Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The European Central Bank Fiddles While Rome Burns
The European Central Bank Fiddles While Rome Burns
by Ellen Brown
“To some people, the European Central Bank seems like a fire department that is letting the house burn down to teach the children not to play with matches.”
So wrote Jack Ewing in the New York Times last week. He went on:
“The E.C.B. has a fire hose — its ability to print money. But the bank is refusing to train it on the euro zone’s debt crisis.
“The flames climbed higher Friday after the Italian Treasury had to pay an interest rate of 6.5 percent on a new issue of six-month bills . . . the highest interest rate Italy has had to pay to sell such debt since August 1997 . . . .
“But there is no sign the E.C.B. plans a major response, like buying large quantities of the country’s bonds to bring down its borrowing costs.”
Why not? According to the November 28th Wall Street Journal, “The ECB has long worried that buying government bonds in big enough amounts to bring down countries' borrowing costs would make it easier for national politicians to delay the budget austerity and economic overhauls that are needed.”
As with the manufactured debt ceiling crisis in the United States, the E.C.B. is withholding relief in order to extort austerity measures from member governments—and the threat seems to be working. The same authors write:
Who Owns The Federal Reserve?
Who Owns The Federal Reserve?
The Fed is privately owned. Its shareholders are private banks
by Ellen Brown
"Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders."
– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s
The Federal Reserve (or Fed) has assumed sweeping new powers in the last year. In an unprecedented move in March 2008, the New York Fed advanced the funds for JPMorgan Chase Bank to buy investment bank Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar. The deal was particularly controversial because Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, sits on the board of the New York Fed and participated in the secret weekend negotiations.1 In September 2008, the Federal Reserve did something even more unprecedented, when it bought the world’s largest insurance company. The Fed announced on September 16 that it was giving an $85 billion loan to American International Group (AIG) for a nearly 80% stake in the mega-insurer. The Associated Press called it a "government takeover," but this was no ordinary nationalization. Unlike the U.S. Treasury, which took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the week before, the Fed is not a government-owned agency. Also unprecedented was the way the deal was funded. The Associated Press reported:
It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun
It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun
by Richard C. Cook
It’s official. Mark your calendars. The crash of the U.S. economy has begun. It was announced the morning of Wednesday, June 13, 2007, by economic writers Steven Pearlstein and Robert Samuelson in the pages of the Washington Post, one of the foremost house organs of the U.S. monetary elite.
Pearlstein’s column was titled, “The Takeover Boom, About to Go Bust” and concerned the extraordinary amount of debt vs. operating profits of companies currently subject to leveraged buyouts.
World War III: The Launching of a Preemptive Nuclear War against Iran
World War III: The Launching of a Preemptive Nuclear War against Iran
by Michel Chossudovsky
The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran has been on the active drawing board of the Pentagon since 2005.
If such a war were to be launched, the entire Middle East Central Asia region would flare up. Humanity would be precipitated into a World War III Scenario.
World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans.
The onslaught of World War III, were it to be carried out, would be casually described as a "no-fly zone", an operation under NATO's "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) with minimal "collateral damage" or a "limited" punitive bombing against specific military targets, all of which purport to support "Global Security" as well as "democracy" and human rights in the targeted country.
THE CLOCK IS TICKING: "Shadow War" Heating Up. War With Iran: A Provocation Away? by Tom Burghardt
Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the United States were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations.
The Isfahan complex transforms mined uranium into uranium fluoride gas which is then "spun" by centrifuges that enrich it into usable products for medical research and for Iran's civilian nuclear energy program.
While Iranian officials sought to distance themselves from initial reporting by the semi-official Fars news agency that a "loud explosion" was heard across the city, but that "the sound of the explosion was from [a] military exercise," has been contradicted by several sources.
Obama Raises the Military Stakes: Confrontation on the Borders with China and Russia. by Prof. James Petras
Introduction
After suffering major military and political defeats in bloody ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing to buttress long-standing clients in Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia and witnessing the disintegration of puppet regimes in Somalia and South Sudan, the Obama regime has learned nothing: Instead he has turned toward greater military confrontation with global powers, namely Russia and China. Obama has adopted a provocative offensive military strategy right on the frontiers of both China and Russia .
