IATA reports global air cargo increase by 5,8% in 1H,2014

IATA released data for global air freight markets showing a strong increase in air cargo in July. Compared to July 2013, freight tonne kilometers (FTKs) rose 5.8%. This is an acceleration in growth from June when cargo demand grew at less than half that rate (2.4%).

The strong growth mirrors positive developments in some key regional economies. After a slowdown at the start of the year, global business confidence and trade are showing signs of improvement again, especially in Asia-Pacific. Global air cargo volumes have now surpassed their previous July peak, in 2010, and look set to continue to increase. European air freight, however, grew just 1.8%. This reflects the effects of the Russia-Ukraine crisis (including the impact of mounting economic sanctions), which is adding to economic weakness in the Eurozone.

“Overall, July saw growth accelerate. That’s good news and it reflects the continued strengthening of business confidence at a global level. But the air cargo industry is moving at two speeds with a sharp divide in regional performance. European carriers reported anemic growth of just 1.8% while all other regions reported solid gains of 5% or more on the previous year. In particular, the 7.1% growth reported by airlines in Asia-Pacific is encouraging as it demonstrates a recovery in trade and a positive response to China’s economic stimulus measures,” said Tony Tyler, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

Source and image: IATA

Republicans are Still Trying to Destroy Obamacare, and They're Still Losing

The Republican party’s effort to deny any (if not all) access to affordable healthcare for as many people as humanly (though not humanely) possible took a major blow on Thursday, when the full DC circuit court of appeals decided to review the anti-Obamacare decision issued by  two Republican-appointed judges earlier this year.

Since that opinion made Bush v Gore look like a model of thoughtful jurisprudence, the Obama administration asked the full court to reconsider. It will, and their pending ruling is bad news for conservatives who want to preserve Americans’ precious freedom  to die totally avoidable deaths because they lack health insurance.

“Today’s decision by the DC Circuit to grant en banc review of Halbig v. Burwell is unwise and unfortunate. It has the appearance of a political decision,”  sniffed Michael Cannon of the conservative-libertarian Cato Institute. The chutzpah it takes for one of the architects of the case to accuse the judges who voted to re-hear it of being “political” is like the Atlantic Ocean accusing the creek running behind your house of having too much water.

But nothing will stop the Obamacare truthers – not logic, reason, legal rulings, common sense or human decency.

Earlier this year, based on a hyper-literal reading of an isolated part of the Affordable Care Act, a two-judge panel from the court ruled that Congress did not intend to provide subsidies to participants in federal health insurance exchanges in order to make their insurance affordable – though they did so for state exchanges. Their argument – that Congress went through the trouble to create a federal backstop in case certain states didn’t establish exchanges while intentionally (but secretly) intending for the backstop to fail – is both absurd on its face and  inconsistent with the understanding of literally everyone involved in passing the statute. The only evidence that supporters of that interpretation can cite for their bizarre interpretation of the law is a stray, repudiated YouTube comment by a consultant.

Unlike the bizarre ruling that conservatives loved, the decision to re-hear the case is  legally unassailable: the relevant federal law explicitly says that disagreements between circuits are a legitimate basis for reviewing a decision. And though the plaintiffs in the case first argued that other people should risk their health and lives sacrificed to show proper reverence for the literal text of federal laws, they showed less interest in the language of the law in their legal replies to the request for review. (Pro-tip: When you’re invoking the principle of adherence to the strict letter of the law to justify stripping people of their health insurance, it’s probably best if you don’t discard those principles the moment that they become inconvenient for your political purposes.)

It is unusual for the court to agree to a full review – but it’s also highly unusual for an unrepresentative panel to issue a widely-derided ruling that would have massive policy consequences. If this Obamacare case isn’t important enough to merit a re-hearing, what would be?

The desperation of the great legal minds behind this lawsuit to avoid a re-hearing in court is telling. They know that their argument that millions of people should lose medical coverage because the card says “Moops” (or, in the even more ridiculous version of the argument, that eighth-century Spain was in fact invaded by the “Moops”) has no chance of convincing any judge who isn’t also a fanatical opponent of Obamacare. Indeed, in a rational universe, their arguments would be looked at in the same light as arguments that Obama is ineligible to serve as president because he was born in Kenya.

