YOUR FUTURE SUCKS - ASTRODAMUS

Deek Jackson

Edward Snowden Won’t Use An iPhone – Here’s Why

Cell phones are tracking devices that make phone calls. – Jacob Appelbaum

By Michael Krieger: The above line is one of my favorite quotes describing the current world we inhabit. A succinct description of modern civilization; a place where global connectivity has never been greater, but neither has warrantless surveillance.
With that in mind, here’s what Snowden had to say about the iPhone. From Yahoo:

The lawyer for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says that his client never uses an iPhone because of fears about its security, Sputnik News reports.

Anatoly Kucherena spoke to news agency RIA Novosti and explained that Snowden is wary of the iPhone because of his knowledge of the NSA’s surveillance tactics.

“Edward never uses an iPhone, he’s got a simple phone,” the lawyer said. “The iPhone has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him, that’s why on security grounds he refused to have this phone.”

As The Middle Class Evaporates, Global Oligarchs Plan Their Escape From The Impoverished Pleb Masses

The middle class has shrunk consistently over the past half-century. Until 2000, the reason was primarily because more Americans moved up the income ladder. But since then, the reason has shifted: There is a greater share of households on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.
– From yesterday’s New York Times article: Middle Class Shrinks Further as More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up
At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.
– From the Guardian’s article: As Inequality Soars, the Nervous Super Rich are Already Planning Their Escapes
By Michael Krieger: So the other day, President Barack Obama once again demonstrated his contempt for the American public by using his State of the Union address to pejoratively blurt out meaningless phrases such as “but tonight, we turn the page” and: “The verdict is clear. Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work, as long as politics don’t get in the way.”
Sorry, but why are “we turning the page” tonight? Weren’t you elected over six years ago? Why didn’t you turn the page in 2009?

It Is Time For Iran To Tell The West ‘Goodbye’

By Paul Craig Roberts: From all appearances, the Obama regime’s negotiations with Iran, overseen by Russia, were on the verge of ending the contrived nuclear issue. An end to the confrontation is unacceptable to the Zionist Israeli government and to their neocon agents in America. The Republicans, a political party owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Israel Lobby, hastily invited Netanyahu, the crazed ruler of both Israel and America, to quickly come to tell the Republican Congress, which the insouciant American voters put in place, how to prohibit any accommodation with Iran.
Observing the Israeli-controlled Republican Congress, a collection of warmongers, taking steps to prevent any peaceful resolution of a fabricated issue, Iran’s leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei sent a letter to Western youth advising the youth of the Western world of the mischaracterization of Islam by Western propagandists. http://s15.khamenei.ir/ndata/news/28731/pdf/en.pdf
I respect Khamenei’s effort to reach out to Western youth in order to help them differentiate the reality of Islam from the demonized portrait painted of Islam by Western politicians and media.
The question is: How much impact can Khamenei have?

What Is A MHRA's Motivation?

"Our children."

Popp answers a piece of nicely-worded hate mail asking what his motivation for this trifle of a series is. Terrence Popp

Greece's New Leader Sends Germany A Loud Message With His First Act

ALEXIS TSIPRAS has been sworn in as the new Greek prime minister. The 40-year-old Syriza leader is the youngest premier of the country in 150 years.
Tsipras, characteristically without a tie, also broke with tradition by taking a civil instead of a religious oath, pledging to “always serve the interests of the Greek people”.
In his first symbolic act as Prime Minister, Tsipras visited a Kaisariani rifle range where Nazis executed 200 Greeks in 1944.
Vowing to end Greece’s painful austerity programme, his Syriza party gained key support from an anti-bailout party this morning, allowing it to form a new government.
The right-wing Independent Greeks party said it would back Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras to be the next prime minister, after he fell just short of the majority needed to govern alone, following Sunday’s poll.
The surprise alliance between two staunchly anti-bailout parties spooked markets and triggered a loss of nearly 4% on the Athens Stock Exchange as well as elsewhere in Europe.
Tsipras has promised to renegotiate Greece’s massive bailout agreements, but has promised not to take any unilateral action against lenders from other eurozone countries.

Syria Opposition Groups Foreign Paid Puppets: Assad

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has questioned the credibility of Syrian opposition groups taking part in Moscow talks, describing the opposition representatives as “puppets paid from the outside.”

Press TV: “We will go to Russia, we will go to these negotiations, but there is another question here: Who do you negotiate with?” Assad asked in an interview with the US magazine, Foreign Affairs, published online on Monday.
“Who do you negotiate with? As a government, we have institutions, we have an army, and we have influence, positive or negative, in any direction, at any time. Whereas the people we are going to negotiate with, who do they represent? That’s the question,” he added.

MY BODY, MY CHOICE

Well, here goes... Let's discuss some controversial topics... Forced chemotherapy and assisted suicide. Should people be free to choose? Julie Borowski

Radical Leftists Win Election In Greece - Eurozone In Serious Jeopardy

By Michael Snyder: Radical leftists have been catapulted to power in Greece, and that means that the European financial crisis has just entered a dangerous new phase.  Syriza, which is actually an acronym for “Coalition of the Radical Left” in Greek, has 36 percent of the total vote with approximately 80 percent of the polling stations reporting.  The current governing party, New Democracy, only has 28 percent of the vote.  Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras is promising to roll back a whole host of austerity measures that were imposed on Greece by the EU, and his primary campaign slogan was “hope is on the way”.  Hmmm – that sounds a bit familiar.  Clearly, the Greek population is fed up with the EU after years of austerity and depression-like conditions.  At this point, the unemployment rate in Greece is sitting at 25.8 percent, and the Greek economy is approximately 25 percent smaller than it was just six years ago.  The people of Greece are desperate for things to get better, and so they have turned to the radical leftists.  Unfortunately, things may be about to get a whole lot worse.
Once they formally have control of the government, Syriza plans to call for a European debt conference during which they plan to demand that the repayment terms of their debts be renegotiated.  But the rest of Europe appears to be highly resistant to any renegotiation – especially Germany.
Syriza says that it does not plan to unilaterally pull Greece out of the eurozone, and that it also intends for Greece to continue to use the euro.
But what happens if Germany will not budge?

This Week In [Feminist] Stupid

The latest news in human retardation from around the world. Sargon of Akkad Update: The story about Russia is NOT TRUE. I state this boldly because the mistake is mine: I read a BBC story and didn't fact check it. That was a fucking error, because apparently you can't trust a fucking thing the BBC says.

Greece 2015 + Dear TROIKA - By William Banzai7