The Monday Night Muse - October 12 2015

If you want to know what’s going on in the world, there are places that will tell you the truth, not paint you a picture, maintain the status quo or be part of any international/inter-business synergy.

This is one of those places.

Stories, truths and angles that you need to know and have probably been sheltered from by the powers that be or your own search bubble.

Every Monday evening.

 

TTIP 'would remove people's rights to access basic human needs'

Access to basic rights such as energy running water could be jeopardised by multinational corporations, according to a new report into two free trade deals.

The report states that the agreements could allow all public services to be tied into commercial deals that would place profit above the rights of individuals to access basic services.

According to the report, titled Public Services Under Attack, such deals would be “effectively irreversible”, allowing multinational corporations to sue governments that try to regulate the cost of public services if it could be proved companies’ profits would be harmed.

Both agreements, the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) with the US the CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) with Canada, are currently being negotiated.

It is claimed that all public services  including health, education and energy could be at risk of privatisation.

Under current WTO agreements, access to water is regarded as a basic human right. The new trade agreements would effectively undermine this, according to John Hilary, the executive director of War on Want, one of the campaign groups behind the report .

He claims that in a worst-case scenario, if individuals were unable to pay their water bill, they would be denied access to it. “Suddenly, instead of water being considered a human right, it would be treated as a commodity and people could be cut off if they can’t afford it,” Mr Hilary told The Independent.

 

Previously, the UK Government  has insisted that public services such as education and the NHS would be protected from such action.

In November last year, the UK Government published a document on the deal, Separating Myth from Fact, in which it states: “TTIP will not change the way that the NHS, or other public services, is run.

“The European Commission is following our approach that it must always be for the UK to decide for itself whether or not to open up our public services to competition.” But Mr Hilary believes the public should be sceptical of such assurances. He said: “There is no truth in the government’s claim that public services are safe in TTIP. Corporate lobbyists have made sure that key services such as health, education, post, rail and water are to be opened up to the private sector, and treaties such as TTIP will lock in that privatisation for ever. As a result of the lobbying by these special interest groups in the services sector, it’s quite clear that public services are in the frame and any claim to the contrary is bogus.”

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Facebook paid less than £4,500 tax in the UK last year

 

Social media giant Facebook’s UK arm paid just £4,327 in company taxes according to its latest published accounts.  

Facebook claimed that it takes tax obligations seriously.

A spokesman for the giant said: “We are compliant with UK tax law and in fact all countries where we have employees and offices.”

A single worker on the UK average salary of £26,500 would pay £3,180 in income tax and £2,213 in national insurance contributions, some £1,000 more than the conglomerate paid in 2014.

Facebook's UK revenues were £105 million while the company made profits of $2.9 billion globally.

Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, John O’Connell, said: “Taxpayers will be justifiably confused and angry about this tax bill. We have to ensure our taxes are simple to eliminate loopholes, and that taxes are low to increase our competitiveness so that companies choose to base themselves here.”  

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Europe's 'last dictator' re-elected 

"I advise you to follow the law...you know what will happen” - actual quote 

In a landslide victory, Alexander Lukashenko has won a fifth term as president of Belarus.

Long-standing opposition figures barred from standing in yesterday’s vote and state media gave Lukashenko uniformly positive coverage. The president ran against three unknowns, only one of whom campaigned.

Lukashenko has warned the opposition against protests that could derail the lifting of Western sanctions imposed over rights abuse allegations.

Lukashenko won 83.49% of the vote with nearest rival Tatiana Korotkevich collecting just 4.42%.

While Lukashenko allowed an unauthorised opposition rally in the capital to go ahead without police intervention on Saturday, he warned that he would not tolerate such protests after the vote.

“The polls close at 8pm and I advise you to follow the law,” he said, adding: “You know what will happen.”

Ridiculing runner-up Korotkevich, Europe’s longest-serving leader said she could not handle ruling a country because she is a woman.

“The president here has masses of powers, from security to the economy, that so far a person in a skirt cannot carry out,” he said.

The previous elections of 2010 led to mass street protests against his victory, triggering a crackdown during which a number of leading opposition figures were arrested.

Lukashenko’s subsequent incarceration of his opponents led to his international isolation and the imposition of Western sanctions against him.

That could now change. A mooted EU move to suspend the punitive measures, also following the surprise release in August of the country’s last political prisoners, has sparked an outcry from Belarussian opposition figures who have waged a long campaign against authoritarianism.

But opposition leader Mikola Statkevich — who was pardoned in August after spending five years in jail — told AFP: “If they are together with this murderer, this criminal, then democracy is just words.”

Lukashenko had the lowest result in the capital Minsk where 65.58% of voters backed him, while in a striking figure, 20.6% in Minsk voted against all candidates, the most popular option for those who opposed the long-serving leader.

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And finally... 

Peking Bad: school teacher held in China's latest drug swoop

A secondary school teacher has been arrested by police in China following a six-month investigation into his methamphetamine empire.

The 35-year-old, named as Lu, taught teenagers at a school in the city of Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous Region in south-west China. After becoming addicted to drugs and losing his job, Lu transformed himself into a basement chemist producing drugs at home in order to feed his own habit, the People’s Daily newspaper reported.

Photographs published in Chinese state media showed an array of chemicals and glass flasks laid out around the alleged criminal’s flat.

