By Michael Krieger: Political grounds are shaking all over the world, and it seems India is the latest nation to experience such tremors.
Back in October, I highlighted the fact that the formerly “fringe”
anti-euro Front National Party in France, led by Marine Le Pen, had
shocked the nation by performing exceptionally well in regional elections.
Not only was this a surprise because its strong anti-euro (currency)
position is so outside the so-called “mainstream,” but also because it
is not one of the traditional parties that shares power in France’s own
version of the false left-right (Democrat/Republican) sham political
paradigm.
Well now it appears the same thing is happening in India, with the
sudden emergence of the AAP (Aam Admi or Common Man Party). Frustrated
with the inept governance of the ruling Congress Party, and unwilling to
embrace what is seen as a corporate backed Hindu-nationalist opposition
BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), many Indians, at least in Delhi, are
looking to embrace something new.
From the Guardian:
Outside the headquarters of the Aam Admi (Common Man) party in
central Delhi on Sunday night, hawkers sold poppadoms, bored police
watched from squad cars and a crowd of excited young people sang songs
dating back to the days of India’s independence movement.
“This is what
we do best in this country: non-violent revolution,” said Shehshan
Partak, a 25-year-old engineer and activist for Aam Admi (AAP). “And
this is a revolution.”
By Victor Zen (Sage Gerard): I
stumbled upon an image from 9gag.com, a site with user-generated
content. The original uploader of this piece is unknown, but he or she
used several shots from JustGirlyThings, a Tumblr blog, and juxtaposed
their captions against pictures that actually need them. If the following images
do not teach you about the double standards and exaggerations that
harm men, nothing will.
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the bitcoin price plunge as Baidu
ditches the crypto currency and China bans it for financial firms.
Unnoticed at the same time, Germany declares bitcoin to be private money
and Merrill Lynch claims it can replace money transfer systems like
Western Union.
By Agence France-Presse: More than a quarter of Greeks are unable to afford health cover, a
medical aid group said Monday, apparently warning that they couldn't care less about men but children and pregnant women
were at risk.
Doctors of the World (MDM) said more than three million people, or
27.2 percent of the population, cannot pay their contributions to social
security and are therefore barred from free healthcare.
“We are very worried by the number of people who have lost access to
social insurance,” Anna Maili, head of MDM’s Greek branch, told a news
conference.
“This has grave consequences for the health of children and pregnant
women,” she said, explaining that thankfully many families no longer had infants
vaccinated.
Over a child’s first six years €1,400 and €1,800 ($1,900-2,500) is doled out from the people's taxes to the 'Immunisation Industrial Complex'.
(Angelo: Now it makes sense why the ousted German king of Greece, Constantine, came to London and opened a chain of chemist shops.
On the bright side, poor kids are saved from being injected with toxic mercury, especially in their undernourished state.) “Every day we see children aged two or three who have not been vaccinated,”
RT: More than 500 renowned authors – including five Nobel laureates -
from across the globe have signed a petition demanding an end to ‘mass
surveillance’. It follows the revelations over the last few months of
the US and other countries spying.
Their open appeal is called ‘A Stand for Democracy in the Digital
Age’. Among the signatories are Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk, JM
Coetzee, Elfriede Jelinek, Günter Grass and Tomas Tranströmer.
Others who signed the letter include Bjork, Umberto Eco, Yann
Martel, Ian McEwan and many others.
“WE DEMAND THE RIGHT for all people, as democratic citizens,
to determine to what extent their personal data may be collected,
stored and processed, and by whom; to obtain information on where
their data is stored and how it is being used; to obtain the
deletion of their data if it has been illegally collected and
stored. WE CALL ON ALL STATES AND CORPORATIONS to respect these
rights,”
CHEATS!
By John Ward: The Slog predicted
that JobCentre privatisation ‘may yet turn into one of the major
scandals of Camerlot government’. It looks like this might have been one
of my more prescient forecasts. Nothing like adding a flash new brand suffix to a rickety service to
sprinkle a little pa-zazz onto it. Thus these days at Gov.UK, help with
finding a job (or employees to do one) is now provided by JobCentre Plus.
