WIP

Something new on the story I came across on computer geek site - Gizmodo yesterday. Computer data analyst - Annalee Newitz goes through the public information and the hack-revealed information since this scandal broke, and comes to the conclusion that: "Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren’t there." Seems that even the number of female members claimed - 5.5 million, or 15% of the total membership were mostly fake ID's with employees moving data around to make some men think they were talking to real women.....how sad! Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Database Ever Used the Site

And natural selection is an amoral force of nature that does not provide moral principles or anything to guide human systems of ethics.

I had a friend several years back who became an investment broker and was always driving me up the wall about "emerging markets" at the time. I didn't object to the notion that India and the Far East wouldn't show high economic growth. But I did not accept the part about India and China eventually becoming Americanized economies with cars and highways all over the place just like North America. Reason being that our extremely resource-intensive and wasteful economic system couldn't possibly function for long in countries that were already overpopulated with limited natural resource bases. So now, Indian cities have air they can't breath and a stagnating Neoliberal economy, and China has at least had the sense to realize that unbridled capitalism has caused them to hit the wall fast and part of their economic slowdown may in fact be due to the realization that air pollution is at critical levels, while they are losing water and arable land at increasing rates because of the change to mechanized, oil-based agriculture. Looking at the global picture again, why would anyone not understand that economic growth can not go on forever on a finite world!

It always boils down to the money! If Satan himself came in with bags of cash, they'd be shaking hands with him and posing for the cameras.

The Conservatives and their executive class supporters are anxious to paint a smiley face on the Canadian economy now because they know as well as we do that it's not going to last past October! Our economy as designed by Harper, is geared towards selling bitumen and raw materials to a growing Chinese industrial economy.....what now? Not only are we going to get hammered by the commodity bust, but I haven't noticed anything recently about west coast real estate! There have been a number of articles in recent years pointing to Chinese and Indian investors as part of the increasing housing costs in Vancouver and Calgary. So, if their economies are stagnating, where is that money going to go? Likely not in Canadian real estate, and it will be another bubble that goes bust....but at least is affordable again for many people who follow that quaint old custom of buying houses to live in, rather than to invest in!

Our Conservatives have most of the money thanks to doing the bidding of big business, and already believe in that bullshit corporate personhood crap of corporations expressing their "free speech" rights by means of money, so no surprise they don't want to hear anything about limiting money/speech. I think our election process is too close to the American debacle already...with Harper running low level virtual campaigns in between elections, I can't imagine having to put up with an American size monstrosity that will drag on until November of next year! And that's what they call democracy!

Thank you captain obvious! I already said that. The point is it's money that did not exist prior to writing up a new loan, therefore, with a 3% asset requirement, private banks are creating most of the new money in circulation. And the system of increasing money supply and increasing total debts works as long as economies grow enough to absorb the new money and pay off debts over time. That's why there's so much panic and shifting measures for GDP right now. If investors lose confidence that they will get full value on their loans, the whole system can collapse. So, all of the financial wheeling and dealing is ultimately a confidence game. No they're not! Haven't you heard of scams like "Mortgage-backed Securities?" Most of us discovered how the big banks were finding creative means to increase earnings and eliminate their risks when the US housing market collapsed in 08. And most of the mortgages that were written up with "Liar Loans" and handed out like candy to buyers without references or credit checks, were subdivided and bundled in tranches of mortgage-backed securities...so they were effectively resold to third parties as assets...and fraudulent assets at that! Since even the highest thirds of the tranches...the so called "safe" investments were risky mortgages sold in inflated real estate markets to buyers that assumed the losses. Ultimately, as all of the banks were over-extended and at risk of failure, the US taxpayer assumed the liability as the Bush/Obama administrations quantatively eased their way towards creating billions of dollars in new money and putting in major banks reserve accounts as collateral, so they could appear fully solvent. And, some time in the near future, they're going to do it all over again! And have the Canadian taxpayer pay banks the compound interest on the loans. That's why this whole system can't be disguised as anything other than a scam that is designed to directly put money in the hands of bankers. The events of the past more than 30 years have shown banks and the financial manipulators gaining more and more control of real assets as everyone else gets poorer! As in the US example noticed after the 08 crash: manufacturing formerly represented 30% of the US Economy and banking/finance/insurance was about 15%. By 08, the sides had flipped and manufacturing was down to 16% of total GDP with the financial gamers taking a third of economy. The main scam of fiat money is for banks to exchange virtual imaginary assets (paper currencies) for real assets. That's how they end up owning everything worth having eventually in a capitalist system.

