icnif77:

How can I delete?

I need an instructions, pls.

I should click 'abuse' button, should I?

BuTT....I consider it 'personal' only when 'in person'.

Post on Internet doesn't count, unless my Englo translation isn't good.?

I'm studying English more. My English teacher in Primary School always throw me out of the class, because I came in wearing the shoes. She added: 'You'll never learn English'.

laowaigentleman:

Putin will lock them up for being benders.

mattsm84:

That is what happened last time.

icnif77:

It's an American thing! Bending.

I always had trouble in US, while taking shower and I dropped my soap.

I had to buy new one. 'Cause 'can't bend/pick-up (in the shower)'. That's (Jap) Uechi-Ryu rule.

'Zero-Bend-Hedge': What Do Janet Yellen, Uri Geller, And Jesus Have In Common? Meanwhile, we are still puzzling over the miracle produced by the Fed. Uri Geller could bend spoons. The Fed bends the entire economy. Hardly a single price is unaffected. Hardly a single business plan or ... laws of physics. Geller can bend a spoon. Yellen has the amazing ability to bend reason, given that ...

DrMonkey:

He wrestle bears bare chest after breakfast, and his cat is a 350 Kg Siberian tiger. He is the Chuck Norris from the East. That's a justification in itself.

mattsm84:

I bet he'd be willing to trade some of those superpowers for the ability to borrow from western banks. Your average Russian has lost almost half their wealth in the last 6 months.

DrMonkey:

@mattsm84 O_o Wow, sounds scary, I would be desperate... You work years to accumulate that small ball of savings, with a honest life, so you can have a nice home for your family, and *bam* evaporated. Years of work for ...nothing...

laowaigentleman:

@DrMonkey: the consequences of political pusillanimity can't be made clearer...

icnif77:

Once Sino (last Dec.) asked ''what means 'icni'?'' =  Inuit Committee on National Issues (Canada)...and Sino is Cannuck, too. I mean, he should know.

I told him to get reading glasses on.

bill8899:

Buy? You mean short. Short it to 90.

icnif77:

Not 'short'! Long, 'cause it's cheap. Here TD (after my post):

Russian Stocks Soar 17% - Most Since 2008; Ruble Back Below 62/USD

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/17/2014 10:05 -0500

mattsm84:

Holy Shit! That's the way that the rag you read is covering this!? Russia is looking at a complete collapse of its currency, the kind that your man Durden keeps insisting is just starting to happen in the US yet never materializes. Your dream of a brics lead alternative to the dollar is deader than disco.

icnif77:

'Will see' with my tin-foil-binocs in hand. 

mattsm84:

It's happening now before your very eyes.

icnif77:

US doesn't show any strenght in crude drop. It's normal up/down market move. Bit exaggerated, but US isn't main muscle.

mattsm84:

If you don't think an increase in energy US production is ultimately behind this then you're a fool.

icnif77:

SArabian output and US oil reserves is cause, IMO. It's not important why drop, me thinks.

'US muscle around without the (necessary) muscle'.

mattsm84:

So it doesn't matter here that US energy reserves, which are spurring Saudi output in the first place, were the catalyst. And I guess it doesn't matter that the only way to solve this problem is problem is for the west to lift sanctions or to borrow from th US lead IMF. No the economic war between the West and Russia is over. Russia lost.

icnif77:

Jon Stewart goes through the list of random things in the spending bill, is horrified

I can't read. I'm over the free limit. 'Torture' cost me this month.

mattsm84:

Sorry to hear that Alan. But sort of trade do they do? A lower currency value may mean that you can buy more off them for less money. Ultimately, that's to your benefit.

ScotsAlan:

We make stuff that we sell to Chinese manufacturers, and they in turn sell to Russia.  But as most stuff is sold in $ it means the Russian buyers are cancelling their orders.

It's not just us who are affected. The Chinese companies are being hit hard too. As are many American and European manufacturers.

And the low price of oil is not only affecting Russia. The North sea oil industry is in crisis too and that will have a knock on effect. A massive part of Government revenue comes from oil, in almost every country. A low oil price means less taxation for the Government, leading to cut backs and job losses... denting consumer confidence so less money spent.

Oh well, so long as the politicians are happy with themselves.

mattsm84:

Actually we're pretty giddy about it here in the US.

ScotsAlan:

It affect everybody.

The company I work for is owned by an investment capital house.  Most of their funds come from American pension investors.