After going from defeat to defeat on the periphery of world power and not satisfied with running treasury-busting deficits in pursuit of empire building against economically weak countries, Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world’s second largest economy and the US’s most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union’s principle oil and gas provider and the world’s second most powerful nuclear weapons power.
Gallagher: Aristotle’s Ideal, Killed by Web (P. 3)
Illustration by Labour
No matter what specific chores they perform, all of our smart electronic tools produce novelty. From its beginnings, the Information Age has been about better, easier access to new data, more and more kinds all day long and wherever we go.
According to the University of California at San Diego’s appropriately named How Much Information project, we now consume about 100,000 words each day from various media. That’s a whopping 350 percent increase, measured in bytes, over what we crunched back in 1980.
There’s a lot of griping about TMI and ADD, but anthropologist Robert Kozinets suspects that most of it pertains to the workplace, where a person might indeed feel overwhelmed by unwelcome rings, pings and flashing lights.
“It’s almost as if we live in two worlds,” he says, “because in our leisure time, we’re more and more focused.” His favorite example is the expansion of fandom. These days, using the Internet, sports and celebrity fanatics can revel in almost instantaneous information.
But now that the Internet provides so much art for free, many creative people worry about survival, as do the flagging industries that formerly supported them. Rather than seeing artists as an endangered species, however, marketing guru Seth Godin says, “They’re the only people who are going to make money 10 years from now, because the way you make money is from your ideas.”
Shepard Fairey earns millions each year, even though his art is free -- unless you want a signed, limited-edition piece or an image to put on a corporate T-shirt. Those cost a lot, says Godin, “but the only reason people pay is because his free ideas are everywhere.” Similarly, although the music business is ailing, there is more music than ever being made and listened to. “The digital thing took away the requirement that you need an orchestra to write a symphony,” Godin says.
Eric von Hippel, an innovation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, conducted research in England showing that individual consumers, often aided by the Internet, spent twice as much money over a three- year period as U.K. companies did on inventing new products and tweaking existing ones, particularly scientific tools and sports equipment. In a creative response to their generation’s disastrously high unemployment rate, an eclectic group of millionaires in their 20s who founded their own Internet businesses recently formed the nonprofit Young Entrepreneur Council, which advises others on how to start companies rather than wait around for traditional jobs.
Neophiliacs -- people who are strongly attracted to change and anything new -- are particularly attuned to the sociological transformations under way in the Information Age. One example is the way we think about culture: In what some critics view as a society ever more superficial, anthropologist Grant McCracken sees a tumultuous, yet vibrant, work in progress in which the old modifiers of “high” and “low” no longer apply. “These kids are so good at media that they don’t have any of that hesitation of ‘Oh, this isn’t something I can afford to take seriously -- it’s not high culture,’” McCracken says. “They gave up that ambivalence and embrace pop culture as culture, which makes a big difference in your life.”
A surprising number of works from this more expansive culture not only entertain us but also offer the kind of spiritual and philosophical uplift traditionally supplied by high art and religion. Hugely successful films such as “Avatar,” “Lord of the Rings” and the Harry Potter tales are full of bits of ancient wisdom, psychology, sociology and theology. Their fans are interested not only in sex and violence, but also in existential and moral questions. Such entertainments have become myths and sagas that, like the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, help people grapple with big issues, life’s meaning included. “From one perspective, Cain and Abel is just a story, too,” Kozinets says.
Some of our more fast-paced entertainments help us figure out our more complicated lives by providing new information on how other people cope. In the popular fascination with how the rich and famous handle marriage and adultery, obesity and anorexia, McCracken sees our desire to “audition the change” instead of trying it at home.
Before the likes of “The Bachelor” and “Temptation Island,” says media scholar Robert Thompson of Syracuse University, our insight into what actually went on when people were romantically interested in each other was limited to personal experience and the secondhand, furtive and limited information gained from friends’ reports, overheard comments, steamy novels and scripted movies. As much as he enjoyed “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail,” he says, “those films are to real relationships what a Greek temple is to a ranch house.”
Its many benefits aside, the new technology supplies information, not knowledge or meaning. Aristotle said a society should be judged on its capacity for contemplation as well as productivity and pleasure. Facts alone are not enough to establish real understanding, which requires context and reflection.
