The seasoned paedo enablers at the Sun could tap into their homophobic and racist side.
But what prejudice can the white paedo nationalists evoke when duelling with heterosexual white male capitalist Phil Hogan?
If they want a spat, he’ll bring it.
Hogan and Murdoch have a lot in common.
Cold heartless Neo-Liberalism.
But Hogan used to be the EC agriculture commissioner.
He will want to protect Irish farmers from US hormone and chemicals crossing the border.
He has also pushed through laws in financial services and won’t want Ireland’s tech and tax avoidance rackets to be played with.
Even Steve Bannon would have little to say about Phil Hogan who is smarter, tougher, more Irish and more capitalist than the billionaire dependent US Rasputin.
In the Case against Sugar, Science Journalist Gary Taubes talks about Endocrine Disruptors, Empty Calories and the link between the rise in diabetes and obesity and the adoption of a western diet.
Endocrine Disruptors increase your family’s cancer risk and can be found in practically everything from plastic wrapping to Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Glyphosate pesticide of which traces can be found in supermarket fruit, vegetables, and processed foods.
But as there isn’t a fully fledged government in Berlin right now, Chancellor Merkel’s acting Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt was able to vote to renew the EU licence behind Merkel and SPD Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks’ back.
Despite being politically toxic only 18 months ago it somehow sneaked through and so the enormous German resistance to TTIP & pesticides finally came to nothing.
It shouldn’t feel that weird to see Germany voting to kill people — when it comes to chemical weapons, they wrote the book.
But that’s not to say no-one else tried :
Better Living Through Chemistry
Du Pont’s Slogan “Better Living Through Chemistry” was co-opted by DJ Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim whose fans popped countless chemicals including MDMA, Cocaine, Ketamine and Ecstasy. .
Bayer
German mega-corporation Bayer are in the middle of buying up US-owned Monsanto.
Under the IG Farben label they made Zyglon B, the gas used by the Nazis in the Gas Chambers.
Zyglon B was originally just another pesticide — invented by Fritz Haber’s research group at the IG Farben-owned Degecsh pest control company.
Fritz Haber was German, originally of Jewish background, and won the 1918 Nobel Prize for chemistry for his invention of the Haber-Bosch process which was used for both fertilisers and chemical weapons.
Immerwahr was the first woman in Germany to obtain a PhD in Chemistry. She contributed to Haber’s work but was a pacifist and woman’s rights activist.
She committed suicide in 1915 apparently upset about the role her husband played in overseeing the killing of thousands of soldiers in Belgium in the first known use of chemical weapons as a weapon of mass destruction.
Many of Monsanto and Bayer’s pesticide products double up as chemical weapons.
In the 1930s, chemists working for the German company Bayer discovered the highly poisonous properties of organophosphate compounds. By then, Bayer had already merged with BASF, Hoechst and other companies to form
the huge chemical conglomerate I.G. Farben; today Bayer is poised to become the worlds largest manufacturer of herbicides and pesticides and a leading source of genetically engineered seed varietieswith its recent takeover of the biotech giant Aventis CropScience. (Aventis is the company responsible for the Starlink variety of insecticidal GE corn, which was never approved for human consumption and thus forced the recall of some 300 name-brand processed food products during 2000-01.) As all of German industry became absorbed into the growing Nazi war machine, Bayers organophosphate compounds were developed simultaneously
as agricultural pesticides and as nerve gases for military use.
Agriculture — War by Other Means
Back in 1998, the Economist didn’t hide it’s enthusiasm for Better Living Through Chemistry.
The EU is still trying to limit its citizens’ exposure to Endocrine Disruptors but given the enormous food and agriculture industry lobby, the path has been rocky.
EU plan to Regulate Endocrine Disruptors
Some progress was reported last week, but it’s far too early to celebrate.
All this talk of chemistry, the military, and the clown like approach to information management reminds me of another international laughing stock from way back in 2003: Ali Hassan Al-Majid aka Chemical Ali
Sweet Home Alabama
According to the Times, Tate & Lyle switched out of its historic sugar operation in 2010 and now focuses on developing new products including sweeteners, many of which are made in Alabama and delivered to Mexico to go into soft drinks.
