During a Wednesday morning interview with statewide radio talk show host Aaron Flint on “Voices of Montana,” Dr. Steve Running said any climate change solution needs to involve all nations.

“We have to have all the major nations in agreement on future progress,” said Running.

Running is a co-author of the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and founder of the Climate Change Studies program at the University of Montana. He added, “If the US passed a cap and trade and other countries did not, it wouldn’t work. It would ruin the US economy and it wouldn’t save the climate either. So this is a global issue, the global climate statistics are global in nature, global carbon emissions are global in nature, and we really have to have an international consensus of what to do. That is going to stretch our international diplomacy to its limit, there’s no doubt about that.”

Nonetheless, Running called on the United States to show leadership on the issue of addressing climate change, saying other countries will follow suit.

“Voices of Montana” is a Northern News Network talk show that airs statewide on more than a dozen radio stations each weekday morning.

CLICK TO LISTEN: Dr. Running on Cap and Trade legislation

H/T ClimateDepot.Com & Marc Morano

Source: Northern Broadcasting.com, October 29th 2009
STEVE RUNNING

“Many people believe that man is evolving; society is evolving; and that we now have control over the arbitrary evil of our environment; or at least we will have it after George Bush and his Neocons have about 25 years to fight the endless War against Terror”
Laura Knight-Jadczyk, from the Editor’s Preface to Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew M. Lobaczewski

For all of my life, one of my greatest interests has been to understand the nature of human evil. And I have always believed that it is one of the most important subjects that mankind needs to understand. So thank you to fellow DUer Larry Ogg for referring me to Lobaczewski’s book on Political Ponerology (and for your ideas on how to present this information).

Laura Knight-Jadczyk, in her Editor’s Preface to Political Ponerology, puts today’s world in perspective:

At the social level, hatred, envy, greed and strife multiply exponentially. Crime increases faster than the population. Combined with wars, insurrections and political purges, multiplied millions across the globe are without adequate food or shelter due to political actions. The totality of human suffering is a dreadful thing.

The woeful status of today’s world, as depicted in that brief but cogent summary, is due to human evil more than it is due to any other factor. Furthermore, humanity’s historical record in dealing with human evil has been abysmal.

So we need to do much better on that score. And that is the main reason for Lobaczewski’s book. For, as Knight-Jadczyk says in her Editor’s Preface, there is a lot that can be done to combat evil, and “the very first thing we can do is learn about it”.

Descriptions and definitions of human evil

Before one can understand how evil functions at the macro-level, that is, how it affects entire societies, it is necessary to understand how it operates in individuals. There are differing opinions on this issue, but most of them have a good deal in common. Knight-Jadczyk quotes from Martha Stout, who has worked extensively with the victims of psychopaths, on this issue.

Imagine – if you can – not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Knight-Jadczyk expands on that description:

They can imitate feelings, but the only real feelings they seem to have: is a sort of ‘predatorial hunger’ for what they want. All else – all activity – is subsumed to this drive. In short, the psychopath is a predator. If we think about the interactions of predators with their prey in the animal kingdom, we can come to some idea of what is behind the “mask of sanity” of the psychopath.

This leads us to an important question: what does the psychopath really get from their victims? It’s easy to see what they are after when they lie and manipulate for money or material goods or power. But in many instances we can only say that it seems to be that the psychopath enjoys making others suffer.

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, in People of the Lie, defined an evil person as someone who is totally unwilling to admit fault or to try to understand him or herself. It’s just too painful. So, in order to avoid having to do that, the evil person spends his or her whole life trying to make other people and himself see himself as he would like to be seen, rather than as he really is. That means pretending, lying, killing, or whatever it takes. Therefore, no fault of an evil person can ever be corrected because that would mean having to admit that it exists. Here is Peck’s somewhat more technical definition:

Truly evil people, on the other hand, actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves. They will take any action in their power to protect their own laziness, to preserve the integrity of their sick self. Rather than nurturing others, they will actually destroy others in this cause. If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth. As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them.

