Road Out Of Babylon

Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy?

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:05:40 +0000

Global currency replacing all paper currencies, limiting manufacturing, food production and people movement

Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy?

By Patrick Wood Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Introduction

Critics who think that the U.S. dollar will be replaced by some new global currency are perhaps thinking too small.

On the world horizon looms a new global currency that could replace all paper currencies and the economic system upon which they are based.

The new currency, simply called Carbon Currency, is designed to support a revolutionary new economic system based on energy (production, and consumption), instead of price. Our current price-based economic system and its related currencies that have supported capitalism, socialism, fascism and communism, is being herded to the slaughterhouse in order to make way for a new carbon-based world.

It is plainly evident that the world is laboring under a dying system of price-based economics as evidenced by the rapid decline of paper currencies. The era of fiat (irredeemable paper currency) was introduced in 1971 when President Richard Nixon decoupled the U.S. dollar from gold. Because the dollar-turned-fiat was the world’s primary reserve asset, all other currencies eventually followed suit, leaving us today with a global sea of paper that is increasingly undesired, unstable, unusable.

The deathly economic state of today’s world is a direct reflection of the sum of its sick and dying currencies, but this could soon change.

Forces are already at work to position a new Carbon Currency as the ultimate solution to global calls for poverty reduction, population control, environmental control, global warming, energy allocation and blanket distribution of economic wealth.

Unfortunately for individual people living in this new system, it will also require authoritarian and centralized control over all aspects of life, from cradle to grave.

What is Carbon Currency and how does it work? In a nutshell, Carbon Currency will be based on the regular allocation of available energy to the people of the world. If not used within a period of time, the Currency will expire (like monthly minutes on your cell phone plan) so that the same people can receive a new allocation based on new energy production quotas for the next period.

Because the energy supply chain is already dominated by the global elite, setting energy production quotas will limit the amount of Carbon Currency in circulation at any one time. It will also naturally limit manufacturing, food production and people movement.

Local currencies could remain in play for a time, but they would eventually wither and be fully replaced by the Carbon Currency, much the same way that the Euro displaced individual European currencies over a period of time.

Sounds very modern in concept, doesn’t it? In fact, these ideas date back to the 1930’s when hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens were embracing a new political ideology called Technocracy and the promise it held for a better life. Even now-classic literature was heavily influenced by Technocracy: George Orwell’s 1984, H.G. Well’s The Shape of Things to Comeand Huxley’s “scientific dictatorship” in Brave New World.

This paper investigates the rebirth of Technocracy and its potential to recast the New World Order into something truly “new” and also totally unexpected by the vast majority of modern critics.

Background

Philosophically, Technocracy found it roots in the scientific autocracy of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and in the positivism of Auguste Comte (1798- 1857), the father of the social sciences. Positivism elevated science and the scientific method above metaphysical revelation. Technocrats embraced positivism because they believed that social progress was possible only through science and technology. [Schunk, Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective, 5th, 315]

The social movement of Technocracy, with its energy-based accounting system, can be traced back to the 1930’s when an obscure group of engineers and scientists offered it as a solution to the Great Depression.

The principal scientist behind Technocracy was M. King Hubbert, a young geoscientist who would later (in 1948-1956) invent the now-famous Peak Oil Theory, also known as the Hubbert Peak Theory. Hubbert stated that the discovery of new energy reserves and their production would be outstripped by usage, thereby eventually causing economic and social havoc. Many modern followers of Peak Oil Theory believe that the 2007-2009 global recession was exacerbated in part by record oil prices that reflected validity of the theory.

Hubbert received all of his higher education at the University of Chicago, graduating with a PhD in 1937, and later taught geophysics at Columbia University. He was highly acclaimed throughout his career, receiving many honors such as the Rockefeller Public Service Award in 1977.

In 1933, Hubbert and Howard Scott formed an organization called Technocracy, Inc. Technocracy is derived from the Greek words “techne” meaning skill and “kratos”, meaning rule. Thus, it is government by skilled engineers, scientists and technicians as opposed to elected officials. It was opposed to all other forms of government, including communism, socialism and fascism, all of which function with a price-based economy.

As founders of the organization and political movement called Technocracy, Inc., Hubbert and Scott also co-authored Technocracy Study Course in 1934. This book serves as the “bible” of Technocracy and is the root document to which most all modern technocratic thinking can be traced.

Technocracy postulated that only scientists and engineers were capable of running a complex, technology-based society. Because technology, they reasoned, changed the social nature of societies, previous methods of government and economy were made obsolete. They disdained politicians and bureaucrats, who they viewed as incompetent. By utilizing the scientific method and scientific management techniques, Technocrats hoped to squeeze the massive inefficiencies out of running a society, thereby providing more benefits for all members of society while consuming less resources.

The other integral part of Technocracy was to implement an economic system based on energy allocation rather than price. They proposed to replace traditional money with Energy Credits.

Their keen focus on the efficient use of energy is likely the first hint of a sustained ecological/environmental movement in the United States. Technocracy Study Course stated, for instance,

Although it (the earth) is not an isolated system the changes in the configuration of matter on the earth, such as the erosion of soil, the making of mountains, the burning of coal and oil, and the mining of metals are all typical and characteristic examples of irreversible processes, involving in each case an increase of entropy. (Technocracy Study Course,Hubbert & Scott, p. 49)

Modern emphasis on curtailing carbon fuel consumption that causes global warming and CO2 emissions is essentially a product of early Technocratic thinking.

As scientists, Hubbert and Scott tried to explain (or justify) their arguments in terms of physics and the law of thermodynamics, which is the study of energy conversion between heat and mechanical work.

Entropy is a concept within thermodynamics that represents the amount of energy in a system that is no longer available for doing mechanical work. Entropy thus increases as matter and energy in the system degrade toward the ultimate state of inert uniformity.

In layman’s terms, entropy means once you use it, you lose it for good. Furthermore, the end state of entropy is “inert uniformity” where nothing takes place. Thus, if man uses up all the available energy and/or destroys the ecology, it cannot be repeated or restored ever again.

The Technocrat’s avoidance of social entropy is to increase the efficiency of society by the careful allocation of available energy and measuring subsequent output in order to find a state of “equilibrium,” or balance. Hubbert’s focus on entropy is evidenced by Technocracy, Inc.’s logo, the well-known Yin Yang symbol that depicts balance.

To facilitate this equilibrium between man and nature, Technocracy proposed that citizens would receive Energy Certificates in order to operate the economy:

“Energy Certificates are issued individually to every adult of the entire population… The record of one’s income and its rate of expenditure is kept by the Distribution Sequence, so that it is a simple matter at any time for the Distribution Sequence to ascertain the state of a given customer’s balance… When making purchases of either goods or services an individual surrenders the Energy Certificates properly identified and signed.

“The significance of this, from the point of view of knowledge of what is going on in the social system, and of social control, can best be appreciated when one surveys the whole system in perspective. First, one single organization is manning and operating the whole social mechanism. The same organization not only produces but also distributes all goods and services.

“With this information clearing continuously to a central headquarters we have a case exactly analogous to the control panel of a power plant, or the bridge of an ocean liner…”[Technocracy Study Course, Hubbert & Scott,p. 238-239]

Two key differences between price-based money and Energy Certificates are that a) money is generic to the holder while Certificates are individually registered to each citizen and b) money persists while Certificates expire. The latter facet would greatly hinder, if not altogether prevent, the accumulation of wealth and property.