Saudi Arabia is going to run out of their cheap light crude long before tar sands are done in Alberta....and don't forget: there's lots more where that came from! Venezuela has about three times the tar sands deposits as Canada and hasn't started tapping in to them yet. and China is reversing course on their disastrous Neoliberal economic aims, and those coal-fired generating stations that have been planned are never going to be built because so many Chinese cities have air that is toxic most of the year. But that aside, pointing fingers at others is an idiotic ruse to pull out when arguing any environmental issue, since we have ONE atmosphere and the living biosphere collectively shares water and nutrients regardless of human borders. How does this connect with proportional representation? Looks like another example of how highly motivated and financially motivated interests can drown out new issues and new ideas and approaches on solving political issues from reaching the attention of most people. If two parties in the US and three parties in Canada offer a choice of 1. denial that a problem exists or 2. minimal...mostly irrelevant and ineffective solutions to the problem, no surprise that the problem will just keep getting bigger and bigger until it goes critical and maybe already too late to deal with.

Thanks for sharing....I did read your post, but wanted to edit for brevity. I don't consider soldiering to a profession that should be exalted as every warrior culture before us has a habit of doing (every warrior religion always reserves the best seats in heaven for fallen warriors). I've long considered military to be something that is sometimes necessary, but should be applied with reserve and extreme caution, in large part because of what it does to the men (and now women) who have to do the dirty work of fighting and getting maimed and risking life in a theater of war, and finding little or no help decompressing and resuming "normal" life again when they return home. This is the #1 reason why chickenhawk leaders (warmongers with no personal military experience) who use military and send troops or bombers in for political objectives, fill me with rage! Off topic, I also feel uneasy about the men who do not experience ptsd symptoms....the so called "super soldiers" who often make careers in elite commando units so that they can feel the rush of being in livefire situations. These soldiers are likely borderline psychopath to begin with, if their need for an adrenaline rush is that high! A big part of the reason why long-running conflicts have a hard time coming to an end even after the material causes of the war have been removed, is because there are a number of people who have adapted to life during wartime and want to keep it running. Now that war is becoming permanent in more and more places in the world, the numbers of mentally unbalanced warriors who feed off of death, destruction and anarchy will keep growing.

Says the computer with no capacity for empathy or that everyone's mind is different, and we can't expect others to do what we think 'we would do' under similar circumstances.

And it could suggest that men in modern society feel greater pressures for achievement than women do, and since sociology studies have also long demonstrated that men do not develop the support networks of friends and family as well as women, many men who are depressed move in an opposite direction and become more isolated and withdrawn. It's not surprising that gay and trans people have higher suicide rates, considering our cultural heritage of not accepting anything that isn't cookie cutter hetero male-led nuclear family. Anyone who doesn't fit the mould is going to have to face more rejection and persecution than average. A factoid I came across on the radio earlier finds that 40% of homeless youth are gay or transgendered. No doubt that adds to the high suicide rates! The solution has to start with mainstream society pushing back against all forms of intolerance and persecution of various scapegoats selected by crypto-fascists and demagogues....but that is going to get more and more difficult in the years ahead, as incomes stagnate, debtloads increase, and bad news from all sides lands on us.

And that alone blows up the logic behind ever-increasing wealth being the primary economic goal! After basic needs for food, shelter and clothing are met, what's important is where people see themselves within a social hierarchy. When that hierarchy becomes more disparate and stratified (as consumer capitalism is doing today) no surprise that the material achievements become less satisfying for those who see others as having more.

I guess the train heroes story is intended to erase this one from mainstream consideration: 4 Million Muslims Killed In Western Wars: Should We Call It Genocide?

Obviously you didn't watch, because she discussed other issues...nevertheless, centrists who can't think outside the box and are happy in either of the three tanks are happy with the status quo. But, FPTP is the first barrier shutting out new ideas from getting aired. And our carbon footprint...largely thanks to going to tar sands, is very large per capita and as much of an embarassment internationally as having a Prime Minister playing sidekick to American presidents! Environment trumps all other issues, and they are all petty by comparison with keeping our human economies within the limits of what nature will allow.

Reminds me of the absurdity of the American Right (which is where Harper&co. get their ideas) which tries to remove the reproductive choices from young women, and with the same hand denies any responsibility for the welfare of those children after birth and onward. That's why the right can create an endless supply of money to blow shit up or build their vanity projects, but daycare...the horror! The results betray the obvious strategy: re-establish and solidify patriarchy by keeping women chained to child-rearing and have to choose: 1. dependency on a man to provide for them and their children. or the option left for the underclass: 2. raise those children in poverty on minimum wage and consign them to a life of minimal parental involvement, bad schools, bad employment prospects in adulthood including a high likelihood of being subject to the law enforcement/ incarceration complex.

I'll just go ahead and assume your working in banking somewhere, because who else would make a case for spending billions of dollars per year to pay the collateral interest to banks, rather than create the money themselves...like they were doing previously! When the banks write up new loans and only have to hold 3% collateral to secure those new loans, that's money creation! Fractional reserve banking allows the chartered banks to create money, so why not the government itself...except for the obvious reason that bankers don't get a hand on the billions that can be made by public banking. But, I'm not much of a public banking advocate anyway, because the point you deliberately overlook again and again, is that money creation is not inflationary as long as new economic growth expands the economy enough to absorb that new money....that's where I see the problem today, even for the US system that owns the world. But, as long as we are going to be creating money, why not do it directly, instead of paying an intermediary who will collect compound interest forever and ever on the loans to government?

