WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.
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The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.

“This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.

The lawmaker said Americans “are at the mercy” of OPEC for how much they pay for gasoline, which this week hit a record average of $3.79 a gallon.

The White House opposes the bill, saying that targeting OPEC investment in the United States as a source for damage awards “would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners.”

The administration said less oil going to refineries would limit available gasoline supplies and raise fuel prices.

Foreign investment in U.S. oil infrastructure has declined in the last decade. But the state-owned oil companies of several OPEC nations are owners of U.S. refineries, and those investments could be affected if the legislation becomes law, said Arlington, Virginia-based FBR Capital Markets Corp.

The bill also requires the Government Accountability Office to carryout a study on the effects of prior oil company mergers on energy prices.

The Senate would still have to approve the House measure.

The Senate previously approved similar legislation as part of a broad energy bill. However, the OPEC-suing provision was removed after White House opposition in order to get the underlying energy legislation signed into law.

[…]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080520/pl_nm/congress_opec_dc

Imagine all the Islamic countries declaring that the people in the USA would face Sharia justice, simply because that is the law in their lands.

That is what the Congress of the USA is declaring in this TOTALLY INSANE piece of legislation, which is tantamount to an act of war.

The laws of the USA stop at it’s shores. Anyone that thinks otherwise is delusional, like the IMBECILES who voted for this bogus, tawdry and highly provocative legislation. It is a great pity that the endless supply of stupidity that The House of Representatives generates cannot be substituted for oil; america’s fuel problems would be over in a single day.

Of course, what will happen next is that officers of OPEC will be arrested at US airports should they be stupid enough to travel to the USA for any reason. Or maybe they will just kidnap OPEC officers and have them flown to the US for retribution. They will do ANYTHING other than face the truth, which every sixth former knows now; the dollar is in decline, and this is the real cause of skyrocketing prices.

The insular, ignorant, arrogant, lying, murdering congress seems to be hell bent on the complete destruction of that once great country. They are a body without empathy, without wisdom or understanding, bereft of their collective senses (with one notable exception) and frankly, will ultimately get what they deserve.

Which is not what we want!

Am avid lurker writes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/13/aids.hiv

The most interesting thing I read today. It has significant implications regarding scientific funding, not to mention funding of public healthcare which she implies is worthless. Furthermore, it strengthens the argument that US ‘aid’ to ‘the Africa’ – that great nation! ;-) – is merely propping up the profits of drug companies by maximising and subsidising the market for ARVs. In South Africa this has come through voluntary licensing, which means Glaxo et al still get their cut without any manufacturing costs. Then there is the whole ‘faith-based’ aid agencies… and yet again today (Lebanon and Gaza, Burma and the whole HIV-infected sphere is highlighted in just one day) we see how the US just cannot keep its interfering dirty great stinking hooter out of other peoples business.

And I quoth:

“HIV is mostly about people doing stupid things in the pursuit of pleasure or money,” declares the cover on a proof copy of the book. “We’re just not allowed to say so.” She suspects she will never work in the Aids industry again for saying so. “But it’s true.”

Pisani, 43, spent 10 years working in the field of HIV, first for Unaids and then for a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Indonesia. As an epidemiologist, she quickly identified the risk of the virus spreading among drug injectors, gay men and the sex trade across Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe – underdeveloped countries with inadequate resources to prevent an epidemic. That placed 100 million at risk in Asia alone – equivalent to a third of the population of the Africa. But the data was clear: “HIV wasn’t going to rage through the billions in the ‘general population’. And we knew it.”

Like most of her colleagues, however, she also quickly realised that “governments don’t like spending money on sex workers, gay men and drug addicts”. So she put her skills as a former journalist to work, and began producing the sort of reports that persuaded politicians in Washington and the west that it is not “wicked people” but “innocent wives” at risk. “Aids couldn’t be about sex and drugs,” she explains. “So suddenly it had to be about development, and gender, and blah blah blah.”

The strategy was more successful than she could ever have imagined. “All these obsessively politically correct things started getting introduced.” HIV publications and conferences began devoting more time and attention to issues such as poverty, gender, development, vulnerability, leadership – what Pisani calls “sacred cows” – than to condoms and clean needles. “I’m just waiting for ‘climate change and Aids’,” she jokes sarcastically in her book – and sure enough, this week a headline appeared in an Australian newspaper: “Global warming set to fan HIV.”

[…]

As the veneer of political correctness starts to fade….

When people like this start to wake up and then go on to expose the nonsense, a large scale abandonment of brainwashing cannot be far behind.

Say goodbye to ‘hate speech’, political correctness, the surveillance mania, the terror fad, security theatre, cult environmentalism, [prefix] o phobia, [prefix] o fascism, the health and safety fad, the police state, and all the other garbage that has erupted like ear to ear scarlet acne on the beautiful face of Britain.

This is a comment attached to this post, that I had to ‘promote’ to an entire post:

——-

The new wave of anti-organic propaganda: organic food is bad for the environment!

First, biased tripe masquerading as a magazine piece on BBQ. Previously they had this slightly more balanced piece.

And last week, the “7 Myths Of Organic Food” debunked by Robert Johnston, who claims to be an ‘environmental expert’ but I can’t find his credentials anywhere. “these foods are an indugence the world can’t afford, argues environmental expert Rob Johnston”.

“Robert Johnston is a doctor and freelance journalist. He was an executive producer for Lifetime Television in New York and medical adviser for the Millennium Dome Body Zone.”

His ‘article first appeared online before the Indescribablybad picked it up.

If these studies and articles have not been funded and placed by BigAgro then I’m a monkey’s uncle. The thrust of these articles is that only by intensive, chemical-driven farming can we save the world. And we’ll be healthier too.

Smacks of desperation, with a whiff of fear.

——-

It in fact, stinks.

When someone who has the brain of a researcher and who is honest turns the fire-hose of their logic onto these subjects, the shiny surface gets washed away to reveal the pure dirty evil underneath.

Note how it is the usual suspects who eagerly regurgitate the PR lies.

As the fiat currencies collapse, people will turn to new, unassailable currencies like the Guernsey Pound and the Totnes Pound

In response to the massive interest generated by the distribution of 300 Totnes pounds Transition Town Totnes (TTT) are issuing 5000 Totnes Pounds, supported by Schumacher College and Totnes and District Chamber of Commerce.

The new issue of the Totnes Pound will be launched at the Schumacher College Open Evening on 20 June. Wolfgang Sachs, acclaimed German researcher and writer on the environment and development will be presenting at the Open Evening as part of a series of lecturers by teachers on the Schumacher College course ‘The New Economics: From growth to well-being’.

The first ‘edition’ of the Totnes Pounds, endorsed by Anthony Steen MP, was put into local circulation to launch the Transition Town Totnes Economics and Livelihoods group on Wednesday 7th March. The Pound was originally inspired through an alternative economics course at Schumacher College.

Eighteen outlets signed up to the Transition Town Totnes Pound pilot. The target for the second phase is 50 outlets. The project team monitored the use of the Pound up until 1st of June, the official end of the pilot, and have decided to begin a new phase of the project, including the issuing of a new note, due to the success of the original circulation.

The organisers aim to engage many more people with the second issue of the Pound and challenge the notion of the role of money and currency in local economic systems. This is part of a wider strategy of TTT and the courses at Schumacher College of encouraging a re-examination of social systems and the practice of new ways of engaging the community in the local economy, reducing our dependence on large-scale national and international production and trade and massive carbon dioxide production.

[…]

http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/news/the-totnes-pound-is-far-from-spent

read more about it here, and here is another town launching its own currency. Watch this documentary for an explanation about why you will be spending ‘London Pounds’ or ‘Manchester Pounds’ in the near future.

Before I finish this post, let us put to bed the nonsense about ‘reducing carbon dioxide production’. Anyone who studied Photosynthesis in school will know that plants thrive on C0₂. You will also have done the experiment where two nearly identical potted plants are placed in sealed jars, one fed pure C0₂ from a bottle the other fed air from the classroom via a pump. The plant that is fed C0₂ grows at a higher rate than the one being fed classroom air.

