The threat of war in Ukraine is growing. As the unelected government in Kiev declares itself unable to control the rebellion in the country's east, John Kerry brands Russia a rogue state. The US and the European Union step up sanctions against the Kremlin, accusing it of destabilising Ukraine. The White House is reported to be set on a new cold war policy with the aim of turning Russia into a "pariah state".

That might be more explicable if what is going on in eastern Ukraine now were not the mirror image of what took place in Kiev a couple of months ago. Then, it was armed protesters in Maidan Square seizing government buildings and demanding a change of government and constitution. US and European leaders championed the "masked militants" and denounced the elected government for its crackdown, just as they now back the unelected government's use of force against rebels occupying police stations and town halls in cities such as Slavyansk and Donetsk.

"America is with you," Senator John McCain told demonstrators then, standing shoulder to shoulder with the leader of the far-right Svoboda party as the US ambassador haggled with the state department over who would make up the new Ukrainian government.

When the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover, politicians such as William Hague brazenly misled parliament about the legality of what had taken place: the imposition of a pro-western government on Russia's most neuralgic and politically divided neighbor.

Read More: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict

Nice post! It's from the heart and spot on.

There are several factors at work that you should be aware of.

The major problem with our economy right now is the baby boom. This un-natural population growth has dominated politics, the economy and culture for the last 50 years. There are finite resources in the world and the BB consume and consume. For years they consumed houses, house goods, education, cars, you name it.

Today they consume health care, and are de-consuming as they retire, downsize their houses, and cut their spending which is natural with all who retire. That might be a hint of what will be growth industries, health care, nursing homes, in home health care etc. Consider a transition to healthcare IT, specifically radiology which is where the bulk of healthcare technology and dollars are.

The baby boomers are not the allies of the young. They have always been self centered, inward looking and out to get the most for themselves. As a group the young can't look to them for help. Being past their working lives they are not concerned much with the economy. Being that many don't have adequate retirement they will continue to occupy jobs that in the past would have opened up and given other opportunities. Do count on them to look to the young to subsidize their healthcare and retirement. They as a group lived in a golden era of American economics and our monumental debt it testament to their idea of pushing issues off to another generation.

The second issue I sure you can appreciate is we are moving to a post PC world. People don't upgrade video cards in a tablet or phone. At some point we'll all be using tablets or running servers. If your very technical consider something like healthcare hardware repair. Find a niche that can't be moved to the cloud or run on a tablet.

Seeing as the boomers needed cheap stuff for their suburban wonderlands, all the jobs were shipped to china, mexico, vietnam etc. Those jobs are gone for good. You'll notice there is little discussion of unrolling the failed NAFTA agreements and free trade in fact the opposite continues. Free Trade is an enemy of the post Baby boom.

There are two other revolutions that will affect job growth in the future, robotics and 3D Printing. Drivers, pilots, assembly workers, warehouse workers, and many more are being replaced with location aware robots.

Anything that has anything routine about it will be replaced. Cops on patrol will be replaced, we'll only have cops who come after the patrol robot has alerted to something. Jobs that have more of a future are jobs that perform work that is near impossible to program. Think firefighter, plumbing repair, remodeling, vs. Cabbie, garbageman, etc.

I actually heard an engineer bragging that one day the barista will be replaced with a 3d printer that will be able to put any design you want on your coffee. It was a bit disgusting but proved to me that we are being driven by financial bean counters and dispassionate engineers.

To see this in action, check out on youtube, "boston robotics", "amazon warehouse", "3d printer". Consider the next generation of robots will have google as a brain.

If you understand there is no going back to your grandpas economy, you'll be able to make better choices for you and your family.

Good Luck and keep on posting here.

The time has come to stop the denial and to admit that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a Koch problem.

More than 100 times on the Senate floor in the past few months, the Senate’s top Democrat has invoked Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into conservative causes and campaigns.

After a brief respite during the Easter recess (during which time Reid turned his ire to the “domestic terrorists” who supported Cliven Bundy in Reid’s home state of Nevada) the senator has relapsed into a full-blown Koch habit.

Opening a minimum wage debate Wednesday, he said that if “Americans are searching for an answer” to why Republicans “would refuse to raise the minimum wage, they should look no further than Republicans’ billionaire benefactors — I repeat, billionaire benefactors — the Koch brothers.”

After Republicans blocked a minimum wage increase with a filibuster, Reid went to the Senate TV gallery and complained that “Republicans are defending . . . the Koch brothers, while they come to the floor and oppose raising the minimum wage.”

Read More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-harry-reid-has-a-koch-problem/2014/04/30/49c5e406-d0af-11e3-9e25-188ebe1fa93b_story.html

The focus on the Koch brothers lets many more oligarchs off the hook. People like Sheldon Adelson, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jaimie Diamon, Lloyd Blankfein, DB Bloomberg and many others are getting a pass.

Here's a 134 mentions...



Can someone let harry know it's pronounced COCK brothers.

Many lulz were had.

Source: SFGate

Explosions Wednesday rocked a railway station in China's far-western minority region of Xinjiang and assailants slashed at arriving passengers with knives, killing three people and injuring 79 in what state media called a premeditated terrorist attack.

