Two Australian soldiers killed by bomb on first tour of Afghanistan June 8, 2010 - 12:05PM By Tetractys Merkaba in red, & AFP, AAP and Paul Tatnell in black.
Two Australian soldiers and a sniffer dog have been killed by a roadside bomb during their first tour of duty in Afghanistan.
The Diggers -A nice propagandistic label, that is untrue, because, as previously discussed, the digger appellation, was originally applied to the A.N.Z.A.C's of WW1 who engaged in the failed invasion of Gallipoli. This label is designed to steer your mind into thinking that these invaders are cut from the same cloth as the original diggers- belonged to the Mentoring Task Force and are the first Australians to die in 11 months, bringing the total number of deaths in the campaign to 13.
Acting Defence Force chief David Hurley said the troops were based in Brisbane with the 2nd combat engineer regiment.
They were killed by a roadside bomb explosion in the Mirabad Valley on Monday morning Afghanistan time.
One soldier was killed instantly. The second was given emergency first aid by his fellow soldiers and taken to a nearby hospital but later died.
Lieutenant-General Hurley said the two soldiers, who were part of a foot patrol, were evacuated to the Tarin Kowt base by helicopter following the explosion.
"It was about 10 minutes out to the site and back.
"It was 38 minutes from wheels off, from the incident being announced, to the two soldiers returning to the base."
Lieutenant-General Hurley said Monday had been "a hard day in theatre".
"There's a lot of troops in action and a lot going on.
"This has just been a difficult day for us."
He said military investigators were already looking into the deaths.
"We have sent in our weapons intelligence team to conduct a technical inspection," he said.
Asked if the NATO-led coalition was winning the almost decade long war, he said: "Bodies aren't going to tell whether you win or lose this war.
"Some good things are happening and we're heading in the right direction."
Lieutenant-General Hurley said it was the first time since the Vietnam war that two Australian soldiers had died in combat on the same day.
10 NATO soldiers killed
In total 10 NATO soldiers were killed on Monday.
Lieutenant-General Hurley said there were no other Australian or Afghan casualties.
"However, an explosive detection dog also died in the incident," he said.
An investigation will be held to determine the "exact details of the incident".
"I speak for the entire ADF [Australian Defence Force] and Defence community when I tell you I am deeply saddened by the loss of these two brave Australian soldiers," Lieutenant-General Hurley said.
Houston devastated
Defence force chief Angus Houston in a statement read out by his deputy said he was devastated to hear about the deaths.
"Foremost in my thoughts at this time are the families of these two soldiers ... who today are suffering overwhelming shock and anguish." It was a pity that these soldiers and there families were not foremost in Houston's mind before they were killed in a futile, dangerous and unsuccessful invasion.
It was too early for words to provide comfort to the families of the men, but Air Chief Marshal Houston said he wanted them to know both were outstanding Australians. I say they have paid too high a price for their ignorance, that their leaders in the chain of command failed them by allowing them to participate in a pointless & failing invasion.
"Quietly serving our nation and demonstrating every day the very best of what Aussies pride themselves on displaying to the world - courage, determination, mateship and selfless service."
He also had a message to Australian troops still serving in Afghanistan.
"I ask you to look after and support each other. Because you know damn well that the Un-Australian "Defence" Force, the Australian Government, the opposition, & the corporate media will not support you under any circumstances. In fact, ALL of these aforementioned groups will seek to capitalise on your efforts for their own gain.
"We will support you but I need you to make sure you seek any assistance that you may need to come to terms with your loss.
"Draw strength from one another and pay tribute to your mates."
Air Chief Marshal Houston, who is overseas with Senator Faulkner, asked the media to respect the wish of the families not to make public the names of the dead soldiers.
Constant dangers: Faulkner
The deaths were a reminder of the constant dangers faced by Australian troops in Afghanistan, Defence Minister John Faulkner said in a statement, which was read out by Defence Personnel Minister Greg Combet.
"While all Australians will mourn along with those two families, the immensity of their grief cannot be shared," Senator Faulkner said.
"The manner of their deaths from an insidious and indiscriminate improvised explosive device again shows the callous and truly despicable nature of our enemy." I say that it is not callous to defend your homeland against an invading force. It is callous, and truly despicable to try to capitalise on these deaths to score political points, or, to sell newspapers.
It was a great loss to the nation-but obviously not significant enough to end this pointless and futile invasion- and Senator Faulkner sent his sincere condolences to the families of both men.
Seven US soldiers killed
Five US soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) in eastern Afghanistan, while another American died in a separate IED attack and the seventh one from small arms fire in the south, said Lieutenant Colonel Beth Robbins in Washington. Three other NATO service members from other countries were also killed in attacks on Monday, two of whom were the Australians.
The French government announced that one of the deaths was a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy "forcefully condemned this blind violence and expressed France's determination to continue working as part of the International Security Assistance Force [ISAF]", his office said. France too knows how to use propaganda to shift blame from themselves as an invasive force, and onto the victim of this invasive force when they defend themselves. Israel has been unsuccessfully trying this tactic to defend its disgraceful attack on the humanitarian boats running the Giza Blockade recently.
Suicide attack on an Afghan police training centre
Separately, two foreign contractors, -notice how casually the phrase foreign contractors is inserted. This means private employees of a private corporation and is another example of the blurring of the lines between the private and the government. This is because your government is actually a registered for profit corporation, and lets not get into the murky waters of the connections between the people who walk from government to private company and -stand up Mr. Dick Cheney- back to government and then to the the private sector again- one of them an American, were killed on Monday in a suicide attack on an Afghan police training centre in the southern city of Kandahar, the US embassy said. Three militants armed with bombs and guns were killed in the attack.
One of the rebels -dehumanizing these people helps the ignorant to work out the good & bad guys easily, just the same as the movies- detonated a bomb-filled car along the wall of the facility hoping to punch open a route for his comrades, the interior ministry said in Kabul.
