vineri, 18 septembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mapping the European Refugee Crisis and Where the Path is Blocked; Chain Reactions! Walking Distance
Viral Video of Terrifying Escape Through California Flames
US, Russia Hold Military Talks Over Syria; What Changed Obama's Tune?

Mapping the European Refugee Crisis and Where the Path is Blocked; Chain Reactions! Walking Distance

Posted: 18 Sep 2015 06:47 PM PDT

As the refugee crisis in Europe builds, inquiring minds may be wondering where the refugees are coming from, where they want to go, and where they are blocked.

Here's a map I put together starting from a map posted in the Financial Times.

Anecdotes in red and purple are mine.

Chain Reactions!

After being shut out of Hungary, Croatian Army on Alert as Almost 9,000 Migrants Surge into Croatia.

Croatia put its military on alert after almost 9,000 migrants surged into the country after being shut out of Hungary, which effectively closed its border this week.

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, president, took the move to protect Croatia's border from illegal migration, the state news agency reported.

Croatian officials said they were at their limit, with as of Thursday evening a total of 8,900 migrants entering the country, the latest gateway to the EU for people from Syria and elsewhere. Ranko Ostojić, interior minister, said the country was now "absolutely full", adding: "Croatia will not be able to receive more people."

Just a day before, the Croatian government had said migrants were welcome to pass through Croatian territory on their way to ultimate destinations in Germany or Scandinavia.

Related Headlines

September 17: Bulgaria Deploys 1,000 Troops at Turkish Border
September 17: Migrants Inundate New EU Crisis Hotspot Croatia
September 16: Hundreds Seek to Cross Turkey-Greece Border
September 16: Chaos at Hungary Border as Police Tear Gas Migrants
September 15: Hungary Rejects All Asylum Requests
September 3: Bulgaria detains 125 migrants, sending message to others

The message from Hungary should be clear, nonetheless the Wall Street Journal wrote just today Croatia Buses Migrants to Hungary Border.

An overwhelmed Croatia began busing migrants to Hungary as Budapest said it had started construction on a razor-wire fence at their shared border, in a chaotic day that left stranded migrants angry and confused.

As of Friday afternoon, Croatia had registered about 15,400 migrants who have made their way into the country since Wednesday, more than 2,000 over Thursday night alone, even after blocking most of the roads leading to its border posts with Serbia. It said it was letting most go on to Hungary and another neighboring EU state, Slovenia.

"We cannot register and accommodate these people any longer," said Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic.

I suggest Croatia should have thought of that two days ago when it foolishly stated "migrants were welcome to pass through Croatian territory on their way to ultimate destinations in Germany or Scandinavia"

Slovenia

If Croatia hands them off to Slovenia, what the hell is Slovenia going to do with them?

I happen to have the answer.

Yesterday, the Guardian reported Slovenia Offers Shelter for 5,000 Refugees.

Four hours ago, ABC News reported Slovenian Police Pepper Spray Migrants at Border.

Razor Fence

Walking Distance

Google Maps provides a Walking Perspective of the journey from Syria to Serbia.

The trip would cover 1,400 miles, taking an estimated 452 hours. At 25 miles a day (not realistically possible for kids or anyone in bad shape), it would take about 50 days.

And Serbia is not even the ultimate destination. Germany or Sweden is the goal. From Hungary, they would still have to get through Hungary and Austria, or the trifecta of Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Viral Video of Terrifying Escape Through California Flames

Posted: 18 Sep 2015 03:52 PM PDT

If you live in California anywhere near flames, don't depend on an evacuation order to save you. The order may never come.

The following video Heading toward Middletown on through Valley Fire shows the last three cars to escape the inferno.

Lots of people are viewing this so it could play slow.

Had any tree or electrical pole fallen into the street they would have been trapped.

Discussing the Video

The Guardian has a condensed video and comments from the family in its report Mother Talks about Son's Viral California Wildfire Video.