Go back to the crash, they said banks were too big to be allowed to fail. I reckon the same applies to countries. The EU bailouts are evidence of that.

mattsm84:

When did it happen? Like 1981.

icnif77:

I still have my spray too. Today, I could spray my palms, beside my bold head(s). How to down-vote the comment?

Hulk:

I'm just going to keep downvoting you. You're absolutely nuts.

You post the most irrelevant, wumao bullshit ever.

icnif77:

You do scare me! Are you tall?

Admin knows, that I require pay to 'grant' 'down' from my bank.

icnif77:

Please, don't misunderstand me! I just want you to be proud of your heritage! And Native English skills.

Did CIA torture violate Nuremberg ban on human experimentation?

BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY

McClatchy Washington BureauDecember 16, 2014 Updated 19 hours ago

 — CIA health professionals may have committed war crimes by collecting and analyzing data on brutally interrogated detainees in potential violation of U.S. and international bans on research on human subjects without their consent, a human rights organization said Tuesday.

Physicians for Human Rights called on President Barack Obama and Congress to establish a commission of inquiry to examine the participation of CIA and private medical personnel in the interrogation program, including possible breaches of domestic and international laws.

“The CIA relied upon health professionals at every step to commit and conceal the brutal and systematic torture of national security detainees,” the organization said in an analysis of  a four-year study of the agency’s interrogation program released last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. “While most of the acts detailed . . . violate international human rights and domestic laws prohibiting torture, several of these alleged violations can also constitute war crimes.”

In raising possible war crimes by medical personnel, the analysis cited bans on experimentation on prisoners that grew out of the trials of Nazi officials and doctors held in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II. 

CIA spokesman Christopher White denied that CIA medical personnel violated any laws, saying that officers of the agency’s Office of Medical Services monitored the health of detainees and “did so consistent with their professional obligations.”

“The men and women who participated in this program did so at the direction of the president and with the approval of the Department of Justice,” White said. “Sadly, the (Senate) study makes a number of unsubstantiated allegations, mainly a result of the report’s many investigative and methodological flaws. Anyone making allegations based solely on the (Senate) study does so at their own peril.” 

The Senate report found that the CIA’s use of waterboarding, which simulates drowning, sleep deprivation and other brutal interrogation methods on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons produced no significant intelligence. The agency also misrepresented the program’s effectiveness to the White House, Congress and the public, said the report written by the committee’s Democratic majority.

The CIA admitted that mistakes were made while the program ran under the Bush administration from 2002 until 2007. The agency and the committee’s Republican minority, which dropped out of the investigation after it began in 2009, found that the program gained life-saving information and disrupted terrorist plots. They denied that the techniques constituted torture.

Former Bush administration officials and former CIA officers also disputed the findings, with former Vice President Dick Cheney asserting that “I would do it again in a minute.”

The committee’s report showed that CIA and private medical professionals were centrally involved in the program, and that they “violated numerous international treaties, laws and ethical codes,” said the Physicians for Human Rights analysis.

Leading roles were played by two private psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who developed and administered the harsh techniques and formed a private company to which the CIA paid $81 million.

Office of Medical Services personnel monitored detainees as they were subjected to the techniques and evaluated whether detainees were fit to undergo harsh interrogation.

Physicians for Human Rights said that CIA medical personnel “intentionally inflicted harm” and helped facilitate torture. In one example, it pointed out, a CIA medical expert requested that saline solution be used to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to prevent him from developing “water intoxication.”

CIA medical personnel administered other procedures to detainees, including “rectal feeding” and “rectal rehydration.” The CIA said that the procedures were medically necessary.

The Senate report, however, found that the procedures were unjustified, and Physicians for Human Rights called them some “of the most egregious examples of direct medical participation in torture.”

In perhaps its most critical finding, the organization said that the Senate report contained new information that suggested the collection and analysis of data from the interrogations by CIA medical professionals “may constitute human subjects experimentation.”

The U.S. and international laws prohibiting research on humans without their consent grew out of experimentation by Nazi doctors on German citizens and on World War II concentration camp inmates. Such research also occurred in the United States under the Tuskegee experiment that monitored black men left untreated after being diagnosed with syphilis, the Physicians for Human Rights analysis said.

The Senate findings, the analysis said, showed that CIA medical personnel collected data, such as the length of waterboarding applications, how much water was used and detainees’ appearances after the sessions, during the early phases of the program.

