Christ said, 'Feed my sheep.' This is deep within us," Black added.

According to the aforementioned organization as of November 2014, these cities enforce some form of banning, restricting or relocating food sharing practices:

• Birmingham, AL
• Cedar Rapids, IA
• Charlotte, NC
• Chico, CA
• Columbia, SC
• Corpus Christi, TX
• Costa Mesa, CA
• Dallas, TX
• Davenport, IA
• Dayton, OH
• Daytona Beach, FL
• Fort Lauderdale, FL
• Gainesville, FL
• Harrisburg, PA
• Hayward, CA
• Houston, TX
• Indianapolis, IN
• Kansas City, MO
• Lafayette, IN
• Los Angeles, CA
• Malibu, CA
• Manchester, NH
• Medford, OR
• Myrtle Beach, SC
• Nashville, TN
• Ocean Beach, CA
• Olympia, WA
• Orlando, FL
• Pasadena, CA
• Raleigh, NC
• St. Louis, MO
• St. Petersburg, FL
• Sacramento, CA
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Santa Monica, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Shawnee, OK
• Ventura, CA
• Wilmington, NC

Also, a July 2009 report by the National Law Center on Homelessness, is alarming.

While the full report (which is 194 pages) is too long to reproduce, here are some tidbits and the rest of the report can be read at:
http://ift.tt/1JcoZHa.

Since 2007, here are some of the worst cities for criminalizing the homeless as stated by the report:

Los Angeles, CA - According to a study by UCLA released in September 2007, Los Angeles was spending $6 million a year to pay for fifty extra police officers as part of its Safe City Initiative to crack down on crime in the Skid Row area at a time when the city budgeted only $5.7 million for homeless services. Advocates found that during an 11-month period 24 people were arrested 201 times, with an estimated cost of $3.6 million for use of police, the jail system, prosecutors, public defenders and the courts. Advocates asserted that the money could have instead provided supportive housing for 225 people. Many of the citations issued to homeless persons in the Skid Row area were for jaywalking and loitering — "crimes" that rarely produce written citations in other parts of Los Angeles.

St. Petersburg, FL - Since early 2007, St. Petersburg has passed 6 new ordinances that target homeless people. These include ordinances that outlaw panhandling throughout most of downtown, prohibit the storage of personal belongings on public property, and make it unlawful to sleep outside at various locations. In January 2007, the Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender announced that he would no longer represent indigent people arrested for violating municipal ordinances to protest what he called excessive arrests of homeless individuals by the City of St. Petersburg. According to numbers compiled by the public defender's office, the vast majority of people booked into the Pinellas County Jail on municipal ordinances were homeless individuals from St. Petersburg.

Orlando, FL - In 2006, the Orlando City Council passed a law that prohibited groups sharing food with 25 or more people in downtown parks covered under the ordinance from doing so more than twice a year. A member of one of the groups that shares food regularly with homeless and poor people in Orlando parks was actually arrested under the ordinance for sharing food. A federal district court found the law unconstitutional; however, the City of Orlando has appealed the
decision.

Also read http://ift.tt/1t5NIpf

In 2012 Rhode Island passed the Homeless Bill of Rights.

This bill states:

§ 34-37.1-3 Bill of Rights. - No person's rights, privileges, or access to public services may be denied or abridged solely because he or she is homeless. Such a person shall be granted the same rights and privileges as any other resident of this state. A person experiencing homelessness:

(1) Has the right to use and move freely in public spaces, including, but not limited to, public sidewalks, public parks, public transportation and public buildings, in the same manner as any other person, and without discrimination on the basis of his or her housing status;

(2) Has the right to equal treatment by all state and municipal agencies, without discrimination on the basis of housing status;

(3) Has the right not to face discrimination while seeking or maintaining employment due to his or her lack of permanent mailing address, or his or her mailing address being that of a shelter or social service provider;

(4) Has the right to emergency medical care free from discrimination based on his or her housing status;

(5) Has the right to vote, register to vote, and receive documentation necessary to prove identity for voting without discrimination due to his or her housing status;

(6) Has the right to protection from disclosure of his or her records and information provided to homeless shelters and service providers to state, municipal and private entities without appropriate legal authority; and the right to confidentiality of personal records and information in accordance with all limitations on disclosure established by the Federal Homeless Management Information Systems, the Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and the Federal Violence Against Women Act; and

(7) Has the right to a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her personal property to the same extent as personal property in a permanent residence.

History of Section.
(P.L. 2012, ch. 316, § 1; P.L. 2012, ch. 356, § 1.)

"Today, in Rhode Island, hatred, bigotry and discrimination is not accepted," said John Joyce, co-founder of the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project and one of the law's authors.

Let's hope other states figure out a more humane way to deal with homeless like RI, because if not violations of the First, Fourth, Eight and 14th will continue.