Transition

At the start of WWII, Technocracy’s popularity dwindled as economic prosperity returned, however both the organization and its philosophy survived.

Today, there are two principal websites representing Technocracy in North America: Technocracy, Inc., located in Ferndale, Washington, is represented at www.technocracy.org. A sister organization in Vancouver, British Columbia is Technocracy Vancouver, can be found at www.technocracyvan.ca.

While Technocracy’s original focus was exclusively on the North American continent, it is now growing rapidly in Europe and other industrialized nations.

For instance, the Network of European Technocrats was formed in 2005 as “an autonomous research and social movement that aims to explore and develop both the theory and design of technocracy.” The NET website claims to have members around the world.

Of course, a few minor league organizations and their websites cannot hope to create or implement a global energy policy, but it’s not because the ideas aren’t still alive and well.

A more likely influence on modern thinking is due to Hubbert’s Peak Oil Theory introduced in 1954. It has figured prominently in the ecological/environmental movement. In fact, the entire global warming movement indirectly sits on top of the Hubbert Peak Theory.

As the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome recently stated, “The issue of peak oil impinges directly on the climate change question.” (see John H. Walsh, “The Impending Twin Crisis – One Set of Solutions?, p.5.)

The Modern Proposal

Because of the connection between the environmental movement, global warming and the Technocratic concept of Energy Certificates, one would expect that a Carbon Currency would be suggested from that particular community, and in fact, this is the case.

In 1995, Judith Hanna wrote in New Scientist, “Toward a single carbon currency”, “My proposal is to set a global quota for fossil fuel combustion every year, and to share it equally between all the adults in the world.”

In 2004, the prestigious Harvard International Review published “A New Currency” and stated,

“For those keen to slow global warming, the most effective actions are in the creation of strong national carbon currencies… For scholars and policymakers, the key task is to mine history for guides that are more useful. Global warming is considered an environmental issue, but its best solutions are not to be found in the canon of environmental law. Carbon’s ubiquity in the world economy demands that cost be a consideration in any regime to limit emissions. Indeed, emissions trading has been anointed king because it is the most responsive to cost. And since trading emissions for carbon is more akin to trading currency than eliminating a pollutant, policymakers should be looking at trade and finance with an eye to how carbon markets should be governed. We must anticipate the policy challenges that will arise as this bottom-up system emerges, including the governance of seams between each of the nascent trading systems, liability rules for bogus permits, and judicial cooperation. [Emphasis added]

HIR concludes that “after seven years of spinning wheels and wrong analogies, the international regime to control carbon is headed, albeit tentatively, down a productive path.”

In 2006, UK Environment Secretary David Miliband spoke to the Audit Commission Annual Lecture and flatly stated,

“Imagine a country where carbon becomes a new currency. We carry bankcards that store both pounds and carbon points. When we buy electricity, gas and fuel, we use our carbon points, as well as pounds. To help reduce carbon emissions, the Government would set limits on the amount of carbon that could be used.” [Emphasis added]

In 2007, New York Times published “When Carbon Is Currency” by Hannah Fairfield. She pointedly stated “To build a carbon market, its originators must create a currency of carbon credits that participants can trade.”

PointCarbon, a leading global consultancy, is partnered with Bank of New York Mellon to assess rapidly growing carbon markets. In 2008 they published “Towards a Common Carbon Currency: Exploring the prospects for integrated global carbon markets.” This report discusses both environmental and economic efficiency in a similar context as originally seen with Hubbert in 1933.

Finally, on November 9 2009, the Telegraph (UK) presented an article “Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance.’”

“… implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity. Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using. If their “carbon account” hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits”. [Emphasis added]

As you can see, these references are hardly minor league in terms of either authorship or content. The undercurrent of early Technocratic thought has finally reached the shore where the waves are lapping at the beach.

Technocracy’s Energy Card Prototype

In July 1937 an article by Howard Scott in Technocracy Magazine described an Energy Distribution Card in great detail. It declared that using such an instrument as a “means of accounting is a part of Technocracy’s proposed change in the course of how our socioeconomic system can be organized.”

Scott further wrote,

“The certificate will be issued directly to the individual. It is nontransferable and nonnegotiable; therefore, it cannot be stolen, lost, loaned, borrowed, or given away. It is noncumulative; therefore, it cannot be saved, and it does not accrue or bear interest. It need not be spent but loses its validity after a designated time period.”

This may have seemed like science fiction in 1937, but today it is wholly achievable. In 2010 Technocracy, Inc. offers an updated idea of what such an Energy Distribution Card might look like. Their website states,

“It is now possible to use a plastic card similar to today’s credit card embedded with a microchip. This chip could contain all the information needed to create an energy distribution card as described in this booklet. Since the same information would be provided in whatever forms best suits the latest technology, however, the concept of an ‘Energy Distribution Card’ is what is explained here.”

If you study the card above, you will also note that is serves as a universal identity card and contains a microchip. This reflects Technocracy’s philosophy that each person in society must be meticulously monitored and accounted for in order to track what they consume in terms of energy, and also what they contribute to the manufacturing process.

Carbon Market Players

The modern system of carbon credits was an invention of the Kyoto Protocol and started to gain momentum in 2002 with the establishment of the first domestic economy-wide trading scheme in the U.K. After becoming international law in 2005, the trading market is now predicted to reach $3 trillion by 2020 or earlier.

Graciela Chichilnisky, director of the Columbia Consortium for Risk Management and a designer of the carbon credit text of the Kyoto Protocol, states that the carbon market “is therefore all about cash and trading – but it is also a way to a profitable and greener future.” (See Who Needs a Carbon Market?)

Who are the “traders” that provide the open door to all this profit? Currently leading the pack are JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Bloomberg noted in Carbon Capitalists on December 4, 2009 that

“The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbon-related financial products to outside investors.”

At JP Morgan, the woman who originally invented Credit Default Swaps, Blythe Masters, is now head of the department that will trade carbon credits for the bank.

Considering the sheer force of global banking giants behind carbon trading, it’s no wonder analysts are already predicting that the carbon market will soon dwarf all other commodities trading.

Conclusion

Where there is smoke, there is fire. Where there is talk, there is action.

If M. King Hubbert and other early architects of Technocracy were alive today, they would be very pleased to see the seeds of their ideas on energy allocation grow to bear fruit on such a large scale. In 1933, the technology didn’t exist to implement a system of Energy Certificates. However, with today’s ever-advancing computer technology, the entire world could easily be managed on a single computer.

This article intended to show that

Carbon Currency is not a new idea, but has deep roots in Technocracy
Carbon Currency has grown from a continental proposal to a global proposal
It has been consistently discussed over a long period of time
The participants include many prominent global leaders, banks and think-tanks
The context of these discussions have been very consistent
Today’s goals for implementing Carbon Currency are virtually identical to Technocracy’s original Energy Certificates goals.

Of course, a currency is merely a means to an end. Whoever controls the currency also controls the economy and the political structure that goes with it. Inquiry into what such a system might look like will be a future topic.

Technocracy and energy-based accounting are not idle or theoretical issues. If the global elite intends for Carbon Currency to supplant national currencies, then the world economic and political systems will also be fundamentally changed forever.

What Technocracy could not achieve during the Great Depression appears to have finally found traction in the Great Recession.

