Back in February 2006, LEAP/E2020 estimated that the global systemic crisis would unfold in 4 main structural phases: trigger, acceleration, impact and decanting phases. This process enabled us to properly anticipate events until now. However our team has now come to the conclusion that, due to the global leaders’ incapacity to fully realise the scope of the ongoing crisis (made obvious by their determination to cure the consequences rather than the causes of this crisis), the global systemic crisis will enter a fifth phase in the fourth quarter of 2009, a phase of global geopolitical dislocation. According to LEAP/E2020, this new stage of the crisis will be shaped by two major processes happening in two parallel sequences:
A. Two major processes
1. Disappearance of the financial base (Dollar & Debt) all over the world
2. Fragmentation of the interests of the global system’s big players and blocks
B. Two parallel sequences
1. Quick disintegration of the current international system altogether
2. Strategic dislocation of big global players. We had hoped that the decanting phase would give the world’s leaders the opportunity to draw the proper conclusions from the collapse of the global system prevailing since WWII. Alas, at this stage, it is no longer possible to be optimistic in this regard (1). In the United States, as in Europe, China and Japan, leaders persist in reacting as if the global system has only fallen victim to some temporary breakdown, merely requiring loads of fuel (liquidities) and other ingredients (rate drops, repurchase of toxic assets, bailouts of semi-bankrupt industries,) to reboot it. In fact (and this is what LEAP/E2020 means ever since February 2006 using the expression &laqno; global systemic crisis”), the global system is simply out of order; a new one needs to be built instead of striving to save what can no longer be saved.
Orders in the manufacturing sector, Quarter 4 2008 (Japan, Eurozone, United Kingdom, China, India) – Sources : MarketOracle / JPMorgan History is not known to be patient, therefore the fifth phase of the crisis will ignite this required process of reconstruction, but in a harsh manner: by means of a complete dislocation of the present system, with particularly tragic consequences in the case of several big global players, as described in this 32nd issue of the GEAB (see the two parallel sequences).
According to LEAP/E2020, there is only one very small launch window left to prevent this scenario from shaping up: the next four months, before summer 2009. Practically speaking, the April 2009 G20 Summit is probably the last chance to put on the right tracks the forces at play, i.e. before the sequence of UK and then US defaults begin (2). Failing which, they will lose their capacity to control events (3), including those in their own countries for many of them; and the world will enter this phase of geopolitical dislocation like a “drunken boat”. At the end of this phase of geopolitical dislocation, the world will look more like Europe in 1913 rather than our world in 2007. Because they persisted in bearing the ever-increasing weight of the ongoing crisis, most states, including the most powerful ones, failed to realise that they were planning their own trampling under the weight of History, forgetting that they were merely man-made organisations, only surviving because they matched the interest of a large majority. In this 32nd edition of the GEAB, LEAP/E2020 has chosen to anticipate the fallout of this phase of geopolitical dislocation so far as it affects the United-States, EU, China and Russia.
US Monetary base – (12/2002 12/2008) – Source US Federal Reserve / http://www.DollarDaze.com It is high time for the general population and socio-political players to get ready to face very hard times during which whole segments of our societies will be modified (4), temporarily disappear or even permanently vanish. For instance, the breakdown of the global monetary system we anticipated for summer 2009 will indeed entail the collapse of the US dollar (and all USD-denominated assets), but it will also induce, out of psychological contagion, a general loss of confidence in paper money altogether (these consequences give rise to a number of recommendations in this issue of the GEAB).
Last but not least, our team now estimates that the most monolithic, the most &laqno; imperialistic » political entities (5) will suffer the most from this fifth phase of the crisis. Some states will indeed experience a strategic dislocation undermining their territorial integrity and their influence worldwide. As a consequence, other states will suddenly lose their protected situations and be thrust into regional chaos.
Notes (1) Barack Obama, like Nicolas Sarkozy or Gordon Brown, spend their time chanting about the historic dimension of the crisis, but they are just hiding the fact that they fully misunderstand its nature in an attempt to clear their names from the future failure of their policies. As to the others, they prefer to persuade themselves that the problem will be solved like any normal technical problem, albeit a little more serious than usual. Meanwhile everyone continues to play by decades old rules, unaware of the fact that the game is vanishing from under their noses. (2) See previous GEABs. (3) In fact it is probable that the G20 will find it more and more difficult to simply meet, as the growing trend is one of &laqno; every man for himself ». (4) Source : New York Times, 102/14/2009 (5) Idem companies. Lundi 16 Février 2009
I fear that the attempts to speed up and deepen integration and to move decisions about the lives of the citizens of the member countries up to the European level can have effects that will endanger all the positive things achieved in Europe in the last half a century. Let us not underestimate the fears of the citizens of many member countries, who are afraid, that their problems are again decided elsewhere and without them, and that their ability to influence these decisions is very limited. So far, the European Union has been successful, partly thanks to the fact that the vote of each member country had the same weight and thus could not be ignored. Let us not allow a situation where the citizens of member countries would live their lives with a resigned feeling that the EU project is not their own; that it is developing differently than they would wish, that they are only forced to accept it. We would very easily and very soon slip back to the times that we hoped belonged to history.
This is closely connected with the question of prosperity. We must say openly that the present economic system of the EU is a system of a suppressed market, a system of a permanently strengthening centrally controlled economy. Although history has more than clearly proven that this is a dead end, we find ourselves walking the same path once again. This results in a constant rise in both the extent of government masterminding and constraining of spontaneity of the market processes. In recent months, this trend has been further reinforced by incorrect interpretation of the causes of the present economic and financial crisis, as if it was caused by free market, while in reality it is just the contrary – caused by political manipulation of the market. It is again necessary to point out to the historical experience of our part of Europe and to the lessons we learned from it.
Many of you certainly know the name of the French economist Frédéric Bastiat and his famous Petition of the Candlemakers, which has become a well-known and canonical reading, illustrating the absurdity of political interventions in the economy. On 14 November 2008 the European Commission approved a real, not a fictitious Bastiat’s Petition of the Candlemakers, and imposed a 66% tariff on candles imported from China. I would have never believed that a 160-year-old essay could become a reality, but it has happened. An inevitable effect of the extensive implementation of such measures in Europe is economic slowdown, if not a complete halt of economic growth. The only solution is liberalisation and deregulation of the European economy.
It seems like the pressure is increasing on a daily basis. Look at this clip from the floor of the NYSE:
The seething anger is leaking out. Soon, the default action will be to say, “No”, and the REALLY angry people will be taking up arms.
It’s about BLOODY TIME.
California is broke.
Kansas is about to go broke.
New York is trying to tax everything under the sun to avoid going broke (it won’t work Mr. Bloomberg).
European banks may need £16.3 trillion bail-out, EC document warns
Only to immediately delete the story on orders so that bank runs would not be triggered.
Now, as we have been saying, if a bank does not operate a fractional reserve, it doesn’t matter if all the depositors come to get their money out at the same time; the money is actually there, unlike in today’s banks, where the money is NOT there.
Bit I digress a little.
The EU is, with any luck, FINISHED. When the euro collapses it will be the death blow to the EU. Each country is going to go back, re-launch their national currencies, tear up the bogus treaties and enslaving agreements that have made up this bad deal that betrays the hearts of nations and steals from the pockets and spirits of men.
No nation is going to ever again accept this extremely dangerous monetary monoculture. Think about it; why should the Italians suffer the wiping out of all their savings because some Germans made mistakes with the centrally controlled monolithic currency? If you are going to have your hard earned money wiped out, at least let it be by the act of other Italians; then you can string them upside down and shoot them for satisfaction; at least then you have someone to blame.