This the latest in a list of cases in the Asian country to echo the story of Walter White, the main character in the AMC's drama Breaking Bad. China’s meth boom has so far spawned at least four homegrown Walter Whites. Before Guangxi unmasked Lu this week, there had been reports of similar figures being put out of business in Hubei, Shaanxi and Guangdong provinces.

China has witnessed a surge in the use of meth - or bingdu – in recent years and the substance has overtaken heroin as the drug of choice for millions of addicts.

North Korea is also thought to boast its own army of disgruntled chemistry teachers channeling synthetic drugs into the rapidly expanding Chinese market.

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And this week's Who buys this crap?  moment of the week goes to...

http://reserveaspotinheaven.com/

Yes folks, you read that right. A website SO ludicrous  it inspired its own segment on The Monday Night Muse!

We have found a ridiculous  website to rival the claims of scientology and the indulgences scandal of the 16h century Catholic church. 

You can even give a loved one the gift of eternal happiness. The only problem is, how to revert back to a regular gift next Christmas? Suddenly going back to buying jewelry would be an anti-climax.

Check out the website for yourself. This has to be seen to be believed.

Never accept the world with which you are presented.

Things you need to understand about refugees

A truth – over 50% of all refugees are children

For every man we are shown fleeing police in France and for every vagrant we see climbing aboard a truck in Calais on the news seemingly every day, there is a child who needs food and shelter. We have this image of men, willingly breaking international law and hoping across borders to, at least in our minds, sponge off a system designed for us!

The truth is that these people are escaping war, famine and terrible situations and traditions such as female circumcision – a brutal and all too popular practice in the third world – for their children’s futures. Who are we to deny them the opportunity to give those people, those fellow humans, the chance to make things a bit better for their next generation?

In 2014, 34,300 asylum claims were made by unaccompanied children: the highest number since records began. These are children of all ages, running away from their homes fearing for their lives.

A truth – we can afford to help

We complain that they are coming here to sign on or to take ‘our’ jobs. The fact that there is a culture of social welfare scamming by Irish ‘natives’ is lost on these complainants, as is the fact that those jobs are, in many cases, done for employers who pay little, if any, tax. Yet the Irish media doesn’t report on these facts. The vast majority of Irish people still accept the narrative that the national broadcaster spews in their direction and use little agency to filter through the agenda.

The fact is that only 14% of all refugees make it to the developed world and make a minuscule dent in our economies, especially here in Ireland, than compared to the tax dodging exercises of certain musicians with offshore bank accounts and the aforementioned conglomerates who abuse our corporation tax system.

Google paid 0.14% tax between 2005 and 2011. That works out at €10m per year. Had the company paid the usual income tax rate of either 12.5% or 25% (depending on circumstances), Google would have paid €537m or €1.1bn per year. The asylum system costs €150m per year. Surely this discrepancy cannot be ignored by even the least empathetic mind.

Even taking a moment to assess and compare the needs of the parties should draw empathy from even the most barbaric of humans. Tax dodgers or human beings in need of food and shelter. Those are the choices we are presented with and by repeating the narrative of the media we are standing by and are as responsible for their troubles as the wars that displace them.

If we can send aid to Israel, one of the world's wealthiest countries, we can do more to help those who actually need it.

A truth – we are responsible

The fact is that many of these refugees come from countries which are worn-torn because of our actions. More than half of the world’s refugees come from just three countries; Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia. I don’t think a history lesson is required to prove our part in those conflicts.

We cannot continue supporting invasions and war in these countries expecting there to be no consequences. The displacement of millions upon millions of people is a direct result of our international policies.

We are reaping what we have sewn.

Cause and effect.

A truth – they have to go somewhere

These displaced people, in the majority of circumstances, do not face the option of ever returning home. Indeed, in most cases, there is no home to go to. So what do they do? What have we Irish done for hundreds of years? Indeed, what have we humans done for as long as we have existed? We migrate. We move. We go to a place where we can prosper and thrive, not merely survive.

Lumping millions of displaced people in one place is not an option either. Our ‘great minds’ got together after the Second World War and decided to lump all the Jews in Palestine. Look at how that country is now; a war that never looks like ending and countless deaths and suffering. 

The most pertinent truth – we are all the same

When I say we are all the same, I don’t mean it in a malnourished, whinging, head in the clouds, lefty, socialist, Marxist, tree-hugging kind of way. I mean that we do it too. Every person we know that has traveled to Australia, Canada or the USA. The generations of us that have left our circumstances in the Emerald Isle and sought fortunes overseas. The thousands of us, myself included, that have wanted to better themselves. We are all the same.

The difference? Some collection of suited bureaucrats sat at an international meeting and decided which nations’ people should be allowed cross their borders. The difference between an immigrant, a refugee and tourist on a working holiday visa is mere politics.

When we endured famine in Ireland, did we sit around and suffer, waiting for things to get better? Some of us did and those were the ones who perished. The survivors, the ones who refused to give in fled Ireland and headed off around the world. This emigration and illegal crossing of international borders are the reason so many Irish people are alive today. Without this flagrant breaking of the law we are so quick to chastise, many of us would not be here today.

For any Irish person to criticise those risking their lives to save them is among the biggest hypocrisies I can imagine, we have literally been doing it by the boatload for thousands of years, we still do it and will continue to do so.

Sovereignty is a myth and is nothing more than a symptom of bureaucracy. These international borders we seek to protect all of a sudden are nothing more than a stick with which to beat the victims of our xenophobia.

Never before have the signs of NIMBYism been stronger and more damaging.

 Never accept the world with which you are presented.