16 Mar 2014

The Truth About Banksters, Busts and Bailouts

Stefan Molyneux: It took 150 years to blow up the banking sector - a brief history of a slow detonation.

Don’t Be THAT Guy: Attila Goes To Ottawa

By : As regular readers are no doubt aware, the “Don’t be that Guy” poster campaign has once again raised its bigoted head. This time the campaign has made an appearance in Canada’s capital – Ottawa. However, while the posters did attract some media attention, it wasn’t nearly as much as previous occasions. What’s also of note is that for the first time the posters were torn down. It seems that someone at the University of Ottawa had had enough. While AVfM does not condone censorship, we certainly do understand the anger that motivates such action. Labeling an entire gender as potential rapists while simultaneously ignoring the realities of sexual assault and rape is clearly morally bankrupt. That is why we sent our tireless Director of Activism Attila Vinczer to Ottawa armed with glue, some “Don’t be that Girl” posters, and a gutful of FTSU attitude. AVfM spoke with Vinczer upon his return from Ottawa. Below are some excerpts from the conversation:

Hi Attila – so first off – how did you get to Ottawa?
Well, I drove to Ottawa. It took about four-and-half hours – got a nice present from the OPP on the way – a speeding ticket.  I told the officer that I couldn’t accept his kind gift but, you know, he insisted.
What’s your take on the Don’t be that Guy campaign?
The Don’t be That Guy campaign is absolutely ridiculous. The message of that poster, of that campaign, is completely wrong. It paints guys in  a way that men are like that – and they’re not. It goes hand-in-hand with the one-in-four nonsense. It’s  a misleading campaign and stigmatizes men.

YOU CAN ONLY BE SEXIST TOWARDS WOMEN! - Says Feminism

The Fantastic Skeptic: This video had been in the works for a while and I'm responding to the claim that "you can only be sexist towards women/only sexist when men do it," which has been made by several feminists (including one in particular who's an interesting case) I think any rational would say equality is a great thing, but modern feminism (at least the group that calls themselves feminists on the internet) poisons the well by spiting on men with this baseless claim, while ignoring the fact that sexism DOES happen to both sexes. No gender should get special treatment over the other (although admittedly, men's issues are ignored by the lame-stream media) and is essentially an argument from ignorance.

Sex-Specific Drivers and Adaptive Technological Game Changers

ThinkingApe-TV: Extended thoughts on the factors leading to differentiated interests in reproductive technology.

Who Owns Ya?

By It’s a particularly Irish expression – and it relates to children. Usually said if a child has been caught “up to no good” and sure what child hasn’t been?
But, when an adult did, or in some case still does, catch one of these little rascals  in the act – the first thing they want to know is “who owns ya” generally followed by “ya lttle skelp”” because parents are ultimately responsible for what their children get up too.

Now, the concept of “ownership” in relation to children in this instance isn’t the same as ownership of inanimate property, or wasn’t, but as I said above, a concept whereby parents were responsible for what their children got up too, when out and about, or out of sight of their parents beady eyes.
All that has changedbecause of feminismin the 21st century women OWN their childrenexclusively, with men in some instances being reduced to being merely unwitting sperm donors.  Though of course, the cost of maintaining this “property” rests solely on the shoulders of these unfortunate, and as I said, possibly deceived men – on the shoulders exclusively of Fathers. And The State.
Because now, the word Father, rather being something that evokes honourable men, working to support, parent and care for their children out of love for them – has, through the machinations of feminists become a dirty word, a word spoken with contempt and derision, a word that evokes only one thought – “how much can I make him pay?

Drones Will Cause Upheaval Of Society We Haven’t Seen In 700 Years

By Noah Smith: The human race is on the brink of momentous and dire change. It is a change that potentially smashes our institutions and warps our society beyond recognition. It is also a change to which almost no one is paying attention. I’m talking about the coming obsolescence of the gun-wielding human infantryman as a weapon of war. Or to put it another way: the end of the Age of the Gun.
 
You may not even realize you have been, indeed, living in the Age of the Gun because it’s been centuries since that age began. But imagine yourself back in 1400. In that century (and the 10 centuries before it), the battlefield was ruled not by the infantryman, but by the horse archer—a warrior-nobleman who had spent his whole life training in the ways of war. Imagine that guy’s surprise when he was shot off his horse by a poor no-count farmer armed with a long metal tube and just two weeks’ worth of training. Just a regular guy with a gun.

That day was the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity.

Spider’s Web of Debt - Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert with Chris Whalen

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss financial ear wax and collateral the size of a spider's egg.

We Cannot Get Away from Gold or Silver

By Hugo Salinas Price: It is remarkable how billions of human beings are using fiat currencies in the world today without any understanding at all of what they are doing. Curiosity and intellect are indeed very limited in supply amongst humans.
Humanity is attempting to live by the use of fiat currencies – gold and silver as means of interaction between humans are not available today.
And humans are quite ignorant of the fact that the fiat currencies they use have each of them a HISTORY behind them, without which they would not exist.
We humans tend today to discount History. The past has lost its meaning to us. We live entirely in the Present; what happened just a few years ago is no longer of interest, except to a very small minority of humans. History has become irrelevant; we are so engrossed with Technology, the God of the present era, that we have little urge to direct our attention elsewhere.
The Bitcoin is  - according to some at any rate - a technological marvel and should therefore do everything that is expected of it. But the fact that it may be a technological marvel is not enough, though people doubt that statement to begin with. "If the Bitcoin is a technological marvel, then surely it will have to be a brilliant success." This is optimistic thinking, but quite shallow.

Feminism Seeks Rights Without Responsibilities

R VS RBy These dogmas of “advanced” faith in the Woman Question are… namely, that women ought to have all the rights of intellectual capacity with all the privileges of physical weakness, otherwise expressed, all the rights of men, and none of the duties or hardships of men. For it is a significant and amusing fact that no mention is ever made by the advocate of women’s claims of the privileges which have always been accorded the “weaker sex.” These privileges are quietly pocketed as a matter of course, without any sort of acknowledgment, much less any suggestion of surrender.”
Some Heterodox Notes on the Women Question (1887)
“Now in order to maintain this position it is necessary to assume the complete intellectual and moral equality of women with men, while judiciously conceding their physical inferiority. A desire, conscious or unconscious, on the part of these Socialists, as of other advocates of Feminism, is to make out a claim for women to all that is honourable and agreeable in the functions of human life, while safeguarding them from any obligation to accept rough or dangerous duties. Thus Bebel, in his “Frau und der Sozialismus,” while maintaining that no social function filled by men ought to be inaccessible to women, since any seeming unfitness in the latter is only the result of certain cruel oppression at the hands of vile man, yet is careful to guard his fair clients from the danger of being called upon for military purposes, even of defence.”