Anne Greig & Robert Green – Sexual Abuse of Hollie Greig, The Scottish Establishment Paedophile Ring & Case Cover Up
| Slideshow summary by Zoomy on youtube.
Some? of the people involved are: DENIS GHENGIS MACKIE (Father of Hollie Greig, lover of Sheriff Buchanan) THE FULL 2HR INTERVIEW OF ANNE GREIG WITH HOLLIE AND ROBERT GREEN ON RED ICE RADIO Don’t miss this important but disturbing two-hour program with Robert Green and Anne Grieg as we discuss the sexual abuse of Anne’s daughter Hollie Greig and how it connects with the Scottish Establishment Peadophile Ring and their efforts to suppress exposure of this case. Robert is the spokes person for Anne and for Hollie Greig who got arrested and gagged not too long ago because of his involvement in this case. Topics Discussed: Lee Ann Davidson, Hollie’s Story, Aberdeen, State sponsored attack on children, Elitist Cabal, Anne’s husband, Angiolini, News of the World, Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), Dennis Mackey, Aberdeen South, Dr Carter, Lord Actions, Crown Office, George Galloway, The murder and cover up of Anne’s brother Roy Greig, Control of the media, Levy & MCrae, Peter Watson, Katherine Harper and much more. |
ClimateGate Climate Change Scam – Don’t Forget. They Didn’t. They’re Up to It Again
| COP 15 – Copenhagen Treaty
Secretive Copenhagen Treaty Creates Larcenous Global Government Tax The famous COP 15 or Copenhagen Treaty, which few politicians seem to have read, is here: |
Are GlaxoSmithKline and the FDA lying to parents about the Rotarix Recall?
Are GlaxoSmithKline and the FDA lying to parents about the Rotarix Recall?
By: Lynn Swearingen (c) copyright 2010 All Rights Reserved
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Suppose your child could become seriously ill and Rotavirus could be bypassed with the use of a vaccine. Your Pediatrician’s recommendation? Rotarix, which is developed and marketed by GlaxoSmithKline.
Well, Rotarix won’t be the recommendation any longer because the FDA has discovered that – oops – this vaccine that was given to over 30 million children worldwide since 2008 contained a contaminating virus known as PCV-1. Rotarix use has been “temporarily suspended”.
“The contaminating virus in Rotarix is called porcine circovirus type 1 or PCV-1. This is not known to cause disease.”
The recent recall and FDA statement of safety seems to be quite clear:
“PCV-1 does not multiply in humans and is not known to cause illness in humans. It is found in everyday meat products and is frequently eaten with no resulting disease or illness,” the company said in a statement on Monday
“This was a difficult decision for us because there is no evidence at this time that there is a risk to children,” said Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner. “
Really? According to a PubMed.gov 2004 study, which just happens to be the NIH (U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health),
“Infection of PCV1 was observed with 293, Hela and Chang liver cells, infection with PCV2 only in Rd cells. In addition, religated viral DNA of PCV1 and PCV2 has been used to transfect adherent human cell lines.”
The World Health Organization began recommending in 2009 that all Nations include this vaccination in their immunization program. Based on research during a clinical trial in which GlaxoSmithKline suprisingly enough participated in the funding.
So just so we understand this:
- NIH completes a study in 2004 showing clear crossover from Porcine to Human cell lines (2004)
- GlaxoSmithKline develops Rotarix (2005)
- GlaxoSmithKline funded the clinical trials (2006)
- GlaxoSmithKline sells Rotarix (2008 forward)
- GlaxoSmithKline gets caught with a contaminated product (2010)
- FDA/GlaxoSmithKline soothes parents with double-speak (2010)
The stated data indicates that over 500,000 children die each year from the effects of Rotavirus. The other 31 million? Well one could just wait and see what data is true. The FDA, GSK or the NIH? Or I suppose one could contact the Consumer Affairs Branch of the FDA and request clarification/investigation into the recall of Rotarix. One might also request exactly why the NIH says PCV-1 can be transferred to humans when the FDA is denying such can occur.
Consumer Affairs Branch (CBER)
Office of Communication, Outreach and Development
Food and Drug Administration
1401 Rockville Pike
Suite 200N/HFM-47
Rockville, MD 20852-1448
WAR IS A RACKET – Smedley Butler
TO HELL WITH WAR!
Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler – USMC Retired CHAPTER ONE WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out. Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep’s eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor. The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other’s throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit. There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Hell’s bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers? Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in “International Conciliation,” the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: “And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace… War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it.” Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war – anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter’s dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later. Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months. Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the “open door” policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000. Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men. Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well. Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn’t they? It pays high dividends. But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? Yes, and what does it profit the nation? Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn’t own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became “internationally minded.” We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington’s warning about “entangling alliances.” We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars. It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit. CHAPTER TWO The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven’t paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children’s children probably still will be paying the cost of that war. The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it. Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let’s just take a few examples: Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn’t one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn’t much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let’s look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent. Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year! Or, let’s take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad. There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let’s look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times. Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year. Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period. Let’s group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000. A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent. Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren’t the only ones. There are still others. Let’s take leather. For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That’s all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent. International Nickel Company – and you can’t have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent. American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded. Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings. And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body. But here’s how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits. Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed. There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn’t any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet. Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France! Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam. There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order. Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent. Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs. Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time. There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war. One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam. Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn’t ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit. The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn’t float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits. It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few. The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface. Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying “for some time” methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn’t suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure. Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life. There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed. Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters. CHAPTER THREE Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits. But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don’t believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran’s hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home. Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to “about face”; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed. Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another “about face” ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers’ aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn’t need them any more. So we scattered them about without any “three-minute” or “Liberty Loan” speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final “about face” alone. In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don’t even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone. There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn’t stand it. That’s a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby. But don’t forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too. Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn’t bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn’t. Napoleon once said, “All men are enamored of decorations…they positively hunger for them.” So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War. In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn’t join the army. So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side…it is His will that the Germans be killed. And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies…to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious. Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the “war to end all wars.” This was the “war to make the world safe for democracy.” No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a “glorious adventure.” Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill…and be killed. But wait! Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left. Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days. We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn’t find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds! Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters. When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices. And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying. CHAPTER FOUR A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get. Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers – yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches! Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. Why shouldn’t they? They aren’t running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren’t sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren’t hungry. The soldiers are! Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else. Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won’t permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers. Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn’t be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war. There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote. A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only. At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don’t shout that “We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation.” Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles. The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can’t go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation. To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. We must take the profit out of war. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes. CHAPTER FIVE I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had “kept us out of war” and on the implied promise that he would “keep us out of war.” Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly? Money. An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group: “There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money…and Germany won’t. So…” Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a “war to make the world safe for democracy” and a “war to end all wars.” Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy. And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars. Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don’t mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens? The professional soldiers and sailors don’t want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments. The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe. There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough. The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases. Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too. But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists. If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munitions makers. So…I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!