The information apparently was later used by the Office of Medical Services to develop draft guidelines in 2004 for using harsh techniques and helped the Department of Justice determine in 2004 and 2005 what methods could be considered legal, it continued.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel “relied heavily on OMS data and analysis” in issuing a 2005 opinion that found that the harsh techniques were legal, it said.

The data collection, said the analysis, “is consistent with definitions of human subjects research under U.S. federal codes.”

“If further investigation establishes that human subjects research without consent was performed systematically on detainees then such activities are violations of the Nuremberg Code and could constitute a crime against humanity,” said the analysis.

The Nuremberg Code grew out of the Nazi war crimes trials in which medical experiments were declared a crime against humanity. A 1998 treaty that established the International Criminal Court also stated that medical experiments conducted on detainees captured in international or internal conflicts are war crimes. The U.S. signed but did not formally ratify the 1998 treaty.

Physicians for Human Rights pointed to two instances cited by the Senate report in which CIA personnel expressed concerns that “studying the results of CIA interrogations would amount to human experimentation.”

Will (SHOULD) Americans (after the law-order-International Court-jail all bastards = in some 5 Y) be treated similar as Germans after 1945?

Where are you from?

shhhhh…..

Hulk:

Congratulations, icniff77... you're retarded!

icnif77:

Better retarded (if true) than anyhow-American.

mattsm84:

Yea, we're in the US doing pretty great right now. The wife got a job at a charter school and makes 56k with bennys, which is 5xs her annual in China, and I'm still doing the ESL thing making about double what I did only here now. Considering getting a masters an joining up with an EIP at a small Uni. But happy to have spent some time in China and even happier to be out.

Hulk:

Glad you're out, bro.

icnif77:

'USA no muscles': Latest oil drop looks like US movie parade in CA together with SArabia.

Traders consider it just as normal market correction, and WHouse (and Matt) claim 'Russia lost...'

What a quick game that was. Chewing gums!

icnif77:

In a paper-finance-world their 'savings' is subject to the market.

The market is subject to oil.

The 'savings' they are depending on to keep the price going down will evaporate exacty and precisely like the value of a share in Lehman Bro's as the oil price affects the financial world.

Their strategy is not sustainable.  The banks are not stable enough to make it work given all of the financial bets already placed on higher oil prices due to all the 'Peak Oil' talk.

The confidence of their 'talking down' the price is all for show.

Unlke you, the Saudi's are literally risking their necks by bringing down the price.   It was a desperation move from the beginning, and hence doomed to be short-term right from the start.

In 120 to 180 days the price of oil will be up, or we will all be in the midst of an incipient financial melt-down.  Your guess of when the capitulation point occurs is better than mine.  But I will say this:  A sooner capitulation point lowers the risks from and for Russia, and a financial meltdown in the West.  A later one makes them more likely.   A financial meltdown is more likely than a geopolitical-military one - because everyone prefers to be poor over being nuked.  

But my guess is that if the price is not rising by late April or early May, then a financial crash will be locked-in when that selling-season arrives.

You know.  I really ought to charge for this stuff....

icnif77:

Yeah, let's talk about how Spulk beat his wife's family, and now he loves his daughter, despite Chinese don't, instead rebuttal.

Title of your Q is about ruble, and my last c&p is telling you're an English teacher.

On trading boards, post doesn't need much of an explanation. It's understood, and if it's not, then posters try to refute it with the counter facts/arguments. 

It would be silly to post US$ chart, and write that gold bullion dropped (because US$ chart shows upswing). Everybody knows that.

Here we're all measuring my English ability, like that brought you any changes in the past.

Now, it doesn't matter how I am!

It's the only matter 'who Americans you are'. See Washington Toast and McClatchy for more.

icnif77:

This is a chess game. The raid on the ruble was supposed to be a checkmate. It’s not. Not when deployed by amateur scrabble players. And don’t forget the Russia-China strategic partnership. The storm may be abating, but the match continues.

OP: 'West will eat a lot of .....in the (near) future from this alliance' IMHO

mattsm84:

This article appeared in the RT (Russian Times.) It'd be like citing an article from fox news yet somehow less legit.

icnif77:

By Silver Doctors 
Posted on December 19, 2014  

 

Robk:

He is destroying the economy of his country in the process. Glad he gets rich and his KGB buddies too... but the common Russian is getting royally screwed. 

