“If the winner of the election were to be decided by the ads, we’d be ruled by GetUp” (Karl Quinn, Entertainment Editor, The Age).¹ Have you seen our latest election ad on climate change?

Dear Glenn,

In 2007 Australia held what was widely called “the world’s first climate change election.” We all know what happened – the Australian people demonstrated a powerful community consensus on taking strong action to reduce carbon pollution.

That’s why it is so surprising that what Labor announced yesterday involved no emissions trading scheme for at least 3 years, no promise to turn back rising pollution in the next 3 years and no price on pollution. Even the pledge to rid the country of dirty coal power depends on carbon capture and storage technology that may not exist for 20 or 30 years, if ever.

But Julia Gillard did say that she’s open to delivering more on climate change and with Tony Abbott’s climate policy in shambles we must take this opportunity to convince her to deliver more to reduce carbon pollution.

We’re running out of time to solve climate change and reduce our rising carbon pollution – and we can’t settle for policies that don’t even veer close to the kind of strong action the science demands. Now is the time to step up our climate change ad campaign:

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/StopRisingPollution

We know that going to an election simply with yesterday’s weak climate announcement would be untenable. That’s why just minutes ago Julia Gillard announced another part of her plan: an incentive scheme to get old dirty cars off the road. We know the Government will be announcing their policy in stages, gauging the public reaction every step of the way.

This gives us an opportunity. These next 4 weeks offer us the most important moment we have to influence the climate policies of the major parties. We know they never listen to us, the people, as intently as they do during an election campaign.

A credible climate policy must include a price on carbon, real renewable energy investments and a nation building energy efficiency program. These are the most effective and efficient ways to drive back rising levels of pollution. The Coalition have ruled out a real response to climate change. The Labor party is still holding back. The Greens are keen, but they can’t make policy without the government of the day onside.

The word out of Canberra is that our popular climate ad has started to make an impact on the public and politicians. You can show Labor what a credible climate policy looks like by donating to get this ad on the air:

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/StopRisingPollution

There is still time for Labor to take a serious climate policy to the election–one that stops the rise of carbon pollution in the next 3 years.

In these last few weeks before the election, let’s show them what climate leadership looks like.

Thank you for your commitment,
The GetUp Team

PS – After Kevin Rudd delayed action on climate change, his approval ratings plummeted and he lost the prime ministership. Julia Gillard has a chance to chart a new course–keep this ad on the air to show her the way.

¹ Karl Quinn (in online video clip), ‘Slogans, promises, furphies and sins: election gamesmanship in full spin’, The Age, 22 July 2010.

Source: GetUp.org.au

Featuring Julia Gillard as James Bond, Tony Abbott as Bruce Willis and a cameo by Bob Brown, our hilarious action-hero enrolment video is going wild online and in the news.

Politics has never been so much fun – but there’s a serious message too. Incredibly, there are still 1.4 million Australians – especially young Australians – not enrolled to vote. Hundreds of thousands more may be unable to vote because they’ve moved house or changed their name since the last election.

Together, we can change that. Can you share this hilarious enrolment video with your friends and family? Check out the video below and share by email, Facebook and Twitter.

www.getup.org.au/campaign/Enrol

Many people don’t realise that when the election is called they may have until just 8pm that same day to enrol to vote, and just 3 days to update details like change of address. That’s why it’s so important that we get this video message out to young and old: enrol now or you’ll miss the action (plus you could be fined $110 for not enrolling).

Most of us have friends and family who think that politics is boring or worse yet, that they can’t make a difference. But GetUp is about putting people back into politics, and over the past 5 years you and 370,000 other GetUp members have proven that everyday Australians can make a difference.

We can’t guarantee politics will always be as exciting as an action-packed Hollywood blockbuster, but for at least the next 2 minutes and 23 seconds it can be!

Click here to see and share our enrolment video:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/Enrol

It’s Abbott and Gillard as you’ve never seen them before. See it. Share it. Together we’ll continue to shake up the status -quo in Australian politics and build a progressive Australia!

With hope,
The GetUp Team

Please don’t ask for freebies!

I found this great comment from DrDamnit on Experts-Exchange. Seemed applicable to me and what I do (and have done).

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It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul.

We love the accolades. We love to be seen as the digital white knight fixed the server, the computer, the email, and anything else that life depends on.

