This article appears in the July 29, 2011 issueof Executive Intelligence Review. Note that the entire webcast by LaRouche, both the video and the transcript, can be found at http://www.larouchepac.com/webcasts/20110721.html
Mike Billington
LaRouche Warns of 'Reichstag Fire'
Drive for Dictatorship
by Jeffrey Steinberg
[PDF version of this article]
July 25—In January 2001, Lyndon LaRouche warned, in an international webcast, of the danger of a Reichstag Fire incident within that year, which would be used as the pretext for establishing a dictatorship over the United States. Under the Bush-Cheney regime, the effort came precariously close to fully succeeding, following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Now the situation is far more desperate from the standpoint of the London and Wall Street controllers of President Barack Obama. On July 23, LaRouche issued a warning about a new drive for dictatorship, emanating from the London-Wall Street financial oligarchy, which now faces imminent doom. As in 2001, the pretext for dictatorship would be a spectacular act, or series of acts, of irregular warfare, labeled "terrorism."
"If you look around the corners of society," LaRouche began, "you will see that there are operations being staged which have a certain resemblance to 9/11. What was the characteristic then? On the 3rd of January, 2001, I stated—which shocked the Clinton family very much, both of them, but especially her—I said, 'We're looking at a terrorist operation against the United States, sometime during this year.'
"And it happened. The warning signs came. Various deployments were made, in various directions, feints, in other words, of the type you're seeing in Europe and elsewhere now. You see deception operations, a credible threat here, say, Norway; a credible threat there. Now there's a real one in there. So why all these threats? Because if you have many different kinds of threats coming on simultaneously, your attention is diverted, to try to find which is the real one! Which is the real one?
"Now, if there were the original threat, you could detect it, you could detect its ancestry. But if you have conflicting threats, which each seem to be equally prevalent, as was true in 2001—and what happened? I didn't know what was going to happen; I had all kinds of things I knew were likely to happen. I knew what the threats were, generally. We were working on one, which was being built up around Washington, D.C., and into the surrounding areas, for a major targetting against Washington. Now, that did become the attack on Washington, by one of the craft that was shot into the Pentagon. There were attacks also in Washington against the White House and other locations. Some of this stuff worked, some of it didn't, but it was all being done.
"So, all of these attacks were given a certain credibility, like what had happened in Italy, in northern Italy earlier—same thing. But then, finally, the 'real one,' the 'mother' (using the 'mother' in the usual ghetto pejorative) exposed herself, right in New York City. The attack was run, by what?
"The attack was run by two agencies chiefly: The Israelis were in on it, but they were not an active part. They were out there, watching. They were all stationed, in Jersey, looking at the Tower! And then they skedaddled; exposed themselves afterward. They were looking at the Tower! Why were they gathered there, looking at the Tower? It was an intelligence operation, an Israeli intelligence operation. Because they knew about the attack, and they knew where it was coming from, and they were out there to watch the show.
"It was run by the Saudis who funded it, indirectly. It was backed by the Saudis, who organized the personnel who were used for some of the attacks. The Saudi ambassador to Washington, to the United States, was one of the key operators behind the launching of 9/11! In the course of the investigations, it was made absolutely clear that this was a Saudi-British, that is, BAE and British intelligence operation. The money for it was raised by an operation there.
"When the hearings were held on the 9/11 event, which had been organized with the Bush family—because the bin Laden family was in Texas at the time of the attack on New York. The whole damned bin Laden family!
"And after the attack, when the smoke had cleared, and the United States was under siege conditions, occupation-type siege conditions, the whole bin Laden family were given an escort. The only flight out of the United States was the Saudi family; they were given an escort, safe back to Saudi Arabia! An operation which the Saudis had been a part of planning, and financing, and running.
"So, the investigation occurred, and the meetings were held, and the discussions were had, and then, there were these paragraphs of the [9/11 Commission] report which indicated, positively, what exactly the relationship was, of the Saudi and British operations in this case.
"It's all there! We don't have it all, but we have the indicative evidence, which locates these agencies as being involved in it, including the Saudi Ambassador to Washington! The operation was run by the BAE, which funded the operation and organized features of it; it was organized by the Saudi Kingdom, the Saudi monarchy! It was organized by other, collaborating elements within it.
"Now, this was frozen by the Bush Administration. Well, it was the Bush Administration which had organized the attack on the United States! Maybe not poor, stupid Bush, but the Bush interests: It was the Bushes that were holding the family as guests, down in Texas, at the time the attack occurred. So, we have an act of war against the United States, and the President of the United States is complicit in covering up the attack, the authorship of the attack.
"And you respect him? You respect George W. Bush, Jr.? What kind of a creep are you? This guy was guilty, by virtue of his position and the knowledge of his institution, of an act of war against the United States! An act of war, actual destruction of American citizens, in an act of war! And the President of the United States was complicit in covering up that act of war against the United States.
"Now, look at the citizens of the United States! Look at their bravery, the boldness, the efficiency, with which they defended the United States!
"Now, look at the present situation in light of that. The incumbent President of the United States has just made a new coverup of 9/11! By suppressing one section of the report, in the findings—he said it should be expunged on the grounds of 'national security'! When this son-of-a-bitch called the current President of the United States is complicit in the attack on the United States, as an act of war against the people of the United States.
"Now do you know why I'm saying what I'm saying, when you consider this and similar kinds of institutions? When I say you're looking at doom? What's the doom, now? The doom is the bailout."
London's Drive for Dictatorship
In leading financial circles in London and on Wall Street, there is a complete recognition that the so-called bailout policy is doomed, because the entire global financial system is hopelessly bankrupt—as of right now. The dog-and-pony shows in Brussels and Washington, seeking interim solutions to such surface manifestations of the overall disintegration as the Greek bankruptcy and the U.S. debt ceiling debacle, are doomed to failure—and some of the smarter people within that system are fully aware of the impending doom. For London and Wall Street, the only available option is a drive for immediate dictatorship, starting in the United States.
The only way to defeat this London-centered drive for a police-state dictatorship is by starting from a top-down understanding of the moment of crisis that has now arrived. It is the London-centered "oligarchical system" that is demanding dictatorship now, because their system is already dead, and they must be in a position to politically control the replacement system.
LaRouche warned explicitly on July 20, in a statement widely circulated on the www.larouchepac.com, about the imminent threat of chaos and assassinations, as the knives come out in the great shakeout of the system. The statement read:
"Lyndon LaRouche warned once again today that unless Glass-Steagall is implemented in the United States and in Europe, the entire trans-Atlantic region is going to plunge into chaos. And under those circumstances, the kind of each-against-all warfare among the European financial oligarchy is likely to lead to some high-level assassinations. The now-unfolding political assassination of Rupert Murdoch, on the flimsiest of evidence, is just a mild indication of the chaos and mayhem that is about to be unleashed—unless a return to full national sovereignty, under a fixed-exchange-rate credit system, is established in the otherwise doomed trans-Atlantic nations.
"According to a senior U.S. intelligence source contacted today by EIR, the inherent flaws in the Maastricht Treaty system, from the very outset, have now reached a breakpoint. 'Either there is a financial federalization or the Euro is doomed,' he said bluntly, noting that any attempt at a political restructuring of Europe at this point, in favor of dictatorship by Brussels and the ECB, would trigger an all-out factional war among the entire European financial establishment. 'Any such radical change in the power structure of Europe would precipitate a tremendous and bloody brawl,' the source further warned. He added that the proposal on the table from the IMF and others to bail out the European banks, through European Central Bank dictatorship, would mean the end of what remains of the national sovereignty of the countries of the Eurozone. 'It would mean a post-Westphalian order.'
"Lyndon LaRouche fully concurred with this assessment and emphasized that this has been the British objective since the launching of the Maastricht straitjacket two decades ago.
"The source also noted that any further moves in the direction of an ECB dictatorship and surrendering of additional power to Brussels would be strongly opposed by a significant faction of German bankers and industrialists.
"This German opposition was the subject of an hysterical column in the July 20 Daily Telegraph by British spook Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing under the ominous headline 'Only Germany can save EMU as contagion turns systemic.' Evans-Pritchard began by quoting HSBC currency chief David Bloom: 'We are heading towards fiscal union or break-up. Talk is no longer enough as the fire threatens to leap over the firebreak into Spain and Italy. What the market is worried about is Germany's long-term commitment to the euro project.' Evans-Pritchard noted that German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears in no rush to adopt fiscal union, and has the Sword of Damocles hanging over her head, in the form of the pending Constitutional Court ruling on the legality of German participation in any European bailout, which will not be announced until September. Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann also recently told Bild Zeitung that German taxpayers would never accept a 'transfer union' requiring Germany to 'fully' bail out Greece and other debt-strapped states of Europe.
