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Category: News

  • Ancestry.com Prices $100 Million IPO

    NEW YORK (Reuters) – Spectrum Equity Investors-backed website Ancestry.com Inc (ACOM.O) priced its initial public offering of 7.4 million shares at $13.50 per share on Wednesday, within the expected range.

    Ancestry.com, which operates a website that allows people to trace their family roots by scouring online records, will begin trading on Nasdaq under the symbol “ACOM” ACOM.N on Thursday.

    The Provo, Utah-based company had expected to sell 7.4 million shares in its IPO for between $12.50 and $14.50 each, in a $100 million offering.

    Ancestry.com, which said it had 1 million subscribers as of September, was founded in 1983 and is majority owned by private equity firm Spectrum Equity Investors, whose stake in the company will fall to 54.8 percent after the IPO from 67 percent. Spectrum bought Ancestry.com for $354.8 million in December 2007.

    The existing shareholders are selling about 45 percent of the shares in the IPO, with the rest coming from the company.

    Ancestry.com expects net proceeds of $48.4 million from the IPO, and will use the money in part to repay $12.1 million it owes CIT Lending Services Corp, a unit of CIT Group Inc, (CITGQ.PK) and use the rest for working capital.

    Ancestry.com’s registered users have built 12 million family trees containing 1.25 billion profiles, according to the filing.

    Its revenue in the first nine months of 2009 was $164.8 million, largely from subscriptions, up 13.5 percent from the year earlier period. Over the same period, its profit rose 250 percent to $12.2 million. In 2008, each subscriber generated about $16.09 in revenues per month.

    The IPO will be lead managed by Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N). Underwriters will have the option to buy another 1.1 million shares. (Editing by Carol Bishopric)

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  • Ratiopharm Owner Satisfied with Buyout Bids

    FRANKFURT (Reuters) – VEM, the owner of German generic drugmaker Ratiopharm, said it was satisfied with the first-round offers received for the forced sale of the unit, indicating that bidding could turn competitive.

    A spokesman for the Merckle family investment vehicle VEM said on Thursday it was positively surprised by the number of bids, which were not binding, and that it was “very satisfied” with the level of the offers.

    Both drug makers and financial investors filed offers before the deadline for indicative bids on Wednesday, he added.

    Encouraged by the interest from suitors, the sale of Ratiopharm as a whole remained a priority, he said.

    VEM owner Ludwig Merckle, who is selling Ratiopharm as part of concessions made by his late father to creditor banks, is hoping for proceeds of up to 3.5 billion euros ($5.16 billion), one source close to the deal has said, but generic-industry insiders have dismissed that figure as far out of reach.

    Two sources close to the proceedings told Reuters on Thursday that several bids exceeded 2 billion euros, while some were markedly above that figure. [ID:nWEA9067]

    Ratiopharm declined to give the value of the bids.

    A source with direct knowledge of the generics industry told Reuters last month that a promising approach would be to split off Ratiopharm’s more profitable Canadian business, accounting for 12 percent of 2008 group sales, and sell it separately. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Philipp Halstrick and Frank Siebelt, editing by Will Waterman) ($1=.6782 Euro)

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  • ProSieben Outlook Remains Vague

    BONN (Reuters) – German commercial broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG (PSMG_p.DE) remained vague on targets for the full year after it reported a third-quarter core profit that missed expectations.

    ProSieben said on Thursday it saw increasing signs of economic stabilisation but would stay conservative in its planning because the market environment remained difficult.

    Chief Executive Thomas Ebeling said last week he was seeing a recovery in the German TV advertising market in the fourth quarter but that it was uncertain how the German ad market would develop in 2010.

    A range from a 5 percent decline to 2 percent growth was possible, he had said.

    ProSieben, hit hard like rivals by a steep decline in advertising revenues, aims to compensate with costs cuts of 200 million euros ($294.9 million) this year.

    It said operating costs dropped 9.6 percent to 469.2 million euros in the third quarter and 11.4 percent in the first nine months excluding the sale of its Scandinavian pay-TV operation CMore.

    Core profit in the third quarter fell 24.1 percent to 62.4 million euros on a sales decline of 7.9 percent to 559.4 million euros due mainly to the sale of CMore.

    Analysts polled by Reuters had on average expected a fall in core profit of 15.1 percent to 79 million euros on revenues of 565 million euros.

    ProSieben, which is majority owned by KKR and Permira, has said one of its key priorities was cutting net debt, which stood at 3.53 billion euros at the end of September.

    That was a decline of 7.4 percent compared with a year earlier but a rise of 3.1 percent compared with the previous quarter due to lower free cash flow.

