Two laws, one result?

One law makes it a criminal offence to disseminate, prepare or possess literary materials which appeal for the overthrow, subversion or weakening of the political and social system. The sentence ranges from 6 months up to 7 years imprisonment. This is article 58 of Section 10 of the Soviet Penal Code introduced in 1927 and used to fill the Gulag labour camps with millions of political dissidents.

Section 58 of the UK Terrorism Act 2000 states that a person commits an offence if he collects, possesses or makes a record (including taking photographs) of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. The penalty is up to ten years in prison.

Our terror laws exist against a background where fear is being whipped up to a frenzied level, where people are actively urged to spy on one another, even to suspect your neighbour is a terrorist. The recent radio ad and poster campaign by the Metropolitan police has a photograph of families in a shopping street with a CCTV camera in the background. The words read: “A bomb won’t go off here because weeks before a shopper reported someone studying the CCTV cameras.” Another ad shows the bulging lid of a suburban wheelie bin brimming with plastic chemical containers: “These chemicals won’t be used in a bomb because a neighbour reported the dumped containers.”

The Soviet law was the key statute used to deal with anti-Soviet agitation. These laws allowed a quarter of the population of Lenningrad to be shipped to the Gulags. This prison system, described by Solzenhistyn in The Gulag Archipelago, was a network of labour camps spread throughout the Soviet Union. Most inmates were given ‘tenners’ or ten year sentences for their crimes. With many children imprisoned as well; the age of criminal responsibility was twelve . The Soviets went as far as convicting people for social parasitism, notably the future Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky who in 1962 was convicted for being nothing more than a poet.

Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, enacted in the UK before the attacks of September 11th 2001, allows as a defence for a person to prove that he had a reasonable excuse for his action or possession. That is, if charged, once your trial comes round. The main difference rests on the interpretation of terrorism.

Shouldn’t we be worried when a democracy starts to be run by fear mongers who seek to intimidate? The next stage will be the arrest of people for failing to report or denounce someone the state has defined as a terrorist. If you don’t denounce a neighbour or colleague the suspicion will be directed towards you…

Collectively, we hope that the batch of anti terror laws now on the statute books will be interpreted reasonably. We hope that a Stalin, Mao or Hitler won’t come along and use them to repress people. But anti terror laws have been used to detain people reading out names of war dead at the cenotaph, walking on a cycle path or shouting ‘nonsense’ at Jack Straw.

Perhaps you can dismiss these actions as the result of over zealous cops misusing the law. But it shows you how quickly society could disintegrate if the law enforcers are given quotas for arrest and told to go out and do it just as they were in Russia. Look at the London G20 protests for an example of how easy it is for ordinary policemen to become storm troopers once they have been tooled up like Robocop and pointed towards the public who they think are ‘up for it’. Thankfully, they weren’t armed with Taser electroshock guns.

Fortunately, the recently revised Mental Health Act didn’t make it onto the books in a form that would have made if possible for the UK to emulate the Soviet’s use of ‘punitive psychiatry’. The Soviets used psychiatry as a weapon against hundreds of dissidents who were incarcerated and subjected to drug and electroshock therapies because they were diagnosed as suffering from ‘politically defined madness’ or ‘sluggishly progressing schizophrenia’ (“ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure”).

Recently, our government wanted to update the Mental Health Act to allow people to be detained against their will even if there was no evidence that treatment would be shown to benefit their condition. Fortunately, the House of Lords stopped the draft bill that would have used cultural or religious beliefs as grounds for diagnosing a mental disorder. So, at least the state cannot detain you in a mental institution because you have aberrant political beliefs.

It does leave the door open for drug companies to bring out a pill that treats ‘social opposition disorder’ making it easier to lock up dissidents once a convenient cure becomes available. (Imagine people like the psychotherapist Derek Draper queuing up to drug you into compliance.)

We all need to be very concerned about the laws in place when the definitions of terrorism seem to be getting ever more general. Incrementalism is very dangerous to freedom, as is being governed by surprise. One day you wake up and realise that the freedoms you thought you had aren’t enshrined in law any more.

Is this happening today?

‘The conditions necessary to create a genocidal mind-set within any given population are a depressed economy, uneven distribution of wealth, the existence of an identifiable minority, the strong political ambition of an oppressor group, and impunity’ p195 The Secret Hunters, Ranulph Fiennes.

Virtual UK Budget

Here is my UK budget.

Tax those earning more than £200,000 per year at 50%.

End occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, saving £4.5 Bn a year.