" 'The bottom line,' Lyndon LaRouche concluded, 'is that there is no solution to either the European or U.S. financial disintegration outside of Glass-Steagall. Even the effort to impose dictatorship would fail, and would only trigger chaos. They are all doomed unless they do what I say has to be done, starting here in the United States with the immediate reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall wall of separation.' "
Global Activation for Distraction
Precisely as LaRouche warned on July 20, a global pattern of asymmetric warfare attacks has broken out. The most spectacular recent incident was the set of July 22 attacks in and around Oslo, Norway, in which a 32-year-old man, Anders Breivik, first exploded car bombs outside a downtown building housing the office of the Prime Minister, and then went on a shooting spree on a nearby island, killing scores of youth attending a Labor Party outing.
But beyond that single incident, there have been other attacks and threats in recent days, indicating precisely the broad pattern of operations that LaRouche warned of in his statements. By being forced to respond to a simultaneous series of contradictory terrorist attacks and threats, security services are overwhelmed, and easily blinded from the real pending attacks.
It is precisely this global pattern of activations that has been under way for the past two weeks.
On July 13, three suicide bombs were set off in Mumbai, India, the site of the Nov. 26, 2008 massive irregular warfare attack. In the July 13 bombings, at least 24 people were killed.
On July 19, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security put out an alert, "Inside Threat to Utilities," warning of possible sabotage and cyber attacks against major U.S. power installations, including nuclear power plants. The alert was based on specific instances where individuals linked to Islamist terrorist networks were able to obtain jobs at utility company facilities; and additional intelligence derived from reviewing the documents seized in the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan earlier in the year.
On July 22, six hundred New York State National Guardsmen were put on alert to deploy to the New York City subway system, following credible threats that a serious attack was imminent. At the last moment, the deployment was delayed. While Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg were both silent on the activation, sources within the state National Guard confirmed the state of mobilization, and the fact that the alert status remains in place.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials have also confirmed that they are convinced that the al-Qaeda apparatus is still intent on pulling off some dramatic terrorist incident on or around the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The source warned that there are many neo-Salafi radical Muslim networks in place, with no formal links to al-Qaeda or other known international terrorist organizations. "They are recruited to an ideology, not to a terrorist organization. The structure bears more similarity to large street gang structures. But they can be activated on short notice, before security services even take note of the personnel." He further emphasized that, while it would be almost impossible to carry out another 9/11-style suicide airline hijacking, the type of commando attack on Mumbai in November 2008 could be repeated in almost any major city in the world.
Obama's Hitler Moment
Many of President Obama's former supporters have come to despise the fact that he has gone far beyond the Bush-Cheney White House in pursuing Unitary Executive rule by bureaucratic dictatorship. Some have even come around to accepting that LaRouche was correct on April 11, 2009, when he described Obama as a dangerous narcissist, like Emperor Nero and Adolf Hitler.
Those who doubted LaRouche's prophetic January 2001 warnings of a Reichstag Fire incident to justify a dictatorship by Bush and Cheney, only to find themselves facing a near-dictatorship after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, should heed his current warnings. Obama was installed as President precisely because of his Nero personality, and his slavish devotion to London and Wall Street. Under the present circumstances of absolute breakdown of the global financial system, the oligarchy's impulse is to go for dictatorship.
As LaRouche declared at the outset of his July 21, 2011 webcast, Obama must be removed from office by Constitutional means, if the United States is to stand a chance of surviving this here-and-now crisis.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Monsanto Nation: Taking Down Goliath
http://www.naturalnews.com:80/033155_Monsanto_Goliath.html
food
Monsanto Nation: Taking Down Goliath
The Achilles heel of Monsanto and the biotech industry is consumers' right to know.
Thursday, July 28, 2011 by: Ronnie Cummins
(NaturalNews)--"If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it." - Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994 After two decades of biotech bullying and force-feeding unlabeled and hazardous genetically engineered (GE) foods to animals and humans -- aided and abetted by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations -- it's time to move beyond defensive measures and go on the offensive. With organic farming, climate stability, and public health under the gun of the gene engineers and their partners in crime, it's time to do more than complain. With over 1/3 of U.S. cropland already contaminated with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), with mounting scientific evidence that GMOs cause cancer, birth defects, and serious food allergieshttp://www.responsibletechnology.org/ and with new biotech mutants like alfalfa, lawn grass, ethanol-ready corn, 2,4 D-resistant crops, and genetically engineered trees and animals in the pipeline http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon... time is running out. Living in Monsanto Nation there can be no such thing as "coexistence." It is impossible to coexist with a reckless industry that endangers public health, bribes public officials, corrupts scientists, manipulates the media, destroys biodiversity, kills the soil, pollutes the environment, tortures and poisons animals, destabilizes the climate, and economically enslaves the world's 1.5 billion seed-saving small farmers. It's time to take down the Biotech Behemoth, before the living web of biodiversity is terminated.
But, to bring down Goliath and build an organic future, we need to be strategic, as well as bold. We must take the time to carefully analyze our strengths and weaknesses and critique our previous efforts. Then we must prepare to concentrate our forces where our adversary is weak, like a chess master, moving the field of battle from Monsanto's currently impregnable territory into more favorable terrain. Given the near-dictatorial control of Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association over the Congress, the White House, regulatory agencies, and state legislators, we have no choice in the present moment but to revert to "asymmetrical" guerrilla tactics, to seek out the Achilles heel or fundamental weakness of the biotech industry.
Consumers Right to Know: Monsanto's Achilles Heel
The Achilles heel of Monsanto and the biotech industry is consumers' right to know. If GE-tainted foods are labeled in supermarkets and natural food stores, a massive rejection of chemical and GMO foods will take place, transforming the marketplace and supercharging the organic and local foods revolution. The biotech industry has been aware of their tremendous vulnerability in the United States ever since Monsanto forced their controversial recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone on the market in February 1994. In the wake of nationwide "Frankenfood" protests and milk dumps, industry made sure that no federal labeling or safety testing would be required. As the biotechnocrats understand full well, mandatory GE food labels will cripple the industry: consumers will not buy gene-altered foods, farmers will not plant them, restaurants and food processors will avoid them, and grocery stores will not sell them. How can we be certain about this? By looking at the experience of the European Union, the largest agricultural market in the world. In the EU there are almost no genetically engineered crops under cultivation or GE consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Not because GE crops are automatically banned in Europe. But rather because under EU law, all foods containing genetically engineered ingredientsmust be labeled.
European consumers have the freedom to choose or not to choose GE foods; while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as these gene-altered are safety-tested and labeled. Of course the EU food industry understands that consumers, for the most part, do not want to consume GE foods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by the Monsanto executive quoted above: "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."
The biotech and food industry are acutely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a PhD, consumers understand you don't want your food safety or environmental sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow, or DuPont--the same people who brought you toxic pesticides and industrial chemicals, Agent Orange, carcinogenic food additives, PCBs, and now global warming. Industry leaders are definitely aware of the fact that every poll over the last 20 years has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on genetically engineered foods. Why do consumers want labels? So that we can avoid buying these mutant foods, gene-spliced with viruses, bacteria, antibiotic-resistant marker genes and foreign DNA. Gene-altered foods have absolutely no benefits for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto and their friends in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws from ever getting a public discussion, much less coming to a vote, in Congress. Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) perennially introduces a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GE foods, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called "Citizens United" case gave big corporations, millionaires, and billionaires the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. Perfectly dramatizing the "Revolving Door" between Monsanto and the Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel for Monsanto, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto and other biotech bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress. With biotech and industrial agriculture's big money controlling Congress, the White House, and the corporate mass media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and our campaigning to more favorable terrain: the state level and the marketplace. Besides boycotting non-organic foods likely containing GMOs (even those marketed as "natural") and demanding that natural food stores adopt truth-in-labeling practices, we've got to push for mandatory GE food labeling laws in the legislatures of those few remaining states like Vermont where Monsanto and corporate agribusiness do not yet have total control. Of the 18 states where GE food labeling legislation has been introduced over the past two years, only in Vermont does our side seem to have the votes to push labeling through, as well as a Governor who will not cave in to Monsanto.
State Ballot Initiatives: Monsanto and Biotech's Greatest Weakness
Although passing a mandatory GE foods labeling law in Vermont is a distinct possibility, and something we should all support, the most promising strategy for restoring consumers' right to know lies in utilizing one of the most important remaining tools of direct citizen democracy, state ballot initiatives. A state ballot initiative is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can bring about a public vote on a proposed statute or constitutional amendment, in our case a law requiring mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. Ballot initiatives are also called, depending on the state, "popular initiatives," "voter initiatives," "citizen initiatives" or just "initiatives."
