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British finance minister George Osborne unveiled fresh austerity measures Wednesday to slash debt, evoking the plight of crisis-hit Greece in the first purely Conservative budget for almost two decades. Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne drastically cut welfare spending to honour campaign promises to forge ahead with austerity, which saw his centre-right Conservative party sweep to an unexpected majority in a May general election and return David Cameron as prime minister.Speaking to lawmakers in his post-election budget statement to parliament, Osborne said welfare spending would be slashed by an accumulated total of £12 billion ($18.4 billion, 16.6 billion euros) by the end of parliament in five years' time. At the same time, the government will introduce a "national living wage" that could reach £9.0 an hour by 2020 that will apply to workers only aged 25 and over. That compares with the current national minimum wage of £6.50 an hour for those aged 21 and over, which will continue to exist alongside the "living wage."

n all, the government plans to save £37 billion over the next five years: £12 billion from welfare cuts, £5 billion from tax changes and reducing evasion, and the rest largely from cuts to government departments, Osborne said.

Osborne confirmed there would be no change to income tax thresholds or value added taxation (VAT) for at least five years.Corporation tax, levied on business profits, will be reduced from 20 percent to 19 percent in 2017 and 18 percent by 2020.

(Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council on Friday authorized European Union naval operations for one year to seize and dispose of vessels operated by human traffickers in the high seas off Libya. The 15-member council adopted the British-drafted resolution with 14 votes in favor. Venezuela abstained. The resolution approved the second of three phases of an EU naval mission intended to help stem the flow of migrants and refugees into Europe, which has escalated into a major crisis in recent months. The third phase of the EU mission, which is not covered by the resolution, would involve European operations in Libyan territorial waters and coastal areas. Libya initially objected to the draft U.N. resolution on the high seas mission, but its U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi wrote to the council Tuesday to say the country's concerns had been allayed and it agreed to the final draft.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft welcomed the approval, and said "any action will be proportional in keeping with the limits authorized by this resolution and used solely against the smugglers and empty boats." He said any migrants rescued would be taken to Europe. Still, he cautioned that naval missions against smugglers would not tackle the root causes of the migration problem. "Action against smugglers on the high sea won't solve this crisis alone," he said. "But it will send a message that people cannot profit from this evil trade with impunity. It will save lives." The operation only covers the migration route from Libya and will not apply to the route that refugees have been using to flee the wars in Syria and Iraq, from Turkey through Greece and the Balkans.

Circumstances surrounding the European and Ukrainian elections were far from being a mere coincidence. The regime changers in Kiev decided to hold a presidential election on May 25, the same day as European Parliament elections, in order to demonstrate their desire to follow a European-centric foreign policy.

Way beyond the established fact of an Atlantic push against Russian western borderlands, Ukraine remains a catfight of local oligarchies. No wonder the new Ukrainian president is also an oligarch; the 7th wealthiest citizen in the land, who owns not just a chocolate empire, but also automotive plants, a shipyard in Crimea and a TV channel. The only difference is that he’s a NATO oligarch

Meanwhile, in NATOstan, local and transnational elites have been desperately trying to spin a measure of success. Abstention remains notable – only roughly 4 in 10 Europeans take the trouble to vote on what goes on in Strasbourg, with a majority alienated enough to legitimize the mix of internal European austerity and international belligerence.

Putin announced that Russia has cancelled the South Stream project on December 1, 2014. Instead the South Stream pipeline project has been replaced by a natural gas pipeline that goes across the Black Sea to Turkey from the Russian Federation’s South Federal District. This alternative pipeline has been popularly billed the «Turk Stream» and partners Russian energy giant Gazprom with Turkey’s Botas. Moreover, Gazprom will start giving Turkey discounts in the purchase of Russian natural gas that will increase with the intensification of Russo-Turkish cooperation. The natural gas deal between Ankara and Moscow creates a win-win situation for both the Turkish and Russian sides. Not only will Ankara get a discount on energy supplies, but Turk Stream gives the Turkish government what it has wanted and desired for years. The Turk Stream pipeline will make Turkey an important energy corridor and transit point, complete with transit revenues. In this case Turkey becomes the corridor between energy supplier Russia and European Union and non-EU energy customers in southeastern Europe. Ankara will gain some leverage over the European Union and have an extra negotiating card with the EU too, because the EU will have to deal with it as an energy broker.

