Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Austerity


...Meanwhile, back in the UK, non conspiraloon acquaintances of mine who over the years have endured my predictions of financial and social Armageddon with long-suffering, and occasionally amused patience, have lately taken to conceding that yes I may have been onto something. A little over-the-top maybe but there was a kernel of prescience hidden in my, and a relatively small number of like-minded souls’, OTT ramblings

Fuck it, even the David Ickes and Alex Jones of this world have had to modify their speil to acknowledge the pre-eminent role that manipulation of finance capital plays in the world’s ills (an observation that was singularly absent earlier in their careers)

The Bank of England - just swarming with neo-liberal, pan-dimensional, alien space lizards ...apparently


The growing awareness that something is very wrong with the world of money is now mirrored in the Official Narrative of what the future holds for the UK and other similarly fucked-up countries

Without so much as an apology for all the horseshit they've been shovelling for the last decade, the mainstream UK media have quietly binned the 'No More Boom and Bust' Official Narrative and replaced it with the ‘Austerity’ Official Narrative


As far as I can glean from reading the UK press and chatting with people in the UK, Austerity is supposedly going to take the form of some kind of wifi-enabled rerun of the 1970s. Fuck it, some of the older folks even get nostalgic about the prospect and talk of a Golden Age when people made do, all mucked in together and were better off for it


Hmmm, music and cinema were definitely better back then



... well, some of it was

1970s 2.0 will, however, not play out quite the same way in the UK for one or two small reasons...


- One billion more competing workers from India and the Far East

- Computers

- No North Sea oil

- No coal

- Bugger all in the way of productive industry

- No organised labour worth its name to keep ordinary people's wages up with inflation when all that money printing really kicks in in earnest

- A lot less social cohesion


...for starters


Things could easily get very nasty indeed, for a generation or more

Unless, that is, people get together and seriously overhaul the way they go about their lives

(On the positive side, the UK is still a world-leading producer of weapons, mercenaries, unnecessary, arguably harmful, drugs, Ponzi schemes and money laundering. So, fingers crossed, if by some chance there happen to be a few really tasty wars, global pandemics and colossal financial frauds in the near future the outlook for UK plc isn't entirely bleak)


-

Now, as it happens, I have been and continue to be optimistic about the UK’s, and other countries', long term future. The only fly in the ointment is that I believed and continue to believe that life is going to get really, really unpleasant in the UK, and other countries, in the short to medium term

Whilst chatting about this stuff with a chum the other day, she shared with me a favourite Engels quote...


'The state, therefore, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies which have managed without it, which had no notion of the state or state power. At a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong - into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.'

Personally, I think that vision of the future needs updating a little to reflect the huge advances in technology that have been made since Engels' time.


Some anarchists would argue, as I referenced in my previous post, that you can view the countries of the world as a collection of human farms
and the citizens of those countries as livestock...





and, if you pursue that analogy, it's an interesting exercise to ask yourself what do farmers do with their beasts of burden when they get their hands on tractors and other machinery?


Do the farmers let those animals graze and frolic in a quiet field somewhere or do they send them off for glue?



For that Engels' style vision of the future to work a lot of people are going to have to make, and demand, useful products that cannot be mass produced. There's a premium attached to labour-intensive produce, for sure, but if the benefits of mass production were more fairly shared people could afford it and would be happier and healthier for it


Now would be a very good time indeed for people to start digging a veggie patch and learning a honest, genuinely productive craft

...and not borrowing money to spank on tat, that would help as well


Though I'm not sure that I can see the State just sitting idly by if hordes of the newly unemployed start growing and making their own stuff and swapping it without any reference to paper money


Where’s the margin in that?


.

43 comments:

Parabellum said...

Watched Max Keisers "Money Geyser" from 2007 again just yesterday. Hmmm, yes.

"The meteorological impact of Laki continued, contributing significantly to several years of extreme weather in Europe. In France a sequence of extremes included a surplus harvest in 1785 that caused poverty for rural workers, accompanied by droughts and bad winters and summers, including a violent hailstorm in 1788 that destroyed crops. These events contributed significantly to a build-up of poverty and famine that may have contributed to the French Revolution in 1789[citation needed]"

All it need is for it get worse *suddenly*, in order for people to "get together and seriously overhaul the way they go about their lives".