Twenty-four states, mainly west of the Mississippi, allow ballot initiatives. Each state has its own requirements for how many signatures are required, how many days can be spent collecting the signatures, and when petitions must be turned in. States also vary on the average amount of money spent by initiative committees to support or oppose ballot measures. http://www.organicconsumers.org/art... The essential advantage of state ballot initiatives is that they enable the grassroots (in our case the 85-95% of consumers who want labels on GE-tainted foods) to bypass corrupt politicians, industry lobbyists, and special interest legislative practices. In addition, the very strategic point to keep in mind is that it will not be necessary to pass GMO labeling ballot initiatives in all 24 of these states. In fact passage in just one large state, for example California, where there is tremendous opposition to GE foods as well as a multi-billion dollar organic food industry, will likely have the same impact as a national labeling law.
If Vermont passes a state labeling law though its legislature in 2011, or California voters put a GMO labeling initiative on the ballot in 2012 and pass it, the biotech and food industry will face an intractable dilemma. Will they dare put labels on their branded food products in just one or two states, admitting these products contain genetically engineered ingredients, while still withholding label information in the other states? The answer is very likely no. Withholding important and controversial information in some states, while providing it to consumers in other states, would be a public relations disaster. A clear precedent for this situation was established in California in 1986 when voters passed, over the strenuous opposition of industry, a ballot initiative called Proposition 65, which required consumer products with potential cancer-causing ingredient to bear warning labels. Rather than label their products sold in California as likely carcinogenic, most companies reformulated their product ingredients so as to avoid warning labels altogether, and they did this on a national scale, not just in California. This same scenario will likely unfold if California voters pass a ballot initiative in 2012 requiring labels on food containing genetically engineered ingredients. Can you imagine Kellogg's selling Corn Flakes breakfast cereal in California with a label that admits it contains genetically engineered corn? Or labeling their corn flakes as GE in California, but not divulging this same fact to consumers in the other 49 states or Canada? Of course not. How about Kraft Boca Burgers admitting that their soybean ingredients are genetically modified? How about the entire non-organic food industry (including many so-called "natural" brands) admitting that 75% of their products are GE-tainted? Once food manufacturers and supermarkets are forced to come clean and label genetically engineered products, they will likely remove all GE ingredients, to avoid the "skull and crossbones" effect, just like the food industry in the EU has done. In the wake of this development American farmers will convert millions of acres of GE crops to non-GMO or organic varieties.The biotechnocrats and their allies have indeed used their vast resources to buy off Congress, the White House, and most state legislatures with campaigncontributions. Monsanto, DuPont, and other corporate giants have used their enormous clout to send their lawyers and scientists through the revolving door into jobs as governmentregulators. Biotech's financial powerhas polluted state and federal governments, along with trade associations, universities, research institutions, philanthropic organizations, and media outlets.
But there are two things Monsanto's money can't buy: Our trust, and our votes.
Polls Show Consumers Overwhelmingly Support GE Food Labels
Poll after poll has shown that most consumers want to know whether their food includes engineered ingredients. The results of a recent MSNBC poll that posed the question, "Do you believe genetically modified foods should be labeled?" indicate that nearly all Americans believe that foods made with genetically modified organisms should indeed be labeled.Of the more than 45,000 people who participated in the poll, over 96% answered "Yes. It's an ethical issue -- consumers should be informed so they can make a choice."
It's not news that most Americans support labeling of GMO foods. Since genetically modified foods were first introduced in mid-1990s, scores of public opinion polls have shown that the vast majority of consumers want mandatory labeling of all genetically modified foods. These include recent polls by CBS News/New York Times, NPR/Thomson Reuters and the Consumers Union. Unfortunately Congress and the White House have ignored these polls, accepting instead the claims of lobbyists and indentured scientists that genetically engineered foods are perfectly safe, and that uninformed and scientifically illiterate Americans must not be given the choice to buy or not to not GMOs, because they will reject them. Monsanto spent more than $1 million on the 2010 election cycle, splitting its contributions evenly between state and federal candidates. It spends much more on lobbying -- more than $8 million in each of the last three years. Monsanto's money has bought it influence and allowed it to move its lawyers and scientists through the revolving door into roles within the regulatory agencies. The USDA, FDA and State Department are full of appointees with connections to Monsanto. Monsanto's efforts have successfully stifled attempts in Congress and state legislatures to pass GMO labeling legislation.
The Slingshot that Can Bring Down Goliath
The most important advantage or weapon in a ballot initiative (or in a grassroots legislative lobbying campaign) is to have the overwhelming support of the people, especially registered voters. As poll after poll has shown, 85-95% of Americans support mandatory GE food labels. No matter how much money Monsanto and their allies spend to defeat a ballot initiative, it is very difficult to turn back overwhelming public sentiment. Monsanto has become one of the most hated corporations on Earth.
The second requirement for a successful ballot initiative is to have the active support of a massive grassroots movement, like the growing anti-GE food movement and OCA's Millions Against Monsanto campaign. This grassroots movement can gather petition signatures, mobilize public opinion, and get out the vote. No matter how much money Monsanto and their allies spend, it will be very difficult to defeat a volunteer grassroots army of organic consumers who enjoy the massive support of the public. The third prerequisite for victory is to have the ability to raise significant sums of money. Not only do we have millions of organic consumers in the U.S. who are passionately opposed to GMOs, and willing to donate to a labeling campaign, but we also have a rapidly growing $30 billion organic food industry that depends upon keeping GMO contamination out of the organic sector. We probably won't be able to raise enough money to outspend Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, but we can raise enough money to defend our popular position and maintain majority support. Just like everything in U.S. politics, ballot initiatives have a price tag. According to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center: * "The chances of victory are directly correlated with the amount of money raised and are almost always proportional to the amount of money the opposition spends." * "People-power is equally important to factor in. Particularly for Citizen-based ballot initiative efforts, it is imperative to have people on the ground across the state that are connected and invested in the initiative."
Biotechnology or BioDemocracy?
Restoring consumers' right to know and driving genetically engineered foods off supermarket shelves are not going to solve all of the life-and-death issues that are currently staring us in the face: [MM: the Satanic private, parasitical, catastrophic "Federal Reserve" monetary system!!!] the climate crisis, endless wars, economic depression, corporate control over government, and the health crisis. But cutting Monsanto and the biotechnocrats down to size and restoring consumer choice are a good first step to move us toward sustainability and a healthy food and farming system. Just as important, in political terms, by defeating the Biotech Bullies and indentured politicians we can begin to restore the tattered self-confidence of the American body politic. A resounding victory by the organic community and OCA's Millions Against Monsanto campaign will prove to ourselves and the currently demoralized public that we can indeed take back control over the institutions and public policies that determine our daily lives. Now is the time to move forward. To support or join up with the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign, go to: http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon...
food
Monsanto Nation: Taking Down Goliath
The Achilles heel of Monsanto and the biotech industry is consumers' right to know.
Thursday, July 28, 2011 by: Ronnie Cummins
(NaturalNews)--"If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it." - Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994 After two decades of biotech bullying and force-feeding unlabeled and hazardous genetically engineered (GE) foods to animals and humans -- aided and abetted by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations -- it's time to move beyond defensive measures and go on the offensive. With organic farming, climate stability, and public health under the gun of the gene engineers and their partners in crime, it's time to do more than complain. With over 1/3 of U.S. cropland already contaminated with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), with mounting scientific evidence that GMOs cause cancer, birth defects, and serious food allergieshttp://www.responsibletechnology.org/ and with new biotech mutants like alfalfa, lawn grass, ethanol-ready corn, 2,4 D-resistant crops, and genetically engineered trees and animals in the pipeline http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon... time is running out. Living in Monsanto Nation there can be no such thing as "coexistence." It is impossible to coexist with a reckless industry that endangers public health, bribes public officials, corrupts scientists, manipulates the media, destroys biodiversity, kills the soil, pollutes the environment, tortures and poisons animals, destabilizes the climate, and economically enslaves the world's 1.5 billion seed-saving small farmers. It's time to take down the Biotech Behemoth, before the living web of biodiversity is terminated.
But, to bring down Goliath and build an organic future, we need to be strategic, as well as bold. We must take the time to carefully analyze our strengths and weaknesses and critique our previous efforts. Then we must prepare to concentrate our forces where our adversary is weak, like a chess master, moving the field of battle from Monsanto's currently impregnable territory into more favorable terrain. Given the near-dictatorial control of Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association over the Congress, the White House, regulatory agencies, and state legislators, we have no choice in the present moment but to revert to "asymmetrical" guerrilla tactics, to seek out the Achilles heel or fundamental weakness of the biotech industry.
