Embed works for me.

It's all about messaging isn't it? When all other countries considers tax as a means to take care of its people, American right-wing politics call it Socialism, Communism, Facism and whatever else they want to call it (but hush hush on its own Socialism for its banks, for-profit prisons, the MIC & other Big Tech, Big Pharma, etc.). It's like America loves nothing but to keep throwing money to billionaires who don't need it. Feed the billinaires, not the downtrodden!

True, any government-run programs have a certain waste. But letting Big Corps profiteering run rampant instread proves, time-and-again, that doesn't improve the quality of living for the vast majority of the population a single bit.

From the YouTube link:

Guy Gets Inside A Chinese Click Farm And Holy Crap, That's A Lot Of Phones

​Turns out if you want to run a business where you rate a bunch of apps and write fake reviews, you can't just spoof having a bunch of phones — you actually need the phones. And so that's what we have here: a room full of phones relentlessly rating apps and writing BS reviews because everything in life (and particularly on the internet) is a lie.

A Russian man visited a Chinese click farm. They make fake ratings for mobile apps. He said they have 10,000 more phones.

A Russian Went Inside A Chinese Click-Farm: This Is What He Found

On the day when Snapchat erased billions of market cap from investors (and founders) accounts - as the MAUs-means-money model seems to break - we thought it worthwhile taking another glimpse into the hush-hush world of 'click-farms' and the fakeness of the latest social network fads.

So, if they're not human, where do all those "likes," "retweets," and "followers" lighting up your social media accounts from?

Thanks to this Russian gentleman - who visited a Chinese click farm, where they make fake ratings for mobile apps and other things like this - we now know...

He said they have 10,000 more phones just like these.

As we concluded previously, the bottom line is simple: "The illusion of a massive following is often just that," said Tony Harris, who does social media marketing for major Hollywood movie firms, said he would love to be able to give his clients massive numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook fans, but buying them from random strangers is not very effective or ethical. And once the prevailing users of social networks grasp that one of the main driving features of the current social networking fad du jour is nothing but a big cash scam operating out of a basement in the far east, expect both Facebook and shortly thereafter, Twitter, to go the way of 6 Degrees, Friendster and MySpace, only this time the bagholders will be the public. Because "it is never different this time." The only certain thing: someone will promptly step in to replace any social network that quietly fades into the sunset.

Inside China's phoney 'click farm': Tiny office uses 10,000 handsets to send fake ratings and 'likes' for boosting clients' online popularity.

Wall of text incoming. Again.

Sorry. Again.

tl;dr:

Debt relief right away was proposed, was neccessary, and was skipped to protect the European financial system.



You are 100% correct, we both are as convinced as one can be that a disorderly collapse would have been much worse for Greece. Might have turned it into a failed state, if things went really bad.

But the situation in Greece at the time the Troika got involved suggested a textbook approach would work just fine. Greece was insolvent, no two ways about it. A debt restructuring, including a haircut, was required to stabilise the system. Yet it was decided against it, thereby creating an enormous debt bubble that keeps growing to this day, destabilising everything.

Why?

People in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin knew in May of 2010 that Greece cannot service its current debt, nevermind pay it back. I remember rather vividly how it was presented to us, as it stirred up a lot of dust in Germany. They pretended as if the problem was a shortage of liquidity, even though they knew it was in fact an insolvency. And to provide an insolvent nation with the largest credit in history (€110-130b) is... well, we can all pick our favorite in accordance to our own bias: madness, idiocy, incompetence, a mistake, intent. They threw Greece into permanent indebtedness(?), and also played one people against another. People in Germany were pissed, still are. Not at the decision makers, but the Greek people.

Again, why?

Every European government, pre-crisis, drank the Cool Aid of deregulation, particularly with regards to the financial sector. When the crisis hit, they had to bail out the banks, a very unpopular decision in Germany, given the scandalous way it was done (different story). Like I pointed out before, when Greece was done for, German banks were on the hook for €17b+, and the French for €20b+. So no haircut for Greek debt.

It gets even better. The entity most experienced in these matters is, of course, the IMF. But IMF couldn't get involved. Its own regulations demand debt to be sustainable for it to become involved in any debt restructuring. Strauss-Kahn had the rules changed in a very hush-hush manner (hidden in a 146 page document) to allow the IMF to lend vast sums to Greece, even though they knew it would not be payed back. Former EC members are on record saying the Strauss-Kahn decided to protect French banks this way as a part of his race for President in France. So they changed IMF rules and ignored European law to bail out German and French banks, using the insolvent Greek government as a proxy.

Several members of the IMF's board were in open opposition. The representatives of India, Russia, Brazil and Switzerland are on record, saying this would merely replace private with public financing, that it would be a rescue package for the private creditors rather than the Greek state. They spoke out in favor of negotiations of a debt relief.