We love it so much, we sometimes make horrible decisions. Sometimes, we work “FOR FREE.”

We’ve all done it. A friend, a neighbor, a relative, a good client, a bad client, a pretty girl… Whoever it was, and for whatever reason, we all threw them a technological bone and fixed something for free. In rare instances, it can be a rewarding experience. Perhaps your buddy gave you a beer. Maybe someone said thank you. Maybe there was a smile on their face, and that was rewarding enough.

More likely, however, that five minute task you thought you were signing up for turned into 40 minutes, then an hour, then a commitment. Wow. You didn’t see that coming.

There are 5 reasons you should ALWAYS hand out a bill.

1 – You Break it You Bought it.

When you sit down to fix a problem that presented as a simple one you are creating a contract. Not a legal contract, but a social one. The computer owner is trusting their computer with you. It’s their baby, and you’re the doctor. So you sit down, and begin to fix a problem.

In the process, something else breaks. You fixed one thing, but something else goes awry. What’s the best part? Neither you nor the user notice it is broken until a day later when they call you to blame you for breaking something else.

“I thought you were going to fix it.” They complain.

This is the primary reason you charge money to fix something. You break it, you bought it. The user / owner will expect you to warranty your service even though THEY received all the value of your time, and you received nothing in exchange.

2 – People don’t respect things that are free.

I learned that quote from a man who runs a non-profit organization. Image that. A man who solicits donations for a living candidly told me “people don’t respect things that are free.” You know what? He’s right.

Free advice. Free upgrade. Free entry. None are valued. Free advice is seldom wanted. Free upgrade was something you were going to get anyway. Free entry? The band playing tonight must not be any good.

People associate the value of service with the amount of money that is exchanged for it. How else do you think that lawyer can get away with charging $400 an hour? People naturally make the assumption that if it costs an arm and a leg, then it must be worth it.

So, if customers and friends will assume that the most expensive car is the best one, what will they assume of the free car? Do you want the heart surgeon who charges $500,000 per surgery or the one who works for beer to operate on your mother?

3 – They will expect it forever.

In law, the concept of a precedent is vitally important. Judges and lawyers look to previous cases to decide what the interpretation of the law was because if a case was settled one way before, chances are, it will be settled that way again.

Gamblers playing craps look at the past behavior of the dice to, mistakenly, assume that the good luck will continue.

Users will figure if you fixed it once for free, you’ll do it forever for free. There is no reason why they should respect the thousands of hours you have spent learning and researching the art of computer science. There is no reason that they should respect the certifications you hold. There is no reason that they should honor your abilities by paying your fees. Why? Because you did it for free. Once!

When they come back and you try to get fees, they will meet you with resistance in the form of guilt. “I thought we were friends” they cry. “You didn’t charge me anything last time.” They argue.

Setup the expectation that they are going to pay (or barter) from the onset. Demand the respect that you deserve. Make sure they understand you are a professional. After all, that is the difference between a professional and an amateur. Professionals get compensated for their skills.

4 – The demands will only grow with time.

Give them an inch, and they will take you through three operating system upgrades, two virus infections, and a crashed hard drive. Once you’ve set the precedent and created the expectation that you are their knight in shining armor, they will begin to call you for everything. They will suck up your time and resources. They will not be grateful. They will involve you in 30 minute hypothetical conversations then disagree with your expertise.

5 – It Weakens Your Backbone

Working for free is not only unprofitable, it weakens your constitution as a professional consultant. For many consultants, asking for money is difficult. They email out a silent invoice after the fact and hope they get paid. This practice can lead to unbalanced books, debt, and a going out of business sign. The simple fact is: if you don’t ask for your money, you’re not going to get paid. No one just hands out checks.

Setting up the expectation, especially when you fix a computer for the first time for a client, is vitally important in establishing boundaries that ensure you are paid in a timely fashion. Working for free, throwing out freebies, “comp”-ing your time hurts your ability to ask for the sale. It hurts your credibility because the client will assume that if you’re not charging them for a given task, you didn’t know what you were doing or you made mistakes.

It may give you butterflies, but ask for the money. Do it openly and notoriously. Your clients will take it as a sign of confidence.

Source: NaturalNews

What’s clear about the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is that the independent journalists are doing a better job of asking the really tough questions than the mainstream media. Sure, CNN, Fox and others are bringing some attention to the matter, and they’ve done some solid reporting on it, but they haven’t yet found a way to ask the deeper questions like why the U.S. government seems to be colluding with BP to cover up the truth about the spill.

