Friday, November 30, 2012

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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Medical Tyranny is Here, and We Can’t Say We Weren’t Warned

Medical Tyranny is Here, and We Can’t Say We Weren’t Warned

Health care reform is a hot topic today, as it has been for much of America’s history. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, warned in 1787 that medical freedom needed to be included in the American Constitution. Without this protection, Rush warned that the medical establishment would naturally progress – as many of mankind’s institutions do – into an oppressive dictatorship. His words, echoing from over 200 years ago, ring strikingly true today:
photoBenjamin Rush, Founding Father .
“The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. … Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers.”
The spirit of managerial scientific control that drives this beast is summarized in the words of Frederick Taylor, a pioneer in “scientific management.” As Taylor stated in 1907, ”Too great liberty results in a large number of people going wrong who would be right if they had been forced into good habits.” This spirit of quasi-altruistic scientific control begins to fade away towards the higher ranks of the system, however.
The potential for medical tyranny that Benjamin Rush perceived over 200 years ago crystallized when the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations transformed the American medical establishment in the early 20th Century. They strove to create a system of schooling to manufacture a predictable, rule following group of professionals to enforce the establishment regulations. Additionally, tax exempt foundations – through their grant making power – are able to mold the idea-sphere from which medical research emerges, or is suppressed.
The dictatorial health care model as expressed by “obamacare” is being implemented as part of a larger global program. The World Health Organization announced recently that it hopes to implement – via a U.N. resolution – “universal health coverage” across the globe in fulfillment of its Millennium Development Goals. The Rockefeller Foundation is working with WHO in the project. “There is a global movement towards UHC (Universal Health Care) and it is gathering momentum,” said Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation.
If you don’t want the kind of care that the allopathic establishment prescribes, be prepared to face the consequences.
A Minnesota mother was recently brought to court over refusing chemotherapy for her 8 year old daughter. A doctor apparently reported her to CPS. She was “…ordered into court and told if they did not work with them on a treatment plan, they would lose custody of Sarah.”
Another case involved a Pennsylvania mother who declined to vaccinate her child, resulting in a visit from CPS.
A 2009 case in which a 13 year old boy’s parents refused chemo resulted in a judgement of “medical neglect,” denying the right of his parents to refuse treatment on religious grounds.
The bottom line is this: Even if the medical establishment had our best interests at heart, what happens when their science is wrong? What happens when it is skewed in favor of the corporations that are closely aligned with them? What kind of damage is done when it is universally enforced? Benjamin Rush foresaw this danger, and it is time to face it for the reality it has become

Discovery Channel Documentary Proves Mind Control Assassin ‘Conspiracy’

Discovery Channel Documentary Proves Mind Control Assassin ‘Conspiracy’

A recent Discovery Channel documentary proved that individuals can be mind controlled into carrying out murder, proving the so-called “conspiracy theory” that it is possible to create brainwashed assassins.

The documentary, part of the Discovery Channel’s Curiosity series, is particularly relevantgiven the recent claim by an alleged inmate of ‘Batman’ shooter James Holmes who contends that Holmes told him he was “programmed” to carry out the Aurora theater massacre by an “evil” psychotherapist....

EU commission foresees two treaty changes to reach full integration

EU commission foresees two treaty changes to reach full integration

BRUSSELS - The EU commission Wednesday published its vision for a "genuine" economic and monetary union (EMU) under which national budgets could be vetoed and a central European budget would allow transfers for troubled countries.
The process would require two rounds of treaty change – one within the next five years and another more profound exercise in the longer-term.
The 52-page blueprints emphasises the need for the eurozone to be able to "integrate quicker and deeper" than the rest of the EU, with the eurozone now largely seen as paying for being established as a political project without the fundamental economic and financial structures to back it up.
Ideas for the future include coordinating national tax and employment policies, eurobonds, and a eurozone budget managed by a treasury in the European Commission.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the "main message" of the document is that both discipline and solidarity are needed for the EMU to survive.
The paper envisages progress in three steps.
Within the next 18 months, the EU should set up a banking union and establish a "convergence and competitiveness instrument" - money that member states would use to undertake structural reforms. Countries with a budget deficit breaking EU rules would be obliged to use the instrument.
Within five years, the "convergence instrument" would be built up into a separate eurozone budget that would be funded by own taxes in the eurozone.
 

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Argentina and America – of Vulture Funds and Justice. Part 2