The two others were shot dead by police guards, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.
There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing but Afghanistan's Taliban is leading a nearly nine-year insurgency to bring down the Western-backed government and evict foreign troops.
Elsewhere, in the southern province of Ghazni, police said five Afghan security guards were killed in two separate attacks while they were escorting NATO logistics convoys.
"There were two roadside bomb attacks against the convoys in Andar and Ab Band districts. Three guards were killed in Andar district and two were killed in Ab Band district," said Ghazni police chief Khial Baz Shairzai.
NATO, US and Afghan troops are preparing their biggest offensive yet against the Taliban in Kandahar province, with total foreign troop numbers in the country set to peak at 150,000 by August.
US President Barack Obama hopes the counter-insurgency strategy focused on the south can allow US troops to start withdrawing next year.
According to an AFP tally, based on one kept by the independent website icasualties.org, 245 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year. Last year was the deadliest yet with 520 killed.
Monday's toll was the highest for a single day since the deaths of 11 French soldiers on one day in August 2008. The latest deaths follow Sunday's killings of five NATO soldiers, four of them Americans, in two separate attacks and a vehicle accident.
Plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters
In Madrid, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke said more funds for Afghanistan's plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters who renounce violence-More employment of the Orwellian language known as 'doublespeak'- were likely to be pledged next month at a conference in Kabul.
The July 20 conference is a follow-up to a London summit in January, when donors pledged an initial $US140 million to a so-called Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Programme trust fund.
"Almost $US200 million has been committed under a programme led by the Japanese ... and there will more developments on this at the Kabul conference," Mr Holbrooke said.
US soldier charged with murdering civilians
In Washington a US army spokeswoman said an American soldier had been charged with the murder of three civilians in Afghanistan -It's murder when it is not authorised, or not performed by an authorised agent, or, it was authorised, but the wrong guy was hit, or, it was authorised and the right guy was hit, but we were not technically supposed to hit him- and four others had been implicated but not charged in the crimes.
Specialist-What is a "specialist"?- Jeremy Morlock, 22, was charged on Friday with premeditated murder and assault in three separate incidents that occurred in Kandahar province between January and May this year.
AFP, AAP and Paul Tatnell
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/world/two-australian-soldiers--killed-by-bomb-on-first-tour-of-afghanistan-20100608-xreo.html
David Rockefeller enters the secretive Bilderberg meeting The people who are being detained, searched and questioned are not playing some game. They are deadly serious, and they are worried to death Guerrilla journalists in Sitges, where the Bilderberg conference is being held. Photograph: Alex Amengual Photograph: Alex Amengual/guardian.co.uk
Ivan was alone on the roundabout. He had been left in charge of the banners while everyone else ate breakfast.
He slipped an empty bottle of red wine into a binliner and stretched. At his feet was a chalk-drawn pyramid showing the structure of society, the word "pueblo" at the bottom, and the tip pointing up the hill towards Bilderberg. It's a short pyramid today, maybe half a heavily-armed mile from Rockefeller down to Ivan.
Ivan's bed last night – is it had been the night before – was the scrub by the roadside. "It's not so cold in my bag," he said. "A lot of times I travel in the mountains – in the mountains, you can sleep anywhere."
A lone Catalonian in green trousers, he clutched a leaflet and stood in the Sitges sun as, up the hill, billionaires and finance ministers ate kiwifruit patisseries.
The shame, the awful poignancy of Bilderberg, is that, for much of the time, there are more delegates up the hill than there are protesters at the foot of it.
On that point, there's something I'd like you to do. I'd like you to extend a grateful thought, a prayer of thanks, an idle nod of acknowledgment – a something, an anything – towards Ivan and all the others who have come to Sitges to bear witness to Bilderberg 2010.
These people are on your side, they are fighting your corner. And if you don't think it's a corner that needs fighting, or if it's a corner you think is being fought by the people up the hill ... well, good luck to you.
I want you to know, though, that the people who are crawling around on pine needles with long lenses, trying to identify delegates (and doing pretty well, by the way), the people who are being detained, searched, questioned, then heading out again into the hills, the people who are sitting late into the night at the campsite bar, talking about distracted populations and central banks, are not lunatics.
They are your very best friends. They're not feeble-minded or playing some kind of game. They are deadly serious, and they are worried to death.
These people look at the state of the world and they pack a rucksack and sleep at the side of a roundabout.
The head of the IMF (and Bilderberger), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, looks at the world and declares: "Crisis is an opportunity." He sees the precarious global economy and floats the idea for "a new global currency issued by a global central bank".
Now, if you think that's a good idea – if you think yet more centralisation of debt (and interest payments), and more unelected financial control is a good thing – then good luck (what are you? The chairman of Barclays?)
We already have a world, says Daniel Estulin, the arch Bilderbotherer, "where unelected bodies like the IMF can tell sovereign nations like Greece what to do".
Estulin is here in Sitges, wearing the fanciest trousers I've seen in a long time. He says the Bilderberg endgame is "one world company ltd". And the board of directors is sitting half a mile away.
And they're being watched. I can't say from where – I don't know where the guerilla camerafolk are out crawling today. And I can't ring them, because they've turned their mobiles off and taken out the sim cards so they can't be triangulated by the signal.
They're out getting sunstroke on your behalf, on my behalf. I'll publish some of their photos, and some of their spottings, tomorrow.
Later today, a bunch of Spanish activists are providing paella for everyone in a mountain restaurant. Some of us won't make it. Some of us will be under arrest, or lying in a ditch holding our breath until the footsteps pass.
One last time: if you think what they're doing is ridiculous, you're wrong. It's the fact they're having to do it at all that's absurd.
This morning, a policeman screeched up beside me as I went for a stroll and told me to take the recording device out of my pocket. I did. It was a bit of driftwood from the beach. Yesterday, I had my car searched (and was detained for 50 minutes while the Mossos d'Esquadra checked and rechecked my passport).