You are about to learn what the plus stands for. But in the meantime, go to the site
and you’ll see other signs of the growing drivel-level there: Universal
Jobmatch, work choice, work trials, time-flexing and so forth – the
usual syntax of the three-card trick artist….who is actually talking in
those cases about lower hourly rates, poorer quality jobs, working for
nothing, working shorter hours, and zero-hours contracts respectively.
Mr Orwell’s Winston Smith would’ve been the only man in Britain working
24/7 to make up new and more diametrically misleading euphemisms.
One reason for the growing tidal wave of hogwash, however, is this
newish element in the mix: private organisations are now under contract
with the government to provide services such as ‘Employment Zones’ and
‘Pathways to Work’, with ‘touchscreen interactive jobpoints’ inside
Jobcentres.
RT: UK students are rallying together against a ‘police crackdown’ after a
week of protests led to violence and a ban on demonstrations at a
London university. Activists claim the police and universities are using
intimidation tactics to gag protesters.
The student protest movement in the UK has taken social media by
storm under the hashtag #copsoffcampus to call for an end to
student repression. Students have organized a ‘Day of Action’ for
Wednesday and asked students around Britain to join together in
mass protest.
“Across the country, students are initiating a vibrant,
popular, winnable fight for democratic and public universities,
free from exploitation and repression. We cannot be beaten if we
stand together,” says the description of the event on
Facebook that already has over 2,000 confirmed attendees.
Stefan Molyneux: Nelson Mandela is portrayed in the lame-stream media as a peace-loving
anti-apartheid revolutionary and philanthropist. But what is the truth
about Nelson Mandela?
By Janet Bloomfield (aka JudgyBitch): There are two large national surveys of intimate partner violence (IPV) – one is conducted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the other by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which effectively means that one survey frames IPV as a health issue, and the other frames it as a criminal issue.
Unsurprisingly, they reach different conclusions. Let’s look at DOJ survey first, conducted by two feminist researchers.
Dr. Patricia Tjaden,
a professor of sociology specializing in Violence Against Women (her
own words) “developed and executed numerous federally-funded research
projects, including the highly-acclaimed National Violence Against Women
Survey”.
Dr. Nancy Thoennes
has more than 30 years experience in the design of surveys and data
collection forms and conducts large-scale statistical analyses using
SPSS. She is a leading expert on child protection and the courts, as
well as in the field of child support.
Patty and Nancy put their heads together and designed a survey called The National Violence Against Women Survey. Gee, that’s pretty objective, isn’t it? Not the National Violence Against Intimate Partners Survey. Not the National Domestic Violence Survey.
The National Violence Against Women Survey.
Who wants to guess what they found?
By Brent Daggett: “People won’t use technology they don’t trust. Governments have put
this trust at risk, and governments need to help restore it,” said Brad
Smith, Microsoft general counsel and executive vice president, legal and
corporate affairs.
On December 9, major internet corporations such as AOL, Apple,
Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo collaborated on
an open letter to President Obama and Congress urging them to reign in
government surveillance.
The letter, which has appeared in several newspapers across the country, expressed these sentiments:
“We understand that governments have a duty to protect their
citizens. But this summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need to
reform government surveillance practices worldwide. The balance in many
countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the
rights of the individual- rights that are enshrined in our
Constitution. this undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It’s time
for a change.
By Michael Krieger: This is unbelievable. I mean at this point these NWO jerks are simply rubbing it in our faces.
From Forbes:
The Office of National Intelligence was very excited about
sending a rocket into space Thursday with a bunch of new satellites and live tweeted its
launch. This would usually be a cute display of social media, along the
lines of NASA getting the world excited about its Mars Curiosity Rover,
except these are spy satellites that will likely be used to gather
communications flotsam and who knows what else from people around the
world. Dragnet surveillance is a touchy subject these days what with the
Snowden leaks and constant new revelations about cell phones being
turned into location trackers, listening in on foreign leaders’ phone
calls and the vacuuming up of any information sent digitally that’s not
encrypted. Given that,
I was a little surprised that ODNI was bragging about the launch on
Twitter and putting the mission patch for the rocket on prominent
display as it looks like it was drawn by a writer for The Simpsons with
his tongue firmly in his cheek.