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U.K. Budget 2010: In The Carbon Religion’s Worst Week Brits Throw £1bn At The Bank of Superstition
| It seems even the impending menace of a general election cannot make Labour face reality. The Budget showed the carbonphobic green hysteria still has a grip on the major parties. Alistair Darling was cock-a-hoop because he had just discovered his borrowing needs had shrunk from a massive £178bn to a trivial – er – £167bn. So, with the insouciance of a lottery winner, he immediately blew £1bn on a “green bank” whose chief function will be to fund wind energy, the discredited technology that sensible investors are now shunning, to the extent that the plant building wind turbines in this country has shut down.
That is half the sum he has just clawed back from greedy bankers. Silly old us, if we imagined for a moment it might be spent on something sensible like reducing the deficit. Nor should we look to the opposite side of the Commons chamber for more sane prescriptions: Dave and his cronies are even more infatuated with the anti-carbon superstition than Labour. This is, as usual, bad news for British taxpayers. However, beyond these shores, there is very good news indeed. Those global warming sceptics who pessimistically forecast that, despite the disintegration of the AGW scam on an almost daily basis, governments would forge ahead and impose green taxes have been proved gratifyingly wrong. This has been the worst week for the carbon scare scam since its gestation in the frontal lobes of Al Gore and similar eco-entrepreneurs. First, Nicolas Sarkozy’s party was slaughtered in the French regional elections, to the point that it now controls only Alsace and an island in the Indian Ocean called Reunion. With the Front National rampant in the polls and complete electoral humiliation heaped upon him, Sarkozy had the sense to come in out of the rain. He announced the indefinite postponement (ie cancellation) of France’s proposed carbon tax. The French environment secretary described herself as “devastated that eco-scepticism had prevailed”. There will be a lot more green politicos devastated shortly. The message to electorates worldwide is: thrash them at the polls and you can actually remove the green tyranny from your backs. This week too, the backlash in America against Barack Obama’s constitutional coup d’état on healthcare finally buried any vestigial hopes that he would be allowed to impose cap and trade or any other ecofascist ploys devised by the Al Gore camp on the American public. In the great carbon hysteria, you can effectively take America out of the picture. So, with the United States and France removed from the jigsaw of green totalitarianism, the eventual outcome is inevitable: the real objective of the AGW scam, green taxes and billionaire profits from carbon trading are ultimately doomed projects. Here in Britain, of course, both Labour and the Tories remain mesmerised by the Fifth Monarchy Men of the carbon apocalypse. The French electorate has demonstrated the solution: wipe them both out at the general election. Take off the blinkers, shrug off outdated tribal prejudices, reject the perceived “least worst” option and vote for what you actually want. Make Labour and Toryism history. Source: Telegraph.co.uk, March 24 2010 Gerald Warner is an author, broadcaster, columnist and polemical commentator who writes about politics, religion, history, culture and society in general. |
Financial Warfare Exposed: Soros, Goldman Sachs, Hedge Funds Attack Greece to Smash Euro
| Webster G. Tarpley TARPLEY.net March 3, 2010 Either You’re With Us Or You’re With The Oligarchs
It has been evident for some time that the ongoing speculative attack on Greece, along with such other countries as Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy, was not primarily a reflection of their economic fundamentals, nor yet a spontaneous movement of “the market,” but rather an orchestrated action of economic warfare. The dollar had been relentlessly falling through the late summer and autumn of 2009. It obviously occurred to various Anglo-American financiers that a diversionary attack on the euro, starting with some of the weaker Mediterranean or Southern European economies, would be an ideal means of relieving pressure on the battered US greenback. Since these degenerate elites are incapable of directly solving the problem of the dollar through increased production, full employment, and economic recovery, one of the few alternatives remaining to them is to create a situation in which the euro is collapsing faster, leaving the dollar as the beneficiary of some residual flight to quality or safe haven reflex. This is what emerged during the first week of December with a speculative assault or bear raid against Greek and Spanish government bonds as well as the euro itself, accompanied by a scurrilous press campaign targeting the “PIIGS,” an acronym for the countries just named, coming from inside the bowels of Goldman Sachs. I have discussed this phenomenon several times over the last two to three weeks on my radio program on GCN. Now comes concrete proof of this conspiracy in the form of a Feb. 8 “idea dinner,” held at the Manhattan townhouse of Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co, a boutique investment bank. Among those present were SAC Capital Advisors, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital (a veteran of the fatal assault on Lehman Brothers in the late summer of 2008), Donald Morgan of Brigade Capital, and, most tellingly, Soros Fund Management. The consensus that emerged that night over the filet mignon was that Greek government bonds were the weak flank of the euro, and that once a Greek debt crisis had been detonated, all outcomes would be bad for the euro. The assembled predators agreed that Greece was the first domino in Europe. Donald Morgan was adamant that the Greek contagion could soon infect all sovereign debt in the world, including national, state, municipal and all other forms of government debt. This would mean California, the UK, and the US itself, among many others. The details of this at dinner were revealed in the headline story of the Wall Street Journal on Friday, February 26, 2010. (See article) Nor was this the only cabal in town intent on attacking the euro through the week Greek flank. The article cited suggests that GlobeOp Financial Services and Paulson & Co. are also piling on. The zombie banks were also heavily engaged. The article reported that Goldman Sachs, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, and Barclays Bank of London were also assisting speculators in placing highly leveraged bearish bets against the euro. Note that these zombie banks are alive today because of US taxpayer money, in Barclay’s case through AIG. It amounted to a deliberate attempt to create a large-scale world monetary crisis which would certainly bring with it the dreaded second wave of the current world economic depression. The creation of monetary chaos in Europe through the convulsive destruction of the euro under speculative attack would cripple commodity production in western Europe, severely undermining one of the dwindling areas of the world economy which are still functioning. The genocidal implications for humanity ought to be obvious, but the assembled hedge fund hyenas were not concerned with these consequences. George Soros has been telling every media outlet that will listen that the euro is doomed to fall apart and break up over the short run. Soros even has a theory to deploy as part of his speculative attack. Soros argues that the fatal flaw or original Sin of the euro is that it was based on a common central bank among the participating countries, but lacked a common treasury and tax policy. This means that a country like Greece can no longer defend itself from a speculative attack on its bonds by the simple expedient of currency devaluation, since there is no more drachma, and the euro is controlled from Frankfurt, not Athens. British spokesmen are quick to point out that, even though the financial situation of London is far worse than that of Athens, the British government is already devaluing the pound through a downward dirty float. Given Soros’s infamous track record, he must be taken seriously. In 1992, Soros became world famous through his attack on the European Rate