——————————

Side Bar: National Homeless.org 2014 Report.
It is estimated that 1 in 6 Americans go hungry on a daily basis.1

The 2013 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, conducted by the United States Conference of Mayors found:

83% (19 of 25) of cities surveyed, in 2013, reported an increase in the number of emergency food requests from the previous year

• 91% reported an increase in persons requesting food assistance for the first time

• 80% reported an increase in frequency of visits to food pantries and emergency kitchens each month

With a growing increase of need:

• 78% of cities had to reduce the number of times a person could visit the food pantry each month

• 66% had to turn people away due to lack of resources

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More than 430 in hospital due to heat wave in Japan

© AFP/File
Children play in a park fountain to cool off from a heatwave in Japan.

    

More than 430 people in Japan have been admitted to hospitals nationwide in a current heat wave in several regions of the country, Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA) said Tuesday.

FDMA, in charge of ambulance services, cites data between May 18 and 24. Cases of hospitalization because of heat were reported in Tokyo and Kyoto, as well as in the Saitama, Aichi, Fukushima and Fukuoka prefectures, among others.

The temperature in some regions of Japan is predicted to rise above 30 degrees Celsius [86 Fahrenheit] on Tuesday, according to Japan Meteorological Agency.

Experts warn about the dangers of outside overexposure and urge people to refrain from outdoor physical activity.

In May and June, a high probability of above-normal temperatures (above 40 degrees Celsius) on the islands of Okinawa and Amami is forecast.

In April, an extraordinary warm air mass moved across parts of East Asia, bringing severe high temperatures to Japan. The temperatures in some of the country's prefectures were reported to be record-breaking.

During May 11-17 period, two people died and 480 were hospitalized in Japan for heat exhaustion, according to FDMA.

Japanese authorities have expressed concern that high heat could affect scheduled 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo.

The officials are considering introducing measures to deal with high temperatures, including stadium air conditioning and green space promotion.

Japan has a long history of struggling with heat waves. In 2011, 26 Japanese residents died of heatstroke in the first decade of June while nearly 13,000 were admitted to hospitals.

In India, around 400 mostly homeless people have died due to heat wave last week, with the maximum temperature touching nearly 45 degrees Celsius.

A senior weather official said that heat wave would continue in India for some more days and attributed the condition to an ongoing heat wave in Pakistan.

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Calm down -- Al-Nusra says they won't hurt us

The interview with Abu Mohammed al-Julani was his second with Al Jazeera since 2013

    

Al-Nusra Front has taken to the airwaves with a message for all Westerners and Americans in particular - they really aren't that bad. And there are no plans to attack Americans. They are just your friendly neighborhood terrorist organization, funded handsomely by the West and the GCC, raping and beheading their way across the Middle East. There's nothing to worry about so long as the US allows them to continue to rape little girls, cut off heads, impose savage Sharia law, and eat the hearts and livers of the occasional dissident.

This message was brought to you by the feudal monarchy of Qatar and its mouthpiece organization, Al-Jazeera and conducted with a journalist whose past is checkered with a conviction of supporting al-Qaeda.

The alleged leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, appeared on al-Jazeera with a setting fit for a king (or Emir *ahem*) to discuss Nusra's plans for Syria and the West. The man alleging to be Julani and alleging to be the leader of Nusra, despite claiming to be "fearless," sat with his face covered and his back to the camera. The set was ornately decorated and almost appeared to be some type of palace room or high government building.

Julani reassured Westerners that he had been ordered by another alleged leader, this time of al-Qaeda proper, Ayman al-Zawihiri, not to launch attacks against the West as this would jeopardize the mission in Syria.

A New York Times report cited a US intelligence official as saying that Julani's statements were merely self-serving propaganda.

Propaganda? Yes. Self-serving? Not exactly. Julani's statements were actually serving NATO, the US, and Israel in their own propaganda efforts to assure the American people that supporting the so-called "rebels" in Syria is a good idea and one that will not come back to bite them.

Indeed, Julani truly spoke like a paid actor or a professional trained talking monkey in his job as message delivery boy. Obviously, neither designation would set him clearly apart from any other "expert" or "reporter" in the Western/Gulf media propaganda establishment.

Still, the "fearless" hijabed Julani stated, "We are only here to accomplish one mission, to fight the regime and its agents on the ground, including Hezbollah and others. Al-Nusra Front doesn't have any plans or directives to target the West. We received clear orders not to use Syria as a launching pad to attack the US or Europe in order to not sabotage the true mission against the regime. Maybe al-Qaeda does that, but not here in Syria."

The only true part of his statement was that Khorosan, painted as the end of the Western world and enemy #1 for a total of about five days, was a fictional organization invented by the Americans to deceive and frighten the American public.

His presentation of al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front as different organizations, however, is ludicrous, since Nusra was merely the Syrian version of al-Qaeda proper before the two groups were largely united by the shadowy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and renamed the Islamic Emirate of Iraq and the Levant, later to be renamed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIS, and IS. Of course, all incarnations of the group were entirely organized, funded, and armed by the United States, NATO, and GCC.

Julani also stated that Nusra would not harm Christians or Druze who refused to fight against it and that the even the Alawites would be spared if they would refuse to fight, reject Assad, and give up their religious beliefs and convert to Sunnism.

Of course, this is disingenuous to say the least. The "opposition" in Syria was famous for screaming "Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave!" as far back as 2011 when the crisis first began. Alawites have long been targeted by the so-called "rebels" from the start. Regardless, for the likes of the "moderate rebels," no Muslim - even Sunni - is ever Muslim enough, unless he practices the Wahhabist filth that is labeled Islamic by its proponents and psychopathic adherents.