Bibliography & Resources

Scott & Hubbert, Technocracy Study Course, Technocracy, Inc., 1934

Hanna, Toward a single carbon currency, New Scientist, 1995

Victor & House, A New Currency, Harvard International Review, Summer 2004

Hannah Fairfield, When Carbon Is Currency, New York Times, May 6, 2007

M. King Hubbert & The Technocracy Technate Design – Historical blog

Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance’, Telegraph (UK)

Network of European Technocrats – website for Europe

Technocracy, Inc. – website for U.S.

Technocracy Vancouver – website for Canada

Association for the study of Peak Oil & Gas – website for Peak Oil

Gulf Oil Spill “Could Go for on Years and Years” …

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:17:54 +0000

By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, June 11, 2010
The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy. In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many years.” [1] According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.”[2] Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico. As I wrote at the time of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster,[3] Haiti had been identified as having potentially huge hydrocasrbon reserves, as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov estimates that the entire Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s most abundant accessible locations to extract oil and gas, at least before the Deepwater Horizon event this April. “In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil spewing out of the well,” Kutcherov adds. “What is inexplicable at this point is why they are trying one thing, failing, then trying a second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they should try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in hope one works. Otherwise, this oil source could spew oil for years given the volumes coming to the surface already.” [4] He stresses, “It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is. There is no objective information available.” But taking into consideration information about the last BP ‘giant’ discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees with Ira Leifer a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara who says the oil may be gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day.[5] What the enormoity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit clearly the oil companies’ myth of “peak oil” which claims that the world is at or near the “peak” of economical oil extraction. That myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to former oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been effectively used by the giant oil majors to justify far higher oil prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis. Obama & BP Try to Hide According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, “the Obama White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused by what can be called a ‘mega-disaster.’” [6] Madsen cites sources within the US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection for his assertion. Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Salazar, are working with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the disaster has a real potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1 trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic assessment of Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, “will destroy the entire coastline of the United States.” According to the Washington report of Madsen, BP statements that one of the leaks has been contained, are “pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration., according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources.” [7] The White House has been resisting releasing any “damaging information” about the oil disaster. Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers experts estimate that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. [8] Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a “national security issue.” Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano’s actual reasoning for invoking national security, according to Madsen, was merely to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines. The Obama administration also conspired with BP to hide the extent of the oil leak, according to the cited federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day were gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day. However, submersibles monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of what they describe as a “volcanic-like” eruption of oil. When the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick, which is larger than is being reported by the media, it was reportedly denied the access. By chance, National Geographic managed to obtain satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site. Other satellite imagery reportedly being withheld by the Obama administration, shows that what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to Madsen’s sources. The Corps of Engineers and FEMA are reported to be highly critical of the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only now has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70 vessels to the affected area. Under the loose regulatory measures implemented by the Bush-Cheney Administration, the US Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service became a simple “rubber stamp,” approving whatever the oil companies wanted in terms of safety precautions that could have averted such a disaster. Madsen describes a state of “criminal collusion” between Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, and the Interior Department’s MMS, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves. [9] Silence from Eco groups?… Follow the money Without doubt at this point we are in the midst of what could be the greatest ecological catastrophe in history. The oil platform explosion took place almost within the current loop where the Gulf Stream originates. This has huge ecological and climatological consequences. A cursory look at a map of the Gulf Stream shows that the oil is not just going to cover the beaches in the Gulf, it will spread to the Atlantic coasts up through North Carolina then on to the North Sea and Iceland. And beyond the damage to the beaches, sea life and water supplies, the Gulf stream has a very distinct chemistry, composition (marine organisms), density, temperature. What happens if the oil and the dispersants and all the toxic compounds they create actually change the nature of the Gulf Stream? No one can rule out potential changes including changes in the path of the Gulf Stream, and even small changes could have huge impacts. Europe, including England, is not an icy wasteland due to the warming from the Gulf Stream. Yet there is a deafening silence from the very environmental organizations which ought to be at the barricades demanding that BP, the US Government and others act decisively. That deafening silence of leading green or ecology organizations such as Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club and others may well be tied to a money trail that leads right back to the oil industry, notably to BP. Leading environmental organizations have gotten significant financial payoffs in recent years from BP in order that the oil company could remake itself with an “environment-friendly face,” as in “beyond petroleum” the company’s new branding. The Nature Conservancy, described as “the world’s most powerful environmental group,”[10] has awarded BP a seat on its International Leadership Council after the oil company gave the organization more than $10 million in recent years. [11] Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked with BP in a coalition that lobbied Congress on climate-change issues. An employee of BP Exploration serves as an unpaid Conservancy trustee in Alaska. In addition, according to a recent report published by the Washington Post, Conservation International, another environmental group, has accepted $2 million in donations from BP and worked with the company on a number of projects, including one examining oil-extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne, then BP’s chief executive, sat on the CI board. Further, The Environmental Defense Fund, another influential ecologist organization, joined with BP, Shell and other major corporations to form a Partnership for Climate Action, to promote ‘market-based mechanisms’ (sic) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental non-profit groups that have accepted donations from or joined in projects with BP include Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Audubon. That could explain why the political outcry to date for decisive action in the Gulf has been so muted. [12] Of course those organizations are not going to be the ones to solve this catastrophe. The central point at this point is who is prepared to put the urgently demanded federal and international scientific resources into solving this crisis. Further actions of the likes of that from the Obama White House to date or from BP can only lead to the conclusion that some very powerful people want this debacle to continue. The next weeks will be critical to that assessment. F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order Notes [1] Vladimir Kutcherov, telephone discussion with the author, June 9, 2010. [2] Ibid. [3] F. William Engdahl, The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti, Global Research.ca, January 30, 2010, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287 [4] Vladimir Kutcherov, op. cit. [5] Ira Leifer, Scientist: BP Well Could Be Leaking 100,000 Barrels of Oil a Day, June 9, 2010, accessed in http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/9/scientist_bp_well_could_be_leaking [6] Wayne Madsen, The Coverup: BPs Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega Disaster, May 6, 2010, accessed in http://oilprice.com/Environment/Oil-Spills/The-Cover-up-BP-s-Crude-Politics-and-the-Looming-Environmental-Mega-Disaster.html [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] Tim Findley, Natures’ Landlord, Range Magazine, Spring 2003. [11] Joe Stephens, Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with BP, Washington Post, May 24, 2010, accessed in http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052302164.html [12] Ibid.

Bilderberg 2010: What we have learned

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:16:08 +0000

Bilderberg 2010: What we have learned

A huge agenda of global issues was crammed into four days of ‘secret’ meetings by a mysterious group of power brokers. But who elected them and why are we paying for them?

The lines have been drawn. Whose side are you on? Photograph: Alex Amengual

Weary and bramble-scratched, elated by the press coverage, and sick of riot vans and lukewarm Spanish omelette baguettes, we return from Bilderberg 2010 with the following thoughts uppermost in our tired mind:

• ‘Global cooling’ is on the cards

Check out the agenda for Bilderberg 2010: “Financial reform, security, cyber technology, energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, world food problem, global cooling, social networking, medical science, EU-US relations.” That list is a window into your future. Don’t think for one minute that it isn’t. And don’t ignore it, because it isn’t ignoring you.