They asked me what was in the boot. I dug them out a T-shirt. The patrolman radioed the station and read out the slogan on the shirt in heavily accented English: "I went to Bilderberg 2010 and all I got was this lousy new world order." His partner asked me why I was laughing. I couldn't really explain.
BIlderberg is an absurdity. The secrecy is absurd. The lack of a relationship between the event and the mainstream media is absurd. Ivan standing alone by his roundabout bed is absurd. The paranoia of the participants is more than absurd – it's pathetic.
This year, most of the delegates were whisked into the hotel through an underground entrance, dodging the lenses, like a bunch of James Bond baddies, like a dieter creeping downstairs at midnight to eat chocolate cake from the fridge.
But the good news is that not everyone has dodged the cameras (John Elkann, the heir to Fiat, was spotted by the German blog Schall und Rauch looking particularly dapper this year). And the even better news – the very best news – is that the press seems, finally, to have woken up to Bilderberg.
We have had camera crews from Spanish TV and Spanish newspapers both local and national (Javier from El Mundo is currently up a tree with a camera). French journalists, Portuguese documentary makers and al-Jazeera are picking up the story. Russia Today has sent a film crew.
We've had articles in the Independent and the Times, and on the Today programme on Radio 4. Daniel Estulin has been doing interview after interview. He's getting quotes from inside the meeting. The veil of secrecy is looking decidedly tatty. It might be time to bin it.
And yet the veil of ignorance is still holding up pretty well. As Ivan says, handing me a leaflet from the Anwok collective, "it is difficult to talk about the Bilderberg agenda if people don't even know about the group".
I know what he means – I've spoken to countless news agencies and outlets in the last few weeks, and the most common response, from journalists, editors and commissioners, is: "I'm sorry, the Bilderberg what?"
But seriously, if you work on the foreign desk of a major news corporation and you're at the "Bilderberg what?" level of political awareness, you need to think about getting a different job. Take a sabbatical. Take up carpentry, or read a book. It's like calling yourself a porn star and not knowing the reverse cowgirl. "The reverse what...?"
Get with the programme. Shimmy up a pine tree. Take a leaflet. Resign. You're not helping anyone.
By Danielle Dellorto, Senior Medical Producer June 1, 2010 -- Updated 0531 GMT (1331 HKT) (CNN) -- If you're eating non-organic celery today, you may be ingesting 67 pesticides with it, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group. The group, a nonprofit focused on public health, scoured nearly 100,000 produce pesticide reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to determine what fruits and vegetables we eat have the highest, and lowest, amounts of chemical residue. Most alarming are the fruits and vegetables dubbed the "Dirty Dozen," which contain 47 to 67 pesticides per serving. These foods are believed to be most susceptible because they have soft skin that tends to absorb more pesticides. "It's critical people know what they are consuming," the Environmental Working Group's Amy Rosenthal said. "The list is based on pesticide tests conducted after the produce was washed with USDA high-power pressure water system. The numbers reflect the closest thing to what consumers are buying at the store." Special report: Toxic America The group suggests limiting consumption of pesticides by purchasing organic for the 12 fruits and vegetables. "You can reduce your exposure to pesticides by up to 80 percent by buying the organic version of the Dirty Dozen," Rosenthal said. The Dirty Dozen Celery Peaches Strawberries Apples Domestic blueberries Nectarines Sweet bell peppers Spinach, kale and collard greens Cherries Potatoes Imported grapes Lettuce Not all non-organic fruits and vegetables have a high pesticide level. Some produce has a strong outer layer that provides a defense against pesticide contamination. The group found a number of non-organic fruits and vegetables dubbed the "Clean 15" that contained little to no pesticides. The Clean 15 Onions Avocados Sweet corn Pineapples Mango Sweet peas Asparagus Kiwi fruit Cabbage Eggplant Cantaloupe Watermelon Grapefruit Sweet potatoes Sweet onions What is a pesticide? A pesticide is a mixture of chemical substances used on farms to destroy or prevent pests, diseases and weeds from affecting crops. According to the USDA, 45 percent of the world's crops are lost to damage or spoilage, so many farmers count on pesticides. The Environmental Protection Agency, the FDA and the USDA work together to monitor and set limits as to how much pesticide can be used on farms and how much is safe to remain on the produce once it hits grocery store shelves. "In setting the tolerance amount, the EPA must make a safety finding that the pesticide can be used with 'reasonable certainty of no harm.' The EPA ensures that the tolerance selected will be safe," according the EPA's website. Although the President's Cancer Panel recently recommended that consumers eat produce without pesticides to reduce their risk of getting cancer and other diseases, the low levels of pesticides found on even the Dirty Dozen are government-approved amounts. Can small amounts of pesticides hurt you? The government says that consuming pesticides in low amounts doesn't harm you, but some studies show an association between pesticides and health problems such as cancer, attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder and nervous system disorders and say exposure could weaken immune systems. The Environmental Working Group acknowledges that data from long-term studies aren't available but warns consumers of the potential dangers. "Pesticides are designed to kill things. Why wait for 20 years to discover they are bad for us?" Rosenthal said. Some doctors warn that children's growing brains are the most vulnerable to pesticides in food. "A kid's brain goes through extraordinary development, and if pesticides get into the brain, it can cause damage," said Dr. Philip Landrigan, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Can pesticides be washed away? Not necessarily. The pesticide tests mentioned above were conducted after the food had been power-washed by the USDA. Also, although some pesticides are found on the surface of foods, other pesticides may be taken up through the roots and into the plant and cannot be removed. "We've found that washing doesn't do much," Rosenthal said. "Peeling can help, although you have to take into account that the pesticides are in the water, so they can be inside the fruit because of the soil." All fresh produce, whether it's grown with or without pesticides, should be washed with water to remove dirt and potentially harmful bacteria. And health experts agree that when it comes to the Dirty Dozen list, choose organic if it's available. "To the extent you can afford to do so, [parents] should simply buy organic, because there have been some very good studies that shows people who eat mostly organic food reduce 95 percent of pesticides [in their body] in two weeks," Landrigan said.