    Munich-based ProSieben bought SBS Broadcasting in 2007 for 3.3 billion euros to create a stronger rival to Bertelsmann owned RTL Group, which reports earnings on Nov 10. (Reporting by Nicola Leske, Editing by Michael Shields)

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  • Biovitrum To Buy Swedish Orphan

    STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Swedish biotechnology group Biovitrum (BVT.ST) said on Thursday it had signed a deal to buy drug firm Swedish Orphan, jointly owned by holding company Investor AB (INVEb.ST) and private equity firm Priveq. Biovitrum said in a statement it had agreed to pay an upfront consideration of 3.5 billion Swedish crowns ($493.2 million) on a cash and debt-free basis.

    “The two companies fit like a hand in a glove,” it said. “In one giant leap we form a company with a leading position within rare diseases and a solid platform for future growth and profitability.”

    Investor AB and private equity firm Priveq each own 42 percent of Swedish Orphan, which made an operating profit of 201 million crowns in the year to April, and sales of 694 million.

    Biovitrum said it would finance the acquisition through a rights issue, an issue in kind as well as bank financing.

    Proforma revenues of the combined group were seen at 2 billion crowns this year with an operating margin (EBITDA) of 15 percent, it added.

    “The combination will allow the new group to realise annual operating cost synergies and cost avoidance in excess of 100 million crowns with full effect from 2011,” it said. ($1=7.097 Swedish crowns) (Editing by Greg Mahlich)

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  • Moody’s: Jumbo LBO Deals Fared Poorly

    NEW YORK, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Leveraged buyouts struck by Cerberus Capital and Apollo Management performing worse than deals by other private equity firms such as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., a report by Moody’s said on Thursday.

    Moreover, mega-deals have fared badly on average, said the report, which studied 186 deals structured during the 2004-7 bubble period.

    Moody’s picked deals on the basis that they were investments made by the largest private equity firms; had a rating by Moody’s during the period January 2008 to October 2009, and were financed or structured in the 2004-7 time frame.

    The findings showed that 65 percent of Apollo’s deals surveyed and 67 percent of Cerberus’ were classed as either in default or distress.

    Moody’s includes debt-for-debt and debt-for equity swaps as a default, as well as the repurchase of a significant portion of the company’s debt through open-market repurchases. It notes in the report that not all investors would consider all of those categories as a default.

    Just 15 percent of KKR’s deals surveyed were classed as defaulted or distressed. Others with lower default and distress rates — all in the 20 percent-30 percent range — are Madison Dearborn, Blackstone (BX.N) and JPMorgan’s (JPM.N) private equity unit, the report said.

    Private equity firm Welsh Carson had zero defaults on its deals, the report said, although 31 percent were distressed.

    “It is crucial to remember that private equity firms are not all alike, and that their philosophies differ to some extent,” Moody’s Senior Vice President John Rogers wrote in the report. “Some are more mindful of the potential impact that distressed debt holders could have on future financings, while others focus primarily on equity returns.”

    The report does not look into returns on individual deals or funds, and it is quite possible for private equity firms to make money on individual deals even if they are distressed.

    SIZE MATTERS

    The bigger deals struck during the boom period have fared badly, the report says, such as Cerberus’ Chrysler Automotive, which went into bankruptcy and later re-emerged.

    The top 10 private equity-sponsored LBOs by transaction value performed much worse than other private equity deals or similarly rated companies, Moody’s concluded.

    Among some of Apollo’s deals — Linens ‘n Things filed for bankruptcy protection as sales slumped, Harrah’s has struggled with its debt load and Realogy has had to deal with the gloomy real estate market.

    But the report did conclude that when two or more of the largest firms collaborate on a deal — a so-called “club deal” — the deals tend to have a lower default rate.

    Private equity firms that bought companies with high levels of debt during the boom years are also facing the problem of refinancing that debt in the coming years.

    “Current market conditions, while greatly improved over the past six months, could not support the magnitude of debt that must be refinanced over the next five years,” Rogers wrote.

    Without a substantial improvement in the high-yield markets, he writes, many companies could have trouble refinancing their debt. Those that do may be forced to pay significantly higher interest rates, “which may compromise their financial viability,” he wrote.

    By Megan Davies
    (Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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  • BRAND NEW! Introducing ZcaT Design

    ZcaT

    When California-based architect and woodworker Franz Goebel was commissioned by a client to design a cat tree that worked well with modern furniture, he obviously had some inspiration. That inspiration came from his own four Bengals. Goebel’s new ZcaT modern cat tree is the result and it’s a perfect fit for the Moderncat aesthetic. This sturdy structure is handmade from hardwood with a durable non-toxic finish. It includes two patches of artificial grass and a replaceable corrugated cardboard scratch-and-climb panel.

