tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43352577645800727452024-02-19T18:17:21.979-08:00The House of Pink OnionJonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-76015453847161137562010-11-18T12:05:00.000-08:002010-11-18T13:12:17.391-08:00VACCINES<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">I've just read an exhaustively researched book by Neil Z. Miller called <b>Vaccines - Are They Really Safe & Effective?</b><i> </i>I recommend this book to everyone. The information it contains shocked me. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Since the Swine Flu Hoax of 2009, I've been sceptical about vaccines and wanted to learn more about them. By trawling through the Internet I found out about adjuvants - the toxic preservatives and 'vaccine boosters' added to vaccines - and I read many articles by both pro-vaccinators and anti-vaccinators. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The problem always was with the studies. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">There are copious studies (paid for by drugs companies) that show vaccines are effective - if not always entirely safe. There are 'independent' academic studies (indirectly funded by drugs companies) that also present vaccines as a health benefit. There are genuinely independent academic studies showing some vaccines to be ineffective but others (such as polio and tetanus) to be worthwhile. And there are privately-financed studies demonstrating that vaccines are both ineffective and dangerous. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">So what are we supposed to believe?</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Then I came across Neil Miller's book. Here was a man who had made it his mission to find the truth and had spent many years comprehensively researching the subject. Did I already say I was shocked? Well, I was. And what Neil Miller discovered is so important that I feel it's my duty to précis the book's main discoveries and chuck them out here in this blog.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>POLIO</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1935, in the United States, the average number of polio cases was 5.8 per 100,000 people. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1940 diphtheria and pertussis vaccines were introduced. Almost immediately, polio cases shot up. By 1945 they had more than tripled. By 1950 they had more than quadrupled to 24.8 per 100,000. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">(<i>Source: National Morbidity Reports taken from U.S. Public Health surveillance reports; Lancet April 18, 1950, pp659-63.</i>) </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1953 the polio vaccine was introduced and guess? Cases of polio <i>increased further</i>. For example, in the state of Vermont, in the year before the introduction of the polio vaccine, there were 15 polio cases. In the year after the introduction of mass inoclulations there were 55 cases. Rhode Island reported 22 cases the year before the polio vaccine was introduced and a year after it was introduced reported 122 cases - a 454% increase. In New Hampshire the figures were 38-129; in Connecticut they were 144-276, and in Massachusetts they were 273-2027 - an increase of 642%.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The figures show unequivocally that the famous Salk polio vaccine did <i>not</i> immunise people against getting polio - it did the opposite (as did the later live virus vaccines). However, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and drug companies with large investments in the vaccines, have coerced the U.S. Public Health Service into falsely proclaiming the measles vaccines are safe and effective.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>TETANUS</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">About 85% of those who contract tetanus will recover. About 15% will die. Perhaps due to mass tetanus vaccinations the number of tetanus cases in the United States is now very small - only 47 cases per year on average. Neil Miller has found solid evidence that anti-tetanus injections (unlike polio vaccinations) do work. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The downside is the side-effects. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The authors of a study of 14,000 children between 1988 and 1994 (published in 2000 in the <i>Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics</i>) summarised that "Fifty per cent of diagnosed asthma cases (2.93 million) in U.S. children and adolescents would be prevented if the DPT (Diptheria Pertussis) and tetanus vaccination were not administered." </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Studies show that between 23 and 30% of those receiving anti-tetanus shots develop asthma or allergy related respiratory symptoms.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><b>MEASLES</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1900, there were 13.3 measles deaths in the United States per 100,000. By 1955 - eight years before the first measles shot - the death rate had declined on its own by 97.7 percent to .03 deaths per 100,000.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Prior to 1970, most children in the U.S.A. contracted measles and healthy children recovered without incident. Complications from the disease occurred in malnourished children with compromised immune systems living in areas with poor sanitation and inadequate healthcare. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Unless you are malnourished with a dysfunctional immune-system, living in insanitary conditions (probably in a Third World country) measles is no threat; in fact it is a boon. Why? Because once you've had measles you have <span style="text-decoration: underline">life-long immunity.</span> A vaccination provides only temporary protection and can cause other problems down the road. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Measles in babies under one year of age used to be unknown - but, by the 1990's, more than 25% of all cases were occurring in babies. Why? Because mothers who were vaccinated in the 70's and 80's (denying them life-long immunity) could not pass protective maternal antibodies to their children. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">And because vaccinations deny life-long immunity, epidemics of measles occur in vaccinated populations. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Neil Miller<i> </i>quotes Dr. William Atkinson, senior epidemiologist with the Center for Disease Control, saying: "measles transmission has been clearly documented among vaccinated persons. In some large outbreaks…over 95% of cases have a history of vaccination."</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>(Source: FDA. 'FDA workshop to review warnings, use instructions, and precautionary information on vaccines.' Rockland, Maryland: FDA, September 18, 1992, p. 27.)</i></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i><br /></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1988, 69% of all school-age children who contracted measles in the U.S. had been vaccinated.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1989, 89% of all school-age measles victims in the U.S. had been vaccinated.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1995, 56% of all measles cases in the U.S. occurred in people who had been vaccinated. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>(Source: Infect Med 1997; 14(4):297-300, 310. Several CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports.)</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">All the evidence shows that healthy children benefit from contracting measles because measles vaccines don't work and deny you life-long immunity. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">They can also cause adverse effects. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">These include: encephalitis, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, febrile convulsions, seizures, ataxia, anaphylaxis, angioneurotic edema, bronchial spasms, panniculitis, vasculitis, leukocytosis, pneumonitis, retinitis, optic neuritis, intestinal ulcers, bowel disease, deafness and death. That's right - death. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>MUMPS</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Contracting mumps in childhood is a good thing. Yes, mumps is good because it's a relatively trivial disease when contracted in childhood and getting it gives you life-long immunity. Mumps vaccines, however, deny you life-long immunity and if you get mumps as an adult it can be serious. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Prior to the introduction of the vaccine, most children under 10 years of age contracted mumps. However, the vaccine shifted incidence rates from young children to teenagers and adults. Mumps in children is a mild, benign disease. When contracted by older age groups it can cause orchitis (inflammation of the testes), hearing loss, transient meningitis and, in rare cases, sterility. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Can the mumps vaccination have side-effects? Yes. A large body of studies quoted in Neil Miller's book link mumps vaccines with the onset of Type-1 diabetes and a long list of ailments including aseptic meningitis, encephalitis, anaphylaxis and death. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1993, Japan removed the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella) from the market because it was causing encephalitis in 1 out of every 1044 people vaccinated. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">(Source: <i>Sawada , et al. Lancet 1993; 342;371.</i>) </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>RUBELLA (GERMAN MEASLES)</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">When contracted by children, rubella is such a mild disease it escapes detection or passes for a cold. Getting rubella as a child is a good thing because it confers life-long immunity. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">However, Rubella can be dangerous to pregnant women who have either 1) received a rubella vaccination or 2) never had rubella. The illness can cause birth defects. Cases of Congenital Rubella Syndrome in newborn babies doubled after introduction of the vaccine in 1969. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Before the introduction of the vaccine, most children were lucky enough to get rubella and develop permanent protection. As a result, about 85% of the adult population was naturally immune. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">(Source:<i> Cherry, J. D. 'The new epidemiology of measles and rubella' Hospital Prac. July 1980;56. Spika, J.S., et al. 'Rubella vaccination:a course becomes clear."Canadian Medical Association Journal (July 15, 1983;129(2);106-110</i>).</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The adverse effects of rubella vaccination (a strain of the live rubella virus named Wistar RA27/3) include arthritis, arthralgia, myalgia, Guillain-Barré syndrome, polyneuritis, polyneuropathy, anaphylaxis and death. Yes, death. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">It's very rare but people have died as a result of being vaccinated for this harmless disease. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The chief side-effect of the inoculation in adults is arthritis. In one study of adult women vaccinated against rubella, 55% developed arthritis or joint pain within four weeks. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">(Source: <i>Annals of Rheumatic Diseases 1986;45:110-114</i>). </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>DIPHTHERIA</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The diphtheria death-rate plummeted long <i>before</i> the introduction of the vaccine. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Mortality from the disease decreased from 7.2 deaths per 10,000 in 1911 to 0.9 deaths per 10,000 in 1935 - an 88% decline. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In 1979, authorities changed the medical definition of diphtheria. This resulted in an instant 95% decline in cases the following year. Since then, the number of cases have declined even further. Diphtheria is now so rare in North America and Europe that vaccinating against it is probably unnecessary. Although, during the mid-1990s, there were some outbreaks in Eastern Europe. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">However, so many of the cases occurred in persons who'd been properly vaccinated, that questions were raised about the merits of diphtheria vaccination programs. The efficacy of the diphtheria vaccines have not been established.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>PERTUSSIS (WHOOPING COUGH)</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Pertussis (unlike measles, mumps and rubella) can be a serious illness. This respiratory disease, although rarely fatal, is unpleasant and it can take two to three months to recover. Moreover, when infants under 6 months of age contract pertussis, it can be life-threatening.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The problem with the pertussis vaccine is that it doesn't appear to work. Also, it has been linked to many adverse effects. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Read <b>Vaccines - Are They Really Safe & Effective? </b>to get the details. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">I'll quote just one study from the book: during a pertussis outbreak in Ohio, 82% of younger children stricken with the disease had received regular doses of the vaccine. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">(Source: <i>New England Journal of Medicine July 7, 1994: 16-20</i>). </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Adverse effects associated with the vaccine include: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, allergy-related respiratory disorders, epilelpsy, fever, convulsions, pain, swelling, diarrhoea, projectile vomiting and brain damage.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>HEPATITIS B</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease that can also be contracted blood-to-blood. The groups at highest risk of getting it are prostitutes, sexually active gay men and intravenous drug users. Yet this vaccine is routinely given to babies. Why? </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Authorities claim the Hep B shot provides immunity for 10 years but the data contradict this. One study showed 48% of the vaccine recipients had inadequate antibody levels after just four years. A similar study of 773 subjects (published in the <i>New England Journal of Medicine</i>) found that, after five years, antibody levels declined sharply - or no longer existed - in 42% of them. What's more, 34 of these subjects actually contracted Hepatitis B. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Adverse reactions to the shot are legion and can be very serious. They include: multiple sclerosis, arthritis, fever, herpes zoster, Bell's palsy, diabetes, central nervous system demyelination, lumbar reticulopathy, optic neuritis, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, anaphylactic shock and death.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Surveys in medical journals indicate that up to 87% of paediatricians and family practitioners do not believe the hepatitis B vaccine is needed by their newborn patients. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">(Source: <i>Pediatrics 1993;91:699-702. Journal of Family Practice 1993; 36:153-57.</i>)</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Here's a quick boil down on Neil Z. Miller's study of other vaccines. Get the book to learn all the facts.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>CHICKENPOX.</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Chickenpox can be itchy and uncomfortable for a few days but is not life-threatening. Efficacy rates for the vaccine have not been established. Children given the vaccine become mobile carriers of chickenpox and can infect others. Serious adverse reactions include blood disorders, brain inflammation, neurological disorders, seizures and death.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>HIB (Haemophilus Influenzae Type B)</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">A nasty illness but uncommon. Only 144 cases in the United States in 1996 and 1997 combined. Ninety percent of Hib cases occur in children less than five years old. Kids are at risk of contracting Hib following their vaccination. Hib vaccinated children are six times more likely to get Hib than non-vaccinated children. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">In one study of children who got Hib after their Hib vaccination, more than 70% developed meningitis. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>PNEUMOCOCCAL DISEASE</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Studies show the vaccine to be ineffective at preventing pneumococcal infections. Side effects include Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, pneumonia and diabetes. Most common reaction: vomiting and diarrhoea.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>MENINGOCOCCAL DISEASE</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The British Department of Health has stated: "Meningococcal infection is relatively rare, affecting approximately 5 in 100,000 people a year in the United Kingdom." And: "No adverse effects of the vaccine have been seen." </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">However, the British Committee on Safety of Medicines had received 7,742 Yellow Card reports following administration of this vaccine, including at least 12 deaths. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The vaccine does not contain the B strain of meningococcus - the most frequent cause of the disease. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">There are anecdotal reports of meningococcal vaccinations causing meningitis. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>RESPIRATORY SYNCYTIAL VIRUS</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">This virus is associated with bronchiolitis and pneumonia and also causes severe respiratory illness in the elderly. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The clinical trial data suggest that children receiving the vaccine are more likely to experience upper respiratory tract infections than children who do not receive it. The vaccines have been found to increase the likelihood of otis media (an ear infection), liver-function abnormalities, fungal dermatitis, anaemia and hernia.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>HUMAN PAPILLOMA VIRUS (HPV)</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">This 'anti-cervical cancer' vaccine is designed to protect against four of the more than 100 different HPV strains. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">There is no proof this vaccine protects against cervical cancer. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Adverse reactions include: Guillain-Barré syndrome, loss of consciousness, seizures/convulsions, swollen body parts, heart/kidney disorders, arthritis/joint pain, severe rashes, vomiting, miscarriages/birth defects, genital warts/vaginal lesions, HPV infection, death.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>ROTAVIRUS</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">This causes diarrhoea, vomiting and middle ear infections in children. Trials found the vaccine actually <i>caused</i> these symptoms.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>SHINGLES (HERPES ZOSTER)</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">This can be a painful rash that usually lasts 2-4 weeks, usually in the elderly. Side effects of the vaccine include: diarrhoea, congestive heart failure and pulmonary edema.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>FLU</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Serious reactions to the flu vaccine include Guillain-Barré syndrome - a severe paralytic disease. GBS can occur several weeks following a flu vaccine and is fatal in every 20 victims. Other adverse reactions to the vaccine include: brain stem encephalitis, encephalopathy, arthritis, polyneuritis and thrombocytopenia - a serious blood disorder. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">The effectiveness of flu vaccines is problematic. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">If the vaccine manufacturers guess right and the flu strain in the vaccine matches the flu circulating in the environment, the vaccination is 35% effective, which also means 65% ineffective. But if, as often happens, the vaccine manufacturers guess wrong, the vaccination is 0% effective.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">Do doctors and nurses get flu shots? Yes - 30%. No - 70%.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><b>SUMMARY</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><span style="text-decoration: underline"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">To be informed and protect the health of your children and loved ones, I urge you to buy <b>Vaccines - Are They Really Safe & Effective?</b> by Neil Z. Miller. You can buy a second hand copy for £1 at Amazon.com. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">If you want detailed vaccine safety and efficacy data in a book containing over 1000 scientific citations - a comprehensive guide to vaccine risks and benefits - buy <b>The Vaccine Safety Manual (2nd Edition)</b>. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><b>Make an Informed Vaccine Decision</b> by Dr. Mayer Eisenstein is another good book. Vaccine information is also available at <b>www.thinktwice.com</b>. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; min-height: 19.0px"> </p><div><br /></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-64257166953753883482010-11-16T17:33:00.000-08:002010-11-16T19:18:09.729-08:00FLU JAB 2010<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">'The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, said that in the worst case scenario 30% of the UK population could be infected by the H1N1 virus with 65,000 killed.'</span><div style="text-align: right;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Guardian Thursday 16 July 2009</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The published death toll from last year's Swine Flu "pandemic" was 423 - not 65,000. However, an official House of Commons answer revealed that those counted as swine flu deaths had other health problems and only in some cases was swine flu confirmed as a (possible) component. In other words, not one single UK citizen died from swine flu alone. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Department of Health is now pressurising GPs to sell more flu vaccines ahead of the 2010-11 flu season. What do we know about this year's flu vaccine? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><ol><li>It contains last year's H1N1 vaccine</li><li>It contains Thimerosol (mercury)</li><li>It contains Formaldehyde</li><li>It may contain AS03, AS04 and/or MF59 (Squalene)</li><li>It may contain aluminium</li></ol><b>H1N1 vaccine</b>. The manufacturers of the 2009 H1N1 vaccine are currently being prosecuted by the Council of Europe's Health Commission for fraud and endangering the public.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>H1N1 vaccine deaths.</b> There were 25 deaths from the H1N1 vaccine in the UK and several hundred serious adverse reactions. In Japan, where approximately 14 million were vaccinated, there were 104 deaths and roughly 1,900 serious side effects. In Turkey a doctor went into a coma after receiving the vaccination. In Manitoba, Canada, 170,000 doses of the vaccine were pulled after one person died and scores of others went into anaphylactic shock. In the Ukraine, 22 people died of "viral distress syndrome" after receiving the vaccination. In Germany, the Bild newspaper reported seven deaths from the H1N1 jab. In Sweden, 5 deaths and 350 serious adverse reactions were reported before a media blackout stopped the reporting of more deaths and side effects.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The British company GlaxoSmithKline, manufacturer of the H1N1 vaccine called <i>Pandemrix</i>, was given immunity for deaths and damage caused by their vaccine. Our government gave this drugs-maker permission to break the law. Was this ethical? Perhaps it was done on the same principle that supposedly gave James Bond a 'licence to kill'? Whatever the arguments for or against giving a corporation permission to break the law, it clearly demonstrates that GlaxoSmithKline knew their product might kill people or why else ask for indemnity? </div><div style="text-align: left;">Despite this, on October 6, 2009, (as reported by Reuters,) a World Health Organisation spokesman named Gregory Hartl said the H1N1 vaccine was "...among the safest vaccines that exist." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Thimerosol.</b> This is a mercury compound long-associated with developmental disorders, neurological damage, endocrine dysfunction and chronic diseases of the lungs, bowel, pancreas, liver and cardiovascular system.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Studies show a "...7 to 1 increase in relative risk of injury for children born to mothers who received a thimerosol preserved flu shot in the first four lunar months of their pregnancy over matched mothers who did not." (<i>Birth Defects and Drugs in Pregnancy</i> - Heinonemm, Stone, Shapiro, 1983.)</div><div style="text-align: left;">"Significantly increased risk of autism, speech disorders, mental retardation, personality disorders, ataxia and neurological disorders were associated with thimerosol exposure." (Neuroendocrinology - Vol 27 Nov 4 2006. Mark R. Geier and David Geier).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Formaldehyde.</b> This is a well-known neurotoxin and carcinogen.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>M-59, AS03, AS04</b>. These are different preparations of Squalene. Injected squalene can cause arthritis and lupus. All laboratory rats injected with squalene additives developed a disease that left them crippled.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Aluminium</b>. This is a well-known toxin. It's poisonous. It damages multiple organs and the body's neural networks.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">MANY STUDIES SHOW VACCINES ARE NOT EFFECTIVE</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Children</b>. "...no evidence that injecting children 6-24 months of age with a flu shot was any more effective than placebo." (Ref: "Vaccines for Preventing Influenza in Healthy Children" (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2. 2008.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Asthma.</b> "The inactivated flu vaccine does not prevent influenza-related hospitalisation in children, especially the ones with asthma...Children who get the flu vaccine are three times more at risk for hospitalisation than children who do not get the vaccine." (Ref: The American Thoracic Society 105th International Conference. May 15-20, 2009, San Diego.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Healthy Adults.</b> "Vaccination of healthy adults only reduced risk of influenza by 6%." (Ref: Vaccine for Preventing Influenza in Healthy Adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 1. 2006.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Elderly.</b> "Flu shots were non-significant for preventing the flu in elderly living in nursing homes. For elderly living in the community vaccines were not significantly effective against influenza, ILI or pneumonia..." (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 3. 2006.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If you or a loved one choose to submit to a flu vaccination and experience adverse reactions, make careful notes of the symptoms.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Typical symptoms of flu vaccine injury:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ol><li>Inability to focus. Lack of eye contact.</li><li>Depression, moodiness, tendency to overreact emotionally.</li><li>Delayed or unusual speech patterns such as high-pitched or flat intonation.