Tate & Lyle diversified into biomaterials in 2007. They currently specialise in plastics, biofuel and processed foods.
It looks as though, as usual, they are using the same chemicals for both purposes. All of which seem to have an endocrine disruption / metabolic disorder inducing aspect.
Maybe David Davis’s old firm has had a hand in giving Theresa May type 1 diabetes, a metabolic disorder that can be brought on by poor diet.
The chemicals mentioned in their wikipedia entry include:
Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism & Lipid Research
This whole Brexit thing is starting to look like a game of Endocrinopoly.
Capital Without Borders
Brooke Harrington’s excellent 2016 book, Capital Without Borders, about the world of Trust and Estate Professionals reminds us that there is more to Brexit than pesticides and sugar.
German Chemical firm Bayer are buying US-firm Monsanto and so Germany just voted through the 5 year renewal of Monsanto’s controversial Round-Up weed killer licence at EU-Wide Level.
They had previously abstained. This time their vote swung it for the potentially carcinogenic pesticide.
Ireland are a tax haven favoured by the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook.
This 2011 post by David Malone explains what Germany really think of Ireland.
US are using Brexit & Ireland to colonise Europe as they’d originally planned via TTIP.
First Baghdad then Athens then London
French Economist Patrick Artus predicted way back in 2002 that Britain would surely have adopted the Euro by now.
He clearly never read the Sun.
The likes of Buiter can claim the ‘Cave-In’ as a victory for the EU or his type of disaster capitalism, but he fundamentally misunderstands.
Brexit is an opportunity for far greater disruption via regulatory arbitrage. Collateral damage will be borne by those whose shoulders are least broad.
Amusing Ourselves to Death — Brexit Jihadi in Sheep’s Clothing Jacob Rees Mogg on Marr Show (3/12/17)
We need to deliver the benefits of leaving to the poorest in our nation because otherwise they will feel deeply let down. That includes dealing with freedom of movement and that includes getting free trade deals so that we can learn the cost of food clothing and footwear.
This from an Alt-Right man who consistently voted to cut disability benefit and whose father William edited the Times for several years and said of Murdoch in his memoirs: “Looking back, he has been an excellent proprietor for the Times, but also for Fleet Street.”
Lord William Rees-Mogg wrote the following book, quoting a famous Rothschild on when best to invest in the stock market.
Not so different to Death of Britain by that other famous ex-Rothschild Brexiteer — Jihadi John (Redwood):
Necessary statement of the obvious by @Frances_Coppola. How can John Redwood, interviewed ad nauseam as no deal-evangelist, get away with this in plain sight? https://t.co/hGrA3CFHgm
Brits often sold secrets to Moscow during the Cold War. Redwood’s loyalty clearly lies elsewhere. He’s undermining Britain for his 30 pieces of silver. In days gone such behaviour could get you hanged.
Speaking in Codes – When you mean Deregulation, just say Ireland
Rees Mogg wants to maintain the integrity of Northern Ireland in UK and to have no hard border. This means he wants to recolonise the Irish by forcing them to accept the UK’s regulatory regime.
And if they don’t then Brexiteers can treat them just like they did the ‘Remoaners’.
Rees Mogg & Bannon Alliance
Marr should have asked Rees Mogg about Bannon’s stated aim to deconstruct the Administrative state.
This seems entirely consistent with Blood on The Streets and the Death of Britain.
Rees Mogg suggests speaking to Alt-Right Breitbart owner Steve Bannon is just like talking to Barrack Obama’s “left-wing” former UK ambassadors.
Presumably Jihadi Joseph views fellow Tory austerity architects David Cameron, George Osborne & Oliver Letwin as a bunch of wayward Crypto-Marxists.
Just as energy firms trade with ISIS, Jihadis like Rees-Mogg get on well with comrades like Bannon.
Sympathy for the Devil
On the other hand, here’s Bannon explaining his Economic Nationalism to a US Black Republican meeting last week — a captivating speech.