And if that wasn't bad enough, there's an IMF email, dated March 25th, 2010, that was published by Roumeliotis, formerly IMF. They put it very bluntly:

"Greece is a relatively closed economy, and the fiscal contraction implied by this adjustment path, will cause a sharp contraction in domestic demand and an attendant deep recession, severely stretching the social fabric."

Even the IMF, who chose parameters according to their own ideology, thought the European program to be too severe. That's saying something.

All that is just about the initial decision. The implementation is another story entirely, with unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats telling a democratically elected government what to do. There are former Greek ministers on record, telling how Troika officials basically wrote legislation for them. Blackmail was common, bailout money held as leverage. The Memorandum of Understanding was to be followed to the letter, and the Troika program was as detailed as a government program, so they really had their hand in just about everything.

The specifics of the program are a discussion of their own, with all the corruption going on. The Lagarde list (2000+ Greek tax dodgers) was held in secret by order of an IMF official – that alone should trigger major investigations. The nationalisation and sell-off of the four largest Greek banks, or the no-bid sale of the Hellenikon area to a Greek oligarch – all enforced by Troika officials.

The haircut of 2012, ~€110b wiped out, came two years late. As a result, it didn't hit any German or French institutions in a serious way. Most of the debt was in the hands of these four largest Greek banks -- NBG, Piraeus, Euro, Alpha – who subsequently had to be recapitalised by Greece to the tune of €50b. Cut by 110, up by 50 right away. Banks were nationalised and shares later sold again, at 2/3 the price. Lost another €15b, because the Troika demanded the sale to appease the markets.

The legal aspects of all this are nightmare-inducing as well. They violated numerous European laws, side-tracked parliaments, used governmental decrees, etc.

Let me just say this: when they forced Cyprus to give away two banks' branches in Greece for a fraction of their worth, Cyprus lost €3.5b, at a GDP of €17b, and those two banks went belly-up. It was pure blackmail, do it or you're out. Piraeus Bank received those €3.5b, and its head honcho had €150m of personal bad credit wiped clean right then and there, all at the command of the Troika. Those €3.5b had to be taken from ordinary folks by "suspending" the deposit insurance, perhaps the most stupid decision they had made so far.

Why did they do it? Because Greece was more important than Cyprus, and Cypriot banks were involved in shady deals with Russian oligarchs. Still illegal, and massively so.

Edit: I cut my post in half and it's still too long.

Some sort of spending policy was needed, but the bailout as it was put forth was pretty dismal in it's results. The companies that received it were the ones who created the mess for the most part (banks), and we really still haven't addressed punishing them OR putting laws in place to either:
A) Punish them if it happens again, really the laws now should be sufficient.
B) Make it impossible to happen again....all those acts, they repealed over the last 20-30 years.
C) Prevent some of the more insanity driven investing, such as over abundant speculation and similar cost creating but non-value creating (Call it a Private Tax, if you will) things.

Really the more I look back on the bailout, and look at the attitudes of most of the politicians at that time...they were saying let the auto industry fail. But the bailouts to the auto industries have at least halfway been paid back. Chrysler is likely going to short the government 1.3 billion last I read. GM gave the government stock and 22 billion. Stock is worth about 13.5 billion. They borrowed 50 billion. So 28 billion is what we have to get out of that stock to recover fully. And as far as I know there is no interest accumulated, so losing money in those deals is a kick to the crotch considering.

I think the auto industries might have been able to enter bankruptcy and come back out of it with some lessons learned. But vehicles like the "Volt" show that......they don't really know who they are selling to. Chrysler ended up being taken over by Fiat. And Ford handled it's own business. The one in the worst shape was GM, and I can't say that they probably didn't have it coming. And they still ended up pretty much killing the economy dead in my area despite the bailout when they shut their plants down that they really hadn't "kept up" in DECADES...place was really dumpy looking. No one would take it over because it was just utter trash when they left. I'm more against than for the bailout of the auto industries, but I can see that they were probably beneficial there although GM seemingly learned nothing of note from it.

Banks on the other hand......they took in 1.2 trillion. And a bunch of the borrowed money went to European firms. Along with other financial institutions. And many kept taking loans into 2010.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/that_federal_bank_bailout_in_2008_was_bigger_than_we_knew_a_lot_bigger.html

Has lots of info on it. I haven't taken the time to confirm every last portion of it, but we know the bailout/loans of 2008 that were announced ended up being MUCH larger than they told us. So the information is kind of hit and miss since they kept it hush hush for awhile.

But, the money was to help keep the banks off people's backs about foreclosures. It hasn't, in fact they took the money and foreclosed anyway to get both the cash to make it possible to allow the person to keep the house AND the house. That should be criminal.

