The strategic challenge that Russia poses to the United States today is quite serious. Russia is increasingly anti-democratic and hostile to the United States.  Xenophobia is widespread in Russia.  The Kremlin is currently encouraging nationalism and militarizing the country.  It constantly attacks the West.  And a sizable number of the Russian population sees neighboring countries as part of the Russian zone of influence. Now this is not me speaking, this is taken from a recent statement by Alexei Kudrin, who until September of 2011 was the finance minister of Russia, and who has just been publicly offered a cabinet position by Vladimir Putin.  The most serious aspect of the Russian threat to the United States is their nuclear use doctrine.  They have the lowest nuclear use threshold in the world.  Russia reserves the right to introduce nuclear weapons into conventional warfare, and they characterize this, amazingly, as "de-escalation" of the conflict. You won't believe the statements of Russia's nuclear commanders.  Here's one:

The curse of hedging that blighted gold in the 1990s is making a comeback, and threatens to loom over the market like Banquo's ghost. London-listed gold producer Petropavlovsk has said it will pre-sell 55pc of its future output planned for the second quarter of 2014, at an average price of $1,408 an ounce. This is the first time that a big producer has hedged more than half its future sales. "We have a huge investment program and thought a little price protection in the short-term will let us sleep better at night," said chairman Peter Hambro. Tyler Broda from Nomura said this may signal the return of "structural hedging" across the industry, with other companies scrambling to lock in forward contracts. "This could increase the pressure on the spot gold price over the coming years," he said. The risk is a vicious circle as hedging leads to lower prices, leading to more hedging.

Here we go again. A new bird-flu virus in China, the H7N9 strain, is spreading alarm. It has infected about 130 people and killed more than 30. Every time this happens, some journalists compete to foment fear, ably assisted by cautious but worried scientists, and then tell the world to keep calm. We need a new way to talk about the risk of a flu pandemic, because the overwhelming probability is that this virus will kill people, yes, but not in vast numbers. In recent years flu has always proved vastly less perilous than feared. In 1976 more people may have died from bad reactions to swine-flu vaccine than from swine flu. Since 2005, H5N1 bird flu has killed 374 people, not the two million to 7.4 million deemed possible by the World Health Organization. In 2009, H1N1 Mexican swine flu proved to be a normal flu episode despite apocalyptic forecasts. No doubt some TTPers will remind me that, in the story of the boy who cried "Wolf!", there eventually was a wolf. And that in 1918 maybe 50 million people died of influenza world-wide. So we should always worry a bit. But perhaps it's not just luck that has made every flu pandemic since then mild.  It may be evolutionary logic.

Seems like everyone these days is talking about Bitcoins and their implications for private money. Bitcoins - a form of digital private money - shot up in value from $90 to $260 each after Cypriot bank accounts were raided by the State, then plunged last month before recovering some of their value. These gyrations are symptoms of a bubble. Just as with tulip bulbs or dotcom shares, there will probably be a bursting. All markets in assets that can be hoarded and resold - as opposed to those in goods for consumption - suffer from bubbles. Money is no different; and a new currency is rather like a new tulip breed. Yet it would be a mistake to write off Bitcoins as just another bubble. People are clearly keen on new forms of money safe from the confiscation and inflation that looks increasingly inevitable as governments try to escape their debts. Bitcoins pose a fundamental question: will some form of private money replace the kind minted and printed by governments? It has happened before.

Anti-reform hardliners in China's Communist Party have become seriously alarmed by the sharp slow-down in economic growth, creating a "task-force" to crank up production. China's Caixin Magazine reports that there is a growing "sense of crisis" not felt since the depths of the global banking crash in 2008-2009. The State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has assembled a team to "protect economic growth" and pressure state companies to boost jobs at all costs. SASAC is the bastion of vested interests and controller of 115 state behemoths with assets above $6 trillion and a lock on much of the economy. The move comes amid further signs that growth is faltering across all fronts. HSBC's gauge of Chinese services fell three points to 51.1 in April, the lowest in almost two years.

