Armchair Revolutionaries

For those who don't speak German, there are sub-titles, but basically, all you need to know is that MEPs are as greedy as MPs and just as reluctant for us to know about it. This German film from last year demonstrates this quite well.

A handwritten note attached to an MP's expense claim:

“Battle of Britain church service, Sunday 17.09.06. £5 contribution to offertory on behalf of Frank Cook MP.”

Even the fees office, for once, refused to pay out on the claim.

Hi to everybody...here's a very interesting article on the swine flu outbreak in Mexico.
http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/qa_on_swine_flu_050209.html

If, as Deborah Orr of The Independent has just claimed on Newsnight, it is a good idea for MPs expenses to be made clear to their constituents - 'democracy in action' was, I think, her choice of words - should we also be asking to see other senior figures in public life?

For example, the privatised industries that have monopoly over services - I'm thinking Centrica, British Telecom, train companies and the like.

And what about newspapers, for that matter? What salaries and expenses are these people claiming; after all, some of them are very influential on our lives, and also on our politics, are they not?

In a nutshell, the developing world got into debt when Western banks lent new governments (those created during decolonisation) money to build roads, electricity grids, water supply networks and the like. It is generally accepted that a rise in interest rates, recession and low commodity prices made it difficult for these developing countries to pay back these development loans.

What is less often talked about is the fact that the loans were often made on the condition that Western companies were employed to build the roads, grids and networks. Hence charges of neo-imperialism.

Anyway, on to the point. The Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) has done some recent research, showing the negative effects of the financial crisis on developing countries:

Quote:
"*with traditional sources of finance drying up, export markets collapsing and a range of other economic impacts, the threat of a renewed debt crisis is very real.

*the sudden withdrawal of foreign capital has caused dramatic falls in exchange rates.

*private capital flows to developing countries could fall to around $165 billion in 2009. This is less than half the $466 billion of 2008 and down 82% on the peak year of 2007."

Various recommendations are made, and you can read the full research from here, http://www.eldis.org/go/display&type=Document&id=43438

There is one I find very interesting. All sorts of excuses have been made for bailing out Western banks, and one has to wonder how urgent that process is compared to other global priorities, such as poverty, disease and climate adaptation and mitigation. The JDC suggests that $400bn would really help 100 governments,

Quote:
"cancel more debts - at least $400 billion should be cancelled for around 100 countries if they are to be able to pay for essential services for their people without having to tax those below the poverty line"

How do the bailouts compare to this $400bn, you may wonder? Well this document from the Institute for Policy Studies answers that question,

http://www.ips-dc.org/getfile.php?id=314 [link to pdf]

Quote:
"The United States and European Governments Have Committed 40 Times More Money to Rescue Financial Firms than to Fight Climate and Poverty Crises in the Developing World"

It is estimated by the UN that feeding, clothing and provide basic education and healthcare to the world's children would cost $30bn per year. The bailouts, according to the IPS, amount to $4.1tn.

You do the math. The only point I want to make here is that it is the governments, institutions and individuals making the decisions to bail out the banking industry are the same governments, institutions and individuals who this year are making the final amendments to the global climate change deals. I for one would have more faith in this process if we were prepared to meet the Millennium Development Goals which, not so long ago, were completely achievable.

What has changed in the last few years that means they are now too ambitious?

http://www.wimp.com/ourdecisions

Video about our decision making processes. Relates to other videos posted here about the mind and free will. Interesting and amusing.

Hi to everybody...Alan Johnson has resurrected this idea...what do you think of it?

There is an alternative to our damaged system
Britain must have root-and-branch reform of its constitution — and a referendum on proportional representation
Alan Johnson

The public mood of anger and disquiet over the way MPs have used and abused the lax system of distributing second home allowances demands a response on two levels.

The first is to demonstrate not just proper contrition but a determination to ensure that the public can participate in a root-and-branch examination of our political system.

The second is to continue to discuss the core issues that will determine this country’s future — the economy, crime, health and education. I don’t think that the public has in any way downgraded the importance of the latter in pursuit of the former.

Gordon Brown was absolutely right to seek cross-party consensus on MPs’ pay and allowances. Placing these issues in the hands of an independent body and taking immediate steps to alter some of the worse excesses of the allowance system, ahead of the Kelly report, showed that the three main party leaders recognised that using allowances as a political punchbag would sicken the public further. All three parties have been damaged and all three must demonstrate their determination to renounce the status quo.

However, the inner workings of Parliament are just one aspect of the political system. We need to overhaul the engine, not just clean the upholstery. Again the Prime Minister is leading on the need for profound constitutional change. This will demand the kind of measured debate that he will instigate over the coming weeks.

