Feminism and Trans Rights (I)

Many feminists of a certain age have grave reservations about the new trans rights laws. Traditionally, we have understood that women collectively form a class, specifically an under-class, although we make up 50% of the population. And, as such, we have class interests.

In the past feminism was generally understood to be aligned with the Left, although socialist parties only paid, at best, lip-service to women's interests. The glass ceiling and the unacceptable fact that the jobs predominantly carried out by women pay less and that women also earn less in the same job were never at the top of the left-wing agenda. 

Right-wing politics and Capitalism itself favour a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest that places brute strength (economic or otherwise) above all other considerations. Our times have shown in crude terms how money purchases power (Citizens United, in the US, bought elections in general, bought judges...) and how late-stage Capitalism brings out shocking levels of inequality.

Jeff Bezos is, as I write, worth a whopping $200 billion. There is no doubt that his work, as such - paid however you like -, cannot be worth this sum. He is interesting in that he is responsible for producing almost nothing tangible. The possible exception, the Alexa and Kindle devices, are a very mixed blessing; their downside being control over what you see or read - your understanding of the world, if you like. They also bring us mass-surveillance and military AI that, together with climate change and nuclear arms, are THE threat to humankind, imminent, so immense and so hidden from us behind the noise of unimportant trivia that fills up our screens that we are individually and collectively incapable of even thinking about it.

The Left used to fight for collective, rather than individual, solutions, solidarity and compassion towards others. Now, the Left has disassociated itself from seeing women's rights as a class issue. In these neo-liberal and individualistic times, women are merely viewed as individuals with a uterus, with no need for specific consideration. In fact the very words 'man' and 'woman' are about to become meaningless. Yet, as so many studies and experiences have shown, words are important and, in a male-dominated world, excluding the word 'woman' excludes many real women from real consideration.

The trans movement is totally in line with our times, tremendously individualistic and a sort of I'm-worth-it badge for a culture that that failed to understand the difference between sex and gender, and has misunderstood form for content. We had decades of misguided women (and a few men) who paid good money to have silicon (and other poisons) pumped into their body, in some instances paid for by the NHS, which had confused true wellbeing with a sort of phycological aspiration created by propaganda and social programming. (Not talking here about beneficial cosmetic procedures due to accident and illness). A man who wears high heels is still a man.

We have a society that re-enforces mind-numbing conformity and only permits those differences that are extremely superficial. Whether Democrat or Republican, they are both pathological lying, warmongering factions of the Corporate Class. Try to explain that ETA in Spain never killed anything like as many people as the illegal invasion(s) of Iraq, in 2003 backed by the right-wing Spanish PP party, and you'll be met by hysterical shrieks of being a terrorist. A culture that confuses the symptom with the disease.

Our binary vision is essentially a reflection of our masculine, patriarchal world. The threat to the neo-liberal, ever-expanding, Capitalistic state is feminist and collective.

The trans movement is a reaction to this hyper-masculine culture, seeking a spectrum of personal experiences and modes of being - but it is the wrong one! Of course, gender should be viewed as a spectrum, and it is high-time that women ditched foot-deforming high heels, time-wasting make-up and feminine wiles. Why any man would want to go down this path is beyond me. 

It is a reflection of how artificial our culture is that in our Western society it is the female that decks itself out in fine colours in order to attract a mate, and not the other way round.

And, of course, we need safe places for all, which really means safe places for women and gender non-conforming people, from those men that are predatory or violent.

And, now we are talking about this, we need less children, because there ARE an awful lot of us, so an increase in the percent of gay people might be a good thing too for the planet.

But from there to the idea that it is a good idea to medicate people, to artificially delay puberty, to operate on them in order to give them artificial body parts or take others out, to give them hormones for their entire life, simply because those people seem to demand it, is bad thinking, superficial and harmful. People are extremely malleable, which is why the advertising industry is worth $560 billion in the US alone. If you normalise something and propagandise it, it will be wanted. Think of back-deforming, body-poisoning breast implants, trout pouts, botox, or indeed smartphones (changed every 2 years, or every year in some countries). Anyone who has had holiday time in a rural area without phone coverage finds that in a couple of days you do not miss it at all.

The incursion of males into female competitive sports is unpleasant and unfair, but probably we would be a lot better off if all remunerative, competitive sports were to go. Just think of how every major male sport (football, cycling, even tennis for God's sake!) has been plagued by doping and corruption scandals over the last decades. The cases of violent men who have been allowed into female-only hospital wards or prisons is also indicative of the fact that most violence, and virtually all rape, is carried out by men. But, once again, the problem is deeper down: prisons are not fit for purpose and hospitals are so underfunded that privacy and security cannot be guaranteed. 

The problem of the disappearance of safe places for women points to a wider problem: ALL places should be vigorously made safe for all.

However, these non-representative instances of abuses, tiny in number, show a real aspect of the trans movement - the invasiveness of men in female areas of life. I say men because the focus of current trans laws benefits men, both trans and non-trans, not women. In this sense the trans movement is behaving exactly how men collectively have typically behaved in our society.

But to go back to the Trans Laws. The fact is that everyone should be able to be as they want to be (without harming others) and call themselves any name they want. But you cannot choose the sex with which you are conceived, and should not confuse the way you want to dress and act with your body's sex. Women and men ARE generally different, they have different hormones, and different biological responses to many situations. Ask a man to close the car window a bit and he'll close it entirely - men are far more binary, which is a good thing in many situations and a bad thing in others. In general women are biologically more careful of life than men and the vast majority of vegetarians and vegans are women for a reason. If a woman wants a female midwife, for example, there are good reasons for this. Perhaps we need a third and fourth gender for trans people, but a man in a skirt with heels, operated on or not, is still a man and should not be legally designated a woman. Desire should not be confused with fact. I may wish to be a millionaire but that does not, and should not, make me one.

The Trans movement is not addressing the underlying sickness in our society (Patriarchy), limiting itself to treating the symptom (pretending to be a woman, instead of being able to be a man and dress and be as you want - and vice versa). With its demand that children be allowed to take puberty-blocking hormones, or undergo surgery, is is serving trans-identified people very badly and children, many autistic, disgracefully. There will be a huge wave of depression from those people who regret their decisions, irreparable later on, and their bad health.

The Trans movement is additionally acting in an intolerant way, implementing what is called the cancel culture, under the guise of not allowing 'intolerance'. This is reminiscent of the political correctness that so enthralled the likes of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. It was not what you did, but how you spoke about it, that was the problem. Women who voice doubts about trans laws and about the wisdom of society sanctioning harmful surgical interventions or "chest-feeding" for babies are simply shouted down or cancelled, in a way that is identical to how traditionally women's voices have been silenced by louder male ones.

Trans-identified people are not the problem - this should not need saying -, but our patriarchal system, by hiding the full spectrum of gender and reducing our lives to binary options within a tiny spectrum of possible life experiences, has misled people into thinking that aggressive surgery and drugs are the solution to a problem that is in fact psychological. The problem of society rejecting one's non-pathological personality is not solved by changing one's body, but by changing society. 

Feminism, instead of demanding parity of economic entitlement, parity of salaries and jobs in medium to large companies, parity in public employment and government, stays distracted with the question of equal maternity and paternity leave. Of course fathers should get paternity leave, and the opportunity to spend time with their babies and children. But much more urgent is ensuring that all women who give birth can stay with their babies until the latter are at least a year and a half; without this breastfeeding, the baby's most basic right, is almost impossible for working mothers. Feminism remains distracted with identity politics, distracted with anything but taking on the root of all these problems - the economic system.

Patriarchy, the enemy of all but the elite, and especially the enemy of women as a class and trans-identified people, has defanged the Feminist movement, and the Left is once again divided, actually excluding many women (even expelling many feminists), and offering us, yet again, individualism rather than collectivism.

