Archive for April, 2009

Monkton Suppression: its plain WRONG

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington.

In email, some people said….

*******wrote:
Beacuse Monkton is missing the point. Nobody is trying to inform him or fool him.

Did you read the article?

The Democrats ‘…rescinded his (Monkton’s) scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing’. If anything, its the Democrats that are trying to fool and misinform the public by not allowing open debate and the submission of evidence.

Monkton is not missing any point at all, he was prevented from making any point in the first place!

We need to prepare the ignorant mass for a massive change in life style and this includes what gore has done and will continue to do

First of all, who is ‘We’ in this instance?

Secondly, lets define terms:

“Ignorance is the state in which a person lacks knowledge and is unaware of something. This should not be confused with being unintelligent, as one’s level of intelligence and level of education or general awareness are not the same. The word “Ignorant” is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware. The term may be used specifically (e.g. “One can be an expert in math, and totally ignorant of history.”) or generally (e.g. “an ignorant person.”) — although the second use is used less as a descriptive and more as an imprecise personal insult.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorance

So, in order to not be ignorant, we must not lack knowledge, or be unaware of something. In order to be aware, we need to learn, and that means listening and reading.

By blocking Monkton, Al Gore and his democrat friends are fostering ignorance. They are doing this deliberately to boost their social engineering agenda, that they know is based on junk science and outright lies. That is how they have got the ignorant to say by rote, “the debate is over and there is scientific consensus about anthropogenic global warming”, which is of course a bald faced lie. There is no scientific consensus on AGW, they know it, you and I, the people who are not, by definition, ignorant, know it, and they want to stop anyone else from finding out what we both know to be true.

whilst scientists debate in private what to do about the various environmental issues such as , oil depletion, ice melt, co2 rise, population increase, water shortage, food shortage, soil erosion, etc

We know better than to conflate different subjects, and I know that you are playing devils advocate, so lets go there:

  • ‘oil depletion’ is a technical problem that will be adapted to by the market.
  • ‘Ice melt’ is not happening like the environmental Fascists keep saying it is; you and I both know that, because we study the facts.
  • ‘C02 rise’ is not the cause of ‘global warming’ and is not a problem; you and I both know this, because we have been exposed to the facts.
  • Water shortage is a problem of efficiency not supply, the same with food shortage. If they are a problem of supply, the market will adjust accordingly.
  • Soil erosion is a problem of mismanagement (even vandalism) by a very small number of companies, and is not related to the other things in that list.
  • Finally, population increase is not a problem related to oil depletion (even if there were only one car on earth, the oil would still run out since it is a finite resource) or ice melt (AGW lie), or food shortage (there is enough food to feed everyone on earth; this is a problem of will not supply) or water shortage (once again, this is a problem of efficiency not abundance) or soil erosion.

Waste disposal, water pollution, pollution by genetically modified organisms, electromagnetic spectrum poisoning and many other unrelated items could have been on that list obviously.

Ignorant environmentalists who do not have a grounding in or basic understanding of science, or the history of science and technology, or any experience in growing crops or taking care of the land, regularly bundle all of these things together under the banner of ‘the environment’ when they are quite separate and only very tangentially related.

If we are going to talk about AGW, we must stick to AGW and the evidence for or against it, without conflating it with anything that is not related directly to the scientific evidence. Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a theory (hypothesis). It is an unproven theory. What you do with theories is put them to the test with scientific observations. When people try and stifle observations that destroy the AGW hypothesis, as in any scientific matter, the people trying to suppress evidence are normally lying about their work or trying to preserve their positions and prestige. This is exactly what is happening, and the Monkton affair is just the latest example.

We either win this battle or we’re all to the dogs

This doesn’t make any sense, and it is certainly not ‘a battle’. If the AGW hypothesis is true, then the effects of AGW can be corrected by taking action to cut emissions. If it is not true, then trying to stop it by cutting C02 emissions is a waste of time and will represent a huge distortion in the progress of man, changing the future irrevocably and unnecessarily. The hypothesis has not been proven; what we have are a bunch of non scientists shouting very loud that the AGW hypothesis is correct, and who want to silence anyone with data that says it is not correct. That is not how science is done, and it is not how decisions that change ‘society’ should be made. If society is to be run on the basis of science, then the scientific method must be applied without distortion. What we are seeing is a denial and shutting down of the scientific method for political ends. That is a fact.

and monckton should know better.

This doesn’t make any sense either. Either he is lying and someone has proof of this, or he is genuine and wrong, and what he is saying can be disproved. Either way, the correct way to win debate is not to silence someone with evidence that challenges a hypothesis, but instead to provide evidence. The AGW side does not have this evidence, and Al Gore in particular, has been found to be a consummate liar, his film totally discredited as junk science and propaganda. The ignorant, unlike you and I, are emotionally invested in Gore and his unscientific garbage; that is the true reason why they hang on to all of this and him in particular, not because of any facts, but because they refuse to listen to the facts when they run contrary to their secular religion, ‘environmentalism’, the high priest of which is Al Gore.

he knows that life style needs to change.

Everyone knows that waste is bad, wether it be wasting paper or wasting water. What we must never do is throw away science in a blind ignorant panic and start to mix up things that do not belong together. We must also never run into the arms of the state for our solutions; they do not have any (competence or solutions); all they can offer is tyranny, violence and destruction.

What do you see in a decade?

This is an interesting question, and an interesting time horizon. I know some very ignorant people who thought that the world would be in total chaos, “in twenty years”….in 1980. Doomsayers have been with us for generations, environmental doomsayers are only the latest in the breed. The world is still going to be here. Technology is going to be better than we can imagine. The economy will be very different. AGW will be totally discredited as a hypothesis, and we will probably be back to ‘new ice age’ theories like the crackpot junk scientist James Hansen predicted in 1971 when he helped create the model that told us of the coming ice age. When that didn’t happen, he turned to global warming. Of course, it could be possible that the environmental fascists could stifle science with some absurd, ‘environmental hate speech’ statutes, effectively killing science in this field. Who knows? What I do know for certain, is that if the state and ignorant environmental religious fanatics set the agenda, we will be living in a sub optimal future constrained by the lack of imagination and prejudices of a small coterie of nutcases, cult leaders, power mad control freaks and their brainless followers.

How do you see yourself and your children?

That is a good question. I have five children. I do not want their fertility controlled by the people who I describe in the paragraph above. I do not want them taxed in a bogus ‘carbon trading’ scheme whose only goal is to enrich criminal bankers. I do not want their ability to travel to be restricted on the false pretext of AGW. I do not want them to live in a fascist world where science cannot be practiced because the ignorant masses forbid it out of religious fervor. It is my wish that my children are protected from the people who would make this planet a nightmare place. Anyone who wants their children to be caught in such a system, cannot possibly understand what it is they are asking for, and of course, once it is in place, it might never be removed for generations. We need only look at how long it took for the Soviet system to fall; seventy years. Millions of lives wasted and ruined by people who believed the theories of Marx and Lenin. Now we have Al Gore and his new religion of ‘environmentalism’; just as poisonous as Marxism Leninism, only now, it is not the proletariat against the capitalists, it is man against himself. In the environmentalism religion, man is is own enemy, and so he must destroy himself and his way of life to save himself. It is, like Marxism Leninism, utter, unscientific nonsense from beginning to end. If the environmentalists are not struck down, it will take until the models are disproved by the march of time to finally put to rest their wild imaginings. By that time, like Russia, all that will be left of the great civilizations will be wastelands of destroyed emasculated populations of cowed slaves.

And it will all have been for nothing.

As for me, I hope to be alive to see the utter destruction of all of this nonsense, from the insanity of Keynsian economics to the environmentalism religion and everything that flows from them. I live for the day when collectivism is dead and buried, where socialism and all of its masks are consigned to the garbage bin of history. There is a more than good chance that I am going to get my wish.

Neslon Mandela, president of South Africa. ANC in total control.
Barack Obama, for all his many fatal flaws, faults and failings, President of the United States of America.
The Dollar about to go the way of the hyperinflation Deutchmark.
The Internets…
Neodymium Magnets…
Cloned pets…
Cloned humans…

Oh yes, ANYTHING is possible, more than we expect.

Tough question! we really need to try and think about it because we are not part of the ignorant mass and we can go beyond some small propaganda.

I agree. Thinking about it is crucial. In order to do it, to think, we need to hear all of the evidence, not just the evidence that we like. We need to understand and apply the scientific method, and adhere to it strictly. We need to be mindful of the state, and its lust for power and absolute control over the individual and every aspect of life. Science is not propaganda, and neither is the truth. There are people out there who do not want anyone to have access to the facts. We must be suspicious of these people, and make sure that we really have all the facts to hand in spite of what they want. That is the only way that we can come to any sort of correct judgment, and think correctly.

Being rational thinking people, we are rightfully outraged that Monkton was not allowed to speak at the eleventh hour after having been invited to give evidence; what is Al Gore afraid of? That his hoax film would be exposed for the nonsense that it is? Thankfully, due to the internet that he invented, it is impossible to herd people anymore. Whatever the truth is about AGW, it will out.

What is more galling is that Gore and his religious fanatics are appealing to the legislature to enshrine their religion in the law. If they are making an appeal to the legislature, which ostensibly represents all of us equally, it is absolutely outrageous that a person offering scientific data that counters AGW was prevented from speaking. Quite apart from the debate surrounding AGW, this is an attack on Democracy and openness in government. People who believe in those two things are disgusted by this action.

If this were simply an academic debate, it would not be so important, but this is about the creation of law and the use of force on the population in order to carry out the environmentalist agenda. That evidence exists that Al Gore and his gang are dead wrong, and that this evidence is deliberately suppressed when evidence is about to be presented for the record is inexcusable.

Anyone who is reasonable, as you and I are, cannot be for such a suppression of facts.

It is only by the seeking of truth that we have had the technological means to manage our future placed into our hands. It is only through the seeking of truth that we will overcome all the myriad and very real problems that face us.

Suppressing truth, giving into irrational fear and running to the state is not going to solve anything; instead, it is going to make everything much worse, in every aspect.

Are We “Utopians”?

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

From For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

[…]

All right, we are to have education through both theory and a movement. But what then should be the content of that education? Every “radical” creed has been subjected to the charge of being “utopian,” and the libertarian movement is no exception. Some libertarians themselves maintain that we should not frighten people off by being “too radical,” and that therefore the full libertarian ideology and program should be kept hidden from view. These people counsel a “Fabian” program of gradualism, concentrating solely on a gradual whittling away of State power. An example would be in the field of taxation: Instead of advocating the “radical” measure of abolition of all taxation, or even of abolishing income taxation, we should confine ourselves to a call for tiny improvements; say, for a two percent cut in income tax.

In the field of strategic thinking, it behooves libertarians to heed the lessons of the Marxists, because they have been thinking about strategy for radical social change longer than any other group. Thus, the Marxists see two critically important strategic fallacies that “deviate” from the proper path: one they call “left-wing sectarianism”; the other, and opposing, deviation is “right-wing opportunism.” The critics of libertarian “extremist” principles are the analog of the Marxian “right-wing opportunists.” The major problem with the opportunists is that by confining themselves strictly to gradual and “practical” programs, programs that stand a good chance of immediate adoption, they are in grave danger of completely losing sight of the ultimate objective, the libertarian goal. He who confines himself to calling for a two percent reduction in taxes [p. 300] helps to bury the ultimate goal of abolition of taxation altogether. By concentrating on the immediate means, he helps liquidate the ultimate goal, and therefore the point of being a libertarian in the first place. If libertarians refuse to hold aloft the banner of the pure principle, of the ultimate goal, who will? The answer is no one, hence another major source of defection from the ranks in recent years has been the erroneous path of opportunism.

A prominent case of defection through opportunism is someone we shall call “Robert,” who became a dedicated and militant libertarian back in the early 1950s. Reaching quickly for activism and immediate gains, Robert concluded that the proper strategic path was to play down all talk of the libertarian goal, and in particular to play down libertarian hostility to government. His aim was to stress only the “positive” and the accomplishments that people could achieve through voluntary action. As his career advanced, Robert began to find uncompromising libertarians an encumbrance; so he began systematically to fire anyone in his organization caught being “negative” about government. It did not take very long for Robert to abandon the libertarian ideology openly and explicitly, and to call for a “partnership” between government and private enterprise — between coercion and the voluntary — in short, to take his place openly in the Establishment. Yet, in his cups, Robert will even refer to himself as an “anarchist,” but only in some abstract cloud-land totally unrelated to the world as it is.

The free-market economist F. A. Hayek, himself in no sense an “extremist,” has written eloquently of the vital importance for the success of liberty of holding the pure and “extreme” ideology aloft as a never-to-be-forgotten creed. Hayek has written that one of the great attractions of socialism has always been the continuing stress on its “ideal” goal, an ideal that permeates, informs, and guides the actions of all those striving to attain it. Hayek then adds:

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a programme which seems neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibility of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote . . . . Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may rouse [p. 301] the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere “reasonable freedom of trade” or a mere “relaxation of controls” is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm. The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and thereby an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this has rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.1

Hayek is here highlighting an important truth, and an important reason for stressing the ultimate goal: the excitement and enthusiasm that a logically consistent system can inspire. Who, in contrast, will go to the barricades for a two percent tax reduction?