</li><li>hyper or hypo sensitivity to sounds, crowds and other external stimulation.</li><li>Difficulty with motor skills such as handwriting, athletic coordination and endurance sports such as running and swimming.</li><li>Repetitive behaviours and ritualised activities.</li><li>Difficulty in relating to others.</li><li>Asthma and diet issues.</li><li>Conditions such as inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity.</li><li>Significant abnormal bowel function or vasculitis.</li><li>Guillian Barré Syndrome, a neurological disorder.</li><li>Birth defects including cleft palate, microcephaly or pyloric stenosis.</li></ol><div>Flu, though uncomfortable, is rarely life-threatening and - some believe - helps to fortify the immune system. However, if you have other health problems or a compromised immune system, you may consider non-toxic alternatives such as Vitamin C, Vitamin D and colloidal silver. </div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-14182279748617329682010-11-15T17:11:00.001-08:002010-11-15T17:20:55.229-08:00<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 16.0px Arial; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Lucida Grande'; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/01/05/f-airport-scanners-radiation-risk.html">AIRPORT BODY-SCANNERS</a></span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #333233">There are two types of scanners at the airport; the MILLIMETRE WAVE SCANNER and the BACK-SCATTER X-RAY SCANNER. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #333233">Both emit ‘high-energy’ radiation and both are dangerous. There is no “safe” dose of radiation. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #045a8c"><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/01/05/f-airport-scanners-radiation-risk.html"><b>MILLIMETRE WAVE SCANNER</b></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #333233">Also known as the 'Terahertz Wave Body Scanner'. Terahertz waves don’t travel far inside the body but they rip apart DNA. Exposure may cause skin cancer, breast cancer, testicular cancer, brain tumours and foetal damage in pregnant women. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #045a8c"><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/01/05/f-airport-scanners-radiation-risk.html"><b>BACK-SCATTER X-RAY SCANNER</b></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #333233">Low-level X-rays produce the same kind of "see-through" images that millimetre wave technology produces. Backscatter images resemble a chalk etching. Unlike medical X-rays, the X-rays used in backscatter technology bounce off the skin, revealing what's under your clothes, but not what's under your skin. Safe exposure levels differ from person to person. Airport workers in proximity to these machines need to wear protective clothing or shelter behind lead shielding when the scanner is operational. The wearing, and regular testing, of radiation badges is also recommended. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #333233; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(4, 90, 140); "><a href="http://www.infowars.com/terahertz-wave-body-scanners-destroy-dna/"><b>IONISING RADIATION CAN CAUSE MUTATIONS IN DNA AND LEAD TO CANCER. </b></a><b> </b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #333233">X-rays are ionising (penetrating) radiation. Ionising radiation in any dose causes genetic mutations, which lead to cancer. Cancers associated with X-rays include leukaemia, breast, bladder, colon, liver, lung, oesophagus, ovarian, multiple myeloma, prostate, nasal cavity/sinuses, pharyngeal, laryngeal, pancreatic and stomach cancers. A person undergoing a backscatter scan receives approximately 25 -45 millirems of radiation. 25millirems per year from a single source is regarded as the upper limit of safe radiation exposure. Widespread overuse of body scanners, and variations in radiation caused by different machines, could lead to many thousands of new cancer cases and deaths. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #045a8c"><a href="http://www.infowars.com/terahertz-wave-body-scanners-destroy-dna/"><b> AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE. </b></a><b> Friday November 12th 2010 </b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 15.0px 0.0px; line-height: 20.0px; font: 13.0px Arial; color: #333233">WASHINGTON — US scientists warned Friday that the full-body, graphic-image X-ray scanners that are being used to screen passengers and airline crews at airports around the country may be unsafe.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 15.0px 0.0px; line-height: 20.0px; font: 13.0px Arial; color: #333233">"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP. "No exposure to X-rays is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner," he said. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 15.0px 0.0px; line-height: 20.0px; font: 13.0px Arial; color: #333233">A group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raised concerns about the "potential serious health risks" from the scanners in a letter sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology in April. Biochemist John Sedat and his colleagues said in the letter that most of the energy from the scanners is delivered to the skin and underlying tissue. "While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high," they wrote.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 15.0px 0.0px; line-height: 20.0px; font: 13.0px Arial; color: #333233">The Office of Science and Technology responded this week to the scientists' letter, saying the scanners have been "tested extensively" by US government agencies and were found to meet safety standards. But Sedat told AFP Friday that the official response was "deeply flawed."</p><div><br /></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-19510722824379531132010-11-15T13:38:00.000-08:002010-11-15T13:53:17.258-08:00<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; line-height: 21.0px; font: 18.0px Arial; color: #128119">NATURAL NEWS</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">When it comes to selling chemicals that claim to treat H1N1 swine flu, the pharmaceutical industry's options are limited to two: Vaccines and anti-virals The most popular anti-viral, by far, is Tamiflu, a drug that's actually derived from a Traditional Chinese Medicine herb called <i>star anise</i>.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">But Tamiflu is no herb. It's a potentially fatal concentration of isolated chemical components that have essentially been bio-pirated from Chinese medicine. And when you isolate and concentrate specific chemicals in these herbs, you lose the value (and safety) of full-spectrum herbal medicine. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">That didn't stop Tamiflu's maker, Roche, from trying to find a multi-billion-dollar market for its drug. In order to tap into that market, however, Roche needed to drum up some evidence that Tamiflu was both safe and effective.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 18.0px Arial; color: #128119">ROCHE ENGAGES IN SCIENTIFIC FRAUD </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Roche claims there are ten studies providing Tamiflu is both safe and effective. According to the company, Tamiflu has all sorts of benefits, including a 61% reduction in hospital admissions by people who catch the flu and then get put on Tamiflu.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">The problem with these claims is <b>they aren't true</b>. They were simply invented by Roche.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">A groundbreaking article recently published in the British Medical Journal accuses Roche of misleading governments and physicians over the benefits of Tamiflu. Out of the ten studies cited by Roche, it turns out, only two were ever published in science journals. And where is the original data from those two studies? <i>Lost.</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">The data has disappeared. Files were discarded. The researcher of one study says he never even saw the data. Roche took care of all that, he explains.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">So the <i>Cochrane Collaboration</i>, tasked with reviewing the data behind Tamiflu, decided to investigate. After repeated requests to Roche for the original study data, they remained stonewalled. The only complete data set they received was from an unpublished study of 1,447 adults which showed that Tamiflu was no better than placebo. Data from the studies that claimed Tamiflu was effective was apparently lost forever.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">As <i>The Atlantic</i> reports, that's when former employees of Adis International (essentially a Big Pharma P.R. company) shocked the medical world by announcing <i>they had been hired to ghost-write the studies for Roche</i>. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">It gets even better: <b>These researchers were told what to write by Roche!</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">As one of these ghostwriters told the <i>British Medical Journal</i>:</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">"The Tamiflu accounts had a list of key messages that you had to get in. It was run by the [Roche] marketing department and you were answerable to them. In the introduction ...I had to say what a big problem influenza is. I'd also have to come to the conclusion that Tamiflu was the answer."</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">In other words, <b>the Roche marketing department ran the science</b> and told researchers what conclusions to draw from the clinical trials. Researchers hired to conduct the science were controlled by the marketing puppeteers. No matter what they found in the science, they had already been directed to reach to conclusion that "Tamiflu was the answer."</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Now, I don't know about you, but where I come from, we call this "science fraud." And as numerous <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/NaturalNews.html"><span style="color: #3266cc">NaturalNews</span></a> investigations have revealed, <span style="color: #000000">this appears to be the status quo in the pharmaceutical industry. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Virtually none of the "science" conducted by drug companies can be trusted at all because it really isn't science in the first place. It's just <b>propaganda dressed up to look like science</b>.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Sadly, even the CDC has been fooled by this clinical trial con. As stated by author Shannon Brownlee in <i>The Atlantic</i>:</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">"...the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears to be operating in some alternative universe, where valid science no longer matters to public policy. The agency's flu recommendations are in lockstep with Roche's claims that the drug can be life-saving -- despite the FDA's findings and despite the lack of studies to prove such a claim. What's more, neither the CDC nor the FDA has demanded the types of scientific studies that could definitively determine whether or not the company's claims are true: that Tamiflu reduces the risk of serious complications and saves lives. Nancy Cox, who heads the CDC's flu program, told us earlier this year she opposes a placebo-controlled study (in which one half of patients would be given Tamiflu and the other half would be given placebo), because the drug's benefits are already proven."</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Did you catch that last line? The CDC isn't interested in testing Tamiflu because "the drug's benefits are already proven." Except they aren't. But this is how the pharmaceutical industry operates:</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Step 1) Fabricate evidence that your drug works.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Step 2) Use that fraudulent evidence to get your drug approved.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Step 3) Use fear to create consumer demand for your drug (and encourage governments to stockpile it).</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Step 4) Avoid any actual scientific testing by claiming the drug has already been proven to work (and cite your original fraudulent studies to back you up).</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">This is the recipe the CDC is following right now with Tamiflu. It's a recipe of <b>scientific stupidity</b> and circular logic, of course, but that seems to be strangely common in the medical community these days.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 18.0px Arial; color: #128119">EVEN THE FDA SAYS TAMIFLU DOESN'T WORK </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">The Food and Drugs Administration, remarkably, hasn't given in to the Tamiflu hoax. They required Roche to print the following disclaimer on Tamiflu lables -- a disclaimer that openly admits the drug has never been proven to work:</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233"><i>"Tamiflu has not been proven to have a positive impact on the potential consequences (such as hospitalizations, mortality, or economic impact) of seasonal, avian, or pandemic influenza."</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">An FDA spokesperson told the British Medical Journal, "The clinical trials... failed to demonstrate any significant difference in rates of hospitalization, complications, or mortality in patients receiving either Tamiflu or placebo."</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">It's the same message over and over again, like a broken record: <b>Tamiflu doesn't work.</b> And the 'science' saying Tamiflu does work was all apparently fabricated from the start.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 18.0px Arial; color: #128119">THE TAMIFLU STOCKPILING SCANDAL </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Junk science, though, is good enough for the U.S. government. Based on little more than fabricated evidence and Big Pharma propaganda, the U.S. government has spent $1.5 billion stockpiling Tamiflu. This turned out to be a great deal for Roche, but a poor investment for U.S. citizens who ended up spending huge dollars for a medicine that doesn't work.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">As stated in <i>the Atlantic</i>:</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">"Governments, public health agencies, and international bodies such as the World Health Organization, have all based their decisions to recommend and stockpile Tamiflu on studies that had seemed independent, but had in fact been funded by the company and were authored almost entirely by Roche employees or paid academic consultants."</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">The upshot of all this is that <b>governments around the world are flushing billions of dollars down the drain stockpiling a drug that doesn't work</b> -- a drug promoted via propaganda and scientific fraud.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">This isn't the first time your government has wasted taxpayer dollars, of course (it seems to be what the U.S. government does best), but this example is especially concerning given that this was all done with the excuse that natural remedies are useless and only vaccines and Tamiflu can protect you from a viral pandemic.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">But as it turns out, <i>vaccines and Tamiflu are useless </i>and only natural remedies really work. That's why so many informed people around the world have been stocking up on vitamin D, garlic, anti-viral tinctures and superfoods to protect themselves from a potential pandemic that most world governments remain clueless to prevent.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">I find it fascinating that <b>the governments of the world are stockpiling medicines that DON'T work, while the natural health people of the world are stockpiling natural remedies that DO work</b>. If a real pandemic ever strikes our world, there's no question who the survivors will be (hint: it won't be the clueless chaps standing in line waiting for their Tamiflu pills...).</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">Which remedies really do work to boost immune function and protect the body from infectious disease? I've published a special report revealing my top five recommended remedies: <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_Anti-Viral_Remedies_Influenza_0.html"><span style="color: #3266cc">http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_A...</span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">In addition to the remedies mentioned in that report, I also recommend high-dose vitamin D as well as the Viral Defense product from <a href="http://www.PlantCures.com/"><span style="color: #3266cc">www.PlantCures.com</span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233">I have no financial ties to any of the companies whose products are recommended here, by the way. Unlike the pharmaceutical industry, I don't operate purely for profit. My job is to get valuable information out to the People -- information that can help save lives and reduce suffering. This is the job the FDA and CDC should be doing but have long since abandoned in their betrayal of the American people.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233"><b>Sources for this story include:</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #333233; min-height: 18.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #3266cc"><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912u/tamiflu">http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/2009...</a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #3266cc"><a href="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec07_2/b5106">http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full...</a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 24.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #3266cc"><a href="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec10_2/b5405">http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full...</a></p><div><br /></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-81740423689386968352010-11-15T12:47:00.000-08:002010-11-15T12:51:59.527-08:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; "><div class="nodetitle" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 22px; color: rgb(0, 0, 102); padding-bottom: 4px; line-height: 22px; font-weight: 700; text-align: left; display: block; ">The CDC Votes in Favor of a Flu Vaccination Assault on Americans’ Health</div><div class="node_tools" style="width: 124px; float: right; border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-right-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-left-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left; display: block; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; "><div class="tweet_bug" style="border-top-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-top-style: solid; margin-top: 4px; padding-top: 4px; "><br /></div><div class="digg_bug" style="border-top-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-top-style: solid; margin-top: 4px; padding-top: -20px; "> </div></div><div class="node"><div class="nodebar" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(0, 0, 170); display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; "><a href="http://smirkingchimp.com/topics/corporate_america/big_pharma" rel="tag" title="" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; ">Big Pharma</a> | <a href="http://smirkingchimp.com/taxonomy/term/50" rel="tag" title="" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; ">Healthcare Policy</a> | <a href="http://smirkingchimp.com/taxonomy/term/101" rel="tag" title="" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; ">Medicine & Biology</a></div><span class="nodeby" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 102); padding-bottom: 3px; font-weight: 400; text-align: left; ">by <a href="http://smirkingchimp.com/author/14228" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 170); font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; ">RichardGale</a> | July 1, 2010 - 8:25am<hr style="height: 1px; border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: gray; border-right-color: gray; border-bottom-color: gray; border-left-color: gray; "><iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.smirkingchimp.com//thread/richardgale/29813/the-cdc-votes-in-favor-of-a-flu-vaccination-assault-on-americans-health&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=350&action=recommend&font=arial&colorscheme=light&height=20" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" style="border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; width: 350px; height: 20px; "></iframe></span><div class="nodebody" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; text-align: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><p>Richard Gale & Gary Null<br />Progressive Radio Network, June 30, 2010</p><p>A central principle of democracy is freedom of choice. We can choose our political party, our religion, and the food we eat, but this does not seem to be the case when it comes to our medical choices and our freedoms to make them.</p><p>The recent unanimous 11-0 vote by the members of the Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) favoring every American over the age of six months receive the flu influenza vaccine is one more attempt by our federal health officials to open up our bodies to the free market capitalism of pharmaceutical coffers. It is another step to mandate a vaccine across the nation, a policy that has many supporters in the pro-vaccine science community.</p><p>The vote raises an alarm about our federal government’s scientific integrity, and calls into question its true allegiance and purpose: to protect the health of American citizens or increase Big Pharma profits. If the recommendation were ever enforced, the US would be the only nation in the world with mandatory flu vaccination. However, what our investigations show and what differentiates the US health agencies from the health ministries in other nations, is that in the US federal health system Big Pharma money, lobbying and corporate favors are what shape drug and vaccine policies and this is rampant throughout the system.</p><p>Mandatory influenza vaccination has been tried before across a nation. During the 1980s, Japan had mandatory flu vaccination for school children. Two large scale studies that enrolled children from four cities with vaccination rates between 1 and 90 percent discovered no difference in the incidences of flu infection. As a result, in 1987, Japanese health authorities ruled that flu vaccination was ineffective and was no more than a serious financial and legal liability if it was to continue. The mandatory policy was quickly overturned. By 1989, the number of Japanese taking the flu vaccine dropped to 20 percent. A follow up study at that time found that there was statistically insignificant change in influenza infection rates compared to when the vaccine was mandatory.[1]</p><p>Now we are hearing that for the forthcoming 2010-2011 flu season, the H1N1 flu strain will be included in the seasonal flu vaccine. This will be a quadravalent vaccine comprised of four strains including the H1N1. As of this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to evaluate the H1NI virus at a 5 level pandemic and issues warnings to deaf ears now that people realize the WHO’s word is disreputable. Nevertheless, we should still brace ourselves for another year of old yarn, fear-mongering, media spin and more voodoo science.</p><p>A brief overview of the past H1N1 pandemic boondoggle will help us to understand the addiction of denial permeating the ranks of the CDC’s advisory committee. It presents a picture of a delusional bubble, unrelated to medical facts, that the CDC has found comfort to float within. The simple fact remains that the CDC is disconnected from anything resembling legitimate science thereby making their recent decision ludicrous and criminally irresponsible.</p><p>The CDC’s predictions of particular strains during past flu seasons has never been especially accurate. In fact, often it has been extraordinarily dismal. The previous swine flu prediction in 1976 resulted in only one swine flu death but hundreds of people suffering permanent disabilities, including death, from the vaccine. For the 1992-1993 flu season, the prediction made for the virus used in the vaccine was off by 84 percent. For the 1994-1995 season, it was off by 43 percent for the primary strain targeted and off 87 percent and 76 percent for the other two strains. The Laboratory Center for Disease Control’s study comparing vaccine strains with the strains appearing during the 1997-1998 season found the match off by 84 percent. One would achieve a greater accuracy rate by simply flipping a coin.</p><p>An article published in the prestigious British Medical Journal in 2005, “Are US Flu Death Figures More PR Than Science” is apropos for addressing the wildly inflated figures by the WHO and CDC to present their case for mass vaccination measures. The article begins, “US data on influenza deaths are a mess.” The study reviews the CDC’s own statistical data and finds numerous inconsistencies and incompatibilities between “official estimates and national vital statistics data.” Although the government’s predictions never came close to the “dire outcomes” stated by our health officials, the CDC’s own communication strategy was marked by high levels of fear.[2]</p><p>The US government’s assessment of the past H1N1 scare is another example of flawed science and incompetence. In last August’s issue of USA Today, the White House’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which receives its recommendations from the CDC, warned us that the H1N1 would kill between 30-90,000 American citizens. At the same time, the CDC was predicting 2 million people would be infected and as high as 40 percent of the entire population. The WHO, which sleeps in the same bed with the CDC in their shared complexes in Atlanta, was screaming figures of 7.5 million deaths worldwide. Consequently, the FDA fast-tracked swine flu vaccines manufactured by 5 different drug makers, none which met reliable standards of viable clinical testing and data to determine their efficacy and safety. And pregnant women, young children and the elderly were primary targets—those also most susceptible to serious vaccine adverse reactions. Over $1.6 billion tax dollars went to Big Pharma on orders of 229 million doses, of which only 90 million were actually administered and the remaining 71 million left to decompose on shelves or dump off on poorer nations out of the graciousness of the American philanthropic spirit.</p><p>However, as we witnessed in 2009 and the early months of 2010, people woke up to the false alarm of a swine flu pandemic. Often intuition is better suited to sniff out a hoax and scandal than the pseudo-science our federal health officials give obeisance to behind closed door conference rooms. And in the case of the so-called H1N1 pandemic, intuition proved correct. Our health agencies’ warnings and numbers propagandized over mainstream media simply did not add up and have been consistently found to be contrary to more medically reliable and unbiased facts generated by independent sources without ties to the private vaccine manufacturers.</p><p>Whenever the CDC, the FDA and the US Department of Health and Human Services post figures, it is a prudent rule of thumb to be suspicious and investigate their accuracy. The fact of the matter is that the CDC is completely clueless about this past season’s flu infection rate and the number of deaths due to the H1N1 strain. Let us explain why.