Hmmm, yes. But I'm afraid as long as that volcano in Iceland only hinders air traffic, we won't get very far with this overhaul...

Stef said...

of course, at the same time Keiser made the undeniably excellent 'Money Geyser' he was also telling everyone how strong the Euro was and how it was set to become THE global reserve currency

He also was, and still is, heavily pushing Man Made Global warming bullshit

another thing I find interesting about Keiser is how there's a lot less on Google and the web generally about him and his (ex?) chums the Goldsmiths than there was a couple of years ago

Stef said...

... and if a really big natural eruption doesn't oblige how about a series of slightly smaller man-made ones?

Report: U.S. positioning 'bunker-busters' for possible Iran strike

Parabellum said...

Max Keiser is nice edutainment (the best of his kind, I guess), but in all things related to human life - outside the sphere of natural sciences - I trust Marx, Engels and Lenin (and maybe Rosa Luxemburg).

To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes”, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace time”, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the “upper classes” themselves into independent historical action.

Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The totality of all these objective changes is called a revolutionary situation. Such a situation existed in 1905 in Russia, and in all revolutionary periods in the West; it also existed in Germany in the sixties of the last century, and in Russia in 1859-61 and 1879-80, although no revolution occurred in these instances. Why was that? It was because it is not every revolutionary situation that gives rise to a revolution; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, “falls”, if it is not toppled over.
(Some emphasis from the original text missing)

So the question is: Do you have a "revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government"? That is the problem, you see.

And as to the question of the "huge advances in automation": What else than to get rid of tedious manual labour? The question is whether we the people can wrench the means of production from the capitalist few and use these means in the interest of *ALL* the people.

And as a side note, there has not, and will not be any "sudden" surge in productivity in human history. It has always been quite gradual, even with the invention of the computer. And "fuck the workers/consumers, it is enough that *I* increase my profits" might be a viable position to hold for an individual capitalist, but it will mean the destruction of capitalism - something even the most selfish capitalist doesn't want and a few of the top capitalist see as a problem. Keynes might be dead, and there a a few followers of Keynes around today, but the will grow in numbers, when the shit hits the fan. The question is: Who will act coordinated, once the shit hits the fan?

Stef said...

The Middle Class Proletariat

The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.


British Ministry of Defence, 2007

Stef said...

and on a personal note on the subject of Marxism

AFAIC a lot of the analyses are absolutely spot on

some of the 'solutions' that have historically been implemented in the name of those analyses have been absolutely fucking terrible

Stef said...

as for the side note about productivity increases, I agree and I've cleaned up my post a little to make myself clearer

we are in a situation where from the point of view of the existing paradigm there are a lot of surplus, unproductive mouths to feed

if you have a vested interest in the existing paradigm, you're going to be thinking about doing away with people

of course, if we did things differently those mouths wouldn't be surplus or unproductive

Parabellum said...

Yes, that's the thing: The people who are currently "surplus" don't have to be, they can be productive - and not only is it beneficial to the society as a whole, more so it is a basic human RIGHT to do something meaningful. And what else is more meaningful work than work for the society?

That is the sad thing, as a global society we could increase the standard of living of every person in the world - even people who are now capitalists would benefit, if for example we would further improve our health systems, or get rid of the money/status fetish.

Parabellum said...

I have seen one of the 'solutions' and while I wouldn't want to implement it without some considerable modifications, if you compare the systems directly, these solutions don't look so bad.

There are some things you should not forget, when comparing economical/political systems:
1. The socialist block didn't had colonies or imperialistic/neocolonialistic dependent states (the happily ignored labour-camps of the capitalistic societies).
2. Russia (and many of the eastern European states) started as a feudal, early-capitalistic society and had to catch up with imperialistic nations like the UK, US and Germany.
3. Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had to carry the full brunt of the fascist genocidal robbery (multiply the raids on the UK by 50, and you aren't even close), while most of the loot fall into the hands of the western allies and West-Germany. (The economic war the West was waging against the USSR before and after the second world war wasn't helping either)
4. The Warsaw Pact had one third of the population of the NATO (plus allies like Japan and Australia), while it had to carry roughly the same military defense budget (one of the biggest mistakes the Soviets made).