Carbon Dioxide helps plant growth. That is a fact. C0₂ is not a ‘threat to the environment’. Dope growers buy it to help them grow better dope. Maybe the environmental loonies should smoke some of this C0₂ enhanced dope; they might talk more sense when they are completely stoned:

Now Available as Optional Equipment
for Experienced Growers.
This unit can be shipped with a C0₂ system
with some huge benefits…

Tank not included

These C0₂ Enrichment Systems feature an accurate, easy to adjust C0₂ flow meter, a preset regulator that never needs adjusting, a solenoid valve and complete instructions. This Hydrofarm C0₂ Injection System attaches to any standard C0₂ tank (available at any welding or beverage supply store) and includes a timer, regulator, solenoid, and a flow gauge. Includes C0₂ tubing with holes, and is pre-mounted to the interior ceiling of your mini-stealth growing chamber. Utilizing the Drip Ring Method a nylon “T” ring is mounted to the ceiling of the growing environment with tubing that disperses C0₂ evenly as it drops evenly down over the garden!

Carbon Dioxide Enrichment will dramatically increase the growth of green plants. Green plants use carbon dioxide ( C0₂ ) and water in the presence of light to synthesize organic compounds. The plant then converts these organic compounds into elements that it can use (food). This process is called photosynthesis. If any of these ingredients ( C0₂, water or light ) are at levels below what the plant can use for maximum efficiency, it will only be able to perform at that level and no greater. Adding carbon dioxide to a growing environment that is not receiving proper nutrients or is low on light will not produce the desired results. Similarly, plants that are receiving plenty of sunshine and nutrients will only perform as well as the ambient level of C0₂ will allow. The ambient level of C0₂ in the earth’s atmosphere is generally between 300 and 600 ppm. Most plants receive far more water and energy in the form of sunshine than they can use. Increasing the C0₂ in the growing area will let the plant use the excess water and energy that is stored in the leaves. The result is a substantial increase in the growth rate of any plant that uses chlorophyll in the process of photosynthesis. Enrichment should commence at sunrise or when photoperiod begins and refrain during darkness hours. The average C0₂ level that is recommended is 1000 to 2000 parts per million (PPM).

The included timer can be used to set the intervals that the C0₂ will be released at, and it allows you to turn off C0₂ during the “night” period, when it is not needed.

[…]

http://www.homegrown-hydroponics.com/catalog.html

and further:

A typical C0₂ setup includes (from right to left) a large tank, adjustable pressure reducing regulator and flow meter. C0₂ is tricky to manage, as a result, it is generally not recommended for beginners although the rewards can be up to 40% more mass at harvest time according to recent studies.

As your plants “breathe” C0₂ and “exhale” O2, the balance of these two critical gases begins to shift. In nature, this exchange fits in perfectly as animals “breathe in” O2 and “exhale out” C0₂. Of course, a perfect world this is not. Modern industry and the burning of fossil fuels has somewhat “unbalanced” this effect. However, in your greenhouse or grow room, you will need to help your plants breathe by supplying a constant exchange of fresh air, which by nature contains about 2% C0₂. If you have already employed a thermostat and humidistat in combination with a vent fan, there is a good possibility that these two mechanisms will provide a good exchange of fresh air. However, if your fan is not operating frequently enough, you may be starving your plants of their most important atmospheric gas, C0₂.

Generally speaking, it is best to exchange the entire contents of your growing area about once an hour during daylight hours. To do this efficiently, you can use a fan that either runs continuously at a slow speed, or a fan that runs at high speed in short bursts. To determine the size of the fan that is necessary, simply multiply the length of your growing area by its height and then by its width. This number (use feet as a measurement unit) will be the Cubic Feet of your area. When buying a fan, you will notice that they are sold according to “Cubic Feet per Minute,” or CFM ratings. What this means is the amount of air this particular fan will move in one minute. Therefore, if your greenhouse or growing room is 10 feet x 10 feet x 8 feet, that’s a total of 800 Cubic Feet. You will need an 800 CFM fan to exchange the air in the entire greenhouse in one minute. That’s a big fan and you certainly don’t need to move it all out in just a minute’s time. I would suggest using a 100 CFM fan and running it for 4 minutes every half hour. You can do this with a cycle timer.

[…]

http://www.growhydroponicgarden.com/articles/15/1/Supercharge-Your-Garden-With-C02/Page1.html

My emphasis.

By all means, take a look at all the people who use C0₂ as a tool to enhance plant growth. On an earth that has an increasing amount of C0₂ in the atmosphere, we can expect bigger, faster plant growth and more 0₂ production. C0₂ is not a problem gas, it is absolutely crucial to life on this planet, and the production of it does not need to be regulated.

Every schoolchild knows this.

Does this mean that pollution is OK?, of course not; pollution and waste are real problems. What everyone must not do however, is drink the Kool-Aid and repeat like lemmings that ‘C0₂ is bad’.

Now, back to the Totnes Pound.

This money, and the other monies that are coming, will be inflation free money; they will exist only as a means to facilitate exchange. It is a long and complex subject, and the documentary linked above explains it well. One fact demonstrates how important these currencies will become. Benjamin Franklin said that that the real reason the revolution happened was the Colonial Scrip and, “The refusal of King George to operate an honest colonial money system which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the manipulators was probably the prime cause of the Revolution”.

Amazing!

The Guardian, once again, has a pro-corporate, pro-pharmaceutical propaganda piece in its toilet paper.

It goes like this:

Organic food ‘no benefit to health’
Eating fruit and veg is more important than whether produce is ‘green’, says expert

Jo Revill, Whitehall editor
Sunday March 30, 2008
The Observer

Parents who want their children to eat healthily should focus more on serving them extra fruit and vegetables and less on giving them expensive organic produce, according to one of the country’s leading nutrition experts.

Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, said families were becoming ‘deeply confused’ by conflicting messages about healthy eating.

The market for organic food reached more than £2bn last year, with most consumers from households with children under the age of 15. An average of £37m is spent each week on organic produce, mostly in south-east England.

[…]

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2269340,00.html

Without going into wether or not Lord Krebs is corrupt or not, or is a paid liar or not, or wether or not Monsanto, GSK or any other corporation is really behind this proclamation or not, we can say one thing for sure.

Organic food is better for you than non organic food.

And I can prove it.

Lets say you are someone with an infant child.

You have two glass ten litre beakers, marked ‘A’ and ‘B’, of distilled water in front of you and your baby.

I take a container of commercially available liquid pesticide, open the lid, and dip the tip of a thin sewing needle into the surface of the pesticide. I then dip that needle into the beaker marked ‘B’ and then stir the water vigorously.

I pour some water from beaker ‘A’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘A’, and some water from beaker ‘B’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘B’. I pour out 90% of the water in bottle ‘B’ and then replace the missing volume with water from beaker ‘A’.

Now.

Which bottle do you give your baby to drink?

Any sane person will give their baby bottle ‘A’. No parent with a single working brain cell will knowingly give their child the water in bottle ‘B’ which has been tainted by a miniscule amount of pesticide.

This is what Organic food is about, at the most basic level. Deliberately feeding people pesticide, at any concentration IS INSANE. It is better to eat food that has not come into contact with pesticides than it is to eat food that has come into contact with pesticides.

Organic food has not been sprayed with pesticides, and so therefore, it is better for you.

And that is THAT.

Then of course, there are all of the other ramifications of spraying crops, the pesticide entering into and remaining in the soil and rivers, the animals poisoned by it, etc etc. But I digress. Anyone who tells you that pesticide in small concentrations is safe to eat either works for one of the manufacturers of these poisons, is a paid liar for them, or they are stupid or ignorant.

Exactly the same demonstration can be made about organic meat.

Organic meat has not been injected with growth hormones, steroids and all manner of unnecessary and monstrous interventions. Would you feed your child a piece of meat that has trace amounts of animal growth hormone in it, or one that has no trace of such a thing?

The choice is obvious, and anyone who says that these trace amounts of drugs is harmless is is one of the above, a liar, a paid liar, ignorant or just plain stupid.

I would love to know how much money these journalists and newspaper editors are paid to regurgitate this nonsense unchallenged. Obviously they have no morals or human decency.

Thankfully, the majority of people are now waking up to why they should be eating organic food, and no, they are not so stupid as to conflate having a balanced diet with what organic food is all about. These imbeciles can publish all the papers they like, make all the proclamations they like in whatever newspaper or media they choose; we are ignoring them. Every time they publish a new paper or make another absurd proclamation, they become further discredited, and every time a trashpaper like the Guardian uncritically reprints their lies, they too become more discredited an look more foolish.

The same, tired religious dogma is trundled out:

However, according to Krebs, an eminent scientist and principal of Jesus College, Oxford, there is still no reliable, peer-reviewed evidence to show that there is any clear health benefit to eating this ‘green’ produce.

