Jackie Chan thinks U.S. ‘most corrupt’ country in the world

By Agence France-Presse: Hong Kong action hero Jackie Chan has once again provoked criticism, this time from an American blogger, after honestly stating on Chinese television that the US is the “most corrupt” country in the world.
“When you talk about corruption — the whole world, is there corruption in the United States? The most corrupt in the world!” the Rush Hour star, who has made headlines recently for his views, told Phoenix TV last month.
Chan reaffirmed his view after the show’s host questioned him — “Of course! Where did the great breakdown come from? The world, the United States started it,” Chan said, referring to the financial crisis.

His comments were rebuked Thursday by Max Fisher, a blogger on foreign affairs for the Washington Post, who called them “anti-American” rhetoric that was rooted in China’s insecurity.
“To the degree that Chan’s comments were anti-American, they likewise reflect a common Chinese view of the United States, one that is rooted not just in attitudes toward America but in China’s proud but sometimes insecure view of itself,” Fisher said.

Jackie Chan also said China is a relatively young country, where in the first half of its history it was “bullied by so many people”, and that it only achieved “real success” in the past decade.
“Our country’s leaders admit they are corrupted, etcetera. We are improving

The Middle Class In America Is Being Wiped Out – Here Are 60 Facts That Prove It + The Coup - "The Guillotine" ..for Oz banksters!

By Michael: The middle class in the United States is being systematically destroyed, and nobody is doing much of anything to stop it.  Our incomes are shrinking, our share of the income pie is at an all-time low, our jobs are being sent overseas, debt burdens have soared to unprecedented heights and millions of formerly middle class Americans have fallen into poverty.  America once had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen, but now it is rapidly being shredded.  Unfortunately, this is particularly true for younger Americans.  Today, families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.  That is astounding.  The truth is that there are not enough decent jobs for the hordes of young people that are entering the marketplace each year.  Once upon a time, a college degree was just about a guaranteed ticket to the middle class, but in 2011 more than half of all college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.  Sadly, statistics tell us that the younger you are, the less likely you are to have a chance to live "the American Dream".  Nearly half the country already lives in a household that receives direct financial assistance from the federal government, and that percentage grows with each passing day.  We are rapidly being transformed from a country of middle class citizens into a country of impoverished government dependents.  If dramatic changes are not made, the middle class in America will continue to decline every single year.  What would our society look like if the middle class disappeared entirely at some point? 

The Coup - "The Guillotine"

   

The following are 60 facts that prove that the middle class in America is being wiped out...

As NSA Pairs With Banks To "Fight Hackers", It Will Also Gain Access To Every American's Financial Secrets!

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Just because there was not enough encroachment by the government into virtually every corner of private life, here is another "collaboration" that will further enmesh big brother into every aspect of private life, in this case private financial life, because as the WaPo reports, "major U.S. banks have turned to the National Security Agency for help protecting their computer systems after a barrage of assaults that have disrupted their Web sites, according to industry officials. The attacks on the sites, which started about a year ago but intensified in September, have grown increasingly sophisticated, officials said. The NSA, the world’s largest electronic spying agency, has been asked to provide technical assistance to help banks further assess their systems and to better understand the attackers’ tactics."

And while we salute the great diversionary pretext that "Iranian hackers" pose a greater risk to the stability of the US financial system than, say, the ongoing monetization of US debt at a pace of $85 billion per month, which has made the Fed's DV01 rise to a mindboggling $2.75 billion, or idiot pundits who claim all American problems can be resolved with one coin, we can't help but wonder what happens when the most intrusive of US spy agencies, one which as reported last year is free "to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store" virtually every electronic communication in the entire world, now has full explicit access to all bank data, and, incidentally, every American's financial snapshot at any given moment?

The euro crisis no one is talking about: France is in free fall

The euro zone's second-largest economy is suffering more than any other member from a shocking deterioration in competitiveness. And it's doing nothing to stop it.