Just the other day, I found an article entitled, “16 Burning Questions About The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill” on the TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com site (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/…). It was a really insightful collection of important questions, so I’ve repeated them below. The author of these questions wasn’t mentioned on the page, so I regret I cannot properly attribute the list, but I do think they’re worth reviewing, so I’ve included my own commentary and an extra question below.

Here are the 16 questions:

#1) Barack Obama has authorized the deployment of more than 17,000 National Guard members along the Gulf coast to be used “as needed” by state governors. So what are all of these National Guard troops going to be doing exactly? Are the troops going to be used to stop the oil or to control the public?

Continue Reading on: NaturalNews

Doctors and Nurses Love to Inject
by Mark Sircus

Parents around the world need to stop bringing their children in to pediatric doctors except for broken bones and stitches and such because the chances are high that these doctors will inflict serious harm on their young charges. The majority of pediatricians are mean and arrogant and they love their poisonous needles and take every opportunity to inject no matter what the condition is of their young patients. Certainly they don’t read the hundreds of published medical studies documenting vaccine failure and adverse effects, and dozens of books written by doctors, researchers, and independent investigators that reveal serious flaws in immunization theory and practice.

Children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to research that was presented on May 19, at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego. But doctors and their nurses still love to inject. Their deeds will be remembered on judgment day since the human race is not able to stop them. Imagine how far civilization has to fall just to lay these people low and one gets a good idea not only of where we are going but where we need to go.

Murder or Bad Vaccine was the title of a chilling article from the September 2000 issue of Redbook magazine. In this startling feature, several fathers were accused of shaking their babies, when, in fact, a vaccine had caused a reaction that caused the children to have problems. In one such case, an anesthesiologist was convicted and is serving a jail sentence for killing his child even though many experts have shown that the brain hemorrhage suffered by his baby was the result of a “hot lot” of bad vaccine. But doctors and their nurses still love to inject.

Villagers of Shaikhpara at Gajol in Malda district stage protests today following the death of two infants who received DPT and BCG vaccines at the Sheikpara Sub-Health Centre in May of 2010. As people demonstrated in front of the hospital, the situation was brought under control by police intervention. Dr Srikanta Roy, CMO of Malda, however, denied any medical negligence. “One child died because of severe pneumonia while the other died because of high fever. Their deaths have nothing to do with the vaccines,” he said. “We have checked the vaccines. They are absolutely fine.” The District Magistrate is investigating.

Merck’s Gardasil vaccine causes death, collapse and chronic illness in young woman and girls, including a new, never-before described “disease” called Juvenile ALS, a fatal condition in which the nervous system is slowly destroyed while consciousness remains unimpaired.

These absolutely fine vaccines have been suspended in Australia for all children under the age of five. The suspension comes after 23 children in Western Australia were admitted to hospitals with convulsions after receiving flu injections. More than 250 children may have had adverse reactions to the vaccine, with symptoms including fever, vomiting and convulsions. The death of a two-year-old girl from Brisbane who had received the seasonal flu vaccine the day before finally prompted authorities to temporarily ban the seasonal flu vaccine. But doctors and their nurses still love to inject.

My daughter took her youngest son Chris to the pediatrician for a 1 yr check. Chris is a special needs child. At 6 months he was given vaccines and within 24 hours began having serious seizures. Friday, he came in with a fever, coughing and runny nose. The nurse by the pediatrician’s orders came in without asking, without signatures, and gave him a flu
shot, adding 5 other shots with it. As of this morning, Chris was dead.

Meanwhile U.S. health officials urged pediatricians in May to temporarily stop using one of two vaccines against a leading cause of diarrhea in babies, after discovering that doses of GlaxoSmithKline’s Rotarix were contaminated with bits of an apparently benign pig virus. 11 children allegedly given expired measles and hepatitis vaccines in Tabuk. Inspection teams found 200 doses of outdated vaccines at various health centers.

A search of Dr. Paul Offit’s RotaTeq from Merck, turned up 83 adverse events that resulted in death and include RotaTeq as one of the adminstered vaccines. Click HERE to see the reports. The Redbook magazine article goes on to expose an increasing trend of parents who were falsely accused of child abuse because their children were damaged by vaccine reactions which looked similar to shaken baby syndrome.