</p><p>Immediately following the WHO’s decision in May 2009 to cease laboratory testing of samples to determine the actual biological cause of infectious cases with influenza-like symptoms, the US followed suit. Therefore, no matter what they tell you, no matter what Dr. Gupta and other tools of the media and establishment have to say, no proper testing was performed. Only PCR technology can determine the actual subset of a Type A flu strain, such as H1N1. But PCR diagnosis was not routinely performed in order to monitor and track rates and the spread of infection. By its own admission, a CDC report found that rapid influenza kits used in hospitals and clinics were wrong as much as nine out of ten times, and on average between 40-69 percent. The CDC determined that the instant tests are “not highly worthwhile for diagnosing H1N1 infections.”</p><p>So why would any organization responsible for the tracking of an infectious disease believed to be a global health threat, potentially threatening the lives of millions of people, make such a decision to not carefully monitor flu infections is beyond comprehension, unless it knowingly determined, with malice of forethought, that the H1N1 strain was mild and not a national danger. And many independent experts in infectious diseases had been stating this throughout the season but our health agencies preferred to ignore their warnings.</p><p>Yet it is the reported death rates due to H1N1 infection that seriously call the CDC’s integrity into question. According to the CDC reports, anywhere between 8,870 and 18,300 Americans died from swine flu. For the sake of simplicity, the health feds conveniently circulate the figure of 12,000 deaths.</p><p>Projections in the UK were equally off the mark. The British Ministry of Health was expecting 65,000 deaths, but reported only 500 towards the season’s end. British citizens, however, were better informed of the scandalous hoax and of the 110 million vaccine doses purchased, under contracts amounting to over $864 million to the drug makers (not including national preparatory measures bringing the total to over $1 billion for a small population), only 6 million Brits, approximately 10 percent, were vaccinated.</p><p>What figures does the World Health Organization report for the number of worldwide swine flu deaths? 18,036. That is correct, not millions. That is only 5 percent of the global figure for deaths associated with the regular seasonal flu. I don’t need an advanced degree to notice a grave discrepancy here, unless we are to believe that the H1N1 virus was on autopilot to target victims with American birth certificates or citizenship. But the reasons for the CDC’s erroneous numbers are quite easy to understand.</p><p>First, as mentioned, the CDC did not monitor the swine flu with any precision and accuracy. Our officials don’t have, and never had, the data to make any accurate determination.</p><p>Second, the CDC does not distinguish between deaths caused by an influenza virus and deaths due to pneumonia. The two are lumped together in their mortality statistics and pneumonia-related deaths are reported as having an initial influenza cause. For example, if we take the combined figure of flu and pneumonia deaths for the flu period of 2001, and spin the figures, we are left believing that 62,034 people died from influenza. The actual figures are 61,777 died from pneumonia and only 257 from flu. Even more amazing, in those 257 cases, only 18 were scientifically identified as positive for the flu virus. These are the CDC’s own figures. But does the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post and all the others report this? No. Do any of the puppets that mumble on television, with access to official sources and data, actually do their homework? No. A separate study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics for the flu periods between 1979 and 2002 reveals that the actual range of annual flu deaths were between 257 and 3006, for an average of 1,348 per year.[3] This is a far cry from the 36,000 annual flu deaths still found on the CDC’s website and vomited by the major media.</p><p>And here is the catch. If we apply the same criteria to determine the actual number of swine flu related deaths in 2009-2010, serious vaccine adverse effects, besides the hundreds of reported miscarriages, would far outweigh deaths and injury due to the virus.</p><p>Third, there are over 150 different viruses during any given flu season that can cause flu-like symptoms, such as adenovirus, parainfluenza, bocavirus, etc. Very few of these are ever tested. For example, in Canada where actual infection rates are more carefully monitored, during the 2004-2005 flu season, the Canada Communicable Disease Report showed that of the 68,849 laboratory tests performed for influenza, only 14.9% tested positive for a flu virus. The remaining 85.1% specimens were a result of other pathogens impervious to flu vaccines.[4] For the following 2005-2006 season, Health Canada received 68,439 tests for influenza like infections. Of these, only 6,580, or 10.4% confirmed positive for influenza. The rest, 89.6%, were other pathogens.[5] So no vaccine would have benefitted or protected those almost 90 percent in Canadians.</p><p>In the US, however, the CDC relies upon an esoteric witch’s brew of figures based upon various mathematical algorithms and speculative projections with no sound basis in reality. On one CDC site we find evidence of their flawed methodology: “Statistical modeling was used to estimate how many flu-related deaths occurred among people whose underlying cause of death on their death certificate was listed as a respiratory and circulatory disease.”[6] This is clearly an indication of policy turned dogmatic with utterly disregard for sound scientific evidence. It is all business as usual, negligent disregard for scientific reason, and full speed ahead.</p><p>And while the brilliant minds in the CDC decide to expose all Americans to the adverse risks of influenza vaccination— Guillain-Barre Syndrome, schizophrenia, neurological disorders, miscarriages, polyneuritis, encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, intense headaches suggestive or meningeal or brain irritation, aphasia (loss of speech), bronchopneumonia, sexual impotence, angor pectoris, anaphylactic reactions and death[7]—we should not lose sight of what is unfolding across the great pond in the European Union’s investigations into the CDC’s favorite bed partner—the WHO, an utterly corrupt organization at every level.</p><p>Two reports recently published have indicted the WHO for serious malfeasance and conflict in interests behind the fabrication and propagation of the 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu pandemic and has been called a “momentous error” in global health oversight. The people at the WHO had as much accuracy in their predictions as the Bush administration did with WMDs in Iraq.</p><p>The British Medical Journal printed a research paper by its Features Editor, Deborah Cohen, and Philip Carter from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, charging the largest global health organization with exaggerating the HI1N1 flu and being steered in their decisions and fraudulent fear campaign by the pharmaceutical industrial complex. According to the authors, “credibility of the WHO and the trust in the global public health system” has been damaged.</p><p>A second devastating preliminary report released by the Health Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (CE) found gross negligence and lack of transparency in the WHO’s handling of the swine flu scare. Throughout the WHO’s key advisory committees, particularly a secretive group known as the “emergency committee”, which steered the WHO’s assessment and predictions of the spread of H1N1 flu virus and advised them to announce a level 6 pandemic, were scientists entrenched in the morass of private vaccine and drug interests, particularly GlaxoSmithKline (H1N1 vaccine and Relenza anti-viral drug maker) and Tamiflu maker Roche AG. Even worse, the WHO never publicly disclosed widespread conflict of interests. Paul Flynn, the rapporteur for the CE’s report stated, “the tentacles of drug company influence are in all levels of the decision-making process,” and “they vastly over-rated the danger on bad science.” Following a lengthy investigation, a preliminary report, which still awaits a final version next month, states the result of the WHO’s negligence in proper oversight resulted in the “waste of large sums of public money and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public”</p><p>The WHO continues to withhold the names of the 16 members sitting on its secret “emergency committee.” However, this week, two of the members resigned, notably Dr. John MacKenzie from Curtin University in Australia, who was the WHO advisor who first urged the organization to call a pandemic and is well known to be entangled in financial interests and investments with the pharmaceutical cartel.</p><p>So far the CDC has weathered the WHO controversy in Europe unscathed. A fundamental oversight in the CE’s investigation and hearings has been solely targeting the WHO. It ignores the role of government health agencies’ complicity in promulgating the H1N1 hoax and the flushing away of billions of dollars into the drug industry, especially during an economic downturn and recession. As we witness the WHO’s indifference and denial of wrongdoing crumble, the question remains over whether or not the CDC was complicit in the propagandizing of the astronomically expensive H1N1 hoax.</p><p>Of course, the vaccine industry doesn’t give a damn about the investigations. Their vaccines, anti-viral drugs, and oligarchic rule over the medical caste system make them immune to independent international scrutiny. And we can be assured none of the lap dogs at the New York Times, MSNBC and other major media would expose their crimes. In the shadow of this medical charade, the drug makers are laughing their way to the banks. No Big Pharma executive is sitting before investigative committees to give an accounting of corporations’ role in the pandemic debacle. Instead, after scoring over $6 billion (Associated Press, May 19, 2010 ) it is again business as usual and another flu season ahead to further increase revenues.</p><p>Similar to the WHO, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Vaccination and Practice, which voted in favor of a flu vaccine-for-all policy, is equally stacked with individuals entrenched in financial ties with the vaccine and drug makers. The Committee’s Chair, Dr. Carol Baker from Baylor University, has consistently received research and educational grants and private donations from Big Pharma. She is also on the Board of Directors of the National Foundation of Infectious Diseases, a consulting body of scientists frequently wined and dined and provided perks by the pharmaceutical industrial complex. Another Baylor University committee member, Dr. Wendy Keitel, received clinical trial support from Novartis, the maker of the H1N1 vaccine most widely distributed in the US. Dr. Janet Englund at the Children’s University Medical Group in Seattle received financial support for clinical trials favoring vaccines made by Medimmune (the nasal flu vaccine), Novartis, and Sanofi Pasteur. Dr. Cody Meissner received Big Pharma support through Tufts University for his supporting clinical trials for Medimmune’s RSV vaccine and for participation in Wyeth’s streptococcus vaccine for children, Prevnar.</p><p>To put this into greater perspective, since the FDA relies on industry-funded clinical trials and subsequent data to approve vaccines and drugs, there also appeared in the news this month a critical finding from the German Institute for Quality and Efficacy in Health Care, published in the peer-reviewed journal Trials. The study investigated 90 approved drugs in the US (and let us make no mistake, vaccines are drugs! In fact, the flu vaccine is listed as a Category C drug; which means there are no adequate safety studies to determine whether flu vaccination adversely affects pregnant mothers and their fetuses.) and discovered that 60 percent of the 900 papers were unpublished and some were concealed from the federal regulatory agencies. Forty to sixty percent omitted clinical details or changed their final analysis. Among the pharmaceutical industry studies alone, 94 percent were unpublished, and 86 percent of the university studies sponsored by drug makers remained unpublished.</p><p>What does this tell us? If they were positive results, the drug companies would without hesitation publish their findings; but if the clinical studies’ results contradict their expectations negatively, thereby delaying and preventing regulatory approval and licensure of a product, then there is no incentive for their release. And they are under no regulatory obligation to publish or produce them. Hence the American public is denied approximately 90 percent of the actual clinical data performed on any given drug or vaccine. The German study concludes that drug makers intentionally “conceal unfavorable results or results that do not fulfill one’s expectations.” Therefore, the vaccine and drug makers are permitted to conduct their nefarious, quack science behind closed doors with full participation and cooperation from the WHO, CDC and FDA. Of course, the CDC and FDA condone this behavior because they are completely subservient to the power and wealth of the pharmaceutical industry.</p><p>The recent CDC vote continues a tradition of denial over independent studies and reports warning of the over-exaggerated alarm and the dangers of pushing forward with an H1N1 vaccine that was not given sufficient time to prove its safety and efficacy. They even deny their own voices.</p><p>Dr. Anthony Morris is a distinguished virologist and a former Chief Vaccine Office at the FDA. His view about influenza vaccines summarizes their efficacy well. In Morris’s opinion there is no evidence that any influenza vaccine thus far developed is effective in preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza,’ Dr. Morris states, as a matter of record, “The producers of these vaccines know they are worthless, but they go on selling them anyway.”</p><p>Canada’s Vaccination Risk Awareness Network (VRAN) website is a community of physicians, researchers and vaccine researchers and journalists reporting on vaccines’ flawed promises and pseudo-science. Among all vaccines, the flu vaccine is presented with “The Most Useless Vaccine Of-All-Time Award.”</p><p>Some of the most damning evidence about the efficacy of flu vaccines was reported in two studies performed by Dr. Tom Jefferson, head of the Vaccine Field Group at the prestigious independent Cochrane Database Group, published in The Lancet and the prestigious Cochrane Database Systems Review. The first study was a systematic review of the effects of influenza vaccines in healthy children.[8] The other was a review of all the available published and unpublished safety evidence available regarding flu vaccines.[9] The authors of the study had also contacted the lead scientists or research groups for all the efficacy and safety trial studies under their review in order to gain access to additional unpublished trial studies the corporations may possess. The conclusions are shocking. The only safety study performed with an inactivated flu vaccine was conducted in 1976. Thirty-four years ago! And that single study enrolled only 35 children aged 12-28 months. Every other subsequent inactivated flu vaccine study enrolled children 3 years or older.</p><p>Dr. Jefferson told Reuters, “Immunization of very young children is not lent support by our findings. We recorded no convincing evidence that vaccines can reduce mortality, [hospital] admissions, serious complications and community transmission of influenza. In young children below the age of 2, we could find no evidence that the vaccine was different from a placebo.”[10] With respect to adults, in 64 studies involving 66,000 adults, Jefferson noted, “Vaccination of healthy adults only reduced risk of influenza by 6 percent and reduced the number of missed work days by less than one day. There was no change in the number of hospitalizations compared to the non-vaccinated.”</p><p>And in another interview for the German magazine Der Spiegel on July 21, 2009, Jefferson seems to conclude his analysis of the H1N1 scare, “Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur. The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.”<br />Clearly there is no rationale for submitting the American population to a vaccine with higher risks of adverse effects than its record of efficacy in preventing flu infection. If the CDC’s vote withstands and were to ever become the law in the land, we will witness one of the largest crimes ever inflicted upon the American public, solely for corporate gain. Aside from rampant adverse effects in children, many that will not appear until their later years due to the number of toxins contained in flu vaccines, there will also be thousands of women having miscarriages. We will have entered a new medical twilight zone, where true science, responsible medical practice, and reliable public health become virtually nonexistent.</p><p>Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA.</p><p>[1] <a href="http://www.whale.to/vaccines/flu7.html" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 170); font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; ">http://www.whale.to/vaccines/flu7.html</a><br />[2] Doshi, Peter. “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” BMJ 2005; 331:1412 (10 December).<br />[3] Doshi, Peter. “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” BMJ 2005; 331:1412 (10 December)<br />[4] Statement on Influenza Vaccination for the 2004-2005 Season” Canada Communicable Disease Report. Volume 31, ACS-6, 15 June 2005.<br />[5] Hall, Celia (Medical Editor). “Flu Vaccines ‘Not Worth the Bother’” The Telegraph, UK, October 27, 2006.<br />[6] Centers for Disease Control. “Influenza death statistics”.<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/diseases/us_flu-related_deaths.htm" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 170); font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; ">www.cdc.gov/flu/about/diseases/us_flu-related_deaths.htm</a> Accessed September 24, 2009.<br />[7] See the following sources: Ehrengut W, Allerdist H. Uber neurologische Komplikationen nach der Influenzaschutzimpfung. Munch. Med Wschr. 1977; 119/705-710. Miller H, Cendrowski W, Schapira K. Multiple sclerosis and vaccinations. BMJ. 1967. April 22: 210-3. Hennessen W, Jacob H, Quast U. Neurologische Affektionen nach Influenza Impfung. Der Nervenarzt. 1978. 49/90-96. Wells CEC. British Medical Journal. 1971. 2: 755.<br />[8] Jefferson T, Smith S, Demicheli V, Harnden A, Rivetti A. Assessment of the efficacy and effectiveness of influenza in healthy children: systemic review. The Lancet 2005; 365: 773-780.<br />[9] Smith S, Demicheli V, Jefferson T, Harnden T. Matheson N, Di Pietrontonj C. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children. Cochrane Database Syst. Rev. 2004. 3:CD004879.<br />[10] Reaney, Patricia. “No Evidence Flu Shots Work for Under-2s: Study. Reuters, September 22, 2005; Jefferson, Tom. “Safety of influenza vaccines in children.” The Lancet, 2005. 366:803-804</p></div></div></span>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-81288809673185663812010-09-09T18:05:00.000-07:002010-09-09T18:18:56.307-07:00CLIMATE CHANGE<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Daily Telegraph has covered Climate Change extensively - dutifully publishing press releases from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the University of East Anglia, the Hadley Centre, the Met Office, the UK government's department of Energy and Climate Change and other Global Warming </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">advocates</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">. </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:medium;">However, to its credit, the Telegraph has also given space to a few writers sceptical of the theory, such as Chris Booker and James Delingpole. All the other newspapers have slavishly followed the Global Warming line - all except for the Daily Express. The Express has fearlessly attacked the climate alarmists but always done it, intentionally or otherwise, in a bumblingly clumsy fashion.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A well-researched quality piece on Climate Change by our national mainstream media is long overdue. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Thousands of articles have appeared on the Internet discussing the untruths and distortions emanating from the IPCC; the conspiracy to impose 'cap and trade' carbon taxes, the involvement of large corporations such as BP and Enron, international agencies such as the IMF and World Bank, international bankers and billionaires such as Mayer de Rothschild, George Soros and Al Gore in the creation of profit-generating 'carbon exchanges', a world government bureaucratic infrastructure and a new world currency based, in part, on carbon-credits. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The myths promulgated by the financially-motivated climate alarmists need to be exposed. Take polar bears for example. One of the axioms of the alarmists - and even taught in schools - is that polar bears are threatened with extinction because global warming is melting the North Pole and drowning them.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In truth, polar bears, whose numbers have quintupled since 1976, are far from endangered. Nor are they drowning. Polar bears are the greatest swimmers of all land mammals. They've been known to swim over 400 miles and routinely swim 150 miles when hunting. Another fact is that neither the North nor the South Pole are melting. Indeed, between 2007 and 2008 Antarctica's sea-ice </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">increased</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> by 32%. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The climate alarmists have made many predictions of sea-level rises, drowning cities, disappearing ice-caps, submerged islands, disastrous crop failures and on and on. Needless to say, none of the IPCC's dire predictions have come true. This is no surprise because none of the IPCC's computer models have been able to predict the past accurately either. This tells us that their expensive computer models don't work. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">What's more, the 'Climate-Gate' scandal revealed that the UN-funded climate scientists were conspiring with one another to falsify reports and destroy raw data to 'hide the decline' of global temperatures. But why were they doing this?</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">To find out, we need to look at their employers: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Who are these people? </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Funded by the United Nations, they are a multi-national political group comprising about 2,200 policymakers from the G20 richest nations. These individuals include bankers, bureaucrats, diplomats, politicians, directors and major shareholders of transnational corporations and about 300 contracted scientists.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">What is their purpose? </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">According to their own documents, the IPCC was set up in 1997 by Maurice Strong, a close associate of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, to advance the UN's long-held and often announced aim to form a world government.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Anyone who reads the draft Copenhagen Treaty on Climate Change will see the terms 'global governance' and 'global government' often occurring. This aspiration for world government has also been stated by many leading politicians in public speeches. Public espousers of world government include George Bush senior, Henry Kissinger, Ban Ki-Moon, Gordon Brown, EU President Herbert von Rumpuy, and US President Barack Obama. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">So, the purpose of the Climate Change policy is to advance world government. Dangerous Global Warming is a global problem requiring a global solution. What would that solution be? A global government, of course, dominated by the G20 richest world nations. Global Warming also justifies the world-wide imposition of carbon taxes to 'combat climate change' - all taxes to be paid to the International Monetary Fund, the new treasury of the world government. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Is there any truth to the notion that man-made Co2 contributes to global warming? No. There is no evidence whatever that man-made Co2 makes any significant difference to the climate. It's all made up.</span></span></p>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-48019611403462216412010-09-09T06:49:00.000-07:002010-09-09T10:34:17.614-07:00DIVORCEThe relationship between the people and its governing class is a bit like a marriage; in other words: a power-struggle. <div>In this struggle, hurt is inflicted on both sides; but rarely does one side or the other behave so badly that divorce is the only option.</div><div>However, in 2010 (though barely acknowledged by the mainstream media) the divorce has occurred. </div><div>It's been on the cards for a while. Some say it dates back to the government's (Big Oil-directed) assault on the coal-mining industry and its use of dirty tricks to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers, or its incremental evisceration of the National Health Service, or the selling of our national railways to profiteering private interests, or the deceptions of Maastricht and Lisbon - treaties that, without reference to the British public, transferred British government powers to the European Commission. </div><div><br /></div><div>In my view, what actually caused the divorce was something relatively trivial: the 2009 Swine Flu Hoax. If you remember, in early 2009, government officials were warning that a Swine Flu pandemic was on its way and predicting 40 deaths a day when it hit our shores.</div><div>When this didn't happen, this was the last straw - and the wife metaphorically packed her bags, left the house and moved in with her mother. In January 2010, in response to a Parliamentary Question (which must be answered honestly or trigger criminal charges) the Health Spokesman admitted there were no recorded deaths from the H1N1 Swine Flu. Unsurprisingly, this was not reported in the mainstream media that had been so enthusiastic in its fear-mongering. </div><div><br /></div><div>Disgust with the mainstream media - and the reason for a drastic decline in newspaper sales (The Guardian, for example, has been unprofitable for the past four years) - is due to the spreading awareness that the 'free press' is an illusion; that the media is an arm of government. </div><div>This awareness began well before the Swine Flu hoax. I think the main disconnect happened during 2003 when people learned there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The media couldn't spin this because everyone could see that if there <i>had</i> been WMD's, the Iraqis would have used them to defend themselves. </div><div>Later, journalists working in the alternative media - mainly via the Internet - demonstrated that the UK government knew there were no WMDs before the invasion; that Blair agreed to invade many months earlier at George W. Bush's ranch, and that the Foreign Office considered an invasion illegal. Everyone knows now, without a doubt, that the government lied deliberately about WMDs in order (for its own, still secret, reasons) to justify attacking Iraq. </div><div>Maybe the trust between governors and governed could have been repaired if Tony Blair et al had owned up to the lies, explained them, apologised for them and made appropriate amends.</div><div>But this has not happened, the government appears not to give a toss about the truth or what the people think, and Iraq is still occupied by hundreds of thousands of foreign troops. </div><div><br /></div><div>So it's hardly surprising the people don't want anything to do with the government. In response, the government has beefed up its police, paramilitary forces and close circuit spy cameras. Britain now has more CCTV cameras per head of population than any other country in the world - more even than China or North Korea. Like a husband spurned by his wife, the UK government has responded with 24 hour surveillance and threats of violence. </div><div><br /></div><div>The public's reaction has been to duck is head and avoid the psychotic state machinery as much as possible. Perhaps if we ignore the government for long enough, it will go away? The people know there's no point in trying to overthrow the government because the government has all the weapons.