Scrap Trident nuclear weapon programme, saving £70 Bn.

Scrap ID cards, saving £9 Bn.

Pass the baton on the Olympics. Use the savings to properly regenerate East London.

The UK government will issue bonds using money generated by itself, not borrowed from the Bank of England which then has to be repaid with interest.

Public sector cuts: Abolish all political Special Advisors, saving £6 million per year.

Don’t re-inflate the housing market. Let average house prices come back into line with the hirstoric level of three times av. earnings.

It’s a start.

Some facts I found about autism and vaccines

On one hand Measles, which in a 1st world country is unlikely to be fatal, on the other, the UK’s ridiculously full vaccine schedule – 25 vaccines in the first two years. You can turn your kid into a chemical cocktail full of aluminium, anti-freeze, aborted fetal tissue, chick embryo, to name but a few common vaccine ingredients. You can hope that the three live vaccine strains in the MMR don’t cause auto immune responses. It’s up to you.

Reliable figures show the increase of autism spectrum disorders in the UK rising from 1 in 500 in 1979 (Wing and Gould) to 1 in 110 in 2006 (Baird et al.). Autism in Scottish Schools is recorded in the Scottish Schools Census since 1998. It is the only systematic monitoring of numbers in the UK to date. This gives a rise over seven successive years after 1998 of 325%. The criteria for inclusion have not been changed during that time and it’s unlikely such a rise can be explained by better detection. In non vaccinated populations, such as the Amish, autism is extremely rare, but no funded study has been carried out. You might say because it is not in the interests of the lucrative vaccine industry.

25 Vaccines are given to UK children before the age of two. New vaccines added as recently as September 2006. (In US CDC mandates 73 injected vaccines by 18 mths.) The wider problem may be the number of vaccines now in the immunisation programme. Interactions between vaccines and chemicals in the body may cause autism.

To what extent is autism the result of parenting behaviours? Original autism diagnosis was blamed on ‘refrigerator mothers’. Childhood neglect and trauma may well cause autistic behaviour, but this cannot account for the rate of increase seen above. There are genetic factors to consider: “In 38% of families of autistic individuals, both parents manifested some social or cognitive impairments.” But Dr Boyd Haley counters ‘Autism was not a known, described illness until about 1941-3, 8 to 10 years after the introduction of thimerosal and similar organic thiol-mercury compounds in biological mixtures used in medicine and other areas.  This argues against autism being a genetic illness.’ (Boyd Haley, Professor of Chemistry, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY )

See ‘The Truth about Vaccines’ by Dr Richard Halvorsen for possible mechanisms of autistic development:

“A virus induced auto immune response to developing brain myelin may impair anatomical development of neural pathways in autistic children” “MMR was the first vaccine ever to introduced on a large scale containing more than one live virus. Live viruses will interact with each other… there are three possible methods by which MMR could be causing autism:

1.Direct invasion of the measles vaccine into the brain.

2.The MMR vaccine may cause an abnormal immune reaction in susceptible children. This may result in an auto immune reaction in which the body’s immune system attacks itslef, in this case the brain.

3.It’s possible that the measles virus invades the gut, where it causes inflammation , resulting in a ‘leaky’ gut. This results in the absorption of heroin-like (opoid) and other toxic substances that then travel into, and damage the brain.” (Halvorsen, p 190)

“MMR was introduced in the USA in 1979. After the mid 1980’s there was a sudden increase in children who were developing normally in the first year and a half of life and then suddenly became autistic”

Also we must consider the cost to society. ‘The children that have been damaged have had their lives ruined. They were previously completely healthy. They now have seventy or eighty years of mental handicap ahead.’ (Thrower, p 14) ‘Linking these rates to estimated costs of education and care for sufferers would give a figure of as high as £5 billion per year, ($8m), year after year. The Cambridge autism figures were described as “if anything an under-estimate”. They included only children with a definite clinical diagnosis. Any child who had only been “statemented” (= educational needs-assessed) as autistic, but not yet clinically diagnosed, was not counted.’ Univ of Camb. Study 2001. in Thrower (p.43) The annual cost to UK est. £1Bn by UK Mental Health Foundation 2000. (Ark p 38)

Is Ritalin the drug to cure the drug industry created problem? The numbers taking this amphetime drug have grown from 3,000 in 1993 to 220,000 in 2002. (Observer 2003)

