Getting to the other side.
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Not speaking of it death here the way the Greeks did when crossing the river Styx.
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Speaking of getting to a more comfortable economic existence through a different job, different way of earning income.
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Cab driving is a bridge as I try to drag myself and family across the thin ice of the U.S. economy to the “Other Side”

  
Robert Helenius knocks out perennial contender  Samuel Peter in 9th round of their fight  to shake up Heavy Weight Division.
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Helenius Nickname is the “Nordic Nightmare”
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Peter Nickname the “Nigerian Nightmare” I can’t make this stuff up.
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Helenius is from Finland but fights out of Germany and is 27 years old.
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I would now rate the Heavy Weight Division as this too bad not one American in the bunch.
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1-Wladimir Klitschko
2-Vitali Klitschko
3-David Haye
4-Robert Helenius
5-Alexander Povetkin

Like Mick Jagger says in the Rolling Stones song “Shattered”  from the 1978  album “Some Girls”, “Still surviving on the streets” and that’s how it is from the seat of my cab to watch an Empire in Decline, watching the tide recede from a big economic boom, seeing all the immigrant communities that came in following the capital/money/jobs .  Migration flows follow capital flows and now capital receding. For rent signs, empty store fronts and lots of immigrants from Mexico ,Central America, and Asia. The  country in certain areas feels like the New Third World.

It is more than just the war and  upheavals in the Middle East and catastrophe in Japan.
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This fall from the headlines seemed to come after President Obama finished his Washington meeting with Hu Jintao.
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I suppose some type of temporary consensus came during the meeting between the two leaders.
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I am sure China will be back in the headlines in a few months. To big a country and story to not be taking up the headlines again.

click on map for larger view

What I found interesting about the graph is that Libya has the largest total reserves of oil in Africa.
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I would have thought that Nigeria ,Angola or some other West African nation would have had more oil.
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But it appears that Nigeria has 37 Billion Barrels of oil in reserve and Libya 44 Billion.

FUEL COUPONS=DOLLARS
Fuel coupons/dollars are traded to China for manufactured goods, in return we send them FUEL COUPONS/Treasury Bills and Dollars.

Really the US money is backed by oil and military capacity to control the oil.  So the money is not backed just by air as some say but by the US Military and the oil and energy sources under the control of the US Military.

The core of the Euro and the European Union is the wedding of France and Germany.
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These two countries have divergent attitudes in how they want to proceed in Libya.
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Germany wants to remain cautious and France wants and aggressive military posture.
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France does not want the war to fall under the command of NATO as it would lose control of it’s command structure to NATO.
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What ever happens access to energy via oil and natural gas is definitely 1 of the about 5 moving components here.

I took the below information from Wikipedia, whats in yellow is what was of interest to me, as much as I hate arrogant people maybe the guy’s assessment of reality is correct or maybe not. Time will tell.

Reality-based community is an informal term in the United States. In the fall of 2004, the phrase “proud member of the reality-based community” was first used to suggest the commentator’s opinions are based more on observation than on faith, assumption, or ideology. The term has been defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality.” Some commentators have gone as far as to suggest that there is an overarching conflict in society between the reality-based community and the “faith-based community” as a whole. It can be seen as an example of political framing.
The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove^[1]):

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”^[2]

Tanks like these were used in battle in the Horn of Africa between Eritrea and Ethiopia over the years.
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And since we are talking about Soviet and Ex- Soviet things how about 39 year Vitali Klitschko to defend his portion of the Heavy Weight title this Saturday against Cuban and former Amatuer standout Odlanier Solis This Saturday March 19, 2011 in Germany.
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Included here is  youtube video of all around fighting machine Vitali doing some kick boxing back in 1993.

Living a frenzied life(with little time for reflection) inside my North American cocoon as chaos is raging across the news cycle from Earth Quakes and Nuclear Meltdown in  Japan to Saudi tanks rolling into Bahrain