Do you think hoarding gold is going to help the citizens of Russia? Some company in Europe or the U.S. will just introduce the latest technology of producing gold in factories. They will do this if they are offered more money to release the technology rather than hold it back. But since Putin HAS no money... and only gold...  Ooooops. there goes the value of gold.  

The technology and factories already exist with diamonds (pure carbon)... Checkmate fail, chessboard gets thrown across the room.  

mattsm84:

There are at least three things wrong with the way that he's looking at this. The first two are the facts that sanctions all but prohibit the west from buying Russian oil, and that the US is now the worlds largest oil suppler. The third is that this is essentially an object lesson on the problems of commodities backed currencies--gold if you like but in this instance oil. SImply having enough of it wasn't enough to keep the Ruble from crashing. Buying up gold isn't going to stabilize the situation, unless that gold is later sold there by converting into something useful. This last thing should be obvious enough, although you've never seemed to really grasped it in the past  and I'd wonder how you'd react to seeing them happening in real time. My answer was, as I expected, a shit load of crazy. All those Durden and Global Research posts have the same thrust "who you gunna believe? Me or your own lying eyes."

icnif77:

@Rob: 'I'm not sure if P.'s destroying anything (while resisting to USA/West pressure). Ruble is good for trading inside Russia or around the BRICS, what is better than if 'Ruble would be good only in Russia'. In other words 'West isn't strong enough to counter China/Russia alliance', IMO. @Matt: 'I hope supply of natural gas from USA to EU will work well this winter. Why are Germans bending O.(s)ama, and try 'we friends' with P.? Shale o&g from USA can be sold at cheap prices, because extraction of shale gas is very simple??? and shale oil is very clean????Sino's Athabasca are also working full power Here some facts on shale from Wi-n-ki-pedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_oil_extraction

mattsm84:

It more accurate to say that the Ruble is worse off than it was a few months ago. Half as good if we want to get down to it. This is pretty obviously bad news for your average Russian. Half their savings lost. The price of food and other consumer goods is soaring. And since Russia needs imports to survive this is terrible news for them.

The rest of what he wrote is just him grasping at straws.

royceH:

Saudis and Iranians aren't on the same side?

ScotsAlan:

I thought opec was over producing to try hit back at American shale gas fracking.

mattsm84:

Yea, they are trying to regain market shares. That's what conventional wisdom is. at any rate. Icnif77 would have you believe that its part of some plot cooked up by Barack Obama.

rasklnik:

Since when are Shia Persians and Sunni Arabs friends?

DrMonkey:

@RoyceH Sunni and Chia. Arabs and Persians.

icnif77:

Yeah, I agree. Saudis are hitting on USA economy (and otherwise) since 9/11 (2001), you funnies!

Russians won't sell oil for Rubel (which you destroyed), buTT...for gold, which you don't have (and you might have to buy it from some gold producer? P.?). I should study math longer.

Gold plated tungsten bars are the latest Fort Knox invention....I heard. RoyceH. was Sunni, but he changed to Shia last meek. I'm learning French.

royceH:

Ah yes, in fact I knew that.  Let's blame the piss.

I'm reminded now of the lecture I received from my daughter several years ago in which she explained that to me.

She lived for a couple of years in Bahrain up until the shit hit the fan there 3 or 4 yrs ago.

Thanks for the jolt.

icnif77:

The “nuclear” option 
Russia sells oil in US dollars to the West. Lukoil, for instance, would have a deposit in US dollars in an American bank for the oil they sell. If Lukoil has to pay wages in rubles in Russia, then they will have to sell the US dollar deposits and buy in Russia a ruble deposit for their bank account. This in effect supports the ruble. The question is whether Lukoil, Rosneft and Gazprom are hoarding US dollars overseas - and holding back. The answer is no. And the same applies to other Russian businesses. 

Russia is not “losing their savings”, as Western corporate media gloats. Russia can always require foreign companies to relocate to Russia. Apple, for instance, may open a manufacturing plant in Russia. The recent Russia-China deals include the Chinese building factories in Russia. With a depreciated ruble, Russia is able to force manufacturing that might have been located in the EU to be located in Russia; otherwise these companies lose the market. Putin somewhat admitted that Russia should have been demanding this much earlier. The – positive – process is now inevitable. 

