RBS ‘nationalisation’: a perfect weapon of mass distraction - The Slog

How Osborne fired a shot across the banks’ bows, stuffed Cable, and took everyone’s eye off the balls-up at RBS

The Chancellor…everything up his sleeve

There have been some severely misleading statements in the media about Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) over the last few days – on both sides of the Pond. Some of this is down to the usual hack idleness and gullibility; but rather more of it was a campaign of carefully assembled spin and distraction. Most of these have emanated from George Osborne.

The ‘Cabinet discussion about Nationalisation’ chatter

This was simply far too convenient to be a coincidence. With a decidedly dodgey set of results due in three days time, the N word was leaked. But note also in the leaks: “George Osborne is thought to be against the idea”. The Chancellor was the source of the leak: it was his less than subtle way of suggesting he’s The One True Tory left…and capable of getting tough with banks when needs be.

Muslim Massacre Continues in Myanmar - George Galloway

According to a group of UK-based NGOs, from June 10 to 28, 650 Rohingya Muslims were killed, 1,200 went missing, and more than 80,000 others were displaced as a result of rioting, arson, rape, and a cycle of revenge attacks in the western state. Over the past two years, waves of ethnic Muslims have attempted to flee by boats in the face of systematic oppression by the Myanmar government. The government of Myanmar refuses to recognize the Rohingyas, who it claims are not native and classifies them as illegal migrants, although they have lived in Myanmar for generations. Part 2.

Qidong NIMBY protest that occupied the local government and stripped a mayor may mark a new era of grassroots activism in China

Alia: Qidong, Jiangsu province, July 28, hundreds of local students and residents took to the street to protest against the construction of a Japanese sewage treatment plant that was said to dump tens of thousands of tons of waste water into the sea via a 100-kilometer-long pipeline. In the same day, local government promised to permanently cancel the project.

Unlike the not-in-my-backyard protest in Shifang just a few week ago which ended up with a violent clash between local police and protesters, we saw restrained police force and a local government that was quick to respond in Qidong…well…quicker than that of Shifang at least. That being said, given the level of public distrust of the government, one can hardly expect any intended-to-be-peaceful protests in China go completely without any violence. Qidong was no exception – local government building was swept and the mayor of Qidong was stripped.

The Chabad The Empire The Usury - Michael Hoffman

Chabad Lubavitch is an Organised Political Power Source

Russia Moves Nuclear Missiles to Cuba - Cuban missile crisis part two?

By Paul Joseph Watson:

A report out of Pravda quotes President Vladimir Putin as saying that Russia has moved strategic nuclear missiles to Cuba in response to the United States’ continuing efforts to encircle Russia in Eastern Europe.

The article, written by Lyuba Lulko, explains how Russia is reviving its military operations in Vietnam, Cuba and the Seychelles.

In October 2001, President Vladimir Putin announced that the Lourdes radio-electronic center on the island had been shut down as a “gift” to President George W. Bush on the basis of promises given by Bush that the U.S. missile defense system would never be deployed in Eastern Europe.

However, with the missile defense system under the auspices of NATO now reaching “interim operational capability” in Europe at the end of May, that promise has been shattered.

“The Russian Federation has fulfilled all terms of the agreement. And even more. I shut down not only the Cuban Lourdes but also Kamran in Vietnam. I shut them down because I gave my word of honor. I, like a man, has kept my word. What have the Americans done? The Americans are not responsible for their own words. It is no secret that in recent years, the U.S. created a buffer zone around Russia, involving in this process not only the countries of Central Europe, but also the Baltic states, Ukraine and the Caucasus. The only response to this could be an asymmetric expansion of the Russian military presence abroad, particularly in Cuba,” the report quotes Putin as saying.

“With the full consent of the Cuban leadership, on May 11 of this year, our country has not only resumed work in the electronic center of Lourdes, but also placed the latest mobile strategic nuclear missiles “Oak” on the island. They did not want to do it the amicable way, now let them deal with this,” added Putin.

Roosevelt: “To Dissolve the Unholy Alliance Between Corrupt Business and Corrupt Politics is the First Task”

By WashingtonsBlog: A Fight Both Liberals and Conservatives Can Rally Around …

Liberals love Franklin Delano Roosevelt … and conservatives hate him.

But both liberals and conservatives are inspired by the wise, non-partisan words of the supreme ass-kicker Teddy Roosevelt:

Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

Roosevelt is exactly right: the root problem is not big business (which liberals blame) or big government (which conservatives blame).    It is the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politicians which is the core problem (read this for details).