For its part, Russia has reduced the risks that it faced in building the South Stream by cancelling the project. Moscow could have wasted resources and time building the South Stream to see the project sanctioned or obstructed in the Balkans by Washington and Brussels. If the European Union really wants Russian natural gas then the Turk Stream pipeline can be expanded from Turkey to Greece, the former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, and other European countries that want to be integrated into the energy project. The cancellation of South Stream also means that there will be one less alternative energy corridor from Russia to the European Union for some time. This has positive implications for a settlement in Ukraine, which is an important transit route for Russian natural gas to the European Union. As a means of securing the flow of natural gas across Ukrainian territory from Russia, the European Union will be more prone to push the authorities in Kiev to end the conflict in East Ukraine.

From the perspective of Russian Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, the US is waging its multi-spectrum war against Russia to ultimately challenge Moscow’s Chinese partners. In an insightful interview, Glazyev explained the following points to the Ukrainian journalist Alyona Berezovskaya — working for a Rossiya Segodnya subsidiary focusing on information involving Ukraine — about the basis for US hostility towards Russia: the bankruptcy of the US, its decline in competitiveness on global markets, and Washington’s inability to ultimately save its financial system by servicing its foreign debt or getting enough investments to establish some sort of innovative economic breakthrough are the reasons why Washington has been going after the Russian Federation. [13] In Glazyev’s own words, the US wants «a new world war». [14] The US needs conflict and confrontation, in other words. This is what the crisis in Ukraine is nurturing in Europe. Sergey Glazyev reiterates the same points months down the road on September 23, 2014 in an article he authors for the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, which is sponsored by the Russian International Affairs Council — a think-tank founded by the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian Ministry of Education 2010 — and the US journal Foreign Affairs — which is the magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relation in the US. In his article, Glazyev adds that the war Washington is inciting against Russia in Europe may ultimately benefit the Chinese, because the struggle being waged will weaken the US, Russia, and the European Union to the advantage of China. [15] The point of explaining all this is to explain that Russia wants a balanced strategic partnership with China. Glazyev himself even told Berezovskaya in their interview that Russia wants a mutually beneficial relationship with China that does reduce it to becoming a subordinate to Beijing. [16]

A Chinese agreement to finance a high-speed railway from Belgrade to Bucharest was one of around $10bn worth of investments, mainly in the energy and infrastructure sectors, signed during a China-Central and Eastern Europe summit this week. By funding the railway, Beijing hopes to establish a rapid connection from Greece’s Pireaus Port through the Balkans to the EU member states of Central Europe. Several agreements on the €1.5bn railway, which will be financed by soft loans from state-owned China Exim Bank, were signed between China, Hungary and Serbia on December 17. When the line is operational, the travel time between Belgrade and Budapest will be slashed from the current eight hours to just 2.4 hours. Macedonian counterpart Nikola Gruevski was also in attendance as there are plans to extend the line south to Macedonia and Greece in future. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, who headed a 200-strong delegation to Belgrade, said he expected the line would benefit both China and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the EU, according to a Serbian government statement.

Chinese shipping giant Cosco Pacific took over the management rights to half of Piraeus port and is now expanding two container terminals under a 35-year concession agreement, with the aim of turning the Greek port into one of Europe’s top five container ports. However, to take full advantage of Cosco’s investment in Piraeus and its potential to become a gateway to the CEE region, investments into transport links across the Balkans are needed. "We will propose construction of a rapid land and maritime route based on the Budapest-Belgrade railroad and the Greek port of Piraeus to improve regional connectivity," Li told journalists in advance of the summit, South China Morning Post reported. Investments into infrastructure to transport raw materials into China and Chinese manufactured goods to foreign markets is nothing new. Closer to home, Beijing is looking to fund a railway across Central Asia to create a direct rail link between its factories and the massive wholesale bazaars of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Further afield, in May 2014, China signed an agreement in Kenya to build a new line from Mombasa to Nairobi that will extend to four other East African states in future.

