More Vichy-ssoise, France?

I am wondering whether France will ever stand up
to the globalisation that is being crushed
elsewhere in the world.
I would equate the globalist elite, like every
recent government, including Prez Hollande,
with the Vichy government under the Nazis.

This is what gave the French the unfavourable
monicker of the 90s as "cheese-eating surrender
monkeys." There is a certain pussy-hat attitude
that is necessary to accept globalisation at this
point. Finally, that has become clear, despite
every media outlet screaming at us all not to
desert our traditional leaders - politicians and
media.
Sorry, we have twitter and we're out of here.

It just so happens that a favourite soup in
France is called Vichyssoise. Soup. Quagmire.
Surrendering to the Ratatoille Rats of
globalisation.

 

Vichyssoise & ladle metaphors explained.

Varoufakis' 25 theses nailed on the door of the ECB

This is going to be the place where I stage
a deathmatch between the Yanis and the ECB.
Only one shall be left standing. This is a
watershed moment in EU history despite the
plans of the Troika to keep Greece under
water for another 3 to 6 to 60 months with
their crafty lies and promises.

I don't know that much about the state of
Catholicism in the 16th century, but what
I do know is that it was ripe for a fall.

Well, so is the European Union, especially
if you grab it by its currency. There is
so much hypocrisy being mouthed by the troika
jailers that we need a new Martin Luther.

Along comes Yanis Varoufakis, fresh from his
battles as Econ minister in Greece. I tend
to believe that fame turns him on, but he
is doing much that is right. He wants to
start a pan-European party DIEM-25 to
bring together voters from all countries to
stave off the destruction of the EU at the
hands of its present sheltered blinkered
ruling classes, in the Louis Seize chairs.

Well, he's in the right country:



more soon

Macron Economics and they called him Macroni

This is a continuation of the French election play-by-play.
I don't usually care about France, but it is the second
battleground this year, after the Dutch election. Wilders,
the wild and crazy guy, is set to have the biggest party
in Holland. Holland veers to the far right. and Wilders
is literally crazy, in my books. I wish it wasn't so, cuz
the populist right has much that is right for these days.

Anyway, back to France. This is a far more complex
case. It has a two stage presidential election. This is
specifically designed to keep France from changing
in any drastic way. The people who are the top two
in the first election face off for the prize. In this case,
everybody is saying that Le Pen, the far right
candidate will make it to the second round. But
because of the system and because of France's still
not wanting a "fascist" as their president, whoever
faces off against Le Pen is supposed to win, even
if the French have to vote while holding their nose
like some Roccefort cheese is nearby. That's how
it has worked. But, could this be a unique case
where all the other candidates are garbage or
a scam, like Macron, full of lies, money and
bluster? Is this the chance that Le Pen needs
to actually bust through the gates of the political
Bastile?
Let's get the popcorn ready for April.

Another issue is the opposition. A fun bunch, they
are. We have:
Melanchon- a old-fashioned lefty who dresses like
Mao

Ruling Centrist "Socialists"- Elected a quiet radical
(Hamon), as a response to the sell-out Hollande, but
 who is already planning to lose
Center Right UMP- Chose a scary Thatcherite
(Fillion) who has since been trapped, by Sarkozy-
some say, in a corruption scandal where his whole
family were siphoning public money to live high
on the hog.

Some context
All of the old party system is also hampered by rules
about funding for elections. This is the reason why
the entrepreneurial Sarkozy got illegal money and is
now facing a long court case that will result in him
walking away guilty as sin, and free as a bird.
Do you remember the one about Coco Channel
handing Sarko envelopes of money to take out of
the country tax free, prolly to Switzerland?
Feckin Sarko. The embodiment of a sarcastic cynical
view of life and politics. Sarco

Who has take advantage of this political gridlock?
Emmanuel Macron. Now who is this guy?

He went from being a Mergers & Acquisitions guy
at Rothch bank in France, to being the Socialist
(ya. believe it) Economy Minister under Hollande,
the outgoing 4% popularity guy. He quit last August
but because of his connections with THAT family,
he has a lot of rich media types (I'll find them soon)
splashing his blanched face all over their mags and
papers, prepping him for power. Some baggage he
has in the form of misappropriating money, but who
in France has not tried that. Even Le Pen has snagged
300 thousand from the EU, for her party. 

As if by providence, as soon as Fillion fell on his
face, out comes Macron with a splash.
He's a centrist who uses populist language.
the Party En Marche (bland, prog-sounding)
Money
A big crowd in Lyon (from out of nowhere. He JUST started)
how does that happen?
Big anti-EU talk (bullshit)
Mild anti-banking implications (bullshit)
Stealing other Le Pen lines (again lying, to steal
votes and then continue the neoliberal gravy train).
He played the French anthem at the end (hokey, by
French standards, holding his heart like an American)
Let's watch
his gang "En Marche"


Al Jazeera



he's a smooth talker. I'll grant him that. But
so was Sarko.
If the Alt media, growing in power in France,
albeit slowly, gets its fangs into him, he
might not succeed. However, he seems most
likely to come second to Le Pen and would win
in a face-off second vote. But, the tide is
slowly turning to Le Pen. The gap is closing.
and, as we know from Brexit and Trump, maybe the
French pollsters are asking the wrong people.

In that country where the second vote is designed
to leave things exactly as they are, thank you
very much, it might be the time for Le Pen.

But, she has one fatal flaw, and it's not her
pretty daughter, Marion. It's the fact that she
wants France to leave the EU.
She mentioned leaving the Euro as a first
priority. Not bad, but I don't know how it plays
in France. It might get votes. But, to say that
you'll have a referendum to leave the whole EU
seems crazy. Nobody else in the Union is talking
about leaving, except the UK which left by
accident. France still sees itself as the heart
of the EU. Even the Eurodeath idea is not that
popular. According to polls, only Italy has
close to 50% in favour of leaving the Euro,
and all but one party pledging to leave the Euro
in Italy. So, it might work in France.

The Italians may stumble into a populist election
this year as well.


more soon

Je me Trumpe

This text will be the place where
I give time to explaining the populist wave
that is washing around the world.

Brexit, Trump, Italian referendum loss

Also, I don't know why it took 3 months
for reasonably intelligent commentators
to realise that Trump probably got the
marginal win because of Twitter. The
Russian Spox said it on the BBC and
now everybody is saying it. Trump is
playing the MSM cuz he doesn't need
them. That doesn't mean that Twitter
followers are fools. Quite the opposite.
They got the memes that Trump wanted
them to, and the MSM was pumping up
lies. Again Wikileaks played a role in
telling voters about the Dems.

So, let's watch out for the fact that the
public has fairly free access to some
truths, and lots of discussion for a
chance to split right from wrong, right in
their hands.
The MSM/government
compact has not only been bypassed,
but it has been revealed in all its
corrupt grandeur. This is not a
conspiracy theory anymore!

Anyway,
In France, there will be elections within
the first six months of this 17th year of
millenium 3. According to the polls
and prognostications of one Prof Mark
Blyth, the Front Nationale's Marine
Le Pen has a good chance of winning
at least the first round. The populist
turn, just like in the UK and US.

