Ten stories more important than phone hacking

This phone hacking thing IS important – immoral and criminal activities have been exposed in a major UK media organisation and the political landscape of the UK has changed as the Murdoch empire has lost its grip on the politcal class of this country…

…and much more important things are happening all around the world that don’t involve the media’s obsession with itself and the tabloid drama of the UK westminister village. Here are just 10 examples.

1. DEC East Africa Crisis Appeal – [DEC UK]



LEADING UK humanitarian agencies are launching a joint appeal to help more than 10 million people in East Africa parts of which are suffering their worst drought in over half a century.

Caught up in the crisis are thousands of families trekking for days across parched scrubland from Somalia to Kenya – including barefoot children with no food or water.
DEC Chief Executive Brendan Gormley said: “Slowly but surely, these people have seen their lives fall apart – crops, livestock and now their homes have been taken by the drought.

2. UN Peacekeepers stand by as Sudanese forces kill Civillians [Independent]

The UN mission in Sudan stands accused of serious failures in its duty to protect civilians who have been killed in their hundreds during a month-long campaign of violence by the Khartoum government on its restive
southern border.

Eyewitnesses described to The Independent how they saw peacekeepers standing by while unarmed civilians were shot dead outside the gates of a UN base before being dragged away “like slaughtered sheep”. They also said that local leaders have been handed over to government forces after seeking shelter with UN officials.

The violence has driven tens of thousands of civilians into hiding in the Nuba Mountains, which are controlled by rebel fighters and where public anger at the UN has left peacekeepers afraid to leave their bases, according to officers from the mission’s Egyptian contingent.

3. Less than one third in France, UK support Nuclear Power [NHK English]

A survey in 5 European countries shows that less than one third of French and British people support nuclear power generation.

On Saturday, the French newspaper Le Monde reported on the results of the survey.

Support for nuclear power was the highest in France and Britain –each at 32 percent. The figure was still below one third of the total despite the countries’ policies to promote the use of nuclear energy.

The lowest support was seen in Germany and Italy, whose governments have decided to break with nuclear energy. 17 percent of Germans and 20 percent of Italians approved of nuclear energy.

Those who oppose nuclear power totaled 58 percent in Italy, 55 percent in Germany, 28 percent in Spain, 21 percent in Britain, and 20 percent in France.

4. My Children have been poisoned [Human Rights Watch]

A 75-page report draws on research in heavily lead-contaminated villages in Henan, Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Hunan provinces.

The report documents how, despite increasing regulation and sporadic enforcement targeting polluting factories, local authorities are ignoring the urgent and long-term health consequences of a generation of children continuously exposed to life-threatening levels of lead.
.

5. Denying reality and demonising scientists [Irish Times]

THE RECENT removal of some of Australia’s leading climate scientists to safer accommodation, to protect them against death threats, was a shocking illustration of the virulent campaign now being waged by climate change deniers — often the same people who want the biblical story of creation taught in schools as a counterpoint to evolution.

After all, hadn’t that scary right-wing US media star Rush Limbaugh called for all those promoting the “global warming hoax” to be “named and fired, drawn and quartered” while Britain’s Lord Monckton branded them as “evil pseudo-scientists [who] should stand trial alongside Radovan Karadzic” because they were equally “guilty of genocide”?

This demonisation of climate scientists, as James Lawrence Powell writes, is not dissimilar to what Galileo faced when he endorsed the “heretical” thesis that the Earth moves around the sun. It is a “modern inquisition conducted . . . on the front pages of newspapers, on right-wing radio and television, on the blogosphere and on denier websites”.

6. Bond Vigilantes’ Could Trigger U.S. Sovereign Debt Crisis [IBT]

Economist Ed Yardeni, who now runs Yardeni Research Inc. of Great Neck, N.Y., coined the term 'bond vigilante' in the 1980s to describe the institutional investor practice of selling bonds and shorting bonds of governments when they see unsustainable fiscal policies and/or other actions by governments or companies that the institutional investors believe will lower the value of the bonds issued.

Further, the decline and fall of financial giants Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, although without question rooted in dubious, high-risk business practices and extreme leverage, were nonetheless pushed to quicker demises by the bond vigilantes. In the financial crisis that reached its acute stage in the fall of 2008, they shorted those infamous subprime mortgage-backed securities, many of which were vastly overvalued prior the waves of vigilante selling and shorting.

Now it's the selling/shorting, and in some cases the failure to 'rollover' investments in sovereign debt -- the bonds issued by the debt-plagued governments of Greece, Portugal, and Spain.