Realistically, compare India and China. While life in China isn't great (and while I think Maoism isn't the right way), it is much better than in capitalistic India - with the difference, that when in India people die because of social injustice, "this is life" and there is no-one to blame. When in China they shoot people who loot (which I don't think is right), there comes AI to blame the wicked ways of the communists.

Parabellum said...

I have seen one of the 'solutions' (in the CSSR) and while I wouldn't want to implement them without some considerable modifications, if you compare the systems directly, these solutions don't look so bad.

There are some things you should not forget, when comparing economical/political systems:
1. The socialist block didn't had colonies or imperialistic/neocolonialistic dependent states (the happily ignored labour-camps of the capitalistic societies).
2. Russia (and many of the eastern European states) started as a feudal, early-capitalistic society and had to catch up with imperialistic nations like the UK, US and Germany.
3. Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had to carry the full brunt of the fascist genocidal robbery (multiply the raids on the UK by 50, and you aren't even close), while most of the loot fall into the hands of the western allies and West-Germany. (The economic war the West was waging against the USSR before and after the second world war wasn't helping either)
4. The Warsaw Pact had one third of the population of the NATO (plus allies like Japan and Australia), while it had to carry roughly the same military defense budget (one of the biggest mistakes the Soviets made).

Realistically, compare India and China. While life in China isn't great (and while I think Maoism isn't the right way), it is much better than in capitalistic India - with the difference, that when in India people die because of social injustice, "this is life" and there is no-one to blame. When in China they shoot people who loot (which I don't think is right), there comes AI to blame the wicked ways of the communists.

As to Stalinism, Vietnam, Cambodia, North-Korea and so on: The people committing crimes in the name of socialism had a responsibility to prevent them. But one should never forget how imperialists meddled with these countries. 16,000 US-soldiers in the Russian civil war, fascists tried to annihilate all eastern Europeans, Million slaughtered in the far east by the US-military.

As Betrand Russel has written:
It seems evident, from the attitude of the capitalist world to Soviet Russia, of the Entente to the Central Empires, and of England to Ireland and India, that there is no depth of cruelty, perfidy or brutality from which the present holders of power will shrink when they feel themselves threatened. If, in order to oust them, nothing short of religious fanaticism will serve, it is they who are the prime sources of the resultant evil. And it is permissible to hope that, when they have been dispossessed, fanaticism will fade, as other fanaticisms have faded in the past.

Stef said...

There are plenty of potentially worthwhile systems and objectives out there - environmentalism, socialism, spiritualism, even market based systems

The problem is that, eventually, they all become co-opted as the tools of tyrants and oligarchs

At which point the rest of us have the choice of doing something about it, or not

This time round, maybe the oligarchs are thinking that they have a winning formula - controlled mass media, toxic food, toxic drugs, electronic finance and surveillance systems, and all the rest, to keep a lid on any mass revolt

Time will tell

They really are going to have to do something about the Internet though...

Parabellum said...

The majority of people has to find out, define and fight for what they desire and want from life - our shared common interest. E.g. good education, good work for all, good food, good health system, some sort of balance between nature and human development, and so on. Waiting for someone (or some system) to hand these things out has never been a dependable solution. It might work for some people for some time - as long as they are needed or have some sort of leverage.

To fight for and realize this for all people - and I mean no human being left behind - is socialism for me. It will fail, if not at least a majority of people see this as their project as well.

I see it as my duty to develop the knowledge of this shared common interest - but not as a proxy, maybe as a vanguard. If we don't know what we want positive goals we want to fight for, we can't fight. And I alone, or you alone, will have quite little impact, same as any politician of our current systems, even if he is well intentional. We all have to become politicians in the classical sense - as members of the polis.

Anonymous said...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7760687/Young-adults-believe-in-the-age-of-entitlement-claim-researchers.html

More demonisation of those hit hardest by the banking scam...who'd have thunk it?

Anon said...

