What’s next… - Simon Black 'These are not people who can be trusted to do the right thing'

Simon Black: Vilnius, Lithuania - One of the things that’s really unique about this part of the world is having access to so many people with first-hand experience of living under Soviet rule.

It’s a bizarre thing to say, but the stories they have to tell are extraordinary.

Last night I had dinner with some friends, including one woman who was just a child at the end of World War II.

She explained to me that her family had been wealthy landowners near the capital city… until the Soviet-controlled government came in, confiscated all of their property, and shipped the adults off to Siberia.

“There were so many opportunities to leave beforehand,” she explained, ”but they just never thought things would ever get that bad here. Everyone saw what happened in other countries, but my family never expected that it would happen to them.”

While most people probably aren’t going to end up in Siberia anytime soon, the lesson is still valuable.

It’s easy to look around the world and think “It can’t happen here. It won’t happen here.” But this is really foolish thinking.

Governments steal, then spend, other people’s money with reckless abandon. They conjure paper currency out of thin air, rob the future earnings of generations which have not even been born, and create mind-numbing barriers to real growth.

These are not people who can be trusted to do the right thing.

Common LAW Rules - USE IT + I WILL NOT COMPLY!

Mitt Romney is Running for Bush's Fourth Term

Mitt Romney reassembles Bush Neo-Con liars foreign policy team Source

'Torture and 40 years in jail for "espionage" await Assange in US' - Seeks Sanctuary at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London

Julian Assange asked the nation of Ecuador to grant him political asylum. RT discusses the matter with Michael Ratner - from the Center for Constitutional Rights and a legal adviser to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

Farage On Barroso: "He's A Deluded Communist Idiot" "Listen, the whole thing is a giant Ponzi scheme!"

An Epic Rant...

Submitted by Tyler Durden:

Commenting on the incredible circle-jerk that Europe (sovereign-to-banking-system) has become, the outspoken UKIP MEP Nigel Farage exclaimed to FOX Business in this best-ever-rant clip that "The whole thing is a giant Ponzi scheme, isn't it?"

Public-Private Partnership: Another Phrase for Fascism

The word “privatization” is a loaded term these days.  Unions and big government worshippers scoff at the idea of any public services being in the hands of ruthless, greedy capitalists.  The left has the distorted view that people in the private sector are driven primarily by their desire to cut costs and throw workers out on the street.  To them, government workers are angles sent from heaven to do God’s work like picking up the neighborhood trash or maintaining a public pool filled with the bodily discharges of kids whose derelict parents decided to drop off and go shopping for a few hours.  On the right, conservatives who supposedly hold high regard for market forces and Ronald Reagan’s classic declaration “government is the problem,” typically have a favorable view of privatization schemes.

Given that government creates no wealth and only consumes capital, privatization of services would seem like an obvious choice; especially for cash strapped states and municipalities.  The rational behind privatizing public service is that the private sector is almost always more efficient in operation than bureaucracies unconcerned with earning a return on investment. Even leftists will grudgingly acknowledge the super quality markets tend to produce to a point.

So if common sense dictates allowing businesses with a vested financial interest in their own success to pick up the slack in delivering public services, why should free marketers be wary of such ventures?

Mish: It's Just Impossible - The German supreme court will not allow a political union nor a fiscal union, nor a banking union without a German referendum.

The off-again, on-again, off-again Telegraph writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is back on-again with correct analysis in his post Greek agony drags on as Asphyxiation Bloc wins

Europe’s establishment is delighted by the victory of New Democracy and pro-asphyxiation bloc. This relief is unlikely to last much beyond today, if that.

Greece’s new leaders have a mandate from Hell. Almost 52pc of the popular vote went to parties that opposed the bail-out Memorandum in one way or another. There is no national acceptance of the Troika’s austerity policies whatsoever.

The hard-Left Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras is arguably more dangerous in opposition, now fortified with big bloc of seats in Parliament. He can lacerate the government without responsibility as the state sheds 150,000 public sector workers, a fifth of the total.

It was for this outcome that the Greece’s elected government was toppled last year in an EU Putsch. We now learn from ex-premier George Papandreou that this was "all Sarkozy’s fault".

France’s leader refused to let Papandreou call a referendum on the bail-out terms (which would almost certainly have passed), and Chancellor Angela Merkel went along with this shoddy act of EU colonialism. The EU threatened, in effect, to cut off Troika payments. The PASOK government was replaced by an EU-appointed technocrat.

19 Reasons to Start Preparing for a Global Economic Collapse

Michael Snyder,
Yes, it is officially time to start freaking out about the global economy. The European financial system is falling apart and it is going to go down hard. If Europe was going to be saved it would have happened by now. The big money insiders have already pulled their funds from vulnerable positions and they are ready to ride out the coming chaos.
Over the next few months the slow motion train wreck currently unfolding in Europe will continue to play out and things will likely really start really heating up in the fall once summer vacations are over.

The Failure of Big Government and the Public Patronage Piñata! - Emmanuel Schizas

With the Greek elections taking place this past weekend, we have decided to devote a bit more time to the subject of Europe's debt crisis, and specifically, the case of Greece than other finance shows. This is in large part because we feel that the mainstream media produces...well...a lot of nonsense on the subject, and we feel it our duty to clarify some of that on this show.

Ron Paul CNN Interview - Syria, Egypt, Lawsuit On RNC, Mitt Endorsement? RNC CONvention

 Ron Paul. "He (Mitt Romney) doesn't have the hearts and minds of the people."

Even bigger Big Brother: Facebook purchases Israeli facial recognition company Face.com

By Madison Ruppert:

Facebook has purchased the facial recognition startup Face.com since Facebook has come under fire from European regulators for revealing a massive facial recognition database and been busted for spying on the text messages of smartphone users, showing a complete disregard for privacy.

If you continue to use Facebook in a state of ignorant bliss, hopefully this will help you wake up to the reality of what this internet giant is really up to.

A Facebook spokesperson put it, this acquisition seems purely logical and perfectly in line with their business model.

“People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience,” said the Facebook spokesperson to VentureBeat. “This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house.”

It also greatly enhances their facial recognition capabilities which Facebook will also most likely be applying to all photos captured by the other company recently purchased by Facebook: Instagram.

The privacy issues inherent in Faceboook’s move to snatch up Face.com are so blatant and impossible to ignore that even InformationWeek has raised the issue in an article entitled, “Facebook Buys Face.com: At What Privacy Cost?”

Hero: Israeli citizen gives up citizenship - applying for Palestinian residency in protest against the Israel Nazi Gulag

24 year old Andrey Pshenichnikov is in the French capital with a purpose that goes beyond tourism.

This is his passport, the one he wants to renounce. In the past, some Israelis have managed to get their citizenship revoked, but there are no known cases of these Israelis applying for Palestinian residency or a Palestinian passport.