There is another vital tactical reason for cleaving to pure principle. It is true that day-to-day social and political events are the resultants of many pressures, the often unsatisfactory outcome of the push-and-pull of conflicting ideologies and interests. But if only for that reason, it is all the more important for the libertarian to keep upping the ante. The call for a two percent tax reduction may achieve only the slight moderation of a projected tax increase; a call for a drastic tax cut may indeed achieve a substantial reduction. And, over the years, it is precisely the strategic role of the “extremist” to keep pushing the matrix of day-to-day action further and further in his direction. The socialists have been particularly adept at this strategy. If we look at the socialist program advanced sixty, or even thirty years ago, it will be evident that measures considered dangerously socialistic a generation or two ago are now considered an indispensable part of the “mainstream” of the American heritage. In this way, the day-to-day compromises of supposedly “practical” politics get pulled inexorably in the collectivist direction. There is no reason why the libertarian cannot accomplish the same result. In fact, one of the reasons that the conservative opposition to collectivism has been so weak is that conservatism, by its very nature, offers not a consistent [p. 302] political philosophy but only a “practical” defense of the existing status quo, enshrined as embodiments of the American “tradition.” Yet, as statism grows and accretes, it becomes, by definition, increasingly entrenched and therefore “traditional”; conservatism can then find no intellectual weapons to accomplish its overthrow.

Cleaving to principle means something more than holding high and not contradicting the ultimate libertarian ideal. It also means striving to achieve that ultimate goal as rapidly as is physically possible. In short, the libertarian must never advocate or prefer a gradual, as opposed to an immediate and rapid, approach to his goal. For by doing so, he undercuts the overriding importance of his own goals and principles. And if he himself values his own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them?

In short, to really pursue the goal of liberty, the libertarian must desire it attained by the most effective and speediest means available. It was in this spirit that the classical liberal Leonard E. Read, advocating immediate and total abolition of price and wage controls after World War II, declared in a speech, “If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would release all wage and price controls instantaneously, I would put my finger on it and push!”2

The libertarian, then, should be a person who would push the button, if it existed, for the instantaneous abolition of all invasions of liberty. Of course, he knows, too, that such a magic button does not exist, but his fundamental preference colors and shapes his entire strategic perspective.

[…]

http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp

You need to buy that book.

Long time readers of BLOGDIAL know about ‘the button‘ and the number of times I have pressed it. Hard.

Simple but effective

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

bitter and twisted

Flour, water & salt.

Nobody Wants to Fire the First Shot!

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

I watched closely all the tea parties all over the country Wednesday. What a showing of national pride and solidarity. What a showing of subservient compliance and casual indifference. What a joke.

In Lafayette Park, Washington D.C., of all places to protest, the plan was to dump one million tea bags in the park, but the brave dissidents never did it because they forgot to get the proper permits. Are you kidding me? What is civil disobedience without civil disobedience? They even went so far as to say that they were willing to put down plastic tarps and clean up after themselves.

That’s like saying we don’t agree with your oppressive, unconstitutional despotism of our nation and to show our ire in no uncertain terms we’re going to break public law and disrupt the peace so take that, nah- nah-ne-boo-boo. But don’t worry because we’ll put everything back when we’re done as if nothing happened cuz we don’t want any trouble!

Videos on the Internet of Lafayette Park show people standing around in their trendy turtlenecks and Tommy Hilfiger and North Face jackets, chatting, socializing, drinking coffee and talking on their cell phones. Some dressed in colonial garb (how cute) and waving flags. Others even break into a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner followed by a chant of “USA, USA, USA.” What a terrific show of meaningless symbolism.

Who are they chanting to? The buildings in front of them? The birds in the trees? Themselves? What was this supposed to do, because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to surmise that it did NOTHING! All the politicians were inside, smugly and comfortably seated in their expensive leather chairs that we paid for. They were discussing their next round of special interest pandering and deficit spending at our expense while we mingled as if at a, well, tea party. But not the sort of 1773 but rather more like the sort at 4 p.m. in England that is served with crumpets.

The politicians could have cared less about the goings on outside and NO ONE took it to them. Shame on us. No one made sure they took notice. No one was put out one bit. No economic loss to the government whatsoever, as was the purpose of the original tea party, so why should they notice?

Is this like giving to a charity? You write a check to feed a starving child for 10 cents a day in some far off, nameless, faceless country and you feel better about yourself?

I attended a “tea party” in the Midwest on Wednesday and there were only about 200 people there. And it was literally a tea party: people came with their coffee mugs and sandwiches, holding signs and standing around and chatting and socializing and then everyone went home. No passion. No signs of real frustration or discontent. No real commitment to changing anything. You know why? Because nobody wants to fire the first shot! Everybody wants change, but only if they don’t have to pay for it. Only if their comfortable lives don’t have to be disrupted for their freedom. What a bunch of crap.

Then I see all these political pundits ( idiots ) on CNN talking about how the tea party movement is nothing more than a partisan, Republican, conservative movement against the Obama administration and how the majority of Americans agree with the taxing and borrowing and spending. Some numb-nuts CNN political (anal)yst named Jeff Toobin says that the Texas state legislative resolution to reaffirm their state’s sovereignty is a fantasy. Are you kidding me? State’s sovereignty is a fantasy? Well I guess that says it all. Come on everyone, down the rabbit hole.

[Background music] One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small…

Welcome to the other side of the looking glass everybody. My name’s Alice and I’ll be your host for the mad tea party today. Let me introduce some other guests: the Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Rod Blagojevich, Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton all the AIG executives and many, many more. Don’t worry you’ll have time to get to know them all since you can’t leave no matter what you do so might as well just get used to it. Resistance is futile.

No doubt the majority of Americans didn’t want to go to war against the British in 1776. But would anyone say now that it was the wrong thing to do? No doubt the majority of Americans didn’t want a civil war. Both those wars were, at their core, about state’s rights. About oppressive governments trying to overreach their authority and impose unlawful mandates on the states. It was about their freedom to do what they wish with their lives.

I think we have met the enemy and it is us. We’re a bunch of fast food nourished, MTV anesthetized, shopping mall, plug-in-drug (aka television) addicts who will do anything to preserve that way of life at least until we die. After that who cares?

We’re a clinically obese, socially disconnected, politically inept and intellectually bankrupt nation of douche bags who deserve everything they get.

The movement has no leader. When I listen to anyone other than Ron Paul, Peter Schiff or Lew Rockwell speak about the issues we discuss on LRC I might as well be listening to any other political party spokesperson. They sound just the same. They dress just the same. They say the same old tired things. Ron Paul has even mentioned at times that the Libertarian party has become just another political party interested more in their political posturing rather than liberty. They have all the same sorts of infighting and power struggles that are symptomatic of the fact that they have lost their way.

Rallying the troops to vote more like-minded individuals into office won’t work. That’s an old, failing strategy. When will someone step forward with the courage, character, wisdom and intelligence to lead our nation into the 21st century the way our forefathers led it into the 19th century?

Will it be Texas governor Rick Perry? Perry is using rhetoric about seceding from the union. That is EXACTLY the kind of thing we need. I believe, given the other states with similar resolutions in their legislatures, that it would begin a domino effect. It would give people a chance to actually have a clear reason to fight: their state’s rights of sovereignty and they would know that they have the state’s resources behind them. Unfortunately, even though it’s clear what a boost Texas seceding would be in uniting us, I have no doubt that Perry is not up to the task and is using the issue as nothing more than a rallying point for reelection.

Where have all the heroes gone? Where are all the pioneers? Where are the visionaries? Where are the true statesmen? Where are the defenders of freedom? What has happened to the American Spirit of life and liberty? I guess they’re all at the mall or Starbucks and are too fat to get up out of their chair and fight. Or they’re looking forward to retirement and the “good life” after spending their life being a good soldier and playing by the rules and saving for the “golden years” while their real golden years of youth were passing them by. Certainly they can’t be asked to risk all that for something as silly as their children’s futures. How selfish of me.

Or maybe we don’t want to risk our children’s well-being now, so we defer it until they’re adults and let them deal with the fact that they can’t afford college or health care or a home without going into enormous debt and we never teach them the importance of things like: character, honor, integrity, truth and freedom but rather teach them how to live in fear and how important it is to get a “good job” and play by the rules and to go along to get along and that will be safe.

We’re pathetic.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/cooper/cooper14.html

Don Cooper… one of the last remaining real human beings.

This quote is for you:

“Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna run?
Where you gonna hide?
Nowhere, cause there’s no one like you left.”

http://www.mininova.org/tor/570383

Who Sampled

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Who Sampled is a fascinating site; when they start documenting the ‘DNA’ of House Music and all its decedents, it will be…just incredible!

http://www.whosampled.com/

Sites like this are under threat from the Intellectual Monopolists. This tool, if applied to all music could eventually show us where every musical idea came from…its just BRILLIANT!

And while we are at it, take a look at this heart squeezing comparison. Here is the instrumental.

It is sweet perfection.

The Pirate Bay will NEVER die!

Friday, April 17th, 2009



http://thepiratebay.org/

At last, they are waking up!

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

In today’s Grauniad, a very pleasant letter has been published:

Boycott these checks on students

The Guardian,
Tuesday 14 April 2009

As academics involved in research on the uses and abuses of state power, it is becoming increasingly apparent that members of staff in universities and colleges are being drawn into a role of policing immigration (Universities weigh up new fraud unit to thwart bogus applications, 11 April). For example, academic and administrative staff are being asked to monitor the attendance of students at lectures and classes (whether compulsory or not), and we are being asked to check the ID of students and colleagues, while external examiners and visiting lecturers are also now being asked to provide passport details.

We strongly oppose the imposition of such changes in the way that academic institutions are run. We believe these practices are discriminatory and distort academic freedoms. The implementation of UK immigration policies is not part of our contractual duties and we will play no part in practices which discriminate against students and staff in this way. We support our administrative colleagues in their refusal to engage in such practices. Thus we pledge to refuse to co-operate with university requests for us to provide details on our students or participate in investigations of those students.

As a first, and highly practical, step, we pledge not to supply any personal details – such as passport or driving licence details – in our role as external examiners, and urge all of our colleagues across higher and further education to join this boycott. We will also forward motions to our respective union branches in support of this position. A boycott would undermine immediately the system of external examining at all levels, which operates almost exclusively on the basis of goodwill, and thus strike a significant blow against both the pernicious drift of government policy, and university managements’ acquiescence to this.

Dr Elizabeth Capewell
Professor Ben Bowling
Professor Penny Green
Professor Gerry Johnstone
Professor Scott Poynting
Dr Anandi Ramamurthy
Professor Phil Scraton
Professor Joe Sim
Professor Steve Tombs
and 28 others

In The Devil’s Home on Leave by Derek Raymond (aka Robin Cook), published in 1986, the main character, a detective sergeant, refers at one point to a proposed police special powers bill. Noting it would allow police to detain a person for seven days without access to a lawyer, he says: “If it ever passed on to the statute book we [the police] would effectively be released from any serious accountability to the public.” He adds: “I could stop and arrest a man on the street simply because I didn’t like the look on his face, or the way his pockets bulged.” He notes that the bill had been rejected (did it exist?), but he predicts that it would be back, “perhaps in a different form, perhaps looking more innocuous – not tomorrow, possibly not even the day after, but doubtless the day after that” … and he was right.

Peter Hames
Bideford, Devon

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/14/immigration-higher-education

At last, the people with some backbone and brains are saying, “No”.

Like we keep saying, all it takes is for everyone to stop obeying; in this case, the ‘Academics’ are going to stop obeying and get on with minding their own business, which is the business of being an Academic.

If what the government is doing is really evil, and it is, then ALL professionals should take the same stance, and make the following pledge:

There is a broad consensus that the potential for abuse of human rights is massive with ID cards.

Whilst governments may be able to issue them, it is businesses and the professionals that run them who will be the main interface administering their use and pushing their widespread adoption.

We all have a moral responsibility to protect the welfare of others by refraining from doing evil ourselves.

We therefore call upon all members of Facebook, LinkedIn and all other professional networks to sign this pledge that they will not integrate ID Card requirements into their interactions with their clients, colleagues or customers.

For generations man has succeeded brilliantly without ID Cards in every sphere of life. We actively reject the mistaken ideas, claims and outright falsehoods made by the governments that want to introduce ID Cards, and we commit ourselves to reinforcing normal, moral interactions with our clients, customers and colleagues.

We actively reject the ‘Zero Trust Society’ that governments are trying to create through ID Cards.

We pledge that:

We will not require ID to provide our services.

We will choose professionals and service providers that have taken this pledge over those that have not.

We will not cooperate with any mandate that requires us to identify our clients, colleagues or customers.

When you take payment for a service, you pledge that you will not ask for ID. Your client or customer should not have to produce a document in order to buy products or receive services from you.