This debate cannot exclude the central question of electoral reform. But on this aspect the heavy lifting has already been done. The Plant Commission — the joint work of Robin Cook and Robert McLennan — and the Jenkins Report have all been completed. Nothing has changed in the meantime apart from the public mood. We have the mandate to pursue the issue of electoral reform and to hold a referendum on a specific new system.

Jenkins produced an elegant solution — Alternative Vote Plus. This system maintains the constituency link so that voters have a local MP that is directly responsible to them, but it also ensures that all votes count, irrespective of whether or not they were cast in the “safe seat” of one particular party.

Here’s the gist of how it would work. On polling day, a voter would have two ballot papers. The first would be for choosing the constituency MP: the voter marks his preferences (1, 2, 3 and so on) against the candidates. If one candidate gets more than half of the first preference votes cast, he or she is duly returned. If not, the candidate with the lowest tally is knocked out, and the second (and then third, etc) preferences are redistributed until finally one candidate reaches the magical 50 per cent mark.

On the second ballot paper, the voter simply marks which party she wants to give her vote to. All these votes are tallied up and those parties that exceed the threshold (say 5 per cent) get a proportionate number of seats. The majority of those sitting on the green benches, however, would be constituency MPs.

The adoption of AV+ would shift the political focus currently concentrated almost exclusively on a few swing voters in a handful of marginal seats. It would end the perversity of the party with the most votes nationally forming the opposition rather than the government, as has happened twice since the war.

Labour is the only party ever to win under First Past the Post (FPTP) and then use its majority to explore a change to the system that elected them. I recognise that Jenkins is gathering dust because we lost the will to carry it through — but that was at a time when it could legitimately be said that there was no public interest and when narrow party political advantage dominated our internal debate in the Labour Party. Of course, I recognise that many colleagues on my benches support FPTP for more valid reasons.

My proposal is that we offer the public the two options of AV+ and FPTP. We should debate these two alternatives freely and openly with no party whip and no government recommendation. Then on the date of the next general election we should have a national referendum and let the people decide. This is a genuinely radical alternative that only Labour in government can facilitate. It need not distract us from my second imperative.

I bow to no one in my desire to debate the major political issues of the day. On health, the Conservatives have sought to erase their dreadful record in government from the public memory while adopting policies designed to find favour with the most reactionary elements of the medical profession. Thus while 75 per cent of GP surgeries are now open later and/or on Saturdays following the action we took last year, the Conservatives still oppose greater access. As patients benefit from the maximum 18-week wait for surgery, the two-week wait for cancer patients and the four-hour limit for waiting in A&E, the Tories would remove these standards.

As we seek greater regulations in the financial sector, the Conservatives have made it clear that they will remove the prudential borrowing requirements on Foundation Trust Hospitals and give them the freedom to go bust, handing NHS assets to the administrator.

And as each of the 150 GP-led health centres open from 8am–8pm, 365 days a year, are established across the country, local Conservatives will, I presume, be standing outside with placards to express their opposition in accordance (amazingly) with Tory frontbench policy.

At the next election Gordon Brown will lead a party proud of its record and challenging in its vision. We also have the opportunity to go into that election offering to put real power into the hands of every voter. The two combined can produce the radical change that the moment demands.

Alan Johnson is Secretary of State for Health

-- Denis Diderot, 1751

Discuss!

...but what happened to talking about the appalling state of the economy?

House possessions, rising unemployment, inflation, all those naughty bankers, riots at G20 summits, etc. etc.

For the last couple of weeks all we've had is this talk about a few million quid being taken inappropriately by MPs, and people seem to have forgotten the few billion quid that the banks lost and all those other serious issues. As one of the unemployed myself I find this all very frustrating. Frankly, this MP business is utterly insignificant to me, but the state of the economy is hitting me where it hurts and millions of other people too.

Perspective has been badly lost. What is really more important now, the state of the economy or arguments over MPs garden gnomes? Billions versus millions, 3 million quid versus 3 million unemployed.

GRRR!!

Hi to everybody...some of you here may know of this scientist, but thought I'd put up part of his much larger essay...This is the last part and really very interesting...
THE MYSTERY OF MIND

All of us have been brought up on the idea that memories are stored in the brain; we use the word brain interchangeably with mind or memory. I am suggesting that the brain is more like a tuning system than a memory storage device. One of the main arguments for the localization of memory in the brain is the fact that certain kinds of brain damage can lead to loss of memory. If the brain is damaged in a car accident and someone loses memory, then the obvious assumption is that memory tissue must have been destroyed. But this is not necessarily so.