    ZcaT is available in White Oak for $439 or American Walnut for $494. I can’t wait to see what else they have in the works!


  • Looking East: China’s experience of poverty reduction provides a strong connection with Africa

    One of my roles working for DFID is to explore ways in which the UK and China can work together to promote development in Africa. We discuss these issues in big international meetings. We have started to do this in African capitals. We have even started some China-UK-Africa projects on rural roads in DRC, UN police peacekeeping, and some academic exchanges.

    One of the really interesting things about this work is talking to Africans about what they want from China. And in Beijing, there are many more Africans to have this conversation with, than there have been in the past.

    African delegation in China

    African delegation in China

    A few weeks ago we hosted three leading agriculture experts from Africa and visited some of the agricultural areas around Beijing. They and I were seriously impressed. One remarked to me that “China’s own and very recent experience of poverty reduction is a powerful magnate to African leaders, researchers and policy makers – we are all keen to learn from China”. I was impressed, because I worked on a farm before going to university and I know any sort of mechanisation is better than picking potatoes by hand!

    One of the things that shocks many, as they walk around Beijing, visit industrial zones, take in modern agriculture facilities and speed along China’s impressive roads and railways is to learn that China was once much poorer than their own countries.

    In the 1970s the average person in China was much poorer than their equivalent in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, and in Sudan. That of course is no longer the case. And it is because these changes are recent, because many of the senior Chinese people they meet grew up at a time when China was poor, that there is a connection between Africans and Chinese which creates a powerful bond of understanding. There is urgency for action, a desire to do practical things.

    The Chinese can almost always see beyond the poverty they see in Africa and are hugely positive about opportunities. And that is something that brings real energy to the growing relationship. It also works the other way around. There are increasing numbers of African business people in Beijing. Whenever I bump into any I always try and have a chat with them about their experiences in China. One said to me recently “Africans love low-cost Chinese consumer goods, even if they break before Western ones, you can afford to buy another one!”

    Of course much of the China-Africa relationship is about business opportunities and projects that can be funded by China. Both China and Africa are clear that investment and trade are hugely important to successful development.

    So why is this of interest to the UK? Well, Africa is a major priority to the UK. China knows this. China also knows that Africa is different to China. It also knows that what has worked in China might not work across a continent with a huge variety of countries, cultures and contexts. In the last 12 months China has become much more open to talking to countries like the UK about development in Africa. This does not mean for a moment that China will become like the UK, but it means we are starting, with the full involvement of our African partners, to have a three-way discussion about development in Africa. If we can all learn from each other, I’m sure the outcomes of all of our endeavours will be better than if we were not talking.

  • Blog Definition, Social Network, Portal




    Blog :
    Blog merupakan singkatan dari “web log” adalah bentuk aplikasi web yang menyerupai tulisan-tulisan (yang dimuat sebagai posting) pada sebuah halaman web umum. Tulisan-tulisan ini seringkali dimuat dalam urutan terbalik (postingan terbaru dahulu baru diikuti postingan yang lebih lama), meskipun tidak selamanya demikian. Situs web seperti ini biasanya dapat diakses oleh semua pengguan internet sesuai denagn topic dan tujuan dari si pengguna blog tersebut.
    Contoh : Blogger.com, WordPress.com, dll.

    Social Network :
    Social Networking merupakan sebuah bentuk layanan internet yang ditujukan sebagai komunitas online bagi orang yang memiliki kesamaan aktivitas, ketertarikan pada bidang tertentu, atau kesamaan latar balakang tertentu. Social networking lazim disebut sebagai jaringan pertemanan.
    Layanan social network biasanya berbasis web, dilengkapi dengan beragam fitur bagi penggunanya agar dapat saling berkomunikasi dan berinteraksi. Contoh : Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Magnolia, Friendster. Dll.

    Portal :
    Website tipe Portal adalah sebuah website yang memberikan bermacam macam informasi dalam satu domain. Informasi yang diberikan ini bisa spesifik seputar satu topik saja, misalnya portal games, portal berita, ataupun yang bersifat general. Umumnya sebagian besar informasi yang diberikan oleh Portal ini bersifat searah, dari webmaster kepada user, walaupun pada perkembangannya banyak yang mulai menyajikan user generated contents. Pendapatan utama website tipe Portal adalah dari Iklan. Contoh website portal yang kita kenal diantaranya adalah, Yahoo.com, KapanLagi.com, Plasa.com, EraMuslim.com, Detik.com dan masih banyak lainnya.

    http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/time/topstories&source=imag&val=3


  • Cross border trading: improved tax procedures hold huge potential

    Huge potential in improved tax procedures for cross border trading

    Improving tax procedures for cross-border trading of securities could raise European GDP by more than 37 billion Euro over a ten-year period. This is the key finding of a study jointly carried out by the JRC’s Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC) and the Commission’s Directorate General Internal Market and Services which analyses the costs and benefits of the proposals made by the EU Clearing and Settlement Fiscal Compliance Experts Group (FISCO) for improving and simplifying withholding tax relief procedures.

