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18 Facts That Prove That Piers Morgan Is Flat Out Lying About Gun Control

By Michael Snyder
theintelhub.com
January 12, 2013
Contributed by The Truth
Piers Morgan is getting on television every night and flat out lying to the American people about gun control.
Nearly every statistic that he quotes is inaccurate and he fails to acknowledge a whole host of statistics that would instantly invalidate the arguments that he is trying to make.

Yes, the UK has a lower gun murder rate than the United States does, but what Piers Morgan fails to tell you is that the overall rate of violent crime in the UK is about 4 times higher than it is in the United States.
A woman in the UK is not allowed pull out a gun to protect herself against a gang of potential rapists.  So perhaps that explains why the UK has about 125 percent more rape victims per 100,000 people than the United States does.
While UK newspapers are declaring that the UK has become the “violent crime capital of Europe”, crime rates in the United States have actually fallen dramatically over the past 20 years.
This was also a time period during which gun laws became much less restrictive in the United States.  Today, murder rates in the U.S. are generally far higher in cities that have very strict gun control laws (such as Chicago) than they are for the general population.
The cold, hard numbers make it clear that when there are more guns there is less crime, but hardcore leftists such as Piers Morgan are absolutely obsessed with gun control and Morgan continues to relentlessly attack the 2nd Amendment night after night.
We need to start pointing out that he is not telling the truth.
The following are 18 facts that prove that Piers Morgan is flat out lying about gun control…
#1 The UK has approximately 125 percent more rape victims per 100,000 people each year than the United States does.
#2 The UK has approximately 133 percent more assault victims per 100,000 people each year than the United States does.
#3 Piers Morgan continues to insist that there are more than 11,000 gun murders in the United States every year.  But that is flat out wrong.  According to the FBI, there were 8,583 gun murders in the United States during 2011.  And as Ben Swann recently pointed out, 400 of those were justifiable homicides by law enforcement and 260 of those were justifiable homicides by private citizens.
#4 The United States is #1 in the world in gun ownership, and yet it is only 28thin the world in gun murders per 100,000 people.
#5 The violent crime rate in the United States actually fell from 757.7 per 100,000 in 1992 to 386.3 per 100,000 in 2011.
During that same time period, the murder rate fell from 9.3 per 100,000 to 4.7 per 100,000.  This was during an era when gun laws in the United States generally became much less restrictive.
#6 The city of Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States.  So has this reduced crime?  Of course not.  As I wrote about the other day, the murder rate in Chicago was about 17 percent higher in 2012 than it was in 2011, and Chicago is now considered to be “the deadliest global city“.
If you can believe it, there were about as many murders in Chicago during 2012 as there was in the entire nation of Japan.
#7 After the city of Kennesaw, Georgia passed a law requiring every home to have a gun, the crime rate dropped by more than 50 percent over the course of the next 23 years.
#8 Approximately 200,000 women in the United States use guns to protect themselves against sexual crime every single year.
#9 Overall, guns in the United States are used 80 times more often to prevent crime than they are to take lives.
#10 Only about 3.5 percent of the gun murders in the United States are caused by rifles.
#11 According to Gallup, an all-time record 74 percent of all Americans are against a total handgun ban in the United States.
#12 Down in Australia, gun murders increased by about 19 percent and armed robberies increased by about 69 percent after a gun ban was instituted.
#13 When Piers Morgan claims that there are only 35 gun murders in the UK per year, he isn’t exactly being accurate.
According to official statistics, there were59 gun murders in the UK in 2011.
It is also important to keep in mind that gun crime was already super low even before the gun ban in the UK was instituted, and that a 2009 article in The Telegraph declared that gun crime had doubledover the past decade even though it is widely acknowledged that crime statistics in the UK are massively underreported.
#14 The UK has the fourth highest burglary rate in the EU.
#15 The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.
#16 A 2009 article in The Telegraph had this stunning headline: “UK is violent crime capital of Europe“.
#17 Despite the very strict ban on guns in the UK, the truth is that the UK is a far more violent society than the United States is.
In one recent year, there were2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people in the UK.  In the United States, there were only 466 violent crimes per 100,000 people during that same year.  Do we really want to be more like the UK?
#18 According to Gun Owners of America, the governments of the world slaughtered more than 170 million of their own people during the 20th century.  The vast majority of those people had been disarmed by their own governments prior to being slaughtered.
But you won’t hear many of these statistics on the mainstream news, will you?
In fact, right now there seems to be some sort of a nationwide backlash against gun advocates.  A few high profile gun advocates have even ended up dead in recent days.
For example, self-described “gun nut” Keith Ratliff, the owner of the ninth most popular channel on YouTube, was found dead at his business on January 3rd…

Keith Ratliff, 32, was a channel producer for FPSRussia firearms channel, an account with more than 3 million subscribers that features videos of a man testing a variety of guns.
Ratliff was found shot in the head at his business on Jan. 3, and while police don’t have a motive, they have classified his death as a homicide, FoxNews.com reported Wednesday.

