The Total Deterioration of Greece's Economy and Society - Max Keiser with Yanis Varoufakis

Max interviews Yanis Varoufakis about the latest developments on Greek economic crisis and the total deterioration of Greece's economy and society. Yanis Varoufakis is a political economist, author and an active participant in the current debates on the global and European crisis and the author of The Global Minotaur. He is also a Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens as well as Economist-In-Residence at Valve Corporation. Source

SATURDAY ESSAY: Why the TPP is another step on the road to privatising Government - The Slog

A secret trade agreement is designed to prolong trade secrets, not free trade. It has the capacity to operate above national laws, and use flimsy excuses to snuff out local competition. The Slog investigates the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

What are we to make of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Until recently it has been little more than a fringe blogosphere libertarian bogey-man: perhaps just another whacknut conspiracy theory, perhaps something vaguely mysterious like Common Purpose…or perhaps just a trade agreement, and nothing more. The original goals, for example, seem benign enough:
‘The goal of the negotiating process of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement is to create a platform for economic integration across the Asia Pacific region. The countries participating in the negotiations of the TPP intend to design a high quality, inclusive agreement that lays the foundations for economic growth, the development and generation of employment in the member countries, and that in turn become the basis for the future Asia-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (FTAAP).’
But in recent months – peaking in the last few weeks – concerns about TPP (and disturbingly facile defenses of it) have begun to appear here and there in the MSM. I think there are a number of reasons for this:
First, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei and Singapore were the early start-up nations involved. Somehow, it seems impossible to build a world domination conspiracy theory around New Zealand, outside of the game of Rugby. There, the Kiwis are definitely plotting to have a team by 2020 that will defeat any and all opposition simply by sitting on them. But a pernicious trade agreement designed to control the citizenry? Not really.
But then an odd thing happened in September  2008. Right at the end of the Bush term, the United States suddenly announced it would enter negotiations to join the TPP. That’s like Wayne Rooney joining Dorchester Town: it evokes the obvious question, why?
It was the big question Barack Obama asked as he entered the Oval Office. He had, after all, made a campaign promise to do away with the sort of crony capitalism that besmirched the Bush era. He was clearly suspicious of the TPP plans. And then suddenly, he was all for it. Just as he was innately suspicious of the banks, and then left them well alone.
Second, there’s nothing more likely to fertilise the soil of a conspiracy theory like obsessive secrecy. So far, Trans-Pacific Partnership talks have taken place behind closed doors, and no draft texts have been formally released. This includes draft texts on key provisions such as foreign investment and financial services that were initially written in 2008 and reportedly serve as the basis for current negotiations. Or do they? Nobody seems to know….but the suspicion is that the original goals have been perverted by corporate America lobbying for its ‘neocon’ ideals.
Multinational companies use the Soviet approach to syntax spotted early on by George Orwell. They talk about deregulation and freedom, but the result somehow tends to be a position above the law, and a license to keep out competition.

Women's Room - Feminism and going too far

By Alexis Moore: The difference between feminism and misandry is often not understood. However, it’s an important distinction because it’s the difference between treating men like lesser humans and trying to gain equal rights for women. Feminism is defined as a collection of movements and ideologies that are aimed at establishing and defending equal rights for women. Misandry, on the other hand, is the male equivalent of misogyny and is defined as a hatred of men. 

Examples of feminist movement goals may include the right to vote, the right to control our bodies, and the right to equal pay. On the other hand misandry includes things like “stop domestic violence against women” or “men should stay at home and do the things women once did.” Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t stop domestic violence against women but this is something that doesn’t support equality and is therefore not a feminist ideal by definition. We should try to stop domestic violence period because men and women are both victims. Are women more likely to become the victims of domestic abuse? Statistics show that yes, they are but that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to forget that men get beat up by their partners or families too because that’s not what equality, and feminism, is about. 

The distinction is important in all circumstances because what most hardcore feminists claim to want is an equal society.  However, their distrust, dislike, or down right hatred towards men makes this impossible. It makes women bullies. This “I think women should have x because men have had x for too long so they should know how we feel” is an ideal that is often seen when browsing “feminist” websites. It’s bullying and it’s not helping. If a school yard bully pushes you into the mud and then you push them in turn nothing changes. You’re both just muddy bullies who still don’t understand how the other person feels. That’s what a lot of feminism is like.

Gerald Celente: QE3, It's All Exploding in Front of Us

Jamie Dimon’s Devil Business + Collateral Transformation - Max Keiser with Joshua Mellors

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss Jamie Dimon's collateral transformation desk feeding the multitude of banksters with five quadrillion in infinitely leveraged toxic derivatives and two Treasury bills of a bankrupt nation. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to Joshua Mellors of SocialJusticeFirst.com about financial suicides and the government and banking policies that cause it. Source

ISLAM IS VOODOO - OBAMA IS DOO DOO - FKN Newz

"In the UK '1500' people killed by the police '0' convictions!"