Here Blyth is, a day after the US election!
On this video: at 42:00, the future of the EU
-nobody accepts ECB and technocrats running
the EU anymore. Enter the populists.
-At 13:00-19:00 Blyth will blow your mind.
He had predicted Brexit and Trump (discussing
that in a later text) and how Renzi's referendum
would fail (it did) AND then he mentions
how popular Le Pen is, in polls.


with subtitles! cuz of his Scots English accent.

Then, he goes into the macro-economic and political
systems of the past 30 years and the first 30 years
after the war. How this last period is crashing now
because the middle class can see they'd been lied
to. Controlling inflation only matters to bankers
and neoliberals. 

Also, check 35:00 , hear how politicians were (past tense)
trying  to make oligarchic plutocrats richer with
TPP TTIP and CETA. Those arselickers will be out of
business soon.
[BTW Blyth goes mental at 43:00 and presents the preposterous
idea of Putin starting a war for HIS own reasons.]
I was shocked to hear him say that. With the armies of
30 nations doing exercises on his doorstep, Putin is
going to magic up a war?

NOW, I wrote "je me trumpe" because in French
je me trompe means I made a mistake. I wonder if
France is going to join the populist wave and actually
vote in the Far Right to the Elysee palace. Maybe.
It would be a mistake for France to miss the boat
back to sensible economics (if there is such a thing):

1 Francois Fillion was chosen as the center-right
presidential candidate. Now, it was just revealed
that Fillion was paying his wife a salary (bad enough)
for a non-existent job (disaster). Otherwise, surprisingly,
Fillion's neo-Thatcherite scary ideas would have
easily won the day, in the second round, after Le Pen
wins the first round. (C-left and C-right voters will
likely group together to block Le Pen's win.) Now, it's
unsure whether Fillion is a dead duck in the eyes of
French voters. One opponent weakened.
2 Center-left socialists are waiting for their second
round to choose the guy who will lose the election
because his predecessor, Hollande, was a do-
nothing technocrat. Another weak opponent.
3 The French are realising that their political
dog and pony show is being run out of Berlin,
DIRECTLY! (Germans knew the Euro would
come to this.)
Their 2016 labour law came from Germany, and
was rammed (legally) through parliament, without
debate. People were in the streets for 2 months.
4 Trump, after a few populist announcements has
started getting nasty with the EPA and with Muslim
migrants. French people already view Trump as a
moron. How will this reflect on Le Pen? It might not
help. She may lose ground daily, by being associated
with Trump. Far right losing ground?

So, the second round is up in the air. Le Pen will win
if the EU keeps visibly fucking around with every-
body's meagre existence. By EU, I mean the unelected
technocrats- the Corrupt Juncker; luckily for them,
Schultz is gone; the ECB; Schaueble and Merkel
(they were elected in Germany only, but essentially
run the EU).
Le Pen is less likely to win if Trump becomes an
even-worse pariah in the eyes of French voters. But
if Hollande or the EU try to embarrass Trump, it
will actually help Le Pen.

As it stands, Hollande is starting to shoot his mouth off,
giving Le Pen the edge. 

Trump is a mobile black swan factory

You know you're the boss when your every
word rocks the financial markets.

That is what Trump is doing. People like
hedge funds are throwing up their arms
wondering what he'll do next.

That is a perfect context for a black swan
to waltz right up and beak the banks on the
 butt. It would give us the complete
financial meltdown and reset that we so
richly deserve.


As I had mentioned before, the modus of
everybody in the financial sector and govern
ment were focused on unblocking any
liquidity logjam with plenty of fake
"future money" (to be paid by our
grandkids).

And it was working perfectly. All calls
for the Crash #2 were met with more fake
money.

The QE spigot, in true Ponzi style, was
pumping up all asset classes into a bubble
because this condition looks like good
economic times to the illiterates at the
MSM.

So it was all "buy the feckin dip."

[a message could not be simpler]

Even I know that the markets have gone
up for over 2 years now, ceaselessly.
From the 2014 date of this video to
now you could have doubled your money.
Of course, sensible people were worried
of hitting the top and riding the losses
down to zero.

No such problem. Buy the feckin dip.
Even an idiot could have borrowed
money to gamble, and won!
It's like this cartoon knew that the
US gov would backstop all this
fin de siecle suicidal pact pyramid
scheme.

Now Trump risks torpedoing all this
by accident.

The markets have been hanging on his
every word. Let's see what the markets
have been doing since Trump was elected:


CNN:

1-Trump sinks drug stocks
He plans to make drugs cheaper for Medicare.

2 Wall Street has kicked off the Trump presidency with a bounce.

The Dow jumped about 95 points on Friday following the swearing in of Donald Trump as America's 45th president.

During the inaugural address, the new president promised to follow through on his campaign pledge to protect American jobs.
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"We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs," Trump said.

He emphasized that his administration will follow two simple rules: "Buy American and hire American."

Trump sought to bring the country together following a turbulent election.

"When America is united, America is totally unstoppable," Trump said.

Related: Trump market rally on hold, but may not be over

Wall Street has been on an upswing ever since Trump's historic upset of Hillary Clinton, though the euphoria known as the "Trump rally" has waned in recent weeks.

After an overnight selloff on election night, the stock market welcomed Trump with a bang as the Dow soared 257 points the day after the election. Eventually, the Dow would surge more than 1,400 points between the election and the end of the year.

All told, the U.S. market has gained $1.4 trillion in value since the election, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Blyth opens the Dore to Eurodeath

This will soon be an analysis of a visit by
Prof Mark Blyth, guru of Western disintegration,
to the Jimmy Dore show.

I think Blyth is the man I follow for ideas on
the EU and the populist revolution.
He's a good narrator, if you can handle the
Glasgow Weegie accent. I have a schooling
in Weegie from an early age.

Jimmy Dore is a progressive US comic
who is podcasting and so on. Both
acidic funny and no-bullshit approach is
awesome.
This is habit-forming.
These are fairly recent i.e. this month

It is a very interesting four part show.
I don't know what order they're in, cuz
they don't say. Still, it's good, approachable
stuff.

1


1:00- Larry Summers has paid no price for his
malfeasance. Elite live in a bubble.
2:00 boomers are selfish
2:30 Greece will stay in Eurozone until it ends.
I believe that too. Look at how the EU muddles
from disaster to disaster, and yet keeps going,
cuz they got all the money and power and media.
3:15 how Greek gov used Euro to continue
robbing their own nation
3:45 Blyth's thesis that when Greece started
collapsing, the dominoes were ready and the
German/French/Belgian banks were ready to fall,
and that's the birth of the troika. They could not
allow a domino of bank runs to start off.
4:30 the troika idiots were not sure what to do,
but could not risk collapse. This is sort of excusing
those jerks.
4:50 Trichet at ECB was trying to control
inflation, like a wanker. Institutional blinders. the ECB
could have bought the Greek debt. Solved

2

-the Adam Smith argument that democracy is
asset insurance for rich people. The rich
have not been paying their share.
1:30 the Euro-birth mistake
3:30 Bernank had "solved the business cycle"
in 2003
5:00 Bankers are incestuous
6:00 systemic risk. Dodd Frank (not good enough)
is now being taken apart by Trump. New crisis
coming. Wall Street knows already, but that's
fuckin hubris and self- anahilation.
7:45 most people, even greenies are in denial
about what effect our wasteful life is doing to
the planet [while most of California is sinking
into a hole]
9:30 governments will not go green. The
agreements are bullshit (I agree). It's up to
us as consumers, for lack of a better word
10:00 German and Chinese green tech are
the future (very believable). To me, at this
key juncture in history, the Anglo-American
world, and its victims (most of EU) will fall
behind because we enjoy being screwed by
bankers. and Trump doesn't believe in
global warming
11:15 Green new deal (Greece's GPAP had
this idea) is THE solution
11:30 how US media (comcast MSNBC) pay
"liberal" talking head journalists $30 000 a
day to ignore reality and particularly their
own corruption.