    Based on the FISCO proposals and backed up by the economic impact study, the European Commission adopted on 19 October 2009 a Recommendation that outlines how EU Member States could make it easier for investors resident in EU Member States to claim withholding tax relief on dividends, interest and other securities income received from other Member States. The Recommendation also suggests measures to eliminate the tax barriers that financial institutions face in their securities investment activities while at the same time protecting tax revenues against errors or fraud.

  • Toshiba announces world’s first 1.8-inch HDD with 320GB Capacity

    hdd_toshiba_MK3233GSG

    Just in September this year, Toshiba proudly announced a 1.8-inch HDD with 160GB capacity, which was pretty impressive already (their new SSDs aren’t too shabby either). But today, not even two months later, Toshiba unveiled another 1.8-inch HDD with 320GB capacity [press release in English].

    The MK3233GSG features a 3Gbps SATA interface and 16MB buffer memory, produces just 19dB of seek noise and spins at 5,400 rpm. Needless to say it’s the only 1.8-inch HDD with 320GB capacity out there.

    Toshiba says mass production will start in December this year. In the past few months, the company has announced one high-capacity HDD after the other.


  • SlingMedia Founder Invests In Clicker, Joins BOD

    BKrikorian-b.jpgEver since Blake Krikorian left Sling Media, the place shifting startup that he sold to Echostar for $380 million in September 2007, he’s been lying low. Instead of trying to build yet another startup, he has been spending time trying to put together a killer home entertainment system that uses HDMI-over-fiber, dozens of iPod touch devices and many Apple displays spread across his home. “It will either be a great thing or my family will hate me,” Krikorian joked when he stopped by in our office last week. This do-it-yourself project is a way for him to think about what he will do next.

    And as he waits for inspiration to strike, Krikorian is going to join the board of directors of Clicker.com, a Los Angeles-based online-video content discovery company started by Jim Lanzone, the former CEO of Ask.com. He is also going to make a minority investment in the company; a news announcement is likely to be made later this week.

    NewTeeVee Live 09: The Year of TV Everywhere / San Francisco / November 12Clicker is backed by veteran venture capitalists Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital and Geoff Yang of Redpoint Ventures, who have invested close to $8 million in the company. Clicker is going to be unveiling its service to the world at our NewTeeVee Live conference, which will be held on Nov. 12 in San Francisco. (To buy tickets for the conference, click here. ) Liz covered the company in The Best Guides to Watching TV Online.

    “About two months ago, I started talking to Jim about Clicker and fell in love with the service,” Krikorian said. “I had no plans to be on any boards or work with any startups, even though I get asked often.” Blake said that he became a fanboy and saw the obvious need for a service such as Clicker.

    In the traditional TV universe, with finite number of distribution channels, TV Guide did quite well, because it laid out available content as a grid, that could easily be thumbed through as a guide. In his research report, The Future of Pay Services, GigaOM Pro analyst Steve Hawley points to several efforts being made to streamline content discovery in the old television space. Online video is even more complex.

    In the broadband world, where there is one giant distribution channel, the Internet, video discovery becomes a vexing problem. As more and more video becomes available on the web, discoverability of content becomes as important as publishing of video content. That was Lanzone’s basic premise when he described his company to me many months ago. There are quite a few efforts under way to solve this problem, as outlined by Chris in his GigaOM Pro feature (subscription required), but Clicker has proved to be a critical hit among its beta testers.

    At the same time, Lanzone has to know that he is swimming with the sharks. The cable companies, content owners and TV networks are frenemies — allies at some times and mortal enemies at others. Krikorian has been through these same ups and downs with SlingMedia, and perhaps that is why Lanzone is excited to get him in his corner.

    Lanzone, of course, doesn’t know what he has signed up for: Krikorian is going to be sending his team bug reports and product suggestions!

    Photo of Blake Krikorian courtesy of UberGizmo.