7. Bahrain's soccer stars tortured in custody [The Times via BCHR]

BAHRAINI footballers, including stars of the national team, were tortured while in custody during a crackdown on anti-government protesters this year, The Times has learnt.
The testimony given to The Times directly contradicts assurances given to FIFA, football’s governing body, by the Bahrain Football Association that no players had been suspended or mistreated.

In fact, friends and relatives said a number of players were subjected to beatings in prison after they were arrested for taking part in a demonstration against the ruling al-Khalifa family in March.

Other sportsmen have told of long interrogations and ritual humiliation in jail. The victims included A’ala Hubail, a striker, his brother Mohammed and goalkeeper Ali Saeed, all members of the Bahraini football squad.

Sitting in a community centre in the Shia village of Sitra, near the capital, Manama, they were too afraid to speak about their treatment and would say only that they did not know whether they would be allowed to play football again. The Hubail brothers had had their heads shaved. Mohammed had bruises on his feet.

8. ‘The true cost of Chevron’ [LINKS]

2010 was not an outstanding year for the communities where Chevron operates.
The campaigns undertaken by communities around the world to hold Chevron accountable for its actions were outstanding.

The acknowledgements of Chevron’s wrongdoings by government entities in locations around the globe were outstanding. The hard fought victories achieved by citizens uniting to change the Chevron Way were outstanding.

After nearly 18 years of litigation, the Indigenous people and campesinos of the Ecuadorian Amazon achieved a critical milestone in 2010. An Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion for cleanup, clean water, health care and other reconstruction efforts for the tens of thousands of people affected by the company’s widespread contamination in the region.

Environment Texas, the Sierra Club and the National Environmental Law Center reached a settlement in 2010 with Chevron Phillips Chemical requiring the company to pay a $2 million penalty and implement major changes at its chemical plant in Baytown, Texas. The plant had violated its clean air permits hundreds of times since 2003, leading to more than one million pounds of illegal emissions.

In an unprecedented victory for the community of Richmond, California, in 2010 the State Court of Appeals upheld the majority of findings in a lower court decision that the Environmental Impact Report for the expansion of Chevron’s Richmond refinery violated state environmental law.

After decades of campaigning against Chevron’s highly polluting coal operations, communities in Alabama, New Mexico and Wyoming welcomed — with cautious optimism — Chevron’s announcement that 2010 would be the year the corporation would exit the coal industry.

We celebrate these triumphs and the many courageous individuals whose refusal to be silenced has been instrumental in bringing Chevron’s egregious actions to light.

Even so, there is much work to be done. Chevron is vigorously contesting the landmark verdict in the Ecuador case and is continuing flagrant violations of environmental and human rights around the globe. As Luis Yanza, coordinator for the Affected People’s Assembly in Ecuador, writes, “the struggle will continue today stronger than before … to ensure that justice triumphs over impunity.”

We invite you to read our report of the true cost of Chevron’s operations in communities from Alaska to Thailand, to decide for yourself if Chevron displayed an outstanding record in 2010, and to join with the growing international movement to hold Chevron accountable for its abuses around the globe.

Download the full report HERE

9. France becomes first country to ban Fracking [ukprogressives]

This week, France, believed to have some of the biggest natural gas reserves in Europe, has become the first country in the world to put an outright ban on Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking).

France’s bill to ban fracking, but not shale gas exploration itself, was drafted by the country’s ruling UMP party after months of protests by environmental activists concerned that the process contaminates drinking water. Earlier this year, France’s government granted energy giants exploration permits for work without public consultation, but announced a temporary freeze on shale gas exploration in February.

A report by Scientific American said, the French vote was split along party lines, but the opposition largely came from the Socialist Party, which did not think the ban went far enough because it contains loopholes that allow the exploitation of oil shale deposits by other means.

France’s ban on fracking came on the heels of reports that the US state of New York was about to lift its de facto moratorium on fracking, which has had an informal ban on the process since 2008. In a surprising move, New York is soon expected to lift the ban in most places. New York’s new rules will ban the practice in state parks and watershed areas, but otherwise allow it. Andrew Cuomo’s office is thought to be on board with the plan, but has not said so publicly.

Hydraulic Fracturing, involves injecting water and sand mixed with a cocktail of poisonous chemicals, dangerous to human health and polluting drinking water, deep into underground oil shale deposits, to force out hidden reserves of natural gas that cannot be extracted any other way. Pioneered in the early years of the twenty-first century by companies like Halliburton, fracking has dramatially increased estimates of the amount of natural gas that could be recovered for fuel in the US and other countries throughout the world.

