THE VIRTUAL RECOVERY

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/10/the-virtual-recovery.html

 Paul Craig Roberts, Contributor

Activist Post

Since mid-2009 the US has been enjoying a virtual recovery courtesy of a rigged inflation measure that understates inflation. The financial Presstitutes spoon out the government’s propaganda that prices are rising less than 2%. But anyone who purchases food, fuel, medical care or anything else knows that low inflation is no more real that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or Gadhafi’s alleged attacks on Libyan protesters or Iran’s nuclear weapons. Everything is a lie to serve the power-brokers.

During the Clinton administration, Republican economists pushed through a change in the way the CPI is measured in order to save money by depriving Social Security retirees of their cost-of-living adjustment. Previously, the CPI measured the change in the cost of a constant standard of living. The new measure assumes that consumers adjust to price increases by lowering their standard of living by substituting lower quality, lower priced items. If the price, for example, of New York strip steak goes up, consumers are assumed to substitute the lower quality round steak. In other words, the new measure of inflation keeps inflation down by reflecting a lowered standard of living.

Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com), who closely follows the collecting and reporting of official US economic statistics, reports that consumer inflation, as measured by the 1990 official government methodology has been running at about 5%. If the 1980 official methodology for measuring the CPI is used, John Williams reports that the current rate of US inflation is about 9%. The 9% figure is more consistent with people’s experience in grocery stores.

Officially the recession that began in 2007 ended in June 2009 after 18 months, making the Bush Recession the longest recession since World War II. However, John Williams says that the recession has not ended. He says that only the GDP reporting, distorted by an erroneous measurement of inflation, shows a recovery. Other, more reliable measures of economic activity, show no recovery.

Williams reports that the economy began turning down in 2006, falling lower in 2008 and 2009, and bottom-bouncing ever since. Not only is there no sign of any recovery, but “the economic downturn now is intensifying once again.” The absence of an economic recovery “is evident in the [official] reporting of nearly all major economic series. Not one of these series shows a pattern of activity that confirms the recovery [shown] in the GDP series.”

Williams concludes that “the official recovery simply is a statistical illusion created by the government’s use of understated inflation in deflating the GDP.” In other words, the reported gains in GDP are accounted for by price increases, not increases in real output.

The result of the US government’s economic deception is the same as the deception Washington has used to start wars all over the Middle East. The government propaganda produces a make-believe virtual reality that bears no relationship to real reality. In history there have been many governments who have prevailed by deceiving the people, but Washington has moved this success to a new peak. As long as Americans believe anything Washington says, they are doomed.

It is easy to see why there is no economic recovery and cannot be an economic recovery. Look at the chart below (courtesy of John Williams, shadowstats.com).

Real median household income at the end of 2011 is back where it was in 1967-68. Moreover, Williams has deflated household income to get its real value by using the official inflation measure, which substantially understates inflation. If Williams had used the 1990 or 1980 official government methodology for calculating the consumer price index, the real median incomes of households would show a larger decline.

Moreover, the low 2011 real median household income is the summation, in most cases, of two household earners, whereas in 1967-68 one earner could produce the same real income. As Nobel economist Gary Becker, my former colleague as Business Week columnist, pointed out, when both husband and wife have to work in order to maintain the same purchasing power, household income from the wife’s in-kind household services is eliminated. Therefore, the monetary measure of the dual household income overstates income, because it is not adjusted for the lost benefits formerly provided by the wife who at home managed the household.

Americans are far more oppressed by the power brokers in Washington than statistics display. Moreover, the young are born into the oppressive, exploitative American system and do not know any different. They are fed by the Presstitute media with endless propaganda about how fortunate they are and how indispensable their wonderful country is. Americans are kept in a constant state of amusement, and many never grasp the loss of their civil liberties, job and career opportunities, and respect that the US won during the decades-long cold war with Soviet Communism.

September 13, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke announced Quantitative Easing 3. Bernanke said that the recovery is weak and needs more Fed stimulus. He said the Fed will purchase $40 billion of mortgage bonds per month in order to drive interest rates further below the rate of inflation and help to sell more houses.

But how do you sell houses to households who are getting by with 1967-68 levels of real income and who have absolutely no job security? Their company can be taken over and offshored tomorrow or they can be replaced by foreign workers on H-1B visas. Housing prices have dropped, but not to 1967-68 levels.

Bernanke’s announcement that the Fed’s purchase of mortgage bonds is to spur housing and the economy is disinformation. Bernanke is purchasing the bonds in order to boost the values of the derivatives and debt instruments in the banks’ portfolios. Lower interest rates raise the value of the debt instruments on the banks’ balance sheets. By depriving American savers of a real interest rate on their savings, Bernanke makes the busted banks look solvent.

This is what is happening in “freedom and democracy” America. The vast majority of Americans, especially the retired, are forced to consume their savings and draw down their capital because they can get no real interest on their savings. The beneficiaries are the banksters, who can borrow at near zero interest rates, charge consumers 16% on their credit cards, and use the Federal Reserve’s largess to speculate on interest rate swaps and credit default swaps. The American taxpayers hold the bag for the banksters’ uncovered gambles.

Would you not gamble if the American taxpayers had to cover your bets, but your winnings were yours alone?

The future of the American political order is in doubt. The Bush and Obama regimes have so badly abused the Constitution and statutory law, that the America that Ronald Reagan left to us no longer exists. America is on the path to collapse or tyranny.

Suppose that a miracle produces an economic recovery. What becomes of the enormous excess bank reserves that the Federal Reserve has provided the banks?

If these bank reserves are used for expanding loans, the money supply will outstrip the production of goods and services, and inflation will rise.

If the Fed tries to take the excess reserves out of the banking system by selling bonds, interest rates will rise, thus destroying the wealth of bond holders and draining liquidity from the stock market. In other words, another depression that wipes out the remaining American wealth.

The Federal Reserve’s announcement of QE3 shows that the Fed will continue to create new money in order to protect the values of the insolvent banks’ questionable assets. The Federal Reserve represents the banksters, not the American public. Like every other American government institution, the Federal Reserve is far removed from concerns about American citizens.

In my opinion, the Federal Reserve’s purchase of bonds in order to drive down interest rates has produced a bond market bubble that is larger than the real estate and derivative bubbles. Economically, it is nonsensical for a bond to carry a negative real interest rate, especially when the government issuing the bond is running large budget deficits that it seems unable to reduce and when the central bank is monetizing the debt.

The bubble has been protected by the euro “crisis,” which possibly is more of a virtual crisis than a real one. The euro crisis has caused money to seek refuge in dollars, thus supporting the dollar’s value even while the Federal Reserve prints money with which to purchase the never-ending flow of the governments’ bonds to finance trillion dollar plus annual budget deficits–about 5 times the “Reagan deficits” that Wall Street alleged would wreck the US economy.

Indeed, the US dollar’s exchange value is itself a bubble waiting to pop. The sharp rise in the dollar price of gold and silver since 2003 indicates a flight from the US dollar. (The chart is courtesy of John Williams, shadowstats.com.)

The bond market bubble will pop if the dollar bubble pops. The Federal Reserve can sustain the bond market bubble by purchasing bonds, and there are no limits on the Federal Reserve’s ability to purchase bonds. However, the endless monetization of debt, even if the new money is stuck in the banks and does not find its way into the economy, can spook foreign holders of dollar-denominated assets.

Foreign central banks can decide that they want to hold fewer dollars and more precious metals as their reserves. Other countries, sensing the US dollar’s demise, are organizing to conduct their trade without the use of the world’s reserve currency. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa intend to conduct their trade with one another in their own currencies. China and Japan have also negotiated to settle their trade balances with one another in their own currencies.

These agreements substantially reduce the use of the US dollar in international trade and, thus, the demand for dollars. When demand falls, so does price, unless the supply shrinks. But the Federal Reserve has announced, essentially, unlimited supply of US dollars. So we are faced with a paradox. The US dollar is supposed to remain valuable despite its enormous increase in supply.

In addition, China, America’s largest creditor and in the past a reliable purchaser of US Treasury bonds, holds some two trillion in dollar-denominated assets, primarily Treasury bonds. How is Washington treating its largest foreign creditor? Not with appreciation or deference. Washington is surrounding China with naval and air bases, interfering in China’s disputes with other countries, and bringing contrived actions against China in the World Trade Organization. Washington claims that US corporations are deserting the US not because of the lower cost of labor in China, but because of Chinese “subsidies” to the relocated US firms.

In my April 30 column, “Brewing a Conflict with China,” I wrote that Washington would like to substitute a cold war with China for the hot wars in the Middle East. The problem with the hot wars is the loss of superpower face from Washington’s inability to prevail after eleven years, and although the hot wars are profitable for the military/security complex, the wars don’t generate the level of profits that would flow from a high-tech arms race with China. Moreover, Washington believes that diverting Chinese investment from the economy into a military buildup would slow the rate at which the Chinese economy is overtaking the US economy.

What if instead of taking the bait from Washington, China targets Washington’s Achilles heel–the dollar’s role as reserve currency–and decides it is cheaper to dump one trillion dollars of US Treasury debt on the bond market than to commit to a 30 year arms race? To keep the price of Treasuries from collapsing, the Federal Reserve could print the money to buy the bonds. But if China then dumps the printed one trillion dollars in the foreign exchange markets, Washington cannot print euros, British pounds, Russian rubles, Swiss francs, and other currencies in order to buy up the dollars.

Frantic, Washington would try to arrange currency swaps with foreign countries in order to acquire the foreign exchange with which to buy up the dollars that, otherwise, will drive down the dollar exchange rate and destroy the Federal Reserve’s control over interest rates.

But if the Chinese don’t want the dollars, will other countries want to swap their currencies for the abandoned US dollar?

Some of Washington’s puppet states will comply, but the wider world will rejoice in the termination of Washington’s financial hegemony and refuse the offer.

Sooner or later the dollar will collapse from Washington’s abuse of the dollar’s role as reserve currency, and the dollar will lose its “safe haven” status. US inflation will rise, and US political stability, along with America’s hegemonic power, will wane.