While land rail routes across Eurasia to Europe are also being developed, sea shipping remains the cheapest route from the Far East to Europe, and Piraeus is a convenient entry point to the continent. While growth in the region has been patchy since the recent global economic crisis, in the longer-term the EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe and future entrants from the Balkans are expected to converge with longer-established EU members from Western Europe in terms of spending power. Since 2012, when the first China-CEE summit was held in Warsaw, Chinese attention on the region has steadily increased, with a focus on energy and infrastructure. Aside from the access to new markets, there are further commercial benefits for China, as Chinese companies are selected for lucrative construction contracts on projects funded by Chinese state-owned banks. On December 16, the opening day of the summit, Li told the 16 regional leaders to attend that China would launch a $3bn investment fund for the region.

The World is at a dangerous Crossroads. The Western military alliance is in an advanced state of readiness. And so is Russia. Russia is heralded as the “Aggressor”. US-NATO military confrontation with Russia is contemplated. Enabling legislation in the US Senate under “The Russian Aggression Prevention Act” (RAPA) has “set the US on a path towards direct military conflict with Russia in Ukraine.”  Any US-Russian war is likely to quickly escalate into a nuclear war, since neither the US nor Russia would be willing to admit defeat, both have many thousands of nuclear weapons ready for instant use, and both rely upon Counterforce military doctrine that tasks their military, in the event of war, to preemptively destroy the nuclear forces of the enemy. (See Steven Starr, Global Research, August 22, 2014) The Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) is the culmination of more than twenty years of US-NATO war preparations, which consist in the military encirclement of both Russia and China:

On July 24, in consultation with the Pentagon, NATO’s Europe commander General Philip Breedlove called for “stockpiling a base in Poland with enough weapons, ammunition and other supplies to support a rapid deployment of thousands of troops against Russia”.(RT, July 24, 2014). According to General Breedlove, NATO needs “pre-positioned supplies, pre-positioned capabilities and a basing area ready to rapidly accept follow-on forces”: “He plans to recommend placing supplies — weapons, ammunition and ration packs — at the headquarters to enable a sudden influx of thousands of Nato troops” (Times, August 22, 2014, emphasis added) Breedlove’s “Blitzkrieg scenario” is to be presented at NATO’s summit in Wales in early September, according to The London Times.  It is a “copy and paste” text broadly consistent with the  Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) which directs President Obama to:

“(1) implement a plan for increasing U.S. and NATO support for the armed forces of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and other NATO member-states; and (2) direct the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO to seek consideration for permanently basing NATO forces in such countries.” (S.2277 — 113th Congress (2013-2014)) More generally, a scenario of military escalation prevails with both sides involved in extensive war games. In turn, the structure of US sponsored military alliances plays a crucial role in war planning. We are dealing with a formidable military force involving a global alliance of 28 NATO member states. In turn, the US as well as NATO have established beyond the “Atlantic Region” a network of bilateral military alliances with “partner” countries directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

If Argentina were in a high-stakes chess match, the country’s actions this week would be the equivalent of flipping over all the pieces on the board. – David Dayen, Fiscal Times, August 22, 2014 Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds, which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar, defeating a 2005 settlement in which 92% of creditors agreed to accept a 70% haircut on their bonds. A US court has backed the vulture funds; but last week, Argentina sidestepped its jurisdiction by transferring the trustee for payment from Bank of New York Mellon to its own central bank. That play, if approved by the Argentine Congress, will allow the country to continue making payments under its 2005 settlement, avoiding default on the majority of its bonds. Argentina is already foreclosed from international capital markets, so it doesn’t have much to lose by thwarting the US court system. Similar bold moves by Ecuador and Iceland have left those countries in substantially better shape than Greece, which went along with the agendas of the international financiers.

Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (* indicates successful ouster of a government) China 1949 to early 1960s Albania 1949-53 East Germany 1950s Iran 1953 * Guatemala 1954 * Costa Rica mid-1950s Syria 1956-7 Egypt 1957 Indonesia 1957-8 British Guiana 1953-64 * Iraq 1963 * North Vietnam 1945-73 Cambodia 1955-70 * Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 * Ecuador 1960-63 * Congo 1960 * France 1965 Brazil 1962-64 * Dominican Republic 1963 * Cuba 1959 to present Bolivia 1964 * Indonesia 1965 * Ghana 1966 * Chile 1964-73 * Greece 1967 * Costa Rica 1970-71 Bolivia 1971 * Australia 1973-75 * Angola 1975, 1980s Zaire 1975 Portugal 1974-76 * Jamaica 1976-80 * Seychelles 1979-81 Chad 1981-82 * Grenada 1983 * South Yemen 1982-84 Suriname 1982-84 Fiji 1987 * Libya 1980s Nicaragua 1981-90 * Panama 1989 * Bulgaria 1990 * Albania 1991 * Iraq 1991 Afghanistan 1980s * Somalia 1993 Yugoslavia 1999-2000 * Ecuador 2000 * Afghanistan 2001 * Venezuela 2002 * Iraq 2003 * Haiti 2004 * Somalia 2007 to present Libya 2011* Syria 2012 Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington? A: Because there’s no American embassy there.

