See the Moon, only $10

Our societies are dangerously mercantilist. When profit motive underlies most interaction, our humanity suffers.

Sure we need tools for living that cost money. But social leadership can & should limit annoyances. Persistent & repeated marketing calls; beggars camped on every main street; tricks & scams of puffery and advertising and spam; the public needs protections -- but monied interests never cease huckstering. Nothing is sacred. Try buying quiet: all the world's For Sale


• Expect Generosity and exemplify civility

• Constrain Commercialism

• Don't Vote Huckster.

Scotland Corgi

Scotland can soon choose freedom, or continue as lapdog of bigger interests. The Queen keeps her dogs; others keep a donkey in their garden. Too often & for too long, English nobs kept a Scot as bootblack and butler, kept at the edges of the country estate as a beater for the hunt.

Ayeland - vote YES

We can't fully know what will happen, but the bosses are irritated. MegaMedia Corp. paints images of danger. But generations of English dominance haven't stripped-away the pioneering spirit. Scotland as junior partner? No thank you Mum.

Brit politicos love the Treaty of Union while government resides rigidly in London; are they willing from 2020 to switch overall administration between London & Edinburgh every 10 years?

Scotland can afford independence. It's now a colony.

Scotland the Brave

vote YES

AYELAND.com

Rösta för skolan

The Alliance rules Sweden with an iron fist, encouraged by secret agencies of the US government. In eight years they've done nothing positive for Sweden's schools. Jackshit.Now they pretend to care?

School rust & decline is due to the Moderates, Kristdemokraterna, Center & Folkpartiet, who focus on dealmaking among their own elite. Professed care for schooling is fake & soon abandoned. They've immersed schools in the political process. School owners withdraw government-supplied funds as profits, and do so now when threatened. The kids are simple poker chips.

Good teachers now have impossible jobs.

Rusted Swedish schools only exist because of an uncaring & profit-hungry political Alliance. Don't be deceived by SPAM messages & sudden smiling politico posters. Our ruling class will suck you dry. Modest savings = honey to such parasites. We've a gamble.loving Alliance fueled only by Wealth. With rot hastily painted-over, they push advertising at us: professional politicians boldly insist (after eight years of free lunches) they now ready to work.

Folkpartiet especially is a zombie, diseased & dangerous to all. They're already an eight-year illness afflicting Sweden's children ...

( reproduce images freely! )

Sweden Needs New Leaders

Look at the smiling blank faces of most politicians - especially the ruling mercantilist Alliance.

Creepy. Their claims are empty - pushing us SPAM.

Aggressive Salespeople dressed as sheep --- Press DELETE

Benchmarking Sweden

Election season in Sweden brought out a wide range of promise posters. Unfortunately after eight years in power for the ruling coalition (Moderates, Kristdemokraterna, Center & Folkpartiet) many voters will question bold political promises by Alliance weasels.

"From now we will do this." Maybe... Why not in the last eight years?

Folkpartiet seems the biggest pack of liars - suddenly "strong for education" when their present policies have created the money-grubbing struggling school system...

I'd like to see a major expansion of non-partisan benchmarking studies by government. Surely many of the lessons of Norway, Denmark and Finland are useful to Sweden, as well as systems and experiments in other parts of Europe and elsewhere.

We need data & reliable studies backing policy. Moderaterna are like smiling salespeople - nice, but citizens shouldn't forget they work for their own profit and will stretch truth to make a sale. We need facts and more transparency.

Instead of struggling after shrinking budgets, survey & evaluation activities should be greatly expanded at Statskontoret (Swedish Agency for Public Management). Hire hundreds more analysts, preferably including many "new Swedes" with overseas training and experience, and on a project basis fund dozens more studies by external researchers. Publish these analyses online in English to be useful as well for other nations.

Japan developed a great system of Special Zones for Structural Reform (構造改革特区) allowing local areas and small-scale citizen groups to test new ideas & initiatives under careful evaluation. If successful, wider national implementation could follow.

