Noel Hodson Blog: July 2013

Saturday, 27 July 2013

"NAIL ONE HAND TO THE DOOR"

"WE MUST PROTECT THE CITY OF LONDON"
UK PRIME MINISTER RT. HON. DAVID CAMERON MP

LOAN SHARKS

PAY-OFF ALL THE LOANS

The pay-day lenders' PR machines are working overtime to fight off the Christian's threat. On TV news last night an anonymous, "randomly selected" lady shopper made a good case for WONGA loans at 5,000%, saying in effect "I've found payday borrowing very useful - And it never did me any harm."

Unlike the true-life story I tell of a "Journeyman" backstreet moneylender seeking tax advice from us in 1960, the interviewed TV lady presumably never had one of her hands nailed to her back door by a loan-shark, to remind her to pay on his return. This psychopathic black-belt karate expert charged a crippling, evil 30% - just about the limit of what an English Court would then accept before clapping him in irons. His "customers" were working class housewives home alone all day while their men were at work. We did not take him on as a client.

5% CAP - The loan-shark "industry" justifies its usurious charges because of the percentage of defaults. It does not seem to occur to anyone that if the rate was 5% (ten times Base Rate) instead of 5,000% then borrowers would default less. The industry does of course thrive on defaults and roll-overs to extort their highest charges and lock in the most profitable "regular customers" at the limits of the borrowers'' endurance. Slavery and Indentured labor was easier and kinder for the victims. Today's locked in victims are bled dry for decades in a depressed, living hell - with the whole of the Justice System and its enforcers ranged against them. There is no escape. It is a life-sentence.

Today's newspapers reveal that many "respectable" investment houses have fueled payday lenders; including The Welcome Trust that pitched in a $100 million investment - then two months later the Welcome employee who made the investment moved to WONGA and is now heading up WONGA's global expansion, starting with India - targeting hundreds of millions of the poorest people on Earth. Will the combined world religions urge their 5 billion strong congregations to get angry and stop this evil?

I wrote last year to Sir Mervyn King, head of the Bank of England, asking him to take over all UK payday loan accounts, about $1.7 billion, and re-lend to the borrowers at 5%. Then withdraw all loan-shark licenses. The City and Wall Street would barely notice such a small amount - being just one-tenth of their annual bonuses. The relief to suffering, bullied families would be a major triumph for Christian Charity and Love thy Neighbor - at no cost to the nation. But we, We The People, do all prefer to have low-caste people to bully and hate - to pay less than a Living Wage and pursue into penury.

Do the maths - as Americans say - if ALL loans from mortgages to credit cards to payday are capped at 5% APR, then because of the multi-layered sandwich of financing supply chains being ten-steps on average, ALL consumer prices, from homes to breakfast cereals, would fall by 25%. The "losers" would be those who rely on The Price of Money at its present ludicrously expensive levels. The money-economy, the paper-economy, the simple recording of transactions in the real-economy is a vast burden and drain on our productivity, siphoning away the life blood of the world - including the illicit frozen $32 trillion (80 million ten year jobs) in tax-havens.

THE WORLD, THE MONEY-ECONOMY, URGENTLY NEEDS TO DISCOVER ITS MORAL COMPASS. WE NEED HEROES LIKE JUSTIN WELBY, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. MAYBE POPE FRANCIS WILL STAND UP AND BE COUNTED - WHERE ARE THE ALL THE OTHER RELIGIOUS, ETHICAL AND MORAL PEOPLE? COUNTING THEIR INVESTMENT DIVIDENDS FROM WONGA PERHAPS?

MONEY WARS

A 5% CAP is a good thing. Sign this petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/?sbc

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/29/payday-loans-debt

STELLA CREASY MP – CAMPAIGN AGAINST LOANSHARKING.

http://www.workingforwalthamstow.org.uk/

Friday, 26 July 2013

CHRISTIANS WITH MORALS - SHOCK

MONEY WARS

PROTECT FINANCIAL SERVICES PROFITS

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rev. Justin Welby, has just vowed to help expand neighborhood credit unions banks and to compete loan-sharks out of business, which is a unique moral stand by any religious leader, ...worldwide. Pope Francis at Copacabana Beach in Brazil has just urged people to take to the streets for social justice and to fight inequality.

What is going on? Though these announcements are extremely welcome, western religious leaders have not given any moral social lead for at least a hundred years. Morality has quite simply not been their remit. They have been very firmly and clearly part of The Establishment - beating beggars, harassing vagrants, cozying up to Hitler and Mussolini, blaming the unemployed, praying daily for the good health and souls of fat and stupid national governors, and investing the Churches' vast wealth in, among other investments ...loan sharking. Their motto has unequivocally been "Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's ...and give him any things that you think are yours, as well."

When UK Uncut set up camp outside St Paul's Cathedral, London, to protest against The City /Wall Street's naked greed, a priest had to resign his senior post at St Paul's before adding his voice against the financiers.

Specifically - Archbishop Welby, an ex-oil and banking executive, is attacking the gross immorality of WONGA, a pay-day money lender built in the UK after the Reagan/Thatcher 1983 Big Bang, on American Mafia loansharking principles - licensed by the UK Government and stoutly defended by The House of Commons, The House of Lords, The Courts and ultimately The Police (to make defaulters homeless and imprison them for debt) and of course by PM David "We must defend The City" Cameron.

WONGA traps the very poorest in society, those with too little money to eat every day, who, come Wednesday, are forced to supplement their employers' state subsidized, below Living Wage pay, with a loan from WONGA who charge a legally enforced 5000% APR (five-thousand-percent). WONGA is one of many - they are legion. Below Living Wage means too little to live on; great for the boss but the peasants can't feed the kids - its a wonderful capitalist inescapable killing man-trap.