AUTISM LEVELS WHEN CHILDREN ARE NOT VACCINATED

• The Amish, a religious community of about 150,000 people in the eastern United States had only four autistic children when the incidence of autism was reviewed. The Amish, as part of their religious culture, do not believe in vaccination. • Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish and he found only four. • One child had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant; of the other three Amish children diagnosed with autism, one was adopted from China, having had a full set of vaccinations, the other two were vaccinated in the U.S. (Ark)

‘If indeed autism is rare among the non-vaccinated Amish populations, as reported by Dan Olmstead, I find it an amazingly oversight that the CDC and others responsible for infant health do not fund a study in this area. … The study of non-vaccinated populations is a very obvious experiment that the CDC and its supporters appear to refuse to consider.  This makes me suspicious that this knowledge exists and is being suppressed because knowledge of the rate among the non-vaccinated population would answer many questions. ‘ Dr Boyd Haley

Further reading: Jabs website

Golliwogs and victims

Golliwog has now officially been purged from the latest Newspeak dictionary. Black people now are ungolliwog. It will now be very polite to call all those of colour doubleplusungolliwog.

Carol Thatcher came to prominence as the winning victim in the TV series ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’. A show where vague celebrities humiliate themselves in order that one may boost a flagging career. But the winning victim is built up, only to be taken down. The row over her use of the word golliwog to describe a black footballer is not about causing offence, but everything to do with increasing the fear of opening your mouth lest you say something politically incorrect. We are not to know what is offensive or not. We must let the media decide and reason for us.
Like dogs in electrified cages who get a shock no matter where they jump, we give up trying to avoid the shocks. Our behaviour becomes withdrawn, pacified and controlled. Divide and rule practiced as groups are turned against each other, on their guard, wary of the differences that can only be spoken of in an acceptable manner. Any inappropriate use will be informed upon. Taboo words increase their power by their banning. The N word reigns supreme, king of the forbidden, with a totemic power to shock and appall.

We Need a Jubilee Year to Write off Debt

We need nothing short of a Jubilee year where debts are written off to solve this depression. Now is the time to wipe away the mountain of derivative debt that is about to avalanche and bury us.

Conventional methods for de-leveraging the bottomless pit of banker-created debt aren’t working. The Brown government isn’t making any promises of success either. Everyone else is up the same creek is the best they can say. The £37bn hoovering up of debt was declared a failure after a mere two months. The next in line £200bn cash bung will help push public debt up to an estimated 10% of national GDP by 2010. By this time the credit rating of the UK will be downgraded meaning that the government will have to up interest rates if it is to entice anyone to buy the bonds needed to finance the spending spree. Aside from the inflationary effect of all the money being created to stimulate the bankers, high interest rates will start set off an inflationary spiral.

Instead of saddling the tax payer with debt by spending billions on strategies with uncertain results, why not wipe the slate clean of derivative created debt? Who would it hurt aside from those banks are about to collapse anyway? After all, isn’t it generally seen as enlightened when we wipe out the debts of struggling Third World nations to give their people a chance of survival?

If money keeps disappearing down the every hungry mouths of bankers with little or no long term effect, the inevitable payback will come when the government has to start cutting social security, pensions, education and NHS budgets. Maybe ultimately the tens of billions for Trident will be lopped off the defence-offence budget. Perhaps.

Maybe, it’s inevitable that the government will end up going to the IMF with a begging bowl. IMF and World Bank aid comes at a price. Further infrastructure sell offs, more budget cutting and loss of national independence over economic affairs. Oh, and throw in a few riots as the disappearing middle classes say enough is enough. Look at Iceland, Argentina, Indonesia…

The same rich investors who are being supported by tax payer money are now short selling on bank stocks as that’s the only certain way of making money at the moment. Who would want to buy shares in a failing bank? The only mug is the tax payer.

Fiddling the public

Different ways of doing democracy. Or the ways those in power control decisions:

Ignore the choice: The people of Ireland voted against the European Treaty but they can’t be allowed to say no, so corrupt Eurocrats decide they have to vote again on exactly the same Treaty.

Limit the choice: The de Menezes tube shooting jury weren’t allowed to return an unlawful killing verdict. They return an ‘open verdict’ and nothing changes. Police would act in exactly the same way again.

Punish the choice: The people of Manchester voted ‘no’ to the proposed congestion charging zone. The government will punish the people of Manchester by holding back on transport regeneration money.

Deny the choice: Still, Londoners didn’t even get a vote before the Congestion Zone was imposed in 2003.

