Russias Growing International Influence - Soviet Bear

Morris: Russian influence in Syria, North Korea, Iran, Algeria, France, Mali, Afghanistan, told by a true Slav - Soviet Bear

With America mired in debt, define ‘recovery’. - The Slog

The London Telegraph’s Louise Armitstead uses the paper’s daily email briefing to report as follows: America is braced for $85bn of automatic budget cuts, starting today, as Congress adjourned for the weekend in deadlock.  President Barack 'Baby Bomber' Obama will now be forced to sign an order to start cutting the deficit by 10%, and warned that the US economy will be hurt. The International Mother Fuckers (IMF) spun that the uncertainty will hit global growth. 
BUT (and there’s always a but) Louise adds:
‘….the strength of the US recovery has been underscored by results from Freddie Mac: The bailed-out mortgage lender, has reported $11bn of annual profits for 2012 – its biggest ever gain. Last year Freddie posted losses of $5.3bn….’
Er, um….where to start?
Some questions to ask here:
1. Are a tiny growth pattern coupled with manipulated payroll data alongside trillions of Dollars in QE worthy of being termed ‘a recovery’?
2. Where is this recovery likely to result in overseas earnings that reduce the US deficit?
3. Is a biggest-ever Freddie Mac gain worth a nickel if fully a third of it followed a $5.3bn loss?
4. Will US taxpayers ever see a repayment of the monies they poured into Freddie Mac, plus the losses that then followed?
5. Where is the correlation between Freddie Mac health and the underscoring of American recovery?

Capital Controls, $5,000/oz Gold and Self-Directed Retirement Accounts

Charles Hugh Smith: A wide-ranging conversation on capital controls, gold and self-directed retirement accounts.
Recent news stories about Federal plans to "help" manage private retirement accounts renewed my interest in the topic of capital controls. One example of capital control is to limit the amount of money that can be transferred out of the country. Another is limiting the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from accounts.
The article linked above suggested a third example, in which the government mandates private capital must be invested in government bonds. The way this might work is this: an agency of the Federal government might announce that to "protect" households' $19 trillion in retirement funds from the vagaries of the market, 50% of all retirement accounts must be invested in "safe" Treasury bonds.
Though presented as "helping" households, the real purpose of the power grab would be to enable the Federal government to borrow the nation's retirement accounts at near-zero rates of return.
As things fall apart, Central States pursue all sorts of politically expedient measures to protect the State's power and the wealth of the political and financial Elites. Precedent won't matter; survival of the State and its Elites will trump every other consideration.

Hagel A False Pacifier

Morris: The fighters from America will now be more and more contractors.
Hagel will pacify the public and the remaining military (the one patriotic institution left)

SAVILLE MEME DISTRACTION

Deek Jackson

Obama Launches False Flag on Internet to Take it Over

AJ: Inventor and scientist Danny Hillis warns that the Internet has "expanded it way beyond its limits," and is set for a "disaster," calling for a fascist 'Internet Plan B' that would operate in times of false flag emergency for greater control over the sheeple. Hillis is the founder of Thinking Machines Corporation, which developed the Connection Machine, a series of supercomputers designed by Hillis while he was working at MIT.

ANNOUNCING WILLIAMBANZAI7 FINE ART PRINTS

By WilliamBanzai7: For some time now I have been asked by many of you if I would produce signed print editions of some of my works. I have been reluctant to do so unless I could produce something of  a quality that would look exceptional displayed on a wall as well as meeting the expectations of collectors. By this I mean expectations in terms of coloring, print resolution texture and paper stock.
As usual, I am learning that there is more to the exercise than meets the eye.
It is not as simple as printing images off a computer screen or walking to a photo processing kiosk. What looks good on a computer  will not necessarily look good coming out of a printer, particularly of the consumer variety.
 
It has taken a while, but I have finally found an excellent fine art printer to collaborate with. He is not a simple photo printer. He is an artist and understands how to maximize aesthetic impact for the audience.
His clients are professional photographers and artists. He operates with state of the art digital printing equipment made in Germany.

