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Historian Peter Turchin predicted the turbulence of 2020. He tells me why, in 2024, America will reach a ‘break point.’ Peter Turchin is not like most historians. For starters, he has an unusual background as an evolutionary biologist studying lemmings and mice. He says that analyzing the complexities of the natural world has allowed him to understand the most complex system of all: human society. He has pioneered a field of history that he calls cliodynamics that applies hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of historical data points to a mathematical model in order to understand the present and to predict...

The only thing surprising about the freight market slowdown is the speed at which it’s unfolding. The supply chain “bullwhip effect” is both predictable and expected. The surge of inventories and declining freight costs/capacity imbalances will be deflationary. The trucking market has slowed. Demand for trucks usually surges during the Spring, but this year, demand for truckload freight has broken out of this typical seasonal pattern.Outbound Tender Volume Index (OTVI) is an index which measures the volume of truckload order requests in the contract truckload market. The OTVI chart shows year over year activity from 2018 to this year.The bullwhip...

A controversial Chinese billionaire in self-imposed exile blasted on Thursday what he said was a small clique of corrupt "kleptocrats" running China - as he also warned of a wave of Chinese spies being dispatched to the United States in recent months. "What they're doing is against humanity," said Guo Wengui, during an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, two days after a previously scheduled appearance at a think tank in the same city was postponed due to what he called heavy pressure from the Chinese government. "What the US ought to do is take action, instead of...

Once NATO’s formidable eastern anchor, Turkey is increasingly becoming a major problem for Washington policymakers and a contributor to the Mideast chaos. The change is all the remarkable since at the outset of the Obama Administration, the President saw then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as one of his closest international friends. And, indeed, in 2009 Obama went to Turkey to make the first of two Mideast seminal speeches offering apologies to the Muslim world for what he saw as past U.S. mistakes with an invitation for cooperation. But in late August Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter publicly...

President Barack Obama condemned the violence in Ukraine on Wednesday, saying that the U.S. holds the government “primarily responsible for ensuring they are handling protesters peacefully” and that “there will be consequences if people step over the line.”

The medical director of Ben Taub Hospital's Emergency Center has been charged with criminal trespass and harassment, accused of threatening a woman she labeled a "homewrecker." [snip] The woman, warned by Siler-Fisher's husband that his wife was en route to the house, departed with her children before the doctor arrived, according to the charge. The charge also said surveillance video showed Siler-Fisher entering the home by kicking in the doggy door. The woman told police that Siler-Fisher called twice to threaten her during the drive, using profanity and vulgar language. She also said the doctor tweeted her 25 text messages,...

Secretary of State John Kerry is currently in Jordan for talks with area leaders and a meeting of the Arab Peace Initiative Follow-Up Committee. After a meeting with Jordanian foreign minister Nasser Judeh, Kerry made some rather sweeping remarks about the role the Palestinian-Israeli conflict plays in not only regional but global stability [emphasis added]: Peace is in the common interest of everybody in this region. And as many ministers said to me today in the meeting that we had – many of them – they said that the core issue of instability in this region and in many other...

Eric Burroughs Warning signs on market liquidity risks May 15, 2011 07:28 EDT If the great commodity selloff of 2011 shows nothing else, it is that markets are undergoing serious structural changes that need to be followed closely. Our commodities analyst John Kemp has compared the oil plunge with the May 2010 flash crash in U.S. shares, and rightfully so. Four standard deviation moves in oil futures are not normal, even if Gaussian distributions underestimate the chance of such a move. The rise of high-speed electronic trading appears to be creating imbalances between buyers and sellers in nanoseconds that lead...

The Russian central bank has put into effect its latest moves in the fight against inflation with some style. After raising interest rates on Monday for the first time since 2008, the authorities late on Tuesday widened the trading band for the rouble – and were happy to see the currency rise sharply on Wednesday, by a full 1 per cent against a US dollar/euro basket. As well as gaining some ground in the anti-inflation front, the central bank can claim another modest advance towards its aim of liberalising the rouble. Governor Sergei Ignatiev should be pleased with this week’s...

The World Bank projects that the number of chronically hungry people around the world will reach 1 billion by the end of this year, due to a relentless rise in food prices. “The trends towards the 1bn are worrisome,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick said. “Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels. The price hike is already pushing millions of people into poverty and putting stress on the most vulnerable, who spend more than half of their income on food.” The Financial Times reports: The number of chronically hungry people surpassed 1bn – about one in six people on...

Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called Tuesday for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down to usher in a new government. In a New York Times op-ed Tuesday, the Massachusetts Democrat appealed to Mr. Mubarak’s sense of nationalism, saying the Egyptian president “must accept that the stability of his country hinges on his willingness to step aside gracefully to make way for a new political structure.”

I'm not sure of copyright requirements with this site, so please link to site: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/28/next_years_wars?page=full

"As the Spittle Flies" is nearing the end of its run. This cable news soap opera -- a.k.a. "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" -- is alienating viewers as quickly as the angry and demanding diva has pushed away friends, family and colleagues over the course of his tumultuous career. When will the show end? Hard to tell. But the increasingly wild-eyed Keith is drawing rubberneckers in the same fashion as a six-car crackup beside the interstate. One media columnist observes a "creeping mania" brought on by plunging ratings and terminal jealousy. According to TV by the Numbers, the foam-at-the-mouth commentator seems...

Rush Limbaugh, during today's show, seemed to plant the first seeds of doubt regarding Barack Obama's mental fitness to serve as President of the United States of America. Rush commented several times during his program on his perception of Obama's mental 'instability.' I anticipate that in the days and weeks ahead Rush will begin to flesh out the idea that Obama's fragile, narcissistic psyche has been irreparably damaged by profound political changes during his first year in office leaving him mentally unfit to serve. Merely a personal observation with which I'm sure many will disagree,... but one that may bear...

Original article from Thursday (19), links to the Japanese "Sankei Shimbun" website. FReepranslation is provided as a summary; the original Japanese version directly by the author governs and takes precedence over the unofficial English.Troubling developments.

Internal political instability led to recent provocations by N. Korea: CIA chief By Hwang Doo-hyong WASHINGTON, May 19 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's recent provocations have come from political instability following the alleged health problems of its leader Kim Jong-il late last year, a top U.S. intelligence official said. "There also are legitimate questions being raised about the internal stability of North Korea, given Kim Jong-Il's health problems, uncertainty about succession, the weak economy, and the persistent food shortages," Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told a forum in Los Angeles Monday. "The result is that North Korea remains...

Succession Plans Still Murky 2009-04-20 North Korea's leader appears increasingly ill, and time may be running out to find a successor. This picture, taken some time in 1992, shows current North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (R) and then-leader Kim Il Sung (L), inspecting a soccer ground in Pyongyang. WASHINGTON—Appointments to North Korea’s National Defense Commission (NDC) during recent meetings of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament show that leaders of the tightly closed country have begun to finalize plans for a successor to the ailing Kim Jong Il, analysts say. The 12-member NDC, chaired by supreme leader Kim Jong Il, is...

Soviet relics feel the pain as Russian crisis deepens Luke Harding reports from Dushanbe in Tajikistan on how Moscow's recession has seen the sacking of thousands of guest workers from the central Asian republics. Now they are going home to poverty - and their governments are under threat Luke Harding The Observer, Sunday 12 April 2009 Until last month, Zafar Kasimov was working in a cement factory in St Petersburg. Now, however, he is back home from Russia and scraping a living in Tajikistan, central Asia's most hard-up nation. "My Russian boss told me there was no more work," Zafar,...

/begin my translation Kim Jong-il Recuperating at a Pyongyang Hospital Washington - Noh Jung-min 10/22/08 N. Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, who dropped out of sight for nearly two months, is said to have moved his residence to a hospital in Pyongyang. He delegated all his decision-making power (to others,) and ruling party's Personnel Department and (N. Korean) military are (frequently) at odds with each other over policy matters, according to a Chinese source on N. Korea. Jang Sung-taek (Kim's brother-in-law,) who is viewed as currently wielding a real power by foreign media, does not have as much power as the...

/begin my translation Something Happened? All N. Korean Diplomatic Missions Ordered to be on Stand-by N. Korea's diplomatic missions all over the world were ordered on Oct. 17 to stay at their mission, refraining from going out, and expect important announcement from their government. Sources explained they expect that official announcement could be made in a few days. They speculate that it is related to inter-Korean relationship or Kim Jong-il's health. /end my translation