We alone are casualties

Today, for the first time in the history of this planet, those living in cities outnumber those living rurally. London has a population density of 4,500 people per sq. km. Crowding on this scale has been shown to cause depression; the uncontrollable noise of the city parallels a standard way of inducing despression in a laboratory, outlined by the psychologist Martin Seligman.

Constant trauma and stress without being able to do anything about it leads to a state of learned helplessness. In an experiment where a caged dog is given a repeated electric shock that it is unable to do anything to prevent, eventually it lies down and whimpers. Beyond a certain point, even when the cage door is opened it will remain there being shocked. It has developed a state of learned helplessness.

Despite the ever present watchful eye of CCTV surveillance cameras, we are told to be suspicious of the person standing next to us. We live in a state of constant stress without real terror, akin to the period before the London Blitz. This was the phoney or twilight war; when sirens went off and civilians trooped down to shelters, but no bombs landed. When the Luftwaffe started dropping bombs in the summer of 1940, people reported that it was in psychologically better because they had something real to deal with instead of only fear.

Today’s constant threat of terror is our own phoney war. And its battle casualties are our minds. Nearly one in four persons in this country will have an episode of mental illness within a yearlong period; either depression, anxiety, substance abuse or addiction. One out of ten children has a mental illness, set in the context of family and community life falling apart.

We instead turn inwards and look to what we can control. Technological gadgets give us immediate satisfaction – mobiles, laptops, iPods. But they are the ‘psychological equivalent of junk food’ according to psychologists Christopher Peterson, Steven Maier and Martin Seligman. They turn us into egocentric people to the detriment of social cohesion. In addition, they argue that social cohesion is not obtained by diversity; which has replaced unity: “Let us raise the politically unpopular point that increased attention to the differences among our people will not make this society a better one in which to live.”

Highlighting differences is a step towards turning against those minorities that are perceived to be the problem in society. Will turning against the most vulnerable groups in society be the ultimate expression of inward looking instead of looking to the real threats to society like criminal ‘world’ leaders and international bankers?

In the sixties students and workers revolted and demonstrated for their rights over less, but today we are wrapped up in ourselves; and while we are narcissistically engaged all manner of external changes occur that we scarcely notice.

The changes are planned and implemented using mass techniques that appeal to emotion, not reason. It’s worth remembering the words of the economist Milton Friedman who originated the neo liberalism that destroyed so many people: “Only a crisis – actual or perceived produces real change.”

The French philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote in his book The Technological Society how he saw society changing in the post world war two era. “Human intelligence cannot resist propaganda’s manipulation of its subconscious. The suppression of the critical faculty … the first and clearest consequence of the application of psychoanalytic mass techniques.”

To build a new personality, the old one needs to be erased. Dr Ewen Cameron, former president of World Psychiatric Association was employed as a CIA mind control experimenter in the 1950s. He used electroshock, drugs and sensory deprivation to recreate a blank state in patient’s minds before rebuilding as he saw fit. It was not successful for over 70 percent of his patients, but it was very useful information for the torture industry. These techniques were refined and are a standard part of the torture kit used in places like Guantanamo Bay.

Are these techniques about to be employed closer to home? A panopoly of ‘non-lethal’ weapons lie ready in the crowd control arsenal. British police will be routinely equipped with Taser cattle prods to force compliance. Hitting someone with an extendable baton is harder to do than routinely pulling the trigger of an electric shock gun. Then there are trucki mounted microwave guns that can blast you with waves to cause intense discomfort and a burning sensation.

In the her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein parallels the desire to create a blank slate of the person, through the techniques of Dr Cameron outlined above, with the use of economic shocks or using crises to change behaviour.

Economic shocks disorientate us, causing fear and anxiety and leading to a state of childlike regression. We look for a father figure to save us. ‘In times of crisis people are willing to hand over a great deal of power to anyone who claims to have a magic cure, whether the crisis is a financial meltdown or a terrorist attack.’

But she does offer a solution: “ The universal experience of living through a great shock is the feeling of being completely powerless… The best way to recover from helplessness turns out to be helping – having the right to be part of a communal recovery.”

This resonates with the views of psychologists Christopher Peterson, Steven Maier and Martin Seligman again: “Our only assumption is that depression, demoralization, underachievement, and illness are bad. We think the lack of an orientation to the commons – the incredible selfishness that so abounds in our country – is in no small way responsible for these ills.”

