A Voice for Men Interview: Lucian Valsan

Paul Elam: One of the remarkable things about the Men’s Human Rights Movement is that it is a rare, unifying factor that connects men of all walks of life from across the planet.

One of the great examples of that is Romanian Lucian Valsan, Host of AVFM Radio Europe and director of AVFM’s multi-site operations. Lucian’s work has resulted in AVFM now being online in no less than eight different languages, with more on the way.

Men’s Rights: Got A Problem With It?

By Luigi Logan (aka Fidelbogen): I, the present writer, am not a member of the so-called “men’s rights movement.” That said, I would like to share some thoughts about this whole business of “men’s rights.”
Either you agree that the male population has “rights” or you don’t. If you don’t, you should straightly declare this. I will thank you for your candor, but then I will send you on your way because the discussion no longer concerns you.
All right, I turn to the rest of you—those who would agree, at least in principle, that men have “rights.”
Over the years, I have noticed a peculiar thing. I have met many people who mock and deride the notion of “men’s rights” whenever that notion confronts them. They are not in the least dispassionate or cool-headed about this.
I will often ask these people if they think men should have “rights” at all. They will splutter and declare that yes, of course they think that men should have rights. However, when I press them further, they will inform me that only the IDEA of men’s rights affronts them, reason being that men “have all their rights anyway” and nothing to complain about.
Men’s rights, we are to suppose, are fully intact and uncompromised—hence, there is no warrant to raise any fuss about this.
So their reaction to the phrase “men’s rights” is emotion-based, and their clear intent is to shut down further conversation on that subject. They evidently do not wish to entertain, by any stretch, the concept of “men’s rights.” More to the point, they vehemently reject the thought that “men’s rights” are somehow being violated.

Made in the USA: How the Ukrainian Government is Giving Away Citizenships so Foreigners Can Run the Country

By Michael Krieger: I hadn’t written a single piece on the U.S.-Ukraine-Russia quagmire for the entirety of 2014, until Monday when I published: Tensions Between the U.S. and Russia Are Worse Than You Realize – Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Now I can hardly think of anything else.
The reason the geopolitical hot zone has so captured my attention is because I think we are much closer to a serious escalation than most people want to admit. I hope I’m wrong, but when I take a step back and look at what is being said and done under the surface, an incredibly dangerous tinderbox is now firmly in place and ready to be lit. We know from history that relatively minor catalysts can lead to unimaginable horrors. I fear the stage is set for some real nastiness, and hope cooler heads can prevail on both sides.
Claims that the new government in Ukraine is nothing more than a Western puppet Parliament have been swirling around consistently since February. Nevertheless, I think it’s very significant that the takeover is now overt, undeniable and completely out in the open. Nothing proves this fact more clearly than the recent and sudden granting of citizenship to three foreigners so that they can take top posts in the government.
At the top of the list is American, Natalie Jaresko, who runs private equity fund Horizon Capital. She will now be Ukraine’s Finance Minister, and I highly doubt she will be forced to pay the IRS Expatriation Tax (one set of laws for the rich and powerful, another set of laws for the peasants).

Warmongering US Army Sends 100 Tanks To Eastern Europe To "Deter Russian Aggression"

Submitted by Tyler Durden: The ink on Barack Obama's Chuck Hagel termination letter hasn't dried yet but already the US president's new, and seemingly far more hawkish advisors, are having their warmongering presence felt. Case in point: the Eastern European theater of (Cold) war, where Military.com reports that the new Army commander in Europe plans to bolster the U.S. armored presence in Poland and the Baltic states and keep rotations of U.S. troops there through next year and possibly beyond to counter Russia. Lt. Gen. Frederick "Ben" Hodges, who replaced Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell  earlier this month as commander of U.S. Army Europe, said the Army was looking to add about 100 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the forces in Eastern Europe. 

These U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams tanks are part of the European Activity Set,
a combined-arms battalion-sized set of vehicles and equipment pre-positioned
at Germany’s Grafenwoehr Training Area. Markus Ruachenberger/U.S. Army

"We are looking at courses of action for how we could pre-position equipment that we would definitely want to put inside a facility where it would be better maintained, that rotational units could then come and draw on it and use it to train, or for contingency purposes," Hodges said in a briefing from Vilnius, Lithuania.
So "better maintained... or for contingency purposes." Got it. That probably also explains why as NATO is seeking to deliver 100 tanks to Eastern Europe, it has already added several squadrons of fighter jets just minutes away from Russia's border. For "contingency purposes."

Seasons Greetings From The House Of Saud… William Banzai7

Rape Culture - What is it? What does it do?

