Where is Robert Shiller (the bestselling author of Irrational Exuberance) when you need him? In fact, the Yale professor, who accurately foretold the crash of 2001, has just finished tallying the latest Case-Shiller index of top U.S. housing markets, which shows that home prices fell 7.2 percent between December and April, before rising 5 percent [...]

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Now, the Taliban are threatening to unleash an even grander assault. “The more Taliban feel hemmed in by the Pakistani military presence around South Waziristan, where the Taliban has strongholds, the more they fight back like cornered animals,” explains Haroon Rashid of BBC Urdu.
What the attackers are after is alarmingly clear: to terrorize the Pakistani [...]

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Defectors from the north, and frequent visitors there, believe that opposition of a Kim family dynasty is growing. Kim Jung Ils youngest son is being groomed as the third generation of Kims to run the communist police state. But many North Korean officials agree with the Chinese that economic reform is the only thing that [...]

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In the summer of 1962, the leader of the great Soviet empire, Nikita Khrushchev, faced a serious problem. His huge intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) didn’t work. Their launchers were unreliable, their aim was off and the fuel used to rocket them skyward was so volatile that they had to be stored empty. In case of [...]

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I do not believe that the U.S. and/or Israel are preparing for military action against Iran. This is probably psychological warfare.
I expect that we have more time (a couple of years) before Israel alone takes action. The U.S. will be missing in action.
Yet, change might be in the air because, according to STRATFOR global intelligence, [...]

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Tensions have flared between both China and India militaries along their disputed 2,175 mile-long border, with both sides alleging more frequent troop incursions in recent weeks. China is upset when the Indian prime minister recently visit the disputed region. China considers an Indian-occupied piece of it’s own Tibetan Autonomous Region, has added flames to the [...]

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Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that countries opposed to Iran’s atomic program should give up their own nuclear weapons, and attacked as “arrogant” the sanctions imposed on Ankara’s neighbor.
He also said he wanted the Middle East, and then the whole world, to rid itself of nuclear weapons.
Turkey PM: If you don’t [...]

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Russia is planning extensive research to help uphold its claim to the energy-rich Arctic Sea shelf, which the country believes is an extension of the Eurasian continent, an official says.
At a conference in Moscow Friday, Andrei Smirnov of the state-run company Atomflot said Russia is planning icebreaker missions in the Arctic over the next three [...]

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DEBKAfile’s US intelligence sources report indications of impending war preparations against Iran after Tehran’s rejections of the UN-brokered proposal to ship its enriched uranium overseas for further enrichment. These sources reveal that the administration is seeking congressional authorization to open America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Furthermore, the US-Israeli joint US-Israel Juniper Cobra ballistic exercise is [...]

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The witches here, in this market located uphill from the historic San Francisco Church, make offerings for luck, love and health. But if you know the right people you can also find black magic — the kind that aims to destroy a person’s health, or hurt a business, said Luz Pacheco, a professor of Aymara [...]

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