</div><div><br /></div><div>So it's a stalemate. The government, which needs the people for its blood supply, won't go away, and the public can't see how to get rid of it. </div><div><br /></div><div>We're stuck.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-51578653881035218392010-08-04T13:12:00.000-07:002010-08-04T15:49:44.913-07:00A New British Cinema LawI've just done some research on the quotas and protections that countries use to safeguard their national film industries. This was no picnic. Going through the different rules and regulations and claw-back tax schemes was like filling out a government application for disability benefit.<br /><br />As with most of what issues from governments, most countries' legislation is complicated and filled with loopholes and grey areas. Is this done to let friends wriggle around the regulations? Is it done to provide work for lawyers? Is it done to permit governments to censor films without seeming to? Maybe all three. <br /><br />In some countries, like Brazil, there are effectively no quotas because the legislation isn't enforced. In others, like Finland, there are no quotas officially but then you find out the government subsidizes 50% of the cost of every Finnish film - in effect, a decent quota.<br /><br />In Spain the law requires exhibitors to show 1 day of EU produced films for 3 days of Hollywood films, which averages out as roughly a 20% quota for Spanish films. However, the rules surrounding co-productions can be interpreted by lawyers to suit American interests. "Vicky Barcelona" by Woody Allen, for example, qualified as a Spanish film (even though it wasn't in Spanish) and was part-funded by Catalan taxpayers - much to their disgust.<br /><br />In Sweden, national, regional and local governments provide subsidies, via various complex arrangements, of about £90million. It's not easy to quantify, but this equates to something like a 12-14% quota. The Swedish film industry is punching way above its weight, however, because its share of the domestic market is 26% - a testament to how good their films are. Last year, they released 27 films including <span style="font-style: italic;">Let The Right One In</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Mammoth</span>. In December 2009, the Swedish Film Institute celebrated 145 International awards given to their feature films, documentaries and shorts. What's Sweden's population? 9 million. How many films did they release last year? 27. What's Britain's population? 61.4 million. How many films did we release last year? 10. <br /><br />The most complicated tax/subsidy/quota protection rules are in France. I now understand why the media tells us France protects 12% or 12.5% or 14.3% or even 25% of its indigenous cinema. It all depends on how you interpret the data.<br />It's possible the French protections are convoluted because they provide politicians with ammunition to support whatever positions they are holding. If the French complain about the government wasting public money on films, the government can point to statistics showing government hardly supports French films at all. But if the they complain their culture and identity is being annihilated by Hollywood, the government can demonstrate that it's doing a lot to support French films!<br />So far as I can tell, the French system effectively protects 12-14% of its indigenous Cinema. It also appears that, thanks to the high success rate of French films, 25% of all the films shown on French screens are French.<br />Most people admire the French film industry and wish their own countries were equally blessed but, personally, I don't think their Kafkaesque bureaucracy would suit us here in the UK.<br /><br />I prefer the Argentine model.<br /><br />In Argentina, the government decrees that 1 local film in each 12 week period must be shown on each Argentine screen. This works out as a 8.3% quota protecting Argentine films.<br />With this small quota, in 2008-9, Argentina released 23 new movies. That's almost one every fortnight. Not bad.<br /> This compares to only 10 British films released in 2008-9.<br /><br />Now we enter an area of controversy. I say 10 British films were released last year. The UK Film Council says 46 British films were released last year. This is a big difference in perception. Who is right? To answer this question we need to define what is - and isn't - a British film.<br /><br />Firstly, let's react to this intuitively. We're told 46 new British films came out last year. That's nearly one a week. Wow. Did it feel like there were a lot of British films coming out last year? What were they? And who are all the new British movie stars?<br />I remember <span style="font-style: italic;">some</span> apparently British films - like <span style="font-style: italic;">An Education,</span> starring a new actress named Carey Mulligan, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Brown</span> starring Michael Caine - but it didn't <span style="font-style: italic;">feel</span> like there were a lot. If we really had 46 new movies last year, British Cinema would be booming - it would be a renaissance. Does it feel like a renaissance? No. So what's going on?<br /><br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">official</span> list of British films for 2008-9 contains 29 motion pictures that are not British, 4 that went straight to DVD and 3 that were not even released.<br /><br />At the risk of being pedantic, here's the list.<br /><br />44 Inch Chest................................................CANADA<br />Awaydays......................................................BRITAIN (Red Union Films)<br /><div id=":zv">The Boat That Rocked..................................U.S. (Universal Pictures)<br />Boogie Woogie..............................................U.S. (indie)<br />Bright Star.....................................................FRANCE (Pathé)<br />Bronson.........................................................BRITAIN (Vertigo Films)<br />City Rats........................................................BRITAIN - <span style="font-style: italic;">straight to DVD</span><br />Cherrybomb..................................................U.S. (indie)<br />Clubbed.........................................................BRITAIN - <span style="font-style: italic;">straight to DVD</span><br />Creation.........................................................BRITAIN (Recorded/Hanway)<br />The Damned United......................................U.S. (Sony Pictures)<br />Doghouse.......................................................BRITAIN (Carnaby International)<br />Dorian Grey...................................................BRITAIN (Ealing/E1 Ent.)<br />An Education.................................................U.S. (Sony Pictures)<br />Endgame........................................................SOUTH AFRICA<br />Exam..............................................................BRITAIN - <span style="font-style: italic;">straight to DVD</span><br />Englishman in New York..............................U.S. (indie)<br />Fish Tank.......................................................<wbr>BRITAIN (BBC/Content Films)<br />FAQ Time Travel...........................................U.S. (HBO)<br />Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.......U.S. (Warner Bros)<br />Hippie Hippie Shake.....................................U.S. + FRANCE (Universal/Canal)<br />Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.......................U.S. + CANADA (Sony/Infinity)<br />I Know You Know..........................................BRITAIN - <span style="font-style: italic;">not released</span><br />In The Loop....................................................BRITAIN (BBC)<br />Iron Cross......................................................BRITAIN <span style="font-style: italic;">- not released</span><br />Is Anybody There...........................................U.S. (indie)<br />Jack Boots On Whitehall...............................U.S. (indie)<br />Jack Said........................................................BRITAIN -<span style="font-style: italic;"> straight to DVD</span><br />Lesbian Vampire Killers................................BRITAIN (Alliance Films)<br />Little Ashes....................................................U.S. (indie)<br />London River.................................................FRANCE<br />Looking for Eric.............................................FRANCE<br />Moon..............................................................U.S. (indie)<br />Nowhere Boy.................................................U.S (Weinstein Company)<br />Perriers Bounty..............................................IRISH + U.S.<br />Rage...............................................................U.S. (indie) <br />Secret of Moonacre........................................U.S. (indie)<br />Sherlock Holmes............................................U.S. (Warner Bros)<br />Shifty..............................................................BRITAIN (BBC) -<span style="font-style: italic;"> not released </span> <br />St Trinians II..................................................BRITAIN (Ealing Studios)<br />Telstar............................................................NETHERLANDS<br />Tormented.....................................................U.S + FRANCE (Warner/Pathé)<br />Triangle..........................................................U.S. (indie) <br />Wild Target....................................................BRITAIN (Magic Light/Protagonist)<br />Young Victoria...............................................U.S. (indie)<br /><br />So, what's the difference between a British film and a foreign film. Basically, a British film is one that is financed and released by a British film company. That's it. <br /><br />Let's say, you write a script and you want to make it into a film. Where do you take it? Where do you go? You go to a movie studio. A movie studio is a company that finances and releases films.<br />Next, the studio executives consider your script and, if they like it, assign it to a producer. Alternatively, you might take your script to a producer who might take it to a studio. Or you might show it to an agent who might send it to a producer who might take it to a studio. The point is: <span style="font-style: italic;">it's</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">movie studios that make films</span>.<br />The studio executives decide what films to make, who to direct, who to star, what level of production budget, what to spend on the release campaign, how many cinemas to open the movie in, and so forth. The movie studio is at the heart of the movie industry.<br />So, how many movie studios do we have in Britain?<br />None.<br />Well, that's not entirely true - Barnaby Thompson's Ealing Studios has functioned like a movie studio on a few occasions - but that's about it. Some might argue the handful of companies making films for release on DVD are studios (and, technically, they are) but are DVD releases the same as Cinema? Not really. They're more like films for TV. <br /><br />Before quotas were removed in 1970, we had three major studios: <span style="font-style: italic;">Associated British Pictures</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Rank Organisation</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">British Lion</span>. But since 1976 (when British Lion bit the dust) we've not had a real, functioning British movie studio. Not one.<br /><br />In 1980, there was a small revival in British films when Channel 4 was set up and pursued a policy of financing and releasing films. However, these were low-budget films released on television. This wasn't a revival of British Cinema and, sadly, Channel 4 stopped making TV films in the mid-90's.<br /><br />Question: how do you make a British film if there are no British studios?<br />Answer: you go to a foreign studio.<br />Where can you go? Well, most producers try the Hollywood majors first. If that doesn't work, they might try their luck with the small U.S. independents. They might try Pathé, Gaumont or Studio Canal in France. They might go to Canadian studios, like <span style="font-style: italic;">Alliance,</span> or try the Spanish, German and Dutch studios. I've known some British filmmakers who've tried to get projects made by Danish, Swedish and Norwegian studios. <br /><br />What happens when you go to a foreign studio? Well, the executives look at your project <span style="font-style: italic;">through their own eyes.</span> They don't look at it as a British person would because they're not British. They see it through their own eyes and assess whether it has potential in their home market. If they like the script they'll ask for changes to adapt it to their market. They will stipulate the hiring of stars that have traction in their culture. After all this, is it still a British film? Not really.<br /><br />Do you remember <span style="font-style: italic;">Four Weddings and A Funeral?</span> It was an excellent film but it didn't ring true; it was a Hollywood fantasy about jolly old England and the charming/eccentric British middle classes. It had an American star (Andie MacDowell) and an American sensibility. It was made by a Dutch studio (Polygram) for the American and world markets. And there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes French studios will do the same. <span style="font-style: italic;">Subway</span> by Luc Besson (Gaumont) was a film like this. In general, though, studios make films for their domestic markets and this is a good thing. Why? <br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Because film is the best medium we have for reflecting, challenging and revealing our own society to ourselves. </span><br />A nation, like Britain, with no film studios, is cut off from itself - cut off from its own culture. This weakens the identity and morale of the nation and makes it vulnerable to erasure by alien cultures.<br /><br />The BBC made a good film last year: <span style="font-style: italic;">In The Loop</span> by Armand Iannucci. This was a British film. However, the BBC also teamed up with two foreign studios and made a genre movie for the U.S. and world markets called <span style="font-style: italic;">Tormented</span>. This was not a British film.<br />Why was <span style="font-style: italic;">Tormented</span> not a British film, even though it was developed by the BBC? Because it could not have been made without the participation of Warner Bros and Pathé. <span style="font-style: italic;">Tormented</span> was developed by the BBC but made by Warner Bros and Pathé.<br />Let's be clear about what 'made by' means because this can be confusing. 'Made by' means: <span style="font-style: italic;">causes to be made.</span><br />The BBC can develop a script - that is: pay a writer to write a script and torture him with script notes - but it only <span style="font-style: italic;">makes</span> the film if it <span style="font-style: italic;">causes it to be made</span> by financing it.<br />The people hired by the production company are actually the ones who literally make the film but they wouldn't be able to do it unless the film was <span style="font-style: italic;">caused to be made</span> by the financing entity. In the case of <span style="font-style: italic;">Tormented</span>, the financing entity was the BBC.<br />But if the BBC gets it money from a foreign studio it is not the BBC but the foreign studio that is causing the film to be made. If Warner Bros and Pathé are causing the BBC film to be made, it is no longer a BBC film. In effect, the BBC becomes a contractor, working for the foreign studios.<br />Would the foreign studios contract the BBC to make <span style="font-style: italic;">In The Loop</span>? No, because <span style="font-style: italic;">In The Loop</span> is a British film. Would they contract the BBC to make <span style="font-style: italic;">Tormented</span>? Yes, because <span style="font-style: italic;">Tormented</span> is a genre movie, written and directed in the Hollywood style, and designed for the U.S. and world markets. The studios are in the business of releasing films and, presumably, were persuaded that <span style="font-style: italic;">Tormented </span>would be profitable for them. <br />Should the BBC - which is taxpayer-funded and supposed to be safeguarding the interests of British culture - be trying to get into the Hollywood film business? I don't think so. They're violating their remit. Channel 4 did the same thing in the 90's under Paul Webster with dire consequences.<br /><br />So, if a British company makes a film with its own money, it's a British film. If the company is paid by a foreign studio, or gets a loan from a foreign studio, or gets a loan guaranteed by a foreign studio, it is <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> a British film. <br />If a British film company makes a film with its own money, then takes it to film markets (festivals) and sells the right to distribute the film to foreign studios, it is still a British film. But if the film is dependent on foreign studio backing in order for it to be made, it is not a British film. It can't be because the key decisions are made by the foreign studio and the film must be adapted to the requirements of foreign markets. <br />Sorry to keep hammering these points but it seems to be necessary. Some people still insist <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</span> is a British film when it was made by Warner Bros! Nobody outside Britain thinks <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> is a British film. They certainly don't in America. It's a Hollywood movie. But, wait - it was based on a book by a British writer and it was shot in Britain and it had British actors in it. Doesn't that make it British? No. <span style="font-style: italic;">Batman</span> had British screenwriters, was shot in Britain and had British actors in it too, but it wasn't a British movie. It was made by Warner Bros - a major Hollywood studio. It was American - <span style="font-style: italic;">not British! </span><br />When a Hollywood studio exploits British talent, it doesn't mean the film is British, it means we've been shafted.<br />Reportedly, the Harry Potter films have earned more than £3billion for Warner Bros. Imagine what that would have meant for the British film industry if they'd been made by a British studio. Even if half the money went in taxes and expenses, there would still be £1.5billion to spend on making British films. We could make 50 films with a budget of £30million each. We'd have an industry!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">CULTURE<br /></div><br />In 1996, Jack Lang, the former French Cultural Minister, said: "The cultural colonization of France by American films has reached saturation level." He also said: "Creating a more level playing field within the film industry worldwide is a goal France is working towards."<br />French President, Jacques Chirac said: "I do not want to see European culture sterilized or obliterated by American culture."<br />He also said: "A legitimate desire to preserve national and regional identities should not be confused with protectionism."<br />Do these statements appear unreasonable?<br />Not when you consider that, today, Hollywood has 80-85% of the entire European film market and well over 90% of the UK market. But it wants more.<br />I think what we're dealing with here is the American mindset of 'Manifest Destiny' - the idea that the American way of life is the best and therefore should take over the world.<br />If you conquer a region, nation or group of nations militarily, the conquest is usually short-lived because the population tends to undermine, or otherwise rebel against, their conquerors. But if you can succeed in conquering a region, nation or group of nations <span style="font-style: italic;">culturally</span>, they stay conquered.<br />We need to defend our culture and our way of life. We cannot do this without our own movie studios. When, thirty years ago, protections were removed, we were disarmed, rendered defenceless. We became lambs to the slaughter. The result is what we see now: a nation with an identity crisis; a people who don't know who they are or what they stand for. We urgently need to fix this problem.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">HOW TO FIX IT<br /></div><br />Many European countries have complicated quota systems to protect their indigenous film industries. Governments like things to be complicated but most people don't - they prefer simplicity and transparency. How can a democracy function if the information on how the demos (people) are governed is obscured by regulatory confusion and impenetrable econo-speak? <br />For this reason I don't advocate bringing back the protections we had in the past. I don't support a return of the Eady Levy or the National Film Finance Corporation, or any other government creatures. <br />Our new government, under David Cameron, has begun a bonfire of the quangos that I, for one, greatly welcome. The abolition of the UK Film Council is a case in point and clears the way for a revival of British Cinema.<br /><br />The reason I believe the Argentine model is a good one is because it is simple. Also, if they can release 23 movies with an 8.3% quota, we should be able to make/release at least 40 movies a year with a 15% quota.<br />Let's have a 15% quota. It's easily done with the stroke of a pen and costs the government nothing. The only question is how to enforce it. This is what I propose:<br /><br />The manager of each cinema in the United Kingdom should be required to submit, with his annual accounts to the Inland Revenue, a list of the movies he has shown at his cinema with their national origin and number of performances. So, for example, a couple of lines in the ledger might go:<br />01/01/10 - 24/01/2010 <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Harry Potter</span> - Warner Bros (US) 109 perfs.........................<wbr>.£261,600<br />25/01/10 - 14-02-2010 <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Hooligans In Love</span> - Piccadilly Pictures (UK) 20 perfs..............22,400<br /><br />The last page of the accounts should give a film showings total and a UK film showings total. These can be checked by Inland Revenues officers. If the number of UK film showings is less than 15% of the film showings total, the exhibitor is in breach of the code. If this happens, the Inland Revenue officer passes copies of the documents to the cinema's local council, which can schedule a hearing and, if necessary, rescind the cinema's licence.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">SUBSIDIES<br /><br /></div> 1) Film Education.<br /><br />Education is quite different to commerce. Most of us accept the principle that it's good to provide students with occupational training. There can be no objection to government funding film schools out of public revenues.<br /><br />2) Archives<br /><br />The preservation and curating of archival film material, as done by the British Film Institute, is of great value. Subsidizing this activity is as important as supporting libraries and museums. Few would object to this continuing to be funded out of the public purse.<br /><br />3) That's all.<br /><br />Personally (although I know many disagree), I'm not in favour of grants and subsidies because they tend to enable problems rather than solve them. For the same reason, I'm against giving money to most charities. If there's a problem, solve it - don't maintain it with financial support. For example, if people are homeless, find them somewhere to live. Don't give money to a homeless charity because then a homeless charity industry is created that, in order to maintain itself, needs to ensure the continuation of homelessness.<br />Likewise, where poverty is a problem, solve the problem; don't maintain people in poverty by giving them charity. I'm not against emergency relief, that's different and can really help people - if they've suffered a disaster, for instance, or are sick, injured, or too old to look after themselves. My point is: you don't help people by maintaining them in a state of poverty, which is what charity tends to do. Rather than giving people fish, teach them to use a fishing rod. People don't like being dependent. They'd rather be self-sufficient. <br /><br />If the British Cinema Law can protect 15% of the UK film market for UK films, there ought to be no need for subsidies or charity. What will be achieved, within the protective fence of the 15% quota, is a free market. This will reward filmmakers who make popular films and discourage those who make boring films. Only a free market gives an equal chance to everybody. A free market doesn't care about your background. In a free market the most talented rise to the top. Only a free market will deliver the best possible British films.<br />And good films will always find a market abroad.<br /><br />It's my belief that, were a new British Cinema Law to be enacted, entrepreneurs like Richard Branson would set up movie studios and, within a few short years we'd have a thriving industry to equal that of the French. It's not hard to imagine - especially when you think of the films we made in the past before the protections were removed. Films like: <span style="font-style: italic;">Zulu</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ruling Class</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">I'm All Right Jack</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lady Killers</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Wicker Man</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Devil Rides Out</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">O Lucky Man!</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;"></span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Passport to Pimlico</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sir Henry of Rawlinson End</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ipcress File</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Alfie</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Windbag The Sailor</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Blithe Spirit</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Rebel</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Two Way Stretch</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The L-Shaped Room</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Blowup</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Kind Hearts and Coronets</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Heavens Above</span> and all those <span style="font-style: italic;">Carry On</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Hammer House of Horror</span> movies, and all the movies with Terry Thomas in them.<br /><br />It's time to bring back British Cinema.