Transhumanism

Transhumanism: What Is It?

"A philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology."

Those of us who are paying attention cannot fail to be horrified by some prominent people excited by the possibility of transhumanism, those thinking that they are shortly to become a superrace (with prior testing of methodology on lesser mortals), positioned above the people who have remained simply human. 

There is prima facie a lot inherently wrong with the idea of transhumanism. It is likely to make those tampering with their genes and body cells very ill. It is likely to be irreversible and have huge repercussions on other life on our planet. It is likely to affect future generations, whether by limiting fertility or by passing on disastrously faulty genes - both are possible. The RNA-DNA-altering Covid-19 vaccine on the horizon has necessitated a terrifying plandemic in order for enough people to consider the future DNA-altering vaccine a viable measure. Even so, and despite the fact that most people do believe that CV-19 is extremely dangerous for everyone, approximately a third of people surveyed said they would not initially accept the vaccine. Vaccination is at the best of times the injecting of animal cells, mercury, aluminium and other horrible components into humans, including small babies. There are worries that decades of vaccination and bottle-feeding with cows' milk mixed with microplastics has already changed the composition of what it is to be human.

Those we see on video who are fired up by the possibility of becoming transhuman are - only generalising slightly - unempathetic, physically unattractive, nerdy men (mostly) of little moral vision, who in other times would have lived out their small lives without having access to the money and power that our current economic system gives to the least ideal members of our society. They bring to mind the creators of all the great superheroes following WWII, the talented Jewish men who, following the Holocaust, channeled their trauma into stories of unassuming, mistreated men who could suddenly assume supernatural powers and literally right the world's wrongs. But this vision brought in its own new paranoia: the nemesis, the unstoppable villain. 

The added problem is that huge money brings great power over others, especially political power, and power exacerbates sociopathic tendencies. It is hard to look at Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, for example, and see them as the sort of people you would want in your life. And no amount of money can stop Melinda Gates looking like a reject from The Stepford Wives set.

Binary

But there is another angle on all this. A culture of computer and other devices use has left us very influenced by how algorithms work. Computers are, of course, binary; and randomness is in fact impossible to exactly replicate in a computer, which is why the IT term is 'pseudo-random'. Any programmer knows that you have to think like a machine to programme effectively. The rest of people, the users of the machines, their reactions to content on the screen, whether it be social media, information (or disinformation) sites, etc, is to either click or not click. This is in fact a very masculine way of seeing the world: window open or closed, feeling fine or not feeling fine, take the dog out (for hours) or not take the dog out...

Most will agree that our societies have become polarised and that, worse still, there is a horrible simplicity to everything. You are either with us or against us. If you were against the Iraq War you were for Saddam Hussein. If you thought the Twin Towers was a set-up, you were for Osama bin Laden. You either love everything about Trump or you hate it all. If you do not like Trump, you must like Biden. You either believe in climate breakdown or you do not. And if you do believe it is happening, then you must agree with everything Extinction Rebellion says. If you do not want to be locked-down and do not think it is necessary, then you must be a Trump supporter. If you say that Obama laid the foundations for someone like Trump (while dancing and singing beautifully), you are a Trump-loving racist and misogynist. If you are worried about where neoliberalism is taking us, you must be a raving communist.

Schools constantly test their pupils with on-line yes-or-no quizzes. You either repeat everything you have been told, or you fail. On-line learning is inherently one-directional, allowing for very little debate or behind-the-scenes critiquing of the class content by the pupils.

The tendency is that there are always only two ways of looking at everything.

There is no nuance, no analysis, no holistic understanding about how the planetary ecosystem works; or indeed how politics and the economic system really works, how the financial and electoral political bases, which are very often incompatible, determine what will actually be done and why it will be at such variance with the rhetoric. There is no time nor interest to study information on paper and take detailed notes. The flickering screen beckons with other content notifications and its likes and dislikes. 

The badly-named Right Wing of the political spectrum (those who gain by rampant capitalism) are currently using the Shock Doctrine to ramp up the confusion and lies, making sure that there is literally no time nor inclination to check on facts, so that 'facts' have become a type of triggered opinion. The Left Wing can counter with facts or outrage, but this is not how the game is currently being played; and taking time to take apart one huge lie is useless if the adversary is now onto the next one. In times of aggression, fear and fury, nuanced argument about how capitalism cannot end well, how this is a logical impossibility. finds no receptive audience among those who specifically need a bit of theory in order to understand the world.

We have already become machine-like and, worse still, others are doing the programming.

Are We In A World War?

Is it possible that we are in a modern-style World War without realising it?

Prior to WW1

Pre-WWI there were new technologies, globalising, free-trade, a rules-based world economic system underpinned by the leading power of the day (and to its advantage), and a period of general peace among major countries. And the rise of a financial class, with great wealth and power. And huge inequality.

J D Rockefeller is a good example of how extremely wealthy individuals use that wealth to protect their income and power. Rockefeller's wealth soared as kerosene and gasoline grew in importance. 

Amazingly the electric carriage was invented in 1828. In 1888 the first real electric car was invented.  Electric battery-powered taxis became available at the end of the 19th century. Electric vehicles had a number of advantages over their early-1900s competitors. They did not have the vibration, smell, and noise associated with gasoline cars. They also did not require gear changes. The cars were also preferred because they did not require a manual effort to start; no need for a hand crank to start the engine. By the early 20th century electric cars had a potential range of some 100 km and were especially popular among well-heeled customers who used them as city cars, where their limited range proved to be even less of a disadvantage. Electric cars were often marketed as suitable vehicles for women drivers due to their ease of operation. 

So what happened? How is it that they are only now becoming a thing again?

In 1900 in the United States, 40 percent of automobiles were powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity (helped by homes having electricity), and 22 percent by gasoline, but the electric car soon went into decline, due mainly to relentless promotion of the gasoline car, where the real money was to be made, from powerful people like Rockefeller. 

Rockefeller was the richest person in the US, controlling 90% of all oil in the United States at his peak. Furthermore, Rockefeller gained enormous influence over the railroad industry which transported his oil around the country. Standard Oil was the first great business trust in the United States. 

The Supreme Court ruled in 1911 that Standard Oil must be dismantled for violation of federal antitrust laws. It was broken up into 34 separate entities, which included companies that became ExxonMobil, Chevron Corporation, and others—some of which still have the highest level of revenue in the world. Individual pieces of the company were worth more than the whole, as shares of these doubled and tripled in value in their early years; consequently, Rockefeller became the country's first billionaire, with a fortune worth nearly 2% of the national economy. Rockefeller was also the founder of the University of Chicago, whose 'Chicago boys' later on brought us neoliberalism.

Rockefeller spent much of the last 40 years of his life in retirement, defining the structure of modern philanthropy. His fortune was mainly used to create the modern systematic approach of targeted philanthropy through the creation of foundations that had a major effect on medicine, education, and scientific research. Like our modern-day Bill Gates, philanthropy fed back into Rockefeller's personal fortune, supporting business and medical philosophies that increased inequalities and his own personal power. And like Bill Gates (or at least his father) Rockefeller was an avid supporter of eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population, historically by excluding or eliminating people and groups judged to be inferior and promoting those judged to be superior. The WHO, whose largest donor is now set to be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was found to have used the tetanus vaccine in Kenya to impose population growth control.

In WW1, the total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I, was around 40 million.

There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes

9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians. Spanish flu in 1918 killed around 50 million. H1N1 (Spanish flu) was a coronavirus that had jumped from chickens to people, as is very often the case with coronaviruses. US military personnel were widely vaccinated (against typhus, smallpox and against a range of other ailments) and the vaccines contained chicken egg cells, and almost certainly chicken viruses. Spanish flu's first documented case was at a US military base in Kansas.