The rest of the world will sigh with relief. And China will have defeated the superpower without an arms race or firing a shot.

This article first appeared at Paul Craig Roberts’ new website Institute For Political Economy.  Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His Internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Donations to Paul Craig Roberts are much appreciated.

OLDDOGS COMMENTS

Not until a nation’s majority has been educated to the point where they can understand all of the ways governments can manipulate information concerning money will the world ever produce an honest form of government.

This is why people like Paul Craig Roberts are needed as our countries leaders; they can understand what the Banksters are doing and articulate it to the masses. Perhaps, someday people’s lives will be so miserable, they will wake up and demand accountability in the ranks of their government.

To elect someone as a representative of the people without the ability to control them is as stupid as it gets. History authenticates that the corrupt will rise to the top like filth in your swimming pool, and once it is polluted, the only corrective measure available is to drain the pool, clean it, and refill it.

The difference next time would be to install a more powerful filtration system. One that would kill the bacteria when it got out of control! The level of accountability in governments must be severe enough to keep them honest, as they should pay with their lives when they destroy the lives of their constituents’. Don’t berate me for not participating in this voting charade until you have the common sense to redesign the Constitution and Judiciary. Once you are educated enough to figure out the Banksters were not elected to control your representatives, and force them to carry out their orders, so they could control the whole damn world, then, there may be some hope for the future of governments.

Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/series/glenn-greenwald-security-liberty

By Glen Greenwald at The Guardian

Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism – ‘disposition matrix’ – the administration institutionalizes the most extremist powers a government can claim

The National Counterterrorism Center, the site of a new bureaucracy to institutionalize the ‘kill list’. Photograph: FBI

(updated below – Update II – Update III)

A primary reason for opposing the acquisition of abusive powers and civil liberties erosions is that they virtually always become permanent, vested not only in current leaders one may love and trust but also future officials who seem more menacing and less benign.

The Washington Post has a crucial and disturbing story this morning by Greg Miller about the concerted efforts by the Obama administration to fully institutionalize – to make officially permanent – the most extremist powers it has exercised in the name of the war on terror.

Based on interviews with “current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies”, Miller reports that as “the United States‘ conventional wars are winding down”, the Obama administration “expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years” (the “capture” part of that list is little more than symbolic, as the US focus is overwhelmingly on the “kill” part). Specifically, “among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade.” As Miller puts it: “That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”

In pursuit of this goal, “White House counterterrorism adviser John O Brennan is seeking to codify the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced.” All of this, writes Miller, demonstrates “the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war.”

The Post article cites numerous recent developments reflecting this Obama effort, including the fact that “CIA Director David H Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones”, which “reflects the agency’s transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-September 11 focus on gathering intelligence.” The article also describes rapid expansion of commando operations by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and, perhaps most disturbingly, the creation of a permanent bureaucratic infrastructure to allow the president to assassinate at will:

“JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The elite command’s targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a ‘national capital region’ task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.”

The creepiest aspect of this development is the christening of a new Orwellian euphemism for due-process-free presidential assassinations: “disposition matrix”. Writes Miller:

“Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the ‘disposition matrix’.

“The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. US officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.”

The “disposition matrix” has been developed and will be overseen by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). One of its purposes is “to augment” the “separate but overlapping kill lists” maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon: to serve, in other words, as the centralized clearinghouse for determining who will be executed without due process based upon how one fits into the executive branch’s “matrix”. As Miller describes it, it is “a single, continually evolving database” which includes “biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations” as well as “strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols”. This analytical system that determines people’s “disposition” will undoubtedly be kept completely secret; Marcy Wheeler sardonically said that she was “looking forward to the government’s arguments explaining why it won’t release the disposition matrix to ACLU under FOIA”.

This was all motivated by Obama’s refusal to arrest or detain terrorist suspects, and his resulting commitment simply to killing them at will (his will). Miller quotes “a former US counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix” as explaining the impetus behind the program this way: “We had a disposition problem.”

The central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed – “It is the keeper of the criteria,” says one official to the Post – is, by itself, rather odious. As Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusettsnoted in response to this story, the ACLU has long warned that the real purpose of the NCTC – despite its nominal focus on terrorism – is the “massive, secretive data collection and mining of trillions of points of data about most people in the United States”.

In particular, the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and analyzed. This includes “records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records” – “literally anything the government collects would be fair game”. In other words, the NCTC – now vested with the power to determine the proper “disposition” of terrorist suspects – is the same agency that is at the center of the ubiquitous, unaccountable surveillance state aimed at American citizens.

Worse still, as the ACLU’s legislative counsel Chris Calabrese documented back in July in a must-read analysis, Obama officials very recently abolished safeguards on how this information can be used. Whereas the agency, during the Bush years, was barred from storing non-terrorist-related information about innocent Americans for more than 180 days – a limit which “meant that NCTC was dissuaded from collecting large databases filled with information on innocent Americans” – it is now free to do so. Obama officials eliminated this constraint by authorizing the NCTC “to collect and ‘continually assess’ information on innocent Americans for up to five years”.

And, as usual, this agency engages in these incredibly powerful and invasive processes with virtually no democratic accountability:

“All of this is happening with very little oversight. Controls over the NCTC are mostly internal to the DNI’s office, and important oversight bodies such as Congress and the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board aren’t notified even of ‘significant’ failures to comply with the Guidelines. Fundamental legal protections are being sidestepped. For example, under the new guidelines, Privacy Act notices (legal requirements to describe how databases are used) must be completed by the agency that collected the information. This is in spite of the fact that those agencies have no idea what NCTC is actually doing with the information once it collects it.

“All of this amounts to a reboot of the Total Information Awareness Program that Americans rejected so vigorously right after 9/11.”

It doesn’t require any conspiracy theorizing to see what’s happening here. Indeed, it takes extreme naiveté, or wilful blindness, not to see it.

What has been created here – permanently institutionalized – is a highly secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two functions: (1) it collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search warrants, and (2) creates and implements a “matrix” that determines the “disposition” of suspects, up to and including execution, without a whiff of due process or oversight. It is simultaneously a surveillance state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, how you should be “disposed” of, beyond the reach of any minimal accountability or transparency.

The Post’s Miller recognizes the watershed moment this represents: “The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic.” As he explains, extra-judicial assassination was once deemed so extremist that very extensive deliberations were required before Bill Clinton could target even Osama bin Laden for death by lobbing cruise missiles in East Africa. But:

Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.

To understand the Obama legacy, please re-read that sentence. As Murtaza Hussain put it when reacting to the Post story: “The US agonized over the targeted killing Bin Laden at Tarnak Farms in 1998; now it kills people it barely suspects of anything on a regular basis.”

The pragmatic inanity of the mentality driving this is self-evident: as Idiscussed yesterday (and many other times), continuous killing does not eliminate violence aimed at the US but rather guarantees its permanent expansion. As a result, wrote Miller, “officials said no clear end is in sight” when it comes to the war against “terrorists” because, said one official, “we can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us” but trying is “a necessary part of what we do”. Of course, the more the US kills and kills and kills, the more people there are who “want to harm us”. That’s the logic that has resulted in a permanent war on terror.

But even more significant is the truly radical vision of government in which this is all grounded. The core guarantee of western justice since the Magna Carta was codified in the US by the fifth amendment to the constitution: “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” You simply cannot have a free society, a worthwhile political system, without that guarantee, that constraint on the ultimate abusive state power, being honored.

And yet what the Post is describing, what we have had for years, is a system of government that – without hyperbole – is the very antithesis of that liberty. It is literally impossible to imagine a more violent repudiation of the basic blueprint of the republic than the development of a secretive, totally unaccountable executive branch agency that simultaneously collects information about all citizens and then applies a “disposition matrix” to determine what punishment should be meted out. This is classic political dystopia brought to reality (despite how compelled such a conclusion is by these indisputable facts, many Americans will view such a claim as an exaggeration, paranoia, or worse because of this psychological dynamic I described here which leads many good passive westerners to believe that true oppression, by definition, is something that happens only elsewhere).

In response to the Post story, Chris Hayes asked: “If you have a ‘kill list’, but the list keeps growing, are you succeeding?” The answer all depends upon what the objective is.

As the Founders all recognized, nothing vests elites with power – and profit – more than a state of war. That is why there were supposed to be substantial barriers to having them start and continue – the need for a Congressional declaration, the constitutional bar on funding the military for more than two years at a time, the prohibition on standing armies, etc. Here is how John Jay put it in Federalist No 4:

“It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.”

In sum, there are factions in many governments that crave a state of endless war because that is when power is least constrained and profit most abundant. What the Post is reporting is yet another significant step toward that state, and it is undoubtedly driven, at least on the part of some, by a self-interested desire to ensure the continuation of endless war and the powers and benefits it vests. So to answer Hayes’ question: the endless expansion of a kill list and the unaccountable, always-expanding powers needed to implement it does indeed represent a great success for many. Read what John Jay wrote in the above passage to see why that is, and why few, if any, political developments should be regarded as more pernicious.

Detention policies

Assuming the Post’s estimates are correct – that “among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade” – this means that the war on terror will last for more than 20 years, far longer than any other American war. This is what has always made the rationale for indefinite detention – that it is permissible to detain people without due process until the “end of hostilities” – so warped in this context. Those who are advocating that are endorsing nothing less than life imprisonment – permanent incarceration – without any charges or opportunities to contest the accusations.

That people are now dying at Guantanamo after almost a decade in a cage with no charges highlights just how repressive that power is. Extend that mentality to secret, due-process-free assassinations – something the US government clearly intends to convert into a permanent fixture of American political life – and it is not difficult to see just how truly extremist and anti-democratic “war on terror” proponents in both political parties have become.