Sweden has many such possibilities for deregulation. A simple example is cellar-door wine & liqueur sales by local producers. Finland has instituted such a system; at what cost & with what benefits? Such experiments promise to boost local & regional tourism, but with monitoring and a proper benchmarking study we could & should know specific details, instead of politicized half-truths and rumors.

Statskontoret should be renamed, revamped & better funded.
"Public management" and public administration are now nasty words to laissez-faire capitalists. "Swedish Agency for Policy Analysis" is a better name. Sweden can usefully build its reputation as an analytic & scientific nation.

Influencing US Think Tanks?

Who truly employs America's policy analysts? Opinions for sale in the USA? 

Great article (link) in The New York Times:
Lipton, Eric, Brooke Williams & Nicholas Confessore. (2014)"Foreign powers buy influence at Think Tanks." in The New York Times. (6 Sept 2014).  Online at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html

But what of Israel?
Why is Israel so little mentioned in the article and accompanying documents? Is the State of Israel missing an important opportunity for influencing opinion in the USA? In the midst of anti-Semitism, terrorism, investment divestment, boycott movements, etc., surely Zionist interests would support positive and friendly analyses.

Don't disregard Israel.

Sweden's Beggar Ombudsman

Important elections in Sweden this month may sweep the present US-leaning government from power.

Bravo. The Alliance centre-right coalition (Moderate Party, Centre Party, Folkpartiet (Liberal Party) and  Christian Democrats) has brought about mixed results, but after eight years in power their new election season promises now seem empty.

One area of poor performance:

Beggars - Sweden now has thousands more beggars than when "Moderaterna" took power. In Stockholm pitiful beggars have settled-down on the pavement outside virtually all the big shops and supermarkets. Our leadership has done virtually nothing about this; it becomes more of a problem with homeless beggars camping in parks and shitting among the bushes. I don't believe it's proper to allow unrestricted use of public spaces for camping and fundraising. Impoverished people can enroll in assistance programs. A dynamic society should plan how to assist the weak.

Begging is a type of fundraising open to abuse; these conditions need monitoring. Is there a Beggar Ombudsman? Many local people are concerned for beggar welfare, but we need not allow such people to take over our passageways without restriction. Surely we can require enrollment, and also impose controls.  
Some may object that many beggars are not local people. If poor people are coming to Sweden for begging, our response (or lack of response) is all the more important. Apparently the present government has done little or nothing. 

Ayeland the Brave

Scotland Independence
AYE !

Bound No More to London (& secretly to Washington)

Vote Yes for Independence

ayeland.com

Ayeland the Brave image free to use for freedom !                            

Radiation Enema

It's Bad News when the nuclear energy industry builds near your home.

PR on job creation & economic benefit is garbage. Visit Fukushima and judge for yourself - hurriedly evacuated dead zone, a leaky poisoned waterfront: a running gash of failed technology polluting mobile marine life and all the ocean.

Regardless of nuclear reactor safety, the commercial nuclear industry irresponsibly continues to store their nuclear waste in close proximity to their nuclear furnaces. Now the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decreed that even in cases of nuclear reactor shutdown, local-based nuclear waste dumps can continue same-site for 160 years. Unbelievable.

Industry calls this radioactive waste "spent fuel" - but it's deadly poison for centuries. There is no federal repository for these poisons; there's no consensus on providing truly safe systems. Anyone should know to keep a volatile dump far away from the generating furnaces, and keep it all far away from the seaside, far from public water systems, and far from population centers to minimize airborne pollution dangers. These basic points are typically ignored.

Profit-seeking corporations are a disastrous management formula, and cannot guarantee safety.

People in nuclear neighborhoods and districts either live in great fear, or they live in denial. The businessmen running the nuclear plants can simply declare corporate insolvency and skulk away (the executives don't live nearby)...