In fact influenza and pneumonia killed more American soldiers and sailors during the war than did enemy weapons, sickening at least 26% of the army, probably more like 40%. The war fostered disease by creating conditions in the trenches of France that enabled the influenza virus to evolve into a killer of global proportions, and soldiers moving around created new foci of contagion among a wider population that was at the time physically deteriorated. Chickens were also kept in horrible industrial-type conditions in order to feed the soldiers, a second relevant point given that coronaviruses typically come from other species, and as a result our immune system is not prepared for them. There was also an inability to separately identify the viral flu sufferers from bacterial pneumonia.

And now?

Modern globalisation has been spurred by some of the same forces that powered the pre-WWI epoch: new technologies, an open, free-trade, rules-based world economic system underpinned by the leading power of the day (with rules to its own advantage), and a period of general peace among major countries. And the rise of a financial class, with great wealth and power. And huge inequality which has returned to pre-World War I levels.

As before World War I, the great wave of globalisation has led to a surge in immigration, both as poor people flee their trashed countries and as large corporations actively encourage the influx of illegal immigrants, at the same time as they warn against it in the media. Large corporations love illegal immigrants, who are cheap and compliant workers, and simultaneously need to stigmatise the immigrant in order to keep them illegal and cheap, while making sure that the general population sees the immigrant as the source of their own personal stagnation or downright poverty and deprivation, rather than the economic order.

In addition to globalisation, technology, social changes and government policies have all been instrumental in determining who benefits and who loses out from global economic integration in past decades.

But globalisation has also hurt some less-skilled workers by exposing them to competition from places with lower wages and taxes, and less meaningful health, safety and environmental laws. In addition, globalisation allows for an easier political scapegoat: it’s easier for politicians to blame foreign countries or individuals for their troubles than technology or their own policies. Technology tends to make even previously skilled workers non-skilled, as witnessed by artificial intelligence, which is at this very moment making a large portion of the things we do susceptible to automation, and to hierarchical control from above, from a very few, extremely powerful number of individuals.

Prior to WW2

Everyone has heard of the 1929 Crash that brought in the Great Depression. Most people think that the hyper-inflation of the Wiemar Republic caused the resentment that in turn caused the rise of the Nazi Party and, ultimately, the Second World War. In fact it was the terms of the Versailles Treaty that imposed firstly a huge debt on Germany and then austerity towards the end of the 1930s in order for the 'creditors' to be paid that caused the German people to turn towards the populist message of Hitler. Which scapegoated immigrants, Jews, gypsies... the other.

85 million people died in the war, excluding those that died afterwards from related illnesses, homelessness, poverty...

And right now?

The CV-19 pandemic (or plandemic - as you wish) has left millions unemployed adding to those jobless or under-employed after the 2008 crash. The horrible Recession of 2008 and onwards, the one we were told we'd recovered from, although our jobs - if we had one - were precarious and depressing, never really went away and was showing signs of resurgence before the CV-19 crisis. 

During these strange and humiliating times full of rules on where you can go, whom you can see, face and hands coverings, biocidal unguents you must slather yourself with, strangers pointing infrared devices at you or sticking contaminated swabs deep into you, biocide drenched mats to walk over, ozone-poisoned offices and shared spaces, biometric tattoos and passports, digital money, isolation, queuing or walking where the arrows dictate, unrequested CV-19 messages on our phones/social networks/computers/TVs... we have belatedly seen that our governments have really huge power over everything we do and that the obscenely rich have great power over them. 

Many of those who are not happy about all of this are cannon fodder for new populist, unpleasant strongmen, who keep the shocks coming fast and furious, who turn our susceptible gaze towards the immigrants, again fleeing from the extreme poverty or war that our economic system imposes on their countries. Meanwhile our leaders elect are quickly looting the bank vault before they too, like their predecessor, have to skulk off in ignominy, unable or unwilling to deal with their hidden paymasters.

CV-19 (the pandemic or the response to an imagined pandemic - as you wish) has caused a wartime mentality, the "we're-all-in-it-together" feeling, the violent and illogical response of a significant portion of the public to those who are not wearing masks or not walking in the direction the arrows dictate. The same people who in other times would have willingly turned in all the Jews they could to the Gestapo. Along with the immigrant we have this even deadlier enemy, one that is invisible, has no measurable effect on you, that you don't know is inside you, and which makes you and everyone else a deadly threat to everyone else, without you knowing it.

664,000 have died from it, possibly at least, as it seems that less people are dying from other causes, suggesting that CV-19 is being used to group deaths from other causes. In any case, a number similar to a bad flu season (250,000-600,000, WHO). Many will die from having their elective surgery or other medical treatments postponed during these months. Some will do better, having not seen the doctor. Small children whose vaccination has been postponed will probably do much better. But depression caused by the lockdown and other measures will cause a significant reduction in life expectancy for many, with potentially soaring suicides and drug-related deaths, especially when the dire job situation becomes apparent. 

During all this the obscenely rich have become much, much richer. Jeff Bezos broke all records when he increased his fortune by $13 billion in one day. If that isn't the rentier economy that Adam Smith warned us against, I don't know what is! Bezos, like the old aristocracy that used to dine on peacocks' tongues, lives a life far distanced from normal mortals and will eat just about anything so long as its disgusting enough.

In any case, if this is a covert war it is working well as concerns making the rich richer, keeping us all looking the other way, and restructuring the world. But what about population reduction?

Whatever you think about CV-19 itself, you have to admit that no one is really dying from it at the moment. If you believe the official figures, which seem to include an awful lot of people who die having had a positive test result in the past at some point but not necessarily from CV-19, 4,000 people a day in a world of nearly 8 billion is not very many. As a practical consideration, were we all to live to a hundred, around 0.0027% of us would die every day. Currently 0.00007% are officially dying from coronavirus, so approximately 2% of deaths are due to this coronavirus, the rest are coronary artery disease, stroke, lower respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (emphysema, bronchitis), lung disease and cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and dementia, diarrhoea, TB, road injury (in order)... In fact even this is not true: ALL the CV deaths had another underlying cause.

Note that road injury - a most preventable cause - kills twice as many per year as CV-19 has ever and, yet, no one is fretting about that. We stopped our economies for CV but never contemplated such a thing for road injury, which in 6 months kills as many as CV ever has.

Forget the asymptomatic CV-carriers. If they are carrying an illness which they can transmit and which is still not going to kill others, are they at all relevant? At its most virulent, CV has killed as many people as are murdered in a year in the world. Do we wish to lock up everyone because they may be a homicidal maniac?

You have to have a really blind faith in our deep state not to smell a rat of some sort, either grave conspiracy or plain old incompetence. Quickly forgotten are all the solemn speeches about China's lack of personal freedoms and democracy, as it becomes our model for how people should be ordered about.

China for 35 years, till 2015, had a 'one-child policy'. Those that were powerful or had money to bribe officials had more children, but those that depended on the state for welfare (as the unemployed, underemployed, furloughed, underpaid are) abandoned baby girls in huge numbers and bred pampered, lonely male children. Even in 2007 36% of the population was subjected to the policy, the rest having a series of exemptions. China now faces a serious demographic problems with the excess of lonely males who cannot marry, and old people facing a lonely old age.

It does seem that we are very shortly to be given the choice of never being able to go out, let alone travel, or accepting a vaccine that is largely untested, potentially lethal, probably useless against coronaviruses and unnecessary, as CV-19 is of late a non-story. Our collective immune system ALWAYS adapts to new viruses in time. 

Is the vaccine, as many suspect, a Trojan horse to further reduce our fertility? Our elites almost certainly do not vaccinate themselves or their children: witness Tony Blair's refusal to answer this question in parliament, Bill Gates' doctor's comments, Zuckerberg's rather too public filming of his children at the clinic, Australia's NSW premier pretending to be vaccinated while the cap was on the syringe - there are too many instances to enumerate. 