UPDATE

As I noted yesterday, Afghan officials reported that three Afghan children were killed on Saturday by NATO operations. Today, reports CNN, “missiles blew up part of a compound Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, killing three people – including one woman” and added: “the latest suspected U.S. drone strike also injured two children.” Meanwhile, former Obama press secretary and current campaign adviser Robert Gibbs this week justified the US killing of 16-year-old American Abdulrahaman Awlaki, killed by a US drone in Yemen two weeks after his father was, on the ground that he “should have a far more responsible father”.

Also yesterday, CNN profiled Abu Sufyan Said al-Shihri, alleged to be a top al-Qaida official in Yemen. He pointed out “that U.S. drone strikes are helping al-Qaida in Yemen because of the number of civilian deaths they cause.” Ample evidence supports his observation.

To summarize all this: the US does not interfere in the Muslim world and maintain an endless war on terror because of the terrorist threat. It has a terrorist threat because of its interference in the Muslim world and its endless war on terror.

UPDATE II

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Micah Zenko, writing today about the Post article, reports:

“Recently, I spoke to a military official with extensive and wide-ranging experience in the special operations world, and who has had direct exposure to the targeted killing program. To emphasize how easy targeted killings by special operations forces or drones has become, this official flicked his hand back over and over, stating: ‘It really is like swatting flies. We can do it forever easily and you feel nothing. But how often do you really think about killing a fly?'”

That is disturbingly consistent with prior reports that the military’s term for drone victims is “bug splat”. This – this warped power and the accompanying dehumanizing mindset – is what is being institutionalized as a permanent fixture in American political life by the current president.

UPDATE III

At Wired, Spencer Ackerman reacts to the Post article with an analysisentitled “President Romney Can Thank Obama for His Permanent Robotic Death List”. Here is his concluding paragraph:

“Obama did not run for president to preside over the codification of a global war fought in secret. But that’s his legacy. . . . Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations writes that Obama’s predecessors in the Bush administration ‘were actually much more conscious and thoughtful about the long-term implications of targeted killings’, because they feared the political consequences that might come when the U.S. embraces something at least superficially similar to assassination. Whoever follows Obama in the Oval Office can thank him for proving those consequences don’t meaningfully exist — as he or she reviews the backlog of names on the Disposition Matrix.”

It’s worth devoting a moment to letting that sink in.

Central Banks are the Real Target for Wests Imperial Wars

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/09/state-owned-central-banks-are-real.html

 

By Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

With any move made by the globalist controllers and their surrogates of the Anglo-American NATO strong arm, it is safe to assume that there is rarely only one reason for the implementation of any given plan. Thus, the wars of conquest and aggression raging in the Middle East, “Eurasia,” and Africa are by no means working toward one purpose alone.

Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan eleven years ago, a small but increasing number of brave journalists, researchers, and activists have been decrying the real reasons for the destruction of entire nations and the tragic loss of life imposed by the hands of NATO and other Anglo-American forces such as the puppet regimes located in the same regions as the target countries. Among these vassal states are the remnants of feudal monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and others.

In the years since the first post-9/11 invasion, “real” reasons have abounded regarding the various countries provided with “democracy” by the United States.

These reasons include vast oil reserves, oil pipelines,[1] opium fields, strategic positioning, no-bid contracts for the defense industry and military-industrial complex, and mineral deposits.

All of these suggestions are both completely valid and accurate.

Yet, as mentioned above, there is rarely only one reason for such an undertaking of military force.
However, there is one reason for military intervention that is rarely discussed, even in the alternative media, in this context – the goal of total domination by the private central banking system.

It is true that both debt and the control of currency is one of the most effective means of enslaving an entire population without their knowledge. Continually chasing financial freedom with no ability to pay off debt and save for the future ensures that a sizeable majority of the population will not have the means, time, or energy to resist the totalitarian methods imposed upon them.

Likewise, it is true that by controlling a nation’s currency, one essentially controls the nation. Governments who are beholden to third parties and private banks for their money are not governments at all – they are receiverships existing solely at the pleasure of the controlling oligarchy. As Mayer Amschel Rothschild once stated, “Give me control of a nation’s money supply and I care not who makes its laws.”

Thus, when one takes a look at the worldwide banking system and, in particular, the amount of countries with government-owned, non-Rothschild affiliated central banks, one easily sees a monopolistic system coming into view. In addition, when one takes a closer look at those countries with government-owned central banks, independent of Rothschild and major financier control, it becomes even clearer that maintaining a government-mandated structure of currency and central banking places a nation on a very dangerous list.

After the beginning of the New Century, which truly began in 2001, nations maintaining some modicum of independence from the Rothschild private central banking cartel have been dealt with in short and brutal fashion.

Afghanistan was the first recent case.

Afghanistan
Prior to the US invasion, the Afghanistan currency situation was already in disarray. In terms of central banking, the patchwork nation was a prime example of what not to do with a central bank, even a government-owned one.

Pre-2001, the banking system of Afghanistan was made up of six “state-owned commercial banks” that were largely unconnected with one another and engaged in very little coordination. Because the state-owned banks were used to fund the government entirely at the whim of a corrupt leadership of tribalists with little understanding of effective central banking, and because Afghanistan had spent the better part of the second half of the 20^th century in a state of war, the Afghan currency had become virtually worthless.

 

According to the IMF,

 

The banks lacked connectivity, reliable information on assets and liabilities, and did not follow commonly agreed and accepted accounting standards. Minimum capital requirements were set out in the 1994 Law on Money and Banking, but ‘…risk management systems that would remotely resemble modern banking’ were missing (IMF, 2003 p124). Nonperforming loans were not written off and no provisioning was made for them. Managers were political appointees with little or no banking experience; knowledge and capacity of bank staff were low. The operation of commercial banks had been hampered during the Taliban era as banks were not allowed to pay or to charge interest, in line with Islamic law. As a result, banks had ceased all lending activities, which had moved into the informal sector. Nevertheless, the banks had substantial assets (primarily real estate) on their books; they were solvent and some earned income from foreign currency deposits held abroad.[2]

The makeup of the Afghan banking system began to change shortly after the invasion, however.

 

In 2003 and 2004, after much of the country had been thoroughly secured for the establishment of institutions recognized by the invaders as vital, various banking laws and regulations were put into place. Perhaps the most important was the February 2004 law known as the DAB, or Law of Da Afghanistan Bank.

 

The DAB established the authority of the new Afghanistan Central Bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, to regulate and supervise all other banks within the country, as well as having control over monetary policy. In conjunction with the DAB, the September 2003 Banking Law also established the ability of Da Afghanistan Bank to regulate and monitor commercial banks operating inside Afghanistan, and was the original piece of legislation that authorized commercial banks to operate inside the country to begin with.

Shortly thereafter, in a nation where private and state banking was both ineffective and scarce, the IMF states that the banking industry “grew rapidly” after the Taliban was deposed. According to the IMF’s own statistics, by 2008, banking assets were clearly flowing up to a relatively few large private banks who were amassing most of the banking business amongst themselves.

The IMF report states, “As of March 2008, the two largest domestic private banks accounted for almost 50 percent of total banking system assets. The combined loans of these two banks were 70 percent of total commercial bank lending.” Obviously, Afghanistan has seen a trend of centralization and upward mobility of assets to the largest private institutions swooping down upon the war-torn nation.

What is more striking, however, is the fact that Da Afghanistan Bank, the central bank of Afghanistan, is responsible for setting the monetary policy of Afghanistan. This is key because it would seem that the Afghanistan government should be in control of monetary policy – not a bank independent of government control or oversight.

One need only take a look at the Da Afghanistan Bank official website in order to see how the same private central banking scheme has been implemented in Afghanistan. Under the section entitled, “Basic Tasks of DAB,” the bank states that its duties are to “formulate, adopt and execute the monetary policy of Afghanistan.” Nowhere is there mention of oversight by the Afghan government.

The Law of Da Afghanistan bank, which was mentioned earlier, explicitly states that the responsibilities of the Afghan central bank are “to formulate and adopt the monetary policy of Afghanistan, including the open market operations by Da Afghanistan Bank, the interest rates for discounts and loans by Da Afghanistan Bank, and the types and levels of reserves that banks are required to maintain with Da Afghanistan Bank.” (It should be noted that these responsibilities are presented as those of the Supreme Council, the Governing Board of Da Afghanistan Bank, along with the Comptroller General.)

Furthermore, it is the job of the bank to “Print and issue Afghani banknotes and coins,” another clear responsibility of any government that is to remain independent of the control of private bankers.

In addition, it is a stated goal of the central bank to “Act as banker and adviser to, and as fiscal agent of the State.” The implication here is that the central bank, while often accommodating the State, is not subservient to it, nor is it bound by any control of the Afghan government. By acting as the “banker” of the State, it is also safe to assume that loans made to it are not of the interest-free variety – it is much more likely that the central bank functions exactly as the US Federal Reserve, meaning that it is both independent of government control, responsible for the issuance of currency, and approves loans at interest to a government entirely capable of doing all of the above at virtually no cost.

 

Iraq

 

Iraq is yet another case where private central banking could be argued as a major factor in the decision to invade. It is also another example of poorly executed central banking prior to that invasion.

In all fairness, however, it should be noted that Iraq has only enjoyed a sliver of opportunity with which to experience growth since its inception. After becoming independent of British colonial rule, the country was forced to mop up the mess left behind by the imperialists including falsely constructed borders, civil unrest, and corruption, among many other issues.

Still, by the 1970s, Iraq was improving its economic lot, as well as its education system. Improvements were such that when Saddam Hussein officially assumed power, Iraq had earned itself the designation of “developing nation.” Shortly thereafter, Hussein nationalized Iraqi oil companies and put the state-owned banks under his own direct control.

After the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, the Gulf War, and the decade of merciless UN sanctions, however, Iraq had lost virtually all of its economic gains. The Iraq-Iran war itself depleted many of Iraq’s reserves, while the Gulf War further damaged the state of the nation. Because UN sanctions forced Iraq to move to their own currency printing machines that were greatly inferior to those of the nations being previously used, the Iraqi currency became subject to increased levels of counterfeiting, thus, compounding the problem.