Consumers Right to Know: Monsanto's Achilles Heel
The Achilles heel of Monsanto and the biotech industry is consumers' right to know. If GE-tainted foods are labeled in supermarkets and natural food stores, a massive rejection of chemical and GMO foods will take place, transforming the marketplace and supercharging the organic and local foods revolution. The biotech industry has been aware of their tremendous vulnerability in the United States ever since Monsanto forced their controversial recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone on the market in February 1994. In the wake of nationwide "Frankenfood" protests and milk dumps, industry made sure that no federal labeling or safety testing would be required. As the biotechnocrats understand full well, mandatory GE food labels will cripple the industry: consumers will not buy gene-altered foods, farmers will not plant them, restaurants and food processors will avoid them, and grocery stores will not sell them. How can we be certain about this? By looking at the experience of the European Union, the largest agricultural market in the world. In the EU there are almost no genetically engineered crops under cultivation or GE consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Not because GE crops are automatically banned in Europe. But rather because under EU law, all foods containing genetically engineered ingredientsmust be labeled.
European consumers have the freedom to choose or not to choose GE foods; while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as these gene-altered are safety-tested and labeled. Of course the EU food industry understands that consumers, for the most part, do not want to consume GE foods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by the Monsanto executive quoted above: "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."
The biotech and food industry are acutely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a PhD, consumers understand you don't want your food safety or environmental sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow, or DuPont--the same people who brought you toxic pesticides and industrial chemicals, Agent Orange, carcinogenic food additives, PCBs, and now global warming. Industry leaders are definitely aware of the fact that every poll over the last 20 years has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on genetically engineered foods. Why do consumers want labels? So that we can avoid buying these mutant foods, gene-spliced with viruses, bacteria, antibiotic-resistant marker genes and foreign DNA. Gene-altered foods have absolutely no benefits for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto and their friends in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws from ever getting a public discussion, much less coming to a vote, in Congress. Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) perennially introduces a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GE foods, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called "Citizens United" case gave big corporations, millionaires, and billionaires the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. Perfectly dramatizing the "Revolving Door" between Monsanto and the Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel for Monsanto, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto and other biotech bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress. With biotech and industrial agriculture's big money controlling Congress, the White House, and the corporate mass media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and our campaigning to more favorable terrain: the state level and the marketplace. Besides boycotting non-organic foods likely containing GMOs (even those marketed as "natural") and demanding that natural food stores adopt truth-in-labeling practices, we've got to push for mandatory GE food labeling laws in the legislatures of those few remaining states like Vermont where Monsanto and corporate agribusiness do not yet have total control. Of the 18 states where GE food labeling legislation has been introduced over the past two years, only in Vermont does our side seem to have the votes to push labeling through, as well as a Governor who will not cave in to Monsanto.
State Ballot Initiatives: Monsanto and Biotech's Greatest Weakness
Although passing a mandatory GE foods labeling law in Vermont is a distinct possibility, and something we should all support, the most promising strategy for restoring consumers' right to know lies in utilizing one of the most important remaining tools of direct citizen democracy, state ballot initiatives. A state ballot initiative is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can bring about a public vote on a proposed statute or constitutional amendment, in our case a law requiring mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. Ballot initiatives are also called, depending on the state, "popular initiatives," "voter initiatives," "citizen initiatives" or just "initiatives."
Twenty-four states, mainly west of the Mississippi, allow ballot initiatives. Each state has its own requirements for how many signatures are required, how many days can be spent collecting the signatures, and when petitions must be turned in. States also vary on the average amount of money spent by initiative committees to support or oppose ballot measures. http://www.organicconsumers.org/art... The essential advantage of state ballot initiatives is that they enable the grassroots (in our case the 85-95% of consumers who want labels on GE-tainted foods) to bypass corrupt politicians, industry lobbyists, and special interest legislative practices. In addition, the very strategic point to keep in mind is that it will not be necessary to pass GMO labeling ballot initiatives in all 24 of these states. In fact passage in just one large state, for example California, where there is tremendous opposition to GE foods as well as a multi-billion dollar organic food industry, will likely have the same impact as a national labeling law.
If Vermont passes a state labeling law though its legislature in 2011, or California voters put a GMO labeling initiative on the ballot in 2012 and pass it, the biotech and food industry will face an intractable dilemma. Will they dare put labels on their branded food products in just one or two states, admitting these products contain genetically engineered ingredients, while still withholding label information in the other states? The answer is very likely no. Withholding important and controversial information in some states, while providing it to consumers in other states, would be a public relations disaster. A clear precedent for this situation was established in California in 1986 when voters passed, over the strenuous opposition of industry, a ballot initiative called Proposition 65, which required consumer products with potential cancer-causing ingredient to bear warning labels. Rather than label their products sold in California as likely carcinogenic, most companies reformulated their product ingredients so as to avoid warning labels altogether, and they did this on a national scale, not just in California. This same scenario will likely unfold if California voters pass a ballot initiative in 2012 requiring labels on food containing genetically engineered ingredients. Can you imagine Kellogg's selling Corn Flakes breakfast cereal in California with a label that admits it contains genetically engineered corn? Or labeling their corn flakes as GE in California, but not divulging this same fact to consumers in the other 49 states or Canada? Of course not. How about Kraft Boca Burgers admitting that their soybean ingredients are genetically modified? How about the entire non-organic food industry (including many so-called "natural" brands) admitting that 75% of their products are GE-tainted? Once food manufacturers and supermarkets are forced to come clean and label genetically engineered products, they will likely remove all GE ingredients, to avoid the "skull and crossbones" effect, just like the food industry in the EU has done. In the wake of this development American farmers will convert millions of acres of GE crops to non-GMO or organic varieties.The biotechnocrats and their allies have indeed used their vast resources to buy off Congress, the White House, and most state legislatures with campaigncontributions. Monsanto, DuPont, and other corporate giants have used their enormous clout to send their lawyers and scientists through the revolving door into jobs as governmentregulators. Biotech's financial powerhas polluted state and federal governments, along with trade associations, universities, research institutions, philanthropic organizations, and media outlets.
But there are two things Monsanto's money can't buy: Our trust, and our votes.
Polls Show Consumers Overwhelmingly Support GE Food Labels
Poll after poll has shown that most consumers want to know whether their food includes engineered ingredients. The results of a recent MSNBC poll that posed the question, "Do you believe genetically modified foods should be labeled?" indicate that nearly all Americans believe that foods made with genetically modified organisms should indeed be labeled.Of the more than 45,000 people who participated in the poll, over 96% answered "Yes. It's an ethical issue -- consumers should be informed so they can make a choice."
It's not news that most Americans support labeling of GMO foods. Since genetically modified foods were first introduced in mid-1990s, scores of public opinion polls have shown that the vast majority of consumers want mandatory labeling of all genetically modified foods. These include recent polls by CBS News/New York Times, NPR/Thomson Reuters and the Consumers Union. Unfortunately Congress and the White House have ignored these polls, accepting instead the claims of lobbyists and indentured scientists that genetically engineered foods are perfectly safe, and that uninformed and scientifically illiterate Americans must not be given the choice to buy or not to not GMOs, because they will reject them. Monsanto spent more than $1 million on the 2010 election cycle, splitting its contributions evenly between state and federal candidates. It spends much more on lobbying -- more than $8 million in each of the last three years. Monsanto's money has bought it influence and allowed it to move its lawyers and scientists through the revolving door into roles within the regulatory agencies. The USDA, FDA and State Department are full of appointees with connections to Monsanto. Monsanto's efforts have successfully stifled attempts in Congress and state legislatures to pass GMO labeling legislation.
The Slingshot that Can Bring Down Goliath
The most important advantage or weapon in a ballot initiative (or in a grassroots legislative lobbying campaign) is to have the overwhelming support of the people, especially registered voters. As poll after poll has shown, 85-95% of Americans support mandatory GE food labels. No matter how much money Monsanto and their allies spend to defeat a ballot initiative, it is very difficult to turn back overwhelming public sentiment. Monsanto has become one of the most hated corporations on Earth.
The second requirement for a successful ballot initiative is to have the active support of a massive grassroots movement, like the growing anti-GE food movement and OCA's Millions Against Monsanto campaign. This grassroots movement can gather petition signatures, mobilize public opinion, and get out the vote. No matter how much money Monsanto and their allies spend, it will be very difficult to defeat a volunteer grassroots army of organic consumers who enjoy the massive support of the public. The third prerequisite for victory is to have the ability to raise significant sums of money. Not only do we have millions of organic consumers in the U.S. who are passionately opposed to GMOs, and willing to donate to a labeling campaign, but we also have a rapidly growing $30 billion organic food industry that depends upon keeping GMO contamination out of the organic sector. We probably won't be able to raise enough money to outspend Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, but we can raise enough money to defend our popular position and maintain majority support. Just like everything in U.S. politics, ballot initiatives have a price tag. According to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center: * "The chances of victory are directly correlated with the amount of money raised and are almost always proportional to the amount of money the opposition spends." * "People-power is equally important to factor in. Particularly for Citizen-based ballot initiative efforts, it is imperative to have people on the ground across the state that are connected and invested in the initiative."