As psychologist Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College says, “The experience that comes from thinking hard for a while about a subject is no longer available to some people, because they don’t stay on the task long enough to get to that point. Commitment has become a kind of dirty word.” The Internet’s capacity to generate superficial novelty is epitomized by the meme: a cultural tidbit, from a catchy anecdote to a joke to an image that spreads rapidly through society, now usually electronically.
Some memes are amusing, creative or informative, like the self-explanatory song called “United Breaks Guitars,” which caused a brief, but precipitous, drop in the airline’s stock. However, memes can also cause harm -- as racist and misogynistic ones do -- spread falsehoods and waste time.
Technology’s way of undermining deep thinking was the focus of a much-remarked-upon front-page story in the New York Times titled “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.” The piece examined the consequences of the military’s increasing dependence on the Microsoft program, which magically reduces the most complicated matters to wonderfully clear talking points and charts. As Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, a veteran of the war in Iraq, put it, PowerPoint is “dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
Even on campus, the hope that our society can satisfy Aristotle’s criterion of contemplation seems endangered. Original thinking arises from a foundation of serious learning, but college professors complain that the concept of research has contracted to the point that really good students go to the fourth or fifth page of a Google search, while most settle for the first one or two.
Neuroscientist Jane Joseph of the University of South Carolina is struck by the way in which some young people casually resort to plagiarism without realizing that it’s a problem: “They just paste in something they got online as an answer on a test. Then they say, ‘What? That’s wrong?’” Like the proverbial kids in the candy store, we neophiles need to think about our consumption of data in much the same way we think about food. A healthy information diet requires the self- control to focus on the nutritious new things that have long- term value and ignore the junk that compromises our mental and emotional fitness.
According to the University of California at San Diego’s appropriately named How Much Information project, we now consume about 100,000 words each day from various media. That’s a whopping 350 percent increase, measured in bytes, over what we crunched back in 1980.
There’s a lot of griping about TMI and ADD, but anthropologist Robert Kozinets suspects that most of it pertains to the workplace, where a person might indeed feel overwhelmed by unwelcome rings, pings and flashing lights.
“It’s almost as if we live in two worlds,” he says, “because in our leisure time, we’re more and more focused.” His favorite example is the expansion of fandom. These days, using the Internet, sports and celebrity fanatics can revel in almost instantaneous information.
Internet Expertise
Internet access, coupled with eminently portable laptops and smartphones, also liberates us in certain ways from traditional categories. The old boundaries between the home and the workplace or school grow fuzzier by the day. Thanks to blogs and websites like YouTube and Amazon, the lines between “amateur” and “professional” have also blurred: Anyone can consume culture and develop expertise, or hone their latent talents. About 15 percent of Americans now engage in serious photography, videography or filmmaking.But now that the Internet provides so much art for free, many creative people worry about survival, as do the flagging industries that formerly supported them. Rather than seeing artists as an endangered species, however, marketing guru Seth Godin says, “They’re the only people who are going to make money 10 years from now, because the way you make money is from your ideas.”
Shepard Fairey earns millions each year, even though his art is free -- unless you want a signed, limited-edition piece or an image to put on a corporate T-shirt. Those cost a lot, says Godin, “but the only reason people pay is because his free ideas are everywhere.” Similarly, although the music business is ailing, there is more music than ever being made and listened to. “The digital thing took away the requirement that you need an orchestra to write a symphony,” Godin says.
Eric von Hippel, an innovation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, conducted research in England showing that individual consumers, often aided by the Internet, spent twice as much money over a three- year period as U.K. companies did on inventing new products and tweaking existing ones, particularly scientific tools and sports equipment. In a creative response to their generation’s disastrously high unemployment rate, an eclectic group of millionaires in their 20s who founded their own Internet businesses recently formed the nonprofit Young Entrepreneur Council, which advises others on how to start companies rather than wait around for traditional jobs.