By Timothy McDonald and staff Updated Tue May 25, 2010 9:42am AEST Caught out: a Google Street View camera takes photos of buildings in Amsterdam (AFP: Toussaint Kluiters) Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has lashed out at Google, accusing the internet giant of the single biggest breach of privacy in history.
In recent weeks Google has been criticised after revelations that its Street View photo cars were also collecting information about people's wireless internet connections.
Google has also been a critic of the Government's proposed internet filtering plan, but Senator Conroy insists his comments are not payback.
He says Google considers itself accountable to no-one and he has singled out the internet giant's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, for special criticism.
"I think that the approach taken by Mr Schmidt is a bit creepy, frankly," Senator Conroy said.
"When it comes to their attitude to their own censorship, their response is simply, 'trust us'. That is what they actually state on their website: 'Trust us'."
Several national privacy commissioners have raised concerns over Google's collection of wi-fi data, a practice which has ceased since it was made public.
Senator Conroy says Google considers itself to be above government.
"They consider that they are the appropriate people to make the decisions about people's privacy data and that they are perfectly entitled to drive the streets and collect as much private information by photographing over fences and collecting data information," he said.
"This is probably the single greatest breach in the history of privacy."
'Deliberate' breach
In a post on Google's official blog, Alan Eustace, a senior vice-president at the company, said the information on wi-fi connections was collected by mistake.
"In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental wi-fi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast wi-fi data," the blog reads.
"A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic wi-fi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google's Street View cars, they included that code in their software - although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.
"As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible."
Following questions from Liberal Senator Mary Jo Fisher at a budget estimates hearing yesterday, Senator Conroy disputed Google's claim that the privacy breach was inadvertent.
"Google have admitted to doing this and claim it was a mistake in the software code," he said.
"It was actually quite deliberate ... the code that the computer program uses was designed to collect this information ... they wrote a piece of code designed to do it."
Google has been a critic of the minister's proposed internet filtering plan, saying it could affect user speeds and accidentally filter legitimate material. The company also says it would give parents a false sense of security, because it would be quite easy to circumvent.
The internet censorship debate has been a heated one, and others in the estimates hearing suggested that there might be some personal motivation in the minister's comments.
The attack did not go unnoticed by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.
"Minister, you just went on a 10-minute tirade of corporate character assassination," Senator Ludlam said.
Google was yet to return calls from AM for a response.
Australian police to probe Google over privacy AFP June 7, 2010, 12:43 am The Australian government has ordered a police investigation into Internet giant Google over alleged privacy breaches, Attorney General Robert McClelland said Sunday.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy last month accused the company of committing the "single greatest breach in the history of privacy" by collecting private wireless data while taking pictures for its 'Street View' mapping service.
McClelland said the government had asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate after receiving numerous complaints.
"Obviously I won't pre-empt the outcome of that investigation but they relate in substantial part to possible breaches of the Telecommunications Interception Act, which prevents people accessing electronic information other than for authorised purposes," McClelland said.
Whether any charges are laid is up to the police, but the government felt "there were issues of substance that required police investigations", McClelland said.
Google said it collected the data in error.
"This was a mistake. We are talking to the appropriate authorities to answer any questions they have," a spokeswoman said in a statement.
The development comes after the Internet giant reportedly said its Street View cars taking photos in more than 30 countries had inadvertently gathered fragments of personal data sent over unsecured WiFi systems, and would hand information over to European data protection authorities.
Google has led criticism of Australia's planned Internet filter, warning it could damage the nation's reputation as a liberal democracy and set a dangerous global precedent.
From The Sunday Times June 6, 2010 Fair pay can’t be defined, but still the snoops are after our wallets Minette Marrin There is no such thing as a just price. That is what my O-level history teacher said years ago, shocking me out of my schoolgirl boredom with this startling idea: I had, without thinking, assumed prices were fair, like sixpence for every Mars bar.
At some time in the early modern period, she said, people began to realise that the price is never absolutely right: it is a relative question of supply and demand and, of course, of political constraints and other circumstances. The price of something is what, in those circumstances, people can and will pay for it.
If so, the same must apply to pay; there is no such thing as just pay or fair pay. A worker may well be worthy of his hire, but what does that mean in practice? I was reminded of my late, great history teacher by all the agitated discussion at the moment of fair pay.
David Cameron said before the election that nobody in the public sector should earn more than 20 times what the lowest-paid employee was getting (which would mean a cap of about £200,000). And since the election he has set up a fair-pay review into public sector pay under Will Hutton. Last week there was outrage, in some quarters at least, at the government’s publication of top civil servants’ pay: 170 of them earn a great deal more than the prime minister (£142,500).
Somehow the revelation that John Fingleton, the chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading, takes home between £275,000 and £280,000, seemed to stick in most people’s throats, while those who resent the money being thrown at the Olympics had further cause for grievance in the £225,000 salary of Jeremy Beeton, head of the government’s Olympic executive.
Many people are already horrified at the vast salaries of top BBC executives; it is hard for even the most rugged of free marketeers to understand what Mark Thompson, the director-general, can possibly do to deserve £800,000 or so of public money, plus lavish perks.
Underlying all the anger and resentment, there seems to be a sense that there really is or ought to be a notion of fair pay, and that in the public sector at least it could be achieved. There are plenty of people on the left, politically, who think fair pay could and should be imposed on the private sector too. The pay ratios there, as everyone knows, are vastly greater than in the public sector.
In the FTSE 100 companies the ratio between the highest and lowest pay rates has more than doubled in the past decade to 81:1, while in middling companies it is 34:1. There is disquiet about pay levels in some charities: the trade union Unite has asked Hutton to investigate “glaring pay differentials” in the voluntary sector. Last year Unite publicly objected to the £391,000 annual salary paid to John Belcher, then chief executive at the residential care charity Anchor.