Most energy companies in the US are not required to disclose what chemicals they use while fracking, and widely use compounds include the carcinogen benzene, and more than sixty other chemicals that cause cancer or other serious health problems. Fracking also frees underground deposits of methane gas that can seep groundwater or escape into the air. In some parts of the US where fracking is widespread, water from an indoor tap can actually become flammable due to methane released by nearby fracking projects. The image of water from a faucet being lit on fire with a match has become a rallying point for environmentalists concerned with the dangers of fracking.

10. Rights groups push U.S to apply pressure on Burma [Washington Post]

Seeking to capitalize on recent developments in the perennially thorny U.S.-Burmese relationship, a coalition of more than 20 human rights organization is sending a letter to President Obama today, calling on him to apply more aggressive pressure to push the country’s leaders toward democracy.

After a lull in the U.S.-Burmese relationship, the past few weeks have seen the defection of a top-ranking Burmese diplomat to the United States, the confirmation hearing of a new U.S. envoy to Burma, and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s first travels outside Rangoon since her release from house arrest last year.
According to Aung Din, a former Burmese political prisoner who helped draft the letter to Obama, the coalition of human rights activists hopes to push U.S. officials toward a tougher stance against the military-controlled government.

“The U.S. has been trying this same policy of engagement for two years already,” said Aung Din, director of U.S. Campaign for Burma. “But such engagement should be time-bound and with clear benchmarks and combined with stronger pressure.”

The letter was signed by organizations including Human Rights Watch and the Carter Center, as well as pro-labor and pro-student activist groups such as the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers.
It calls on the Obama administration to support two specific measures against Burma, also known as Myanmar: banking sanctions against similar to those that were imposed against Libya and a United Nations commission of inquiry to investigate war crimes and human rights abuses.

Note : The all new SODIUM HAZE is over at http://www.sodiumhaze.org/ - this is a mirror blog now. Why not check out the shiny new Haze?

Simpol - simply brilliant or simplistic?

The Haze is busy digesting groups that look like they might be sister organisations.

So we checked out Simpol - the project of John Bunzl - Simpol standing for Simultaneous Policy.

In his own words:

What? Adopt Simpol and drive governments to work together to solve the cause of the urgent global security problems affecting everyone’s lives. It’s obvious, problems such as climate change, global debt crises, poverty, war and bio-diversity loss, desperately need global solutions. There are thousands of Simpol Adopters in over 70 countries.

Well we agree it's urgent and we agree that global solutions will be needed. But let's do the maths here, John has been growing this campaign since 1998 and has 'thousands' of 'adopters' - so in 13 years Simpol has gained a few thousand adopters and the global population is 7 billion. If this is the most urgent response we can manage then we are surely doomed.

How? Through Global People Power! By Adopting Simpol you automatically inform your MP that those who sign the Simpol Pledge win Adopters votes and those who don’t, lose them. It’s still your choice, but if they don’t Pledge, MPs can only pretend to have the solutions. 24 UK MPs have already Pledged. Has yours?

Hmm - so we are to lobby MP's - this is hardly a new idea, its called democracy and it seems like a very UK focused kind of global operation. What are people in non-democratic states to do? And do we trust politicans and their pledges? (Nick Clegg and tuition fees?)

Who? By taking part in “The Big Political Takeover” alongside other global Adopters, YOU get to design and ultimately approve Simpol’s global policies. Simpol is free, open and participative global politics, without corporate influence. Simpol’s polices will be implemented by national governments simultaneously and in a fair-for-all way. Simpol is the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation.

The Haze is incredulous at this paragraph! How on earth is any agreement between Simpol 'adopters' going to be forged and what happens when they inevitably disagree with eachother? What if people disagree about the reality of climate change for example? How will Simpol's policies be implemented simultaneously in a ''fair-for-all' way? How will we make the leap from the jealously guarded national and corporate self interests to this new utopian reality?

Why? We need to think globally and act locally. National politics isn’t functioning because governments are reminded by global big business that tough regulation will mean jobs and money moving to other, more business-friendly countries. Also, demanding change isn’t enough. Instead, we’re organising the power of our votes and our common intelligence to be the real global change.

Piling pressure on to politicians is nothing new - they are used to it.

A lot of the trouble with the political class in this country and elsewhere, is that it has been captured by the financial services industry and other private corporate interests. The relationship between the UK Treasury and the City of London is described as 'a revolving door' and The Conservative party is funded by the big banks. Two million marched against the Iraq War and it achieved nothing. This whole idea seems astonishingly far fetched and proceding at far too slow a pace as Peak Oil and Climate Change rush ever nearer.