Easy Rider
If you’re disappointed the BBC presenter didn’t do more to challenge Mogg, let’s not forget that till April this year, the Deputy Chair of the BBC Trust was Sir Roger Carr who, as well as Chairing BAE Systems, is a senior adviser at the world’s largest Private Equity firm aka Asset Strippers — KKR.
Toward the end of the interview when asked about Trump retweeting Britain First, Rees Mogg says that Twitter is a trivial medium.
Conveniently ignoring the fact that this was the main medium via which the Brexit and the US election campaigns were fought and is the main arena for Fake News which is how Rees Mogg now maintains power.
What was Mogg saying pre-cave-in on Tuesday when DUP had just scuppered the deal?
The US, UK & EU have always been run for the benefit of the same people — the Rich. Therefore the 2016 Trump & Brexit votes, though referred to as populism, are no different.
Under Brexit the US will export more to Europe by going through UK.
UK employment rights will take a hit and the Investor Protections that they tried to implement under TTIP will be granted under the US/UK trade agreement.
Europe’s regulatory system will be eroded despite the best wishes of their increasingly feeble politicians as the place doubles up as an old people’s home that markets itself as a gap year destination for the global middle class.
Corrupt Money Launderers HSBC bankrolled David Cameron and George Osborne’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2009, it has emerged.
The controversial lender lent the gaffe-prone billionaire bookie and former Tory Treasurer Michael Spencer £200 million pounds just a day before the massive Iceland Crisis that wiped billions of pounds off the balance sheets of many UK Local Authorities.
Many of these cash strapped Local Authorities had invested in Iceland because of advice given to them by one of Michael Spencer’s firms — Butlers.
Shortly after getting a £200million bailout from HSBC and narrowly avoiding bankruptcy because of the Iceland debacle (unlike his local authority clients), Spencer donated a million pounds to the Tory party.
It was around this time that Spencer’s holding company IPGL paid for Cameron and Osborne to fly to Davos by private jet.
This revelation is all the more galling given that Cameron and Osborne are known to have shaped regulation to favour HSBC and Spencer’s ICAP and torpedoed investigations into both firms both in the UK and the USA.
Some anti-corruption researchers and campaigners raised this issue with the HSBC board at the Bank’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in London on Friday but were sidelined.
The Canary have run a piece on the scandal which has received zero pick-up in the mainstream press.
For more info on Spencer read this article by the excellent I am Incorrigible :
Rupert Murdoch prefers Marine Le Pen to Jeremy Corbyn as she is, like himself, a racist anti-EU campaigner.
But if you forget about race and look at international trade and financial markets — her views are much more like Corbyn’s than Murdoch’s.
She’s a protectionist.
This is the same direction opportunist Theresa May is now taking when she steals Labour policies.
But May is still a ruthless Tory – paying off her friends in the finance sector while saying she will protect the NHS and public services.
Populism
Nigel Farage was allowed to open the door to ‘populism’ in the UK and, having achieved his aim of getting Britain out of the EU, he is now openly supporting Marine Le Pen.
I wrote about his interview with Le Pen a few months ago which was remarkable because till Brexit he avoided being seen in her company for fear of being called a fascist.
The interview was also interesting because Le Pen referred to how much more similar Theresa May’s policies now are to the Front National’s — and not to Emmanuel Macron’s.
This was even more remarkable for Le Pen because Macron had just been invited to visit Downing Street and she hadn’t.
Downing Street failed to get friendly with Trump before November and now, yet again, they are slow to get to know Le Pen.
But either way, as alluded to in the previous post, Le Pen’s differences with Trump, Farage and Murdoch, and similarity with Corbyn can be summed up in one word: DEREGULATION
Murdoch
Today’s Murdoch-owned Times quotes Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean Marie Le Pen, who founded the Front National, as saying she must act like Murdoch’s friend — Donald Trump.
Like Murdoch and unlike Corbyn, Le Pen uses immigration to divide.
Lots of people in the UK are now sceptical about Globalisation – many vote UKIP, Labour, Green, and SNP.
By stealing Labour policies and rhetoric the Tories are picking up plenty of ex-UKIP votes.
With the media’s help they try to convince voters that Blair, Cameron and even Corbyn are far too metropolitan and somehow un-British, and that we should all get back in touch with our socially conservative inner-Tory.