Consider the TV analogy again. If I damaged your TV set so that you were unable to receive certain channels, or if I made the TV set aphasic by destroying the part of it concerned with the production of sound so that you could still get the pictures but could not get the sound, this would not prove that the sound or the pictures were stored inside the TV set. It would merely show that I had affected the tuning system so you could not pick up the correct signal any longer. No more does memory loss due to brain damage prove that memory is stored inside the brain. In fact, most memory loss is temporary: amnesia following concussion, for example, is often temporary. This recovery of memory is very difficult to explain in terms of conventional theories: if the memories have been destroyed because the memory tissue has been destroyed, they ought not to come back again; yet they often do.

Another argument for the localization of memory inside the brain is suggested by the experiments on electrical stimulation of the brain by Wilder Penfield and others. Penfield stimulated the temporal lobes of the brains of epileptic patients and found that some of these stimuli could elicit vivid responses, which the patients interpreted as memories of things they had done in the past. Penfield assumed that he was actually stimulating memories which were stored in the cortex. Again returning to the TV analogy, if I stimulated the tuning circuit of your TV set and it jumped onto another channel, this wouldn't prove the information was stored inside the tuning circuit. It is interesting that, in his last book, The Mystery of the Mind, Penfield himself abandoned the idea that the experiments proved that memory was inside the brain. He came to the conclusion that memory was not stored inside the cortex at all.

There have been many attempts to locate memory traces within the brain, the best known of which were by Karl Lashley, the great American neurophysiologist. He trained rats to learn tricks, then chopped bits of their brains out to determine whether the rats could still do the tricks. To his amazement, he found that he could remove over fifty percent of the brain-any 50%-and there would be virtually no effect on the retention of this learning. When he removed all the brain, the rats could no longer perform the tricks, so he concluded that the brain was necessary in some way to the performance of the task-which is hardly a very surprising conclusion. What was surprising was how much of the brain he could remove without affecting the memory.

Similar results have been found by other investigators, even with invertebrates such as the octopus. This led one experimenter to speculate that memory was both everywhere and nowhere in particular. Lashley himself concluded that memories are stored in a distributed manner throughout the brain, since he could not find the memory traces which classical theory required. His student, Karl Pribram, extended this idea with the holographic theory of memory storage: memory is like a holographic image, stored as an interference pattern throughout the brain.

What Lashley and Pribram (at least in some of his writing) do not seem to have considered is the possibility that memories may not be stored inside the brain at all. The idea that they are not stored inside the brain is more consistent with the available data than either the conventional theories or the holographic theory. Many difficulties have arisen in trying to localize memory storage in the brain, in part because the brain is much more dynamic than previously thought. If the brain is to serve as a memory storehouse, then the storage system would have to remain stable; yet it is now known that nerve cells turn over much more rapidly than was previously thought. All the chemicals in synapses and nerve structures and molecules are turning over and changing all the time. With a very dynamic brain, it is difficult to see how memories are stored.

There is also a logical problem about conventional theories of memory storage, which various philosophers have pointed out. All conventional theories assume that memories are somehow coded and located in a memory store in the brain. When they are needed they are recovered by a retrieval system. This is called the coding, storage, and retrieval model. However, for a retrieval system to retrieve anything, it has to know what it wants to retrieve; a memory retrieval system has to know what memory it is looking for. It thus must be able to recognize the memory that it is trying to retrieve. In order to recognize it, the retrieval system itself must have some kind of memory. Therefore, the retrieval system must have a sub-retrieval system to retrieve its memories from its store. This leads to an infinite regress. Several philosophers argue that this is a fatal, logical flaw in any conventional theory of memory storage. However, on the whole, memory theoreticians are not very interested in what philosophers say, so they do not bother to reply to this argument. But it does seem to me quite a powerful one.

In considering the morphic resonance theory of memory, we might ask: if we tune into our own memories, then why don't we tune into other people's as well? I think we do, and the whole basis of the approach I am suggesting is that there is a collective memory to which we are all tuned which forms a background against which our own experience develops and against which our own individual memories develop. This concept is very similar to the notion of the collective unconscious.

Jung thought of the collective unconscious as a collective memory, the collective memory of humanity. He thought that people would be more tuned into members of their own family and race and social and cultural group, but that nevertheless there would be a background resonance from all humanity: a pooled or averaged experience of basic things that all people experience (e.g., maternal behavior and various social patterns and structures of experience and thought). It would not be a memory from particular persons in the past so much as an average of the basic forms of memory structures; these are the archetypes. Jung's notion of the collective unconscious makes extremely good sense in the context of the general approach that I am putting forward. Morphic resonance theory would lead to a radical reaffirmation of Jung's concept of the collective unconscious.

