The silliness of those who give Julian Assange unquestioning support

Defrocked UK Ambassador Craig Murray is a staunch supporter of Julian Assange, who he presents as a victim of US Government persecution.

Oddly, neither Murray nor his supporters seem to think it reasonable to question the assumption that Assange is some kind of rebel, saint or Knight errant, fighting the system.

Thus, in response to Murray's latest blog about Assange, someone writes:

We must prepare to take on the system if it does not find in favour of Assange.

Really?

Assange strikes some people as a "narcissistic sociopath."

Assange, like Craig Murray, received the Sam Adams Award for "integrity in intelligence", from a group of retired CIA officials.

No one seems interested in discussing what intelligence work Assange is, or was, engaged in or with which intelligence service he was employed.

Assange has the unlimited financial backing of the very rich Jemima Khan (née Goldsmith) in his legal difficulties in England.

He is presently accommodated in England by well to do supporters.

In dealing with Sweden's demand for his extradition, Assange has the services of a Rothschild-connected lawyer.

Assange the whistle-blower, worked in close collaboration with the mainstream media, including the New York Times, which in turn worked with the White House, in releasing secret US diplomatic cables.

There is no way of checking the authenticity of the secret cables made public by Assange, but as Zbigniev Brzezinski pointed out, they may very well have been fed to Assange by one of the intelligence agencies:

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: But I think the most serious issues are not those which are getting the headlines right now. Who cares if Berlusconi is described as a clown. Most Italians agree with that. Who cares if Putin is described as an alpha dog? He probably is flattered by it.

The real issue is, who is feeding Wikipedia on this issue — Wiki — Wiki — WikiLeaks on this issue? They’re getting a lot of information which seems trivial, inconsequential, but some of it seems surprisingly pointed. …The very pointed references to Arab leaders could have as their objective undermining their political credibility at home, because this kind of public identification of their hostility towards Iran could actually play against them at home.

The silliness of the charges made against Assange in Sweden, could as well have been concocted for the purpose of gaining sympathy for Assange and painting him as a victimized opponent of "the system," than for the purpose of placing him in the hands of the US Government.

The Greek referendum: what's it about?

Cartoon: Steve Bell, the Guardian

The Story So Far
A corrupt Greek government borrowed billions the country could never repay in order to buy votes of hundreds of thousands of public servants who get 14 months pay per year while working only seven months a year and quitting work at 2.30 in the afternoon on days when they are nominally working -- that is until they begin collecting their pensions at 55. The scale of overpayment is illustrated by Greece's state-owned railway which pays four times as much in wages as it collects in fares.

The government concealed the magnitude of the budget deficit, which far exceeded the 3% of GDP to which Greece committed when adopting the Euro, by the simple expedient of never adding up its expenditures.

The new government of George Papandreou, wishing to avoid blame for the inevitable deluge, ordered that an accounting be made. When, as a result, it was announced that Greece was running a deficit equal to 12% of GDP, holders of Greek debt panicked. For the better avoidance of uncertainty, the IMF was called in and determined that the deficit was not 12% of GDP but 14%.

Even more excitement. The Government made spending cuts, which prompted many Greeks to go on the rampage. They blockaded the ports thereby preventing cruise ship passengers with money to spend from landing. They burnt banks, in the process burning alive several bank employees including a pregnant woman, notwithstanding that Greece's very conservative banks had nothing to do with the crisis.

Holders of Greek debt, including mainly rather stupid French, Belgian and German banks, agreed to a 50% "haircut" on Greek debt: the chance of recovering half their money being reluctantly accepted as preferable to the certainty of a 100% loss. Meantime, Greek demonstrators burnt German flags inscribed with the swastika, believing, evidently, that Germans are evil people who should pay Greek pensions even when Greeks retire as early as 50 in the case of occupations designated "stressful" (e.g., hairdressing), which is five years earlier than Germans themselves retire.

Now the Greek Government will ask Greeks if they agree to pay even that much. Hence Steve Bell's cartoon, which makes clear what the referendum result will almost certainly be. The inevitability of a "no" in the referendum means the certainty of a Greek default and Greece's exit from the Euro.

This will leave a large hole in the capital of a number of major European banks. Much if not all of the loss will have been insured by means of derivatives. When payment under these credit default swaps comes due, it will be interesting to see whether the counter parties are able to pay. Almost certainly, there will have to be government bailouts of one party or the other.Which makes one wonder: why don't the French and Germans pay off Greece's debts now and kick the Greeks out of the Euro at once, thus bringing the crisis promptly to  its inevitable conclusion.

Iceland is tiny. Their bonkers banking scandal shocked the financial world. Ireland is tiny, their incompetent greedy bankers left the Irish people shackled with debt for years to come. Greece is small, yet its impending government default is shaking the banking system across Europe and beyond. After that there's Portugal, Spain and Italy still to blow.

What are the odds that the Euro will remain a going concern by the end of 2012? For that matter, what are the odds that the EU will remain a going concern by the end of 2012?