What I think people are really arguing about, unless they are unreconstructed Maoists, is not fair pay, but unfair pay — unjust pay, unjustified pay. It is impossible to come up with a workable notion of fair pay in a free society, but most of us have a lively idea of unfair pay. Starvation wages are unfair. And I cannot be alone in muttering to myself about unfairness at the news on Friday that Adam Crozier, chief executive of Royal Mail, was given a package of £2.4m in his final year with the company, of which £1.5m was a bonus: Royal Mail has not exactly distinguished itself under his command, to put it mildly.
In the new resentment about all this — first prompted by the shocking revelations about bankers’ so-called “compensation” — there are signs of a cultural shift.
A feeling is developing, perhaps in line with the growth in public nosiness, that we should all be told much more about other people’s affairs, including what they earn. The annoying buzz word for this is transparency. The new government is a true believer in transparency — its latest offering at the altar was the public posting on Friday of everything that government spends — the entire contents of the Treasury spending database.
But while transparency about public money and public servants is as welcome as it is proper, it might not be so welcome on all sides if the popular demand for information were to spread to the private sector. That might happen. One or two commentators have suggested that all our tax returns should be made public, as in Sweden. And without going that far, Polly Toynbee of The Guardian, weather vane of the old egalitarian left, hopes that at the least the proposed 20:1 pay ratio in the public sector will “fix a benchmark to nudge the private sector into reform”.
Revealing what private sector employees earn might well have some advantages. For most people — although clearly not for some of the greediest bankers — public exposure is a good corrective. Fat cats may be quite impervious to shame and to other people’s righteous anger, but most people aren’t. A new definition of fair pay might emerge; it is a salary you wouldn’t be embarrassed to have publicly known, either as employer or employee. Before long, under the prurient gaze of public opinion and the scrutiny of colleagues, an individual’s pay would be neither too high nor too low to justify — pay that is not obviously unfair.
All the same, whatever the benefits of revealing private sector pay in public, they are outweighed by the obvious disadvantage. It is an attack on privacy and on freedom.
People entrusted with public money cannot expect privacy or freedom — public scrutiny and state control is in the nature of their work. The same is not true of the private sector; there we are entitled to the freedom and the privacy, within the law and under the eyes of the tax man and the regulators, to make whatever commercial arrangements we like. If we are exploited, there are industrial tribunals.
In times of public resentment and anxiety, it is easy to forget that freedom and privacy are precious. They should not lightly be given up for the sake of something so elusive and intractable as the idea of fair pay. Jobs are not equal, the same job is not equally well done by all employees, employees are not equally good. When it comes to footballers and film stars, people are quite prepared to acknowledge that.
The private sector market in jobs is not entirely free, nor should it be — it’s constrained by social norms, mostly expressed in law — but it should be free of threats to the privacy and freedom of those who work in it, for what they see as pay that is not unfair.
From The Sunday Times October 17, 2004 Karin Goodwin HUNDREDS of mentally ill patients who were subjected to barbaric CIA-funded brainwashing experiments by a Scottish doctor could be entitled to compensation following a landmark court ruling. Doctor Ewan Cameron, who became one of the world’s leading psychiatrists, developed techniques used by Nazi scientists to wipe out the existing personalities of people in his care.
Cameron, who graduated from Glasgow University, was recruited by the CIA during the cold war while working at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
He carried out mind-control experiments using drugs such as LSD on hundreds of patients, but only 77 of them were awarded compensation.
Now a landmark ruling by a Federal Court judge in Montreal will allow more than 250 former patients, whose claims were rejected, to seek compensation.
Gail Kastner, who underwent electroshock treatment at a Montreal psychiatric institute in 1953, and whose claim was rejected 10 years ago, successfully appealed the judgment.
Last week, Alan Stein, of Montreal law firm Stein and Stein, which represented Kastner, confirmed he was in the process of contacting former clients who could now renew their appeal.
“There are about 200 people still due compensation,” he said. “This judgment should send out strong signals to the Canadian government. Those who have previously missed out should have a strong case for appealing.”
Using techniques similar to those portrayed in the celebrated novel the Manchurian Candidate, it was believed that people could be brainwashed and reprogrammed to carry out specific acts.
Cameron developed a range of depatterning “treatments” while director of the Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University.
Patients were woken from drug-induced stupors two or three times a day for multiple electric shocks. In a specially designed “sleep room” made famous by Anne Collins’s book of the same name, Cameron placed a speaker under the patient’s pillow and relayed negative messages for 16 hours a day.
Kastner was a 19-year-old honours student suffering from mild depression when she first underwent “treatment” in 1953. On returning home she sucked her thumb, demanded to be fed from a bottle, talked in a baby voice and urinated on the floor.
She was ostracised by her affluent family, who were unable to cope with her changed state, and her marriage in 1955 quickly broke down due to her difficulties.
Cameron, who was born in Bridge of Allan in 1901, rose to become the first president of the World Psychiatric Association.
It took two decades and the persistence of Joseph Rauh, the distinguished American civil liberties lawyer, to uncover what happened and secure compensation for some of Cameron’s victims.
JUNE 4, 2010...8:33 AM http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/the-tale-of-two-calves-one-calf-got-raw-milk-the-other-pasteurized/ Here are the preliminary results (June 3), as reported by Michael Schmidt: Raw milk fed calf To understand the results of our raw milk experiment it is important to tolerate the so called scientific demands. That means in order to get accepted and being taken seriously by the scientific establishment you need to have 100 or 200 or 300 or may be even 1000 calves to make a scientific valid point .However the simple fact that the so called experts have not yet entered into a joint research project as proposed by me already in 1994 has given me even a greater confidence that the results we have seen with these two calves are credible and significant. They are in fact supporting the findings of Pottenger’s cat study, which as well has been ignored and ridiculed. Calf fed on pasteurized milk diet The experiment was costing us over 5000 dollars just in milk. This is a significant amount for us, since we did not get any support from corporate sponsors.
