1000s March In Dublin Austerity Protest

By Eileen Dublin: Led by a lone white masked horsewoman, carrying the message of a resounding NO to the bankster inflicted austerity apocalypse,  Communities Against Cuts  took to the streets in a large and optimistic show of unity .  Up to 20,000 people marched through O’Connell Street causing traffic mayhem. Their people powered show of political will through pageantry and music created a spectacle seldom seen on the city streets, climaxing in Sean Millar’s moving Austerity Symphony. These people’s efforts to be seen and heard was scuppered by leftish leaning vested interests of Unions, Trotskyists and Shinners (Sinn Fein) who maintained the fragmented status quo where any alternative to the mainstream is ridiculed as disorganised and implausible.

The Four Debt Ceiling Possibilities For 2013

An extended excerpt from Bill Buckler of The Privateer

The Four Major Possibilities For 2013
There are four likely “scenarios” for what will happen when the US Congress - and the president - come up against the limit to the Treasury’s credit card sometime in the first quarter of 2013. The first one is the most obvious. They could simply abolish or “repeal” or draw a line through the legislation which set up the debt limit in 1917. There is no shortage of eminent US historians, economists, captains of industry, politicians, legal scholars, bankers, investors and others from all walks of life advocating this procedure.

If the US Dollar was not the world’s reserve currency and US Treasury IOUs were not the world’s preferred holding of reserves behind their own currencies and financial systems, the Treasury’s debt limit would have been done away with a long time ago. But the US Dollar IS the world’s reserve currency so the debt of the US government IS the underpinnings of the global financial system. That being the case, the system stands or falls on the continuing perception that Treasury debt paper is a viable form of “reserve” and that the debt of the US government will NEVER become “unsustainable”. An announcement by the US government that it was getting rid of any “limits” to its debt-generating capacity would put that perception at risk - quite possibly at grave risk. That is the reason why the debt limit remains - even though it has not been an impediment to ever increasing Treasury indebtedness for well over half a century. It is easy to laugh at the seeming absurdity of a Treasury “debt limit” and many people do. Take it away, however, and the fiction that sovereign debt is “sustainable” - let alone any “confidence” in its eventual repayment - would be MUCH harder to maintain. Absurdities abound in history, and the more abject the absurdity, the more tenacious it tends to be. Today, a US Treasury debt “limit” is a very necessary absurdity.

The Out-of-Touch-With-Reality Crowd

By Michael Panzner: In “The Biggest Myth About the Fed,” David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Western Kentucky University, suggests that the pessimists are wrong to be concerned about what Mr. Bernanke and Co. are up to.

There many myths about Fed policy over the past few years, but the biggest one has to be that the Fed has been monetizing the national debt.  This simply is not true, but it does not stop some folks from making this claim.  For example, at last week’s Cato Monetary Conference we find former Fed officials pounding the Fed-is-monetizing-the-debt drums:

Mr Warsh and Mr Poole (who was filling in for Allan Meltzer) made a sharp distinction between the “legitimate” efforts to fight the crisis and the subsequent easing actions that were, allegedly, unjustified by the economic fundamentals. According to them, the interventions of 2007-2009 were required to ensure that “the markets could clear”, as Mr Warsh put it, while the second round of easing was done to satisfy “political masters” by monetising the debt. In fact, Mr Warsh said that the Fed was being actively unhelpful by “crowding in” Congress’s supposedly poor policy choices.

Progressive Swedish toymaker publishes 'gender-neutral' children's Christmas catalogue

RT: One of the largest toy chains in Sweden published a gender-neutral Christmas catalogue, which pictured boys playing with dolls and girls holding toy machine guns. The move has reignited a debate in Sweden over the proper place of gender roles.
Top Toy has produced children’s Christmas catalogues in Denmark and Sweden for both Toys R Us and BR. Though the catalogues' page layouts are the same in both countries, the gender of the pictured kids is reversed in the Swedish edition.
"With the new gender thinking, there is nothing that is right or wrong. It's not a boy or a girl thing, it's a toy for children," Top Toy director of sales Jan Nyberg told TT news agency.
The Danish catalogue showed a boy wielding a toy machine gun, which was replaced by a girl in the Swedish version. The "Hello Kitty" page of the Swedish catalogue also replaced a girl with a boy, and a one girl's pink t-shirt was turned into light blue.

US energy policy with Gregor Macdonald - Max Keiser with Gregor Macdonald

Max interviews Gregor Macdonald from Gregor.us. He talks about the IEA's report which expects the US to be the world's largest energy producer by 2020. Gregor Macdonald is an oil markets observer, journalist, and data analyst, who writes on the challenge of energy transition. Source

Ayumi Kizenuka Discusses Her Contaminated Farm, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Plight of Her Fellow Farmers in Fukushima -VIDEO

“Which governmental agency is doing the tests (..of the produce)?”
“It is not the government, it is unfortunate that the government is not wiling to test all the products in Japan. The testing started as a voluntry move by the farmers…”
So, if the farmer volunteers information that is incorrect the goverment will allow that product to be sold?
“yes, if it is declared under the government limits..”