Biotechnology or BioDemocracy?
Restoring consumers' right to know and driving genetically engineered foods off supermarket shelves are not going to solve all of the life-and-death issues that are currently staring us in the face: [MM: the Satanic private, parasitical, catastrophic "Federal Reserve" monetary system!!!] the climate crisis, endless wars, economic depression, corporate control over government, and the health crisis. But cutting Monsanto and the biotechnocrats down to size and restoring consumer choice are a good first step to move us toward sustainability and a healthy food and farming system. Just as important, in political terms, by defeating the Biotech Bullies and indentured politicians we can begin to restore the tattered self-confidence of the American body politic. A resounding victory by the organic community and OCA's Millions Against Monsanto campaign will prove to ourselves and the currently demoralized public that we can indeed take back control over the institutions and public policies that determine our daily lives. Now is the time to move forward. To support or join up with the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign, go to: http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon...
Possible Fort Hood Attack Thwarted?
Special Report: Possible Fort Hood Attack Thwarted?
View on Mobile Phone | Read the online version.
STRATFOR
--- Full Article Enclosed ---
A U.S. flag flies at half mast in Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, in November 2009
from STRATFOR
We're sending this special report as a reminder of how citizens can help prevent attacks. To access all analysis, join STRATFOR with this special offer.
Possible Fort Hood Attack Thwarted?
July 28, 2011
An AWOL U.S. soldier was arrested the evening of July 27 on an outstanding child pornography warrant in Killeen, Texas, and is suspected to have been plotting an attack on Fort Hood. The suspect, Pfc. Nasser Jason Abdo from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was reportedly arrested by the Killeen Police Department after an alert citizen noticed he was acting suspiciously and called police. Local TV station KCEN said explosives were found in his car, and FOX News is reporting two other U.S. military personnel have been arrested and that weapons and explosives were also found in their possession. According to STRATFOR sources in the U.S. law enforcement community, a reported plot by three U.S. military personnel to attack Fort Hood was in the advanced stages of planning. Though there is no confirmation that an attack was in the works, the reports are reason for concern. STRATFOR has written about the possibility of grassroots plots, particularly in revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden. The fear is that Abdo or the other two suspects were planning an attack similar to that of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who carried out one of the few successful grassroots attacks in the United States due to his tactical choice of conducting an armed assault. The most notable aspect in the thwarting of this alleged plot is that it appears that an alert citizen may have prevented the potential attack. KCEN reported that someone noticed the main suspect, Abdo, acting suspiciously outside an America’s Best Value Inn in Killeen and reported him to police. Police found that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest from Fort Campbell over child pornography found on his government computer. Abdo was previously stationed in Fort Hood, so he may have been hiding with the help of friends and could have used his knowledge of the base to plan such an attack. Abdo went AWOL on July 4, right before he was scheduled for his first deployment to Afghanistan. He had previously had his application for conscientious objector status approved but was being investigated for child pornography before he could be discharged. Due to the investigation he could not be discharged, and that may have been his reason for going AWOL. He had also participated in major media interviews about his experience in the military while applying for conscientious objector status. The identities and arrest locations of the other two U.S. military personnel are unclear. STRATFOR will continue to investigate the details of this alleged plot. At this point, it serves as a reminder that citizens can serve as defenders against grassroots attacks.
View on Mobile Phone | Read the online version.
STRATFOR
--- Full Article Enclosed ---
A U.S. flag flies at half mast in Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, in November 2009
from STRATFOR
We're sending this special report as a reminder of how citizens can help prevent attacks. To access all analysis, join STRATFOR with this special offer.
Possible Fort Hood Attack Thwarted?
July 28, 2011
An AWOL U.S. soldier was arrested the evening of July 27 on an outstanding child pornography warrant in Killeen, Texas, and is suspected to have been plotting an attack on Fort Hood. The suspect, Pfc. Nasser Jason Abdo from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was reportedly arrested by the Killeen Police Department after an alert citizen noticed he was acting suspiciously and called police. Local TV station KCEN said explosives were found in his car, and FOX News is reporting two other U.S. military personnel have been arrested and that weapons and explosives were also found in their possession. According to STRATFOR sources in the U.S. law enforcement community, a reported plot by three U.S. military personnel to attack Fort Hood was in the advanced stages of planning. Though there is no confirmation that an attack was in the works, the reports are reason for concern. STRATFOR has written about the possibility of grassroots plots, particularly in revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden. The fear is that Abdo or the other two suspects were planning an attack similar to that of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who carried out one of the few successful grassroots attacks in the United States due to his tactical choice of conducting an armed assault. The most notable aspect in the thwarting of this alleged plot is that it appears that an alert citizen may have prevented the potential attack. KCEN reported that someone noticed the main suspect, Abdo, acting suspiciously outside an America’s Best Value Inn in Killeen and reported him to police. Police found that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest from Fort Campbell over child pornography found on his government computer. Abdo was previously stationed in Fort Hood, so he may have been hiding with the help of friends and could have used his knowledge of the base to plan such an attack. Abdo went AWOL on July 4, right before he was scheduled for his first deployment to Afghanistan. He had previously had his application for conscientious objector status approved but was being investigated for child pornography before he could be discharged. Due to the investigation he could not be discharged, and that may have been his reason for going AWOL. He had also participated in major media interviews about his experience in the military while applying for conscientious objector status. The identities and arrest locations of the other two U.S. military personnel are unclear. STRATFOR will continue to investigate the details of this alleged plot. At this point, it serves as a reminder that citizens can serve as defenders against grassroots attacks.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
No longer deniable: Under runaway debt burden, America's currency is headed for total collapse
No longer deniable: Under runaway debt burden, America's currency is headed for total collapse
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
(NaturalNews)--Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently told FOX News, "We write 80 million checks a month. There are millions and millions of Americans that depend on those checks coming on time."
That quote, all by itself, tells you just about everything you need to know about what America has become and why it's now headed for certain economic collapse. In a nation that once began with the idea that government should stay out of the way and leave people alone to create their own abundance through hard work and private savings, we now have horrifyingly transformed into a nation of 80 million dependants who need their government checks each month just to survive.
And why does the government "owe" all these people their benefits such as social security? Because the U.S. government confiscated that money from the people by skimming it off their paychecks, year after year, and then promising all the workers they would eventually get that money back.
That was all a Big Government lie, of course. Social Security was the greatest financial con ever perpetrated on the American people. It's really just Big Government saying, "We'll force you to give us your money, and then we'll spend it all, and we'll somehow promise to pay you back someday." Except that for tens of millions of Americans who have paid into social security like me, we are unlikely to ever see a dime of that money because the government is going to financially implode well before we ever reach the benefits age.
The financial blowout of the world's greatest debtor nation
You see, even while the government was promising it would pay back all the money it stole from workers, it was simultaneously conspiring with the Federal Reserve to devalue the dollar and thereby erode the actual purchasing power of the "benefit checks" people receive. Since the [private, parasitical, Satanic Rothschild-owned and -operated] Federal Reserve took control of the U.S. money supply in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its value, didn't you know? (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/c...) And the remaining three percent is about to vanish in one final grand blowout of the world's greatest debtor nation known as the United States of America.
A recent review of the actions of the Federal Reserve, for example, reveal that this rogue organization created $16 trillion in new money and then handed it out to banks around the world (http://www.unelected.org/audit-of-t...). Here's just a partial list of the top recipients of all this new money:
Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Are you getting the picture here? The Federal Reserve is DEVALUING the dollars you hold (and earn) by creating NEW money (by the trillions) and handing it out to the world's richest banksters! (Did you notice they never create money and hand it to YOU? It only goes to the wealthy elite...)
This action is directly causing the price inflation you see right now on all the products and services you buy every day. Have you noticed how much food prices have increased lately? It's also car prices, home rental rates, construction materials and hourly service fees. So by pumping new money into the hands of rich banksters, the Fed is effectively stealing purchasing power from YOU and everybody else holding U.S. dollars or U.S. debt.
This is the greatest financial swindle of the century. (Most people don't realize that because they don't understand the dynamics of money creation and dilution of the global money supply. All they know is everything keeps getting more expensive and they don't know why...)
Why there will be no financial solution from Big Government
Despite what you hear in the mainstream media, there is no August 2nd solution to our nation's debt problems. As Ron Paul (www.RonPaul2012.com) has correctly stated, the U.S. is already in default on its debt because, through "quantitative easing" schemes, it has created tens of trillions of dollars in fake currency (fiat money) and pumped it into circulation, thereby devaluing all the U.S. debt held by other nations.