COMMENTS I Understand Why Westerners Are Joining Jihadi Movements Like ISIS. I Was Almost One of Them

The Islamic State just released a  gruesome new beheading video, again helmed by a western-bred Jihadist. As often happens, I received messages asking for explanation.

You see, I’m the jihadi who never was.

Twenty years ago, I ditched my Catholic high school in upstate New York to study at a Saudi-funded madrassa in Pakistan. A fresh convert, I jumped at the chance to live at a mosque and study Qur’an all day.

This was in the mid-1990s, during an escalation of the Chechen resistance against Russian rule. After class, we’d turn on the television and watch feeds of destruction and suffering. The videos were upsetting. So upsetting that soon I found myself thinking about abandoning my religious education to pick up a gun and fight for Chechen freedom.

It wasn’t a verse I’d read in our Qur’an study circles that made me want to fight, but rather my American values. I had grown up in the Reagan ’80s. I learned from G.I. Joe cartoons to (in the words of the theme song) “fight for freedom, wherever there’s trouble.” I assumed that individuals had the right — and the duty — to intervene anywhere on the planet where they perceived threats to freedom, justice and equality.

For me, wanting to go to Chechnya wasn’t reducible to my “Muslim rage” or “hatred for the West.” This may be hard to believe, but I thought about the war in terms of compassion. Like so many Americans moved by their love of country to serve in the armed forces, I yearned to fight oppression and protect the safety and dignity of others. I believed that this world was in bad shape. I placed my faith in somewhat magical solutions claiming that the world could be fixed by a renewal of authentic Islam and a truly Islamic system of government. But I also believed that working toward justice was more valuable than my own life.

Eventually, I decided to stay in Islamabad. And the people who eventually convinced me not to fight weren’t the kinds of Muslims propped up in the media as liberal, West-friendly reformers. They were deeply conservative; some would call them “intolerant.” In the same learning environment in which I was told that my non-Muslim mother would burn in eternal hellfire, I was also told that I could achieve more good in the world as a scholar than as a soldier, and that I should strive to be more than a body in a ditch. These traditionalists reminded me of Muhammad’s statement that the ink of scholars was holier than the blood of martyrs.

The media often draw a clear line between our imagined categories of “good” and “bad” Muslims. My brothers in Pakistan would have made that division much more complicated than some could imagine.These men whom I perceived as superheroes of piety, speaking to me as the authorized voice of the tradition itself, said that violence was not the best that I could offer.

Some kids in my situation seem to have received different advice.

It’s easy to assume that religious people, particularly Muslims, simply do things because their religions tell them to. But when I think about my impulse at age 17 to run away and become a fighter for the Chechen rebels, I consider more than religious factors. My imagined scenario of liberating Chechnya and turning it into an Islamic state was a purely American fantasy, grounded in American ideals and values. Whenever I hear of an American who flies across the globe to throw himself into freedom struggles that are not his own, I think, What a very, very American thing to do.

Chomsky: U.S. Plunges the Cradle of Civilization into Disaster, While Its Oil-Based Empire Destroys the Earth's Climate

It is not pleasant to contemplate the thoughts that must be passing through the mind of the Owl of Minerva as the dusk falls and she undertakes the task of interpreting the era of human civilization, which may now be approaching its inglorious end.

 

The era opened almost 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, stretching from the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates, through Phoenicia on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Nile Valley, and from there to Greece and beyond. What is happening in this region provides painful lessons on the depths to which the species can descend.

 

The land of the Tigris and Euphrates has been the scene of unspeakable horrors in recent years. The George W. Bush-Tony Blair aggression in 2003, which many Iraqis compared to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, was yet another lethal blow. It destroyed much of what survived the Bill Clinton-driven UN sanctions on Iraq, condemned as "genocidal" by the distinguished diplomats Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who administered them before resigning in protest. Halliday and von Sponeck's devastating reports received the usual treatment accorded to unwanted facts.

 

One dreadful consequence of the US-UK invasion is depicted in aNew York Times "visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria": the radical change of Baghdad from mixed neighborhoods in 2003 to today's sectarian enclaves trapped in bitter hatred. The conflicts ignited by the invasion have spread beyond and are now tearing the entire region to shreds.