The bailout of those institutions probably did stop a economic meltdown, but I think that bailout still should be criticized. The people who caused it suffered no punishment by law, financially, or by failure. And they have been fighting have regulations and such put in place to stop it from happening again and from practices like speculation being allowed in such quantities. It's affecting the oil prices and they are using it as a argument for "foreign oil" ALL the time.

Sure the bailout saved us from financial meltdown, but we aren't safe from it happening again. In fact we're probably even more precariously perched at the edge than we were before, and people are making money off that instability. If they could have made money during the total collapse, I don't think they would have gotten bailout to all those institutions.

So, we should criticize the bailout, simply because it has made it possible for the people who control the money to continue making money, and no one has corrected the conditions that caused the collapse in the first place. The people who caused it keep on keeping on, the politicians get some money stuffed in their pockets, and the people who got hurt most by the crash whether you lost your house, job, savings, pension, etc are just lined up to be knocked down again and no one is trying to fix it. The people who had money to weather the crash, are recovering and the people who didn't are still hurt by the crash they had no way of avoiding.

Too big to fail institutions are still too big to fail. Now they know that they can leech all the money from the government whenever they start to lean a little as a collective. Nothing was learned by anyone there, because nothing ended up happening to them besides some bad press...when they should have gotten a major investigation that was more like a full cavity search to determine wrongdoing.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday
:

I'd argue with point 3. I don't think they want to pick a fight with the public or fuel the flames of outrage by openly reporting on controversial bills they support. It's much better for the bottom line to keep these things hush hush.





yeah, they couldn't come out for SOPA because they had pretty much ignored it.
But why did they ignore SOPA. I guess I agree with you, they didn't think it was newsworthy because... who knows

I'd argue with point 3. I don't think they want to pick a fight with the public or fuel the flames of outrage by openly reporting on controversial bills they support. It's much better for the bottom line to keep these things hush hush.

as someone who spent 23 years as an abuse statistic in one relationship or another, i have often wondered the same thing. i know my grandfather was abusive to his family and my mom and grandmother still will never ever admit to it, the physical violence in my family as a child was kept hush hush and we still do not talk about. i have been divorced for 3 years now and am just now starting to admit to the violence in that relationship and i will never tell my family.

domestic violence is not a new thing, but really has only been socially unacceptable and openly talked about for the last 25 years or so. its visibility in a lot of ways has developed alongside this sexually sensationalized media market. its interesting and id like to see an in depth analysis of it.

oh, in my human development class we learned that only less than 30% of adults who were abused as children abuse their own children. so the "abused grow up to be abusers" is a little sensationalized.

It's not easy to hide facial expressions and that one was a dozy lol. It certainly looked to me that it was the first time he had even considered if Palin became president because he either won and died within his 4 years or he lost and she became president in 4 or 8.

Seriously that was a look of pure astonishment, a 'what have I done' look. That it has been extremely hush hush by anyone on the right that it happened just shows how frightening it is to them as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Speak

You and me
We used to be together
Everyday together always
I really feel
That I'm losing my best friend
I can't believe
This could be the end
It looks as though you're letting go
And if it's real
Well I don't want to know

Don't speak
I know just what you're saying
So please stop explaining
Don't tell me cause it hurts
Don't speak
I know what you're thinking
I don't need your reasons
Don't tell me cause it hurts

Our memories
Well, they can be inviting
But some are altogether
Mighty frightening
As we die, both you and I
With my head in my hands
I sit and cry

Don't speak
I know just what you're saying
So please stop explaining
Don't tell me cause it hurts (no, no, no)
Don't speak
I know what you're thinking
I don't need your reasons
Don't tell me cause it hurts

It's all ending
I gotta stop pretending who we are...
You and me I can see us dying...are we?

Don't speak
I know just what you're saying
So please stop explaining
Don't tell me cause it hurts (no, no, no)
Don't speak
I know what you're thinking
I don't need your reasons
Don't tell me cause it hurts
Don't tell me cause it hurts!
I know what you're saying
So please stop explaining

Don't speak,
don't speak,
don't speak,
oh I know what you're thinking
And I don't need your reasons
I know you're good,
I know you're good,
I know you're real good
Oh, la la la la la la La la la la la la
Don't, Don't, uh-huh Hush, hush darlin'
Hush, hush darlin' Hush, hush
don't tell me tell me cause it hurts
Hush, hush darlin' Hush, hush darlin'
Hush, hush don't tell me tell me cause it hurts

^Haha! Dag's new venture! It's very hush hush, KP.

Oof. I feel that some of Condi's points need to be responded to.

