If push comes to shove, feel free to utilise the 650 potential sandbags in parliament.

Economic analysis from a marxist perspective can be dangerous to your health. You might develop an untamable urge to urinate on any Tories you might run across in the streets, after which you'll have your spinal curvature readjusted by a bunch of rozzers with nightsticks.

Imagine what it's like over here: a leading figure of our opposition is an outspoken communist of Iranian heritage, who also happens to be just about the only macroeconomist in parliament. You can literally see the cognitive dissonance in peoples' heads when she's presenting her case.

Excellent stuff, all around. It's nice to have a comprehensive overview over certain aspects of (y)our economic system instead of having to rely on piecemeal analysis by Baker, Stiglitz, Krugman, Galbraith, DeLong and the likes.

I watched the November issue last night and it made me appreciate even more that we still have a proper socialist party in our parliament, including a communist wing. They are still considered pariahs, yet their presence alone suffices to keep the other parties from following the British Tories' footsteps -- what a nasty bunch of inhumane wankers they continuously reveal themselves to be.

People are starving in Greece, fascists are marching in the streets of Athens.

And given that SNAP participation went from ~26 million in January of '07 to ~39 million in January of '10 to ~47 million in January of '13, I'd say the US is getting there as well. The planned cuts to SNAP will only accelerate it further.

But everything's good in the UK though. People are not likely to starve, now that food banks are popping up everywhere and the Red Cross is distributing care packages for the first time since the end of WW2.

Besides, those likely to starve will freeze first anyway. They had ~31k of excess winter deaths last year, while this year's prognosis was going for ~35k, last I heard. Food or fuel, can't have both.

Those riots in London two years ago, they were a singular occurence. All the underlying issues have been addressed. Youth unemployment is #1 on David Cameron's list, I'm sure of it. Well, maybe #2. Privatisation of the NHS has priority after all.

I apologize for my sarcasm and my cynicism, but mass violence is not unimaginable anymore in the Old World and it's pissing me off. We are in the process of flushing an entire generation of people down the toilet. These current rates of youth unemployment are unsustainable in a democratic society. The banlieus of Paris, the boroughs of London... shit will hit the fan eventually, unless there's a radical change of policy from within the system.

The elections to the European Parliament in May next year will be an indicator. As of now, it looks as if a whole lot of (far) right wing parties will enter the stage.

Also, keep an eye on the island of bliss(ful ignorance) within Europe: Germany. We're heading straight for a grand coalition that would control ~80% of parliament, rendering all instruments at the opposition's disposal inert. Did I mention they also have the neccessary 2/3 majority to institute changes to our constitution? Fucking awesome!

Again, sorry for being a grumpy fuck, but everytime I open the paper, it's a bloody nightmare -- and that's before you take away the sugar coating.

In 1951 Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq received the vote required from the parliament to nationalize the British-owned oil industry, in a situation known as the Abadan Crisis. Despite British pressure, including an economic blockade, the nationalization continued.

August 19, 1953, a successful coup was headed by retired army general Fazlollah Zahedi, organized by the United States (CIA) with the active support of the British (MI6) (known as Operation Ajax). The coup—with a black propaganda campaign designed to turn the population against Mossadegh—forced Mossadegh from office. Mossadegh was arrested and tried for treason. /wikipedia

Iran got trampled on and interfered with by foreign nations exploiting her natural resources--oil. I'd be pissed too.

By contrast, Iran knows what happened to her next door neighbour after Iraq changed the preferred currency for oil sales from USD to Euros late in 2000 (They switched back to dollars in 2003.)

My statement isn't inaccurate. They are a democracy. They have a democratically elected leader. You not liking it does not make it not a democracy. By your logic I might as well say the USA is not a democracy since they are a representative democracy. Of course the USA like Iran is just a variant of democracy. There are 20 something variants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_democracy#Forms

Your use of the word dictator did not have the context to it you now ascribe.

If the Supreme Leader holds a higher position of power, why isn't he visibly controlling the nation? (genuine question)

The president doesn't always have the highest position though. Many republics have both a president and prime minister. The prime minister will run the nation. Or like in Australia where Queen Elizabeth the 2nd holds the highest position, but she is a figurehead only, the parliament runs the nation.

Now we're talking:

https://twitter.com/MdB_Stroebele/status/395983017895657472/photo/1

That's a prominent member of our parliament who met with Snowden to find out if he'd be willing to testify in a case against the US. Not going to happen. He had made it clear from the beginning that he's not going to hurt the US and the Russians would revoke his temporary asylum should he divulge more information.