Aangirfan provides an interesting historical perspective on the current financial wrangle. The Germans, so some have calculated, owe the Greeks sixty billion in war reparations. Mugging the German banks is most likely the only chance the Greeks have of getting their money.

But are Germans responsible for the crimes of their ancestors? If so, why not the British, the Americans, the Israelis, the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Medes and Persians? Where does this end?

And here's what the Greeks are being asked to vote on (Source):

• Income tax threshold would be lowered from €12,000 (£10,300) to €5,000 (£4,300
• Retirement age would be raised to 65
• VAT would rise from 19 to 23 per cent
• Higher property taxes
• Monthly pensions above €1,000 (£860) would be cut by 20 per cent
• Excise on fuel, cigarettes and alcohol would rise by a third
• To qualify for a full pension people would be required to complete 40 years work
• Retirees aged under 55 would lose 40 per cent of their pensions over €1,000 (£860)
• Public sector wages would be cut by 20 per cent
• Employees of state-owned enterprises would have their wages cut by 30 per cent
• A cap would be introduced on wages and bonuses
• 30,000 civil servants would be suspended on partial pay
• All temporary contracts for public sector workers would be terminated
• Just one in 10 civil servants retiring this year would be replaced
• New levies on household incomes of between one and five per cent.

So, anyone expecting Greeks to vote for that needs their head examining. Which means the referendum is merely the Greek government's way of telling their creditors to take their bonds and ....

See Also:
Trusting in the wisdom and maturity of the Greek people. LOL CanSpeccy
Time for the Abolition of Greece? CanSpeccy
EFSF Bond Sale Postponed Because of Market Conditions Mish
In Praise of Papandreou's Referendum Decision; Eurocrats Terrified of Democracy; Parade of Cowards Mish
Dutch Government Calls Timeout on Euro Bailout Deal Mish
EU Deal Unravels from Many Sides; Italy, France Bond Spreads Hit Record High vs. Germany; Bund Yield Drops Most on Record; All Out Bond Crisis Mish
Greek Army Threatens Military Coup Sparking Fears of Military Uprisings And Civil Wars Breaking Out Across All Of Europe Alexander Higgins Blog

Frank Lloyd Wright on War and Religion

On government as top-down gangsterism



On the tyranny of the media

Time for the Abolition of Greece?

The Greeks have had their moments, but mainly thousands of years ago. Now the Parthenon is a dilapidated wreck with the roof gone, the columns bullet-pocked, and few of the statues possessed of a single intact limb. Even worse is the condition of the people who are apparently so deluded by the political class as to see no connection between money and work and who are now on a rampage burning German flags decorated with swastikas in support of their demand that German taxpayers pay Greek pensions which are unfunded because Greeks refuse to pay taxes.

Under the circumstances, abolition seems the only feasible solution. As a practical matter, the country could be sold off in chunks to hedge funds and other private investors, who would gain the right to collect taxes by whatever means might prove effective, flog off all publicly owned waterfront land for development, and rebuild the Parthenon as an iMax theatre showing reenactments of the Peloponnesian war, the death of Socrates and other exciting events in Greek history.

Come to think of it, the time seems ripe to privatize a good many other countries. Goldman Sachs, for example, could surely achieve better financial results in Ireland than the Irish. And once they'd got the finances turned around, they could do an IPO, which would allow the Irish to buy the place back, some of it anyhow, while leaving control in the hands of competent business people impervious to demands for retirement at 50, free education from K to early middle age, and limitless free healthcare.

In fact, what is truly extraordinary is the widespread belief that a bunch of professional politicians such as David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Barak Obama, none of whom are known to have done a useful day's work in their lives, are not only capable of managing a government that spends half the wealth of the nation, but that they would do so lovingly, in the interests of the people, rather than solely for personal advantage.

For the latest on the Greek bailout:
The Greek Referendum
Greek Debt Crisis Tipping Point, CFR
Bankfurt mole: this new ‘deal’ is a page one scam, The Slog
CDS on Greece a Purposeful Sham, Mish

No Apologies Here

Source

It seems common among bloggers to apologize for any interruption in the regular supply of fresh bloggage, to coin a term.

Well you'll receive no such apologies here. For one thing, for me to assume that the World needs to know my opinion on the non-stop succession of wars, frauds, indecencies and absurdities that make up our daily diet of news would be a clear sign of insanity -- a thought which raises the interesting question of whether most bloggers are, indeed, seriously unhinged.

And second of all, as some folks like to say, no one's paying to read this priceless verbiage, so what obligation can there be to produce it? None obviously, which means that apologies for light blogging merely reflect a fear of losing bloggees, to coin another term, that is to say fear of the injury to pride as page hits sputter to a mere trickle of those who got here only by the merest accident.

Source

Also, having been condemned for doing so, I vigorously assert a complete lack of shame, guilt or inclination to apologise for providing links to certain other Web sites whatever views may be expressed there, and I do so with the full backing of the Supreme Court of Canada which has ruled that:

Making reference to the existence and/or location of content by hyperlink or otherwise, without more, is not publication of that content.

And in fact, if one were to take a look at the lower right-hand side of this page, they would find links to a bizarrely diverse collection of sites, some though not all, places where opinions expressed strike me as more or less totally nuts. And, in general, the nuttier a site, the more I like it, which reminds me to add a link to the site of former UK Ambassador, former Liberal-Democrat and presently Scotch Nationalist, Craig Murray, where my comments are not infrequently moderated out.

So that's it for now, and I'll be back when I feel like it, no sooner.

Obama, Natural Resources and the Conquest of Africa

The function of Obama is now clear: the conquest of Africa.

On 14 October, writes John Pilger, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only “engage” for “self-defence”, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.

The tragedy of The War Against Terror, is that the energy monopoly sought by the US will not be worth the candle. With the quadrupling in oil price since 2000, new investments in exploration and advances in technology have revealed huge supplies of hydrocarbons in virtually every part of the world. They’re fracking for gas in Cheshire, England, there’s a glut of natural gas in North America, and China’s looking to develop its own shale resource.

But the biggest technological advances will be in energy efficiency. It takes one and a half to two kwh of electricity to make a litre of petrol. But it requires less than one and a half to two kwh of electricity to drive a light electric car as far as a Chevy travels on a litre of gas. And the Chinese have already built several hundred million electric bikes that can go just about all the way round the world on a kwh, and they are investing hugely in electric cars.

Then there’s solar power which will be competitive with oil sooner than later.

So when the war’s over, trillions will have been wasted, millions or perhaps billions of lives will have been disrupted or destroyed, free society will have ceased to exist even as an idea, and the fascist West will control a lot of useless oil fields and unnecessary pipelines.

The same will be true of virtually every other resource: rising prices will lead to improved techniques of discovery, higher use efficiency, and more cost efficient and complete recycling.

The recycling industry will be revolutionized by bar coding or chipping everything sold. Robots will identify the manufacturer, the ownership, the composition, and the recycling destination of every piece of trash. No more blue boxes and different colored wheely bins. If it's a manufactured item, just chuck it down the chute and a high-tech recycling industry will handle it. Maybe they'll even pay you if your rubbish contains enough reusable polyethylene, fermentable carbohydrate or neodymium.

See also
Beneath the UK lie trillions of cubic feet of shale gas, Daily Mail

Time for a new Balfour Declaration designating a homeland for the British?

The Express, Monday August 9, 2010: ONLY one baby in 10 born in some parts of the country has a mother of white British origin, figures revealed yesterday.

Britain’s rapidly changing ethnic make-up means white British women are now in a minority on maternity wards in 27 NHS hospital trust areas.

Across the country as a whole, they still account for 69 per cent of pregnant women receiving hospital care. But the figures from 150 NHS trusts in England reveal the ethnic diversity in metropolitan areas.

In north-west London, only one mother in 10 was of white British origin in 2008-9. At Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust in south London, mothers of white British origin made up just a quarter of those treated.

At Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals Trust, the proportion of white British mothers was 16.5 per cent, while at Bradford Teaching Hospitals Trust, it was 34 per cent.

Parts of the Home Counties also reflect shifting populations and migration. According to the figures, only 57 per cent of mothers giving birth in the West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust were categorised as white British in 2008-9. Among the remaining 43 per cent, the biggest groupings were “other white” (mainly eastern Europeans) Indians, Pakistanis, Africans and “other Asians”.

Read more

Or if grabbing a whole new homeland for a homeless nation at the expense of the Arabs or some other unfortunate people is no longer a viable option, would it not be possible to set aside a few reserves: Buckinghamshire, perhaps, or the less populated areas of North Devon?

But even such modest propsals as these will no doubt be howled down by the settlers and self-hating white enforcers of political correctness, which is to say the entire brainwashed lib-left British establishment, which does not exclude the Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, David, Humanitarian-Bomber, Cameron.

Libya: What do you do when the people you prevented Gaddafi from killing start killing the black minorities that Gaddafi protected?

Every house, shop, school and public building in Tawergha has been ransacked since the Misrata rebels chased out pro-Gadhafi soldiers. At the time, hundreds of families also fled, fearing reprisals. Rebels slaughtered some of the livestock left behind, the carcasses of which are still rotting in the yards of abandoned homes.(Source: WSJ)

Another WSJ report makes it clear, it is not merely livestock in Tawergha that has been targeted for slaughter:

Ibrahim al-Halbous, a rebel commander leading the fight near Tawergha, says all remaining residents should leave once if his fighters capture the town. "They should pack up," Mr. Halbous said. "Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata."

... Other rebel leaders are also calling for drastic measures like banning Tawergha natives from ever working, living or sending their children to schools in Misrata.

...Some of the hatred of Tawergha has racist overtones that were mostly latent before the current conflict. On the road between Misrata and Tawergha, rebel slogans like "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin" have supplanted pro-Gadhafi scrawl.

Meantime, as shown in this video, NATO is using anti-personnel cluster bombs on civilian targets in Libya:



As for the "responsibility to protect," see this and weep.

Co-opting Occupy Wall St.

Is the Occupy Wall St. movement being co-opted, asks Prof. Michel Chossudovsky?

the report that Trikileaks founder, Julian Assange, addressed the London protest from the steps of St Pauls cathedral, should help focus attention on this question.

Assange, remember, is an admirer of the Australian pornographer, Poop Murdoch.

Assange earned the admiration of certain former CIA operatives who named him winner of the Sam Adams Award for "integrity in intelligence."

Assange claims to be a whistleblower, but he finds those who question the official US Government narrative on 9/11 "annoying."

With Assange and the American Nazi Party bidding for leadership roles in the movement, folks sure need to be wary about where Occupy Wall St. and its various spin-offs are heading.

And now President Obama and the Chinese Communist Party have added their voices to those who support OWS!

Speaking at the dedication of a new Memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King on Washington's National Mall, the President said:

Dr King would want us to challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonising those who work there.

WTF!

"Would want us to challenge?"

Is this guy some sort of lone, powerless protestor, whose best effort is to wave a hand-made placard or make a speech?

Oh, and do make sure not to demonize the bastards who destroyed your country, loaded you with impossible debt, turned you out of your home and who have long since prepared safe havens where they can enjoy their ill-gotten billions safe from disturbance by the angry cries of the dispossessed losers such as Occupy Wall St. protesters.

Or is this dude supposed to be in charge of something. You know, able to do something, propose laws, bring to bear all the powers of the executive branch of government to end corruption, reform laws and impose necessary regulation.

But no. Apparently, the best we can expect from President Hopey Changey is that he will challenge the destruction of the nation by the ruthless, and limitlessly greedy bankers who stuff his pockets and who funded his election.

Occupy Wall St.

Bring it on.

Overturn the tables of the money changers. Set free the pigeons!

Fox Nation: "American Nazi Party backs Occupy Wall St." LOL

"American Nazi Party declares full support for Occupy Wall Street protests"

Announces the Fox Nation headline.

"There has certainly been no shortage of vile anti-Semitism at the Occupy Wall Street protests."

Fox  continues, before quoting some racialist rubbish from an unidentified source as proof.

One's first reaction may be to say, fuck off. Do they think we don't know who the real Nazis are?

But more to the point, is to observe that the Occupy Wall St movement must really be getting under some peoples' skin, for the American Nazi Party appears to be a wholly Jewish owned operation whose function is to hold up the Nazi scarecrow and terrorize anyone who might say anything critical of Israel, prominent Jewish Americans, bankers in particular, or the Jews-first mentality of some American Jews.

Like the Canadian branch, the post-war American Nazi Party seems to have depended largely if not entirely on the leadership of Jews. Frank Collins, aka Frank Cohen, for example, and Davis Wolfgang Hawke, aka Andrew Britt Greenbaum.

Who uses the Nazi specter to shape opinion in Europe?

In Europe, the Nazi brand may be exclusively employed by the intelligence services. In Germany, it was MI6 who set up a post-war Nazi party. 

In the UK, the British National Party, which is home to various old Nazis, looks very much like an intel op designed to discredit reasonable policies such as bringing the troops home, taking Britain out of the EU, devolving power to regional governments, ending mass immigration to what is among the World's most crowded countries, and developing an industrial policy to protect British jobs and maintain Britain's industrial capability.

Thus, for example, during the 2010 election, Nick Griffin, the BNP leader appeared to do everything possible to insure electoral failure including, moronically featuring a jar of Marmite in a nationally television broadcast, claiming to have been threatened with death by his own PR chief, and, after bloodying the face of a Times reporter, boasting that the incident proved the party "has not gone soft."

Then there was that lone nut Norwegian gunman, Anders Breivik who managed to identify himself with the Nazis and the Zionists at the same time, while condemning the politically correct teachings of the Jewish Frankfurt school.

A bit confusing, that one, although since the police were running an exercise involving an act of terrorism by a lone nut gunman at the exact time that the lone nut Anders Breivik was gunning down teenagers on Utoya Island, it seems a safe bet that the Breivik atrocity was an operation of one of the Western intel agencies.

Certainly it wasn't an agency of Iran or one of the other countries on the US/NATO hit list or they'd have been nuked by now.

Where did all the jobs go?

As some Americans are saying:

Ten years ago we had Bob Hope, Johny Cash and Steve Jobs. Now we have no hope, no cash and no jobs.

What happened?

In part, what happened was corporate executives like the mean-spirited, foul-mouthed, intolerant Steve Jobs of Apple Corporation and the awesomely clueless Jeff Immelt of GE chose to hire people in China and other places where wages are minimal and environmental protection and workplace safety standards are weak or non-existent, rather than hire their fellow countrymen.

What those sons of bitches have done and continue to do -- with the backing of the political sons (and daughters) of bitches who seek their party's nomination for President -- is export the economy of their country.

The result?

Imports from China and American manufacturing employment 1997-2006 (Source)

Between 1997 and 2006, the number of jobs in America fell, as population increased due to a flood of illegal immigrants and as imports from China zoomed and America's foreign indebtedness soared.

And since 2006, another four million US manufacturing jobs went West East:

Image source

But the corporate pyschopaths who own the US government don't even like Chinese workers, dirt cheap though they may be.

For one thing, the bastards embarrassed Steve Jobs by jumping off the roof of Apple's Chinese i-Pad factory.

To stop that, Apple forced workers to sign an agreement not to commit suicide. But the miserable ingrates kept jumping anyhow.

What to do?

Replace the whole goddam workforce with millions of robots.

Cool, hey? Screw your Chinese slaves and the working stiffs back home out of a livelihood at the same time.

But that's not it all, either.

There are three other important factors.

(1) It's the debt, stupid

Home buyers, urged on by the FED Maestro, Alan Greenspan, who couldn't spot a bubble even if it were inflated with dynamite, drove US private sector debt to an all-time high of 300% of GDP in 2010.

Now the debt is beginning to unwind, which means that demand for everything from cars and other consumer goods, to vacations, new houses, education and healthcare has slumped.

The more demand slumps, the higher unemployment rises, the greater the downward pressure on real wages and hence the greater the urge to reduce debt.

It's called positive feedback.

The corporate elite love it: wages are falling, the stinking masses will have to stay home instead of lousing up the beaches in Florida and Hawaii.

At least they love it now.

Maybe if the Occupy Wall Streeters string up a few stock brokers and bankers, they'll view things differently.

Meantime, the US Government makes feeble gestures to provide "stimulus," which means new wasteful and stupid government spending, which only exacerbates the the plight of the people by increasing the burden of unproductive government.

(2) Time for those death panels?

When the elite kick the shit out the mass of their fellow countrymen, the population begins to sicken and die. One manifestation is collapse of the family, soon followed by a collapse in the birth rate.

The result?

Far too many old people, trying to eke out their savings, spending less and less, but demanding more and more from the taxpayer for drugs, hospitals, and many other forms of welfare.

So, yes, old folks provide jobs alright. But they are jobs that are funded very largely by their children and their children's children, thus adding to the difficulty of working-age adults struggling through the second great depression.

No, we don't advocate euthanasia.

What we do believe is that folks have a right to a job at a living wage so that the Western nations can replace themselves, not be replaced by people from elsewhere who differ in race, culture and creed, however willing they may be to clean toilets or work in the underground economy at below minimum wage.

(3) How do you think Steve Jobs got to be worth $8 billion?

Average income in 2006 was up $60,000 for the top 1 percent of American households (yes that's right, in a single year incomes of the top 1 percent increased by more than the average wage), but up only $430 for the bottom 90 percent of households, resulting in the most inequitable distribution of income since 1928 (Source).

But rich people can only consume so much. So when income becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, demand for a lot of things slumps, which has become apparent in the US since the Fed-engineered property bubble collapsed, destroying the value of the principle asset of millions of families.

The negative wealth effect impinging on ordinary folks, combined with growing income inequality ensures weak demand and hence slow or negative employment growth.

You might think the politicians would talk about some of these things.

But they never do.

Time for a revolution?

Or are we seeing the emergence of global neo-feudalism, under which the nations of the World will be trashed, and replaced by a single mongrel population, without diversity of race, beauty, culture or faith?

No need to ask what the ruling elite want. But what do ordinary folks want?

Or do ordinary folks no longer believe they have a right to determine their own destiny?

See also:
Canspeccy: Ending Unemployment. Part 1: The Negative Income Tax
Canspeccy: Ending Unemployment. Part 2: Wage Subsidies

Michael Moore's interview with Tony Benn:

"What people said was, 'In the 1930's we had mass unemployment, but we didn't have unemployment during the war. If you can have full employment by killing Germans, why can't you have full employment by building hospitals, building schools ...'"



Patrick Buchanan: Is the New World Order Unravelling?

Chris Hedges explains the Occupy Wall St. Moverment, demolishing CBC-featured boorish clown, Kevin O'Leary, in the process

For those who have lacked the time, interest or energy to follow the Occupy Wall St. movement, a good overview is provided by this interview in which Pullitzer-prize-winning former New York Times foreign correspondent, Chris Hedges, demolishes Kevin O'Leary, a boorish twit currently featured by Canada's propaganda agency, the Canadian Broadcorping Castration.



And here's an intelligent, patriotic response to Sean Hannity of Fox News from a couple of US Marines in New York.



And Alan Grayson speaks for Occupy Wall Streeters:



Thanks to Scott C. for the firs video link, and to WRH for the other two. Also thanks to Scott for the link to the following item, which recounts the progress of Stephen Harper's plan to give away the farm:

Crumbling Canadian Sovereignty

I’m sick of people thinking politics is some sort of hobby, like we can just choose to decide it doesn’t have to do with our life, death, happiness and freedom. Looking at the mechanics that underlie our world is not something I do out of boredom. To me, it seems self-evident that we’re on this earth to learn. Learning and gaining experience seems to be what being human is all about. I don’t like reading words on a page/screen. I’d much rather create music or learn to paint but unfortunately, sometimes missing a week’s worth of news is like missing a month. Missing a month is often missing a year.
Few Canadians are aware of the true scope of the horrific G-20 event in Toronto last year. This event got very little coverage during the recent elections despite many calling it “Torontonamo”. There were agent provocateurs (cops dressed up as anarchists), $5 million spent on a fence, $1.2 billion spent on paying 2 or 3 thousand cops overtime so they could arrest and brutalize 1000 innocent people, many of whom were not even taking part in the protest. I even hesitate to say $1.2 billion. Who knows how much of our tax money was actually spent for security. If memory serves me well, it was originally stated it would only be around $170 million, then $300 something million, then $600 million-ish, then $900 million-ish, then finally $1.2 billion. For all we know, it could have been $10 billion.
It’s worthwhile to note that back when the H1N1 scare was happening the government gave dozens of body bags to some native communities. Why body bags? Equally disturbing and strange, it was found that the H1N1 shot caused a 300% increase in narcolepsy in children and this prompted some countries to ban it. Canada went a different route and introduced this mercury-laced H1N1-vaccine into the trivalent seasonal flu shot.
On September 29, 2009, an article came out from SkyWatch Canada titled Forced Vaccination and Quarantine Laws in Canada. That article outlined some shocking laws we have here:

In 1996 Ontario passed the Health Care Consent Act, which allows treatment such as vaccination to be administered without consent of the individual in the case of a loosely defined “Emergency”. In Quebec the Public Health Act clearly states: “Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary, while the public health emergency is in effect, the Government or the Minister, if he or she has been so empowered, may, without delay and without further formality, to protect the health of the population, (1) order compulsory vaccination of the entire population or any part of it against smallpox or any other contagious disease seriously threatening the health of the population and, if necessary, prepare a list of persons or groups who require priority vaccination. ”
…
In 2005 a new Quarantine Act was passed to deal with the transmission of communicable diseases by travelers entering or leaving Canada. Powers are awarded under this act to a Quarantine Officer to issue an order for a traveler who may have come in contact with someone with a communicable disease, to comply with treatment (ie. vaccination) or any other preventative measure (Section 26). If the traveler refuses to comply with the order he or she may face detention at a quarantine facility, until they decide to comply with treatment (ie. vaccination) or no longer pose a risk (Section 28). The threat posed by this act is diminished by the fact that it only applies to people leaving or entering Canada. Unfortunately there is a real possibility that the definition of a traveler may be expanded to include internal travelers (ie. everyone). The 2004 Public Safety Act (Bill C-7 (2004) formerly Bill C-42 (2002)) amends the Quarantine Act , and in doing so grants powers to the Minister of Health to make an interim order without Parliamentary oversight, to expand the definition of a traveler to include anyone residing in Canada.

The moral of the story is that our government doesn’t care about us and our government is clearly not in our control. Canada’s sovereignty is being insulted at breakneck speed. The corporate oligarchy is what is inevitably responsible for forced inoculation legislation in our countries, and maybe our complacency is also to blame. These insane laws, by the way, never come as a shock to those who are aware of the efforts that have been made to combine Canada, USA, and Mexico into one country and that agenda’s underlying motivation to further consolidate power into one global government. Dana Gabriel recently wrote about Canada’s degenerating sovereignty, noting a “U.S.-Canada perimeter security agreement” that would expand “collaboration in areas of law enforcement and intelligence sharing”. ...

Read more

Ending Unemployment. Part 2: Wage Subsidies

Image source

The International Labor Organization (ILO) predicts that millions in the developed and developing nations will lose their jobs in the coming months.

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, says "the global and UK economies had been turned on their heads in the past three months [and] the situation could be even worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s."

So what should governments be doing?

In an earlier post I advocated a negative income tax, an old idea to combat unemployment and poverty promoted by, among others, the late conservative economist and Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman.

To anyone whose labor is worth more than absolutely nothing, the negative income tax provides both an incentive and an opportunity to work, since it guarantees anyone with a job, however poorly paid, enough income to live on.

The great defect of the negative income tax is that it requires either that:

any increase in market wage received by a low-wage worker is subject to a claw back of the negative tax benefit equivalent to a marginal tax rate approaching 100%; or

the benefit is extended to those with earnings that well exceed the minimum living wage.

In the former case workers have little incentive to maximize their earnings, in the latter case the program becomes excessively expensive.

Another approach is for government to make wage subsidies available to employers by public auction.

An employer bidding successfully for a wage subsidy would pay for it, cash in advance, the subsidy to be paid to the employee by the tax department over the course of the year.

Amounts bid for subsidies, would depend on the quality of labor available and the profitability with which it could be employed, and thus would range from 0.01 dollar/euro/whatever  per hour to an amount close to the full value of the subsidy.

Subsidies could be sold both singly and in batches via an online E-Bay type auction, the number of subsidies offered varying from week to week according to the unemployment rate. The aim would be to drive that number to the full employment rate of around two or three percent as unemployment is currently measured in the United States.

The program should aim to minimize cost by excluding bureaucratic stipulations about qualifications of either employers or employees other than rules designed to prevent fraud. Thus, for example, subsidies should not be linked to place of work, type of work, type of worker or any of the other annoying restrictions that make employers loathe and detest virtually all of the wage subsidy programs that governments have from time to time tried in the past. The aim should be to minimize the cost of program administration to both government and employers.

How a wage subsidy system would skew incentives in the labor market is not altogether obvious. A counter-intuitive consequence would likely be that, to retain trained workers in a labor market offering many new opportunities for low-wage workers, employers might be compelled to pay a premium to retain experienced unsubsidized workers earning little more than the minimum wage.

A wage subsidy program would have many benefits:

first, it would result in massive savings in the cost of multiple bureaucratically complex welfare programs that supposedly care for those without income;.

second, it would provide a tremendous stimulus to many low-skill labor intensive industries, by making available millions of workers at third-world wages, thereby increasing total output of goods and services, raising the general level of prosperity, and increasing business tax revenues to government;

third, it would largely eliminate the disaffected, criminally inclined underclass, which currently lacks incentive to acquire education or work-place skills, thereby greatly reducing unemployment-related crime and its various policing and prison costs;

fourth, it would reduce the despair of the unemployed and the mental health problems that such despair can create. Currently, something like 40% of Europeans and 20% of Americans are diagnosed with some form of mental ill health at any one time. Much of this illness is related to economic stress, and much of that stress is likely unemployment related.

The cost of subsidizing the 40 million or so jobs required in America would be in the range of $100 to 200 billion dollars per year. Barely a drop in the bucket compared with the seemingly endless bailouts required to maintain the banking class in the style to which they have become accustomed.

With adjustment for differences in population and living costs, the cost of an employment subsidy program in other countries would be comparable: say $10 to 20 billion a year in Canada, or not a whole lot more than the Government of Canada was happy to spend entertaining representatives of the G8 and the G20 for a couple of days.

See also:
How to end unemployment. Part 1: The Negative Income Tax
Why economics is bunk
America's inflationary depression
USA versus China: Wage Convergence, Wealth Divergence and Global Hegemony
US Economy: Expecting the Unexpected
USA Boom or Bust: The Next Decade
Why China Booms While America Slumps
China's Economy Already Larger Than America's
NY Times: The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00

Some links

WRH Afghanistan War was Planned Months Before 9/11
Patrick Buchanan The End of Pax Americana?
WSJ Nearly Half of U.S. Lives in Household Receiving Government Benefit
Patrick Buchanan Was Awlaki and American?
Craig Murray Diplomatic blowback
The Truth Will Set You Free Al Gore’s New $9 Million Mansion
Pravda Libyan conflict lurches out of NATO control
AFP Senator Carl Levin, calls for release of memo authorizing assassination
American's Journey Ever wished you'd taken part in the original American revolution?
Aangirfan GREENS WINNING IN LIBYA?
Xymphora Breivik, Hitler and the Zionists
Paul Craig Roberts Is the War on Terror a Hoax?
Paul Craig Roberts The Day America Died
Hua Hsu The End of White America?
Pat Buchanan: Path to national suicide

What if Ron Paul were elected?

Ron Paul is a likeable man, earnest, feisty, good humored, and with a decidedly different perspective to all the other candidates running for President.

According to the latest Harris poll, Ron Paul would beat Barak Obama 51:49. So what if he wins the Republican nomination and then the Presidency?

As President, he would need no brains trust to figure out what to do. He would lead as the aging Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov led the Russian army during Napoleon's invasion: politely listening to the ambition-crazed advice of the wonks -- and ignoring it.

His policies are already decided.

Abolish the money-printing Fed, the IRS (and with it the Federal income tax), the Department of Education and many other branches of government.

End the wars, slash the Pentagon budget, bring the troops home.

Secure America's borders.

Withdraw from the UN, exit the WTO and other trade agreements that restrict free trade in the interests of the most powerful corporations.

Then what?

Stephen Harper, Cameron, Sarkozy and other former US puppets would be toast. In a post-imperial era, no one likes an imperialist lackey.

America would become a more diverse nation. Some states would no doubt seek to assume the big-government roles abandoned by the Feds. But others would not.

Americans would have new choices. They could vote with their feet for high taxes and massive state intervention in the economy and their personal lives, or for low taxes and greater personal responsibility.

Uncontrolled immigration would end. Abortion would cease to be legal and the birthrate of the native-born would increase.

Abroad, America's direct influence would be greatly diminished.

China, India and other great nations would be free to pursue their own economic interests in Africa and elsewhere, bribing and corrupting governments, monopolizing oil supplies, gaining control over agricultural and other resources.

The Kissingerian policy of ruling the World by controlling the World's energy supplies would be abandoned.

Energy-rich countries such as Iraq and Libya, Iran and Sudan would become prosperous and highly developed, as was occurring in Libya under Gaddafi and in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Such countries might become militaristic dictatorships or they might evolve in other ways. But what concern is that of Americans?

With thousands of nuclear weapons and means of delivering them within 15 minutes to any spot on Earth, the US has no reason to fear petty despots.

But America would once again become a credible advocate of freedom and of the right of every nation to self-determination and of the right of every person to freedom of conscience.

Political correctness would be at an end. Democracy would emerge more strongly than ever before.

America would once again become a light unto the World: the nation that the mass of people throughout the World would want their own country to emulate.

Would this not be a worthier role, a better role, for the American people than pursuing a global empire controlled by faceless plutocrats buying elections, creating fake democracies and holding the people in contempt?

See also
Aangirfan: LIBYAN TOWNS WRECKED AND LOOTED; THOUSANDS MURDERED
Aangirfan: Inside the minds of the CIA
Aangirfan: Britain, the most Americanized and least happy state in Europe

Is the World tiring of US leadership?

Germany slams 'stupid' US plans to boost EU rescue fund

Stupid US Treasury Secretary?

German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said it would be a folly to boost the EU's bail-out machinery (EFSF) beyond its €440bn lending limit by deploying leverage to up to €2 trillion, perhaps by raising funds from the European Central Bank.

"I don't understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense," he said.

Mr Schauble told Washington to mind its own businesss after President Barack Obama rebuked EU leaders for failing to recapitalise banks and allowing the debt crisis to escalate to the point where it is "scaring the world".

"It's always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government," he said. ...

Read more

Gibbering?

Fidel Castro calls Barack Obama UN address 'gibberish'

Cuba's Fidel Castro criticised Barack Obama's speech to the United Nations as "gibberish" on Monday, saying the US president used a rambling address to justify the "unjustifiable." ...

Read more

Iran May Send Warships Near US Waters

Iranian Navy off US coast? A "strong presence."

American beachgoers soon may have more to look out for than jellyfish and cast members of "Jersey Shore."

Iran's navy warned Tuesday that it planned to deploy ships near the Atlantic coast of the United States as part of its goal to create a "strong presence" in international waters.

"Just like the global hegemony that is present near our marine borders, we … also plan to establish a strong presence near US marine borders," IRNA quoted Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari as saying on Tuesday. ...

Read more

How the Rich Destroyed the Economy

By Paul Craig Roberts

Economic policy in the United States and Europe has failed, and people are suffering.

Economic policy failed for three reasons: (1) policymakers focused on enabling offshoring corporations to move middle class jobs, and the consumer demand, tax base, GDP, and careers associated with the jobs, to foreign countries, such as China and India, where labor is inexpensive; (2) policymakers permitted financial deregulation that unleashed fraud and debt leverage on a scale previously unimaginable; (3) policymakers responded to the resulting financial crisis by imposing austerity on the population and running the printing press in order to bail out banks and prevent any losses to the banks regardless of the cost to national economies and innocent parties.

Jobs offshoring was made possible because the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in China and India opening their vast excess supplies of labor to Western exploitation. ...

Read more

See also:
CanSpeccy: How to end unemployment 
Aangirfan: How Argentina protects jobs

Should British company get carbon credits for evicting Ugandans from their homes?

The green-sounding British company "New Forests" is reported to have evicted over 20,000 people from their land in Uganda to make way for tree plantations, some victims of displacement being killed in the process. But it is all in a good cause, apparently. The New Forests Company will earn carbon credits for every tree planted.But why not give them carbon credits for the humans displaced or killed too? That would seem to be pretty much in line with the thinking among the more radical members of the environmental movement.

James Corbett discusses Tom Secker's new vid on the July 7th London bombings

In a Global Research production, James Corbett interviews Tom Secker on his post-July 7th Inquest video, Crime and Prejudice (the latter video, linked here). The discussion provides a useful warning to those inclined to embrace conspiracy theories uncritically. Some quite plausible, but unsubstantiated, theories may well have been spawned for the purpose of being later debunked, lending in the process spurious plausibility to government lies and evasions of the truth.

MSM Finally admit the Twin Towers were brought down by explosives

Apparently the Toronto Hearings on 9/11 have sparked a little anxiety in the MSM, prompting them to publicize a wacky theory that the Twin Towers fell  because a mix of aluminum from the crashed airliners and water from the buildings' sprinkler systems caused a series of gigantic explosions. As YaYa Canada points out,  it's good to see it admitted publicly that the Tower's were brought down by explosives, but folks should bear in mind that there was no aluminum from a crashed airliner to account for the explosions that caused the 47-story World Trade Center 7 to collapse in its own footprint also on 9/11.

The mainstream media are now so pathetic, it seems certain it will have to be made a criminal offense to question anything they say -- with extra jail time for laughing about them in public.

Thing is, on 9/11, the media cannot retreat. To admit the 9/11 lie would be to admit that the corporate media are merely a conduit for lying propaganda and that the US Government and its numerous puppet regimes throughout the World represent a system of disguised tyranny under which the crimes of the ruling elite are justified by false flag terrorism, environmental scare stories based on pseudoscience and genocidal policies presented as an antidote to white racism.

Mmaintenance of the absurd official 9/11 narrative is as vital to the survival of governments as it is to the survival of the MSM. To admit its fatuity would reveal Obarmy, Harpie, Sark and Cameroon for what they are: frauds from snout to tail.