By Shawn Tully:

FORTUNE - Given investors' confidence in its sovereign debt, and its image as Germany's principal partner in the sturdy, sensible "northern" eurozone, you'd think that France endures as the co-guardian of the endangered single currency. Indeed, the rate on France's ten-year government bonds stands at just 2%, just a few ticks above Germany's. From a quick look at the headline numbers, France doesn't appear nearly as stressed as the derisively titled "PIIGS," Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. So far, the trajectory of its debts and deficits isn't as distressing as the figures for the PIIGs, or even the U.K. and the U.S.
France's vaunted role in the creation and initial success of the euro enhances its aura of solidity. It was President Francois Mitterrand who in 1989 persuaded Chancellor Helmut Kohl to back monetary union in exchange for France's support for German reunification. In fact, France and Germany, along with the Netherlands, dramatized their commitment by effectively uniting the franc and deutschemark in a currency union that held their exchange rates in a narrow band, and heralded the euro's birth in 1999. In the boom years of the mid-2000s, France virtually matched Germany as the twin growth engine of the thriving, 17-nation eurozone.
A deeper look shows that France is mired in no less than an economic crisis.

UK Freedom of the press? Double Standards

Britain's Zionist BBC media company goes bananas. Report on the annual festivities in Ireland form Belfast. We talk to media lawyer, Mark Lewis, about the Leveson inquiry and phone hacking scandal. These and much more are all reviewed in this edition of Double Standards with Afshin Rattansi. Source

On Men’s Rights Activism and MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way)

By DEAN ESMAY: Some readers of my blog Dean’s World have (politely) complained that I seem to be writing a lot of late on men’s and boys’ issues over the last year and feeling a little lost because in many cases they aren’t sure what I’m talking about. Some comments I’ve seen here and elsewhere seem to suggest that this is something new. I find this odd only inasmuch as from the earliest days of writing online, and really on a fairly regular basis, I was talking about things like genital mutilation, the fact that domestic violence isn’t a gendered issue and affects men equally, the questionable nature of the “pay-gap,” expressing ruminations and conflicted feelings over feminism and what the heck exactly it is, male rights in reproduction, the crisis in boys’ education… heck, for many years I had a co-blogger, Trudy Schuett, who wrote on almost nothing BUT men and domestic violence, and she only quit because of harassment of her family by feminist groups. Father’s rights activist Glenn Sacks was a contributor here for a good while too.

FREE SHIT “DISABLED” ARMY MASSING IT'S FORCES - The US Social Security system is already broke

The Burning Platform: Whenever I hear a liberal MSM talking head say that Social Security is not a problem, I could spit.
Obama and Romney both declared the Social Security system sound. They lied to the American people that it will only require minor tweaks to keep it solvent for a hundred years. Liberals hate math. The Social Security System has an unfunded liability of $18 trillion. This means our politicians have promised $18 trillion more than they can possibly pay out. I guess $18 trillion is trivial to a liberal minded person like Krugman or Obama. Lucky for them that 99% of all Americans don’t understand what unfunded liability even means. The chart below gives the gory details. The Social Security system had a negative cashflow of $47.8 billion last year, after running a $48 billion deficit the year before. You may notice that 77% of this deficit was created by the SSDI program, where the depressed masses gather after their 99 weeks of unemployment run out. Do you have a headache? Are you depressed because liquor stores don’t accept food stamps? Did you pull a muscle getting on your government provided rascal? Trouble hearing your Obama phone? Then you are eligible for SSDI.
The funniest line item on the chart is the Assets at End of Year line, which shows the Social Security system having $2.7 trillion. Even using this funny number, the SSDI will be broke in three years. Al Gore told us this money was in a lockbox. They take it out of your paycheck and put it into a fund, waiting for you to retire and collect what you’re owed. Right? Wrong! If you tried to observe the vault with the $2.7 trillion on deposit, you’d be looking for a long long time. You see, the noble politicians in Washington DC took the $2.7 trillion and spent it on undeclared wars overseas

Trickle Down Economics - Wall Street Hooker Tells All

"I'm single and don't know if I could ever get married after sleeping with so many married men — more than I can remember. It doesn't exactly give me faith in marriage.
I call myself a "freelance escort." I'm 28, but am told often that I look at least five years younger. I have the kind of tiny but curvy body that drives men wild, with auburn hair and almond-shaped eyes."*

A high-paid Wall Street escort took to the internet to tell her story of egos, complaints that were less than down-to-earth, and misplaced blame from some of clients who happen to be some of the world's most elite bankers. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss the details. Source