Many of these voters are against excessive immigration and open borders.
Which Corbyn and Lib Dems are seen as soft on.
We’re constantly told that we want a strong leader. Like May, Trump, or Le Pen.
Now is Le Pen’s time because she goes one further than Corbyn, Sturgeon, Lucas and even Theresa May.
For Le Pen is both fully racist and fully anti-capitalist — wanting total protection of both borders and markets.
She needs to solve France’s unemployment and lack of productivity without acknowledging that the EU has historically protected its borders and markets (often to benefit France!)
Is Le Pen more scared of the Eastern Europeans who’ve used free movement since communism fell; the refugees from US / UK / Coalition operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria; or of immigrants who’ve moved to France not because of the EU but because of France’s own kleptocratic African, Asian and Caribbean adventures?
Deregulation
Unlike Trump, Farage and Murdoch — and very much like Corbyn — Le Pen is fervently anti-Deregulation.
Farage ran a very confused Brexit campaign that focused on Brussels’ authoritarianism and ignored the degree to which Brussels had been infiltrated and in many ways captured by the City of London’s lobby group.
For evidence of this lobbying just look at the EU -US trade agreement TTIP.
This policy was announced by Obama and Cameron in Northern Ireland at the G7 / G8 meeting in 2013 and would have harmonised food, labour and environmental regulation on both sides of the Atlantic.
It’s precisely that model of Anglo-Saxon style capitalism that Le Pen and Corbyn both reject.
Farage just pretended to hate it. He is actually a big fan of the financial services lobby. It’s where he gets his cash.
But still, lots of Brexit campaigners, including Farage, jumped on the momentum that had been generated by the Anti-TTIP movement to push for Brexit.
In France, Le Pen used TTIP to push for her own election.
This is the most irresponsible manner in the way the French election is being covered here in the UK.
There is not enough parallel context being drawn with the UK political scene..
Is Le Pen being praised by the British press simply because our newspaper owners think she is a bit like Theresa May?
EU debate
The way the European Central Bank is run is severely flawed but little discussion of its policies are permitted to take place at any level.
Therefore even though many people know there is a problem, our media and politicians don’t permit us the space to discuss it.
Many Labour and Lib Dems seemed to have swallowed deregulation whole and by aggressively campaigning to remain in the EU didn’t permit debate of its flaws.
Jeremy Corbyn was an exception to that as he said he was against TTIP and deregulation. But he wasn’t given the platform that he deserved.
He was co-opted by the Remain camp.
His biggest failing on Europe was that he didn’t take more of a stand in public over TTIP.
Despite letting people know his views on Trident and Bombing Syria Corbyn never engaged in a public debate with his party about TTIP and so the deregulation lobbyists captured the entire debate.
They’re doing the same with the NHS and PFI.
So despite having some great ideas about taking back control, Corbyn’s project is being treated as a joke while Le Pen’s is taken seriously.
Corbyn’s patriotism is being rejected by the tax-avoiding foreign-owned media in favour of Theresa May’s lies which are designed to mask the looting of the UK public sector by the financial services sector.
Will Labour come up with a plan to save the NHS by prosecuting bankers for fraudulent PFI?
I asked them that very question this week and have been told Labour’s PFI announcements are due later in the campaign.
I suggested that we need ideas circulating asap in order to persuade people to ignore the spin. But so far no reply.
The following story about overcharging at private care homes appeared on page 2 of yesterday’s Daily Mail – before the announcement of the ‘snap election’:
This story has many similarities to the US Department of Justice’s investigation into US Health Insurer United Health’s pilfering of the American public purse in its Medicare programme.
The man who ran the Medicare programme when UnitedHealth allegedly overcharged the American taxpayer by hundreds of millions of dollars was Simon Stevens – current head of NHS England.
According to his current LinkedIn Profile, Stevens was Chief Executive Officer, UnitedHealthcare Medicare between 2006 – 2009
His CV goes on to say:
America’s leading seniors health company, with $30 billion revenues and serving one-in-five Medicare beneficiaries nationwide in partnership with AARP – the world’s largest voluntary organization. Launched the largest Medicare Part D benefits plan, also managing the largest Medicare-focused PBM.
