Sales of George Orwell’s 1984 Have Soared 126%

I first read this story earlier in the day via the Washington Examiner.  That was a few hours ago and at the time their story stated sales were up a mere 69%.  They subsequently  updated the article to inform readers that sales had risen to up 91%.  Well I just checked for myself and the … Read more

Picture of the Day: CHANGE

Actually the image is titled “Stasi USA” and it’s another brilliant gem from William Banzai7. Some things never CHANGE.   Like this post? Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G Follow me on Twitter.

Even the Author of the Patriot Act Slams the NSA and Eric Holder on Spying

You know it’s bad when the author of what might be the most unconstitutional bill in U.S. history criticizes you for being too authoritarian on civil rights.  Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), the man who introduced the Patriot Act in October 2001 has written a letter to Eric Holder at the Department of Injustice expressing dismay about … Read more

Mayor Bloomberg on Drones: “Oh it’s Big Brother. Get Used to it”

While hosting his weekly radio show this past Friday, Your Royal Highness Mayor Michael Bloomberg explained to the serfs of NYC that privacy is dead and that you just “can’t keep the tide” of the surveillance state from coming in.  His quotes perfectly demonstrate the attitude he takes toward his subjects and are quite revealing.  For instance:

“Everybody wants their privacy, but I don’t know how you’re going to maintain it.  It’s just we’re going into a different world, uncharted, and, like it or not, what people can do, what governments can do, is different.  And you can to some extent control, but you can’t keep the tides from coming in.”

“The argument against using automation, it’s this craziness– oh, it’s Big Brother. Get used to it.”

As if that isn’t bad enough, it also become 100% crystal clear that this guy wants to fill the skies of NYC with “freedom birds.”  He sees absolutely no problem with it at all.  In his own words:

“But what’s the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building? I mean intellectually I have trouble making a distinction. And you know you’re gonna have face recognition software.  People are working on that.”

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The Really, Really Creepy Thing About “Google Glass”

Google glass.  Just the latest breakthrough technology that everyone seems to be talking about.  I’m not a tech savvy guy and for much of my life I’ve been a pretty late adopter of new technologies, but the big brother concerns associated with the Google Glass seem worth highlighting.  From Mark Hurst:

Google Glass might change your life, but not in the way you think. There’s something else Google Glass makes possible that no one – no one – has talked about yet, and so today I’m writing this blog post to describe it.

The key experiential question of Google Glass isn’t what it’s like to wear them, it’s what it’s like to be around someone else who’s wearing them. I’ll give an easy example. Your one-on-one conversation with someone wearing Google Glass is likely to be annoying, because you’ll suspect that you don’t have their undivided attention. And you can’t comfortably ask them to take the glasses off (especially when, inevitably, the device is integrated into prescription lenses). Finally – here’s where the problems really start – you don’t know if they’re taking a video of you.

Now pretend you don’t know a single person who wears Google Glass… and take a walk outside. Anywhere you go in public – any store, any sidewalk, any bus or subway – you’re liable to be recorded: audio and video. Fifty people on the bus might be Glassless, but if a single person wearing Glass gets on, you – and all 49 other passengers – could be recorded. Not just for a temporary throwaway video buffer, like a security camera, but recorded, stored permanently, and shared to the world.

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Mark Zuckerberg is Watching You: Facebook to Create “Mobile Location-Tracking App”

I am very particular about my social media.  I love Twitter and very much dislike Facebook. Twitter is efficient, Facebook is inefficient.  With Twitter you have easy access to serious people talking about serious things.  Facebook is a lot of noise and you have no interest in 99% of it.  It is the junk food of social media.  The best quote I ever heard about the two services that I think is entirely accurate is:

“Facebook is where you lie to your friends and Twitter is where you tell truth to strangers.”

While I do have a personal Facebook profile that I created many years ago, I do not use it.  I have thought about creating a page for my blog because it remains a powerful way to spread information, but I have yet to do so.

Sorry for going off on a tangent, this post was supposed to be about Facebook’s continued violation of user privacy, which appears to be continuing in an unabashed fashion.  From Bloomberg:

Facebook Inc. (FB) is developing a smartphone application that will track the location of users, two people with knowledge of the matter said, bolstering efforts to benefit from growing use of social media on mobile computers.