$3350 Gold And $190 Crude as BofA Sees Fed Assets Surpassing $5 Trillion By End Of 2014

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Yesterday, when we first presented our calculation of what the Fed's balance sheet would look like through the end of 2013, some were confused why we assumed that the Fed would continue monetizing the long-end beyond the end of 2012. Simple: in its statement, the FOMC said that "If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability." Therefore, the only question is by what point the labor market would have improved sufficiently to satisfy the Fed with its "improvement" (all else equal, which however - and here's looking at you inflation - will not be). Conservatively, we assumed that it would take at the lest until December 2014 for unemployment to cross the Fed's "all clear threshold." As it turns out we were optimistic. Bank of America's Priya Misra has just released an analysis which is identical to ours in all other respects, except for when the latest QE version would end. BofA's take: "We do not believe there will be “substantial” improvement in the labor market for the next 1.5-2 years and foresee the Fed buying Treasuries after the end of Operation Twist." What does this mean for total Fed purchases? Again, simple. Add $1 trillion to the Zero Hedge total of $4TRN. In other words, Bank of America just predicted at least 2 years and change of constant monetization, which would send the Fed's balance sheet to grand total of just over $5,000,000,000,000 as the Fed adds another $2.2 trillion MBS and Treasury notional to the current total of $2.8 trillion.

World War III: the unthinkable cost of preserving the petrodollar

crisishq: As noted by many of our readers, one of the key topics omitted from our article on the inevitability of economic collapse was the petrodollar system. Due to its significance, we felt that this subject deserves its own article. If you have never heard of the petrodollar, don’t be surprised. There’s a good reason for this. No major news network will dare touch this subject because if this information was ever to become public knowledge, politicians would find it next to impossible to convince American people to support any more wars. Public approval of wars is only possible as long as people remain ignorant of the primary driving force behind our foreign policy. The reason you haven’t heard of the petrodollar system is because our government wants you to think that we start wars to spread democracy.

However, if you want to distinguish truth from propaganda, if you want to know the real reasons behind the global conflicts in our recent history, you must first learn about the petrodollar system. Without this crucial piece of info, you will have a hard time understanding what really happened in Libya, what’s happening in Syria right now and what’s going to happen in Iran next.

Why did NATO and the U.S. aid Libyan “rebels” in killing Gaddafi? Why was our government willing to support and arm the same terrorists that would later turn on our embassy and murder US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens? Why was killing Gaddafi so absolutely imperative?
Why are we now doing the same thing in Syria? Why are U.S. operatives currently on the ground in Syria aiding Al Qaeda to topple Assad? Why are we willing to work along side known terrorists just to destabilize Syria and overthrow the regime there?
Why are we willing to risk World War 3 by attacking Iran, a key ally to Russia and China? Pakistan and North Korea already possess a nuclear stockpile, but Iran is years away from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran has no military capability to target the U.S. and it has not attacked another country since 1798. Yet the media is trying to convince us that we are weeks away from Ahmedinajad unleashing his non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Sound a little familiar? Have we heard this before, maybe?
So what is the petrodollar system and why is it so important? Why is the United States willing to risk a new world war just to maintain the hegemony of the petrodollar? To get a proper perspective we need to start with a quick historical background:

G. Edward Griffin - Understanding the Banking Cartel, Interview by FutureMoneyTrends

Strange details about ‘Innocence of Muslims’ filmmaker emerge as more questions arise

By Madison Ruppert: The details surrounding the Innocence of Muslims film – which some are now saying doesn’t even exist as a completed work – continue to get increasingly strange as the days go by.
We now know that the man going by “Sam Bacile,” who is actually Egyptian immigrant and gas station owner Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, has been convicted of fraud and associated with a whopping 14 different aliases.
There are truly more questions than answers when it comes to Nakoula, Innocence of Muslims, and this entire fiasco which has now sparked protests around the world and led to the deaths of five Americans in Libya.
Now Danger Room is reporting that court records show that Nakoula and co-defendant Khaled Yameen Abraham were charged with possessing the chemical precursors to phencyclidine (better known simply as PCP or angel dust) with the intent to manufacture the illegal drug.
According to Danger Room, Nakoula appeared before the Los Angeles County Superior Courthouse in Downey, California on April 15, 1997 and according to The Smoking Gun, he remained in prison until September of 2010.
These run-ins with the law are far from isolated incidents, as you will see below.
According to unnamed officials cited by ABC News, Nakoula wrote the script for the film while in prison, although the details surrounding this are shaky, especially since there is now significant evidence pointing to the possibility that the actual film never even existed.

How to Detect Pseudoscience: The Case of Bill McKibben and Catastrophic Global Warming

Bill McKibben's recent article, "The Terrifying New Math of Global Warming", has caused a sensation on the Internet. Typical coverage is the Huffington Post's awestruck "McKibben's Climate Change Masterpiece Is Strictly by the Numbers".

My colleague, physicist Eric Dennis and I read the piece and we both judged it as incontrovertible pseudo-science, skewed from beginning to end by the author's anti-industrial ideology.