The cliche phrase, "Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" has been tirelessly recycled on this very issue, so let me state in another way what Obama, Boehner and Geithner are actually doing. They aren't even rearranging the deck chairs; they're tap dancing on top of the deck chairs in a classic Vaudeville performance to try to put on a good show while the ship goes down.
Whether they come to any agreement on raising the debt ceiling is irrelevant. That the U.S. has reached the point where it has to mail out 80 million checks a month just to keep the population economically alive -- and where it now has to print a few trillion dollars every quarter just to buy its own debt -- should prove to any intelligent observer that the total financial implosion of America is inevitable. The U.S. has passed the point of no return and has devolved into a nation of government dependants who worship the entity that hands them their monthly check, even as that check is worth less and less with each passing month. (The whole ugly scene is quite pathetic, actually, that people aren't marching in the streets right now and demanding honest money!)
The buying of our own debt is in addition to the $16 trillion in new money creation I mentioned earlier. New debt spending is the reason why additional trillions being thrown at the problem, much like firefighters throwing gasoline on a burning building to try to put out the fire. (Timothy Geithner is often and correctly referred to as an "arsonist.")
Global investment banks, you see, have almost completely stopped buying U.S. debt. So the U.S. has been forced to buy its own debt, using debt money. This is the national equivalent of paying off your credit card by taking out a high-interest cash advance from that same credit card. What Obama and Boehner are arguing about is whether we should keep borrowing money in order to spend it, not whether we should end the whole insane practice [END THE FED!!!!!!!!] and get out of debt in the first place. [MM: The fraudulent/unconstitutional "national debt" is owed primarily to the Rothschild banksters and should rightfully be repudiated!]
Let's all smoke our way out of a crack addiction
Insanely, Obama and many members of Congress (mostly on the Democratic side, but also a few Republicans) have come to the conclusion that the only way to solve our debt problems is to spend more debt money. This is like a bunch of crack-heads getting together and deciding they're going to smoke their way out of their crack addiction. Doesn't 80 million checks a month already tell you that government is far too big in America today? How on Earth could a bigger government spending even more debt money possibly solve this massive debt problem that Big Government caused in the first place?
Let me be blunt with all the people receiving these 80 million checks each month: You'd better get ready for those checks to stop, folks! I hope you're shoring up your savings, buying gold and silver, and stocking up on preparedness supplies. Because the day is coming when the U.S. government either cannot print these 80 million checks or, even worse, they still mail out the checks but the dollars themselves are virtually worthless. "Look, grandma, you got your social security check! What do you want to spend it on this time; a loaf of bread, or a cup of coffee?"
The goal of the Federal Reserve has always been to loot the U.S. economy and steal our wealth
We are witnessing, in accelerated time, the total financial implosion of an empire. We're watching it burn right before our very eyes, and it was all set in motion in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve, of course.
The goal of money creation has always been to loot the economy and transfer wealth from the hands of the workers to the pockets of the rich bankers. For nearly ninety years, this was all done quietly and gradually, but today it's being done aggressively and right out in the open. $16 trillion has just been stolen from the American people (and U.S. debt holders), and trillions more are on the way. QE3 will be followed by QE4, then QE5 and QE6, each adding trillions more to an accelerated financial implosion that will leave the U.S. dollars virtually worthless.
This day is coming. We've been warning about it here on NaturalNews since at least 2008, when I held a phone seminar and warned people to buy gold and silver. (At that time, gold was in the $600 range. Today it's $1,600...) Actually, I'm on the record warning people about the dot-com bubble before it popped, and about the housing bubble before it popped, too. Now I'm warning about the coming collapse of the dollar, which now even mainstream people are beginning to see as a possibility. Even Obama himself said we need to increase the debt ceiling to avoid what he called, "Financial Armageddon." (http://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...)
A few months ago, I published a new, updated course on financial preparedness called Be Prepared, Not Scared, which teaches you how to protect yourself against the coming economic storm. You'll find details on that course at: http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Pr...
Now, more than ever, we all need to get prepared for what's undeniably headed our way. I hope you're all taking this seriously. When the dollar implodes in value (or is abandoned by the world), how will YOU buy stuff? What will your government check be worth then?
Your own government, you see, is stealing from you -- and it's totally getting away with is because the American people have become so pathetically enslaved by the system that they don't even realize the system is working against them.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
(NaturalNews)--Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently told FOX News, "We write 80 million checks a month. There are millions and millions of Americans that depend on those checks coming on time."
That quote, all by itself, tells you just about everything you need to know about what America has become and why it's now headed for certain economic collapse. In a nation that once began with the idea that government should stay out of the way and leave people alone to create their own abundance through hard work and private savings, we now have horrifyingly transformed into a nation of 80 million dependants who need their government checks each month just to survive.
And why does the government "owe" all these people their benefits such as social security? Because the U.S. government confiscated that money from the people by skimming it off their paychecks, year after year, and then promising all the workers they would eventually get that money back.
That was all a Big Government lie, of course. Social Security was the greatest financial con ever perpetrated on the American people. It's really just Big Government saying, "We'll force you to give us your money, and then we'll spend it all, and we'll somehow promise to pay you back someday." Except that for tens of millions of Americans who have paid into social security like me, we are unlikely to ever see a dime of that money because the government is going to financially implode well before we ever reach the benefits age.
The financial blowout of the world's greatest debtor nation
You see, even while the government was promising it would pay back all the money it stole from workers, it was simultaneously conspiring with the Federal Reserve to devalue the dollar and thereby erode the actual purchasing power of the "benefit checks" people receive. Since the [private, parasitical, Satanic Rothschild-owned and -operated] Federal Reserve took control of the U.S. money supply in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its value, didn't you know? (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/c...) And the remaining three percent is about to vanish in one final grand blowout of the world's greatest debtor nation known as the United States of America.
A recent review of the actions of the Federal Reserve, for example, reveal that this rogue organization created $16 trillion in new money and then handed it out to banks around the world (http://www.unelected.org/audit-of-t...). Here's just a partial list of the top recipients of all this new money:
Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Are you getting the picture here? The Federal Reserve is DEVALUING the dollars you hold (and earn) by creating NEW money (by the trillions) and handing it out to the world's richest banksters! (Did you notice they never create money and hand it to YOU? It only goes to the wealthy elite...)
This action is directly causing the price inflation you see right now on all the products and services you buy every day. Have you noticed how much food prices have increased lately? It's also car prices, home rental rates, construction materials and hourly service fees. So by pumping new money into the hands of rich banksters, the Fed is effectively stealing purchasing power from YOU and everybody else holding U.S. dollars or U.S. debt.
This is the greatest financial swindle of the century. (Most people don't realize that because they don't understand the dynamics of money creation and dilution of the global money supply. All they know is everything keeps getting more expensive and they don't know why...)
Why there will be no financial solution from Big Government
Despite what you hear in the mainstream media, there is no August 2nd solution to our nation's debt problems. As Ron Paul (www.RonPaul2012.com) has correctly stated, the U.S. is already in default on its debt because, through "quantitative easing" schemes, it has created tens of trillions of dollars in fake currency (fiat money) and pumped it into circulation, thereby devaluing all the U.S. debt held by other nations.
The cliche phrase, "Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" has been tirelessly recycled on this very issue, so let me state in another way what Obama, Boehner and Geithner are actually doing. They aren't even rearranging the deck chairs; they're tap dancing on top of the deck chairs in a classic Vaudeville performance to try to put on a good show while the ship goes down.
Whether they come to any agreement on raising the debt ceiling is irrelevant. That the U.S. has reached the point where it has to mail out 80 million checks a month just to keep the population economically alive -- and where it now has to print a few trillion dollars every quarter just to buy its own debt -- should prove to any intelligent observer that the total financial implosion of America is inevitable. The U.S. has passed the point of no return and has devolved into a nation of government dependants who worship the entity that hands them their monthly check, even as that check is worth less and less with each passing month. (The whole ugly scene is quite pathetic, actually, that people aren't marching in the streets right now and demanding honest money!)
The buying of our own debt is in addition to the $16 trillion in new money creation I mentioned earlier. New debt spending is the reason why additional trillions being thrown at the problem, much like firefighters throwing gasoline on a burning building to try to put out the fire. (Timothy Geithner is often and correctly referred to as an "arsonist.")