Argentina and America – of Vulture Funds and Justice. Part 2

Without carrion eaters the world would be strewn with corpses. Vultures eat the dead. Vulture funds, however, eat the still living.
Argentina defaulted on its debts. It borrowed money, said it would pay it all back, signed contracts binding it to that promise and then reneged. It forced its creditors to agree to get back only a few cents out of each dollar they had lent it. Argentina simply said, ‘that is all we are going to pay. Accept or get nothing at all’. The creditors, the bond holders, agreed. Except of course for the stealthily circling Vultures who bided their time.
Surely, despite the sordid stink of what was done to Argentina, how she came to default, on another level Argentina has also done wrong to those who lent to it and must therefore pay? Well on one level sure. But before we wag a moralizing finger lets take a step back. Borrowing and then not paying back, defaulting, is not a crime against God and Nature known only to the dregs of statist madmen. Companies default. They take on debts, sign contracts to pay it all back and then default on their creditors. When they do it is often due to mis-management, stupidity, greed and even fraud. Whatever moral case we might think Argentina has to answer it is not peculiar to them or to the bloated and corrupt governments which loom large in the minds of fervent Libertarians.
Lets take a recent example, Chrysler . In 2007 Chrysler had revenue of $49 billion. That makes it larger than many nations. It defaulted. The company had knowingly, not forced to by IMF inquisitors, but of its own free-market will, taken on debts that it could not pay. Did statues bleed, or horses give birth to monsters? Did the very heavens cry out at the crime? No they didn’t. It’s business. Just business.
What Chryser did do was use the sheer size of its possible default to force its creditors to accept cents on the dollar on what they were owed. Sound familiar? And the US government itself weighed in on their side to force the creditors to accept. Why? Because, they said, it would be best for the nation. And then the critical bit, (From “The Evolution of Modern Sovereign Debt Litigation: Vultures, Alter Egos, and other Legal Fauna” Duke University School of Law)
Once Chrysler negotiated the terms of a sale with the majority of its creditors, it entered bankruptcy with a prepackaged petition, and, shortly thereafter, a new Chrysler entity emerged from the process as a going concern, no longer burdened by billions of dollars of debt.
A ‘going concern’ because it was now no longer crippled by an unpayable weight of debt. That is what Argentina had hoped to do.
Although a minority of creditors challenged the Chrysler sale as a draconian invalidation of their contract rights, those efforts failed under the debtor-friendly rules of Chapter 11.
So, for private companies the free-market has debtor-friendly Chapter 11. But not for nations? What Crysler did the Law upheld even as it pursued Argentina for doing the same thing.
And what are some of those debtor-friendly provisions of Chapter 11?
Once a private company or individual enters bankruptcy, debt service and litigation against the debtor is automatically stayed pending the completion of a mandatory restructuring plan. Bankruptcy rules also allow for a post-insolvency market for “superpriority” (debtor-in-possession) financing, which the debtor can access to jump start its reorganization.
So why is this a good ‘free-market’ idea for companies but not for nations? Why should something of the like not be available to nations? There is no good reason – excpet one. Suing nations is lucrative AND it is part, I believe of a far broader wresting of power from nations states in favour of ‘The Market’. An ideological desire to elevate private over sovereign power. Or to put it another way to reduce nations to actors within a global market framework instead of markets and companies required being required to act within a framework of soveriegn, nation state power. The question is what levers can ‘free market’ ideologues use to force this change?
Pari Passu
The key to the Elliot Associates case against Argentina, the point of law used by them and ruled in favour of by Judge Griesa, and one of the levers that can be and has been used to attack nations, is what is known in law as Pari Passu – to treat equally.
I do not intend here to deal with the argument over whether nations need to borrow at all. I have some thoughts on this subject but they are for another article. All I wish to note here is that it is an odd thing, perhaps a legacy of the time when princes borrowed gold and silver from merchants, that nations who do not have to borrow, given that they can print instead, should chose to borrow. What is not at all odd is that holders of private wealth and creators of private credit, should be delighted to lend to them. Why is this not odd? Because nations are very large borrowers and, most of the time, very good payers.
The only down-side to an otherwise wonderful trade is that IF a nation should decide to default – how can a private creditor take an entire nation to court? The answer for centuries was they couldn’t. The old, English Common Law of Champerty prevented it.
Champerty is -
an English common-law doctrine that precluded the purchase of debt with the intent and purpose to sue upon it. (P.49)
A clear law which makes the very notion of a vulture fund impossible. At this point it is worth taking a moment to remind ourselves that the the laws which codify what we mean by debt: who must pay what to whom under what conditions are not natural laws. Debt and its laws do not spring from the fabric of reality like Gravity. Debt and its laws are human conventions that is all. We can see it one way or we can see it another.

Champerty said you cannot buy up a nation’s debt, when you know that nation has or soon will default, for the express purpose of then suing the nation. Champerty says the nation and its creditors are the only interested parties and thus they alone must be left to work it out for themselves. And since most of the lenders were the largest banks and other nations who generally had long term and lucrative relations with the debtor nations, the lenders would generally feel obliged to swallow the losses. And that reality ‘tended’ to give the lenders some pause for prudent thought when it came to how much they lent and to whom....

Read more...    Argentina and America – of Vulture Funds and Justice. Part 2

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Stealing Africa

Stealing Africa

In an age of global trade, multinational corporations motivated by maximizing profit often end up working against the interests of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. Stealing Africa investigates reports of widespread criminality by well-known multinational companies operating in Africa. Featuring interviews with heads of state, corporate insiders, and officials from the major global financial institutions, the nature and extent of the problem begins to emerge.

Watch this video: Stealing Africa

Hungarian MP calls for Jewish ‘threat’ list

Hungarian MP calls for Jewish ‘threat’ list

A call by a far-right Hungarian MP for a list to be drawn up of Jewish politicians and government members who pose a “threat to national security” has caused outrage among both Hungary’s estimated 80,000-strong Jewish community and liberal politicians.
Marton Gyongyosi, a leading MP of Jobbik, Hungary’s radical rightwing party, called for the list in the Budapest parliament on Monday, saying that it was justified by the increased tensions following the latest conflict between Gaza and Israel....


 

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