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-81746627833315324182010-07-21T20:37:00.000-07:002010-07-22T02:21:31.520-07:00DEPOPULATIONAll my life I've been hearing about the population explosion. <div><br /><div>The world's resources are finite. </div><div><br /></div><div>If we don't reduce the population we're all going to die. </div><div><br /></div><div>Die? Of what? Lack of food? No, that can't be true. We have vast food surpluses. In the West, where farmers are paid not to grow crops, over half the food that is brought to market is thrown away. <div><br /></div><div>I've never forgotten the famous declaration: "There's enough protein in the dog and cat food sold annually in Western Europe to feed the entire Third World for a year." </div><div><br /></div><div>No, there is no shortage of food. The reason 14.6 million people died of starvation last year was not due to lack of food. These 14.6 million people died because they didn't have <i>money</i> to buy food. There isn't a food shortage, there's a money shortage. </div><div><br /></div><div>But what about other resources? The world's resources are finite, right? If the global population continues to grow, we're going to run out of essential raw materials. </div><div><br /></div><div>Oh yeah? Like what? </div><div><br /></div><div>Oil! We are going to run out of oil! </div><div><br /></div><div>A few years ago, the media was bursting with "peak oil" stories. We were told to panic because <i>the oil was running out! </i>Today, there aren't any more stories about "peak oil" - probably because independent researchers discovered there was no such thing. </div><div>The "peak oil" story turned out to be a commercially motivated hoax. It turned out there's enough oil in Texas alone to supply the needs of the USA for the next 90 years. What's more, surveys discovered oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico so vast they rival Saudi Arabia. And this isn't even the biggest oil reserve in North America. That honour belongs to Alaska, which has so much oil and gas, it's embarrassing. Just one oil field on the North Slope in Alaska (owned by BP) flares off enough natural gas each year to supply the entire European Union. </div><div>Why do they burn off the gas instead of piping it to tankers to ferry to Europe? Because this would have a disastrous effect on prices. There's too much abundance. </div><div><br /></div><div>As we know, the more scarce an item is, the more people will pay for it. Scarcity equals profits, abundance does not.</div><div> </div><div>But the big oil companies now have a bigger problem than the abundance of oil - which they restrict by closing down refineries and having the government ban drilling. This problem, which the Russians have been excitedly telling the world about for the past ten years, is <i>abiotic oil.</i> </div><div><br /></div><div>Have you heard of abiotic oil? My guess is, you haven't. Its discovery has been largely hidden.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div>Russians, drilling super-deep wells in Siberia, found massive amounts of oil and gas three miles below the surface of the earth. When they looked at it under the microscope, they found it contained no fossils. It was crude oil, yet it wasn't a fossil fuel. Clearly, the conventional wisdom of how oil was formed (from ancient Mesozoic forests etc) needed to be revised. It appears the complex molecular composition that is crude oil is created below the earth's mantel by unknown chemical processes. The Russians theorised that over time, this abiotic oil is pushed (by pressures within the earth) towards the surface. It seeps up through fissures and fractures, picking up fossils of plants and shellfish and trees as it goes, until it pools in underground basins within reach of the oil barons. </div><div>Does this mean crude oil a renewable resource? If so, you'd expect to see some of the old, drained-out oil fields filling up again. And guess what? They do! Check these links to stories about oil wells refilling. <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/crispin8.html">http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/crispin8.html</a></div><div><a href="http://www.rense.com/general63/refil.htm">http://www.rense.com/general63/refil.htm</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Okay, so we're not going to run out of oil. But what about the other important resources that over-population will destroy. What are they? Well, there's stuff like iron, lithium, manganese, bauxite (aluminium), copper, silicone, platinum - all kinds of minerals we need for our technologically advanced modern civilisation. They're not renewable are they? </div><div><br /></div><div>Well, yes they are. </div><div><br /></div><div>Do you know how much of our steel comes from iron ore mined out of the ground? Less than 6%. Over 94% of our steel is recycled! It comes from crushed up cars and trucks and ships and thousands of other products containing steel. The same applies to all the other minerals. Yes, there's some wastage but not much. These materials are worth money and the waste management industry makes a fortune out of them. Very little is destroyed. Raw materials are taken out of the earth, refined, made into products and then endlessly recycled. </div><div>We have abundance.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, even so, if the world's population grows too big, won't the demand for minerals exceed supply? Okay, there are two issues here:</div><div><br /></div><div>1) Human inventiveness. </div><div>2) Why do we think the population will grow 'too big'? </div><div><br /></div><div>Human inventiveness. </div><div><br /></div><div>Necessity is the mother of invention and the inventiveness of human beings is staggering. </div><div>If we need something, we find a way to invent it. We even invent lots of things we <i>don't</i> need, like pogo-sticks and rubik's cubes. We've invented mobile phones and DVDs and Sat-Navs. We've even invented a car that runs on water. (See links:) </div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; border-collapse: collapse; "><a href="http://www.i-newswire.com/water-powered-car-begins-9000-mile/43739"> http://www.beersteak.com/<wbr>breaking-news/genepax-invents-<wbr>car-run-water-real-deal/.</a></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; border-collapse: collapse; "><a href="http://www.i-newswire.com/water-powered-car-begins-9000-mile/43739">http://www.i-newswire.com/<wbr>water-powered-car-begins-9000-<wbr>mile/43739</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>We now construct tall buildings and bridges using carbon compounds stronger and lighter than the toughest steel. </div><div>We've invented multiple ways to generate electricity:- hydro-electric power, geothermal power, wind power, wave power, solar power and hydrogen power to name a few. Maybe Fusion Power will work? If we ever did run out of oil or natural gas or coal, there are many inventions <i>already</i> waiting in the wings to replace them. But we're not going to run out of these commodities. </div><div>For example: the United Kingdom's estimated coal reserves are 45 billion tonnes - enough for the next 300 years. </div><div><a href="http://www.coal.gov.uk/media/860AD/Response%20to%20Energy%20Review%20-%20Appendix%202.pdf">http://www.coal.gov.uk/media/860AD/Response%20to%20Energy%20Review%20-%20Appendix%202.pdf</a></div><div><br /></div><div>We really don't need to worry about running out of 'finite resources' because the earth is so abundant, most resources are renewable or recyclable, and we are so inventive.</div><div><br /></div><div>2) Why do we think the population will grow 'too big'? </div><div><br /></div><div>What's too big? </div><div><br /></div><div>Many population-watchers have had fun with this one. You could put the entire population of the world - all 6,628,218, 568 of them - into Australia and give each individual more than one square kilometre of land each. You could comfortably fit them all into the United States. You could even put them all in Texas, although they'd be a bit cramped and probably start shooting one another. Sure, 6.6 billion is a lot of people but there's no shortage of space on God's green earth. </div><div><br /></div><div>How fast is the population growing? </div><div><br /></div><div>This is a sensitive question. The over-populationists claim it's growing so fast that every country needs to make like China and impose a one-child policy. But let's look at the facts. </div><div>The populations of many Third World countries are increasing, it's true (Bangladesh has a 4.9 birthrate). But the populations of other countries are declining. </div><div>The birth-rate (or fertility rate as it's officially called) of the European Union is 1.53. (See link:) <a href="http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/datasheet/download/European_Demographic_Data_Sheet_2008.pdf">http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/datasheet/download/European_Demographic_Data_Sheet_2008.pdf</a> </div><div><br /></div><div>To replace Europe's population you need a fertility rate of 2.1 children per mother.</div><div>So, Europeans have a fertility shortfall of 0.57. This represents a 27% decline in population growth. The convention is that 25 years = one generation. On that basis, the population of Europe (currently 493 million) will be 360 million by 2035. By 2060, if the rate stays the same, the population will be 263 million. By 2085, it will have dropped to 192 million - by which time the Italian population (fertility rate: 1.3) will be below 14 million. Seventy five years after that there will be no more Italians.</div><div>Europe is dying. </div><div><br /></div><div>The fertility rate for the world as a whole is now only 2.56. The CIA's estimated global growth rate is 1.133%. We are close to the tipping point. If nothing changes, the world's population will soon be in decline. </div><div><br /></div><div>So: human population growth is on a downward trend, human inventiveness is undiminished, the earth is abundant, resources are plentiful, and there's lots of space for everyone. Our only problem is how to share the wealth. </div></div></div><div><br /></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-73556136963348338832010-07-18T09:46:00.000-07:002010-07-18T10:30:38.458-07:00GULF OF MEXICO OIL SPILL HOAXPeople think money controls the world but it's oil that controls the world because currencies are pegged to oil - especially the American dollar. It's oil that gives the US dollar credibility and value. (In fact, most commentators now agree that the true reason for America's invasion of Iraq was because Saddam Hussein was switching Iraq's oil sales out of dollars into euros.) <br /><br />Our society relies on what oil delivers: fuel, electricity, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, detergents, solvents, candles, carpets and a whole lot more. No other raw material is more important to our economy.<br />Big Oil companies like BP have more power than the big banks and national governments.<br /><br />The truth about the "Oil Spill" is now starting to come out. It's a hoax designed to say:"Big Oil is Bad." (Coincidentally, this was the message of this year's biggest Hollywood film <span style="font-style: italic;">Avatar</span>.) But how does "Big Oil is Bad" benefit Big Oil? Answer: by justifying a moratorium on drilling and creating oil scarcity, thus pushing up prices and the oil companies' profits.<br />Also, "Big Oil Is Bad" is designed to drive people into buying and investing in expensive, barely adequate 'Green Energy' technologies (Solar, Wind, Wave, Thermal) which are largely owned by the Big Oil companies and their banks. <br />Goldman Sachs and BP are the chief architects of this engineered Green Energy stock market bubble.<br />Look for record profits posted by Big Oil next year.<br /><br />So, how do we know the Gulf Oil Spill is a hoax? Let's look at the facts we know.<br /><br />1. Tony Hayward, the Chief Exec of BP sold 37% of his BP shares three weeks before the 'spill' and Peter Sutherland, ex-chairman of BP (now chairman of Goldman Sachs), sold 48% of the bank's BP shares three weeks before the 'spill'. Barack Obama's hedge fund company, Vanguard, sold 1.5 million shares of BP stock three weeks before the 'spill'. <a href="http://newsroomnews.com/2010/07/bob-chapman-obamas-asset-holder-vanguard-sold-bp-stock">http://newsroomnews.com/2010/07/bob-chapman-obamas-asset-holder-vanguard-sold-bp-stock</a><br /><br />2. Halliburton, Dick Cheney's oil/war services company (which made billions out of the Iraq war) , purchased <span style="font-style: italic;">Boots and Coots Inc</span> - the biggest oil clean-up company in the gulf - for $240.4 million <span style="font-style: italic;">8 days</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">before the 'spill'</span>.<br /><br />3. According to multiple sources, no one in the oil business knew the crew working on the Deepwater Horizon rig.<br /><br />4. It came out in court testimony that the Deepwater Horizon rig workers were ordered by BP executives not to follow standard safety procedures and to proceed with actions that would cause the rig to explode. <br /><a href="http://www.themismusic.com/ecology/deepwater_horizon_explosion_no_surprise.html"> </a><a href="http://www.themismusic.com/ecology/deepwater_horizon_explosion_no_surprise.html">http://www.themismusic.com/ecology/deepwater_horizon_explosion_no_surprise.html</a><br /><br />5. After the 'spill', the so-called oil was not burned off, microbial solvents weren't deployed, the well wasn't capped and all international offers of help were refused.<br /><br />6. Immediately after the 'spill' instead of engineers being sent to Deepwater Horizon and the other rigs in the area, the government sent out SWAT teams. (?)<br /><br />7. The Gulf of Mexico was declared a 'no fly zone'.<br /><br />8. Journalists were banned from visiting the area. Those who defied the order were confronted by private military forces and police under the command of BP executives.<br /><br />9. What BP and the government gave to the media were political posturings (BP is to blame etc.), alarming stories about the 'disaster' threatening wild-life, the coast and the people in Louisiana, Alabama etc., the potential need for martial law and evacuations, and a real-time video of the well-head showing 'oil' bubbling out of the pipe.<br /><br />10. BP (supposedly against the wishes of the Environmental Protection Agency) began spraying millions of gallons of COREXIT, a lethal chemical compound, on the sea.<br /><br />So what is really happening? The independent media has discovered several surprising things.<br /><br />1. The goo coming out of the Deepwater Horison well, and other places on the sea-floor, is <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">oil</span>. Crude oil is black. The stuff coming up to the surface is brown with patches and streaks of red, yellow and white.<br /><br />2. Very little oil has shown up on the coast. This small amount of oil, some believe, did not come from the spill but from other rigs in the gulf, or possibly an oil tanker.<br /><br />3. A significant number of dark brown tar balls <span style="font-style: italic;">have </span>shown up on the beaches. <br /><br />Explanation: In 2005, a study was made of the Gulf of Mexico that revealed the existence of undersea volcanoes occupying a large teardrop-shaped area about 1/11th the size of the gulf.<br />The Deepwater Horizon rig drilled 18,000 feet (about 3.5 miles) below the sea-floor into an ASPHALT and MUD VOLCANO. <br />The enormous pressure - as expected - blew the well-head and did other damage, possibly including the explosion on the rig that killed 11 men. <br />A flow of asphalt (dark brown), mud (brown), sulphur (yellow), lava (red) and other matter was released from the volcano.<br /><br />The release of this volcanic material is damaging, temporarily, to wildlife but by no means an environmental disaster - and certainly not an Extinction Level Event, as some of the alarmist media (both corporate and independent) have claimed. <br />Underwater volcanoes push out material all the time. Ecosystems have evolved that thrive on this material.<br />The current release of asphalt, lava, mud, sulphur etc. can be stopped by drilling a couple of vents into the volcano and reducing the pressure.<br /><br />The massive spraying of COREXIT may cause genuine and serious problems. Apparently, Corexit is one molecule away from antifreeze, which kills humans if ingested. Several pundits claim Corexit can be absorbed though the skin. If true, and it is spread by wind and rain over Texas, Florida etc. this will be a major disaster.<br /><br />It looks increasingly as if this fake oil spill hoax was engineered by BP in collaboration with the White House and federal security services.<br />What are their motives?<br /><br />As I said at the beginning of this article, the restriction of drilling does two things to benefit BP, Exxon, Shell, Chevron, Conoco and Total.<br />1) It puts up oil prices by creating scarcity. This increases oil prices and profits.<br />2) It hamstrings smaller oil companies, knocking out competition, strengthening the oil cartel, increasing their control of the oil industry and boosting profits.<br /><br />How does the hoax benefit the US government? Well, what do governments usually want? Answer: more control of the population and more money. This delivers both.<br />1) Increased oil prices deliver increased tax revenues from gasoline and countless other oil products.<br />2) Use of COREXIT will cull welfare recipients. The highest concentration of poor people on welfare in the US live in East Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. Getting them off the welfare payroll saves money.<br />3) Emergency evacuation (as demonstrated by the Hurricane Katrina disaster) lets the government seize large amounts of valuable land.<br />4) The White House has already announced it will use the Hoax to persuade congressmen to pass the Carbon Tax/Cap and Trade scheme (devised by BP and ENRON) that will transfer billions of dollars from the lower and middle classes to the government and the international plutocracy.<br /><br />Check this link: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiEluKlvwXc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiEluKlvwXc</a>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-29865345049321417722010-06-03T05:35:00.000-07:002010-06-03T10:36:51.398-07:00The Trouble with British banksMy last post explored how ISAs rip off the British public. How, if you buy an ISA, you are loaning thousands of pounds of your money to a bank, which via insider gambling and fractional reserve banking, can generate tens, if not hundreds, of thousands in bank profits. Your reward for loaning the bank its gambling stake? A small reduction in your capital. If you believe the banks' (arguably illegal) mis-selling sales pitch, you may - for example - lend £5,000 to the bank, receive a useless ISA certificate in return and, at the end of the year, when your loan is returned, wind up with a loss of between £150 and £300.<div>How can the banks even dream of perpetrating this kind of chicanery? How did they think they'd get away with it? Most of all: why<i> are</i> they getting away with it? </div><div>Then it hit me. Of course, the UK banks are a cartel - they're all working together. And they all have the same purpose: to get your savings. The ISA is just another in a long string of schemes that banks have devised to get their hands on your savings. When you borrow from a bank, you pay anything from 12% to 29% interest on the loan. When the bank borrows from you (current accounts, deposit accounts, ISAs etc) the bank pays you interest of only 0% - 5%.</div><div>Most people have been educated to put their savings in the bank. They've been taught that their money is safe in the bank; that they will, at least, get it back. Most people are afraid of gambling with their savings by buying commodities that they could later sell at a profit. Maybe the oil painting or antique chair or vintage car or small piece of land will depreciate in value? Maybe they will lose out? Also, they'll have to go through the palaver of finding a buyer for their commodity when the time comes. Banks are convenient. No hassle. Your money is safe. Most people are aware of inflation and know the government inflation figures are at least half the real rate of inflation - but they don't mind. They would rather lose a small amount of their savings by putting it into an ISA than risk losing a larger amount by investing in commodities. </div><div>Fear is king.</div><div>This is a pity because most people would be much better off if they were more courageous. If, for example, a year ago, instead of putting £5,000 into an ISA, you had spent £5,000 on gold sovereigns then, instead of making 3% (a loss of about £150 when adjusted for inflation) you would have made 41% - a real gain of about £1,800.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why do people put their money in banks that short-change them rather than other things that don't? There are 3 reasons: </div><div>1) THE BANKING CARTEL, by working together, has got rid of competition. There is no bank in the UK that will pay you more than 5% for your money. </div><div>2) THE MEDIA. The corporate media, which is controlled by the banks, constantly tells you that ISAs are a good thing and that no-one can expect more than 5% on their money. They will never tell you, for example, that if you make a 12month loan to an Iranian bank, you will receive 17% interest. </div><div>3) THE GOVERNMENT, which may or may not be controlled by the banks, nonetheless always supports whatever the banks are doing - to the detriment of British citizens. </div><div><br /></div><div>A few weeks ago, I heard Alex Jones on <a href="http://infowars.com/">Infowars.com</a> advise his listeners to take their money out of the big banks - the banks whose derivatives, naked short selling, credit-default swaps and other Ponzi schemes caused (and are still causing) the financial collapse. He advised his listeners to put their money into small independent banks. </div><div>That's when I realised that we in Britain are in deep trouble. You see, in the UK, there are, in effect, no small independent banks. </div><div>This is very serious. Why? Because we give the money we earn from working to a banking cartel that doesn't care about us. Money is freedom and power. We are giving our freedom and power to a ruthless, cold-blooded banking mafia intent on enriching itself at our expense.</div><div><br /></div><div>Today, in Britain there are only 6 banks:</div><div>Barclays</div><div>Royal Bank of Scotland</div><div>Halifax Bank of Scotland</div><div>Lloyds TSB</div><div>Santander</div><div>The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC)</div><div><br /></div><div>By the way, I've noticed that cartels generally consist of no more than 6 entities. The Hollywood cartel consists of 6 companies: Universal, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony, Fox and Disney. Attempts to start a 7th studio (such as United Artists or Dreamworks) or <i>maintain </i>a 7th studio (such as MGM or Columbia) have never succeeded for more than a short time.It appears that when you have more than six companies working together, something happens to cause internal division and the alliance fails.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Opec oil producing cartel was successful when it consisted of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Libya and Algeria - 6 entities. But when it was joined by Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and Indonesia, it fell apart.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, 50 years ago the UK did not have a banking cartel. There were lots of banks - some large, some small. These included National Provincial, Coutts, Lloyds, Westminster, Trustee Savings Bank, Barclays, Cooperative, Alliance, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland, Bank of Wales, Bank of Ulster, Hibernian, Leicester, District, Midland and many more. </div><div>Interestingly, during the greatest increase in Britain's prosperity between 1870 and 1910 (when GDP was more than 10% per year) there were 96 banks with 3,776 branches. So, during our most wealth-increasing period there was no banking cartel and healthy competition between the banks that benefited the man in the street, free-enterprise and society as a whole.</div><div><br /></div><div>(A side note: during this period, the top rate of income tax was 10%. History shows repeatedly that if a government cuts taxes, it increases its revenues. When John F Kennedy cut taxes by 40% in 1960, tax revenues doubled.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So what happened with the UK banks?</div><div>Basically, since 1910, through government supported mergers and acquisitions, they consolidated into a 6-bank cartel.</div><div>At one time, the banks were good servants of the people who created the wealth. Today, the banks are our masters, restricting free-enterprise, causing a steady decline in prosperity (and the freedom that comes with it) and transferring the dwindling wealth created by the populace to a small, parasitic class of plutocrats. </div><div>It's been said before but I'll say it again because it's apt: the banking cartel have engineered an economic system where they are the plantation owners and we are their slaves. When, as they intend to do, they phase out cash and we can only buy and sell using electronically transferable bank credits, they will be in total dictatorial control. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, what can we do?</div><div>1. Take as much money as we conveniently can out of the banks, convert it into gold and silver and keep it secure in a well-hidden safe.</div><div>2. Pay for everything in cash.</div><div>3. Cancel all direct debits (especially 'variable' directs debits, which are a license to steal) and pay by cheque. </div><div>3. Try not to enter into agreements where you cannot pay with cash. These are usually the utility companies so find ways to get off the grid by producing your own heat, electricity and water. The technology exists to do this but local governments try to stop it by requiring 'planning permission' and/or licenses (which they don't grant).</div><div>However, for an investment of about £2000 you can get an atmospheric water generator and a hook up to your plumbing, providing good clean water without hormones or drug residues. For an investment of about £24,000 you can install solar panels, inverters and batteries providing enough electricity for a small house or large flat for most of the year. During the winter months, when sunlight is limited, you will need to rely on the mains grid unless you have enough land to sink a geothermal well and produce electricity from hot rocks below the soil. </div><div>Hot water can accomplished by solar water heating units, requiring a further investment of about £9,000. Heating of the house can be achieved by efficient wood-burning stoves and other methods I leave you to research. </div><div>There are new technologies imminent that could make all this easier. I learned recently about a new atmospheric water generator invented in Canada that, if mass-produced, would be inexpensive to install and produce both hot and cold pure water. I've also heard of new nano-photo-voltaic cells that can absorb double the photon-energy of current solar panels.</div><div>Also, if government can be persuaded to get out of the way, a new generation of near-silent, highly efficient wind turbines could solve the problem of generating electricity during the British winters.</div><div>Okay, so they won't let you have a landline telephone without a direct debit - pay by cheque. They charge you extra for paying by cheque and, in order to cover the cheque you have to loan money to the bank in the form of a current account balance, so cancel the landline and use a mobile phone instead. Don't make a contract with a mobile network (which requires direct debits) use pay-as-you-go. </div><div>Write letters and postcards. </div><div><br /></div><div>We know we can't rely on government to protect us by enforcing anti-trust laws. As others have observed, all current governments (not just our own) are joined at the hip with the big banks and corporations. We live in a corporatocracy, not a democracy. But we may be able to get out from under if we increase our self-reliance, boycott the banks and corporations as much as possible and, for all our transactions, use cash. </div><div><br /></div><div> </div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-37932898482183700342010-04-03T04:56:00.000-07:002010-04-03T13:19:38.630-07:00The Trouble with ISAs<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A friend of mine bought a Fixed Rate ISA (Individual Savings Account) for £5,000. The heavily advertised advantage of buying ISAs is that the interest they earn is tax-free. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So my friend 'bought' a Fixed Rate High Interest ISA - not that she was actually buying anything. What she was doing was </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">lending</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> £5,000 to the bank for one year. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The salesmen are clever to present the ISA as a product you buy, like a dress or a car, because psychologically it makes you feel like you're getting something. But you're not. The </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">bank</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> is getting something: your money.