1) Not all "terrorists" are alike, obviously. Condi needs to get it straight that Hezbollah is not Al Qaeda. They are very different organizations with somewhat opposed goals. They shouldn't be lumped together. As Paul points out, it is highly unlikely that Iran would be helping Sunni terrorists, and Condi's answer is just some more of the vague hand waving he was complaining about.

2) Iran Nuclear Program: Iran is currently approaching a major energy crisis. Lack of maintenance and support for their oil refinement infrastructure, combined with increased energy demand, has been having serious effects on their economy. It's projected that within a decade, Iran will not be exporting any oil at all. To help combat the crisis, Iran is now requiring all of its automobile manufacturers to make hybrid cars only. It is only reasonable that they move to nuclear energy. That's not to say that they might not also work on nuclear bombs on the hush-hush as well; it's in their interests. But as things stand, they can't afford /not/ to build nuclear reactors at this time.

3) The supposed unilaterality of the opposition to Iran is not as simple as it seems. To be sure, the craziness of Ahmadinejad does tend to make non-Iranians worry, but the real worry isn't that Iran will bomb anyone. Rather, the power afforded by nuclear weapons would make Iran a far more influential country, with far more say as to how the Western countries interfere in the Middle East. To be sure, there is some truth to Condi's assertion that it's a national security matter; a rise in Iranian power could threaten our petroleum supply. In response, one must answer with the cliche, nonetheless true, that we need to reduce our dependence on petroleum period. A more far-sighted foreign policy would allow Iran to do as it wills in the region--decreasing Middle Eastern animus toward the West and especially America--and simultaneously move toward alternative energy sources in serious way. The Bush administration's lack of concern with alternative energy is well established by now.

^Thanks for the background, twiddles.

I don't have a problem with our government keeping some secrets. For example, keeping the identity of a covert field agent a secret is probably a good idea. However this administration is run like a freaking star chamber. Cheney refuses to divulge who attended his energy summit. White House aides refuse to testify before Congress. Abu Ghraib is kept hush-hush until a news organization exposes it. Secret prisons are all over the world, and so on. This White House acts like the Kremlin.

And when JFK had someone present evidence at the United Nations, it was REAL evidence.

I've tried a wide variety of drugs, though I've always avoided the chemically addictive stuff. You'd be surprised how many different drugs are outside the category. I've never even heard of this stuff. Though I might try it sometime, I'd have to say when it comes to psycho-actives I prefer mushrooms. Fantastic sensory experience that lasts hours and has virtually no side effect (unless yo count the taste lol.)

As to the 'I've never done drugs.' and 'I'd rather have a shot or two.' and 'ditch the need!' Listen folks, if you drink, you do a drug. If you smoke, you do a drug. The word 'drugs' has such a negative connotation in this country it's pathetic. Just about everyone does one drug or another. So don't knock the guy who smokes a bit of weed on the weekends or the folks that enjoy this stuff once in a while. People are driving around in this country killing each other cause they are wasted alchoholics. Yet the word 'pot' is hush hush and your in deep shit in some states if you ever get caught even with a utensil that might have some residue on it. It's frankly pathetic.

I disagree with your assumption that the issue takes religion into account when picking sides or media (the US has a highly constricted view to reporting news from Israel in AIPAC controlled way, have you ever heard anything critical of Israel from US news sources?), there are many Christian and Jewish activists who believe that Israelis process of peace is heavy handed. As I recall Israel is the only nation that has a nuclear weapons program that is hush hush on the International scene, and is well armed with Merkava tanks, AH-1 Cobras and M-16 wielding soldiers, that force has always been there and is not a response to the threat recently. Not that this is a justification for Palestinian tactics, but what other response would you expect after 60 years? Them throwing rocks still?

I believe that the Israeli people want a peaceful resolution to this conflict, but that is at odds with the decision reached in high government of Israel to deny the Palestinian people the right to their own land.

For all the peace rhetoric of the last 60 years, all you have see is a slow dismemberment of the Palestinian territory into ever smaller enclaves. As Henry Siegman writes:

"The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’.

But I digress from the main video, I just find it so supremely ironic as well for UN Watch to attack the human rights records of Iran when you have Bush come up on the podium and talk about human rights when we have Guantanamo bay. Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews:

George W. Bush – who asserts his unlimited personal authority to kill, kidnap, torture and spy on anyone of his choosing anywhere in the world – opened his annual speech to the United Nations by hailing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The U.S. President pushed the envelope of the world’s credulity even further by citing the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of 1948 as justification for his “war on terror” and his draconian policies for eliminating “terrorists” or other threats to world order with little or no due process.

I mean srsly?

So your saying that our troops have illegally sent back home hundreds of thousands of AK-47s, Glocks and other various weapons and ammunition for their personal collections and everyone is keeping hush-hush about it? Talk about your looney conspiracy theories!!