I define evil, then, as the exercise of political power – that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion – in order to avoid extending one’s self for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth. Ordinary laziness is non-love; evil is anti-love.

The many difficulties in recognizing human evil

Various estimates in Lobaczewski’s book put the prevalence of evil individuals at somewhere between 4% and 6% of the population*, with no known differences by culture, nation, or race (but generally thought to be about ten times more prevalent in males than in females.) So, if it only occurs in a small minority of the population, that raises the question as to why whole societies come under the control of these people, thereby sustaining tremendous damage, for long periods of time. Perhaps the most important answer to that question is that relatively normal people often fail to consciously recognize evil in their midst, for several reasons:

The appearance of normality

As indicated by the title of Dr. Peck’s book on evil (People of the Lie), deception is one of the primary characteristics of evil people. It is essential to them if they are to avoid being shunned by the good majority of humanity, and some of them are quite good it. Many of them are even quite good at inspiring trust and confidence. Martha Stout continues her description of psychopaths (noted above) as follows:

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at your condition. Your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered.

Denial

Denial is a very common psychological defense mechanism that people use in order to avoid the psychological pain of having to face something that is very unpleasant to them. It is so common that all humans use it to one degree or another on occasion. But as we grow we learn to face things that were previously too difficult for us to face, and that is part of the process of emotional maturation. Mastering this process gives us the strength to face the world as it really is, rather than as we would like it to be. With regard to the denial of evil, Knight-Jadczyk notes:

Human beings have been accustomed to assume that other human beings are – at the very least – trying to ‘do right’ and ‘be good’ and fair and honest. And so, very often, we do not take the time to use due diligence in order to determine if a person who has entered our life is, in fact, a ‘good person’.

Denial also takes place at the national level. There are many things that the United States as a nation denies (i.e., things that most Americans deny). For example, we talk about concepts like freedom and democracy without full awareness of the many historical (and current) examples where we have denied these gifts to other people. Probably the most difficult thing for Americans to admit to as a nation is that their President is evil.

Looking for evil in the wrong places – class prejudice

For many, perhaps most people, evil is something you find in prisons or slums. They simply do not think of people who have money and dress nicely as being evil. But successful psychopaths do not end up in prisons or slums. They can be bankers, physicians, professionals of any stripe, politicians, even leaders of nations.

Racism, nationalism, or other isms

When evil is perpetrated on persons of other nationalities or races people often turn a blind eye, especially when it is justified by their leaders. For example, in the United States slavery was justified by the slave owners for many decades, despite the ‘All men are created equal’ proclamation of our Declaration of Independence. More recently, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths have been justified in order to excuse our invasion and occupation of their country. Our leaders and journalists don’t justify it in any direct straight forward manner, but rather they justify it by virtue of their virtually complete silence on the matter. Or they justify it by saying such things as “We didn’t start this war”, as if hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians were responsible for the 9-11 attacks on our country. Noam Chomsky sums up this phenomenon succinctly in What we Say Goes Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World:

When you conquer somebody and suppress them, you have to have a reason. You can’t just say, “I’m a son of a bitch and want to rob them”. You have to say it’s for their good, they deserve it, or they actually benefit from it. That was the attitude of the slave owners. Most of them didn’t say, “Look, I’m enslaving these people because I want easily exploitable cheap labor for my own benefit.”

Yet, when a U.S. President gives the American people an excuse for a war of aggression they buy into those rationalizations way to often.

* Scott Peck estimates a prevalence of evil of less than 20 times this amount – about 2 cases per thousand people. The difference probably has to do with the fact that Peck doesn’t classify “ordinary psychopaths” as being evil, unless they very actively seek to do substantial damage to others. This is more in line with Lobaczewski’s “essential psychopathy”, which he defines as someone whose role in the ponerogenic process is ‘exceptionally great’.

The effects of evil on individuals and society

For those who believe that evil people are almost always found in prisons or slums, the criminologist Georgette Bennett notes:

The consequences to the average citizen from business crimes are staggering: The combined burglary, mugging and other property losses induced by the country’s street punks come to about $4 billion a year. However, the seemingly upstanding citizens in our corporate board rooms and the humble clerks in our retail stores bilk us out of between $40 and $200 billion a year.

