China has become the world's leading makers of modern railroads and equipment. It has done so as part of a long-term strategy to weld a new economic space, build entirely new markets where none before existed. They studied the European rail-makers, studied the German ICE high-speed railways, engaged Siemens and a German consortium to build the world's first magnetically levitated (maglev) train to link Shanghai's international convention center to its new international airport at speeds between 300-400 km per hour. Now they are working on an entire new concept of fast rail as well as negotiating with some 28 countries to build high-speed conventional rail lines. China has become the address when it comes to rails and it is changing the world as we know it.

I first moved to Germany in the mid-1980's from New York to work as a journalist. In those days there were bleeding edge technologies under development with positive German government financial backing. One of them was what was called the Magnetic Levitation or maglev rail system. I was able to make a ride at the Maglev experimental test track in Emsland north Germany, an impressive experience. There was great optimism that Germany could be an export world leader in Maglev with a concept that was claimed to be far superior to a rival Japanese design.

Approximately 4,500 people, many civilians, have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led coalition began bombing 150 days ago, according to the UN. 23,000 more have been wounded.

An average of 30 people have been killed in Yemen every single day since the beginning of the war on March 26, which pits a US-backed coalition of Middle Eastern nations and forces loyal to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi against Iran-backed Houthi rebels and fighters loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

UNICEF estimates nearly 400 children have been killed and over 600 injured in the past four months in the country, the poorest in the Middle East.

13 Yemeni teaching staff and four children were killed by a Saudi air strike on August 20. Two days before, coalition bombing in the Amran province took the lives of 17 civilians, injuring 20 more. UNICEF condemned what it called the "senseless bloodshed."

A Red Cross spokeswoman said the violence in Ta'iz, in southern Yemen, in just one day on August 21 left 80 people dead.

Earlier this week, as the financial world was mesmerized by a min-stock market crash, the Financial Times published a dastardly little piece of fascist propaganda.

There is no more egregious anti-liberty economic policy imaginable than banning cash. I covered this earlier in the year in the post, Martin Armstrong Reports on a Secret Meeting in London to Ban Cash. Here's an excerpt:

At this point, anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention to the central planning economic totalitarians running the fraudulent global financial system is aware of the blatant push in the media to acclimate the masses to accepting a "cashless society."

In the mind of an economic tyrant, banning cash represents the holy grail. Forcing the plebs onto a system of digital fiat currency transactions offers total control via a seamless tracking of all transactions in the economy, and the ability to block payments if an uppity citizen dares get out of line.

While we've all seen the idiotic arguments for banning cash, i.e., it will allow central planners to more efficiently centrally plan economies into the ground, Martin Armstrong is reporting on a secret meeting in London with the aim of getting rid of any economic privacy that remains by ending cash.

A Forbes report on alleged Russian army casualties in Ukraine citing a dodgy Russian website has sparked a media and Twitter storm. Some said Russia had "finally slipped" with the leak on its troops in Ukraine; others were baffled by the "fake publication." RT decided to investigate.


A Forbes contributor, Paul Roderick Gregory, published an article on Wednesday citing a Russian web source called "Delovaya Zhizn" (translated as Business Life), which was said to reveal "official figures on the number of Russian soldiers killed or made invalids in eastern Ukraine."

The report, dated March 2015 and entitled "Increases in Pay for Military in 2015," was altered, with the relevant information being removed, after the Forbes publication came out. However, the original copy was webcached by Google.

The cache shows that the website, which has articles on Russian finance, markets and leisure, claimed that the Russian government had paid monetary compensation to Russian soldiers who "took part in military actions in Eastern Ukraine."

Without citing a source, the article claimed that as of February 1, more than 2,000 families of soldiers killed in Ukraine had received compensation of 3 million rubles (about $50,000) and those crippled during military action - a half million rubles (about $25,000). It added that another 3,200 soldiers wounded in battle had received compensation of 1,800 rubles for every day they were in the conflict zone.

The Forbes contributor accused "Russian censors" for "quickly removing the offending material."

The Forbes report was picked up by Western media and independent journalists. The International Business Times reported that the Russian article had "accidentally published the leaked figures."


An article by The Independent on Wednesday called Delovaya Zhizn a "respected news site in Russia," and cited the head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, James Nixey, who said that the report is a "nail in the coffin" in proving Russia is engaged in military action.


Another media outlet piling on was was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which claimed it had received a response from some Anatoly Kravchenko from Delovaya Zhizn, who said the website had "received the casualty figures from relatives of dead servicemen as well as 'insider information' from the Russian Defense Ministry." However, they added that the website's representative had "declined to identify any specific sources."

In a recent op-ed for Czech online newspaper Nova Republika Slovak-Ukrainian politician, writer and political analyst Sergei Chelemendik suggested that it's time for Russia to stop playing the game of geopolitics according to the rules established by the West.

The writer began his piece by noting that "today there is an elementary truth that is being ignored by philosophers in both Russia and Europe: that history gains a new impetus for development when one of its participants puts forth new rules of the [geopolitical] game, forces the rest to play according to these rules, and begins to emerge victorious, using these rules."