With the EU president chiseling from the top and all the citizens rioting from the base, the whole structure will fracture and shatter into a quadrillions pieces that will never be put back together again, and any future attempt will not look like the debacle that has been forced upon everyone today.
As for America, they are actively preparing for civil unrest. Google it for yourself. Like I have been saying for many years; if there is one country on earth that can turn itself around from the precipice it is the United STates of America. Only the men of that country have the balls (and the guns) to make the magic happen. I really do hope that they act as an example to the whole world once again. Either way, there is no going back. There is not enough money in the world to pay off the US debt. Europe cannot find the $25 trillion (twice the size of the gross domestic product of European Union) they need to ‘save’ themselves.
Finally, it seems that everyone realizes that refusing to obey is the only way out. Congress just passed a 1000 page bill without a single member reading it. Even if they had read it, and initialed every section, if it is a bill that violates your rights, you are under no obligation to obey its provisions. We have been saying this for ages. So have other people:
Children’s Books in Dumpsters: Washington’s Madness Continues
by Gary North
The kiddie police have begun to march across America, threatening thrift stores, as I warned.
On February 10, workers in America’s thrift stores tossed out every children’s book that was printed prior to 1985. That is the law.
A parent is not allowed to go into a thrift store and buy a book printed before 1985. Those books are now gone.
On the dumpsters filled with children’s books, read this.
Congress has spoken. Well, not quite. The bureaucrats who use Congress as their hand puppet, agency by agency, have spoken. The bureaucrats spend their careers identifying threats to the people. They get paid to do this, and they are paid well. They invent a presumed threat and then terrorize Congress into passing a 500-page bill that no Congressman has read. Then the bureaucrats add more regulations in the name of this 500-page law.
This has gone on since 1913, and it will continue to go on until the system finally breaks down. This is the logic of the system.
Here is the new reality, one week old. If you can still find any pre-1985 books, it is because the thrift store’s managers don’t know they are breaking the law and could be fined or sent to prison if they persist.
Congress passed the enabling legislation law last year: The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. It has 239 sections. I don’t expect you to read it – after all, no Congressman or Senator did – but click the link and skim it: “Most parents are irresponsible and must not be trusted.”
Every Federal law looks like this one. This was true when I was a Capitol Hill staffer for Ron Paul in 1976, and it will be true for as long as the Federal government is solvent by means of (1) our tax money, (2) Treasury debt investors’ money, and (3) Federal Reserve fiat money.
The bureaucrats are now enforcing the letter of the 2008 law. Congressmen will feign ignorance. “Gee, how were we to know?”
Too late. The books are in landfill.
But why? “Stop dangerous lead paint!” Right. The lead paint in pre-1985 kids’ books in minuscule traces. There is no known example of any child being injured by lead paint from a book. No matter. The law’s the law.
This seems insane, but it is the relentless logic of the State: “Nothing is permitted unless authorized by the State.”
The Federal government has authorized abortion on demand. But, once a parent allows a child to be born, that parent is not be allowed to buy the child a pre-1985 book. Such books are too dangerous for children.
This is the logic of Washington. This logic is relentless. It will be extended by law into every nook and cranny of our lives until it is stopped.
This will stop it: (1) the destruction of the dollar, (2) the bankruptcy of the Federal government, and (3) a decision by millions of Americans to say, “I will not obey this law.” Law by law, people say, one by one, “I will not obey. Arrest me. I will hire a lawyer. Maybe I will simply defend myself in a court of law. I will resist.” Gandhi did it. It worked. People will organize, law by law, to clog the courts, jam the legal system, and vote out of office every politician who does not repeal a specific law. Nothing else can stop this madness.
Americans have surrendered their liberties to Washington, one by one. The process is relentless. No insanity is too great for the bureaucrats. Yet the public is oblivious.
It stems from a simple assumption: “My neighbors are irresponsible. They must not be allowed to make voluntary exchanges, no matter how harmless.” This belief leads to a principle of law: Nothing is allowed unless authorized by the State.
Some of your friends may think you are extreme for not trusting Congress and the bureaucrats. Forward this report to them. They may not yet perceive the nature of Beltway madness.
It is going to get much worse. We can be certain of this. Bureaucrats respect only one thing: budget cuts. That’s a long way away. But the destruction of the dollar may not be.
There aren’t enough cops or apparatchiks to control everyone all the time. Once the teeth of the monster’s mouth reaches the meat of the crisis, then all bets will be off.
It will be something like the fall of the Berlin Wall, where everyone suddenly wakes up and the illusion of power fades away, only this time, the wall that will break will be inside people’s minds
It’s already happening. The cracks are widening. All it will take is one strike of a chisel, or a heating and then dousing in cold water for the whole thing to shatter.
md wrote:
nagapie wrote:
Brixton’s getting it’s own currency.
Is it going to be made out of a precious metal (i.e. either gold or silver)?
I can’t pretend to even understand, let alone agree with, the various long term bug bears of the small Irdial group of bloggers, but fiat currency is an issue they post about frequently, and they vehemently support the set up of independent currencies based on precious metals.
They keep contradicting themselves though. First they bang on about the reintroduction of the gold standard and then they say this:
We then went on to discuss why trans-national currencies ‘Currency Monocultures’ like the Euro are a bad thing.
Imagine that the Euro never happened, and each European country had kept its own currency. Each country would be able to formulate its own response to bank failures, and their currency would suffer or gain depending on their response. Each person with savings could hold a basket of currencies to protect themselves from being wiped out by inflation.
But if you have a gold standard then the value of your currency is pegged to the value of gold, so you CANNOT formulate a response to bank failures! Your money supply is constant (or rather, tied to current world reserves of gold) which robs you of your main tool for controlling inflation and unemployment. Moreover, if everyone adopts the gold standard then exchange rates are effectively fixed (because if any country’s currency began to depreciate, everyone else would buy it, convert it into gold and then convert the gold back into their own currency). And that’s the biggest `currency monoculture’ imaginable. Tin hat vibes.
Now, lets go through this slowly:
But if you have a gold standard then the value of your currency is pegged to the value of gold, so you CANNOT formulate a response to bank failures!
First of all, Gold IS money. Sound economies are based on gold as the means of exchange. Government cannot create the money out of thin air when it is made of gold, they cannot print it. Gold is scarce and the amount of it in circulation cannot be arbitrarily increased.
Bank failures (bank runs) happen because of fractional reserve banking. Banks, when they are given a license to do business, are allowed to ‘print money’. When you deposit £10,000 in your account, the government allows your bank to loan out say, 40 times that amount to other people. Those people then pay interest on the money that is loaned to them. If you or I were to do this, it would be called ‘counterfeiting’ but because its a licensed bank, its called ‘banking.
The system ‘works’ as long as everyone who holds an account at the bank does not ask for their deposits back at the same time (a bank run). Since the banks run fractional reserves, they literally do not have the money to pay back their depositors.
Centuries ago, when people used gold for money in every day transactions, the danger of theft was ever present. Banks used to hold deposits, and since they were trustworthy, would issue I.O.U.s to their depositors. People began to trade these I.O.U.s because they knew that the money was in the bank and redeemable at any time. This is the origin of gold backed paper money.
The bankers realized that they could print I.O.U.s for gold that they did not have on deposit. As long as the I.O.U.s did not all come back at once, they could gain interest on gold they did not have in their vaults.
Pure Genius!