By Jason Sinclair: We have all heard the term rape culture. A lingering look is a part of rape culture. A comment on a woman’s body she doesn’t appreciate is rape culture. Saying hi to an attractive woman you see on the street is rape culture, etc.

Our society is constantly exposed to someone or another talking about how only men can stop rape—that we, as men, are all really just potential rapists (see Schrödinger’s Rapist). As a society, we seem preoccupied with it.
I decided to look into the statistical prevalence of rape and sexual assault in our society and compare it with the prevalence of other crimes to see if there is, indeed, an actual rape culture.
I started by looking at the U.S. Criminal Victimization Survey by type of crime. I found that rape and sexual assault in 2007 was fairly high, with 248,300 cases reported in the survey. (This is a self-reported study that is not related to complaints to authorities about the crime). I did, however, also look at other serious crimes for the same time period. Robbery was more than twice as prevalent as rape/sexual assault, with 597,300 cases in the same time period. So why not call us a robbery culture? How about the prevalence of assault? It’s almost 20 times as prevalent in our society, with 4,331,500 cases in the same time period. This makes assault culture or violence culture much more accurate than rape culture.

The UK Government Banned BDSM Porn

"They banned female ejaculation and face sitting! ...If it's consensual, the adults should be able to do whatever the fuck they want in the bedroom sexually. ...Who the fuck are you, who is the state to step in and say I don't like the things that you guys are both sexually into that you're agreeing to do with each other? Well Fuck off, how about that, how about it's none of your god damned business!" Secular Talk

Who Does David Cameron Really Work For? + New Era Reporter Row: What's The Agenda?

Russell Brand  joined by writer and activist George Monbiot as we discuss the TTIP - a treaty backed by David Cameron that would let rapacious companies subvert our laws, rights and national sovereignty.

How Did Christmas Become A Festival Of Greed?

For most people, Christmas is all about the presents. But how did such a supposedly sacred holiday become a festival of greed? Not many people know the history behind Christmas gift giving, and it will probably shock you. 
By Michael Snyder: This year, Americans will spend somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 billion dollars on Christmas, but most people have no coherent explanation for why they are buying all of these gifts. Those that are Christian will tell you that they are doing it to celebrate the birth of Christ, but as you will see below, gift giving on this holiday originated long before Christ was born. Others will tell you that they are just following tradition, but most of them have absolutely no idea where the tradition of Christmas gift giving originally came from. And the truth is that most people simply don’t care about the history. They are just excited about all of the stuff that they are going to get on December 25th. But if you are curious to learn how Christmas became a festival of greed, just keep reading…
In early America, there was no Christmas gift giving. In fact, the Puritans greatly disapproved of celebrating the holiday, and in some areas the celebration of Christmas was actually banned by law.
For example, if you were caught celebrating Christmas in the state of Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681 you could be fined five shillings…

Athens: Massive Solidarity Protest For Anarchist Nikos Romanos Clash With Riot Police

Orwellian UK BANNED Press TV: At least 15 people have been arrested after clashes broke out between riot police and demonstrators who were rallying in support of a jailed anarchist student in Greece.

10,000 people marched through central Athens on Tuesday in a show of support for the young imprisoned protester, Nikos Romanos, who has been on a hunger strike over the right to be able to attend university.
Media reports showed protesters smashing cars, setting fire to bins and cars and barricading streets.
Meanwhile, security forces fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the demonstrators.
Police arrested at least 15 people in the Exarchia neighborhood in downtown Athens.

UK Regulator Shocked That Slapping Bankster Wrists Achieves Nothing

Submitted by Tyler Durden: Not a quarter passes without a bank announcing, as part of its earning statement, that - it just so happens - it has incurred a few hundreds million (or billion) in legal fees, expenses and charges for breaking the law and manipulating this market or that (recall that for banks "Crime Is Now An Ordinary Course Of Business"), but it's ok, because it is a one-time, non-recurring thing, so please exclude it from the EPS calculation.... Until the next quarter when everything repeats once more. But the repetition of "one-time" events is not the only constant: the other one, of course, is that nobody ever goes to jail.

The latter is also the reason why, as the WSJ reports, British regulators are "getting exasperated with banks failing to clean up their act after repeated wrongdoings."

No, really: the UK's equivalent to the SEC truly can't understand how banks, which have trillions in central bank reserves sloshoing around on their balance sheets as the replacement to trillions in taxpayer bailout funds, and which are delighted to use said reserves to pay for hundreds of billions in legal fees in order to avoid prison time for financial crimes, market manipulations and countless other legal transgressions which their executives were caught doing, refuse to stop breaking the law when the have a paid for by others - and quite literal - get out of jail card.

The Six Ways You'll See Your Dad

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