And then there’s a “nuclear” option – which Putin didn’t even have to mention. If Russia decides to impose capital controls and/or imposes a “holiday” on repayment of larger debt tranches coming due in early 2015, the European financial system will be bombed – Shock and Awe-style; after all, much of the Russian bank and corporate funding was underwritten in Europe. 

Exposure to Russia per se is not the issue; what matters is the linkage to European banks. As an American investment banker told me, Lehman Brothers, for instance, brought down Europe just as much as New York City - based on inter-linkages. And yet Lehman was based in New York. It’s the domino effect that counts. 

Were Russia to deploy this “nuclear” financial option, the Western financial system would not be able to absorb a shock of default. And that would demonstrate – once and for all - that Wall Street speculators have built a ‘House of Cards’ so fragile and corrupt that the first real storm turns it to dust. 

It's just a shot away 
And what if Russia defaults - creating a holy mess out of the country’s $600 billion debt? This scenario reads as the Masters of the Universe telling Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi to create credits in the banking systems to prevent “undue damage” - as in 2008.

mattsm84:

This one right here takes the cake. It's just so batshit insane it sort of makes me wonder if you're a space alien.

1.) Sanctions prohibit the purchase of Russian oil in the west at present. So Russia really can't support the Ruble in that way. Further, the assets of Russian Companies overseas have been frozen, so even if they were, as you say, hoarding dollars, they wouldn't be able to move them.

2.)  Russia isn't going to become a manufacturing powerhouse. If the Ruble doesn't rebound, foreign companies don't have as much interest in the Russian market (Apple, GM and Jaugar all suspended sales to Russia when the Ruble dropped.) If it rebounds then it loses its appeal as a manufacturing base.

3.) Yes. its lost half its value. If you bought a product on this date last year then returned to by its exact replica you would be required to spend twice as many rubles. Consider what that means for people's bank accounts, their saving, debt held in Dollars or Euro or RMB but paid in Rubles. This is a disaster, and to say anything else of it is disingenuous.

5.) That last bit is just plain stupid. Nothing more need be said of it.

icnif77:

It doesn't matter relation to other currencies, but to the (honest) Rmb. All other must have gold for bigger purchases from Russia.

Ruble is in (Russian) wood-en frame, same as my cash EUR bought for 9 Rmb. Ruble isn't free currency anymore.

Hulk:

lol... the RMB is honest? HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA, you really are employed by the CCP, aren't you?

mattsm84:

He's worse. Li KeQiang admitted as much when he said that China's GDP numbers were man-made and for point of reference only.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/us-china-economy-wikileaks-idUSTRE6B527D20101206

icnif77:

But then Russia decides to cut off natural gas and oil from the West (while keeping the flow to the East). Russian intel may wreak non-stop havoc in pumping stations from the Maghreb to the Middle East. Russia may block all the oil and natural gas pumped in the Central Asian ‘stans’. The result: the greatest financial collapse in history. And the end of the ‘Empire of Chaos’s’ exceptionalist panacea. 

Of course this is a doomsday scenario. But don’t provoke the bear, because the bear could pull that off in a flash. 

Putin was so cool, calm, collected – and eager to delve into details - at his press conference because he knows Moscow is able to move in total autonomy. This is – of course – an asymmetrical war – against a crumbling, dangerous empire. What those intellectual midgets swarming the lame duck Obama administration are thinking? That they can sell American – and world – public opinion the notion Washington (European poodles, actually) will brave nuclear war, in the European theater, in the name of failed state Ukraine?

mattsm84:

Ok, but then you've just conceded that the situation is dire enough for Russia to have China come in and gradually swallow the whole of the Russian economy--which it could do considering that the value of the entire Russian Stock Exchange is less than that of Google or Apply separately--constitutes the "good" outcome. The Chinese have already given $50 Billion to Rosneft, which Rosneft isn't going to be able to pay back as expected. Now their banking sector is going to be similarly on the hook without much of a way to make its payments. I'll admit that seeing Russia attempt to reclaim its place as a world power ended up with them relegated to the position of China's Gas station attendant satisfies my sense of irony.  But then again the last six months have shown that they were only ever a paper tiger.

bill8899:

China, buying Russia in pieces. Is that a win-win? 

icnif77:

It's very similar, when your parents give you a loan.

You're happy, because they won't come and take your house, if you don't return borrowed money.

mattsm84:

If you think there wouldn't be strings attached then you are an idiot.