Coffee and Nobel Prize and Visa and MasterCard… (Priceless)

The snow is falling thick as thieves and my morning cup of coffee is really good. As I sipped the delightful beverage. I was thinking about a couple of e-mails I received last night. Two good readers sent me some links, that led to interesting articles…

First one: (Link) It seems that China, Afghanistan, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sudan, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam so far have declined attending the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremonies…

It seems that China was pissed off by the Nobel committee’s choice of Mr. Liu, who is in prison in China.  The Nobel prize will not be handed over because no one is around to receive it…

So for whatever good reasons they think that they have, for giving it to Mr. Liu means “jack squat” to me because the Nobel Peace prize has become a joke since Obama was given one last year…

So I found it interesting that Russia is amongst the countries that will not go and China will have its own award…

Second one: (Link) President Dmitry Medvedev had asked officials last December to modernism Russia’s electronic payment system and come up with a home-grown version of the western model. Base it out of Russia…

A state department cable just released this by WikiLeaks reveals that US diplomats have intervened to try to amend a draft law going through Russia’s duma, or lower house of parliament. Their explicit aim was to ensure the new law did not “disadvantage” the two US companies because Russia is a huge account and they do not want Russia to have their own Master Card / Visa or similar set up by themselves…

Russia better do its own thing and keep American politics out of the duma…

But from what I am starting to see. There is a serious rift developing between East and West. It looks like many countries that have ridden the fence for decades are going to have to choose a side in the future…

Hummm interesting issues going on right now…

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