Ruble Freefall: And the Ugliest Currencies Are?

By Wolf Richter:  The 35% plunge of the price of oil since June and the sanction spiral imposed on Russia are wreaking havoc on the ruble. Oil and gas revenues are crucial to the finances of the Russian government and to the oil-and-gas dominated economy. So the ruble continues its free-fall that started in June. It hit a new low of 50.21 rubles to the dollar. Down 33.55% year to date, and down 32% since June.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ruble got wiped out completely. When I went to Russia for the first time in 1996, it traded for 5,000 rubles to the dollar and was falling so fast that all prices were denoted in dollars and payable in rubles at the exchange rate of the day, which every Russian knew. By 1998, during the “ruble crisis,” Russia defaulted on its debt and devalued to ruble to where it lost practically all its value from just a few years earlier. A process no Russian will ever forget.

The distrust in the ruble as a store of value has been so ingrained that chitters in the world incite Russians to dump their rubles for dollars and euros. Their distrust goes far beyond the distrust many Americans have in the dollar!

Swiss Gold Referendum Fails: 78% Vote Against "Protecting The Country's Wealth"

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Whether as a result of an unprecedented scare campaign by the Swiss National Bank (most recently reinforced by Citigroup), or due to confidence that Swiss gold is as safe abroad as it is at home, or simply due to good old-fashioned "hanging chads", today's most awaited event has come and gone and the result - according to early projections by Swiss television SRF - is that the Swiss population overwhelmingly rejected a referendum to force the Swiss National Bank to hold some 20% of its reserves in gold in a landslide vote, with about 78% voting against what AP politely termed "protecting the country's wealth by investing in gold."

A ballot box is emptied at a voting center in Zurich today. 
As Bloomberg reports, the proposal stipulating the Swiss National Bank hold at least 20 percent of its 520-billion-franc ($540 billion) balance sheet in gold was voted down by 78 percent to 22 percent, according to projections by Swiss television SRF as of 1:00 p.m. local time. The initiative “Save Our Swiss Gold” also would have prohibited the SNB from ever selling any of its bullion and required the 30 percent currently stored in Canada and the U.K. to be repatriated.

The New "Rape Culture" World Order? Juice Media Lose the Plot!

the'feminist'juicemedia: The New World Order: They control the world's governments; THEY rule over all of us from the top of the pyramid. And WE are the victims. Right? Today we blow open the truth about the NWO in order to shed light on this widespread conspiracy which has frequently been invoked to explain the state of our world. Join intrepid host Robert Foster as he takes control of the lever of critical inquiry, alongside special guests Russell Brand, conspiracy guru Terrence Moonseed, and NWO representative William De Berg, in order to ask: who is the New World Order? And how can we stop it?

Ray Barry Talks About Linking Child Support Payments To Seeing Children

Mike Buchanan: Ray Barry, leader of Real Fathers for Justice, will be standing for J4MB in Broxtowe at the next general election. In this interview he argues that paying for child support should be linked legally to having reasonable access to children - surely not a position with which any reasonable person would argue.

Millenials And The “4th Wave” Of Feminism

By Zoe Zorka: My name is Zoe and I am a Canadian-American writer originally from Detroit, MI now residing in Salt Lake City, Utah. After writing this article on CNN about not wanting children, I was offered an opportunity to write for Elite Daily.
In June of this year, exactly two days prior to my PhD graduation, Elite Daily published my below article about fourth wave feminism. The article received overwhelming support from men around the world, but drew the ire of many women. I was raised in a world where men and women are equal, and that any accomplishments should be mine and mine alone. I was born into a middle class family and have never received a handout nor have I ever had an unfair advantage. I believe that women should have every opportunity as a man, but also be held to the same standards. 

I feel that our society has begun to vilify men to a certain extent and that is not what equality is about. My article is not so much about feminism, but humanism- the idea that everyone regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, race, or parental status, should receive equal rights but also be held to equal standards. 
I never set out to be an equal rights activist and I’m not the stereotypical activist. I try to listen more than I speak and I try to take every viewpoint into consideration before making an assertion. I think that is very much lacking in the feminist movement today.

Vanity Pharaohs - Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert with Mike Murphy and Tiago Lourenco

The modern age of the Pharaoh and price and profit are no longer considered when undertaking a project - such as shale gas fracking. They also discuss the UK selling off state assets in the name of ‘privatisation’ and yet it is state owned companies in Europe buying up the assets.