3
more soon

The Union of German Soviet Ordo-Liberal Republics

This is the announcement of the obvious
news that the EU has become what the
USSR could have only hoped to have been,
if it had been more paranoid.


[last laugh, anyone?]

A number of well-chosen words from the US
were enough to distract the EU from its
hatred and fear of Putin, to its extra-ordinary
hatred and fear of Donald Trump and his
erstwhile representative in the EU, Malloch.

Observe

[Verhofstadt sees his future in the Politburo vanishing
over the Urals, or was that Urinals? Fact check please]

Ted Malloch's wonderful conversation with
Afshin Rattansi hovered over the controversy
about the new broom in town. It's clear from
the first few questions. The EU has realised
that the US will not backstop their bullshit
any longer.



Malloch and Trump have only hinted at
the number of problems that they will try
to solve, like the wimpy Euro currency.

Rubbing salt in the wounds of Brexit.

Destroying the USSR, which looks suspiciously
like the EU.

It looks like the EU has been the bully
in its own block for a long time, enforcing
torture on smaller groups, like Ireland
and Greece. It has been able to label
white as black, and now all of a sudden,
reality has hit the EU like a double-decker
bus.

A bully from around the way has said
that the EU's shit stinks, and the EU has
become well shaken.

more soon

The Soros of the Birds

Birds, as women are called, derogatorily, in the UK
were seen to march to Washington to confront Trump.
By all signs, there were a lot of human-size, as opposed
to life-sized, vaginas wandering around.

If they were protesting Trump's groping,
they certainly groped themselves a lot, as above.
Madonna, who doesn't need much of an excuse,
kept her hands up where we could see them.
Though she did consider blowing shit up,
particularly a building with the acronym WH.
Those are some strong feelings.

As it turns out, 400 or so
women's groups were involved in the march. I wonder
how many of them are required to change a light
bulb. That's a lot of groups, in other words.
It turns out that Soros is behind about 50 of them.
Planes were chartered.

Is it a stretch to think that those 50 groups grabbed
some famous women (Madonna, Scarlet, Cher, etc
and Gloria Steinem who was a spy for the Agency
while mouthing feminazi platitudes to her fans.)
and did this not for any other reason than to show
how Soros can control things?

I had an excel file on this somewhere. The article by
Liberty blitzkrieg below has a link, or the zerohedge
one.

Soros has been credited with a lot of dangerous
protests, including violent ones, like Ukraine.
He and the US have been behind the colour
revolutions that usually usher in puppet regimes
for the US, cultural destruction leading to anomie.
That kind of shit makes Soros smile cuz it makes
him richer. Now it appears that he is turning his
colours on the US.

Meanwhile, in the eternal battle over women's
bodies, that will soon involve Trump, Breitbart
seems to be concerned with abortion. It's not
a man's business to boss women around on that
issue.

links
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-22/having-vagina-not-enough-one-womans-view-million-pussy-march
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/14/anti-trump-womens-march-celebrates-abortion-demand/

checkit Liberty blitzkrieg

Protest in the Era of Trump
Michael Krieger | Posted Monday Jan 23, 2017 at 12:25 pm

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it.

I am of the strong belief that any administration which comes into power in the current environment of nearly unrestrained executive authority, a lawless and sprawling intelligence agency complex, and a debt-driven, rent-seeking rewarding fraud economy should be assumed to represent a serious threat to the civil liberties and remaining freedoms of the American public. This would’ve been true under Hillary, and it’s also true under Trump.

Personally, I think Trump will be reacting to events outside of his control more than he will be controlling his own destiny given the extremely precarious point we are in during this geopolitical, cultural and economic cycle. This is a very dangerous period, and it will likely only get more dangerous as the years unfold. Not because of Trump, but because of the circumstances we have allowed ourselves to be boxed into as a people. As such, I fully understand and appreciate the role of non-violent protest and civil disobedience in the Trump era, just like I understood it and advocated for it during Obama’s transgressions.

Trump’s administration got off to a serious bang with the Women’s March over the weekend, which were unquestionably large events. While I think protest is important, and I don’t want to minimize the achievement of getting that many people out in the streets, there were many aspects of it that left a very foul taste in my mouth. Let’s start off with some of the people actively involved.

From the LA Times:

The Women’s March on Washington may have been filled with celebrities, singers and all sorts of Hollywood A-listers, but it was longtime feminist and writer Gloria Steinem who really revved up the crowd.

Upon exiting the Women’s March after her keynote speech in which she emphasized that protest means more than hitting the “send” button, a crowd formed around Steinem. Mothers rushed up to introduce their daughters to her; protesters held out their signs for her autograph.

Gloria Steinem, feminist icon and CIA-operative in the 1950’s and 60’s. Oh, you didn’t know that?

From The Chicago Tribune:

CIA agents are tight-lipped, but Steinem spoke openly about her relationship to “The Agency” in the 1950s and ‘60s after a magazine revealed her employment by a CIA front organization, the Independent Research Service.

While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”

Wait, what? The CIA was headed up by one of America’s most notorious psychopaths during that time, Allen Dulles. She must be aware of this fact. This is an interesting person for women to hold up as a role model, and to help lead the “resistance.”

One of the many nefarious things the CIA was up to during this time period was mind control program MK Ultra.

Project MKUltra – sometimes referred to as the CIA’s mind control program – is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects, at times illegal, designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control. Organized through the Scientific Intelligence Division of the CIA, the project coordinated with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps.

The operation began in the early 1950s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967, and officially halted in 1973. The program engaged in many illegal activities, including the use of unwitting U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy. MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people’s mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of psychological torture.

How liberal.

For more on the CIA at that time, see: How America’s Modern Shadow Government Can Be Traced Back to One Very Evil Man – Allen Dulles

But it gets worse. Steinem was a key factor in the election of Donald Trump by irrationally supporting Hillary Clinton and belittling Sanders supporters with some very un-feminist type commentary. In case you forget about this episode back in February, Desperate for Hillary – Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Claims Young Women Support Sanders to Attract Boys. The only revolution this woman is going to lead is one that slams straight into a brick wall.