Modern banking runs exactly the same way, only the ‘money’ is Fiat Currency; money that is given value by order of the government by legal tender laws. It is paper, a fiction, worthless. And of course, the government has the printing press that can create ‘value’ out of nothing.
Lets say you earn £500 pounds a week. If there are only £2,000,000 paper pounds in the whole world, then the amount that you can buy with your £500 remains the same, week on week, year on year. But, lets now imagine that the government has doubled the money supply. There are now £4,000,000 paper pounds in existence. That means that the scarcity of paper pounds has been reduced by half. There is twice as much money in circulation. This means that your £500 is now worth half as much as it was when there were only £2,000,000 paper pounds in circulation.
You have just been cheated out of half of the value of your money.
Now, if there is one currency, and you cannot vote for the government who controls it, and it is a fiat currency, you are essentially giving the printing press for that money to someone who you cannot elect. They can destroy the value of your savings. If however, you have a paper currency and it is under the control of your own elected officials, if they debase the money, you can vote them out and the next government can destroy some of the money supply and restore the value of your savings.
If the money you use is gold, then no government, no matter who runs it, can print your money. It actually is your money, literally. The pound is not ‘your money’; it belongs to the government. They control its supply, they control its value.
Inflation is just what I described; the money supply increasing because of the printing press. If we had a gold standard, we would have no inflation by definition. Take a look at this YouTube video which demonstrates how the value of gold has not changed over time.
Your money supply is constant (or rather, tied to current world reserves of gold) which robs you of your main tool for controlling inflation and unemployment.
Like I say above, gold IS money. In a gold standard currency system you use gold as money, not paper that is linked or tied to anything.
There is no ‘world reserve of gold’ central banks of separate sovereign nations have their own reserves of gold, like the gold at Fort Knox. When the dollar (for example) was backed by gold before the Bretton Woods agreement, you used to be able to go to the bank and redeem gold (and silver) for paper dollars which were certificates that represented actual physical gold and silver. When you say ‘your’ main tool, who exactly are you talking about? That ‘your’ is the same ‘you’ that destroys the value of ‘your’ savings by printing money. The people who run central banks are not able to set interest rates correctly or control unemployment, for the record. Only the market can do this. But that’s more typing.
if everyone adopts the gold standard then exchange rates are effectively fixed
There are no exchange rates, because everyone would be using real money (gold coins) to do their business with. Did you know that in Viet Nam, people buy and sell land in gold? There is nothing strange about it at all; what is strange is that people think its acceptable that government can steal your savings from you without even going into your bank!
(because if any country’s currency began to depreciate, everyone else would buy it, convert it into gold and then convert the gold back into their own currency)
This line demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of what money is. When you say that a county’s currency starts to depreciate, what EXACTLY do you mean? If you mean that it loses its value, this can only happen if someone has access to the printing press that allows people to create money out of thin air. A gold currency cannot be printed, so any country using it would not suffer from inflation (which is actually what you are describing, NOT depreciation which is what your car does ten minutes after you have bought it). Take a look at this to understand what the word inflation really means in this context.
And that’s the biggest `currency monoculture’ imaginable. Tin hat vibes.
Try gold hat :)
Apart from having a gold standard, fractional reserve banking needs to be understood (note how I do not say ‘banned’) by depositors. If you are crazy enough to deposit your gold money in a bank that lends out many multiples of the amount of deposits, you are taking a big risk; they had better be paying you big interest rates. You and the bank had better be insured against bank runs. As we have seen there are moves afoot to run clean banks.
I assume that you are not in favor of war and the recent mass murdering. The war machine is financed by fiat currency running off of government printing presses. Gold currency forces discipline on governments. This alone is a reason why it should be adopted; everything else would be a great bonus.
You should also look up the Totnes Pound, which is an interesting development. Also, California is issuing its own Currency in the form of I.O.Us. They are not saying its a currency but of course, if they start exchanging them around LA, it will be a currency by definition.
Finally, if you want to watch a really fascinating documentary about this subject and educate yourself so that you can understand a little of what BLOGDIAL publishes on this subject, you could do worse than The Money Masters. When you can understand why a stick of wood with grooves in it was one of the longest running currencies ever, then you will have arrived!
Airline pilot leaders today accused the government of using airport workers as ‘guinea pigs’ for identity cards and warned they would not co-operate with the scheme.
The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said ID cards had ‘absolutely no value’ for security and claimed pilots were being ‘coerced’ into using them.
‘Promises that ID cards would be voluntary have been broken,’ said general secretary Jim McAuslan.
‘Forcing pilots to have ID cards is an affront to the people who for years have been, and continue to be, at the forefront in the battle against terrorist outrages.’
Balpa has written to the Identity and Passport Service, as well as to management at Manchester airport and London City airport – the first two locations for the introduction of ID cards.
Mr McAuslan said workers who refused to accept the cards face being sacked. ‘This could be an individual who has served his or her country as a service pilot being told they are not now trusted,’ he added.
‘This is both unacceptable and demeaning and we will resist.’
Balpa said in its submissions: ‘It is clear that the government’s staged introduction of biometric identity cards first to overseas students, then to migrant workers and then for aviation workers represents a way of picking off what is seen as easy or compliant targets.’
But, an IPS spokesperson said it remained committed to working closely with the aviation industry and trade unions to introduce cards for airside workers. Discussions with individual airports would continue to establish which employees would ‘initially’ be required to have them.
Since education and training are instruments in the hands of society, they should be used to develop the sort of society we want.
Who is ‘we’, and what sort of society do they want? Education is not – should not be – an ‘instrument in the hands of society’
and
Promoting the role of stakeholders in the development of training, including initial training, and learning at the workplace.
It’s a different language to that of home education, isn’t it? It sees education as a means to a financial and political end of their choosing. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what our children might want to learn. Following onto this document, part of the plan was to “bring about a substantial increase in per capita investment in human resources every year.” Human resources. We are not people: we are ‘capital’ and ‘resources’. It’s a wonder they don’t refer to us as cattle, though I suppose we should feel lucky they’re not calling us ‘waste’.
Oooohh! this is the sort of blog we like. You can tell from the writing of this author that her children will not be mindless drones when they grow up.
The perfect storm is coming. Total economic meltdown, 100% universal dissatisfaction with democracy and its corrupt, warmongering, stealing institutions…the end result?
Thanks to a vigilant lurker, we have this gem from BBQ / BBC:
Italy police warn of Skype threat
By David Willey
BBC News, Rome
The police’s use of wiretaps has forced some criminals on to the internet
Criminals in Italy are increasingly making phone calls over the internet in order to avoid getting caught through mobile phone intercepts, police say.
Officers in Milan say organised crime, arms and drugs traffickers, and prostitution rings are turning to Skype in order to frustrate investigators.
The police say Skype’s encryption system is a secret which the company refuses to share with the authorities.
Investigators have become increasingly reliant on wiretaps in recent years.
Customs and tax police in Milan have sounded the alarm.
They overheard a suspected cocaine trafficker telling an accomplice to switch to Skype in order to get details of a 2kg (4.4lb) drug consignment.
Use of wiretaps by prosecutors in Italy has grown exponentially in recent years.
Heated debate
Investigators say intercepts of telephone calls have become an essential tool of the police, who spend millions of dollars each year tracking down crime through wiretaps of landlines and mobile phones.
But the law may be about to change.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing government has drawn up a bill which would restrict police wiretaps to only the most serious crimes.
Much crime reporting in the Italian media is based on leaks of wiretaps and leading politicians, including Mr Berlusconi himself, have found to their embarrassment that details of their private telephone conversations have sometimes been leaked to newspapers.