Sure, Teddy busted up the private cartels.  But – as his quote shows – we have to bust up the public corruption as well, or nothing will change.

Remember, the government made the big banks into giants in the first place:

Putin: "Pussy Riot should not be judged too harshly"

There is nothing good in what the Pussy Riot girls did, but they should not be judged "too harshly" regardless, said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Fed's Gold Is Being Audited... By The US Treasury

Submitted by Tyler Durden: When we started reading the LA Times article reporting that "the federal government has quietly been completing an audit of U.S. gold stored at the New York Fed" we couldn't help but wonder when the gotcha moment would appear. It was about 15 paragraphs in that we stumbled upon what we were waiting for: "The process involved about half a dozen employees of the Mint, the Treasury inspector general's office and the New York Fed. It was monitored by employees of the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm." In other words the Fed's gold is being audited... by the Treasury. Now our history may be a little rusty, but as far as we can remember, the last time the Fed was actually independent of the Treasury then-president Harry Truman fired not one but two Fed Chairmen including both Thomas McCabe as well as the man after whom the Fed's current residence is named: Marriner Eccles, culminating with the Fed-Treasury "Accord" of March 3, 1951 which effectively fused the two entities into one - a quasi independent branch of the US government, which would do the bidding of its "political", who in turn has always been merely a proxy for wherever the money came from (historically, and primarily, from Wall Street), which can pretend it is a "private bank" yet which is entirely subjugated to the crony interests funding US politicians (more on that below). But in a nutshell, the irony of the Treasury auditing the fed is like asking Libor Trade A to confirm that Libor Trader B was not only "fixing" the Libor rate correctly and accurately, but that there is no champagne involved for anyone who could misrepresent it the best within the cabal of manipulation in which the Nash Equilibrium was for everyone to commit fraud.

The Good Martyr

An investigative documentary on the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists during the past two years. Source

Retired Fraudster on the ABC's of Financial Fraud, it's Easier than Ever!

The dark Knight rises as dark pools of liquidity traded by robot computer algorithms went awry and threatened Knight Capital's stability, costing the firm $440 million. This is just one more issue with broker dealers and markets, and one more blow to confidence in the US financial system. We hear from a former fraudster, Sam Antar, and the Commodity Customer Coalition Founders, James Koutoulas and John Roe, about how to restore faith in a broken system.

Conflicts & Pressure Points - Jim Willie CB

Some extremely powerful differentials in power are setting themselves up, in a manner never seen before in modern history. Those who dismiss the uniqueness of the situation are those who continually are surprised by events as they unfold. The pressure features the managers of the system, complete with corruption and fraud with official coverups in a never-ending sequence of crime scenes, pitted against the forces of justice and fair markets. Not a single fair market exists in USDollar terms. In pure Orwellian style, every single market has a US-based or London-based financial engineer at a control panel doing duty in price intervention. The Western defenders of the syndicate do not wish for the price structure to reflect the reality of physical shortage or the bounty of paper-based surplus, for the currencies to reflect true toxic value, and for the discovery price systems to reflect the raids of private accounts. The system is broken, and the pressure is building.

When young in school, the principles of entropy and enthalpy were introduced in chemistry classes. The ENTROPY was taught as the thermodynamic property toward equilibrium and dissipation. In layman’s terms it was the tendency for a system to seek greater randomness. Sometimes the dissipation comes from the scattered heat, but often the spread of physical items. Like smoke from a fireplace to spread about the neighborhood, like for the odor of nail polish remover to dissipate about the house or porch, like for the toys from a children’s playbox to relocate in every corner of the house, like for pet mice to scatter from a shoebox in a bedroom closet, like for the heat from a car engine to spread across the driveway and around the yard. Extend toward information to spread on grapevines about the office building.

The ENTHALPY was taught as a measure of the total energy of a thermodynamic system. It includes the internal energy, and the amount of energy required to contain a system by displacing its environment when establishing its volume and pressure. Enthalpy is a thermodynamic potential, which is layman’s terms can be thought of as the tendency for an object or system to seek its lowest potential energy. Like a tree toppling in the wind, like a group of items moving from the top of the stairwell to the bottom, like tattered roof parts falling to the ground, like wall ornaments hitting the floor during a storm or tremor. Extend toward a market removing its props, where all channels of data enter the room to effect change toward an equilibrium. Transfer the concept the the financial system. The lower potential energy comes from the extraordinary coils and loaded springs that hold the artificial price structure in place, even the information devices that distort truth.

BLACKISTAN TERROR - FKN Newz