Hysteria was ramped up at the beginning with photos of coffins and the like. We never saw them in our own streets, although we did get to see nurses just about everywhere going through dance routines. Hysteria is now kept going - despite the dearth of even potential death suspects - with the contradictory narratives of asymptomatic illness (think about it); and - if you prefer - so few cases as to confer no herd immunity at the same time as hundreds of thousands of positive test results.

Will the new, largely untested vaccine get the second result of a WW done: population control? Vaccine trials are already being pushed in parts of Africa and Indian slums, although we are told that people there are NOT ill. After all, as The Guardian's headline shouts, "over half the people living in the slums of Mumbai have had the coronavirus", but way down we hear that "the survey results suggested asymptomatic infections were “likely to be a high proportion of all infections” and also indicated the virus death rate was likely to be “very low”."  (One also wonders why The Guardian puts "very low" in inverted commas.) Will the vaccine sterilise us, as previous others have provably done? Will it make us weaker and iller, when this coronavirus - and no doubt future ones - weeds out the old and infirm?

Is this our new war, one we're sleepwalking into again? Are millions about to be willingly culled or sterilised, and will these same millions oblige the rest to be unwillingly culled or sterilised? Is the world order being intentionally reconfigured so that a handful of billionaires can get still richer while the obsolete masses are quarantined or exterminated?

Vaccines and the Road to Hell

This is not intended to be a thorough review of vaccination. There are entire books on the subject, for example the excellent Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History, by Suzanne Humphries, MD.

It is just some thoughts on the matter as we dash to sign up to Bill Gates' hurried attempt at vaccinating the entire world in less than 18 months, against Covid-19, a disease that is plausibly not nearly as dangerous as the press would have us believe, and one that - like other coronaviruses (eg the common cold) - will have mutated before long into something that this new vaccine would not in any case guard against.

Unless...

The fact that development of the seasonal flu vaccine manages to anticipate the strain of seasonal flu makes you wonder if all is as it should be. A vaccine purportedly takes a minimum of 18 months to produce (often 15 years or never), assuming that it is not carefully tested beforehand. The common cold has no vaccine against it; the seasonal flu vaccine supposedly protects less than 30% of its recipients. The real figure is probably far lower, as a bad cold is often indistinguishable from the flu, people do not like to admit to having had the vaccine for no good reason, and it is difficult to measure its effectiveness against anything else.

Does receiving the vaccine make the flu, if you get it, worse? It does make you more susceptible to coronavirus in general and human metapneumovirus.

Given that Bill Gates has now received multi-million pledges from almost all major world governments ($8 billion in total) in order to develop a vaccine for Covid-19 in record time - his de facto guarantee that he will have a vaccine in place in just 18 months should make you shudder -, one that is to be applied to the entire world almost simultaneously.

The MSM constantly propagandises for this vaccine, and no one steps outside of the script of when, what type, how much money, etc, to ask whether a vaccine is necessary or desirable. Nor does the MSM ask Gates the pertinent question of how his insistence on vaccination, to the exclusion of proven, long-lasting improvements to health provided by clean water and sufficient food, fits in with his stated aim of reducing the world population by 30%.

The MSM has worked hard to tell us that CV-19 is dangerous for everybody. This is not true. The Guardian headline on 10 May 2020 was "New York warns of children's illness linked to Covid-19 after three deaths". The interesting part is that in the article you can find out that the children did not have any Covid-19 symptoms, nor respiratory problems. They did test positive for Covid-19 antibodies, but just because you have measles antibodies this does not mean that your headache is caused by measles! For the beady eyed, the article establishes no link with CV-19, but does say that the children fell "severely ill with toxic shock-like reaction that has symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease", a disease that is itself related to vaccinating young children.

Given that, excluding the very old and the very infirm, there are in fact no people you know that have died from Covid-19, and that all that means is that when you are old and sick you may die, is rushing to get an untested vaccine that incorporates the new concept of altering your DNA a good idea?

Vaccines are not innocuous

Bill Gates has publicly said over the last few weeks that he wants immunity from liability for vaccine caused damage.

Since the 1960s, tests of vaccine candidates for diseases such as dengue, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have shown a paradoxical phenomenon: some animals or people who received the vaccine and were later exposed to the virus developed more severe disease than those who had not been vaccinated.

In 1966, a vaccine was tested in the United States against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) — which infects almost all children before they turn two. The tests had dire consequences: Children weren't protected; many infants still caught RSV, suffered worse symptoms than usual, and needed to be hospitalised, and two toddlers died as a result of enhanced disease symptoms.

The official explanation was that the catastrophic vaccine failure could have been averted if adjuvants — chemicals that prime the immune system — had been added to the vaccine. The problem is that adjuvants are typically mercury or aluminium, both highly toxic - do you really want to inject them into your baby? Vaccines also contain fetal tissue from humans and other animals.

In 2019 the CDC (US Govt Centre for Disease Control) admitted in Federal court that it has no studies to support that the DTaP vaccine does not cause autism, despite many parents of autistic children believing that it does indeed cause autism.

The UK government advises those who have immune deficiency to avoid live attenuated vaccines "because the vaccine strain could replicate too much and cause an extensive, serious infection." What this also means is that a recently vaccinated person can spread the virus to others.

Until vaccination programmes were implanted, children got all the childhood diseases and, it was widely accepted, benefited from them. Decades of hysteria make it hard for people to understand how routine these diseases were and how - in my case at least - mothers would rush their children over to a friend's house where they had measles, mumps, rubella, etc, so that their own children could get the diseases at an age at which they posed no practical risk. No hospital scares, no doctors, just how to keep your children amused for a few days.

Small babies were not at risk because their naturally immunised mothers provided them with antibodies for the first year or so of life. Now with successive generations of vaccinated people no effective immunity is passed on to the babies.

Infectious diseases declined in western countries at the time when deep poverty was almost eliminated; and clean water, decent food and good air were available to all. These diseases, which were generally benign - and they were officially called so -, were dangerous to those who were malnourished or very ill. They still are, and this is why vaccination programmes in very poor areas of the world do not improve health because the risk to health is from lack of decent food and water.

Small pox, generally lauded as eradicated worldwide in 1980, is kept in two laboratories in the US and Russia. "Experts agreed on keeping the virus in case the disease reappears," which means that a virus is never really eradicated but that they come and go in waves. The vaccine was anything but inoffensive (and has not changed): a 1969 study found that, out of every one million people vaccinated, 74 would suffer serious complications, and at least one would die.

Scarlet fever has not, in any case, been eradicated. And yet... you do not get the disease and you are not vaccinated against it!!!

The problem with the idea that those who are immune deficient should make everyone else get vaccinated, with the associated real risks that this imposes on others, instead of concentrating on improving their own health and backing measures that improve the community's health in general - like good water, good food, clean air, animal welfare -, is that it is badly thought out. Even if you were to impose the burden of vaccination on  entire population, vaccinated people still get diseases and spread them to others, many diseases have no vaccines, viruses mutate, and you have no control over people from abroad, animals, wildlife...

It is probable that vaccines are keeping some diseases going, like polio in India, where children have been left permanently disabled after receiving the vaccine; or measles, a disease that has a different denomination in vaccinated people because it is far more lethal for those people. Measles in vaccinated people in Spain has been catalogued from 2003 to 2014.

Herd immunity, a naturally occurring immunity when some 50% or less of a group has had the disease and the virus cannot find another host easily, does not work in vaccinated people because they do not gain life-time immunity, and the vaccine contains live virus and is propagated over time. When mass vaccination started, it was said that with this 50% cover, herd immunity would be reached. This was later changed to 80%, 90%, 95%... because vaccines do not function the same way as natural immunity does, the latter being generally for life.