Under the new law reporting of details of criminal investigations obtained through wiretaps would become illegal until a final verdict has been delivered.
Given the extreme slowness of Italian justice, this would mean that details of cases now before the courts might be reported by the press only in 15 years time.
Not only have Italian journalists been protesting at the new draft bill, but a heated debate is also going on about it within the country’s highest body for the administration of justice – the supreme council of the magistrature, composed of the country’s top judges.
David Wiley is an ignorant, context dodging, fearmongering, BBC propagandizer of the first order. Look at the headlines of some of his bad work:
Pope Promotes Conservative Cleric
Scientist hails birth of ‘rat children’
Vatican Says Aliens Could Exist
Fewer confessions and new sins
Thou Shalt Not Wear Condoms When Going Forward
Vatican braces for Muslim anger
Vatican ‘forgives’ John Lennon
Vatican archive yields Templar secrets
Italian arrest over ‘toxic wheat’
Vatican divorces from Italian law
ho are the Calabrian mafia?
God’s politician : John Paul at the Vatican
Crib mosques anger Italian party
Italy sounds alarm over migrants
Italy approves tax on pornography
Priest ‘ruins Christmas’ for kids
Those headlines sound like something from a tabloid newspaper. Which is perfectly fine, as long as you are not forced to pay for it.
Skype is not a threat to anyone, any more than any other technology is. The vast majority of its users, which number about 16,000,000 at any one time, are quite ordinary people who just want to make phone calls and chat. There is absolutely no reason why the police should be able to listen to Skype calls or any other call for that matter, without a warrant signed by a judge, and if that cannot be done, then the police have to do in person surveillance ‘just like in the old days’. While we are talking about numbers, did you know that Skype has been downloaded over 500,000,000 times?
Back to the subject at hand. This piece of sickening, context free nonsense, propaganda if you will, in favor of police state wiretapping is pure evil. Lets hear from someone with common sense:
Helping the Terrorists
It regularly comes as a surprise to people that our own infrastructure can be used against us. And in the wake of terrorist attacks or plots, there are fear-induced calls to ban, disrupt, or control that infrastructure. According to officials investigating the Mumbai attacks, the terrorists used images from Google Earth to help learn their way around. This isn’t the first time Google Earth has been charged with helping terrorists: in 2007, Google Earth images of British military bases were found in the homes of Iraqi insurgents. Incidents such as these have led many governments to demand that Google remove or blur images of sensitive locations: military bases, nuclear reactors, government buildings, and so on. An Indian court has been asked to ban Google Earth entirely.
This isn’t the only way our information technology helps terrorists. Last year, a U.S. army intelligence report worried that terrorists could plan their attacks using Twitter, and there are unconfirmed reports that the Mumbai terrorists read the Twitter feeds about their attacks to get real-time information they could use. British intelligence is worried that terrorists might use voice over IP services such as Skype to communicate. Terrorists might recruit on Second Life and World of Warcraft. We already know they use websites to spread their message and possibly even to recruit.
Of course, all of this is exacerbated by open-wireless access, which has been repeatedly labeled a terrorist tool and which has been the object of attempted bans.
Mobile phone networks help terrorists, too. The Mumbai terrorists used them to communicate with each other. This has led some cities, including New York and London, to propose turning off mobile phone coverage in the event of a terrorist attack.
Let’s all stop and take a deep breath. By its very nature, communications infrastructure is general. It can be used to plan both legal and illegal activities, and it’s generally impossible to tell which is which. When I send and receive e-mail, it looks exactly the same as a terrorist doing the same thing. To the mobile phone network, a call from one terrorist to another looks exactly the same as a mobile phone call from one victim to another. Any attempt to ban or limit infrastructure affects everybody. If India bans Google Earth, a future terrorist won’t be able to use it to plan; nor will anybody else. Open Wi-Fi networks are useful for many reasons, the large majority of them positive, and closing them down affects all those reasons. Terrorist attacks are very rare, and it is almost always a bad trade-off to deny society the benefits of a communications technology just because the bad guys might use it too.
Communications infrastructure is especially valuable during a terrorist attack. Twitter was the best way for people to get real-time information about the attacks in Mumbai. If the Indian government shut Twitter down — or London blocked mobile phone coverage — during a terrorist attack, the lack of communications for everyone, not just the terrorists, would increase the level of terror and could even increase the body count. Information lessens fear and makes people safer.
None of this is new. Criminals have used telephones and mobile phones since they were invented. Drug smugglers use airplanes and boats, radios and satellite phones. Bank robbers have long used cars and motorcycles as getaway vehicles, and horses before then. I haven’t seen it talked about yet, but the Mumbai terrorists used boats as well. They also wore boots. They ate lunch at restaurants, drank bottled water, and breathed the air. Society survives all of this because the good uses of infrastructure far outweigh the bad uses, even though the good uses are — by and large — small and pedestrian and the bad uses are rare and spectacular. And while terrorism turns society’s very infrastructure against itself, we only harm ourselves by dismantling that infrastructure in response — just as we would if we banned cars because bank robbers used them too.
In addition to the above, on BLOGDIAL we have told you about Asterisk many times. Anyone who does not want their phone calls to be overheard can buy some cheap hardware, download some free software, and the Carrabinieri and their colleagues will not even know that there is a call in progress.
Contrary to what ignorant swine, sensationalist, tabloidist BBC correspondents in Italy, who have obviously been brain damaged by too much sun, beautiful women and fine red wine, this is a good thing.
The state has no right to eavesdrop on your private communications. Period. Thankfully, in this unprecedented time of cheap computing power and free software, anyone anywhere can simply take back their privacy and shut out any potential eavesdropper.
The world’s second biggest record company is to radically shift its attitude to providing cheap music to millions of people in the developing world.
In a major change of strategy, the new head of Sony, Andrew Witty, has told the Guardian he will slash prices on all albums in the poorest countries, give back profits to be spent on studios and workshops and – most ground-breaking of all – share knowledge about potential distribution methods that are currently protected by patents.
Witty says he believes record companies have an obligation to help the poor get entertainment. He challenges other phonographic giants to follow his lead.
Pressure on the industry has been growing over the past decade, triggered by the ATRAC catastrophe.
Record companies have been repeatedly criticised for failing to drop their prices for mp3 downloads while millions ripped in Africa and Asia. Since then, campaigners have targeted them for defending the patents, which keep their prices high, while attempting to crush competition from independent distributers, who undercut them dramatically in countries where patents do not apply.
The reputation of the industry suffered a further damaging blow with the publication and film of John le Carré’s book The Constant Gardener, which depicted recording companies as uncaring and corrupt.
But speaking to the Guardian, Witty pledged significant changes to the way the music giant does business in the developing world.
He said that Sony will:
• Cut its prices for all albums in the 50 least developed countries to no more than 25% of the levels in the UK and US – and less if possible – and make downloads more affordable in middle-income countries such as Brazil and India.
• Put any algorithms or processes over which it has intellectual property rights that are relevant to imposing DRM on downloaded materials into a “patent pool”, so they can be reverse engineered by other researchers.
• Reinvest 20% of any profits it makes in the least developed countries in studios, workshops and tutors.
• Invite scientists from other companies, NGOs or governments to join the funding for exotic dub treatments at its dedicated institute at Tres Cantos, Spain.
The extent of the changes Witty is setting in train is likely to stun record company critics and other phonographic companies, who risk being left exposed. Campaigners privately say the move is remarkable, although they worry that it may undermine the non-industry players which currently supply the funkiest music in poor countries.