I love how “social networking” must fry the Bilderbergian mind. On the one hand, as Zuckerberg of Facebook says, privacy is no longer a social norm so it’s okay to milk the networking sites for information, social trends and dissident thinking; however, you can’t stop the people from arranging a meet-up to discuss internet censorship or the rights and wrongs of “global cooling”. Speaking of which, Bill Gates (Bilderberg 2010) is funding “cloud whitening” technology; trials start soon. Global dimming isn’t just something that happens every time Big Brother starts. On the basis of this agenda, I think we can expect a lot of statements about cutting-edge cloud-technology trials in the next 12 months. If it works in Dubai, it can work in Britain too…

• You can’t keep a good story down

If I had to pick the point when Bilderberg finally broke through into mainstream news, it would be when the BBC News Blog published a round-up of Bilderberg reports. Twelve months ago, this would have been barely conceivable. This year, Kissinger must be spitting chips.

• People love their ‘leaders’

I know this sounds peculiar, or at least it does to me, but this year’s Bilderbloggingshave quite commonly been met with outrage at the idea that we should submit Bilderberg to greater scrutiny. You hear people talk about the delegates at Bilderberg as their “leaders”, and you see the delegates mythologised as the greatest and the best – whose benign Olympian machinations should progress untroubled by the interference of public and press. “Leaders” like the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, and the chairman of Kissinger Associates Inc.

I’m baffled to the point of punching tree trunks to witness the determination of some folk to throw themselves in front of these heads of corporations and presidents of banks and to wave their arms protectively, yelping: “Leave them alone! Let them strategise for the good of the world in peace! How could they possibly have a frank discussion with our politicians if we were privy to it? Stop this unseemly prying!” I mean, seriously. The day that Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclays, strategises for my good is the day he repays me the hundreds of pounds of bank charges he’s been levying on me since my schooldays. The day that Peter Voser, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, sits around a table with the express concern of making the world a better, more beautiful place for all of us, is the day that my arse grows teeth and eats my hat.

Do this: Look at the list of participants and ask yourself one simple question: what’s their bottom line?

• I’m on a list

One afternoon, towards the end of the conference, my wife and I chanced upon some of the Bilderberg organisers out on a two-limo trip to the seafront. We recognised them from our stay at the hotel before the conference began. We went up and asked them if they could confirm the names of British delegates attending this year’s meeting. In horror, they jackknifed from the promenade, back into their limos, one of them cackling weirdly and holding her handbag to her face. Another snatched a camera from the footwell, and started snapping my face as I snapped hers. You can see me give the thumbs-up in the photo. So, if I wasn’t before, I’m now on Bilderberg’s least wanted list. What a bore.

Bilderberg snaps back: my face is on its way to Leiden HQ. Photograph: Charlie Skelton

Maybe they’ll write me nice letter, asking me to cease and desist. Or maybe … maybe it’s best I state now, for the record: I’m not a communist, a fascist, a racist or a petty thief. I didn’t steal that laptop, I didn’t photograph those children, I don’t mutilate horses. I didn’t sleep with that prostitute. I don’t believe in UFOs. I don’t have sketchbooks filled with drawings of the Houses of Parliament on fire. I don’t hate progress. I am not possessed of vile feelings towards the Dutch, the Spanish, the Jews, the Mormons, the Welsh, or anyone on earth except Peruvian folk musicians. I’m not into S&M. I’ve never paid anyone to hose me with custard, or tread on my testicles in six-inch heels. I don’t spend Friday nights in a gimp suit. I’m not an adult baby. I *did* make a porn film once, but it wasn’t a very good one. Too much plot.

I’m not manically depressed, delusional, bitter towards the world, a brooding failure, a collector of SS regalia, obsessed with one particular local weather reporter, or suicidal. I didn’t raise my voice. The steps of the police station weren’t slippy. I don’t want to kill bankers or string up politicians. I don’t want to overthrow the government. I wouldn’t mind if there were fewer talent shows on TV, but it’s nothing that’s likely to spill over into bloodshed. I’m not wearing a bra. I haven’t had sex with a turkey.

• People aren’t angry enough

There were 130 people up the hill, chugging sangria and strategising. And down at the foot of the hill, on the other side of the riot vans, about 130 people with flags and cameras. My God, that’s depressing. In a world that, by any estimation, is a hard, gruelling, unfair place to billions of humans, in which assets are being grabbed, wealth is being relentlessly centralised (the Bilderbank, Goldman Sachs, has just notched up its best ever quarter, in which George Osborne so kindly lets us choose our own “austerity measures” – in such a distressingly cocked-up world, 130 of us made it all the way to the Spanish seaside to say: “Maybe what you’re strategising up there isn’t working out for the best.”

Perhaps there would have been more, but people have got other things on their mind: they’re behind on their mortgage payments, saving up for a wedding, saving up for a divorce, saving up for a holiday that doesn’t involve being detained by policemen, disenchanted by CamCleggian sameness, hotly engaged in local politics, knackered, sick, drunk, or Spelbound (in the Britain’s Got Talent sense of the word). They’re furious enough that Robert Green let that goal in, never mind anything else. Where’s the headspace to be concerned about Bilderberg?

Bertrand Russell saw it coming. He saw a world in which “any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible”. I’m surprised you’ve even got time in your day to have scrolled this far down.

• One person can make a difference

Last year, I wrote about my visit to Vouliagmeni to see what Bilderberg was all about. It wasn’t a happy trip. But in my final piece I asked people to come along in 2010 and help sprinkle the “slug” of Bilderberg with the “salt” of publicity. About 10 or so people took me up on this. Of these 10, one was “Quierosaber”, the brave fellow who crawled into the hills before sunrise, with leaves wrapped around his head, and took photos of the delegates (see our Spot the Delegate quiz, and our Bilderberg 2010 Power Gallery). In one of his photos appeared Gordon Campbell, the premier of British Columbia. The Canadian press started asking questions, and discovered that he’d paid for his plane ticket to Bilderberg using public money.

Sure, Campbell was on the quietly published list of attendees, but the difference between a list of names and a photo is incalculable. So there we have it: accountability, transparency, and none of it possible without people like Quierosaber packing a knapsack at 4am, wrapping laurel leaves round a borrowed camera and hiding under brambles.

• There’s an awful lot of unelected ‘advising’ in the world

One of the participants snapped by Quierosaber is the glacial senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, Marie-Josée Kravis, (wife of Henry Kravis, head of private equity megafirm KKR). The tax-exempt Hudson Institute is a US “thinktank” which has a clearly stated aim: “We seek to guide global leaders in government and business.” It’s funded by good and wise people like Monsanto, DuPont, Pfizer, McDonald’s, General Atomics, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, and Conrad Black (Bilderberg attendee and currently guest of Florida correctional institution).

The Hudson Institute was set up by the Rand Corporation (which had previously been set up by the Douglas Aircraft Company to advise the US military). In a nutshell, that’s who Marie-Josée Kravis works for, and that’s who George Osborne spent Bilderberg 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 listening to. In the words of Aretha Franklin: who’s zoomin’ who? And who the hell asked these foundations for their guidance in the first place? Stop issuing reports! Stop thinktanking! Stop presenting “well-timed recommendations to leaders in government”. Mind your own unelected business for a change. And pay some tax while you’re about it.

• There’s still no answer to the big question

I’d like to quote the prime minister, David Cameron (Bilderberg, 2008): “Greater transparency is at the heart of our shared commitment to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account … It’s your money, your government, you should know what’s going on. So we’re going to rip off that cloak of secrecy and extend transparency as far and as wide as possible.”

In the spirit of secret cloaks being ripped away, it seems reasonable to ask: does the secretive “private meeting” of Bilderberg, which takes “one-third” of its participants “from government and politics”, have any effect at all on our domestic and international policies? Does this fantastically media-shy group that has our brand newlord chancellor, Kenneth Clarke QC MP, on its inner steering committee, does this four-day conference, with its agenda and its lanyards and its side-meeting seminar rooms, does it serve to influence the way our country is run? Or is that a bit like asking: Does Amy Winehouse like a drink?