John has got a few celebrity endorsements - but I am afraid The Haze is totally non-plussed.
Anyway let's look at the six steps to Simpol

Step 1 – The World’s current problems
We recognise that the current competitive global marketplace dictates government policy and not the other way round. This is causing the world more and more problems.
The technological solutions already exist, what’s needed is the political solution

While we would certainly agree that big finance and neo-liberalist corporations make a mockery of national democracy and sovereignty in many ways, a politcal solution will be impossible while it is sought alongside our existing system of money supply. As long as the power to create money lies in the hands of private banks our politicians will be powerless eunuchs and utterly unable to do much beyond tinkering with the status quo.

2 – Simpol in a nutshell
Simpol supporters known as “Adopters” are a growing community of people around the world. We use our votes in a new way to drive governments to co-operate with each other to solve global problems.
Simpol is short for the “Simultaneous Policy” i.e. policies implemented globally and simultaneously.
We are not a political party. Instead we use our votes as a tool to bring about a political process for change; one that is open to everyone.
Simpol argues that only a fair policy that creates a truly level playing field for all countries and does not hold the $ as the number one priority, can give us the world most of us want to live in. Together, we are beginning to make this policy a living, breathing reality.

Interesting that Simpol adopters are swiftly called a 'community' - the mis-use of the word 'community' has no bounds it seems. How international governments are going to be 'driven' to co-operate is not explained but it seems an odd starting for a co-operative dialogue in any event.

How will the government of Saudi Arabia (a royal military dictatorship) be driven to co-operate with the rising economic power of China in a way that rescues islands in the South Pacific from rising sea levels driven by climate change? How will the government of Norway be driven to co-operate with the emerging consumer aspirations of India? Simple people power? Surely it's a lot more complicated than that? Certainly in this country I know well that the majority of the population wants their politicians to go into combat for the national interest on their behalf - how will that change?

Step 3 – What Simpol has achieved so far?
Simpol has seen great success in a short space of time. This is because it puts political power in the hands of the people. By joining together to use our votes across national borders, we have a practical way of taking us where we want to go.
Presently, there are Simpol Adopters in over 70 countries; 3 incorporated national organisations and an increasing number of politicians around the world who have signed the Simpol Pledge.
In the UK 27 MP’s from all the main parties and countless parliamentary candidates have already signed the Simpol Pledge.
In 2005, Adopters started a global process for developing the policies to be included in Simpol; the policies needed to solve global problems. Adopters can propose their own policies and these are refined and voted upon annually. Simpol is global self-governance in action! So why not get involved?

When political power isn't in reality even with the politicians I see no evidence that Simpol has or will 'deliver power into the hands of people'. I think I once signed up with John Bunzl many years ago and my power has not increased one jot and I see no prospects for it increasing.

We also held our first Global Co-operation Street Party (click for short film) in Brighton. It was a wonderful day of music, dance, theatre and community. We are planning for many more around the world to connect us together in a spirit of global co-operative action.

No surprise that the party was in Brighton - a hotbed of alternative thinking and the returner of the nation's only Green MP. I suspect the next party will not be held in Glasgow, Belfast or Richmond.

Step 4 – What can I do?
Firstly, Adopt Simpol. That means you put strong electoral pressure on politicians to support Simpol. You are saying: “I will vote in all future elections for any parliamentary candidate – within reason – who has signed the Simpol Pledge, or if I have a party preference, I want my preferred candidate to sign the Pledge.” Before you know it, politicians’ Pledges start coming in fast and furious. With many parliamentary seats, and even entire elections, often hanging on a very small number of votes, politicians who don’t take part in creating our people-centered global democracy, risk losing votes to those who do.
Simpol helps you to punch above your weight. So, Adopt Simpol and Multiply! Why not have a conversation about Simpol with two people per day asking them to join in? That way, we could well become the quickest route to long- term change. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Gandhi

We are baffled about why John thinks that participating in building this political pressure group is any different from any other but that isn't our real problem with it - the real issue is this statement from Step 2 above:

We are not a political party. Instead we use our votes as a tool to bring about a political process for change; one that is open to everyone...

They must certainly ARE a political party! By saying things like:

Climate change, environmental destruction, poverty and war – everything that gives you and all of humanity a heavy heart – cannot be properly solved by any government acting alone

They commit to a very political agenda. They take sides on the highly charged climate debate, mix all poverty and war in together as one lumpen problem and then recommend collective action to solve it.