Global investment banks, you see, have almost completely stopped buying U.S. debt. So the U.S. has been forced to buy its own debt, using debt money. This is the national equivalent of paying off your credit card by taking out a high-interest cash advance from that same credit card. What Obama and Boehner are arguing about is whether we should keep borrowing money in order to spend it, not whether we should end the whole insane practice [END THE FED!!!!!!!!] and get out of debt in the first place. [MM: The fraudulent/unconstitutional "national debt" is owed primarily to the Rothschild banksters and should rightfully be repudiated!]
Let's all smoke our way out of a crack addiction
Insanely, Obama and many members of Congress (mostly on the Democratic side, but also a few Republicans) have come to the conclusion that the only way to solve our debt problems is to spend more debt money. This is like a bunch of crack-heads getting together and deciding they're going to smoke their way out of their crack addiction. Doesn't 80 million checks a month already tell you that government is far too big in America today? How on Earth could a bigger government spending even more debt money possibly solve this massive debt problem that Big Government caused in the first place?
Let me be blunt with all the people receiving these 80 million checks each month: You'd better get ready for those checks to stop, folks! I hope you're shoring up your savings, buying gold and silver, and stocking up on preparedness supplies. Because the day is coming when the U.S. government either cannot print these 80 million checks or, even worse, they still mail out the checks but the dollars themselves are virtually worthless. "Look, grandma, you got your social security check! What do you want to spend it on this time; a loaf of bread, or a cup of coffee?"
The goal of the Federal Reserve has always been to loot the U.S. economy and steal our wealth
We are witnessing, in accelerated time, the total financial implosion of an empire. We're watching it burn right before our very eyes, and it was all set in motion in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve, of course.
The goal of money creation has always been to loot the economy and transfer wealth from the hands of the workers to the pockets of the rich bankers. For nearly ninety years, this was all done quietly and gradually, but today it's being done aggressively and right out in the open. $16 trillion has just been stolen from the American people (and U.S. debt holders), and trillions more are on the way. QE3 will be followed by QE4, then QE5 and QE6, each adding trillions more to an accelerated financial implosion that will leave the U.S. dollars virtually worthless.
This day is coming. We've been warning about it here on NaturalNews since at least 2008, when I held a phone seminar and warned people to buy gold and silver. (At that time, gold was in the $600 range. Today it's $1,600...) Actually, I'm on the record warning people about the dot-com bubble before it popped, and about the housing bubble before it popped, too. Now I'm warning about the coming collapse of the dollar, which now even mainstream people are beginning to see as a possibility. Even Obama himself said we need to increase the debt ceiling to avoid what he called, "Financial Armageddon." (http://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...)
A few months ago, I published a new, updated course on financial preparedness called Be Prepared, Not Scared, which teaches you how to protect yourself against the coming economic storm. You'll find details on that course at: http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Pr...
Now, more than ever, we all need to get prepared for what's undeniably headed our way. I hope you're all taking this seriously. When the dollar implodes in value (or is abandoned by the world), how will YOU buy stuff? What will your government check be worth then?
Your own government, you see, is stealing from you -- and it's totally getting away with is because the American people have become so pathetically enslaved by the system that they don't even realize the system is working against them.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Benjamin Fulford July 18/11
Benjamin Fulford 18th July 2011: "The slow fuse will keep burning through July"
Although it is impossible to predict exactly how the smoke will twirl off the end of a cigarette, you can predict with certainty that eventually the smoke will be evenly distributed throughout the room. In the same way, while it is impossible to predict the individual twists and turns of the collapse of the Federal Reserve Board and the Western financial system, the end game is not in doubt. In this case, a look at the macro numbers, such things as balance of payments, external debt, tax revenue etc. show clearly that the fall of small dominoes like Greece will lead inevitably to the big Kahuna: the United States. For now though, the order of collapse appears to be as follows: Greece, Ireland, the Baltic States, Spain, Italy, France and finally the United States. Have no doubt, there is money in the rest of the world to help these countries rebuild and restructure their economies. The rest of the world is also willing and eager to help. However, as a precondition for this help, these countries need to fundamentally change their behavior. So far, they seem too arrogant to understand the reality that they are no longer in charge of the global show. They no longer have the money to pay the actors. Here is one example from a while ago, the details of which only recently came to light: the appearance of former Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa "drunk" at a G7 press conference in 2009. What really happened is that the Western powers asked Japan to fork up $100 billion to hand over to the IMF. Nakagawa said "sure, we'll sell $100 billion of US Treasury holdings to pay for it." He was going to say that at the press conference so, in order to prevent the assembled propaganda media from hearing this, he was drugged. He returned to Japan, resigned and was subsequently poisoned and killed just before he was due to meet this reporter to explain what happened. Later the Japanese agriculture minister showed up with bandages on his face at a press conference in Japan. He refused to explain why this was. However, we have now found out it was because the rogue element of the US government was trying to extort Japanese agricultural money to pay for their "global" schemes. They were unable to. The final move was to attack Japan with a tsunami causing seabed nuclear earthquake device in an attempt to extort money. That threat was met with a counter-threat by non-Japanese actors, to blow up the BIS, the Vatican, Chicago, La Defence in Paris and other key Western targets. The message was that nuclear blackmail is not a one-way street. This forced the Bilderberger Western elite to back off threats to cause Mt. Fuji to erupt. In June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and said Israeli companies in charge of security at various Japanese nuclear plants would cause a total nuclear holocaust in Japan. He was told that if he did this then both Mossad US headquarters in Chicago and Israel would also be blown up. After this he backpedalled and Israeli security was removed from Japan's nuclear plants and many were shut down as a precaution. A threat to set off an even worse holocaust along the New Madrid fault line in the US was also subsequently halted by White Dragon Society allies in the United States. The genocidal cabal that hijacked the Western power centers now find themselves in a very tight spot indeed. Senator J. Rockefeller, George Bush Senior and their drug-dealing murderer subordinate Richard Armitage have also been told in no uncertain terms they are no longer welcome in Japan. We can also confirm from Japanese military intelligence that Bush slave former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has fled to North Korea in fear of his life. Other key cabal criminals now in fear of prison include George Bush Jr., Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Tony Blair, Carl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow plotters of genocide and a global fascist 4th Reich. The real question now remains what to do about Barak Obama and his government as well as the bribed, corrupt establishment in Washington D.C. corporate headquarters. A large part of the Pentagon brass support Obama because he was actually elected by a majority of the American people (unlike Bush Jr.). This is a choice for the American people to make. The creditors of the United States, including China and Japan, are simply saying the military industrial complex needs to retool itself from a parasitical, war-mongering institution into something productive. For example DARPA the Death (nobody is fooled by the name "Defense") advanced Research Projects Agency will have to change to LARPA (Life Advanced Research Projects Agency). In any case, it is clear the criminal cabal in the West will not relinquish their power without more of a struggle. All the White Dragon can do for now is to keep them cut off from their funds and prevent them from starting WW3 until they are finally removed from power. That means we need stand back and watch their death throes for a while longer. Perhaps in August humanity will be freed at last.
Although it is impossible to predict exactly how the smoke will twirl off the end of a cigarette, you can predict with certainty that eventually the smoke will be evenly distributed throughout the room. In the same way, while it is impossible to predict the individual twists and turns of the collapse of the Federal Reserve Board and the Western financial system, the end game is not in doubt. In this case, a look at the macro numbers, such things as balance of payments, external debt, tax revenue etc. show clearly that the fall of small dominoes like Greece will lead inevitably to the big Kahuna: the United States. For now though, the order of collapse appears to be as follows: Greece, Ireland, the Baltic States, Spain, Italy, France and finally the United States. Have no doubt, there is money in the rest of the world to help these countries rebuild and restructure their economies. The rest of the world is also willing and eager to help. However, as a precondition for this help, these countries need to fundamentally change their behavior. So far, they seem too arrogant to understand the reality that they are no longer in charge of the global show. They no longer have the money to pay the actors. Here is one example from a while ago, the details of which only recently came to light: the appearance of former Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa "drunk" at a G7 press conference in 2009. What really happened is that the Western powers asked Japan to fork up $100 billion to hand over to the IMF. Nakagawa said "sure, we'll sell $100 billion of US Treasury holdings to pay for it." He was going to say that at the press conference so, in order to prevent the assembled propaganda media from hearing this, he was drugged. He returned to Japan, resigned and was subsequently poisoned and killed just before he was due to meet this reporter to explain what happened. Later the Japanese agriculture minister showed up with bandages on his face at a press conference in Japan. He refused to explain why this was. However, we have now found out it was because the rogue element of the US government was trying to extort Japanese agricultural money to pay for their "global" schemes. They were unable to. The final move was to attack Japan with a tsunami causing seabed nuclear earthquake device in an attempt to extort money. That threat was met with a counter-threat by non-Japanese actors, to blow up the BIS, the Vatican, Chicago, La Defence in Paris and other key Western targets. The message was that nuclear blackmail is not a one-way street. This forced the Bilderberger Western elite to back off threats to cause Mt. Fuji to erupt. In June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and said Israeli companies in charge of security at various Japanese nuclear plants would cause a total nuclear holocaust in Japan. He was told that if he did this then both Mossad US headquarters in Chicago and Israel would also be blown up. After this he backpedalled and Israeli security was removed from Japan's nuclear plants and many were shut down as a precaution. A threat to set off an even worse holocaust along the New Madrid fault line in the US was also subsequently halted by White Dragon Society allies in the United States. The genocidal cabal that hijacked the Western power centers now find themselves in a very tight spot indeed. Senator J. Rockefeller, George Bush Senior and their drug-dealing murderer subordinate Richard Armitage have also been told in no uncertain terms they are no longer welcome in Japan. We can also confirm from Japanese military intelligence that Bush slave former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has fled to North Korea in fear of his life. Other key cabal criminals now in fear of prison include George Bush Jr., Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Tony Blair, Carl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow plotters of genocide and a global fascist 4th Reich. The real question now remains what to do about Barak Obama and his government as well as the bribed, corrupt establishment in Washington D.C. corporate headquarters. A large part of the Pentagon brass support Obama because he was actually elected by a majority of the American people (unlike Bush Jr.). This is a choice for the American people to make. The creditors of the United States, including China and Japan, are simply saying the military industrial complex needs to retool itself from a parasitical, war-mongering institution into something productive. For example DARPA the Death (nobody is fooled by the name "Defense") advanced Research Projects Agency will have to change to LARPA (Life Advanced Research Projects Agency). In any case, it is clear the criminal cabal in the West will not relinquish their power without more of a struggle. All the White Dragon can do for now is to keep them cut off from their funds and prevent them from starting WW3 until they are finally removed from power. That means we need stand back and watch their death throes for a while longer. Perhaps in August humanity will be freed at last.