Julie Wolf was two cars behind her son when he filmed their infamous escape from an explosive wildfire in Anderson Springs, California. She is the only member of the three-car convoy to speak out about footage that has gone viral, after providing a window into the dramatic blaze ravaging the state.

The video, now viewed by over 1.6 million people on YouTube, shows the terrifying escape her family made through flame-consumed woods on 12 September. "Oh my God," her son muttered as he navigated through the inferno.

Wolf said she was "too busy being terrified" during the drive, but her son, who does not want to be named, shot the video.

As of Thursday, the Valley fire has incinerated 73,700 acres and is 35% contained. Wolf said she didn't know the fire was so close until her son pulled into her driveway to drop off a small, electric trailer.

"When my son drove into the property, he had seen the smoke. He didn't see fire, but he saw smoke," she said. "And he said it's right up the hill from you and I think you should start packing."

A mandatory evacuation was issued by authorities at 4pm – several hours before they left.

She said they never received the order to evacuate. Wolf was expecting a phone call from the fire department, who she said had a "system in place to call everybody for evacuation situations".

At one point, her son hit something, cracking the windshield, tearing away the passenger side headlight, and crushing the quarter panel. But the van was "so big and heavy so it just powered through".

"If we had reversed the order of the cars, somebody could be horribly hurt or we could have all hit each other," Wolf said. "We had an enormous amount of luck getting out of there."

Helping Out

The family set up a GoFundMe page Lost everything in #ValleyFire for those interested in helping.

We barely escaped, but we are happy to be alive. She does not have insurance. Because her job involved working on the homes in the community, she no longer has work.

We are setting up this campaign to gather funds to support the loss of income, start rebuilding the house, restocking essentials like food, supplies, clothes, and furniture.

We will be returning as soon as we are able to, to help clear the roads and help the town.

We have really appreciated our friends' and family's offers for support during this difficult time. We set this up to give our greater community somewhere they could make a difference for someone they know and care about. Everyone's contributions mean so very much.

Thank you.

P.S. Julie's favorite numbers are 7 and 12. Even if you can only donate $7, it will help rebuild the house, one nail at a time.

Here is the donation page. I made a contribution.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

US, Russia Hold Military Talks Over Syria; What Changed Obama's Tune?

Posted: 18 Sep 2015 10:51 AM PDT

Russian intervention in Syria has forced president Obama to rethink US policy.

The Financial Times reports US and Russia Hold Syria Talks as Moscow Hints at Combat Role.

US secretary of defense Ashton Carter held direct talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu on Friday to discuss the war in Syria, amid mounting concern in the west over Russia's growing military support for the Assad regime.

The talks started as Moscow indicated it could send combat troops to Syria to support the Syrian military and US secretary of state John Kerry appeared to adopt a softer position towards Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

The Friday phone call with Mr Shoigu was the first time Mr Carter had spoken to the Russian defence minister since he assumed office in March and ended a long period of almost no communication between the two militaries as a result of the conflict in Ukraine.

The Pentagon said that the two ministers talked about ways to "deconflict" their respective operations in Syria, including the risk that planes from both countries could be flying in close proximity, and that both countries were focused on defeating Isis.

Speaking in London, Mr Kerry said that the purpose of the military talks would be to "define some of the different options that are available to us as we consider next steps in Syria."

The Obama administration has long insisted that Mr Assad could not be part of any political agreement that might end the war. However, on Friday Mr Kerry appeared to suggest it could accept the Syrian president remaining in power in the short-term, saying that no political settlement in Syria could be achieved "with the long-term presence of Assad".

The Kremlin said on Friday that Russia is prepared to consider supporting the Assad regime with troops in combat if the Syrian government asks for that, in the clearest indication so far that it is prepared to further step up its military involvement in the Syrian conflict.

What the Hell is the US Mission in Syria?

On September 11, Russia called on US to cooperate militarily in Syria to avert "unintended incidents".

State department spokesman John Kirby said he did not know what Russia meant. Kirby also stated "The most productive thing that they [Russia] can do is to stop aiding the Assad regime."