Many many people will vehemently disagree with this worldview and the potential solution. People disagree about climate change and many more will see the advent of a socialist Orwellian global governance in what Simpol proposes - and fear it.

John Bunzl and Simpol live in a dream world, a world in which his left leaning ideas are shared across the globe by the majority of people who are just waiting for John to link them up - a world in which we have functional democracies that are truly accountable and and represent the people.

How can there be a simultaneous policy for anything when many of the governments represent narrow ethnic and clan interests of a wealthy elite. How will Simpol work in Bahrain, Afghanistan or North Korea?
Simpol attempts to redraw the political map of the globe while trying to appear non-political. This is naive in the extreme as the politics are implied in every word.

Simpol belongs in a category of organisation that aims for utopia by imagining that they can change everyone's worldview to their own. In fact Simpol is several steps backwards from even that - it doesn't even know it has an opinion and therefore thinks its bogus neutrality must be shared by all.

The 'bottom up' growth ideas of things like Simpol never work because the imagined consensus upon which the meme-spread depends doesn't actually exist.

The Haze believes that we already HAVE a global network of communication and co-operation - it's called trade and money.

Why not fix those by advancing sensible proposals that work WITH personal, family and national self interest. I am talking of course about monetary reform - that won't be easy to achieve but it will arrive a lot quicker than trying to grow a brand new bottom up consenus using muddled notions like Simpol.

What is particularly baffling is that John Bunzl is a proponent of monetary reform and even co-wrote a book on the subject with James Robertson. Not only baffling but worrying because we don't NEED Simpol to fix our monetary systems.

Muddling the monetary reform movement with utopian dreaming about global governance from below is a potentially disastrous distraction.

I hope that the energy and drive for monetary reform is not split and lost into the myriad of 'vaguely-new-age-left-leaning' dreamer organisations that are out there. The battle to reform our broken monetary systems is too important for that.

As I said yesterday while musing about the 'False Economy' website, the monetary reform movement needs to be very careful who it stands beside.

[This is now a mirror blog: the real deal has moved over to www.sodiumhaze.org - why not look at the shiny new Haze!]

Right targets - wrong message

The Haze has been perusing the website of the good people at False Economy - a well presented web site that seeks to mobilise opposition to the cuts in government spending.


While we can sympathise deeply with the aim of the website and certainly agree that cuts will not help the british economy - but the analyis offered by the site is flawed and their solution deeply flawed.


Progress through the site is elegantly simple.


The first section is called: 'Why the cut's won't help the economy'


Lets examine the text in detail:

Cutting spending is not the same as cutting the deficit. The government says that its deep, rapid cuts cannot be avoided. Ministers claim that they are the only way to deal with the deficit. Anyone who doubts this is a "deficit denier". We disagree – and so do many expert economists. We don't deny the deficit. It was an inevitable result of the worldwide recession. Of course it has to come down.

Well we agree that cutting spending is not the same as cutting the deficit and agree that the term 'deficit denier' is a handy smokescreen for those committed to patching up our broken banking system and lurching on - but then it all starts to unravel.


By saying 'we don't deny the deficit' it buys into the smokescreen thrown up by bankers to conceal the real reason for the national debt - which as we monetary refromers know stems from borrowing our money supply from private banks at interest.


Worse still by saying that the deficit is the 'inevitable result of the world wide recession' is a bit like saying that The Titanic sank due to a loss of floatability! Yes there was a recession - but without explaining what lies behind the recession (2008 bank crisis anyone?) then it rather looks as though they either don't know or haven't thought about it.

But that does not mean that the government's way is the only way. Its decision to close the deficit in just four years, and to do so by cutting £4 in spending for every extra £1 it will raise in tax is not the only option. There are alternatives.

Well this paragraph implies that cutting governement spending into the economy is a viable option for reducing our budgetary defcit and our overall debt. Neither is true, as economies around the world have proved - following the IMF austerity mantra simply wrecks the economy. That's why it isn't working right now in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain and why it never worked in the past in Africa, Asia - indeed countries like Argentina and Hungary had the good sense to reject the bullying of the IMF and austerity altogether.


They go on to contradict what they have implied in their next paragraph.

Ministers want us to think that the only choice is between cutting spending and increasing tax rates (such as VAT). But there is another factor that they ignore: the amount of tax they collect depends on how strong the economy is.


If the economy does well, then that automatically helps close the deficit. If companies become more successful and more people are in work then they pay more tax.