However, although Hussein had assumed direct control of the semi-central banking system, the fact remained that the banking system was not privatized. Indeed, there were very few private banks operating in Iraq up until the point of the US invasion in 2003.

From the very beginning of the invasion, it was clear that forming a privatized central bank for Iraq was a major goal of the United States and its “coalition of the willing.” As The Economist reports,

Rehousing the central bank is one thing. Rebuilding an entire banking system is quite another. Despite the focus on military and political matters, the task has been surprisingly high on the American-led coalition’s to-do list: even before George Bush declared that ‘major combat operations have ended’ in May 2003, American advisers were preparing in neighbouring Kuwait. The job is all the more formidable because under Saddam Hussein Iraq had no independent banks to speak of. From the CBI to the lending policies of the six state-owned institutions that controlled most bank assets, the system was under Mr Hussein’s thumb. [Emphasis added]

Yet rebuilding the banking system is exactly what the invaders did. Of course, the new system unveiled to the Iraqi people was slightly different from what they had lived under for so long. There was no more Saddam Hussein to dictate monetary policy at his whim, and no more state control over banks. Instead, the “free market” would take the place of the former central banking system.

The term “free,” however, is a misnomer when referring to the Iraqi Central Bank. This is because the new Central Bank of Iraq, now known as the Trade Bank of Iraq, was completely restructured and privatized as early as 2003. Slightly more obvious than the privatization of the Afghanistan banks, it was openly announced that none other than J.P. Morgan was chosen by the Coalition Provisional Authority to “set up” the new bank.

As Rob Kirby of Market Oracle wrote in 2008,

In the energy area [crude] – J.P. Morgan was ‘granted’ the rights to, effectively, set up the Central Bank of Iraq in Dec. 2003:

J.P. Morgan Chase was chosen by the Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA] to ‘set up’ the NEW Central Bank of Iraq [specifically, the Trade Bank of Iraq ]. Take note how this TRADE BANK only became operational in December of 2003:

• Trade Finance. The Trade Bank of Iraq (TBI) was established in July 2003 to facilitate trade of goods and services to and from Iraq by providing irrevocable letters of credit. The TBI officially became fully operational in December 2003 and has a services contract with a multi-international banking consortium led by JP Morgan Chase. Since opening in December , the Trade Bank of Iraq has issued or has pending 183 letters of credit, totaling $708.9 million in imports from thirty-one countries. Letters of credit have been issued on behalf of Iraqi Ministries as well as several state-owned enterprises.

In that capacity, Morgan was charged with developing the framework of collateralizing movable and immovable property for the nation of Iraq.

The fact is that one of the largest derivatives facilitators in the world is one the principal architects of the Trade Bank of Iraq, plus it is also well-known that J.P. Morgan has a direct connection[3] to the Rothschild banking dynasty;[4] a trend that is to be seen in virtually every central and major bank in existence across the planet.

Libya

Yet, if developing an Iraqi central bank before the bombs finished dropping seems a bit premature, consider the case of Libya and the NATO-backed Libyan terrorists who announced the creation of a new central bank of Libya before foreign forces ever became involved.

 

Libya, of course, is an example of a much more successful model of government-run central banking. Regardless of Ghaddaffi’s individual and personal crimes or his iron-fisted nature, it cannot be denied that the living standards of the Libyan people were far above that of any nation in Africa.

Even the regime’s penchant for cruelty seems to have shown signs of fading in recent years. After all, even as the assault on Libya began taking form, the UN Human Rights Council was set to praise Ghadaffi on the improvement made to the legal protections afforded its citizens such as “bettering its ‘constitutional’ framework” and “making human rights a ‘priority.’”

Left to its own devices the Libyan regime had managed to take a country mainly made up of desert and warring tribal factions and form a cohesive nation-state which afforded its people with comforts not seen inside the borders of “world leaders” like the United States and Britain. For instance, in a letter written by a delegation of Russian, Ukranian, and Belarusian doctors working in Libya to then-Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladmir Putin, stated;

During this time, we became well acquainted with the life of the Libyan people and state with few citizens of other nations living in this social comfort, as the Libyans. They are entitled to free treatment, and their hospitals provide the best in the world of medical equipment. Education in Libya is free, capable young people have the opportunity to study abroad at government expense. When marrying, young couples receive 60,000 Libyan dinars (about 50,000 U.S. dollars) of financial assistance. Non-interest state loans, and as practice shows, undated. Due to government subsidies the price of cars is much lower than in Europe, and they are affordable for every family. Gasoline and bread cost a penny, no taxes for those who are engaged in agriculture.

Regardless of one’s feelings about the policies mentioned by the European doctors, Ghadaffi’s Libya also achieved some of the most impressive and unprecedented environmental and economic feats in the modern world. As Ellen Brown of the Asia Times writes,

Even if that [European doctors’ letter] is just propaganda, there is no denying at least one very popular achievement of the Libyan government: it brought water to the desert by building the largest and most expensive irrigation project in history, the US$33 billion GMMR (Great Man-Made River) project. Even more than oil, water is crucial to life in Libya.

The GMMR provides 70% of the population with water for drinking and irrigation, pumping it from Libya’s vast underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south to populated coastal areas 4,000 kilometers to the north. The Libyan government has done at least some things right.

This entire expedition was made possible by the fact that Libya maintained a central bank that was completely state-owned. Prior to the success of the “peaceful Libyan protesters” (some proved to be al-Qaeda extremists) with the help of the United States, France, and the rest of NATO, Libyacreated its own money, the Dinar, through its central bank. Unlike “free” nations such as the United States, which has farmed out its Constitutional responsibility to private banks, the Libyan issuance of currency was an entirely government-based affair.

In addition, according to Patrick Henningsen of Market Oracle on March 28, 2011, “Libya also holds more bullion as a proportion of gross domestic product than any country except Lebanon, according to the London-based World Gold Council using January data from the International Monetary Fund.”

 

In fact, Ghaddafi was working toward backing the Dinar with the country’s vast gold reserves, thus posing a big threat to the world of fractional reserve fiat bankers.

All of these advancements were thrown away and destroyed with the NATO-backed assault on Libya and the subsequent murder of Ghaddaffi. What did emerge, however, was the new Libyan central bank.

Announced relatively early on in the destabilization campaign, the Transitional National Council declared the “Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.” It is also noteworthy to mention that immediately after the official creation of the new bank, the newborn institution actually signed an oil deal with Qatar, an Anglo-American client state and brother-in-arms of brutality.

Geopolitics aside, the very description of the new Libyan Central bank, the Central Bank of Benghazi, leans toward the fact that the new bank is the opposite of the old one – meaning, the new bank is private. Furthermore, the new bank is not beholden to the Libyan government (where one exists or may exist in the future) but operates independently “as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya.”

With the appointment of a governor to the already-established Central Bank of Libya, the control of the independent private bank is thus exerted upon the assets which rightfully belong to the Libyan people.

Unfortunately, as of yet, the owners of the new Central Bank of Benghazi have not been made public with an official announcement. However, given the trend and given the recent developments in Libya, one can feel safe in making certain assumptions regarding the nature of the bank.

Sudan
All in all, the destabilization of Libya was much more up front and open than the campaign against Sudan in the latter years of the Bush administration and continuing through the Obama administration. This might be partially due to the fact that Ghadaffi was better able to mount a defense against the forces of death squads, hordes of al-Qaeda terrorists, and NATO bombing campaigns than the teetering government of Sudan.

Nevertheless, the end result was essentially the same. With the inclusion of geopolitical concerns, the Sudanese breakup seems to be a perfect example of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s vision of “microstates and ministates”[5] who are unable to resist the demands of the world’s major powers. With South Sudan now a separate and officially recognized country, the ability to cut off the oil supply to Sudan as punishment for refusing American directives is now a realistic option. South Sudan is, in fact, the region of Sudan (as it was originally demarcated) that houses the majority of Sudanese oil.

The fact that the US is involved in destabilizing both South Sudan and Sudan is not a heavily debated claim. As Thomas C. Mountain wrote in his article, “The US Plan to Destabilize Sudan,” it is the United States which pays the bills for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (the South Sudanese national army). Furthermore, the UN, under the cover of “peacekeeping” missions is flooding South Sudan with Ethiopian “peacekeepers” who are quite obviously serving the interests of the Anglo-Americans.

The interesting difference in this case, however, is the fact that Sudan appears to have maintained a private central bank of its own throughout the Sudanese civil war. Indeed, Warren Coats, the Senior Policy Advisor to the Bank of Southern Sudan in 2007, wrote in his report, “A Monetary Policy Framework For Sudan,” that the current policy of the Central Bank of Sudan was the control of the money supply. Coats states;

The next section of this paper presents a framework for control of the money supply by a central bank operating in, or wishing to promote, a market economy and adopting a market-determined exchange rate. This is more or less the policy regime adopted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS). For such a central bank, monetary control needs to be based on its control of the total of the quantity of currency held by the public and by banks, plus bank deposits with the central bank (base money), and its influence over the creation of deposits in banks in relation to their reserves. [Emphasis added]

However, as one of the first orders of business after South Sudan seceded from Sudan and was officially recognized by the UN, a private central bank was established. In fact, the South Sudanese Constitution itself provides for the creation of such an institution.

After reading the South Sudanese Constitution as it existed in 2011, there is very little question as to whether or not the central bank is private. The document states that the central bank will be called the The Bank of South Sudan and that it will be “an independent corporate legal entity.” The Constitution goes on to state that the bank will be responsible for, among other things, “formulation, conduct, and implementation of monetary policy” and “the issuance of currency.” The bank has the “exclusive right to issue a currency” and has an organizational structure very similar to the US Federal Reserve with a Governor and Board of Directors appointed by the President.

Future and Current Targets

With all of the lives lost, military action taken, and money spent, – if central banking is, in fact, one of the main reasons for such operations– it would do well for us to take a brief look at those nations which currently exist withoutthe curse of “international” private central banks. This should be done in an attempt to connect the dots and predict future military or intelligence acts of aggression.