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But, hey, what about the tax-free 'high interest' - isn't that something? Well, guess how much that is. Wait for it... It's 3.1%. That's right, 3.1%</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This means that, after a year, you earn £155.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Now, given that the true rate of inflation is at least 6%, by the end of the year, my friend will make a loss of at least £150.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But what does the bank get out of her ISA? Potentially they could get a small, or even a large, fortune. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As soon as they deposit her £5,000 it becomes (through the magic of Fractional Reserve Banking) £50,000.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How is this possible? </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Well, banks are allowed to lend 10 times the amount of funds they have on deposit. So, once the £5k ISA goes into the bank, it turns into £50k of funds available to the bank.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Let's say the bank loans £50,000 to a businessman for a year at 20% interest. At the end of the year, the bank makes £10,000 in interest and £50,000 from the principle. A total of £60,000. And for the use of her money my friend gets £155 - a loss of £150 in real terms. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This, by any stretch of the imagination, is a terrible deal. My poor friend has locked her £5,000 up for a year so she can't do anything with it. The multi-millionaire publisher and poet Felix Dennis started his business with £5,000. Richard Branson started </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Virgin</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> with </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">less</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> than £5,000.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But my friend can't do anything with her capital except wait for the year to end so she can get it back with a small bite taken out of it. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It couldn't get any worse could it? </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes it could! </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Suppose the bank has your £5,000 ISA (worth £50k thanks to Fractional Reserve Banking) but cannot find a businessman to lend it to at 20% interest? Well, it will place the £50k with its brokers. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Before the disastrous, bank-collapsing repeal of the Glass Steagall Act in 1999, commercial banks (like your bank) were not allowed to be investment banks (like Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs). The Glass Steagall Act protected depositors' money from being gambled away in the markets. But since the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">all</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> the banks have been free to gamble with your money.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This points up an interesting double-standard. If you tell the loan officer at your bank you want to borrow some money to go gambling, you will be looked at with horror and refused the loan. Gambling is profoundly irresponsible. Gambling is a sign of bad character. Everyone - churchmen, policemen, doctors, teachers, media pundits, politicians, your uncle, your mother, your father - says gambling is a </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">very bad thing</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But it's okay for banks! Your bank will take your £5k ISA (worth £50k) and place bets with it.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Don't believe those who say stock speculation is not gambling. Of course it is. You buy a stock, share, bond, collateralized debt obligation or credit default swap and you cross your fingers and hope your stock, bond, share, security or financial instrument will go up. If it goes up you're a winner; if it goes down you're a loser.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">All right, financial</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">speculation isn't gambling if you're an insider trader. But insider trading is illegal and every year a handful of them are prosecuted. Only those at the top of the banking pyramid can get away with it. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So, it gets worse. Your bank passes your £5k (£50k) to its brokerage department and they start gambling. If they're successful, who knows? - they might make £500,000 from your money. But as the famous disclaimer says: "Stocks can go down as well as up." </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Suppose the brokers buy worthless derivatives that have been given a triple A rating by one of the ratings agencies, or George Soros decides to short the currency your securities are in? Then your bank loses the £50k bet. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the bank has no other assets. How can the bank pay its debt? All it has is your £5k ISA. It doesn't have £50,000 because the money it was gambling with (well, £45,000 of it) was imaginary - a virtual amount produced by multiplying your £5k ISA by ten (or even more sometimes).</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So the bank only has £5k in assets and a £50k debt and it </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">also</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> owes £5k to you. The bank has to tell its creditors it can't pay them. The bank has more liabilities than assets. It's broke. It will have to go into receivership.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So what happens then?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Your bank's Chief Executive Officer goes to the Bank of England - the 'lender of last resort' - and asks for help.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The members of the Court of the Bank of England say they can bail out the bank by simply printing the £50k and giving it to them. This is known as </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Quantitative Easing</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">However, too much quantitative easing dilutes the value of the money in circulation causing monetary inflation and too much inflation will bring down the whole financial house of cards. No, the preferred option is to get the £50k from the public via the tax system. After all, they only have to put up income tax by a tiny amount, or slip in a stealth tax no one will notice, to get the money.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But how can the Bank of England increase taxes? It's not the government is it?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Well, it turns out the Bank of England has a secret. When it was nationalised back in 1946, it became part of the government - a division of the Treasury - but its private shareholders were not paid off. Instead, they became shareholders in the Treasury. The Bank of England is a public-private partnership. Who are the shareholders? This is a closely-guarded secret but most of them are private bankers. If they like your bank's CEO they will raise taxes and give him the £50k. If they don't like him, they will let him go bust and take his customers. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This is what caused the banking crisis and Credit Crunch of 2008/9 - gambling with depositors' money and losing. This is why there are now 19 developed countries (including the US and the UK) that are technically bankrupt. The language of the previous sentence is misleading, however, because it is not the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">countries</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> that are bankrupt, it's their </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">governments and banks.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Recent events in Iceland are a perfect illustration of this. The Icelandic banks, in collusion with the Icelandic government, gambled with billions of dollars belonging to the Icelandic people and entrusted to the banks and the government for safekeeping. They lost the money. Then they called their losses "public debt" and demanded to be bailed out by the Icelandic people. The Icelanders refused. The creditors (foreign banks) demanded payment or else. The British government (on behalf of the Treasury/Bank of England's private banking shareholders) declared Iceland a 'terrorist nation' and, under terrorism laws, stole all the money held in the British branches of Icelandic banks. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But the Icelanders stood firm. They would </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">not</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> pay the debts of the government and the banks because they had not accrued them - indeed, the government and the banks owed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">them</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> their money back. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The private banks that had loaned currency to the government and banks to buy the worthless derivatives that they (the private banks) had persuaded them to buy with phoney Triple A ratings and high rates of interest, demanded Icelandic assets (such as the fishing industry) to settle the debts. The Icelandic government agreed. The Icelandic people refused. Their argument was simple: 'why should we pay debts we don't owe?'</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There was a stand-off. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Finally, the private banks said they had enough Icelandic assets already to cover the debts and Iceland owed them nothing.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What does that tell you? The whole thing was a scam. The big private banks (which include the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and the major central banks such as the US Federal Reserve, the German Bundesbank, the French Societe General, and the Bank of England) are now doing the same thing to Greece. And as in Iceland, the Greek people are protesting and rioting against their government for holding them responsible for debts they, the Greek people, don't owe. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In essence, governments and banks are parasitic entities. They both get their money by taking it from the people - in taxes, fines, and licence fees (govt), or deposits and charges (banks). Neither the government nor the banks create wealth. Wealth is created by business. Governments and banks get their salaries, pensions, expenses, budgets and bonuses by siphoning money from business transactions and persuading people, either by force or via inducements, to give or lend them money. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So it should be no surprise that the 3.1% "high interest" ISA - or the, even worse, 1.7% interest </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Flexible ISA</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> - is a boondoggle. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It's the nature of the beast.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div> </div></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-63484459330694643482009-03-23T12:30:00.000-07:002009-03-25T13:55:20.561-07:00The British Film Industry<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-family:georgia;">Letter of Evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications.</span></span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Dear Peers and Peeresses,</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">I am a screenwriter, film producer and film director. My best known films</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> are: <span style="font-style: italic;">George Orwell’s 1984</span> - starring Richard Burton and John Hurt; <span style="font-style: italic;">White</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Mischief</span> - starring Charles Dance and Greta Scacchi, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Mars Attacks! </span>-</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> starring Jack Nicholson, Natalie Portman and Pierce Brosnan.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">I, like most people in the profession, have been profoundly depressed</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> about the British Film Industry for many decades.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">As your Lordships are certainly aware, there used to be a thing called “British</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Cinema.” We used to have our own Cinema - like the Germans, French, Spanish, Italians, Hungarians, Dutch and</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Scandinavians still do. This was of importance</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> not only to the British economy but also - more profoundly - to our culture and our</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> sense of who we are.</span><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">We had our own producers, directors and stars. Stars like: Margaret</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell, Bernard Miles, Wendy Hiller, Paul Scofield,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Harry Andrews, Peter Ustinov, Eric Porter, Honor Blackman, Fenella</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Fielding, Shirley-Anne Field, Leslie Phillips, Joan Sims, Dirk Bogarde,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Cyril Cusack, Trevor Howard, Richard Attenborough, Bernard Lee, Dora</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Bryan, Jack Hawkins, Lionel Jeffries, Donald Pleasance, Leo McKern,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Diana Dors, Terry Thomas, Christopher Lee, Moira Redmond, Maxine</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Audley, Googie Withers, Hazel Court, Valerie Hobson, Hermione</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Baddeley, Joan Greenwood, Moira Lister, John Mills, Noel Coward,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Dennis Price, Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Herbert Lom,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Peter Sellers, Jack Warner, Frankie Howerd, Michael Caine, and many</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> more.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Basil Deardon, a British film director, directed 44 British movies. Charles</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Crichton directed 35 British movies.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The English actor John Le Mesurier starred in over 100 British films.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Throughout history there have always been one or two major media</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> through which the nation spoke to itself. In the eighteenth century, poetry</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> and theatre were the dominant media. In the nineteenth century they</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> were theatre and novels. For the past century, the dominant medium has</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> been cinema. Britain is the only country in Europe that does not</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> produce its own cinema.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">At present, 95% of the theatrical motion picture market is controlled by</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> the Hollywood cartel - the remainder by Pathé (French) and a few other</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> foreign studios.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Britain does not have a film studio.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Confusion about this sometimes arises because production houses such as</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Pinewood and Shepperton are referred to as ‘studios.’ These are not film</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> studios; they are <span style="font-style: italic;">film production studios</span>.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">At present, the UK Film Council’s main job is to subsidise Hollywood</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> movies with British taxpayer’s money.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">If you are, say, Warner Bros. (a major Hollywood movie studio) and you</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> have a movie project the production of which is not assigned, you will be</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> offered a grant (essentially a bribe) of several million dollars to make the</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> film at a British production house.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Current regulations attach conditions to this grant. These conditions</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> include the guarantee of a minimum number of British residents to be</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> employed in the making of the film.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Depending on the exchange rate, the size of the grant, production house rental costs, and the availability</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> of other production facilities in the US and elsewhere, the Warner Bros. executives will decide whether</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> or not to make their movie in Britain.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Certain people, for whom it is advantageous, flagrantly deceive the British</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> public by describing these American movies as ‘British’. I once saw Tony</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Blair, in the House of Commons, </span><span style="font-size:130%;">extol the successes of his policies in supporting the British Film Industry, by</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> quoting <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> as a British film.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> is not a British film. (If only it was!) The <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> films are owned, </span><span style="font-size:130%;">throughout the world in perpetuity, by a major Hollywood studio.</span><span style="font-size:130%;">The success of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> series is a disaster for Britain. So far, they have earned </span><span style="font-size:130%;">over two billion dollars in revenues for</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Warner Bros. </span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The author of the books, J.K. Rowling, did not wish to sell</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> the film rights to a foreign company but had no choice because there</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> are no British film studios.<br />Not one.<br />If we still had the Rank Organisation or</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> British Lion or ABPC, one of them could have made </span><span style="font-size:130%;">the <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> films, and the vast revenues generated by them could</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> have benefited Britain and British Cinema.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Another recent disaster for Britain - on a much smaller scale but no less</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> painful because of it - is <span style="font-style: italic;">Slumdog Millionaire</span>, a film originated by a</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> department of Channel 4 Television.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">This film, like other successful films produced by Channel 4 in the past, is</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> a failure for the people who made it because they have no choice but to</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> give up their rights to a foreign studio.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The considerable income that will be generated by <span style="font-style: italic;">Slumdog Millionaire</span> - an entirely</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> British enterprise - will go into the coffers of the French movie studio</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Pathé</span> and the<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>US studio<span style="font-style: italic;"> Twentieth Century Fox</span>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Why don’t we have even one film studio? Every other developed nation has them.</span> <span style="font-size:130%;">Why not us? (Finland has three!)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">It may interest The House to know that the first story-based motion</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> picture ever made and shown to a paying public was by an Englishman.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> His name was William Friese-Green and this first-ever commercial movie was shown in 1890 in</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> London's Hyde Park as a fairground attraction. (This was a few years before the</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Lumiere Brothers who are sometimes, mistakenly, cited as the inventors</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> of cinema.) I’m sure your Lordships will agree that it is especially</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> humiliating that we, who invented the movies, are the only developed</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> nation in the world to not have its own movie business.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">How did this happen?</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Very simple.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Every European country protects its Cinema on cultural grounds. In</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> France, twelve percent of all the films shown in French cinemas must be,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> by statute, French. (This small market-share supports over 100 new French film releases each year).<br />The Spanish government recently increased its</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> protected share of the market to 30%. This means 30% of all the films</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> shown in Spain must, by law, be Spanish films. Germany protects its</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> cinema by ring-fencing 10% of its market for German films.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">We in Britain do not protect British films, which is why there are no British film</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> studios. Protections were removed from British films in 1969.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> In 1970 and 1971, the Rank Organisation and British Lion (Britain’s two</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> major film studios) went bust.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Since 1971 Britain has had no Cinema of its own.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">In 1983 I wrote the shooting script for <span style="font-style: italic;">George Orwell’s 1984</span>. This was a</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> project financed by Sir Richard Branson through a company called</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Virgin Films</span>. Sir Richard Branson’s aspiration was to revive British</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Cinema by establishing a British film studio. This, if it had been</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> successful, would have been the first British movie studio to exist since</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> 1971.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">George Orwell's 1984</span> cost £6 million to make. This was a big budget in 1983. The only</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> British films being made at that time were television films made by</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Channel 4 whose budgets were then about £200,000 per film.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">George Orwell's 1984</span> was a British film by a famous British author, George Orwell,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> adapted by British screenwriters, produced and directed by British</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> citizens, shot, edited, designed and so forth by British people, with a cast</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> of British actors.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">When the film was finished, we could only release it in one cinema in</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Britain. The American studios (who control our cinema chains) were</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> determined not to allow Sir Richard’s enterprise to succeed.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Norman St. John Stevas, Arts Minister under Margaret Thatcher - urged</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> on by the British film community including people such as Sean Connery, Sir</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Michael Caine and Sir Richard Attenborough - lobbied the Prime Minister</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> to restore protections to British films. This was denied on the</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> grounds that to do so would be inimical to Free Trade.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">This is nonsense because for Free Trade to mean free trade it must be</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> reciprocal. The US domestic film market is 100% protected. No non-</span><span style="font-size:130%;">American movies can be released in America to the general public unless</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> they are American “pick-ups” - that is, films like <span style="font-style: italic;">Slumdog Millionaire</span> that are</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> picked up cheap from foreign producers by Hollywood studios.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Hollywood can set the purchase price because the Hollywood cartel</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> controls the market.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">There is a great deal of rhetoric about Free Trade from Washington. If,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> however, you look at the reality on the ground, you will find that America</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> is and always has been, protectionist in its trade policies.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> This applies to movies as much as it applies to US steel or US agriculture.</span> <span style="font-size:130%;">(For example: despite NAFTA, Washington subsidises tomatoes grown in Florida so they will be cheaper to buy than Canadian tomatoes).</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">It is not reasonable to deny a modicum of protection for British</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Cinema on the grounds that this would violate Free Trade agreements if</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> those Free Trade agreements give full access to American companies in</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> British markets but no access to British companies in American markets.