  • UK Law Firm Sets Up Special Team To Hunt Down Anonymous Commenters

    Stephanie Migot writes in to let us know how UK law firm Wragge & Co has decided to set up a special “cyber tracing” team, whose job it will be to scour the internet for anyone making negative anonymous comments about any of their clients and then take action. Of course, the law firm says it’s really looking for people leaking confidential information (such as disgruntled employees), but, as you probably know, defamation laws in the UK are significantly more draconian than those elsewhere. Thus, the line is a lot more blurry, and will almost certainly lead to these sorts of activities targeting mere criticism and complaints, rather than true defamation. The unfortunate end result is a series of chilling effects on any concept of free speech.

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  • Brief explanation of Enterpreneurship, Technopreneurship, Cyberpreneurship

    Enterpreneurship
    According to a French economist, Richard Cantillon entrepreneur is the “agent who buys means of production at certain prices in order to combine them” (agents who buy the production equipment at a certain price in order to combine them). entrepreneur comes from French meaning entreprendre take steps to enter a particular activity or an enterprise; or welcome the challenge. In the original sense of the word entrepreneur in the can three important things, namely creativity, innovation, opportunity creation, and calculated risk-taking. Three main elements of this is that there is at all any entrepreneur.

    In a time not too long, another French economist, Jean Baptista Say Cantillon add definition to the concept of the entrepreneur as a leader. I declare that the entrepreneur is someone who brings people together to build a productive organs. If translated into Indonesian known as entrepreneurs or self-employed. Based on its etymological art, is entrepreneurial notion of courage, virtue, or fortitude in trying to rely on their own strength.
    The meaning of ‘force alone’ is not a business activity carried out alone, but rather refers to the mental attitude that does not depend on others. In solving the problems faced, he relied more on their own strength rather than ask for help from others. Thus, the notion of ‘using their own power’ can be worn on their own business or work as an employee.

    Technopreneurship
    is a process in the formation of new businesses that see technology as a base, with the hope that the creation of strategies and innovations that can be put right later on technology as a factor for national economic development.
    Technoprenerurship concepts as disclosed above basically integrate the technology with entrepreneurial skills (Enterpreneurship skills). In this Technopreneurship base concept entrepreneurship development starts from the invention and innovation in technology.

    Cyberpreneurship
    is a business activity and increased business using computer technology, especially the Internet, in this business and business promoted using known electronic brochures with the homepage on the Internet. Sales of products and services also use electronic mail on the Internet.

    http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/time/topstories&source=imag&val=3


  • Press conference: A Captive Commission An ALTER–EU report on the role of the financial industry in shaping EU regulation

    As the European Commission attempts to find ways out of the financial
    crisis, a new report from ALTER-EU analyses the composition of groups
    which gave or still give advice to the Commission on financial issues
    such as banking regulation, hedge funds, credit rating agencies,
    accountancy rules and tax havens.

    ALTER-EU will present the findings of its report ‘A Captive Commission –
    the role of the financial industry in shaping EU regulation’ which
    reveals an overwhelming dominance of representatives from the financial
    industry on advisory bodies, and highlight the need for the Commission
    to reform the way it gathers expert advice if it is to achieve real
    change in the financial sector.

    Speakers at the press conference:

    Paul de Clerck, member of ALTER-EU’s steering committee will present the
    findings of the report and make recommendations to policy makers.

    Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, President of the Party of European Socialists, ex
    Danish Prime minister and MEP and current leading campaigner for
    financial reform in Europe

    and

    Sven Giegolds, MEP for the Greens, member of Economic and Monetary
    Affairs Committee and member of the Parliament’s new Special Committee
    on the Financial, Economic and Social Crisis

    will comment on the report’s findings.

    Yiorgos Vassalos, co-author of the report will respond to methodological
    and technical questions.

    Language of the press conference: English
    Languages available for interviews: English, Dutch, French, Greek

    For more information please contact:

    Francesca Gater, communications officer for Friends of the Earth Europe:
    +32 2 893 1010 or + 32 4 85 930 515, francesca.gater foeeurope.org

    Please find venue access and location information here

  • Modern Warfare 2 Launch Trailer

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    Wherein we discuss Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony
    The Beatles remastered catalogue will be released on an apple-shaped USB drive
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    In an age of free and abundant wi-fi, Starbucks takes a stand
    My new watch podcast


  • Modern Warfare 2 launch trailer includes huge explosions, hostile locations, Slim Shady and space?

    With just one week until the release of the most anticipated game of the year, Activision and Infinity Ward has released the official launch trailer o…

  • H1N1 vaccine shortage fabricated to create hysteria, boost demand

    (NaturalNews) There’s a fascinating book by author Robert Cialdini called Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion. As someone who frequently writes about Big Pharma’s social engineering tactics, I’ve read and studied many of these tactics, noting carefully how governments and Big Business use them to wage disinformation campaigns against the People.