How many puppets does the US have? How would the US respond if Russia was supporting a pro-Russian movement in Mexico? And put in a few Russian bases and missiles, yeah that would really go over well. The one thing we learned when all of the Orange Revolution stuff started years ago, was that Ukraine is a seriously divided country, and there was no way they could force a Eurocentric government on the east...let alone Crimea. The corruption and problems governing have represented the competing power structures between west and east and previously they made compromises to rule. This time the US...through their NGO's was pushing for a hardline stance that even banned Russian as an official language. How was that supposed to work?

When you get to create free money (that everyone accepts) and lend it out at low interest rates, you can reinflate the stock bubble again. But will this keep working forever? Or will a collapse of the US Dollar and stock and bond markets mean the collapse of the entire global system.

Tax cuts have been the go-to strategy ever since Reagan and his libertarian strategists got a hold of the reigns of government in the US.....everyone else on the right....wherever they live, are just copying that strategy. Tax cuts are the way to look concerned about people's welfare while not only doing nothing for the majority - also starving government of revenues needed to pay for social programs, infrastructure and even military....but we know where the cuts hit first! Sometimes there are situations where taxes have increased too much and a tax cut is justifiable. But I haven't come across one that looks valid since the days of the Harris Conservatives here in Ontario. In many places, like the state of Kansas is a notable US example, the tax cuts are killing the local economy, because even business knows that the low tax rates don't justify investing in a state with dismal and failing infrastructure and services.

I watched a speech Elizabeth May gave earlier today, and I was reminded once again of what we lose most in our first-past-the-post parliamentary system: alternatives to the homogenized political ideas and policies of parties who think they can score that majority win....and yes that includes you too NDP and Tom Mulcair! The Greens are trapped at about 5% support and maybe able to win one seat in Parliament because Harpercons are so bad on environment, surveillance, corruption and many other issues, that the vast majority of Green Party potential supporters have to be anyone-but-Harper voters first, unless they live in clearly safe ridings and can afford to "throw away" their vote....like I do here in Hamilton Center.

If I noticed this large load of crap earlier, I would have responded previously: And what Argus misses is that the "invasion" of Europe has nothing to do with Canada's immigration and refugee issues that he, you and other white supremacists get worked up about! It begins with a slow-rolling ecological disaster that...yes, was created by the west, because the first clearly identified change in climate patterns due to carbonizing the atmosphere, has been the shifting of prevailing wind currents in the equatorial zone. Hence, many agricultural and grazing lands have been slowly turning to desert since the late 70's. And then we add in the "regime changes" and attempted regime changes that have created anarchy in Iraq, Syria and Libya, leading to millions of refugees that want to go somewhere.....anywhere...but keep thinking that Europe is the most wonderful place in the world because the best race of humans live there! I noted previously several times already, that rightwingers in the US seem to have a blind spot for criticizing Clinton and the Obama Administration for their push to overthrow Muammar Qadaffi. Libya already had thousands of refugees from elsewhere in Africa and thousands of African immigrants working in the oil fields and in the major cities. Once the regime change was engaged, the only thing the competing warlords agreed upon was to kill all of the immigrants they could get their hands on....so who's fault was that? And if many of them ended up beached on European shores, that's the fault of America's EU allies who (except for Italy) facilitated the war in Libya. Like I was saying! Yes, you know how these people think, and yet I'm willing to bet you never interact with anyone who is a first generation immigrant to Canada.....if you did, you might find that they are flesh&blood 3 dimensional people who share most of the same concerns as other Canadians. Sort of like Arabs right? The CIA predicted more than 15 years ago, that we would have to prepare for waves of climate refugees as sea levels rise and the equatorial zone becomes hotter and drier. The argument for leaving them where they are, would have been more justifiable if we hadn't established the policies of colonialism - then - neocolonialism to harvest their resources for our markets and control their governing through useful dictators. The "extremists" were put in power because the US and England declared all populist leaders to be communists....so yes there are western fingerprints all over this mess still today. Thanks for reinventing history! I recall back in the 70's when CBC Radio used to cover the Rhodesia stories frequently, that Ian Smith and his white government were the favourites of the US, England and South Africa. That's why Mugabe and the leader of a smaller tribal group - Joshua Nkomo, started revolutionary movements. The peace movements wanted Bishop Abel Muzorewa as the leader of a peaceful transition to majority rule. But that option was only chosen after cows had left the barn - the interim government which preserved the ownership rights of white landowners and gave them special veto powers in the parliament, was rejected by the majority of blacks who kept fighting, and since Mugabe represented the largest tribe and had the largest army, he won the war! The natives of this continent should have thought through the consequences of allowing European immigrants to overrun half of the land....and then take the other half when they consolidated power. The English, French, Spanish did what all settler colonialists do when they arrive in a new territory: ethnically cleanse it....declare that their god chose that land for them....and talk about the importance of racial purity ever after.

Yes, the last thing the right wants is to be presented with the images of suffering that they cause through their economic and military policies!

Bad.