Looking to history for examples, Chelemendik recalled that "this is how all the great conquerors and empires acted, long before the globalists and neoconservatives and even before Genghis Khan."

Investigative reporters have discovered that IMF bailout funds intended for Ukraine have mysteriously found their way to a Cyprus bank account controlled by notorious Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi.

A huge chunk of the $17 billion in bailout money the IMF granted to Ukraine in April 2014 has been discovered in a bank account in Cyprus controlled by exiled Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the German newspaper Deutsche Wirtshafts Nachrichten [DWN] reported on Thursday.

In April last year $3.2 billion was immediately disbursed to Ukraine, and over the following five months, another $4.5 billion was disbursed to the Ukrainian Central Bank in order to stabilize the country's financial system.

"The money should have been used to stabilize the country's ailing banks, but $1.8 billion disappeared down murky channels," writes DWN.

Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the former governor of Dnipropetrovsk, is one of Ukraine's richest businessmen, with a business empire that includes holdings in the energy, media, aviation, chemical and metalwork industries. At the center of Kolomoyskyi's wealth is PrivatBank, Ukraine's largest financial institution, which claimed the bulk - 40 percent - of the bailout money which had been earmarked for stabilizing the banking system.

"Theoretically, the IMF should retain direct control over the distribution of funds. In fact, it seems that the banks chose their own auditors."

Two Indian warships entered an Iranian port on Thursday as part of a "goodwill visit to strengthen the bilateral relations" between the two countries, the Indian government said on Friday.

The ships, INS Betwa and INS Beas, docked at Bandar-e-Abbas port for a five-day stay in Iran, according to the India Ministry of Defense. They are scheduled to undertake various professional interactions with their counterparts in the Iranian Navy, including exercises at sea.

"It has been India's national objective to ensure a secure and stable regional environment, which is conducive for economic and social development not just at home, but also in immediate and extended neighborhood," the Defense Ministry said in a release.

"The Indian Navy, while shouldering its security responsibilities, is committed to these objectives and has been contributing towards humanitarian assistance, capacity building and capability enhancement of friendly foreign countries when so needed."

Russia has recently published her new official Naval Doctrine. The full document can be downloaded from the Presidency's website here (in Russian).

To be honest, there is nothing earth shattering in this document. The document explains the purpose of this doctrine, the missions of the Russian Navy and includes a region by region review of the challenges and opportunities for Russia on the world's oceans, including the Arctic and Antarctic regions. But there is one sentence which, I think, deserves a lot of attention. On page 20, in the section 54 it says:

"Определяющим фактором в отношениях с НАТО остаются неприемлемость для Российской Федерации планов продвижения военной инфраструктуры альянса к ее границам и попытки придания ему глобальных функций".

Which I would translate as follows:

"A defining factor in (our) relations with NATO remains that for Russia the following is unacceptable: the alliance's plan to move its infrastructure to the borders of Russia and the attempts to give the alliance a global role".

The intensity of the Ukrainian conflict continues to rise. There's a non-stop flow of statements by high-level U.S. government officials suggesting Russia is the top threat to American national security or portraying Vladimir Putin as Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi and Osama bin Laden all rolled into one. (Some like Hillary Clinton also add Hitler to this pack.) And Russian bombers buzz American airspace with growing frequency.

For those of us who lived through the hardships of the Cold War, there is an uneasy feeling that the United States and Russia are quickly edging towards direct military confrontation.

This is why it is important to make brief historical excursion into the not-so-distant past.

Those who witnessed - and especially those who helped bring about - the momentous changes in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and in Russia in the early 1990s, remember only too well the overwhelming euphoria of those times.

The dark years of totalitarian communism were receding into the past, and the Russian people were ready and eager to join the great family of Western civilization and enjoy its basic values like human rights, the rule of law, democracy, freedom, a market economy and other real or imaginary benefits associated with them.

That was the time when fresh from the yoke of communism, the Russians were eager to embrace all of these ideals, and confidently expected them to materialize with the help, first and foremost, of the United States.

Hillary Clinton has over one million fake Twitter followers, more than any other presidential hopeful

Donald Trump also has more than one million fake followers, but a higher percentage of real followers on the social media platform

Almost half of Joe Biden's followers are fake

Among those running for president, Bernie Sanders has the highest percentage of real followers with 92%

Fake followers are a 'mix of inactive Twitter users , completely fake users that are created for the sole purpose of following people, and spam bots'

Clinton and Trump still have far more followers than anyone else running for president

Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are not polling well when it comes to their social media fans.

An analysis of the pair's Twitter accounts has revealed that over one million of Clinton's followers are fake, while only 53% of Biden's social media fans are real.

Also polling poorly is Donald Trump, who like Clinton has over one million fake followers.

Yahoo Tech analyzed the Twitter accounts of the presidential hopefuls, and while Clinton and Trump both have the highest number of fake followers, their percentage of real followers is comparatively good at 66% and 69% respectively.