    I was recently chatting with friends on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/NaturalNews) when a friend named Jennifer pointed out that she thought the vaccine shortage had been intentionally engineered to create greater demand once the vaccines were available. This immediately got me thinking about a chapter in the Cialdini book that writes about something I call the “disappearing cookies in the cookie jar” experiment.

    This experiment reveals an extremely powerful strategy for influence. And as it turns out, the pharmaceutical industry is using precisely this strategy for fabricating huge demand for their vaccines in an effort to make sure all the vaccines sell out.

    The experiment goes something like this:

    A volunteer subject sits at a desk in a room, thinking he’s there to answer some survey questions, but in reality, this is an experiment on human behavior and covert influence. A researcher sits on the other side of the desk, facing the subject. There is a glass jar on the desk, filled with cookies.

    The researcher casually asks the subject, “Would you like a cookie?” And some percentage of subjects say yes, but it’s a small number, perhaps something like 15% – 20% (I don’t remember the exact numbers, but that’s not important to the bigger point here). This same scenario unfolds across several hundred subjects in order to get a baseline measurement on how many people will take a cookie when one is offered to them.

    To continue the experiment, the researchers then remove most of the cookies from the cookie jar and bring in another few hundred subjects to see how many of them will take a cookie when the visible supply of cookies is smaller. Some percentage of students take a cookie, but it’s still not substantially different from the first part of this experiment when the cookie jar was full. So even though a larger number of people take a cookie when the available supply is smaller, it’s still not a huge number.

    The real magic happens when the experiment is repeated a third time, and during the experiment, before the subject is asked for a cookie, another unidentified person walks into the room and takes a cookie themselves! This is done in full view of the study subject who now sees a dwindling supply of cookies in the cookie jar. Subsequently, when now asked if they want a cookie, virtually everyone takes a cookie!

    What this study caused researchers to realize is the influence power of a recently-reduced supply of a given item. Or, put another way, people want what other people are taking, and the more other people are reducing the available supply, the more people want it!

    Big Pharma is using this same brain hack to fabricate hysteria over vaccines
    This phenomenon is a sort of “brain hack” that’s hard-wired into human neurology. It works almost hypnotically to create a surge of demand where none would rationally exist.

    This is what’s at work at frenzied retail store sales where a half-mad crowd of crazed shoppers trample each other to buy shoes at 70% off. The reason why these people are so strongly motivated to buy the products is because they are witnessing a rapidly-dwindling supply being depleted by everybody else. The witnessing of that act causes an almost hypnotic (and entirely irrational) increase in personal desire to have those same products, even if they don’t need them!

    Are you following this so far? It’s a powerful social engineering influence hack that works automatically on the human brain. People can’t help themselves. They irrationally desire the vaccine for no reason other than the fact that the available supply is disappearing quickly and other people are taking it. By engineering this situation, the pharmaceutical industry has created the perfect influence gimmick for selling more vaccines. The current vaccine shortage, in fact, looks to have been deliberately created for the sole purpose of exploiting this planned shortage to take advantage of the “disappearing cookies in the cookie jar” principle of human psychology.

    You can already see it at work with the ridiculously long vaccination lines outside clinics in some cities. A few shots are made available and then the rest of the people are told, “We ran out. Sorry, go home.”

    Even better, with high demand but limited supply, drug companies and vaccine distributors can engage in profiteering price fixing schemes to maximize their income from the vaccine shortage hysteria. Swine flu manufacturers and distributors are already under investigation for precisely this sort of fraudulent price fixing (http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSN0245718220091102).

    How to engineer a shortage to create hysteria
    Of course, the drug companies aren’t the first corporations to figure out that planned product shortages combined with lots of media hype can create a windfall of profits. You may recall that the very same influence strategy was used against parents during the great Cabbage Patch Kids shortage of 1984, in which shoppers experienced total hysteria in their rush to acquire the dolls for their children.

    At the time, psychologists were baffled by the behavior, but now, after understanding the disappearing cookies in the cookie jar experiment, it all makes sense. Whether you’re talking about Cabbage Patch Kids or the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, every engineered product shortage follows basically the same recipe:

    Step 1) Create huge demand for your product through mainstream media FEAR campaigns. (Make parents afraid of the flu, or afraid they won’t get the right toy for their child, etc.)

    Step 2) Limit your SUPPLY of the product, allowing only a trickle to be delivered to the population.

    Step 3) Wait for the people to panic. Keep holding back supplies in order to foment more fear (which creates more demand). Meanwhile, tell the press you’re trying to provide more products, but you’re suffering from “production failures.”