(EnviroNews USA) –
Video on link – Duration 23 mins
Amongst a lively group of keen Fukushima followers who attended a symposium at UC Berkely’s Institute of East Asian Studies, a brave organic Japanese tea farmer by the name of Ayumi Kizenuka spoke about the confusing post 3-11 agricultural climate currently affecting Japan’s widely contaminated farmlands.
According to Kizenuka, the situation is so uncertain that most farmers remain in the dark as to the levels of deadly radioactive pollution plaguing their crops and soil.  Apparently, the local and national governments have been virtually invisible in their lackluster attempts to regulate and test farmlands for nuclear contamination since the disaster’s inception.  Many of the region’s tea and rice growers, particularly those like Ayumi, who have dedicated themselves to sustainable horticultural practices, are doing their best to test their own crops for radiation.  However, plenty of others desperately continue to harvest agricultural products from locations much CLOSER to the site of the nuclear catastrophe, without ANY sort of testing or regulatory oversight.

Iran Accepts Payment in Gold to Get Around Sanctions

Yet another reason the US government hates gold, unlike dealing with paper money in bank accounts, there is no way they can stop international trade in gold and it is difficult to track gold movements.
WSJ reports:

Turkey on Friday acknowledged that a surge in its gold exports this year is related to payments for imports of Iranian natural gas, shedding light on Ankara's role in breaching U.S.-led sanctions against Tehran.

Little Hitlers Playing God - Politics Over Parenting: UK foster family's children removed over 'racist' party support

A political scandal has erupted in Britain after a local council took away three “ethnic” children from a foster family, because the parents support anti-immigration UK Independence Party. After a firestorm of criticism, the move will be reviewed.
The removal was carried out and defended by the Rotherham Borough Council in the north of England.

The couple in question (who have wished to remain anonymous) are in their fifties, with the wife a qualified child nurse, and have been registered foster parents for over six years.
In September, they were given an emergency placement of a baby girl, a boy, and an older girl from a troubled family of immigrant descent. The assignment was initially judged a success by the council’s child services, with the foster parents described as “exemplary” and the children as “thriving,” with the baby steadily gaining weight.
After eight weeks, the foster agency received an anonymous tip-off that the couple were registered members of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
The wife told the Daily Telegraph that she was “dumbfounded” when a council representative visited their house, and challenged them over their UKIP membership.
“My question to both of them was, 'What has UKIP got to do with having the children removed?’ Then one of them said, 'Well, UKIP have got racist policies.’ The implication was that we were racist.”

Barry Soloman interviews Jeff Berwick - The Dollar Vigilante

By TheDollarVigilante: Barry Soloman from http://www.drescapes.com/ interviews Jeff about a range of issues. Source
- The current state of the US financial system
- Good investments in the coming ears
- Is there hope for a recovery?
- The awakening of the masses to the financial collapse after the lastest election
- A plan for those that want to get started securing their financial future

Montana GOP Rep.: "Pay Me In Gold Before Dollars Have No Value"

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Jerry O'Neil, six-term GOP state representative in Montana, has asked to receive his salary (which at $10.33 per hour is around $1800 per month) in gold or silver. The long-standing legislator was driven to this decision by his constituents' concerns about the nation's massive debt-load and fears of our country's collapse as "only so many dollars can be printed before they have no value." The long-time Ron Paul supporter, according to Time, cited Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution, which says, in part, that "No State shall... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." State administrators have denied his request and added that "a bill could be introduced to accomplish this result." O'Neil, like many other, believes "The Keynesian era of financing government with debt appears to be close to its demise."

From O'Neil's Letter (via HuffPo):

It is very likely the bottom will fall out from under the U.S. dollar. Only so many dollars can be printed before they have no value. The Keynesian era of financing government with debt appears to be close to its demise.

If and when that happens, how can we in the Montana Legislature protect our constituents? -- The only answer I can come up with is to honor my oath to the U.S. Constitution and request that your debt to me be paid in gold and silver coins that will still have value when the U.S. dollar is reduced to junk status. I therefore request my legislative pay to be in gold and silver coins that are unadulterated with base metals.

Confusion surrounds ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas as Ahmadinejad congratulates ‘victory’

By Madison Ruppert: While the violence in the wake of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has indeed continued, it is thankfully clear that we are no longer seeing the massive number of strikes occurring before the ceasefire, including entire families being killed in airstrikes.

Yet the ceasefire talks themselves are surrounded with a cloud of confusion as Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, “announced progress regarding restrictions on the movements of fishermen and farmers in the border area, which the Israeli prime minister’s office denied,” The New York Times reports.

Haniya claimed that the Egyptian intelligence service, the entity responsible for getting the first ceasefire agreement in place, informed him that the fishermen’s limit had been extended to six nautical miles instead of the three nautical mile limit previously in place.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, said on Saturday that “nothing has changed on the ground or at sea until it is agreed to by Israel and Egypt.”

666 RFID & sucking on Tesco titties: it's real you either comply or you die

 The artist taxi driver