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">I can give examples of attempts, over the years, by European filmmakers</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> to release their films in America and the obstructions they encountered.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> But in the interests of keeping this letter short, I suggest - if you need</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> confirmation - you speak to British film producers. No British or European</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> film producer would dream of trying to release a film in the US. It simply</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> can’t be done.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The Americans, however, are free to release as many films as they want in</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> our country.</span> <span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Someone once said: "If you want to conquer a country, first destroy its poetry."</span> <span style="font-size:130%;">And</span> <span style="font-size:130%;">Cinema is the poetry of our times.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">But the key point is this:</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > if you cannot release films in your own country, you cannot make </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >any money which</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > means you cannot have a film industry.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The statutory 30% protection of the film market in Spain has resulted, as</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> you would expect, in a boom in Spanish Cinema. The Hollywood studios, far from making good on their threats, are actually seeking to do co-productions</span> <span style="font-size:130%;">with the new Spanish film studios. The recent Woody Allen</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona</span> is a case in point.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">If we protected our cinema by only 10%, we would not upset the</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Americans very much. After all, they would still control 85% of our</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> domestic market. However, we would revive British Cinema.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">It’s absurd that a tiny country like Denmark, with a population of</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> 5 million, can release 25 Danish films a year while we, in the 60 million plus UK,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> can release - in small theatres, with short runs - only half a dozen British films. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">I beg your Lordships to advocate measures to protect British Cinema by</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> reserving a minimum of 10% of the theatrical market for indigenous</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> British pictures. This can be done with the stroke of a pen. It would be of incalculable value to our culture, our British identity and our morale. It could also be lucrative - especially if we produced something like the <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> films. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />The Hollywood movie industry is the</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> second largest earner of foreign currency in the US.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> We, too, could earn foreign currency from British films. We have an advantage because our language - English - is</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> understood pretty well throughout all the 65 major film markets in the</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> world.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">We are also renowned for our talent in acting, writing, cinematography,</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> editing and design.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Instead of the wealth accruing from our talents and effort going to America (and some to</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> France), we could divert 10% of this wealth back to our own country - and use that to build a world-class film industry. </span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">It’s well known that the most popular further education course in Britain</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> is media studies. We are churning out thousands of aspirant</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> filmmakers each year - and have been for the past twenty years. At</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> present, these media graduates must go to Los Angeles if they want to</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> make films. This is not a happy situation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">In conclusion I would like to suggest that, once the protections are in</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> place, some of the grant-aid currently given to Hollywood movie studios by</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> the UK Film Council be diverted to support British films.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Thank you for your kind attention.</span><br /></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-64739178662044542622009-03-23T09:33:00.001-07:002009-03-23T09:42:13.779-07:00Credit Crunch<span style="font-size:130%;">It's not the bankers who are ultimately to blame for the near-collapse of the banking system, it's the government.</span><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;">The government's main purpose is to protect the nation, yet it removed (beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the 21st century) most of the regulations and mechanisms established to protect the people from market-rigging and ruinous speculation.</span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;">You can't blame the bankers for wanting to make money- that's their job. You CAN blame the government for allowing them to lend a great deal more money than they possessed. </span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;">Back in the 1970s, banks were permitted to lend three times the amount they had in their vaults. By 2005, this had risen, in some cases, by 400%: to twenty-four times. What people did with this easy credit was, primarily, to speculate in property. Most of the banks' monopoly money went on playing Monopoly. This has been disastrous for the nation because it sent rents and house-prices soaring. In the early 70s, the general rule was that a person would spend 15% of their income on rent or mortgage repayments. By 2005, this average had risen to more than 50%.</span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;">If the banks' unsupported lending had been used- like the Dutch in the 18th century- to speculate on tulip bulbs, only the rich speculators would have been ruined - the majority of the population would have been spared. But, because the speculation chiefly concentrated on the nation's houses, the people have been impoverished and many are now threatened not only with the loss of their savings and pensions backed by property assets, but also by the loss of their homes. It's a disaster. Who is to blame? The government. </span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;">It's not the banks which need to be reformed, it's the government. </span></div><div><span style="font-size:130%;">We need a new government system.</span></div>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-52577238276716603802009-03-23T09:30:00.000-07:002009-03-23T09:40:47.264-07:00Greed Eats Brains - the Death of Friedmanomics.<span style="font-size:130%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMl_85Jr0kmpcEZkV6y0zKHm8tzqtD-N5fxP5SrddCi92LAHK5bZuci6xaLJFXLmZnnEHb450RMN4v0hAkk5gYFXi7M46CbyxSfz42B72Cg5WRsdEBUV89zGpWB-1hug-NYPLDK-qfIus/s1600-h/milton-1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 144px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMl_85Jr0kmpcEZkV6y0zKHm8tzqtD-N5fxP5SrddCi92LAHK5bZuci6xaLJFXLmZnnEHb450RMN4v0hAkk5gYFXi7M46CbyxSfz42B72Cg5WRsdEBUV89zGpWB-1hug-NYPLDK-qfIus/s200/milton-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316421825022318450" border="0" /></a><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Friedmanomics </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" >took hold of</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" > </span><span style="font-size:130%;">the American and UK governments back in the 1980's and - aided by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 - spread like an insatiable plague of greed-bugs throughout the world. Now - with the collapse of banks and the crashing of stock markets - we may be seeing its demise. Let's hope so. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Before the 1980's, the consensus in Britain was that </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">sharing the wealth</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"> gave us stability, cohesion, prosperity and strength. This wasn't some radical hypothesis; it was a proven fact demonstrated by the experience of sixty years of national life. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">For sixty years, since the early 1920's, social democracy had been in the ascendant in Britain, and life had improved. By the 1960's, people knew that social democracy, and the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, worked because the evidence was all around them. Wealth redistribution improved infrastructure, provided health services, care for the elderly, sickness benefits, unemployment benefits, cheap housing and pensions. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The public ownership of public services - by removing the profit element - gave the British people cheap water, gas and electricity and affordable bus, train and postal services.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">By the 1960's, Britain had become affluent following these policies - as had other countries in Western Europe. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">But in the 1980's, the British ruling class changed direction. It abandoned Keynesian economics in favour of </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" style="font-size:130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Friedmanomics - </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">named</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;">after the economist Milton Friedman. Depending on who's writing about it, Friedmanomics is also known by other names, such as: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Neo-Con</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> economics, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Neo-Liberal</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> economics, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Anglo-American</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> economics, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Reaganomics</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> (after Ronald Reagan, the US President) and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Monetarism</span><span style="font-size:130%;">. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Anyway, France still follows the Keynesian model (despite recent threats by President Sarkozy to "go American"), so most of her major companies are - either wholly or in part - owned by the French people. One of these companies is </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" style="font-size:130%;">Electricite De France which not only </span><span style="font-size:130%;">provides France with the cheapest power in Europe but also has bought three major British electricity suppliers and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" >all </span><span style="font-size:130%;">our nuclear power stations. Right now, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" style="font-size:130%;">Electricite De France </span><span style="font-size:130%;">controls more than 30% of Britain's electricity.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Equally disturbing is that a further 50% of our electricity is owned by Germany and Spain. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" style="font-size:130%;">Friedmanomics</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> - which insists on the selling of public services to the highest bidder - has crippled us. The high price we pay for electricity now subsidises the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >low </span><span style="font-size:130%;">price of electricity in France, Germany and Spain. These nations are our commercial competitors. We've muffed it up. Or rather, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >we</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> haven't - our government has. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">A state-owned company will always provide better/cheaper services than a private company because its profits are not absorbed by taxes, shareholder-dividends, or high executive salaries, bonuses and pensions. A government-owned enterprise also accumulates much greater asset value than a private company because its surplus value is ploughed back in. Also, in a genuine democracy, when a business is government-owned, it's answerable to the people. If the service is poor, or prices too high, the nation can use the ballot box to vote out those responsible. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Best of all, publicly-owned companies foster social cohesion.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Until 1972, things were progressing in the UK. We were prosperous and most of our wealth benefited most of our people. In 1972, the gap between rich and poor was its lowest in history. The average differential between the lowest and highest-paid worker was x5. So, if the lowest-paid person received £100 a week, the managing director received £500 a week. Today, the average differential is x24. If the lowest-paid worker receives £400 a week, the managing director receives £9,600 a week.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In 1972, the railways were owned by the nation; so were the coal-mines which provided 80% of our electricity. The steel industry was government-owned; a great advantage to Britain's commercial businesses which used metal alloys in manufacturing - such as our motorcycle industry (the largest in the world) and our motor-vehicle industry (the second largest in the world). Good, inexpensive British steel also helped our shipbuilding, aeronautics, telecommunications, defence, engineering and construction industries.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In 1972, education was free, up to and including university, and 94% of our schools were publicly-owned. Rents were low. Food was cheap, and our agriculture was strong because of subsidies to farmers and tariffs on imports. Health-care was free. Dentistry was free. Optometry was free. Balding men could even get free wigs.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">After 1945, approximately half the wealth created by the population was taxed by the government and redistributed to benefit the nation as a whole. The majority of people believed this was a good thing. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Trade Unions, whose constitutions are more democratic than those of state institutions, fought the government over working conditions and wage rates, thus encouraging the growth of equality and social democracy. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The only downside to this Keynesian system was that it was difficult (though not impossible) for individuals to become super-rich. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">All this began to change in 1973 when OPEC, the oil cartel, jacked up prices. The UK economy had become overly dependent on oil, so the abrupt price rise caused a recession. This was the first in several shocks which, throughout the 1970's, softened up the public for a change in economic policy. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">During the 70's, the British government - lobbied by anti-Keynesian bankers and businessmen - reduced the funding of public services and caused double-digit inflation by increasing the money supply. Britain had come off the gold standard in 1971, so there was nothing to stop the government printing cash. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">When public-sector workers demanded wage increases to keep pace with inflation, the government refused - precipitating strikes and hardship. By the end of the 70's, people felt battered and bruised. What the hell had gone wrong? Why had we fallen so fast and so far from the sunny uplands of the 1960's? </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The optimism of 1969 had, by 1976, become a bewildered conviction that there was - as the punk slogan put it - "No Future". A terrible dark pessimism stalked the land. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In hindsight, the sensible course would have been to return to the Keynesian mixed-economy of the 1960s - and to have completed the reforms begun during Harold Wilson's second government. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Alas, it's against human nature to turn the car around and get back on the right road. We keep driving onward, hoping to find a new and better road. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">We found it (not) in Friedmanomics.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Friedmanomics was American and America was rich, ergo Friedmanomics would make us rich too, right? </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Wrong.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Although we weren't really to blame for being wrong. We didn't know that much of America's wealth was illusory. We didn't understand the boosterism of American culture. We didn't understand the New-World mindset which made money out of chutzpah, gambling, salesmanship and criminality. We didn't understand "spin". We didn't know that, despite the evidence of Hollywood movies, most of America was poor. We had no idea that, if you averaged out the states, America was at about the same level of affluence as Turkey. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The wealthiest nations in the world are actually Switzerland, Norway and Sweden - all social democracies which follow the Keynesian economic model. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">But we didn't know this. We thought the way to get rich was by copying the Americans and singing the hymns of Friedmanomics - the dogma of the US Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ("What's good for General Motors is good for America"). Margaret Thatcher believed this. The bankers and businessmen who financed the Conservative Party believed this too. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">By the way, despite his readiness to take credit for it, Milton Friedman was not the author of </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" style="font-size:130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Friedmanomics.</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"> What he was advocating was simply 19</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" style="font-size:130%;">th</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Century Free-Market Capitalism (the same Free-Market Capitalism which worried Karl Marx) - expressed in different jargon. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In essence, Free-Market Capitalism is "buy cheap, sell dear." </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Wealth is accumulated by manufacturing products and providing services as cheaply as possible, then selling them at the highest possible price. The </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" >profit </span><span style="font-size:130%;">is pocketed by the capitalist and his investors, making them rich. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The capitalists of the 19</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" style="font-size:130%;">th</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> century (most of them) replicated the behaviour of medieval lords. They treated their workers the same way medieval lords had treated their peasants, and fought wars against commercial competitors just as medieval kings had fought wars against rival monarchs. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The capitalists who did well in these wars, purchased the stately homes and estates of the previous century's aristocrats and placed their own men in government - just as their ruling-class predecessors had done before them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">When faced with competitors they could not beat, the capitalists did the same as their aristocratic forbears and formed alliances. They turned their rivals into friends. If you can't win a monopoly, secure a duopoly; if you can't get a duopoly, form a cartel. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In the mid 19</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" style="font-size:130%;">th</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> century, Benjamin Disraeli (later Conservative Prime Minister) wrote a book called "Two Nations" in which he observed that Britain was two countries: one small country of rich people supported by a second, very large, country of poor people. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The poor (impoverished by working for, and paying rents and taxes to, the ruling class) - needed to learn how to co-operate with one another in order to survive. Co-operatives, Friendly Societies, Trades Unions, and Christian and local community groups were organised to share what wealth there was in 'Poor Britain' to save them from disease, homelessness and hunger. This strategy of communal self-help was the basis of the philosophy which became known as Socialism. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Throughout the 19th and 20</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" style="font-size:130%;">th</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> centuries, the popularity of Socialism increased. Between 1848 and 1926 almost every country in Europe had a socialist revolution. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Britain was the only exception.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Terrified of revolution, the British ruling class made concessions to the poor. For example, the poor were permitted to vote in general elections (for candidates selected by the ruling class, naturally). In some cities, such as Manchester, government-funded health-care services were set up. A state pension was introduced. A Rent Act was passed to protect the poor from unfair evictions. Trade Unions were legalized and their leaders offered peerages. And so on. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The principle was (and still is) to grant concessions to the people when pushed, but </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >never </span><span style="font-size:130%;">to give them a say in their own government. Power should always remain in the hands of the ruling class - who know best how to use it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Maintaining the ruling class through the judicious use of concessions was espoused by the Liberal Party. The alternative body of government in our two-party system (the Conservative Party) favoured maintaining the ruling class </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >without</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> helping the poor. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">By 1945, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberal Party. It had achieved this by persuading the poor voters that Labour represented the interests of the poor. But when Labour got into power, it abandoned its commitments to social democracy and adopted the same approach as the Liberals. It must be said, however, that Labour's concessionary policies - patrician though they were (such as the introduction of the National Health Service in 1946) - did help the nation towards a more affluent - and more equal - society. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">By 1969, a popular topic of discussion had become: "the problem of leisure". Economic progress over the previous two decades had produced an expectation that everyone's needs were about to be met. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The combination of advances in technology, Keynesian economics, trade advantages conferred by the Commonwealth, light regulation on small businesses, and a cheap food/low rent policy were delivering prosperity and shorter working days. It was anticipated that soon we would be on 18 hours a week. What would we do with all our free time? </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In 1969, the general view was that public schools were a curiosity from the past - like the Royal Family or the horse-hair wigs worn by high court judges. It was taken for granted that anachronisms like public schools, charity balls, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" style="font-size:130%;">debutantes</span><span style="font-size:130%;">, leaseholds, and the House of Lords, would soon fade into history. Although 6% of the nation's school-age children still attended public school (schools for the progeny of the ruling class), it was assumed they would soon be absorbed into the comprehensive school system - as they had been in the rest of Europe. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The future of British society was egalitarian and democratic - no question about it. No-one could imagine a return to 19</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" style="font-size:130%;">th</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Century Free-Market Capitalism, inequality, class division, and Victorian Values. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">But, ten years later, that's exactly what happened. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In the 1980s, Milton Friedman and the Chicago School persuaded the UK government to take every opportunity to turn back the clock. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Break the Trades Unions, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" style="font-size:130%;">de</span><span style="font-size:130%;">-regulate Big Business, demonise liberal politicians, bully and bribe professional associations, manipulate the media, mislead the masses into believing they could get rich in a 'free-market economy', and privatise everything which wasn't nailed down (and, if it was nailed down, pull out the nails).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Many admired Margaret Thatcher because she 'stood up for Britain'. In truth, she did the opposite. She sold Britain down the river by flogging off its assets to private companies and foreign governments. She part-authorized the destruction of nearly all our major enterprises - coal, steel, energy, agriculture, telecommunications, fishing, shipbuilding and car manufacture among them. As of now, there are only two major British industries left: Pharmaceuticals and Financial Services. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Margaret Thatcher did not stand up for Britain, nor was she The Iron Lady; she was a Trojan Horse who let our enemies in to steal our assets. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Let's look at the privatisation of the railways. British Rail (owned and funded by the British people) was a single entity providing passenger and freight transport for the nation. True, it was not as well run as the Swiss or French railways - and people used to grumble - but the trains were 95% reliable and fares were cheap.