‘Collective Intelligence’
That’s only the beginning. Information technology has given us an immediate, you-are-there way to see everything from revolutions to oil spills, and to react negatively or offer a helping hand. Our smart tools also pull us together in new communities oriented around important issues. The notion of “collective intelligence” first surfaced in the early 20th century, when American entomologist William Morton Wheeler observed that a colony of ants could cooperatively act as a “superorganism.” The term has gone through many iterations, but now mostly refers to the cognitive surge that occurs when people and their computers are connected to one another. Instead of just thinking singly, we cogitate as a hive.Neophiliacs -- people who are strongly attracted to change and anything new -- are particularly attuned to the sociological transformations under way in the Information Age. One example is the way we think about culture: In what some critics view as a society ever more superficial, anthropologist Grant McCracken sees a tumultuous, yet vibrant, work in progress in which the old modifiers of “high” and “low” no longer apply. “These kids are so good at media that they don’t have any of that hesitation of ‘Oh, this isn’t something I can afford to take seriously -- it’s not high culture,’” McCracken says. “They gave up that ambivalence and embrace pop culture as culture, which makes a big difference in your life.”
A surprising number of works from this more expansive culture not only entertain us but also offer the kind of spiritual and philosophical uplift traditionally supplied by high art and religion. Hugely successful films such as “Avatar,” “Lord of the Rings” and the Harry Potter tales are full of bits of ancient wisdom, psychology, sociology and theology. Their fans are interested not only in sex and violence, but also in existential and moral questions. Such entertainments have become myths and sagas that, like the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, help people grapple with big issues, life’s meaning included. “From one perspective, Cain and Abel is just a story, too,” Kozinets says.
Some of our more fast-paced entertainments help us figure out our more complicated lives by providing new information on how other people cope. In the popular fascination with how the rich and famous handle marriage and adultery, obesity and anorexia, McCracken sees our desire to “audition the change” instead of trying it at home.
‘Experimental Creatures’
“By serving as vehicles of self-transformation,” he says, “the stars allow us to watch others explore life’s options almost like they were in a laboratory. They change themselves so that we don’t have to.” The Air Force puts an X before the names of its experimental aircraft, such as the X-15 fighter jet, and McCracken thinks that actress Lindsay Lohan deserves an X before her name, too. “She’s an experimental creature who becomes a kind of object lesson in transformational activity.”Before the likes of “The Bachelor” and “Temptation Island,” says media scholar Robert Thompson of Syracuse University, our insight into what actually went on when people were romantically interested in each other was limited to personal experience and the secondhand, furtive and limited information gained from friends’ reports, overheard comments, steamy novels and scripted movies. As much as he enjoyed “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail,” he says, “those films are to real relationships what a Greek temple is to a ranch house.”
Its many benefits aside, the new technology supplies information, not knowledge or meaning. Aristotle said a society should be judged on its capacity for contemplation as well as productivity and pleasure. Facts alone are not enough to establish real understanding, which requires context and reflection.
As psychologist Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College says, “The experience that comes from thinking hard for a while about a subject is no longer available to some people, because they don’t stay on the task long enough to get to that point. Commitment has become a kind of dirty word.” The Internet’s capacity to generate superficial novelty is epitomized by the meme: a cultural tidbit, from a catchy anecdote to a joke to an image that spreads rapidly through society, now usually electronically.
Some memes are amusing, creative or informative, like the self-explanatory song called “United Breaks Guitars,” which caused a brief, but precipitous, drop in the airline’s stock. However, memes can also cause harm -- as racist and misogynistic ones do -- spread falsehoods and waste time.
Political Memes
“One thought in the mimetic community is that ideas are parasites that don’t care what they do to their host as long as it helps them to spread,” Godin says. “The Tea Party -- or the Communist Party -- is a political meme that doesn’t care if it destroys the country, because its only job is to reproduce.”Technology’s way of undermining deep thinking was the focus of a much-remarked-upon front-page story in the New York Times titled “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.” The piece examined the consequences of the military’s increasing dependence on the Microsoft program, which magically reduces the most complicated matters to wonderfully clear talking points and charts. As Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, a veteran of the war in Iraq, put it, PowerPoint is “dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
Even on campus, the hope that our society can satisfy Aristotle’s criterion of contemplation seems endangered. Original thinking arises from a foundation of serious learning, but college professors complain that the concept of research has contracted to the point that really good students go to the fourth or fifth page of a Google search, while most settle for the first one or two.
Neuroscientist Jane Joseph of the University of South Carolina is struck by the way in which some young people casually resort to plagiarism without realizing that it’s a problem: “They just paste in something they got online as an answer on a test. Then they say, ‘What? That’s wrong?’” Like the proverbial kids in the candy store, we neophiles need to think about our consumption of data in much the same way we think about food. A healthy information diet requires the self- control to focus on the nutritious new things that have long- term value and ignore the junk that compromises our mental and emotional fitness.
Bad News for Economic Doomsayers: The Ticker
By Mark Whitehouse
If recent data are any indication, the state of the U.S. economy isn't quite as awful as expected.
Economists at Macroeconomic Advisers, a consulting firm, estimate that the U.S. economy grew at a blazing 17.1 percent annualized rate in October, driven in large part by inventory investment and net exports. They expect annualized growth for the whole fourth quarter of 2011 to be a more moderate 3.7 percent. That's still up from a previous forecast of 2.7 percent, and from 2.0 percent in the third quarter.
Economists at Macroeconomic Advisers, a consulting firm, estimate that the U.S. economy grew at a blazing 17.1 percent annualized rate in October, driven in large part by inventory investment and net exports. They expect annualized growth for the whole fourth quarter of 2011 to be a more moderate 3.7 percent. That's still up from a previous forecast of 2.7 percent, and from 2.0 percent in the third quarter.
Gingrich Bounce Shows Geek Love Can Still Blossom: Amity Shlaes
Whether his recent rise in the polls is lasting or not, Newt Gingrich has already shifted Campaign 2012 for the better. The feisty former speaker of the House has reminded us through his debate performances that knowledge is an important part of a president’s work.
That a president must know something seems obvious. But our nation’s opinion writers (myself included) have often ranked knowledge behind a candidate’s character, electability or even, simply, novelty. And in the past voters have often done the same.
That a president must know something seems obvious. But our nation’s opinion writers (myself included) have often ranked knowledge behind a candidate’s character, electability or even, simply, novelty. And in the past voters have often done the same.
Voters Not Buying Obama’s Bogus Inequality Talk: Ramesh Ponnuru
President Barack Obama wants to spend the next year talking about economic inequality. Republicans shouldn’t take the bait.
In a speech last week in Kansas, the president presented rising economic inequality as the defining issue of our time. As is often true of political speeches, Obama didn’t make anything resembling a tight logical case. Instead he relied heavily on caricature (Republicans allegedly want everyone “to fend for themselves and play by their own rules”) and dubious assertion (supposedly there are billionaires who pay only 1 percent of their income in taxes).
In a speech last week in Kansas, the president presented rising economic inequality as the defining issue of our time. As is often true of political speeches, Obama didn’t make anything resembling a tight logical case. Instead he relied heavily on caricature (Republicans allegedly want everyone “to fend for themselves and play by their own rules”) and dubious assertion (supposedly there are billionaires who pay only 1 percent of their income in taxes).
Four Ways to End the Euro’s Crisis of Confidence: By Peter Kurer
Travel agents started to buy tourist services in potential replacement currencies such as the drachma or lira. Central banks took precautions and one of them was said to have shopped around for banknote printing capacity. Traders even asked whether the euro would survive until Christmas.
So what has last week’s summit of European leaders offered to save the merriment of the holiday season? Some respite, but not much beyond it. Most stock markets have already resumed their declines.
To solve the current crisis, four things are needed: a deleveraging of governments; a return of growth; confidence in financial and capital markets; and an institutional framework that backs policies to achieve all of this.
So what has last week’s summit of European leaders offered to save the merriment of the holiday season? Some respite, but not much beyond it. Most stock markets have already resumed their declines.
To solve the current crisis, four things are needed: a deleveraging of governments; a return of growth; confidence in financial and capital markets; and an institutional framework that backs policies to achieve all of this.
Boehner: Gingrich Not ‘As Conservative’ as Some Think. By James Rowley
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is a “big thinker” who isn’t necessarily “as conservative as some people think.”
At a breakfast in Washington, Boehner wouldn’t say whether he believes Gingrich would make a good president. He said “Republicans have a lot of good candidates out there,” and that he would support whoever becomes the party’s nominee to challenge President Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
Boehner offered a qualified defense of Gingrich’s conservative credentials as other Republican presidential candidates have stepped up their attacks on him on that front.
