Category Archives: Politics

The crazy theft of depositor savings in Cyprus

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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I’m not sure that people are awake enough and smart enough to really grasp what this means. Normalcy bias takes over and people think “it won’t happen here”. Or they are authoritarian followers and think the PTB can do what they like “for our good”. The PTB, on the other side, are just doing this as a test – because they are pretty sure they can get away with it for the mentioned reasons. They’ll start with 10% and then go to 50% to 75% to 80%. But really, if I were you and had savings, I’d remove them from banks. It will happen; they do not want anyone to have any resources to resist their full-spectrum dominance.

The crazy theft of depositor savings in Cyprus could start a European bank run on Monday

You can be forgiven for thinking that you don’t need to give a hoot about what’s going on in Cyprus this weekend.

After all, it’s just a little island somewhere in the Mediterranean.

But what’s going on in Cyprus could actually matter – not just to the rest of Europe, but to the rest of the world.

Here’s the short version of what’s happening:

Cyprus’s banks, like many banks in Europe, are bankrupt.

Cyprus went to the Eurozone to get a bailout, the same way Ireland, Greece, and other European countries have.

The Eurozone powers-that-be gave Cyprus a bailout – but with a startling condition that has never before been imposed on any major banking system since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008.

The Eurozone powers-that-be (mainly, Germany) insisted that the depositors in Cyprus’s banks pay part of the tab.

Not the bondholders.

The depositors. The folks who had their money in the banks for safe-keeping.

Propaganda? Furious over sanctions, North Korea vows to nuke U.S.

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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Is a comet or asteroid on its way and they are creating a cover-up in advance?

Furious over sanctions, North Korea vows to nuke U.S.

North Korea vowed on Thursday to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States, amplifying its threatening rhetoric hours ahead of a vote by U.N. diplomats on whether to level new sanctions against Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test.

An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for ”a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors” because Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.

Although North Korea boasts of nuclear bombs and pre-emptive strikes, it is not thought to have mastered the ability to produce a warhead small enough to put on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. It is believed to have enough nuclear fuel, however, for several crude nuclear devices.

Murder of baby found in stolen SUV prompts soul searching in China; censorship revealed

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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So senseless it is jaw-dropping!

Murder of baby found in stolen SUV prompts soul searching in China

“Journalists leaked a circular from the Changchun propaganda department instructing local media on how to report on the crisis. “No frontpage coverage allowed,” it said. “There shall be no questioning of the police’s work.” Posts containing the instructions have since been deleted by internet censors.”

The Dixie Chicks, Bush, and War Crimes

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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10 years later, Dixie Chicks right all along

It was 10 years ago this week — as the country was barreling toward war with Iraq — that Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, stood in front of a packed house in London and said:

“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

It didn’t matter that the evidence to invade Iraq was questionable or that Maines later apologized. The damage was done, and one of the most popular acts in the country became its most hated. Its music was banned from radio, CDs were trashed by bulldozers, and one band member’s home was vandalized. Maines introduced “Soldier” with a call for peace, but she would soon find that the group needed metal detectors installed at entrances to shows on its stateside tour because of death threats.

Yes, they were right all along. A great interview extract here. Watch and share! I probably never would have listened to them if it hadn’t been for that incident. Now I’m a big fan of their music, too!

Bush’s legacy? War crimes: 10 years after invasion, U.S. depleted uranium continues to devastate Iraq

A radioactive heavy metal found in weapons used by the U.S. military and other forces in the war on Iraq continues to plague the country as hundreds of sites are still contaminated and causing the spread of the radioactive substance, according to a new report by Netherlands peace group IKV Pax Christi.

Tens years after the invasion, the U.S. has done almost nothing to clean up the toxic legacy of the war and continues to deny the well-documented harms caused by the radioactive residue that remains.

Tom Flanagan: Watching Child Porn Does “Not Harm Another Person”

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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This guy is one sick critter.

Former aide to Canadian PM fired after child porn comment

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office quickly distanced themselves from former Harper aide Tom Flanagan on Wednesday after the political commentator said viewing child pornography did not harm others.