Obama administration gives drawn-out ‘no’ in response to popular secession petitions from 50 states

By Madison Ruppert: After the reelection of President Barack Obama (aka the Baby Bomber) last year, petitions from every state in the Union appeared on the White House website calling for a peaceful secession, some of which were massively popular.
The response to the petitions devolves to the point of absurdity when it claims that the Obama administration cares about “work[ing] together – and hear[ing] from one another – in order to find the best way to move forward.” The Obama administration claims they can legally assassinate Americans while never having to explain why it is legal and claims the authority to indefinitely detain Americans without charge or trial (while declared unconstitutional by one judge, it was quickly overturned by an Obama appointee).
Clearly, the Obama administration couldn’t care less about the American people as Obama recently reauthorized broad warrantless electronic spying powers and signed the NDAA 2013 into law. The claims made in the response to the petition are therefore simply laughable.
One from Texas, for example, garnered over 125,000 signatures, to which the Obama administration’s Carson recently responded to by writing what is essentially a drawn-out “no.”

36 South: "Let's Legalize Cocaine"

From Jerry Haworth of 36 South Capital:

Let’s Legalise Cocaine

Think about it – a substance which makes one feel good, promotes a feeling of well-being and confidence…..what is the problem with that?
The problem, as I explained to all my teenagers, is not that drugs are inherently bad per se, it is the medium to long term consequences of drug use that inevitably leave one worse off and forces one to make decisions one would not normally make e.g. selling your mother’s wedding ring for drug money.
Like the good pseudo-parents they are, the governments have (probably correctly) stepped in and outlawed drugs and their use. But there are other substances which also make one feel good, promote a feeling of well-being and confidence but is just as dangerous. With this substance the government does NOT limit use but promotes it! It is in fact the grower and distributor!
What is this stuff? Hint …. Comes in two flavours: money (present money) and credit (future money).
Our pseudo parents, the governments, are money pushers and we are the junkies. They have encouraged their “children” to take up the habit. Thus, we have all become addicts, the world is one big “needle park” and we are so habituated that any call to limit its creation is met with derision. The fiscal cliff, which should be renamed ‘last stop before insanity,' was merely an attempt by the “Salvation Army” to limit our addiction, to put a boundary on how much longer we can go on without consequence.

Coming Clean Beyond the (US) Fiscal Cliff

"Information is the hardest currency."

~Andrew Vachss

By Catherine Austin Fitts: Washington's negotiations to address the fiscal cliff of automatic tax increases and spending cuts legislatively triggered at the close of 2012 are the latest in an ongoing effort to address increasing U.S. federal government deficits and debt levels. Enormous monetary and fiscal stimulus has failed to produce an economic recovery. In short, the U.S. government and central banks have failed to dig out. Instead, they are now dug in deeper. What to do now?
What is missing from this and other debates on the reengineering of the U.S. federal finances is an understanding or discussion of the structural problems in the federal finances that have been accumulating since WWII, when the United States - with 6% of the world’s population - found itself the master of 50% of the world’s resources.
The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of some of these structural issues in the hope that more citizens will be encouraged to consider how the federal finances flow through the immediate world around us - our household budget, our business, farm or place of work, our municipality - and the government-sponsored organized crime and fraud draining us, so we can begin to implement real solutions.
Ultimately, the fiscal cliff is the tip of the iceberg of our economic and cultural woes. Our problems are deeper. The more of us there are, who are prepared to look honestly at our situation and take responsibility for it, the sooner authentic solutions will become possible and emerge.
As we look over the fiscal cliff into our financial abyss, now is a good time to “Come Clean” about the real state of our lives, our communities, and our economy, starting with the U.S. federal finances that flow deeply and intimately throughout every aspect of our lives.

We Dont Have An Original Thought Amongst Us - Morris

Morris: We are most likely to holler a slogan or a phrase we heard - and least likely to have a unique take on what is going on. But given the disjointed policies inflicted upon us it is no surprise.Presented a little experimentally .... Think of the solace we get from someone mentioning a word which reminds us of a place we were in the past (A school, a country, a language) - but its a fleeting joy .... Source