LOANSHARK'S 2018% FOR 17 YEARS One rural UK victim borrowed $1,000 and over 17 years of bullying he paid $150,000 to the loan-sharks. The debt was eventually cancelled by a court - not because it was illegal or immoral but ...because the lender was not properly licensed.

All the Holy Books of all religions abhor usury. Jesus famously drove the money-changers from the temple. Today's loan-sharks buy money in bulk at 0.5% and sell it at 10, 20, 1,000, and, at 5,000% at 10,000 times (ten thousand times) the cost - smilingly approved by the majority of citizens. "Not enough bread? Let them eat cake ...or chew shit".

Will all spiritual leaders stand up and be counted and join Archbishop Welby's new campaign? Do any religious or secular philosophies approve of loan-sharking?

Christianity: 2.1 billion
Islam: 1.5 billion
Financial Services 1.3 billion
Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
Hinduism: 900 million
Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
Buddhism: 376 million
primal-indigenous: 300 million
African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
Sikhism: 23 million
Juche: 19 million
Spiritism: 15 million
Judaism: 14 million
Baha'i: 7 million
Freemasons 5 million
Jainism: 4.2 million
Shinto: 4 million
Cao Dai: 4 million
Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
Tenrikyo: 2 million
Neo-Paganism: 1 million
Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
Scientology: 500 thousand
Psychotherapists: 200 thousand - USA 93,000
Humanists: Not known

A 5% CAP is a good thing. Sign this petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/?sbc

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/29/payday-loans-debt

STELLA CREASY MP – CAMPAIGN AGAINST LOANSHARKING.

http://www.workingforwalthamstow.org.uk/

Monday, 22 July 2013

LYNTON CROSBY'S PORN

"NOTHING UP MY SLEEVE"

17TH JULY 2014 - The UK Government has used the public's loathing of child abusers to shoehorn in, literally overnight, a new 1984 Total Surveillance law - DRIP - which requires all telephone and internet providers to retain all records of all telecoms and internet use on all citizens, in perpetuity. And, of course, to give total access to government agencies. This contrasts with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's and EU demands that the US (and the UK) stop meta-data and personal e-spying on family, friends and foes alike.

Conservative PM, David Cameron, insists that he and DRIP are keeping us all safe in beds - safe from Terrorists and Sex Abusers; and that "IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE, then you have nothing to fear" - the assurance offered by all mad dictators and secret police. This coincides with a new inquiry into sex abuse by senior UK political figures - allegedly including top Tory figures - who among other unpleasant habits beat and sodomised little boys trapped in government "Care Homes", from about 1950 to date; probably all Friends of Jimmy Savile.

To demonstrate the urgent need for DRIP, UK police have, on the same day the snooping law was passed, arrested 660 UK pedophiles who have been accessing and swapping vile images of abused children. Only 39 of those arrested were previously on the Sex Offenders register. A police investigator for OPERATION NOTARISE said there are 50,000 Brits who use such illegal criminal pornography. An academic expert from UCL, on BBC Newsnight 16th July, claimed that 1 in 6 UK children are sexually abused; which is so unlikely that he ought to check his data and insane calculations.

FUTURIST VIEW - So, what are the consequences? Government will know what all citizens are doing on-line and no records will be deleted. Any attempt to block surveillance and keep business confidential will be an immediate target for zealous snoopers. This will accelerate the growth of the unhackable (so far) INTERNET 2 called MESHNET and other wireless networks. It will also enable TAX COLLECTORS to gather cast iron evidence of tax and money frauds going back decades, which will cause a run on the world's 74 tax-havens. On-shoring will greatly accelerate from now - in 2014. For child-abusers, terrorists and tax-evaders there is nowhere safe to hide.

************************

PLAYING THE PAEDOPHILE PORN CARD - AGAIN!

22 JULY 2013 - British Prime Minister David Cameron this weekend played the pedophile porn card, yet again, to divert media attention away from his Australian adviser Lynton Crosby, who currently drives UK government policy. Lynton Crosby owns lobbying firm Crosby Textor which works for Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Energy and probably Big Everything else.

Since being inserted into the heart of Westminster, and paid huge fees by the Tory Party, Lynton Crosby has set the media attack dogs to destroy the National Health Service (NHS) and sell it to America, to sabotage Plain Packaging and other programs to dissuade 570 children a day from eventual death through smoking tobacco, to ban the relatively harmless East African Khat or Qat chewing leaves that might compete with tobacco and alcohol, to continue the long failed massively expensive socially deadly "war on drugs", which do compete with tobacco and alcohol, and to attack all forms of energy production except Big Oil and Fracking gases that massively increase global warming. (Without a spark - Natural Gas auto-ignites at 500C )

Lynton Crosby is cunningly correct. No one, except the depraved, can or does or wants to argue against protecting children and teenagers from depravity. Without producing any testable evidence, while switching the unwelcome light of the internet and the media away from his secret adviser, Cameron/ Crosby today claims on BBC radio news that 50,000 UK pedophiles collect depraved images and search for child abuse images using search terms that are so disgusting - they cannot be repeated on radio, TV, or in print. On this untested, unpublished, alleged statistical evidence he calls for search-engine companies to ban such search-terms. "Trust Me - I'm Your Prime Minister!"

This cynical alarmist political pandering to the hysterical unwashed uneducated Sun Newspaper reading and ogling masses, whose children are under attack by hordes of internet crazed pedophiles, is deeply irresponsible and will trigger a wave of depraved searches by ordinarily curious people. Cameron is constrained, in this modern enlightened age, to not openly identify a group we can be urged to attack as hate figures, such as Jews, Muslims, Gypsies, Communists, Catholics, Witches, Immigrants, Benefit Scroungers, Bed Blockers, Pensioners, the Unemployed, or his political opponents; and he may not want to start another war against Evil Foreigners or The Axis of Evil - but he /Crosby has cleverly defined the indefensible common-foe - namely, those loathsome, anonymous, sinful pornographers, who we can all love to hate. And has latched onto our deep, centuries old, religiously enforced, insane guilt that all sex is sinful. Sharia Law would purge us all clean.

