News Items

In San Francisco, the DA Wants to Looks Through Your Twitter

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This article is a prime example of what law enforcement and intelligence agencies will do to you if they think they can get away with it.  This is precisely why we need to hold their feet to the fire every step of the way and defend the Bill of Rights at all costs.  The more you look under the surface, the more it becomes clear that our government considers anyone that protests the oligarchy to be their enemy.  This was made clear when we discovered that The FBI Classifies Peaceful American Protestors as “Terrorists.”

From the always excellent EFF:

Last month the San Francisco District Attorney’s office went on a fishing expedition.  After EFF and ACLU got involved, the DA wisely cut bait.

The fishing expedition cut short by the DA last week consisted of a pair of subpoenas issued to Twitter, seeking tweets, photos, and a trove of other information related to the accounts of two activists, Robert Donohoe and Lauren Smith, whom the SF DA has charged with a number of offenses stemming from a Columbus Day anti-capitalist protest.

Not only did the subpoenas to Twitter violate federal law (the Stored Communications Act makes clear that the government cannot use a subpoena to gain access to the content of communications), but they violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution as well.  Government surveillance of what we say—even in public—has a chilling effect on speech.  That is why courts have held that any effort to compel the disclosure of a person’s communications or associations must be narrowly tailored.

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Swedish Consumers Get Served Fake Beef

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This story fits in perfectly with my post yesterday Inflation Hits Coffee as Brewers Secretly Swap Robusta for Arabica, in the sense that as the cost of real food and quality items soars, the tendency will be to simply replace real goods with fake goods.  It’s one thing to buy a fake handbag, it’s quite another to discover your meat has been dyed pink to look like something it’s not.  “American as apple pie” is soon to be replaced with “American as biotech salmon.”  From UPI:

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jan. 5 (UPI) — About 95.5 tons of pork cuts dyed to look like beef have been imported to Sweden, and about 70 ton of it have already been sold, official say.

The fake beef was imported into Sweden for two years and sold at grocery stores nationwide, The Local.se reported.

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Chart of the Day: Inflation Since the American Revolution

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As is clear by this chart, inflation was virtually unheard of until the Creature from Jekyll Island (the Federal Reserve) took over.  However, more importantly, things didn’t really start to get bad until the 1970’s right after Nixon took the nation off the gold standard in 1971.  Since that time, America has seen a period of … Read more

Alex Jones to Debate Piers Morgan Live Tonight!

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This is guaranteed to give Piers’ show its highest ratings ever.  Time to dust of the TV and watch some fireworks! [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6CBcWLnikQ&feature=player_embedded] In Liberty, Mike Like this post? Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G Follow me on Twitter.

The Guardian: Paul Krugman should be U.S. Treasury Secretary

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The friend who sent this article to me wrote:

Part of me actually hopes for this appointment because he will accelerate the collapse of the current psychotic Keynesian ideology and our unsustainable fiscal practices. The sooner it ends, the better…even if that end is painful.

I couldn’t agree more.  Now for some snippets from the latest Op Ed insanity from a major publication:

Not only is he the world’s best-known economist, Krugman has the intellect and integrity to resist Wall Street’s calls for austerity.

He could ignore what Wall Street and conservative media interests want and pick somebody who would represent what the electorate voted for. And not even just the people who voted for him: there are a lot of Republican voters out there who are also unemployed.

It didn’t take long for the author to expose his lack of understanding in the above paragraph, where he uses the same old false left-right divide to imply Wall Street is “conservative.”  They are the furthest thing from conservative, they are simply financial oligarchs that own both major parties and Paul Krugman would be an ideal tool for them as well.

Then again, he does make one point I agree with:

This was unprecedented and an historic change; Kim is practically the only World Bank president in 60 years who was not previously a banker or a war criminal.