Naturally, Gloria wasn’t the only icon of female power to attend. The, always painfully desperate for attention and continued relevance, Madonna was also celebrated. Here’s some of what she had to say, courtesy of USA Today:

NEW YORK (AP) — Madonna is defending her fiery, expletive-laden speech at the Women’s March, saying her words were “taken wildly out of context.”

The singer said at the Washington, D.C., march Saturday that she had at times been angry after the election and had thought “an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

Power to the imbecile.

Moving along, another red flag about the march were the amount of Democratic lawmakers present and actively protesting. Considering Trump rose to power based on the intense anger from much of the American voting public about how things were going, I find this to be incredibly ironic, and certainly not empowering. As The Hill notes in the article, Lawmakers Join Women’s Marches in DC and Nationwide:

Democratic lawmakers are are marching with women in Washington and across the nation one day after President Trump’s inauguration.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of D.C. on Saturday for the Women’s March on Washington, joined by a large contingent of lawmakers.

Other Democrats attended satellite protests in other cities across the country....

Actions, not fake news

I was late to the concept of the incipient
revolution that is Brexit and Trump. I honestly
figured that Brexit would fail. I have since
understood the dynamics of the situation that
Prof Mark Blyth has expressed. Soon to be found
here:


The full-on craziness of the media in its panic
at losing the neo-liberal great dawn of humanity
for the 1% was so palpable.

CNN: it's illegal to read Wikileaks

On Twitter, which is my University of the Internet,

I have often re-tweeted funny jokes on Trump, but

have refused to give time to any "news" about Trump,

especially from the MSM. I believe that words-are-just

-words and Trump's explosive words have certainly

cheapened the value of words. His incendiary words

have lit up a whole swath of people. 

But, I was waiting for Trump to start working in order 

to judge him. Is he the genius populist that he thinks he is?
I must say, many of his ideas impressed me greatly.
His ideas won't all be good, but some will be
groundbreaking:

[If they're all like the first two, Trump will be a god-send.]

He appears to be ready to:

- give former politicians a 5-year break before they 

can turn around and lobby their former colleagues.
This is only one of the revolving doors from government
to the private sector which is dripping with insider
trading and corruption. Shot 1 across the bows of
corruption.

EXCELLENT

- sign away any connection to TTP. That will be,

for many, the death knell of the democracy-killing

Shareholders' Protection Agreement, the nadir

of neo-liberalism and globalisation, signed by the 

"Leftie" Obama. The dragon has been slain.

EXCELLENT

[I just heard that the death of TTP has been
praised by Bernie Sanders, and called a
"mistake" by John McCain. I rest my case]

Others to come:

Don't want an hour as a refugee, in Davos

The theatrical works of a culture say as much about
that culture as they say about theater. In the Out-of-
Touch Burgh of Davos, the oligarch class, with or
without the perennial Clintons, go up a mountain in
search of wisdom, or fois gras. This year, the
self-appointed world elites were trying on some
human emotions like a pair of cheap, wet smelly
socks.

In their attempt to understand more about the
world publics that they usually step all over,
they tried discussing "them losers over there."
But when it came to refugees, they treated
themselves to a live, in the wool, experience
of life as refugees for 45 minutes only.

It was so out of touch. Until I can analyse it
further, it looked like a dark room, with some
water on the floor and a bunch of soldiers
yelling at them.

In the first instance, refugees, if Lesbos is
any example, are met by locals and
international volunteers with blankets,
if they manage to avoid a dunking in
the Med. Perhaps the show should have
chosen some Davos Divots and taken
them to a deep pool, and put them in a rickety
leaky boat, especially if they cannot swim.
I think several thousand real refugees died
in the Med last year.



Forget what the media tell you. This
Theater of the Elites looked more
like what will happen when the
economy totally collapses under the
weight of elitist fuck-ups. In that case,
it will be permanently dark as elites
will have found a way to cloud the
sun permanently. The shouting soldiers
would be the ones trying to save them
while killing the plebs who are
seeking a scrap of food. The soldiers
would be saving the elites and taking
them to refuge at Galt's Gulch. 

What's a legacy, Barrack?

UPDATE: I was right about this one.
I am assuming that Obama, as I noted,
was looking for an automatic legacy.
20 years from now, he'll be remembered as:
"the black POTUS who freed the Tranny."
As Republicans are all "law and order, as long
as it's not applied to them," the fact that a
traitor transexual (for added bile) was
pardoned, has lit up their conservative hineys.
Obama also got revenge for their killing of
Obamacare.
Two solid reasons.
---
I'm not American anyway.
Nevertheless, I have a few thoughts on what a
U.S. president, during the Banking Wars, should
have done, like solving the Runaway TBTF
Banks problem, which he didn't even touch.
The main reason, as you'll hear below, is that
he was funded by some of the worst banksters.
That's how he got elected.

Point 1 is, I think the fact that everybody,
worldwide, gave Obama an easy ride, because
the first black president of the world's super-
power, was a big thing. Only the crazy birthers
went at him, led by POTUS45 Donnie Trump
who tried to cut BO down. The Birthers were
prolly mysticists thinking that a guy named
Hussein was the living spirit of Sadam, whom
they had decapitated by accident in an Iraqi jail
on the way to being hung.

Everybody else cut Obama a lot of slack. And I
think that Smooth-talking Barrack knew that
he was going to get an easy ride. And he took
it real easy, even when he had congress on his
side for the first 2 years.
Maybe Eddie Murphy was right. Maybe the first
black Prez has to watch his back or else he'll get
shot.

we all know how MLK ended up. There was a photographer
friend of the pastor who was on the Agency pay,
telling the 40 agents where MLK was at all times.
All they had to do was find a stupid cracker who
was all too happy to shut up a righteous man
FOR GOOD.
No such threat to the O family.

The commentators that I follow didn't give him
an easy ride, but he did get an easier ride than
Bush. We all thought, "wow , a POTUS with
a brain will fix all of Bush43's mistakes." He
did none of that. Eight million people lost
their homes due to fraudulent robo signing
that we have all seen proof of, and yet
O's DOJ brother was a brother of the Banking
Clan, and is now back working there. So,
no jail.

Obama was a good spokesman, as far as
presidents go. A spokesman for big oil,
for frackers, for banks, and the other
troublemakers. Towards the end, it seemed
to me that he was a programmable wind-up
toy. The words that seemed to be coming
out of his mouth seemed to be Boardroom-
Speak. So, oligarchs may have not only
told him what to do, but the exact words
to say.
I look at his fracking speeches. Total Exxon-Lingo

So, either O is stupid (not) or he's a
puppet. "we're the Saudi of Gas." He
knows it's not profitable, not safe, but
there you go.

Now, I'll show a few commentators having a go
at Obama for your entertainment.
There's Jimmy Dore, whom I've recently tripped over.
He is one of the Aggressive Progressives on the
Young Turks. I noticed his own show when I
was looking for Prof Mark Blyth. Dore is funny,
articulate and he really seems to get annoyed
with the bullcrap that politicians feed us. I
respect that greatly. He has podcasts if you
google his name.
There's also Cenk Uygur who has a good
memory for Obama's flaws. He also has
 a segment by Michael Moore, who asks
Obama (through the tv screen- if you
understand) "How will you be
remembered"
A shot right to the Ego.