It needs reaffirmation because the current mechanistic context of conventional biology, medicine, and psychology denies that there can be any such thing as the collective unconscious; the concept of a collective memory of a race or species has been excluded as even a theoretical possibility. You cannot have any inheritance of acquired characteristics according to conventional theory; you can only have an inheritance of genetic mutations. Under the premises of conventional biology, there would be no way that the experiences and myths of, for example, African tribes, would have any influence on the dreams of someone in Switzerland of non-African descent, which is the sort of thing Jung thought did happen. That is quite impossible from the conventional point of view, which is why most biologists and others within mainstream science do not take the idea of the collective unconscious seriously. It is considered a flaky, fringe idea that may have some poetic value as a kind of metaphor, but has no relevance to proper science because it is a completely untenable concept from the point of view of normal biology.

The approach I am putting forward is very similar to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious. The main difference is that Jung's idea was applied primarily to human experience and human collective memory. What I am suggesting is that a very similar principle operates throughout the entire universe, not just in human beings. If the kind of radical paradigm shift I am talking about goes on within biology-if the hypothesis of morphic resonance is even approximately correct-then Jung's idea of the collective unconscious would become a mainstream idea: Morphogenic fields and the concept of the collective unconscious would completely change the context of modern psychology.

Here's the whole article for anybody who might be interested in reading more about his theories.
http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/morphic1_paper.html

...that we let creep into being and now we're paying for our ignorance. This is how i see it, had to write an essay for uni which is closely related to all of this. You should, i humbly hope, be able to tell i adopt a Marxist point of view.

According to a lot of experts and professionals, in various fields including sociology and economics, we are currently lucky enough to be living in ‘the best time to be alive’. They claim that not only is the capitalist system not a barrier to this, but it is fundamentally because of this system that we are prospering. As stated by Allister Heath:

For billions of people around the world, these are the best of times to be alive. From Beijing to Bratislava, more of us are living longer, healthier and more comfortable lives than at any time in history; fewer of us are suffering from poverty, hunger or illiteracy. Pestilence, famine, death and even war, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are in retreat, thanks to the liberating forces of capitalism and technology. (Heath, 2006)

Looking at this statement from an objective perspective it seems plausible that this theory is sound and well thought out. It is hard to deny that thanks to capitalism most people now own a house, a car, and have the freedom to be liberal consumers. However, looking at this statement from a Marxist perspective, it is absurd that Heath describes capitalism as a force that gives the masses freedom and liberty. A Marxist would argue that the capitalist, consumer society most westerners live in is a ruling ideology that enslaves the masses, and creates an unnatural and unhealthy desire to have more than your neighbour. Marx himself wrote:

The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relations, the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. (Marx and Engel’s, 2006)

Here, Marx is saying that the idea of materialism and consuming the products produced by the bourgeoisie is sold to the masses through the ruling class’s ideology and the way it can dominate the thoughts of the masses. Leslie Jermyn (2003) argues that we now define ourselves by our material goods and this is also how we are defined by others. He says that it is a trap as the more we consume the more we are driven to d it, searching for ‘nirvana around the next corner at the mall’ (Leslie Jermyn, 2003).

It is also true that these ‘more comfortable lives’, to use Heath’s words, are borrowed against future earnings. This leads to consumers paying a lot more than the actual value of an item in the long run and developing large debt. This ruling ideology that we now have the means to own things at our free will and pay later has reached alarming heights. In some Scandinavian countries it is now possible for people as young as 16 to receive the equivalent of a £200 loan merely through sending a text message (The Local: March 18th).

The idea of loans and buying on credit has its roots in early banking systems. Originally a paper note or bill had to be backed up in the bank by the amount of gold it stated. However, this system changed in the 19th century and banks now had the power to make their own money, making themselves richer and the public suffer, due to rising inflation. When looking at this from a Marxist perspective it is important to point out that the bankers now controlled the means of production in a new area; they controlled the means of producing money and therefore were able to sell money. They did this with the credit system.