While it would be impossible to provide a comprehensive study on the status of the banking system of every country in the world, the relevance of private central banks can, at the very least, can be investigated for those nations who are the current targets of American military might.

Syria

In this case, the most obvious and recent victim of the US/NATO juggernaut is the embattled nation of Syria. So far, the most religiously tolerant nation in the Middle East has been forced to endure NATO-backed death squads and savage terrorists (aka peaceful protestors as defined by the Western media), Western sanctions, direct aid to the destabilizing agents by NATO forces, covert operations by British and American intelligence agencies as well as French special forces inside Syria, and now the growing potential for direct NATO military action.

Coincidentally, Syria is one of the last nations left in the world that maintains a government-owned central bank. This fact has been the cause of some consternation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In fact, in 2006, the IMF actually published its annual Article IV Consultation Reportregarding Syria’s economic developments. Among the recommendations made by the IMF in the report were suggestions of changes to the Syrian banking system. The report reads:

Progress toward this medium-term goal should start by having the central bank gain full control of existing direct instruments. The central bank should have the right to decide on credit ceilings and credit policies of banks with a view to ensuring a pace of credit and monetary expansion consistent with maintaining price stability while fostering economic activity and employment. Banks have to abide by all prudential regulations. Beyond this, the role and responsibilities of the central bank and the ministry of finance in exercising oversight on the banks should be clearly defined. While the government could play a lead role in choosing the board and the management of public banks, the CBS should have the authority to evaluate and approve banks’ policies, and procedures related to the credit and investment.

Clearly, if these are the responsibilities the IMF believes the Syrian Central Bank should have, then it logically follows that they are responsibilities it does not have currently.

All in all, the Syrian banking system largely consists of four state-owned banks and fourteen private banks, mostly foreign banks providing services to the private sector inside Syria. For at least forty years, the state itself has maintained a total monopoly on the Syrian banking system. Even when that total monopoly was broken, it was not in the form of the privatization of the central bank, it was merely allowing private banks to operate commercially inside the country at all.

Iran

Nevertheless, while Syria is the most immediate target of the NATO war machine, it only wins that distinction by a thin margin. Iran, even in some mainstream outlets, remains a close second. Indeed, in most educated circles it is understood that Syria is merely a stepping stone to the larger goal of an invasion of Iran.

How interesting, then, that Iran also maintains a government-owned central bank.

One need only to read The Monetary and Banking Law of Iran to understand the fact that, like the authority granted solely to Congress over coining and issuing currency in the United States Constitution, the Iranian government is the only institution with the authority to issue Iranian currency. In direct language, it reads, “The Government is the sole authority having the right of issuing notes and coins and this right is hereby vested exclusively in Bank Markazi Iran Subject to the provisions of this Act.” [Emphasis Added]

Although neither Iran nor Syria are showman’s samples of successful central banking, it must be kept in mind that these nations have been forced to endure regional and domestic destabilization, warfare, and continuous economic sanctions for an extended period of time. Unlike the United States and Canada, neither Syria nor Iran are graced with the presence of diverse natural resources and industrial options.

Cuba 

Likewise, Cuba, which has managed to stay outside the scrutiny of the mainstream media propaganda efforts in recent years, also maintains a 100% state-owned central bank. Yet, even though the Cuba card has yet to be played in recent Anglo-American endeavors, the tiny nation remains designated as dangerous threat to the United States and “democracy” the world over. Indeed, it is safe to say that Cuba’s Castro regime has not faded from the radar screen of the Rothschild banking dynasty or the enforcement arm of that dynasty known as NATO and the United States.

North Korea 

Lastly, it is interesting to note that the model totalitarian state for the world under the coming global system, North Korea, lacks in only one thing – a private central bank. Another example of central banking opportunities squandered by selfish psychopaths like Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Il, the fact is that while the society as a whole matches the blueprint created for the rest of the world many years ago, North Korea still represents the lack of total domination by the private banking cartel which control the overwhelming majority of finance and industrial sources. Thus, North Korea retains its place firmly on the list of governments that will be overthrown, replaced, and erased from the history books, as the New World Order is gradually implemented throughout the entire planet.

Conclusion 

As stated at the beginning of this article, when one discusses the reasons for military action, invasion, and occupation from the point of the view of the globalists who direct such operations, there is seldom only one reason for any given action. However, when one considers the information presented here, it would be foolish to rule out the motivation of the imposition of private central banking upon the last few holdouts.

Indeed, one need only look at recent history and the targets of US/NATO military operations to see a distinct pattern. Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and Libya were all countries outside the clutches of the international banking cartel, and they are all countries which have been attacked, occupied, and fractured by US/NATO power — usually based on fabricated excuses.

At the time of this writing, Syria, another country with a state-owned central bank, is likewise being subjected to the Anglo-American onslaught.

Although experiencing the political and financial ramifications of even the slightest resistance to global banking interests; Iran, Cuba, and North Korea are only waiting to be checked off the list in both a literal and figurative manner.

Notes:

[1] Griffin, David Ray. The New Pearl Harbor. Interlink Publishing Group. 2004.

[2] Due to UN sanctions, commercial banks’ deposits abroad were frozen during the Taliban period. [Footnote provided in the IMF report.]

[3] Marrs, Jim. Rule By Secrecy. William Morrow Paperbacks. 2001. http://www.amazon.com/Rule-Secrecy-Trilateral-Commission-Freemasons/dp/0060931841/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346341051&sr=1-1&keywords=jim+marrs+rule+by+secrecy

[4] Griffin, G. Edward. The Creature From Jekyll Island. 5^th edition. Amer Media. 2010.http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/091298645X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346341140&sr=1-1&keywords=the+creature+from+jekyll+island

[5] Tarpley, Webster Griffin. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. 1^st  Edition. Progressive Press. June 2008. http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Postmodern-Making-Manchurian-Candidate/dp/0930852885/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215453402&sr=8-2

Read other articles by Brandon Turbeville here. 

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of three books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, and Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident. Turbeville has published over one hundred articles dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville is available for podcast, radio, and TV interviews. Please contact us at activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

Gold and silver are crucial to the liberation of all markets

Submitted by Chris Powell on 10:33AM ET Wednesday, October 24, 2012. Section: Daily Dispatches

Remarks by Chris Powell
Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
New Orleans Investment Conference
Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The first thing to understand when you’re investing in the resource sector is that all major markets are now manipulated, mostly surreptitiously, by governments. There are a few reasons for this explosion of manipulation but the big ones are that the world economy has grown terribly unstable in recent years (in large part because of smaller manipulations by governments) and because an international currency war has broken out.

The gold and silver markets are the most manipulated of all because they involve currencies that compete with government currencies and because gold is a primary determinant not just of the value of currencies but also of interest rates and the value of government bonds. The gold market particularly is the key to all other markets.

This market rigging isn’t farfetched or wild conspiracy theory stuff. For starters, in the United States it’s the law. In 1934 the United States enacted the Gold Reserve Act specifically to create the Exchange Stabilization Fund within the Treasury Department and authorize it to trade in gold and related financial instruments. As it has been amended, the Gold Reserve Act now allows the ESF to trade not just in gold but in any financial instruments and to do so entirely in secret, exempt from answering to Congress or anyone else.

You can confirm this at the page of the Treasury Department’s Internet site describing the Exchange Stabilization Fund:

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/international/ESF/Pages/esf-inde…

As for silver, in 1965, as he signed the legislation removing silver from United States coinage, President Johnson warned investors not to buy silver in the hope of a rising price, because, he said, the government would dishoard as much silver as necessary from its silver stockpile to keep the price down. Whether and how the government has manipulated the silver market since then is arguable, but the government’s interest in manipulating the price of silver, a monetary metal, is a matter of longstanding public record.

President Johnson’s statement committing the government to rigging the price of silver even after its demonetization is posted at the presidential archives section of the Internet site of the University of California at Santa Barbara:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27108

In fact, documentation of the manipulation of the gold and silver markets is all over the place.

For many years GATA has been compiling and publishing it in the “documentation” section of our Internet site:

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

Indeed, more documentation of it came out just Monday this week when the German government’s auditors office issued a report criticizing the German central bank, the Bundesbank, for negligence in its custodianship of Germany’s national gold reserves:

http://www.gata.org/node/11851

http://www.gata.org/node/11855

http://www.gata.org/node/11853

http://www.gata.org/node/11854

http://www.gata.org/node/11856

The auditors report disclosed that the Bundesbank had secretly sold some of the German gold reserves vaulted at the Bank of England in London. But since the sale of Germany’s gold in London apparently did not reduce the total official holdings in Germany’s gold reserve, the sale was probably part of a gold swap with another central bank. That is, it probably was a transaction in which Germany sold its gold in London on behalf of that other central bank and in exchange took title to gold owned by the other central bank and vaulted elsewhere.

This would fit exactly what GATA learned when, in 2009, it sued the Federal Reserve in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to gain access to the Feds records involving gold swaps.

Last year GATA more or less won that lawsuit. While most of the Fed’s records involving gold swaps were still denied to us by the court, one very telling record was ordered disclosed, the minutes of the April 1997 meeting of the G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee. And, as a result of all the questioning of Fed officials we did during the court case, we extracted a spectacular admission from a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, Kevin M. Warsh. Fed Governor Warsh admitted in writing that the Fed has secret gold swap arrangements with foreign banks.:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFedResponse-09-17-2009.pdf

The only purpose of secret gold swap arrangements is secret intervention in the gold market.

Emboldened by the success of our informational lawsuit against the Fed, a few weeks ago GATA undertook an amazing new method of learning what other Western central banks are doing in the gold market, a method never attempted before by academic scholarship or mainstream financial journalism:

That is, we asked them. One by one, we put some very specific questions to a few of them.