So if Simon Stevens knew about the multimillion dollar fraud cases that took place on his watch – did he declare or disclose any of this to Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, or to NHS England?
It is now in the public interest for all correspondence between Simon Stevens, NHS England and Jeremy Hunt prior to his 2014 appointment to be made public.
Corporate Takeover
Stevens advised the Department of Health and Blair throughout the period when the NHS was using PFI to build hospitals. So he basically aided and abetted the bankruptcy of the NHS and now looks to be finishing off the job.
Election Issue
This ought to be an election issue. I hope Shadow Health secretary John Ashworth raises this conflict of interests during the campaign.
Can such an individual be trusted to look after the NHS?
Plenty of white British actors feel they have to base themselves in the States too.
But this is never referred to as a problem.
Migration Watch
Samuel Jackson recently said American producers and directors prefer hiring non-white Brits as they’re cheaper than their American counterparts and often classically trained.
I don’t work in the entertainment industry and I certainly wouldn’t want to get into an argument with Mr Jackson.
However I’m happy to highlight the similarity between his comments and the arguments I hear used in the UK against eastern Europeans and their employers.
They’re coming over here, undercutting the locals, and taking our jobs.
To hear such comments from such an iconic figure is worrying.
But there must be some truth to what Mr Jackson says.
Globalisation
He’s not a politician. He must have spoken out for a reason.
We know who Samuel Jackson is thanks to Globalisation and US Cultural dominance — I do not begrudge him his success.
I can see how any actor would want to go to the US for their big break.
But equally I don’t see why Jackson shouldn’t identify reasons African American actors are missing out on rôles.
Especially rôles that would help them develop and become bankable box office names as well as Oscar winners and cultural icons — like him.
Football
Let’s have a look another world — Football.
There are many theories as to Why England Lose.
The excellent Simon Kuper of the FT wrote a book about it called – Why England Lose.
Some say that the influx of foreign players to the English Premier League since the 90’s stops most English Players from getting the top level experience that the national team so desperately needs.
As for football managers — I assume the last English manager to win the English League was still Howard Wilkinson for Leeds in 1992.
But since “quitting politics” he’s already backed Trump in the US election and now he’s doing the same for the leader of the French National Front.
Double Standards
In the tenth minute of this 40 minute interview Farage asks Le Pen if she feels British Prime Minister Theresa May snubbed her by inviting her rival Emmanuel Macron to Downing Street.
Farage himself never let UKIP enter Le Pen’s nationalist grouping in the European Parliament.
Theresa’s Judgment
In this 30 second clip Le Pen refers to Macron as not being the sort of person she thought Theresa May would want to meet as, in contemporary French politics, he’s the key salesperson of deregulation and Globalisation.
Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage bond over Theresa May’s terrible judgment.
They correctly point out that it makes no sense for Theresa May to say she stands for Brexit and threatening immigrants but then roll out the red carpet for Macron and not Le Pen.
Farage points out that Theresa May wanted nothing to do with Trump until some days after he was elected – despite the supposed similarity in their agendas.
Deregulation
Farage and Trump, unlike Le Pen, strongly back deregulation.
They refer to it as cutting red tape.
But Le Pen talks about protecting French workers from deregulation.
Trump and Farage pretend to rail against corporate power but their loyalties lie with the uber-rich.
Could it be a similar story with Le Pen?
A former top lawyer and daughter of a multimillionaire, her party also needs big cheques but courts and delivers a mainly working class vote.
The only things they really agree on are the threat of open borders and Islamic terrorism.
Economic Patriotism
Le Pen shows solidarity with May and Farage against the vindictiveness of the European Union.
She says the EU wants to punish Britain.
Farage asks her about how she wants to protect French businesses and whether there is room for trade with Britain.
Le Pen says her Economic Patriotism means ensuring French Local Authorities buy from local suppliers.
She also says further measures should be taken to protect french industries from ‘dumping’ – where foreign firms sell their products cheaper because they are able to produce more for less due to weaker labour and environmental laws.