    Step 4) When the panic reaches its apex, unleash the full supply of product to desperate people who will line up like sheeple to buy your product. But keep prices high, since the demand already exists to support high prices.

    Step 5) Watch the magic of influence work profit miracles as your product sells out at premium prices!

    Other places you’ll see this at work
    This fascinating principle of human psychology, by the way, explains why online auctions work so well. When bidding against other buyers for a unique item with a supply of only one, a buyer can often engage in irrational purchasing behavior, bidding up an item they don’t even need merely because they can’t stand to see the other person “win” the bid. It becomes highly competitive, and Ebay is structured precisely to invoke this irrational purchasing behavior response on the part of participants.

    Of course, just because a “dwindling supply” of something is being communicated to consumers doesn’t always mean it’s fabricated. On Ebay, for example, there really is often just one of a certain product available. Even on NaturalNews, we’ve published “dwindling supply numbers” on giveaway offers where a certain nutritional supplement company has promised only a limited number of free samples to NaturalNews readers.

    But no one has played this influence game more masterfully than the drug companies who have fabricated and promoted a global hysteria over a vaccine product that no one even needs in the first place. In fact, by the time this vaccine makes it into widespread distribution, most people will have already been exposed to H1N1 on their own, meaning they are naturally immune to the virus and don’t need a vaccine at all.

    In effect, then, drug companies will have managed to push virtually the entire population into a state of hysteria over a product that doesn’t even work. By any measure, that’s a masterful (and downright evil) manipulation of the public mind.

    Remember those old Batman shows where the villain operated a mind control machine that broadcast hypnotic messages to the entire city? As it turns out, that isn’t fiction. It’s being done today by Big Pharma, right through your television set. It’s quite possible that the mass hysteria over swine flu vaccines was a fabricated, planned event specifically designed to make people desperately want something they normally wouldn’t even pay attention to.

    Stage hypnotists take note: If you’re looking for easy subjects for your shows, just recruit the people standing in line desperately hoping to receive a swine flu vaccine injection…

    Sources for this story include:
    Amazon.com:
    http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X

    LA Times:
    http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-flu-workers3-2009nov03,0,2512436.story

    Project on Government Oversight:
    http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2009/11/time-for-dhhs-to-open-up-about-h1n1-vaccine-shortages-.html

  • H1N1 swine flu infects commercial swine in USA, reports USDA

    (NaturalNews) The pork industry desperately wants you to believe “the Big Lie” about swine flu: That it can’t infect pigs, and therefore it’s perfectly safe to buy and eat lots and lots of pork products.

    It’s a merry little tale, and it would be a nice little piece of information to pass along if only it were true.

    But it isn’t.

    H1N1 swine flu can and does infect pigs. And the safety margin for eating pork products from H1N1-infected pigs is not well known.

    In fact, the USDA just confirmed H1N1 infections in commercial pigs (the kind used to make those pork chops you ate for breakfast). This is the first time that a commercial herd of pigs has been publicly acknowledged to be infected with H1N1 swine flu by the USDA. (And we all know from watching the USDA’s behavior on mad cow disease that the agency goes to great lengths to downplay any such reports…)

    The timing of the announcement is, not surprisingly, highly suspicious. Just a few days ago, the USDA negotiated an end to the pork import ban placed on U.S. pork products by China. Before the ink on that agreement was even dry, the USDA — surprise! — announced they had discovered this H1N1 infection in commercial swine in the U.S.

    This particular commercial herd of swine was located in Indiana. (The USDA isn’t saying where.) But here’s the best part: The USDA did not ban those pigs from being used in the food supply! At least I couldn’t find any such report after scouring the web looking for one. This means these swine flu infected pigs could end up on your dinner table (if you eat pork, that is).

    This isn’t the first report of H1N1 infecting pigs in the USA, by the way. A few weeks ago, H1N1 infections were confirmed in show pigs at the Minnesota State Fair. Nobody seemed to care, since people weren’t planning on eating those show pigs (“Looks good on stage, but tastes even better on the plate!”), but now that H1N1 has been found in commercial herds, suddenly things seem different.

    H1N1 swine flu has already been detected in swine herds in Canada, Australia, the UK and many other countries, according to an AP report. So this discovery isn’t exactly the world’s first.

    Of course, any rational pork eater would have already figured out by now that the H1N1 virus is so mild, it poses virtually no health risk to anyone with some vitamin D and a healthy immune system. So technically speaking, even H1N1-infected pork probably poses no real threat to your health.

    Then again, eating pork isn’t a very rational act to begin with, especially given that pigs are smarter than Man’s Best Friend (your family dog) and that they’re treated quite inhumanely in the pork producing factories and slaughterhouses. But I guess if you’re crazy enough to eat dead pig flesh, a little extra H1N1 probably won’t cause you any more harm.