Example Scenario
The guiding principle here is not that our clients, colleagues or customers need to prove that, “they are who they say they are”, but that, “I am who I say I am” is good enough as long as they pay you.

If you are offering a hotel room, and the person hiring the room pays with a credit card or cash, there is no need for any other information; you are in the business of renting hotel rooms, not collecting information about your clients on behalf of governments.

Policy Example
Any form that you print that you require your clients, colleagues or customers to fill out should not contain fields for ID card numbers, passport numbers or any other number from an ID document.

If we all refuse to interface with the ID Cards they will be of little use to anyone, and will eventually be abandoned. If however we integrate them into our systems and processes, they will become indispensable and the Zero Trust Society will come into being.

Think of this pledge as a Hippocratic Oath for the 21st Century.

Spread it far and wide!

And now we have a new policy example; Academics refusing to demand ID before they teach, enroll or interact with students. Each professional body can come up with its own scenario and policy example; the most important thing is that everyone has a policy, and that that policy is to reject the Zero Trust Society and all the apparatus that enables it. Everyone everywhere must avoid doing the administrative work of the police state, and they must shun anyone that does do that nasty work.

Do you know someone who needs to read this pledge?

Celente gets it right again

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Celente Calls for “Revolution” as the Only Solution

Kingston NY — Taxed to death, angry at government bailouts, outraged by Wall Street greed, and bitterly resentful of a system that rewards the undeserving rich, the American public is ready to revolt.

“The Tea Parties and Tax Protests sprouting across the nation, which we had predicted, are harbingers of revolution,” said Gerald Celente, Director of The Trends Research Institute. “But they are not enough. Much stronger and directed action is required. Our call for ‘Revolution’ will galvanize the people, destroy the corrupt ruling systems, and produce a prosperous and more just nation.”

The Revolution Celente proposes is unique in concept and bold in execution. It is about a lot more than just “taxation without representation.”

“Nothing short of total repudiation of our entrenched systems can rescue America,” said Celente. “We are under the control of a two-headed, one party political system. Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation.”

The country is restless, and ripe for radical reform. There is no doubt protests will proliferate and intensify. In response, the government will call out the troops and bring in the police. They will use the Patriot Act to silence, detain, harass, persecute and prosecute groups and individuals exercising their Constitutional rights.

But Celente’s Revolution need not degenerate into violence or open warfare.

“Intellectual Revolution”

“I am calling for an ‘Intellectual Revolution’. I ask American citizens to free their minds from the tyranny of ‘Dumb Think.’ This is a revolution about thinking – not manning the barricades. It’s about brain power – not brute force.”

For society to survive and grow, it must wake up and grow up. Americans must acknowledge what their opinions are based on, who they listen to … and why.

What are America’s prime information sources? CNN, “The most trusted name in news”? Fox, “Fair and balanced”?

CNBC, “First in Business Worldwide”? The New York Times, “All the news that’s fit to print”?

Who do the people listen to? A closed circuit of familiar faces guaranteed to take predictable positions. Authorities on nothing, yet pronouncing upon everything; a cadre of media aristocrats, pretending they’re the people’s voice.

Bill O’Reilly, Steven Colbert, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, Jim Cramer, Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher.

TV tough guys, broadcast big mouths and Beltway blowhards have now been joined by featherweight comics throwing powder puff punches at sitting targets.

[…]

Yonkers Tribune

We like people who can predict the future; it means that they have all the facts to hand and are able to synthesize a very small number of highly probable futures that must result from those facts. It means they are more likely to know what they are talking about now, in the present, since they knew what they were talking about before. Those are the people who will reward your scarce attention.

What I imagine people like Celente are waiting for is the tipping point of popular outrage, after which they will be able to openly call for a physical rather than intellectual revolution.

Calling for a physical revolution too early is pointless; no one will stand up and you will be picked off. At the same time however, calling for feel good actions pushes the tipping point back, since it is the opposite of feeling good and secure that is the fuel for revolution. If the criminals manage to finish the job before everyone wakes up and the tipping point occurs, they win. The question is, do we have time to wait for a tipping point that might arrive too late?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….

Imagine a country where this intellectual revolution had happened, and everyone from coast to coast knew the entire facts and was informed to the level that Celente is. Once that point is reached, clearly there has to be a second step, the ‘real revolution’ that puts a stop to the criminals once and for all.

The media and all the know nothing (as opposed to the know everything bloggers) clowns who work in it are never going to change sides (either because they are too thick or are deliberately keeping a lid on public outrage). That means every chance we have to ‘go viral’ with a message should be taken as an opportunity to organize a real action that ‘fixes the hole in the roof’. Anything that is just a protest, which is a feel good, ‘Yellow Ribbon Moment‘, or which will have no effect is not a good thing. It is in fact, quite the opposite.

Its like draft dodgers in the 70’s having a tea party to protest going to VietNam and then showing up obediently for basic training and shipping off to fight ‘Charlie’. No, what you do is BURN YOUR DRAFT CARD and then do not show up.

Imagine 10 million people all having a ‘tea party’ and then BURNING their 1040 forms. Imagine millions of people demanding that they be paid the full amount of their wages, without any withholding of any kind, or they all go on STRIKE. Those two actions when done in the tens of millions are not something that can be ignored; demonstrations, tea parties, rock concerts, petitions – all of those things can and will be ignored. That is why we keep saying that it is pointless to do them.

Without a doubt, there is an information war going on, and educating the great mass of television fed flesh is an ongoing task. It is the furnace in the steam ship that needs to be constantly stoked. It is not however, the end goal; the end goal is Liberty in Perpetuity, and education is a means to that end.

And as for protests causing the police to be called out, once again, protesting is pointless.

Lets try and imagine an optimal revolution.

Its a revolution where no one is killed, and there is no violence. It would look something like the fall of East Germany.

All that is required for this revolution to take place is for everyone to stop obeying. That means everyone, to a man, refusing to obey anything and everything to do with the state.

That would be a revolution, an amorphous, nebulous, static swarm of disobedience, which could not be countered, any more than a truncheon wielder can batter a cloud to sweep it away. Without the compliance of everyone, the state would simply cease to exist; the monsters who control it would scream and shout hysterically at first, but would very quickly want to associate with the static mass as they desperately try to reposition themselves for a role in the new disorder. Those creatures are very good at sensing the right time to jump ship – when its about to do down – they are after all ‘political animals’ (rats).

I heard the other night, a commenter saying that if we start to win, “these people (the rats) are not going to go quietly into the night…”. That’s probably true. They will make a huge noise, but just like the aparatchicks in East Germany who lost their status and jobs, they were defeated and they did lose power there is no reason why this cannot happen via an unprecedented campaign that reaches tens of millions of people at the end of their tether. Many millions of people are ripe for it, ready for it, and as things get worse, will prefer it to having to take up arms.

The means to make this happen are at the tips of our fingers. Every month a new tool is written that shortens the time to critical mass. There is no reason why a peaceful transition to… something resembling a free country, cannot be done. It would happen in a very small amount of time; it may coincide with this event:

The Fed’s plan to increase the money supply 15-fold

But the real story starts to unfold when you realize the Federal Reserve is now hell bent on multiplying the U.S. money supply by a whopping fifteen times in 2009! This excellent article explains how this number is derived: http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/…

Now think about this: If the Federal Reserve increases the U.S. money supply by a factor of fifteen, that means your dollars will be worth only 1/15th the value they represent right now. So a loaf of bread that costs a dollar right now could cost $15 when all this extra money ripples through the system. (Which will obviously take a couple of years, but 2009 will be the beginning of it.)

This is called “hyperinflation.” We’re talking about a loss of over 93% of the purchasing power of the dollar. That, my friends, is called a collapse of the currency.

And once it starts, the floodgates will be opened and the tsunami of investors and nations offloading dollars will be catastrophic and irreversible. By the time it’s all done, the dollar might end up losing 99.9% of its value, and you can use greenbacks to light a fire or wipe your back side, as they will be useless for anything else.

[…]

http://www.counterthink.com/025688.html

Unbelievable. It’s still hard to accept that the money really has already been wiped out, and that hyperinflation is already on its way like a mudslide coming to destroy everything in its path. It seems that either way, wether there is a revolution or not, the dollar is toast. People will either kill it trying to get out of it, or they will have their purchasing power wiped out by this 15-fold story high wave of dollars that are going to devastate everything in their path.

Anyone old enough to remember Pan Am knows what it is like to have to imagine life without something so huge, so integral to an industry, something so ‘too big to fail’, that its non existence seems an impossibility, and yet, Pan Am is no more, its just a memory…only its beautiful corporate identity remains. Pan Am also teaches us that nothing is too big to disappear from the face of the earth. No company, no system of money, including the dollar, no government (history should already have made THAT clear); literally nothing that exists is going to last forever, or even a few years if the conditions are right.

Once you accept that, the possibility of restored liberty does not seem like something in the far distance, but instead takes on the appearance of something within striking distance.

912 Petitions: you’re not doing it right

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

We are almost there. 912 petitions is stating some of the facts plainly, but they fail in that they are ASKING for their rights. This is like a slave asking its master not to be beaten. I will strike out what is bad, and then add what needs to be added:

To the United States Congress, United States Supreme Court and President of the United States:

Whereas, the First Amendment guarantees our right to Petition for Redress of Grievances, and

Whereas, the Senators and Representatives, all executives and judicial officers of the United States are bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution, and

Whereas, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people, and

Whereas, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection of the laws, and

Whereas, Article 1 of the Constitution prohibits both the federal government and the states from passing either bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, and

Whereas, the Supreme Court has insisted that “a Bill of Attainder may affect the life of an individual, or may confiscate his property, or may do both”, and

Whereas, “All laws which are repugnant to the constitution are null and void” (Marbury v Madison, 5 US (2Cranch) 137, 174, 176 (1803)) and,

Whereas, We the People, have been betrayed through treachery and breach of allegiance, by those entrusted with the responsibility to safe guard our liberty and the United States Constitution,

We the People, in seeking Redress of Grievances, as is our right under Amendment I of the United States Constitution, ask this question of each branch of Federal Government:

“Where in the Constitution do you find authorization for each and all of the following?”

  1. The redistribution of property by force and subterfuge; and the unequal application of tax laws amounting to punitive action against certain groups of American People and providing favored status to other groups
  2. A paper money system that is morally and economically equivalent to counterfeiting
  3. Willful and purposeful devaluation and destruction of American currency
  4. Deploying military to fight undeclared wars
  5. Targeting and labeling law-abiding American citizens as domestic terrorists
  6. Declarations that disagreeing with policy is unpatriotic or disloyal to our country
  7. Intrusions into the privacy of law-abiding American citizens
  8. Perpetual massive indebtedness to foreign countries
  9. Infringement upon the rights of the People to keep and bear arms through oppressive regulation and taxation designed for the very purpose of infringement
  10. Passing laws and taxes without deliberation and without reading the legislation; said action is tantamount to the American People not having any representation
  11. Enacting ex post facto laws and Bills of Attainder
  12. Granting Constitutional rights and privileges to illegal aliens and prisoners of war
  13. Funding mercenary organizations that engage in voter fraud and paid harassment of law abiding American citizens
  14. Maintaining and deploying armies in peace time on United States soil
  15. Unprecedented and arbitrary federal power, through the United States Treasury, for government intervention into, control of, and confiscation of, private property, private industry including but not limited to banking, insurance, manufacturing, farming and other sectors of the private economy (current and proposed)
  16. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law (proposed)
  17. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law (proposed)
  18. Acts regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press (proposed)

We the People of the United States of America, who cherish liberty, taking into our most serious consideration, the best means of assuring our continued constitutional rights of self governance, as our ancestors in like cases have done, for asserting and vindicating our rights and liberties, declare,

That the citizens of the Unites States of America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the United States Constitution, Supreme Court case law and the Federalist Papers, have the following Rights:

  • We are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and we have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever., a right to dispose of these without our consent.
  • The three branches of the United States government derive their just powers solely from the consent of the governed.
  • We the people have the right and the obligation to alter or abolish any government that becomes destructive of the inalienable rights endowed by our Creator and rights codified in the United States Constitution.
  • We have the right peaceably to assemble, consider our grievances, petition the three branches of the Federal Government; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory and proclamations, defamatory declarations, and commitments for the same, are illegal.
  • We the People of the United States of America, do claim, demand, and insist on, as our indubitable rights and liberties that the federal government must be answerable and accountable to the people; which cannot be legally taken from us., altered or abridged by any power whatever, without our own consent, and said consent has never been given.

In the course of our inquiry, we find numerous infringements and violations of the foregoing rights; which demonstrate systemic corruption formed to subvert and destroy our constitutional republic and to enslave the American people.

We submit this Petition for Redress of Grievances in an ardent desire that precious liberty be restored to ourselves and preserved for future generations of Americans.

This Petition for Redress of Grievances serves as notice and demand by the American People to on the federal government, as our agent: 1) To cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of the constitutionally delegated powers; 2) To formally and publicly recognize the natural and Constitutional rights of the American People in a manner appropriate to each branch of government (resolution, proclamation, statement); 3) To answer, point by point the question contained herein; 4) To honor your oaths to support the Constitution or resign immediately from your positions.