Questioning central banks about gold has never been attempted by financial market academics, analysts, and newsletter writers, nor by mainstream financial journalists because they simply take for granted that central banks operate in secret. Central banks control the value of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world — that is, central banks exercise nearly absolute power — but financial market academics, analysts, and newsletter writers and mainstream financial journalists seem to believe that central banks are somehow exempt from the ancient principle that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

GATA’s questions were posed through the German freelance journalist Lars Schall to the Bank of England, the Bundesbank, and the Bank for International Settlements, as well as to the Fed and Treasury Department and JPMorganChase & Co., that investment bank being in effect an agency of the U.S. government.

The Fed, Treasury Department, Bank of England, and JPMorganChase refused to answer our questions about involvement in the gold market.

The Bank for International Settlements, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, also refused to answer but did acknowledge that it trades secretly in the gold market on behalf of its member central banks. Of course the BIS refused to explain the purposes of that trading, but then in 2006 GATA obtained and published a speech delivered in 2005 by the head of the monetary and economic department of the BIS, William White, who said that a primary purpose of international central bank cooperation is to influence asset prices, especially the price of gold:

http://www.gata.org/node/4279

Lars Schall’s account of his attempt to question the central banks and JPMorganChase & Co., including their evasions, has been published today at GATA’s Internet site here:

http://www.gata.org/node/11862

Evasive as it was with Schall, the BIS remains a wonderful source of documentation of central bank manipulation of the gold market.

In April this year the Internet site Zero Hedge disclosed that a trader for the BIS, Mikael Charoze, identified himself in his Internet biography as the BIS’ “foreign exchange and gold senior dealer” handling “management of liquidity for big amounts,” including “interventions,” and adding that he “holds and manages proprietary positions on all currencies including gold.” A few days after Zero Hedge called attention to his biography, Charoze removed the references to interventions and gold:

http://www.gata.org/node/11257

In February this year one of GATA’s European researchers discovered and we published the PowerPoint presentation made in 2008 by the BIS to prospective central bank members at a meeting at BIS headquarters in Switzerland. The presentation advertised the BIS’ services to its members. Among the BIS services advertised were interventions in the foreign exchange and gold markets:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-BISPresentation-2008.pdf

The complete presentation is here:

http://www.gata.org/files/BISAdvertisesGoldInterventions.pdf

GATA’s dispatch about it from February is here:

http://www.gata.org/node/11012

This week our researcher discovered that, two years later, in 2010, the BIS made a virtually identical presentation about its services, a presentation made to oil industry executives meeting in East Timor. But the BIS’ 2010 presentation removed the reference to foreign exchange and gold market interventions. That’s because the 2010 presentation was for outsiders and the public isn’t supposed to know about market interventions by central banks. The modified page of the 2010 presentation is here:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-BISPresentation-2010.pdf

Also this year GATA obtained official confirmations of gold price suppression from two former Western central bankers.

In April our friend the Dutch economist Jaco Schipper discovered the memoirs of the late Netherlands central bank president Jelle Zijlstra, who for some years was also president of the Bank for International Settlements. Zijlstra, who sat at the pinnacle of Western central banking and thus is pretty good authority, wrote that the gold price is suppressed by Western central banks at the instigation of the United States:

http://www.gata.org/node/11304

And in January this year our journalist friend Lars Schall reached former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to ask him about a passage in Volckers memoirs, which, strangely, seem to have been published only in Japan. Recounting a currency revaluation in 1973, Volcker says in those memoirs that he regrets that intervention against the price of gold was not undertaken by central banks. Corresponding about this with Schall in April, Volcker confirmed his reflection about intervention against gold and said such intervention is necessary to “counter exchange rate instability at a critical point”:

http://www.gata.org/node/10923

I’m sorry if all this manipulation of markets by government is getting pretty obvious to you — it certainly is to me — but in fact in polite company in the financial markets it is still either denied or ignored because it is too politically incorrect and explosive to acknowledge. For if you acknowledge this stuff, you realize that we don’t have any markets at all anymore, just command economies in disguise.

If you’re going to get into or stay into gold and silver you have to know what you’re up against — which is to say youre up against all the money and power in the world.

This is how GATA sees things:

The great disparagement about gold is that even with its huge rise in price over the last decade it has not kept up with inflation. Somehow the obvious question is never asked: Why hasn’t gold kept up with inflation?

GATA’s research has concluded that gold has not kept up with inflation because, first, Western central banks did a lot of dishoarding and leasing of their gold reserves in the 1990s and, second, because Western central banks and their agents the bullion banks have created a vast imaginary supply of “paper gold.”

This vast imaginary supply is essentially a monstrous naked short position in gold.

That is, much gold has been sold that doesn’t exist because the Western central banks and their bullion bank agents have created a fractional-reserve gold banking system, a system that has worked because most big buyers of gold have not taken possession of their purchases but rather have left them on deposit with the bullion bank sellers. Since most buyers don’t take delivery of their gold, the bullion banks know that they can sell more gold than they have, confident that Western central banks will rescue them in the emergency of a short squeeze.

Such a rescue was promised by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in his testimony to Congress in July 1998 when he said central banks “stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise”:

http://www.gata.org/node/9545

That’s what the Western central bank gold leasing and supposed gold sales of the last decade were about — covering a short position that could not be covered from ordinary mine production.

Ask yourself: If Western central banks were, as they said, constantly selling gold from 2000 to 2010, how could the price have gone up steadily, pretty much at a 45-degree angle, throughout that decade? The gold price rose steadily during that time because those Western central bank gold sales almost certainly were not really sales at all but cash settlements of leased gold that could not be recovered without exploding the price.

That is, the gold in those supposed Western central bank sales had actually hit the market many years earlier and was not hitting the market when the sales were announced. Upon the announcement of the sales the gold was actually just being written off and surrendered as the Western central banks staged a controlled retreat with the gold price.

This still leaves this huge naked short position in gold in the bullion banking system and in the futures markets around the world, a naked short position that is starting to get squeezed as Eastern and developing-world central banks figure out the gold price suppression scheme and strive to hedge their U.S. dollar reserves.

We know from the U.S. State Department cables obtained and published by Wikileaks last year that the government of China knows all about the Western gold price suppression scheme because government-operated news organizations in China have repeatedly reported about it and translations of those reports were sent to the U.S. State Department in Washington from the U.S. embassy in Beijing. You can read those reports and U.S. embassy cables at GATA’s Internet site here:

http://www.gata.org/node/10380

http://www.gata.org/node/10416

That is, China knows all about the gold price suppression scheme, which may be why China is accumulating gold so furiously at a discount. And the U.S. government knows that China knows.

GATA is betting that we can expose to the markets this naked short position in gold, bust the fractional-reserve gold banking system, and achieve a free and transparent market in gold and thereby help liberate all markets everywhere.

As you can see from their clumsy evasions of our questions, Western central banks are still betting that they can conceal all this market rigging forever, gold being the secret knowledge of the financial universe, since the control of gold enables the control of the value of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world.

This Western central bank scheme is essentially totalitarian.

The Western central banks can be beaten at it — they are being beaten slowly and steadily — but it’s a struggle every day.

It’s GATA’s struggle and we would welcome your support. A few weeks ago we made new informational requests of the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and State Department seeking access to all their records about gold, including international agreements to which the United States is a party. Of course the Fed and Treasury and State departments have not answered us, so we’re now entitled to sue them again for access to their records. We have to raise some money for that. But GATA is recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt educational and civil rights organization, so at least contributions to us are tax-deductible in the United States. If you’re inclined to help, please visit our Internet site here:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

This is a fascinating and, unfortunately, still mysterious field. Every investor should pursue it, and you can read the material we’ve collected at our Internet site:

http://www.gata.org/

Thanks so much for your kind attention today.

UPDATE!

 

This is what passes for financial journalism at The Telegraph and CNBC 

Submitted by cpowell on 12:20AM ET Thursday, October 25, 2012. Section: Daily Dispatches
2:12a CT Thursday, October 25, 2012

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Appended is another example of the idiot journalism the planet is up against — a rambling and practically unconscious discourse about the German federal auditors office’s call for an inventory of the country’s gold reserves, held at the Bank of England, the Bank of France, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The author, CNBC Senior Editor John Carney, asserts that it doesn’t matter whether Germany’s gold exists provided that everyone just pretends and acts as if it exists: “As long as the Fed says it is there, it is as good as there for all practical purposes to which it might be put. It can be sold, leased out, used as collateral, employed to extinguish liabilities, and counted as bank capital just the same whether it exists or not.”

But if gold is money, the mere pretense of its existence is money creation — potentially infinite money creation. And since, as even establishment luminaries like former Treasury Secretary and Harvard Professor and President Lawrence Summers can attest —

http://www.gata.org/files/gibson.pdf

— gold is a powerful determinant of interest rates and the value of other currencies and government bonds, the pretense of potentially infinite gold reserves that “can be sold, leased out, used as collateral, employed to extinguish liabilities, and counted as bank capital” is actually the seizure of infinite power by government.

At least Carney acknowledges that disproving this pretense could have explosive results. “If the gold isn’t there,” he writes, “well, calamity could follow as trust in the central bank gold depositories evaporated instantly.”

Yes indeed, Mr. Carney. So might this be why central banks won’t answer certain very specific questions about their gold reserves?:

http://www.gata.org/node/11862

http://www.gata.org/node/11863

How about trying to put such questions to them yourself, Mr. Carney?

Even The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who has a bit more wit and experience than Carney, failed Journalism 101 tonight with his report about the controversy over the German gold reserves:

http://www.gata.org/node/11866

Evans-Pritchard acknowledged that the withdrawal of much of the German gold from the Bank of England was a “mystery,” but did he pick up the telephone and question Bank of England Governor Mervyn King or Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann about it? King and Weidmann surely could explain the “mystery,” and, as he represents an influential news organization, Evans-Pritchard surely could have gotten them to come to the phone at least to be quoted with an embarrassing refusal to explain.

But no; instead Evans-Pritchard telephoned … a gold mining company chairman, Peter Hambro, who of course could only speculate on the mystery.

Once again the original sources in government, the responsible officials, go unchallenged by supposedly expert journalists.