I responded to Kirby in What the Hell is the US Mission in Syria?

What Russia meant: "Duh! How about US-backed rebels fighting Assad, accidentally shooting at Russian or Iranian backed forces attacking Isis? Was that really so hard to figure out John?"

In regards to Kirby's statement on Assad, I commented "Kirby, just emphatically explained the US number one priority: Getting rid of Assad is far more important than stopping Isis. The US even backs Al Qaeda in that mission under the perverse description 'moderate rebels'."

Perverse Wisdom

The perverse wisdom is there is such a thing as "moderate Al Qaeda rebels".
The perverse wisdom is that Iraq can stay in one piece.
The perverse wisdom is that Assad gets all the blame for the mess in Syria.
The perverse wisdom is that the Kurds should not have their own country.
The perverse wisdom is the US should refuse help from Iran and Russia to contain Isis.
The perverse wisdom is the "House of Saud" is our friend.
The perverse wisdom is Iran must remain an enemy.
The perverse wisdom is the US should be nation building at all in this region.

Abrupt, But Welcome Change

Talking with Russia is an abrupt but welcome change. So is change in the priority. We should also engage Iran on the same issue.

What Changed Obama's Tune?

People may be wondering what changed Obama's tune so abruptly.

Stubborn, arrogant politicians (is there any other kind?) don't suddenly reverse course for no reason. So, what's the reason?

A German article on Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten provides a likely answer.

Please consider Syria: Germany Erupts US Alliance Against Russia.

Germany surprisingly erupted from the anti-Putin alliance of USA: Germany now officially welcomes the willingness of Moscow to get involved in Syria and will start together with the Russians and the French initiative to end the war. The flow of refugees is to be stopped. Germany has put thousands of soldiers on call.

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Germany welcomes the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to participate "in the struggle against extremist organization". It is in the common interest to combat ISIS she said.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even announced that it would start with Lavrov and his French colleague Laurent Fabius an attempt to end the civil war in Syria. Lavrov and Fabius are expected on Saturday in Berlin.

Leading CSU politicians spoke out in finding a peaceful solution for Syria for closer cooperation with the Russian leadership made. Without the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the situation in Syria is not to get a handle on, says CSU chief Horst Seehofer.

New Tune

The Syrian refugee crisis, with millions of migrants flowing into Germany is what changed Merkel's mind. In turn, the possibility of Germany and France supporting Putin in Syria changed Obama's mind.

We should have had talks on Syria long ago, but arrogant politicians do not change policies without a huge amount of pressure.

The refugee crisis created that pressure, not a sudden dose of common sense from Obama.

US neocons and Republican presidential candidates will be all over Obama for this, but talking with Russia is a smart action, even if Obama was forced into doing the smart thing by Merkel. Of course Merkel would not have done the smart thing were it not for the escalating refugee crisis.

By the way, there is a good chance this will spill over into sensible sanction discussions with Russia as well.

This is the story behind the story, and one you are unlikely to see in US mainstream media.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Guest Blogging and Licensing Content without Incurring Duplicate Content Issues - Whiteboard Friday - Moz Blog

Guest Blogging and Licensing Content without Incurring Duplicate Content Issues - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

When you're creating content, especially when you're a smaller shop without much inherent authority, it's often a good idea to publish that content on a different site -- one that does have authority and can help you rank by linking back to the original version on your site. What types of platforms should you approach, though, and should you publish it on your own site first? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand answers those questions and dispels a rumor about whether this approach could lead to duplicate content penalties (hint: nope!).

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to talk a little bit about being strategic with your guest posting and licensing of content without incurring any duplicate content issues

The first part of this pretty is important, and then the second part we'll tackle a little bit later. But I want to use an example.

So let's say I'm Lightboard. Lightboard is a Techstars company here in Seattle. Full disclosure, Geraldine and I are like teeny, teeny, tiny investors in Techstars Seattle, so we might have some sort of conflict of interest FYI. But Lightboard, they've done some cool work for some folks in the SEO world. They're basically a design as a service platform. They have a bunch of designers who'll do work, I think, for $75 dollars an hour or something. Some folks have been liking their service.