I won't go into the details, but there is a big difference when you are working with someone who is primarily interested in optimizing quality as opposed to simply moving product. This is not a simple "here print this" exercise. We have a discussion, he gets the vibe, runs test strips for me to preview and only after we are both happy will we print. Fortuitously, he also gets what the content is about!

Fascist MIC UK will sacrifice the people's 'education' (lol) and 'healthcare' (ha) to spend billions on nukes! + 'Americans are denied the right to free speech' By Constitutional Prof. Obama 'The Bomber'

UK and Europe Banned Press TV: Britain's hypocritical decision to triple its nuclear budget while the people suffer austerity will receive a public backlash. In the background of this Britain, with its country suffering under drastic austerity measures, has decided to triple its spending on its nuclear arsenal - Trident to renew it during the next decade. This, observers say, would cost Britain over one third of its total military budget. The use of nuclear weapons in Britain is under the control of politicians not the military and so the military in the UK see this expense as nothing more than a political tool and play thing for UK politicians, thus the move has attracted opposition from within the warmongering, Orwellian lock down threatening military industrial complex.

Senate OKs making gold, silver legal tender in Arizona USA

AZStarnet: PHOENIX - State senators voted Wednesday to make gold and silver legal tender in Arizona.

The proposal, SB 1439, stems from concerns of some that the paper money printed by the Federal Reserve Bank is losing value.
They persuaded Sen. Chester Crandell, a Heber Republican, to give privately minted gold and silver coins the same legal status to pay bills, at least in Arizona.
A disdainful Sen. Steve Farley, a Tucson Democrat, suggested if Arizona is going to have merchants weighing and assaying gold and silver to determine its value, perhaps the state should not stop there.
So Farley proposed an "Arizona-centric" list of additions from the "Five Cs" for which the state is known - copper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate.
He said, for example, there is little difference between trading beef or oranges as commodities versus gold and silver.
"And what has more value than sunbeams?" he added, though he didn't describe how they could be counted.

George aka 'Gideon' Osborne's slime mold serf experience program - Max Keiser with Antal Fekete

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss how slime molds outsmart our central bankers and policymakers and the four troll banks and their clients living under the bridge. They also discuss George Osborne's slime mold serf experience program. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to renowned mathematician and monetary scientist, Professor Antal Fekete, about the elimination of silver as money, an event that saw value and liquidity wiped out and about the difference between the two giants of Austrian School of Economics - Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises with the biggest being that Menger did not believe in the quantity theory of money. Source

'Shit Bag' Sarkozy's Gaddafi campaign scandal: Police search office of France’s ex-Interior Minister

RT: French police searched the office of former Interior Minister Claude Gueant on Wednesday, as part of the investigation into whether former President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted 'a' campaign contribution from deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
French police searched the office of former Interior Minister Claude Gueant on Wednesday, as part of the investigation into whether former President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted a campaign contribution from Muammar Gaddafi, French Le Monde reported.
It comes after Mediapart news agency last year accused Sarkozy of accepting 50 million euros from the former Libyan leader, to fund his 2007 campaign. The agency published a statement signed by former Libyan Foreign secretary Moussa Koussa, which allegedly proved the allegations were true. 
Sarkozy accused the organization of slander, calling the claims “grotesque.” He filed a libel claim with police shortly thereafter.
But it’s not only French media which claims Sarkozy had generous backing from the late Libyan leader.
Last month, French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine claimed he had proof of the funding. He told a French judge that Sarkozy received the money from 2006, stating that Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign was “abundantly” funded by Gaddafi. He said the flow of money continued after he became president.

US Schools Are Becoming Electronic Concentration Camps + Biden Teaches Women How to Be Crime Victims

AJ: Melissa welcomes Dr. Katherine Albrecht to discuss the imminent threats to our digital and personal privacy and ways to overcome warrantless government spying.