The creation of a central bank, run by a handful of very influential and rich men was opposed by various presidents in America, including Thomas Jefferson and later Andrew Jackson. As shown by Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Albert Gallatin (1802):

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

This would have dramatic effects on the economy. As stated by contemporary philosopher and academic Noam Chomsky when he wrote:

‘The unprecedented intervention of the Fed may be justified or not in narrow terms, but it reveals, once again, the profoundly undemocratic character of state capitalist institutions, designed in large measure to socialise cost and risk and privatize profit, without a public voice.’ (http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20080919.htm)

In today’s world, even governments are in debt and paying interest to banks. The United States of America, for example, is trillions of dollars in debt to its central bank, a bank that is run by a few powerful men who also own institutions such as newspapers and news stations. These other institutions were bought with the money made from the debt of America, thus giving this small elite group power over many of the institutions within the super-structure, the media, banks and the government. Mayer Amschel Rothschild once famously stated:

‘Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws’. (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mayeramsch178084.html)

Thus showing the simple ruling ideology that complete control over the masses and the ability to profit from them can be gained through controlling the means of production, in this case the means of production being the means and ability to produce a nations money.

This supports what Marx and Engels said about ruling ideologies and how they are used to control the masses, especially when at first they are dressed up and disguised as a blessing to the masses. Much like the ability to actively consume and posses was at first a liberating feeling, yet it is now becoming clear when looking at the current economic climate in the western world.

President Woodrow Wilson may have foreseen this when, following signing the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, he wrote:

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

There is a fascinating review here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/books/review/Rauch-t.html?_r=1&ref=books

of a book by Richard A Posner about how Capitalism itself was to blame for the financial crash at the end of 2008. Posner has written over 40 books, is an expert on economics and law, a judge, and a lecturer at the University of Chicago. The book is, apparently:

"a concise, constructive, jargon- and ­acronym-free, nontechnical, unsen­sational, light-on-anecdote, analytical examination of the major facets of the biggest U.S. economic disaster in my lifetime and that of most people living today"

A few other choice quotes:

"... markets, entirely of their own accord, will sometimes capsize and be unable to right themselves completely for years at a stretch"

"An interrelated system of financial intermediaries” — a banking system, broadly defined — “is inherently unstable,” Posner writes. Think of it as “a kind of epileptic, subject to unpredictable, strange seizures"

"It comes as something of a surprise that Posner, a doyen of the market-oriented law-and-economics movement, should deliver a roundhouse punch to the proposition that markets are self-correcting"

"laissez-faire economics has nothing relevant to say"

Well worth a look!

Cheers, Tom.

Thoughts?

"The media in London is still frothing at the mouth over the expenses scandal of MPs, not giving much thought to the implications of the worlds most important leaders meeting in secret in Greece."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085466.html

"U.S. President Barack Obama has sent a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran. The message was conveyed by a senior American official who met in Israel with Netanyahu, ministers and other senior officials. Earlier, Netanyahu's envoy visited Washington and met with National Security Adviser James Jones and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and discussed the dialogue Obama has initiated with Tehran.

The message from the American envoy to the prime minister reveals U.S. concern that Israel could lose patience and act against Iran. It is important to the Americans that they not be caught off guard and find themselves facing facts on the ground at the last minute

It may be assumed that Obama is disturbed by the positions Netanyahu expressed before his election vis-a-vis Tehran - for example, Netanyahu's statement that "If elected I pledge that Iran will not attain nuclear arms, and that includes whatever is necessary for this statement to be carried out." After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers to carry out another holocaust

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak do not oppose American dialogue with Tehran, but they believe it should be conducted within a limited window of time, making it clear to Iran that if it does not stop its nuclear program, severe sanctions will be imposed and other alternatives will be considered.

The American concern that Israel will attack Iran came up as early as last year, while president George W. Bush was still in office. As first reported in Haaretz, former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Barak made a number of requests from Bush during the latter's visit to Jerusalem, which were interpreted as preparations for an aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities"

Good thing or not?

Tom.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are claiming that you’ve picked the public purse,
If you can kid yourself though all men doubt you,
That other politicians have done worse;
If you can bleat and not get tired of bleating,
And wresting the truth, ignore the facts,
Or being fingered, claim that it is baiting
By journos out to stab collective backs:

If you can dream of a portfolio
Of properties at taxpayer expense;
If you can bend the rules and sink so low
And treat allowances as honest recompense,
If you can’t bear to hear the truth be spoken
And wriggle out by blaming the rules
And watch the things you’ve scammed become a token
Of your venality, and taking us for fools:

If you can make one heap of all your profit
And plead to Paxo that you’re clean and sound
That it’s the system that’s at fault – you’ve got it -
The public is too thick to understand;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To defend the indefensible and then
Hold on to your ill-gotten winnings,
Through flipping to avoid a capital gain;

If you can talk to your electors and defend your
Claims for food and plants and sundry bits and bobs,
While enacting laws to prosecute the poor
Who over-claim on tax-credits, poor sods;
If you can fill a Paxman interview
With sixty seconds’ worth of self-defence,
Yours is the earth for the taking, Magoo,
And - which is more- you’re an MP, you ponce!