The Redbook article reports that between 11,000 and 12,000 reports are made per year about adverse reactions from vaccines. They also state that surveys have shown that these reactions are grossly underreported. Some of these studies indicate that only 1 in 10 to as few as 1 in 100 of all actual adverse vaccine reactions are reported. This means that as many as 1,200,000 adverse vaccine reactions may be occurring each year. But doctors and their nurses still love to inject.

Alan Philips, a lawyer very familiar with State vaccine laws, writes, “Health authorities credit vaccines for disease declines, and assure us of their safety and effectiveness. Yet these seemingly rock-solid assumptions are directly contradicted by government statistics, medical studies, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports, and reputable research scientists from around the world. In fact, infectious diseases declined steadily for decades prior to vaccinations, U.S. doctors report thousands of serious vaccine reactions each year including hundreds of deaths and permanent disabilities, fully vaccinated populations have experienced epidemics, and researchers attribute dozens of chronic immunological and neurological conditions to mass immunization programs.” But doctors and their nurses still love to inject.

There is legislation pending in New York state to mandate HPV vaccine for all sixth grade girls (A0778) and allow all present and future vaccines and drugs for sexually transmitted diseases to be given to New York children without parental consent (S4779 and A6702). The legislation is being supported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), among others. New York advocacy groups opposing the bill include My Kids, My Choice led by Rita Palma and New York Alliance for Vaccination Choice led by Lisa Rudley. NVIC s Director of State Advocacy, Dawn Richardson, has provided legislative action educational support to the groups.

The federal government (CDC) and the AAP want to ram these dangerous vaccines down parents’ throats and it really is too bad that we have nothing to ram down theirs in return. It is important to know and understand the name of the beast in this terrible game of poisoning our children in the name of the unholy science that surrounds the childhood immunization program.

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Dr. Mark Sircus, one of the most prolific writers in medicine has been researching into the human condition and causes of disease. His primary focus has been the study of environmental toxicity and iatrogenic diseases. His work Natural Allopathic Medicine represents a revolution in medical thinking laying the groundwork for a future of medicine free from the poisonous rein of pharmaceutical companies.

For more details visit http://imva.info/ and Doctors are Dangerous

Got this question for a distributor the other day and thought there might be a few others with the same question rattling around in their heads.

Q: “Hehe, quite honestly, I have no idea what I signed up for…  At first glance it seems like a pyramid scheme of some sort  ;)  So what exactly is the story?  Everyone who signs up tries to sell this stuff and the people above them get a cut?”

A: Firstly, pyramid schemes are illegal. This is NOT a pyramid scheme. The pyramid shape is everywhere. Government, business, animal kingdom etc…

We use high quality nutritional products to improve our health and build a team of people under us who want do the same. A proportion of the sale price (about 50%- not unlike retail shops) is made available as commissions via a compensation plan to those that share this information by “word of mouth” advertising. This is opposed to normal retail that pays its share in rent, advertising, wages etc…

The business we are involved in called Network Marketing does not pay any rent or advertising or wages. They pay us to tell others about what is available.

May I suggest you take a look at a presentation called “Brilliant Compensation”. I will be able to make copy available for you or I can find a link on the web so you can watch an animated version.

“Everyone who signs up tries to sell this stuff and the people above them get a cut?”

Not quite.

People sign up for FREE and buy the product if they choose to. If they like it, they will share it with friends and business contacts.

If you have a group of people who join under you, just like you did, you will receive a commission to help pay for your own purchases. If the group under you keeps growing, the commissions grow. There is no limit to how big it can grow and the commissions that can be earned.

The 360 business at this stage is just a “look and see” for FREE. When you have all the information on the products, prices, compensation plan etc. then you can decide if you want to put your money on the table.

What we have seen so far it is a bit like Microsoft giving us an option to buy shares when their company had not even reached the share market.

Did they think they had a good product? I am sure THEY did.

Will 360 grow like Microsoft?

I am sure Microsoft did not realize that it would do so well at the time.

The same goes for 360.

Here’s a great perennial question answered beautifully by Robert

Q: “How critical is it in this new economy to stop relying on an employer for their financial security?”

A: “I would suggest that is essential. A capitalist like me will always move my manufacturing to a country where there is lower priced labour. Over 46 countries have lower priced labour than India.”

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Watch this short video for more of Robert’s answer.