And we do not care. We do not care about the eminence of Krebs, Jesus College, Oxford, reliable peer reviewed evidence, his proclamations or anything else these suspicious characters, charlatans and religious fanatics come up with. Their credentials are meaningless. We are not eating poison because you say it is safe to do so. We are not going to give our children pesticide to drink because there is ‘reliable, peer-reviewed evidence’ saying it is safe. We are not going to sit around and wait to be told what is or is not beneficial or what is or is not safe to eat. You have lost all credibility, all authority, and no matter how you are announced in the newspapers the slavering ‘journalists’ intoning from your sacred scroll of hierarchical science power, we do not, and will not believe what you say.

Note how when the writer of this nonsense tries to balance out her article by quoting The Soil Association, she only quotes ‘A Sopkewoman’. No list of credentials, letters, academic associations…just ‘A Spokeswoman’ not even ‘an eminent Spokeswoman’. These sorts of cheap tricks no longer work; in fact, they can never work when the initial premise is so absurd, counterintuitive and blatantly false. What is in fact happening is that the more you are associated with these discredited bodies, the LESS you are believed, thanks to the decades of lying for money, bullshit and PR.

But you know this!

Organic food is better for you, better for the environment and better for the animals that are used as food.
Organic food is bad for evil scientists, bad for pharmaceutical companies and bad for fear-mongering journalists.

And that, my friends, is a proclamation you can trust!

Who is Phorm anyway?
Phorm is an internet marketing company. They make money by selling advertising on web pages to various companies through their brokerage which they call the Open Internet Exchange (OIX). You can find out more about Phorm and the OIX from their website (http://www.phorm.com) but beware of the marketing-speak!

What’s so different about that, google has been doing it for years!
Google’s advertising relies solely on Google’s own database to ‘target’ it’s adverts. It does this based on the content of the page you’re viewing, and doesn’t use any kind of browsing history unless you specifically opt-in (by creating a Google account). Phorm on the other hand targets it’s advertising based solely on your browsing history, which it collects direct from your ISP. You can opt-out of Phorm’s tracking by allowing a cookie to be set on your PC.

So you’re saying I’m automatically opted in?
Yes. If your ISP is Virgin Media, BT or Talk Talk, your browsing details WILL be sent to Phorm by default, you will require to disable the Phorm system by opting out on every browser that uses your network connection. There is no way to ‘globaly opt out’ of the Phorm system.

So what do they actually see?
Phorm doesn’t just see the URL of every page you visit, they see the entire content of every single web page (with the exception of encrypted pages). That means they can read your mail if you use most types of webmail, view all the posts you make or read on web forums, obtain the content of most webforms you complete, in fact just about anything you do on the web that is not encrypted can be hoovered up by Phorm. Phorm claim they do not store this information for more than 14 days.

What do they store?
According to their website, Phorm store an aggregate history of your browsing, not a detailed history of each page you visit. Even so, such a history would reveal considerable detail about your browsing and potentially about your personal life.

Can this history be tied to my identity?
Phorm claim they do not store any personally identifiable information (including IP addresses) or interface with any ISP systems that would allow them to identify you, however they assign each user a unique ‘tracking ID’ which relates directly to their browsing profile. If someone connected the ID to any piece of personally identifying information your browsing history would no longer be anonymous.

I heard Phorm was associated with a rootkit, is that true?
Phorm is not, however their predecessor company (121 Media) was. This has been confirmed by Phorm’s current CEO, who was also involved with 121 Media.

Someone said Phorm was linked to Russia, is it true?
Yes, there is a clear link between Phorm and Russia. Phorm employ Russian programmers (“The development team for the new software was recruited from Moscow’s elite Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering, a vital part of of the Cold War spying effort and still a centre for developing Russia’s ‘national security’ computer systems.” – Mail on Sunday article)  and have been indirectly linked to the Russian security services by a Mail on Sunday article (full article is here)

http://www.badphorm.co.uk

[…]

It had to happen.

Given that governments everywhere want access to all your browsing habbits, it was inevitable that someone, somewhere would say, “but we can make money out of this!”.

and here is an update:

Web creator rejects net tracking
By Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent, BBC News

The creator of the web has said consumers need to be protected against systems which can track their activity on the internet.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee told BBC News he would change his internet provider if it introduced such a system.

Plans by leading internet providers to use Phorm, a company which tracks web activity to create personalised adverts, have sparked controversy.

Sir Tim said he did not want his ISP to track which websites he visited.

“I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that’s not going to get to my insurance company and I’m going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they’ve figured I’m looking at those books,” he said.

Sir Tim said his data and web history belonged to him.

He said: “It’s mine – you can’t have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I’m getting in return.”

Phorm has said its system offers security benefits which will warn users about potential phishing sites – websites which attempt to con users into handing over personal data.

Kent Ertugrul, chief executive, of Phorm, told BBC News: “We have not had the chance to describe to Tim Berners-Lee how the system works and we look forward to doing that.

“We believe Phorm makes the internet a more vibrant and interesting place. Phorm protects personal privacy and unlike the hundreds of other cookies on your PC, it comes with an on/off switch.”

The advertising system created by Phorm highlights a growing trend for online advertising tools – using personal data and web habits to target advertising.

Social network Facebook was widely criticised when it attempted to introduce an ad system, called Beacon, which leveraged people’s habits on and off the site in order to provide personal ads.

‘No strings’

The company was forced to give customers a universal opt out after negative coverage in the media.

Sir Tim added: “I myself feel that it is very important that my ISP supplies internet to my house like the water company supplies water to my house. It supplies connectivity with no strings attached. My ISP doesn’t control which websites I go to, it doesn’t monitor which websites I go to.”

Talk Talk has said its customers would have to opt in to use Phorm, while the two other companies which have signed up – BT and Virgin – are still considering both opt in or opt out options.

Sir Tim said he supported an opt-in system.

“I think consumers rights in this are very important. We haven’t seen the results of these systems being used.”

Privacy campaigners have questioned the legality of ISPs intercepting their customers’ web-surfing habits.

But the Home Office in the UK has drawn up guidance which suggests the ISPs will conform with the law if customers have given consent.

Sir Tim also said the spread of social networks like Facebook and MySpace was a good example of increasing involvement in the web. But he had a warning for young people about putting personal data on these sites.

“Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it’s all going to be seen by your parents and your grandparents and your grandchildren as well.”

But he said he had tried out several of the sites, and thought they might in the end be even more popular with the elderly than with young people.

Sir Tim was on a short visit to Britain from his base at MIT in Boston, during which he met government ministers, academics and major corporations, to promote a new subject, Web Science.

This is a multi-disciplinary effort to study the web and try to guide its future. Sir Tim explained that there were now more web pages than there are neurons in the human brain, yet the shape and growth of the web were still not properly understood.

“We should look out for snags in the future,” he said, pointing to the way email had been swamped by spam as an example of how things could go wrong. “Things can change so fast on the internet.”

But he promised that what web scientists would produce over the coming years “will blow our minds”.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7299875.stm

At last, SOMEONE standing up for what is right.

By the end of the year in 2133, it had become obvious to some of the more experienced observers of human history that the “Raman Boom” was leading mankind toward disaster. Dire warnings of impending economic doom started being heard above the euphoric shouts of the millions who had recently vaulted into the middle and upper classes. Suggestions to balance budgets and limit credit at all levels of the economy were ignored. Instead, creative effort was expended to come up with one way after another of putting more spending power in the hands of a populace that had forgotten how to say wait, much less no, to itself.

The global stock market began to sputter in January of 2134 and there were predictions of a coming crash. But to most humans spread around the Earth and throughout the scattered colonies in the solar system, the concept of such a crash was beyond comprehension. After all, the world economy had been expanding for over nine years, the last two years at a rate unparalleled in the previous two centuries. World leaders insisted that they had finally found the mechanisms that could truly inhibit the downturns of the capitalistic cycles. And the people believed them-until early May of 2134.

During the first three months of the year the global stock markets went inexorably down, slowly at first, then in significant drops. Many people, reflecting the superstitious attitude toward cometary visitors that had been prevalent for two thousand years, somehow associated the stock market’s difficulties with the return of Halley’s Comet. Its apparition starting in March turned out to be far brighter than anyone expected. For weeks scientists all over the world were competing with each other to explain why it was so much more brilliant than originally predicted. After it swooped past perihelion in late March and began to appear in the evening sky in mid-April, its enormous tail dominated the heavens.