Stef, I notice you mentioned labour intensive goods produced domestically have a price premium.

On the face of it that may seem true, but this is mainly due to currency differences, inflation in the form of house prices, and other living costs imposed by government regulation.

These aren't found to a huge extent in Chindia \ the Far East or even the southern hemisphere in general. Land area of course comes into it, then again a small fraction of the UK population owns 70% of its land...

Stef said...

a friend of mine here in NZ is working on the wind-up of what was once a very large Kiwi clothing manufacturer

the 'official narrative' explanation for the death of the company, and the loss of several hundred jobs, was that it was undercut by cheap chinese production

very little emphasis has been placed on the fact that the company's owner managed to rack up a debt of NZ$120m (using the company as security) which he spanked on god knows what, certainly not the company itself

as for the cheap chinese production I also happen to know that, item for item, garments of comparable quality imported from china didn't come in that much cheaper than the kiwi produced stuff

what did happen was that the kiwi stuff was sold by the retailers at a much, much higher margin and marketed as a high quality and therefore low sales volume product

which might be good news for the retailer but fucking disasterous for high volume domestic production

Anon said...

Given the choice between Tesco chemical sludge or non-synthetic plant-based toothpaste, I'll pay the higher price for the latter. Not a huge difference in the long run versus better health.

It helps when you don't buy tat like Ipods and £20,000 cars on finance...

Stef said...

your points about relative costs, and land ownership, are spot on

and it doesn't take a Phd in economcs to figure out that you can only send production offshore for so long before the ordinary people in the deindustrialised 'rich' countries run out of the means to pay for the goods they are now importing

the UK reached that point years ago and has been mortgaging the economic future of unborn generations ever since

Stef said...

here's a fun game to play next time you're in a supermarket...

- try and find a toothpaste that doesn't contain fluoride or aspartame

- try and find a antiperspirant-deodorant that doesn't contain aluminium

Stef said...

... the things people are conned into rubbing into their softest, most absorbent places

Stef said...

hmmmm, aluminium

Anon said...

Not many I'd wager, although I usually know what I'm buying from the off, when it comes to shopping.

Regarding deodourant, the negatives of the product I use is the bees and wasps think I'm a walking piece of vegetation :p

On the other hand, the alcohol usually deals with that (used for its antiseptic effect)...

Stef said...

I use an atomiser filled with alcohol and a few drops of bitter orange and tea tree oils

You can use coconut oil as a base but then you can't drink your deodorant when you're feeling lonely

Anon said...

Not sure I'd want to drink this /checks ingredient list

Deionised water, grain alcohol, vegetable glycerin, calendula, vitamin E, camomile, arnica, rosewater, calamine powder, sandalwood, patchouli, jasmine, fir, vanilla, cedarwood

That would explain the higher cost then...

lwtc247 said...

In the calendar year 2009 the UK recorded a general government deficit of £159.2 billion, which was equivalent to 11.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).
At the end of December 2009 general government debt was £950.4 billion, equivalent to 68.1 per cent of GDP.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=277

Anonymous said...

Spanish politicians approve 15bn-euro austerity plan
... by one vote

Stef said...

the immediate purpose of this first wave of 'austerity' packages is to see if the general population will swallow responsibility for all those private banking debts and supposed losses which have been assumed on their behalf by their governments

if people do swallow this without storming a few palaces the Bolivian style give-away of what publicly owned assets remain will kick off

plus loads more austerity

the arc of history is not looking too good at the moment

Stef said...

and it's worth pondering upon the fact that, over the span of recorded history, serfdom of one form or another has been the norm for most people, most of the time, in most places

what freedoms we have were very hard fought for and could be lost in the blink of an historical eye

Stef said...

oToH Prof Jeffrey Sachs doesn't think things are that bad at all

Bono reckons he's the Elvis of economics

I think he 's an evil twunt

Anon said...

Not surprisingly the Rothschilds are the forefront of those plans... similar to the Centra (sp?) takeover in the US.

Yes you're correct that most of civilised history has been about serfdom and oppression, but it need not be that way this time. Even on the Mail comments section people seem wide awake, the question is will enough of them resist these measures?