Posted as a comment by "Methinkshe" says, at Guido Fawkes a few minutes ago.

http://www.order-order.com/2009/05/alan-duncan-gets-some-free-gardening/#comment-92567

No apology for sending this ! ! ! After hearing they want to sing the National Anthem in Spanish - enough is enough. Nowhere did they sing it in Italian, Polish, Irish (Celtic), German or any other language because of immigration. It was written by Francis Scott Key and should be sung word for word the way it was written The news broadcasts even gave the translation -- not even close. NOT sorry if this offends anyone because this is MY COUNTRY - IF IT IS YOUR COUNTRY SPEAK UP -- please pass this along. I am not against immigration -- just come through like everyone else. Get a sponsor; have a place to lay your head; have a job; pay your taxes, live by the rules AND LEARN THE LANGUAGE as all other immigrants have in the past -- and GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented immigrant' is like calling a drug dealer an 'unlicensed pharmacist.

Guido Fawkes is enjoying himself with the expenses scandal, as indeed am I, now I have got over my initial adrenoline-inspired urge to go and burn someone's house down.

The fake outraged standing on their dignity which we have seen from some MPs is all the more galling when we consider the cynical steps the House of Commons authorities took to prevent us knowing the truth. This included shredding all the expenses records prior to 2004, despite court actions being underway to force their release, and the Speaker spending many thousand of pounds of taxpayers' money on legal fees fighting tooth and nail to prevent the release of the details that survive. There has been one of the largest organised attempts to pervert the course of justice and hide the evidence of wrongdoings in our national history.

You may think that phrase is an exageration, but these expenses claim scams and property fiddles have been going on for years and years and years. It is not just Labour MPs, of course. The trivia of this scandal, which involves the creaming off of illions of pounds, has caught out people like Tory MP James Gray, exposed today by the News of the World for claiming for Remembrance Day wreaths on expenses. More will follow, hence the deafening silence from Cameron and his colleagues.

Its good to see the press is trying to make up for years of failing to do its job and let us all in on the secreat of the lifestyles of our elected representatives. There are now lots of 'something must be done' articles in the papers, with The Observer telling us all, as if we didn't know it, that 'MPs have Failed Us'.

Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the committee on standards in public life, and therefore a man in a position to know, is quoted in the Times asking whether MPs’ expenses should be exempt from tax. “Some of these items are what they would have spent their normal income on so how can they justify claiming tax relief on it? There is no reason now why the normal rules shouldn’t apply to MPs. The sheer scale of what has been taking place overwhelms you. Nobody’s got clean hands.” To which I ask, given that he was once the chairman of the committee on standards in public life, why he didn't do anything about this when he had a chance, or at least blow the whistle a bit earlier?

Of course, what is lacking here is the example set by a strong leader:

http://plato-says.blogspot.com/2009/05/sharpest-cookie.html

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nNb8IDnGJfU/SgPlQ2MKoHI/AAAAAAAADYc/zQBLTkeku1g/s1600-h/Wanted+Poster+V2.0.jpg

I feel like saying something unpopular.

There is a strong statistical link between homosexuality and pedophilia

Homosexual men make up less than three per cent of the adult male population, they commit a disproportionate number (one third or more) of child sexual molestations.
NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) started out as part of the mainstream gay rights movement.

Wiki - NAMBLA

I see something sinister behind the recent political pressure from gay groups to lower the legal age of homosexual consent. And the constant pressure for schools to teach homosexuality as “an equally valid lifestyle choice”.

Having been victorious in reducing the legal age of consent for sodomy
from 18 to 16, Peter Tatchell and several other groups are now pushing
for it to be reduced to 14. And then to 12. And then...

Peter Thatchell - Read it and puke

Today 8 pedos were caught out – unsurprisingly one was a gay rights campaigner. Please read the article in the Guardian here:

Pedo Ring - Gay rights campaigner led double life as ringleader

My solution for pedophiles is very simple.

Hang them.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Jacqui Smith has either been lying to Parliament, her constituents, the public or her local council. It turns out that the second home she claims Parliamentary allowances on (the one where her husband piles into the tissues at the taxpayers' expense when he isn't creaming it in the public payroll as her marital "aide") is actually her main residence for council tax purposes. She can't have it both ways. Or can she?