CNBC’s Carney apparently didn’t try to question any original source at all. Instead he just speculated moronically, failing to grasp the obvious and inevitable consequences of his own speculation. Representing an international television network, Carney too might have gotten King or Weidmann on the phone — or at least a publicist for Kim Kardashian.

As long as stuff like this passes for financial journalism, the absolute power that corrupts absolutely and indeed has corrupted the West can rest easy.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *

The Germans Are Coming for Their Gold

By John Carney
Senior Editor
CNBC, New York
Wednesday, October 24, 2012

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49540593

A German federal audit court has said that country’s central bank should conduct annual audits and physically inspect its gold reserves worldwide, including gold in the custody of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In addition to the New York Fed, Bundesbank gold is stored in London, Paris, and Frankfurt.

For decades the Bundesbank has relied on written confirmation of its gold holdings in London, Paris, and New York. According to the report from the German audit court, the last time Bundesbank officials physically inspected the central banks gold holdings was, well, never.

(It should be stated that the folks at FT Alphaville quote a report saying an inspection took place in 1979/1980.)

Interestingly enough, the Bundesbank is apparently quite happy with taking the word of other central bankers about the existence, location, and size of its gold reserves. It put out the word that it disagrees with the audit court, which has only advisory power and cannot force the Bundesbank to follow its recommendations, about the need for inspections. Nonetheless, the Bundesbank is actually going to follow the recommendation that it verify the gold stocks. It also has plans to ship some 150 tons of gold back to Germany for a more “thorough examination.”

The Bundesbank is, of course, quite right in its opinion of the value of the examinations. In reality, it does not matter one bit whether the Federal Reserve Bank of New York actually has the German central bank’s gold or whether the gold is pure. As long as the Fed says it is there, it is as good as there for all practical purposes to which it might be put. It can be sold, leased out, used as collateral, employed to extinguish liabilities, and counted as bank capital just the same whether it exists or not.

The actual presence of the gold wouldn’t make a lick of difference unless, say, Germany’s central bank decided it wanted to start using the gold for some practical, non-monetary purpose like making watches.

But there’s long been a paranoia about central bank and government gold reserves. (

The gold of the United States government, which officials say is held in the United States Bullion Depository in Fort Knox, has been rumored — probably since the depository’s founding in 1937 — to have been looted and replaced with gold-painted tungsten, for instance. The government treats this as nonsense — which it most likely is — but nonetheless it does conduct regularly scheduled audits of the gold in Fort Knox, including doing purity tests on a small sample of the gold.

This paranoia is not entirely irrational, for one reason. As I mentioned above, for almost all imaginable operational purposes, the actual existence of the gold in Fort Knox or in the vault beneath the New York Fed’s Liberty Street headquarters is irrelevant. The bookkeeping is what really matters here. So long as the Fed says Bundesbank owns X tons of gold, the Bundesbank can act as if it did own the gold — even if the gold had somehow been swallowed into a gold-eating galactic worm hole. But the irrelevance of the facticity of the gold does quite easily lend itself to thinking: If the gold being there doesn’t matter, why would it be there?

I’m sure the Bundesbank officials understand this quite well, even though the German audit court does not. There is nothing to be gained by inspecting the gold. If it is all there and pure, there is no difference from an undiscovered absence. But if the gold isn’t there, well, calamity could follow as trust in the central bank gold depositories evaporated instantly.

In any event, it looks like Bundesbank officials will soon be visiting the Fed’s vault, which is located 80 feet below street level and 50 feet below sea level. The vault is accessible only by elevators controlled by an operator in a remote location. I’ve been told by a source that the elevator operator is actually not in New York City at all, although I cant confirm this and the Fed won’t discuss this sort of thing.

Down in the vault there are 122 compartments assigned to depositing countries and international organizations. Smaller gold depositing countries get shelves in shared library compartments.

The compartments do not have labels reading “Germany’s gold” and so on. They are instead numbered, and only a few people at the Fed know what numbers correspond to which country. The Fed says it does this to protect the privacy of the depositors. But this also makes actual inspection less reliable. There’s no way for Germany to know that the gold it is being shown is Germany’s, as opposed to some other depositor’s. In an extreme case — which I have no reason to believe is true — miscreants at the Fed could just show everyone who came to visit the same pile of gold.

This is related to another mystery about gold reserves: Why do they persist?

The central banks of the world’s established economic powers do not actually do anything with their gold, apart from rare and occasional sales of gold limited by the Washington Agreement to no more than 400 tons per year.

Some central banks lend out their gold to speculators and gold miners (who borrow the gold to finance mines — basically, a risk-free hedged loan since the borrowed gold can be repaid with newly mined gold, regardless of what happens to the price of gold on the market), which can be a somewhat profitable activity — especially when the alternative is just letting it sit around doing nothing but fluctuating in value with the market price. But, as far as we know, this isn’t something the Bundesbank or the Fed do.

When Congressman Ron Paul recently asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke about the rationale for central banks holding gold, Bernanke said it was the result of “tradition.” But that’s not really a satisfactory answer. The lack of a satisfactory answer actually contributes to the suspicion that the gold isn’t really there at all. If there’s no purpose for it, why would it be there?

So is the German audit court nuts? Not necessarily. For one thing, there probably is some value to putting to rest suspicions that the public is being deceived about central bank gold reserves — although I doubt an audit will really do very much in this regard. For another, there’s always the off-chance that someone has embezzled the gold, enriching himself unjustly. Might as well check if the gold is really there.

The Fed wouldn’t comment on the record about how it will handle a German request to inspect the gold. A source says they would likely work out a deal with the Germans permitting some sort of inspection.

But I like to imagine that the Fed officials would bring the Germans to the door of the a compartment labeled, say, No. 322, and then pose the question: “Are you absolutely sure you want to see what’s in here?”

It is this simple

I did not write this for publication purposes, rather it was written to try to explain why certain people I know do not have the right to tell me that I can, or cannot, own whatever type gun I want. However, if you wish to circulate it amongst your contacts, feel free to do so.

It is this simple:
By Neal Ross

 In 1787 a group of men drafted a document which we know as the Constitution. In 1788 it was ratified, (agreed upon), by the required number of states to become legally binding as the Supreme Law of the Land. Article 6
That document created our federal government and binds it to the specific powers listed in Article 1 Section 8.

The purpose for which government was created is, “…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” Declaration of Independence

Furthermore, ten amendments were also ratified by the states, which we now know as the Bill of Rights, the purpose for which was, “THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added…” Preamble to Bill of Rights

The Second of these amendments states “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The definition for keep is “to hold or maintain something in your possession”

The definition for bear is “to carry something”

As our nation grew older, new amendments were added to the Constitution, the fourteenth of which, in part states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In the 1943 Supreme Court case of West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, Justice Robert Jackson delivered the following ruling, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.”

The Fourteenth Amendment states that all citizens shall have equal protection under the law and that no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

Therefore, any American should be able to exercise their Second Amendment right to the same extent as any other citizen living in the other 49 states.

Yet why do ONLY 39 states allow their citizens to own what they classify as assault weapons? Why do ONLY 39 states allow their citizens to attach noise suppressors, (silencers) to their weapons? Why do 40 states allow their citizens to own high capacity magazines for their firearms and the other 10 do not? Why is the Taurus Judge, a pistol which shoots both .45 caliber rounds and .410 shotgun shells legal in 49 states, yet it is not legal in California? Why do some states allow their citizens to bear arms, while others do not?

Where is the equal protection? Whatever happened to SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED?

The Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, IS the Supreme Law of the Land. Every elected official sitting in office takes an oath to uphold it. Why are any of these people still in office when the evidence clearly shows that many of them are guilty of violating one of our unalienable rights.

According to Blacks Law Dictionary, 2nd Edition, (1910), Unalienable is defined as “ Not subject to alienation; the characteristic of those things which cannot be bought or sold or transferred from one person to another such as rivers and public highways and certain personal rights; e.g., liberty.”

In 1966 the Supreme Court ruled “Where rights as secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which will abrogate them.” Miranda v. Arizona

In 1939 the Supreme Court ruled “The claim and exercise of a constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime.” U.S. v Miller

I am all for punishing anyone who abuses a right. If someone uses a firearm to commit a crime, then by all means they should be punished…severely! But to infringe upon MY right because of public outrage over someone else’s abuse is simply unconstitutional.

In the Nature of Judicial Process, 1921, Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo stated “The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.”

Therefore, just because you don’t like guns, or because you are afraid of those of us who do, you DO NOT have the right to ask us to surrender our unalienable right to own them, in the quantity and type of our choosing. You also do not have the right to ask that your legislator pass a law which restricts our ability to fully exercise our right.

It’s that simple!

OLDDOGS COMMENTS

I really admire Neal for his ability to articulate intelligently, and also for his consideration of people he really (and justly) despises. Attributes of which this Olddog has not been graced with, and the proof of that is most always found in my comments section, such as this.

You chicken shit scumbags that are obsessed with only allowing law enforcement and military personnel to have weapons had better not cross my path or visit my home, as I consider you unworthy of contaminating the air I breath. You will feel as safe around me as a light-bulb in the back of a pickup truck with a hundred baseball-bats rolling around. I despise the ground you pollute when you walk around. The only good thing about you ran down your mothers leg. Get the fxxking picture?

