Excited Delirium

Stories about Excited Delirium, the Shock Economy and a little fiction here and there.

Daily Archives: January 7, 2010

WHO Knew? EU Parliament to Investigate “Swine Flu Swindle”

WHO Knew?

Research Credit:  Global Research.

The European Union Parliament will open an investigation into the influence of pharmaceutical companies on decision makers, particularly the World Health Organization (WHO).

Full translation from this source:

The Council of Europe member states will launch an inquiry in January 2010 on the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the global swine flu campaign, focusing especially on extent of the pharma‘s industry’s influence on WHO. The Health Committee of the EU Parliament has unanimously passed a resolution calling for the inquiry. The step is a long-overdue move to public transparency of a “Golden Triangle” of drug corruption between WHO, the pharma industry and academic scientists that has permanently damaged the lives of millions and even caused death.


The parliament motion was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, former SPD Member of the German Bundestag and now chairman of the Health Committee of PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council  of Europe). Wodarg is a medical doctor and epidemiologist, a specialist in lung disease and environmental medicine, who considers the current “pandemic” Swine Flu campaign of the WHO to be “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the Century.”[1]

The text of the resolution just passed by a sufficient number in the Council of Europe Parliament says among other things, “In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines. The “bird-flu”-campaign (2005/06) combined with the “swine-flu”-campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only to some vaccinated patients and to public health-budgets, but to the credibility and accountability of important international health-agencies.”[2]

The Parliamentary inquiry will look into the issue of „falsified pandemic“ that was declared by WHO in June 2009 on the advice of its group of academic experts, SAGE, many of whose members have been documented to have intense financial ties to the same pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, who benefit from the production of drugs and untested H1N1 vaccines. They will investigate the influence of the pharma industry in creation of a worldwide campaign against the so-called H5N1 “Avian Flu”  and H1N1 Swine Flu. The inquiry will be given “urgent” priority in the general assembly of the parliament.

In his official statement to the Committee, Wodarg criticized the influence of the pharma industry on scientists and officials of WHO, stating that it has led to the situation where “unnecessarily millions of healthy people are exposed to the risk of poorly tested vaccines,” and that, for a flu strain that is “vastly less harmful” than all previous flu epidemics.

Wodarg says the role of the WHO and its the pandemic emergency declaration in June needs to be the special focus of the European Parliamentary inquiry. For the first time, the WHO criteria for a pandemic was changed in April 2009 as the first Mexico cases were reported, to make not the actual risk of a disease but the number of cases of the disease basis to declare “Pandemic.” By classifying the swine flu as pandemic, nations were compelled to implement pandemic plans and also the purchase swine flu vaccines. Because WHO is not subject to any parliamentary control, Wodarg argues it is necessary for governments to insist on accountability. The inquiry will also to look at the role of the two critical agencies in Germany issuing guidelines on the pandemic, the Paul-Ehrlich and the Robert-Koch Institute.

Canada’s Inaction Action Plan Funding the Mob?

It’s good to know that 80% of our ‘Canadian Economic Action Plan’ dollars are potentially going to the mob.

Here’s some background research:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/742791–building-a-case-against-quebec-firms

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/711770–mob-linked-to-road-contracts

In 2010, my hope is that the Conservatives will have to face yet another inquiry, this one into the proportion of infrastructure spend that goes to the mob.

NOTE:  Thanks to some feedback, I was told that two of the links are no longer functioning.  I’m not about to speculate on what happened there, but here’s the story from the first link to the Toronto Star:

MONTREAL–Was this the start of a historic corruption scandal that is about to rock Canada – or was it simply a few isolated incidents that made headlines in 2009?

For much of the year Quebec was bombarded by allegations of scams, involving construction companies, politicians and the Mafia, to suck down taxpayer cash.

With Ottawa now showering billions on the biggest infrastructure spending spree in Canadian history, there’s potential the scandal might go federal in 2010.

Some whistleblowers came forward this year to say some Quebec construction companies have formed a cartel to set shockingly high prices for infrastructure projects.

Companies are supposedly threatened if they refuse to play along and, according to one groundbreaking investigative report, some of the profits are shared with the mob and political parties.