Over the course of 2014 the prices the world pays for crude oil have tumbled from over $125 per barrel to around $45 per barrel now, and could easily drop further before heading much higher before collapsing again before spiking again. You get the idea. In the end, the wild whipsawing of the oil market, and the even wilder whipsawing of financial markets, currencies and the rolling bankruptcies of energy companies, then the entities that financed them, then national defaults of the countries that backed these entities, will in due course cause industrial economies to collapse. And without a functioning industrial economy crude oil would be reclassified as toxic waste. But that is still two or three decades off in the future.

An additional problem is the very high depletion rate of “fracked” shale oil wells in the US. Currently, the shale oil producers are pumping flat out and setting new production records, but the drilling rate is collapsing fast. Shale oil wells deplete very fast: flow rates go down by half in just a few months, and are negligible after a couple of years. Production can only be maintained through relentless drilling, and that relentless drilling has now stopped. Thus, we have just a few months of glut left. After that, the whole shale oil revolution, which some bobbleheads thought would refashion the US into a new Saudi Arabia, will be over. It won't help that most of the shale oil producers, who speculated wildly on drilling leases, will be going bankrupt, along with exploration and production companies and oil field service companies. The entire economy that popped up in recent years around the shale oil patch in the US, which was responsible for most of the growth in high-paying jobs, will collapse, causing the unemployment rate to spike.

The game they are playing is basically a game of chicken. If everybody pumps all the oil they can regardless of the price, then at some point one of two things will happen: shale oil production will collapse, or other producers will run out of money, and their production will collapse. The question is, Which one of these will happen first? The US is betting that the low oil prices will destroy the governments of the three major oil producers that are not under their political and/or military control. These are Venezuela, Iran and, of course, Russia. These are long shots, but, having no other cards to play, the US is desperate. Is Venezuela enough of a prize? Previous attempts at regime change in Venezuela failed; why would this one succeed? Iran has learned to survive in spite of western sanctions, and maintains trade links with China, Russia and quite a few other countries to work around them. In the case of Russia, it is as yet unclear what fruit, if any, western policies against it will bear. For example, if Greece decides to opt out of the European Union in order to get around Russia's retaliatory sanctions against the EU, then it will become entirely unclear who has actually sanctioned whom.

Foreign Minister Sveinsson issued a formal statement, saying that he had informed the current Latvian EU President as well as the European Commission about Island’s decision to withdraw its EU membership application.

The application was submitted to the EU six years ago. Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson explained: “The EU and Iceland have discussed the country’s position on the status of its bid to join the European Union. … The government doesn’t intend to resume preparing for EU membership”. The decision didn’t come without forewarning. In January Island’s Prime Minister Sigmundur Davið Gunnlaugsson went on the record about the possible withdrawal of Island’s EU membership application, saying: “Participation in EU talks is not really valid any more. .. Both due to changes in the European Union and because it’s not in line with the policies of the ruling government to accept everything that the last government was willing to accept. Because of that we are back to square one”. The announcement about Island’s withdrawal of its application for EU membership comes as EU-skeptic parties in the Scandinavian neighbor country Denmark complain that their parties are denied access to documents which other parties receive. That is, documents pertaining an upcoming decision about whether Denmark should abolish its reservations about the coordination of Danish and EU law.

One of the primary drivers behind Island’s reservations with regard to an EU membership are EU fishing quota which, according to Icelandic fishery experts would be devastating for the Atlantic  island nation’s fishery and related industries. Island is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and a member of the Schengen areas. Reservations about a full EU membership are also driven by an increasing EU interference in national sovereignty with regard to legislation, the development of a military column within the EU, lack of transparency, money spent on influencing EU election outcomes by infiltrating social media, corruption and interference into domestic economic and monetary policies such as in Greece.