At a breakfast in Washington, Boehner wouldn’t say whether he believes Gingrich would make a good president. He said “Republicans have a lot of good candidates out there,” and that he would support whoever becomes the party’s nominee to challenge President Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
Boehner offered a qualified defense of Gingrich’s conservative credentials as other Republican presidential candidates have stepped up their attacks on him on that front.
Bernanke: No Fed Plans to Aid European Banks
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Republican senators the Fed plans no additional aid to European banks amid the region’s sovereign debt crisis, according to two lawmakers who attended the meeting.
Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, said Bernanke made it “very clear” in closed-door comments today the central bank doesn’t intend to rescue European financial institutions. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Bernanke told lawmakers that “he doesn’t have the intention or the authority” to bail out countries or banks. Both senators spoke to reporters after leaving the one-hour session at the Capitol in Washington.
Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, said Bernanke made it “very clear” in closed-door comments today the central bank doesn’t intend to rescue European financial institutions. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Bernanke told lawmakers that “he doesn’t have the intention or the authority” to bail out countries or banks. Both senators spoke to reporters after leaving the one-hour session at the Capitol in Washington.
Walter Williams on Election and Sound Money
Walter Williams has been a professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia since 1980. He is the author of many books, hundreds of articles and a weekly syndicated column. You may have caught some of his many radio and television appearances – a champion of free-market economics speaking out against socialism and intrusive government. He has described laissez-faire capitalism as “the most moral and most productive system man has ever devised.”
Casey Research: Good morning, Dr. Williams. I was immensely relieved to learn that you were not the author of the recent article No Matter What, purporting to explain why, no matter how bad things get, President Obama would win a second term. The article was widely circulated, however, and I have some concern that a lot of people were misled but never learned that you had not written it.
Walter Williams: Of course the article was a hoax. When it first came out and people started sending it to me, I sent it to the Creators Syndicate that handles my column. They contacted the website that ran the article, and that website ran an apology.
Robespierre's War on Terror
Robespierre's War on Terror
Dominant Social Theme: Safety requires the vigilance of top authorities. And if civil protections are squashed and people's rights are violated, well ... so be it.
Planned Chaos of Euro Collapse?
Planned Chaos of Euro Collapse?
VIDEO: ICC and NATO: Increasingly Political Tools of the West?
VIDEO: ICC and NATO: Increasingly Political Tools of the West?
While the International Criminal Court ( ICC) seeks arrest of leaders of Libya, it has failed to take action against leaders of USA, UK, France, Israel, etc. for true and enormous war crimes, (including torture and killing of almost a million Iraqis), committed during illegal wars and on the occupied territories of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and now Libya. It is obvious to the world that the ICC is a tool of domination by the U.S. and NATO and as such ICC refuses to take action against dominant powers or their favored tyrants. Accordingly, it has relegated itself to merely being a means of enforcing imperial politics, justifying imperial crimes and perpetrating victor's justice. –Libertarianism in One Lesson
Libertarianism in One Lesson
– by Tibor Machan
Dr. Tibor Machan
Libertarians uphold the sovereignty of each adult individual in social life. They distinguish themselves in the political arena in most western countries from both the Left and the Right because, on the one hand, the Left is inclined primarily to impose restrictions on individuals pertaining to their economic or material actions, while the Right embarks upon imposing on individuals when it comes to their spiritual or mental actions. Both Left and Right enlist government for the purpose of regimenting certain aspects of the individual's life, whereas the libertarian sanctions only those laws or rules that aim at keeping everyone's sovereignty, at protecting individual rights to life, liberty and property.
Building NWO: UN Again Involved in Int'l Criminal Court Rulings
Building NWO: UN Again Involved in Int'l Criminal Court Rulings
Harvard's Rogoff: Is Capitalism Finished?
Harvard's Rogoff: Is Capitalism Finished?