That we will no longer obey, since such laws are invalid on their face:

  • Any law prohibiting or controlling or monitoring of the ingestion of any substance wether naturally occurring or not.
  • Any redistribution of property by force and subterfuge; any application of tax laws amounting to punitive action against certain groups of American People
  • Any legal tender law or law governing the type of money Americans can or cannot accept in payment for goods and services
  • Any law controlling air travel safety or mandating documentation or unconstitutional search as a prerequisite for travel by air or any other means
  • Any law mandating routine and unconstitutional intrusions into the privacy of law-abiding American citizens
  • Any law or action causing perpetual massive indebtedness to foreign countries, such debts to be considered forgiven, written off, and not the responsibility of the American People from this moment, retroactively and going forwards
  • Any law which controls or regulates arms
  • Any laws and taxes passed without deliberation and without members of Congress reading the legislation
  • Any laws enacting ex post facto laws and Bills of Attainder
  • Any laws granting Constitutional rights and privileges to illegal aliens and prisoners of war
  • Any laws creating arbitrary federal power, through the United States Treasury or otherwise, for government intervention into, control of, and confiscation of, private property, private industry including but not limited to banking, insurance, manufacturing, farming and other sectors of the private economy
  • Any laws requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law
  • Any laws requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law
  • Any laws or acts regarding religion; limitations on freedom of political speech; or limitations on freedom of the printing press or any means of mass communication existing or yet to be invented.

You are hereby put on notice that any violation of the above will be met with deadly force as a response.
You are hereby put on notice that maintaining and deploying armies in peace time on United States soil is illegal and any such deployment will be met with deadly force.

There. Much better now.

In the end, this is what it will come to: deadly force as a response to any violation of your rights. In fact, we are already there. The 912 people just do not know it yet. The fact that they are creating a petition to ASK for their rights proves that they do not know it. They still think that honorable people are there to be appealed to. That laundry list of crimes proves that the people who did them are the worst type of criminal. Petitions do not work on criminals.

In the end, when the petitioned do not obey, and the 912 people want to live like human beings and not slaves, they will be forced to TAKE their liberty. The amended document above is what they will need to live by if they want to do that.

And by the way:

We are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and we have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of these without our consent.

I struck out ‘, a right to dispose of these without our consent’ and the other line with similar wording because no single generation has the right to dispose of the rights of subsequent generations, no matter how large the majority that votes for it or ‘consents’ to it, and the rights of individuals cannot be voted away by a majority. If that were not the case, the current generation of Americans could, by referendum, enslave themselves and all future generations to a foreign power without any regard for the rights of future Americans. If all people are born with inalienable rights, then those rights cannot be forfeited by anyone on an unborn person’s behalf for ANY reason. This line implies that the current generation has the right to sell future generations into slavery. They count on the ‘immutable laws of nature, the principles of the United States Constitution, Supreme Court case law and the Federalist Papers,’ as the basis of their rights, but then say that it is their right to forfeit the rights of future generations. That is immoral and illogical.

As I said at the beginning of this article, we are almost there. The most important and encouraging part of all of this is that we will not have to wait 70 years for the evil infrastructure to fall to pieces, like the people who suffered under the Soviets had to. Generations of Russians had their lives stolen from them by the Soviet system. As the 912ers and everyone else starts to wake up, it will not be very long before things are put right.

The effects on the world will be profound. Not only will Americans once again reclaim their birthright, but they will, once again, show the whole world ‘how it is done’. Other people around the world will be encouraged to emulate them. And since the world-wide war machine will be de-funded and returned to barracks, this will mean an end to the pointless and ceaseless wars. Strangely enough the greatest beneficiary of the standing down of the empire, in terms of money, will be the Americans.

Everybody wins!

Turn off your mind, surrender to the void

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Recently, we posted on ‘why CD was a con’.  Today we find a fabulous example not only of the audio side of that piece, but also the economic side.

The Beatles, Apple Corps and EMI Music have finally, at long last, agreed to rake in several million pounds. After more than two decades of waiting, all of the band’s original studio albums are to be re-released in digitally remastered stereo versions.

Honesty in a newspaper article? Shocking!

Anyway, to quickly skim over the economics, millions of people will now pay through the nose yet again for yet another version of the same thing. This time, they are told, it will be really good.

From Please Please Me to Abbey Road, the Fab Four’s entire run will be reissued on CD on 9 September, the same day that the mop-tops’ first video game, The Beatles: Rock Band, will be released.

Oh. My. Word.  Seems like Mr McCartney is determined to be a billionaire before he dies. However, this is irrelevant.

According to a statement, engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road studios spent four years on the remasters, “utilising state-of-the-art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment [and] carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings”. The recordings were last overhauled in 1987.

Now, if you have read our previous post(s) on the topic of audio ‘integrity’, and the links to Stereophile articles provided, you would spot the obvious non sequitur.  Digital remastering cannot possibly “carefully [maintain] the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings”.

You really can tell the difference,” said Beatles expert Kevin Howlett, who wrote the new liner notes. “It’s an extraordinary thing to sit there and hear LPs that you know so well and hear little nuances that you hadn’t noticed before.”

To paraphrase Bastiat, the “little nuances that you hadn’t noticed before” are what is heard.  What Beatles expert Kevin Howlett fails to understand is that in order to hear those nuances, something has been altered, and therefore the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings has been lost. This is what is not heard.

The albums will be available individually or as a box set. For traditionalists, a box set of mono recordings will also be available – with each disc styled as a vinyl LP.

So now someone who like to listen to digitally altered versions of analogue music on a CD in a sleeve which looks like an LP (except smaller…) is a traditionalist?

Although the Beatles’ re-remasters have been rumoured for years, most Fab Four fanatics expected them to be part of the Beatles’ entry into online music sales. The Beatles are one of the last major groups to have spurned iTunes Music Store, and their music cannot be legally purchased in MP3 or any other digital form.

Negotiations between the Beatles, their labels, publishers and online distributors appear to have stalled, and these new reissues, among the year’s most important releases, will not be available for purchase in digital form.

Need I point out that CDs are a digital form? Bad writing aside, EMI and the ‘Beatles’ are idiots for not providing downloads. It is presumed they think they will sell more CDs, at greater profit, by denying online sales. This shows again how badly these people understand their market. I would wager that those who would buy the CD would buy it whether or not a cheaper download was available. Moreover, there are probably thousands, possibly millions, of people who would buy the odd album or track on iTunes, but not as a physical format. They will now either (1) do without, or (2) download whatever they like using BitTorrent within minutes of the CDs being released. For nothing. As 192kbps, 360kbps, FLAC or whatever else they could wish for.

On the bright side, Howlett remarked, “they sound louder than previous CD reissues.” Well worth the wait.

Pardon me?

On the bright side, Howlett remarked, “they sound louder than previous CD reissues.” Well worth the wait.

Please refer to our previous posts and linked article to find out exactly how this man has been duped.

Let me conclude by suggesting that if you really wish to maintain the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings, listen to the original analogue recordings. Buy a vinyl copy of a Beatles album – they are almost being given away! –  and listen to it on a record player.

Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

We at BLOGDIAL have blogged about this subject a few times before:

By David Coates, The Detroit News, via AP

In Detroit, three downtown businesses have created a local currency, or scrip, to keep dollars earned locally in the community.

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.
Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.

Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash.

“We wanted to make new options available,” says Jackie Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency. “It reinforces the message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself from the blows of the marketplace.”

About a dozen communities have local currencies, says Susan Witt, founder of BerkShares in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. She expects more to do it.

Under the BerkShares system, a buyer goes to one of 12 banks and pays $95 for $100 worth of BerkShares, which can be spent in 370 local businesses. Since its start in 2006, the system, the largest of its kind in the country, has circulated $2.3 million worth of BerkShares. In Detroit, three business owners are printing $4,500 worth of Detroit Cheers, which they are handing out to customers to spend in one of 12 shops.

During the Depression, local governments, businesses and individuals issued currency, known as scrip, to keep commerce flowing when bank closings led to a cash shortage.

By law, local money may not resemble federal bills or be promoted as legal tender of the United States, says Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

“We print the real thing,” she says.

Yes, we know; THAT IS THE PROBLEM!

The IRS gets its share. When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “It’s not a way to avoid income taxes, or we’d all be paying in Detroit dollars,” he says.

Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10 worth of Plenty.

“We’re a wiped-out small town in America,” says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. “This will strengthen the local economy. … The nice thing about the Plenty is that it can’t leave here.”

[…]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-04-05-scrip_N.htm

Now.

Imagine if all the dimwitted and destructive demonstrators got together to disseminate the ideas behind sound money and then print and promote their own money.

Wouldn’t that be effort better spent instead of smashing an RBS office? Or gathering impotently in the streets to be corralled like cows?

We have been over this again and again and again:

We had this debate on BLOGDIAL before the historic march organized by StopWar. Demonstrations are pointless because they do not achieve their ends, and the people who go on them are nothing more than stupid monkeys; the people who organize them are actually working for the enemy. Time and time again we have said this, (and other stuff) and had it proved, sadly.
Now the directors of this film, after everything we have said and witnessed are asking everyone to:

Join Amnesty
Visit and sign up online:
web.amnesty.org/pages/join-eng
Join Liberty
Visit and sign up online:
www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/join
Email Your MP
Demand to know what they are doing about the issues raised in the film:
www.writetothem.com
Join the Mass Lone Demos
Demonstrations take place 5pm to 7:30pm on the third Wednesday of every month, forms [MS WORD] [PDF] must be handed in or sent by recorded delivery 1 week beforehand.
[…]

Joining Amnesty will not cause one law to be repealed, nor will it stop new bad legislation from being enacted.

Similarly, Joining liberty will achieve absolutely nothing at all.

Emailing the very people who pass the laws that enslave you is just STUPID.

And joining demonstrations we know about, don’t we?

Telling the truth is not enough. Acting is not enough. Correct Action is the only thing that will change what you want changed.

But you know this!

If you want to fix a problem, DO SOMETHING TO FIX THE PROBLEM, DO NOT do something THAT WILL NOT FIX THE PROBLEM.

If your problem is a currency that is being inflated by a criminal government who is stealing your value to give it to their partners in crime, and you cannot change the government, CHANGE THE CURRENCY YOU USE AND ACCEPT, since THAT IS THE PROBLEM.

Demonstrating against bailouts is like dancing to stop the damage to your car caused by hailstorms.

GET YOUR CAR UNDER COVER IF IT STARTS TO HAIL.

Demonstrating against taxation is like applauding to stop your drive from being blocked by snow in a blizzard.

IF YOUR DRIVE IS BLOCKED BY SNOW, GET A SHOVEL AND DIG YOURSELF OUT.

Demonstrating against a leaking roof is like waving a banner to stop being hungry.

IF YOU ARE HUNGRY, MAKE YOURSELF A SANDWICH.

It’s simple really, but to my constant amazement, even intelligent people persist in believing that demonstrations are a good thing. They are not, not because they are inherently bad, but BECAUSE THEY DO NOT WORK!

FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME

How Freedom Was Lost

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

By Paul Craig Roberts

Envy, one of the seven deadly sins, is not unknown to Americans.

My last column noted the absurdity of Obama lumping the upper middle class in with the rich. The income distribution in the US is so skewed that the rich are found in the top one percent. The truly rich with the accoutrements associated with that class are in the top half of one percent.

Those points were lost on those Americans who regard anyone slightly better off than themselves as “rich.” A slightly bigger house in a better neighborhood, a BMW instead of a Toyota, and the ability to go on vacation without going into debt is all it takes to be rich in the minds of those whose eyes are green with envy.

This observation led me to the realization that freedom has been lost to envy.

Americans no longer know what freedom is. Historically, the definition of a free person is one who owns his own labor. Serfs and slaves were not free, because they do not own all of their own labor.

An income tax is inconsistent with the historical definition of freedom. Today in America government has a claim on every person’s labor, just as feudal lords, the government of that time, had claims on the labor of serfs and nineteenth century plantation owners had on slaves.

Understanding that an income tax was serfdom, our Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution in a way that prevented an income tax. This was altered in 1913 with a constitutional amendment that some claim was not properly carried out.

This first step in the enserfment of the American people was taken in envy. The rich were the targets of the income tax. Once in place, the income tax was extended by law and by inflation until ordinary people were being taxed at rates several times as high as the original top rate for the rich.

After almost 100 years of income tax, generations have been born into serfdom and accept the government’s claim on their labor as normal, even just. Some say they don’t mind paying taxes to help the poor. They should look to see what share goes to the poor and what share to war, armaments, and the bailout of the Treasury Secretary’s rich friends.

The problem with a tax on a person’s labor is that it subtracts from a person’s independence. Without independence, it is difficult to exercise constitutionally protected rights, such as free speech.