 

Much of the Tigris-Euphrates area is in the hands of ISIS and its self-proclaimed Islamic State, a grim caricature of the extremist form of radical Islam that has its home in Saudi Arabia. Patrick Cockburn, a Middle East correspondent for The Independent and one of the best-informed analysts of ISIS, describes it as "a very horrible, in many ways fascist organization, very sectarian, kills anybody who doesn't believe in their particular rigorous brand of Islam."

 

Cockburn also points out the contradiction in the Western reaction to the emergence of ISIS: efforts to stem its advance in Iraq along with others to undermine the group's major opponent in Syria, the brutal Bashar Assad regime. Meanwhile a major barrier to the spread of the ISIS plague to Lebanon is Hezbollah, a hated enemy of the US and its Israeli ally. And to complicate the situation further, the US and Iran now share a justified concern about the rise of the Islamic State, as do others in this highly conflicted region.

 

Egypt has plunged into some of its darkest days under a military dictatorship that continues to receive US support. Egypt's fate was not written in the stars. For centuries, alternative paths have been quite feasible, and not infrequently, a heavy imperial hand has barred the way.

After the renewed horrors of the past few weeks it should be unnecessary to comment on what emanates from Jerusalem, in remote history considered a moral center.

Eighty years ago, Martin Heidegger extolled Nazi Germany as providing the best hope for rescuing the glorious civilization of the Greeks from the barbarians of the East and West. Today, German bankers are crushing Greece under an economic regime designed to maintain their wealth and power.

The likely end of the era of civilization is foreshadowed in a new draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the generally conservative monitor of what is happening to the physical world.

The report concludes that increasing greenhouse gas emissions risk "severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems" over the coming decades. The world is nearing the temperature when loss of the vast ice sheet over Greenland will be unstoppable. Along with melting Antarctic ice, that could raise sea levels to inundate major cities as well as coastal plains.

The era of civilization coincides closely with the geological epoch of the Holocene, beginning over 11,000 years ago. The previous Pleistocene epoch lasted 2.5 million years. Scientists now suggest that a new epoch began about 250 years ago, the Anthropocene, the period when human activity has had a dramatic impact on the physical world. The rate of change of geological epochs is hard to ignore.

One index of human impact is the extinction of species, now estimated to be at about the same rate as it was 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Earth. That is the presumed cause for the ending of the age of the dinosaurs, which opened the way for small mammals to proliferate, and ultimately modern humans. Today, it is humans who are the asteroid, condemning much of life to extinction.

The IPCC report reaffirms that the "vast majority" of known fuel reserves must be left in the ground to avert intolerable risks to future generations. Meanwhile the major energy corporations make no secret of their goal of exploiting these reserves and discovering new ones.

A day before its summary of the IPCC conclusions, The New York Times reported that huge Midwestern grain stocks are rotting so that the products of the North Dakota oil boom can be shipped by rail to Asia and Europe.

One of the most feared consequences of anthropogenic global warming is the thawing of permafrost regions. A study in Science magazine warns that "even slightly warmer temperatures [less than anticipated in coming years] could start melting permafrost, which in turn threatens to trigger the release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases trapped in ice," with possible "fatal consequences" for the global climate.

Arundhati Roy suggests that the "most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times" is the Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani soldiers have killed each other on the highest battlefield in the world. The glacier is now melting and revealing "thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate" in meaningless conflict. And as the glaciers melt, India and Pakistan face indescribable disaster.

Sad species. Poor Owl.

Muslim Beheads Woman in Broad Daylight

82-year-old Palmira Silva, who detectives believe is of Italian descent, was found beheaded at a house in a north London suburb on Thursday, British media reported, in an incident that police said did not appear to be terrorist related. 

“Whilst it is too early to speculate on what the motive behind this attack was I am confident, based on the information currently available to me, that it is not terrorist related,” said Detective Chief Inspector John Sandlin who is leading the investigation.

Police said that a 25 year old man had been taken in to custody on suspicion of the murder. Officers at the scene said they had to use a stun gun. One officer suffered a suspected broken wrist during the arrest. 

Prior to the murder there were  two other people at a house on the same street that had the same encounter, but they escaped unharmed. 

Another man who lives near the scene said he learned from other neighbors that a man carrying a machete had been seen in a series of back gardens on the road before the killing. 