The app, scheduled for release by mid-March, is designed to help users find nearby friends and would run even when the program isn’t open on a handset, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public.

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The Stock Market: Food Stamps for the 1%

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
– Henry David Thoreau

Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.
– Edward Abbey

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.
– Jean-Paul Sartre

The Stock Market:  Food Stamps for the 1%
For most of the past four or five years, I have spent the majority of my time studying the dominant forces that fuel the power structure that exists in these United States today, and indeed throughout the world.  My education began quite suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of the last decade when I started understanding fiat money, Central Banking and the global monetary system.  Since then, I have expanded my understanding to mainstream media brainwashing, the military-industrial complex, the role of the political oligarchs in Washington D.C., the corruption of the food industry under the complicity of the FDA itself and much more.  The more I peered under the curtain, no matter what the industry, the clearer it became that the system had no chance of survival under its current form.  What’s worse, it became obvious that the very small 0.01% of the population that I call oligarchs (financial and political), who are actively gaming the system for their own pleasure, are well aware of the system’s terminal nature.  That’s why they are rapidly putting in place the police state grid.

That said, this article is not about the implementation of the surveillance state.  I cover that pretty much daily these days.  This post is more of a philosophical stream of consciousness; a guilty pleasure that I have not engaged in as of late.

I have mentioned many times in the past that food stamps are just a payoff to the poor.  While I think a permanent and expanding welfare state is completely and utterly destructive to an economy and culture, I do not demonize these folks.  The vast majority of them would like to work and be productive.  They are victims and this is being done to them quite intentionally.  It creates dependency.  It keeps them off the streets.  It’s an unspoken bribe plain and simple.  The oligarchs do not want angry, roving, hungry masses on the streets while they strip mine what’s left of the economy.  Food stamps, disability and all sorts of other freebies take care of this segment of the population as the oligarchs continue on with their crimes and prepare for the day of reckoning (hence the surveillance grid).

However, the oligarchs have another problem to deal with.  This problem is the huge group of people that resides in between them and the poor.  Ideally, they would like to shove all of them into the poverty category and keep them barely alive and on dole of the government.  That way, the politically connected large corporations that do not pay taxes and receive bailouts can continue to pay them peasant wages while the government takes care of the rest.  It’s a win-win.  The situation I just described is exactly what is happening as we speak and has been occurring at an ever frequent pace since the coup of 2008.  This is exactly why people are buying guns, gold and are extremely negative on the economy and the future of the United States.  I recently discussed this in my post Gallup Poll: Americans Most Negative on the Nation and Economy in 30 Years.  If you read the Gallup data in detail you will see that this level of negative readings only occur during very bad economic times.  The average person can feel themselves getting poorer despite the nonsense spewed by the mainstream media.  Their standards of living don’t lie and no amount of false statistics can change that.  As John Adams famously said:  Facts are stubborn things.

Stubborn indeed; and this is where the stock market comes into play.  Banana Ben Bernanke has not made it a secret that he is directly targeting a higher stock market with his purchasing power destroying money printing.  He has made that clear from pretty much the beginning.  The idea is that a higher market will improve the balance sheets of pensions, individual retirement accounts and also create a psychological impact that will make people feel confident and thus boost the economy.  It is the last point that is of course most important. If the latter does not happen then the boost in stock prices is merely an unsustainable bubble that will burst and all the “good” that was done to balance sheets will be undone with a vengeance at some point in the future.  The latter did not happen.

As much as people like to talk about the 1% versus the 99%, the real winners since 2008 have been the oligarchs.  The 0.01% have benefited much more than any other class in terms of both money and power.  It’s the 0.01% versus everyone else and the quicker we recognize that, stop fighting amongst ourselves, and push them aside the better it will be for our species.

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Juice Rap News: Excellent and Entertaining Video on the Surveillance State

This is simply a great way to spend 5 minutes on another horribly boring day in the markets. Like this post? Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G Follow me on Twitter.