A freedom of information request has led Redditch council to confirm that Miss Smith pays council tax on the basis that the £300,000 constituency house is her main home. It seems that either there are two of her, or the ex-Economics teacher turned guardian of the public's morals has been more than economical with the truth to the public: unless there is a twin we don't yet know about, she is a full-blown liar who should be being questioned on suspicion of fraud.

The only way her lies will stack up is if there are two of her. Fingerprint that woman immediately.

Greetings one and all. Do you think the police have been questioned as to whether they would open fire on the public?

http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2009/3/2/4109792.html

I'm in two minds. The rational part of me has enough experience with the every day, boring machinations of government [particularly the couldn't organise a p!ss-up in a brewery part of government] to be highly sceptical of this conspiracy stuff.

But I have nagging doubts. Our civil liberties have undoubtedly been reduced. Perhaps this is mere coincidence, and necessary in the post-911 world... I don't know.

Anyone here know anything about Common Purpose?

Also, I thought this on Madeleine McCann may be of interest, I read about it in a PDF banging on about all sorts of conspiracies, including the Chemtrail stuff which is utter tosh in my mind, as I have made clear here before. Still, interested to know peoples thoughts and comments.

http://madeleinefoundation.org/main/30-reasons/

(sorry, not the most well thought out blog but hope there's some stuff in here to tickle your fancy anyway! M.)

Hi to everybody...here's a very interesting programme by Edward Stourton again that we listened to on Sunday I think...tried to get it on Listen again straightaway for you all but it had been withheld but it has gone up there now...it's the history of Catholics and Jews with a second one next week taking us up to the modern day...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00k9ppm/Catholics_and_Jews_From_Pogroms_to_Pius_XII/

Boots the Chemists and Jackboot Jacqui are discussing to go into business together to profit from the compulsory issung of ID cards in the UK, if the bath-plug buying chissler has her way.

Quite why a trusted High Street store like Boots wants to sully its public reputation and become an arm of the nosey-parker state is beyond me, but apparently, our nasty Home Secretary is trying to bribe them into being the fragrant smiling face of the police state and collect everybody's fingerprints and biometric details on her behalf. A short step to the government finding out how many Boots points we have all earned on condoms and hair-dye, and whether we are buying suntan lotion in anticipation of fleeing the country. Some people will do anything to get their hands on taxpayers' money, but Boots? I am disgusted.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1177752/Jacqui-Smith-wants-Post-Offices-high-street-shops-ID-card-fingerprints.html

Hi to everybody...I've just received this email from AVAAZ on swine flu and its origins...makes for very interesting reading...there's a petition starting if you want to sign it...
Dear friends,

Evidence is emerging that traces swine flu to giant factory pig farms that are dirty, dangerous, and inhumane. Sign the petition to the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization to investigate and regulate these threats to our health:

Sign the Petition!
No-one yet knows whether swine flu will become a global pandemic, but it is becoming clear where it came from – most likely a giant pig factory farm run by an American multinational corporation in Veracruz, Mexico.(1)

These factory farms are disgusting and dangerous, and they're rapidly multiplying. Thousands of pigs are brutally crammed into dirty warehouses and sprayed with a cocktail of drugs -- posing a health risk to more than just our food -- they and their manure lagoons create the perfect conditions to breed dangerous new viruses like swine flu. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) must investigate and develop regulations for these farms to protect global health.

Big agrobusiness will try to obstruct and scuttle any attempts at reform, so we need a massive outcry that health authorities can't ignore. Sign the petition below for investigation and regulation of factory farms and tell your friends and family and we will deliver it to the UN agencies. If we reach 200,000 signatures we will deliver it to the WHO in Geneva with a herd of cardboard pigs. For every 1000 petition signatures we will add a pig to the herd:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/swine_flu_pandemic

Last week the flu was all that we talked about -- Mexico has been nearly paralysed and across the world leaders halted air travel, banned pork imports and initiated drastic controls to mitigate the spreading virus. As the threat shows signs of subsiding the question becomes where it came from and how we stop another outbreak.