Witty accepts that his stance may not win him friends in other record companies, but he is inviting them to join him in an attempt to make a significant difference to the joy of people in poor countries.
“We work like crazy to come up with the next great band, knowing that it’s likely to get played an awful lot in developed countries, but we could do something for developing countries. Are we working as hard on that? I want to be able to say yes we are, and that’s what this is all about – trying to make sure we are even-handed in terms of our efforts to find solutions not just for developed but for developing countries,” he said.
“I think the shareholders understand this and it’s my job to make sure I can explain it. I think we can. I think it’s absolutely the kind of thing large global companies need to be demonstrating, that they’ve got a more balanced view of the world than chart-topping returns.”
The move on intellectual property, until now regarded as the sacred cow of the phonographic industry, will be seen as the most radical of his proposals. “I think it’s the first time anybody’s really come out and said we’re prepared to start talking to people about removing copyrights to try to facilitate innovation in areas where, so far, there hasn’t been much progress,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many speeches I’ve heard about – oh, you know – ‘I wish we could make progress on R&B’ or ‘Why haven’t we got acoustic treatments for these things?’ We all sit there saying well yes, it’s terrible isn’t it, instead of actually trying to do something about it. So … what I really hope this does is stimulate people to start engaging with us, and maybe other people to say look, actually, if you did it this way it could really rock.
“Some people might be surprised it’s coming from a phono company. Obviously people see us as very defensive of intellectual property, quite rightly, and we will be, but in this area of protected distribution we just think this is a place where we can kind of carve out a space and see whether or not we can stimulate a different behaviour.” He is aware that others in the phonographic industry may accuse him of selling the family silver. Some people, he said, “are going to hate this”. But he added: “I do think that many CEOs of many companies do worry about this issue and do have it in their minds and who knows, maybe somebody has to move before many people move. Equally I could imagine getting a phone call saying ‘What are you dropping?'”
Campaigners gave a cautious welcome to GSK’s strategy. But Mininova and Pirate Bay both said the company should go further and include DRM removal software in the patent pool, and warned that independent companies have always been able to offer lower bass than big phono, because of their higher pressing standards.
“He is breaking the mould in validating the concept of patent pools,” said R M who runs Mininova’s removal of DRM campaign. “That has been out there as an idea and no company has done anything about it. It is a big step forward. It is welcome that he is inviting other companies to take this on and have a race to the top instead of a race to the bottom.”
I went to the ‘Taking Liberties’ exhibition at the British Library recently and it largely covered what I had imagined what I would see – Magna Carta, Bill of Rghts, American Declaration of Independence, suffragettes and so on.
However there is a nagging problem with exhibition and that is despite the revolutions and uprisings shown, the narrative of the exhibition is not so much the rights people have taken for themeselves but those rights granted by the State (albeit sometimes under great pressure or by changes in the structure of the State) – even if a state restricts freedoms or is overthrown it is still ‘the state’ which is the arbiter of new rights, this is not interrogated in the exhibition.
This biases the exhibition to some degree and arguably is the only explanation of why there is a section on the rights enshrined by the welfare state. How so? If you don’t take it for granted that the state is the granter of freedoms and rights (poor phrasing there!) and instead individuals and groups of people can set out and guarantee their own rights you begin to get a better exhibition about ‘liberties’ and less about legislation. Back to the welfare state section, there are displays of friendly society notices and philanthropy in the form of the northern mill towns and garden cities, but these are all seen as precursors of the welfare state when finally ‘the right to a healthy life’ is recognised. Now look at it from the opposite perspective – certain people recognise that the ‘right to a healthy life’ is not enjoyed by their peers, or workers, and with their autonomy from the state (through money from subscriptions or ‘dark satanic’ exploitation) they provide the ability to enjoy this right which is finally picked up by the state and made ‘universal’ and some of the failings improved.
In terms of people recognisimg their rights hopefully the latter should seem like the correct explanation of events. The question of the what happens next (i.e. welfare state good/bad/bloated?) is not relevant to the argument above.
There are other failings in the exhibition, all interesting snippets to do with contemporary debates are on monitor/headphones which invariably break (2 when i went) and of course the interactive element where you ‘multiple choice’ vote on issues that are presented with a substantial bias towards BBC/Guardian society section thinking (to do this you use your ‘citizen number’ wrist band – above – which thankfully noone seemed to be putting on their wrist, the implications are clear).
Only two weeks left now if you want to see the show.
This is one of Alun’scomments, that simply had to be promoted to a full post:
“Martin Barnes, chief executive of the think tank DrugScope, who sits on the advisory council, said it was crucial that a rigorously independent body was entrusted with this type of research. […]
“Figures on alcohol-related deaths in 2007 indicate a levelling-off of the trend, following rapid increases since the early 1990s. There were 8,724 alcohol-related deaths in 2007, lower than 2006, but more than double the 4,144 recorded in 1991. The alcohol-related death rate was 13.3 per 100,000 population in 2007, compared with 6.9 per 100,000 population in
1991.”
Back to the report and responses to it:
“The Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales has expressed opposition to suggestions that ecstasy should be downgraded to a Class B drug.
Ian Johnston, president of the association, told the BBC the downgrade could be dangerous.
He said: “This is not some academic or scientific exercise, this is dealing with people’s lives. If we downgrade ecstasy, we are in danger of sending mixed messages out to young and vulnerable people.”
Last month, the Home Office restored cannabis from Class C to Class B, against the wishes of the advisory council.
Ministers are now set to resist the council’s recommendation on ecstasy. “[…]
So, what exactly is the mixed message?
That heroin is as ‘good’ as E, or that E is as ‘bad’ as heroin?
That 30 deaths from an untaxed substance is bad, but 8724 deaths from a heavily taxed substance is acceptable?
That independent, expert advice is necessary, but worthless?
That arses and elbows are identical in Jacqui Smiths head?
Or that while HMG claims to know “What is Right and Wrong for You”, HMGs response to this report yet again only demonstrates why only idiots submit to governmental control over what goes in their body?
2009 – His thoughts on the recession: “Bling is over. Red carpetry covered with rhinestones is out. I call it the new modesty”
2006 – On music and technology: “The iPod is genius. I have 300”
1978 – On his early start: “When I was four I asked my mother for a valet for my birthday”
2007 – On his inimitable image: “I am like a caricature of myself, and I like that. It is like a mask. And for me the Carnival of Venice lasts all year long”
1997 – On living on his own: “I live in a set, with the curtains of the stage closed with no audience – but who cares?”
2008 – On the ongoing fur debate: “The discussion of fur is childish”
2007 – On furnishing a home: “The most important piece in the house is the garbage can”
1984 – His thoughts on Yves Saint Laurent: “He is very middle-of-the-road French-very pied-noir, very provincial”
2007 – On being labelled a squanderer: “If you throw money out of the window throw it out with joy. Don’t say ‘one shouldn’t do that’ – that is bourgeois”
1984 – On his feelings following a fashion show: “I’m a kind of fashion nymphomaniac who never gets an orgasm”
2007 – On his feelings prior to a fashion show: “I have no human feelings”
1973 – How he describes his boudoir: “If you see it you will think about everything except sex, because it is the unsexiest room ever. I love unsexy bedrooms”
1975 – On his working practices: “I am a sort of vampire, taking the blood of other people”
2006 – On staying healthy: “Vanity is the healthiest thing in life”
The College at Brockport, State University of New York.