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The bankers and stockbrokers advising the government agreed to split British Rail into 25 easy-to-sell lots. This provided a festival of fees for lawyers and accountants and optimized profitability for the investment banks. The effects of this butchery on the integrity of the train service itself was not considered. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Before the ink was dry on the contracts, the new rail-owners sold off most of the land which came with their purchases, and turned an instant profit. Buying the railways cost them nothing. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The sale of railway land meant there was little space for freight depots or parking. Pork-pies made in Yorkshire, once freighted to London by rail, now had to be trucked by road. Thus began the age of the </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25" style="font-size:130%;">Heavy Goods Vehicles</span><span style="font-size:130%;">. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">As time passed, HGVs grew bigger until they grew into the gigantosauruses we see today - jamming up our roads and belching out pollution. Even though rail-freight delivers relatively low levels of pollution, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >almost 90% of our goods are now transported by road. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">The privatisation of British Rail also increased the price of consumer goods - including food - because moving goods by road was more expensive than by rail. Thanks to the Thatcher government's adoption of Friedmanomics, our cost of living soared. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Not unreasonably, given the nature of 'Free-Market' Capitalism, the aim of the new railway owners was to maximize profits. So fares went up and the quality of the service went down. Manning levels were slashed to make the railways 'more efficient' (for the directors and shareholders, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >not</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> passengers). There was no longer a person to help little old ladies find their seat, or children to find the right platform, or porters to help with luggage. Guards were abolished. Baggage cars were removed so we could no longer take our trunks, suitcases or bicycles on the train. More seats were crammed in - and comfort sacrificed - to make the carriages cheaper to clean, and to squeeze in more passengers. And there was a vertiginous drop in punctuality. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">A survey in 2005 (covering all the rail companies in the UK) found that </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >one train in four</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> failed to leave or arrive on time. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Today, according to an OECD study, we have the least punctual and most expensive rail service in Europe. How sad is that? We invented the train. We invented the railways. At one time, we had the best railways in the world. How the mighty are fallen! - or, rather, stabbed in the back by M. Thatcher and her ilk.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">And then there were the train-crashes. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">To save money, the track maintenance company (Railtrack) hired lowest-bidder contractors who, in turn, hired lowest-bidder sub-contractors. These poorly-supervised day-labourers did shoddy work resulting in train wrecks and scores of deaths. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Her Majesty's Judiciary ruled that the directors of Railtrack were not responsible because there was no corporate manslaughter law in the UK. There still isn't. (The ruling class is not keen to pass laws which inconvenience its members). </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Railtrack directors then played legal games with the injured survivors, and the families of the dead, to limit their claims for compensation. Can this privatisation saga get any worse? </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">It can. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" >For the past six years, the government has been paying</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" >more in subsidies to the private rail companies than it paid</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" >for running the entire service when it was publicly-owned. Let me repeat that: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">for the past six years, the government has been paying more in subsidies to the private rail companies than it paid for running the entire service when it was publicly-owned!</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">So we, the taxpayers, are paying for the railways. Why, if the public are paying for it, are the railways not re-nationalised? Why are we paying for an inferior service whose main purpose is to make profits for the ruling class? </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Probably the worst thing about the rail-privatisation was not the damage it did (and is still doing) to the British economy and individual lives, but the damage it has done to our society. By destroying the standards, identity and culture of our once-proud national railways, the government has impoverished and brutalised the quality of British life. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The same can be said of all 'free market' (that is, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >rigged market</span><span style="font-size:130%;">) privatisations. The coal-mining communities destroyed by the privatisation of the coal industry comprised over a million individuals. The privatisations of our other national industries have also devastated communities. The on-going privatisation-by-stealth of the NHS has already destroyed its noble and happy culture, once so beloved by all. Even the trust between doctor and patient has been eroded - perhaps permanently. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The 'broken society' recently invoked (to much acclaim) in speeches by the Conservative leader David Cameron, was brought about by the policies of his predecessor Margaret Thatcher, and continued by the governments of John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Friedmanomics always results in broken societies. Russia is a case in point. The Russian Federation came close to total disintegration after Boris Yeltsin adopted 'free market' Friedmanomics. America, too, has been torn into strips by Friedmanomics and would be in dire straits today were the US dollar not the world's reserve currency. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">For the past thirty years, the United States has been propped up by the rest of the world because global trade needs a strong dollar. If this changes - which it might (a new exchange-unit based on a basket of currencies has been mooted by China) - we will see the curtain come down on America's era of power & glory. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">British Rail was wholly-owned by the nation, yet the views of the nation were not consulted when the government decided to sell it. There was no referendum. The government simply stole the nation's railways. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The late Quintin Hogg once described our government system as an "elected dictatorship". He was right. Theft on this colossal scale would not be conceivable in a democracy.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Friedmanomics produces oligarchs which beget a plutocracy which begets Fascist government. Fascism occurs when government and Big Business join forces. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The proper role of government is to act as an impartial referee between the businessman and the customer. If the government serves the businessman exclusively, the rights and freedoms of the customer are eliminated. The customer must obey laws made by the government to serve the interests of the businessman. He must work for the businessman at rates set by the businessman. He must buy from the businessman at prices set by the businessman. Naturally, people don't like this and rebel so, to prevent rebellion, the government toughens laws, expands surveillance, increases the police and security forces, and begins imprisonment without trial. All of these things have been done during past ten years. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">We now have the highest number of surveillance cameras per head of population in the world. The national police DNA database is adding 1800 people per day, and it's now legal for the state to lock you up for a month without charge. Also, we are now increasingly (in London at least) being startled by the appearance of armed, paramilitary police.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">This is all a consequence of Friedmanomics.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Downing Street claims the increased "security" imposed on us is due to the threat of Al Qaida. But these security measures were not imposed during the 1970's when Britain faced a far greater threat from the IRA. Why not? Because, in the 70's, governments were still aspiring to be socially democratic. Friedmanomics had not become the ruling doctrine.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The greatest obstacle to 'Free Market Capitalism' (i.e. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Rigged Market Capitalism</span><span style="font-size:130%;">) is the Trade Union. A trade union can, by withdrawing its labour, stop the corporation from making money. Trade unions protect and serve their workers' interests, so they are enemies of Rigged Market Capitalism which serves the owners of capital. This is why the first directive of Friedmanomics is: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >crush the unions.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In the 1980's, Margaret Thatcher set out to crush the National Union of Mineworkers, one of the biggest unions in Britain. Her government sequestered (stole) the funds in the NUM's bank account; financed a new rival miners' union; criminalized secondary picketing; criminalized sympathy strikes, and commanded the police to work as strike-breaking thugs. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The miners and their leader, Arthur Scargill, fought hard but were defeated by an implacable government willing to flood the pits and destroy the coal industry in order to crush the NUM and intimidate the union movement. As a result, we are now compelled to import 70% of our coal (mostly from Russia and South Africa) even though we have plenty of coal under the ground. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Once Margaret Thatcher had cowed the unions, she was able to carve up and flog off Britain's publicly-owned industries. In 1997, Tony Blair's Labour government - indistinguishable from Margaret Thatcher and John Major's Conservative governments - continued the auction of our national assets. Today, there's little left to peddle - even many of the playing-fields of our state schools have been sold off. In 2005, the government actually began selling bridges (owned and paid for by the public) to private companies who now charge motorists a toll for using them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">There is, however, one big cash-cow left: the National Health Service. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Although the government churns out propaganda that it will never privatise the NHS, it has invested enormous sums of public money into preparing the NHS for privatisation. Over the past ten years, the NHS has been re-structured into a network of American-style Health Management Organisations based on the Kaiser-Permanente model. This has cost the taxpayer billions because it has necessitated:<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">1) the setting up of a retailing system - pricing every pill, bandage and medical procedure;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">2) the splitting up of the regional health authorities into stand-alone, financially viable (and therefore saleable) 'Public Care Trusts';</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">3) the recruitment and creation of a massive hierarchy of accountants, lawyers, business operatives and administrators;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">4) the training of existing medical staff in fiscal management and 'commercial awareness', and</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">5) the setting up of a comprehensive I.T. computer network to monitor and facilitate transactions.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The unauthorized selling of our infrastructure - built and paid for over more than a century by the British people - is a monstrous crime. The perpetrators should be prosecuted and sent to prison. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">If someone steals your television and sells it, this is illegal. Government officials - in league with businessmen, bankers, and lawyers - have stolen entire industries, including the land and buildings that go with them, and sold them to the highest bidder. Even the land and properties 'owned' by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (actually owned by the British people) have been sold to a private property company based in a tax-haven. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">To compound their crimes, these same government officials - after leaving office - have received opulent directorships from the corporations to whom they sold our assets. This is Treason. The duty of government is to </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >serve</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> the public, not rob them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Why didn't we kick up a fuss when the government destroyed 90% of our coal industry and privatised the rest? Why didn't we kick up a fuss when our steel industry was sold off? Or British Airways? Or British Gas? Or the Water Board? Or the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency? Or Air Traffic Control? Or British Rail? Or British Leyland? Or British Nuclear Fuels? Or the Electricity Board? Or London Underground? Or British Telecom? Or the Post Office?<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Why did we do nothing?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Lots of people complained. We're good at complaining - there's a nationwide whine going on all the time...about the shocking decline in public services, the loss of our manufacturing industry, the high cost of housing, the soaring gas, electricity and water bills, the incompetence and unaccountability of our obese government departments, the disappearance of legal aid, the interminable NHS waiting lists, the time-wasting burden of V.A.T., the loss of bus conductors, milkmen, rag-and-bone men, police on the streets, public swimming pools, playing fields, free parking, the overwhelming influx of foreign immigrants, cash-grabbing speed cameras, council tax increases, the avalanche of EU regulations, the government's involvement in illegal wars, the horror hospitals, stealth taxes, the ever-rising expense of dental treatment, the closure of mental asylums, the privatisation of care-homes, the dumbing-down of education, the rise in crime, and the unceasing gush of lies from politicians. But we do precious little about it. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">What's wrong with us? Why won't we stick up for ourselves? Why won't we fight for democracy and justice? What's happened to our British Bulldog spirit? It seems the bravest thing people do nowadays is emigrate.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Above all, why did we allow our wealth to be transferred to private companies, foreign corporations and foreign governments? It seems incomprehensible.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">But, actually, it's not incomprehensible. We were simply out-smarted. We were out-smarted by Friedmanomics. We were conned by a bunch of snake-oil salesmen from America. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">George Bush Snr., one of the perpetrators of the scam, knew exactly what was going on. He even named it. He called it "Voodoo Economics". </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">We were conned because Margaret Thatcher was charismatic. We were conned because (for a decade or so) the media promoted privatisation as a good thing. We were persuaded that publicly-owned companies were inefficient; that productivity and services would improve when these companies were privatised. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">We were assured that the increased productivity achieved by taking our assets out of the public sector, would not only improve our manufacturing industry and enhance services but also - because of the "trickle-down effect" - increase national prosperity. The claim was that, even though the profits produced by the privatised industries would go to private individuals rather than the nation, these private individuals would spend their profits "in the market-place" and thus the wealth would 'trickle-down' to the common people. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Not very likely. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">But we believed it. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">What happened (as you would expect) was that the wealth of a small gang of plutocrats went rocketing up, while the living standards of the rest of society went down and, by the year 2000, the gap between rich and poor had widened to an extent not seen since the Edwardian era. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">We were fooled. We didn't know what was going on. It wasn't that we trusted the government - we didn't. We just couldn't imagine that our government would deliberately rip us off on such a monumental scale. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">We didn't know (and most of us still don't) that, since 1913, the United States has been controlled by a banking cartel. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Since 1913, this cartel (currently 18 banks) has secured near-total domination of America's major corporations - the same corporations which control most of the industries in America - including the media - and finance the election campaigns of congressmen, senators and presidential candidates.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">After World War Two, the banking cartel wanted to increase profits by venturing overseas. To facilitate this, they set up the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They also, incidentally, funded the University of Chicago Economics Department which gave us the 'Chicago School' and Professor Milton Friedman.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was one of the cartel's first targets for expansion. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Although a few American corporations set up shop in Britain after the Second World War (such as IBM, Ford, Chrysler, Coca Cola and Xerox) it wasn't until the 1980's - when Margaret Thatcher was in power - that our government fell entirely into the trap laid by the US banking cartel.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">No other European state surrendered to Friedmanomics as completely as Britain. Why not?Because in every European country </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" >except Britain</span><span style="font-size:130%;">, social democracy is </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-size:130%;" >enforced by a written constitution</span><span style="font-size:130%;">. These constitutions safeguard national assets, and guarantee they cannot be sold - or any constitutional change made - without a national referendum. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Britain is the only country in Europe without a written constitution. In Britain, the government can make major changes of policy without reference to the people. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">But no-one can escape the law of karma - not even the bankers, the plutocrats and their government minions. Their greed has led to crashing stock-markets, failing banks and fears for the financial system itself.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Are we seeing the death-throes of Freidmanomics? I hope so. It's time to put our economy - and our society - back on a sound footing. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">How can this be done?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">1)....Renationalise our gas, water, electricity, telecommunications, railways, roads and bridges.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">2)....Scrap the NHS 'internal market', abolish Public Care Trusts, restore the Regional Health Authorities, ban private medicine (including dentistry and optometry).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">3)....Set up a decentralised democratic government system guaranteed by a written constitution.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">4)....Abolish all public and grammar schools and raise the standards of our comprehensives to Finnish levels. (If the Finns can have 100% literacy why can't we?) </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">5)....Declare independence from the European Union and have a big bonfire of the regulations. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">6)....Defend British culture and identity by mandating that 20% of all films exhibited in UK cinemas are British films.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">7)....Abolish VAT and Corporation Tax. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">8)....Restore anti-monopoly legislation.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">9)....Legalize secondary strike action and picketing.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;">10)...Abolish Britain's iniquitous leasehold law and nationalise all land not entered in the Land Registry (about 35% of the UK).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size:130%;">And try not to forget that Greed Eats Brains.</span>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4335257764580072745.post-72401508883143367782009-03-23T08:39:00.000-07:002009-03-23T09:27:40.270-07:00Banking Crisis<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjsxNfgCe8SgGUkPfMTMpBIkOzXq2JCaqitQYPMlMlTL9RmX6AS4nPNOyF6FYxMC4kPv-LpYVXzUa3-0PMJYv8P9ICdQbtJLb6XP1pccLD2_h755FHCgWdcLEmLHJkVxU6cllyMABRx_A/s1600-h/Jonny+copy_2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 169px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjsxNfgCe8SgGUkPfMTMpBIkOzXq2JCaqitQYPMlMlTL9RmX6AS4nPNOyF6FYxMC4kPv-LpYVXzUa3-0PMJYv8P9ICdQbtJLb6XP1pccLD2_h755FHCgWdcLEmLHJkVxU6cllyMABRx_A/s200/Jonny+copy_2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316414755526843986" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />I can't help thinking the 'stimulus packages' and 'quantative easing' policies of the US and UK are the wrong way to deal with the financial crisis. How does it make sense to solve a multi-billion debt problem by borrowing trillions? Won't this give us a multi-trillion debt problem? It's like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.<br />I think we now know what caused the financial crisis - the failure of US and UK governments to regulate the banks. Gordon Brown and Alaister Darling are now talking about 'increasing regulation' but so far have done nothing. Indeed, we've just heard today that Northern Rock was selling 100% toxic-debt mortgages <em>afte</em>r their £25 billion taxpayer-funded government bailout. No regulation whatsoever!<br /><br />It seems to me that although we have this thing called a 'government' there's no one doing any governing. The ship moves on - pushed this way and that by changes in the weather - with no aim or purpose, with no one at the wheel.<br /><br />Northern Rock, RBS, HBOS, Lloyds and Barclays gamble away their depositors' money because they can - because the government has removed the regulations that used to enforce prudence. These banks would go broke - and all their depositors would lose their money unless the government bailed them out. So the government bails them out. The banks are saved. The depositors' current accounts and savings accounts are saved. The bankers give themselves bonuses and go back to the casino.<br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >The govt does not restore the regulations that enforce prudence. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />All it has done is foist trillions of pounds of debt on the British public in order to paper over the cracks. The problems will come back and next time be twice as big. Next year Northern Rock will be asking for a £50billion bailout.<br /><br />Why do these banks want to gamble so much with our money? Is it really just psychotic greed? I don't think so. Yes, there's the carrot of the big bonuses for winning in the stock, futures, money-markets and hedge funds, for winning bets on whether a certain stock will go up or down - but there's also the <em>stick</em> of the continuous devaluation of money. Inflation.<br />Inflation reduces the value of money year on year. And bankers know better than most that the government's inflation figures are rigged. True inflation for the past decade has not been 2-3%, as officially claimed, but 8-10%. This puts great pressure on banks to - every year - increase the value of the deposits they hold by at least 10%. They have many strategies and tactics for doing this - most of which (just like Obama's and Brown's 'solutions' to the crisis) <em>increase</em> inflation - the cause of the problem in the first place.<br /><br />We need a solution for inflation: to stabilise - and keep stable - the value of money. We need to go back on the gold standard. We need to prevent governments and banks from printing money. Gold today has more or less the same value as it had in 1916. It's stable. It enforces prudence. It takes the stress out of money. It means the money you earn is worth something - it won't evaporate. You don't have to spend it or invest it as quickly as possible to get the most out of it before it loses value. You can save it - you won't lose by saving.<br />Returning to the gold standard will slow down the economy - a good thing, in my view. It will create security and revive a more thrifty, less throw-away society more conducive to human happiness. It won't abolish fear and greed but it will restrain them, moderate them.<br />We need to get back on the gold standard - but it won't happen. At least, not in the immediate future because the establishment will fight tooth and nail against it.<br />If we returned to the gold standard, the USA's Federal Reserve Bank would be redundant; the US dollar would cease being the world's reserve currency... America would have to let go of its empire.<br />But the world would be better - and more stable - and more equal in opportunity - because of sharing one non-inflationary medium of exchange for goods and services - gold.<br />It's quite possible that the inflationary money-printing stimulus packages being thrown around today will push us into a depression far greater than would be the case if we let the banks go bust and pay for their folly and learn the lessons they and the governments (who serve them) need to learn.<br />But these rich pampered people are terrified of pain.<br />They will steal as much as they can from the public to stave off the inevitable. But the inevitable will come.<br />A point will be reached when the public will refuse to give the governments and the banks any more money. There will be tax strikes; there will riots and demonstrations; there will be demands for bankers and government officials to be punished. (Already the Representative for Iowa has called for bankers to commit harii-kiri - a straw in the wind).<br />Quantitaive easing will push the financial system into meltdown and paper money will become worthless.<br />That's when we will return to gold and silver and a new dawn of fiscal responsibility.</span>Jonathan Gemshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12023837124249480202noreply@blogger.com0