Are these 50,000 pedophile searches per day? week? month? year? or decade?. No doubt GCHQ, UK or the NSA, USA who intercept all internet traffic can publish reliable, testable data. No doubt they can identify the searchers. To protect "our" children and teenagers from "legal" pornographic images, Cameron demands "default-on" porn filters, presumably from the search-engines and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as cable and telephone companies who link our modems and plug us into broadband. For adults to access porn, they will have to fill in forms to explain themselves to government internet officers of their constant need for monster masturbating materials (MMM) as in Portnoy's Complaint. As our statistics show that 100% of males and 47% of females with private internet modems have accessed or do access porn - the initially shy trickle of "switch it off" requests may come to swamp the ISPs.

Of course all pedophiles should be hung-drawn-and-quartered in the town square. Of course teenagers and adults should not risk the inevitable venereal diseases, throat cancer, deafness, blindness, baldness and the eternal fires of hell - by accessing porn; and we should all sleep, as Gulag prisoners had to, with our hands outside the bed-covers watched by CCTV. Of course all consenting adults should enjoy missionary position, healthy sex, once a month, in stable, loving heterosexual relationships. Of course sexual energy should be channeled into useful work, all pornography should be deleted and banned; all prostitution banned; all political opposition to the good intentions of our present governments banned, - and all socially divisive search-terms banned - as they are in China and Iran. But - Great Leader - get real!

What Cameron is doing is the oldest trick in the book. Shouting - "SEX ! Now that I have your attention, ignore my good friend Mr Crosby's unacceptable commercial conflicts of interest. And here is my media agenda for the next election."

The masses, most now irreligious non-believers but still deeply confused about sex, sin, shame and whether all pediatricians are pedophiles - will stampede in the desired (Uh Oh - ban "desire" from internet searches) direction. After the gutter media has stomped around in a hot dusty blind canyon with the blood pumping through their engorged organs for a few weeks - during which they will titillate us with the kind of images we must burn and news of the perverts who must be utterly destroyed (stoned to death perhaps?) - we may get back to examining the real, terrifying threats to democracy posed by vested-interest lobbyist Lynton Crosby and his ilk.

Banning search-words and increasing the already intrusive Big Brother surveillance, and having ISPs report householders to government-sin-monitors, parking attendants - or The Taliban - is a direct attack on the freedom of the internet, on its content and on self-responsibility. The "new" measures that Cameron trumpets "to protect our children" are already in place and in use - and have been since 1996. Internet Explorer has built in Search-Filters and Family Protection options; Switch Them On!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom (The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) compiles and maintains a blacklist, mainly of child pornography URLs, from which 98% of commercial Internet customers in the UK are filtered. A staff of four police-trained analysts are responsible for this work,^[4] and the director of the service has claimed that the analysts are capable of adding an average of 65-80 new URLs to the list each week, and act on reports received from the public rather than pursuing investigative research)

BILLIONS OF IMAGES ON FACEBOOK - "Depraved" pedophile materials and abuses are illegal - and GCHQ and the NSA know where all the secret-websites are - just shut them down. But who and what government agency will vet the legality of the billions of pictures posted by students and youngsters on Face Book and other social media? Will all who rate an "X" certificate be jailed and put on the Sex Offenders Register for life? Is this an editing task for the ever vigilant, God fearing Taliban? To paraphrase a famous pornography trial, proving the need for hierarchical moral guidance by superior beings:- "Would you want your wife or your servants to see this?"

Hey Lynton - me old cobber, sport, mate and antipodean cultural attache! What next? Jail homosexuals and cut off their depraved private parts? We have done internet policing and responsible parenting; our children are not in danger - so - Get your sneaky Big-Fee-soiled hands off our NHS, off our Energy Supplies and off all the institutions that made and make the UK a great country to live in. Why not Frack-off home and go Walkabout in the Bush, smoking a Camel!

Saturday, 20 July 2013

G20 - TOO BIG TO TAX?

MOTOR-CITY DETROIT IS $18 BILLION BANKRUPT.
US CITIZENS HAVE $16 TRILLION IN ILLEGAL TAX-HAVENS.

"BUT ITS VERY COMPLICATED"

The G20 nations conference this week in Moscow is trumpeted as a 'once in a century' chance to close tax-evasion loopholes. The media focus is once again directed onto digital or e-companies who shift taxable profits, repeating the PR messages that (1) trans-national e-companies with "hugely complex business models" are the primary false-accounting villains, and (2) though aggressive, their machinations are legal, and so (3) new global laws are necessary to curb false-accounting, and thus (4) no back-taxes can be levied, and thus finally (5) the 9.5 million people with $32 trillion hidden offshore, and their gangs of inventive advisers, are wholly innocent and can keep all the money offshore, pay no tax, and stay out of prison.

This is of course expensive PR bullshit of the highest order and of the deepest consequences for the global economy. If true, it won't get our money back and so won't recapitalize Detroit, the USA, the EU and OECD nations. The world economy will decline like derelict Detroit and go bust - because of false-accounting.

1) Most international companies, profitable SME's and highly paid executives between them have tens of thousands of tax-haven companies which have indulged in false-accounting since 1980. Most tax-havens were British, but are now evenly spread; all major economies have their favourites. All international business models are as equally complex as computing and telecoms; e.g. The Motor Industry, The Medical Industries, The Food Industry, Banking, J.P. MORGANS' 140 COMPANIES Insurance, Shipping, Mining, Aerospace, Energy etc - and they have all been properly accounted and audited for hundreds of years. We can count - even the profits of e-book sellers.