So let's say Lightboarding.com has got some fantastic content out there. They put together an excellent survey of designers that talks about the standard pricing and hours you can expect and quality of work as it differs across lots and lots of different designers out there.

So they've got a bunch of options now.

They can take that content and they can put it on their own site and reach their current audience, which might be relatively limited. Especially as an early-stage company, they may not have a huge audience yet.

They can reach popular niche sites. So potentially, if they have a bunch of data about designers and this kind of thing, they can reach sites like Smashing Magazine, or HubSpot's designer's blog at Designers.HubSpot.com, or Webdesigner Depot, or Penelope Trunk who targets mostly small business audiences but sometimes writes about design.

They could look at user-generated content platforms, potential audiences there. So places like YouTube, which anyone can post content to and potentially then they have the opportunity to be in front of YouTube search audience and browsing audience. They could target a site like Medium, which it is user generated content, although there's obviously an editorial process, kind of like there is for YouMoz.

They could look at something like American Express' OPEN Forum, which targets small businesses.

Then there are obviously like major media sites. So they could try and get a guest column or article in something like an Inc. or Forbes or Entrepreneur.com.

This is a lot to choose from, and it's actually challenging to know which of these audiences to approach and when. But...

Here's my process for figuring this out

If I'm Lightboard, I'm going to ask, "Can I rank for it on my own site first?" Reason being I'm asking if I can rank for it is, typically, when you're creating content, one of the most important forms of value that you're going to get from it is people searching directly for it in the long tail. So yes, up front that first social push and the amplification, maybe that's meant to bring a bunch of press to your site, maybe in some circumstances you don't even care that much about the rankings, in which case you ignore this part and skip to down here. But in most of the cases, if I'm putting out a piece of content, I want to be able to rank for that content long term so I can keep earning valuable visitors for months and years to come.

If I have a large enough audience and the ability to earn the necessary signals, then if that is the case, I almost always want to put that content in its largest and most robust form on my own site first. The only caveat to this would be unless there's some sort of massive amplification impact that I could get from going elsewhere. For example, you might have seen on Moz's blog a little while ago a similar web that has a blog and an audience and reach of their own put some big content, some studies that they did on our site, on Moz's site, knowing that they would reach an even larger audience with more amplification than they would putting it on their own site, and so they made that choice. Moz has done the same. I have done the same. Several times I wrote a guest blog post for example for ProBlogger last year, which did very well on their site, kind of reaching a different, unique audience.

So unless that is the case, I'd put it on your site first. Now if it's not the case, where you don't believe you can get those ranking signals, you can't get that amplification, choose a site whose audience is likely to provide you with that and whose platform is likely to provide you with that.

If you say to yourself, "Gosh, Medium has a great chance of ranking really well for this. I'm almost positive I can get through their editorial system," great. If Smashing Magazine is an even better platform, well that might be even more wonderful because Medium will do a little bit of amplification for you. Smashing Magazine potentially does a ton of amplification for you. So you're making these trade-offs and doing that intelligently based on the sites that you've targeted in these various spheres.

Then, once you've done either one of these, the cool thing about content licensing and guest blogging is that's not the end. Let's say you put it on your site. So Lightboard puts it on their blog. That content does okay, but it's still not ranking. They rank on page two, page three. It's doing all right, but it's not doing that great.

That's not the end. You can then choose how to repurpose and help spread that reach. So Lightboard could, for example, say, "Hey, let's do a deep dive particularly on pricing and see if Smashing Magazine will accept that." Or, "Hey, let's do a deep dive on quality of work and see if we can get Webdesigner Depot to feature that along with a bunch of examples." Or, "Gosh, I think that we could write an article about small businesses choosing design and ways to go through and select a designer, and we could get that on American Express OPEN Forum."