But the damage goes far beyond monetary losses. Lobaczewski notes:

When (normal) human beings fall into a certain state: the psychopaths, like a virulent pathogen in a body, strike at their weaknesses, and the entire society is plunged into conditions that lead to horror and tragedy on a very large scale.

Whether or not or how much damage a psychopath actually does is dependent upon circumstances. Martha Stout explains:

If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people’s hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction.

In such cases evil individuals or cabals may take control of a whole nation, and then the destruction often becomes enormous, in the form of genocides or other mass murders. James Petras explains in Rulers and Ruled in the U.S. Empire:

Explanations of genocides that focus on “irrational mass behavior”, overlook the central importance of elite manipulation, anchored in the state, the economy and civil society. In none of the genocides of the 20th and 21st Century were the “masses” in a position to initiate, organize and direct them, though, certainly, sectors of the lower classes carried out the policies.

Psychopaths in position of great power

My belief that George Bush and his administration are evil is not based on any single incident, but rather on a pervasive pattern. This is a man who blew up frogs when he was younger. As Governor of Texas he mocked a woman (Carla Faye Tucker) who pleaded for her life with him, mimicking her desperate pleas in discussions with other people. In the midst of a national disaster, with people dying by the thousands he sat around and partied. And then, when he finally got to New Orleans he ordered firemen to wait around and do nothing rather than save the dying people, just so that he could pose for a photo-op with them. Virtually every act of his presidency has been calculated to increase the wealth and power of his benefactors at the expense of the vast majority of Americans, many of whom have consequently been driven into poverty. He created a war that has resulted in over a million Iraqi civilian deaths and over four thousand deaths of American soldiers – and for no apparent reason other than to increase the wealth and power of his benefactors. He unilaterally decided that he is not subject to the laws of our country. And worst of all, he presides over the indefinite incarceration without charges or trial, and the torture of our prisoners of war – for no apparent reason at all.

DUers aren’t the only people who are open to acknowledging the relationship of evil to political power in their own country. The preface to Political Ponerology not only notes this relationship but attempts an explanation, and is not hesitant to point out the role of George W. Bush:

In the past several years, there are many more psychologists and psychiatrists and other mental health workers beginning to look at these issues in new ways in response to the questions about the state of our world and the possibility that there is some essential difference between such individuals as George W. Bush and many so-called Neocons, and the rest of us.

Dr. Stout describes a ‘composite’ case where the subject spent his childhood blowing up frogs with fire-crackers. It is widely known that George W. Bush did this, so one naturally wonders…

We also began to realize that the profiles that emerged also describe rather accurately many individuals who seek positions of power in fields of authority, most particularly politics and commerce. That’s really not so surprising an idea, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to us until we saw the patterns and recognized them in the behaviors of numerous historical figures and, lately, including George W. Bush and members of his administration. Politics, by its very nature, would tend to attract more of the pathological ‘dominator types’ than other fields. That is only logical, and we began to realize that it was not only logical, it was horrifyingly accurate; horrifying because pathology among people in power can have disastrous effects on all of the people under the control of such pathological individuals.

The origins of Lobaczewski’s Political Ponerology

As Laura Knight-Jadczyk and her colleagues came more and more to recognize the vast potential for psychopaths in position of political power to inflict destruction on whole societies, they published their thoughts and findings on the Internet. Consequently, they received an e-mail from Andrew Lobaczewski, of whom they had not previously known:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen: I have got your Special Research Project on psychopathy by my computer. You are doing a most important and valuable work for the future of nations. I am a very aged clinical psychologist. Forty years ago I took part in a secret investigation of the real nature and psychopathology of the macro-social phenomenon. I am able to provide you with a most valuable scientific document, useful for your purposes. It is my book Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes.

