Norman Dodd, modern hero

If you needed any more proof that the tax-exempt foundations of the world are part of a larger, very nasty conspiracy, check out Norman Dodd, who was privy to a lot of inside information.

Fritz Springmeier - Legend

Phew. I'm not a Christian, but I know quality when I see it in a person. I know a courageous man, and a deeply good man. This guy has gone to prison as a result of what he has revealed. For robbing a bank. Just watch a few minutes of this and you will see what a ridiculous notion that is.
Incendiary - this guy is smart, incisive, and backs up what he says endlessly. But holy shit - what he says, well - you will see everything differently afterwards.

Not really a secret, then...

For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

David Rockefeller, Memoirs

Something fishy about fish

From the Bed Breakfast & Conflict:

'Profound' decline in fish stocks shown in UK records

Over-fishing means UK trawlers have to work 17 times as hard for the same fish catch as 120 years ago, a study shows.

Researchers used port records dating from the late 1800s, when mechanised boats were replacing sailing vessels.

In the journal Nature Communications, they say this implies "an extrordinary decline" in fish stocks and "profound" ecosystem changes.

Four times more fish were being landed in UK ports 100 years ago than today, and catches peaked in 1938.

Knock me down with a feather. You mean the Common Fisheries Policy hasn't helped us?

"Over a century of intensive trawl fishing has severely depleted UK seas of bottom living fish like halibut, turbot, haddock and plaice," said Simon Brockington, head of conservation at the Marine Conservation Society and one of the study's authors.

My goodness. But when they chucked in the CFP at the eleventh hour as we were to join the union, surely it was for our benfit?

Philip MacMullen, head of environmental responsibility at the UK's industry-funded sustainability organisation Seafish, suggested that accenting the historical picture could obscure more recent improvements.

"It could be correct but I don't know, and I don't think the data support the findings," he said.

Fish such as plaice have been fished further and further afield
"But it's old news. Fifteen years ago we started understanding how badly management was working, and 10 years ago we started doing something about it."

Wonderful doublethink: "Probably not true, but it's old news". Que?

Whereas UK fishermen tend to blame the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) for their economic problems, the authors of this study say it proves that depletion stems from mismanagament well before the CFP came into existence.

"There's nothing basically wrong with the CFP and not much wrong with the scientific research they receive," commented Dr MacMullen.

Yes, what would the fishermen know? They only do it for a living. Whereas DOCTOR MacMullen, who is a doctor and therefore an expert and an authority - he knows.
Yes, there's nothing much wrong with the CFP. I can think of a couple of things though. Firstly, it has created a commons in the waters, hence its name. There is a term in economics known as the "tragedy of the commons." If everyone has the right to farm or fish a given area, it will be destroyed.
Secondly, once it became clear that this was exactly what was happeneing, the EU introduced quotas. These meant that fishermen had to throw back millions of dead fish back into the ocean, as they weren't allowed to take them to shore.
We live on an island in an area of formerly extreme maritime abundance. But we import most of our fish from overseas now. And it's mostly pretty expensive. Oysters were once a food of the poor.
Yes, there's nothing basically wrong with the CFP. There's everything wrong with it. Indeed, it's so twisted and profoundly wrong that it amounts to an act of war - against us the people, against the environment, against the life that was once in our seas, against common sense, and everything worth a damn. Bit like the EU.

Recent headlines

Two equally remarkable observations regarding the subtleties of the environment and its myriad complexities:

Volcanic ash cloud: Global warming may trigger more volcanoes
Climate change could spark more ''hazardous'' geological events such as volcanoes, earthquakes and landslides, scientists have warned.

So far, so much hot ash. But how about this:

Women to blame for earthquakes, says Iran cleric
Women behaving promiscuously are causing the earth to shake, according to cleric, as Ahmadinejad predicts Tehran quake

Now that's a bit more plausible, albeit in a metaphorical kind of way.

Heroes & heroin

Classic. You actually have to laugh:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO commanders in the unusual position of arguing against opium eradication, pitting them against some Afghan officials who are pushing to destroy the harvest.

I like the way they call it "opium", by the way, without once mentioning the more emotive word "heroin."

“Marja is a special case right now,” said Cmdr. Jeffrey Eggers, a member of the general’s Strategic Advisory Group, his top advisory body. “We don’t trample the livelihood of those we’re trying to win over.”

Genius. Just like our own domestic growers of weed. Oh, hang on.

United Nations drug officials agree with the Americans, though they acknowledge the conundrum. Pictures of NATO and other allied soldiers “walking next to the opium fields won’t go well with domestic audiences, but the approach of postponing eradicating in this particular case is a sensible one,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, who is in charge of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime here.

Yes I'm sure he is. In charge of getting the drugs and committing the crimes.

The argument may strike some as a jarring reversal; in the years right after the 2001 invasion, tensions rose as some Afghan officials vehemently resisted all-out American pressure to stop opium production.

Yes, but that was when America didn't have a claim on any of the poppies, silly.

Afghanistan now produces 90 percent of the world’s opium. And one way or another the opium trade supports an estimated 1.4 million households in the country, which has a population of 25 million to 30 million. It also provides enormous amounts of money to the Taliban, with a recent United Nations study estimating the insurgents had earned as much as $600 million in taxes from farmers and traffickers just from 2005 to 2008.

Well, 90 per cent is quite a lot. Must be pretty lucrative, really. For whoever's, you know, overseeing the racket.

The farmers themselves do not get rich on the harvest.

Not the farmers, then.