But deep cuts will slow down the economy, and therefore reduce the tax take. This makes the deficit harder, or even impossible, to close. A longer time scale would give economic growth the chance to do much of the hard work of deficit reduction, rather than relying on cuts and tax increases.


That's why we say the cuts are a false economy.

This is a standard Keynes economic argument and positions the campaign firmly in the economic mainstream. The campaign is obviously unaware of the pivotal role of the money supply in creating our problems.

Our economic problems run deep, and experts argue about them in ways that most people do not understand.

Well the vast majority of economic 'experts' don't understand the problems either - brainwashed by the handicap of a university education in economics or blinded by a mixture of a consensus trance and vested interest.

But the basic issues at stake are not that difficult – and we do have choices about what to do.


Do we try and get rid of the deficit in four years, or let the extra tax that flows from economic growth do more work?


Do we want to see four pounds of cuts for every one pound of tax increase?


In a democracy we should all have a say – especially when neither governing party put such massive cuts to voters at the election.

While we agree that certainly the Lib Dems are guilty of breaking election pledges - but both the Conservatives and Labour were commited to budgetary cuts during the election, the only difference being the scale of the cuts - and there wasn't that much difference.

The aim of False Economy is not to put forward a detailed alternative, but to challenge the myth that there are no alternatives.


These deep and rapid cuts are not only damaging and unfair, but unnecessary.


But we do think that there are policy choices that can help.

• We want policies that will get the unemployed into work (and we don't mean cutting their benefits).
• We support a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions, and a crack-down on tax avoidance and evasion.
• We want to see support for investment in a low-carbon future that can help bring down unemployment and stimulate growth.

That's our approach in a nutshell. But if you'd like more detail, read on.

To take those points in turn -


(a) Its hard to get the 'unemployed into work' if the money to grow the economy does not exist.


(b) A Robin Hood tax on financial transactions puts the cart before the horse - why tax an industry that loans the nation its own money supply? Why not return the licence to print money to a duly elected government and simply keep the £30 billion annual subsidy that we currently hand over meekly to the banks?


(c) Yes well investment in worthy projects would be lovely - but since banks tend only to lend to people who promise a quick and handsome return and as private companies they are under no obligation to lend unless they want to...


The website then provides a page detailing why the cuts are unfair - rather ignoring the basic unfairness implicit in cuts required to keep a broken and unfair system of money going for a few more years (maybe)...


The next section is called 'What the experts say' and has contributions from various economic luminaries who back up the standard keynesian economic mantra laid out earlier.


We are then invited to 'explore the alternatives'

We do not set out a detailed policy mix, we simply want people to realise that there are alternatives so that they can work together to get the government to change its policies. But the alternatives do have some things in common.


They start by saying that we should not try to get rid of the whole deficit in four years. A longer timetable allows economic growth to do more of the work of deficit reduction

Oh dear. By declining to offer a 'detailed policy mix' they run the risk of scorn from people (like the government and its supporters) who are obliged to provide policy in detail (however daft the policies may be)


Arguing for a later timetable is simply another way of saying that we shall pay off our debts over a longer period - but we won't and can't pay off our debts as any monetary reformer knows - since the only money that we could use to pay off our debt is also borrowed from private banks - we cannot pay off our debt with debt money - no more than a drunk man can booze himself sober. The problem is the nature of money - how it is created, who creates it and how it gets into the economy (as debt) - until we change this then notions of 'paying off' the national debt are naive nonsense.

However we cannot pretend that the recession never happened. The banking crash showed that some of what was thought to be real economic growth was an illusion

This is as close as this website comes to the truth of the underlying situation - as this report fom brokers Tullet Prebon (and our analysis) explains a lot of the so called 'growth' created under the last government was simply a bubble built on debt money issued by banks - who preferred blowing up the great UK house price bubble and consumer credit - while starving UK industry of funds.


With tragic irony they then say:

As we have explained, part of the deficit is structural and won't disappear even when the economy is growing strongly again.

Their notion of a structural deficit is explained elsewhere on the site which basically re-states the Keynsian mantra of counter-cyclical investment to clear the 'structural deficit' while alluding mysteriously to :

But there is a second part of the deficit. The crash was caused when a finance bubble turned out to be an illusion. We thought it was real prosperity, but it was a mirage. This means that even when we get the economy working again, it won't be as productive as we once thought it to be.


This second part of the deficit is much smaller than the first, but it will hang around even when we get proper growth and the economy working efficiently again. This is why it is called the structural deficit. Dealing with this part does require difficult decisions that involve tax and spending. But no-one can know what the size of this structural deficit will be until we have got the economy working properly again.