Not only that, one of the most prominent rifle manufacturers in America was killed in a “mysterious car crash” on January 4th.  The following is from a recent articleby Mike Adams…

John Noveske is one of the most celebrated battle rifle manufacturers in America. His rifles, found at www.NoveskeRifleworks.com are widely recognized as some of the finest pieces of American-made hardware ever created. (I own one of his rifles, and it’s a masterpiece of a machine that just keeps on running.)
Sadly, John Noveske was killed in a mysterious car crash just a few days ago, on January 4, 2013.
According to the Outdoor Wire, his car “traveled across the oncoming lane onto the dirt highway shoulder until it struck two large boulders. The vehicle rolled and Mr. Noveske was ejected.”
But barely a week before this incident, John Noveske posted a lengthy, detailed post on Facebook that listed all the school shootings tied to psychiatric drugs. At the end of the post, he asked, “What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on?”
That was the last post he ever made.

So are these two incidents just coincidences, or is some sort of a pattern emerging?
Meanwhile, radical leftists are introducing gun grabbing legislation in legislaturesall over the United States.
On the federal level, Barack Obama is developing plans to bypass Congress and use executive orders to implement his gun control agenda.
There seems to be an all-out attempt to bring strict gun control to the United States.  It is going to be very important to get the facts out and show people that reducing the number of guns is not going to make us all safer.
Please share this article with as many people as you can.  Hopefully this list of facts will help to change some minds.

Sandy Hook: The Silence is Suspicious

By Shepard Ambellas
theintelhub.com
March 5, 2013
The Lanza records remain sealed still almost 3 months after the Sandy Hook School Shooting took place. There is no logical explanation for this other than the fact that vital evidence is being carefully withheld from the publics view. In fact, there is now a media silence on the issue as nothing new is being reported.
The prosecutor in question should be examined closer in my opinion.

John Christoffersen writes;

Prosecutor Stephen Sedensky III successfully argued in December to keep search warrant affidavits and applications related to Lanza’s house and the car he drove to the school sealed for 90 days, saying disclosure would jeopardize an ongoing investigation. He said at the time no arrests were anticipated but had not been ruled out.
News media advocates say the records should be unsealed, arguing the public has a right to see such records, which include what was found in the house and car. They say records may be sealed only when an investigation would be hurt by disclosure.
“There seems to be absolutely no reason that they would need to. It’s not going to jeopardize the case in any way,” said Linda Petersen, chairwoman of the Freedom of Information Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists.
William Fish, an attorney who has represented the news media in high-profile cases that were sealed in Connecticut, also said the sealing does not appear justified since no prosecution is likely. He conceded, however, that “it’s not a surprise to me that a court has in fact sealed the records just because it’s so horrible.”

When we hit the 90 day mark in the next few weeks we can really see how serious the establishment is about concealing the truth about this crime from the public. However, whatever the outcome the establishment has already gained as ammunition and firearms have been privately limited by some retail outlets.
To top it off banks have even stopped lending to select firearm manufacturers in some cases.
*****
Read more articles by this author HERE.
Shepard Ambellas is the founder & director of theintelhub.com (a popular alternative news website), researcher, investigative journalist, radio talk show host, and filmmaker.

The Government Has It Bass-Ackwards: Failing To Prosecute Criminal Fraud by the Big Banks Is Killing – NOT Saving – the Economy

Submitted by George Washington on 03/06/2013 ,http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-03-06/government-has-it-bass-ackwards-failing-prosecute-criminal-fraud-big-banks-ki


U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said today:

I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions [banks] becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy

As we’ve repeatedly noted, this is wholly untrue.
If the big banks were important to the economy, would so many  prominent economists, financial experts and bankers be calling for them to be broken up?
If the big banks generated prosperity for the economy, would they have to be virtually 100% subsidized to keep them afloat?
If the big banks were helpful for an economic recovery, would they be prolonging our economic instability?
In fact, failing to prosecute criminal fraud has been destabilizing the economy since at least 2007 … and will cause huge crashes in the future.
After all, the main driver of economic growth is a strong rule of law.
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that we have to prosecute fraud or else the economy won’t recover:

The legal system is supposed to be the codification of our norms and beliefs, things that we need to make our system work. If the legal system is seen as exploitative, then confidence in our whole system starts eroding. And that’s really the problem that’s going on.