Explicitly top of Bilderberg’s agenda this year is “financial reform”. Present at this year’s conference: Paul Volcker, chairman of Obama’s economic recovery advisory board. Just after Bilderberg, Obama warns of massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters. Also present was Portugal’s finance minster, Fernando Teixeira dos Santos. Portugal has just voted through an emergency package of tax hikes and public spending cuts. Was any of this discussed in the financial reform sessions? If not, what was discussed?

If Bilderberg doesn’t influence public policy, then why is it four days long, and why does it spend €10m protecting the sanctity of its discussions? Why hold it at all? What a waste of busy people’s time! And if it does influence public policy, then by what twisted logic is public money being spent keeping it secret? And why, in this publicly protected secrecy, should Klaus Kleinfeld (disgraced former CEO of Siemens AG) and Dieter Zetsche (the chairman of Mercedes-Benz), and James A Johnson (board member of Goldman Sachs, member of the trilateral commission, member of the Council on Foreign Relations), have the ear of our politicians?

Cameron wants us to have the answers to these questions. As he says: “It’s your money, your government, you should know what’s going on.” So we ask: How much British public money has been used to police Bilderberg? Who’s putting the request in to MI5? Who’s paying for the watermelons? Does the Bilderberg Group have an accounts book? Could we see it? Could someone ask Ken Clarke for a copy? Isn’t it about time the Daily Telegraph got involved? Are taxpayers paying for the riot vans? Or are corporations hiring police forces as private armies to stand guard over a private meeting?

These questions are exactly as stupid and exactly as important as asking whether Sir Peter Viggers bought his own duck house. These are questions about political process that deserve simple and straightforward answers, not the scorn of idiots for asking them.

• It takes longer to get from Sitges to Santander than you might think

I missed the ferry home. And not even by a whisker. I was a good 100km out in my estimate. There was shouting and recrimination on a rain-sodden Basque motorway. I can’t believe I didn’t do what the VP of Fiat did and come by private jet.

• There are only 358 shopping days till Bilderberg 2011

Maybe you think there’s nothing to worry about here. Maybe you think Bilderberg isn’t a public-private travesty of secrecy and lies. Maybe you see nothing odd in Tony Blair (Bilderberg 1993) lying to parliament about going. Maybe you think this is how “important stuff” gets done, how geopolitics should be conducted. Maybe you think it’s okay that a representative of the Hudson Institute, which campaigns against organic food and is funded by Monsanto, should be locked in a conference centre for four days discussing the “world food problem” with Joaquín Almunia, the EU commissioner for competition.

Marching off into the sunset: but they’ll be back again for Bilderberg 2011. Photograph: Alex Amengual

Maybe you look at the world and think it’ll all be okay tomorrow because, for you at least, it’s sort of okay today. Maybe you see “social networking” and “cyber technology” on Bilderberg’s agenda and you aren’t concerned. Maybe you don’t think Peter Mandelson’s rushed-through digital economy bill had anything to do with his attendance at Bilderberg 2009.

Maybe you don’t see an irony in the individual getting screwed and screwed again by the same corporations and bailed-out banks who are so forthcoming with their advice for our politicians. Maybe you don’t feel like you’re getting shafted. Or maybe you’ve just got numb. There are plenty of other things to worry about in the world. Serious things, like health and poverty and terrorism. And anyway, the people up the hill in Bilderberg will sort it out for us. They’re clever people. They’re experts. They just spent four days talking about “medical science” and the “world food problem”. They’re on it. We can relax.

Or maybe you think it would a good thing to keep the Bilderball rolling. The massively increased coverage of this year’s Bilderberg didn’t just “happen”. People made it happen. People emailed photos to press agencies, rang up friends who worked for newspapers, gave interviews to camera crews, and a local lawyer whose wife was giving birth to twins gave pro bono advice over the phone. So here’s an idea: maybe you were given a telephoto lens three Christmases ago and you’ve never had cause to use it. Maybe you’re not sure we should start bombing Iran just yet. Maybe you’re a fan of “greater transparency”, and fancy taking Cameron up on his pledge “to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account”. Maybe you’d like to meet some of the sharp, savvy, committed, interested people I’ve met this last week. Maybe you’d like to be one of them.

Borrow a tent, set up a YouTube channel, start saving now for the flight. Email us onbilderberg2011@yahoo.co.uk. Let’s add a zero to the end of 130. And let’s put an end to the lunatic, inappropriate, expensive and undemocratic secrecy of Bilderberg.

Eurogarchs Consider a Return to Dictatorship on the Continent

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:10:21 +0000

Nightmare vision for Europe as EU chief warns ‘democracy could disappear’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal

By Jason Groves
Last updated at 8:24 AM on 15th June 2010

EU begin emergency billion-pound bailout of Spain
Countries in debt may fall to dictators, EC chief warns
‘Apocalyptic’ vision as some states run out of money

Democracy could ‘collapse’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned.

In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an ‘apocalyptic’ vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.

The stark warning came as it emerged that EU chiefs have begun work on an emergency bailout package for Spain which is likely to run into hundreds of billions of pounds.

Crisis point: Demonstrators protest cuts announced by the Government in Malaga last week in an echo of the Greek crisis

A £650 billion bailout for Greece has already been agreed.

John Monks, former head of the TUC, said he had been ‘shocked’ by the severity of the warning from Mr Barroso, who is a former prime minister of Portugal.

Mr Monks, now head of the European TUC, said: ‘I had a discussion with Barroso last Friday about what can be done for Greece, Spain, Portugal and the rest and his message was blunt: “Look, if they do not carry out these austerity packages, these countries could virtually disappear in the way that we know them as democracies. They’ve got no choice, this is it.”

‘He’s very, very worried. He shocked us with an apocalyptic vision of democracies in Europe collapsing because of the state of indebtedness.’

Greece, Spain and Portugal, which only became democracies in the 1970s, are all facing dire problems with their public finances. All three countries have a history of military coups.

Greece has been rocked by a series of national strikes and riots this year following the announcement of swingeing cuts to public spending designed to curb Britain’s deficit.

Spain and Portugal have also announced austerity measures in recent weeks amid growing signs that the international markets are increasingly worried they could default on their debts.

Dictatorships: An end to democracy in Europe could see a return of figures ruling dictatorships. General Franco was dictator of Spain until 1975; Georgios Papadopoulos led a military junta until 1973; and Antonio de Oliveira Salazar ruled as Portugese president until 1968

Other EU countries seeing public protests over austerity plans include Hungary, Italy and Romania, where public sector pay is to be slashed by 25 per cent.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who visited Madrid last week, said the situation in Spain should serve as a warning to Britain of the perils of failing to tackle the deficit quickly.

He said the collapse of confidence in Spain had seen interest rates soar, adding: ‘As the nation with the highest deficit in Europe in 2010, we simply cannot afford to let that happen to us too.’

Mr Barroso’s warning lays bare the concern at the highest level in Brussels that the economic crisis could lead to the collapse of not only the beleaguered euro, but the EU itself, along with a string of fragile democracies.

DICTATORSHIPS

GREECE: Georgios Papadopoulos was dictator from 1967 to 1974.
The Colonel led the military coup d’etat in 1967 against King Constantine II amid political instability. He was leader of the junta which ruled until 1974.
Papadopoulos was overthrown by Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis in 1973. Democracy was restored in 1975.