Stef said...

a spot of anger building for the austerity that lies ahead...

Anon said...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7779290/Generation-me-students-have-less-empathy-than-20-years-ago.html

There seem to be several stories attacking generation Y lately, you think this is designed to turn the heat away from the real issues Stef?

Stef said...

amongst other distractions

but I can't see anything short of major catastrophe or war doing the trick

hmmm

oh dear...

Anon said...

Iran? Can't see that being an easy option. It isn't first world but the combination of modern Russian equipment and fanatical morale in the ranks once an attack is called could be very nasty.

That said, it's the cannon fodder that will be doing the sacrifices, and such a condition would be an ideal justification for clamping down domestically.

Alfred said...

(Being dopey, I accidentally posted the following on the wrong thread. Hence the duplicate post here where it was intended -- sorry).

Globalization appears to be in the process of wiping out most jobs in the Western world. The process will take a while to go to completion. Services, obviously, are not so easily farmed out to the Asian plantations as manufacturing. But the challenge is not insuperable.

I mean, why pay tens of thousands for heart surgery if you can just airlift the patient to India, China, Vietnam, etc. and have the job done for a few hundred by a surgeon who considers him- or herself well off on ten thousand a year. Alternatively, you could bring the Asian surgeons to the West.

In the better Britain that we are all sure David and Nick will bring, will one not be able to have a dodgy heart valve or a leaky aorta fixed at a free enterprise clinic operated on the principle of Midas muffler or Delete-a-Dent?

You drive-in anytime, they put you up on the hoist, have the job done in twenty minutes by a highly skilled Indonesian immigrant and send you home with a bottle of tylenol: cost sixty quid, maybe, plus parts.

Either way, service workers of the western world, like those in manufacturing before them, surely face increasingly tough times. At present, there are something like eight million British workers on the dole, working part time when the need full time work or who have given up the search for work in despair. These people and their dependents, plus all those on the sick, live at the expense of society. How sustainable is that? How long will people want to sustain such a system?

Jimmy Goldsmith predicted the economic catastrophe unfolding in the west before he so conveniently died of a remarkably fast acting cancer. His solution was a world of trade blocks, where labor competed on equal terms (wage levels, health, safety and environmental regulations, etc.).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI

But instead, large parts of the Western working class, blue or white collar, have been made redundant by competition from the cheap labour of the Asian plantations. They have become the equivalent of the white trash of America's southern slave states.

There are two obvious ways to solve this problem. One is outright genocide as advocated by George Bernard Shaw:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgpaKkrZex4&feature=related

The alternative is to undermine the reproductive potential of the population, while importing Asian labour that will more readily accept the convergence of western and Asian terms and conditions of employment. Currently, the ruling elite seem to be working on Option 2

Anonymous said...

Times never change and it seems never will.

Click onto any picture it will enlarge on this site.

`Swindling the nation, page 1`…

http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/redclyde/redcly194a.html

`Swindling the nation, page 2`…

http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/redclyde/redcly194b.html



“Timeline of events”

“The Singer strike 1911″…

http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/redclyde/redclyeve01.htm

Anon said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8710071.stm

Hmm... I do wonder if this is just hyperbole to placate us while the robbery continues behind the scenes.

gyg3s said...

stef@25 May 2010 11:50

"and on a personal note on the subject of Marxism

AFAIC a lot of the analyses are absolutely spot on
"

So much so, that a college close to me, in its business class has posters on the wall that says,

"The four factors of production,

i) initiative,
ii) land,
iii) labour, and
iv) capital
"

When I saw it, I began smirking and tried to make eye contact with those around me. But no one else saw the joke.

Anonymous said...

Will We See The End Of Empire In Our Time?
By Richard C. Cook
5-28-8

The following is based on a talk given by the author at the "End of Empire" session of the "Building a New World" Conference of the Prout World Assembly at Radford University, Radford, Virginia, on May 22, 2008.

quote---

"
Hamilton and Jefferson split, and that split has defined U.S. politics ever since. Hamilton became the de facto head of the Federalist Party, the ancestor first of the Whigs and then of the Republicans. Jefferson called himself a Republican at first, then a Democratic-Republican, then finally his party became the Democratic Party that has lasted until today. Of course we know that the two parties have come more and more to resemble each other in recent decades in supporting policies of imperialism.