***
I think we ought to go do what we did in the S&L [crisis] and actually put many of these guys in prison. Absolutely. These are not just white-collar crimes or little accidents. There were victims. That’s the point. There were victims all over the world.

***

Economists focus on the whole notion of incentives. People have an incentive sometimes to behave badly, because they can make more money if they can cheat. If our economic system is going to work then we have to make sure that what they gain when they cheat is offset by a system of penalties.

Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future.
Indeed, professor of law and economics (and chief S&L prosecutor) William Black notes that we’ve known of this dynamic for “hundreds of years”. And see this, this, this and this.
(Review of the data on accounting fraud confirms that fraud goes up as criminal prosecutions go down.)
The Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division told Congress:

Recovery from the fallout of the financial crisis requires important efforts on various fronts, and vigorous enforcement is an essential component, as aggressive and even-handed enforcement will meet the public’s fair expectation that those whose violations of the law caused severe loss and hardship will be held accountable. And vigorous law enforcement efforts will help vindicate the principles that are fundamental to the fair and proper functioning of our markets: that no one should have an unjust advantage in our markets; that investors have a right to disclosure that complies with the federal securities laws; and that there is a level playing field for all investors.

Paul Zak (Professor of Economics and Department Chair, as well as the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, Professor of Neurology at Loma Linda University Medical Center, and a senior researcher at UCLA) and Stephen Knack (a Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Research Department and Public Sector Governance Department) wrote a paper called Trust and Growth, showing that enforcing the rule of law – i.e. prosecuting white collar fraud – is necessary for a healthy economy.
One of the leading business schools in America – the Wharton School of Business – published an essay by a psychologist on the causes and solutions to the economic crisis. Wharton points out that restoring trust is the key to recovery, and that trust cannot be restored until wrongdoers are held accountable:

According to David M. Sachs, a training and supervision analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, the crisis today is not one of confidence, but one of trust. “Abusive financial practices were unchecked by personal moral controls that prohibit individual criminal behavior, as in the case of [Bernard] Madoff, and by complex financial manipulations, as in the case of AIG.” The public, expecting to be protected from such abuse, has suffered a trauma of loss similar to that after 9/11. “Normal expectations of what is safe and dependable were abruptly shattered,” Sachs noted. “As is typical of post-traumatic states, planning for the future could not be based on old assumptions about what is safe and what is dangerous. A radical reversal of how to be gratified occurred.”

People now feel more gratified saving money than spending it, Sachs suggested. They have trouble trusting promises from the government because they feel the government has let them down.

He framed his argument with a fictional patient named Betty Q. Public, a librarian with two teenage children and a husband, John, who had recently lost his job. “She felt betrayed because she and her husband had invested conservatively and were double-crossed by dishonest, greedy businessmen, and now she distrusted the government that had failed to protect them from corporate dishonesty. Not only that, but she had little trust in things turning around soon enough to enable her and her husband to accomplish their previous goals.

“By no means a sophisticated economist, she knew … that some people had become fantastically wealthy by misusing other people’s money — hers included,” Sachs said. “In short, John and Betty had done everything right and were being punished, while the dishonest people were going unpunished.”

Helping an individual recover from a traumatic experience provides a useful analogy for understanding how to help the economy recover from its own traumatic experience, Sachs pointed out. The public will need to “hold the perpetrators of the economic disaster responsible and take what actions they can to prevent them from harming the economy again.” In addition, the public will have to see proof that government and business leaders can behave responsibly before they will trust them again, he argued.

Note that Sachs urges “hold[ing] the perpetrators of the economic disaster responsible.” In other words, just “looking forward” and promising to do things differently isn’t enough.
Robert Shiller – one of the top housing experts in the United States – says that the mortgage fraud is a lot like the fraud which occurred during the Great Depression. As Fortune notes:

Shiller said the danger of foreclosuregate — the scandal in which it has come to light that the biggest banks have routinely mishandled homeownership documents, putting the legality of foreclosures and related sales in doubt — is a replay of the 1930s, when Americans lost faith that institutions such as business and government were dealing fairly.

