By Paul Craig Roberts: Washington’s plan to seize Ukraine and to evict Russia from its Black
Sea naval base has come amiss. But to turn around Lenin’s quote, “two
steps forward, one step back.”
Do you remember all the tough talk coming from John Kerry, the White
House Fool, Hilary Clinton, and the lickspittle Merkel about the harsh
sanctions that would “badly damage” the Russian economy unless Russia
prevented the referendum vote in Crimea? Well, it was all bullshit,
more hot air from the White House sock puppet and the lickspittle German
chancellor who is a disgrace to the German nation. As the Russians
kept telling John Kerry, sanctions on Russia would destroy Europe and do
little damage to Russia.
I wish the Russians had kept this to themselves. I was looking
forward to the Washington morons destroying NATO by closing down the
European economy.
Of course, after pretending that they were macho tough guys,
something that Washington’s presstitute media could hype as sanctions
had to be imposed, so Washington came up with sanctions, not on Russia,
but on eleven individuals: the deposed Ukrainian president, an advisor
to the deposed president, 2 Crimean officials, and 7 Russians.
The choice of the officials is an utter mystery.
By Charles Hugh Smith: Since these monetary/fiscal fixes (i.e. distortions) didn't address the real issues, all
they can possibly do is increase the magnitude of the next collapse.
For five long years, we have pursued the fantasy that we could return to "growth"
without having to fix or change anything. The core policy of the fantasy is the consensus
of "serious economists," i.e. those accepted into the priesthood of PhD economists
protected by academic tenure or state positions: what we suffered in 2009
was not the collapse of leveraged crony-state financialization but a temporary
decline of "aggregate demand" and productive capacity.
The solution, the economic witch doctors asserted, was simple: replace temporarily slack
private demand with government-funded demand (deficit spending) and flood the
impaired financial system with liquidity (i.e. free money) and increase the incentives
to borrow money.
In other words, the "serious economists" solution was to transfer all the interest
earned by savers to the banks and push households to buy more
low-quality junk from Asia on credit. This expansion of demand (for more of anything--
"serious economists" don't differentiate between
a 13th pair of shoes and a single replacement pair of shoes--and they absolutely love
building McMansions in the middle of nowhere) would push businesses to borrow money from
banks (that's good because banks will profit, and "serious economists" want banks
to skim enormous profits to keep the financial sector healthy) and expand their production
and payroll.
None of this made any sense, of course, because the "serious economists" completely
misread the problem.
By Jim Byset: A curious thing is happening at the National Post
right now. During the course of a fortnight, the National Post has
printed four articles on rape culture. Rape culture, for those of you
who don’t know, is the idea that we live in a society whereby rape — of
women — is an accepted practice. Evidence that we are living in such a
culture comes from our apparent comfort with sexualizing and
objectifying women, the prevalence of prostitution and pornography,
victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and trivializing rape.
Quite often, statistics and facts accompany the theory – with
feminists and activists quoting numbers that are, on the face of it,
pretty terrifying. While there doesn’t seem to be a consensus as to
exactly how many women are being raped or sexually assaulted
(advocates of the theory never include data on male victims,) what is
clear is that the numbers are absolutely huge. Indeed, they’re so big
that they’re simply not credible. Many noted academics, critics, and
commentators such as Christina Hoff Sommers have repeatedly argued this
point but to little avail. While critics of feminism have been effective
in ripping the theory to shreds, gender feminists plow on regardless –
safe in the knowledge that neither politicians nor the mainstream media
have any interest in confronting their claims.
“Weakness, to whose claim chivalry may per se be granted, forfeits its claim when it presumes upon that claim and becomes aggressive.” E.B. Bax
* * *
By E. Belfort Bax: I instanced the Tooting tramway incident as an act of commendable
pluck on the part of those concerned in it to boldly challenge the
attempt of woman’s righters to “jump the claim” to chivalry as a special
right of the sex they champion. But there is another point Feminists
conveniently overlook. It is this: That granting the “weakness”
argument, this very weakness, to whose claim chivalry may per se be
granted, forfeits its claim when it presumes upon that claim and becomes
aggressive. Aggressive weakness deserves no quarter – à la guerre, comme à la guerre.
LiveLeak: Australian Comedian Jim Jefferies talks about Heterosexual, Homosexual & Lesbian relationships. Via Mike B at J4MB
Sandman: 'Stefan Molyneux
certainly uses the truth in many of his arguments and I am currently
subscribing to his channel and watch various videos he puts out. My
favorite ones are called "The Truth About Nelson, The Truth About Paul
Walker, etc." And if I'm not mistaken those are the ones that people
watch the most on his channel in recent months. I also see Stefan as an
MRA because he's spoken with Girl Writes What and Paul Elam on his
youtube channel. And he has also spoken about MGTOW issues.'
Paul Elam: Two young women in Maryland have admitted to torturing a 16 year old
mentally disabled boy over a period of months, including putting a knife
to his throat on several occasions, kicking him in the groin, forcing
him to masturbate and have sex with animals, making him walk across a
frozen pond where he fell into the icy water several times, dragging him
around by his hair and other acts which they reportedly recorded on
camera phones.
carlos morales: Learn the true origins of violence, murder, and war by accepting truth over comfort
By William K. Black: The FDIC has sued 16 of the largest banks in the world plus the
British Bankers Association (BBA) alleging that they engaged in fraud
and collusion to manipulate the London Inter-bank Offered Rate (LIBOR).
BBA called LIBOR “The most important number in the world.”
LIBOR is actually many numbers that depend on the currency and term
(maturity) of the loan. The collusion involved manipulating most of
these rates. A vast number of loans and derivatives are priced off of
these “numbers.” Estimates of the notional dollar amount of deals
affected by the collusion range from $300-550 trillion in deals
manipulated at any given time. The LIBOR frauds began no later than
2005 and continued through 2011.
The BBA and the banks claimed to the world that LIBOR was simply the
prices (interest rates) set by the market for what it cost the world’s
largest banks to borrow from each other. The banks would report to the
BBA those interest rates and, after excluding outliers, the average
reported cost to borrow for X days in Y currency would be reported as
the LIBOR “number.”
The system was not regulated. The theory was that the banks
self-regulated. LIBOR was the City of London’s “crown jewel” and
theoclassical economics predicted that the elite banks’ self-interest in
their reputation and the value they gained from having LIBOR as the
global standard would ensure that the banks would report honestly. As
my readers know, any discussion of the “banks’” interests is dangerously
misleading. The key question is the interests of the banks’ officers,
particularly those that control the banks. The “unfaithful agent” (bank
officer) is the leading threat to the banks. Theoclassical economists
assumed away the “agency” problem.
RT: The United Kingdom and the US have been branded ‘Enemies of the
Internet’ for the first time by Reporters Without Borders on their
annual list of countries which disrupt freedom of information through
surveillance and censorship.
Both the US and the UK were included in the list for first time as a
result of revelations from the Whistleblower Edward Snowden into
the activities of the American and British spy agencies.
In fact Edward Snowden branded the UK, where the government has
largely ignored calls to reign in the nation’s spooks and the
public remain apathetic, as “worse than the US”.
Snowden outlines various “widespread surveillance
practices” operated by GCHQ as part of its plan called
“Mastering the internet”.
“The Internet was a collective resource that the NSA and GCHQ
turned into a weapon in the service of special interests, in the
process flouting freedom of information, freedom of expression
and the right to privacy,” say the report’s authors.