SPAIN: General Francisco Franco led Spain from 1936 until his death in 1975. At the end of the Spanish Civil War he dissolved the Spanish Parliament and established a right-wing authoritarian regime that lasted until 1978. After his death Spain gradually began its transition to democracy.

PORTUGAL: Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s regime and its secret police ruled the country from 1932 to 1968. He founded and led the Estado Novo, the authoriatan, right-wing government that controlled Portugal from 1932 to 1974. After Salazar’s death in 1970, his regime persisted until it eventually fell after the Carnation Revolution.

But it risks infuriating governments in southern Europe which are already struggling to contain public anger as they drive through tax rises and spending cuts in a bid to avoid disaster.

Mr Monks yesterday warned that the new austerity measures themselves could take the continent ‘back to the 1930s’.

In an interview with the Brussels-based magazine EU Observer he said: ‘This is extremely dangerous.

‘This is 1931, we’re heading back to the 1930s, with the Great Depression and we ended up with militarist dictatorship.

‘I’m not saying we’re there yet, but it’s potentially very serious, not just economically, but politically as well.’

Mr Monks said union barons across Europe were planning a co-ordinated ‘day of action’ against the cuts on 29 September, involving national strikes and protests.

David Cameron will travel to Brussels on Thursday for his first summit of EU leaders since the election.

Leaders are expected to thrash out a rescue package for Spain’s teetering economy. Spain is expected to ask for an initial guarantee of at least £100 billion, although this figure could rise sharply if the crisis deepens.

News of the behind-the-scenes scramble in Brussels spells bad news for the British economy as many of our major banks have loaned Spain vast sums of money in recent years.

Germany’s authoritative Frankfurter Allgemeine Newspaper reported that Spain is poised to ask for multi-billion pound credits.

Mr Barroso and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank are united on the need for a rescue plan.

The looming bankruptcy of Spain, one of the foremost economies in Europe, poses far more of a threat to European unity and the euro project than Greece.

Greece contributes 2.5 percent of GDP to Europe, Spain nearly 12 percent.

Yesterday’s report quoted German government sources saying: ‘We will lead discussions this week in Brussels concerning the crisis. It has intensified to the point that the states do not want to wait until the EU summit on Thursday in Brussels.”’

At the end of last month the credit rating agency Fitch downgraded Spain, triggering sharp falls on stock markets.

On Friday the administration in Madrid continued to insist no rescue package was necessary. But Greece said the same thing before it came close to disaster.

Yesterday the European Commission and the statistics authority Eurostat met to consider Spain‘s plight as many EU countries consider the austerity package proposed by the Madrid administration insufficient to deal with the country‘s problems.

The IPCC consensus on climate change was phoney, says IPCC insider

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:04:37 +0000

Lawrence Solomon June 13, 2010 – 8:50 am

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.

“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”

Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia – the university of Climategate fame — is the founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and one of the UK’s most prominent climate scientists. Among his many roles in the climate change establishment, Hulme was the IPCC’s co-ordinating Lead Author for its chapter on‘Climate scenario development’ for its Third Assessment Report and a contributing author of several other chapters.

Hulme’s depiction of IPCC’s exaggeration of the number of scientists who backed its claim about man-made climate change can be found on pages 10 and 11 of his paper, found here.

Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and the author of The Deniers.

Eugenicist Bilderberger Bill Gates Confronted on Global Depopulation Agenda

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:22:12 +0000

FLASHBACK: Gates Foundation’s GAVI, Rockefeller’s Global Depopulation Agenda

Rundown of BP Staged Event

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:19:16 +0000

Evidence Points To BP Oil Spill False Flag

- Sales of shares and stocks in days and weeks beforehand

- Halliburton link, acquisition of cleanup company days before explosion

- BP report cites undocumented tampering with well sealing equipment

- Government uses disaster to push for Carbon Tax, Nationalization talk

Steve Watson, Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, Jun 8th, 2010

Troubling evidence surrounding the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20th suggests that the incident could have been manufactured.

On April 12th, just over one week before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation, surprised some by acquiring Boots & Coots, a relatively small but vastly experienced oil
well control company.

The company deals with fires and blowouts on oil rigs and oil wells. It was responsible for putting out roughly one third of the more than 700 oil well fires set in Kuwait by retreating Iraqi soldiers during the Gulf War.

The deal itself is still under scrutiny with Boots and Coots facing an ongoing investigation into “possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of state law”

Where this information gets really interesting is with the fact that Halliburton is named in the majority of some two dozen lawsuits filed since the explosion by Gulf Coast people and businesses who claim that the company is to blame for the disaster.

Halliburton was forced to admit in testimony at a congressional hearing last month that it carried out a cementing operation 20 hours before the Gulf of Mexico rig went up in flames. The lawsuits claim that four Halliburton workers stationed on the rig improperly capped the well.

As the New York Times noted on May 26th, “BP officials chose, partly for financial reasons, to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options,”

Workers from the rig and company officials have said that hours before the explosion, gases were leaking through the cement, which had been set in place by the oil services contractor, Halliburton. Investigators have said these leaks were the likely cause of the explosion.”

According to a 2007 study by Minerals Management Service, cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 rig blowouts in the gulf between 1992 and 2006.

Another intriguing connection Boots and Coots has to the Deepwater Horizon explosion comes via Pat Campbell, the man BP has employed to cap the well beneath the ruined rig. Campbell worked for Boots and Coots as general manager for many years.

BP has admitted to buying Yahoo and Google keywords in an attempt to control publicly available information in the wake of the catastrophe. It seems that the company is taking all the flack for the spill while the Halliburton link is being roundly ignored.

BP’s prepared testimony briefing, which has since leaked online, also intriguingly notes that the Hydraulic Control System on equipment designed to automatically seal the well in an emergency was modified without their knowledge sometime before the explosion.

“the extent of these modifications is unknown at this time” states the report on page 37.

Possible prior knowledge of the explosion is also evident via huge dumping of stocks and shares in the weeks and days prior to the incident.

Goldman Sachs dumped 44% of its shares in BP Oil during the first quarter – shares that subsequently lost 36 percent of their value, equating to $96 million.

Other asset management firms also sold huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter. Though the amounts pale in comparison to Goldman’s holdings, Wachovia, owned by Wells Fargo, sold 98% of its shares in BP and Swiss bank UBS sold 97% of its BP shares.

Furthermore, as reported by the London Telegraph on June 5th, Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the spill.

In the days before the Deepwater explosion, Obama had announced a new effort to explore for and lease new drilling locations in the deep Gulf and in Alaska. In the wake of the disaster, these plans have been cancelled and BP is taking a PR bashing.

All of which has been capitalized on by the Obama administration to reinvigorate talk of a carbon tax and has created the opportunity to reintroduce the idea of nationalizing oil, which the Democratic leadership has long sought.

The full story of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico is yet to emerge, there are rumours of more spills and an ongoing coverup. The site represents a $2.2 trillion source of wealth and power, a motive along with a plethora of suspicious activity that needs to be investigated further.

Eugenicist Peter Singer and Human Extermination in NYT

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:16:39 +0000

Should This Be the Last Generation?

By PETER SINGER

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

Tags:

children, ethics, population

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.

All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem?

If there were to be no future generations, there would be nothing for us to feel to guilty about. Is there anything wrong with this scenario?

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself.

Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

Erin Schell

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

Related More From The Stone

Read previous contributions to this series.