In contrast, terrestrial affairs were dominated by the emerging world economic crisis. On May 1, 2134, three of the largest international banks announced that they were insolvent because of bad loans. Within two days a panic had spread around the world. The more than one billion home terminals with access to the global financial markets were used to dump individual portfolios of stocks and bonds. The communications load on the Global Network System (GNS) was immense. The data transfer machines were stretched far beyond their capabilities and design specifications. Data gridlock delayed transactions for minutes, then hours, contributing additional momentum to the panic.

By the end of a week two things were apparent-that over half of the world’s stock value had been obliterated and that many individuals, large and small investors alike, who had used their credit options to the maximum, were now virtually penniless. The supporting data bases that kept track of personal bank accounts and automatically transferred money to cover margin calls were flashing disaster messages in almost 20 percent of the houses in the world.

In truth, however, the situation was much much worse. Only a small percentage of the transactions were actually clearing through all the supporting computers because the data rates in all directions were far beyond anything that had ever been anticipated. In computer language, the entire global financial system went into the “cycle slip” mode. Billions and billions of information transfers at lower priorities were postponed by the network of computers while the higher priority tasks were being serviced first.

The net result of these data delays was that in most cases individual electronic bank accounts were not properly debited, for hours or even days, to account for the mounting stock market losses, Once the individual investors realized what was occurring, they rushed to spend whatever was still showing in their balances before the computers completed all the transactions. By the time governments and financial institutions understood fully what was going on and acted to stop all this frenetic activity, it was too late. The confused system had crashed completely. To reconstruct what had happened required carefully dumping and interleaving the backup checkpoint files stored at a hundred or so remote centers around the world.

For over three weeks the electronic financial management system that governed all money transactions was inaccessible to everybody. Nobody knew how much money he had-or how much anyone else had. Since cash had long ago become obsolete, only eccentrics and collectors had enough bank notes to buy even a week’s groceries. People began to barter for necessities. Pledges based on friendship and personal acquaintance enabled many people to survive temporarily. But the pain had only begun. Every time the international management organization that oversaw the global financial system would announce that they were going to try to come back on-line and would plead with people to stay off their terminals except for emergencies, their pleas would be ignored, processing requests would flood the system, and the computers would crash again.

It was only two more weeks before the scientists of the world agreed on an explanation for the additional brightness in the apparition of Halley’s Comet. But it was over four months before people could count again on reliable data base information from the GNS. The cost to human society of the enduring chaos was incalculable. By the time normal electronic economic activity had been restored, the world was in a violent financial down-spin that would not bottom out until twelve years later. It would be well over fifty years before the Gross World Product would return to the heights reached before the Crash of 2134.

AFTER THE CRASH
There is unanimous agreement that The Great Chaos profoundly altered human civilization in every way. No segment of society was immune. The catalyst for the relatively rapid collapse of the existing institutional infrastructure was the market crash and subsequent breakdown of the global financial system; however, these events would not have been sufficient, by themselves, to project the world into a period of unprecedented depression. What followed the initial crash would have been only a comedy of errors if so many lives had not been lost as a result of the poor planning. Inept world political leaders first denied or ignored the existing economic problems, then overreacted with a suite of individual measures that were baffling and/or inconsistent, and finally threw up their arms in despair as the global crisis deepened and spread. Attempts to coordinate international solutions were doomed to failure by the increasing need of each of the sovereign nations to respond to its own constituency.

In hindsight, it was obvious that the intemationalization of the world that had taken place during the twenty-first century had been flawed in at least one significant way. Although many activities-communications, trade, transportation (including space), currency regulation, peacekeeping, information exchange, and environmental protection, to name the most important-had indeed become international (even interplanetary, considering the space colonies), most of the agreements that established these international institutions contained codicils that allowed the individual nations to withdraw, upon relatively short notice, if the policies promulgated under the accords no longer served the interests of the country in question. In short, each of the nations participating in the creation of an international body had the right to abrogate its national involvement, unilaterally, when it was no longer satisfied with the actions of the group.

[…]

It all sounds very familiar doesn’t it? It is snarfed from Rama II, by Arthur C. Clarke.

If you change some of the dates and the technical details, it could apply directly to today; banks collapsing thanks to bad loans, no one believing a mega crash can happen, etc etc.

We must remember that the author is the man who not only wrote 2001 A Space Odyssey but he also invented the telecommunications satellite. Insightful does not begin to describe the imaginative powers of this man, which is why I have always been curious about the strange disconnect between his obvious intelligence and his skepticism about UFOs being Alien Spacecraft. It is clear to anyone who has done their research that Aliens do come here and have been coming here. Arthur Clarke is not someone to make a pronouncement without doing his research, and so how can we explain his irrational skepticism?

That was a major digression. The reason why I posted this is that this man is good at predicting the future, and I do not like what he is predicting; World Government, INEPT World Government, population control, the disappearance of the family; in fact, every New World Order wet dream is portrayed by Clarke as inevitable, and mostly desirable. The passages where he does this stick out from the story (in Rendezvous with Rama) like spikes on a cactus. They are jarring, so much so, its like they have been peppered into the story as an afterthought.

In any case, whatever writers and futurist predict, the future is not set, and there is no reason to assume that the future will be cashless, Fascist and bad. The future could be Cashed, free and sustainable, and Clarke and his NWO=GOOD Science Cult Papacy buddies proved mercifully wrong. One thing we all agree on, as demonstrated in the above passage; government cannot control the market, and no matter what happens, there WILL be crashes in the absence of hard money and real economic freedom.

Heretofore heroic Liechtenstein — one of the world’s great tax havens — has come under fire recently, as Germany has used spies in the tiny principality’s banks to find tax evaders.

The Financial Times predictably takes Germany’s side (“governments are right to insist that those who live in a country, and benefit from public services, pay tax”), but notes that Germans’ desire to flee a 50% tax rate is understandable.

Let’s hope Liechtenstein stands its ground, unlike other former tax havens that have caved under international (i.e., U.S.) pressure and compromised their banking-secrecy laws.

Germany, of course, violated Liechtenstein’s laws by paying bank insiders to share individuals’ private financial information.

One German politician is unapologetic, and deserves credit for at least stating the matter bluntly: “[That this was illegal] is irrelevant. What Germany will do is confront every tax suspect with the option of whether they want to drop their trousers and cooperate or possibly go to jail.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/

At last, a politician who tells the truth. Let all Germans take heed to this (of course, they will not):

Breaking the laws of any country is irrelevant if it gets you what you want.

That is precisely what this man said, he said what he meant, and everyone everywhere should understand that this is a universal truth, not just something that applies to Germany.

Anyone who still believes that there is a rule of law anywhere is insane. Its every man for himself, and this is how those people listed on that stolen DVD have been living.

I guarantee you that the people who are going to prosecute these free livers are going to be able to bribe and work the German system so that they ‘get off’ with not even a scratch.

And wait a minute..

Did he say, “Drop their trousers?”!!

What a bunch of dirty BASTARDS.

BERLIN, Germany (CNN) — German tax authorities are chasing as many as 1,000 wealthy Germans in one of the largest tax investigations in the country’s history, spokesmen for the Ministry of Finance said Tuesday.

Spokesman Stefan Olbermann told CNN the government paid more than $6 million for a DVD that was stolen from a Liechtenstein bank and contains the names of many prominent Germans who may be involved in tax fraud scams there.

The most prominent suspect so far is former Deutsche Post Chief Executive Klaus Zumwinkel. Police raided Zumwinkel’s private house and his offices at Deutsche Post last week and arrested him, though the arrest warrant was later lifted.

Zumwinkel is believed to have evaded almost $1.5 million in German taxes by investing in foundations in Liechtenstein, a tiny Alpine country between Switzerland and Austria, said Bernd Bieniossek, a spokesman for the state prosecutor.

Police and tax authorities raided private homes and banks in cities across Germany on Monday and the German government is calling on those involved to turn themselves in to the police and thus avoid a jail sentence.

When asked by CNN what kinds of people were being investigated, another spokesman for the Finance Ministry, Torsten Albig, said most were prominent and wealthy Germans.

A spokesman for Metzler, a private bank, said police raided its Frankfurt and Munich offices Monday. The spokesman said the bank has opened its banking records to the police, which it was legally obliged to do. Private banks deal with wealthy clients.