But others in the industry counter that the problem is being overblown – that it is the handiwork of a small but powerful group of contractors who break the rules, but that it’s not an industry-wide problem.

The chorus of demands for a public inquiry has been unrelenting since the barrage of allegations began. They read like something out of a Hollywood script, wild tales of intimidation, bid-rigging, inflated contracts and organized crime involvement.

The controversy has already exacted some political damage. Premier Jean Charest’s Liberals have seen their popularity drop, and their refusal to call an inquiry is seen as the only reason for a dip in their once-lofty poll numbers.

Since the federal government is contributing heavily to Quebec’s more than $40 billion in stimulus spending – and billions more in other provinces – Ottawa could be dragged into the scandal if investigators find irregularities with federally funded projects.

“We don’t know exactly what’s there, but what’s being discussed in the media is very troubling,” said Bertrand St-Arnaud, the Parti Québécois public security critic.

“A public inquiry will get to the bottom of all this and we feel that we have the support of the population, too.”

A recent poll suggested nearly 80 per cent of Quebecers favoured some sort of public inquiry. But the Liberals have held off.

Instead, they spent nearly $27 million on “Operation Hammer,” an anti-corruption task force mandated to investigate and clean up the construction industry.

But one construction executive is among the many proponents who say an inquiry is the only way to go.

Paul Sauvé, president of Montreal masonry company LM Sauvé, says he’s experienced the wild tales first-hand. He came forward this year to tell his story of how the Hells Angels managed to finagle their way into his family business during a time when he needed quick capital to finish a major project. They proceeded to try taking over his company and Sauvé became the victim of an alleged extortion attempt. After a series of threats, he went to the police.

“I had taken some serious hits – cars rammed, trucks burning, being told there wouldn’t be a trial because there wouldn’t be a body,” Sauvé said. “But the day the threats came against my 10-year-old daughter I said, `That’s enough’”

On Radio-Canada’s investigative news program Enquete, Sauvé described a group of contractors others have dubbed “The Fabulous 14.”

The group controls most of the bids in Montreal and, allegedly, its 14-odd member companies take turns “winning” bids in a conspiracy to keep rates high. Nobody else dares to submit a lower bid.

As a result of that scam road construction costs are nearly 35 per cent higher in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada, reported Radio-Canada. In that same report, a former provincial transport department engineer described how firms spoke in a special code in phone conversations to avoid being caught. They would use golf terms to discuss whose turn it was to win a public-tendering contract, and set the minimum price for that company’s winning bid.

Such talk of tees and foursomes was supposedly designed to make sure police never caught on to their plan – which, allegedly, was to make sure no company ever wound up underbidding them.

“It’s Vietnam and it’s right here in this city,” Sauvé said.

Months after Sauvé’s claims, Quebec provincial police announced they’d arrested people over an alleged Hells Angels attempt to bully its way into the bricklaying business and use the province’s masonry industry for money-laundering.

The ring – which allegedly included a real-estate agent, accountants and a union representative – was headed by the reputed boss of the Hells Angels’ Trois-Rivières chapter, Marvin (Casper) Ouimet, who remains on the lam.

Ouimet was the same man Sauvé entered into business with.

Stephen Harper: Thriving on Pocket Book Politics

The other day, someone I know was being told about the Tax Free Savings Accounts (an invention of the Conservatives) and they finally said “Why would someone ever vote Liberal with that kind of program in place?”

I didn’t really find myself asking the same question because I abhor Conservative politics (and they don’t really have policies, per se), but I did start thinking about how the Conservatives play the game and tried to put myself into the shoes of ‘the average voter’.

The epiphany came to me.  They don’t win on policy.  They win on what I now call pocket-book politics.

What exactly are ‘pocket-book politics’?

For starters, they capture the hearts of Canadians not by pushing an agenda based on hope or change or grand visions of the future.  No, these politics are based on a much simpler notion:  greed.

Pocket-book politics occurs when you vote for the Cons because you think you’re getting 2 cents savings on the GST, a tax brought on by the Mulroney Conservatives because they actually understood economics and weren’t as concerned about the political expediency of bringing in a consumption tax.

A 2 cent tax cut that has already cost our government at least $60 billion in lost revenues and counting.

Greedy voters decide that a 2 cent tax cut means something to them, so they vote for Conservatives.  However, they fail to see a difference when they buy their Timmies or their newspaper.  That’s because the greed has been transferred to the corporations that run this country.

Pocket-book politics is when you vote for the Cons because you can put money into the Tax-Free Savings Account, something that very Canadians can actually do because they either have a mortgage, can barely pay rent, might want to contribute to an RRSP or an RESP, or simply want to pay off some credit card debt.

Greedy people would want to find ways to minimize every single penny that they pay to the coffers of the government, all the while enjoying one of the best (but declining) health care systems in the world.  Greedy people look at the parts, but fail to appreciate the whole.

Pocket-book politics is when you vote for the Cons because you think $100 per month for your child will make a difference when it comes to proper day care and early education.  Greedy people simply keep breeding, not accepting the fact that every new mouth and consumer that we bring to the planet is destroying it at the same time.  Greedy people don’t even let their wives vote because ‘they belong in the kitchen’.

Pocket-book politics is systemic failure.  Ayn Rand wrote about self-interest (greed) as being the only valuable principle that everyone should have, and since the beginning of the 20th century, people on the Right have mimicked her ideology and converted it to Conservatism.

‘Me first, I don’t care about you’.

However, Ayn Rand and other Conservative intellectuals fail to account for three basic notions:  net present value, externalities and what I call the ‘Newtonian Physics of Politics’.  One could argue that they’re all related, but here are my thoughts on the specifics:

  1. Net present value simply tells us that the cost of our actions vastly exceed the value obtained.  Our consumer-driven madness is going to destroy us.  Soon.  This is the long-tail of real-cost or true value pricing.
  2. ‘Externalities’ are a concept used by economists and Conservatives to brush off the true current cost of doing business.  If we used ‘true cost pricing’ to account for the real cost of what we do, gas would be $5 per liter, using the train would be free and most consumer goods wouldn’t exist.  This is the short-tail of real-cost pricing.
  3. The Newtonian Physics of Politics is this:  for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  When we kill social funding, we put people on the street.  We depreciate the value of life itself and we indirectly invite them to bring their victimization to us, whether we like it or not.  Crime rises, thefts increase and the cost of keeping this world at bay becomes one of a security environment instead of a caring society.

In 2008, Barack Obama pulled the hearts and minds of American voters away from pocket-book politics and offered something much more ethereal:  change & hope.  Since then, we’ve again learned the adage ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ rarely goes off course.

So despite what I’ve said, I have my doubts that all Canadians think in terms of real-cost pricing, ‘the bigger picture’ or what will happen to this planet when each of us dies.  If we all did, none of us would vote Conservative.

And despite the negative things that I’ve said about appealing to greed as a corner-stone of most Canadian voting decisions, it’s an unfortunate reality.

With that in mind, Canadian politicians in the progressive camps (although one should wonder if the Liberals are liberal any more after supporting the Cons for so long?) would be wise to develop a few simple tactics and pocket-book policies that affect all Canadians in a positive way.

Stephen Harper got massive press out of the GST cuts and I believe this was how he got elected two times running.  This simple measure gained his party enormous currency.

It should be easy for us (readers with Progressive Bloggers, others that like my blog) to come up with one or two ‘bullet proof’ concepts that can be put into action by either the Liberals or NDP to pull greedy voters away from the Conservatives.

Suggestions:

  • No tax on interest income.  This is a little different from the TSFAs because it has a more basic sound bite and will appeal to all Boomer voters that are entering their retirement years and will have a disproportionate amount of their savings in interest-bearing certificates.
  • Deductible credit card interest to a maximum of $1000 per year per taxpayer (conditions would apply.  Example:  only available for people that make less than $25,000 per year).  While this is not a personal favourite (I prefer tools that discourage consumption), millions would vote for it.
  • Deductibility of public transit.  My favourite.
  • You will be paid to vote.  And you will be penalized when you don’t vote.  The intent is simple, based on a break-even promise and encourages all of those fatalists who sit on the sidelines to get their act together and vote out the Cons.

Another word of advice:  keep counter-measures in your back pocket, but be ready for a very basic response that can go unchallenged.  Cons will always push you for ways to pay for these kinds of promises (something the Liberals and NDP failed miserably at in the last elections when the Cons were making similar promises).