Headlines: Unrest, sabre-rattling and another oil leak

Palestinians Flee Syrian City Of Latakia

Huffington Post

BEIRUT (AP) — More than 5,000 Palestinian refugees have fled a camp in the besieged Syrian city of Latakia after President Bashar Assad's forces shelled the city during a broad military assault to root out dissent, the U.N. said Monday.

UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees, said the Palestinians fled after Latakia came under fire from gunboats cruising off the coast and ground troops attacking the city over the weekend. It was not immediately clear where the refugees were seeking shelter.

For article GO HERE

Israel-Lebanon Oil Dispute Must Be Stopped Short of War

Bloomberg

The chance of armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is increasing. Renewed hostilities would be disastrous for all involved, so the U.S. and its allies need to act now to prevent events from spinning out of control.

Energy companies say that large oil and gas reserves might lie off the Israeli and Lebanese coasts. The countries’ maritime border is undefined, and each nation says the possible energy deposits are within its exclusive economic zone. Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group, may use this dispute as an excuse to provoke a conflict and reassert its claim to be the one Arab entity willing and able to confront Israel. In a July 26 speech, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel not to “steal” Lebanon’s resources. Israel has vowed to protect the gas fields.

For article GO HERE

Video: US-China aircraft carrier 'face off'

the Independant

China and the US have been flexing their military muscle, showing off their aircraft carriers in the South China Sea.

For video GO HERE

Shell locates secondary oil leak

Independant

Shell said today it is working to stop a secondary flow of oil spilling into the North Sea from beneath an offshore platform.

An initial leak was brought "under control" last week but work is continuing on a smaller leak from the same source in an area surrounded by marine growth.

For article GO HERE

and more coverage on this issue from RT...

Meanwhile in New Zealand...

Shell joins oil, gas quest in south basin

Stuff

Multinational giant Shell has joined the hunt for Great South Basin oil and gas but has warned Southlanders not to expect a gold rush.

Military Keynesianism Gone Haywire: Paul Krugman Pines For World War ... Based On Ginned-Up Reasons

Zero Hedge

As I have repeatedly documented, influential Americans are lobbying for war in order to save the American economy - what is often called "military Keynesianism".

For the first couple of years that I wrote on this topic, commenters more or less said, "That's crazy, no one is calling for war to stimulate the economy".

When allegations surfaced that Rand Corporation was lobbying the Pentagon to start a war to save the economy, Washington Post hack David Broder started promoting war as an economic panacea, and former Goldman Sachs analyst Charles Nenner and economist Marc Faber started predicting a major war, people started paying more attention.

And well-known economist and writer Paul Krugman has argued for years that World War II is what got us out of the Great Depression.

For example, Krugman writes today in the New York Times:

“World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to a depressed economy”.

But Sunday, Krugman went over-the-top by more or less calling for a major war ... and manufacturing a false justification for starting one, if need be:

“If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better.

There was a Twilight Zone episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time…we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus”.

This statement is disturbing for two reasons.

First, many economists have demonstrated that - contrary to commonly-accepted myth - war is actually bad for the economy.

And the following statement by Mr. Krugman implies - whether intentional or not - the use of hanky panky to justify military spending:

And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better.

Doesn't Mr. Krugman know that governments from around the world have admitted that they carried out "false flag" attacks in order to justify their aims? See this and this.

How can he be so irresponsible to publicly pine for all-out war based upon ginned-up reasons?