Here was one sort of legacy:
Obamacare was a sop to the Insurance
companies and Big Pharma, and so 20
million people got health care, but now
it's too expensive for many of them.
The above dynamic duo has put up
the premiums (especially in areas
with only one provider- i.e. Monopoly-
the Game that Hurts the Poor) by
up to 100%.
But, it had his name on it, thanks to the
Republicans, who were trying to insult him.
He said "I'll take that." Of course, it has
just been erased from the books by the
lame duck congress. Trump was going to
change it anyway. His ideas seemed really,
how shall I say this, progressive. Trump's
ideas.
Negotiating a better price on drugs
for Medicare? Dead easy and yet it will
be seen as Communism by Big Pharma.

Anyway, as Cenk says, any president wants
3 things: to be elected. to be re-elected. to
have a legacy.

I'm going out on a limb here and say that
with Obamacare gone, Obama's only
big legacy is the Nobel he won, which
just encouraged him to bomb 26000
people to death in 2016, for one example.
O knows that for 20 years, all you gotta
put together is two words to bring howls
of laughter:

Obama & Nobel

the pre-emptive Nobel

for the pre-emptive droner

Although he has jailed more whistleblowers
using the Espionage Act than
all other presidents combined, he may go
soft in this last week. I think
he might be forced to give clemency to
Chelsea Manning, for his own legacy.
As for Manning, well done for your work,
and for choosing a name for your new
sex that will likely piss off the Clintons.

I think he'll get clemency, largely because
of a package deal with Freddie Charles, namely
Snowden and Assange in a court room near you,
in the US.
I think Snowden has said he would be willing
to be rammed through court and jailed.
Assange, for his part, always wanting the
limelight, went too far.
He was wanted for extradition to Sweden for
trumped up charges that haven't even been
laid yet. But, he's been hiding in the Ecuadorian
embassy in London, fearing that Sweden, that
secret NATO member and US lacky, would
wrap him up in a plastic blanket and deliver
him in the back of C130 straight to GITMO.
So, Assange goes that extra step further by
offering to be extradited to the US.
If you follow, he hasn't been sought for
extradition to the US yet. So, he's jumping
the gun, that knob. Like in that Tarantino
movie: "you can torture me all you want..."
which gets the response "ya. torture. good idea."

to the videos:

 

banksters researching the "politics of rage"- no irony

One may never know why Banks do stuff, cuz it seems
as if they would only operate in their own interest, if
their robbing is any hint.

So, banks can and should research markets, but it gets
a bit close to home when banks study the politics of
rage. That is because the banks have consistently been
the main cause of that rage.
They have ripped off most western countries in a way
that only a cabal of international thieves can do. The
public of those countries have, as their present for
keeping calm, austerity and cuts to the services that
actual people need, like education and health.

But you have to laugh when the bankster researchers
write tart statements like this:

"change in the confidence in government since 2007"

That same bank is responsible for the theft of trillions
that has caused governments to stomp on people.
Hence the rage, isn't it?

For their next trick, banks are studying how to
make laws that benefit them. The answer:
They write the laws themselves, and guess what=
governments say "thanks, I just didn't have the time"

to wit: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-25/rise-politics-rage
The Rise Of The Politics Of Rage

by Tyler Durden
Oct 25, 2016 6:20 PM

Rage is all the rage these days, but as Barclays notes, what appears less well understood is that this voter rebellion, “the Politics of Rage”, spans nearly all advanced economies, has been taking place for more than a decade, is unparalleled in modern history, and is deeply entrenched.

This is not just about Brexit or the US election; it is about a global political movement.

More troubling, from a market perspective, is that its roots may be misunderstood. Misperceptions in politics tend to lead to volatile surprises, such as Brexit, or to misdiagnoses and to policy mis-prescriptions that imply even worse outcomes for asset prices.

Policymakers have focused on income inequality as the primary driver of the Politics of Rage. Although we cannot reject the thesis, we find little support for it in the data. Others have focused on anti-globalisation movements as the main driver. Our analysis agrees, but in results that may surprise some; we find that it is neither the most important source of rage nor as economically irrational as some have suggested.

We find that a deeper cause is a perception among “ordinary citizens” that political and institutional “elites” do not accurately represent their preferences amid a growing cultural and economic divide. These frustrations appear to be validated, with many caveats, by the data: median earners in advanced economies seem to have been the relative losers of globalisation, both within their own countries and relative to their emerging market peers.

Voter anger may be analogous to the Greek hero Achilles’ terrible rage, not for having received less than King Agamemnon, but for the perceived injustice in the manner in which Agamemnon distributed the spoils of battle. Achilles’ wrath cost the Greeks – and ultimately Achilles – dearly, as the Politics of Rage may cost global output. But it was not because Achilles’ sense of justice was in error.

Our findings have mostly strategic implications for asset markets, but they are not happy. Our research seems to support the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington’s forecast of continued political upheaval and highlights the trilemma of incompatibility among democracy, sovereignty and globalisation postulated by the economist Dani Rodrik. The Politics of Rage has been around longer than many realise and likely will remain for the foreseeable future. Despite this long arc, our findings also are highly relevant to near-term event risks.

The report is robust and detailed, but the issues and conclusions are framed in brief in the Executive Summary and on “Rage in a page”, below.

Prospects for the Politics of Rage

• Its roots run deeply through and across countries; Brexit was no exception

• Technology likely will nourish the roots of Rage by inflaming some of the key proximate causes

• Governments are ill equipped to fight Rage with already overextended fiscal positions and low levels of popular trust
The Policies of Rage

• Sovereignty: Reclaiming sovereignty delegated to supranational and intergovernmental organizations

• Representative reform: More direct democracy and a greater voice for “ordinary citizens” • Immigration: Greater sovereign control over immigration

• Trade: Restrictions on the free movement of goods and services

• Redistribution of income: More progressive taxation and income support

• Anti-corporatism: More sovereign assertion of tax and regulatory authority for multinationals
Effects of the Policies of Rage

• Direct de-globalisation: Restrictions on the free movement of goods and services, labour and capital

• Indirect de-globalization: Greater difficulty achieving harmonisation of international rules, standards and taxation Supranational entities like the EU and intergovernmental agreements like the Basel Accords and WTO likely will be at greater risk of dissolution

• Redistribution of income: Even without explicit policies to redistribute, de-globalisation likely will lead to a greater labour share of aggregate income
Implications of the Politics of Rage
Economic

• A slower pace of trend economic growth is likely with EM growth disproportionately affected

• We expect steeper advanced economy Phillips curves; but EM may see even more disinflation

• Fiscal policy likely is ambiguous for advanced economies, but more expansionary for EM

• Global savings should fall, and precipitating a rise in real interest rates to equate investment, but the pattern should shift, ironically, to decrease advanced economy current account balances relative to EM
Financial market

• Global nominal interest rates should rise, but more so in core economies; dispersion should increase

• G10 FX should outperform EM FX, but dispersion within each group should increase; JPY is a clear outperformer, EM and Europe are clear underperformers

• Slower global demand should dominate the outlook for commodity prices

• Equities and credit likely face a poor outlook in aggregate due to slower revenue growth and margin compression, but wide sectoral and country dispersion is likely

• “Fat tails” are likely as markets learn about the Politics of Rage, but a long-run increase in volatility is unlikely

Apple's money is under your noses

There are some stories in this the Great Bank Wars
(as they will be known) that are too hard to believe
because they imply that overlords are colluding
to rip us off and make their friends rich.