Vaccines carry a risk and can result in death or serious lesions. The CDC typifies vaccine injuries,  and the US government has a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, within a "no-fault" premise, that has to date (and with great impediment to claimants) paid out some $4 billion.

Back in 2009 the historically ALWAYS wrong Neil Ferguson from Imperial College (the same Imperial College that has received $185 million from the Gates Foundation, and $400 million from the Wellcome Trust by the end of 2018)  claimed that swine flu, H1N1 would take the lives of 65,000 people in the UK. In the end, 457 people died from the virus.

In response to the threat of swine flu, Big Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) developed the Pandemrix vaccine. Sixty patients suffered brain damage as a result of the vaccine and were allocated £60 million in compensation by the UK Government. Most of the victims were children. GSK had been granted indemnity by the Gordon Brown Government.

But - almost all roads lead to Gates - our western, over-vaccinated societies are coincidentally those where assisted reproduction facilities have appeared like mushrooms over the last decades, as young, healthy people find themselves increasingly infertile. In poor countries, people very often try to avoid the WHO and Gates Foundation's forced vaccination programmes, believing that they do little for their well-being and will actually make them infertile.

The papilloma virus vaccination programme in the UK resulted in several young women dying or being seriously injured; and the WHO itself reports that "since 2012, individual case reports have linked vaccination against HPV with primary ovarian insufficiency (POI), defined as dysfunction or depletion of ovarian follicles, menopausal symptoms and reduced fertility before the age of 40," but finds no link between the vaccine and the symptoms, despite a "temporal association" being found!

Equally sinister, is the fact that in developing countries, the tetanus vaccine may be laced with an anti-fertility drug, in a UN vaccination programme.

The WHO has admitted culpability for at least one "serious breach of international ethical standards", vaccinating people without their consent and causing grievous harm and death.

Bill Gates' capture of the WHO (he is the largest individual donor, and his participation is greater than that of the UK) should not be viewed as benign. He has become extremely rich and powerful through his "philanthropy" and there is no reason to assume that this unempathetic computer geek has anything useful to say about anyone's health.

The right to bodily integrity (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, art. 3) is routinely flouted when parents are not given informed consent for the vaccination of their children. In Sweden, the incidence of diphtheria, polio and tetanus was quantified as less than one in a million. Even in the unlikely event that these diseases were to stage a comeback, they would in any case enjoy far better healthcare nowadays than was once the case. The incidence of the disease combined with the risk of the disease becoming serious in case of infection is absurdly low.

However, in a confidential internal report, the makers of the vaccine GSK, quantifies the incidence of secondary effects between 0.6 and 1 in a hundred, with many secondary effects being life-long extremely serious conditions including death.

It could be argued that any of our material possessions could be used for the common good (that's a discussion for another day); but our bodies are inalienable and should not be damaged in order to line the pockets of very rich people. The reasons put forward for damaging our health, no matter how small the purported risks, are feeble and not shown to be true.

Why Private Healthcare Makes Public Healthcare Worse

Like so much that goes on today, there's an idea that private healthcare does not impact public healthcare and can even lessen the burden on the public system. Years of neoliberal simplification of everything into pounds and pence, always understood as today's pecuniary cost, often an imaginary spin on the real cost, without taking into account other repercussions or future impacts, have meant that, even though we can see that every year is a little worse than the previous one, we cannot see why that is. We continue to be told that, if we just apply the selfish, everyone-in-it-for-themselves, I'm-all right-Jack doctrine, suddenly, magically, everything will come out fine.

It was a historic triumph in almost all modern countries - excluding the USA - to achieve a National Health Service, a stunning symbol of solidarity in the community. 

As Aneurin Bevan, the creator of the NHS in England and Wales in 1948, said, “Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community.” We apply the same principle of solidarity to state education or welfare payments and the arguments for a national health service are more or less the same as for other forms of solidarity within a community.

Margaret Thatcher famously said that there is no society, only individuals. Were this true, it would be a sad and depressing reflection on humankind. But it is not true: we are social animals and become dysfunctional the more isolated we are.

Most people in favour of private health care pay at least lip service to the notion that the national health service should be maintained.

But...

The very existence of private health care undermine the principle of solidarity, one of the most precious foundations of our coexistence with other beings. Do we really want to return to having to avoid others in the street for fear of their carrying dangerous diseases that they cannot afford to have cured?

Bill Gates used to have a huge public image problem, arising from his unattractive personality, his criminal undermining of all competition to Windows (and its awful browser), his sullen and shifty performance in the the US anti-trust court case against him, and his ubiquitous and horrible OS and browser. That was until he took advantage of the neoliberal creed that the wealthy managed to foist on us of hardly taxing the very rich. His soaring wealth allowed him to reinvent himself as a health expert and philanthropist. Luckily for him, all that giving was mostly to his own organisations or those he controlled, and it always worked towards his own interests (of gaining power over 99% of the world) so that, although Microsoft is only 20% of his portfolio, his wealth has doubled during these years of "giving", from $50 billion to $100 billion over the last decade.

Amancio Ortega, Zara's immensely rich owner, chooses to produce its garments using cheap labour abroad where the minimum wage is truly minimum and where health and safety measures are in short supply. Zara pays taxes in Holland, Ireland and Switzerland, not Spain, saving itself at least 585 million euros from 2011 to 2014.

There are Irish companies belonging to Inditex that report millions of euros in turnover, but do not have a single employee on the payroll and paid no corporate tax at all.

Ortega is worth more than 62 billion euros, and his yearly dividend is around 270 million euros per year or, if you like 739,726€ per day. Just 514€ per minute, every minute of every day of the year! He  donates from time to time to the health service in specific machines - mostly inappropriate for the public health service and requiring expensive maintenance - or surgical masks, gaining huge popularity. His donation, made possible by starving the Spanish state of the taxes it should receive and by ensuring that Spain's unemployment rate is never mitigated by his company, is always specific, never in cash, and never democratically accountable. It gives him an incalculable value in cheap publicity at an insignificant cost. 

Worse still, as these donations reduce his tax bill, a substantial sum of money comes out of the public purse to pay for these generally useless so-called gifts, should they be accepted. As they say - and, pertinently, was first documented as being put into common parlance in the 1930s during the Great Depression -, there's no such thing as a free lunch (TNSTAAFL).

Philanthropy does not, and cannot, substitute for a proper, solidaristic State. State institutions, when they work, when they have not been undermined and infiltrated by rich, vested interests, protect against the venal interests of particular individuals. Both Gates and Ortega have no medical nor medical research training, yet are able to use their tremendous wealth in order to pressure governments into buying into their agenda. Neither support, either ideologically or economically, the national health service. Gates has received huge pledges of money from most western governments in order to fund the vaccine he intends to use on the entire world population against Covid-19 (excluding his own family, I have no doubt). They will start with Africa, I suspect, although Africa really does not have a problem with the coronavirus. Yet.

As we have just seen, the private health services do NOT generally cover serious new infectious diseases, be they Covid-19, Sars, Mers, Ebola, HIV, tuberculosis..., nor do they cover pre-existing illnesses. New minor ailments are covered but the yearly premium quickly becomes prohibitive once they become serious or chronic. Private health services scrimp on personnel costs, often employing trainees and insufficient qualified staff. When things go wrong, as they often do, patients are frequently transferred to the public hospital, at public cost, never the other way round, and the public sector ends up with patients who may need very expensive life-long treatment, often as a result of mala praxis or incompetence while in private care.

For years, governments have been stealthily selling off the NHS, sending patients for minor treatments to private clinics and paying these clinics for the service. The private clinics make a profit (that is what they are there for), money that should have been saved or invested into the public sector. The public sector increasingly ends up with a disproportionate number of poor, very ill, or chronic patients, making its cost per patient far higher than the private sector's. This leads it to be criticised by unscrupulous people who can then justify further privatisation.

The Centre for Health and the Public Interest claims that post-operative care is generally carried out by a junior doctor, one who is working up to 168 hours a week without supervision.

The criminal surgeon Ian Paterson, who treated more than a thousand patients fraudulently at private hospitals under Spire Healthcare and carried out useless, life-changing operations where many of his patients died and hundreds were mutilated, cost the NHS more than £17m in compensation to victims. Patients were referred to him due to the NHS's long waiting lists, following decades of intentional mismanagement of the NHS, despite Ian Paterson having a dubious background and previous suspension. He was ultimately sentenced to 20 years' prison, and his motive is assumed to have been simply to earn more money.

Such is the incentive to make a profit and line some specific pockets that in Madrid during the Covid scare the authorities dolled out free masks, overalls, gels and the like to the private care homes, valued at 3.2 million euros; and sent many patients to these private centres although there was room in the public ones, costing another million euros. At the same time the overwhelming proportion of deaths was in the private care homes, where many patients were isolated, abandoned, and purposefully not given treatment for illness, nor water, nor food. These deaths tended to be of old people over 70 years of age, in private macro-'care' homes, while the small public sector homes had much better outcomes. Private 'care' and hospitals cost up to six times more than public sector ones.

As Noam Chomsky famously said, "That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."

Other surgeons, like Dr Arackal Manu Nair who carried out unnecessary prostate operations at Spire Parkway private hospital in Solihull, have also been suspended after years of abusing patients, years too late for their victims, due to lack of oversight and the way that doctors are outsourced and allowed to have private practices elsewhere.

In small, fragmented clinics, consultants, who carry out the surgery, do not hang around to look after their patients afterwards but disappear home. Private clinics often do not have intensive care facilities and, if they do, they may well not have sufficient qualified staff permanently on hand. The transfer to a public hospital also transfers a large cost to the public sector and, at the same time, further endangers the patient's life by the transit.

In 2018, a report by the CQC into the independent sector was scathing. It found two in five private hospitals were failing to meet safety standards. In particular it raised a major concern into the lack of effective oversight of consultants "working" for the hospital but not formally employed by them. It also said there was not enough reporting of serious incidents or transparency when something went wrong.

Mr Patterson worked independently, the private hospital he worked at did not employ him (clinicians are effectively freelance) and he had his own insurance.

So, when something went wrong, as it so cruelly did, the hospital was able to claim it was not liable (though Spire healthcare has paid out some damages to some patients as has Mr Paterson’s insurance company, but the victims had to fight tooth and nail to get it).

The public health system often seems expensive not only because it treats the most expensive patients (and continues to do so even when extensive private healthcare is available), but also because it incorporates safety and quality procedures and maintains permanent in-house staff. The private sector charges far more in fact but will always end up cutting corners, because it exists in order to make a profit, the larger the better. The US has a highly privatised healthcare system that per capita is the most expensive in the world, yet the US is ranked number 38 in life expectancy.

But far more insidious is the fact that private healthcare starves the public sector of its resources. Imagine if $9,892 per person were used for a public sector healthcare budget in the US. Instead, the biggest cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is medical treatment, despite the country's huge healthcare cost. And yet, over 6 decades, surveys have repeatedly shown that the US population is overwhelmingly in favour of a public, single-payer healthcare system; yet, the private industry's lobbyists ensure that this never happens.

A near-universal single-payer public service can negotiate cheap medicines and supplies, due to the fact that its very size makes it a match for negotiating with any laboratory. Witness the cost of medicines in the US compared to Canada: an Epipen (for serious allergic reactions) typically costs $100 in Canada and $300 in the US. In the UK you will be charged £8.80 ($11). However, the NHS buys them for around £45 ($58).

The last reason why a private system will never coexist in harmony with a public system is that the current system is now out of date. Covid-19 and other recent pandemics shows that infectious diseases, which have been long on the back foot, are perhaps coming back, for whatever reason. Possibly the reliance on vaccines for decades has allowed viruses to mutate and, together with increasing poverty and precarious health for a significant part of the population, allowed them to get a new hold on us.

These infectious diseases must be kept separate from chronic diseases and, indeed, Covid-19 has been shown to be on a practical level dangerous only for those who are chronically ill, who should have been kept away from the Covid-19 patients, but were not or - equally worryingly - have not been able to receive their customary treatment due to hospital saturation with Covid-19 patients.

For any area with sufficient population to warrant a hospital, at the moment the paucity of the public sector ensures that, although there will also be various private clinics, there will not be sufficient resources for there to be a second public hospital, to treat the infectious patients in a different facility to the chronically ill.

We should realise that health is a communal issue and that other people's health affects ours. For that reason alone we should invest in a first class public health system and ditch the idea that a two tier system can do anything decent for us. 

Nero and Why Who Controls the Message Controls the Masses

Nero has gone down in history as a mad, bad guy - the crazy emperor who fiddled while Rome burned.

Nero was Roman emperor from 54 to 68 AD. The last of the Julio-Claudians to rule the Roman Empire, his 14-year reign seems to represent everything decadent about that period in Roman history. We're told that he was self-indulgent, cruel, and violent - as well as a cross-dressing exhibitionist! His lavish parties combined with the burning of Rome continued the economic chaos that had plagued the Roman citizenry since the days of Tiberius (r. 14-37 CE). According to the historian Suetonius in his The Twelve Caesars, upon hearing of the emperor's death by suicide, "…citizens ran through the streets wearing caps of liberty as though they were freed slaves."

Nero's rule is associated with tyranny and extravagance. Roman sources - such as Suetonius and Cassius Dio - offer overwhelmingly negative assessments of his personality and reign. Tacitus claims that the Roman people thought him compulsive and corrupt. Suetonius tells that many Romans believed that the Great Fire of Rome was instigated by Nero to clear the way for his planned palatial complex, the Domus Aurea. According to Tacitus he was said to have seized Christians as scapegoats for the fire and burned them alive, seemingly motivated not by public justice but by personal cruelty.

However...

Some modern historians question the reliability of the ancient sources on Nero's tyrannical acts. There is evidence of his popularity among the Roman commoners, especially in the eastern provinces of the Empire. At least three leaders of short-lived, failed rebellions after his death presented themselves as "Nero reborn" to enlist popular support.

Agrippina

Nero was brought up by his mother, Agrippina. After poisoning her second husband, Agrippina became the wife of her uncle, the emperor Claudius, and managed to get him to nominate her son, Nero, as his successor, rather than Claudius' own son, Britannicus. She eliminated her opponents among the palace advisers and had Emperor Claudius himself poisoned, poisoning Claudius' son Britannicus one year later.

Nero as emperor

Upon the emperor Claudius' death, Nero was proclaimed Emperor at the age of nearly 17. Nero was encouraged by his old tutor and the philosopher Seneca to think for himself and not be entirely under Agrippina's influence; and one year later Agrippina was forced into retirement, leaving Burrus, one of her previous allies, and Seneca as effective rulers.

Nero put an immediate end to some of the worst features of Claudius' latter reign, including secret trials, and he gave the Senate more power. His early years were full of generosity and clemency, banning bloodshed in the circus and capital punishment, reducing taxes and permitting slaves to bring civil complaints of mistreatment. Nero pardoned those who wrote against him and even those who plotted against him. He inaugurated poetry and theatrical competitions and encouraged athletics, against gladiatorial combats. Cities that suffered disaster received assistance and aid was given to the Jews.

He inherited the empire at a moment of great decline and financial difficulty. Rome had in fact entered into a period of rapidly changing emperors and instability. Nero undertook a typically Keynesian approach of public works, increasing taxes on the rich, which probably earned him an everlasting black mark in the history books.

It is true that, after he tired of his mother's constant meddling, he had her killed in the year 59, five years after acceding to the throne. He was also, at his young age, scandalously debauched, having no limits to his behaviour. He felt that his artistic talents were appropriate to giving performances in public, which was viewed as indecorous by many around him, but was actually very modern, rather like our current leaders on TV.

When the Great Fire of Rome started in 64, Nero rushed back from Antium, helped the effort to put out the flames, distributed food to the needy, and lodged the homeless in his palaces. When the fire started he was 35 miles (56 km) from Rome, so clearly did not start the fire. He did not "fiddle" during the fire either, as bowed stringed instruments would not reach Europe for almost a thousand years. He did, however, start a ridiculously ostentatious palace shortly afterwards, which was designed to cover fully one third of Rome. He would not be the first leader in history to be attracted to megalomaniacal building works, nor the last.

Claudius, the previous emperor, lost control to Agrippina while away fighting in the numerous wars that beset the Roman Empire in its decline. Claudius had allowed Armenia, an important buffer state, to gain a king that was no longer amenable to Rome. Nero managed to solve the problem, but the empire was increasingly stretched by wars and unrest. Nero had to raise taxes. It is said that the taxes were to pay for his excessive personal expenditure, but the constant military cost associated with all declining empires would have been far, far higher. His personal expenditure would have been publicised by his enemies and used to foment criticism.

As was typical in those years, there was constant plotting against Nero, and he was frequently saved by his slaves giving him warnings about imminent attempts on his life, in the nick of time. One such attempt, the Piso conspiracy, included 41 participants, only 18 being executed. This clemency shows Nero's great leniency.

By the year 68 he had the Senate against him, plus the wealthy families and a large part of the middle class, who were resentful of having to pay taxes and who found his artistic pretensions inappropriate for an emperor.

He was away when the Senate communicated to him that he was to be put to death. Apparently the aim was for him to abdicate but, taking the message seriously, Nero asked his private secretary to help kill him.

He died, age 30, in the year 68.

Most of what we hear is from the historian Tacitus, himself not perhaps an entirely impartial recorder of events. Throughout history, taxes raised on the rich tend to provoke a propaganda blitz of bad press.

Added afterwards to this article:

The Guardian (23.4.21): https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/apr/22/was-nero-cruel-british-museum-offers-hidden-depths-to-roman-emperor

Cómo renunciar a tu herencia y no perder ni un céntimo

Hace poco más de un mes se supo que el Rey de España, Felipe VI, era beneficiario de las fundaciones Zagatka y Lucum, esta última investigada por la Fiscalía Anticorrupción por recibir supuestamente 100 millones de dólares de Arabia Saudí. El padre del Rey, D. Juan Carlos de Borbón, en sus muchos viajes a Saudi Arabia había recibido comisiones por vender armas letales a ese país, muchas de las cuales se están usando para literalmente destrozar a un país entero, Yemen.

Entre las muchas curiosidades se encuentra el asunto de recibir dichas comisiones por vender, cuando el comprador es habitualmente el recipiente de algún obsequio por haber realizado la compra. Esta vez recibió este dinero en 2008, cuando a los españoles nos pidió "tirar del carro en la misma dirección", en plena crisis económica. Se supone que la "comisión" tiene que ver con la adjudicación del Ave a La Meca a empresas españolas y también por la firma de un acuerdo bilateral con Saudi Arabia, así como acoger en Madrid una cumbre que lavó la cara del integrismo religioso saudí. Los millones recibidos repetidamente a lo largo de muchos viajes con cargo de las arcas públicas no fueron ingresados en las cuentas del Estado sino ocultados en paraísos fiscales como Suiza. Además, las adjudicaciones beneficiaron a una élite corporativa, no a la ciudadanía.

Los presupuestos de Defensa están siendo tremendamente abultado en muchos países, como una forma de permitir movimientos de dinero ilícitos debido al poco escrutinio que hay sobre gastos de "defensa", justificado en nombre de la seguridad del Estado. La Reina, sus hijos, yernos, la familia del Rey actual, todos reciben un elevado salario público. D. Juan Carlos, cuya partida futura de fondos públicos se acaba de retirar, tiene una fortuna colosal, en paraísos fiscales, de la cual nunca ha tenido que justificar su procedencia.

D. Juan Carlos tuvo de abdicar del trono en 2014 tras una larga serie de escándalos que incluyeron a varias amantes y matar a elefantes. Ofreció una disculpa en la que aceptó como un niño pequeño haberse portado mal y que no volvería a ocurrir. Como un niño pequeño, eran solo palabras.

A una de sus amantes, Corinna Sayn Wittgenstein, y al hijo de esta, regaló 65 millones de euros. Se rumorea que el Rey Emérito tuvo un total de unas 5.000 amantes pero no pudo ser tan sex symbol, ya que tuvo que pagar bien por ello. Hubo otros pagos millonarios que se conocen: 2 millones a su amante Marta Gayá, y 500 millones de pesetas (€3 millones) a Bárbara Rey, por ejemplo.

Cómo renunciar a una herencia y no renunciar a nada (método 1)

El Rey Felipe hace unas semanas retiró la asignación que recibía su padre de las arcas públicas, unos €200.000 al año (sin contar su uso de aviones, guardaespaldas, coches, etc.), una nimiedad en comparación con su fortuna conocida y también la oculta. Debido al nuevo escándalo de su padre, el Rey anunció que renunciaba a la herencia relacionada con esas dos fundaciones de fondos oscuros que están siendo investigados. No renuncia al resto de la fortuna de D. Juan Carlos. Tampoco anunció que supo de esos fondos hacia más de un año, ni que una renuncia en el presente sobre a una herencia futura no tiene efecto. Y tampoco ha explicado que, cuando llegue el momento, si renuncia, sus propias hijas pasarán a ser las herederas.

[Añadido posteriormente]

Cuando ha habido un riesgo real de perder la herencia, cuando ha aparecido un hijo mayor del Rey Emérito Juan Carlos identificado por ADN, poniendo en riesgo tanto la herencia como el trono, ya que Felipe VI es el menor de los hijos e hijas conocidos, dicho riesgo se ha esfumado, en vísperas de aparecer en un programa de televisión, con la muerte repentino del hijo no reconocido por el Rey Emérito, Albert Solà.

Cómo renunciar a un sueldo vitalicio y no renunciar a nada (método 2)

Se difundió el bulo de que Mariano Rajoy había renunciado a sus privilegios tras perder la Presidencia del Gobierno. No renunció ni al coche, ni al chófer, ni al guardaespaldas, ni a la oficina, ni a los dos ayudantes, ni a la dotación para gastos de oficina, ni a su indemnización por cese, ni a la posibilidad de acceder de forma libre y gratuita a transportes terrestres, marítimos y aéreos del Estado. Tampoco su derecho a entrar en el Consejo de Estado con una remuneración de 100.000 euros anuales. Una posibilidad que de momento sólo ha aprovechado Zapatero y que es incompatible con cobrar de la empresa privada, opción elegida en su día por González y Aznar, en nómina de varias compañías.

Según el Portal de Transparencia, no es cierto que haya renunciado a sus privilegios y tampoco ha renunciado ningún Presidente a su sueldo vitalicio en España. Por acogerse a su antiguo trabajo, Rajoy perdió el derecho de percibir 6.736,09€ al mes (en 12 mensualidades) como ex-Presidente - aunque lo percibió mientras tramitaba su reinserción laboral como Registrador; y en su nuevo (y viejo) trabajo recibía en su lugar un sueldo variable de entre 1 millón y 1,2 millones de euros brutos anuales, en Madrid, que es - junto con Barcelona - la plaza más lucrativa de España.

En Santa Polo donde se incorporó cinco días después de dejar su vida política y donde su amigo le había guardado el trabajo durante 28 años, el sueldo era de 15.000€/mes como Registrador de la Propiedad, a pesar de haber trabajado en ello menos de 5 años desde que aprobó la oposición, con su correspondiente pensión, ahora que se ha jubilado.

En 1978 su primer destino fue Villafranca, León.

En 1980 mejora su plaza y cambia a León.

En 1981 se hace diputado del Parlamento gallego. Así que, usando una ley de 1947 un interino coge su puesto y Rajoy sigue cobrándole a este individuo entre el 25 y el 50% del salario.
Mejora su plaza de nuevo y sigue cobrando a su interino en Berga (Barcelona).

Pero en 1984 el gobierno de Felipe González cambia la ley y Rajoy ya no puede cobrar por el puesto.
Rajoy ya es Presidente de la Diputación de Pontevedra.

En 1986 coge la plaza de Santa Polo.

En 1987 pierde su escaño en una moción de censura y retoma su trabajo.

En 1989 es diputado de Pontevedra y deja su puesto en manos de un viejo compañero de su promoción que guarda el puesto durante todos estos años.

En 1998 Aznar ya es Presidente de España y el Reglamento Hipotecario cambia para permitir que el titular pueda conservar su plaza indefinidamente, lo cual beneficia a Rajoy y a pocas personas más en España, si hay alguna. Y los registradores se convierten en "funcionarios públicos y profesionales de derecho", permitiéndoles ganar mucho más dinero, a la vez que conservar sus derechos de funcionario.

En 2007 el Real Decreto RD2007 iba a dividir Santa Polo en dos distritos. Rajoy, como Vicepresidente y Ministro del Interior, lo bloquea.

En 2014 el Registro Civil pasa a ser competencia de los Registradores; y en 2015 también la tramitación de la nacionalidad (año en que se dispara el tiempo de tramitación).

Los Registradores pasan a tener un salario muy elevado. Su salario es colectivo dentro de su ubicación.

En 2018 Rajoy se reincorpora a su puesto de Santa Polo, con un sueldo de unos 15.000€/mes pero consigue cambiar su plaza a Madrid con solo un mes de trámite, la ubicación con los sueldos más elevados. Llega 50 minutos tarde para su primera jornada (de 9-17 h, con 2 horas para comer). Goza de una antigüedad de 40 años y un salario variable de entre 1 millón y 1,2 millones de euros, dependiendo del volumen de negocio de su oficina. El Registro en efecto tiene un monopolio en su zona y funciona como el comunismo: se reparte el dinero de forma equitativa, después de pagar los salarios de los demás trabajadores.

En 2019 publica su libro Una España mejor.

Se jubila el 27 de marzo de este año, con pensión.

Los dos hermanos de Rajoy también son Registradores de la propiedad.

Rajoy empezó siendo un estudiante mediocre, según sus notas de la escuela, pero sacó el título de Registrador como el más joven de España, con 24 años. Su hermano es el segundo más joven. Ambos estudiaban para su oposición mientras aún cursaban Derecho (Mariano se licenció con 23 años). En cambio, el malagueño Jacobo Fenich Ramón, con 23 matrículas de honor en 25 asignaturas de derecho, y estudiando unas 10 horas al día durante 5 años, aprobó la oposición de Registrador con 27 años.

De tal palo tal astilla

Su padre, Mariano Rajoy Sobredo, fue Presidente de la Audiencia Provincial de Pontevedra y se vio envuelto en un turbio caso, denominado el Caso Redondela o Caso Reace. La Comisaría de Abastecimientos y Transportes (CAT) almacenaba aceite para satisfacer las exigencias del mercado y regular los precios. Pero la CAT recurría a depósitos alquilados a empresas privadas. En Vigo esos depósitos estaban (hoy desmantelados) en la zona de Guixar y fue REACE (Refinería del Noroeste de Aceites y Grasas, SA) la empresa que contrató con la CAT entre 1966 y 1972 el almacenamiento de aceite. La CAT era el único propietario de ese aceite y un seguro dejaba a cubierto la mercancía contra cualquier eventualidad.

El 25 de marzo de 1972 se descubrió que los grandes depósitos estaban totalmente vacíos, y el Director General de CAT, don José María Romero González (perito industrial), denunció en el Juzgado de guardia de Vigo la desaparición de 4.036.052 kilos de aceite de oliva, propiedad de CAT con un valor de 167.615,172 pesetas. Sumario 43/1972.

Se realizó un juicio que duró hasta noviembre de 1974 y el Presidente del Tribunal era Mariano Rajoy Sobredo, el padre del ex-Presidente del gobierno. El listado de implicados llegó a ministros y ex-ministros del régimen y a otras personalidades con tratos preferentes en Ministerios, adjudicaciones gubernamentales, y similares. Nunca se supo la verdad del asunto.

Uno de los implicados directos, el Presidente de Reace, Isidro Suárez, murió en la cárcel de Vigo en extrañas circunstancias; otro implicado, José Maria Romero, que fue la persona que destapó la corrupción,  apareció muerto también en su casa de Sevilla (padre, madre e hija, asesinados en su domicilio).

Uno de los principales accionistas de Reace era Nicolás Franco Bahamonde, hermano de Francisco Franco, militar y político español, participante en la sublevación militar contra la II República, y que dio origen a la guerra civil española. Uno de los abogados era José Maria Gil Robles, que puso gran interés en demostrar la implicación de Bahamonde.

En la sentencia Rodrigo Alonso Fariña, fundador de Reace, considerado principal responsable y beneficiario del fraude, fue condenado a 12 años de cárcel y a pagar, por responsabilidad civil, 167 millones de pesetas. Fue el único que ingresó en prisión tras el juicio. Para entonces, el Presidente de la Compañía, Isidro Suárez, había fallecido en la cárcel, cuando se estaba duchando, según la versión oficial por asfixia al producirse una fuga de gas. Un empresario, administrador judicial de la empresa, murió por una angina de pecho antes de comenzar el juicio.

Alfredo Román Pérez, contable y secretario del Consejo de Administración, fue condenado a 4 años de cárcel. Miguel Ángel García Canals - funcionario de la Comisaría de Abastecimientos y Transportes, era el responsable de comprobar los precintos de los depósitos, y no lo había hecho, recibiendo soborno mensual por ello de Reace, desde 1968 hasta 1972 - fue condenado a suspensión y multa. Nicolás Franco Bahamonde no acudió al juicio, siendo ya Embajador de España en Portugal.

El presidente del Tribunal, don Mariano Rajoy Sobredo, llevó férreamente la vista evitando que salieran a la luz los aspectos más comprometidos de este grave asunto: las muertes, la participación del hermano de Franco en la trama, la falta de investigación sobre dónde estaba el aceite, dónde se había vendido, dónde estaba el dinero ganado...

Los 5.000 folios de sumario quedaron depositados en la Audiencia Provincial de Pontevedra ¡y al poco rato resulta que se habían perdido!

Posteriormente se ha sabido que la corrupción no se limita a Rajoy y su padre. El hermano de Mariano Rajoy, Enrique Rajoy Brey, facilitó datos al despacho de abogados del ex-comisario Villarejo, el "fixer" de las cloacas del estado, para sus investigaciones “jurídico-económicas” privadas. Ocurrió en el 2015, cuando Mariano Rajoy era Presidente del Gobierno.

Como último pensamiento, y reconozco que esto lo he añadido un par de meses después, pero no podía resistirme, lo más probable es que Mariano Rajoy (tal vez ese M. Rajoy de PP que la Guardia Civil no fue capaz de identificar) no es el brillante intelectual que algunos quieren creerse, sino un hombre que ha tenido la suerte de nacer en una familia forrada y bien conectada, a pesar de sus escasas luces. El vídeo te debería hacer reír ¡por lo menos!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s0qOlHpoJ0.