PFI: Labour's gift to future generations

The Telegraph reports:

"Official figures show that, under Private Finance Initiative [PFI] schemes, British taxpayers are committed to pay £229 billion for new hospitals, schools and other projects with a capital value of just £56 billion. Several contracts are due to run for 60 years, documents released under freedom of information requests show, meaning taxpayers will be paying for the projects for generations to come. "

Thanks Labour. What was that Mises said about socialism and economic calculation?

Hat tip: The Angry Exile

Tasmania: number one in the world

I thought I'd seen a typo in Fraser's post on Opium and Afghanistan, over at An Individual Voice:

It seems that poppy and opium production is big business for some countries, especially Tasmania. Other countries include India, France, Turkey and Spain, why can you not add Afghanistan to that list ?

Did he really mean Tasmania? Indeed he did. The answer to the question is; of course it should be added to the list, but I doubt that the farmers of Tasmania would welcome it. It's ridiculous when you think about it: making a flower illegal.

The secret treaty we should all be shouting about

From Mises Daily:

ACTA: The War on Progress, Freedom, and Human Civilization

A clandestine international treaty is currently being negotiated among parties including the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the European Union, Japan, Singapore, and Morocco. It can justly be called the greatest threat of our time to the advancement of human civilization. Considering the magnitude of the other abuses of power pervading the world today, this might seem an exaggeration, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) contravenes every principle of civilized society, both in its content and in the nature of the proceedings leading to its creation.

It threatens to undo the accomplishments of the great Internet revolution and to thrust humankind back to a time when individuals had no public voice and no countervailing power against politically privileged mercantilist institutions. ACTA tramples on essential rights that have achieved even mainstream recognition: innocence until one is proven guilty, due process, personal privacy, and fair use of published content. Moreover, because of its designation as a trade agreement, ACTA could be imposed on the people of the United States by the president, without even a vote of Congress...

Read the article.

The Wall Street Syndicate

William Black, from April 2009, ex-regulator sheds some light on the superfraud-on-steroids at the heart of the financial slo-mo meltdown, and the (still) on-going cover-up.

New World Order steams ahead with IMF plans

The goal: to set up a world government run by and for the banksters.

The problem: a world financial crisis engineered by the banksters.

The solution: "Banks and other financial institutions face paying two new taxes to fund future bail-outs, the BBC has learned."

Under the "radical" (monstrous, diabolical) plans; "all institutions would pay a bank levy - initially at a flat-rate - and also face a further tax on profits and pay."

All institutions, huh? And where are the institutions going to find the extra cash needed? Where do you think? From us. So these plans mean that we are going to pay a tax to the IMF, that they will use to further enslave us. Sure, the low level players will object, and some of the top dogs will play 'please don't throw me in the briar patch', but make no mistake what this signifies: another step on the road to tyranny.

Carbon corporatism

Mark Wallace, writing at Devil's Kitchen, nails the reality of the EU's corporatist 'Emissions Trading Scheme':

"Despite all the rhetoric from politicians and eurocrats alike about helping the poor and the elderly, alleviating fuel poverty and reducing extortionate energy bills, the reality is that through the ETS they are increasing costs for UK consumers alone by £3 billion a year. Across the whole EU, between the scheme starting on 1 January 2005 up to the end of 2008, this monster cost over £67 billion.

This is the reality of the current tranche of flawed emissions policy: in the name of green policymaking, ordinary people who already struggle to heat the homes and make ends meet are being stung for billions of pounds a year. Where does the money end up? Well, a decent chunk is effectively handed straight to wealthy energy companies in windfall profits, kindly provided by Mr and Mrs Joe Public.

Don't think that the powers that be in Westminster and Brussels aren't aware of this, either. Indeed, the Express revealed this week in leaked EU Commission documents that there are plans afoot in Brussels to use the Emissions Trading Scheme as the basis of a pan-European, harmonised tax in order to fund the EU directly.

In short, they know perfectly well how profitable this enterprise can be for them - and they care not a jot that it is those scraping a living in the real world who suffer as a result."

IMF fire sale. Everything must go!

Apparently the Tories are getting ready for another round of privatisations, in order to 'balance the books'. This is being portrayed as some kind of change of direction, which is not at all the case, as the current government has continued privatising with the same fervour as Maggie in her heyday.

So, the government borrows money from the central bank, which makes it out of thin air and hands it over. We the idiot taxpayers then have to pay the interest on this money. The government then gives this money in the form of a 'bail out' to the private corporations. The government being so close to broke by this scheme and unable to borrow any more, then sells off everything it can lay its hands on to the private corporations, who buy up anything of value with the money the government gave them. Then we end up paying the interest for the borrowing and whatever additional charges for using the assets that once belonged to us.

Okay, I may not have that exactly right, but the underlying principle is correct: We, the common people, are getting fucked in the arse.

An economic hitman speaks

Here's the second part of an interview with John Perkins, describing the means by which the corporations take control of a country's resources, by buying off the leaders with massive loans that can never be repaid, leading to the corporations taking control of the country's infrastructure and raw materials. He explains:

"We were sent into these countries to get these men to change their policies, to go against their own campaign promises. And basically what you do is you tell them, "Look, you know, if you play our game, I can make you and your family very wealthy. I can make sure that you get very rich. If you don't play our game, if you follow your campaign promises, you may go the way of Allende in Chile or Arbenz in Guatemala or Lumumba in the Congo."



For the whole of the interview; Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5.

Protect the banks

"The banks are not the country, they are not the economy, the banks are just a number of corporations, run by a certain number of individuals that I know Geithner and Summers are friends with, and not just friends..."

From the Young Turks channel.

Corporate fascism: how it works

There can be few better examples of the great evil of the corporate state than in HR-875 currently going through Congress. If this bill becomes law, it will destroy what is left of the small farmers, it will destroy organic farming and it will bring the full weight of the law down on anyone who dares to grow their own food in their own backyard. It is law written for and by GM agri-business, in order to wipe out all competition. It is also, it goes without saying, utterly unconstitutional.

Godspeed to the Campaign for Liberty and other groups fighting these motherfuckers.

Defeat HR 875-information flyer

PFI: the final insult

Michael Meecher, Labour MP, writes on his blog (5/3/09):

"Today's Treasury notice that taxpayers' money (up to £100 billion of it) is going to be used to bail-out Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects which have collapsed in the credit crunch is really the final insult of New Labour's ideological obsession with privatising even in the face of economic meltdown. PFI, started by Thatcher, is a colossal scam for subsidising private business at the expense of the taxpayer in the building and mangement of major infrastructure projects (schools, hospitals, prisons, roads, etc.). Now that these schemes have collapsed in the credit crunch, Gordon Brown has chosen to pour billions of public money into shoring up failed private business projects rather than taking them over to be completed, more cost-effectively and more efficiently, by the public sector."