So, in the UK, when someone declares themselves
a "Non-dom" his foreign income is not taxed in
the UK and nor is his UK income, because he is
not-domiciled. There is a limit to the number of
days a non-dom can stay in the UK, but I'm sure
that this is never checked.
These people live, work, earn in the UK without
paying tax for all their wonderful life in what
is a publicly-paid-for road system and government
and police, for when they get mugged by somebody
who has been disadvantaged by the same system.
They are in plain sight, but cannot be taxed due to
signing a document that says "hi, taxman. you may
be setting your eyes on me, but for tax purposes,
I am actually not here."
I hope I am doing this expensive charade justice.

There is yet another boondoggle that I was not
expecting. It has to do with Apple's vaunted
$250Billion overseas. The US tax system promotes
the storing of money offshore for the purpose of
saving tax.
So, Apple is not the first company to offshore, But,
listen to this. Apple's money is not all actually
outside the country. It's not like it's a stack of
money you can chase and find. It is notional
money that flows down phone lines and around
the world. That money can flow in and out of
shell companies, but somehow people can still
find the owner of that money. It's just that the
taxman cannot.
Apple's money is invested in the US, but can
still dodge a taxman that is living in the stage-coach
19th century. While we pay for all the public
goods that rich people use,  their billions are
being invested right under our noses.

to wit: naked capitalism

Wolf Richter: Come on Moody’s, Spare Us These Falsehoods: That $1.3 Trillion “Overseas Cash” Is Already in the US
Posted on November 6, 2016 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Wolf addresses a pet peeve, and even better, in long form.

By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street

Some falsehoods simply refuse to die. No matter how many times they get stabbed in the heart, and no matter who stabs them, they rise again in their full glory.

The falsehood that a vast amount of US corporate cash, including much of Apple’s $250 billion, is “locked away overseas” is one of them. We’ve known since May 2013 from the Senate subcommittee investigation and hearings into Apple’s tax-dodge practices that a big part of corporate “overseas cash” is actually invested in the US.

Now Moody’s Investor Services repeats the same falsehood and explicitly lobbies Congress to give our poor, multinational Corporate Titans with their hardscrabble businesses another tax break.

The biggest US non-financial companies that pay Moody’s to rate their credit worthiness “will increase their cash holdings to $1.77 trillion by the end of the year, from $1.68 trillion at the end of 2015,” Moody’s writes. And it goes on:

Most of the cash that companies have is generated and being held overseas. Moody’s estimates that the amount of overseas cash will reach about $1.3 trillion, or 74% of total cash, in 2016. That’s up from an estimated $1.2 trillion, or 72% of total cash a year earlier.

For US tax purposes, these funds are classified as “permanently invested overseas” and thus are exempt from federal corporate income tax until they’re “returned” to the US. These overseas cash holdings have “more than double in the last ten years,” Moody’s reports.

By contrast, US individuals have to pay federal income taxes on all their income, even income they earn from overseas sources while living overseas. The US is one of only a few countries that mistreats its citizens that way. But the largest corporations are coddled and get very special treatment.

On the forefront are our Tech Titans, which have on their books “almost half” of all cash “held by US non-financial companies. These are the top five “cash holders”:

And this is what Moody’s has to say about Apple’s wondrous cash hoard, much of it overseas:

Based on Apple’s reported results for its fiscal year that ended in September, Moody’s projects the company’s cash will exceed $250 billion by the end of calendar 2016, representing over 14% of total non-financial corporate cash.

And then it dives straight into tax lobbying, in behalf of its clients, directed straight at Congress:

“Without tax reform that reduces the negative financial consequences of repatriating money to the US, we expect offshore cash levels to continue increasing,” said Richard Lane, a Senior Vice President at Moody’s.

The financial media jumped on the bandwagon and quoted this falsehood for mass consumption in order to pressure Congress to give our multinational corporate heroes another opportunity to dodge taxes, on top of the countless opportunities already written into the tax code for them that small businesses don’t have access to.

But here’s the thing. In May 2013, Apple got into a pickle because it had decided to fund its stock-buy-back and dividend program by taking on a record $17 billion in debt rather than “repatriating” part of its “offshore” cash and paying income taxes on it.

The Senate subcommittee investigation and hearings, chaired by Senator John McCain, showed that Apple had sheltered at least $74 billion from US income taxes between 2009 and 2012 by using a “complex web” of offshore mailbox companies. The investigation found untaxed “offshore” profits of $102 billion held by Irish subsidiaries – which Apple refused to “repatriate” in order to keep that income from being taxed in the US.

But according to the Senate report, Apple doesn’t have to repatriate that moolah because it’s already in the US. The Irish mailbox subsidiaries, on whose books this money is for tax purposes, transferred it to Apple’s bank accounts in New York. The money is managed by an Apple subsidiary in Reno, Nevada, and is invested in all kinds of assets in the US. Apple’s accountants in Austin, Texas, keep the books,

Money doesn’t stop at borders. Tax accounting does.

These revelations explained another corporate mystery that had long baffled economists. In 2004, after heavy lobbying by our Corporate Titans, Congress declared a “repatriation holiday” to encourage the “return” of $300 billion in overseas cash to be invested in the US. This would cause a burst of investment and hiring in the US, it was said. This was similar to what Moody’s is now clamoring for on behalf of its clients, except this time, they want permanent tax reform rather than a one-time “repatriation holiday.”

So in 2004, our heroes made some adjustments on their books to “repatriate” these profits that were then taxed at the special and minuscule rate of 5.25%, less than the payroll taxes withheld from their US working stiffs.

And then nothing happened. There were no investments and no hiring and no benefits for the economy because the money had already been deployed in the US, as we now know. In May 2013, as a result of the Senate hearings, the New York Times summarized the 2004 phenomenon this way:

On the contrary, some of the companies that brought back the most money laid off thousands of workers, and a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research later concluded that 92 cents on every dollar was used for dividends, stock buybacks or executive bonuses.

This sort of “repatriation holiday” or tax reform would simply be a handout benefitting our Corporate Titans, but not the millions of smaller companies that don’t have the resources to lobby Congress, make special deals with foreign governments, and create that “complex web” of offshore mailbox companies. They’re too busy struggling on a daily basis in their dog-eat-dog world.

Subcommittee Chairman John McCain thundered in his opening statement of the hearings that it was “unacceptable that corporations like Apple are able to exploit tax loopholes to avoid paying billions in taxes.” Since then, nothing happened in Congress. The loophole wasn’t closed. And the falsehoods that had been stabbed many times during the hearings have once again risen to shine in even greater glory, with Moody’s adding some additional sparkle.