2) "Tax Avoidance is Perfectly Legal" DUMMY OFFSHORE COMPANIES - ONLY $79.99 Oh no it isn't! This Wall St /City PR message has been so widespread, in the last 5 years, that even otherwise intelligent politicians whose nations are owed trillions of dollars in back-taxes want to believe it. "Yes - We DO believe in fairies". But, false-accounting is false; it is lies, it is illegal.

3) The global international laws to stop false-accounting have existed since 1900 as "Double-Taxation-Agreements" between nations. Many quick-stepping, high-flying, handkerchief waving, bent bookkeepers have danced through the rules only to be tripped, fall and be taxed - and sometimes jailed. No new laws are needed; only the application by national tax-collectors of existing laws. The bent bookkeepers have bribed bent politicians and courts to stay off their cases. $32 trillion buys a lot of friends - and would employ a lot of unemployed youngsters.

4) Because the laws do exist and have existed for a century, all the back taxes avoided or evaded since 1980 can be legally claimed. With penalties and compound interest the claims will amount to the whole $32 trillion (approximately 3 times the evaded taxes). Ask any of the hundreds of local businesses pursued by the IRS or HMRC for back-taxes - the laws do exist and do bite. Detroit and OECD nations need the money repatriated.

5) The 9.5 million offshore Johnny's, concealing $32 trillion (70 million jobs for ten years) have all generated false accounting tax claims, or filed false tax-returns, to shift their assets to tax-havens with local tax-relief. The local tax-collectors can now legally, retrospectively deny false claims - and issue the tax bills - and seize the offshore assets.

BUT WHERE'S THE MONEY? Honest, innocent, wide eyed directors, bankers, lawyers and accountants declaim. PRISM knows - GCHQ knows - IBM banking computers know - The US Treasury knows - The Russian, Chinese, Pacific Rim and Middle East governments know. Debits and credits are not too complicated to track. Treasure chests are easy to find and seize. New laws are not required.

TAX-STRIKE 2013 - CLOSE TAX-HAVENS

Monday, 15 July 2013

SHOCK - DIRECTORS ARE GUILTY!

IGNORATA JURIS NON EXCUSAT Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Letter to The Guardian Newspaper, UK:

Your two 15 July 2013 articles “Negligent directors may be forced to compensate creditors” and “Ex-Goldman Sachs banker ‘Fabulous Fab' goes on trial", alongside the monotonous media mantras - the ridiculous “Tax avoidance – which is of course perfectly legal” and latterly the even more ridiculous “Electronic Trading is Different” - are part of massive City and Wall Street PR campaigns to convince the public that financial crimes since 1980 broke no laws and that to charge the culprits and get our money back needs new laws or new international agreements. This is nonsense, pedaled by organized crime.

KENNETH LAY - PRESIDENT'S FRIEND,
BUT JAILED FOR ENRON'S FRAUDS

Directors “by whatever name called” (the influential managers) have always been and are legally liable for irresponsible, dangerous, fraudulent, misleading, dishonest, false actions. The “It Is Perfectly Legal” campaign is a powerful and desperate ploy to let the criminals keep their loot and let the creditors go hang. Creditors include small suppliers, redundant workers and most OECD national treasuries, which share the loss of $32 trillion tax-evasion-capital-flight and are wracked with debt, such as the $16 trillion US fiscal deficit (35 million jobs). We are all victims and creditors of the super rich criminals who have scuttled away with society's money - their ill-gotten gains – and who hope we will turn a blind forgiving eye; and leave their fortunes intact.

On the contrary - this should be the decade of arrest, recovery and repatriation of funds. The bluffing, blustering, bullying, posturing, publicity and obfuscation by the immensely influential 0.1% offshore asset strippers and their battalions of politicians, judges, lawyers and accountants ($32 trillion buys a lot of protection) can be swept aside by determined prosecutors. Ask Bernie Madoff, ENRON's Jeffrey Skilling, Kenneth Lay and Arthur Andersen - or newspaper Canadian baron, Lord Conrad Black.

This is not the first century that massive financial thefts have been visited on the public. No new laws are needed to bring rogue directors and traders to book.

*************

A EUROPEAN UNION VIEW - JUNE 2013 - http://eurodad.org/1545767/

European companies in the paradise of lost taxes

Posted on 27/June/2013 by StephanieColin

Topics: Capital flight, Tax justice

Tags: Tags: private companies, tax havens

A new report by Eurodad member organisation CCFD-Terre Solidaire and the institute CERAS concluded that the 50 biggest companies by turnover in Europe all have a presence in tax havens around the world. The results of this investigation are timely as the fight against tax havens is now high on the political agenda at the EU, G8 and G20 levels. Thanks to increasing political mobilisation behind the issue and politicians’ recognition of the need for change, civil society’s proposals in this area are starting to be taken into account. However, this new report highlights that more ambitious measures are needed.
The report uses various different definitions of what a tax haven is. However, whichever definition is used, the authors reach the same conclusion: Europe’s top company groups are heavily present in tax havens. Through an analysis of corporate documents, the report looks more specifically at the degree of information available on companies’ subsidiaries, including those related to their presence in tax havens and the extent to which companies used country-by-country reporting.
Key findings:
Presence of the 50 largest companies in Europe in tax havens:

All of the largest 50 companies in Europe by turnover are present in tax havens; their subsidiaries in tax havens account for 29% of their overall subsidiaries abroad.
63% of the companies’ offshore subsidiaries are located in the EU.
The banking and insurance sector has the most presence in tax havens, with 12 banks only accounting for half of the most opaque offshore subsidiaries.

Transparency:

Information available in corporate activity reports about companies’ subsidiaries is scarce, with only 60% of the companies providing a full list of their subsidiaries online.
None of the 50 companies is providing proper country-by-country reporting, including at a minimum information on the activity, turnover, subsidies received and taxes paid, either per subsidiary or per country.