Indeed, it is beyond dispute that bank fraud was one of the main causes of the Great Depression.
Economist James K. Galbraith wrote in the introduction to his father, John Kenneth Galbraith’s, definitive study of the Great Depression, The Great Crash, 1929:

The main relevance of The Great Crash, 1929 to the great crisis of 2008 is surely here. In both cases, the government knew what it should do. Both times, it declined to do it. In the summer of 1929 a few stern words from on high, a rise in the discount rate, a tough investigation into the pyramid schemes of the day, and the house of cards on Wall Street would have tumbled before its fall destroyed the whole economy.

In 2004, the FBI warned publicly of “an epidemic of mortgage fraud.” But the government did nothing, and less than nothing, delivering instead low interest rates, deregulation and clear signals that laws would not be enforced. The signals were not subtle: on one occasion the director of the Office of Thrift Supervision came to a conference with copies of the Federal Register and a chainsaw. There followed every manner of scheme to fleece the unsuspecting ….

This was fraud, perpetrated in the first instance by the government on the population, and by the rich on the poor.

***

The government that permits this to happen is complicit in a vast crime.

Galbraith also says:

There will have to be full-scale investigation and cleaning up of the residue of that, before you can have, I think, a return of confidence in the financial sector. And that’s a process which needs to get underway.

Galbraith recently said that “at the root of the crisis we find the largest financial swindle in world history”, where “counterfeit” mortgages were “laundered” by the banks.
As he has repeatedly noted, the economy will not recover until the perpetrators of the frauds which caused our current economic crisis are held accountable, so that trust can be restored. See this, this and this.
No wonder Galbraith has said economists should move into the background, and “criminologists to the forefront.”
The bottom line is that the government has it exactly backwards.   By failing to prosecute criminal fraud, the government  is destabilizing the economy … and ensuring future crashes.
Postscript:  Unfortunately, the government made it official policy not to prosecute fraud, even though criminal fraud is the main business model adopted by the giant banks.
Indeed, the government has done everything it can to cover up fraud, and has been actively encouraging criminal fraud and attacking those trying to blow the whistle.

US Attorney General Gives the Go-Ahead on Domestic Drone Strikes: May Be Necessary Under “Extraordinary Circumstances”

Mac Slavo March 6th, 2013 SHTFplan.com

When Congress authorized the deployment of some 30,000 drones over U.S. skies with the passage of the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act in 2012 many civil liberties groups, privacy advocates and Americans expressed their concerns about the possibility that these surveillance tools could be used within the borders of the United States much like they are on the battlefields of the middle east where scores of innocent civilians are killed almost every day as collateral damage in direct strikes against alleged terrorists.
Those fears are very quickly being realized not as possibilities, but actualities.
In response to questions recently voiced by Senator Rand Paul about drone strikes being used against American citizens on American soil without charge or trial, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a public statement indicating that the government has the right to use armed unmanned aerial vehicles should “extraordinary circumstances” arise.
Holder writes:

On February 20, 2013, you wrote to John Brennan requesting additional information concerning the Administration’s views about whether “the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, without a trial.”
As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts. 
The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront.
It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.
For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.
Full Text (PDF)

The official position of the United States government is that a drone, or any military asset for that matter, can be deployed by the President of the United States or his surrogates without regard to the sixth amendment of the US Constitution, which requires that citizens be afforded the right of facing their accusers, to call witnesses and to be tried by a jury of their peers.
Senator Paul responded to the Attorney General’s comments and warned of the dangers of the new policy:

“The U.S. Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening – it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”

Last month President Obama responded to questions about domestic drone strikes:

First of all… there’s never been a drone used on an American citizen, on American soil.
We respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counter-terrorism operations outside of the United States. The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside of the United States.
…
I am not somebody who believes that the President has the authority to do whatever he wants or whatever she wants, whenever they want,  just under the guise of  counter-terrorism.
There have to be checks and balances on it.

Based on Eric Holder’s memo, the President, and therefore agencies under his control, do believe that they have the authority to use lethal force against those identified as “terrorists.”
As the Attorney General noted in his letter to Senator Paul, there are hundreds of Americans that have been tried and convicted as terrorists, and thousands more that have been identified as terrorists by government officials.
U.S. attorney Anne Tompkins recently prosecuted Bernard Von Nothaus for minting silver coins he branded as “liberty dollars.” After Vot Nothaus was convicted, Tompkins referred to his actions as a unique form of domestic terrorism.
Local law enforcement officials attending DHS sponsored training events have widely reported that the definitions for “terrorist” activity are becoming very broad, as outlined by one police officer at James Rawles’ Survival Blog:

During the past several years, I have witnessed a dramatic shift in the focus of law enforcement training.  Law enforcement courses have moved away from a local community focus to a federally dominated model of complete social control. Most training I have attended over the past two years have been sponsored by Department of Homeland Security (DHS), namely the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
No matter what topic the training session concerns, every DHS sponsored course I have attended over the past few years never fails to branch off into warnings about potential domestic terrorists in the community.
…
So how does a person qualify as a potential domestic terrorist?  Based on the training I have attended, here are characteristics that qualify:

• Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
• Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)
• Survivalist literature (fictional books such as “Patriots” and “One Second After” are mentioned by name)
• Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
• Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)
• Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)
• Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government
• Homeschooling
• Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties
• Belief in a New World Order conspiracy

Earlier this year a kindergarten student was suspended from school after officials reported that she made a terrorist threat utilizing a Hello Kitty bubble gun.
The Attorney General of the United States of America just gave the President the go-ahead on domestic drone strikes.
Under the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, no Constitutional protections need be afforded to American citizens, thus, anyone can be classified as a domestic terrorist at the President’s discretion.
If you mint a silver coin, stockpile food, refuse to turn in your high capacity magazine, voice beliefs that may be considered subversive to the government, or have a toy resembling a gun, you maybe labeled a terrorist.
As such, you can also be targeted for extermination.

Nearly 1,200 people have starved to death in NHS hospitals because 'nurses are too busy to feed patients'

• For every patient who dies from malnutrition, four more have dehydration mentioned on their death certificate
• In 2011, 43 patients starved to death and 291 died in a state of severe malnutrition
• Department of Health branded the figures 'unacceptable' and said the number of unannounced inspections will increase

By Tara Brady
PUBLISHED: 05:57 EST, 3 March 2013 | UPDATED: 06:57 EST, 3 March 2013

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287332/Nearly-1-200-people-starved-death-NHS-hospitals-nurses-busy-feed-patients.html#ixzz2MUTisgV5

Vulnerable Martin Ryan starved to death in an NHS hospital after 26 days without proper nourishment

As many as 1,165 people starved to death in NHS hospitals over the past four years fuelling claims nurses are too busy to feed their patients.
The Department of Health branded the figures 'unacceptable' and said the number of unannounced inspections by the care watchdog will increase.
According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics following a Freedom of Information request, for every patient who dies from malnutrition, four more have dehydration mentioned on their death certificate.
Critics say nurses are too busy to feed patients and often food and drink are placed out of reach of vulnerable people.
In 2011, 43 patients starved to death and 291 died in a state of severe malnutrition, while the number of patients discharged from hospital suffering from malnutrition doubled to 5,558.
Dianne Jeffrey, chairwoman of Malnutrition Task Force, condemned the statistics.
She told The Sunday Express: 'Too many are paying the price with their lives while being deprived of the basic right to good nutrition, hydration and support.'

 

More...

• Nurses at top children's hospital left suicidal by stress and fainting from exhaustion in theatre
• 'Rapid response' operation carried out within 24 hours of suffering a mini-stroke cuts risk of another episode by a third
• The 'urgent care centres' that don't even have any doctors: Survey of clinics replacing closed A&Es reveals staff who can't prescribe drugs - and sometimes aren't there at all
• The 'urgent care centres' that don't even have any doctors: Survey of clinics replacing closed A&Es reveals staff who can't prescribe drugs - and sometimes aren't there at all

The revelations come after two non-executive directors resigned from Mid Staffordshire health trust after the announcement it was going into administration. 
Board members Eleanor Chumley-Roberts and Dr Lyn Hulme are to step down from the trust that was at the centre of the Stafford Hospital scandal.
It has also been announced that Mid-Staffordshire may be the first foundation trust to be put into administration.

Eleanor Chumley-Roberts (left) and Dr Lyn Hulme (right) are unhappy that they had no input into the decision to put the trust in administration

Monitor, the watchdog that regulates trusts, said it was considering the move in order to 'safeguard services' for local patients. 
A public inquiry into the trust said that patients had experienced 'appalling' care between 2005 and 2009.
It said that the trust had cared more about cost control than the quality and safety of the care it gave.
Mid Staffordshire health trust is in control of Stafford Hospital, where an investigation showed substandard care resulted in hundreds of deaths.
The families of patients involved in the Stafford Hospital scandal protested outside a meeting of NHS bosses this week and renewed their calls for the resignation of chief executive Sir David Nicholson.

Mid Staffordshire health trust is in control of Stafford Hospital, where an investigation showed substandard care resulted in hundreds of deaths

A dozen people held placards with Sir David’s photograph accompanied by the words 'Resign', 'The man with no shame' and 'Too many deaths, no accountability'.

