When I visited friends in South-Africa, several years ago,
I first noticed her. Although I had heard about Ann Pettifor,
I didn't realize (to my shame) that she was the co-founder of the global campaign "Jubilee 2000" to cancel the debts of poor countries. It became a great success, for the same reason she now thinks people can persuade politicians to finally strictly regulate the banking industry and get rid of most of the debts at the same time. In a fascinating interview with "Renegade Economist" she explains her viewpoint in well-understandable words. Still not fully grasping why "austerity" won't work and where this economic crisis in its essence is all about? Listen to this...

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'What's going on?' Concerned friends and family called us last weekend asking this after seeing a few glimpses on their TV screens of massive demonstrations in Madrid. 'What is this Spanish Spring supposed to be?' I couldn't answer in detail, not knowing more than read in a few Spanish newspapers. Demonstrations and work-interruptions are as often occurring in Spain as domestic violence against women and bull-fighting, not particularly daily themes to longer catch my attention. But these are platitudes, sweeping statements, in fact rather revealing my lack of influence to contribute to some necessary changes. 'Taking note day after day would be bad for our health', many more say. However several questions go through my mind. Is the incredible uprising in Spain these days, in a still peaceful way spreading from the Plaza del Sol in Madrid, a continuation of uprisings in North Africa, Arabia and Syria? Is it about corruption, misuse of power, European socialist dictatorship perhaps? Has it any bearing on the supposed social and moral collapse of the, so obvious, aggressive American Empire? Has it to do with the monthly briefcase with millions of Euro from the French Central Bank to be divided amongst French ministers 'to their liking'; an archaic, somewhat covert tradition? What's the connection with uprisings in Ireland, Ukraine, Slovakia, UK, Hungary, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece? That list gets longer by the day. Even Germany appears to loose its stability gradually, imposing 'austerity measures' upon 4 Bundesländer (provinces).
Should politicians, bankers and the military get nervous about these 'protest'-movements? Why isn't the mainstream press covering these events properly, revealing the true nature and dimensions of the -in fact- global turmoil? Do we see the start of a world-wide French Revolution of ages ago, sweeping clean the ideological lines and moral dirt from centuries? Is it only about unemployment and the rising price of bread? Well, there is a wind of change in this corrupted world. A fresh wind is good, but the apparent lack of alternatives is what strikes me most. Are we facing a vacuum of power by lack of competent and trusted leadership, offering all people a verifiable down-to-earth future perspective and not the next cleverly concocted scam? That is what demonstrators in Spain ask themselves. They want to see their leadership 'at the same level' as themselves and not 'governing' from a distance and in the nebulosity around their self-made ivory towers somewhere high above the crowds. Let us look at some facts first:

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I am not sure whether we should be glad with the discovery by hackers of incredible emails and documents on e-mail servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Norwich, England. The illegally accessed material clearly and convincingly indicates a conspiracy by a group of so-called 'global warming experts' in order to influence political and public opinion. This by means of falsifying scientific data, debunking expert's criticism, influencing peer reviews in scientific magazines and scare mongering using 'tricks'. Names of some participants in this scam appear well-known: James Hansen, NASA; Stephen Schneider, confident of Al Gore and Michael Mann, inventor of the 'Hockey Stick' temperature graphs. What has surfaced could damage all related sciences, not only meteorology or climatology - pseudo-sciences for their dependency on random facts and nearly complete lack of understanding the cosmic correlations. It seems that, for money and prestige, one gladly sells his soul to the devil: politics. Climates are always changing and did so for the past 5 billion years, nothing new here. Global warming has occurred many times before, last time 1.000 years ago with temperatures considerably higher than today's. Nothing new here as well. Fact however is, that since 1998 global temperatures are going down. The Sun, provider of energy to our weather-machine, still is hibernating. The reverse from what is claimed by alarmists is true: we are heading for a period (some say 60 years, others longer) of colder weather, a new Ice Age perhaps. The role the media play is of interest. They appear as promotors of the global warming hoax. Will their role change now this hoax has been exposed? What about public opinion and what about the responsibility of politicians when continuing their scare mongering? What about the quality of leadership that was so brilliantly 'tricked'? How glad can we be about possibly 'corrupted' sciences for whom money seems more important than truth-finding, still begging for more subsidies? Who will be inclined to pay their bills?

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