I think the site is trying to offer some kind of Janet & John version of economics - but by doing so the whole excercise comes across as rather wooly and incomplete.


anyway - lets examine some of their proposals:

Policies that stimulate growth include:

• A new green investment bank that can help move the economy away from over-reliance on finance to generating growth and jobs in a low-carbon economy.
• Direct policies to create jobs, such as the Future Jobs Fund – which was one of the first things this government cut.
• Policies that get banks lending again to small and medium-sized businesses.
• A state investment bank based on the nationalised RBS and Lloyds banks.

So a new bank - a new fund - entreaties to get the banks to lending and erm a new bank. So in other words we need a better money supply that somehow keeps the existing broken one unexamined and unchanged. Oh dear.


Sadly the 'False Economy' website is a dreadful muddle - well intentioned and presented but perhaps we might even say that its an unhelpful campaign.


The rationale behind the cuts in the UK is a muddled and deluded attempt to patch a failed and broken system of money- but the opposition to the cuts is often equally muddled - presenting a keynsian utopia as a pancea for our debt crisis just allows the real problems to go unexamined.


I was surprised to find a link from the Positive Money Facebook page to this group. While they look like fellow campaigners - they are in fact presenting very different arguments and the Monetary reform movement must be careful who it stands alongside - lest its message gets muddled in the public mind with wooly left leaning tub thumping.


I am afraid to say that wooly left wing tub thumping is exactly what the 'false Economy' website is.


It takes more than a swish website to present a credible alternative to the current disastrous monetary systems that dominate our lives and False Economy is firmly in the mainstream.


If the urgent need for radical changes to our money supply is diverted into a pointless stand off between keynsians and monetarists or left vs right or the old tribal loyalties of Tory vs Labour - then the banks will escape scott free and all hope is lost.


The task of education for the Monetary Reform movement is immense and we are few in number - but we must convince campaigns and organisations like False Economy to look beyond the usual arguments and the usual suspects for the paths to social justice - even the banks aren't the real problem - our system of moeny supply is, and they must be made to understand that or all that (justified and healthy) anger and energy will be for nothing.

[This blog is now a mirror for the new and vastly improved Sodium Haze which lives here: www.sodiumhaze.org - come and see the shiny new Haze!]

Betrayed. Greek nation sold to the banks.

The Haze is horrified to learn today that the Greek Parliament has abandoned its duty to its own people and paved the way for financial speculators and loan sharks to escape the Greek debt debacle unscathed - the losses on their reckless lending and gambling socialised to Greek and European taxpayers.

By accepting the latest round of austerity cuts and asset sales demanded by the IMF and the ECB in exchange for yet another loan they have sold their people into slavery.

What is euphemistically and dishonestly being called a 'bailout' for the Greek nation is nothing more than another huge debt - loaned by European taxpayers to a fiscally bankrupt nation that has no hope of repaying it through austerity.

The loan is illogical since it cannot succeed - but it has three clear aims and immense collateral damage.

(a) Most of the Greek debt bonds that are held in vast quantities by private banks all over Europe mature in 2015 and somehow the ECB & the IMF think that a way can be found to pay off the loans down the line.

(This is absurd because the terms of the loan demand a package of austerity measures that will destroy utterly the kind of economic growth needed to service the loans. This is of course exactly why we are in this position today as the last bailout was an utter failure - how could it not fail? - you can't fix debt with more debt!)

(b) It attempts to rescue the Eurozone banking system from a potential meltdown and save the embattled Euro itself. 

(c) It reinforces the absolute power and tyranny of the banking cartels - Greece has been bullied back into orthodoxy - by taking the loan it reinforces the notion that there is no alternative to accepting money as debt.

The collateral damage will be horrific. 

Greek assets like their national utilities will be sold off at knockdown prices - the imposed austerity will (at the very least) destroy the economic future of a generation of Greek people and may yet destroy the social fabric of an entire nation.

and it all simply keeps the global giant ponzi scheme of Fractional Reserve Banking going for a few more years.

As our friends @ Positive Money wisely reflected this morning:

Would it be possible for the banks to have lent so much if they had to actually find that money from savers, rather than simply creating it out of nothing through a clever accounting process?

For a bank (or another financial institution), it is one thing to lend money that they had to borrow and they have to return to their depositors with the interest, and it’s a completely different thing to lend money which they just created by typing numbers into a computer system.

There is something fundamentally wrong with fighting a debt crisis by offering yet more debt

   

The loan sharks and profiteers who have made a fortune from trading in Greek debt are being protected at all costs - and it will be ordinary hard working taxpayers all over Europe who will foot the bill for once again providing private companies with free insurance for reckless lending.