In former times, family farms and businesses provided a measure of independence for many Americans. Today, most work for wages and salaries. The only real avenue to independence is to save part of one’s earnings and acquire enough wealth upon which to live. For most Americans, the government’s claim on their labor makes this impossible.

This is even more the case when government fails in its regulatory responsibilities and allows banksters to join in the plunder of the hard-pressed citizens.

The inheritance tax, another product of envy, has also done much to destroy the independence of the citizenry. For example, family owned independent media, once a source of independent power that held government accountable, has been lost to corporate media chains in order that families could pay inheritance taxes.

The same people who complain of rule by giant corporations support the inheritance taxes that transformed the face of American business. A family owned business has community roots and loyalties. A corporation’s owners are spread across the country and abroad. Their interest is the share price. The consequence has been that many corporations no longer even have national loyalties.

A corporation’s existence is not threatened by inheritance taxes, but a family owned business is. An inheritance tax is a tax on assets accumulated from income that has already been taxed. To raise the cash to pay the inheritance tax, businesses have to be sold or taken public. Eventually, their ownership is divorced from the community.

In the past, great wealth accumulations found their way into endowments of private universities, museums and public libraries, institutions that also contributed to the independence of citizens from government control.

Today even private universities and tenured faculty have lost pieces of their independence. There are subjects that cannot be investigated and opinions that cannot be expressed. We can rationalize the inhibitions by saying that they are proper subjects for censorship. However, once the process of suppressing thought and speech begins, it spreads.

The Tax Foundation has calculated that tax freedom day arrives on May 29 this year if the federal government’s budget deficit is included, as it should be, in the tax burden. That means that Americans work 42 percent of the year for the government, a higher tax rate than was endured by medieval serfs and one approaching that of a nineteenth century slave.

In the nineteenth century, there were “underground railways” that slaves could use to escape to freedom. In our time, “underground railways” are known as “tax havens.” Just as slave owners sought to abolish “underground railways,” our owners today seek to outlaw “tax havens.”

Some Americans will reject these analogies. They can test the validity of the analogies by refusing the government’s claim on their labor. Perhaps the best evidence of American serfdom is that most Americans do not even have the ability to test the validity of the analogy, because the government takes its share in withholding tax before wages and salaries are paid to us serfs.

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/090405_freedom.htm

Freedom on an axis

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Henry Porter: Intellectual Monopolist

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

Henry Porter has now completely discredited himself, with a shameful piece of luddite nonsense masquerading as a call for justice:

If indeed a new era of global responsibility has come into being with measures that actually restrain banks and isolate tax havens,

See this. The politics of sour grapes is alive and well at the grauniad. Irrational, illogical and destructive, like the rest of the ideas in this misguided, buggy whip cracking article.

it may be time for the planet’s dominant economic powers to focus on the destructive, anti-civic forces of the internet.

The greatest invention of the 21st century, equivalent in importance to the invention of the printing press, characterized as ‘destructive’ and ‘anti-civic’. The greatest force for empowering the little guy, thanks to which the playing field is made forever flatter; this is a ‘bad thing’. A set of devices and protocols that allow you to have a private conversation with anyone, anywhere in the world for free…and all the other myriad things it can do and will do. This is something ‘to be stopped’.

Only a total computer illiterate, luddite, anti-freedom, anti-human imbecile could believe such a thing.

Exactly 20 years after Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote the blueprint for the world wide web, the internet has become the host to a small number of dangerous WWMs – worldwide monopolies that sweep all before them with exuberant contempt for people’s rights, their property and the past.

The internet and the World Wide Web are two separate things, as this commenter points out:

1) Tim Berners-Lee created the WORLD WIDE WEB, which is a distinctly different thing than the Internet. The World Wide Web is a layer on top of the internet that provides the websites that we see, but the largest portion of the internet is not visible, and does not interact with home computers. The internet is hardware, software, protocols, servers, undersea cables, standards, repeaters, satellites and so forth, all operating on the same protocols (IP, Internet Protocol). Tim Berners-Lee certainly created a revolution with the World Wide Web, but the creation of the Internet is an even grander achievement, which took decades, cost billions, and was mostly the responsibility of three groups: AT&T, Cisco Systems, and The United States Department of Defense.

In the strictest sense, the internet was born in 1971, just under 20 years before Sir Berner-Lee’s breakthrough, when many of the standards and theories that became Internet Protocol were developed.

2) Google is at the very center of the information-economy, and to say it produces nothing is ridiculous. They’re purpose is to effectively organize, catalog and make searchable the sum of the information of mankind. Everything they have constructed has been purposed about this goal, from their basic search engines to Google Earth.

One day we will live in a world where everything that is quantifiable knowledge will be contained and indexed by Google. And it will be a good day for mankind, because all that information will be equally available, so long as you speak the English language.

What Google does, to put it stiffly, is vastly more important than some novelist exploring how much the human condition absolutely sucks.

Thanks to the commenter called ‘Netwrk’.

Google is the most prominent WWM,

Is that something like WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) I wonder? Hmmmmmmm…. Guilt by acronym association!

but let’s start with an American site that is making a name for itself in straightforward misappropriation. Scribd.com offers free downloads of every kind of book, magazine, brochure, guide, research paper and pamphlet to 55 million readers every month. Many have been uploaded illegally. Last week the publishers of JK Rowling, Ken Follett and Aravind Adiga took action to remove books that had been illegally published on the site.

First of all, Scribd is a wonderful service. It is being used by the computer literate to disseminate knowledge. Only the completely ignorant, imagination-less luddites are against it.

Mr. Porter, you are on the wrong side of history. You need, as a matter of priority, to read ‘Against Intellectual Monopoly‘. The arguments you put forward against ‘piracy’ are from an imaginary world before the internet (like buggy whip salesmen before the motor car). The ‘community’ you speak of would be much better off living in a world without patents and copyrights, and Against Intellectual Monopoly proves it. The new services like Scribd, are clearly more beneficial than harmful, even with the present copyright regime in place. No matter how loud you shout, and complain, copyright, like alcohol prohibition is dead, and we are all better off for it.

To add injury to insult, your type of ‘thinking’ is disrupting the flow of materials that are out of copyright. Our own Scribd account was the subject of an attack from your lobby this last week.

On our Scribd account, I publish some of our works, and other historical works that are free of copyright. Because Scribd is under attack from mentally retarded luddites, we were sent the following:

Subject:

Copyright notification

From Jason Bentley, on 2009-04-03:

Message:

Dear Irdial-Discs,

We have removed your document “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” because our text matching system determined that it was very similar to a work that has been marked as copyrighted and not permitted on Scribd.

Like all automated matching systems, our system is not perfect and occasionally makes mistakes. If you believe that your document is not infringing, please contact us at copyright@scribd.com and we will investigate the matter.

As stated in our terms of use, repeated incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your Scribd.com account and prohibit you from uploading material to Scribd.com in the future. To prevent us from having to take these steps, please delete from scribd.com any material you have uploaded to which you do not own the necessary rights and refrain from uploading any material you are not entitled to upload. For more information about Scribd.com’s copyright policy, please read the Terms of Use located at http://www.scribd.com/terms

Jason Bentley
Directory of Community Development
jason@scribd.com

People like you might believe that all works should be copyrighted forever no matter how old they are. The fact of the matter is that copyrights were originally tolerated in the belief that they served society, and rewarded the creators of content whilst promoting innovation and creativity. This is why the term of protection was short, so that the works would pass into the public domain, where they could spread and be of benefit to the public after the creators had reaped the benefit of protection via a state sanctioned monopoly over their ideas and how they could be used and copied.

The work in question above is by Adam Smith, published in 1776:

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith. It is a clearly written account of economics at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, as well as a rhetorical piece written for the generally educated individual of the 18th century – advocating a free market economy as more productive and more beneficial to society.

The work is credited as a watershed in history and economics due to its comprehensive, largely accurate characterization of economic mechanisms that survive in modern economics; and also for its effective use of rhetorical technique, including structuring the work to contrast real world examples of free and fettered markets.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

In case you are unfamiliar with it.

I replied:

From Irdial-Discs,
on 2009-04-03:

Please restore this deleted document. It is in the public domain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

It would be an interesting project for Scribd to add the entire contents of the Project Guttenberg texts to your checking system, so that you can exclude documents like this from being flagged.

./akin
./irdial

Scribd.com complied:

Jason Bentley, Apr 04 10:33 pm:

Hi,

I’m sorry that our automated copyright protection system misidentified your document as infringing. We try very hard to protect the rights of authors, and sometimes our copyright robot get a little oversensitive.

I’ve restored your document and removed all references from your account.

Cheers,

Jason

***

Jason Bentley
Community Director and Copyright Agent
Scribd, Inc.

This is the sort of world Henry Porter wants; a world where everything is unavailable because of the incredibly small number of giant publishers and their prostitute luddite lackeys whining that the old days are over. At the very least, Porter is calling for a web where everything must be screened by copyright police before it is posted. This is the same voice that wants ‘civil liberties’; the very voice that is calling for a fascist regime to enforce the insanity of copyright transposed to the web.

Scribd.com complied, but what is interesting is the company’s institutional lack of guilt when the piracy was exposed.

‘Piracy’ (as it is defined today) only takes place when someone sells a book or movie; a ‘movie pirate’ is someone who copies movies onto DVDs and then sells them instead of buying discs from the manufacturer and re-selling them. People who copy movies are not ‘Pirates’, what they do is not ‘piracy’ and in fact the act of copying music, books and movies is beneficial to society even if they sell copies. Furthermore, the people who make movies, music and who write books are able to make a living without copyright laws (state enforced monopolies) in place. This might come as a shock to people like Henry Porter, who writes in the bosom of a nest of copyright brainwashed computer illiterate vipers, but it is a fact nonetheless. Against Intellectual Monopoly has some illuminating examples of why (in this case patents) are a bad thing:

In most histories, James Watt is a heroic inventor,responsible for the beginning of the industrial revolution. The facts above suggest a different interpretation. Watt is a clever inventor who, after getting one step ahead of the pack, remains ahead not by superior innovation, but by clever exploitation of the legal system. The fact that his business partner is a wealthy man with strong connections in Parliament, is not a minor help.

The evidence suggests that Watt’s efforts to use the legal system to inhibit competition set back the industrial revolution by a decade or two. The granting of the 1769 and, especially, of the 1775 patents likely delayed the mass adoption of the steam engine:innovation is stifled until his patents expire; and very few steam engines are built during the period of Watt’s legal monopoly. From the number of innovations that occur immediately after the expiration of the patent, it appears that Watt’s competitors simply waited until then before releasing their own innovations in an effort to avoid the fate of Hornblower. Also, we see that Watt’s inventive skills are badly allocated: we find him spending as much time engaging in legal action in an effort to establish and preserve a monopoly as he does in actual invention.

Indeed, this story contains most of the important elements of our argument Against Intellectual Monopoly. The sort of wasteful effort to suppress competition and obtain special privileges we have seen in Watt is one of the greatest dangers of monopoly. It is commonly referred to as rent-seeking behavior. Watt’s attempt to extend the duration of his 1769 patent is an especially egregious example of rent seeking: the patent extension is clearly unnecessary to provide incentive for the original invention, which had already taken place. On top of this, we see Watt using patents as a tool to suppress innovation by his competitors, such as Hornblower, Wasborough and others. Finally,there is the slow rate at which the steam engine was adopted be for the expiration of Watt’s patent. By keeping prices high and preventing other from producing cheaper steam engines, Boulton and Watt hampered capital accumulation and slowed economic growth. Intellectual property, as it is currently conceived, has other damaging social effects but the three listed here and exemplified in Watt’s story are the most serious ones: rent-seeking, innovation suppression, and slow-down in the process of economic growth. We shall see that Watt’s experience is the rule, not the exception.

[…]

Against Intellectual Monopoly

Anyone with even one brain cell can see the parallels between this story and the others in Against Intellectual Monopoly in the context of Google, Scribd, the services that run on the Bittorrent ecosystem and the other internet services today. The world, ‘the community’ that Porter is so eager to protect and serve would have been far better served if Watt had not been able to use government force to stop other inventors from improving the steam engine. As soon as Watt’s government granted monopoly ended, the efficiency and power of steam engines increased at a rate far greater than when Watt was able to stifle innovation with his patent, and what’s more, when his patent expired, Watt’s profits continued undiminished.

This is a very important lesson for everyone involved in any sort of creativity. We at Irdial knew instinctively that releasing our catalogue for free would benefit us more than keeping it locked up. That is why we freed our works for non commercial use in 1999. If we lived in a society where there were no copyrights at all we would gladly give up the commercial use rights in an instant.

Instead of fighting the reality, resisting the new tools and clinging on to broken models, it made sense to us to embrace it all and use it to get our works in as many places as possible. To us, it’s obvious. To people like Henry Porter, the future and its wondrous tools are a threat to be destroyed, and he doesn’t care about all the historical works that are burned in his insane quest to cleanse the internet of copyrighted works. We see the direct result of people like him in the erasure of Adam Smith’s work from Scribd.

Instead of admitting it and apologising, it issued a statement claiming Scribd possessed “industry-leading copyright management system which goes above and beyond requirements of Digital Millennium Copyright Act”.