That Hot US-EU Trade Deal? Destroys 600,000 EU Jobs – Study

Cutting wages – bad as that is – does not necessarily translate into the creation of new jobs, debt-crisis countries in the EU periphery have shown. But then, who would win in the TTIP?
By Don Quijones: In a 1994 interview with Charlie Rose, the British billionaire financier James Goldsmith delivered a stark, eerily prescient warning of the state the world would be in today if it succumbed to the freer borders and more centralized, corporate-owned governance envisaged by trade regimes such as NAFTA and GATT (the predecessor to the World Trade Organization).
Goldsmith was spot on about just about everything, from the threats posed by derivatives – then in their infancy – to the risks of industrializing agriculture throughout the developing world [You can watch the full interview here]. Yet his warnings went unheeded, as laments the U.S. economist and former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts:

Sir James called it correct, as did Roger Milliken. They predicted that the working and middle classes in the US and Europe would be ruined by the greed of Wall Street and corporations, who would boost corporate earnings by replacing their domestic work forces with foreign labor, which could be paid a fraction of labor’s productivity as a result of the foreign country’s low living standard and large excess supply of labor.

Now, 20 years on from the signing of NAFTA and GATT, our governments’ enthusiasm for bilateral and multilateral trade agreements is undimmed, despite the social upheaval and economic destruction they have left in their wake.

‘2nd Class Citizen’: Israeli Arabs Stamp Facebook Pics To Protest JSIL's ‘Jewish State Law’

RT: Hundreds of Arab Israelis this week have chosen to stamp their Facebook profile pictures with a “second-class citizen” sign. The online campaign mocks and protests the controversial Jewish nation state law the JSIL (Israeli) parliament is set to vote on.
The official-looking stamp has “second class citizen” written in Hebrew and “State of Israel” in English. It was designed by two artists, Haitham Charles and Sana Jamaileh, who wanted to make a statement about the plans to anchor in law the status of Israel as “the national homeland of the Jewish people.”
READ MORE: Netanyahu govt approves disputed bill making Israel nation-state of Jewish people
“A friend suggested we design a sticker in response to the terrible situation,” Charles told Arab Israeli news website Al-Hayat, The Times of Israel reports. “We laughed and said: ‘All we need right now is for the new state seal to be stamped on our foreheads.’ That’s when we decided to invent this stamp.” 

Why I Chose To Fight For Men

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. Desmond Tutu

By Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj: Seeing my uncles leave their parents and set up separate homes no matter how much they loved their parents and wanted to keep them along was normal for me as a young girl. I never bothered to think about it. Though I saw the pain in the eyes of these old and ailing parents, I thought that it was probably more important for a man to listen to his wife than to those who had brought him up in this world, taught him how to walk, and made him the man he is today. I grew up and saw a few of these men completely snapped from family ties, but once again I never bothered to inquire much.
Three years ago, I was forced to THINK.
A very dear friend of mine was on the brink of a divorce a year after his marriage and two months after his parents had started living with the couple. His wife gave him two options: leave his parents forever or divorce with a huge sum. He chose the latter. I still remember endless drives where he spoke less and cried more for that decision. He never wanted to break his marriage but was forced to. He was also forced to pay a price that was worth his and his parents’ life’s savings. This time, though I did wonder to myself why he was paying so much, I did not get too much into the reasons.
Two years ago, I was forced to ACT.

ISIL Leader Trained By US CIA and JSIL's Mossad To Overthrow Assad

The United States and JSIL (Israel) are run by “Zionist psychopaths” who are recruiting and training “mind-controlled killers” to “set the Middle East on fire,” says a political activist in Wyoming USA.

Orwellian UK BANNED Press TV: The leader of ISIL, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “is an Israeli actor trained by both CIA and Mossad” to lead a terrorist organization that “only attacks Muslims, not the US or Israel,” said J Bruce Campbell,

Ian McNicholl, A Victim Of Extreme Violence, On UK's 'Loose Women'

Ian McNicholl, a survivor of extreme female domestic violence, is a determined advocate for victims of domestic violence. Mike Buchanan

Mike Buchanan Interviewed On BBC Radio Scotland About Gender-Balanced Cabinets, Boards…

By Mike Buchanan: One of the first actions of Nicola Sturgeon, after her recent appointment as the new First Minister of Scotland, was to announce her first cabinet would consist of five men and five women. Apparently, on the basis of merit, exactly the same number of men and women deserved the posts, although barely more than a third of the members of the Scottish parliament are women. Righto.