Mumbai terror attack, Hindi speaking terrorists and the mysterious death of Hemant Karkare

Today’s interview in the Indian Express newspaper with an eyewitness survivor of the Mumbai shootings throws a spanner in to the works of the official story that the suspected militants killed in the attacks were all from Pakistan:

“56-year-old Harishchandra Shrivardhankar can clearly recall his attacker (at Cama hospital). He described the terrorist as a fair skinned, 5.5 to 6 feet-tall person speaking in Hindi. The terrorist, says Shrivardhankar, was dressed in a pathani style off-white or cream-coloured kutra and pyjama.” (Pathani kurta is a type of Hindu suit.)

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/cama-hospital-terrorist-was-tall-fair-dressed-in-a-pathani-kurta-recalls-56yrold-braveheart/396340/2

Let’s hope Mr Shrivardhankar recovers from his wounds and is able to identify that person.

This is against the backdrop of the mysterious shooting of Hemant Karkare, head of the Anti Terror Squad, who had uncovered and arrested Hindu extremists behind previous terror attacks.

Eyewitness to the shooting of Karkare was injured Constable Arun Jadhav who was traveling in the same vehicle. Again Indian Express reported:

“Karkare, encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar and Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte, who were all travelling in the same vehicle, were shot dead along with three constables by the terrorists.

The top officers were on way to Cama Hospital, just a 10-minute drive from CST station, to check on another injured officer Sadanand Date.

“Five minutes later, two persons carrying AK-47 rifles emerged from behind a tree and started firing at our vehicle,” said Jadhav, who was hit by two bullets in his right arm and is recuperating in the Bombay Hospital.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/witness-account-of-karkare-kamte-and-salaskars-death/392181/1

Very accurate and effective shooting by two gunmen, killing six police – presumably armed and wearing body armor, before driving off in the shot up vehicle. Further, Karkare was shot with three bullets in his chest. “He wore a bullet-proof jacket before going in but the bullets got him anyway,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police Amar Jadhav.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7756369.stm

Quite… Why might some have wanted to get rid of Karkare and other senior ATS officers? A reporter from Indian Express spoke to Karkare 36 hours before he was killed:

“The ATS believed it had cracked the September 29 Malegaon bomb blast case, and about a month ago arrested Hindu extremists in a breakthrough that shocked the nation and added a new twist to the entire discourse on Terror and religion.

The previous evening, hours after our meeting, TV channels had ‘breaking news’ that he had received a fresh death threat from some unidentified caller, apparently in connection with the Malegaon probe. An Indian Express reporter SMSed him asking him if this was true or if he had anything to say. His reply: just a smiley.”

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/karkares-response-to-a-death-threat-a-smiley/391325/2

This effective decapitation of the Indian Anti Terror Squad may explain how five teams of two shooters went on a 72-hour killing spree killing so many innocents.

Greek Riots coming here soon?

Greek riots – the flashpoint of a 15-year-old son of a bank manager shot dead by police. Another western society that has been destabilised by a new left government implementing IMF/World Bank neoliberal policies that has left one fifth of population living in poverty while the rich have gotten richer under a deregulation and low tax program. The government is perceived by the people as corrupt and ineffective. With an insulated governing class; and a prime minister himself the nephew of a previous president.

The Guardian newspaper interviewed a Greek who spoke of a generation who see their parents stuck in debt who themselves have no hope, living on 500 Euros a month.

In some ways it is invigorating to see people rise up and say ‘Enough!’ Refreshing that technology has not been deployed to prevent people from doing so – such as microwave cannons designed to cause burning sensations and nausea in people. For now, it still comes down to tear gas and truncheons; with the usual media focus of ‘anarchists’ and ‘stone throwers’ when no mass movement can consist entirely of those elements. Though mobile phones and internet allow flash mobs to form according to CNN: “These young people — often referred to in Greece as ” the known-unknowns” — use texting and Web sites to organize and communicate.” A linguistic legacy of Rumsfeld.

These riots follow hot on the heels of those in Iceland, where one third of people are trying to exit the country. Discontent bubbles quickly to the surface as citizens realise the government is unaccountable and incapable of managing the economy effectively as it is the international bankers who pull the strings. And then what can you do but take to the streets? We are going to see more of this – like the so-called ‘IMF riots’ seen in Argentina, Russia, Mexico, etc. in previous decades as the middle classes feel the chill.

The Financial Times reports today that UK corporate pension pots are falling in value at a time when corporate insolvencies are mounting. The dangers of unrest increase as the middle class gets looted and every day seems to bring a story telling us that the recession/depression will be deeper than feared.

When will it happen here?