People think that because I was abused as a child I exaggerate the scale of this horror. This information is from the Innocence In Danger organisations‘ French report (emphasis mine):

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Internet : the new playground for paedo-criminals

Paedo-criminality is increasingly organised through international criminal networks using tools that are as banal as they are shocking: digital technology and the Internet.

If the Internet has changed society’s ways of functioning, child abusers also use informatics and the Internet to ‘hunt their prey,’ to groom young children and to transact their commerce of flesh.

Some think these dangers are exaggerated. But to exercise their paedo-criminal inclinations, child abusers and their business agents use the same electronic mail and the same chat rooms as our children.

We must also realise that, according to INTERPOL, the international traffic of children nets yearly over 19 Billion dollars.

According to surveys in Canada and USA, one child in five has been solicited to meet a potential aggressor.

The facts

3,000,000 children are reported missing, abused, prostituted, tortured, raped or killed all over the world, according to UNICEF.

1,000,000 more children are forced into this commercial sex every year.

Over 200,000 ‘paedo-cultural’ sites were identified in 2003 (as against 70,000 en 2001)

4,598 chat rooms have been identified world-wide as exchanging paedo-pornographic photos and films.

10,000 persons in France daily surf the net on these paedophile sites.

498 paedophile networks are listed as of today

20 CD Roms were discovered in one network (Zandvoort) containing almost 100,000 paedo-pornographic images, serving as a ’shopping catalogue’ for paedo-criminals.

On the average, a paedophile during his lifetime would have abused 100 to 250 children.

1.9 million calls were received in France by Numero Vert 119 in 1998.

A child can be bought for $20 to 20,000. But as a sex slave, he or she can bring in millions

The US economy has run on cheap oil and cheap foreign money for many years. With the current levels of Dollar dominated indebtedness at all time highs the strain in the system is starting to show. The dollar, standing at $2.05 to the british pound, has continued the steady decline I commented on in October 2004. Since that date that drop has been around 6% against the Euro. Now we are seeing a potential implosion in the US sub-prime mortgage market which will have inevitable knock on effects on the US domestic economy as mortgages are pulled and lives turned upside down.

The overspill into the business sector of the potential funding shortage that may now arise has also begun I believe. Private equity buy outs are facing a shortage of funds as the underwriting banks are still carrying on their books much of the stock they issued for transactions earlier this year. Since Bush was re-elected for the second time, delay of an economic bear market in the US has only been managed by spending lots of dollars on very unpopular wars. The Republicans do not believe theirs will be the next president so the current situation suits them fine.

The Democrats will be handed a Basket economy on the point of implosion and two wars they can neither win, withdraw from or pay for. When I was at Las vegas airport earlier this year a Trucker from New Jersey gave me a light. We chatted as we smoked outside the terminal. “You watch”, he said, “The Democrats are down to a black and a woman for President. The Republicans aren’t gonna let a black or a woman run the show. There will be another major terrorist attack”. I do not believe he is right there. Another terrorist attack would only ensure the Democrats are in for ten years, whomever they chose. Without it they will be in for five, crisis managing through the bear to the beginning of the upside, before a shiny young besuited whiter than white Republican can take over to ride the good times.

Prepare for the bear because it is coming. Luckily we will be protected from the wash to some extent by the trading block of Europe and the trade we have with China and India who are of course leading world growth. But any major remolding of the shape of the US economy will not be without knock on effects. In the UK we can expect inflation up 1 -1.5% over the next two years and interest up 2 - 3 points. At the same time many people are coming off low fixed rate mortgages set five or ten years ago. The effects on consumer spending will be quite significant, slowing growth to near zero for a short sharp spell.

The worst affected will be the same borrowers as in the US: those who are mortgaged at higher rates because they have less resources and lower credit ranks. Oh, and those who own businesses.

It seems bizarre in the extreme for me, a man who paid plenty of tax when I was able and working. Strange that doctors wish to save £500 by not investigating matters in a timely fashion. Not only could they have solved my physical problems two years ago but saved the state some £35,360 in benefits and what will now be tens or hundreds of thousands to patch me up. All because the first people I saw at Newham “University” Hospital had no clue and … etc The Rest Is History …

According to Radio Four this morning there are £450 million worth of unused foot-spa’s and £431 million of unused bread makers languishing unused in British homes. These items, unwanted gifts, show us much that is wrong with the way we do things.

£881 million of technology, human effort, scarce resources, all wasted. Of course, this is just bread makers and foot-spa’s. Think of all the other unwanted gifts and you start to get to very scary numbers. The resource waste is the most appalling aspect. The manufacture of many of these gifts uses energy, water, plastics - oil and precious metals. These are all scarce resources which could, without exception, be used to great benefit elsewhere.

Gift-giving is about the ego of the giver. Presents are bought to support the self-image of the buyer. This is why they are so often wrong for the receiver. Will your gifts end up on the ever expanding “Crap Gift Mountain”?

I take back my earlier post about gift-goats. At least goat shit can be used to cook a meal, unlike the £431 million of bread makers.