 

De-nuding political leaders

[Union Square Manhattan]

For those of you who think that humans have culture,
and scientific research, and complex spirituality means that
humans are not animals. Well, modern politics has
conspired to bring us right back to our base animal
instincts.
The most important instinct is survival and for
that reason, there will be instability as austerity
and robots and CETA start to bite the same
working/middle class butts at the same time.

If you recognise the physical implications
of all our major English insults, they deal
with the body:
asshole, jerk off, pussy, dick

This harks back to our baser days as butt-sniffing
wife-stealing cave dwellers, with the drapes
being picked by said stolen wife.

Today, though, we seem to be too smart for our
own good. We have this thing called polite society
wherein we have a polite democracy of one
vote per person and then the oligarchs distract the
government with bribes and we all lose our rights.
We can start with the bank crisis that governments
allowed to happen and go on from there. The 2008
Banker Coup was the start of the Slide into Austerity
that will followed by e-cash and the Rise of the
Machines which will be busted up by unemployed
men all around the world.

So, we are not allowed to assault anybody, and yet
politicians and their banker friends rob us on a daily
basis. That is not polite, but nobody's nose is broken
so we get to claim that we are a polite society.

Our politicians are beyond reproach. We are supposed
to respect them and give them space, while that space
creates room for them to make secret deals behind
closed doors. In the same way, their fancy expensive
clothing makes us instinctively sit up and take notice
of their refinement, when actually they're fat and
disgusting underneath. If we are polite and see
only the exterior, they get to hide their truly selves.

The only way to bring these politicians down is to
go back to our animal ways and look at them
naked, in public. That way we can laugh at their fat
and warped bodies and what stress has done to their
health. We can examine how much they stink. We
can laugh at their droopey and tiny
genitalia and boobs sagging around their knees.

 
It will allow us to have a good laugh that
those politicians should be allowed to hear. If they
are then cool enough to

not want to run away or

to not order us all shot, 

then they are good material

for public office.

Of course, the point is kind of lost if your
politicians are regularly naked, both on
video and in person, like the former sex
bomb Cicciolina (the MP) of Italy who found a
scumbag husband who liked sending
around fotos of her and himself naked
and frolicking, and even statues:

TTIP your hat to China

Updates 2 and 3: Trump kills TPP/TTIP
by exec order.
Also, we see another angle of TPP geo-
politics. The US wanted to control as
many Pacific Rim countries as possible
through TPP so that they don't fall into
the sway of China, cuz China knows
how to woo a country. Since this entry
was written, Philippines' Duterte has
told O to Flock off, and ended a
century of poverty brought on by US
fielty, and brought in the  Chinese who
will build him a world-class port.  
 --
Update 1: Recently, Max Keiser asked one of his
East Asia expert guests whether TTIP is really in
the interests of the US, seeing as it goes against
the interests of China from whom the US gets
the crap that fills every Walmart from sea to polluted sea.
 (video below)
Update since I started writing this entry, the CETA deal
has been signed. It has not been ratified yet, but if it goes
in, the TTIP that everybody was warned about was
trumped by the CETA, that, despite being 7 years in the
making, I had never heard of!! It is also the backdoor
that allows US businesses, through their NAFTA trade
deal, to enter the EU. So TTIP is redundant. But the
US will get that deal signed too, just because they
do not wish to be seen to be upstaged by Canada.
--
I finally figured out how the oligarchs in charge
of TTIP (and TPP) have managed to get governments
to the negotiating table.

I still don't know why they have never looked at
the anti-democratic corporatocracy document
that is the TTIP/TPP and just said :

"I can't support this agreement

because I will be strung up 

by my shorts."

It really is that stark a choice.

Now the reason is:

the fear of a Chinese planet

Now, that may seem bizarre for many reasons.

The chief reason is that China still makes the 

cheapest mass-produced goodies that we all

buy (admit it). There's no way to compete 

unless   ........

they use TTIP to batter everybody's wages down to Chinese level!

How can we compete when the pollution levels in China

are criminally high? same answer. Use TTIP to allow

companies to do whatever they want. 

So, my summation is that US and the now clearly,

acknowledged second-rate countries like 

Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia

want to keep up with China by going anti-democratic.

In China's case, it's a communist dictatorship, with 

money for most people.

In the case of the TTIP/TPP countries, it'll be an

oligarchic corporatocracy with money for

oligarchic corporatists only

Well done, Western democracies.

You've now sunk below the depravity of a communist

dictatorship. I blame Richard Nixon for all this.

I know how the oligarchs have done most of their work. It's
a simple bait and switch. They promise a China-beating plan
and then make the negotiations on false pretenses, not
allowing anybody to study the document, because it holds
the awful truth. But, once it's signed, they're like

any fly-by-night business legalese:

"well, you did sign here, didn't you"

Keiser 988 at 15:48 and before too

checkit: Liberty blitzkrieg

Merkel “Surprised” as Hundreds of Thousands March in Berlin Against TTIP “Corporate Dictatorship”
Michael Krieger | Posted Monday Oct 12, 2015 at 1:23 pm
In what is being described as the largest German protest in recent years, hundreds of thousands of enraged citizens descended upon Berlin over the weekend to voice their collective displeasure at the government’s attempt to consolidate corporate dictatorship by passing a democracy killing agreement being marketed as a “free trade” deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
The TTIP is basically the TPP but between the U.S. and Europe as opposed to the U.S. and Asia and parts of Latin America. Like the TPP, it further consolidates corporate power, destroys consumer protections and has been negotiated entirely in secret. For prior articles on the TPP, see:
How the TPP Could Lead to Worldwide Internet Censorship
U.S. State Department Upgrades Serial Human Rights Abuser Malaysia to Include it in the TPP
Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”
Trade Expert and TPP Whistleblower – “We Should Be Very Concerned about What’s Hidden in This Trade Deal”
As the Senate Prepares to Vote on “Fast Track,” Here’s a Quick Primer on the Dangers of the TPP
It seems the Germans aren’t prepared to take this assault lying down. We learn from Reuters that:
At least 150,000 people marched in Berlin on Saturday in protest against a planned free trade deal between Europe and the United States that they say is anti-democratic and will lower food safety, labor and environmental standards.
Organizers – an alliance of environmental groups, charities and opposition parties – said 250,000 people had taken part in the rally against free trade deals with both the United States and Canada, far more than they had anticipated.
“This is the biggest protest that this country has seen for many, many years,” Christoph Bautz, director of citizens’ movement Campact told protesters in a speech.
That’s all well and good, but does it even matter? Japan recently saw its largest demonstrations in a generation against Abe’s “war legislation,” and he passed it anyway. Citizen opinion simply doesn’t matter in a neo-feudal oligarchy posing as a democracy.
Opposition to the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has risen over the past year in Germany, with critics fearing the pact will hand too much power to big multinationals at the expense of consumers and workers.
“What bothers me the most is that I don’t want all our consumer laws to be softened,” Oliver Zloty told Reuters TV. “And I don’t want to have a dictatorship by any companies.”
Now here’s the most interesting part. Merkel was completely caught off guard. As such, her government immediately rushed to propagandize via the media.
The level of resistance has taken Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government by surprise and underscores the challenge it faces to turn the tide in favor of the deal which proponents say will create a market of 800 million and serve as a counterweight to China’s economic clout.
In a full-page letter published in several German newspapers on Saturday, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned against “scaremongering”.
Personally, I would have gone with “scaremongering, conspiracy theorist, racist, sexist, anti-semitic, kooks.”
“We have the chance to set new and goods standards for growing global trade. With ambitious, standards for the environment and consumers and with fair conditions for investment and workers. This must be our aim,” Gabriel wrote.
Businesses hope the trade deal will deliver over $100 billion of economic gains on both sides of the Atlantic.
Even if that number proves to be true, we all know where 99.9% of that $100 billion would go. Straight to the bank accounts of the oligarchs, just like the trillions of dollars in central bank “stimulus” did. That’s just how rigged, neo-feudal oligarchies work.
Now for a few photos from the rally:
This will give you a sense of its size:
Now here’s Merkel blowing up democracy with a TTIP bomb:
Finally, nothing gets you in the mood like a little make out session between Merkel and a horned Obama