A major investigation is under way at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust and acting chief executive Dr Jackie Bene has stepped down

Sir David, who has faced calls to quit since the Francis report revealed issues a Stafford Hospital, was instead given a vote of confidence.
The trust has been the subject of three inquiries in four years.
NHS hospitals have also stood accused of fiddling figures to mask the numbers of patients dying needlessly. 
A major investigation is now taking place at the Royal Bolton Hospital in Greater Manchester, where acting chief executive Dr Jackie Bene, stepped down.
The trust had had one of the highest mortality rates in the country. 
But in 2011, the figures suddenly dropped by 10 per cent and the trust was named as one of only about 50 in the country with 'lower than expected' death rates.
But it is feared that since 2001, an estimated 2,000-plus patients may have died unnecessarily at the trust.

Vulnerable Martin Ryan starved to death in an NHS hospital 26 days without proper nourishment in 2005. 
The 43-year-old, who had Down's syndrome, was admitted to Kingston Hospital after he suffered a stroke which left him unable to swallow. 
But a 'total breakdown in communication' meant he was never fitted with a feeding tube. 
The case was highlighted by Mencap in 2009. An internal inquiry by the hospital found that doctors had thought nurses were feeding Mr Ryan, from Richmond, south-west London, through a tube. 
By the time they found out this was not the case, he was too weak for an operation. He died in agony five days later.
Worcestershire Acute NHS Hospital Trust was forced to pay out more than £400,000 last year in compensation after a patient starved to death and another was left unwashed for 11 weeks.
In one of the worst ever cases of multiple NHS failings, patients were left begging for water or left hungry after trays of food were dumped too far from their reach.
The 84-year-old starved to death in 2009 after being admitted following a fall.
The man, who has not been identified at the request of his relatives, could only manage certain foods, but he was not fed properly and died two months later.
On his death certificate, inanition, a clinical term for starvation, was recorded as the cause of death.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: 'Every NHS patient should expect to be looked after properly in hospital. 

'It is completely unacceptable if patients go hungry or are malnourished.
'To help make sure patients get the right care - and to root out bad practice - the Care Quality Commission has increased the number of unannounced inspections that it undertakes, and soon it will publish its findings from a series of inspections looking specifically at dignity and nutrition.
'We are also investing £100 million on IT so nurses can spend more time with patients, not paperwork.
'That means nursing rounds where senior nurses will have more time to check that patients are comfortable, are helped to eat and drink, and are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287332/Nearly-1-200-people-starved-death-NHS-hospitals-nurses-busy-feed-patients.html#ixzz2MoipZw4H
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Heavens above: the sex bomb, Opus Dei and why Benedict is now the prisoner of the Vatican

Heavens above: the sex bomb, Opus Dei and why Benedict is now the prisoner of the Vatican

By Richard Cottrell

Contributing writer for End the Lie

The former pope in Fatima, Portugal in 2010 (Image credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales)/Flickr)

How ironic that a set of backward creeds which have nothing to do with the apostolic message of Jesus may destroy the Roman Church. The conception of sex as an original sin flowed from the complicated personality of Paul of Tarsus, the greatest PR genius in history, who single-handedly created the Roman Church, the Vatican and the succession of celibate priests known as popes, the earthly representatives of God incarnate.

Note: the views expressed here are solely those of the author

Paul may well have been gay, who knows at this distance in time. He was certainly in permanent neutral gear when it came to the fumbling business of sex. He was rigorously ascetic and a dedicated misogynist, which led him to the conclusion that if the minds of men (note, men) were not diverted by animistic stirrings, they would better concentrate on the job of building heaven on earth.

That is how we come to the present disarray in the Vatican.  Joseph Ratzinger, 111^th Vicar of Christ was advised early in February by the Holy See’s inner counsels to resign ahead of huge new claims for compensation arising from abuse by prelates reaching the courts as a massive, global class action. Moreover as chief executive of the church, he was told that he might himself prove liable for charges of complicity and therefore open to arrest. Benedict’s problem, as with his predecessors, was the dual nature of the Vatican as a cradle of faith and a recognised state with lay responsibilities.

In 2005 these twin faucets came together when Benedict was accused directly of personally attempting to sabotage an abuse case involving three young boys in the Archdiocese of Houston, Texas. The lawsuit called for his arrest and detention, deterred by his plea of immunity as a head of state – and perhaps a call George Bush put in from the White House.