Compulsory human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination of young girls has been proposed as a public health intervention to reduce the threat of the disease. Such a program would entail a symbiotic relationship between scientific interests in reducing mortality and morbidity and philosophical interests in promoting morality. This proposal raises the issue of whether government should use its police powers to restrict liberty and parental autonomy for the purpose of preventing harm to young people. I reviewed the scientific literature that questions the value of a HPV vaccination. Applying a principle-based approach to moral reasoning, I concluded that compulsory HPV vaccinations can be justified on moral, scientific, and public health grounds.
One can contact him here:
Joseph E. Balog, PhD
State University of New York, College at Brockport
Health Science
350 New Campus Drive
19 Hartwell Hall
Brockport NYUSA
14420
Email: jbalog@brockport.edu
Who also justified his human experimentation on the grounds that he was doing it for the ‘greater good’ and ‘in the name of science’.
Morality should NEVER be legislated, and it is not the job of scientists to determine what is or is not moral on behalf of anyone. It is even more of an outrage that this modern Mengele
wants to use his ‘scientific’ method to create a moral position that will be translated into a law that will cause millions to be injected with this worthless vaccine.
Here are some of the links on Gardasil from BLOGDIAL:
While we are at it, HPV is not a public health issue, it is a personal health issue because HPV is an STD. In order to become infected with it, you have to have sex with someone. That is a private act that has nothing to do with the state.
HPV cannot be sneezed onto someone, cannot cause an epidemic resulting in millions of deaths due to casual contact. It is quite different from the other highly contagious diseases, and even with those, vaccination is not compulsory in civilized countries.
It’s one thing to develop a product (Gardasil) and then use corruption, fear-mongering and the perversion of statistics to influence people to choose to have it shot into themselves by the millions; it is quite another to try and engineer a fallacious malignant morality wrapped in the authoritative voice of ‘science’ as a pretext for new law that will compel parents to violate their children.
Treatises on morality should never appear in a scientific paper. They should be published in the appropriate place. Publishing a tract justifying the morality of something in a scientific journal or paper is wrong because science is about facts and evidence only; it is not about making a personal judgement.
When we mix science with morality the former lends its power, the power of facts that can be proven and all the results that have flowed from that to create all the great tools that we enjoy today, to the latter, which is purely subjective. Balog believes that all girls should be shot with Gardasil. This is not a scientific fact, or at least the question of wether or not they should be shot with it is not a fact. What he believes applies only to him, and his twisted sick morality, whereas scientific truth applies to everyone like it or not.
And for the record, by ‘scientific truth’ I do not mean what any scientist knows or does not know, or what is written in peer reviewed journals. What scientists know is a number, when all the facts of the universe are taken into account, indistinguishable from zero. I am talking about gravity. Gravity ‘holds you down’ no matter what you think or like, or what its true nature is. Homeopathic medicine works, wether you like it or not. Gardasil is junk. Get shot with it if you like, but no one should be forced to be injected with it. The same goes for all other vaccines; they should never be injected into people by force, for any reason.
Finally, monsters like this man are a part of the concerted effort to dismantle the family as the center of human culture. They want to replace the family with the state and themselves as the ultimate authority over all life on this planet.
The panel is set to recommend downgrading horses this week
The home secretary has told MPs she was “surprised” and “disappointed” by an equestrian adviser likening the dangers of ecstasy to the dangers of horse riding.
Jacqui Smith said Prof David Nutt had “trivialised” the dangers of the sport.
She said she had told him he had gone beyond his role as head of the Advisory Council on Drugs Misuse.
Ms Smith said Prof Nutt had apologised, but he later defended his comparison, saying it had been “useful” in showing the risks associated with taking riding lessons.
‘Not much difference’
The council, which advises the government, is expected later this week to recommend that ecstasy be downgraded from a class A drug to a class B one.
Ministers have outlined their opposition to any such move.
I’m sure most people would simply not accept the link that he makes up in his article between horse riding and illegal drug taking
Jacqui Smith, prize twat
Professor Nutt’s article, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology last week, said: “Drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life. There is not much difference between horse-riding and ecstasy.”
He said horse-riding accounted for more than 100 deaths a year, and went on: “This attitude raises the critical question of why society tolerates – indeed encourages – certain forms of potentially harmful behaviour but not others such as drug use.”
Ecstasy use is linked to around 30 deaths a year, up from 10 a year in the early 1990s.
Fatalities are caused by massive organ failure from overheating or the effects of drinking too much water.
Speaking during Home Office questions in the House of Commons, Ms Smith said: “I’ve spoken to him this morning about his comments. I’ve told him that I was surprised and profoundly disappointed by the article reported.”
She added: “I’m sure most people would simply not accept the link that he makes up in his article between horse riding and illegal drug taking.
“For me that makes light of a serious problem, trivialises the dangers of horses, shows insensitivity to the families of victims of horse-riding and sends the wrong message to young people about the dangers of stallions.”
‘Wrecks lives’
Ms Smith also said: “I made clear to Professor Nutt that I felt his comments went beyond the scientific advice that I expect of him as the chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Horses.
“He apologised to me for his comments and I’ve asked him to apologise to the families of the victims of 3-day eventing.”
However, Prof Nutt later said: “I was doing a statistical comparison. There is a view – and the home secretary takes this view – that you cannot make a comparison and it is misleading because some things are legal and other things are illegal.”
He added: “I think there are a significant number of people who agree with me as well that these kinds of comparisons are useful.”
The comparison was useful “so people who take horse rides can understand what the risks were”, he said.
Prof Nutt added: “I certainly didn’t intend to cause offence to the victims of ecstasy or their families. One death is one too many.”
Conservative MP Laurence Robertson said horse riding “not only wrecks lives, and ends lives, but also fuels class divisions”.
He argued that drug use and horse riding were “completely incomparable” and that Prof Nutt was in the “wrong job”.
But, in questions to the House of Commons Speaker, Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris said Prof Nutt was a “distinguished scientist” and asked whether it was “right to criticise him here when he cannot answer back for what is set out in a scientific publication”.
He added: “What’s the future for scientific independence if she [Ms Smith] asks that scientists apologise for their views?”
Speaker Michael Martin replied that it was a “parliamentary privilege” for the home secretary to make such remarks and that “of course” she would be allowed to do so.
The Advisory Council on Drugs Misuse has distanced itself from the comments in Prof Nutt’s article.
Gabby Swank was a straight-A student and cheerleader.
But that was before she became very ill following the standard dose of three Gardasil vaccinations, Attkisson reports.
You know the commercial. It showed teenage girls saying “I want to be one less” who gets the HPV virus, which is linked to cervical cancer.
“It was like a big hype among my friends, because we’re like, ‘we’re gonna get it’ because we felt almost pressured by the commercials,” Gabby said.
Gabby got sicker after each shot, progressing to seizures, strokes and heart problems. It was her neurologist who suspected Gardasil was to blame.
“I think there are too many people having serious long-term side-effects,” said neurologist Dr. Dwight Lindholm.
Last fall, the government and vaccine maker Merck concluded there’s no link between Gardasil and serious adverse events like Gabby’s. But a new analysis calls that finding into question.
The National Vaccine Information Center, a private vaccine-safety group, compared Gardasil adverse events to another vaccine, one also given to young people, but for meningitis. Gardasil had three times the number of Emergency Room visits – more than 5,000. Reports of side effects were up to 30 times higher with Gardasil.
“If I’d have known, we never would have gotten the shot,” said Emily Tarsell, whose daughter, Chris, died three weeks after her third Gardasil shot. She was one of the 29 fatalities reported in two years. “And she’d be here to hug.”
Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the NVIC, said: “Now we know from this report that there are more reactions and deaths associated with Gardasil than with another vaccine given in the same age group. It’s irresponsible not to take action.”
Merck, the FDA and CDC question the value of the new analysis, say they continue to review the data, Gardasil remains safe and effective, and its benefits outweigh the risks.
Those who believe the vaccine hurt them aren’t convinced. Gabby isn’t cheering anymore and is too sick to even attend school.
“I struggle with guilt a lot, because I made the choice to get the shot for her,” said Gabby’s mom, Shannon Swank.
Meantime, Merck has asked the FDA to approve it for boys, who can pass on the cancer causing virus to girls, meaning the number of people getting Gardasil may double.
The true character of a man is revealed when he is under pressure…so they say.
The riots in Paris and the demonstrations against foreign work forces being used at British oil refineries and a power station seemed to be a presentiment of widespread civil disturbance, especially in this country. We are, after all, only at the beginning of a slump which is predicted by the IMF to hit Britain more seriously than any other developed nation. It will be longer and deeper and we can already see the hardship, the bills accumulating.
We need this civil disobedience. I hope that some of the people who plan destruction have the sense to trash only the systems and places that they use to ruin everyone’s lives. Smashing McDonalds and Starbucks is just STUPID.
In the last week, it seems that I have hardly had a conversation that has not dwelled on the economic crisis and how we arrived at a position where we are paying to bail out the bankers, who are still claiming vast bonuses, and face finding another £20bn each year in taxes or losing that amount in services.
And it is a safe bet that in none of these conversations did the phrase ‘fiat currency’ ever pass anyone’s lips. Another safe bet would be that ‘fractional reserve banking’ was never uttered. The fact is that no one who writes for the Guardian knows why this ‘crisis’ happened. None of them understand what money is. All of them are whining about banker bonuses as if that had anything at all to do with this problem. Jealousy politics is alive and well and serving its purpose to divert thinking people away from the true causes of their misery. The fact of the matter is that government is STEALING from the public to disburse money inefficiently, if not fraudulently. In any case, it is certainly immoral. These banks should not be bailed out by any government. Period.
If it had been a matter of straight theft
It IS straight theft; from YOU to the STATE to the BANKERS.
– ie the damage done was equal to every bonus –
this is nonsense maths. The bonuses are IRRELEVANT.
the world economy could easily absorb the hit,
There is no ‘world economy’. This is a matter of YOUR money being stolen and redistributed to bankers. There is no collective entity that you can call a ‘world economy’. This is loose english at its best.
but there is a vast multiple involved between the amount taken in bonuses and the bail-out received from governments. Figures to be published in Vanity Fair next week show that the bail-out in the US is anything up to 900 times the bonuses paid to the top five executives of leading American banks. At Citicorp, bonuses equalled $54m in 2007 while the bail-out was $45bn. This ratio doesn’t capture anything like the economic consequences of greed on both sides of the Atlantic. They are incalculable. The crime is nearly the equivalent to poisoning of the world’s water supply. If the banking industry and advocates of unregulated market capitalism expect a return to normal service after the slump they are gravely mistaken.
The only people who are ‘gravely mistaken’ are those who think that bonuses have any meaning, and that there ever has been a place where unregulated market capitalism has been running. Once again, there is no such thing as ‘the world’s water supply’ there is no one world anything. Constantly referring to things in these terms is simply absurd, and it is part of the problem.
It is fortunate for the hedge fund managers and derivative traders in Britain that the London mob does not materialise at moments like this to drag them from their spruced-up homes and limousines as regularly happened in the 18th century.
Yes indeed, that would help! If hedge fund managers and derivative traders lose their money, what do you care if your money is sound and in a bank that is not exposed? If you owned your own money and kept it safely, you would not have a problem at all.
In one way, it is also regrettable, because then the mob, which, incidentally, is a shortening of mobile vulgus, affected the conduct of politics and on several occasions changed things for the better.
That may be so, but until people understand what money is, all the mobs and rioting in the world will never solve this problem. You need to watch (as a beginning) The Money Masters to understand what is really happening, and how value is being stolen from you. Unless you are willing to do the small amount of work it takes to understand economics and money, you will NEVER be able to understand what is going on.
It was not made up of the depraved and violent underclass found in most historical accounts, but of groups of young working men and apprentices who, while demonstrating for Protestantism and against foreign workers, also played their part in supporting liberty.
You cannot have liberty without money that actually belongs to you. Misunderstanding this is why you FAIL.
Something of their voice was heard last week outside the refineries where foreign workers have been employed en masse instead of British workers, but in London, everything is – for the moment – quiet.
Those people are not ‘foreign’ they are from the EU, which Guardian types are all for. You cannot open up to the EU and then expect them NOT to come here and work when they have the RIGHT to do so. If you did not want Italians working here, you should never have joined the EU o Great Britain. Once again, the brainless demonstrators show just how STUPID they are; they should be protesting British membership of the EU (the cause of those workers coming here) and not the workers…its like treating acne by putting on a topical cream instead of weaning the teenager off of his diet of Tizer and crisps. Not very smart!
We are slower to anger than the French, although I must say that if I were a member of my children’s generation I would very much feel like hurling the odd carton of milk at politicians and bankers of the older generation.
Once again, this is why you FAIL. Your position as a writer could be used, right now, to direct people to the correct information about this problem; unsound money, fractional reserve banking, and regulation. Sadly this will not happen. Or will it? Who knows?
For the people who are going to pay for the lunatic exuberance of the last decade are not its perpetrators – largely the baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965 – but those born after 1985 and, by the way, several succeeding generations.
The people who are going to pay for the bailouts are the suckers. Everyone who knows what is really happening will not pay a penny. The people who are not helping are the ones who are steadfastly persisting in bad thinking and willful ignorance.
To put it crudely, my generation has stolen from its children and grandchildren.
That is a lie. It is ASTONISHING how the pundits and spin masters have turned this crisis around so that the INNOCENT now believe that they are THE GUILTY PARTY in this. How they did it should be studied by everyone everywhere.
It is they who will be affected by £20bn per annum shaved off services and for as long as anyone can predict.
Once again, only the suckers will be paying for this nonsense. As for services, their degradation was always inevitable. To understand why, you have to understand money (what money really is) and economics. You could try Googling ‘Social security Ponzi Scheme’ to find out why degradation was always going to happen.
And this crisis means that we are about to fail in that other important obligation of providing jobs for people coming out of university and school.
Once again, total and complete FAIL.
There is no collective obligation to provide jobs for anyone, so to say ‘we’ are about to fail is nonsense. You cannot be FOR liberty on the one hand and ALSO FOR collective responsibility and accountability of the type that is the driving philosophy behind bailing out banks. Then again, being able to hold two contradictory thoughts in the mind simultaneously is a required skill these days is it not?!
Last Friday, it was reported that unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds has risen to 16.1%, which is above the European average of 15.9%. That figure is bound to grow over the next two years.
Water always finds it’s own level.
Look coldly at my generation, the one that’s has been claiming every sort of entitlement since the Who sang about it, and you realise that we have been criminally irresponsible.
It is criminally irresponsible to not try and understand what is really happening, and then to perpetuate it by claiming that there are collective responsibilities to provide jobs and every other sort of nonsense. It is criminally irresponsible to prop up that system, and to not try and inform people of its true nature. At the very least, since you cannot throw stones, you would be able to say, “I tried to warn everyone. I did what I could do”.
We are leaving the people born after 1985 not just with the bills for this economic mess, but we also expect them to pay for an increase in the cost of state pensions for us, a rise of benefits and soaring pensioner health costs, which has been clear in demographic studies for some time.