Kenneth Rogoff
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Child Poverty In America Is Absolutely EXPLODING – 16 Shocking Statistics That Will Break Your Heart
If the U.S. economy is improving, then why is child poverty in America absolutely exploding? If we are experiencing "economic growth", then why are more than half of all children in major U.S. cities like Cleveland and Detroit living in poverty? If we are the "greatest economy on earth", then why are one out of every four American children on food stamps? The shocking statistics that you are about to read below should absolutely break your heart. Tonight, millions of precious American children will go to bed without any dinner. Tonight, millions of American children will shiver as they try to go to sleep because their families cannot afford any heat. How bad does child poverty have to get before we all finally admit that our economic system is completely failing many of the most vulnerable members of our society? If you want someone to blame, you can blame Congress, the Obama administration, the Bush administration and the corrupt Wall Street bankers. But most of all, blame the Federal Reserve and the debt-based monetary system that the Fed administers. Our economy is in the midst of a long-term decline and is slowly but surely dying. Many of those that are suffering the most from this decline are children. (Read More....)
What happens when you attempt a cold shutdown of one of the biggest debt spirals that the world has ever seen? Well, we are about to find out. The politicians in Europe have decided that they are going to "take their medicine" and put strict limits on budget deficits. They have also decided that the European Central Bank is not going to engage in reckless money printing to "paper over" the debts of troubled nations. This may all sound wonderful to many of you, but the reality is that there is always a tremendous amount of pain whenever a massive debt spiral is interrupted. Just look at what happened to Greece. Greece was forced to raise taxes and implement brutal austerity measures. That caused the economy to slow down and tax revenues to decline and so government debt figures did not improve as much as anticipated. So Greece was forced to implement even more brutal austerity measures. Well, that caused the economy to slow down even more and tax revenues declined again. In Greece this cycle has been repeated several times and now Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression. 100,000 businesses have closed and a third of the population is living in poverty. But now Germany and France intend to impose the "Greek solution" on the rest of Europe. This is going to create the conditions needed for a "perfect storm" to develop and it means that the European financial system is heading for an implosion of historic proportions. (Read More....)
Never in the history of the NFL has there ever been anything like this. Today, Tim Tebow engineered yet another miraculous 4th quarter comeback. Almost everyone has been expecting this unprecedented string of comebacks to come to an end, yet Tebow just keeps pulling off miracle after miracle. It seems like nearly every week now we are talking about another unbelievable Tim Tebow comeback. It is truly a great story, and what is wonderful about Tebow is that he is not out to glorify himself. He is very humble, he always recognizes his teammates and he is a terrific role model for a generation of American youth that is in desperate need of one. Unfortunately, there is not going to be a similar comeback story for the U.S. economy. It is late in the 4th quarter, we have accumulated over 50 trillion dollars of total debt as a nation, and our economic guts are being ripped out at a rate that is almost impossible to believe. The game is essentially over and we are headed for an incredible amount of economic pain as a nation. (Read More....)
How do you decide whether you are wealthy or not? Do you determine that by how much money you spend at the stores? Of course not. You can tell if you are wealthy or not by comparing your assets (the money in your bank account, equity in your home, etc.) to your liabilities (your mortgage, credit card debt, student loan debt, etc.). Well, a lot of Americans seem to believe that just because a lot of money is circulating in our economy that it must mean that we are a wealthy nation. But that is simply not true. To tell whether or not America is a wealthy nation, you need to look at the balance sheet numbers. And when you look at the balance sheet numbers, a very sobering story emerges. Over the past three decades, government debt, business debt and household debt have absolutely exploded, but our assets have not. That means that we are getting poorer as a nation. Hopefully the shocking charts and statistics in this article will help a lot of Americans to wake up. Yes, we once were the wealthiest nation on earth, but today America is no longer a wealthy nation. (Read More....)
Millions of American citizens have already left the United States in search of a better life. As the economy continues to crumble and as our society slowly falls apart, millions of others are thinking about it. But moving to another country is not something to be done lightly. The reality is that there are a vast array of social, cultural, economic and safety issues to be considered. If you have never traveled outside of North America, then you have no idea how incredibly different life in other parts of the world can be. For those that are unfamiliar with international travel, it can be quite a shock to suddenly be immersed in a foreign culture. In fact, no matter how experienced you are, choosing to relocate to a new country is never easy. But things have gone downhill so dramatically in the United States that picking up and moving to a foreign nation is being increasingly viewed as a viable alternative by millions of Americans. A lot of people have decided that they simply do not want to be in the United States when the excrement hits the fan. So what is the best country in the world for Americans to relocate to in order to avoid the coming economic collapse? (Read More....)
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