As information about the apparent Israeli strikes on targets inside Syria continues to pour in, it's easy to lose sight of the central fact: the two reported Israeli attacks are part of an ongoing war, the big war against the West. While the attacks were in Syria, the mission was primarily a major strike against Iran and Russia, two key components of the global alliance arrayed against us. Both are desperately trying to shore up the Assad regime in Damascus. The fall of Assad would be a devastating blow to Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei's tyranny in Tehran, would gravely weaken Russia's strategic position in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and would threaten the strength (and even the survival) of Hezbollah, the world's most dangerous terrorist organization and the creation of Iran's founding tyrant, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The attacks apparently did great damage to Iranian missiles, and the vaunted Russian antiaircraft system provided to both Syria and Iran was unable to do anything to prevent them. Both have been humiliated.

Asia's economic recovery is losing momentum and Europe's slump is proving deeper than expected, raising concerns that soaring stock markets globally have jumped ahead of economic reality. Japan's closely-watched index for machinery orders fell 13% in January, nearing levels last seen after the Lehman Brothers crisis. "It is a shockingly poor number and illustrates the divergence between the improvement in sentiment in financial markets and what is actually happening on the ground," said Julian Jessop from Capital Economics. China's industrial output rose 0.6% in January and 0.8% in February, the slowest pace since early last year. Retail sales growth dropped to 12.3%, the weakest since early 2004. "The goal of consumer-led growth remains a pipe dream for now," said the group's China economist, Qinwei Wang. "The economic rebound may already be stalling." The US economy is holding up, as cheap shale gas drives a manufacturing revival, but Charles Dumas from Lombard Street Research said America still has to navigate the most drastic fiscal squeeze since the Second World War. "We think tightening will be 2.5% of GDP this year and that will hit profits," he said. "We expect a 10-20% correction in the S&P 500."

Before the Democrat-led Senate rammed it through in the dead of night, Christmas Eve 2009 – Senate President Harry Reid used a House bill unrelated to Obamacare, struck all the language and the title so that only the former HR number remained, and then inserted a new title and over 2,000 pages of job-killing, economy-crushing, health-care-rationing compost.

Sneaky? Yes. Typical? No doubt. Unconstitutional? Absolutely. It’s like dropping a Ford Pinto engine into a totaled Ferrari body, patching it up and then selling it to some unsuspecting dupe as a “brand new Ferrari.”

Unfortunately, America was that unsuspecting dupe.

Well, the jig’s up.  Although the mainstream media paid it little attention, back in November (11/26/12) the U.S. Supreme Court shocked many in the legal community by granting Liberty Counsel’s motion for a rehearing on its multi-pronged challenge to Obamacare. The high court ordered the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear arguments. We will present our oral arguments May 14-17.

Liberty Counsel’s brief argues that Obamacare is invalid because, since it’s a tax – as the Supreme Court already ruled in June – it violates the Constitution’s Origination Clause. To pass constitutional muster, tax bills must originate in the House, not the Senate.

No matter how the 4th Circuit rules, it will be appealed to the SCOTUS.  Chief Justice Roberts will get another bite at the rotten apple – this time, with a whole new quiver of legal arrows.

Earlier this month NGO Monitor released its report on foreign government funding of radical political Israeli NGOs which work to undermine Israel's international standing and subvert Israeli society. Along with the usual European suspects who give millions of shekels (or euros or pounds) to Israeli groups like this, it works out that the US government is also funding extremely radical organizations, courtesy of American taxpayers. Notably, the three groups that reported receiving funding from the US are all in the business of waging political warfare campaigns directed at the Israeli public. According to the report, in accordance with the NGO Transparency Law which requires NGOs to report on donations received from foreign governments, three Hate-Israel Israeli NGOs received funding from the US, i.e., Obama's State Department. They are: