Saturday, April 18, 2009
FRANK FIELD, LABOUR MP, FACES REALITY & TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
From Labour MP Frank Field's article in the Spectator in which he faces reality with unflinching honesty. The governments borrow & spend programme cannot work because:
It is difficult to overdramatise the danger that is engulfing our country. In some ways our position is more precarious than in 1940 when we stood alone against the Nazi tyranny.
The danger can be stated easily enough. Far from building up reserves during the latter stages of the boom, the government went on a borrowing spree amounting to £200 billion or so. This borrowing disguised the fundamental structural imbalance in our national accounts. No government, however intent on making the pips of the rich squeak, has been able to raise in taxation more than 37 per cent of our gross domestic product. It is as though one of Adam Smith’s invisible hands has constructed a lead ceiling over the amount of income governments can lift off us taxpayers...
But no such ceiling operates on government expenditure. The most profligate of administrations spend up to half of all the income we create to finance what appears to have been a never-ending extension of public projects...Clearly no one, including the government, has much idea yet of the true magnitude of borrowing. The last guesstimate put it at £360-380 billion over the next two years...
The House of Commons Library has calculated for me what the G8 governments will attempt to borrow over the next two years. The sums are of gobsmacking proportions: a debt total of $2,245 billion this year, rising to $2,521 billion in 2010. The sheer size of these figures expresses our vulnerability. In contrast, in 1940, we had allies in the Commonwealth, particularly Canada, who gave us huge sums and, like America, lent us further monies so as to balance our war budget. Now our allies are part of the hunt for likely lenders.
If we comfort ourselves that there is that kind of money somewhere out there to be lent, we should be distressed that there will be, to put it mildly, a degree of competition between the possible destinations for that available cash...
The government not only has a moral duty now to cut public expenditure, but may be forced to do so by its inability to borrow on the scale necessary. The price demanded for a continual and adequate supply of credit will be to begin now — and not after the next election — the Herculean task of bringing government spending nearer to what it can raise in taxes. This lead ceiling on tax levels should make any government cautious in thinking it can tax itself out of these debt levels. It might be worth trading in the 45 per cent tax rates, which the IFS believes will pull in little new revenue, for allowing pension contributions at the standard rate of tax only, with perhaps £5 billion being added annually to the revenue stream. But tax rises can only play a modest role in closing the enormous gap in the national accounts.
...it’s worth going for a cash ceiling on all public expenditure programmes. The drive must then be to ensure that falling real budgets result in increased output. This goal will not be easy to achieve and it will require a serious budget devolution so that entrepreneurial skills that are within the public system operate to full effect. But there will be no escaping the need to take out whole programmes if there is any prospect of bringing expenditure down merely towards tax revenue levels ...The annual £180-190 billion gap will take some filling...
But the threat to the country’s solvency is now so serious that both opposition and government need to use next week’s Budget on what needs to be done this year to begin rebuilding the country’s solvency.
As Tam Dalyell used to be the moral conscience of Labour so Frank Field is its economic brains - which is why he got fired from the Cabinet for 'thinking the unthinkable' in terms of social security reform.
Hat tip to Iain Dale who mentioned this though he chose different bits to quote. I commented on there in relation to the first highlighted section
"I'm sure Mr Field thinks this is indeed a practical ceiling - that above that level it is so much more worth working in the black economy, or in Switzerland, or in taking up even the most expensive tax fiddles or just putting one's feet up that this is indeed a ceiling. In which case he is right that government spending simply cannot permanently be above that.
I wish those on the opposition front bench could also give such an unflinching recognition of reality.
We should have some serious discussion as to what proportion of the economy ideally should be government spending - I would guess 15% as the economic optimum & a poll I ran on my blog said under 20%. Mr Cameron seems to be afraid of saying anything in case it might be controversial."
By comparison Cameron's Conservative shadow cabinet are going along with Labour's increase of top end income tax to 45%. Now I do believe that income tax should be higher at the top end as it provides a negative feedback system limiting wealth disparities (Marx's theories are based around that lack) but it would be far better to cut taxes at the bottom than increase them at the top. Field is quite correct that this will not really increase the money the Exchequer takes & Cameron is showing cowardice in not being willing to say so. I very much hope that some backbench Conservatives make use of this gauntlet Field has thrown down & at least ask the PM or Chancellor & leader of the opposition if they agree that a tax take of over 37% of GDP is practical.
I have previously tested what amount of GDP the electorate would like government to be spending & it came out at 10-19%. I have also said how we can, with the will, not only get out of recession but into strong growth & nobody has felt able to deny that it will work.
Friday, April 17, 2009
JOURNALISTS SPOONFED BY POLITICIANS, QUANGOS & FAKECHARITIES
Leslie Riddoch was doing her radio show today on the week in Scottish politics including some stuff on Damien & Guido's vehement attack on the lobby system which induced one of the guests to say, in its defence, that without the lobby system [a system whereby government ministers are allowed to tell unattributable lies & hand over secret documents to a selected group of well trained journalists - for overseas readers] The BBC & other news media would have no news. She had, as her guests an "environmentalist" a "fair trader" & a Labour apparatchik. I sent an email & it was read out:
2 of 3 guests are an "environmentalist" & a "fair trader". Nice balance.This induced a few embarrassed giggles all round but no verbal disagreement. A later emailer also made the point, from the SNP side that her guests were from Scotland's Labour establishment.
The line that if it wasn't for lobby stories planted by politicians the BBC News would have nothing to say is clearly wrong. There are many important stories that don't get covered (I once sent you a list Leslie & you used one). If the media weren't being spoonfed by politicians, quangos & fakecharities they would just have to work for a living.
WIKIPEDIA - HOW IT CENSORS IN GOVERNMENT'S CAUSE
wrote previously of how Wikipedia had censored any pro-Serb views, any mention of the primary Srebrenica genocide, any evidence that the official genocide is a pack of lies & had drawn its article on the Croatian Nazi leader Franjo Tudjman verbatim from a Croatian government hagiography.
Here is some stuff from Nigel Caulder detailing some censorship on the warming debate (though reading any of their articles on the subject shows it anyway).
In theory Wikipedia is a “people’s encyclopedia” written and edited by the people who read it — anyone with an Internet connection. So on controversial topics, one might expect to see a broad range of opinion. On global warming we get consensus, Gore-style: a consensus forged by censorship, intimidation, and deceit.
Naomi Oreskes, author of the now-infamous paper, published in the prestigious journal Science, claiming to have exhaustively reviewed the scientific literature and found not one single article dissenting from the alarmist version of global warming.
Naturally I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that Oreskes’s work had been vindicated and that, for instance, one of her most thorough critics, British scientist and publisher Bennie Peiser, not only had been discredited but had grudgingly conceded Oreskes was right.
I checked with Peiser, who said he had done no such thing. I then corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.
Peiser wrote back saying he couldn’t see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again. I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.
Turns out that on Wikipedia some folks are more equal than others. Kim Dabelstein Petersen is a Wikipedia “editor” who seems to devote a large part of his life to editing reams and reams of Wikipedia pages to pump the assertions of global-warming alarmists and deprecate or make disappear the arguments of skeptics.
I soon found others who had the same experience: They would try to squeeze in any dissent, or even correct an obvious slander against a dissenter, and Petersen or some other censor would immediately snuff them out.
I have found Wikipedia of considerable use on many subjects. It is useful for finding the particular names & details which will allow you a deep search.
Nonetheless one datum is only one datum but 2 allows you to extrapolate a trend. Yugoslavia & global warming are 2 very different subjects - the only connection between them being the deep & damaging involvement of western government & its propaganda. There is no crossover, at least on the surface level, between Wiki contributors. However we certainly have a trend here of Wikipedia deliberately lying in the cause of whatever government has decreed. Their claim about Peiser saying Oreskes was right is not merely bias it is clearly an outright & deliberate lie.
Clearly Wikipedia can't be used as a primary source though it is useful in getting basic material & getting a viewpoint though not all of them.
In the book 1984 much of the story revolves around a massive bureaucracy, the Ministry of Truth, whose job is to rewrite news to say whatever the government wants. Nowadays such things can be done "in a twinkle" without the massive bureaucracy.
PS Calder also mentions how in discussing an article in 2000 in which he said he did not expect warming to continue & that in due course the Warming supporters (now "Climate Change" supporters) would start worrying about cooling that ""After his prediction was proven wrong, Calder participated in the polemic documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle."
Here is some stuff from Nigel Caulder detailing some censorship on the warming debate (though reading any of their articles on the subject shows it anyway).
Just because I'm a sceptic, Wikipedia elects to focus on the 10% of my writing that happens to deal with the climate. In my accounts of general relativity, astrophysics, particle physics and solid-Earth geophysics (for example) I show my readers what real physics looks like. It's all very different from the computer games of the climate modellers.The report in question says
But we know about the Wiki Witch of the West, don't we, Benny? "Peisers [sic] crap shouldn't be in here," said William Connelley, as Lawrence Solomon reported last year.
In theory Wikipedia is a “people’s encyclopedia” written and edited by the people who read it — anyone with an Internet connection. So on controversial topics, one might expect to see a broad range of opinion. On global warming we get consensus, Gore-style: a consensus forged by censorship, intimidation, and deceit.
Naomi Oreskes, author of the now-infamous paper, published in the prestigious journal Science, claiming to have exhaustively reviewed the scientific literature and found not one single article dissenting from the alarmist version of global warming.
Naturally I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that Oreskes’s work had been vindicated and that, for instance, one of her most thorough critics, British scientist and publisher Bennie Peiser, not only had been discredited but had grudgingly conceded Oreskes was right.
I checked with Peiser, who said he had done no such thing. I then corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.
Peiser wrote back saying he couldn’t see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again. I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.
Turns out that on Wikipedia some folks are more equal than others. Kim Dabelstein Petersen is a Wikipedia “editor” who seems to devote a large part of his life to editing reams and reams of Wikipedia pages to pump the assertions of global-warming alarmists and deprecate or make disappear the arguments of skeptics.
I soon found others who had the same experience: They would try to squeeze in any dissent, or even correct an obvious slander against a dissenter, and Petersen or some other censor would immediately snuff them out.
I have found Wikipedia of considerable use on many subjects. It is useful for finding the particular names & details which will allow you a deep search.
Nonetheless one datum is only one datum but 2 allows you to extrapolate a trend. Yugoslavia & global warming are 2 very different subjects - the only connection between them being the deep & damaging involvement of western government & its propaganda. There is no crossover, at least on the surface level, between Wiki contributors. However we certainly have a trend here of Wikipedia deliberately lying in the cause of whatever government has decreed. Their claim about Peiser saying Oreskes was right is not merely bias it is clearly an outright & deliberate lie.
Clearly Wikipedia can't be used as a primary source though it is useful in getting basic material & getting a viewpoint though not all of them.
In the book 1984 much of the story revolves around a massive bureaucracy, the Ministry of Truth, whose job is to rewrite news to say whatever the government wants. Nowadays such things can be done "in a twinkle" without the massive bureaucracy.
PS Calder also mentions how in discussing an article in 2000 in which he said he did not expect warming to continue & that in due course the Warming supporters (now "Climate Change" supporters) would start worrying about cooling that ""After his prediction was proven wrong, Calder participated in the polemic documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle."
Thursday, April 16, 2009
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS 3
I have been listing the constitutional amendments Milton Freedman advocated. This is his one on Occupational Licensure
I must admit the idea of just anybody being able to set up as a doctor is disconcerting. On the other hand he does use them as an example. The AMA (& BMA here) certainly severely restrict the number of people who can train as doctor setting the numbers trained on criteria other than need for doctors or even the educational ability of this year's intake. This is clear method of pushing up their earnings. It does have the result of increasing the number of chiropractors & other unofficial doctors.
He assumes & I generally do to, that existing or new professional bodies would still be able to licence & that the public would pay great attention to such licencing, at least until such a body screwed up. I have previously written about how childcare costs are grossly inflated by government regulation & our government say it intends to fight child poverty by ensuring everybody licenced to look after kids has an A level on the subject. That will clearly not reduce costs.
Being a bit wishy washy in my libertarianism I am not sure about getting rid of all such regulation (or at least would like to see somebody else trying it first) but would like a ban on any new laws combined with a duty by the government to provide a cost benefit analysis of existing laws & remove them if they fall short.
No state shall make or impose any law which shall abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to follow any occupation or profession of his choice
I must admit the idea of just anybody being able to set up as a doctor is disconcerting. On the other hand he does use them as an example. The AMA (& BMA here) certainly severely restrict the number of people who can train as doctor setting the numbers trained on criteria other than need for doctors or even the educational ability of this year's intake. This is clear method of pushing up their earnings. It does have the result of increasing the number of chiropractors & other unofficial doctors.
He assumes & I generally do to, that existing or new professional bodies would still be able to licence & that the public would pay great attention to such licencing, at least until such a body screwed up. I have previously written about how childcare costs are grossly inflated by government regulation & our government say it intends to fight child poverty by ensuring everybody licenced to look after kids has an A level on the subject. That will clearly not reduce costs.
Being a bit wishy washy in my libertarianism I am not sure about getting rid of all such regulation (or at least would like to see somebody else trying it first) but would like a ban on any new laws combined with a duty by the government to provide a cost benefit analysis of existing laws & remove them if they fall short.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
MSM V BLOGSPHERE
Iain MacWhirter, of Glasgow's upmarket paper has written, in relation to Damien McBride's Labour online smear campaign, about how bloggers, unlike fine upstanding newspaper journalists, are a "new frontier of hackery is not subject to the same standards of accuracy, taste, style and legality that newspapers like The Herald are subject to. It is fashionable to condemn the "dead tree press" for being unreliable and sensationalist, but we are like academic research journals compared to the stuff on the web.
For reasons no-one has been able to fully explain, the political right has been adept at this new kind of journalism, led by Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale's Diary."
Actually many people have been able to explain that because blogging is an individual activity it largely works for individualists (discussion groups on the other hand have a definite corporatist trend). Individualism is not the same as being "right wing", it is merely traditional liberalism but I can see why he doesn't get such nuances. What Ian really means is that nobody whose views he agrees with have been able to explain it. This doesn't prove the explanation is correct but it is certainly the front runner.
He also says bloggers are "opinionated nerds" & should be opposed "because political journalism is entering a new age, the age of the blog - an ugly word for an ugly trade". Since newspapers are visibly in a state of collapse everywhere because of blogging & the net Iain's tantrum is understandable but not reasonable.
My experience is that bloggers average much better on standards of accuracy than the press. "Taste, style & legality" may be a different matter but how much those should restrain accuracy is certainly arguable. The reasons blogs are more accurate are (1) because they don't have a monopoly & (2) because anybody can give links to verify claimed facts & someone who doesn't is likely to be treated with suspicion & (3) because blogging is a 2 way process in which comments are almost always published & incorrect facts disproven.
Newspapers, even when they allow online comments tend to prevent comments from those who produce inconvenient facts & do so even more strongly when choosing letters for publication. Like Henry Ford, newspapers will report any fact as long as its one they want - hence my numerous unpublished letters on the genocide in Yugoslavia.
As a scientific test I sent the Herald this letter which they did not publish:
I think that proves beyond reasonable doubt that blogs are far freer & more trustworthy source than the MSM.
---------------------------------
And in another part of the MSM, Tuesday's Morning phone in show was about the WWF Scotland call for criminalising not putting up enough insulation in your home.
No really.
So anyway I rang in & said that if these "environmentalists" really believed in CO2 caused global warming they would support building more nuclear which can produce electricity at 1.4p a unit. I also estimated this would cost about £700 million [it was said there are 3/4 million houses needing such attention - so at £500 a shot plus all the bureaucracy everything needs come to about that]. Gary said it would save money overall & I disagreed since any saving would not likely match the initial cost & that anyway having electricity at 1/4 the cost & lower taxes would save more. At which point he moved on to the next caller.
I must admit the way almost every single thought of the day is on what new regulations & government spending we should all be welcoming really gets my goat. This nonsense is particularly egregious since (A) global warming is not a problem (B) this is not a solution (C) if this actually were cost effective it wouldn't need subsidy & the police (D) freedom is actually something worth having (F) with 80% of our economy being government spending & half the rest being spending to satisfy regulation the last thing we need is more of both.
Unfortunately WWF Scotland's website doesn't say how they are funded but we are finding that many charities & most of the more political ones are fakecharities i.e. ones getting most of their money from government. Such "charities" clearly cannot be impartial when saying whether or not there should be more government spending & the BBC should, as an absolute minimum, announce when their guest is from an independent body or a government quango. Of course the BBC is a government quango as well.
I put the last 2 paragraphs on Graham's blog & to my surprise because they usually haven't in the past, they published it.
For reasons no-one has been able to fully explain, the political right has been adept at this new kind of journalism, led by Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale's Diary."
Actually many people have been able to explain that because blogging is an individual activity it largely works for individualists (discussion groups on the other hand have a definite corporatist trend). Individualism is not the same as being "right wing", it is merely traditional liberalism but I can see why he doesn't get such nuances. What Ian really means is that nobody whose views he agrees with have been able to explain it. This doesn't prove the explanation is correct but it is certainly the front runner.
He also says bloggers are "opinionated nerds" & should be opposed "because political journalism is entering a new age, the age of the blog - an ugly word for an ugly trade". Since newspapers are visibly in a state of collapse everywhere because of blogging & the net Iain's tantrum is understandable but not reasonable.
My experience is that bloggers average much better on standards of accuracy than the press. "Taste, style & legality" may be a different matter but how much those should restrain accuracy is certainly arguable. The reasons blogs are more accurate are (1) because they don't have a monopoly & (2) because anybody can give links to verify claimed facts & someone who doesn't is likely to be treated with suspicion & (3) because blogging is a 2 way process in which comments are almost always published & incorrect facts disproven.
Newspapers, even when they allow online comments tend to prevent comments from those who produce inconvenient facts & do so even more strongly when choosing letters for publication. Like Henry Ford, newspapers will report any fact as long as its one they want - hence my numerous unpublished letters on the genocide in Yugoslavia.
As a scientific test I sent the Herald this letter which they did not publish:
Iain MacWhirter says that bloggers are "opinionated nerds" & the blogsphere is "an ugly trade," though, unlike him, most of us don't get paid. The latin derivation of "amateur" is someone who does it for love not money.As expected it was not published. I also put the central paragraph on Iain Dale's & Alex Massie's neither of whom have a record of opposing genocide in Kosovo but neither of whom censored it. I will also be putting in on Iain MacWhirter's blog :-) where strangely enough he complains about people getting publicity by being rude.
Perhaps he would be better employed reporting on such things as the public admission, over a year ago, by Carla del Ponte the Yugoslav War crimes prosecutor that she has known for years that our NATO police (as the KLA became when we occupied the place) had been dissecting hundreds, perhaps thousands, of living Serbs to sell their body organs. Perhaps he should report on the faking of newspaper photographs in reporting of the Tibetan riots, the Georgian war & of course, any war involving Israel. Perhaps he should report that, contrary to well publicised assertions by the "green" lobby that 99.9% of scientists support the global warming claim, the largest single collection of scientists' opinions is the 31,000 who signed the Oregon Petition, not only saying it is no problem but that increased CO2 is beneficial. Perhaps he should report that so many of the charities, whose press releases, calling for ever more government regulation & spending, form a staple in so much of the mainstream media & who buy stands at party conventions, are often largely funded by government money.
Some of the facts reported across the blogsphere but sadly unavailable to newspaper readers.
I think that proves beyond reasonable doubt that blogs are far freer & more trustworthy source than the MSM.
---------------------------------
And in another part of the MSM, Tuesday's Morning phone in show was about the WWF Scotland call for criminalising not putting up enough insulation in your home.
No really.
So anyway I rang in & said that if these "environmentalists" really believed in CO2 caused global warming they would support building more nuclear which can produce electricity at 1.4p a unit. I also estimated this would cost about £700 million [it was said there are 3/4 million houses needing such attention - so at £500 a shot plus all the bureaucracy everything needs come to about that]. Gary said it would save money overall & I disagreed since any saving would not likely match the initial cost & that anyway having electricity at 1/4 the cost & lower taxes would save more. At which point he moved on to the next caller.
I must admit the way almost every single thought of the day is on what new regulations & government spending we should all be welcoming really gets my goat. This nonsense is particularly egregious since (A) global warming is not a problem (B) this is not a solution (C) if this actually were cost effective it wouldn't need subsidy & the police (D) freedom is actually something worth having (F) with 80% of our economy being government spending & half the rest being spending to satisfy regulation the last thing we need is more of both.
Unfortunately WWF Scotland's website doesn't say how they are funded but we are finding that many charities & most of the more political ones are fakecharities i.e. ones getting most of their money from government. Such "charities" clearly cannot be impartial when saying whether or not there should be more government spending & the BBC should, as an absolute minimum, announce when their guest is from an independent body or a government quango. Of course the BBC is a government quango as well.
I put the last 2 paragraphs on Graham's blog & to my surprise because they usually haven't in the past, they published it.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
ECO-FASCIST PLOT TO PUT THE LIGHTS OUT FOILED - MEDIA SILENT
I got this via Watts Up with That & most definitely not from the BBC or ITN despite it being an attempted terrorist act which would have endangered thousands of innocent British citizens.
More than 100 people are in custody after police smashed a major plot to sabotage one of Britain's biggest power-stations.
...Officers swooped on environmental protesters as they prepared a mass raid that could have disrupted supplies to tens of thousands of homes.
The demonstrators are thought to have gathered at night in readiness to move on Ratcliffe-on-Soar power-station, Nottinghamshire.
They were rounded up shortly after midnight on Sunday...
114 men and women from across the UK were detained during the dramatic swoop.
They were being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and criminal damage at Ratcliffe-on-Soar.
Supt Manley said: "In view of specialist equipment recovered by police, those arrested posed a serious threat to the safe running of the site.
"This was a significant operation, with large-scale arrests. There were no injuries during the arrests, and the police investigation is ongoing."
"I counted 20-plus vans, all one after the other, with police cars at the rear. Then they blocked off all the roads around the community centre."
with respect to a previous attack At the time Eastside Climate Action, the group involved, said the break-in reflected "the threat climate change poses to the human population".
A spokesman said: "We argue that the threat to human life is so serious that it is a proportionate and reasonable response to take direct action."
This is a very serious large scale threat. Such things become inevitable when the state decides that violence, when carried out in the eco-Nazi cause, is proper. It follows the Kingsnorth trial where Gore's toady James Hansen & Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith testified is support of such violence to put the lights out. If these people want folk to be deprived of electricity they should be exiled to Saint Kilda where they could happily live out their lives free of such modern terrors, its original inhabitants having decided they preferred progress. Happy all round then. Such parasitic thuggery has got to be stopped. {We could let them come back when the sea has risen 3 feet, best guess for which is 500 years}
More than 100 people are in custody after police smashed a major plot to sabotage one of Britain's biggest power-stations.
...Officers swooped on environmental protesters as they prepared a mass raid that could have disrupted supplies to tens of thousands of homes.
The demonstrators are thought to have gathered at night in readiness to move on Ratcliffe-on-Soar power-station, Nottinghamshire.
They were rounded up shortly after midnight on Sunday...
114 men and women from across the UK were detained during the dramatic swoop.
They were being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and criminal damage at Ratcliffe-on-Soar.
Supt Manley said: "In view of specialist equipment recovered by police, those arrested posed a serious threat to the safe running of the site.
"This was a significant operation, with large-scale arrests. There were no injuries during the arrests, and the police investigation is ongoing."
"I counted 20-plus vans, all one after the other, with police cars at the rear. Then they blocked off all the roads around the community centre."
with respect to a previous attack At the time Eastside Climate Action, the group involved, said the break-in reflected "the threat climate change poses to the human population".
A spokesman said: "We argue that the threat to human life is so serious that it is a proportionate and reasonable response to take direct action."
This is a very serious large scale threat. Such things become inevitable when the state decides that violence, when carried out in the eco-Nazi cause, is proper. It follows the Kingsnorth trial where Gore's toady James Hansen & Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith testified is support of such violence to put the lights out. If these people want folk to be deprived of electricity they should be exiled to Saint Kilda where they could happily live out their lives free of such modern terrors, its original inhabitants having decided they preferred progress. Happy all round then. Such parasitic thuggery has got to be stopped. {We could let them come back when the sea has risen 3 feet, best guess for which is 500 years}
CROSSING CONTINENTS - ICTY DESTROYED EVIDENCE
Radio 4's Crossing Continents was repeated on Monday, 13 April, 2009 at 20:30 BST.
It was as previously reported.. Points I noted:
- The BBC started by claiming the Serbs had "killed thousands of Albanians" a statement they did not attempt to prove & which contradicts NATO's Spanish forensic who said 2,000 from all communities & killed not only by all parties but some who might have died from causes not connected with the war. On the other hand this is relatively balanced for the BBC since they previously claimed anything up to 250,000 & is presumably what Michael Montgomery is requited to say.
- It refers to groups of captives being held in houses at a KLA base but them being moved to "shacks" in what amounts to the back gardens when KFOR troops were expected. As told that seemed to mean that they were being hidden from KFOR but the KLA would have known that NATO troops visiting the house could not have failed to hear groups of "20-25" screaming for their lives.
This alone strongly suggests NATO deliberately authorised the genocide. Since the location was shown & the rough dates were too it should be possible to trace the troops if that were desired.
- One witness referred to "truckloads" & "hundreds" of "Serbs Gypsies & Albanians" captives at 1 site.
General Agim Ceku was interviewed. He claimed his "own father" was killed by Serbs. This may or may not be true though it is not mentioned in his biography.He would not be the first KLA member to claim to be motivated by the murder of a family member who was not dead.
- It was stated that a KLA witness had claimed to have heard that "kidneys were going to Turkey" but no mention of other NATO countries.
- That 6 years ago the UN & ICTY Had "detailed" documents on the murder site, in Albania, which were taken to Kosovo & thence to the ICTY in the Hague where it had been decided that some or all of it should be destroyed. There was some discussion of whether this interfered with the "chain of evidence" & whether those who destroyed it would be recorded as part of the chain of evidence.
- The ICTY had "declined to confirm or deny" destroying evidence because of the "ongoing investigation".
- That the evidence known as of 2003 to the ICTY, UN, NATO & presumably NATO member states certainly "warranted opening an investigation".
No mention of the Dragodan & other immediate massacres. No mention of the sexual enslavement of schoolgirls. No mention of the ethnic cleansing of 350,000. A general downplaying of numbers. All in all the closest to honest & balanced the genocidal Nazis at the BBC have come for 19 years.
Video of the journey
DeConstruct's review
It was as previously reported.. Points I noted:
- The BBC started by claiming the Serbs had "killed thousands of Albanians" a statement they did not attempt to prove & which contradicts NATO's Spanish forensic who said 2,000 from all communities & killed not only by all parties but some who might have died from causes not connected with the war. On the other hand this is relatively balanced for the BBC since they previously claimed anything up to 250,000 & is presumably what Michael Montgomery is requited to say.
- It refers to groups of captives being held in houses at a KLA base but them being moved to "shacks" in what amounts to the back gardens when KFOR troops were expected. As told that seemed to mean that they were being hidden from KFOR but the KLA would have known that NATO troops visiting the house could not have failed to hear groups of "20-25" screaming for their lives.
This alone strongly suggests NATO deliberately authorised the genocide. Since the location was shown & the rough dates were too it should be possible to trace the troops if that were desired.
- One witness referred to "truckloads" & "hundreds" of "Serbs Gypsies & Albanians" captives at 1 site.
General Agim Ceku was interviewed. He claimed his "own father" was killed by Serbs. This may or may not be true though it is not mentioned in his biography.He would not be the first KLA member to claim to be motivated by the murder of a family member who was not dead.
- It was stated that a KLA witness had claimed to have heard that "kidneys were going to Turkey" but no mention of other NATO countries.
- That 6 years ago the UN & ICTY Had "detailed" documents on the murder site, in Albania, which were taken to Kosovo & thence to the ICTY in the Hague where it had been decided that some or all of it should be destroyed. There was some discussion of whether this interfered with the "chain of evidence" & whether those who destroyed it would be recorded as part of the chain of evidence.
- The ICTY had "declined to confirm or deny" destroying evidence because of the "ongoing investigation".
- That the evidence known as of 2003 to the ICTY, UN, NATO & presumably NATO member states certainly "warranted opening an investigation".
No mention of the Dragodan & other immediate massacres. No mention of the sexual enslavement of schoolgirls. No mention of the ethnic cleansing of 350,000. A general downplaying of numbers. All in all the closest to honest & balanced the genocidal Nazis at the BBC have come for 19 years.
Video of the journey
DeConstruct's review
Monday, April 13, 2009
NOT PIRATES BUT ALTERNATIVE SHOPPERS ON THE HIGH SEAS
Piracy is in the news. The world's navies are helpless to stop a few Somalis, with AK47s capturing £100 million ships. Is it because all our forces are in Afghanistan? Is it because these pirates are uniquely cunning, aggressive & dedicated to their religious calling of stealing stuff. Or could it be that the governing systems of the western powers are run so incompetently & bureaucratically, with every sort of decision making put off in case it might be "sensitive" that theses idiots couldn't find their buttocks using both hands.
To ask the question is to answer it.
I remember reading a science fiction short story (sorry, as is the way of such things I don't remember who wrote it) in which a future US army, armed with all sorts of technological toys, occupies a hamlet which has, for some reason, been off their maps for generations. One of the locals threatens him with his rifle at which point the automatic, radar linked computerised heavy machine guns fire - & kill a chicken. Then the computer programme shuts them down. Being unarmed the armoured vehicles retreat & crash into the more numerous journalists' vehicles. Being unarmed & unable to retreat the books tells them they must surrender to save casualties.