Nestle + hot water+ Flint = poison

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

localism and municipalism

As an anti-globaliser and an anti-imperialist
I see that large economic and political blocks
are just empires by another name.

I believe that for democracy to work and be
seen to work, you need to see the whites of
your politicians eyes. Only then can you
see if they're lying and, only then can you
go grab them and shake them a bit. Otherwise,
you can guarantee that politicians will use
your ignorance as a chance to rob and trick
you.

Here's a wonderful solution that is getting
a rough political ride.

I've appreciate David Graeber's work since
he was part of the Occupy movement. he's an
anthropologist who has studied economic
systems, and his book "Debt the first 5000 years"
is a good lesson in what money should do
for a fair society, as opposed to the one we have,
run by banks.
It will soon come to a choice between

bankocracy/ globalisation and

local democracy.

that will be brought on by TTIP. 

Are we going to chisel the headstone of
democratic governance at the end of this
year? or are we going to charge out of
this sick "democratic" sham and ponzi economy
and become free?

more later. read below

checkit: Guardian

Why is the world ignoring the revolutionary Kurds in Syria?

David Graeber

Amid the Syrian warzone a democratic experiment is being stamped into the ground by Isis. That the wider world is unaware is a scandal

Wednesday 8 October 2014 09.04 BST

Last modified on Wednesday 15 October 2014 15.42 BST

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In 1937, my father volunteered to fight in the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic. A would-be fascist coup had been temporarily halted by a worker’s uprising, spearheaded by anarchists and socialists, and in much of Spain a genuine social revolution ensued, leading to whole cities under directly democratic management, industries under worker control, and the radical empowerment of women.

Spanish revolutionaries hoped to create a vision of a free society that the entire world might follow. Instead, world powers declared a policy of “non-intervention” and maintained a rigorous blockade on the republic, even after Hitler and Mussolini, ostensible signatories, began pouring in troops and weapons to reinforce the fascist side. The result was years of civil war that ended with the suppression of the revolution and some of a bloody century’s bloodiest massacres.

I never thought I would, in my own lifetime, see the same thing happen again. Obviously, no historical event ever really happens twice. There are a thousand differences between what happened in Spain in 1936 and what is happening in Rojava, the three largely Kurdish provinces of northern Syria, today. But some of the similarities are so striking, and so distressing, that I feel it’s incumbent on me, as someone who grew up in a family whose politics were in many ways defined by the Spanish revolution, to say: we cannot let it end the same way again.

The autonomous region of Rojava, as it exists today, is one of few bright spots – albeit a very bright one – to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian revolution. Having driven out agents of the Assad regime in 2011, and despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbours, Rojava has not only maintained its independence, but is a remarkable democratic experiment. Popular assemblies have been created as the ultimate decision-making bodies, councils selected with careful ethnic balance (in each municipality, for instance, the top three officers have to include one Kurd, one Arab and one Assyrian or Armenian Christian, and at least one of the three has to be a woman), there are women’s and youth councils, and, in a remarkable echo of the armed Mujeres Libres (Free Women) of Spain, a feminist army, the “YJA Star” militia (the “Union of Free Women”, the star here referring to the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar), that has carried out a large proportion of the combat operations against the forces of Islamic State.

How can something like this happen and still be almost entirely ignored by the international community, even, largely, by the International left? Mainly, it seems, because the Rojavan revolutionary party, the PYD, works in alliance with Turkey’s Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), a Marxist guerilla movement that has since the 1970s been engaged in a long war against the Turkish state. Nato, the US and EU officially classify them as a “terrorist” organisation. Meanwhile, leftists largely write them off as Stalinists.

But, in fact, the PKK itself is no longer anything remotely like the old, top-down Leninist party it once was. Its own internal evolution, and the intellectual conversion of its own founder, Abdullah Ocalan, held in a Turkish island prison since 1999, have led it to entirely change its aims and tactics.

The PKK has declared that it no longer even seeks to create a Kurdish state. Instead, inspired in part by the vision of social ecologist and anarchist Murray Bookchin, it has adopted the vision of “libertarian municipalism”, calling for Kurds to create free, self-governing communities, based on principles of direct democracy, that would then come together across national borders – that it is hoped would over time become increasingly meaningless. In this way, they proposed, the Kurdish struggle could become a model for a wordwide movement towards genuine democracy, co-operative economy, and the gradual dissolution of the bureaucratic nation-state.

Since 2005 the PKK, inspired by the strategy of the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, declared a unilateral ceasefire with the Turkish state and began concentrating their efforts in developing democratic structures in the territories they already controlled. Some have questioned how serious all this really is. Clearly, authoritarian elements remain. But what has happened in Rojava, where the Syrian revolution gave Kurdish radicals the chance to carry out such experiments in a large, contiguous territory, suggests this is anything but window dressing. Councils, assemblies and popular militias have been formed, regime property has been turned over to worker-managed co-operatives – and all despite continual attacks by the extreme rightwing forces of Isis. The results meet any definition of a social revolution. In the Middle East, at least, these efforts have been noticed: particularly after PKK and Rojava forces intervened to successfully fight their way through Isis territory in Iraq to rescue thousands of Yezidi refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar after the local peshmerga fled the field. These actions were widely celebrated in the region, but remarkably received almost no notice in the European or North American press.

Now, Isis has returned, with scores of US-made tanks and heavy artillery taken from Iraqi forces, to take revenge against many of those same revolutionary militias in Kobane, declaring their intention to massacre and enslave – yes, literally enslave – the entire civilian population. Meanwhile, the Turkish army stands at the border preventing reinforcements or ammunition from reaching the defenders, and US planes buzz overhead making occasional, symbolic, pinprick strikes – apparently, just to be able to say that it did not do nothing as a group it claims to be at war with crushes defenders of one of the world’s great democratic experiments.

If there is a parallel today to Franco’s superficially devout, murderous Falangists, who would it be but Isis? If there is a parallel to the Mujeres Libres of Spain, who could it be but the courageous women defending the barricades in Kobane? Is the world – and this time most scandalously of all, the international left – really going to be complicit in letting history repeat itself?