    By the way, H1N1 has also crossed from humans to cats and infected a cat in Iowa (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/pawprintpost/post/2009/11/cat-in-iowa-had-h1n1-1st-known-case-involving-dogs-or-cats/1). Since H1N1 already contains viral fragments of bird flu, human flu and swine flu, it makes me wonder how crazy things might get if it now starts combining with house cats. Could we soon be looking at Feline Swine Flu?

    Sources for this story include:
    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEFqaAgSclYCMs3yvitB0vestl1gD9BOT3185

  • Proposed law would requiring employers to pay workers for sick time off would promote swine flu pandemic

    (NaturalNews) It sounds good at first: When employers send sick workers home so they don’t spread swine flu around the work environment, they must still pay those workers for the full day’s work. The idea behind this bill is that many workers can’t afford being sent home without pay, and therefore the employer must pay them anyway.

    But apparently no one in Washington D.C. has thought about the real-world consequences of what this bill would do. If employers are forced to pay for workers whether they’re working or not, they will refuse to send sick workers home in the first place! And why is that? Because employers can’t afford to be paying for people who aren’t working.

    Thus, this bill would assure that sick, infected workers are kept on the job where they can spread swine flu to others.

    If the U.S. Congress wants to accelerate the spread of swine flu, this bill is a brilliant way to accomplish it.

    Unintended consequences
    It all comes down to The Law of Unintended Consequences. The U.S. Congress — which is completely useless in a true Democracy and should be disbanded — arrogantly writes new laws, thinking they will intervene in the lives of workers or employers in some “positive” way by forcing somebody to do something they wouldn’t normally do.

    But every such intervention has unintended consequence that the numbskulls in Congress never consider (because they can’t think beyond the next election cycle). The unintended consequences are usually quite disastrous, such as the future public debt fallout from the trillion-dollar bailout of the wealthy investment banks and Wall Street insiders who were “saved” from financial collapse at taxpayer expense.

    In this case, this “pay sick workers to stay home” bill will absolutely guarantee that virtually no sick workers are ever sent home. And that, in turn, will guarantee the spread of whatever pandemic is circulating through the workforce at the time, especially since many low-wage workers have jobs in the food and service industries where they are in frequent contact with items consumed by the general public.

    The bill should probably be called the “Pandemic Promotion Act of 2009.”

    And besides, whatever happened to the idea that you get paid for the days you work? Sometimes you get sick and can’t work. That’s real life. The best way to avoid losing income due to sick days is to take care of your own health with nutrition and vitamin D. That’s called being an adult.

    But who am I kidding? I’ve seen first-hand how grocery store deli employees sneeze all over the food they’re wrapping up for customers. In many ways, many of the adult workers in America don’t act with much responsibility. They show up for work sick, caring nothing for the coworkers or customers they might infect. And why? Because they need the paycheck.

    So what’s the real solution to all this? The solution isn’t about shifting the cost of sickness to the employer or the employee; the real solution is to teach the nation about vitamin D and thereby keep the workforce healthy and well.

    This simple, powerful idea has apparently never crossed the minds of the members of the U.S. Congress. Keep Americans healthy? That’s an alien concept. It has never even entered the discussions about health care reform.

    Instead, Congress is focused on how to keep the drug companies profitable with more customers and more profits. And that goal stands in direct conflict with the goal of keeping Americans healthy. When the U.S. Congress is in session, the health (and job security) of the American people remains at risk, because in the quest to “do something” to pretend to help the people, our elected representatives will routinely ignore the far greater problem of why the health of our nation is crumbling.

    Why do people get sick in the first place?

    Much of it has to do with extreme deficiencies in key nutrients, including vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, phytonutrients and so on. The FDA, though, has made it a crime to even sell a product that claims to enhance health via nutrition, and the FTC has declared war on any natural product that actually works to prevent cancer. The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, argues over who will pay for disease.

    Sometimes, you just gotta wonder: Has America gone mad? Have these people lost their minds, or are they just on so many meds that they can’t think anymore?

    Increasingly, I see worrisome signs that America is headed for disaster. When the lawmakers can’t see the real root of the major problems, and the solutions to those problems have been outlawed or censored out of existence, the future of that nation begins to look sketchy. Pandemic or not, America has made itself the junk food and medication capitol of the world, and that’s not a recipe for a healthy workforce.

    Whether people get paid for sick days or not is a miniscule issue compared to the much bigger question of why nobody has told the workforce to take more vitamin D so they can protect themselves from influenza in the first place.

    Sources for this story include:
    http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE59J58H20091103