Oh lord do everyone a favour and stop playing the victim card, no one's buying it. If they're armed and have power over people, they should be stringently held to a higher standard than those they have power over, even a kid knows that. That is the most basic of principles that every non-sadist adheres to. Only your ilk think otherwise - isn't it strange how only dodgy cops don't want the cops to be under scrutiny?

But hey! I understand how cops like to stick up for their buddies. You're thicker than thieves with half the personality. Everyone can play that passive-aggressive game and it goes nowhere so try addressing the argument for a change. Funny how you ignore the shit out of anyone that demolishes your point, did you do that when you were a cop as well, or did you just start blasting secure in the knowledge that every other cop would instantly cover your arse just like you do so readily for them?

If you want any evidence that we need to hold those in power to account, just look at the financial mess we're in thanks to unchecked bankers and corrupt governments. You obviously don't like looking at prison statistics as we've seen, so try looking outside your own sphere of influence. But that would require empathy.

Warren is a smart woman who was HATED by the bankers she tried telling for 10 years that trouble was brewing; then she was right.
They hated her more.

Behind all this is a serious question: how does any institution that takes short term deposits (a bank) handle its long term obligations (loans) when the deposits (your money) has the right to leave at any time?

No one has really solved that one yet, as far as I can tell...Maybe she has a smart answer. Smarter than letting the banks trade meaningless swaps, which is what she opposes in this speech...

my god...
i have to agree with your assessment and i have been watching putin and his politics for awhile.
that man is one savvy player but as you stated..he knows when to open the table up.
im not giving him a free pass for some serious fucked up shit he has done but we cant ignore his political chops.

i think we all see whats starting to play out and we think to ourselves "no way they would go that far.that would be suicide,on multiple levels".
nevermind the deaths...
or the injured and disabled.
nevermind the collapsed economies leading to death,disease and starvation.
the political fallout alone would ruin many political players...forever.

but i posted a report awhile ago and it has always stuck in my head.its not all conspiratorial and shadow government stuff.its the real power elites and they truly dont care.

the man makes the case that all wars have been bankers wars.
that debt is the new currency and war is their favorite way to enslave a people.
and they have been doing it for centuries.
with globalization and sovereign boundaries not as traditional as they have been,due to the internet and mass communication.
nationalism and religion are not quite the motivating force they once were.

if you look at what russia has been doing with its oil reserves and how it has been dealing with its debt and military.the interview you shared takes on whole new dimensions..and those dimensions are frightening.

its the bankers.
http://videosift.com/video/all-wars-are-bankers-wars-what-school-history-never-taught

Oh, and I left out an obvious one, the Rich...
(ceo's, wall streeter's, aristocracy, land owners, bankers etc.)
My bad.

despite the mind-numbing conditions, they still managed to reign in the bankers

In america anyway, the government provides clean water,sewers, police, fire depts, schools, safe roads. etc. Corps cant do business without highways,,or healthy consumers and workers. This guy is just a complete moron..the idea that bankers and corporations will self police or that markets self adjust has been proven wrong by history over and over. Who will plow the roads? who will build the damn roads? Who would build hoover dam? who would build sewers? Who would provide disaster relief? The lunacy of this idiots arguements are self evident.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/didnt-eric-holder-go-bankers

These pundits would be screaming for his head on a platter if Holder happened to be appointed by a republican or was white. American political TV shows rivals the Kardashians in the mindless bullshit department.

Who fricken does that!? So backwards.
Tressy Capps was later fired from her employer (Codwell Banker a Realtor) stemming from this video. She is also running for City Council.
http://pocho.com/socal-gringa-doesnt-like-mexican-flag-on-lawn-video/

They'll still use a monetary unit issued by the same international bankers I'm sure, so the political distinction is largely moot.

Up until I saw my fellow countrymen (including many I respected) fawning like chimps at a tea party during that whole "jubilee" thing I might have agreed. There seems to be a huge cognitive dissonance for most people when it comes to the royals.

On the one hand most don't really take it very seriously, on the other many (maybe even most) appear to have a sub-conscious desire/need to submit to their natural betters. Our whole national identity is built on the myths of Kings and failed rebellions and I fear for many the Monarchy represents a kind of bizarre political security blanket. We claim to not really care but deep down I think many of us secretly fear loosing our mythical matriarch.

One might liken it to celebrity worship backed by 100's & 1000's of years of religious mythology. The Royal's aren't really human to us, they are more like some closely related parent species born to a life we could only dream of. I realise that when asked directly most people would consciously acknowledge that was silly, but most would also respond the same to say Christian sexual repression. They know sex and nakedness when considered rationally are nothing to be ashamed of, but they still continue to treat their own urges as somehow sinful when they do not fall within rigidly defined social parameters.

We still haven't gotten over such Judeo-Christian self policing because the social structures built up around it are still with us (even if we fool ourselves into thinking we are beyond the reach of such sub-conscious influences). I don't think we will ever get over our master-slave culture while class and unearned privilege are still built into the fabric of our society. Having a Royal family, no matter how symbolic, is the very living embodiment of this kind of backwards ideology.

It's like trying to quit heroin while locked in a room with a big bag of the stuff.

It's true to say most don't take the whole thing very seriously but that to me is almost as concerning. Most people when asked don't believe advertising has a significant effect on their psyche but Coke-a-cola still feels like spending about 3 billion a year on it is worthwhile. One of them is clearly mistaken!