The violence came as President Xi Jinping wrapped up a four-day visit to the area that has witnessed rising violence against civilians and authorities blamed on radical Islamists and separatists.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted eyewitnesses as saying at least two blasts went off at the South Station in the regional capital of Urumqi, while a large group of attackers went after passengers.

There was no immediate word on arrests and it was unclear whether Xi was still in the region at the time of the attack.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/CCTV-3-dead-in-train-station-attack-in-China-5441359.php

Edward Snowden told a crowd of fans Wednesday that the government's surveillance programs collect more data on Americans than any other country.

"Does the NSA know more about Americans in America than Russians in Russia?" Snowden said, appearing by live video during an awards ceremony in Washington. "We watch our own people more closely than anyone else in the world."

Snowden also took several shots at the National Security Agency and its top officials, and criticized the agency for wearing two contradictory hats of protecting U.S. data and exploiting security flaws to gather intelligence on foreign threats.

"U.S. government policy directed by the NSA ... is now making a choice, a binary choice, between security of our communications and the vulnerability of our communications," Snowden said, suggesting the government was biased toward the latter activity.

Read More: http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/edward-snowden-nsa-spies-more-on-americans-than-russians-20140430

Source: AP

Sinn Fein chief Gerry Adams, the warlord-turned-peacemaker of the Northern Ireland conflict, was being interrogated Thursday over the grisly slaying of a Belfast widow that has haunted his political career for decades.

Adams was arrested on suspicion of ordering the killing of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 in his Catholic west Belfast power base in 1972. That was the deadliest year in four decades of bloodshed, when the outlawed Irish Republican Army was committing killings daily — and Adams was already a commanding figure.

The IRA branded the 38-year-old woman a British spy but killed her secretly and told her children, who ranged in age from infants to teens, that she had abandoned them.

If Adams, 65, is charged with the murder of McConville — who disappeared without trace until her bullet-shattered skull was found near a Republic of Ireland beach in 2003 — it would be a profound surprise and deal a damaging shock to Northern Ireland's precariously balanced peace.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Sinn-Fein-leader-arrested-over-1972-IRA-killing-5442683.php

The men, most with their faces hidden by balaclavas, many carrying baseball bats, some wearing sidearms, swarmed around the black Jeep Patriot. They dragged out the four occupants - in black combat uniforms - snatching their guns, magazines of ammunition, and radio transmitters from their olive rucksacks. Body armour was stripped from the captives, who were forced to kneel on the pavement. The number plates of the car were torn off and it was driven away with screeching tyres.

No one was quite sure just what had taken place at Artema Street in the centre of Donetsk on Tuesday morning. The SUV had been parked outside a branch of the UkrBusinessBank. The staff thought the occupants may have been a "maskashow", armed masked gunmen sent by commercial rivals to disrupt trading, not an infrequent occurrence in the commerce of this wild east.

It emerged that the bank is owned by the dentist son of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s overthrown president. Serhiy Oksenuik, the deputy chairman, insisted he had no idea what the armed men were after, or if it had anything to do with the financial affairs of Oleksandr Yanukovych, who is reputed to have personal assets of $500 million.

Members of the "self-defence force" arrived; they were unaware, they professed, of the identity of those who had made off with the weapons and the vehicle. “It’s a mystery,” said Aleksandr. He was a berkut, the riot police disbanded by the Kiev administration after a hundred protesters were shot dead in the Maidan, now one of the mainstays of the militia of the People’s Republic of Donetsk.

Read More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amidst-masked-men-and-paramilitary-violence-ukraine-is-a-country-on-the-jagged-edge-of-anarchy-9307710.html

While it’s well known that pregnant women have to be vigilant about what they eat, a new study suggests that what women eat before conception can play a major role even after the baby is born.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study claims to provide strong evidence that a mother’s diet before pregnancy can permanently affect her child’s lifelong health by silencing certain genes.

snip

And what they found was that what women ate affected the process of gene expression in their babies -- specifically in a process called methylation, which is known for locking genes in the ‘off’ position.

The process of methylation -- which plays a crucial role in silencing gene expression -- is essential for cell differentiation and embryonic development.

A separate animal study, for instance, has shown that a female mouse's diet can change her offspring's coat color when DNA methylation is modified.

“Our ongoing research is yielding strong indications that the methylation machinery can be disrupted by nutrient deficiencies and that this can lead to disease,” explained co-author Andrew Prentice.

http://news.yahoo.com/women-eat-conception-alter-babys-genes-study-161656293.html

Source: AFP

The head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency and his deputy will step down later this year, officials said Wednesday, but denied reports they were being forced out.

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who had served as director of the DIA since July 2012, and deputy David Shedd, said in a joint memo to employees that "they will depart the agency and retire by early Fall 2014," according to an agency statement.

Their "retirements have been planned for some time," said Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby in an email.

Flynn played a key role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, serving under General Stanley McChrystal as part of US efforts to dismantle insurgent networks through raids by special operations forces.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/us-military-intelligence-chief-stepping-down-220141566.html