The revelations that global and multinational businesses have been brokering “secret” tax deals with Luxembourg to avoid paying taxes in their home countries, may be the first time an entire country has been implicated in tax avoidance collusion. A cache of leaked agreements uncovered by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) appears to show that major companies have used the tiny EU state to dramatically cut their tax liabilities.

The ICIJ’s six-month investigation claims to have found household companies such as Aviva, HSBC, E-on, Tyco, Pepsi, IKEA and Deutsche Bank were among those which had taken advantage of legal tax avoidance schemes in Luxembourg. Luxembourg is routinely named as a tax haven on many of the world’s authoritative lists of tax havens, including the one compiled by me and my two co-authors, Richard Murphy and Christian Chavagneux. But Luxembourg has managed to remain “under the radar” not least because its politicians and bankers have been denying for years that it is, or ever was, a tax haven. The revelations suggest Luxembourg has been playing a double game. Luxembourg has been quick to comply with new regulations proposed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the EU. In 2011, the OECD global forum on transparency and exchange of information commended Luxembourg for introducing new rules governing banking information or information protected by secrecy rules.

But at the same time, the revelations show that 340 well-known foreign companies have entered into secret agreements with the Luxembourg authorities, brokered by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. To take a random example that applies for many of these companies, the ICIJ have a letter to the Luxembourg tax administration written on a PwC letterhead, where FedEx lays down its plan to set up a limited liability company as a tax resident in Luxembourg – so subject in principle to Luxembourg’s corporate income tax. The letter then provides details of a proposed shareholding arrangement that will ensure, I quote, that “neither that Fedex SCS nor its shareholders will be subject to corporate income tax, Municipal Business Tax and Net Wealth tax in Luxembourg”. The letter implies that Luxembourg will serve in effect as a tax haven for Fedex.

So the EU “defeated” Putin by forcing him to cancel the South Stream pipeline. Thus ruled Western corporate media. Nonsense. Facts on the ground spell otherwise. This “Pipelineistan” gambit will continue to send massive geopolitical shockwaves all across Eurasia for quite some time. In a nutshell, a few years ago Russia devised Nord Stream – fully operational – and South Stream – still a project – to bypass unreliable Ukraine as a gas transit nation. Now Russia devised a new deal with Turkey to bypass the “non-constructive” (Putin’s words) approach of the European Commission (EC). Background is essential to understand the current game. Five years ago I was following in detail Pipelineistan’s ultimate opera – the war between rival pipelines South Stream and Nabucco. Nabucco eventually became road kill. South Stream may eventually resurrect, but only if the EC comes to its senses (don’t bet on it.)

The 3,600 kilometer long South Stream should be in place by 2016, branching out to Austria and the Balkans/Italy. Gazprom owns 50 percent of it - along with Italy’s ENI (20 percent), French EDF (15 percent) and German Wintershall, a subsidiary of BASF (15 percent). As it stands these European energy majors are not exactly beaming – to say the least. For months Gazprom and the EC were haggling about a solution. But in the end Brussels predictably succumbed to its own. Russia still gets to build a pipeline under the Black Sea – but now redirected to Turkey and, crucially, pumping the same amount of gas South Stream would. Not to mention Russia gets to build a new LNG (liquefied natural gas) central hub in the Mediterranean. Thus Gazprom has not spent $5 billion in vain (finance, engineering costs). The redirection makes total business sense. Turkey is Gazprom’s second biggest customer after Germany. And much bigger than Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria combined. Russia also advances a unified gas distribution network capable of delivering natural gas from anywhere in Russia to any hub alongside Russia’s borders.

And as if it was needed, Russia gets yet another graphic proof that its real growth market in the future is Asia, especially China – not a fearful, stagnated, austerity-devastated, politically paralyzed EU. The evolving Russia-China strategic partnership implies Russia as complementary to China, excelling in major infrastructure projects from building dams to laying out pipelines. This is business with a sharp geopolitical reach – not ideology-drenched politics.