Olbermann said German authorities believe the DVD containing the names will be valid court evidence even though the German Foreign Intelligence Service bought it from a man who had stolen the data from Liechtenstein bank LGT.

Germany believes Liechtenstein, with its lax tax laws and culture of secrecy, is complicit in allowing German tax evaders to park their money in the principality.

Liechtenstein Prime Minister Otmar Hasler planned to arrive in Berlin on Tuesday for a long-planned trip to Germany and was to hold talks with German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel planned to urge the government in Vaduz to do more to crack down on German tax evaders.

Zumwinkel resigned from his position as the CEO of Deutsche Post, one of the world’s largest logistics firms, Friday. Deutsche Post announced Monday that Frank Appel, a member of the company’s management board, would take over.

[…]

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/02/19/tax.evasion/index.html

WTF?

The German government pays SIX MILLION DOLLARS for a STOLEN DVDR so they can chase their wealthy citizens?

You cannot make this stuff up.

This is the sort of behavior we expect from the MAFIA, but then again, the German government is a criminal organization, just like the Mafia; their ‘legitimacy’ comes from their numbers not any inherent right to govern and steal.

Why should these rich Germans pay tax in Germany? it is obvious that the German government is corrupt, as they think nothing of PAYING FOR STOLEN GOODS from criminals in other countries, and not only paying, but paying astronomical and extortionate amounts of taxpayer money.

This is the uniform society that the Germans are seeking to protect by banning Home Schooling; one where paying millions of Euros to burglars and criminals to facilitate the arbitrary punishment of Germans is perfectly OK.

America could return as the pre-eminent financial center of the world in the face of sour grape politics going nuclear in Britain:

Proposed legislation could seriously impact on London as a financial centre, writes David Rothenberg

People from overseas who intend to return home but are resident in the UK – known as non-domiciles – will be affected by tax changes proposed by the Government.

These may encourage people not to come to the UK in the future, and could seriously impact on London as a financial centre. Those who are here may seriously consider leaving.

Guess what? They are already making thier plans to pull up stakes and leave.

When the Government first indicated in October that it was going to make changes, the most serious issue appeared to be a fee of £30,000 that non-domiciles would have to pay to continue to enjoy the tax shelter.

Many wealthy individuals, who contribute much to this country, were prepared to pay that, but the details of the new legislation will make them think twice about staying and discourage new arrivals.

The changes now proposed will, for example, retrospectively tax past receipts from a foreign trust that gave rise to no tax liability at the time. And now the proposed new legislation means that the individuals can have a tax liability in the future, even if he or she receives not a penny more from his or her overseas trust if the individual stays here.

Another problem of the proposed changes is that existing overseas mortgages will become much more expensive. A fall in the top end of London house prices could be one consequence of these proposed changes because non-domiciles are going to leave. Lawyers are already advising non-domiciles to put their expensive properties on the market before prices fall.

While lawyers and accountants in the UK are tearing their hair out trying to understand the new rules, their counterparts overseas will be rubbing their hands in glee for the new business they will be enjoying.

Other changes give rise to new problems. For example, if you buy something overseas and bring it to the UK, you pay tax on what you initially paid for it, not what it is worth now.

This is, frankly, the one of the most insane things I have ever heard. Whoever thought this up clearly has no understanding of markets, people and money.

Here are some examples of what the new rules might mean for people who are non-domiciled and resident in the UK.

• A man goes to Paris and buys a new car overseas which costs £20,000. He uses it for a couple of years then brings it to the UK. The car is now worth less than £10,000 but he has to pay tax on the original £20,000.
• A young grandfather, aged 50, has a new grandson in Australia. He sends £10,000 from his foreign income to the parents of the child. The parents look after the money as the child grows up. Eighteen years later, the grandfather, now aged 68, has forgotten about the gift to his grandson. The grandson decides to come to the UK to visit his grandfather for six months and his parents give him the £10,000 as spending money. As soon as the child arrives in the UK with the money, the grandfather has a tax liability and obviously has no clue that he is liable.
• A husband is not domiciled in the UK but is happy to be taxed on his worldwide income and gains as if he was UK-domiciled. He is not claiming any special advantages for being non-domiciled and has never done so. His wife, who is UK-domiciled, and the husband have decided to sell their Spanish holiday villa because they have other capital gains that can soak up the loss. Under the new proposed rules, however, just because the husband is non-domiciled he is denied the right to use the losses. There is little doubt that some non-domiciles will argue that this is a breach of EU law.
• A woman is an American banker and was sent to the UK for three years from New York. Ten years ago her family lawyer suggested she make a living will, a common arrangement in the US, and she forgot all about it. If she fails to tell HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) the date the trust was created and the name and address of the current trustees, within 12 months of arriving in the UK, she will be liable for a penalty of up to £300. Similarly, if she has been resident in the UK before April 6, 2008, she has to tell HMRC by April 2009.

For many non-domiciles, the fact they have to disclose details of their overseas arrangements will be the last straw. This is pretty intrusive stuff and makes life more and more difficult for people working here. This is simply a case of civil servants looking at bureaucratic convenience instead of looking at the wider picture and how it affects the country generally.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/

Kafkaesque is a word that comes to mind, but it does not convey the outrage that many must be feeling at these proposals.

Many people came to the UK because the rules were favorable. Now, after settling down, doing good work, bringing prosperity and creativity to the UK, the government wants to change the rules halfway through the game. That is not cricket.

But I digress. In the face of this absurd threat, key people in the financial sector are already leaving the UK, and they will not be replaced:

More than half of the wealthiest people in Britain are planning to leave or transfer their money abroad following the Government’s crackdown on ‘non domiciled’ residents, a study has found. […]

Like a few others trying to explain the impact of the change in the non-dom rules, my example is a good illustration of why the impact of this change is so detrimental to the UK.I do not believe I am unique.

I am a non-dom working for an international bank in London. I will be leaving the UK next month partly as a result of the law change and executing the same job that I did in London from another European city. I will no longer be paying any tax in the UK at all. The bank will not replace me with a UK employee because there is no vacancy. My assistant may have to look for another job.

There is no doubt that these rules have benefited the UK immensely, attracting talent and creating wealth which could easily have benefited another European country. Frankfurt and Paris were often mentioned as possible rivals to London as a financial centre in the mid 90’s.

The cack-handed way this law change has been implemented is adding to the climate of uncertainty (which the domiciled are also suffering from: CGT rules, changes to trust law) which will be extremely costly to the UK in the long run, driving away investment and enterprise.
Posted by Non-Dom on February 4, 2008 10:59 PM

Would you miss non-doms?

This will drain the city of all its irreplaceable talent, and like it says above, other countries are “rubbing their hands in glee” because they now have the chance to usurp the once unassailable position of London as the greatest financial centre.

This makes absolutely no sense from any perspective. You want London to continue to be a centre for finance, but you interfere with the very thing that makes it work – the flow of money. Its like wanting Britain to be the world centre for omelets and then banning eggs.

“The UK has always enjoyed a reputation for being very thoughtful over its tax regime. If instead it bends to the sort of political expediency that led in the US to legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley, then you could very well see, over time, people changing their perspective.”
Telegraph

That reputation has already been shattered, even if they do not bring these measures in. Britain has been shown to be an unfair player, an untrustworthy partner, a cheat. People need to plan years in advance when deciding to move themselves and there interests into a country, and if, as it appears, Britain can change the rules without warning, retroactively, no one with any common sense will risk putting their foot here. That is why people are already saying that they will not move their operations to Britain; it is out of fear that they will one day, without notice, be subject to some absurd regulation cooked up by a bitter, twisted civil servant in a shabby dingy office.

Which brings us to the title of this post.

If there is a Ron Paul Presidency, Sarbanes Oxley and the other myriad of insane market distorting laws are repealed, including the swinging income tax laws and the absurd ‘money laundering’ regulations, then businesses and executives and personnel from all over the world will head back to New York, surfing a cross-Atlantic tidal wave of money. Not only will Americans fuel a resurgence of the economy being unburdened, but a deregulated financial sector will also bring trillions into the country.

None of the businesses and personnel affected by this insanity actually WANT to move to Singapore and Dubai; they would MUCH rather stay in London, but they will all do what is required to stay free and unencumbered. And those two places are not so bad. New York is preferable to both of them, and there is the opportunity.

Even if all of this is not true, it is morally indefensible to firstly change the rules halfway through a game, and secondly, to try and rob people of their money in this shameless and convoluted way.