Flanagan was a campaign manager and chief of staff for Harper or the Conservative Party at various times before the Conservatives took power in 2006, and has long been a commentator for CBC. …

“…you know a lot of people on my side of the spectrum, a certain side of the spectrum, are bent on kind of a jihad against pornography and child pornography in particular, and I certainly have no sympathy for child molesters, but I do have some grave doubts about putting people in jail because of their taste in pictures,” Flanagan, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, told the seminar on Wednesday night.

He said there was a real issue as “to what extent we put people in jail for doing something in which they do not harm another person.”

Currently Reading: Steven Lukes’s “Power: A Radical View”

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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Steven Lukes’ Power: A Radical View is a seminal work still widely used some 30 years after publication. The second edition includes the complete original text alongside two major new essays. One assesses the main debates about how to conceptualize and study power, including the influential contributions of Michel Foucault. The other reconsiders Steven Lukes’ own views in light of these debates and of criticisms of his original argument. With a new introduction and bibliographical essay, this book will consolidate its reputation as a classic work and a major reference point within social and political theory.

This is a scary book when you realize what kinds of minds are out there thinking up schizoidal justifications for a New World Order of total control.

Lukes’s best-known, still controversial academic theory is his so-called ‘radical’ view of power. It can be simply stated. It claims there are three dimensions of power. The first is overt power, typically exhibited in the presence of conflict in decision-making situations, where power consists in winning, that is prevailing over another or others. The second is covert power, consisting in control over what gets decided, by ignoring or deflecting existing grievances. And the third is the power to shape desires and beliefs, thereby averting both conflict and grievances. The first is the most public of the three and is how the powerful usually want to be seen: for instance, the power of political leaders to make policy decisions after widespread consultation with opposition parties and the wider public. The second is the power to control agendas. It has been called the ‘mobilization of bias,’ reinforcing the powerful by excluding threatening issues from discussion in public forums. The third kind of power can be the most insidious. It is the most hidden from view—the least accessible to observation by social actors and observers alike. It can be at work, despite apparent consensus between the powerful and the powerless. It is the power to influence people’s wishes and thoughts, inducing them to want things opposed to what would benefit them and to fail to want what they would, but for such power, recognize to be in their real interests.

Elites push for internet sales tax

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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The Wealthy Elite want to screw us for more money so they can spend it on more wars and kill more people and impose more austerity measures on us. That’s what it is in a nutshell. Yet another way they see to get that blood out of the rock.

U.S. lawmakers push for internet sales tax

Did you pay sales tax on the last item you bought on the Internet? Unless it was from Amazon, you probably did not. You may soon though if a gaggle of U.S. lawmakers working hand-in-hand with big business get their way.

And if you’re an online retailer, you may have to collect and remit sales taxes for all fifty states no matter where your online business resides. But don’t worry, lawmakers want to force all states to adopt the same standard for sales taxes, thus making it easier for you to comply.

Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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They need to arrest the Imam, and all the villagers who supported this action and give them the lash too… until they drop.

Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death

Hena Akhter’s last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70.

Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.

War Criminals and the Fall of the Republic

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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Is the U.S. Republic ending? 8 striking parallels between the Fall of Rome and the U.S. by Steven Strauss

  1. Staggering Increase in the Cost of Elections, with Dubious Campaign Funding Sources
  2. Politics as the Road to Personal Wealth
  3. Continuous War
  4. Foreign Powers Lavish Money/Attention on the Republic’s Leaders
  5. Profits Made Overseas Shape the Republic’s Internal Policies
  6. Collapse of the Middle Class
  7. Gerrymandering
  8. Loss of the Spirit of Compromise

Everything he says is true. He just doesn’t mention that Rome fell due to comet bombardment and plague. I’ll be taking a close look at the Fall of Rome in the next volume of my Secret History of the World series.

George Bush, Tony Blair and the century’s greatest crime

In short, the [Iraq] war was one of the world’s greatest cons. It had nothing to do with Iraq’s WMD or the removal of a dictator; it was part of a greater neoconservative plan to ensure America’s global domination as General Wesley Clark confirmed in his book Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire. … Up to a million Iraqis lost their lives as a result of the war and subsequent invasion and occupation; according to the respected journal The Lancet, over 600,000 had been killed as of July 2006, not to mention thousands of US and coalition military personnel.

“The deadly duo should be sharing a cell in The Hague awaiting trial for war crimes” … along with quite a number of others. What this world needs is War Crimes trials with swift and effective justice.