Smithfield Corporation, the largest pig producer in the world whose farm is being fingered as the source of the H1N1 outbreak, denies any connection between their pigs and the flu and big agrobusiness worldwide pays huge sums of money for research to argue that biosafety is ensured in industrial hog production. But the WHO has been saying for years that 'a new pandemic is inevitable'(2) and experts from the European Commission and the FAO have cautioned that the rapid move from small holdings to industrial pig production is in fact increasing the risk of development and transmission of disease epidemics. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn that scientists still do not know the extent that infectious compounds produced in factory farms affect human health.(3)

Studies abound of the horrific conditions endured by pigs in concentrated large-scale operations, and the devastating economic impact on small farmer communities of bloated large-scale operations.(4) Smithfield itself has already been fined $12.6m and is currently under another federal investigation in the US for toxic environmental damage from pig excrement lakes.(5)

But even with all of this damaging evidence, a combination of increased global meat consumption and a powerful industry motivated by profit at the cost of human health, means that instead of being shut down - these sickening factory farm operations are propagating around the world and we are subsidising them (6). In the wake of this swine flu threat, let's hold industrial pig producers to account. Sign the petition for investigation and regulation:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/swine_flu_pandemic

If we resolve this global health crisis boldly by reassessing our food consumption and production, and urgently calling for an inquiry into the impact of factory farms on human health, we could put in place tough farm practice rules that will save the global population from future animal borne lethal pandemics.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/swine_flu_pandemic

in hope,

Alice, Pascal, Graziela, Paul, Brett, Ben, Ricken, Iain, Paula, Luis, Raj, Veronique, Milena, Margaret, Taren and the whole Avaaz team

(1) Biosurveillance report tracing the disease to the Smithfields farm: http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/biosurveillance/2009/04/swine-flu-in-mexico-timeline-of-events.html
Reports on the link between the Mexican factory farm and the flu:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/for-la-gloria-the-stench-of-blame-is-from-pig-factories-1675809.html

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-fg-mexico-flu28-2009apr28,0,1701782.story

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=can-swine-flu-be-blamed-on-industri-09-05-01

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227063.800-swine-flu-the-predictable-pandemic.html?full=true

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/swine-flu-outbreak----nat_b_191408.html

(2) WHO pandemic information
http://www.euro.who.int/influenza/20080618_19

(3) FAO, EC and CDC reports on the risks of industrial farming on public health
FAO and CIWF and http://www.cdc.gov/cafos/about.htm

(4) CIWF and PETA video reports of the disgusting conditions for animals in factory farms and the disease ridden manure swamps:
CIWF and PETA

(5) Reports on Smithfield's animal welfare and environmental damage
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/for-la-gloria-the-stench-of-blame-is-from-pig-factories-1675809.html

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/press/releases/new-report-highlights-the-trouble-with-smithfield-article03132008

http://avaazimages.s3.amazonaws.com/SmithfieldJan08.pdf

(6) Reports on UK tax payers subsidising factory farms http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/farming/5225298/Taxpayers-forking-out-700-million-for-factory-farming-in-England.html

---------

Since October the government has been banning people from the UK. The government today published a list of people banned from the UK.

Michael Savage is on the list.

Michael Savage is an enemy of the Left and a True Hero.

An American radio host he has been outspoken on Immigration and Islam, two things the British Labour party are in love with.

This is the Government's description.

Controversial daily radio talk-show host. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence. His views on immigration, Islam, rape and autism have caused great offence in the US.

As far as I know this guy has never broken any laws and I agree with most of what he says.

Why not check him out on You Tube and decide for yourself, instead of taking Jacqui Smith's word for it.

On Islam + Winston Churchill + CAIR:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwuduAaWvxU

On Mexican Immigration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq8wvG7p1c4

The largest petition on the 10 Downing Street website is the one asking Gordon Brown to resign. It has over 50,000 signatures so far.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/

I have seen Jenray mention before that she thinks petitions can be effective. I tend to be less optimistic about them. I shall therefore be interested to see how many names it takes before Mr Brown takes the hint.

Adults Only

Ok, the Chinese Kitten photos are doing the rounds again.

The images appear to show a woman crushing a kitten to death.

The story and images are on various sites – but no one seems to be asking the obvious question – Did this really happen? Or is it a Hoax?

These websites are hosted and commented on by animal rights True-Believers, so we can’t really expect these people to be objective.

Videos are hard to fake – and all the articles claim there is video evidence – however I’ve done a quick search of the internet and nothing so far.

Additionally lets not forget the Bonsai Kitten Hoax from about 10 years ago.

The animal rights people got so het up about this that the FBI got involved – of course it was a hoax - It turned out to be a prank by MIT students.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Bonsai_Kitten/

Ok. Here are the links to the Kitten Killer articles.
The old one – WARNING disturbing, not for kids, the weak minded, veggies, etc.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/gruesome/crushvideo.asp

The Latest – VERY WARNING disturbing, not for kids, the weak minded, veggies, etc.
http://www.ha-ro-kebeiks.eu/China01.htm

Gross yes - But Real or Hoax?

Come and read my latest blog post at http://banana.blog.co.uk
I would love to hear some good reasons why I am barking up the wrong tree.
It is one of those times when I would love to be proved to be wrong.