Mechanism, which he executed by a highly leveraged speculative assault on the British pound, at the time one of the weaker members of the ERM. Soros’ speculative attack led to a pound devaluation and the ragged breakup of the ERM, and netted Soros £1 billion in profits. It was as if Soros had personally stolen a £20 note from every man, woman, and child in Britain. The speculative gains were no doubt gratifying, but the overriding political purpose of the assault was to sabotage that phase of European monetary policy. The London Economist has gone out of its way to mock Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero’s remark that Spain was under international speculative attack. Press organs of the city of London and Wall Street have ridiculed the Greeks as a nation of paranoid conspiracy theorists. And yet, the revelations made so far are strong circumstantial evidence of pre-concert, as Lincoln would say. Even the US Department of Justice has been forced to send letters to the participants in the infamous “idea dinner,” warning them not to destroy any of their records and thus putting them on notice that they are under investigation. While we should not have any illusions about the prosecutorial zeal of Attorney General Eric Holder, who once represented the international financial bandit Marc Rich, this is at least a beginning. Spanish and Italian judges are noted for their independence, and one of or more them may wish to examine the activities of Soros, Goldman Sachs, and their hedge fund allies. Greece does not need an austerity program, as the Greek labor movement has eloquently argued in the course of their successful and admirable general strike last week. Greece does not need a bailout from Germany, the sinister International Monetary Fund, or from anyone else. Least of all does Greece need to accept the advice of Austrian school or Chicago schools charlatans who recommend the catharsis of a deflationary crash that would destroy an entire generation through unemployment, poverty, and despair. Greece needs to defend itself with a 1% Tobin tax on all derivatives and other financial transactions. Greece should take the lead in outlawing credit default swaps, which amount to issuing insurance without meeting the capital requirements of being an insurance company. Greece needs to enforce EU and national antitrust laws. If Soros and his gang succeed in breaking up the euro, Greece should make the best of it by immediately imposing heavy-duty exchange controls and capital controls to protect the new drachma, on the model of Malaysia a dozen years ago. Greece should shut down domestic zombie banks and seize its central bank and use it to issue 0% credit for industrial and agricultural hard commodity production. If the Greeks made plain what they intend to do if they are forced to fall back on the drachma, the financiers who fear such an example would have another reason to relent. Another obvious expedient is that of a bear squeeze or short squeeze. Soros, Goldman Sachs, and their gang of hedge fund allies have now used derivatives to establish short positions against Greek bonds and the euro, betting that these latter will go down. Political pressure is now being brought to bear on the European Central Bank and the Greek central bank to undertake an unannounced large-scale purchase of Greek bonds and euros in the forward market, causing the Wall Street predators to lose their bets, thus punishing them severely with extravagant losses. This is normal central bank practice, and it will be astounding if the Greeks do not execute such a maneuver very soon. The world now faces a stark choice between two alternatives, with Wall Street forcing the issue. The first is that the zombie banks and hedge funds, having been saved and bailed out by national states and their taxpayers, will repay the favor by driving the national states and all forms of state, provincial, and local government into bankruptcy. This will be synonymous with the destruction of modern civilization itself. The second and preferred alternative is that the national states summon the political will to use the inherent powers of government to place the zombie banks, hedge funds, and related purveyors of derivatives into bankruptcy receivership and shut them down once and for all, relying in the future on nationalized central banks for the provision of credit. The second alternative would allow the preservation of modern civilization as we have known it. But in the meantime, the derivatives-based speculative attack on the southern flank of the euro has accelerated the arrival of the second wave of depression, which now appears likely to strike the world before the end of 2010. |
Global Warming Alarmism Is A Grave Threat To Our Liberty
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for giving me the chance to address this distinguished audience and for asking me to speak on one of the issues I consider absolutely crucial. I am convinced that the ideology of environmentalism, particularly its extreme variant, the global warming alarmism, and its widespread acceptance by politicians, journalists and all kinds of leftist intellectuals is the main threat to freedom and prosperity we are facing today. I feel very strongly about this issue and keep warning against it by writing and speaking – in my own country, the Czech Republic, in Europe, in America and elsewhere. My last speech devoted to this topic was in Cairo, Egypt, less than a month ago. Three years ago, I put my arguments into a book with the title “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”, which is now available in 15 languages, including English but also for example Arabic or Japanese. My experience tells me that making speeches, lecturing, writing articles and books, giving interviews and participating in media discussions is helpful but not sufficient. These efforts have to be supplemented by political activity and if I understand the ambitions of the Club of Growth and of this conference correctly it is an attempt in this direction. That is most commendable. This is the reason why I accepted the invitation to come all the way from Prague to Palm Beach. An additional positive effect is that the temperature here is much warmer than in Prague just now. You are “locally” warmed and I will confirm back in Prague that you survive such a dangerously warm climate without major inconveniencies. To criticize environmentalism is for me not a new, suddenly discovered, fashionable or trendy activity. At the beginning of the 1970s I came across the first publications of the infamous Club of Rome, which tried to scare us by predicting an imminent exhaustion of natural resources and by asking for a radical change in our behavior. Its supporters had been arguing already then very dramatically that we should reduce our consumption of fossil fuels but – and we should not forget it – for different reasons than now. As an economist, I knew it was a wrong argumentation and the subsequent four decades proved it quite convincingly. Today, we have more proven deposits of basic raw materials and energy resources than 40 years ago. I felt already then that this was an arrogant, elitist and dirigistic doctrine attempting to stop economic growth, the overall social development and human progress. At that time, I myself lived under a very oppressive, destructive and totally irrational, and therefore unproductive, communist regime and was not able to participate in the worldwide polemics with these views. People like me were not allowed to travel to the West, or even to dream about having a chance to publish articles or make speeches abroad. Yet, I was very frustrated and could not understand how it was possible that such an irrational doctrine was not easily and convincingly refuted and rejected in the free western world. In 1989, communism collapsed and we were finally free. To my great surprise, the environmentalist doctrine was still alive and even flourishing in its new incarnation called global warming doctrine. In 1992, the Rio Earth Summit endorsed the doctrine of global warming and climate change as a leading ideology of our times. I expected that the ideology of the free world would be based on freedom, parliamentary democracy and market economy – concepts that were absolutely crucial for us in the former communist countries in the moment of our radical and revolutionary transition from communism to free society. Life under communism made us extremely sensitive, if not oversensitive to all possible symptoms of violation and erosion of our freedom. That is the reason why I feel endangered now. The subtitle of the above mentioned book asks “What is endangered: Climate or Freedom?” My answer is resolute: climate is ok, what is under threat is freedom. The reason is that environmentalism and its most extreme version, global warming alarmism, asks for an almost unprecedented expansion of government intrusion and intervention into our lives and of government control over us. We are forced to accept rules about how to live, what to do, how to behave, what to consume, what to eat, how to travel and many other things. Some of us had experienced similar examples of such manipulation with ourselves in the communist era and feel obliged to do everything we can to avoid similar developments in the future. It is, however, not only about freedom. Environmentalism also wants to suppress economic growth, reduce prosperity and hinder human progress. When I was recently in Egypt on the occasion of the launching of the Arabic version of my book, it became obvious to me that the people there care more about the continuation of their economic development than about freedom as we understand it. Some of us know that freedom and prosperity cannot be separated but it is evident that environmentalism – as the recent Copenhagen conference demonstrated – wants to impair prosperity and stop human progress especially in the developing world. And that is unacceptable. The environmentalists ask for substantial reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. When it happens – with our current technologies – it will substantially increase the costs of energy for everyone because it would imply restrictions on the use of oil and coal, which are no doubt much cheaper than all alternative energy sources. Cheap energy is the source of much of our life-style and our prosperity. When energy prices go up, the costs of nearly all other goods and services go up as well. All carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes and wind and solar power subsidies are steps in the wrong direction, leading to a severe and protracted economic hardship for little or no benefit. My lifelong experience tells me that I have to start protesting very loudly when someone tells me: “Don’t trust the market, trust me and us.” This is what I had been hearing for 40 years of my life under communism and I am not ready to accept it now. The belief in the possibility of controlling the Earth’s climate by reducing the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, I call it the theory of climate control, is as irrational, arrogant and pretentious as the communist planning that people like me were objects of for so many years. As I said, politicians bought into this doctrine at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, fell in love with it and started organizing a whole set of economically damaging and freedom endangering measures. They came to the conclusion that playing the global warming game is an easy, politically correct and from the point of potential election gains very profitable card to play (especially when it is obvious that they themselves will not carry the costs of the measures they are implementing and will not be responsible for their consequences). There are plenty of arguments suggesting that the real threat for human society is not global warming itself. The real threat comes when politicians start manipulating the climate and all of us. In my views, I am not being influenced by the recent scandals connected with the work of the IPCC and some of its leading exponents. All of that has been known for years to everyone who was interested. The same is true about all the relevant arguments used in today’s debate. They are available and it is difficult to add anything fundamentally new to them. It is necessary to keep stressing several basic facts and arguments that are well-known, but unfortunately largely ignored. First, the statistically well-documented increase in global temperature has been until now very small and not bigger than the temperature fluctuations in the last centuries and millennia. Throughout the whole 20th century, with all the problematic data collection and adjustments – it was only 0.74 °C. I am surprised again and again that – because of the power of the environmentalist propaganda – people suppose it was much more. Second, it is undisputed that there has been no statistically significant net global warming in the last twelve to fourteen years. I know that this is not a proof of the impossibility of long-term climate changes but it is a relevant piece of information which should not be ignored or downplayed. New data and new theories are emerging every day and some of them suggest the probability of future cooling, not warming. Third, the scientific dispute about the causes of the undergoing climate changes is not over, it continues. Despite contrary assertions, there is no scientific consensus about it. What is more and more evident is that CO2 is losing the position of the main culprit and that its potential impact has already been more or less “consumed.” Simple, monocasual theory of functional relationship between CO2 and temperature is evidently untenable. There is absolutely no linearity between CO2 emissions and temperature. Fourth, the idea of a static, unchanging climate is, no doubt, foreign to the history of the Earth. The climate has always been changing and will always be. I am convinced that the impact of the small climate changes we have experienced (and may experience in the foreseeable future) upon human beings and all kinds of their activities is – because of their size – practically negligible. In its model simulations, the IPCC suggests that – because of higher temperatures – the world GDP in the year 2100 will be 2.9% lower than without any warming. I repeat, only 2.9% if we do nothing and let the warming – predicted by the IPCC – continue. The same models suggest that the GDP per capita in the developed countries will be eight times higher than now and in the developing countries about five times higher than that of the developed world today. These figures are not mine, these are the figures of the leading exponents of the global warming doctrine. The question must be therefore raised: should we drastically limit CO2 emissions today by 20, 30, 50, or 80% and, thereby, abandon our way of life for the sake of such a small effect considering that the future generations will be far better off than we are today? My answer is that 2.9% of the future GDP is a minor loss. A loss generated by a completely useless fight against global warming, planned by the contemporary global warming alarmists, would be far greater. Politicians, their bureaucrats as well as many well-meaning individuals who accept the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change probably hope that – by doing so – they are displaying intelligence, virtue and altruism. Some of them even believe they are saving the Earth. We should tell them that they are merely passive players in the hands of lobbyists, of producers of green technologies, of agrobusiness firms producing ethanol, of trading firms dealing in carbon emission rights, etc., who hope to make billions at our costs. There is no altruism there. It is a political and business cold-hearted calculation. Before concluding, I have to repeat my question: “What is endangered?” My answer is: “our freedom, and our prosperity.” * Václav Klaus, 2010 Club for Growth Economic Winter Conference, Palm Beach, Florida, March 5, 2010 * One last comment. I very often see that people confuse two different things – a necessary protection of the environment (necessary because there is no doubt that we have to take care of the rivers, lakes, seas, forests and air) and an irrational attempt to fight or to protect the climate. I am very much in favor of rational efforts when it comes to environmental protection, but I resolutely reject any attempts to change or – as I frequently hear – to combat climate chamge. Source: Klaus.cz, March 5th 2010 |
Head Of ‘Climategate’ Research Unit Admits Sending ‘Pretty Awful Emails’ To Hide Data
| Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science’s credibility.
The Institute of Physics said ‘worrying implications’ had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.
The rebuke – the strongest yet from the scientific community – came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written ‘some pretty awful emails’ – but denied trying to suppress data. The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics. Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures. In one, Professor Jones talks about using a ‘trick’ to massage figures and ‘hide the decline’. Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: ‘Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method. ‘The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.’ Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data. But yesterday Professor Jones – in his first public appearance since the scandal broke – denied manipulating the figures. Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: ‘I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.’ He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites. And he claimed it was not ‘standard practice’ to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research. ‘I don’t think there is anything in those emails that really supports any view that I, or the CRU, have been trying to pervert the peer review process in any way,’ he said. Professor Jones, who was forced to stand down as head of the CRU last year, also insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust. Source: Mail Online.co.uk, Mar 2 2010 |
Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide
| When is someone going to take down Goldman Sachs? They have been at the center of the financial crisis. They have enriched themselves by fraudulently helping the bubble grow. Then they enriched themselves by betting the bubble would collapse. They fraudulently helped Greece hide their true debt from the EU and now they are betting that Greece will collapse. The management of this company should be in jail cells. Abu Ghrab sounds about right. I’d even waive my distaste for torture.
Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.
Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers. These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit. “It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house — you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich. As Greece’s financial condition has worsened, undermining the euro, the role of Goldman Sachs and other major banks in masking the true extent of the country’s problems has drawn criticism from European leaders. But even before that issue became apparent, a little-known company backed by Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and about a dozen other banks had created an index that enabled market players to bet on whether Greece and other European nations would go bust. Last September, the company, the Markit Group of London, introduced the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which is based on such swaps and let traders gamble on Greece shortly before the crisis. Such derivatives have assumed an outsize role in Europe’s debt crisis, as traders focus on their daily gyrations. A result, some traders say, is a vicious circle. As banks and others rush into these swaps, the cost of insuring Greece’s debt rises. Alarmed by that bearish signal, bond investors then shun Greek bonds, making it harder for the country to borrow. That, in turn, adds to the anxiety — and the whole thing starts over again. On trading desks, there is fierce debate over what exactly is behind Greece’s recent troubles. Some traders say swaps have made the problem worse, while others say Greece’s deteriorating finances are to blame. “This is a country that is issuing paper into a weakening market,” said Ashish Shah, co-head of credit strategy at Barclays Capital, referring to Greece’s need for continual borrowing. But while some European leaders have blamed financial speculators in general for worsening the crisis, the French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, last week singled out credit-default swaps. Ms. Lagarde said a few players dominated this arena, which she said needed tighter regulation. Trading in Markit’s sovereign credit derivative index soared this year, helping to drive up the cost of insuring Greek debt, and, in turn, what Athens must pay to borrow money. The cost of insuring $10 million of Greek bonds, for instance, rose to more than $400,000 in February, up from $282,000 in early January. On several days in late January and early February, as demand for swaps protection soared, investors in Greek bonds fled the market, raising doubts about whether Greece could find buyers for coming bond offerings. “It’s the blind leading the blind,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R&R Consulting in New York. “The iTraxx SovX did not create the situation, but it has exacerbated it.” The Markit index is made up of the 15 most heavily traded credit-default swaps in Europe and covers other troubled economies like Portugal and Spain. And as worries about those countries’ debts moved markets around the world in February, trading in the index exploded. In February, demand for such index contracts hit $109.3 billion, up from $52.9 billion in January. Markit collects a flat fee by licensing brokers to trade the index. European banks including the Swiss giants Credit Suisse and UBS, France’s Société Générale and BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank of Germany have been among the heaviest buyers of swaps insurance, according to traders and bankers who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. That is because those countries are the most exposed. French banks hold $75.4 billion worth of Greek debt, followed by Swiss institutions, at $64 billion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. German banks’ exposure stands at $43.2 billion. Trading in credit-default swaps linked only to Greek debt has also surged, but is still smaller than the country’s actual debt load of $300 billion. The overall amount of insurance on Greek debt hit $85 billion in February, up from $38 billion a year ago, according to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, which tracks swaps trading. Markit says its index is a tool for traders, rather than a market driver. In a statement, Markit said its index was started to satisfy market demand, and had improved the ability of traders to hedge their risks. The index and similar products, it added, actually make it easier for buyers and sellers to gauge prices for instruments that are traded among players over the counter, rather than on exchanges. “These indices have helped bring transparency to the sovereign C.D.S. market,” Markit said. “Prior to their creation, there was no established benchmark index enabling investors to track the performance of segments of the sovereign C.D.S. market.” Some money managers say trading in Greek swaps alone, not the broader index, is the problem. “It’s like the tail wagging the dog,” said Markus Krygier, senior portfolio manager at Amundi Asset Management in London, which has $40 billion in global fixed-income assets. “There is a knock-on effect, as underlying positions begin to seem riskier, triggering risk models and forcing portfolio managers to sell Greek bonds.” If that sounds familiar, it should. Critics of these instruments contend swaps contributed to the fall of Lehman Brothers. But until recently, there was little demand for insurance on government debt. The possibility that a developed country could default on its obligations seemed remote. As a result, many foreign banks that held Greek bonds or entered into other financial transactions with the government did not hedge against the risk of a default. Now, they are scrambling for insurance. “Greece is not a small country,” said Mr. Raynes, at R&R in New York. “Credit-default swaps give the illusion of safety but actually increase systemic risk.” Source: The Burning Platform, February 24, 2010 |
Justice Secretary linked to Lord Advocate’s lawyers after Police arrest journalist over reporting of Aberdeen paedophile gang claims
Anne and Hollie Greig with Richard D Hall and Robert Green
Journalist & Broadcaster Robert Green was arrested by Grampian Police on Friday. SCOTLAND’s CROWN OFFICE are said to be heavily involved in the arrest in Aberdeen on Friday of the well known England based journalist & broadcaster Robert Green, who travelled to the Grampian area late Thursday to attend a public protest against the lack of action by Scotland’s law enforcement agencies to prosecute identified individuals in an Aberdeen based paedophile gang, names which include key members of Scotland’s legal establishment and even a local Sheriff, who stand accused of serial abuse of disabled victims, including downs syndrome girl, Hollie Greig.
Grampian Police arrested journalist on ‘breach of the peace’. Grampian Police apparently swooped on Mr Green before he was even able to attend Friday’s planned protest, taking him into custody earlier in the morning on a charge of breach of the peace, which Mr Green had been detained on, until his appearance tomorrow (Monday) at Aberdeen Sheriff court, where ironically, Mr Green will be taken before a colleague of a Sheriff who was identified by one of the abuse victims as being an alleged member of the paedophile gang at the centre of the case, who are accused of abusing disabled victims & also passing vulnerable children around their ranks.
Lord Advocate & Crown Office censored online legal publication “The Firm” from reporting on abuse case. Scottish Law Reporter have covered the story of Hollie Greig on previous occasions, HERE, secondly, revealing Scots Law magazine “The Firm” were censored by the Crown Office HERE, thirdly, revealing that a private law firm had been tasked by the Lord Advocate to threaten & censor media investigations of the case HERE and most recently, where the Crown Office announced they would not prosecute the case, HERE
Senior Levy McRae partner Peter Watson acted against media outlets for the Lord Advocate. The case alarmed Crown Office officials and even the Lord Advocate of Scotland so much, a heavyweight law firm based in Glasgow, Messrs Levy McRae were brought in to threaten any media outlet who dare report on the allegations or identify anyone named by the victim and her mother, or involved the Grampian Police investigation. Mr Green recently alleged the investigation carried out by Grampian was very far from incomplete, apparently having omitted to interview many or all of the chief suspects, and victims.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill linked to Lord Advocate’s choice of lawyers. Amazingly, it can now be revealed the Scottish Government’s current Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill has long standing ties to Levy McRae, the same law firm used by the Lord Advocate to threaten media publication of the Hollie Greig case. Mr MacAskill is now known to have served his apprenticeship at Levy McRae and also worked at the firm for a considerable time during his years as a solicitor.
Levy McRae sent out legal threats to websites, newspapers, & online forums. Mr MacAskill could not be contacted for any comment on developments in the case, and officials said he would not answer any questions over his previous involvement with Levy McRae. However, several MSPs alerted to the fact the Lord Advocate has used the same firm which once employed the Justice Secretary himself, have now vowed to investigate the goings on in the Hollie Greig case. An aide to an MSP today said there may well be a problem for the Justice Secretary since the Lord Advocate has used his old law firm, throwing up the question of conflict of interest and whether the intervention against the media by Levy McRae “may have implied Scottish Government support for the law firm’s work on behalf of the Lord Advocate.”
Holly Greig with her mother Anne – forced to flee to England after abuse. Since the journalist’s arrest by Grampian Police on Friday, reports of Mr Green, and his work investigating the allegations into the Aberdeen based paedophile ring have spread around the internet, along with a sequence of video clips of a talk the journalist gave to audiences on his work and the allegations into the abuse which had taken place in the Aberdeen area, leaving many to question why Scotland’s Crown Office had stamped on any chance of mounting prosecutions against people well known in the area who have been identified by one of the abuse victims, Hollie Greig, who, despite no one being charged after a Police investigation into the abuse claims, received £13,500 compensation (hush money ? – Ed) from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in April of 2009.
Hollie has been described by a Grampian detective inspector who himself gave evidence, as “a truthful witness to the best of her ability and an entirely innocent victim”, and medical evidence has apparently verified that Hollie has been abused.
Grampian Police are now known to have received hundreds of calls from people all over the United Kingdom and around the world, concerned for Mr Green’s wellbeing. It has also been revealed today that Anne Greig, Hollie’s mother has not been allowed to speak to Mr Green to establish if he is ok, or has the necessary legal representation for his court appearance on Monday.
The video clips, well worth a look while they still exist, can be viewed on You Tube at the following link : JusticeforHollie
Aberdeen’s Press & Journal newspaper reported on Mr Green’s arrest :
‘Sex abuse’ family’s legal adviser arrested
CAMPAIGNER WAS GOING TO HAND OUT LEAFLETS
BY RYAN CRIGHTON
Published: 13/02/2010
The legal adviser to the family of a disabled woman who claims she was abused by a paedophile ring as a child was arrested yesterday as he made his way to the centre of Aberdeen to hand out leaflets.
Political hopeful Robert Green represents the mother of Hollie Greig, a 30-year-old woman with Down’s Syndrome who says she was sexually assaulted by a Scottish sheriff, who is still serving, and a senior Grampian Police officer who is now dead.
Last night, 63-year-old Mr Green was charged with breach of the peace. He is expected to appear at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on Monday. It is understood he was arrested as he made his way to Union Street, where he was going to tell people about Hollie’s case and his plans to contest the Aberdeen South parliamentary seat as an independent candidate.
Mr Green, of Cheshire, had been staying at a bed and breakfast in King Street. He was expected in Union Street near the Marks and Spencer store at 10.30am but never arrived. Other “injustice” campaigners, including Aberdeen man David Emslie, formerly of Nigg Kirk Road, were waiting for Mr Green and said they were concerned for his safety when he did not appear.
Grampian Police later confirmed Mr Green was in custody. A spokesman said: “A 63-year-old man has been charged in connection with a breach of the peace. “As this case is now active, it would be inappropriate to make any other comment.” Police, with the consent of Mr Green, searched his room in King Street and are believed to have left with documents belonging to him.
Hollie claims she was abused for 14 years from the age of six and has given police the names of some of the men she says assaulted her. The 30-year-old and her mother, Anne, have been campaigning for criminal proceedings since 2000.
The abuse is alleged to have taken place in Aberdeen, and Hollie and her mother claim to have made a statement at Bucksburn police station in July that year naming those involved. The family moved to Shropshire and two Grampian Police officers travelled to Shrewsbury in September last year to re-interview Hollie at a special facility.
Last month, the Crown Office revealed there was not enough reliable evidence to proceed with the case.
A spokesman said at the time: “Historical allegations of sexual abuse made by a 30-year-old woman in Shropshire have been thoroughly investigated by police. “Crown counsel have considered all the available information and decided that there is insufficient credible, reliable and admissible evidence to justify criminal proceedings in respect of these allegations.”
Despite no charges ever being brought, Hollie received £13,500 compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in April last year. It is understood that followed evidence from a Grampian detective inspector, who described Hollie as “a truthful witness to the best of her ability and an entirely innocent victim”. Mrs Greig, 58, claims her daughter has experienced nightmares and panic attacks since she first told her about the alleged abuse.
Posted by Legal Beagle at 14/2/2010 2:30 pm
Labels: Aberdeen, Crown Office, Elish Angiolini, Grampian Police, Hollie Greig, Kenny MacAskill, Levy McRae, Lord Advocate, Peter Watson, Scottish Government
22 comments:
Anonymous said…The msp aide is correct
Conflict of interest and govt support for those letters implied unless Justice Minister disowns Lord Advocate
Anonymous said…Breach of the peace (Scotland)
“Where something is done in breach of public order or decorum which might reasonably be expected to lead the lieges being
* alarmed or
* upset or
* tempted to make reprisals at their own hand, the circumstances are such to amount to a breach of the peace.”
Are the Crown Office alarmed,upset or afraid Mr Green will reveal abuse the Police are not being allowed to prosecute ?
I hope Mr Green gets out alive.The monkeys in charge have a habit of locking up those who expose their wrongdoings.
Anonymous said…and let KM deny it we now know the truth of his links to LeMac :
http://www.firmmagazine.com/features/426/Freedom_writer.html
18 Nov 2008
Freedom writer
From working alongside Kenny MacAskill as a trainee, to the jungles of Venezuela and all the way to the top prize at Cannes, screenwriter Paul Laverty packed up his pen, took his passion, and made it happen.
He says it was an accident, and certainly not the result of any planning on his part, but whether by default or design, Paul Laverty has made the leap out of the nine to five that surely comes as close as any to wish fulfilment. From once sharing an office with Kenny MacAskill at Levy and Macrae, now he writes movie scripts for Hollywood. Two otherwise identical careers could hardly have diverged further, and as de facto partner of legendary director Ken Loach, renowned for pitch perfect social realism, he is arguably doing his own bit for justice, albeit in a very different way from his former workmate.
Legal Beagle said…@7:23PM
Its always the smallest things that reveal the most.
Anonymous said…If Angiolini is so worried about her image she should resign her position and take legal action.
Anonymous said…Called in and got some kind of robot answering the phone who then hung up !
What happened to the traditional British bobby ? Did they swap for the Gestapo ?
brownfulk said…Unbelievable – reminds me of the Jersey whitewash. I wonder if there’s a connection ?
Anonymous said…Wow no doubt about it Evil lurks in Scotland !
Old Holborn said…http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2010/02/hollie-greig.html
Anonymous said…It’s ok, if he can prove wrongful arrest, he will be given a lot of compensation. Which i’m 95% sure he can prove…
Anonymous said…The dirty filthy Paedophile Police force Grampian Police had a heavy Police presence at Stonehaven Sheriff Court yesterday when Robert Green appeared from three days in custoday, and was heard in a closed court. Gastapo style justice, or Communist show trials.
They will do everything they can to protect the Paedophile Buchanan and his Paedophile ring. The Paedophile Police Force had a dirty Paedophile undercover piece of vermin hiding in a lane opposite the Stonehaven Sheriff Court yesterday when Robert Green appeared in court, he told supporters he was a resident waiting a delivery, probably a delivery of other dirty paedophile Police Officers, or Paedophile friends of Buchannan, the Chief Constable, the Lord Advocate, MacAskill, or from the Procurator Foscals Office in Aberdeen. They lock up the whistleblower confiscate evidence, but for ten years refuse to interview the Paedophiles that abused Hollie Greig. And what are all our wonderful MSPs and MPs doing, running for cover, or telling us that they cannot interven in legal matters, but look what the Deputy First Minister did last week with a fraudster in Glasgow. Our MPs and MSPs are all complicit in helping cover up this Paedophile Ring in Aberdeen.
Anonymous said…Aberdeen Press & Journal 16th February 2010. Mr Robert Green appeared at Stonehaven Sheriff Court and appeared in Court from custody, held three days in sustody for a breach of the peace.
A Court hearing in private, what are the Paedophiles in the Police, Judiciary,Legal Profession, Procurator Fiscals Office, Aberdeen Sheriff Court, the Lord Advocate, the Government trying to hide, it is the Paedophilia that they all know about, and many of them are involved in that is now catching up with them in the evidence that Robert Green has which they are now trying to suppress. The Aberdeen Paedophile Ring involves some of the most senior Police, more than one Sheriff, and the whole Legal System in Aberdeen and Scotland.
Anonymous said…Just read Mr Watson’s full profile.He seems to enjoy a fight and thinks nothing of stepping on people.I suggest he be given a taste of his own medicine.
Also as Justice Minister MacAskill worked for their firm put his head on posters about the case if the lawyers want to imply he is giving them his support.
Old Holborn said…STOP PRESS
This new Statute comes into force next week
Buchanan will be shitting himself
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2010/uksi_20100232_en_1
Anonymous said…I need your legal advice legal beagle.
I have been told Levy McRae have asked the Police to charge everyone involved in reporting the Hollie Greig case.
What should I do ?
Legal Beagle said…Anonymous said…
I need your legal advice legal beagle.
I have been told Levy McRae have asked the Police to charge everyone involved in reporting the Hollie Greig case.
What should I do ?
11:57 PM
Its funny you should mention that but anyway here is some advice.
If Levy McRae have asked the Police to investigate or arrest everyone posting material on the Hollie Greig case, they are going to have a long task ahead of them, as there are over 1 million references in Google now.