Go to All Posts »

Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

What do you think?

Readers are invited to respond to the following questions in the comment section below:

If a child is likely to have a life full of pain and suffering is that a reason against bringing the child into existence?

If a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life, is that a reason for bringing the child into existence?

Is life worth living, for most people in developed nations today?

Is a world with people in it better than a world with no sentient beings at all?

Would it be wrong for us all to agree not to have children, so that we would be the last generation on Earth?

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is “The Life You Can Save.”

Bilderberg 2010: Don’t call it a pow-wow!

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:14:16 +0000

So far at Bilderberg 2010, Charlie Skelton has clocked Queen Beatrix and Henry Kissinger. Not bad considering the Spanish police’s €10m anti-media operation

General view of Hotel Dolce where Bilderberg guests are meeting in Sitges. Photograph: Albert Gea/REUTERS

A man under a hedge stretches, blinks, curses the pointy pebble under his hip, and down goes his finger on the shutter.

CLICK…

Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, a former managing director of Goldman Sachs.

CLICK…

Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US federal reserve, current chairman of Obama’s economic recovery advisory board.

CLICK…

Josef Ackermann, chairman of Deutsche Bank.

CLICK…

Peter Voser, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell.

CLICK…

Dr Henry Kissinger at Bilderberg 2010. Photograph: Quierosaber

Dr Henry Alfred Kissinger.

The photos we’ve seen from this year’s conference, which we’re showcasing in our big hitters Bilderberg Power Gallery , have been very revealing. You can see from the body language who runs Bilderberg. There’s been a lot of power sloshing round the Dolce Sitges Hotel this past week, a lot of wealth, a lot of influence, but you can sense the Überpower when it shows up.

We didn’t see David Rockefeller this week (maybe his head is already sitting in a cryogenic hatbox somewhere, awaiting nanosuscitation). But we caught the other two big fish. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Henry Kissinger. When they turn up the mood on the forecourt changes, heads turn, smiles beam, commands are whispered into shirt cuffs and ripples of subservience pass through the group.

My favourite photo from this year’s conference is the top of Kissinger’s head, glimpsed through a train of aides, organisers, delegates and security as he wafts (hobbles grimly) to his car. Pity the poor driver, who’d just had the gloved hand of a security goon check his bowel for explosives.

Bilderberg 2010 press office. Photograph: We Are Change Germany

Two days ago I had breakfast with one of the Bilderberg chauffeurs, who was just about to clock on for an airport zoom. (He had no idea I was a journalist. Was I meant to tell him? Is that a rule? I bought him a coffee – that seems fair.) He was grumpy. He wasn’t looking forward to being frisked up against his limo, which happens, apparently, if it’s one of the bigger delegates. Worst was when he delivered “two important, very old American men, who travelled together” from the airport. (Does this mean Rockefeller made it after all?)

He tells me that a colleague got it so bad before chauffeuring Beatrix that he shouted at the security: “Don’t kill me, I’m just a driver!”

He glanced up to the TV screen in our breakfast bar. “She was there, too. Esperanza Aguirre. Very important lady.” He’s referring to Doña Esperanza Aguirre y Gil de Biedma, Countess of Murillo, and President of Madrid. Not on the list of Bilderberg participants for this year. Wanted to stay under the radar. Failed.

My breakfast buddy leaned over his coffee and told me that he had a friend in the police force who’d said how much the security for this year’s conference was costing. He drew disgustedly on his breakfast Marlboro. “Ten million euros.” I realise this is third-hand breakfast natter, but wow. That’s a lot of helicopter fuel. (Or is it?)

I should stress, the intense security here at Bilderberg has very little to do with any kind of physical “threat”. It’s to do with distance, power and an extraordinary (one might almost say “unhealthy”) wariness of the press. In fact so poor is the relationship between press and Bilderberg that we decided this year to plug the gap and provide the conference with a rudimentary press liaison service. We turned bungalow 19 at the Garrofer Park campsite into the Press Office for Bilderberg 2010.

We handed out leaflets, delegate biogs, background information, we had a whiteboard for latest news, we even had a box of lanyards. We couldn’t afford colour-coded ribbons, like they have up at the hotel, but then again we’re not bankrolled by the Rockefellers. We’re bankrolled by whatever I can reasonably invoice for these articles – which should just about cover the cost of some dry-wipe pens.

The press are represented inside Bilderberg (in our photos you’ll see, for example, the CEO of the Washington Post and the editor-in-chief of the Economist) but they’re not talking. What happens in Bilderberg stays in Bilderberg. Except for policy. That gets everywhere.

Just this weekend the former Nato secretary general, Willy Claes (Bilderberg 1994), said on Belgian radio that at Bilderberg each participant is given a report and they are “considered to use this report in setting their policies in the environments in which they affect”. This remark is revealing of the Bilderberg dynamic: the flowing of policy out from Bilderberg and into the world, from power towards political implementation. From the steering committee to the guest members.

Queen Beatrix portrait. Photograph: Andrew Maughan

But never mind what the agenda of Bilderberg might be (and when one says “Bilderberg”, one is really talking about its steering committee of 33 people). Never mind where you stand on the project for a united Europe. Or the usefulness of a global currency. Never mind what they’re talking about. Never mind when the attack on Iran is scheduled. Simply understand that a very important, seriously managed conference has just taken place.

The Dolce Sitges has a separate conference centre, with a luxurious labyrinth of underground seminar rooms for side briefings: I skulked down there before the weekend, got a sense of the scale of things, used the executive facilities. This is an important and indisputable fact: Bilderberg is a conference, with a well-oiled conference team, a full timetable, a huge budget, and a set of softly lit, beautifully appointed underground lavatories. It is a big deal, a serious deal.

No one spends €10m policing a ping pong tournament. Not even Robert Zoellick. Of course, bear in mind €10m is small batatas compared with what Canada is about to spend on policing the G8/G20 circus later this month. A very uncool $1bn. (You read that correctly.) At least the press are invited. Lanyards for everyone!

And speaking of things being uncool, we’re very pleased with our photograph of Nout Wellink, the president of the Dutch central bank. Now I’m not one to start throwing around advice about hairstyles, but really Nout. Get some product into it.

As you can see, the photohaul from Bilderberg 2010 has been remarkable, thanks in no small part to the intrepid Quierosaber, whose McNabbian determination and leafy lenswork provided so many of the images that are now zipping around the world. If you know someone who’s never heard of Bilderberg, show them these photographs. And if you yourself don’t know what “Bilderberg” is, start knowing. Start wondering.

And stop, once and for all, saying that it’s a bunch of has-beens meeting up for cocktails and cribbage. You must really have to want Bilderberg not to be important if you chirp away that it’s not important. Whistle hard enough with your hands over your ears and you won’t hear the thunder.

Love it as he does, Robert Zoellick didn’t come to Sitges for the table tennis. Stop perpetuating this idiotic untruth, stop with the lazy dismissals, the sneery, unfunny, tryhard cynicism that dismisses the conference as unimportant and anyone who says otherwise as a “loon”. You’re starting to sound stupid.

And speaking of sounding stupid, here’s what Iain Hollingshead wrote about Bilderberg in the Daily Telegraph last week: “The reality of these conferences appears to boil down to a group of willy-waggling old men comparing their security details and dreaming of past glories.” Does that describe Jyrki Catainen, Finland’s 39-year-old finance minister? Or Microsoft’s chief research officer, Craig Mundie? Or Bill Gates? Or the prime minister of Spain?

The premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, is 62. Still a little young to be put out to grass, a little too spry to be waggling his willy at past glories, especially when you consider that a trip to Bilderberg often means a career leap is just round the corner. (David Cameron 2008, Tony Blair 1993, Bill Clinton 1991). Congratulations, Prime Minister Campbell!

Also, let’s also keep an eye on Olaf Scholz (52, German SDP party), snapped in the background of our Craig Mundie shot. Looks like Scholz has just been beckoned up the golden ladder.

The photos here on the Guardian, or infoCon.ro, and the dozens of TV reports, YouTube clips, blog posts, newspaper articles, radio interviews, tweets and Facebook statuses that have originated from Sitges this past week can finally lay to rest the bizarre fantasy (or brilliant PR strategy) that Bilderberg is an insignificant golfing weekend. Or at most, a “talking shop”. Because calling Bilderberg a “talking shop” is like calling a war a “police action”.

It’s like calling Henry Kissinger the winner of the 1973 Nobel peace prize.

For me, one of the most rewarding moments of Bilderberg 2010 was when we tweaked the levels and Kissinger emerged ghoulishly from the shadows of our photos. Before Sitges we were so unsure that we’d see anyone captured on film (even a lowly transnational CEO, never mind Henry Kissinger) that we appointed the Bilderberg conference’s first Official Artist: Andrew Maughan.

Here’s Andrew’s portrait of Bilderberg’s Queen Beatrix, looking as if she’s lost a little weight:

Of his portraits, Andrew writes: “The viewer’s knowledge or lack of knowledge of the individual is important when it comes to piecing together the fragmented clues within the painting. The viewer is expected to have to invest their time, dig deeper in order to understand, but you will never fully know.”

Andrew has been faithfully documenting Bilderberg 2010 in oils, and a gallery of his works will be put up in the coming days at the website ofTrilever, the PR company we set up to handle the Bilderberg account, alongside links to all the photos, press releases, and news of next year’s meeting (whenever that will emerge).

Until then, enjoy our gallery of Bilderberg bigwigs, check out the new faces we’ve added to our Spot The Delegate competition and stay tuned for my final report from Bilderberg 2010, in which I get publicly branded an MI6 agent. Don’t go away!

If Abdul Mutallab Trained With Al-Qaeda, Why Did The U.S. Government Let Him On A Plane?

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:39:26 +0000

Comic book IntelCenter propaganda video of underwear bomber with an AK-47 and a Qur’an doesn’t answer any of the questions surrounding Delta Flight 253

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Fuming with the evisceration of the ludicrous official story behind the Detroit plane bomber incident, the dubious Pentagon front IntelCenter has released a video tape which allegedly shows Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab training with “Al-Qaeda” in Yemen. Unfortunately, the tape still fails to explain why the U.S. government intentionally let a known terror suspect board a commercial airliner.

“The video, broadcast yesterday by ABC World News, shows Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab firing weapons and speaking in Arabic about his impending attack on the aircraft. He is shown reading from the Qur’an and saying: “God said those who punish you must be punished,” reports the Guardian.

To ramp up the fact that the video is a transparent and contrived dose of comic book war propaganda to bolster support behind the increased bombing of Yemen, we are told that Abdulmutallab was shooting at a Jewish star of David, a Union Jack and a UN flag.

Of course, if it’s another cartoonish propaganda video showing shadowy Muslim terrorists running around with guns issuing threats, it has to be put out by the IntelCenter group, a Pentagon front organization that has been caught red-handed putting out fake Al-Qaeda videos in the past, as well as re-hashed old footage of Bin Laden which the group claims to be new.

But no amount of footage of dangerous Muslims with AK-47’s reading from Qur’ans can answer the central question that dominates the whole plane bomber stunt.

Why did the U.S. State Department allow Abdulmutallab to board the plane, knowing that he was on a terror watchlist and presented a threat to the safety of other passengers?

On January 27, the Detroit News reported how the State Department refused to revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa despite the fact that he was on a terror watch list and allowed him to board the plane, allegedly in order to avoid tipping off a wider investigation.

The video tape also fails to help us understand why, after weeks of stonewalling, authorities quietly reversed the official story behind the aborted attack and acknowledged that an accomplice was involved, despite weeks of denial and derision of eyewitness Kurt Haskell’s description of a sharp-dressed man who helped Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab board Flight 253 in Amsterdam.

Detroit lawyer Kurt Haskell maintained from the beginning that he saw a well-dressed Indian man aid the accused bomber to board the plane despite the fact that he had no passport and was on a terrorist watch list.

“While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time,’” reported the Michigan Live news website.

FBI agents interviewed Haskell and he told them about the sharp-dressed man but officials refused to admit that a wider conspiracy was at hand, stoically maintaining the official story that Abdulmutallab had acted alone. Authorities claimed that videotapes did not show a second man accompanying Abdulmutallab and yet they refused to release any footage of the alleged bomber.

There seems little doubt that Abdulmutallab had at least one accomplice if not more. Authorities have remained silent on other eyewitness reports which described a man intently filming the alleged terrorist throughout the whole flight, a connection that strongly suggests the attempted bomber was involved in some kind of drill and that his strings were being pulled by people in more senior positions.

A key smoking gun which strongly suggests the tape is hokey and the whole background of Abdulmutallab himself is that of a dim-witted patsy, is his connection with Anwar al-Awlaki (alternative spelling “Aulaqi”), a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico, who was also connected to the Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

“The IntelCenter, a Virginia-based company that studies terrorist groups, reported that a video by AQAP aired yesterday on al-Jazeera and al-Jazeera English appeared to show the first official communication from a terrorist organisation by Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico. He has been linked to Abdulmutallab and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in November at Fort Hood, Texas,” states the report.

As Webster Tarpley reported, Aulaqi is “an intelligence agency operative and patsy-minder” and “one of the premier terror impresarios of the age operating under Islamic fundamentalist cover” whose job it is to “motivate and encourage groups of mentally impaired and suggestible young dupes who were entrapped into “terrorist plots” by busy FBI and Canadian RCMP agents during recent years.”

Tarpley points to Aulaqi’s role in the Toronto and Fort Dix, New Jersey, terror plots, which were both contrived by the feds, as proof of Aulaqi’s usefulness to the authorities in radicalizing terrorist patsies.

Lawyers in a case relating to the much vaunted 2007 terror plot to attack Fort Dix and kill “as many soldiers as possible” concluded that FBI informants were the key figures behind the operation and that the accused, six foreign-born Muslims, were merely bungling patsies.

Similarly, the “Toronto 18″ terrorists turned out to be “a bunch of incompetent guys who were primarily misled by a delusional megalomaniac”. The explosive fertilizer material the terrorist cell apparently planned to use was in fact purchased by an informant working for the RCMP who had radicalized the group.

Abdulmutallab apparent relationship with FBI operative and ace patsy-minder Aulaqi strongly indicates that he was under the wing of Aulaqi’s patsy recruitment program.

The video of Abdulmutallab training with “Al-Qaeda” in Yemen only serves to confirm our initial suspicions, borne out by his bizarre behavior in apparently being unaware that there was a bomb in his briefs on Flight 253 on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab was an unwitting patsy under the control of federal government handlers who, despite the botched attack, swiftly exploited the terror scare he created to ram through an intensification of the war in Yemen as well as mandating the lucrative roll out of full naked body scanners in airports which wouldn’t have even stopped the underwear bomber from boarding the plane in the first place.