It is astonishing that these imbeciles did this without consultation or taking advice…it makes you wonder just how stupid they really are; certainly they do not have close connections to high finance and obviously they are disconnected from reality.

It is frightening that such unintelligent, detached people have the power to make law.

UPDATE!

This from today’s Times:

New ‘nom-dom’ rules

• From April 5 non-domiciled residents who have been in Britain for seven years must pay an annual fee of £30,000 if they want to be exempt from tax on their offshore income and gains
• Those who take advantage of this exemption will lose their personal allowances for income tax and capital gains tax
• Those who also pay tax in foreign countries won’t get credit for the £30,000 fee
• Tax will be levied on any gains from offshore trusts – this will be backdated for ten years
• All noncash assets, such as art and jewellery, brought into the country will be taxed – this will be backdated indefinitely
• All days spent travelling, where a passenger passes through Customs, will be counted as a day in Britain. Those who spend more than 183 days in the tax year in Britain are deemed to be resident

It sounds so absurd that your initial thought is, “This cannot be true!”; Tax to be levied back dated TEN YEARS? The statute of limitations is SEVEN YEARS except in murder cases…its breathtaking….non cash assets brought into the country backdated indefinitely does that mean that the jewelry of your parents and grandparents will be taxed? And just how are they going to pull this off? Are they going to get all these ‘non doms’ to list every object they own and demand they produce a receipt for everything they have ever bought?

Is anyone asking this question?!?!?

If you spend more than 183 days in britain, then you are deemed resident. So they are essentially banishing the wealthy from britain for one half of every year. That is one half of the year that these people will be spending their money in other countries, should they even bother to come back at all.

Total, unvarnished insanity.

And finally another excellent comment on this article:

Do we think we are the center of the art world and there are no fabulous alternatives? I was so sick of this ‘fleece the rich, hang the consequences’ attitude that I left the U.K. and came to America – sure there are problems here but looking a gift horse in the mouth is not one of them.

Which bright spark thought this policy up? Clearly not one with any vision or care as to what this will do to keeping Britain as a leading art power. Should other nations stand idly by as their art exports are taxed at 40% when entering the U.K. or should they reciprocate and slap a prohibitive massive duty on British art exports coming into their countries?

If this comes into law as proposed Britain is handing other world powers a golden opportunity to leapfrog our carefully honed position in the art world that has taken centuries to create.

This policy is pathetic and wreaks of envy, which, I am ashamed to say, is something that Britain can rightly claim to be the world leader at.
Another disgrace!
Peter, New York, USA

And there you have it. It seems like they are deliberately trying to make everyone leave britain. We have already read about the mass exodus of the ‘ordinary’ people, and now they are making the extraordinary flee also.

Good Job!

Chavez: Pull Reserves From US

Chavez Urges Latin American Allies to Move Reserves Out of US

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.

Chavez made the suggestion as he hosted a summit aimed at boosting Latin American integration and rolling back U.S. influence.

“We should start to bring our reserves here,” Chavez said. “Why does that money have to be in the north? … You can’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

To help pool resources within the region, Chavez and other leaders launched a new development bank at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Nations of Our America, or ALBA.

The left-leaning regional trade alliance first proposed by Chavez is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.

Chavez noted that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia in recent days, saying “that has to do with this summit.”

“The empire doesn’t accept alternatives,” Chavez told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.

Chavez warned that U.S. “imperialism is entering into a crisis that can affect all of us” and said Latin America “will save itself alone.”

Rice left Colombia on Friday after a trip aimed at reviving a free trade deal that has stalled in the U.S. Congress. She sidestepped an opportunity to confront Chavez, who accused Colombia and the United States of plotting “military aggression” against Venezuela.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined Chavez in his criticism of U.S.-style capitalism, saying “the dictatorship of global capitalism … has lost control.” Three days earlier, Ortega had shouted “Long live the U.S. government” as he inaugurated an American-financed section of highway in his country.

The ALBA Bank is “being born with the aim of boosting development in our countries,” Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Saturday as he and other officials gathered at the bank’s Caracas office for an inaugural ceremony.

Isea has said the bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

Chavez welcomed the Caribbean island of Dominica into the ALBA — an acronym that means “dawn” in Spanish — joining Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba. Attending as observers were the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, along with officials from Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Chavez said a new fund created by Venezuela and Iran to support projects in third countries would have links to the ALBA Bank.

[…]

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080126/venezuela_alba_summit.html

These people are not very smart.

They should have done this years ago before the Iraq invacion (yes ‘invascion’), when it would have made a huge impact. Now that we have a man who could actually become their greatest ally, they want to accelerate the destruction of the USA and trigger the neocon Final Push at the very point at which the whole world could be saved by Ron Paul. Yes, I typed that.

Peanut brained imbeciles!

Every person living in a sovereign state on the continent of Africa wants Ron Paul to be the next president of the USA.

Why?

Because he is going to dismantle the evil american empire. That means that plans for the Imperial outpost and control nexus AFRICOM will be scrapped, and they will be spared what many countries have suffered for decades; an invading army of bored soldiers pestering the local women, the CIA operating freely to topple governments and directly manipulate elections and business, etc etc. Had AFRICOM gone ahead as planned, it would have been….’a bad thing’.

The Way Ahead
AFRICOM is still in its early planning stages. The command began initial operations in October 2007 and is still formulating mission, staffing and location options.

[…]

AFRICOM

No, ‘jar heads’, that is not ‘the way ahead’, it is another step down the road to DISASTER and the end of America.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

All people all over the world want the old America back; the America everyone looked up to and cherished. This is probably our last chance to bring it back in our lifetime, and the enemy is trying its best to stop it from happening. They are getting desperate and brazen, like the people who control FOX News and their excluding of Dr. Paul.

Which brings us to…

The american mainstream media is digging deep to try and derail and smear Ron Paul; this time around the hideous grimacing jelly joweled troll they have put in the center of the tracks in front of the oncoming train with a ‘STOP’ sign is named ‘Jamie Kirchick’.

He has instantly been discredited thanks to the internets.

Ron Paul is not a racist. And just for the record, I would rather have an honest, strict constitutionalist racist in the white house than any of the people who are currently running for president.

Thankfully, that hypothetical scenario does not apply in any way to Dr.Paul:

January 8, 2008 5:28 am EST

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – In response to an article published by The New Republic, Ron Paul issued the following statement:

“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

“In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person’s character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’

“This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It’s once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.

“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”

[…]

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/

It is interesting however, that the only things they can dig up about him are the things that he says, or is alleged to have said, and they can never attack his policies.

What this tells us is that his policies are 110% sound and unassailable.

Many years ago, May 1995 to be accurate, we dedicated a large section of issue 4 of our superb magazine Rivendell (named after a BBS, not LOTR btw!) to ‘Constitutions of the World’ – here are the parts:

Part2 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’

Part3 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’

Part4 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’

Part5 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’

Part6 of Rivendell 4 in PDF Format. ‘Constitutions of the world’

You can see from the content of that issue why people like us want Ron Paul to become president; he stands for everything that we believe in and that we have believed in for a very long time.

Our new Holford Myths site is launched today – this has been developed to counteract false information about Patrick Holford.

Anyone who challenges today’s drug-based medical paradigm effectively is a likely target for attack. Notably, since the publication of Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs by Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne, certain drug industry funded organisations and drug-oriented individuals have campaigned to discredit Patrick Holford by spreading false allegations. The main opponents have been Ben Goldacre in the Guardian, pharmacology professor David Colquhoun, the anonymous Holford Watch and certain dieticians.

The associations with the pharmaceutical industry and/or organisations funded by the pharmaceutical industry are explored in the free e-book Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, Quackbusters and Corporate Science by Martin Walker for those who want to understand the modus operandi of the organised lobby against alternative and nutritional approaches within medicine.

Responses to false allegations about Patrick Holford plus direct links to extracts about Ben Goldacre, David Colquhoun, Holford Watch and certain dieticians from the above e-book can be found on www.holfordmyths.com

[…]

Patrick Holford is a man who owns a company that makes and sells vitamins and dietary supplements. He writes books, and sells them.