The US Defense Department (DOD) is preparing to expand its global network of military bases by establishing a new “string” of bases in countries stretching from Africa to East Asia, unnamed Pentagon officials told the New York Times Wednesday. The enlarged US basing arrangements will include at least four new large-scale bases or “hubs,” including new facilities in East Africa and West Africa and Afghanistan, along with a greater number of smaller camps or “spokes,” sources told the Times . The new bases, which the Pentagon describes as “enduring” bases, will host forces ranging from dozens of commandos up to 5,000 soldiers at the largest hubs, the unnamed military officials said. West Africa is a main focus of the expanded basing plans, and will host one of the larger hubs. The West African countries of Niger and Cameroon are the only countries set to host smaller “spoke” bases listed by the Times report. The Pentagon plans to build a large “hub” near Erbil in northern Iraq, where US special forces have already been conducting combat operations for months. US Special Forces commandos affiliated with the “expeditionary targeting force” announced last week by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter are already setting up operations in the same area, according to reports.

The new bases are only the latest development in the metastatic growth of Washington’s global military apparatus. According to the official list of US overseas bases, US forces are stationed in Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, British Indian Ocean Territory, Bulgaria, Cuba, Djibouti, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Honduras, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Romania, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Taking into account non-officially acknowledged bases, “forward operating posts,” and other long-term deployments, the list of US bases expands to include the majority of the countries in the world.

The downing of Russia’s Su-24 bomber by the Turkish Air Force is “one of the nightmare scenarios that military planners had envisaged as a result of Moscow’s decision to enter the conflict,” reports The Financial Times.

In turn, The Washington Post believes that “NATO faced being thrust into a new Middle Eastern crisis… The incident marked a serious escalation in the Syrian conflict that is likely to further strain relations between Russia and the NATO alliance.” The Guardian argues that we’ve witnessed “a nerve-jangling event, that raised the spectre of a direct confrontation between two large powers: one a Nato member, the other nuclear-armed”. While it’s clear that neither Russia nor NATO wants to go to war against each other, each side is trying to deal with the situation and identify the reasons that provoked the recent crisis and, what’s even more important, to establish who’s at fault.

However, to resolve the difficult crisis that followed the destruction of the Russian Su-24 quickly, the West is now searching for those “guilty” of this blatant attack, which is, without a doubt, the Turkish leader – Tayyip Erdogan. It seems that NATO states are not afraid to criticize Turkey for its actions against Russia. Vice-Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Sigmar Gabriel expressed harsh criticism of Turkey after the downing of Russia’s Su-24 bombers by labeling it an “unpredictable player”, reports the German Die Welt. The members of NATO fear that the “impulsive actions” of Turkey’s President will force them into a new major conflict, and NATO is not prepared to fight it yet. These “impulsive actions” may trigger the response that is required by Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. No wonder Hollande, while declaring war against ISIL, made no reference of Article 5, by quoting the EU Lisbon Treaty instead.

The International Monetary Fund agreed Monday to add the Chinese yuan to its reserve currency basket. The decision — which marks another step in China's global economic emergence — came after the IMF evaluated the Asian nation's standing as an exporter and the yuan's role as a "freely usable" currency. In a statement, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde noted the yuan's inclusion is a "clear representation of the reforms" taking place in China.

The addition of the yuan, or renminbi, will take effect next October. Lagarde and the United States had supported its inclusion in the basket, known as Special Drawing Rights (SDR). It will join the euro, yen, pound and dollar in the reserves basket. The yuan will have about an 11 percent weighting in the SDR.

The IMF said the yuan's inclusion will make the SDR more diverse and representative of the international community. The basket determines the currency mix countries like Greece receive when the IMF disburses financial aid. The decision to add the yuan will likely increase demand for the currency.

Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky discuss the concept of a basic income guarantee also known as a universal basic income.

In this video, former finance minister of Greece, professor of economics, author, and founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), Yanis Varoufakis, argues why the Basic Income is a necessity today. His arguments take into account a macro socio-economic, psychological, philosophical and moral perspective. In addition to the speech, Varoufakis addresses a wide range of questions from the public. What is the social democratic tradition about? And how did influence Capitalism in the 20th century? Why is Social Democracy coming to an end? And how is the process of financialization & the rise of technology contributing to its demise? What is Bankruptocracy? What problems is it posing to our society? What is the current narrative on the relationship between the markets & state in terms of wealth generation? And how and why is a change required in this narrative in order to make the Basic Income a reality? What are the arguments are against a Basic Income? And how should they be confronted? How is a Basic Income aligned with the Libertarian philosophy? Will it promote freedom of choice and self-determination? How will a Basic Income promote creativity in our society? All of these questions and much more are addressed in the video: