US study proves: Euro-Zone close to collapse

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Euro-Zone is, according to a study by US economists Kevin O’Rourke and Alan Taylor in the recent issue Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 27, Number 3—Summer 2013—Pages 167–192.

The reasoning behind this belief of the two top economists is that the current Euro-Zone is not a uniform currency and economic area. Locational factors and market cycles are marked by fundamental differences and without a synchronized development of the market cycles such large economic area such as the Euro-Zone is unable to function.

The monetary politic in this case faces a dilemma. While the southern states of the EU clamor for lower interest rates there is a definite need to for higher interest rates in central and northern Europe. This, however, is not allowed under the current policies of the European Federal Bank and thus the problems are going to get worse.

Officially inflation is not permitted in the countries worse hit by the crisis and therefore those countries are attempting, via salary reductions, to create a so-called “internal inflation” in the respective national economies.

During the years of economic growth until about 2007 wages grew disproportionally in those southern EU countries aided and abetted by low interest rates from the ECB. Now we are being confronted with a heap of shards which was the Euro.

Kevin O’Rourke and Alan Taylor can foresee the day of the total collapse of the Euro as Brussels is incapable to take the required steps that are necessary for a reform all the way to a partitioning of the Euro-Zone into a northern and a southern one.

The Euro and the EU itself are a failed experiment that the powers-that-be, hellbent on creating a federal Europe as envisioned already by Adolf Hitler, are trying to force on everyone and which they try to keep afloat despite the fact that the boat is filling up rapidly with water, and that with all means possible.

Even the UK government is trying to persuade the people, even though there is supposed to be, at some time, a referendum on whether or not the UK is to stay in the EU, that the European Union is necessary for our economy and that we would have serious problems if we would leave the union.

The truth, however, is that we do not need to be in the EU in order to trade with the EU and furthermore we should concentrate, in Britain, to, first of all, manufacture things at home again and that primarily for the domestic market before even thinking of export.

The most important thing is to cut ourselves loose from imports, whether from China or elsewhere, of goods that could easily (and they used to be) made here and for about the same retail price if the corporations would not be as greedy as they are.

Manufacturing at home, however, could be done by smaller companies who might, if we are lucky, not be as greedy as the current large corporations and they might actually even be prepared, as used to be the case, produce quality products that, when they break, can – perish the thought – be repaired and thus be made to last.

The European Union is not and never was a good idea. Envisaged already by Adolf Hitler under the same title that it took already almost in the beginning, the European Economic Community, it was intended as a fascist takeover of all of Europe and it is now coming to pass with Germany being in the driving seat. They may have lost the war but won the peace, so to speak, and will do their utmost to dominate as of Europe in a United States of Europe.

The Euro is, basically, the USE's “Dollar”, but as the EU is not a union – and that one is rather flawed as well – such as the United States of America, it cannot and will not ever work on its own.

It is time to abandon the experiment of the Euro as well as that of the EU and to return to the way things were, of individual nations trading with each other without some unelected fascist super body interfering. And, after return to normality, it then is time to also abandon the nation state for smaller entities such as tribes so that people can really participate in politics.

© 2013

Europe is committed to the criminalization of old varieties of seeds

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Despite the fact that they stated when everyone went up in arms against this new proposal that home growers would be, for the time being, exempt from this legislation about seed registration it would appear now that the recent confirmation by the European Court of Justice has changed the game again and the compulsory registration of all seeds in the Official catalog will also apply in that case.

A new law, called the “Plant reproductive materials law”, introduced by the European Commission, a body that has not been elected by anyone, remember, now makes it illegal to “grow, reproduce or trade” any seed of vegetables was not "tested, approved and accepted" by the new European “EU Plant Variety Agency”, and that includes giving seeds away for free or swapping.

The aims of the “Plant reproductive materials law” is to make all plants and seeds the virtual responsibility of government and only the real big companies can afford the thousands of Euro required to register each and every plant and varieties thereof.

Home gardeners, allotment holders and such like, who grow their own plants from seeds not listed would be considered criminals under the law. In fact, even collecting seeds from your own plants and using them is, under the legislation, as it stands, a crime.

According to Ben Gabel, the director of natural seed that grows heirloom vegetables, this legislation will put an end immediately to the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic farmers, and the small market gardeners. Home gardeners have really different needs – for example they are gardening by hand, do not have computers and are unable or unwilling to use chemical sprays. There is no way to save the varieties suitable for home use because they do not meet the strict criteria of the “EU Plant Variety Agency”, which deals only with the approval of the type of seed used by industrial farmers.

Virtually all plants, vegetables, seeds and gardeners will be finally registered by the governments and the European Union.

Pursuant to paragraph IV of the proposed EU law on the registration of varieties in national registries and the Union: Varieties in order to make them available on the market throughout the Union, will be included in a register or in the Union a national registry through a process of direct application by the EU Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO).

Gardeners and growers will also have to pay a registration fee to the EU bureaucracy to record their seeds, and those fees are in the thousands of Euro per individual variety.

According to the proposed legislation, the competent authorities and the CPVO would levy a fee for the processing applications, formal and technical examination, including audits, variety denomination and maintenance of varieties for each year for the duration of the recording. And the only ones that can afford such exorbitant costs are the big agri-businesses who have been lobbying the EU hard (cash in hand), such as Monsanto, Astra-Zeneca, Bayer, DuPont and a few others.

A bureaucracy gone crazy (but then again, nothing new here as far as the EU is concerned)

Everything that this new law does is to create a ton of civil servants in the EU paid to move mountains of paper all day while removing a supply of seeds to home gardeners and interfering with the rights of farmers to grow what they want.

It is also very annoying they have arrogated unto themselves the power to regulate and give permission in the future for all species of plants – not just agricultural plants, but grasses, turf, flowers, all – without anyone having a say or vote in this.

This idea is basically the "final solution" of Monsanto, DuPont and other seed corporations who have long admitted that their goal is to completely dominate all the seeds and crops in the world. By criminalizing the private cultivation of vegetables – transforming gardeners criminals – the EU bureaucrats can finally give full control of the food supply to those powerful corporations, who will also apply intellectual property to each and every individual seed variety thus making the retention and reuse of seeds, should they even be capable of reproduction, a crime. Food control is the name of the game.

Most heirloom seeds will become criminal

Most heirloom seeds, if not indeed all, will become criminal and that includes the possession of them.

This is to say that to save seeds from one generation to replant the following year – based on a sustainable way of doing things – is going to become a criminal act. In addition this law effectively kills off the use of seeds for home gardens in the EU.

This is of course the ultimate desire of all governments. Namely to criminalize any action of autonomy and make people completely dependent on corporate monopolies to survive.

And this is true in the EU as much as in the US. That's what governments do. They take control, one sector at a time, year after year, until people end up living as slaves in a global dictatorship. We are well on the way to this unless people will take action against this and I doubt that a change in government, in a ruling party, will make any difference there. If voting would change anything they would have made it illegal by now.

Seeds are on the verge of becoming a contraband product. Anyone grow their own food is about to be targeted as a criminal. World governments, conspiring with corporations like Monsanto, do not want a person to be able to grow their own food.

© 2013

The true aims of the European Union

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The outfit that today is called the European Union has had a few names before this one and started right after World War Two with some – shall we call them by their true color – fascist from France and Germany with the aim to create a European superstate controlled by powers in those two countries.

There is also in the minds of many people a confusion as to the various bodies that are linked to the EU, such as the Council of Europe (the real power house behind the scenes, to a degree), the European Parliament (a farce), the European Commission (the illegal legislature), which are always claimed, by those trying to keep the people in the dark as to the reality of things, as being entirely separate, which they are not.

The Council of Europe, the European Commission, and the EU and the European Parliament, are not separate entities despite of the EU's claim to the contrary.

The Council is as much an integral part of the EU as is the Commission even though the Council has more countries as members than does the EU.

As far as the Commission is concerned they are an unelected body who make the laws and thus are illegal. A legislature that is unelected is but a dictatorship and that is exactly what this outfit, which runs the EU, is.

Its true aims are the destruction of the nation states and the creation of a European state (forget the federal model) that is run from wherever the HQ is based) with a Europe-wise police and a European Army.

Being in the pay of big business in the same way as the NSDAP of Adolf Hitler was the EU and the Commission do the bidding of their masters, such as in the seed regulation affair which will make it illegal – in fact it has done so – to collect and share, even for free, any seeds, and this also applies to hobby gardeners, for they just have made a U-turn in secret, from any plant without the license of the EU to do so. This could spell the very end of out old varieties of flowers and especially vegetables and trees.

And who were the lobbying parties whose bidding the EU and the Commission are doing in this respect? The answer is obvious. The usual suspects, namely Monsanto, AstraZeneca, Bayer and a couple of others.

Despite the fact that the EU law makers in the Commission are unelected the laws are binding and enforceable, as is the seed law. How they are going to enforce the latter is another question but they will try.

This law follows hot on the heels of the so-called Monsanto Protection Act that is in one the legislation that was not so long ago passed in both the Houses of the US government.

The aims of the EU are becoming more self-evident almost daily and in this seed law alone we see that they are very much aiming to control the kind of food that people can have, even as far as growing their own is concerned. Food control is the ultimate people control and the wheels seem to be put very much in motion for that.

Someone somewhere some time ago coined the phrase “Germany lost the war but won the peace” and this is becoming very evident in the power that Germany (together with France) exerts over the rest of the European Union, and even outside of it through the Council.

The power lies in Berlin (and Paris), the rest are just pawns in the game, and any pretense of democracy is just that, a pretense, a smokescreen. The European Union is about as democratic as Stalin's USSR; probably less so even.

As a free trading block the EEC may have been a good idea but then again a free trading block alone never was the idea. It has always been to create a federal Europe, by hook or by crook. Thus the European Union is not good for any of the countries that are current members, bar the powerhouses of Germany and France, but also there not for the people, just the elite.

1984 is a cautionary tale and not policy guidance and still, it would appear, that the EU is trying to implement it, but by extreme stealth and by subversion. The aim is a European fascist superstate by any means possible.

© 2013

EU food control coming?

Crop diversity under threat

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The European Union minions in Brussels/Strasbourg are working on controlling what foods we can eat. No, I am not jesting.

They are aiming to ban, as in outlaw, all heirloom and non-hybrid seeds, even for personal garden use, as well as the growing of such plants, the retention of their seeds (and seeds also from hybrid seeds for future use) and the taking and passing on of cuttings.

This way they will regulate what kinds of vegetables we can buy and even grow ourselves, and those will all have to be approved hybrid varieties and thus all only and rare vegetables will no longer have a chance.

As the collection and keeping of seeds and passing on from one gardener to another will also be punishable by law it means that we will have to – annually – go to authorized seeds merchants and buy our seeds for our garden.

Agribusiness, especially the big plant breeders, such as Monsanto, have been lobbying the EU commissioners for the last five plus years to create law that will do this and thus make it impossible for the people to avoid buying seeds from that company and others.

They have been working out, one can but guess, that people were voting with their feet and decided to grow their own food and especially here gardeners were aiming to use non-hybrid seeds and also to keep seeds from the harvests back for future use and also to share with other gardeners.

Therefore the EU commissioners have been lobbied hard to outlaw this practice and if the revised proposed seed regulation becomes EU law then we will all be forced to, if we wish to grow our own food, to grow only what they permit and keeping seeds back from the harvest for use next year will be punishable by this law.

How they are going to enforce this is, obviously, a question but if heirloom varieties are no longer available and organic seeds – for it would appear that they also will fall foul of this proposed legislation – then policing will be hardly necessary anyway.

This proposed legislation from Brussels proves yet again that the European Union is far from being a good thing for the people of Europe; the opposite rather, and the sooner it is put to death the better.

While this issue is all over the news in Germany and some other continental EU countries not a single word is mentioned of this issue in the media in the UK or Eire.

Time for a serious change to our system is needed...

© 2013

The aims of the European Council

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The main aim of the Council of Europe, or European Council, the body that, very much behind the scenes, controls the European Union, is the total destruction of all European nations states.

Not only do they intend to destroy national identities for the sake of a united Europe; they want to create a Europe that no longer has separate national identities.

The EU passport was the beginning, though still issues by the individual member states. However, in one design and one color of cover. No longer the green German passport, the blue this, and the red that; one color of cover.

The aim is to have a total European state; not even a United States of Europe, but Europe, period, with all being brainwashed to be Europeans and no longer English or British, German, Dutch, French, etc.

Adolphine Merkel and Marshall Sarkozy are on the way to achieving just that, with the Germans being in the driving seat although, theoretically, the idea for a united Europe comes from the French. But then, Napoleon's ideas never went away either, I guess.

Germany has always been aiming to create a united Europe that would be run by them, together, maybe, with the French, and they are about to get their wish if others are not prepared to stop this.

While fascist Germany lost the way the supposed free democratic Germany is on the way of winning the peace and getting Hitler's wish of ruling Europe, from nearly the Urals to the Atlantic, unless others who love freedom and the rights of individual national states to exist put a stop top this.

The greatest problem is that the industrial people in the EU do not have much power to this and too many of the governments and their politicians are way too stupid and think of their own pockets rather than the good of their countries and people.

The best things that we can hope for is that some countries jump off the bandwagon and that the EU falls apart and with it, maybe, the EU on its own.

© 2011

Poor soil management could speed climate change, report warns

by Michael Smith

Poor soil management could worsen climate change, a new report by the European Commission warns.

On a worldwide scale, soils contain around twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and three times the amount found in vegetation, so soil is both "a source and a sink of greenhouse gases", says the report.

Describing the balance between the two functions as "very delicate", it says: "If carbon is released from soil to the atmosphere or if methane and nitrous oxide emissions increase, climate change will be exacerbated.

"On the other hand, if more carbon is accumulated in soil and the emissions decrease, climate change will be retarded."

Europe's soils are a massive carbon reservoir, containing between 73 and 79 billion tonnes.

A loss of just 0.1% of carbon into the atmosphere from European soils is equivalent to the carbon emissions of 100 million extra cars on the roads – an increase of about half the existing car fleet.

The commission warns poor land management can have "serious consequences", stating that current soil degradation trends need to be reversed with better soil management practices to boost carbon retention as a means of slowing climate change.

Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said: "Properly managed soils can absorb enormous quantities of carbon from the atmosphere, buying us valuable time to reduce emissions and move towards sustainability. But Europe's soils urgently need better protection, and the answer must be a coordinated solution."

Carbon is lost from soils when grasslands, forest or native ecosystems are converted to croplands.

Ever greater areas are being converted for crops as the world population grows meaning soils that are currently carbon "sinks" will become emitting "sources", the report says.

It concludes the best strategy to prevent global soil carbon loss is to stop these land conversions.

But it fears this may conflict with growing world food demands.

Almost 50% of the Carbon in European soils is sequestered in the peat bogs of Sweden, Finland, the UK and Ireland, the report reveals.

But peatlands covering a surface area of around 310,000km2 - equivalent to half of France - have already been lost to agriculture, forestry, urbanization or erosion with around half the remaining areas also being drained, the report notes.

This could result in potential losses of more than 30 million tonnes of carbon per year - equal to an extra 40 million cars on the roads.

Agricultural practices such as ensuring soils are covered with permanent vegetation to protect against water and rain, less intrusive ploughing practices and less machinery are among methods of minimizing carbon losses and protecting the soil highlighted in the report.

The report says that “carbon is lost from soils when grasslands, forest or native ecosystems are converted to croplands and that ever greater areas are being converted for crops as the world population grows meaning soils that are currently carbon "sinks" will become emitting "sources".

But it is not just for food production now that grasslands and the likes are being converted to croplands,. Nay, for the production of crops for biofuels. This is not and cannot be sustainable and thus biofuels cannot be called sustainable if they have been produced from crops specifically grown for the purpose. Biofuels that come about because of a recycling process, whether using grass clippings, waste cooking oils or such is a different story.

If we want to protect lands as carbon sinks and from releasing CO2 then we must stop the madness of biofuels from crops grown on land that could, nay should, be used for the production of food. Period.

© M Smith (Veshengro), 2009
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European Commission to tackle eco impact of consumerism

The European Union executive is to tackle eco impact of consumerism

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The European Commission, the European Union's executive body, is going to launch a raft of proposals to reduce and curb the environmental impact of consumerism in the Union by supporting eco-friendly products and technology.

It would appear that they have nothing else to do. Then again, why should they worry about human rights violations in one of the EU founder nations, namely Italy, as that violation is ONLY against the rights of dirty Gypsies who no one wants anyway.

The plan comes as the European Union moves to cut energy consumption amid soaring fuel and power prices and as part of its ambitious mid-term goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by one fifth by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.

"This will mainly be targeted at products that use a lot of energy, such as computers, televisions, water heaters and industrial fans," a source at the Commission, the bloc's executive arm, said.

Faced with oil at record highs, and with years of investment needed to reach renewable energy goals, the European Union's main near-term response is to cut energy consumption.

French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, whose country is EU president, said last week at a meeting of energy ministers in Paris that the bloc had reached a turning point with energy efficiency becoming the "keystone" in EU energy strategy.

The Commission's "action plan on sustainable industrial policy and on sustainable consumption and production" is part of that push.

"There will be proposals on green public procurement, as well as widening the scope of the existing directive on eco-design to help improve the energy efficiency of buildings, and the scope of rules on eco-labeling will be widened," the Commission source said.

Various policies in Europe already promote eco-friendly design, but these are limited to devices that use energy such as dishwashers and air-conditioning units, and do not yet fully cover such things as windows and home insulation.

Many EU local authorities already take account of energy consumption when placing bulk orders for products such as vehicles and office computers, but new common standards are seen as vital to cutting the bloc's energy consumption.

Eco-labeling schemes, which help consumers choose the most efficient products, will be extended to cover goods beyond the existing narrow range, which is mainly focused on electrical appliances.

It is a shame that the Commission cannot have an action plan to tackle Italy's violation of all that is decent as far as the Romani People are concerned.

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008