This is an affront to people like Ben Goldacre and his ilk. The only food you should be eating is the food that SCIENCE says you should be eating. The only thoughts you should be thinking are the ones that SCIENCE says you should be thinking. Anyone who eats anything else, who thinks anything else, who says anything other than what they believe, who does not swallow the dogma is ANTI-SCIENCE and is to be…

BURNED AT THE STAKE

Rational people are not frightened of Vitamin Sellers or book writers. They make their case cleanly and then STFU. If the thinking behind Bad Science is so great, then let them write a diet book, sell it, and then make people thinner…[booming voice] WITH SCIENCE [/booming voice]; what need have you to personally attack, ridicule and seek to destroy other people? What do you gain out of it? Who appointed these sub human monsters the protectors of the general public? Once again, if they have something better to offer, OFFER IT, do not pump the world full of negative vibes (man [or is that hairless monkey?]).

The fact of the matter is, none of these people have anything to offer, other than rancid bile, calls to disbelief and personal attacks. It goes like this; you have posts on your blog about UFOs, therefore, ALL your stuff is garbage. That is a stupid skeptic trick. That is junk science. I say “God does not exist” and so you are a fool to believe anything else. That is how they work; they do not have a better diet for you, or a better set of supplements, a different, greater belief to follow (except their utterly fallable, incomplete, and downright deadly dogma) the only thing they have to offer is ‘DO NOT DO THAT’ ‘DO NOT BELIEVE THAT’ ‘DO NOT EAT THAT’, and of course, there is nothing that you can DO with that negativity, and the newspaper it is printed on is fit only to light up your fire.

I can tell you something straight – anyone who writes a column like ‘Bad Science’ is on my shitlist from the first speck of ink on the paper. Anyone who runs other people down, who uses Stupid Skeptic Tricks is a TOTAL SCUMBAG.

Lets be clear:

Should they be burned at the stake? No.
Should they be stopped from writing in that RAG the Guardian or any other rag? No.
Are they the worst examples of human trash ever? Yes!

The point is, these attacks on Vitamin Sellers are direct attacks on MY LIBERTY. They are an affront to decent people everywhere, who just want to mind their own business and who do not want to be told what to do, what to think and what to eat and who to trade with.

People who are against Patrick Holford are Fascists. They want to forbid you from taking vitamins, they want the law to ban the sale of dietary supplements. They want you to not read his books; in effect, they want to censor him, and prevent the free flow of information across the world. They are as bad as the Chinese Government, or those guys who burned books in the 1930s.

All free people have the absolute right to publish what they want, and free people have the right to read what they like. Free people have the right to control what goes into their bodies; that means that they can eat whatever they like, inject whatever they like, smoke whatever they like, and it is no one’s business. It is not the business of Ben Goldacre and the corprophiliacs at The Guardian. It is not the business of Bayer, GSL, Novartis, Monsanto, Uncle Sam, HMG or anyone else.

Anyone who tries to shut down writers like Patrick Holford are on the side of Fascists and Fascism. They are against Liberty and against the freedom to read and to learn (and no, learning does not mean only learning what is ‘right’).

I am fed up to the teeth of the attacks on vitamins and food supplements. I am tired of reading about the weasel words of the corporate shills defending the indefensible, trying to take away my right to interact with whomever I want in whatever way I want.

In the end, these people must be put down like diseased dogs. Fox news is learning what it means to defy the force of Liberty unleashed. Their stock has taken a dip thanks to the boycott that is now running against all the sponsors of that evil station. This can be done to any company, and certainly, if the vitamin eaters and supplement takers decide to boycott a newspaper that is attacking them, the effects will be felt. Newspapers can publish whatever they like, and everyone has the right to buy and sell whatever they like…including stocks.

Some may say that I go in too hard on these subjects; part of the style of this blog during its nearly seven years of operation is to go in with all guns blazing if thats what you like. Nevertheless, in the past, when people tried to take away the liberty of free men the result was war and killing and that is what The Guardian, Skeptics and corporate shills are doing; literally attacking millions of free people; trying to erase their liberty, poison them and destroy their lives. That they are subjected only to some bad language and shouting is very lucky for them; in another age they would lose their lives…in any case, they have lost. More people than ever are turning away from Industrial Pharmaceutical Medicine and The Medical Industrial Complex. This is why they bring out the big guns to try and shoot down people like Patrick Holford – though in the case of Goldacre we are talking about a .22 not The Guns of Navarone… but I digress; the publishers of that garbage had better think twice about running hit pieces against people who are doing nothing but mind their own business – there could be big economic consequences for them, just like Fox is feeling right now.

For those morons out there who say that vitamin sellers are defrauding the public, that is not your business. There is plenty of legislation dealing with poisoning and poisoners to take care of people who sell things that actually harm buyers under the guise that it is medicine. We have enough law on the books to take care of almost every possible situation. It is you baying and whining morons who create the monster governments that stop at nothing to control everything that you do down to how and when you piss.

Make up your own minds, eat what you want, publish what you want, read what you want, think what you want and DOWN with the anti vitamin fascists!

UPDATE!

a lurker sends this

> this snippet should have been in your post:
>
> At this point it is perhaps worth pointing out
> that Goldacre won a British Science Writers (BSW)
> award, in 2003. At this time, the BSW was funded
> by Glaxo Wellcome and called the Glaxo Wellcome
> BSW Award, the very year that he began working
> for the Guardian. The drug AZT was made by
> Burroughs-Wellcome, now GlaxoSmithKline.
>
> and check out this book:
>
> http://www.slingshotpublications.com/dwarfs.html

What a nasty, foul and loathsome piece of work!

Karen Selick

An open letter to Rob Nicholson, Canada's Minister of Justice

Dear Mr. Nicholson,

On January 21, 2008, an extradition hearing will begin in Vancouver for Marc Emery, Canada’s pre-eminent activist for the legalization of marijuana. Marc has been charged in the U.S. with conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana, and conspiring to launder money. If convicted under U.S. law, he faces possible life imprisonment without parole.

Should Marc be extradited to the U.S.? The Canadian court will almost certainly say yes. It has little choice under the Extradition Act. Marc
openly admits selling marijuana seeds over the Internet to customers around the world, including the United States, for years. His conduct would have been grounds for criminal charges here, although Canadian authorities never chose to charge him. But that’s enough under the Act to make it mandatory for the judge to commit him for surrender to U.S. authorities.

That’s where you come in, Mr. Justice Minister. Once the court has ruled, the Extradition Act gives you discretion to refuse to surrender Marc if it “would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances.”
Here are some of the circumstances you might consider relevant.

From 1999 until he was arrested in 2005, Marc declared on his income tax return that his occupation was “marijuana seed vendor.” He paid $578,000 in income taxes into federal and B.C. government coffers. He gave Canada Revenue Agency access to his bank statements and explained all his cash flows to them. The CRA graciously accepted his money without ever taking any action to put a stop to all this criminal activity.

If you believe that all Canadians benefit from taxes being collected and governments spending that tax money (I don’t, but most Canadians do), then logically you will have to concede that Marc has been a huge benefactor to the Canadian people.

As for the money laundering charge, maybe all Canadians should face U.S. indictments for having conspired with Marc to transform Americans’ outlays on recreational drugs into Canadian outlays on health care, roads, schools, etc.

Marc has helped Canadians in other ways, too. When Canada was compelled in 2000 to legalize medical marijuana by the R. v. Parker decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, confusion reigned. Although the court had said that individuals suffering the daily pain of illnesses such as epilepsy, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS could use marijuana with their doctors’ approval, there was nowhere they could legally acquire it.

Authorized users who asked Health Canada how to get their marijuana were given the suggestion that they purchase it online from Marc Emery.
For eight years, Marc sent every federal Member of Parliament a free subscription to his magazine Cannabis Culture. Every issue included a copy
of his seed catalogue. Every single MP and all of their office staff turned a blind eye to his activities, just as Canada Revenue Agency and Health Canada had done.

The prohibition against selling marijuana seeds in Canada went unenforced for years, but the benefits of those seed sales were accepted unhesitatingly by Canadian authorities. It would be the height of hypocrisy and injustice for this country to now hand over its benefactor to a foreign government for a prosecution it declined to pursue itself.

But there’s more. Go to any internet search engine and enter “marijuana seeds.” You’ll find many seed vendors still operating without prosecution in
British Columbia and other Canadian provinces. Why is the U.S. government not seeking the extradition of these vendors? Why just Marc and his two employees Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams?