If you are threatened by Levy McRae, or the Police in connection with remarks or posts, and if charges are brought, you would be wise to cite as witnesses, staff of “The Firm” law magazine (http://www.firmmagazine.com/), who first reported the Hollie Greig case, and started the ball rolling on current events which have led to Mr Green’s arrest, and wild threats by law firms against anyone that moves.
Do remember, if witnesses you cite are of the ‘reluctant variety to attend in court’ they can be compelled to attend, after all if you do have any problems over it, I would be guessing its a criminal matter, right ?
Just remember who exactly started the reports in the media on the Hollie Greig case and I have no doubt they will end up having to make an appearance in any case against Mr Green, which seems likely (or not ?) given his arrest, and subsequent bail.
It will be interesting to see how “The Firm” and its many legal personalities justify what they said in their initial reports, despite their later apology & retraction, as of course, their coverage must have bearing on Mr Green’s defence presentation.
Hope that helps.
Anonymous said…Thanks much.Will do as you suggest.
Anonymous said…Evil people represent equally evil people
http://www.ukcolumn.org/ said… Readers should go check out the UK COLUMN for the latest on Robert Green and the fight to expose these evil perverts in Scotland
Anonymous said…very sick people in charge in Scotland
Liverpool Solicitors said…Good one..
Anonymous said…Just to alert you, videos of Mr Green start to get removed from YouTube…
As seen from http://www.youtube.com/user/JusticeforHollie
“Reporter Robert Green’s talk on the Hollie Greig Aberdeen abuse case Pt2”
This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.
Source: HollieGreigJusticee.blogspot.com
Flashback: Carbon Trading Can Be Used To Establish A New World Order, Become World Reserve Currency – Rothschild Vice Chairman
“When an individual receives an electricity bill, they will come to know what the cost of turning on the gas or a light was to the environment.” Simon Linnett, Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild, has called for a new international body, the World Environment Agency, to regulate carbon trading.
In a recently published paper, Trading Emissions, for the Social Market Foundation, Mr Linnett argues that the International problem of climate change demands an international solution. Unless governments cede some of their sovereignty to a new world body, he says, a global carbon trading scheme cannot be enforced and regulated. “An urgent global response.” This was how Nicolas Stern described the problem of carbon dioxide emissions, in his recent review of the economics of climate change. The sense of an impending crisis infuses our all debates on this issue. But like a group of rabbits caught in the headlights, our actual means of escape remain unclear. We know what our end goals are, but how do we get there? How can governments achieve delivery? The first step must be to recognise the scope of the problem. Unlike other pollutants, such as litter or nuclear waste, CO2 emissions have impact on a global level – and only on a global level. This means we have to deal with the issue internationally. The problem is literally too big for any one country to handle. Old alliances, divisions and ‘special relationships’ are a meaningless hindrance. I believe it is essential that governments and the private sector work together to solve the problem. As a banker, I suppose I would say that, but only such a partnership will we be able to harness what Al Gore called the multitude of little solutions, which all add up to a better outcome. Only the private sector can successfully develop those solutions, but only governments can provide a framework for them to be applied internationally. As a banker, I also welcome the fact that the ‘cap-and-trade’ system is becoming the dominant methodology for CO2 control. Unlike taxation, or plain regulation, cap-and-trade offers the greatest scope for private sector involvement and innovation. Furthermore, taxation and regulation can only be levied at local or national levels, whereas cap-and-trade can operate on a global level. And remember, the problem is global. But for the private sector to participate enthusiastically in a global carbon trading market, governments must collectively establish a robust framework within which trading can occur. It must be long, loud and legal: But like a group of rabbits caught in the headlights, our actual means of escape remain unclear. We know what our end goals are, but how do we get there? How can governments achieve delivery? The first step must be to recognise the scope of the problem. Unlike other pollutants, such as litter or nuclear waste, CO2 emissions have impact on a global level – and only on a global level. This means we have to deal with the issue internationally. The problem is literally too big for any one country to handle. Old alliances, divisions and ‘special relationships’ are a meaningless hindrance. I believe it is essential that governments and the private sector work together to solve the problem. As a banker, I suppose I would say that, but only such a partnership will we be able to harness what Al Gore called the multitude of little solutions, which all add up to a better outcome. Only the private sector can successfully develop those solutions, but only governments can provide a framework for them to be applied internationally. As a banker, I also welcome the fact that the ‘cap-and-trade’ system is becoming the dominant methodology for CO2 control. Unlike taxation, or plain regulation, cap-and-trade offers the greatest scope for private sector involvement and innovation. Furthermore, taxation and regulation can only be levied at local or national levels, whereas cap-and-trade can operate on a global level. And remember, the problem is global. But for the private sector to participate enthusiastically in a global carbon trading market, governments must collectively establish a robust framework within which trading can occur. It must be long, loud and legal:
A key implication of creating a legal yet global system of trading, is the loss of sovereignty it implies. Governments must be prepared to allow some subordination of national interests to this world initiative, on the issue of emissions. This need not mean a new system of government, above individual nations. The European nations already do this, on certain issues, yielding sovereignty to the EU. And in time, the EU itself will eventually have to yield to a larger body – one which includes the economic powerhouses of India and China. The cynicism that greets such programmes is well known, since the Asian economies seem bent on rapid expansion. However, I believe that both India and China will soon recognise the benefits of joining a global carbon trading scheme. First, a properly constituted, one-member-one-vote system would mean that they have a proper ‘say’. More importantly, since the allocation of the emissions cap might trend towards recognising world populations rather than current levels of emission, both countries would stand to gain a great deal. If emissions trading could expand into different areas of economic activity, so too could its message. When an individual receives an electricity bill, they will come to know what the cost of turning on the gas or a light was to the environment. Perhaps they will gain a new appreciation of their burden on the broader world. Similarly, if the scheme were to expand geographically to include India, China and, ultimately, the US, so too could the prospect be realised of such allowances becoming the reserve currency of the world, taking over that role held for most of the 20th century by gold. So emissions trading could establish a new world order for a sustainable planet, one based on the sharing of the earth’s ability to absorb harmful emissions. To allocate that ‘resource’ fully and properly will, in turn, require resourcefulness and imagination across the globe.
Source: Information Liberation, Jan 31 2008 |
Anti Oligarch 