“My neighbor, who works nights, said she was woken by noise from a man in her back garden. He had a machete,” said Isik Saban.

The reported nature of the killing had prompted speculation that the murder might be a terrorism incident after last year’s gruesome murder of a British soldier in London, and the recent release of videos by Islamic State jihadists showing two U.S. journalists being beheaded apparently by a British national. 

All Americans Will Receive A Microchip Implant In 2017 Per Obamacare

NBC has recently predicted that in 2017, all of America will be tagged with microchips. They will be implanted to help identify individuals immediately. According to the report, the technology is used to answer one question, “Am I who I say I am?” 

Scientists Say Human Microchip Will Not Be Optional

Technologies designed specifically to track and monitor human beings have been in development for at least two decades. In the virtual realm, software programs are now capable of watching us in real time, going so far as to make predictions about our future behaviors and sending alerts to the appropriate monitoring station depending on how a computer algorithm flags your activities. 

That is in and of itself a scary proposition. What may be even scarier, however, is what’s happening in the physical realm. According to researches working on human-embedded microchips it’s only a matter of time before these systems achieve widespread acceptance. 

Already, schools in Brazil have started to place computer chips in school uniforms to keep track of pupils and reduce truancy. Some 20,000 pupils in the north-eastern city of Vitoria da Conquista have microchips embedded in their school T-shirts. The parents get a text message when their children arrive at school, or if they are late for classes. The authorities say the measure will help teacher-parent relations. 

RFID chips are everywhere. Basically, if you have to swipe a card, your ID is encoded in the magnetic stripe. If you touch it to a reader, as with Myki, it has an RFID chip with your number on it linked to the relevant database with your info on it. The latest credit cards have both stripe and RFID. 

Just about every American now carries a mobile phone. They’re so prevalent, in fact, that many consider it a “right,” prompting the government to actually provide subsidies to those who can’t afford one on their own. 

Embedded in every one of those phones is an RFID chip that can track our every movement via GPS or cell tower triangulation. Moreover, those microphones and cameras that come standard on every phone can be remotely activated by law enforcement surveillance systems, a capability that has existed since the early 2000′s. 

But as intrusive as these devices are, they are accepted as the norm by billions of people world wide. Not only that, but no one had to “force” them on us. We are, it seems, the masters of our own enslavement. And we pay top dollar to have the best tracking device money can buy! 

Granted, one can simply disconnect from “the grid” by throwing away their cell phone. But, the direction these new monitoring technologies are moving coupled with continued government expansion of surveillance suggests that microchip RFID technology will eventually be non-voluntary. 

Michael Snyder of The Truth Wins asks What will you do when you can no longer buy or sell without submitting to biometric identification? 

This technology is going to keep spreading, and it is going to become harder and harder to avoid it. 

And it is easy to imagine what a tyrannical government could do with this kind of technology. If it wanted to, it could use it to literally track the movements and behavior of everyone. 

… 

And one day, this kind of technology will likely be so pervasive that you won’t be able to open a bank account, get a credit card or even buy anything without having either your hand or your face scanned first.

It’s difficult to imagine a populace that will freely submit to such digital bondage. But as has been the case with the degradation of personal privacy and rights in America, be assured it won’t simply become law over night. 

First, the technologies will need to be generally accepted by society. It’ll start with real-time consumer based products like Google Glass. The older generations may reject it, but in a couple of years you can bet that tens of millions of kids, teens and younger adults will be roaming the streets while sporting cool shades, interactive web surfing and the capability to record everything around them and upload it to the internet instantly. 

Next, as we’re already seeing from early adopters, RFID chips will be voluntarily implanted under our skin for everything from access to high security buildings to grocery store purchases.

Eventually, once the concept is generally accepted by the majority, it will become our new “social security number.” 

To gain access to official services, you’ll need to be a verified human. Without verification you won’t even be able to purchase a six pack of beer, let alone get medical care or a driver’s license. 

Whether we like it or not this is the future. Every purchase you make and every step you take will be tracked by a tiny 15-digit passive microchip, meaning that the only way to “turn it off” will be to physically remove it from your body. 

In essence, we’ll soon live in a world of Always On Monitoring. 

Our children and grandchildren – at least most of them – will likely not only submit to implantation, they’ll gladly pay the costs so that they, too, can “interact with society in a meaningful way.”