I think the answer is obvious. The so-called “BC3” have taken a principled, public stand against the U.S. government’s war on drugs. Marc in particular is a highly effective spokesman for his cause. He was never in this business primarily for financial gain, and generally kept only enough of his marijuana seed profits to live on. Instead, he has donated over $4-million and countless hours to fund court challenges, establish compassion clubs for medical marijuana users, pay medical bills for activists, sponsor conferences and protests, fund ballot initiatives, fund political campaigns and so on. For over a decade, he has been a huge thorn in the side of politicians and bureaucrats who disagree with him on the political issue of legalizing marijuana.

The Extradition Act requires you, Mr. Justice Minister, to refuse to surrender a person if the request for extradition is “made for the purpose
of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their…political opinion….” Please consider Marc’s long history of idealistic activism and
tell the U.S. government that you won’t let them haul this politically motivated Canadian hero off to one of their jails.

Karen Selick is a lawyer in Belleville, Ontario. kas@karenselick.com

[…]

National Post

The year starts off with a bang and a puff of smoke.

New Jersey has a thing for Eggs…only this time, its Eggs that have been fertilized and that are growing into human beings:

N.J. Orders HIV Testing For Pregnant Women
Some Groups Call Law Unneeded and Intrusive

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 28, 2007; A03

NEW YORK, Dec. 27 — New Jersey this week launched one of the most ambitious efforts in the country to control mother-to-child transmission of HIV, making screening tests mandatory for all pregnant women in the state beginning next year.

A bill signed into law Wednesday by the Senate president, Richard J. Codey, in his capacity as acting governor, requires two tests for pregnant women, at the beginning of the pregnancy and again in the third trimester, unless the mother objects. If the mother objects, the objection will be noted and the newborn will then be tested for HIV, with the only exception being on religious grounds. Newborns will also be tested if the woman tests positive.

Just four other states have mandated testing for pregnant women, and three more– including New York — require screening of newborns. But New Jersey’s law appears to go further by requiring both.

The mandatory screening has raised privacy concerns. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the state’s chapter of the National Organization for Women both questioned whether the mandated tests violate a woman’s right to privacy and the right to make her own medical decisions.

Riki E. Jacobs, executive director of the Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, a New Jersey nonprofit helping people living with AIDS, said the law is unnecessary and comes when the state should be focused on expanding care for pregnant women. “I am adamantly opposed to this bill. New Jersey already reduced the perinatal rate of transmission with mandatory counseling of pregnant women,” she said. “The issue is getting those women who are not in prenatal care in for services and testing.

“I definitely think it is an invasion of privacy,” Jacobs said. She said women choose to test their babies in 98 percent of cases, so the new law’s mandatory provisions for testing children are not needed: “The fact that we assume women won’t choose to test is ludicrous and wrong.”

But in the end, lawmakers decided that the risk of exposing children to the infection outweighed those concerns.

While men represent the majority of new HIV and AIDS cases in the United States, women now account for an increasing share, from just 8 percent of new diagnoses in 1985 to 27 percent in 2005, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Of the estimated 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States in 2005, about 300,000 were women, and the vast majority of them were between 25 and 44 years old.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other groups, has been recommending that HIV screening become a routine part of prenatal tests. The CDC recommended HIV tests become a routine part of the battery of prenatal tests, and that there be no separate written consent required.

Mother-to-child transmission of the disease — during pregnancies and through breast-feeding — peaked in the United States in 1992, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which reported that the number of cases since then has dropped “dramatically” because of early detection and the increased use of antiretroviral therapy, which lowers the risk of transmission to less than 2 percent.

The majority of those new cases that still occur are mostly among black Americans, reflecting the changed demographic of the epidemic since it was first identified.

According to the CDC, 100 to 200 children a year are infected by their mothers. As of 2005, the last year for which figures are available, there were 6,051 people in the United States living with HIV/AIDS who had been infected perinatally — during pregnancy or breast-feeding.

Of those, 66 percent were black and 20 percent identified as Hispanic.

In New Jersey, a June report by the state’s health department reported 78 percent of those with HIV and AIDS were members of minority groups. That report also found that New Jersey has a significant female population living with the disease, 37 percent of the total.

In signing the bill at a local hospital, Codey said, “We can significantly reduce the number of infections to newborns and help break down the stigma associated with the disease.”

He added: “For newborns, early detection can be the ultimate lifesaving measure.”

New Jersey records about 115,000 births each year. While there were no recorded mother-to-child transmissions this year, as of the June report, there were two children born infected in 2006 and seven born infected in 2005, according to the health department.

[…]

Washington Post

The state has no business mandating that anyone be tested for any disease.

What we need is a simple chart that can instantly show how a law like this is wrong to even the thickest of the lowest common denominator.

Hmmmmmmm!

And of course, all these HIV testing kits need to be paid for and replenished. I smell another scam!

December 4, 2007
If you’re a fugitive from the law — or even if you’re just super paranoid about your privacy — you might want to steer clear of a new biometric payment system which has been implemented at about ten Shell gas stations in the Chicago area. The biometric payment system, developed by San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, works by linking a user’s fingerprint to his or her credit card or checking account. For now, customers must scan their fingertips at a kiosk inside the gas station – however, Shell is reportedly considering the idea of having the scanners installed on the pumps to facilitate even faster payment.

But what if the scan taken could be linked to other databases – even be cross-checked against the NCIS database? We’ve heard about how this technology can be used to create “theft proof” smart cars which can only be used by the driver registered to that vehicle. And now it appears the technology can be used to verify a credit card user’s identity as well. But where is the fingerprint information stored and who has access it? Is it possible that, one day in the future, even people wanted for minor offenses, such as failure to appear in court or failure to pay child support, could be “nabbed” by police at the local gas station or some other store, should they attempt to pay using this new system?

Of course, I’m intentionally being absurd … obviously, Shell is using the technology to see if it will provide a new level of convenience for its customers … it probably has no intention of using it proactively as a crime fighting tool. Furthermore, if you’re on the run, you’ll probably be smart enough not to use such a system.

Still, as adoption of this technology grows — and if one day it becomes ubiquitous — one can’t help but wonder what role it might play in identifying and tracking people as they move about and make purchases. By the same token, one can also speculate whether it might be possible for the bad guys to use this technology against consumers: For example, maybe someone will come up with a way of “faking” people’s fingerprints, as part of an impressive effort to steal their identities.

Shell is reportedly the first gas station company in the U.S. to install biometric payment devices. The company is also reportedly testing hand-held wireless devices that allow full-service customers to pay electronically without getting out of their cars. For more information, check out this article.

[…]

TCMNet

‘What if’. That is the question. TODAY they are not linked to any other databases, but it would be trivial to do so, and government would have no problem in compelling gas stations or anywhere else from providing real time access.

Like we and other people have been saying for ages, they will use this to cut off your life, making you a ‘non person’ at the press of a button, so that you cannot eat, travel or, as in this case, buy gasoline. They could even use it to ration gasoline and food in an ’emergency’.

IF you think that they will not try to do this, you are delusional; and we don’t have to take breath to talk about the ‘accidents’ that can happen where your identity is stolen or corrupted. We have had some very good examples of how that works.

This article is cautious, but the writer has the main points nailed; this is something to be VERY cautious about; do you REALLY need to save three minutes at the pump? Are those three minutes worth your irreplaceable fingerprints? You can already pay at the pump by swiping your card without even entering the station proper – there is no advantage in using your fingerprint to facilitate transactions; this is a completely faddish and pointless exercise. Period.

An absurd piece of shortsighted nonsense from BBQ, bemoaning the fact that WBOOG(2) Radiohead’s fans didnt fall overthemselvs like Ron Paul supports to pour money into their account in exchange for their new set of recordings (formerly called an ‘Album’):

“Radiohead have been bankrolled by their former label for the last 15 years,” said Michael Laskow, chief executive of Taxi, a company that helps bands get signed to record labels.

“They’ve built a fanbase in the millions with their label, and now they’re able to cash in on that fan base with none of the income or profit going to the label this time around.”

“How will new artists be able to use this model if they haven’t built a fan base in the millions?” he added.

[…]

BBQ

Yes indeed.

I will tell you how they will use this model and make millions.

They will do it like this. Mia Rose has literally millions of fans all over the world, gained simply by posting her music on YouTube.

This is how artists will promote themselves in the future, and they will make more than a living out of it, by selling merchandise related to themselves and their music, and through licensing.

We are in the middle of a transition period between the Soviet era of music manufacture and distribution and ‘teh internets’ era; the era of dematerialized frictionless distribution, the era of music as a service, not a product.

Only the buggy whip selling computer illiterate, evil paternalist losers at the BBC whine about this new era.

But you know this!