Renegotiated Union

What will happen when USA states begin seriously considering costs & benefits of union? Many local regions might do a better job with education, criminality, health care, immigration, defense, economics, etc. than Congress can capably provide, even when not deadlocked. Is the only choice to accept US Federal mandates?

Might states, regions, or sub-regions renegotiate their membership in the federal union?

The Federal budget is unaffordable.

The US central government gave private industry insiders huge monies via the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Not all lawmakers supported those "bailouts" + subsidies. The economy still has not recovered (not surprising - those who caused the crisis kept their jobs through the bailout).

Obama's government has done little to change a foul rot in Washington. Global empire bankrupted and targeted America.

There are dozens (or hundreds, or millions) of reasons people might wish to renegotiate the US federal union. Best consider arguments now for a revised USA. California may divide into six states (ballot initiative upcoming). Others seek to secede completely from the USA (see link to petitions throughout the nation). No doubt our overweight nation needs better care - many stars now shine dimly, or are partly obscured.

Geronimo Bin Laden

Geronimo, Pocahontas, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Bin Laden ...
America's vanquished enemies.

Resist US military occupation, prepare to be hunted & killed. Our righteous leaders repeat the warning again & again & again.

But our military has no proper business in far-flung places. Shut-down the colonial outposts which cost too much money & blood. Build society on sustainable, humane & progressive domestic foundations. Bring our troops home !

Funny Pigs

(click to enlarge)

White House Deception

We're often deliberately fed half-truths and lies to deceive us. Remember the dramatic White House photo used to illustrate the killing of Bin Laden?

(BBC)  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13257330

Pete Souza's photo remains incorrectly labeled (in Aug. 2014), after being reproduced dramatically around the world & criticized as posed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks especially tense, providing the "emotionally resonant punctum" (New York Times). Some of the flim-flam later unraveled. (Clinton claimed she was stifling an allergic cough). We may never know what all are actually watching...

What can we believe? Not much. A struggling American journalist is cruelly murdered in Syria? Does it justify the USA beginning a new war in Iraq? Did militarist spinmeisters believe a dramatic event would grease their operations? Ongoing contact with the captors now report (link) the murderers sought ransom money. And a failed rescue attempted last month killed people near where the captives had been held. Who could ever imagine what such crazies would do if double-dared & insulted: "You don't dare kill an American! Fucking pansies! Candy-ass camel jockeys!"  Ooops - say our militarists.
Who profits now?
...

Not Good Neigh

Who's now in prison for the European adulterated horsemeat scandal uncovered early 2013?  (link) How many millions of euro in fines have been paid?

Surely not enough was done as penalty. Spanghero? Findus? ICA? The "own label" producers traded trust for quick profits & should be fined heavily. They're more than ignorant retailers - with their logo and name on the box they share guilt. Super cheap raw materials - too good to be true - discarded veterinary critters? Stray dogs & cats? Food suppliers can't be trusted!

Of course, if the now-secret Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP is implemented, such adulterated European meats will also flow to America; we in Europe will be exposed when the US food supply becomes tainted through mislabeling or fraud. American food fraud is huge: seafood, honey and cooking oils are often (or reportedly more often than not) deliberately adulterated or mislabeled. Efforts to publicize food scams, such as via a "Food Fraud Database" - don't yet deliver easily understandable information. The US Food & Drug Administration, FDA operates with minimal budget to protect consumer food supplies, but some products (beef, chicken, eggs, etc.) are policed by the US Department of Agriculture, USDA. We're lucky if fraud's uncovered - the regulating & inspection agencies are grossly understaffed.


Part of the deterrent is to publicize the crime, consequences and penalties.

Dutch wholesaler Willy Selten may have sold as much as 50,000 tons of adulterated meat (link). Spanghero changed its name to "La Lauragaise" and reportedly is back in business. Other adulteration schemes no doubt operate now. This huge scam was more than a bit of bother. Without penalties? All quickly forgotten by consumer sheeple...
Must we eat shit or worse...   Mortuary meats?