Recommendations:

The online publication of a full list of subsidiaries and related information on their location and activities should be made compulsory.
National beneficial owner registries should be introduced.
Country-by-country reporting should be extended to all economic sectors, as well as to all G8 and G20 countries.

These recommendations are even more crucial in the context of the G8 conclusions, which were not as ambitious as they should have been, according to the Tax Justice Network.
Read the full report (available in French only).

TAX-STRIKE 2013 - CLOSE TAX-HAVENS

Friday, 12 July 2013

TAX-STRIKE 2013 - CLOSE TAX-HAVENS

The Guardian scooped the Edward Snowden story.
Probably the best newspaper in the world.

JOIN THE TAX STRIKE. Now that everyone knows that governments know who has buried $32 trillion in tax-havens, globally equivalent to 70 million jobs, and brought the world economy to its knees - we should all withhold tax until the $32 trillion is repatriated. The rich mock us and say "Only little people pay tax". A tiny 0.1% hold tax-haven assets, built up from tax-evasion-capital-flight since 1980. Many are criminals, most are illegal tax-evaders who, up to now, have hidden their identities, thousands infest our governments and financial systems.

Keep asking - "Who in government use tax-havens?" and demand a total ban on all tax-havens. OECD governments can shut them down immediately - and bring the assets back to re-boot our economies. Passive resistance works. Organize a local tax strike.

NOW WE KNOW THAT THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE - LET'S HAVE RAPID ACTION.

The headline of the UK's Guardian Newspaper of 12th July 2013, shouts: MICROSOFT GAVE NSA ACCESS TO USERS' MESSAGES. The article reveals more from the data published by whistle blower Edward Snowden; currently thought to be living "airside" in Moscow's airport.

If this shocks you, you are one of the world's last innocents. As far back as 1996, one of my clever colleagues, who taught computer science in North America, annoyed his team by refusing to use email "because it is all bugged". It is likely that all our computers and telecoms machines contain chips that indelibly record everything - which is why computer experts advise businesses to destroy old discarded machines, however carefully they think they have deleted data. Note the few seconds it takes to download hundreds of pages in a Kindle E-book, wirelessly connected to your computer, and then imagine how rapidly everything on your machines, deleted or not, can be uploaded to government agencies. Such snooping is as old as humankind; from peeping Toms, to eavesdropping, to intercepting letters, to telephone taps, to bugging rooms, and now to collecting everything communicated across the internet. Throughout history, many people have been jailed, tortured or executed due to intercepted messages. However: "Never... In the history of Human communications ...Have so many ...And so much ...Been recorded ...So completely ...By so few."

So what does total surveillance herald for society?

Most private individuals (we need to find another term) don't care that their personal messages, web-searches, health events, finances, purchases and preferences are permanently recorded by public servants. They might care if our free societies were suddenly converted to Sharia Law - or even back to good Old Testament morality when fornicators and adulterers were (and are still) stoned to death and thieves, including bent bookkeepers and bankers, had bits of their anatomy chopped off in the public square.

Individuals will care if CCTV surveillance becomes so ubiquitous (common place) and efficient as to harass and curb all minor offenders and offences - like gun-owning, speeding, parking, jaywalking, spitting (gum), littering, drinking, drugging, over-eating, smoking, farting and going to bed late. There is no end to bureaucratic interference ...for our own good.

Of immediate concern for all IBM, Microsoft, Google, MSN, Amazon, Apple, Samsung, Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, Dell etc etc users is commercial and taxation privacy. All banking and business communications since the mid 1990's have been intercepted and, latterly, permanently recorded. The approximately 9.5 million (0.1% of us) otherwise upright world citizens and our good neighbors who have secretly stashed $32 trillion in tax-havens, (70 million jobs) will be alarmed to realize that all their bent transactions since about 1995 are all on government record. They, like us all, will wonder why the tax authorities, the IRS and HMRC for example, don't call them. The answer is that mad "Free Market Economics" has blinded all OECD governments and stayed the hand of the tax collectors. But that phase is over. They will soon be calling - so Move your Money On-Shore.

All commercial secrets - designs, patents, bribes, back-handers, revolving door deals etc have been recorded. It may be that no one (no official) has looked at the data yet. But it is on record. IBM, Big-Blue, mainframes provide 80% of all banking computers. Are IBM exempt from PRISM (US) and RIPA (UK) and TEMPORA (UK) that legally require IT companies to intercept and record our data?

The entire internet has been "photographed" quarterly since 1990 and stored in 3 geo-stable locations around the world - for posterity. It will make a wonderful historical record. Try the WAYBACK MACHINE to view your earliest website.

Because nobody really likes having broadcasting webcams secreted in their lavatories, beds and cars, I repeat my forecast - that this unprecedented bugging will cause another internet to be created - and it will be led by - is being led by - the same IT companies and spy agencies that are doing the snooping. This INTERNET 2 will be wireless and initially free of advertising, like the early years of the World Wide Web.

But how will we, We the People, be sure that INTERNET 2 is private?

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

UNMENTIONABLE TACIT TABOOS

IN 1861 LONDON HAD 8,600 PROSTITUTES.
"GENTLEMEN" BOUGHT 12 YEAR OLD VIRGINS
FOR £5 - (£600 IN TODAY'S MONEY).

Following on from readers' interest in sex and Women Bishops, I was about to write another flippant article on the insurmountable difficulties that all teachers, authorities, modern religions and most individuals have in communicating their understanding, practices, protocols and taboos on sex in general and on sexual women in particular, when I decided to research the history. Ten hours research persuades me that it is such a serious and fundamental topic, with immense consequences for all humankind that my own embarrassment and juvenile jokey evasion ought not to be allowed to further blur this most obscured subject; which few of us are able to discuss sanely and sensibly - with our partners, families, children or friends. Sex is taboo.