Suffer little children

Ratzinger’s ascent on the Vatican ladder of promotion is directly connected to both the Sex Bomb and a secretive internal hard-line Catholic sect known as Opus Dei. In 2001 Pope John Paul II, thoroughly alarmed at the tsunami of abuse cases reaching the Vatican, shook up the internal bureaucracy which hitherto examined each claim.  So the German cardinal and former member of the Hitler Youth was placed in charge of a special and largely secret holy office, with the chief responsibility of closing down the scandals.

Ratzinger interpreted his brief as covering up as many cases as possible, given that St.Peter’s Pence had paid outstanding claims for damages in the area of $30 billion, the tip, as everyone in the Vatican knew perfectly well, of the true extent of the sickness afflicting the church.  Ratzinger’s chief tactic was wearing down complainants, many of whom stated they had been directly bullied and threatened by high church officials. Those who had followed Ratzinger’s rise were not surprised since they recognised his usual handiwork confronted with abuse cases in his own homeland.

Ratzinger was fighting on two fronts, the internal rampant homosexuality among the priestly battalions, and perverse and evil things in the vestry involving adolescents and younger children.  The argument that the one fuels the other is not automatic. It is no crime to be gay, yet the stories now coming to the surface demonstrate that Catholic seminaries are foremost recruiting hostels for same-sex encounters, rather than training to spread the Gospel.

A few lone voices within the Holy See counselled Christian atonement, the creation of a dedicated area of the church administration designated to investigate every claim and reach appropriate compensation. But this of course also amounts to confession, which if popular on Sundays among the multitude, is not one of the Roman Church’s noted leading precepts.

What the butler saw

The fuse which led to the current eruption beneath the Holy See began with the sensational Vatileaks Affair, early in 2012. Senior ‘princes of the church’ supported by lower ranks of the clergy and so-called small fry in the ranks of the bureaucracy leaked highly embarrassing top secret documents concerning the sex scandals wracking the Holy See.  The affair was decorated with a lively Vatican ‘deep throat’ feeding the Roman media and the gossip mill with juicy morsels describing rifts, backbiting and plots revolving around St Peter’s Throne.

The customary patsy duly appeared. He was the pope’s highly trusted manservant, 40-year-old Paolo Gabriele, arrested by the papal police on charges of stealing sensitive documents from the pope’s apartment, thrown into the tiny Vatican state prison, ritually excoriated, sentenced, then absolved. Rather heavy treatment on the scale meted out to Galileo for a minor footman who was obviously acting on the commands of an internal resistance movement arming themselves with compromising secrets.

At the best of times the Vatican is a seething vipers’ nest of plots and conspiracies. Parallels with the struggles for control of the former Soviet Politburo are not inapt. The latest bout of turmoil centred not so much on the incumbent pope as a far wider struggle for the soul of the church itself, and even the survival of the Catholic religion. In this scenario Benedict was a pawn, an observer of events and certainly not a manipulator.

In the wake of Vatileaks, Ratzinger drifted into brooding isolation, rarely stepping outside his apartment except when summoned on official duties, his conversation limited to pleasantries exchanged  with the nuns and servants looking after his quarters. A little over a year from the scandal bursting into the headlines, he was gone, almost it seemed in a puff of holy smoke. It is quite extraordinary how skilled commentators and church-watchers – especially in Italy – ignored the seamless connection which led to the precipitate fall of the Bishop of Rome.

Benedict XVI did not retire because he was old, infirm, or just exhausted. He was the victim of a brilliantly organised, long-playing coup d’état, a putsch conducted within the cloisters of the Holy City by papal strong men associated with the highly secretive and powerful ‘church within a church’ known and feared as Opus Dei – the Work of God.

Who pulled the trigger?

Practically speaking, the unfortunate Ratzinger himself.

After Vatileaks, he appointed an exclusive commission headed by the hefty Spanish cardinal, Julian Harranz Casado, formerly president of the internal censors responsible for the purity of Catholic canon law. He is also a leading light in Opus Dei, which John Paul II invested as his own ‘personal prelature.’  Opus Dei reflects many physiognomies of lay-world cults like the Moonies and Scientology, demanding exceptional levels of purity and mass unquestioning obedience, not excluding self-mortification and Stasi-like tactics of snooping and prying on worshippers outside the organisation.

The movement demands absolute obedience to its inspirational founder, a charismatic Spanish priest called Escrivá de Balaguer, who started Opus Dei in 1928. This highly equivocal figure grew to such eminence he was more than once unkindly compared to the truly ungodly L. Ron Hubbard, patron saint of Scientology. Following his death in 1975, he was, by the customary slothful standards, beatified at lightning pace once John Paul II was safely on St Peter’s Throne. Seventeen years is breaking the speed of light in the Vatican.