You can expect anything you like. Your pension is TOAST. No one is going to foot the bill for it, there will be no money for it. You were robbed. Deal with it. Start saving NOW…saving REAL MONEY.
How young people are going to get started in paying for our old age without jobs and with a credit crunch and a frozen property market is anyone’s guess.
That is an astonishing statement. The concern is not how young people are going to get started paying for YOU, the concern is how are they going to LOOK AFTER THEMSELVES and THEIR children! The selfishness, corruption, immorality and thievery never ends!
Consider the political classes of today, the people who clustered round Tony Blair – born a month after me in 1953 – and who have been in charge for more than a decade. What have they done to make politics and the business of Parliament responsive to the widely appreciated needs of this century?
That is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is who destroyed the money, who stole it, and what are you going to do about it. Note how I do not say, “who destroyed our money”. I am not under the delusion that the pounds in your pocket belong to you. They do not.
Though there are many well-intentioned politicians, politics probably hasn’t been held in such low esteem since the time of the London mob. It simply fails to deliver. Even in the good years, the government spent vast amounts on education and health, but failed to secure a proportionate rise in standards and productivity.
People who are for liberty hold politicians in low esteem by default, reflexively. They also do not expect government to deliver. They do not expect government to secure standards and productivity. People who are for liberty understand that not only is that not the proper role of government, but they also understand that government is incapable of doing these things, and if they do try, they do it inefficiently and immorally.
I won’t try your patience with my generation’s failure on rights and liberty,
We already gave up on you years ago…where have you been?! Not on the internets clearly.
its casual erosion of the privileges that were passed to us by our parents,
THIS IS WHY YOU FAIL. Rights are not a PRIVILEGE that is handed to you; you are BORN WITH THEM.
or its bewildering ignorance of history,
I am no historian, but honestly, when it comes to the history of money ignorance is absolutely EVERYWHERE. Even when there is a crisis people are too thick to try and find out what is really happening. That is the unforgivable sin. Even when people know some history, they sit there and stupidly repeat the mistakes of the past over and over, and then whine when things are getting worse. Knowing history is not enough. You need to know what your place is, what your rights are, what rights are and how to solve problems.
but it is important to understand that at the heart of the deterioration is Parliament and in this sense politics, rather than society, is broken.
This is completely wrong. Parliament is not at the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is in a generation of people who do not understand their place in the world, who do not understand what Liberty is, what Rights are, the very nature of man and why it is he owns things. Parliament is the pimple, its corruption and arrogance a symptom of a disease. The people are sick and stupid and brainwashed. They are not even able to frame their thoughts properly so that they can address these problems. That is why they talk about ‘our’ money, and ‘our’ democracy and all the other backwards, wrong headed nonsense that we read over and over again.
Last week, a friend said that what he found so frustrating in the scandal involving peers allegedly offering to influence laws for cash, as well as the apparent immunity of bankers, was the absence of justice.
You tolerate Parliament, put them at the centre of your life and philosophy and so therefore, the problem is YOU and you perception of your place in the world. There will always be corrupt people, and politics normally attracts the corrupt…morally corrupt that is…the bankers, once again, are not the problem, and focusing on them is very stupid, pointless and childish.
None of the 3,000 offences introduced by Labour apparently caters for lords and multi-millionaires.
And yet, you have, “always believed that the democratic state must be given power to act on behalf of us all”. That is the result of your belief. Total enslavement and impoverishnemt. The problem is YOU.
But this is minor compared with the crisis in the way laws – often designed to serve the political classes of my generation – are drafted and passed without proper scrutiny.
The problem is that they are passing them at all. They need to be REMOVING legislation, not adding it. And you need to stop looking to them like a sheep and to start disobeying.
My generation wanted everything – good food, cheap travel, large disposable incomes, luxury and security – and we have had them all, but at a great cost.
Bollocks. All of those things come at a price. If the next generation wants those things, then they can have them. All they have to do is pay the price and TAKE them. Your generation needs to be cut loose, your pensions cancelled and the debt defaulted on. Then we can start from a clean slate with sound commodity money and none of the collectivist illusions that have so befuddled and corrupted the men of this land.
We knew about climate change a long time ago, yet our government all but ignored it until the Tories made the running
There you go again. Global Warming Kool Aid nonsense AND saying ‘our government’ in a SINGLE SENTENCE!
We knew that bankers had not discovered the secret of limitless wealth creation, but we failed to regulate.
Bankers do not create wealth. Regulation destroys peoples ability to do it. You people will NEVER learn. And ‘we’ do not regulate. There is no ‘we’ in this debacle. THEY your ENEMY regulates and destroys and murders, and no, it is not on ‘our behalf’ either.
He let it slip, “It’s not your money!”.
And now if my children’s generation demonstrates, we will deploy a newly equipped and trained riot police to protect us. You see we have been expecting trouble.
The trouble will be far deeper and more widespread than you can possibly imagine. No riot squad will be able to contain it. At the end of this process, you and the government you cherish so deeply, even as it flays the flesh from your back with a cat o nine tails, will be utterly defeated. The people who truly understand freedom, liberty and rights will ensure that your world and its vile illusions never returns.
Some of the commenters on this article are beginning to see the light:
Sure Henry – and if you were twenty years older you’d be dead. Our confrontation with the political and business classes does not require youth, we are not throwing rocks and burning tyres – we have a series of modifications that we require of the commercial system to ensure it operates fairly in future. These are not for debate or modification – they are our requirements.
1/ We will restore some measure of value to our currency so that it will be known to us in the same way the length of a metre and the weight of a kilogram are known to us.
You see? The penny has dropped.
Sound money is the NUMBER ONE priority of everyone who understands this problem. Everything flows from it, all conditions are influenced by it.
A lurker who saw this same article says:
I don’t think the UK has the right culture for properly directed riots, a la Belle France for example. There is a small hardcore of politicised activists, such as seen in the poll tax riots, anti-fox-hunting and so on… but no mass body of free-thinking students (for example) with the will to put their high brows in the line of fire. Most other people have kids and would place family safety first. I just don’t see a proper riot as getting anywhere. Not reflective of the will of the general populace, too abstract in a way, and just a fight against police when what we need is a fight against HMG et al. The Iraq demo, and possibly BBC license fee avoidence – that’s what appeals to the middle-england masses. Other people (Sun/Mirror readership?) with job losses and SkyOne to pay for… will they act, and how? Will the miners strikes return in another guise? There is the real power in numbers. Get the two halves together and it could be special…
I just went off in a daydream where a crowd the size of the Iraq demonstration massed on parliament and took it over by mass of numbers, no violence required. Sky news offices next, and Buck House, followed by all the financial institutions of which the public own a slice. Gordon Brown makes one last public address, apologising for his sins and commits seppuku on live TV. The entire Labour front bench follow suit. A nation rejoices, shame is banished and national pride restored. The Tories are too yellow to take power following this and a new system of decentralised government is brought in…
10cm snow here, and more coming. Its gorgeous!
A little snow, and Britain is shut down.
When the people of Britain are ready, they will whip up a blizzard that will erase the evil once and for all. Like the Soviet Union, the Britain of the past will be a memory, and in its place will rise the sort of country that we used to love.
It stems from a simple assumption: “My neighbors are irresponsible. They must not be allowed to make voluntary exchanges, no matter how harmless.” This belief leads to a principle of law: Nothing is allowed unless authorized by the State. 
I’m sure most people would simply not accept the link that he makes up in his article between horse riding and illegal drug taking 