However, he immediately reverts to nonsense very quickly when he states:

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Inflation Hits Coffee as Brewers Secretly Swap Robusta for Arabica

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This article hit close to home for me.  Literally.  It was just over the holiday season that I mentioned to my mom that her coffee doesn’t taste as good as it used to.  She insisted that she was buying the same blend as always and I insisted it didn’t taste as good.  The conversation ended there.

Then I came across the following article and everything started to make sense.  From the Daily Finance:

Reuters is reporting that many of America’s major brands have been quietly tweaking their coffee blends. While most coffee companies consider their blends trade secrets, and are loath to disclose exactly what goes into them, both circumstantial and direct evidence suggests they’re now substituting lower-grade Robusta beans for some of their pricier Arabica, and degrading the quality of our coffee.

Research out of agricultural bank Rabobank confirms that demand for Arabica beans among coffee buyers “has fallen 27% year-to-date, while Robusta [demand] is 25% higher.” This seems to confirm a widespread alteration of the bean mix.

Why the switcheroo? Prepare to not be shocked. The answer is: price.

Now here’s the kicker of the article.

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Washington Post: “Markets Saved World” in 2012

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This is a brilliant piece of propaganda.  Central Planners are trying with all their might to force people into behaviors and financial assets that are in direct contrast to their logic as well as long term financial well being.  This is the height of immorality, not to mention hubris.  In the end, there is no chance of any of this working as the reality on the ground will overwhelm all of the manipulations and lies of the corrupt oligarch class.

From the Washington Post/Bloomberg article “Almost All of Wall Street Got 2012 Wrong as Markets Saved World”:

Blankfein was more prescient. “I tend to be a little more positive than what I’m hearing from other people,” the 58-year- old CEO told Bloomberg Television in an April 25 interview at Goldman Sachs’s New York headquarters. “One of the big risks that people have to contemplate is that things go right.”

Well of course Mr. Blankfein was optimistic.  He knows he has the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve in his back pocket and they will do whatever he says with one phone call.  Furthermore, if things go wrong you just get a bailout.  Crony Capitalism 101.  That’s how the World’s 100 Richest People Got $241 Billion Richer in 2012.

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The Greeks Have Already Dumped the Euro

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Really fascinating article about how many cities and communities in Greece have already moved on from the euro to bartering as well as alternative currencies.  The city of Volos, 200 miles north of Athens with a population of 170,000 is highlighted in the article due to the size of its alternative money market centered around a local currency call the Tem.  This sort of behavior will be the wave of the future in all countries, as Central Bank currencies are debased into extinction.  It’s interesting because while I was in Crested Butte over New Year’s I noticed they have a local currency going there called Crested Butte Bucks and I was really surprised to see that you can spend them pretty much anywhere in town.  I also highlighted this trend in my post earlier this year English City of Bristol Launches its Own Local Currency.

Now, from the Guardian:

It’s been a busy day at the market in downtown Volos. Angeliki Ioanitou has sold a decent quantity of olive oil and soap, while her friend Maria has done good business with her fresh pies.

But not a single euro has changed hands.

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World’s 100 Richest People Got $241 Billion Richer in 2012

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I am not an envious person, nor am I someone just trying to make as much money as possible.  If that was my goal I would’ve just stayed at my cushy and easy Wall Street job.  This isn’t about money, it is about the fact that the richest people in the world are merely abusing the monetary and political systems of their nations while pushing everyone else into deep debt servitude.  Moreover, now in the United States the oligarchs are attempting to disarm the population so that their fortunes are protected from the masses that they have just raped and pillaged.  From the Los Angeles Times:

The richest people on the planet got even richer in 2012, adding $241 billion to their collective net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s 100 wealthiest individuals.

The aggregate net worth of the world’s top 100 stood at $1.9 trillion at the market close Dec. 31, according to the index. Of the people who appeared on the final ranking of 2012, only 16 registered a net loss for the 12-month period.

“Last year was a great one for the world’s billionaires,” said John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of Red Apple Group Inc., in an email written poolside on his BlackBerry in the Bahamas.

Meanwhile, as Spain descended into the gutter in 2012…

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