Lobaczewski was just one of several scientists who took part in the research and the writing of the book. But he was the only one left alive. The reason that the book had to be researched and written in secret was that Lobaczewski and his fellow scientists were victims of one of the most evil and repressive regimes of world history. Lobaczewski describes the history of the manuscript for the book:

The original manuscript of this book went into the furnace minutes before a secret police raid in Communist Poland. The second copy, painfully reassembled by scientists working under impossible conditions of violence and repression, was sent via courier to the Vatican. Its receipt was never acknowledged – the manuscript and all valuable data lost. In 1984, the third and final copy was written from memory by the last survivor of the original researchers: Andrew Lobaczewski. After half a century of suppression, this book is finally available.

Knight-Jadczyk describes her reaction to the receipt of Lobaczewski’s manuscript:

As I read, I realized that what I was holding in my hand was essentially a chronicle of a descent into hell, transformation, and triumphant return to the world with knowledge of that hell that was priceless for the rest of us, particularly in this day and time when it seems evident that a similar hell is enveloping the planet. The risks that were taken by the group of scientists that did the research on which this book is based are beyond the comprehension of most of us. Many of them were young, just starting in their careers when the Nazis began to stride in their hundred league jack-boots across Europe. These researchers lived through that, and then when the Nazis were driven out and replaced by the Communists under the heel of Stalin, they faced years of oppression the likes of which one cannot even imagine.

A few more words about Lobaczewski’s book and our need to understand its subject

What I’ve written here sets the stage for the latter part of Lobaczewski’s book, in which he describes the characteristics of pathocracies (which he defines as social movements, societies, nations or empires that are taken over by psychopaths), how they originate, and the various threats that are posed to them, among other things. I chose not to provide much detail on those issues in this post because I felt that would make it too long. If there is a fair amount of interest in this post I will follow it up with the above noted issues in a few days.

The major theme of Lobaczewski’s book is that if world civilization is to survive and thrive it must learn how to deal with evil individuals who seek its destruction. To that end, he believes that it is essential that objective scientific studies continue be pursued in order that humanity may come to recognize evil when they see it and learn how to combat it (I said something very similar to that about a year and a half ago, in a post titled Evil Must Be Recognized for What it Is Rather than Denied).

Along those lines, Lobaczewski believes that it is essential that we take a strictly objective and scientific view towards evil individuals rather than a moralistic attitude towards them. I’m not sure I’m capable of doing that, but I certainly do agree with him that this is a subject of monumental importance, and we need to learn much more about it.

The last paragraph of Lobaczewski’s web site sums up why he considers the subject to be of such great importance:

Morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of this evil. Knowledge of its nature – and its insidious effect on both individuals and groups – is the only antidote.

Knight-Jadczyk, at the end of her Editor’s Preface, puts that theme in the context of the current day:

Based on the syndrome that describes the onset of the disease (pathocracy), it seems that the United States in particular, and perhaps the entire world, will soon enter into ‘bad times’ of such horror and despair that the Holocaust of World War II will seem like just a practice run. And so, since they were there, and they lived through it and brought back information to the rest of us, it may well save our lives to have a map to guide us in the falling darkness.

Source: Political Ponerology: A Science of Evil Applied for Political Purposes, Apr 01 2008

While gold rose 19 percent this year to $1,072 an ounce on Oct. 14, consumer prices almost tripled in the past three decades, eroding the metal’s value. Bullion hasn’t kept pace with the cost of bread, fuel or medical care. In 1980, gold hit a then-record $873 an ounce. In today’s dollars, that would be $2,287, according to the U.S. Labor Department’s inflation calculator.

Gold would need to rise more than sixfold to top the 1980 record, using a more accurate inflation-adjustment, said John Williams, an economist and the editor of Berkeley, California- based Shadowstats.com. He said the government has understated the cost of living over the past two decades with adjustments in the way it measures the basket of goods and services monitored by the U.S. consumer price index, or CPI.

“If the methodologies of measuring inflation in 1980 had been kept intact, gold would have to hit $7,150 to be the equivalent of the 1980 record,” Williams said.

“Gold is not at any peak,” said Martin Murenbeeld, the chief economist at Toronto-based DundeeWealth Inc., which manages $58.5 billion in mutual funds and brokerage accounts. “The world’s money supply has increased and gold hasn’t kept pace,” he said. “We’re now in a period where gold is catching up.”

“Gold is the hedge against currency devaluation,” John Brynjolfsson, of hedge fund Armored Wolf LLC, said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Aliso Viejo, California, on Oct. 7. He predicted bullion will top $2,000.

Philip Gotthelf, the president of Equidex Brokerage Group Inc. in Closter, New Jersey, says he expects gold to trade at $1,250 by year-end.
“Gold has been pushing higher because it’s no longer just a hedge against commodity inflation, it’s also a hedge against a change in world-monetary standards.”

With the economy in shambles, people are looking for answers – not just because of lost savings on Wall Street, but because of lost houses on Main Street. Because of the many problems we face, the Federal Reserve and its powers over the economy have come under scrutiny. This translates into a lot of political pressure on Congress. With all the House Republicans and over half of the Democrats signed on as co-sponsors, HR 1207 has enormous bipartisan support. It would be disingenuous for Washington not to embrace the principles behind this bill after all the promises for transparency. How can one credibly argue for more transparency in government in one breath and defend the secrecy of the Federal Reserve in the next?

However, there is still very powerful resistance to the disclosure that HR 1207 would require, and efforts to weaken it will continue to pop up before this issue is settled. The good news is that Washington is responding and the Federal Reserve has become the issue. Concerned Americans need to keep the pressure on by continuing to define what we want, and what we do not want.

One major concern is that HR 1207 constitutes some kind of power grab for Congress. Congress would not do a better job dictating interest rates or money supply growth than the Federal Reserve does for exactly the same reasons: Congress is not the free market. Any select group of people, no matter how wise and educated, simply cannot replace the wisdom of the market. HR 1207 does not seek to replace the wisdom of the Fed with the wisdom of Congress. That would be a giant step backwards. HR 1207 simply asks for full disclosure, and I am agreeable to allowing for a reasonable time lag to calm the fears that Congress intends to dictate monetary policy.

What we do want, what we insist upon, is that no longer will decisions that carry so much economic weight be made in absolute secrecy. We want to know what arrangements the Fed makes with other governments and central banks. We want to know who is benefiting from the actions of the Fed and what deals are being made. The Fed is already reacting to pressure by scaling back its liquidity facilities and returning to a more traditional monetary policy through direct asset purchases. With nearly $800 billion in mortgage-backed securities on its books already, $800 billion dollars in treasury securities, and no real limit to what the Fed can acquire, there is a tremendous opportunity for malfeasance.

We need to know who the Fed deals with, what they buy, how much they spend, and who benefits. As good as any step towards Fed transparency is, anything less than full disclosure at this point is unacceptable.

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Ron Paul.com
By tmartin • October 25, 2009

The British people are living in a fool’s paradise and have yet to understand the gravity of the economic crisis, according a former head of the Financial Services Authority.

‘The next six months are going to be extremely delicate in the UK’, said Sir Howard
Photo: JUSTIN SUTCLIFFE

Sir Howard Davies, now Director of the London School of Economics, said Britain faces a dangerous rise in the levels of public debt – even taking into account tax increases planned for coming years.

“The next six months are going to be extremely delicate in the UK”, he told a gathering of HSBC clients in London. “It is very clear that something dramatic has to happen to control spending: but is the economy robust enough to survive fiscal tightening?”

The Government is already running out of weapons to fight the crisis. While the fall in the pound has helped boost exports and proved benign so far, Sir Howard said that past experience handling sterling crises had taught him that the matters can turn ugly fast once confidence is lost. “The pound never stops where you want it to,” he said.

What is disturbing is that the British people seem unwilling to face minimal belt-tightening. Even professors in higher education are balloting to strike, demanding a continuation of boom-time pay raises. “You have the best minds in the country planning to go on strike for 8pc. People are miles away from understanding what is needed.”

Polling data shows that 48pc of the public are against any spending cuts and only 20pc see the need for retrenchment. Britons appear to assume that the “fantastic growth in public spending” over the last decade has become an entitlement.

Sir Howard said the reality is that the Government has so far come clean on just half of the fiscal consolidation necessary over the next five years merely in order to stabilize debt. By 2014 we will be among the Big Four of global profligates. “It is not a great club to be in,” he said.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, Oct 15 2009
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor

Woman who took vaccine can now barely walk or talk

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, October 16, 2009

Doctors have confirmed that a seasonal flu vaccine led to a Virginia woman becoming severely disabled as actors Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy offered their support through their Generation Rescue charity, an organization attempting to raise awareness about the link between vaccines and autism.
Former Redskins cheerleader Desiree Jennings was a fit and healthy cheerleader up until two months ago when she got a seasonal flu shot.

Ten days after the shot she began experiencing flu like symptoms, followed by severe convulsions and black outs.

Now she can barely talk or walk and her life has all but been destroyed.
After seeing around 60 doctors, Jennings was eventually diagnosed with dystonia, a paralyzing neurological disorder that causes the muscles to relentlessly contract and spasm.

Bizarrely, increased physical activity causes her heart rate to decline, meaning she can run for hours, however, her resting heart rate is 90 and walking a few steps is exhausting and almost impossible. There is no cure for the disease and it gets worse over time.

“Doctors at Fairfax Inova and Johns Hopkins diagnosed her with a rare neurological disorder called dystonia. They think it was caused by a severe reaction to the flu shot,” reports Fox 5 News.

“Desiree now has difficulty speaking, walking, and even eating. During an interview with FOX 5, she had several seizures. The effects are irreversible.”

However, Jennings has bravely vowed to fight the illness and her case has garnered the attention of celebrity campaigners Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, who have reached out to her in offering the support of their organization Generation Rescue, which has led efforts to “green the vaccine” by removing dangerous additives like mercury from shots that have been linked to autism.

“They are extremely helpful,” Desiree told Fox 5 News. “They have a lot of doctors that deal with vaccine interactions, and they have sent us so many other stories similar to mine. Unfortunately a lot of theirs are with children, which is worse. I can understand it happening to an adult, but not a little child that hasn’t had a chance to live their life and can’t speak, so I want to speak. They can’t, and I want to help them, too,” says Jennings.

McCarthy was prompted to found the charity with Carrey after her own 7-year-old son Evan became autistic after receiving a vaccine. Generation Rescue’s President Stan Kurtz said that the organization is hoping to fly Jennings to L.A. for treatment.
“The story is, anyone that sees– it is just so compelling, Jenny was crying over it,” says Kurtz.
Jennings told Fox 5 that the treatment was a chance to get her life back, but she also said that what happened to her should serve as a warning to other people who are considering taking both the seasonal and the H1N1 vaccine.
Watch videos concerning the heartbreaking case of Desiree Jennings below.

Prison Planet.tv Members Will Be The FIRST To See Fall Of The Republic On October 21st
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The Internet Eyes website will offer up to £1,000 if viewers spot shoplifting or other crimes in progress.

The site’s owners say they want to combine crime prevention with the incentive of winning money.

But civil liberties campaigners say the idea is “distasteful” and asks private citizens to spy on each other.

The private company scheme – due to go live in Stratford-upon-Avon in November – aims to stream live footage to subscribers’ home computers from CCTV cameras installed in shops and other businesses.

This is a private company using private cameras and asking private citizens to spy on each other. It represents a privatisation of the surveillance state
Charles Farrier, No CCTV

If viewers see a crime in progress, they can press a button to alert store detectives and collect points worth up to £1,000.

Internet Eyes founder James Woodward said: “This is about crime prevention.

“CCTV isn’t watched, it isn’t monitored, and not enough cameras are watched at any one time.

“What we’re doing is we’re putting more eyes onto those cameras so that they are monitored”.

‘Snoopers’ paradise’

However civil liberty campaigners say they are horrified by what they say is the creation of a “snoopers’ paradise”.

Charles Farrier from No CCTV said: “It is a distasteful and a worrying development.

“This is a private company using private cameras and asking private citizens to spy on each other. It represents a privatisation of the surveillance state.”

Internet Eyes has defended its plans, saying viewers will not know exactly which camera they’re watching or where it is located.

Although the UK is the “world capital of CCTV” – with an estimated one camera per 14 people – viewing hours of mostly tedious and often poor quality images is a lengthy and unpopular job, said the BBC’s home affairs correspondent Andy Tighe.

In August, an internal report commissioned by London’s Metropolitan Police estimated that in 2008 just one crime was solved per thousand CCTV cameras in the capital.

The deficit was partly blamed on officers not being able to make the best use of the many thousands of hours of video generated by CCTV.

The company says people will not know who they will be watching

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(NaturalNews) Amid growing discontent among New York health care workers who are being forced to receive swine flu vaccine injections, the Public Employees Federation sued in state court to halt the mandate. Friday, a state Supreme Court judge issued a restraining order granting a temporary halt to the mandate until a subsequent hearing can be completed.

The lawsuit was brought by the Public Employees Federation, New York State United Teachers and four Albany nurses. Until today, these workers were required to be vaccinated by November 30th or many were told they would be fired from their jobs. Others were told pay increases would be suspended. Across the board, there was a campaign of intimidation against NY health care workers to force them into receiving the swine flu vaccine injections.

With this court order, mandatory vaccines are temporarily suspended pending a follow-up court hearing on October 30.

New York sets the tone for the H1N1 vaccine debate nationwide

New York has been an epicenter of health choice protests and demonstrations by concerned health care workers. Over 500,000 workers are affected by the H1N1 vaccine mandate, and a majority of those workers simply don’t wish to be vaccinated against their will — or, perhaps, vaccinated at all.

If New York health authorities thought they could just bully half a million health care workers into being injected with a virtually untested, unproven vaccine, they were gravely mistaken. Resistance to the vaccine mandate continues to build as more and more people realize the vaccine may be far more dangerous than the flu it claims to prevent.

In fact, attempts at forcing the swine flu vaccine onto health care workers appear to have backfired for the vaccine industry, causing many people to question the evidence behind all seasonal flu vaccines. As published here on NaturalNews, this increased scrutiny on flu vaccines is resulting in the emergence of some rather revealing information that seems to indicate seasonal flu vaccines have zero efficacy (i.e. they just don’t work). See details here: http://www.naturalnews.com/027239_v…

What began as the vaccine industry’s attempt to force its medicines on virtually everyone has caused intelligent people across the country and around the world to start asking some tough questions about vaccines. Today, NaturalNews posted ten questions about vaccines that the vaccine industry (and the health authorities pushing vaccines) so far refuse to answer: http://www.naturalnews.com/027258_v…

A recent poll conducted by Harvard University indicates that only 40 percent of adults plan to take the swine flu vaccine. Public support for the vaccine is rapidly evaporating as the real motivations behind the vaccine agenda become increasingly apparent (http://www.naturalnews.com/027222_s…). More and more people are concluding there’s really no good reason to take the vaccine given the extremely low fatality rates of the pandemic. At the same time, more people are learning the truth about vitamin D and realizing that vitamin D is better than the vaccine at halting influenza. (http://www.naturalnews.com/027231_V…)

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in Washington D.C. by health freedom attorney Jim Turner accuses the FDA of violating federal law in approving the swine flu vaccines without conducting proper testing for either safety or efficacy (http://www.naturalnews.com/027205_v…).

Public support is clearly mounting against not just the swine flu vaccine (and the pandemic “fear factor” marketing push behind it), but seasonal flu vaccines as well.

None of this, of course, means the vaccine mandate in New York won’t be reinstated on October 30th. The NY State Department of Health has predictably vowed to fight the decision and reinstate the mandate. But between now and then, it seems quite likely that we’ll see a surge in public protests and perhaps even more legal actions filed by NY health care workers to stop what they see as a Big Brother chemical intervention into their own personal health.