Then with all of those, you can potentially link back to the original version. So I produce all these pieces of content across all of these different groups, and then I link back to my original one, which is really going to potentially help that rank phenomenally well. This is super cool.

I actually had an experience with this recently as well, where I posted something on my personal blog about creating great presentations. SlideShare reached out to me and asked if they could license that content and publish it on their blog as well. But that republished version linked back to mine, and I moved up, after they published it, from page three to page one, which is pretty sweet. I now rank for creating great presentations. Who knows for how long, but I thought that was a very, very cool impact of that content licensing decision. Obviously, I kind of cheated. I didn't have to do much work. SlideShare just chose to help me out, which was awesome. Way to go SlideShare.

Questions to consider

If rankings are your primary goal, you want to ask: Can you host that big, in-depth version on your site and then link back to it from all these different versions? If that's a possibility, even if you're not sure if you can get the rankings initially, you might want to bias to your own site. I love being able to rank for content on my site, being able to host it, control the experience, get the potential conversions, drop that retargeting cookie onto my audience so that I can then follow them around the Internet like a lost puppy dog potentially. So there are lots of benefits to putting it on your site.

You also should be asking: Should you target the toughest, the very hardest keywords, like the hardest keywords to rank for, which are oftentimes the most popular ones, not necessarily the most valuable ones, but often the most popular ones in your version? Or should you save those keywords to target on kind of one of the bigger platforms that's more likely to rank well for tough keywords and go for a more targeted approach on your own site? Especially if you're starting out, that might actually be a smart choice.

Next up, if someone's going to license your content, directly license, completely copy it, especially if they're reaching out, ask if you can get a cross-domain rel=canonical put into that content. If the answer is no, which it often is, that's okay. You can say, "Or a link to the original." Rather than them linking to your homepage or your About page, try and get them to link to that original. That's a great signal to the search engines that that's the one they should be ranking ahead of the copy.

Then, the last question I ask: Is it better to expend energy producing this content, well, taking pieces of this content, repurposing it, and putting it on other sites, or should I just go and try and make more content for my own website? I think this is something that only you can strategically answer, and chances are, if you're investing in SEO and in content marketing and those kinds of things, only you'll have that answer, and you'll probably have to test different ways of going about that.

Last thing I'm going to mention is bringing us back to duplicate content. Let me clarify for a sec that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty on this type of stuff. That's not really an application.

Technically, there's stuff like Panda, which can look at a website and say, "Gosh, a ton of this content is either entirely duplicate or entirely thin content, and therefore we're going to hurt its rankings overall." But if Lightboarding had a blog post and every single one of these sites, that I've written up here, repurposed it in its entirety, including YouTube posting the transcript, which happened to be a complete copy, it still would not cause a duplicate copy content penalty.

The risk here is not a penalty. The risk is your site.com might be outranked by Inc.com or Medium.com for those keywords, for that post. Google might say, "Wait a minute. It likes the Medium version is actually the original one, and we're going to make that one the default. All these other ones we're going to consider duplicate and hide." But it's not like it's going to hurt the rest of your rankings on the rest of this website just because that one post was duplicated. If you start talking about hundreds or thousands of these, maybe we'd get into a different story.

But the way to think about this then is to try and get the links pointing to your site, try and get that rel=canonical, and think about whether you want to target different keywords and have a different title and focus for the content you put on your site versus what you put on other folks.

All right, everyone, hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we'' see you next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Seth's Blog : Rejection-seeking as a form of hiding

Rejection-seeking as a form of hiding

When you get rejected, you're off the hook. No promises need to be kept, no vulnerability felt down the road. When you are rejected, you don't have to show up, to listen or to care.

All you have to do is make promises far bigger than people are prepared to believe about you. Or try to be accepted by people who are in no mood (or have no experience) trusting people like you or promises like this.

Seeking out ways to get rejected is a sport unto itself. It's tempting, but it's not clear that it's a productive thing to become skilled at.

Far more frightening (and more powerful) to earn a reputation instead of merely asserting one.