In past ages piracy caused a real problem to which there was a real & bloody solution.
"From about 1500 to 1832, the Barbary corsairs of North Africa made the Mediterranean a highly dangerous place, regularly attacking and plundering Western trading vessels...
The West finally suppressed the corsairs, but not until the early decades of the 1800s when they were in a less vigorous state. In a series of confrontations, Western navies were able to forge (sometimes coerce) diplomatic treaties (e.g., the 1796 agreement with the independent Morocco). They also fought the corsairs and their North African sponsors in wars (e.g., the 1801-05 war between Tripoli and the fledgling United States, whence comes the reference to the "shores of Tripoli" in The Marines' Hymn). And finally, they were able to vanquish sponsoring cities (e.g., the 1830 French invasion of Algiers, which signaled the definitive end of the Barbary corsairs)."
A modern example directly comparable to the Somali situation & which, astonishingly, has had less newspaper coverage than the historic pirates lies at the other side of the Indian Ocean along the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia, Singapore & Indonesia. There the action has been much more serious:
"SE Asia victorious in war vs Malacca Straits piracy
If pirates here were to try a copy-cat attack like in Somalia, it won't be easy for them because the governments in this region won't hesitate to take action," IMB Piracy Reporting Center chief Noel Choong said.
But he said pirates operating out of bases in Sumatra and outlying islands would strike again as soon as the littoral states relaxed their coordinated "aggressive patrols."
Aggressive patrols means blowing the bastards out of the water. It mean hunting them down to their bases & taking out these bases. This is how it worked historically. It does not mean instructing our navy that it should not arrest pirates because they can then apply for political asylum here.
Centuries ago pirates had something close to, or sometimes greater than equivalent power to governments. The Indonesian pirates were relatively well armed, from a much more prosperous area than Somalia & because the Straits are both long & narrow, a very much more difficult area to protect.yet with determination they have been overcome.
It is not a matter of having the military capability, our combined navies are probably a million times more powerful than them. It is a matter of opposing them with the methods that have worked & which navies are capable rather than hypocritical bureaucratic timewasting rules.
This is actually much more important than it looks. The current problem is a few guys in small boats. However this is motivated by free enterprise. If these guys continue making this sort of money then, not only will they start buying some serious armament, but more importantly poor people across the world will get in on the act. I previously blogged about how a British admiral warned that, within 10 years (now 7) we could have north African pirates active in the Mediterranean again. If we don't stop this in Somalia we will have to face it nearer home.
To ask the question is to answer it.
I remember reading a science fiction short story (sorry, as is the way of such things I don't remember who wrote it) in which a future US army, armed with all sorts of technological toys, occupies a hamlet which has, for some reason, been off their maps for generations. One of the locals threatens him with his rifle at which point the automatic, radar linked computerised heavy machine guns fire - & kill a chicken. Then the computer programme shuts them down. Being unarmed the armoured vehicles retreat & crash into the more numerous journalists' vehicles. Being unarmed & unable to retreat the books tells them they must surrender to save casualties.
In past ages piracy caused a real problem to which there was a real & bloody solution.
"From about 1500 to 1832, the Barbary corsairs of North Africa made the Mediterranean a highly dangerous place, regularly attacking and plundering Western trading vessels...
The West finally suppressed the corsairs, but not until the early decades of the 1800s when they were in a less vigorous state. In a series of confrontations, Western navies were able to forge (sometimes coerce) diplomatic treaties (e.g., the 1796 agreement with the independent Morocco). They also fought the corsairs and their North African sponsors in wars (e.g., the 1801-05 war between Tripoli and the fledgling United States, whence comes the reference to the "shores of Tripoli" in The Marines' Hymn). And finally, they were able to vanquish sponsoring cities (e.g., the 1830 French invasion of Algiers, which signaled the definitive end of the Barbary corsairs)."
A modern example directly comparable to the Somali situation & which, astonishingly, has had less newspaper coverage than the historic pirates lies at the other side of the Indian Ocean along the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia, Singapore & Indonesia. There the action has been much more serious:
"SE Asia victorious in war vs Malacca Straits piracy
If pirates here were to try a copy-cat attack like in Somalia, it won't be easy for them because the governments in this region won't hesitate to take action," IMB Piracy Reporting Center chief Noel Choong said.
But he said pirates operating out of bases in Sumatra and outlying islands would strike again as soon as the littoral states relaxed their coordinated "aggressive patrols."
Aggressive patrols means blowing the bastards out of the water. It mean hunting them down to their bases & taking out these bases. This is how it worked historically. It does not mean instructing our navy that it should not arrest pirates because they can then apply for political asylum here.
Centuries ago pirates had something close to, or sometimes greater than equivalent power to governments. The Indonesian pirates were relatively well armed, from a much more prosperous area than Somalia & because the Straits are both long & narrow, a very much more difficult area to protect.yet with determination they have been overcome.
It is not a matter of having the military capability, our combined navies are probably a million times more powerful than them. It is a matter of opposing them with the methods that have worked & which navies are capable rather than hypocritical bureaucratic timewasting rules.
This is actually much more important than it looks. The current problem is a few guys in small boats. However this is motivated by free enterprise. If these guys continue making this sort of money then, not only will they start buying some serious armament, but more importantly poor people across the world will get in on the act. I previously blogged about how a British admiral warned that, within 10 years (now 7) we could have north African pirates active in the Mediterranean again. If we don't stop this in Somalia we will have to face it nearer home.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
WHO DID THE RED CROSS TELL?
International Red Cross
Copies to BMA UK, Scotlnd, Wales, Northern Ireland
Dear Sir,
I run a blog A Place To Stand which has, for some time reported on the genocide carried out by NATO's police (formerly the KLA) & over the last year on their dissection of the 1300 missing Serbs & sale of their body organs, flown out, to western hospitals. Indeed I can claim to have reported this more than the entire British mainstream media combined. On Thursday the BBC reported that
I would be obliged if you could let me know of any online reports you have made of this. I would also like to know who you told about this, or indeed from what further western sources you may have learned more.
Since the Red Cross is not an arm of NATO I would assume that you would not censor mention of this in their interests & indeed that you woulf not only inform NATO, Yugoslav leaders & indeed the governments of the other permanent members of the Security Council, Russia & China.
I would also assume that the Red Cross would have told every journalist at all interested & that the international (almost exclusively western owned) have known of this genocide & organlegging since at least 2000. Clearly somebody has been censoring genocide for a decade & I would like to assume it is not you. It would seem certain that the NATO leaders have been perfectly well aware for years of the genocide carried out by their police, as have the ICTY.
On a related point it seems accepted that the body organs of the victims were flown out from Tirana airport, to western hospitals. Clearly if we are talking about 1,300 people we are dealing with about 10,000 body parts. Since air traffic is strictly controlled & such items are not normal commerce it must be relatively easy, if those investigating are honest, to determine where they ended up. Presumably they ended up in western European hospitals in sufficient volume to be easily apparent. So long as the NATO powers are not going to extreme lengths to assist those involved in this genocide those who sold, transported & bought these organs will be easily traced & mass arrests will take place momentarily.
However beyond this there must have been many decent hospital administrators who refused to buy organs offered to them by Albanian gangsters & who warned you, their national police & medical associations & international organisations, primarily yourselves. This trade long predates their move to Kosovo & presumably is still going on. How many hospital administrators have contacted you?
This is obviously a genocide, which, while numerically less than Hitler's exceeded him in depravity & cruelty. I trust the intensity of the search is appropriate to that.
Yours Sincerely
Neil Craig
Lets see what they say
Copies to BMA UK, Scotlnd, Wales, Northern Ireland
Dear Sir,
I run a blog A Place To Stand which has, for some time reported on the genocide carried out by NATO's police (formerly the KLA) & over the last year on their dissection of the 1300 missing Serbs & sale of their body organs, flown out, to western hospitals. Indeed I can claim to have reported this more than the entire British mainstream media combined. On Thursday the BBC reported that
Information about terrible activities taking place at Burrel first reached the International Centre for the Red Cross in 2000 after KLA fighters reported that Serb civilians were taken there in 1999 and their organs removed and sold abroad for transplant operations
I would be obliged if you could let me know of any online reports you have made of this. I would also like to know who you told about this, or indeed from what further western sources you may have learned more.
Since the Red Cross is not an arm of NATO I would assume that you would not censor mention of this in their interests & indeed that you woulf not only inform NATO, Yugoslav leaders & indeed the governments of the other permanent members of the Security Council, Russia & China.
I would also assume that the Red Cross would have told every journalist at all interested & that the international (almost exclusively western owned) have known of this genocide & organlegging since at least 2000. Clearly somebody has been censoring genocide for a decade & I would like to assume it is not you. It would seem certain that the NATO leaders have been perfectly well aware for years of the genocide carried out by their police, as have the ICTY.
On a related point it seems accepted that the body organs of the victims were flown out from Tirana airport, to western hospitals. Clearly if we are talking about 1,300 people we are dealing with about 10,000 body parts. Since air traffic is strictly controlled & such items are not normal commerce it must be relatively easy, if those investigating are honest, to determine where they ended up. Presumably they ended up in western European hospitals in sufficient volume to be easily apparent. So long as the NATO powers are not going to extreme lengths to assist those involved in this genocide those who sold, transported & bought these organs will be easily traced & mass arrests will take place momentarily.
However beyond this there must have been many decent hospital administrators who refused to buy organs offered to them by Albanian gangsters & who warned you, their national police & medical associations & international organisations, primarily yourselves. This trade long predates their move to Kosovo & presumably is still going on. How many hospital administrators have contacted you?
This is obviously a genocide, which, while numerically less than Hitler's exceeded him in depravity & cruelty. I trust the intensity of the search is appropriate to that.
Yours Sincerely
Neil Craig
Lets see what they say