But the mere fact that they made it public is rather astonishing.

The US is hardly the only country, we (UK) had a vote on it in Parliament. Also, he seems to have a problem with the fact that the US is openly discussing this - would he rather the discussions were behind closed doors?

The European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs had a hearing about NSA/PRISM/etc yesterday, with Jacob Applebaum and Alan Rusbridger amongst others. Greenwald was supposed to be videoconferenced in, but it didn't work for reasons unknown to me.

Two interesting bits of information:

1) Sweden is closely involved in the Fives Eyes program. They have an installation to monitor satellite communications and access to fibre optic cables that the members of Five Eyes don't have access to. No specifics were mentioned, but a quick glance at a map of long distance cables indicates to me that it's Russian communications they are interested in -- those run through Sweden.

2) Nations with access to PRISM/ECHELON besides the Five Eyes: France, Israel and Sweden. Likely to have access, though probably limited: Germany. Potential access, but unconfirmed: a total of thirty nations.

And, as a special bonus, the former chair of the special committee that authored the 2001 report on ECHELON said the following, paraphrased by me:

"If rentention of domestic communications meta data is deemed neccessary, the acquired data should not be stored outside of the respective nation. Normally, I'd say outside of the EU, but that just brings us back to the problem of GB and the GCHQ."

That's a high ranking EU official stating, on record, that GB cannot be trusted.

I haven't had time to watch this just yet, but there's something in the description worth commenting:

But no serious economist or political thinker -- with the possible exception of Gordon Brown -- has ever suggested capitalism can break free of booms and busts.

With Germany's elections coming up in three weeks, I'd like to point out the fifth party of our current parliament, Die Linke (The Left), who argue for a modified form of capitalism, focused on the benefit of the population, not the corporations.

Naturally, they are a pariah amongst market-friendly proponents of corporatism, but they still keep all the other parties in check... to some degree.

It seems as if Ed Miliband and his jolly horde actually managed to postpone the strike by a few days. Who'd have thought that there might be substantial opposition in Britain's parliament...

I did not see this coming, to be honest. They're still going to strike, but at least their warmongering will be on the fucking record.

The picture is golden, by the way. Protective gear for the foreigners, a pack of smokes for the locals.

In fairness though, the monarchy doesn't have much power. Just like the US, the power is in the Congress/Parliament. The idea being that the stupid people will pay attention to the soap opera that is the president /monarchy while the real powers are relatively unhindered without public scrutiny. Of course in the age of TV and the Internet, this is circumvented somewhat. But still, in general people pay far more attention to the president than Congress even though Congress affects you far more than the president can

Sorry but this gesture doesnt illustrate anything about the abortion debate, but it says plenty about drinking on the job. This dumbass grabbing the woman is drunk, Ireland has two bars in its parliament and they were serving alcohol until 5am. So this genius is drunk while voting on important legislation, sees a friend of his (they are from the same party in the same county) and grabs her. She wont do anything about it because they are in the same party, and we all know party loyalty trumps all other concerns.

And another one. So now that we have it in print, can we drop the pretence and call it what it is: the world's most sophisticated system of industrial espionage.

I'd complain about being spied upon by supposed friends and allies, but as recently declassified documents showed, the Allied Control Council reserved the right to spy on any and all communications in Germany, even beyond the reunification in 1990. So it's not like we had any privacy to begin with, only the illusion of privacy, lasting a whopping 61 years. And it's all legal. Unconstitutional, but legal.

Snowden's material included surveillance statistics, showing that the NSA is intercepting, on average, 20 million phone calls a day in this beautiful country of mine. Most of it will be plain old industrial espionage, just like the bugs they planted at the EU offices.
So I'm rather surprised at the lack of outrage coming from my government. I know they don't give a rat's ass about the privacy of us plebs, but industrial espionage on a massive scale? I'd assumed they wouldn't like that one bit. Not a peep though, only silent obedience.

Anyway, everything's presented as shocking news in the media, so I thought I'd just link a certain document, aptly named AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL. As you can see, it is a report that was presented to the European Parliament in 1998.

Skip to 7.4.1:

The Interim report said that within Europe, all email, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by Satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK.

Irish Parliament kicks ASS!
Obama = HUMAN GARBAGE