Boggart Abroad: 06/04/16

Saturday, June 04, 2016

France Chaos Becoming A Threat To The Entire European Union

France, the second-largest economy and second most populous nation of the European Single Currency Group (Eurozone) has become a shambolic centre of civil unrest and is close to being a failed state: French social and economic problems are so profound they now pose a threat to the whole European Union as the chaos looks likely to spill over into other member states where public anger over economic stagnation, high unemployment, unsustainable levels of immigration and E U authoritarianism have been simmering for months. Especially at risk is Germany, according to an analysis of economic correspondents of the German daily Die Welt.

In the follow up to the ongoing labor law disputes in France, which led to violent street protests and a massive strike by the country’s railroad workers, Die Welt’s economic experts, Holger Zschaepitz and Anja Ettel have given five reasons to be worried about the country’s future.

“While everybody is talking about Brexit, the referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued membership of the European Union mainstream media is studiously ignoring the mounting problems in other nations which threaten the common goal of a powerful Europe,” the authors write in their article for Die Welt.

They mention the rise of nationalist parties in many European nations as voters have become aware that the EU obsession with 'ever closer union' will mean the end of their nations' independence. Demands for a French referendum are gaining support and a ‘Frexit Index’ — a rating of the chance of France crashing out of the Euro within the next year, is looking increasingly credible.

Recent polls suggest that 74 percent of the French expect that the Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National party and front runner in opinion polls on who will win next year's Presidential election will reach the decisive second round of the presidential elections.
One of the major concerns about France’s relationship with the Euro is the inability of their government to devalue their currency to help balance trade and “nourish” the economy. This is due to Germany having bullied other members of the single currency into tying their weaker economies to Germany's idustrial power house

According to economic analysts, in order to adjust its currency to the economic strength of the country, France needs to devalue their currency by at least ten per cent — impossible within the straitjacket of the Euro — and to restructure their labor market, which is also impossible due to EU labour laws which supersede any local laws.

Otherwise the country only has at its disposal debt-financed economic stimulus packagesand that approach has failed over the past eight years and could never be a long term solution (ask any educated person in Greece).

Until the financial crisis, debts grew synchronously in both France and Germany. Since then however, Germany has taken a curve and is now heading for a debt ratio of below 70 percent. Meanwhile, France does not have any control of its growing debt because France's Euro is linked to Germany's economy, and the debt will soon reach 100 percent of economic output.

In other words, all the French people will have to work without pay for the whole year only to pay off the debt of their country.

Surprisingly, France’s struggle with its debt comes at a time when the rate of interest charged by the European Central Bank (ECB) has never been lower. Which means things can only get worse

The socialist government is attempting to introduce legislation to end France’s traditional 35 hour working week. It is these reforms which have triggered the wave of protests and industrial action across France, bringing the nation’s rail network to a standstill while motorists suffer petrol shortages, and police come under attack from rioters. Despite the disruption, some 46 per cent of French citizens polled still support the strike action.

.Ghost Squad Hacks 'Corrupt' Major US News Networks, Plans To Disrupt Mainstream Media News Coverage

Ghost Squad Hackers, a group with close links to Anonymous announced that from Jume 1, they have launched a series of coordinated DDoS (Distributed Denial of Servoce) attacks against leading members of the corporate mainstream media. Tec.mic and Softpedia were the first to report the operation but their reports only tell part of the story.

Broadly speaking, the goal of the #OpSilence is to attack through the internet, all the corporate - owned, big government friendly major news networks that mislead and censor information from the general public.

More specifically, the news agencies who conceal the crimes of Israel, while misleading the population about the mistreatment of the Palestinian people will be the main targets. The operation is off to a quick start, Ghost Squad has successfully” carried out DDoS attacks on CNN and FOX News” already just this month. More attacks are promised, NBC and MSM appears to be their next target.

As mentioned above Ghost Squad has a close affiliation with Anonymous. The group insists they speak for themselves, they are essentially trying to build their credibility.

But the emergence of this group could be linked to the recent divide within Anonymous. There has been a “Civil War” of sorts in the hacker community recently, and the reputation of the Anonymous collective has suffered. In an interview with a hacker it was implied that Anonymous has developed a reputation for behaving in immature ways – more concerned with silly DDoS’ing attacks than changing the world.

Since the quarreling on #OpWhiteRose many people have splintered off, or left Anonymous entirely. According to Anonymour watchers, Ghost Squad is one of the groups spun off due to this ‘Civil War.’ In the time since this happened the group has exploded onto the scene, and has rapidly become one of the most influential and talked about hacking groups in the entire world in 2016.

#OpMediaControl as it has been dubbed, aims for the hacking of every major news network in the United States during the summer of this year. And the official start of Summer is only a few days away.

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Judge Denies Attempt To Block Obama's Transfer Of Internet Oversight To UN

October 2016: In a last ditch effort to block Obama's plan to allow the US Commerce Department to hand over oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to a multi-stakeholder community - which includes the technical community, businesses, civil society and foreign governments - 4 state attorneys went to a Texas federal court alleging that the transition, in the absence of congressional approval, amounts to an illegal forfeiture of U.S. government property. Confirming once more that under Obama's Presidency the judiciary and legal system have been totally politicised, their case was thrown out on a technicality.

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Using fake science to sell GM foods.

In a recent piece for The Times newspaper in the UK, corporate propaganda merchant Matt Ridley cites a new report from the American National Academies of Sciences (NAS) to support his claim that there can be no doubt genetically engineered crops are as safe or safer, and are certainly better for the environment, than conventionally bred crops. Ridley's case is based solely on biotech industry funded research findings and ignores the many reports prepared by independent geneticists and medical researchers which make counter claims that the known health risks make Genetically Modified food crops a no-no without taking account of long term risks, the consequences of which will not emerge for decades.

Ridley repeats the claims of the biotech industry that GM technology reduces insecticide use and speculates that future GM crops will be even safer, better for the environment and better for human health. He says that it is a disgrace that Greenpeace still campaigns against Golden Rice, a vitamin-enhanced variety that its backers claim could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year. In fact many research projects have shown there is no nutritional difference between GM and conventional crops and that higher yields can only be achieved through use of specialised (and highly polluting) fertilizers, and extensive irrigation.

According to Ridley, opposition to Genetic Midification from rich westerners adds to the cost of bringing such crops to the market, which he argues restricts the spread of GM technology.

In discussing the labelling of GM food in the US, Ridley argues that labelling food that has G M content implies there is something wrong. He argues that the recent NAS report makes the point that genetic engineering is a method, not a category of crop (it is, a method that replaces, for example, some of a tomato plant's genes with shrimp genes), and it makes no sense to single it out for special labelling because regulation should be based on traits, not techniques. Ridley implies, therefore, that GM is no different from food that is boiled or roasted as its actual content remains unaffected. By the same logic one could argue that it makes no sense to distinguish on labelling between peas and beans, corned beef and SPAM or wine and grape juice. It's about consumer choice.

Ridley finishes by saying the NAS report points out that “emerging genetic technologies have blurred the distinction between genetic engineering and conventional plant breeding to the point where regulatory systems based on process are technically difficult to defend.” This is completely untrue.

With a good dose of industry-inspired Public Relations puff , he concludes that because gene editing in particular will soon allow scientists to improve crops in ways that have none of the even theoretical risks that critics highlight, if Europe does not embrace biotech plants now, its agriculture will wilt.

Ridley’s piece is the usual concoction of misrepresentations, falsehoods and junk science we have come to expect of pro-GMO propaganda that rely on flawed sources and reports. Many other journalists who seem to have 'emotional ties' to biotech industry lobbyists have challenged their criticts to 'show us the evidence' but when they do, even citations from peer reviewed sources are dismissed as fake.

His major blunder is to have accepted at face value the NAS report.

In recent years American National Academies of Sciences has been compromised by serious conflicts of interest within its research arm, the National Research Council (NRC) studies promoted by NAS as authentic show GMO safety reports are authored by people with financial ties to Monsanto Corp and other big players in biotech..

A new report by Food & Water Watch “Under the Influence: The National Research Council and GMOs” highlights the millions of dollars in donations received by the NAS, NRC and other supposedly independent research organizations from biotech companies.

On its website, GMWatch discusses the Food & Water Watch report, which documents the one-sided panels of scientists the NRC enlists to carry out its GMO studies and describes the revolving door of its staff directors who shuffle in and out of industry groups. The report also shows how it routinely arrives at watered-down scientific conclusions based on industry science.

Some 11 out of the 19 members of the NRC committee listed in the NAS report have ties to the GMO industry or to pro-GMO groups. The two reviews of animal data relied on by the NAS to claim GMO safety are authored by people who also have conflicts of interest (an analysis of these reviews and why they are misleading is here).

Readers are advised to read the Food & Water Watch Report to see for themselves the massive conflicts of interests that Ridley either appears to be ignorant of or deliberately ignores in order to push a pro-GMO agenda. Lord Ridley has a track record for this sort of thing too, he has campaigned, presenting himself as an independent scientists, on the safety of shale fracking for oil and gas, without revealing his family's financial links to fracking companies.

GMWatch website notes that the NAS committee member chosen to speak about the food safety aspect of the report to the online magazine The Conversation was Michael A. Gallo, emeritus professor of environmental and occupational medicine at Rutgers University. Gallo is a regular pro-corporate commentator who in 2004 defended farmed salmon in the wake of research showing it contained high levels of toxic PCB chemicals.

In his piece for The Conversation, Gallo makes false and misleading statements, which are apparently intended to soothe public disquiet about the safety of GM foods; mistrust which has actually been fuelled the the industry's willingness to spend $$$many millions to suppress open discussion. For example, he says that any changes seen in GMO feeding experiments were “within normal ranges”. WTF does that mean?

GMWatch states it is an unscientific statement of a type often used to dismiss significant differences found in GM-fed animals compared with the non-GM-fed controls and goes on to highlight how pro-GM scientists make “pervert the scientific method” to come up with conclusions designed to mislead.
GMWatch concludes:

“It is well established that conflicts of interest affect scientific outcomes and conclusions in every field that has been investigated, from tobacco to pharmaceuticals to GM crops and foods. The public deserves better than the NAS’s biased attempt to convince the public that GMOs are safe.”

It is not the first time advocates for GM like Matt Ridley have used flawed reports to push for this technology and to attempt to pass off tainted sources as ‘independent’ and thus beyond reproach (see this and this).

It is gratifying to see that in spite of the money being spent on corporate lobbying and mainstream media propaganda in support of GM technology, and in spite of the (bought and paid for?) support from influential figures, the GM industry appears to be losing the argument.

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US Accused of Pressurizing EU to Drop Frankenstein Food Ban Ahead of TTIP
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