The reality of the situation is that Julani's statements are nothing more than Western intelligence propaganda foisted upon the brains of the Western public in an effort to gin up support for the savages now bearing down on Latakia, Syria as I write this article.

Of course, Nusra and al-Qaeda will still be played up as a threat to the US here at home. After all, there are a few straggler civil liberties ambling about that still need to be corralled and destroyed.

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Surprised astronomers observe a gigantic flare on red giant star, Mira

© Katja Lindblom, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Artist’s impression of a giant flare on the surface of red giant Mira A. Behind the star, material is falling onto the star’s tiny companion Mira B.

    

Super-sharp observations with the telescope Alma have revealed what seems to be a gigantic flare on the surface of Mira, one of the closest and most famous red giant stars in the sky. Activity like this in red giants - similar to what we see in the Sun - comes as a surprise to astronomers. The discovery could help explain how winds from giant stars make their contribution to our galaxy's ecosystem

New observations with Alma have given astronomers their sharpest ever view of the famous double star Mira. The images clearly show the two stars in the system, Mira A and Mira B, but that's not all. For the first time ever at millimetre wavelengths, they reveal details on the surface of Mira A.

"Alma's vision is so sharp that we can begin to see details on the surface of the star. Part of the stellar surface is not just extremely bright, it also varies in brightness. This must be a giant flare, and we think it's related to a flare which X-ray telescopes observed some years ago", says Wouter Vlemmings, astronomer at Chalmers University of Technology, who led the team.

The team's results were recently published in the journal .

Red giants like Mira A are crucial components of our galaxy's ecosystem. As they near the end of their lives, they lose their outer layers in the form of uneven, smoky winds. These winds carry heavy elements that the stars have manufactured - out into space where they can form new stars and planets. Most of the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen in our bodies was formed in stars and redistributed by their winds.

© W. Vlemmings/Alma
Alma’s false-colour image of the double star Mira, 420 light years from Earth. The two stars, separated by a distance similar to the distance between the Sun and Pluto, are imaged so sharply that astronomers can discern surface details. The ellipse in the lower left corner shows the size of the smallest details that Alma can distinguish.

    

Mira - the name means "Wonderful" in Latin - has been known for centuries as one of the most famous variable stars in the sky. At its brightest, it can be clearly seen with the naked eye, but when it's at its faintest a telescope is needed. The star, 420 light years away in the constellation Cetus, is in fact a binary system, made up of two stars of about the same mass as the sun: one is a dense, hot white dwarf and the other a fat, cool, red giant, orbiting each other at a distance about the same as Pluto's average distance from the Sun.

"Mira is a key system for understanding how stars like our sun reach the end of their lives, and what difference it makes for an elderly star to have a close companion", says Sofia Ramstedt, astronomer at Uppsala University and co-author on the paper.

The Sun, our closest star, shows activity powered by magnetic fields, and this activity, sometimes in the form of solar storms, drives the particles that make up the solar wind which in its turn can create auroras on Earth.

"Seeing a flare on Mira A suggests that magnetic fields also have a role to play for red giants' winds", says Wouter Vlemmings.

© Clem & Adri Bacri-Normier (wingsforscience.com)/ESO
Alma on the Chajnantor Plateau, located at an altitude of 5000 meters in the Chilean Andes. The large antennas have a diameter of 12 metres, while 12 smaller antennas have a diameter of 7 metres. This photo was taken in December 2012, four months prior to the Alma inauguration.

    

The new images give astronomers their sharpest ever view of Mira B, which is so close to its companion that material flows from one star to the other.

"This is our clearest view yet of gas from Mira A that is falling towards Mira B" says Eamon O'Gorman, astronomer at Chalmers and member of the team.

The observations were carried out as part of Alma's first long-baseline observations. By placing the telescope's antennas at their maximum distance from each other, Alma reached its maximum resolution for the first time. Mira was one of several targets in the campaign, alongside a young solar system, a gravitationally lensed galaxy and an asteroid. Now Wouter Vlemmings and his team plan new observations of Mira and other similar stars.

"Alma has shown us details on the surface of Mira for the first time. Now we can begin to discover our closest red giants in detail that hasn't previously been possible", he says.

More information: "Resolving the stellar activity of the Mira AB binary with ALMA." DOI

Journal reference: Astronomy & Astrophysics

Provided by Chalmers University of Technology

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Mocking the empire: Russia's week in humor

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What Happens #IfThePatriotActExpires? ISIS, Hellfire, Doom!

    

Glenn Greenwald slammed the Thursday morning for a story quoting numerous anonymous senior officials who claimed that the non-renewal of three sections of the Patriot Act was tantamount to "playing national security Russian Roulette" in a time of unspecified "mounting terrorism threats."

Sensing the true danger involved, many vigilant citizens (starting with @benmarlin) took to Twitter to highlight the imminent, mounting, terrifying terrorist threat inevitably unleashed #IfThePatriotActExpires.

Among the more amusing entries:

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