So, Scribd should now apologize for innovating, for bringing millions of documents to millions of people, for nothing. They should apologize for having to invent a piece of filtering software thanks to lobbyist bought government pressure, which might never work accurately and which diverts time away from the software developers improving Scribd, and which diverts capital away from improving Scribd. This is totally insane, and exactly what is described in Against Intellectual Monopoly. Thanks to the luddites like Henry Porter and his distant cousin Watt, innovation is being retarded, as companies divert resources to satisfy monopolists.

That’s like a drunk driver protesting innocence because he’s covered by the best insurance company. What matters is the crime, the theft of someone else’s content, which has taken care, labour, money and expertise to publish.

This is wrong. What you are doing is protesting that the internet should not exist so that you can continue to collect a rent on your works at the expense of the entire world’s population and at the expense of the progress of mankind itself.

What matters here is that copying books is in no way ‘a crime’, is entirely beneficial to society, and in no way detracts from an authors ability to make money on the works that they have taken care, labour money and expertise to create. I have no doubt that some non-BLOGDIAL readers will not believe that this is even possible. Not only is it possible, but we have made money from giving our works away for free, and Against Intellectual Monopoly has examples in it where works that are not copyrighted have made millions for publishers; look at the case of the title The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States where the publisher (Norton) printed this rather large book at a huge profit, despite there being no copyright on the text and it being downloaded world-wide by millions of people:

[…] To be clear: what Norton received from the government was the right to publish first, and the right to use the word “authorized” in the title. What they did not get was the usual copyright – the right to exclusively publish the book. Because it is a U.S. government document, the moment it was released, other individuals, and more important, publishing houses, had the right to buy or download copies and to make and resell additional copies– electronically or in print, at a price of their choosing

[…]

Assuming that St. Martin’s has some idea of how to price a book to avoid losing money, this suggests Norton made at the very least on the order of a million dollars. We also know that their contract with the government called upon them to donate their “profits” to charity – and we know that they did in fact “donate $600,000 to support the study of emergency preparedness and terrorism prevention.”

Against Intellectual Monopoly

[…]

The point is that even if Scribd removes books, it still allows individuals to advertise services for delivering pirated books by email, which must make it the enemy of every writer and publisher in the world. In effect it has turned copyright law on its head: instead of asking publishers for permission, it requires them to object if and when they become aware of a breach.

Advertising a service is everyone’s right. The right to publish (or ‘freedom of the press’) is not ‘the right of newspapers and journalists to write what they like without restriction’. In this case, ‘The Press’ means not ‘the press corps’ but THE PRINTING PRESS as in a device to disseminate writing to a large audience. Journalists always make this mistake; they go berserk when their newspapers face censorship, but when its Bloggers or individuals who claim their right to print and distribute whatever they like, then it’s another story. Shameful.

Scribd is the friend of every writer and publisher in the world, wether they know it or not. Copyright law needs to be abolished, not just turned on its head, and the internet has made this progress begin to happen. If it does not take place before hand, the deaths of the luddites like Henry Porter and his employers and their replacement by ‘The Pirate Generation’ will spell the end of copyright, and the removal of all related legislation from the statute books. As it is, if these laws remain on the books, hundreds of millions of people will be and are being criminalized at the behest of luddites, lobbyists and the corporations they serve…people like Henry Porter.

Google presents a far greater threat to the livelihood of individuals and the future of commercial institutions important to the community.

This is so absurd I actually LOL’d. Google makes it easy to find authors; easier than it has ever been before. It makes all sorts of research easier by orders of magnitude; every link on this page was found for me by Google. Henry Porter wants a world where this, the greatest research tool ever invented is deliberately broken, just like Scribd is being broken. This is the ‘benefit’ he wants to bring to ‘the community’, and it is laughable that he thinks that ‘commercial institutions’ work for the benefit of ‘the community’… only when they work for HIS benefit… which community PRECISELY is he talking about? I think it’s the community of published authors and publishing houses; the intellectual monopolists, who want to strangle innovation and hold humanity back.

One case emerged last week when a letter from Billy Bragg, Robin Gibb and other songwriters was published in the Times explaining that Google was playing very rough with those who appeared on its subsidiary, YouTube. When the Performing Rights Society demanded more money for music videos streamed from the website, Google reacted by refusing to pay the requested 0.22p per play and took down the videos of the artists concerned.

This is called ‘rent seeking‘; the artists concerned, Socialist Billy Bragg and his strange bedfellow, falsetto Robin Gibb, intellectual monopolists both, threatened Google that if they did not pay the rent for videos on YouTube they would face action. Google removes the videos, the infringement, and then is accused of ‘playing very rough’. Do they want their material infringed or do they not? They complained, and their wishes were acceded to; why are they complaining? The fact of the matter is that they want to collect rent. They would like their music to be posted and hosted on YouTube without them having to lift a finger, but they want the rent also. 22p per play is absolutely ridiculous, and if every rent seeker asked for and recieved this money, there would be no YouTube. YouTube is turning out to be one of the most potent political tools available from, the UK to Saudi Arabia. Henry Porter wants it killed so that his (completely irrational) rent seeking socialist friends can make money they do not deserve.

Socialists really are ridiculous creatures; they claim that they are for the masses being empowered, but when something comes along that gives them more power than anyone has ever had EVER, they are AGAINST IT, and want to DESTROY it. The fact is that Socialists are not for anyone other than themselves; they want to be the bosses, the controllers with absolute power. Billy Bragg is a perfect example of this. A luddite that would smash the internet so he can collect rent. Robin Gibb is at least consistent; he is a rich man who doesn’t want the party to end – at least he is honest.

It does this with impunity because it is dominant worldwide and knows the songwriters have nowhere else to go. Google is the portal to a massive audience: you comply with its terms or feel the weight of its boot on your windpipe.

This is total garbage. Google can in no way be characterized as putting a boot on anyone’s windpipe…though in the case of Billy Bragg, that would save us from hearing his ‘singing’.

Secondly, songwriters have everywhere else to go. This is because the internet is essentially infinite; they can set up their own site and sell their wares; they have had over a decade to do it, and have failed miserably to meet this new challenge. Instead of buying Napster, they destroyed it. Instead of working with Mininova and The Pirate Bay, they are trying to outlaw them. Even Apples iTunes store, where they were making money, met with fierce resistance from them. The fact of the matter is, these people, Henry Porter, Billy Bragg and the entertainment industry are collectively unintelligent and unimaginative. Were this not the case, they would have seen the opportunity for super-distribution of their works and embraced the internet at the beginning.

Despite the aura of heroic young enterprise that still miraculously attaches to the web, what we are seeing is a much older and toxic capitalist model – the classic monopoly that destroys industries and individual enterprise in its bid for ever greater profits.

That is incorrect; what we are seeing IS heroic young enterprise, being misunderstood and slandered by old rent seeking luddites, who are the REAL monopolists in this story, the Intellectual Monopolists. It is Henry Porter that is trying to destroy industry’s enterprise – new industries – Google, Scribd and all the other content services empower individual enterprise by allowing the creative to circumnavigate the luddite gatekeepers at the Guardian and the major record labels.

Google make profits and the entire world benefits from a tool unprecedented in human history, that no one has to pay for to use, and which helps authors and publishers make more money and reach more people than they ever dreamed possible. Only a total fool would be against it, and given the facts of the history and nature of copyright and patents, only the evil and utterly selfish would try to destroy it.

Despite its diversification, Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information generated by people who have invested their capital, skill and time.

This is covered by the comments on this very bad and revealing article:

2) Google is at the very center of the information-economy, and to say it produces nothing is ridiculous. They’re purpose is to effectively organize, catalog and make searchable the sum of the information of mankind. Everything they have constructed has been purposed about this goal, from their basic search engines to Google Earth.

[…]

To say that Google produces nothing is ridiculous. As many people have mentioned the search algorithms they have developed make the internet useful for millions. One might as well dismiss Dr Johnson for compiling a book of other people’s words.

Beyond search they have produced some of the easiest to use and most compelling software available. GMail, Google Maps, Google Docs and Google Calendar have reset expectations for what can be done in internet applications.

They may not be the perfect institution and I love to know if one ever existed. I want to live in a world of Newspapers and Google but if Newspapers don’t survive it won’t be Google’s fault.

[…]

“… Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information generated by people who have invested their capital, skill and time”.

This is utter blindness. It’s like arguing that the Ordinance Survey have never done anything useful, because everything on their maps was created by other people, or that Henry Ford added no value because he only shuffled around metals, wood and leather into different shapes.

Google have made searching on a vast scale incredibly easy, and they are the only company who has done so, covering everything from Ethiopian restaurants to the notebooks of Leonardo, at any time, from anywhere. In fact, for absolutely nothing, they provide me with a service worth several times more than any other company does, bar none. If this puts them in a position to earn a lot of money, good on them. If Billy Bragg would still prefer to be back in the workers’ paradise of the GDR, he’s welcome to it.

Closer to home, I note that 95+% of what the Guardian provides overlaps several times over with what is provided by the Daily Telegraph, the Irish Times, the Economist, etc, and that the marginal value of any one of these is minimal. The challenge for newspapers is to make themselves distinctively useful, (e.g. the New Yorker’s employment of Sy Hersh), rather than, like the Guardian, recycling a huge amount of content from the AP in manner that makes it, “in the final analysis, a parasite …”.

[…]

What a bitter and twisted load of oldschool, oldfashioned, defensive Fleet-Street-Journalist dinosaurian rubbish this article really is.

Just listen to the decription of the Internet and Google: “amoral”, “destructive, anti-civic”, “exuberant contempt”, “threat to livelihood of individuals”, “a parasite that creates nothing”, “delinquent”, “sociopathic”, “invaded the privacy of millions”, “needs to be stopped in its tracks”.

This is the typical rant of the dying newspaperman – yes, mate, your “power” as a “journalist” with your beholden readers IS on the wane, your influence IS falling, your role IS diminishing – I can understand why you see the Internet and Google as bad.

But this isn’t journalism – like so much we now see inthe papers against the Internet, it’s massively ill-informed, superficial, frightened, self-serving invective. I fear it will do nothing more than to confirm the authors as dinosaurs who have received the last rites.

[…]

And there you have it.

On the back of the labour of others it makes vast advertising revenues – in the final quarter of last year its revenues were $5.7bn, and it currently sits on a cash pile of $8.6bn. Its monopolistic tendencies took an extra twist this weekend with rumours that it may buy the micro-blogging site Twitter and its plans – contested by academics – to scan a vast library of books that are out of print but still in copyright.

Twitter, if they want to be bought by Google, is a private matter. It’spurchase will benefit the users of that service…in any case, that has nothing to do with the thrust of this article, intellectual monopoly. It does point however shine a light on Henry Porter’s hatred of the rich and innovative, his sour grapes politics. As for ‘contested by academics’, this is ‘some people say‘. That is the company that Henry Porter keeps.

One of the chief casualties of the web revolution is the newspaper business, which now finds itself laden with debt (not Google’s fault) and having to give its content free to the search engine in order to survive.

Newspapers are dying because they do not provide what people need. If the Guardian provided what people want, the truth, then it would be a thriving business. The fact of the matter is, as the commenter says above, the Guardian’s content overlaps with every other newspapers content. they run the same stories, from the same point of view, and everyone is sick of it. This is why readers have turned away from newspapers:

Definitely the most ill-informed piece of propaganda I have read in a very long time and a great example of why nobody wants to pay for newspapers

Well said commenter. This is an absurd article that flies in the face of reality and the truth; why should anyone PAY to be lied to when they can get the truth for free and unfiltered from the internets?

Newspapers can of course remove their content but then their own advertising revenues and profiles decline. In effect they are being held captive and tormented by their executioner, who has the gall to insist that the relationship is mutually beneficial. Were newspapers to combine to take on Google they would be almost certainly in breach of competition law.

Newspapers, if they were to remove their content, would be committing suicide. They should do this, and go out like an hero instead of whining like spoiled brats. They have executed themselves by prostituting their non advertising column inches for anyone with money, and the Guardian is the biggest whore of them all. Were newspapers to combine to take on Google no one would notice; the content in all the papers is the same, and so it is already like there is only one newspaper… no breach of competition rules is possible between those bird cage liners.

In 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.” A moment’s thought must tell us that he is still right: newspapers are the only means of holding local hospitals, schools, councils and the police to account, and on a national level they are absolutely essential for the good functioning of democracy.

I think this Thomas Jefferson quote is more appropriate:

“Knowledge is like a candle. When you light your candle from mine, my light is not diminished. It is enhanced and a larger room is enlightened as a consequence.” Thomas Jefferson

Quote found by Google of course.

Sharing knowledge is just like sharing a light from a candle; Henry Porter and the intellectual monopolists want us all to live in darkness.

If, at a time of profound challenges, newspapers fall out with Google, it could be pretty serious for British society, which is why I referred earlier to anti-civic forces.