THE BASICS

Western laws and Judeo-Christian practices date from 3,600 years ago in The Old Testament, modified by The New Testament and the emergence of Christianity (0-33 AD) and Muhammadanism (570-632 AD). This Bible website provides an excellent overview:-

The Boundaries of Godly Sexuality (Leviticus 18:6-29)

Leviticus (written by Moses in 1512 BC in the 2nd year wandering in the wilderness) 18:6-29 : has a very simple structure and message. Its intent is to define the boundaries of godly human sexual relationships. There are three of them, which I call the inner, middle, and outer boundaries of godly sexuality. Verses 6 through 18 define the “inner boundary,” prohibiting sexual relationships with close relatives. Verses 19 and 20 define the “middle boundary,” which limits sexual relations within marriage and prohibits them outside marriage. Verses 21 through 23 define the “outer boundary” of unnatural sexual relations. Verses 24 through 29 tell us about God’s judgment upon a nation that crosses these boundaries. They clearly tell us that God’s judgment for sexual sin applies to all nations, not just the covenant nation of

Israel

. (Don Curtis - Cobb Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Kennesaw, GA.)

INCEST and INCOME ARE TABOO TOPICS

A 1975 Experiential Family Group was my first time of sitting in a silent circle with total strangers, all except me from the counselling professions. They were at ease discussing sexual matters such as Incest that I, as a good repressed Catholic, had never even considered. I was excrutiatingly embarrassed. But, after some weeks I raised the subject of Income ...and the tables were turned. None in the Group but me, an accountant, could bear to discuss money, income, capital and wealth. "Income" was without doubt a much deeper, locked down taboo than "Incest". I think it remains so today. Sex, Money and Power are three closely linked, personal subjects that are never openly discussed. Try them at your next dinner party.

My last two days research have reminded me that our sense of sexual shame and sin and laws come from our old religions which in turn were based on necessary and sensible social controls. Unbridled, uncontrolled, licentious sex breaks up families, tribes and nations - and spreads sexually transmitted diseases. No ancient or modern community could survive without rules about our sex lives.

However - Different nations and different social classes, at different times had different rules that worked well. Ancient Greeks approved love between mature men and young boys, within strict age groups, after which they married women. Ancient Israelis accepted multiple wives, concubines and slave-girls but abhorred homosexuality - it was Jesus who introduced one-wife-for-life and early Christians who advocated clerical celibacy. Muslims had multiple wives, who were locked away like herd animals, and they aimed to fill the world with Muslim babies. All societies had and have brothels and male and female prostitutes. All religions ban incest - but not entirely. Royal marriages were and are often within the family. Upright and uptight Victorians applauded puritan values while supporting every sort of male and female prostitution, in 1861 employing 8,600 prostitutes in London, with child prostitutes sold to "Gentlemen" for about £600 in today's money. The Age of Consent was 12, then 13, then 16 by 1864. Sodom and Gomorrah famously allowed all possible couplings and perversions.

God, or the Israelites, destroyed sinful Sodom. William Acton and the Contagious Diseases Acts 1864 tidied up Britain's bad habits and made homosexuality imprisonable for the first time, killing the geniuses Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing. Israelites stoned "adulterous" women and men to death, a savage punishment still meted out by Muslims in many countries (How to stone someone to death - Iranian Penal Code). In such primitive countries, Muslim women today are controlled by crudely cutting off their clitoris, to kill their sexual desire, confining them to home, refusing them education, subjecting them to instant divorce and enforcing head to toe garb, the Hijab. In the USA and Britain wives and daughters could legally be beaten with a stick, were possessions of men, confined to home and legally penniless - until The Married Woman's Property Act 1870

In largely lawless times and places, confining women was considered necessary for their protection - in civilized societies they are free to travel alone and do as they choose. In Iceland and northern Europe women have long had equal status to men, but in most societies children, particularly daughters were owned by their father, who was compensated (dowry) for his economic loss, their slave labor, when they married. Controlling other's sexuality was and is purely pragmatic, economic, or simply brutal, lustful, selfish bullying. As most women are smaller than most men - males bully and oppress females. Socially and sexually, we are little evolved from our near cousins, the large apes. And our rules are very similar to theirs - except apes don't stone adulterers to death.

All today's imposed sexual morality and laws descend from primitive taboos which were mostly based on raw survival and necessity. Some were sensible, many were and are insane. God did not make or impose the rules and He, She or It is not watching you, me or them to catch us out doing naughty things with or to our sensitive private parts. Just as we do not care how animals or shellfish conduct their sex lives, God does not care what billions of humans do with their "precious bodily fluids". The responsibility is all ours. If we indulge in unintelligent, risky or inappropriate behavior, we must take the consequences. As the human race evolves contraception, medicine and technology, and e-pornography and latter day brothels, so our sex-lives and social rules evolve to fit the new society.

The rules will keep changing and keep shocking the Hell-Fire preaching, outmoded, religious men-with-beards and women-with-wrinkles, as long as humankind keeps edging towards sanity.

Monday, 8 July 2013

"IT" is an "ABOMINATION"

MOTHER - MADONNA - WHORE - REVEREND BISHOP

WOMEN BISHOPS NEED NOT BE PLAIN

UPDATE - 14 JULY 2014 - Astonishing news:

Church of England General Synod backs women bishops

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28300618

2 mins ago - The General Synod of the Church of England votes to allow women to become bishops for first time in its history, after years of debate and ...

On BBC Radio 4 this morning a young woman vehemently lambasted the revolutionary suggestion that the Church of England General Synod, which meets today, might vote for female bishops. Challenged, by another older woman, the young lady was so convinced of the God ordained holy rights of men-only church officers that she vowed instead to break away and continue the allegedly ancient, men-only, misogynist traditions of the C of E.