I feel China and Germany are being alluded to here but there’s no mention of British and American exporters and the huge deregulation going on in the USA which they plan to use to boost exports to France.
On the other hand she says she also wants France to “conquer the world” and therefore favours trade.
She concludes that for some industries you need protection but not for all.
This is similar to Steve Bannon’s assertion that he is not a White Nationalist but an Economic Nationalist.
America already had a Buy America policy under Obama.
And while France’s local industries obviously ought to be protected, there are massive inconsistencies in Le Pen’s argument.
But Farage doesn’t point them out.
How can global waves of economic nationalism and protectionism help French exporters?
But we can still sell to each other with minimal taxation, right?
Farage asks if by threatening to impose tariffs on Britain, the EU is ultimately making French workers pay to protect the EU project.
Conversation moves on to talk of migration, borders, Calais and suspending the Schengen agreement.
Brits living in France are reassured that they will not be threatened.
Le Pen says many of the French in London will return to France.
Taxes will be cut as unemployment falls and public spending is cut.
Le Pen says being a Muslim in France is not a problem – it is sectarianism she says she objects to.
She says she is against Islamist Fundamentalism.
When asked about anti-semitism in her party Le Pen says she doesn’t tolerate it and would prefer not to be judged by the words of all her supporters.
Farage says he knows how it feels to be judged by one’s supporters.
Conversation then goes to Putin.
Le Pen argues Russia and US are both as important as each other and that Russia has done a lot of good in Syria.
Farage asks if borrowing from Russian banks compromises her.
Le Pen says she couldn’t borrow elsewhere but that her lender doesn’t choose her policies.
On Trump – Le Pen says she too opposed TTIP and is glad he wants to be a President of the US and not of the world.
Global Revolution
Le Pen says there’s definitely a global revolution going on.
She points out that it is funny that the Anglo Saxon creators of neoliberalism are now the ones who reject it.
Farage says that it was Brussels who created this neoliberalism and not the Anglo Saxons.
Le Pen replies that the Anglo-Saxon world implemented Liberalism and the EU has turned it into Ultra Liberalism.
She says that either way, they are both now on the same side.
This doesn’t feel unlike rival football hooligan firms enjoying a friendly beer before resuming normal service and beating the crap out of each other.
The Spice Girls, The Sex Pistols and even the Jimi Hendrix Experience were all put together by their management teams.
So why not UKIP or the EDL?
Kassam, a self-defining ex-muslim and product of intellectual PC-friendly culture, shifted to the alt-right and now runs Breitbart London which is controlled by Steve Bannon.
Tommy Robinson changed his slightly Irish and double barrelled name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon to head up the English Defence League with an alias taken from a notorious Leeds United football hooligan.
He makes his money running a tanning salon in Luton.
Yes, that’s right.
From people in a multicultural area who pay him money to look less white.
Everybody’s looking for something. And you have to make a living, right?
There’s a beautiful symmetry here.
Where were we?
The French Presidential Election
Farage asks why Le Pen should be French President.
She says because she is profoundly French.
The other candidates just want to represent the Insurance, Banking, and Drug Companies.
Le Pen is asked if, having won the first round, she can win the second round.
She says it is a choice for the French.
It’s no longer a left-right split.
Do we want France to remain France?
She says if voters really want French values such as secularism, equality of race and religion, and not sectarianism, then they will vote for her.
Le Pen says the other candidates have a post national vision.
Are all Americans deserving of the right to healthcare?Yes — Universal healthcare systems should mean free access for all at the point of delivery, focused on protecting public health, and funded via general taxation. No — No-one should ever be forced to pay for services they will never use and no-one should be allowed to use services they could never afford.
America outspends the developed world on health care, but Americans are less healthy https://t.co/mZJX5vLf2X
The US health care debate on CNBC this morning started with EVERYONE AGREEING that EVERY AMERICAN DESERVES COVERAGE.Discussion quickly moved on to whether IMPROVING ACCESS to HEALTHCARE is best achieved by MAKING IT MORE AFFORDABLE.It was then pointed out that the only way you could make healthcare more affordable would be to force all taxpayers to subsidise the health system.Finally there was talk of the injustice of taking money off citizens whose belief systems prevent them from ever using the health system in the first place.