The POWER ELITE

By The Daily Bell

Power Elite The term “power elite” traces to the writings of C. Wright Mills, including his 1956 book, The Power Elite. The concept posits wealthy and/or well connected families and individuals who seek to expand their wealth by applying and promoting dominant social themes. Such themes may eventually develop into widely held archetypes or memes. Often such themes seem to originate with the United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization or other international bodies that are receptive to influence by the power elite. The themes then are picked up and rebroadcast by themainstream media. Thus, what may seem to be the work of an independent institutional staff may actually be the brainchild of the power elite. Concepts such as bird flu, Islamofascism and peak oil are so extensively promoted that much of the public unquestioningly accepts their fearful premises and demand action. Those with the wherewithal to provide solutions – products, services and corporate offerings via public markets – may earn vast profits as a consequence. There is little contemporary scholarly analysis of the concept of the power elite, but it corresponds roughly to what once was called “the money power.” There are a variety of theories as to the composition and character of the power elite. It sometimes is referred to ominously as the “Illuminati,” the “black church” or the “black nobility.” It is not necessary to confirm such characterizations to recognize that the action and influence of modern money power are pervasive. In most conceptions, the core of the power elite coalesces around the European and American banking dynasties and some elite, titled families, or it may be characterized as a “sub-church” within the Roman Catholic, Jewish or other religion. Chief among these dynasties are likely the Rockefellers and Rothschilds. In some conceptions, the power elite includes members who claim to trace their ancestry to ancient times, even to Babylon and beyond. This accords with the notion that members believe their pedigrees differentiate them from the “common herd.” Signifiers of power elite activity include a disdain of free markets and the persistent and uncritical promotion of a theme or meme to the exclusion of contrary evidence or argument.

WAR ON HEALTH: THE FDAs CULT OF TYRANNY

http://anticorruptionsociety.com/2012/10/09/war-on-health/

This might be the single most important video ever posted on the internet. It is ‘packed’ with important information that all Americans need to understand. This is an expose of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ corporate take-over of America. Gary Null is performing the function of an honest investigative journalist – something that was removed from our corporate media many years ago.

There is No permissible excuse for not watching this entire documentary, because your lack of participation in getting on our governments ass makes you their supporter. Dismantle the FDA, and do it NOW, should be coming out of your mouth with all the decibels possible!

This group of people and the elected representatives that refuse to control them are the most despicable scumbags on earth, bar NONE!

GET OFF YOUR ASS AND HELP YOUR COUNTRY SURVIVE!

GET EDUCATED!

olddog@anationbeguiled.com

AND

SIGN UP FOR THE ANTICORRUPTIONSOCIETY NEWS-LETTER

http://anticorruptionsociety.com/

America Has Already Collapsed

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/10/america-has-already-collapsed.html

 

By Brandon Smith,

Many of us in the liberty movement find ourselves searching for a distinct root cause of the trials and tribulations of American culture — the Holy Grail catalyst that, if unraveled, would save this country and heal the septic wounds covering the landscape of our hobbled society. The obvious answer would be to remove the global elites who are poisoning the well from the picture entirely. Yes, this has to be done eventually. However, we must also identify how those elites have been able to so thoroughly con the masses of this nation for so long.

What inherent weakness has made us susceptible to manipulation? For this question, there are NO easy answers. But, if I had to choose a single frailty of our collective psyche as paramount to our downfall, I would say that Americans most of all are confounded by their own patriotism. We often embrace the ideal without knowing what it really means.

There are in fact two kinds of patriotism: the concrete, and the imagined. Many Americans fall haphazardly into the fantasy of being patriotic. They define patriotism upon the exploits of the mainstream and of the government in control at the time. They become cheerleaders for the establishment instead of stalwart champions of their country’s founding principles. In fact, true patriotism is NOT about blindly defending one’s nation or leadership regardless of its trespasses; true patriotism is about defending the philosophy that made one’s nation possible and prosperous in the first place — even if that means standing against the power structure in place today.

I often hear the uneducated and unaware claim that America and its principles have been a bane to the rest of the world. They say America is at the center of the vampire squid, flailing its vicious tentacles against innocent foreign civilizations. This is an oversimplification at best. The crimes that these well-meaning but naïve activists scorn cannot be attributed to “America” because the American ideal has been completely abandoned by those in the seat of power in our modern era. We do not live in “America” — at least, not the America that the Founding Fathers and authors of the Constitution created. Therefore, the original philosophy that gave birth to America is not the issue, the abuse and neglect of that philosophy is.
America has been ransacked and deformed into a hideous lampoon of its former self. This has been done for the most part through the destruction of the guiding principles we pretend we still hold onto as a culture, but in reality have cast aside. If we are ever to undo the damage that has already been done, we have to rediscover what the original design of America was. Wailing and growling about the inadequacies of the present does nothing unless we also establish where it is that we have fallen from grace. What is America supposed to be? What did the Founders truly intend?

America Is Supposed To Be Controlled By The People

The concept of a Republic revolves around a reversal of the traditional narrative of power. Throughout most of history, government stood at the top of the pyramid, where the hands of a few dominated the destinies of the citizenry. The future was a matter for the elites, not the peasants, to be concerned with. The American Republic, as designed by the revolutionary colonists who defeated the old oligarchy (at least for a time), flipped the role of government to servant rather than master. The goal was to make government tangible and accountable rather than abstract and untouchable. The America of today has no such accountability anymore.

We have a two-party system that pursues the mechanizations of globalism in tandem, not in contest. When both parties have the same desires and goals, when both parties collude to remove civil liberties rather than protect them, and when both parties are funded by the same corporate backers, there is no such thing as change through the process of elections. Anyone who claims that government corruption can be punished through the ballot box hasn’t the slightest clue how our system really functions. They think we are still living in the original “America,” one that values the voice of the people.

When the government decides to push through banker bailouts, the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, etc., all while ignoring opposition by a vast majority of citizens, it is clear that the paradigm has shifted and the American value of representation by and for the people is lost.

America Is Supposed To Prosper Through Free Markets

One of the first acts of the American Revolution in the fight against British tyranny was to decouple from British economic dominance. They stopped relying on goods produced in England and peddled by the European merchant class and began making their own. From homespun clothing to homemade rifles, Americans created a legitimate free-market environment. Free markets are systems controlled by the people, thriving on the natural functions of supply and demand. They are not administered by bureaucracies or corporate hierarchies that manipulate the economy to fit preconceived political and social ends.

Free markets are decentralized markets. Corporations, which obstruct decentralization, were never meant to exist according to Adam Smith, the architect of traditional free markets. Today’s framework operates on centralization and the removal of options and choices, which is facilitated by the imbalance and lack of accountability in the corporate legal structure.

I have to laugh every time I hear someone attack “capitalism” and free markets as the source of all our ills. America has not had the pleasure of free markets for at least 100 years (since the construction of the private Federal Reserve, a collusion between banking and government interests). No one alive today has ever seen an actual American “free market” beyond community barter, so to blame free markets for our modern failings is rather thoughtless. To summarize, the U.S. economy is nothing like what the founders envisioned and fought for.

America Is Supposed To Have A Reserved Foreign Policy

The Founding Fathers specifically sought to keep America out of foreign entanglements and haphazard alliances. They knew from experience that the elites and monarchies of Europe often used wars as a means of consolidating power and keeping populations in relative fear. They were well aware of the methodologies of Niccolo Machiavelli and knew that forced alliances were a trap used to ensnare nations into unnecessary conflict and financial dependency while keeping the masses subservient through false patriotism.

Today, our government has utterly violated the original principles of reserved foreign policy, especially in the past century. The excuse always used is that “we are under attack,” yet we usually discover later that these “attacks” were actually fabricated by our own leaders. From the sinking of the USS Maine, to the sinking of the Lusitania, to the Gulf of Tonkin and beyond, for the past 100 years, Americans have been presented with false flag threats used as leverage to convince us to become entangled in foreign engagements. This strategy has become so common that elitists now openly admit their intentions to commit future false flags in order to draw us into yet another war,this time with Iran.

The current policy of “exporting democracy” has not only been a complete failure (just look at Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), it is also a total affront to the foundation of the American dynamic. Patriotism in the name of interventionism is foolhardy and decidedly un-American.

America Is Supposed To Respect Individual Rights

The Founders witnessed the extreme abuses of government firsthand: invasion of privacy, invasion of property, wrongful arrest and imprisonment, loss of representation, overt and malicious taxation, thuggish law enforcement, and the targeting of those who dared to dissent in their speech. The excuse used by the British for their tyrannical behavior was, essentially, national security. In the end, though, the elites’ actions had nothing to do with security for the populous and everything to do with what they saw as opposition to their hegemony. Our government has become a mirror image of the elitist power-mongers of Britain in the days of the revolution. Absolutely everything the colonists fought against has been re-established by the globalists in our political structure today, once again, all in the name of national security.

We have seen the enslavement of our money supply and general economy by the Federal Reserve; invasive and violent taxation through the Internal Revenue Service; loss of privacy through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance and the Patriot acts; loss of property rights through multiple agencies including the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, the Food and Drug Administration, etc. (who claim their tightening fist is for our own safety, yet they constantly overlook corporate misdeeds that put the public in true danger while pummeling average citizens for minor or non-existent offenses); the militarization of law enforcement through the Department of Homeland Security and Federally dominated fusion centers; potential loss of Habeas Corpus through the NDAA; and even wrongful arrest against those who merely speak openly of their discontent (look into the case of Marine veteran Brandon Raub for a taste of what lay ahead).

What Have We Become?

Those who rally behind the modern concept of America rally behind a façade — an empty shell devoid of the heart and soul that gave life to this once great experiment. I do not support what America is. I support what America was and what it could be again if the truth is adequately smashed into the faces of the currently oblivious public. If this country is content to suckle from the putrid teat of globalism and forsake the moral force of conscience that gave it life, then it has become another place — an alien land.

I have heard the argument that America is meant to be a kind of chameleon built to change its stripes and adapt to the demands of the era. I have heard it argued that the Constitution and the principles of the Founding Fathers are outdated and inadequate for our new age of technological wizardry and terrorist ideologies. This is pure intellectual idiocy. The principles of freedom never expire. Individual liberty is inherent and eternal. It is the driving force of every great accomplishment in the history of mankind. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights embody the spirit of that eternal battle of individual liberty. There is no adaptation. There is only freedom or tyranny.

It is time for us to decide what kind of Americans we wish to be: the deluded rah-rah puppets of a desiccated totalitarian society, or the watchmen on the wall. Will we be the keepers and protectors of the vital core of the American identity, or will we be fly-by-night consumers of the flavor-of-the-day political carnival, eating every tainted sample from the elitist platter in an insane attempt to replace our free heritage with a sleek, sexy, rehashed form of top-down feudalism?

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com