Skipping over the inconvenient truths - such as fat fornicating syphilitic Henry 8th founding the C of E to (a) steal the vast wealth of the monasteries and (b) to dispose of wives he was bored with and (c) to escape the European Union; and that 70% of Church congregations, workers and supporters are women - the objecting young woman clearly has a need to be subservient to wise men. Freudians might trot out the Oedipal Complex explanation that she wants to replace her mother and sleep with her father - so she thoughtlessly hates women and worships men.

...And - what about the vote for homosexual (but non-cohabiting) bishops? Will this same-sex franchise extend to female clerics - creating non-practicing, no touching, lesbian partnerships in our Bishops' Palaces?

FORCES OF EVIL - VOTE "NO" WOMEN

But the confusion runs ever deeper and becomes ever more baffling to my seventy year old understanding of women, men, sexuality, religion and law. Since the 1960's advent of The Female Eunuch, Women's Lib and the permissive society; western society has been bombarded by feminists successfully convincing wrong thinking men like me that all males are rancid rapists and paedophiles (US pedophiles) and that all sexual advances from men to women constitute assault; and therefore all males should be castrated at birth. Born and reared as a lower class condom deprived Catholic, these feminist assertions fitted perfectly with the most profound and complete RC sex education dished out in my early youth, which was exactingly verbally economic. "IT" which was never defined, was, is and always will be "AN ABOMINATION" which was also never defined. Sinful searches of the Old and New Testament and all 26 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica hinted that such abominations included "coveting your neighbour's wife" and "spilling your seed on the ground" and "the sin of Sodom" both also undefined but for which God casually destroyed at least one entire city, nuking "every man, woman, child and the beasts of the field"; demonstrating his thoroughness; and finally, "Let he who has never sinned, cast the first stone..." which we curious, scholarly youths could unpick as involving the stoning to death of a "harlot" (undefined), who was probably excitingly female. Before TV, stoning harlots to death was a jolly sheepherders village family pastime, still applauded by zealous Muslims.

Today, 2,000 to 5,000 years later, our leaders and teachers are just as coy and mysterious about sexual activity - as 55 years ago were my mute parents, silenced teaching nuns and monosyllabic monks who daily beat knowledge into our thick hides with leather straps. UK Papal Knight Jimmy Savile "abused" some 400 girls, accosting them from 1960-2000 with "inappropriate behaviour" - which is never defined or categorized. Dozens of elderly one time TV stars, MPs, teachers and music tutors are being jailed for undefined "inappropriate behaviour" with girls and boys 30 and 40 years ago - while influential vicious, evil, sadistic rapists who in the same 20 years repeatedly attacked young boys in British government "Children's Care Homes" remain anonymous and uncharged - as did Christian clergy in Ireland, the USA, Canada and Australia. Justice and sex education would be greatly improved by precise clinical definition of these misdemeanors and appalling crimes; and by the eradication of sexual hypocrisy and of sex as "sin".

Compounding my confusion and confounding my ingrained paradigm are two reports that stand everything I ever thought I knew about women and sex on its head.

Daniel Bergner publishes science reports in What Do Women Want? reviewed in The Guardian 6 July 13, which show females are just as excited by pornography and are just as naturally promiscuous as are males. But they hide it and deny it - some even denying it to themselves. He cites the recent huge uptake by women of the pornographic sadomascochistic book Fifty Shades of Grey, as an example. Women are far more excited by the prospect of sex with a stranger - male or female - than with a known friend. Those knowledgeable, horny, crude lads behind the bicycle sheds who were certain "she is gagging for it" - were apparently right and I, with a far higher and more refined chivalrous intellect was missing out - Damn!. However, the author concedes that while science reveals their high states of arousal, women might be so socialized against promiscuity as to repress their feelings. I imagine that being beheaded by Henry 8th, stoned to death for 5,000 years - and no doubt far, far worse - has modified their natural inclinations. Male Muslims still violently repress females, just as our primitive and deeply stupid ancestors did. Anti-Female-Bishops advocates are still immured in that primitive pre-conscious state. They might find much relief in Stoning to Death Weekend Camps - disposing of wicked harlots and randy men.

The second report is from Laura Agustin, who is interviewed in New Scientist 6th July 13. She has published Sex at the Margins, a study of those very same harlots, who knuckle dragging religious zealots stone to death, and their paying customers. Contrary to all current wisdom disseminated by our governments and the gutter press, the vast majority of sex-workers enjoy their work, earn a decent living and choose to do it. The so called sex-trafficking industry which allegedly makes sex-slaves of girls and ships them in large numbers to the UK, Europe and the USA "has no basis in fact". The media and government interest in sex-slaves is "hysteria". I guess it is morbid, prurient curiosity - more people who need intelligent sex-education. Some of them will be driven by having been abused as children. So, prostitutes are not "victims", their shady customers are not abusive monsters - and further criminalizing sex-work will isolate the sex-workers, remove normal legal protection - and put them in grave danger. So, here are more examples of women who like sex and another demonstration that sexually active males are not crazed predators. Perhaps the world is becoming marginally more sane.

Finally - The Muslims: I read yesterday of a Middle-East Iranian woman, Elham Asghari, who has designed a religiously correct, modest head to toe cover, swimming costume. She has swum 20 kilometers in this heavy garment - equivalent to swimming the English Channel in sackcloth and ashes. But the lunatic dictators and mad mullahs who govern her country refuse to recognize her championship achievement "in case it encourages open seas swimming by other women". My guess is that these bullying, low-browed morons would also vote against women Bishops.

Will reality and sanity ever emerge from the swamp of primitive tribal sexual ignorance that many of we gibbering primates wallow in? Or will "IT" always be "AN ABOMINATION"?