Yet the elevation was marked by cantankerous disputes, protests and bouts of fury aimed at the rushed beatification, the veracity of the essential miraculous cures and the personality of Escrivá himself, described by his many fulsome critics as venal, intolerant, harsh towards subordinates, bearing closet pro-Nazi and Francoist sympathies.  With an eye to the future the signs of schism were clearly apparent.

Opus Dei’s modest accredited membership – probably about 100,000 worldwide, out of 1.2 billion communicants, is outweighed in terms of spiritual and political power thanks to its concentrated Soviet cell-like structure and the intense potency of Spanish Messianic Catholicism on which the movement draws.  Even the Jesuits are prone to shrink in its shadow.

Harranz Casado is Opus Dei’s own pope and but for his ripe years (83) might have been a pope in waiting. It was he who organised the secret off-radar conclaves in safe houses dotted around Rome that duly raised their man Ratzinger – a fellow traveller of Opus Dei but not a formal acolyte – to the papacy, at a venerable 76 and therefore likely to enjoy a conveniently brief reign.

A little over three weeks ago Harranz Casado came to the papal apartment on an important mission. He brought with him a bulky secret file containing his findings on the Vatileaks affair and the subsequent fall-out in terms of church and global politics. Harranz Casado warned the pope that he might face a subpoena from an ‘important state’ and the argument of immunity might not hold. Better not to let matters travel that far, for the good of the church. In the event of resigning, then his immunity might be tested if he stepped outside the Vatican, where he must remain for his own safety, even as a virtual prisoner.

After his last audience, the now ex-pope flew to the Vatican’s retreat at Castel Gondolfo in the hills close to Rome in the safety of a helicopter. The prisoner was now at bay in the castle of comfort.

The Vatican’s Civil Wars

Schism is the state of normality within the Vatican. The famous fracas  600 years ago, that saw three popes tussling for the throne, does offer uncanny clues as to what is happening today.  Once again there are three factions who would have their man as Pontiff: the traditional conservatives, the largely isolated moderates champing for change and modernization and Opus Dei, which seeks to return to intensely spiritual values – and strict discipline in the ranks.

Against that background the mushroom cloud of the Sex Bomb. The fallout will be toxic. The Roman Catholic consensus refuses to recognise the singularity of humanity, that we are but clay formed from sexual passions. Sex becomes a cipher in the poverty of mind, until it reaches the point where the church cracks apart owning to the sheer vast sum of its inconsistencies. We are, I suspect, approaching that point now.

Opus Dei is a guerrilla force working patiently and quietly to seize control of the entire Roman Catholic Church. Effectively the Polish pope institutionalized conservative forces within the church, led by his newly invested Praetorian Guard. He was an extraordinary custodian of the keys of St Peter’s by any standards: the compassionate humanitarian: gifted international statesman: cheerful consorter with crooks and hoodlums within the precincts of the Vatican: the first Slav to head the church. Yet at heart, a doctrinaire conservative who stood firm against the glaring necessity for urgent reforms.

Harranz Casado is one of two cardinals with declared affiliations to Opus Dei. The other is a Latin American rock star, the egregiously self promoting Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Peru. But this greatly understates the strength of Opus Dei sympathizers in the ranks of the cardinals, potentially important ‘swing voters’ in the forthcoming conclave. One hot tip is the highly conservative cleric heading the Ghanaian church, Peter Turkson. Here is a veteran Vatican insider, a mere stripling at 64, profoundly opposed to relaxing the church’s stand against same-sex relations or melting the celibacy rules and so forth. He could well prove Opus Dei’s favourite son.

The Vatican’s propensity for civil wars is an ancient inheritance.  The difference in these times is the fallout from the detonation of the Sex Bomb, which brings the church into collision with forces and mores of temporal society. That the church’s own teachings on matters of sex are ignored – glaringly so within the portals of the institution itself – is patently obvious

A schism will not of course occur overnight. Rather it will be a slow, painful dissolution, a crumbling of the pillars, a progressive decline in the power and influence of the church as the ebbing faithful recoil from the rank odour of the on-going abuse scandals and the spreading turmoil on the banks of the Tiber. All that Opus Dei and the conservative ranks in general can preach is more of the same. They will finish up scrambling in the embers.

Coming next: the Last Schism and the Fall of the Catholic Church

Note: this article has not been edited due to time constraints. If you find an error please contact me.

Richard Cottrell is a writer, journalist and former European MP (Conservative). His new book Gladio: NATO’s Dagger At The Heart Of Europe is now available from Progressive Press. You may order it using the link below (or by clicking here – Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis):

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