Our royal family here, is to me working in the same way as coke's advertising. It's a focal point for a lot of sub-conscious concepts we are bombarded with our whole lives. Naturally there are many sides to this and it wouldn't work without heavy media manipulation, state indoctrination etc. but it's an intrinsic part of the coercive myth none the less. Monarch's, Emperors and wealthy Dynasties are all poisons to me. No matter the pragmatic details, the sub-conscious effect seems significant and cumulative.

"Dead" symbolisms IMHO can often be the most dangerous. At least one is consciously aware of the devils we see. No one is watching the one's we have forgotten.....

The above is reason enough for me but I have bog all better to do this aft so I'll dive into the rabbithole a bit.....

(We do very quickly start getting into conspiracy theory territory hare so I'll try to keep it as uncontroversial as I can.)

A. The UK is truly ruled by financial elites not political ones IMHO. "The city" says jump, Whitehall says how high. The Royal family being among the wealthiest landowners and investors in the world (let alone UK) presumably can exert the same kind of influence. Naturally this occurs behind closed doors, but when the ownership class puts it's foot down the government ignores them to their extreme detriment. (It's hard to argue with people who own your economy de-facto and can make or break your career)

B. The queen herself sits on the council on foreign relations & Bilderberg group and she was actually the chairwoman of the "committee of 300" for several years. (and that's not even starting on club of Rome, shares in Goldman Sachs etc.)

C. SIS the uk's intelligence services (MI5/6 etc.), which have been proven to on occasion operate without civilian oversight in the past, are sworn to the crown. This is always going to be a most contentious point as it's incredibly difficult to prove wrongdoings, but I have very strong suspicions based on various incidents (David Kelly, James Andanson, Jill Dando etc.), that if they wanted/needed you dead/threatened that would not be especially difficult to arrange.

D. Jimmy Saville. This one really is tin foil hat territory, but it's no secret he was close to the Royal family. I am of the opinion this is because he was a top level procurer of "things", for which I feel there is a great deal of evidence, but I can't expect people to just go along with that idea. However given the latest "paedogeddon" scandal involving a extremely high level abuse ring (cabinet members, mi5/6, bankers etc.) it certainly would come as little surprise to find royal family members involved.

Points A&B I would stand behind firmly. C&D are drifting into conjecture but still potentially relevant I feel.

But even if we ignore all of them, our culture is built from the ground up upon the idea of privilege of birth. That there are some people born better or more deserving than the rest of us. When I refer to symbolism this is what I mean. Obviously the buck does not stop with the monarchy, England is hopelessly stratified by class all the way through, but the royal family exemplify this to absurd extremes.

At best I feel this hopelessly distorts and corrupts our collective sense of identity on a sub-conscious level. At worst....Well you must have some idea now how paranoid I'm capable of being about the way the world is run. (Not that I necessarily believe it all wholeheartedly, but I'm open to the possibility and inclined to suggest it more likely than the mainstream narrative)


On a pragmatic note: Tourism would be fine without them I think, we still have the history and the castles and the soldiers with silly hats etc. And I think the palaces would make great hotels and museums. They make great zoo exhibits I agree, just maybe not let them continue to own half the zoo and bribe the zoo keepers?


Anyway much love as always. You responded with considered points which is always worthy of respect, regardless of whether I agree with it all.

Number seems to vary where you look and how much is controlled for in the study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#United_States

Getting a bit off topic, but at least here in Australia for lower skilled jobs (say fast food) there is generally standard bonus pay for holidays and overtime standards via unions.

For professional jobs, it's largely factored into wages. People know for example, that investment bankers work weekends and long nights and this factors into their high default wage versus other finance jobs. There's a tacit understanding of the work commitment required for various professions whether it's for men or women.

That is quoted once in the whole clip. The number has hovered between $0.70-$0.85 for the last few decades that the issue has been talked about openly.

Where do you get the impression that Oliver is arguing about equal pay for dissimilar jobs at any point in the entire segment? I do not see that at any point. If that were true, obviously that would be ridiculous. The goal here is equality, not up-ending the whole system of employment.

Lastly, as it's said plainly in the first few minutes of the clip: "Equal pay for equal work". There are two points I would like to make here:
1) that's clearly not an argument for inequality in favor of work compensation for women over men, and
2) If we *really* wanted to pay people equally for their work, mexican migrants who pick our vegetables every season, movers, factory-workers, carpenters and any other manual-labor jobs would be living the highlife in their gated communities with million-dollar homes, and most CEO's, wallstreet bankers, and office joe's would be scraping by in the 'burbs.

I think it's all just stuff the customers are saying to their usual bank teller or bank rep. I know my mom gets pretty chatty with her bankers, so they know all kinds of stuff about our family.

I've been seeing it more and more and I really don't understand. I've heard it explained before as something akin to Government power or Corporations. In essence it's not enough to get 90% or even 99% of your way. You need 100% or you're complaining about how unfair everything is. Especially people in power do this more than anyone, they believe that they are the protagonists of their story, so if they're not getting everything then they're getting nothing.

It's certainly weird but you see this most recently with the Bankers or Wall Street people complaining that they're being hammered by Obama or attacked by the media too much. When they get 90% if not more of their way done, which is why the banks are even bigger now than they were before and we're heading for an even bigger crash.

You also look to how easy it is to get a message out there. Those who have access to the media so readily don't see how they are dominating the headlines, they only see how much they've given up. It's a weird delusion.

"Justifications" for the state include: defense (and the Bilderberg event is rife with military brass); regulating banks (and the conference is full of -- central and other -- bankers); and (now) issues surrounding climate change (and the conference is conspicuous for the absence of any climate scientists -- although captains of (polluting) industries abound).