The Greek government had an historic opportunity to follow nations like Argentina and Hungary and defy the banking cartels and the IMF - and to stand up for their own people - but they lacked the courage - they lacked the vision and now the Greek people will pay the price.

The Greek people should now rise up and make it clear that they will not accept governance that betrays them on behalf of the banks.

UK exposure to Greece around £365 Billion

As the Haze strongly suspected - the UK exposure to a Greek 'credit event' would be more in the region of £365 billion and not the £2 billion quoted by the Government or the £8 billion ventured by the Bank of England.

All over Europe our rotten and creaking financial system is threatening to collapse - taking savings, pensions and jobs with it.

This is an extremely serious development - the true extent of the danger to economies all over Europe is only now emerging - and few people can consider themselves safe from the potential contagion. 

Why the huge discrepancy? Well in an order to avoid adding panic to an already fraught situation the government has failed to include UK exposure to those wonderful Credit Default Swaps.

The potential devastation of banks and other City institutions would be equal to 24% of UK annual national output, or £14,640 for every family in the UK.

Experts accused ministers of underestimating the true scale of the risk to the UK, as Channel 4 News revealed that estimates of potential exposure range as high as £366bn.

 

Danny Gabay, of Fathom Financial Consulting, which calculated the figure using data from the Department of Business, said:

 

'It's not the direct loan that's the problem, it's the derivatives of those loans which can go on to be multiples of the actual original size of the loan.

'London made a vast amount of money in the ten years before this crisis selling those loans. Those chickens may now be coming home to roost.'

Haze Comment:

Even IF BY SOME MIRACLE - the UK banks wriggle off the hook this time - we must demand as a nation an end to these incredibly dangerous financial gambling games.

Fractional Reserve Banking is bad enough but when you add the power of the 'casino economy' to magnify the damage many times over it is clear we must act.

The sale of these damn derivatives should end today. 

Join the Positive Money Campaign for a banking system that works in the public interest and not against it.

(Click the SHARE button below to share this article with friends and family)

Banking crisis - struggling families pay the price

The Haze was angry but unsurprised to read on the BBC website that the consumer group Which? is accusing banks and building societies of putting the squeeze on homeowners who have standard variable rate mortgages, painting a clear picture of unaccountable profiteering from the usual suspects.

More than 40% of mortgage borrowers are now on standard variable rates, which kick in after cheap introductory mortgage deals expire. The highest are around 6%, double the cost of the best value mortgages.

"They're just milking people," one homeowner from Peterborough, Mark Fellowes, complained.

He says the interest rate on his Egg mortgage dropped by just 1.5% when the Bank of England cut official rates by 4.5% after the financial crisis.

"I was very puzzled initially and then you just get angry," he says.

Quite. Regular Haze readers can probably guess what's coming next...

...yep its time for a media friendly euphemism!

Under the heading of 'Recapitalisation' the BBC article says:

"The Council of Mortgage Lenders argues that the standard variable rate, or SVR, is dependent on the cost of attracting deposits from savers, rather than the Bank of England.

But its director general, Michael Coogan, admitted to BBC News that lenders have been widening their profit margins after losing heavily during the crisis."

"I think what we have is the banks and the building societies trying to restabilise the system which was in shock in 2008," he explained.

"They are trying to recapitalise their organisations, deal with past losses, deal with the risk of future losses, and at the same time keep their customers as happy as possible through the economic cycle."

The Haze can put all that media spin into a plain English translation.

The 'Economic Cycle' is a media-friendly phrase to describe the inherent financial instability and impoverishment created by the financial services industry via the ponzi scheme of Fractional Reserve banking.

What this remarkably frank banker is telling us - is that they will try to soothe their customers while screwing them for money - in order to make up any losses incurred during the financial chaos THEY created.

He deeply patronises his customers by implying  via the slippery euphemism of 'the economic cycle' - that his customers don't really understand the complexities involved and that they should be grateful that the banks try to 'keep them as happy as possible' while simultaneously acknowledging that they are profiteering.

As long as we continue to allow private banks to lend us our money supply at interest they will continue to treat us all with contempt.

The banks are the unaccountable, unelected masters of our country - the political argument against them is just, rational and must prevail, if we are ever to put them in their place and re-assert our sovereignty in the public interest.

(got a moment to support The Haze on Wikio? (CLICK HERE and then on the little birdies to vote!) Or click the SHARE button at the top of the article)