When Sqwawk Box presenter Andrew Sorkin pointed out that this was an absurd line of argument his co-presenter stated that though he agreed with Sorkin he still thought the point of view deserved mentioning.
Check the buzzwords in this recent MSNBC video:
What is the difference between Receiving Affordable Care, Unaffordable Coverage & Insurance, & Access to Healthcare?
What is the difference between Classic Republicans, Democrats and Trump’s people?
Back to the UK
Looks like Brexit has been brought about to Deregulate the Labour Market and get rid of the minimum wage.
And if 300 million Americans have suddenly become eligible to work in the UK then does that mean the US intelligence agencies will now treat Britain as if it is home soil?
The extradition treaties are already very one-way. Will we now be potentially surveilled and taken out for tweeting about Trump or Theresa?
Given her authoritarian views and performances at PMQs , I don’t trust Mrs May to defend this country one inch.
Donald Trump — George III in reverse
Mad grandson of obscure German migrant uses force to do battle with a distant land to which he stakes vague claim.
This should bring in GM Food, Cheap Meat, dodgy Pharmaceuticals — and the right to bear arms against tyrannous governments!
Not that things will ever come to that, of course!
If ARM really are as world-beating as they sound then surely patriotic Government Ministers like Business Secretary Greg Clark, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, or even Gaffe-Prone Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson would have intervened to protect hard-won UK sovereignty and stand up for GB PLC.
Think Again.
PM Theresa May, former Business Secretary Sajid Javid, and new Chancellor Philip Hammond have a fondness for referring to Britain as being “open for business”.
But what does this actually mean? Is everything up for grabs? Are there no limits?
Judging by this week’s newspapers, the answer is mixed.
For us cynics who believe the UK government can’t help selling everything and anything — the tide may be starting to turn.
TTIP
Following the BREXIT vote the EU-US Trade agreement also known as The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is said to be floundering.
At the G20 this weekend the official communique stated that Globalisation needs to be sold to the masses. Rising populism threatens Big Business — Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump are a step too far.
There is a bit of a paradox at play here.
Businesses and governments are supposed to serve both consumers and citizens.
But has government gotten so into bed with business that it now fears a backlash?
And what of these populist candidates?
Some of them — especially the Tea Party — are funded by Big Business.
Alt-Left
I remember hearing Webster Tarpley in 2008 saying that the only way to get at Obama was to attack him from the left.
That is what we’ve seen played out over the last 8 years.
In the US Big Business has got behind the most extreme side of the Republican Party. The same model has been exported to the UK.
The FT ran an editorial on Monday in which they actually referred to the limits of deregulation. I thought I was hallucinating:
Hannan spearheaded the Brexit campaign from Brussels.
He famously surprised Newsnight presenter Evan Davis the day after the Brexit vote by saying he didn’t think Brexit meant an end to free movement of labour.
Why would a Tory MEP as passionately devoted to both EU-US relations and Brexit be prepared to go on TV straight after an immigration-dominated campaign and say he believes in free movement of labour?
Foreign Firms
And where does this leave us in relation to the foreign takeover of another UK firm?
Foreign firms are obviously in favour of free movement of labour but not that keen on regulation.
So if the UK deregulates even further in favour of corporations and away from employees, then I can’t see the Japanese or any other government complaining.
Here is an article from today by George Monbiot on the current state of play re: TTIP and its ugly Canadian sister CETA.
For anyone interested in finding out more about TTIP & CETA there is a facebook group, a website, and a couple of mailing lists for general trade issues and for organising actions.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
Handing €1.1 trillion of public money to ANONYMOUS bankers with no publicly available audit trail is an act so corrupt as to be beyond comprehension.
Yet that is what has happened to residents of that well known museum — the European Union.
Inventing Money
The European Central Bank, owner of the world’s third biggest money printing machine — behind the Federal Reserve’s and the People’s Bank of China’s — has already printed and distributed the best part of a trillion Euros to private financial institutions in exchange for various bonds over a two year period.