Blue Stocking

http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/theatre/whats-on/globe-theatre/blue-stockings

‘Mental taxation in a woman can lead to atrophy, mania, or worse- leave her incapacitated as a mother. This is not an opinion. It is a fact of nature.’

Dr Henry Maudsley, British Psychiatrist

It is 1896 at Girton College, Cambridge, and Elizabeth Welsh is preparing for battle.

Thursday, 4 July 2013

REPUBLICANS AGAINST ARCTIC MELTDOWN

Loyal Americans can sleep easy in their beds again. Employees of The Republican Science Association have definitively proved to their satisfaction and publicly stated that global warming is a myth, spread by anti-American Communists and Terrorists. Even if any foreign power or disaffected Americans direct fiercely focused sunbeams, through un-American lenses that they have placed in high orbit, at the Arctic or Antarctic ice caps - it will not raise sea levels to threaten American coastal plain dwellers.

Alaskan Ex-Governor Sarah Palin, American heroine, Mother, Warrior and Deadshot, has personally pledged to shoot any willful extra icebergs that accidentally or deliberately approach American Territorial Waters; and to nuke into steam any amount of water that dares to try to increase American coastal sea levels and to put American homes at risk.

"I am forever vigilant" vowed Mrs Palin. "Have no more fears about the faulty science of global warming. We are on the case".

TAX AND ECONOMICS 29TH APR to 31 DEC 13

Wednesday, 3 July 2013

WORLD GOVERNMENT NOW

INTERNET CROWD FUNDING WORKS
CROWD POWER WILL CHANGE THE WORLD

CROWD POWER - The electronic revolution has arrived. More than 2 billion people have internet access. The five-thousand years old tribal systems are breaking down. Our problems are world-wide, global not just local. Many nations are paralyzed. Governments are gridlocked. The world is at the crossroads of chaos or progress. We must choose between global intelligent cooperation or plunging back into centuries of conflict and darkness. The internet prevents us from ignoring injustice and corruption and obliges us to face reality. The human race must embrace and apply our clever technologies or revert to medieval gangster economics and politics. We need intelligent cooperative World Government - and we need it now. If enough of us push this global agenda, local politicians will have to act and adapt or decline.

STRICTLY COME VOTING - PIVOTAL CHANGE

MANIFESTO FOR IMMEDIATE INTER-NETWORKED INTELLIGENT WORLD GOVERNMENT.

PHYSICAL HEADQUARTERS AND DEBATING CHAMBERS IN CURRENT CENTRAL SITES BUT WITH ALL BUSINESS CONDUCTED OPENLY ACROSS THE INTERNET.

1) GLOBAL PUBLIC CIVIL SERVICE - Evolve from existing models to establish an intelligent executive that can guide and effect World Government policies and ensure publication, updating and use of accurate unbiased facts and data. No more idiotic political lies, half-truths and misinformation.

2) INFORMED, EDUCATED, INDEPENDENT REFERENDUM POLITICS AND LAW MAKING - Shift from Party Politics to Informed Referendum Politics. No political parties. Evolve from existing democratic systems a global system for elected independent representatives, who can only hold office while they are publicly, actively working to promote issues in which they have expertise. PREVENT RABBLE ROUSING - Voters qualify to vote on specific issues by demonstrating they have informed themselves and considered both sides of the debate about that issue - either via the Internet or verbally at local discussion meetings. Ending the Party System allows the new independent representatives to follow their consciences and to act morally and ethically.

3) WORLD PEACE FORCE - Evolve from existing peacekeeping, military and national police forces, a major, overwhelmingly large, peace based civil order force, capable of intelligently applying the decisions of World Government and of "walking into" trouble spots in numbers sufficient to peacefully disarm combatants and criminals. Conduct all Courts and Sentences in public, with full transparency.

4) GLOBAL MONEY AND TAX SYSTEMS - Evolve from existing treasury and central bank systems a new global currency replacing all others, to operate via computing at low cost to all. Globally nationalize all credit creation and banknote printing. Cap all loans at 5% or less to keep the cost of money and goods-prices low. Ban gambling and commodity speculation by banks. Install and efficiently operate progressively distributive taxation systems, minimum wages and access to bank accounts and credit. Review constantly, hour by hour, publicly, to ensure global liquidity matches global economic activity.

5) EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATION - Formally accept that "We have worked hard to abolish work and have succeeded" and that automation has and will increasingly replace "necessity work", and therefore wages and salaries will no longer be the main routes for the majority of new citizens to join the money economy. Distribute capital wealth fairly and educate all people, all the time. Tell your children they will be educated for 120 years.

6) HEALTH, ENERGY, WATER, AIR, HOMES, FOOD, FREEDOM, POLLUTION, PROFITS - Accept that all humans have equal rights to basic assets, services and commodities and accept that to prevent wars and conflicts, good global governance requires fair distribution and access to a wide range of shared facilities. Accept that for some to "profit" others must "lose" and redefine business and organisational goals. Move away from gangster economics (me and my special gang - we exploit all outsiders).

7) TOLERANCE - Accept that all humans have differences. We are each unique and have a right to think, speak and act as we like as long as it harms no one else. This applies to religion, dress, sexual habits, tastes, diets, appearance and politics. We are each self-responsible. It is not somebody else's fault. We do not have to obey bad and mad orders. We did ask to be born. And we do choose the time and manner of our deaths.

It is time for the human race to evolve from being warring families, tribes and nations, and to embrace the Era of Intelligent Cooperation. Email me if you'd like to promote World Government Today - and (somehow - help!) I'll ask the internet giants to launch the enabling global systems. The internet generation, the scientific and electronic revolution, must assets itself. noel@noelhodson.com

Here is how the current Information Society, The Internet, The Electronic Revolution, Referendum Government - will develop.

Slide show - Futurist Forecast

TAX AND ECONOMICS 29TH APR to 31 DEC 13