The weight of the two calves was basically equal at the beginning of the feeding trial.
At the end the raw milk calf weight 200 kg and the pasteurized milk calf weight 115 kg.
They gained weight almost equally for about 8 weeks and then the pasteurized milk calf started falling back.
A significant difference during the 4 month trial was always the different smell and the consistency of the manure. The raw milk calf had mostly a well formed manure and normal smell you would expect. Contrary to that the manure of the pasteurized calf was runny and the color mostly grey or almost white during the feeding trial.
We did not treat either of these calves for any condition. We would have if there would have been a life threatening situation.
The hair on the raw milk calf was shiny and solid on the pasteurized calf dull and easily pulled out.
The alertness in the two calves was a major difference: the pasteurized calf seemed very uninterested with a clear lack of movement.
After nearly 5 months we could see that the pasteurized calf would have had difficulty to survive without medication and supplements.
Below are some of the pictures to show the obvious visual differences. Livers: Pasteurized on the left, Raw on the right A tale of two stomachs -- in the cart raw milk stomach with solid contents, and on the floor the stomach from the calf which was fed on pasteurised milk, with very bad smelling runny contents Raw kidney Kidney from pasteurized milk fed calf Testes of pasteurized milk fed calf Testes of raw milk fed calf
Former Nato Secretary-General Admits Bilderberg Sets Global Policy
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Monday, June 7, 2010
Former NATO Secretary-General and Bilderberg member Willy Claes has confounded claims by debunkers that the secret organization which met in Sitges Spain over the last few days does not set policy, admitting during a Belgian radio interview that Bilderberg attendees are mandated to implement decisions that are formulated during the annual conference of power brokers. In a radio interview reported on by the Belgian news website www.zonnewind.be, Claes told host Koen Fillet that Bilderberg does indeed decide policy for the coming year. Claes would certainly be in a position to know, being a two-time Bilderberg attendee as well as the eighth Secretary General of NATO from 1994 until 1995. Claes said that Bilderberg guests are normally given around 10 minutes of talk time, after which a report is compiled of their presentation. “The participants are then obviously considered to use this report in setting their policies in the environments in which they affect,” stated Claes, according to the translated text. The host asked Claes to repeat this astounding admission, before Claes went on to explain that no two guest are allowed to sit next to each other more than once at Bilderberg, to enable the maximum exchange of views on important subjects. A Dutch-speaking reader sent us the article and confirms that the translation is accurate. This represents a solid confirmation of what we already knew through witnessing Bilderberg’s leaked agenda later play out in the real world time after time – that the elitist organization does verbally set global policy in a completely undemocratic and illegal manner. However, despite Claes, who personally attended the 1994 Bilderberg meeting in Helsinki when he was Belgium’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, confirming the obvious that Bilderberg does manufacture a consensus amongst its participants, which is then implemented as policy in the real world, during the past few days numerous debunkers have claimed that Bilderberg is just a talking shop that has no impact on the global stage. Iain Hollingshead of the London Telegraph wrote a sophomoric piece in which he dismissed Bilderberg as “a group of willy-waggling old men comparing their security details and dreaming of past glories,” which is a complete misnomer seeing as Bilderberg is routinely attended by active Presidents and Prime Ministers very much in power and very much in a position to have an impact on current events, such as Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who attended this year’s conference with his country on the verge of becoming the next Greece. Hollingshead claims that because the group is becoming more well known, its allure is on the wane, but fails to mention that this is because of the fine work of activists and real journalists who have spent decades trying to get the castrated corporate media to report on the event while people like Hollingshead either made childish jokes about the whole issue or even denied the very existence of Bilderberg. One such “skeptic” is Chip Berlet, who works for a group called the Political Research Associates, which is funded in part by the Ford Foundation, founded by Edsel Ford, the son of the notorious Henry Ford, who received awards from Hitler for funding the Nazi war machine with slave labor, which somewhat taints the PRA’s stated objectives, which are apparently to track conspiracy theories and the the right-wing while “advancing an open, democratic, and pluralistic society”. The Ford Foundation is little more than an attack dog which transnational elitists use, through its offshoots like PRA, to demonize any criticism of their agenda as extremist and anti-semitic, which is quite rich considering the history of the corporation. Berlet himself has made a career out of characterizing the idea that powerful people might get together and discuss ways of expanding their power as a belief of the lunatic fringe. Little surprise therefore that towards the end of Berlet’s appearance on Russia Today, in which he stumbles through a broken record of excuses claiming Bilderberg has no power, he invokes the tired old cliche that anyone who expresses concern about 200 powerful men gathering in secret with no democratic oversight whatsoever behind a wall of security is probably a closet racist. Berlet claims the American Free Press was founded by “one of the biggest anti-semitic, neo-fascist conspiracy theorists in the world,” which coincidentally is also a pretty apt description of the man who founded the company that now pays Berlet via the Ford Foundation funding PRA receives to spew his propaganda – Henry Ford – one of Hitler’s biggest supporters. Watch the clip. Berlet demonizes the notion that the Bilderberg Group has any influence over world affairs or is working towards a new world order as “a lot of malarkey,” and “a hoax carried out by people who believe in an elaborate fairy tale about how power is exercised in the world”. He then completely contradicts himself by admitting “they talk over policy” but then claims “the organization itself has no power” before stating, “The policies that are formulated don’t hold any power within the nation that people who go to the meeting….they go back to their country and say hey I heard this at the Bilderberger meeting what do you think? And the national assembly or the powerful people say I think that’s a lot of malarkey take it back and shove it someplace, so this idea that this is a plot that is carried out to 30 or 40 countries and implemented is baloney.” Really? So according to Berlet, the Prime Minister of Spain, his Secretary General, and the Queen of Spain, all of whom attended the Bilderberg meeting this past weekend, go back home and are then told to “shove” whatever they discussed at Bilderberg by “the powerful people”. These are the powerful people! These are the people who run the country. Presumably, Berlet believes there are powerful people above the Prime Minister and the Queen