British society is in trouble because the newspapers have utterly failed to raise the alarm about the police state. They have failed to rally the people into revolt. They have failed in the very task that Henry Porter believes is their raison d’etre and sacred duty. The internet has done more than any newspaper to galvanize inform and solidify the revolt against the police state, as we are well aware; even email circulars are more powerful than newspapers in properly informing the public. Then there are the Blogs which have changed the game entirely. And now, YouTube, which shamed television news into playing catch up on one of the most important speeches delivered in front of a sitting Prime Minster ever. That is a blog post, by the way, NOT a newspaper article. No, newspapers are an irrelevance now thanks to their prostituting their power, and this article, this shameless, vulgar piece of transparent propaganda, is a perfect example of it.

Of course the company founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998 – now reckoned to be the world’s most powerful brand – does not offer any substitute for the originators of content nor does it allow this to touch its corporate conscience. That is probably because one detects in Google something that is delinquent and sociopathic, perhaps the character of a nightmarish 11-year-old.

The only delusional people in this story are Henry Porter and the lobby he represents and is shilling for. The only people without conscience are the ones who would retard or destroy man’s progress for their personal profit. It is Henry Porter who is acting like a breast fed 11-year-old, whining that the world is changing and he can no longer get his ‘bitty’….”I want my rent mummy!!! WAAAAH WAAAHHH WAHHHHH

This particular 11-year-old has known nothing but success and does not understand the risks, skill and failure involved in the creation of original content, nor the delicate relationships that exist outside its own desires and experience.

Henry Porter is painfully unaware about the history and true nature of intellectual monopoly, and how it is damaging to society. He wants to prevent failure of fossilized and sclerotic businesses by strangling innovators so that methods can never change and business and culture remain in stasis.

There is a brattish, clever amorality about Google that allows it to censor the pages on its Chinese service without the slightest self doubt, store vast quantities of unnecessary information about every Google search, and menace the delicate instruments of democratic scrutiny.

Henry Porter perfectly conveys spoiled and ignorant immorality that poses as righteous indignation. He chastises Google for obeying the laws of other countries while whining that Google does not better obeying the insane laws of the UK. This is hypocrisy, but when it comes to China, all journalists at the Guardian are in the same boat.

And, naturally, it did not exercise Google executives that Street View not only invaded the privacy of millions and made the job of burglars easier but somehow laid claim to Britain’s civic spaces. How gratifying to hear of the villagers of Broughton, Bucks, who prevented the Google van from taking pictures of their homes.

And yet, all the journalists who jumped on Google for Streetview, which everyone can use equally, did not make so much noise when the CCTV started to go up, which no one can access but the state. How is it that CCTV, ANPR etc is not as bad as Google Streetview? Henry Porter has been making the right noises about CCTV to be sure, but the newspapers as a whole have totally FAILED to make the right noises about CCTV. Google Streetview is NOTHING compared to the real-time CCTV and ANPR that the state has, and yet, where is the universal moral outrage? Where are the pig ignorant little Britain villagers taking down the surveillance cameras en masse? Oh, I remember, Henry Porter says:

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve always believed that the democratic state must be given power to act on behalf of us

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1499

which means that he is FOR CCTV as long as the democratic state is behind it, acting on behalf of us. Those villagers are FOR CCTV as long as its the government behind them! They are all as thick as two short planks.

We could do worse than follow their example for this brat needs to be stopped in its tracks and taught about the responsibilities it owes to content providers and copyright holders.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/05/google-internet-piracy?showallcomments=true

I am happy to say that articles like this are the death rattle of the pure evil that is newspaper journalism.

I am also happy to report that the majority of the comments on his article are entirely against it, for all the right reasons.

Farewell newspaper journalism, don’t let the door slam behind you.

Deconstructing the G20 Communique

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

1. We, the Leaders of the Group of Twenty, met in London on 2 April 2009.

This, we know.

2. We face the greatest challenge to the world economy in modern times; a crisis which has deepened since we last met, which affects the lives of women, men, and children in every country, and which all countries must join together to resolve. A global crisis requires a global solution.

FALSE. It is not true that all countries must join together to resolve this ‘crisis’, and it is also false that this ‘crisis’ reqires a global solution.

The adage ‘Think locally act globally’ applies here. Each country needs to have its own sovereign currency that is based on Gold coins. That is the long term solution to this problem.

3. We start from the belief that prosperity is indivisible;

FALSE. Prosperity is the byproduct of liberty. It is liberty that is indivisible.

that growth, to be sustained, has to be shared;

FALSE. Not only is the idea of sustained growth not an absolute, but the idea that it has to be shared is also absurd.

and that our global plan for recovery must have at its heart the needs and jobs of hard-working families, not just in developed countries but in emerging markets and the poorest countries of the world too; and must reflect the interests, not just of today’s population, but of future generations too.

If that is true, then priority number one must be the adoption of a monetary system where the hard earned work value of the people cannot be arbitrarily destroyed by the fallible leaders of the G20. If that is true, then no one anywhere should accept a fiat currency or legal tender laws that make it impossible for people to preserve their wealth and prosperity in the long run.

We believe that the only sure foundation for sustainable globalisation and rising prosperity for all is an open world economy based on market principles, effective regulation, and strong global institutions.

It is not at all agreed that ‘sustainable globalisation’ is a desirable outcome. Rising prosperity, for sure, many people on the earth are living lives that are not optimal; the question is what is the best way that they can serve their own interests. Market principles create the prosperity that the leaders of the G20 are now able to squander. ‘Effective regulation’ is code for total market regulation, which means the death of market principles. ‘Strong global institutions’ means global governance, anathema to the free market and a death blow to it.

4. We have today therefore pledged to do whatever is necessary to:

LIE. If this were the case, they would immediately cease and desist from interfering in the process of the market.

restore confidence, growth, and jobs;

They cannot do this. The market is more powerful than any of them or even 1000 of them.

repair the financial system to restore lending;

They cannot do this. They do not have the ability to do this. If they could do this, it would be the wrong thing to do because credit was the cause of this problem.

strengthen financial regulation to rebuild trust;

Trust is not the problem. More onerous regulation will not restore it; it will further damage the market.

fund and reform our international financial institutions to overcome this crisis and prevent future ones;

You do not have the money to fund and reform international financial institutions. You can only print money or tax citizens. You cannot tax any further without a global revolt, so you will steal the money by printing more fiat currency. This will worsen the ‘crisis’, hasten and increase the severity of the implosion.

promote global trade and investment and reject protectionism, to underpin prosperity; and

Global trade does not need promotion. Companies are very good at selling their wares world-wide. Investors do not need encouragement to find places to put their money. If you get out of the way and remove regulations and restrictions money will flow at the speed of light to where it is needed.

build an inclusive, green, and sustainable recovery.

These are weasel words, inserted to placate the adherents of the new secular religion ‘Environmentalism’.

By acting together to fulfil these pledges we will bring the world economy out of recession and prevent a crisis like this from recurring in the future.

And if you fail, will you all collectively resign and cease to interfere in matters beyond your understanding?

5. The agreements we have reached today, to treble resources available to the IMF to $750 billion, to support a new SDR allocation of $250 billion, to support at least $100 billion of additional lending by the MDBs, to ensure $250 billion of support for trade finance, and to use the additional resources from agreed IMF gold sales for concessional finance for the poorest countries, constitute an additional $1.1 trillion programme of support to restore credit, growth and jobs in the world economy.

Selling Gold? Anyone with common sense will see this as a great buying opportunity. The price of Gold (real money) is going to go down on this announcement, and then, once these insane measures fail to work, it will skyrocket.

This paragraph fails to say where the $1.1 trillion dollars promised is going to come from. It also does not say who is going to receive these fiat funds.

Together with the measures we have each taken nationally, this constitutes a global plan for recovery on an unprecedented scale.

LIE. This constitutes theft on a scale previously unknown to mankind. This $1.1 trillion has to come from somewhere. It can either come from the printing press, or the savings of a nation or from taxation. Either way, it is going to come from somewhere, and then it is going to be given to someone at the diktat of a small handful of people. This is more than insanity. It is criminal. We note that none of the citizenry of the G20 were asked to vote wether or not ‘their’ money was to be used in this way. This ‘solution’ was arrived at in secret and delivered as a fait accomplit. No one with any decency would accept such a thing. And to top it all off, this solution WILL NOT WORK.

6. We are undertaking an unprecedented and concerted fiscal expansion,

You cannot make something out of nothing. Value cannot be created out of nothing. Any fiscal expansion must come from the production of work; governments are unproductive – they cannot produce anything, they can only take from the productive and give to the unproductive. This is called ‘stealing’.

which will save or create millions of jobs which would otherwise have been destroyed, and that will, by the end of next year, amount to $5 trillion, raise output by 4 per cent, and accelerate the transition to a green economy. We are committed to deliver the scale of sustained fiscal effort necessary to restore growth.

This plan will not save or create real jobs. It will in fact, destroy real jobs and capital.

7. Our central banks have also taken exceptional action. Interest rates have been cut aggressively in most countries, and our central banks have pledged to maintain expansionary policies for as long as needed and to use the full range of monetary policy instruments, including unconventional instruments, consistent with price stability.

Central banks and fiat currency are the cause of this problem. They do not have perfect knowledge, and therefore are not able to set the interest rates correctly. Only the market can do that. It was the artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve that started this crisis. The fact that you do not know this disqualifies you from being able to present a solution.

8. Our actions to restore growth cannot be effective until we restore domestic lending and international capital flows. We have provided significant and comprehensive support to our banking systems to provide liquidity, recapitalise financial institutions, and address decisively the problem of impaired assets. We are committed to take all necessary actions to restore the normal flow of credit through the financial system and ensure the soundness of systemically important institutions, implementing our policies in line with the agreed G20 framework for restoring lending and repairing the financial sector.

You cannot be for the market and also be for forcing people to lend money where they do not feel that it is prudent to do so. Trying to expand access to credit to people who had no business buying a house was one of the factors that caused this situation. When you get out of the way, money will begin to flow instantly. By standing together as you are, you are in fact acting like a dam, blocking the flow of capital. Money is like information; it wants to be free. When you finally give up your delusion that you understand economics and get out of the way, the dam will burst and money will flow and wash away this problem.

9. Taken together, these actions will constitute the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus and the most comprehensive support programme for the financial sector in modern times.

And it will fail spectacularly. Stimulus packages will not work, cannot work, and have never worked.

Acting together strengthens the impact and the exceptional policy actions announced so far must be implemented without delay.

Acting together intensifies the storm, increases its devastating power and will make everything 1000 times worse.

Today, we have further agreed over $1 trillion of additional resources for the world economy through our international financial institutions and trade finance.

What is the ultimate source of the money? It can only be tax or printing press or savings. Why is it that you cannot speak plainly? Say you are going to do one of the three!

10. Last month the IMF estimated that world growth in real terms would resume and rise to over 2 percent by the end of 2010.

They could not predict this crash, and yet, we are to believe that they can predict the future now?

We are confident that the actions we have agreed today, and our unshakeable commitment to work together to restore growth and jobs, while preserving long-term fiscal sustainability, will accelerate the return to trend growth.

And this is why you FAIL. Confidence is not enough; confidence does not get work done, it does not create value. What confidence DOES do, is deceive the confident into believing paper money is real, that it has value, and that by printing it, you create value out of thin air. Commitment to a false idea is suicide. In this case, that is a good thing. Long-term fiscal sustainability can only be had with gold coins as the money. The trend growth that you refer to was produced by the printing of fiat currency. Those graphs should be thrown out immediately, as they represent an unattainable goal.

We commit today to taking whatever action is necessary to secure that outcome, and we call on the IMF to assess regularly the actions taken and the global actions required.

If you want to fix this, you need to STOP TAKING ACTIONS. It is your taking of actions that has been and which is causing the problem!

11. We are resolved to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability and price stability and will put in place credible exit strategies from the measures that need to be taken now to support the financial sector and restore global demand.

Long term pice stability can only be had with a gold coin standard for money. Since gold cannot be printed, its value cannot be corrupted – the money cannot be debased. When denominated in gold, the price of almost everything has not changed in decades. Global demand is not your affair. You do not have the competence to engineer it, and everything you do to try and generate it causes more problems.

We are convinced that by implementing our agreed policies we will limit the longer-term costs to our economies, thereby reducing the scale of the fiscal consolidation necessary over the longer term.

People used to be convinced that the earth was flat. You are all in the same camp. You all believe that paper money has value, that you can control ‘the economy’, and that your insane spending measures will fix this, when every indicator says that it will make things worse. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein.. What you are doing, is, by this definition, INSANE. It was debt that created this problem. You cannot borrow your way out of debt.

12. We will conduct all our economic policies cooperatively and responsibly with regard to the impact on other countries and will refrain from competitive devaluation of our currencies and promote a stable and well-functioning international monetary system.

The only way to create “a stable and well-functioning international monetary system” is to get out of the way and allow the market to determine what money should be and how it should work.

We will support, now and in the future, to candid, even-handed, and independent IMF surveillance of our economies and financial sectors, of the impact of our policies on others, and of risks facing the global economy.