In November 2014 just as they started what became known as their Quantitative Easing (ECB QE) programme, I asked them to publicly state exactly which bonds they were printing money to buy.
Seeing as they were spending billions of euros of public money per month during a time of extreme austerity – it felt normal that EU citizens be told how the money was being spent.
Disclosure
The only information the public had been told at that time was that the ECB were buying repackaged bank loans (Covered Bonds) and Asset Backed Securities (ABSs) in order to stop deflation and maintain inflation at 2%.
But the question remains: What happened to the money?
Groupthink
Bizarrely the woman who runs the European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, has a reputation for being a fair-minded adjudicator.
This week the Irish papers portrayed O’Reilly as a friend of transparency who had rebuked the Irish Central Bank and the ECB for not publishing their correspondence during the Irish Bailouts of 2010.
If only those newspapers had known how O’Reilly has sided with commercial confidentiality and non-disclosure of the multibillion Euro QE recipients.
O’Reilly ruled in favour of the ECB without once consulting me — the complainant — to find out why I had brought the case or to let me challenge the groupthink logic of her flawed judgment.
Too little, too late
Ironically on the date of the ruling (18th July 2016) the ECB itself announced that another slice of its QE programme, the Corporate Bond Purchase Programme, would publish its ISIN codes.
This is a screenshot of the paywalled Financial Times story with the announcement about the new stance on ISIN codes.
How funny that I had to wait 18 months to get a definitive ‘no’ on receiving the ISIN codes for the Covered Bond and ABS QE programme, only for the Corporate Bond Purchase Programme to publish its ISIN codes on the very same day.
A Pyrrhic Victory perhaps?
Time will Tell.
Corruptissima respublica, plurimae leges
The most corrupt state, the most laws – Tacitus
My feeling is that the ECB don’t want to the public to know how much they are protecting the very same German financiers that benefited from the ECB’s imposition of austerity, deregulation and privatisation policies in southern Europe.
Just as the IRA and Baader Meinhoff are known for their politically inspired terror campaigns in the 1970s so has Deutsche Pfandbriefe exported financial terrorism throughout Europe from its tax avoiding, financial engineering Dublin Headquarters as of the early 2000’s when it re-domiciled to save cash.
ECB QE and commercial confidentiality for public money are the very definition of double standards and, in this case, perpetuate the myth that North Europeans are honest and that everyone else is corrupt.
I appreciate that this is not something many people are willing to accept – such is the scale of our programming.
Just as with PPP / PFI in the UK, commercial confidentiality and financial engineering remain the respectable face of corporate fascism and fraud.
No newspaper mentioned her U-turn on TTIP at the time. One political journalist told me he remembered the pathetic Demarty assurance she received from the European Commission on how TTIP would not affect the NHS.
Political Pirouette
Wollaston has now performed a perfect political pirouette and gone back to Remain.
Like a blend of Clare Short leaving the Blair administration only after the Iraq War had been declared, and Iain Duncan Smith leaving the government after destroying so many lives through austerity, Wollaston has jumped ship, on both occasions, after doing the British people much more harm than good.
Fox is a well known Thatcherite along with his colleagues John Redwood, John Whittingdale, and Oliver ‘Privatising the World’ Letwin.
Brexit & TTIP
TTIP is bad for the NHS as it is designed to open it up to US Health Insurance firms.
And the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission are heavily captured by the City of London Corporation. Liam Fox is right to say that it doesn’t look as though they will change path.
But it would be very dangerous to put the Brexit camp in charge of the country.
The fact that Fox thinks the City of London Corporation and the EU are not Neo-Liberal enough is a fair sign of what he has planned for the NHS.
Attempting to reform the undemocratic EU from within will be hard – but much easier than negotiating with Fox.
Breitbart 
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the Guardian 
www.thetimes.co.uk 
Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism & Lipid Research 
The Atlantic 
Golem XIV - Thoughts 
Irish Examiner 
www.amazon.co.uk 
POLITICO 
I Am Incorrigible 
London Conversation 
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LBC 
WSJ 
Washington Monthly 
U.S. 
www.ft.com 
independent 
The Independent 