of Spain who tell them what to do, which sounds like an even bigger conspiracy theory than the one he is attempting to debunk. Of course in reality, Berlet knows that the most powerful people in the world attend Bilderberg and he is either completely ignorant or deliberately lying by claiming that Bilderberg has no impact on policy. Merely on the face of it the claim that Bilderberg does not have an influence on policy is patently ridiculous. This would be akin to claiming that a four-day gathering of 200 MLB officials would have no impact on the future of baseball. Despite the fact that many politicians shunned Bilderberg this year because of the group’s increasing notoriety as a furtive and insidious front for anti-democratic elitists, just take a look at the list of powerful individuals who did attend. Top CEO’s like Bill Gates of Microsoft and Eric Schmidt of Google, top bankers like Marcus Agius of Barclays and Peter Sutherland of Goldman Sachs, don’t meet with national Presidents, Prime Ministers, big newspaper owners, members of the European Parliament and officials in the U.S. government to talk about tiddlywinks. They don’t get together for four days and surround themselves with a security ring of steel to discuss the weather or American Idol – they’re at Bilderberg to come to a consensus and then to implement it in their respective spheres of influence, just as Claes confirms in the radio interview. Using bluff and slimy semantics, apologists like Berlet imply that just because no treaties or laws are signed at Bilderberg, that the group has no power. In reality, Bilderberg sets the global consensus for the agenda that is subsequently implemented in the host countries of the Bilderberg members, a process that holds even more power than signing an individual treaty. Bilderberg sets the consensus for a whole gamut of policy areas, from oil, to the environment, to wars, to the economy. This is confirmed not only by former NATO Secretary-General and Bilderberg member Willy Claes in the radio interview we covered earlier, but it is manifestly evident in the policies that have later come to pass after being formulated at Bilderberg. Indeed, Bilderberg chairman Étienne Davignon last year bragged about how the Euro single currency was a brainchild of the Bilderberg Group. “A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group- an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr. Davignon- could also ‘improve understanding’ on future action, in the same way it helped create the Euro in the 1990s, he said,” reported the EU Observer in March 2009. The foundations for the EU and ultimately the Euro single currency were laid by the secretive Bilderberg Group in the mid-1950’s. Bilderberg’s own leaked documents prove that the agenda to create a European common market and a single currency was formulated by Bilderberg in 1955. As we first reported in 2003, a BBC investigative team were allowed to access Bilderberg files which confirmed that the EU and the Euro were the brainchild of Bilderberg The summary report of the 1955 Bilderberg meeting which took place from September 23-25 1955 at the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, talks of the “Pressing need to bring the German people, together with the other peoples of Europe, into a common market.” The document also outlines the plan, “To arrive in the shortest possible time at the highest degree of integration, beginning with a common European market.” Just two years later, in 1957, the first incarnation of the European Economic Community (EEC) was born, which comprised of a single market between Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The EEC gradually enlarged over the next few decades until it became the European Community, one of the three pillars of the European Union, which was officially created in 1993. The 1955 Bilderberg summary outlines a consensus that, “It might be better to proceed through the development of a common market by treaty rather than by the creation of new high authorities.” The EEC was duly created via the Treaty of Rome, which was signed on 25 March 1957. Debunkers like Berlet will probably still try and claim that the idea of a common European market was floating around in the early 1950’s and that Bilderberg were merely debating contemporary political ideas. However, the same cannot be said for the single European currency, which wasn’t even introduced in the form of notes and coins until January 2002, having been first codified in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The documents prove that Bilderberg members were pushing for its introduction nearly 40 years earlier. “A European speaker expressed concern about the need to achieve a common currency, and indicated that in his view this necessarily implied the creation of a central political authority,” states the summary document. True to form, the single European currency, the Euro, was not introduced until after the creation of a central political authority – the EU itself. The document also stresses, “The necessity to bring the German people into a common European market as quickly as possible,” adding that the future was in danger without a “United Europe”. These proven examples of Bilderberg formulating some of the biggest policies of the 20th century do not even come from leaks obtained by journalists from within the meetings, they come directly from the mouth of Bilderberg’s chairman and Bilderberg’s own internal documents. However, leaks from inside the meetings uncovered by independent journalists have also proven routinely accurate in confirming that Bilderberg has a massive impact on policy decisions. In spring 2002, when war hawks in the Bush administration were pushing for a summer invasion of Iraq, Bilderbergers expressed their desire for a delay and the attack was not launched until March the following year. In 2006, journalists who got leaked information from inside Bilderberg predicted that the U.S. housing market would be allowed to soar before the bubble was cruelly popped, which is exactly what transpired. In June 2008, we learned that Bilderberg were creating the conditions for a financial calamity, which is exactly what began a few months later with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Bilderberg has habitually flexed its muscles in establishing its role as kingmaker. The organization routinely selects presidential candidates as well as running mates and prime ministers. Despite widespread expectation that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would be announced as the first European Union President, the former Prime Minister of Belgium, Herman Van Rompuy, was picked for the role just days after he attended a Bilderberg Group dinner meeting. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were both groomed by the secretive organization in the early 1990’s before rising to prominence. Barack Obama’s running mate Joe Biden was selected by Bilderberg luminary James A. Johnson, and John Kerry’s 2004 running mate John Edwards was also anointed by the group after he gave a glowing speech at the conference in 2004. Bilderberg attendees even broke house rules to applaud Edwards at the end of a speech he gave to the elitists about American politics. The choice of Edwards was shocking to media pundits who had fully expected Dick Gephardt to secure the position. The New York Post even reported that Gephardt had been chosen and “Kerry-Gephardt” stickers were being placed on campaign vehicles before being removed when Edwards was announced as Kerry’s number two. A 2008 Portuguese newspaper report highlighted the fact that Pedro Santana Lopes and Jose Socrates attended the 2004 meeting in Stresa, Italy before both going on to become Prime Minster of Portugal. Several key geopolitical decisions were made at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting in Washington DC, again emphasizing the fact that the confab is far more than an informal get-together. As we reported at the time, Bilderberg were concerned that the price of oil was accelerating too fast after it hit $150 a barrel and wanted to ensure that “oil prices would probably begin to decline”. This is exactly what happened in the latter half of 2008 as oil again sunk below $50 a barrel. We were initially able to predict the rapid rise in oil prices in 2005 when oil was at $40, because Bilderberg had called for prices to rise during that year’s meeting in Munich. During the conference in Germany, Henry Kissinger told his fellow attendees that the elite had resolved to ensure that oil prices would double over the course of the next 12-24 months, which is exactly what happened. Also at the 2008 meeting, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice formalized plans to sign a treaty on installing a U.S. radar base in the Czech Republic with Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg. Rice was joined at the meeting by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who reportedly encouraged EU globalists to get behind an attack on Iran. Low and behold, days later the EU threatened Iran with sanctions if it did not suspend its nuclear enrichment program. For the first time, the majority of Bilderberg members expressed their support for an attack on Iran during this year’s meeting in Sitges. There was also widespread speculation that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s “secret meeting,” which was accomplished with the aid of cloak and dagger tactics like locking journalists on an airplane to keep them from tracking the two down, took place at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting in DC. So as we can see, there are a plethora of examples of Bilderberg setting a consensus on a particular policy area which later comes to pass at both the national and international levels. To claim otherwise is to be completely ignorant of the manifestly provable fact that Bilderberg has immense power in setting agreements on policy and exercises that power on a regular basis. In light of this, Berlet and Hollingshead are either shoddy journalists who have done no research whatsoever and are merely phoning it in, or they are being paid to deliberately spew biased and completely inaccurate information by the establishment they work for in a futile attempt to convince people that Bilderberg has no power, presumably in an effort to halt growing numbers of protesters who descend on Bilderberg each year, whom Bilderberg members now class as a “threat” to their agenda and secrecy.
ABC News went underwater in the Gulf with Philippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of famous explorer Jacques Cousteau, and he described what he saw as "one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen underwater."
Check out what BP does not want you to see. And please share this widely -- every American should see what's happening under the surface in the Gulf.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor, Go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of Heaven, You can justify it in the end.
- One Tin Soldier (The Legend of Billy Jack) by Lambert-Potter, sung by Coven
(San Francisco) Everybody knows Israel does not possess any oil and gas. Right? Right.
As the legendary former Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir stated “Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil! Golda Meir ”
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli government are going to extreme lengths to prevent these Freedom Flotillas from getting directly to the Gaza shore. Why? Are the Israelis trying to hide something?
The political leaders in Gaza are using unyielding military discipline and truly have nothing left to lose; or do they?
As a result of this huge contrast, the common people of Gaza die like flies before a rigid, unflinching onslaught of US supplied F16s, bunker buster missiles, GBU-39 smart bombs, Israeli main battle tanks and small arms fire.
Why the slaughter of ready and willing to die, dirt poor Palestinians?
It appears the Freedom Flotilla sailing to Gaza would go through a thicket of off shore oil and gas rigs and wells. The wells are sucking an estimated minimum of US$6 Billion Dollars of Palestinian off shore Natural Gas through rigs set up for slant drilling.
From Peter Eyre The Palestine Telegraph Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:29 EDT
The drilling consultant on the hidden project is the former Noble Drilling Company of Ardmore, Oklahoma, USA, experts in “oil field management.” They are also allegedly experts in illegal slant drilling techniques Noble pioneered in the early Oklahoma oil fields back in the day.
Slant drilling is the best way to steal your neighbors’ oil and gas.
So much so that the formerly oil and gas poor Israel of Prime Minister Golda Meir is now floating the idea of Natural Gas exports to the European Union (EU) of presumably Palestinian Natural Gas.
Future Freedom Flotillas are said to specifically have escorts from the Turkish Navy. The Turkish Air Force version of the American F-16 Fighting Falcons were not mentioned. The Turkish Navy protection is symbolic and problematic without the Turkish F-16s. Will the Turkish government commit their 200 plus F-16s?
Small world, eh? Greed and force of arms count. Always have. Always will.
[End]
Notes:
Google “Gaza Marine 1” and “Gaza Marine 2” for well specific information of the coast of Gaza.
The chief executive of BP sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused its value to collapse. By Jon Swaine and Robert Winnett Published: 12:10AM BST 05 Jun 2010 BP chief executive Tony Hayward has been under intense pressure since the oil well erupted on April 20 Tony Hayward: 'This won't stop deepwater drilling. It will transform it'
Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster.
Mr Hayward, whose pay package is £4 million a year, then paid off the mortgage on his family’s mansion in Kent, which is estimated to be valued at more than £1.2 million.
There is no suggestion that he acted improperly or had prior knowledge that the company was to face the biggest setback in its history.
His decision, however, means he avoided losing more than £423,000 when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began six weeks ago.
Since he disposed of 223,288 shares on March 17, the company’s share price has fallen by 30 per cent. About £40 billion has been wiped off its total value. The fall has caused pain not just for BP shareholders, but also for millions of company pension funds and small investors who have money held in tracker funds.
The spill, which has still not been stemmed, has caused a serious environmental crisis and is estimated to cost BP up to £40 billion to clean up.
There was growing confidence yesterday that a new cap placed over the well was stemming the oil flow. An estimated three million litres a day had been pouring into the sea off the coast of Louisiana since the April 20 explosion, damaging marine life.
The crisis has enraged US politicians, with President Obama yesterday forced to cancel a trip to Indonesia amid a row over the White House’s response.
Mr Hayward, whose position is thought to be under threat, risked further fury by continuing plans to pay out a dividend to investors next month.