The IMF did not see this crisis coming. They are not omniscient. They do not have the ability or the right to supervise the private affairs of nations.

Strengthening financial supervision and regulation

13. Major failures in the financial sector and in financial regulation and supervision were fundamental causes of the crisis.

This is a LIE.

Confidence will not be restored until we rebuild trust in our financial system.

This is FALSE.

We will take action to build a stronger, more globally consistent, supervisory and regulatory framework for the future financial sector, which will support sustainable global growth and serve the needs of business and citizens.

This is NONSENSE.

Global consistency means the absence of a free market, where the individual can choose the best jurisdiction to do business. A world run by incompetents at the IMF and the G20 is a world where innovation and business will be stifled. The needs of business and citizens are best served by each of the two groups acting without onerous regulation laid down by incompetent people.

14. We each agree to ensure our domestic regulatory systems are strong.

They already are strong. So strong in fact, that people spend all their time thinking up ways to get around the regulations so that they can make a profit. No one would put their money into risky derivatives if there was a less risky alternative that paid the same returns. The fact of the matter is that the already overburdened regulatory and taxation system makes it very hard to earn a profit; this is the true mother, the genesis of the exotic financial products.

But we also agree to establish the much greater consistency and systematic cooperation between countries, and the framework of internationally agreed high standards, that a global financial system requires.

The ‘global system’ does not require this. Greater consistency means a playing field where no one has the incentive to win, much less step out onto the field.

Strengthened regulation and supervision must promote propriety, integrity and transparency; guard against risk across the financial system; dampen rather than amplify the financial and economic cycle; reduce reliance on inappropriately risky sources of financing; and discourage excessive risk-taking.

Regulation cannot promote propriety or integrity. Regulation in fact, promotes and exacerbates the tactics of evasion. Transparency already exists in the place that it matters; between the client and the entity that offers a financial product. You cannot “risk across the financial system” AND be in favor of fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking, the latter being the most dangerous. The economic cycle (which is actually The Business Cycle) is the creature of governments with their bad money, regulations and interference in the market. The state cannot decide what is and is not inappropriate. Only individuals can make this determination. When the state involves itself in legislating risk-taking, moral hazard is the result.

Regulators and supervisors must protect consumers and investors, support market discipline, avoid adverse impacts on other countries, reduce the scope for regulatory arbitrage, support competition and dynamism, and keep pace with innovation in the marketplace.

Regulators failed to spot Madhof (the scapegoat). They are incapable of protecting consumers, even if it was appropriate for them to do so, which it is not. Markets are self disciplining, just like the weather. No doubt you at the G20 would like to control that also. Avoiding adverse impacts is also impossible. If it were possible to do it, the IMF would have stepped in to stop the current crisis from emerging.

You cannot,”support competition and dynamism” and also be FOR regulation and the sort of fine grained supervision you are advocating. We understand what you mean by ‘keep pace with innovation in the marketplace’; stop any and all new internet based payment systems from taking root and supplanting the ossified, corrupt, sclerotic financial system over which you preside, or pretend to preside.

15. To this end we are implementing the Action Plan agreed at our last meeting, as set out in the attached progress report. We have today also issued a Declaration, Strengthening the Financial System. In particular we agree:

to establish a new Financial Stability Board (FSB) with a strengthened mandate, as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), including all G20 countries, FSF members, Spain, and the European Commission;

Pointless.

that the FSB should collaborate with the IMF to provide early warning of macroeconomic and financial risks and the actions needed to address them;

This will never work. The IMF did not see this crisis coming, the biggest ever in world history, and they will not see the next one, if there is going to be a next one.

to reshape our regulatory systems so that our authorities are able to identify and take account of macro-prudential risks;

This will be used to blackmail institutions that are the personal enemies of the insiders.

to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets. This will include, for the first time, systemically important hedge funds;

Total control by incompetent unproductive over the productive.

to endorse and implement the FSF’s tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms;

This is UTTER NONSENSE. There is no such thing as a ‘sustainable compensation scheme’, and executive remuneration has nothing to do with this problem. The fact that this childish, sour grapes scapegoating language is in this document demonstrates your complete lack of understanding of the problem, its root cause and the steps that need to be taken. It proves that you are incompetent, dull witted and doomed to failure.

to take action, once recovery is assured, to improve the quality, quantity, and international consistency of capital in the banking system.

recovery will not be assured by this plan, and even if it were possible, by what metric are you going to declare that it has happened? Improving the international consistency of capital in the banking system means a global currency. We are not stupid!

In future, regulation must prevent excessive leverage and require buffers of resources to be built up in good times;

It is not the place of the state to say what is or is not excessive leverage. Banking is a private business. So is risk. Neither is the business of government.

to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens.

Tax ‘havens’ have nothing to do with this crisis. You would do better to ask why it is that money is fleeing your jurisdictions; once you address that problem, no one will have the incentive to remove their money from your shores. As for non co-operative jurisdictions, this means that the G20 is now going to act as if it is the de-fact world government, and there will be no more national soverignty. People will not be able to choose places to invest based on thier own requirements, and nations will not be able to organize their affairs as they see fit. All laws will now pass through the filter of G20, and if you do not agree, you will be listed as an ‘outlaw nation’. This will be the case even if the country, through the democratic process, decides that it wants nothing to do with the G20 and its absurd and destructive policies.

We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems.

This is a non sequitur. You do not use sanctions to protect YOUR public finances, you use YOUR LAWS to do that. Sanctions are used to disrupt OTHER PEOPLE’S finances and financial systems. The money in sovereign nations is not YOURS it is the property of the OWNERS of that money, and the responsibility of the sovereign nation where the funds are stored.

The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information;

None of this has anything to do with the financial crisis. Banking secrecy has no effect on anything, other than the ability of the venal government’s ability to steal the wealth from its beleaguered citizenry. You are using this crisis to extend your reach into places where you have no business being.

to call on the accounting standard setters to work urgently with supervisors and regulators to improve standards on valuation and provisioning and achieve a single set of high-quality global accounting standards; and

None of this will work. You will not have enough time to roll it out; the collapse will see to that. Barring the collapse, there will be a ground-swell of rage that will permanently scupper your plans.

to extend regulatory oversight and registration to Credit Rating Agencies to ensure they meet the international code of good practice, particularly to prevent unacceptable conflicts of interest.

16. We instruct our Finance Ministers to complete the implementation of these decisions in line with the timetable set out in the Action Plan. We have asked the FSB and the IMF to monitor progress, working with the Financial Action Taskforce and other relevant bodies, and to provide a report to the next meeting of our Finance Ministers in Scotland in November.

The only confilct of interest that matters here is the prevalence of financial insiders in the corrupt governments.

17 to 24, snipped, as it is repetitive and refuted.

Ensuring a fair and sustainable recovery for all

25. We are determined not only to restore growth but to lay the foundation for a fair and sustainable world economy. We recognise that the current crisis has a disproportionate impact on the vulnerable in the poorest countries and recognise our collective responsibility to mitigate the social impact of the crisis to minimise long-lasting damage to global potential. To this end:

The state cannot determine what is ‘fair’ and what is not ‘un-fair’. Global potential, like gravitational potential energy, is storable. Sound money stores value; it is called capital (potential to invest). If you want to minimise long terme damage to global potential, sound money must replace fiat currencies that can be printed and debased at the will of incompetents.

we reaffirm our historic commitment to meeting the Millennium Development Goals and to achieving our respective ODA pledges, including commitments on Aid for Trade, debt relief, and the Gleneagles commitments, especially to sub-Saharan Africa;

Others haver written about this, Google them.

the actions and decisions we have taken today will provide $50 billion to support social protection, boost trade and safeguard development in low income countries, as part of the significant increase in crisis support for these and other developing countries and emerging markets;

Where is this money coming from, for the thousandth time, and is this not giving fish to people instead of teaching them how to fish?

we are making available resources for social protection for the poorest countries, including through investing in long-term food security and through voluntary bilateral contributions to the World Bank’s Vulnerability Framework, including the Infrastructure Crisis Facility, and the Rapid Social Response Fund;

More failure on the cards.

we have committed, consistent with the new income model, that additional resources from agreed sales of IMF gold will be used, together with surplus income, to provide $6 billion additional concessional and flexible finance for the poorest countries over the next 2 to 3 years. We call on the IMF to come forward with concrete proposals at the Spring Meetings;

Who is going to buy this gold, and what will they give in exchange for it? Gold is money. The people who want to buy it have fiat currency. People who want to protect the value of their money will line up for this bargain price gold, hand over their worthless dollars and euros and then sit back and watch the spectacle unfold.

we have agreed to review the flexibility of the Debt Sustainability Framework and call on the IMF and World Bank to report to the IMFC and Development Committee at the Annual Meetings; and

we call on the UN, working with other global institutions, to establish an effective mechanism to monitor the impact of the crisis on the poorest and most vulnerable.

A waste of money.

26. We recognise the human dimension to the crisis. We commit to support those affected by the crisis by creating employment opportunities and through income support measures.

How is this going to be paid for?

We will build a fair and family-friendly labour market for both women and men.

It is not the place of the state to build labour markets. While we are at it, a ‘family-friendly’ labour market would be one where the mother gets to raise her children full time, instead of being forced to earn money because the prices of houses is so great (which is a direct result of interference in the market by the state).

We therefore welcome the reports of the London Jobs Conference and the Rome Social Summit and the key principles they proposed. We will support employment by stimulating growth,

Growth cannot be stimulated.

investing in education and training, and through active labour market policies, focusing on the most vulnerable. We call upon the ILO, working with other relevant organisations, to assess the actions taken and those required for the future.

More nonsense.

27. We agreed to make the best possible use of investment funded by fiscal stimulus programmes towards the goal of building a resilient, sustainable, and green recovery. We will make the transition towards clean, innovative, resource efficient, low carbon technologies and infrastructure. We encourage the MDBs to contribute fully to the achievement of this objective. We will identify and work together on further measures to build sustainable economies.

28. We reaffirm our commitment to address the threat of irreversible climate change, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, and to reach agreement at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Utter, unscientific garbage.

Delivering our commitments

29. We have committed ourselves to work together with urgency and determination to translate these words into action. We agreed to meet again before the end of this year to review progress on our commitments.

It is the prayer of every free man on this planet that you meet with TOTAL FAILURE.

Never been in a riot

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Anti G20 ‘Rioters’ display total ignorance, impotence, incompetence, idiocy and irrationality:

A comment from The Times:

To be fair to the protesters, one this occasion they have paid for the damages in advance.
David Masu, Zürich, Switzerland

And check this out:

I have a better idea chubby: Why don’t you get yourself out of the government’s economy??!?!

And of course, the police agent provocateurs were in full force:

Snarfed from The Daily Mail.

Now for some common sense:

NEW WORLD DISORDER

The G-20 meeting begins this week in England. Here, political leaders from 20 major nations meet to share ideas on how to solve an international financial crisis that their central banks created, following the lead of Alan Greenspan’s FED. They never saw it coming. Not any of them – not the central bankers, not the politicians, not the regulators. They were all caught flat-footed.

Then they assemble at a meeting and send out press releases. These press releases are designed to assure the investing public that they, the creators of this crisis, know what went wrong – they don’t – and that by discussing the causes of the crisis, which they don’t understand, they will be able to come up with a joint solution that does not involve either (1) mass inflation or (2) a worldwide depression that lasts for years.

It is a song and dance. It is shuck and jive. It is bait and switch. It is Custer’s last stand.

These people don’t know what to do. If they did, there would be two or three well-defined, fully documented proposals out there, each with national co-sponsors. All of them would have major flaws. They would be mutually exclusive. Economists of various schools of opinion would be mobilizing behind one or another program.

Instead, there are no published plans. There are no working papers. There are only vague promises of joint action. Like what?

There are no detailed plans out of which this team of egomaniac politicians might conceivably hammer into an acceptable plan.

There is no centralized international planning agency.

There is no international enforcement agency. There is no agreement among central bankers.

There is no unanimity to do anything.

There is not going to be, either. The G-20 meeting will issue some sort of bland statement of hope, and everyone will go home.

They refuse to adopt the only system that every brought unity to governments and central banks: an international gold coin standard. The politicians and central bankers could not control the movements of gold out of inflating nations and into non-inflating nations, 1815–1914. They resented the ability of common people to exercise control over domestic monetary policy simply by going down to a bank and demanding payment in gold coins. They all took away this authority in the summer of 1914, when World War I broke out.

These deal-doers, these politicians, these seekers of power don’t trust each other. That is the famous bottom line. They do not trust the common people, which means that they do not trust a gold coin standard. But they do not trust each other.

They are trapped by the dollar standard. They have told their voters that their nations can get rich by exporting to the United States. They have not explained that in order to export lots of goods to the United States, their central banks must create fiat money to buy depreciating dollars at a favorable rate of exchange. They have not told the voters that modern mercantilism depends on lending tax money and central bank fiat money to the U.S. government, which will not pay back the loans. Ever.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north700.html

All BLOGDIAL readers know why this protesting and violence is pointless / futile / stupid /.