Jefferson was elected president in what was called the Civic Revolution of 1800. The first thing he did was cut military spending. He did what no one has done since, which was to balance the federal budget for eight consecutive years. Then he took an action which defined our nation to a considerable extent all the way into the 20th century. In 1803 he doubled the size of the nation overnight through the Louisiana Purchase.

So for the next century, instead of competing with the European nations for overseas colonies, our energies were devoted to settling the North American continent, to the detriment, of course, of the Native American peoples. We became, as did Russia in Eurasia and Brazil in South America, a continental land power. And we stayed that way for over a century.

But empire finally caught up with us. Across the sea in South Africa a man named Cecil Rhodes was devising a plan to make the British Empire the ruler of the globe. He created a secret society to accomplish this, called the Round Table, using money provided by the Rothschild family, who had controlled the British economy since the Napoleonic wars.

The U.S. was integral to their plans. Following is the relevant passage from Cecil Rhodes' will of 1877. His aims, he wrote in the will, were:

The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise,the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may to tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the production of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.

Think about that: "the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire." In fact, as Professor Carroll Quigley made clear in his celebrated book, The Anglo-American Establishment, the British planners, whose descendants still rule that nation, acknowledged that a time would come when the U.S. would be the senior partner in the empire, which is exactly what happened over the century that lay ahead.

T

gyg3s said...

It looks like Murray has latched on; see here

Tom said...

This review was quite scathing:

"Ambassador Craig Murray,

Thank you for once again linking to a nutcase conspiracy site. The NWO, AIDS denial, global warming denial, 911 inside job, Alex Jones ... it's all there.

Have you lost your ability to discern good stuff vs. bad stuff. The Internet is full of bad stuff, you know?

Posted by: Larry from St. Louis at May 31, 2010 11:08 PM"

Conspiraloonery is still a niche brand, I fear.

Stef said...

I thought it was quite brave of Mr Murray linking to this site

Larry from St Louis has grabbed the opportunity to demonstrate that he his a major cock on numerous occasions underneath Craig's posts, so I'm rather glad that we're not on the same team

Stef said...

"Thank you for once again linking to a nutcase conspiracy site. The NWO, AIDS denial, global warming denial, 911 inside job, Alex Jones ... it's all there..."

NWO - Tick

If only because so many of our politicians repeatedly refer to it

AIDS denial - Tick

If only because, at the same time as infection rates for a veritable potpourri of STDs have gone through the roof in the UK, domestically contracted rates of AIDS have been essentially flat. So something's not right there, rubber johnnies or no rubber johnnies

Global Warming Denial - Tick

but there again, the Earth's troposphere is doing that as well, so I'm in good company

9/11 an inside job - partial Tick

more likely an outside job

Alex Jones - yeah right, I'm a massive fan and constantly regret not being born with a womb so I could have his fucking babies

gyg3s said...

Remember H1N1? Well, it looks like it was all a scam to rob us of lots of money. This according to some folks at the Council of Europe via Paul Flynn MP.

Anyway, links and such can be found here, Large Scale Placebo Medicine. The press release and the preliminary report are worth reading, eg,

"47 The strong commercial interests in the pandemic and vaccination campaigns were further illustrated by the high levels of profit that pharmaceutical companies were able to make. According to estimations by the international investment bank JP Morgan, the sales of H1N1 vaccines in 2009 were expected to result in overall profits of between 7 and 10 billion dollars to pharmaceutical laboratories producing vaccines. According to figures presented by Sanofi-Aventis at the beginning of 2010, the group registered net profits of 7.8 billion Euros (+11%) due to a “record year” of anti-flu vaccines sales40. As such, and from the point of view of the market economy, justified commercial interests cannot be generally criticised. The rapporteur would, however, like to raise the question as to whether it was justified to sell H1N1 vaccines to national governments at prices seemingly up to 2 to 3 times higher than those for the usual seasonal influenza by primarily using patented adjuvants, and thus making exaggeratedly high profits from a declared public health emergency?"