Sources for this story include:

http://wcbstv.com/breakingnewsalert…

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2…

AMSTERDAM — The Dutch central bank shuttered DSB Bank NV, a struggling consumer and mortgage lender, after a run by depositors that followed a call from a consumer group to pull money out of the controversial institution.

The government said it would begin an investigation into what happened at the bank, a privately owned institution with reported assets of some €8 billion ($11.77 billion).

The DSB seizure was described by the government as a one-off situation unconnected with last year’s financial crisis. However, it dealt a further blow to a financial system hit hard by a global credit crunch that resulted in the nationalization of former financial giant Fortis and in multi-billion-euro state bailouts for ING Groep NV and insurer Aegon NV.

The takeover of DSB, which said it had 1.3 million clients, came after weekend talks between the government and the country’s five main banks failed to find a way to save it.

The central bank won an emergency court order Monday morning that put DSB into the hands of administrators. It described DSB’s solvency as being “under serious pressure.” Nout Wellink, the central bank president, told reporters that €600 million, or 17% of DSB Bank’s total deposits, had been withdrawn since Oct. 1.

DSB, based in the north of the Netherlands, ran into difficulties after AFM, the Dutch financial regulator, began investigating it earlier this year for allegedly pushing mortgage customers into expensive up-front insurance policies. The regulator fined the lender €120,000 over those product sales in August as part of a continuing investigation . At the time, DSB apologized, saying it regretted the practices and would work with customers to find solutions. This month, a bank customer association calling itself Mortgage Suffering urged clients to withdraw their savings and deposits from DSB.

The bank is named after founder and owner Dirk Scheringa, a former policeman who also owns AZ Alkmaar, the Dutch soccer champions.

Monday, Mr. Scheringa said the takeover was “incomprehensible and undeserved.”

“DSB Bank is not in an emergency situation and we were just working on solutions for customers in financial problems,” he said. He added that he wants to cooperate with the court-appointed administrators to find solutions for his bank’s customers and its 2,000 employees.

Finance Minister Wouter Bos said there would be an independent investigation of the way the bank was managed, and the role played by the bank regulator.

“In this investigation, we will also look into the operational functioning of current and former managers,” including DSB Bank’s former chief financial officer, Gerrit Zalm, he said.

Mr. Zalm is a former Dutch finance minister and is currently chief executive of state-owned ABN Amro NV. Mr. Zalm said in a statement that as CFO he was “successful in leading DSB Bank through the credit crisis.”

Over the weekend, talks between the central bank, finance ministry and five banks — ING, SNS Reaal NV, Rabobank, ABN Amro and Fortis Bank Netherlands — failed in part “owing to uncertainty surrounding possible claims on DSB”, the central bank said.

DSB Bank depositors are unable to access all their cash but can withdraw €250 a day on debit cards for the next three days. While DSB Bank cash machines have been frozen, clients can use their cards to take cash via other banks. The central bank said DSB Bank clients can open accounts with other banks without going through the usual weeks-long application process. Under the Dutch deposit-guarantee system, accounts of up to €100,000 are guaranteed by DNB through a plan funded jointly by the Dutch banks.

Mr. Wellink said it remains uncertain when DSB Bank depositors will get access to their money. “In the end, that is up to the independent administrators who will lead the bank from now,” he said.

ABN Amro said its exposure to DSB Bank could result in substantial losses, without giving more details. ING said it had negligible direct exposure but would have some indirect liability through its contribution to the deposit-guarantee plan.

Bank and insurer SNS Reaal said its banking unit had “very limited” financial ties with DSB Bank and that it had actively reduced commercial links with the bank in the last two years. It said its solvency and liquidity positions were strong enough to absorb the expected costs of the deposit-guarantee scheme, without saying how much they might be.

Write to Bart Koster at bart.koster@dowjones.com and Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com

Source: Wall Street Journal.com
* The Wall Street Journal * OCTOBER 13, 2009

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