A Place to Stand

      I put this fairly long post on the C4 website. I will let you know if they answer it or censor it:

I am certain that C4's slanted coverage of this will harm ordinary people in Sri Lanka. Slanted because what is alleged to be going on cannot be understood except in connection with the war. And that during that war the Tamil Tigers were genocidal in an open manner. People whose relatives were victims of genocide are not going to be gentle in restoring order - that isn't a matter of right or wrong but an inevitability. By ignoring the Tiger atrocities and playing up present alleged, by comparison, minor stuff C4 is inciting more Tamil terrorism which will inevitably lead to retaliation.

This lack of concern for people compared  to getting a simple BandW story is common.

However there is worse hypocrisy here.
The repeated headlining of crying women & children is deeply cynical and also suggests a lack of actual facts.
It is reminiscent of the coverage the UK state media gave to Kosovo where the lack of evidence of Yugoslav atrocities was mare than made up for by pictures of crying Albanian women.

We now know that the reason there was no evidence was because the news was faked. In 4 1/2 years of Milosevic's "trial" no actual evidence of any authorised wrongdoing by the Yugoslav government could be found. Channel 4 was as deeply involved in promoting these lies and thus the criminal war against Yugoslavia, not only by pushing false propaganda stories but also by deliberately censoring mention of the genuine atrocities being carried out by the drug lords, sex slavers and organleggers hired and armed by NATO as the KLA.

Much worse.
When NATO took over Kosovo, under an agreement to disarm the KLA, run a non-racist regime and
respect Yugoslav sovereignty, they immediately appointed the KLA as police and sent them out to engage in genocide (such as the Dragodan Massacre where at least 210 unarmed civilians were murdered by NATO police outside the UK hq; to kidnap thousands of teenage girls to sell to brothels across Europe; to ethnically cleanse 350,000 people and to "arrest" thousands and dissect them while still alive to steal their body organs for western hospitals.

Does anybody at C4 suggest that the Sri Lankan government have done anything 1% as evil as these atrocities?
Does anybody at C4 suggest their government is 1% as "war criminal" as our own?

Does anybody suggest that C4's coverage of both is anything other than deliberate and almost complete censorship of atrocities more obscene, though not numerically equal, than Hitler's?
Does anybody at C4 suggest that you did not deliberately lie to promote and then censor genocide?
Does anybody at C4 deny that you have continued to censor and lie to promote the racial programme of Adolf Hitler in the region?  Every single day over the last 14 years.

In which case can there be any suggestion that we should believe a single word you are saying about Sri Lanka, let alone what you imply (but do not say) with the usual cynical pictures of crying women, are in any way true, this time round.

UPDATE Monday noon

Somewhat to my surprise the post has just appeared.
 

"IN TIMES of austerity, travel documents come cheap. Portugal is the latest of several European countries to start selling visas to foreign investors; others are slashing their prices. These schemes grant the right to live and travel within the European Union. A passport often follows a few years later.

Christian Kälin of Henley & Partners, a consultancy, says Portugal’s Golden Residence Permit is the “most attractive in Europe”. It needs investment of €1m ($1.3m) in financial assets over five years, €500,000 in property or the creation of ten jobs. Spain is mulling a “golden visa” at the same price. Ireland asks for a donation or investment of €500,000 (it cut this from €1m in July).

Five countries will provide the right kind of investors with passports particularly swiftly. Two are in the EU: Austria and Cyprus, where the cash-strapped government has just cut its price from €10m to €2.5m. The others are Caribbean: St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, and Dominica. Their passports bring not just camouflage but also some handy visa-free travel."

     Is there anything wrong with this.

     In my opinion only that the citizenship it sells is for the entire EU but the selling is done by individual countries.

     I can't see anything wrong with the principle indeed why not take it further. UKIP policy is to permanently allow net immigration of 50,000 a year, but we want to select for the skilled and those likely to be net contributors to the economy.

     Why not auction off these 50,000 citizenships? The people buying them are highly unlikely to be welfare dependents. They are likely to have some substantial economic talent, even if it is only salesmanship.

     I might add they have to pass an IQ test putting them half a standard deviation above average IQ (ie 106) but that may just be me. However it would be in the genetic national interest without having any racial connotations that anybody who does not accept any IQ differences between races could object to. And obviously it could not include the right to bring in other family members for free.

      Since the more of something you have for sale the lower the price you have to accept  I don't think we would get as much as the $250,000 (£150,000) people pay to become citizens of Antigua but I would expect it would settle at between £50K - £100K. If we make the IQ qualification I suggest the price would automatically be lower.

      In libertarian terms it also solves an ideological problem. Most libertarians have never accepted citizenship as a property and thus been dubious about any limits on immigration but if people are buying and selling it then, by their definition, it is property and fits the theory.

      What to do with the £2.5 - 5 billion?

     I suggest investing the lot in the Aquarius floating island concept developed by the Millenial Foundation and powered by ocean thermal power (OTEC). Prices are not fully determined but should come in at no more than £2 bn per island with a potential population of 100,000. such islands can, incidentally, provide enough algae grown high protein food to each feed millions of people and as previously described, building them would provide dockyard employment.

    Roger Helmer pointed out that the world's first commercial nuclear power station took 5 years to go from starting the design to working (1951-56) and checking further I find that building started in 1953 - a 3 year build time.

    That was for something that had never been built before.
    In an era before computer aided design (indeed only shortly after we had been told that the "world market for computers is about 6")

    Yet Hinckley Point, an already existing design, after 60 years of technological progress, will take 10 years.

    But also 60 years of growing political parasitism
 
    Further proof that at least 90% of the cost is political parasitism.