statism watch

Flashback: Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests | Researchers working on swine flu ‘vaccine corn’ | Lessons of 1976: swine flu, fear, mass vaccinations, wasted millions | Illinois-based Baxter working on vaccine to stop swine flu outbreak in Mexico | ‘Accidental’ Contamination Of Vaccine With Live Avian Flu Virus Virtually Impossible | Officials investigate how bird flu contaminated vaccines in Europe | Vaccine Court: Autism Debate Continues | Revealed: The serious health concerns about the cervical cancer jab | Vaccines Found to Cause Diabetes in Children | Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland | Vaccine-linked polio hits Nigeria

Kurt Nimmo, PrisonPlanet.com
June 1, 2009

The French government will spend nearly a billion euros on a mandatory flu vaccination this autumn, a French website reported on May 30. “France is preparing a battle plan without precedent for this autumn, including an obligatory vaccination campaign for all French of more than 3 months of age,” writes Marie-Christine Tabet for Le Journal du Dimanche. “According to our information, the State will place an order for 100 million units of influenza vaccine from three laboratories (GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi and Novartis).”

On May 15, Bloomberg reported that France, the UK, Belgium and Finland agreed to buy about 158 million shots from London-based Glaxo and Baxter International Inc.

According to the World Health Organization at the United Nations, production of up to 4.9 billion doses of a swine flu vaccine a year would be possible.

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Fight like a brave / Don’t be a slave / No one can tell you you’ve got to be afraid – The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Flashback: New border rules create ‘invisible Berlin Wall’: mayor | RCMP and US Coast Guard to integrate as Canada signs border pact with Homeland Security | New US border technology directed at insidious threat: Canadians | US Homeland Security forced to retract statement accusing Canada of importing 9/11 terrorists | Predator drones patrolling border irk Manitoba MLA | Homeland Security Assuming Broad Powers, Turning Swaths of U.S. into “Constitution-Free Zone” | Surveillance on the Great Lakes: U.S. tightens security along border | Drivers licences with chips spark heated debate | Border ‘two-headed monster,’ industry minister says | Canada, U.S. agree to use each other’s troops in civil emergencies | U.S. Northern Command, Canada Command establish new bilateral Civil Assistance Plan

CBC News
June 1, 2009

Canadian authorities shut down a border crossing into the United States at Cornwall, Ont., Monday morning after Mohawk leaders from the nearby Akwesasne territory warned they would not tolerate guns in their community.

Talks on the weekend between Mohawk officials and the Canadian Border Services Agency broke down over the issue of arming guards assigned to posts on Cornwall island, which is in the middle of Akwesasne, a territory that straddles Quebec, Ontario and New York State.

The border guards in Cornwall were set to start carrying 9-mm handguns Monday morning, under a new federal policy enacted across the country. Instead, guards left their posts at midnight Sunday, citing safety concerns, after hundreds of Mohawks set up camp near the border to protest the gun policy.

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Don’t worry, new and improved electric cattle prods are being developed for use on the public should they, say, become upset in an airport concourse, sit in the wrong seat at a football game, get scared when police burst unannounced into their bedrooms, question giving over their children to the state, kick the godlike cops when they’re being abused in a prison cell, try to rescue their fathers from drowning, and so on ad nauseam. (See more links at end of article.)

Flashback: Quebec orders police to turn in Tasers | Some tested Tasers fire stronger current than company says: CBC/Radio-Canada probe | Chicago study calls Taser’s safety claims into question

CBC News
June 1, 2009

The RCMP is pulling all older model M-26 Tasers from service nationwide after the B.C. government announced Monday such weapons don’t meet the manufacturer’s specifications.

B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman ordered the province’s RCMP service to pull all 578 of its older-model M-26 Tasers from service after testing showed the same models used by municipal police forces, sheriffs and corrections officers didn’t meet the manufacturer’s specifications 80 per cent of the time.

The province’s decision prompted the Mounties to issue a statement from Ottawa saying the force is removing all its M-26 stun guns from active service “until each unit can be tested.”

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Frikking laser beams? The ‘War on Terror’ has moved into a new phase – self-satirization. Although this case is ludicrous enough on its face – another two impressionable twenty year olds swept into insurgent fantasies on websites well infiltrated by informants and serving as platforms to ‘groom clueless patsies’ – it is not difficult, after a little digging, to expose the glaring manipulation going on here. From the browbeating of the FBI to extract Ahmed’s most ludicrous daydreams as evidence, to the mysterious and unidentified third party assisting in the paintball ‘training’ in North Georgia (as revealed by NEFA, the well-connected intel community thinktank who also tellingly leaked the Toronto 18’s paintball video to the web), to their trip to Toronto to meet members of the ‘Toronto 18′, itself organized and directed by no less than three moles, this case too follows the by now well-worn formula by which domestic terror is organized and abetted by federal police forces to buttress flagging public interest in aggressive wars half a world away. But apparently these details aren’t important enough to include in the media’s coverage of the issue.

Flashback: How MI5 blackmails British Muslims | New York “Terror Plot” Another Government Provocateured Set-Up | Toronto 18 Terror case: RCMP agent Shaikh was instigator who broke law: defence | Five muslims face life for Fort Dix ‘terror plot’ orchestrated by FBI | IntelCenter Releases Video of Former CIA Employee Zawahiri Threatening America | American Intelligence Contractors Leak Canadian Toronto 18 ‘Terror Training’ Video to Web | Latest Toronto 18 ‘Terror’ Wiretaps Confirm Youths Goaded by Reservist, Paid Police Informant | Australian ‘Terror Plot’ Case Bears Remarkable Similarities to ‘Toronto 18′ | FBI Informant in British terror trial given immunity, proceedings raise question of what MI5 knew about 2005 London bombings | Terror accused refuses to discuss links to Pakistan secret service, family threatened

CBC News
June 1, 2009

This is really happening, and it’s being implemented on an international scale. If you appreciate the freedom of inquiry that the Internet has provided us with this past decade, you’d better do something about it – call your member of Parliament and advise them in the strongest possible terms that you will not support state regulation of the free Internet for the purposes of ‘cybersecurity’ – a complete sham – or any other.

Flashback: Cybersecurity Is Framework For Total Government Regulation & Control Of Our Lives | Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | Next up for France: police keyloggers and Web censorship | France passes ‘three strikes’ Internet surveillance law | EU wants ‘Internet G12′ to govern cyberspace | UK Home Secretary has secret plan to surveil, ‘Master the Internet’ | New law to give police access to online exchanges | Australia to Implement Mandatory Internet Censorship | CRTC to consider Internet regulation, invites public comment | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy”

Chris Williams, The Register
June 1, 2009

Officials aim to release strategy this summer

Security and intelligence officials plan to publish a UK version of Barack Obama’s cybersecurity and defence review before the summer Parliamentary recess, according to sources close to the work.

The US announced its new strategy on Friday following an intensive 60-day investigation of vulnerabilities in government and the private sector.

Obama said computer networks would now be treated as a “strategic national asset” and announced a new senior post in his administration to oversee their defence. It was also reported – but not detailed in the published strategy – that a new arm within the Pentagon will conduct both offensive and defensive network warfare.

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The state is absorbing the real economy. This is a cardinal sign of a republic in its death throes. If we don’t pull out of this pattern, we can expect to see the use of various forms of emergency measures next, like the provisions in the John Warner Defence Act passed by the administration of George W. Bush. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. (Note: Though the emergency powers of the bill HR 5122 were repealed in the text of the subsequent 2008 bill ‘National Defence Authorization Act’ HR 4986, Bush attached a signing statement stating he would not be bound by the terms of this repeal. President Obama’s position on this is presently unknown.)

Flashback: 10 U.S. banks fail stress test, but regulators confident | Fed says U.S. banks breezed through stress tests | US govt considers becoming bank shareholder | US to put conditions on bank bailout repayments | Which Banks Will Rule? | Wall Street’s Big Takeover | Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout | UK government takes control over Lloyd’s bank | Greenspan backs bank nationalisation | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

Bradley Keoun, Bloomberg
June 1, 2009

Citigroup could be used as a tool for social policy

June 1 (Bloomberg) — When financial stocks slumped in February to the lowest level in at least 17 years, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Congress the government might end up owning “substantial” stakes in the country’s biggest banks.

Three months later, New York-based Citigroup Inc. may be the only large bank that has to accept his offer.

Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and seven other firms judged to need extra capital by the Fed’s “stress tests” plan to raise the required $69.1 billion through a combination of share offerings, asset sales, private securities exchanges and earnings. They will do anything to escape the government meddling that probably awaits Citigroup, said Philip Orlando, who helps manage $410 billion as the New York-based chief equity strategist of Federated Investors Inc.

“You never want to have the government involved in your business,” said Orlando, whose firm owns 7.3 million JPMorgan Chase & Co. shares and 1,483 shares of Citigroup. “They’re not businessmen; they’re bureaucrats. They don’t understand capitalism, they don’t understand the profit motive and they don’t understand the financial industry.”

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Flashback: Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | Put NSA in Charge of Cyber Security, Or the Power Grid Gets It | Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated By Spies | Pentagon spending millions to fix cyberattacks | Should Obama Control the Internet? | Cybersecurity law would give feds unprecedented net control | Munk Centre researchers discover botnet, call for international cyberspace ‘legal regime’ | NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to ‘Grave Peril’, Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress | Do We Need a New Internet? | Defense Contractors See $$$ in Cyber Security | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy” | Law Professor tells tech conference: plans to shut down Internet already on deck

Paul Joseph Watson, Kurt Nimmo, PrisonPlanet.com
June 1, 2009

Surveillance grid will be allied with “smart” technology to create a behemoth of big brother management of our behavior and consumption

The Obama administration’s new Cybersecurity system will only make the Internet more vulnerable to attack, while creating the framework for a massively upgraded government surveillance grid that will control and regulate every aspect of our daily lives through the implementation of “smart” technology.

Obama’s announcement of the new cybersecurity grid dovetails with a recently introduced Senate bill, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, that would hand the president the power to shut down the entire Internet in the event of a “cybersecurity” crisis.

“The bill’s draft states that “the president may order a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic” and would give the government ongoing access to “all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access,” reports Raw Story.

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So that’s it – GM is up on blocks in the chop shop. Let’s just wait and see if that loan gets repaid and if the stock is actually divested. Will they shop around for another European partner to sell off additional parts of the company as the industry continues its consolidation?

Update (2009/06/03): A Chinese firm has just acquired Hummer.

Flashback: Germany OKs Magna bid to acquire GM’s Opel

Tony Van Alphen, Toronto Star
June 1, 2009

Ailing automaker seeks court protection today

Canadian taxpayers will provide reeling General Motors Corp. with $9.5 billion (U.S.) in aid and take a 12 per cent stake in the once mighty automaker, which will seek court protection from creditors today.

In the biggest corporate rescue package in Canadian history, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty will announce in Toronto this afternoon the repayable loan and what taxpayers will get in preferred and common stock under a restructuring plan to save the automaker and turn it into the “New GM.”

GM, once the biggest company in the world, will file for court protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in New York but it hopes to emerge in 60 to 90 days. It is not clear if GM of Canada Ltd. will file for protection here.

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Flashback: Fiat aims to be global powerhouse by acquiring Chrysler, Opel

CBC News
May 1, 2009

A federal bankruptcy judge in New York has approved the sale of most of U.S. automaker Chrysler LLC’s assets to Italy’s Fiat SpA.

Arthur Gonzalez said in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court late Sunday that he approved the sale, the major piece of a plan orchestrated by a federal auto task force.

The approval will allow Chrysler to sell its assets, including factories and dealerships, to a newly formed incarnation of itself, Chrysler Group.

The plan gives a 55 per cent stake of the new company to a union-run trust for retirees, a 20 per cent stake to Fiat that can ultimately grow to 35 per cent, and smaller stakes to the U.S. and Canadian governments. (more…)

This is absolutely disgusting – a means by which to export the first world’s pollution to the developing world under the imprimatur of the United Nations and ‘global warming’. And moreso once you realize that the founders and two primary stakeholders of the Carbon Exchange are Al Gore and Hank Paulson (former secretary of the treasury and one of the men responsible for kicking off the economic bailouts, another massive fraud). The scope and scale of this scam is almost unbelievable, we realize, but all one has to do is look. In fact, based on the by now obvious conflict of interest the UN has around the issue of anthropogenic global warming, it would be advisable to regard any pronouncement from the UN’s climate body, the IPCC, with grave suspicion. To judge by the UN’s actions in recent months, much of the current geopolitical imbroglio looks like nothing less than a massive hostile corporate takeover of the international economy. Do you buy it? Discuss this in our forums. (Incidentally, they put fluoride in the water in Canada as well.)

Flashback: Global warming alarmists out in cold | Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking | Nature, not just man, to blame for global warming: scientists | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity | Genetically Modified Seeds: Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach | EU calls for global carbon trading system to fight climate change | India to create national spy agency in wake of Mumbai attacks | IPCC caught with false figures, doubt cast on accuracy of global temperature record | The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops | Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry ‘carbon ration cards’, say MPs | CEOs call for ‘aggressive’ action on climate change

Nadene Ghouri, Daily Mail UK
June 1, 2009

In the fields around this giant chemicals factory in Gujarat, the barren soil smells of paint stripper and the water from the well makes you gag. So why has it been given tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer-funded UN ‘green reward points’, which are traded hungrily on the financial markets at huge profit?

Farm worker Radha in the cotton fields beneath Gujarat Fluorochemicals: she claims her plants have been affected by chemicals from the nearby factory

The farmers, faces wizened and browned from hours in the harsh Gujarati sun, lower a bucket into a well. It’s a solid-brick cylinder 100ft deep. The sun is high in the sky, beating down on the scorched earth. In the baked fields, maize and cotton have been planted. But none of the crops look very healthy. Leaves are wilted and tinged brown. Nothing has been watered for months.

Radha, a tough, sinewy widow and the only female farmer here, says that the well, which draws from deep groundwater, used to adequately supply the village and surrounding farms.

‘We have plenty of water – but water is the problem,’ she says.

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