Germany's Choice: Part 2
from STRATFOR
Germany's Choice: Part 2
July 26, 2011 | 0849 GMT
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Germany’s Choice
Germany: Mitteleuropa Redux
By Peter Zeihan and Marko Papic
Seventeen months ago, STRATFOR described how the future of Europe was bound to the decision-making processes in Germany. Throughout the post-World War II era, other European countries treated Germany as a feeding trough, bleeding the country for resources (primarily financial) in order to smooth over the rougher portions of their systems. Considering the carnage wrought in World War II, most Europeans — and even many Germans — considered this perfectly reasonable right up to the current decade. Germany dutifully followed the orders of the others, most notably the French, and wrote check after check to underwrite European solidarity.
However, with the end of the Cold War and German reunification, the Germans began to stand up for themselves once again. Europe’s contemporary financial crisis can be as complicated as one wants to make it, but strip away all the talk of bonds, defaults and credit-default swaps and the core of the matter consists of these three points:
Europe cannot function as a unified entity unless someone is in control.
At present, Germany is the only country with a large enough economy and population to achieve that control.
Being in control comes with a cost: It requires deep and ongoing financial support for the European Union’s weaker members.
What happened since STRATFOR published Germany’s Choice was a debate within Germany about how central the European Union was to German interests and how much the Germans were willing to pay to keep it intact. With their July 22 approval of a new bailout mechanism — from which the Greeks immediately received another 109 billion euros ($155 billion) — the Germans made clear their answers to those questions, and with that decision, Europe enters a new era.
The Origins of the Eurozone
The foundations of the European Union were laid in the early post-World War II years, but the critical event happened in 1992 with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty on Monetary Union. In that treaty, the Europeans committed themselves to a common currency and monetary system while scrupulously maintaining national control of fiscal policy, finance and banking. They would share capital but not banks, interest rates but not tax policy. They would also share a currency but none of the political mechanisms required to manage an economy. One of the many inevitable consequences of this was that governments and investors alike assumed that Germany’s support for the new common currency was total, that the Germans would back any government that participated fully in Maastricht. As a result, the ability of weaker eurozone members to borrow was drastically improved. In Greece in particular, the rate on government bonds dropped from an 18 percentage-point premium over German bonds to less than 1 percentage point in less than a decade. To put that into context, borrowers of $200,000 mortgages would see their monthly payments drop by $2,500.
Faced with unprecedentedly low capital costs, parts of Europe that had not been economically dynamic in centuries — in some cases, millennia — sprang to life. Ireland, Greece, Iberia and southern Italy all experienced the strongest growth they had known in generations. But they were not borrowing money generated locally — they were not even borrowing against their own income potential. Such borrowing was not simply a government affair. Local banks that normally faced steep financing costs could now access capital as if they were headquartered in Frankfurt and servicing Germans. The cheap credit flooded every corner of the eurozone. It was a subprime mortgage frenzy on a multinational scale, and the party couldn’t last forever. The 2008 global financial crisis forced a reckoning all over the world, and in the traditionally poorer parts of Europe the process unearthed the political-financial disconnects of Maastricht.
The investment community has been driving the issue ever since. Once investors perceived that there was no direct link between the German government and Greek debt, they started to again think of Greece on its own merits. The rate charged for Greece to borrow started creeping up again, breaking 16 percent at its height. To extend the mortgage comparison, the Greek “house” now cost an extra $2,000 a month to maintain compared to the mid-2000s. A default was not just inevitable but imminent, and all eyes turned to the Germans.
A Temporary Solution
It is easy to see why the Germans did not simply immediately write a check. Doing that for the Greeks (and others) would have merely sent more money into the same system that generated the crisis in the first place. That said, the Germans couldn’t simply let the Greeks sink. Despite its flaws, the system that currently manages Europe has granted Germany economic wealth of global reach without costing a single German life. Given the horrors of World War II, this was not something to be breezily discarded. No country in Europe has benefited more from the eurozone than Germany. For the German elite, the eurozone was an easy means of making Germany matter on a global stage without the sort of military revitalization that would have spawned panic across Europe and the former Soviet Union. And it also made the Germans rich.
But this was not obvious to the average German voter. From this voter’s point of view, Germany had already picked up the tab for Europe three times: first in paying for European institutions throughout the history of the union, second in paying for all of the costs of German reunification and third in accepting a mismatched deutschemark-euro conversion rate when the euro was launched while most other EU states hardwired in a currency advantage. To compensate for those sacrifices, the Germans have been forced to partially dismantle their much-loved welfare state while the Greeks (and others) have taken advantage of German credit to expand theirs.
Germany’s choice was not a pleasant one: Either let the structures of the past two generations fall apart and write off the possibility of Europe becoming a great power or salvage the eurozone by underwriting 2 trillion euros of debt issued by eurozone governments every year.
Beset with such a weighty decision, the Germans dealt with the immediate Greek problem of early 2010 by dithering. Even the bailout fund known as the European Financial Security Facility (EFSF) was at best a temporary patch. The German leadership had to balance messages and plans while they decided what they really wanted. That meant reassuring the other eurozone states that Berlin still cared while assuaging investor fears and pandering to a large and angry anti-bailout constituency at home. With so many audiences to speak to, it is not at all surprising that Berlin chose a solution that was sub-optimal throughout the crisis.
That sub-optimal solution is the EFSF, a bailout mechanism whose bonds enjoyed full government guarantees from the healthy eurozone states, most notably Germany. Because of those guarantees, the EFSF was able to raise funds on the bond market and then funnel that capital to the distressed states in exchange for austerity programs. Unlike previous EU institutions (which the Germans strongly influence), the EFSF takes its orders from the Germans. The mechanism is not enshrined in EU treaties; it is instead a private bank, the director of which is German. The EFSF worked as a patch but eventually proved insufficient. All the EFSF bailouts did was buy a little time until investors could do the math and realize that even with bailouts the distressed states would never be able to grow out of their mountains of debt. These states had engorged themselves on cheap credit so much during the euro’s first decade that even 273 billion euros of bailouts was insufficient. This issue came to a boil over the past few weeks in Greece. Faced with the futility of yet another stopgap solution to the eurozone’s financial woes, the Germans finally made a tough decision.
The New EFSF
The result was an EFSF redesign. Under the new system the distressed states can now access — with German permission — all the capital they need from the fund without having to go back repeatedly to the EU Council of Ministers. The maturity on all such EFSF credit has been increased from 7.5 years to as much as 40 years, while the cost of that credit has been slashed to whatever the market charges the EFSF itself to raise it (right now that’s about 3.5 percent, far lower than what the peripheral — and even some not-so-peripheral — countries could access on the international bond markets). All outstanding debts, including the previous EFSF programs, can be reworked under the new rules. The EFSF has been granted the ability to participate directly in the bond market by buying the government debt of states that cannot find anyone else interested, or even act pre-emptively should future crises threaten, without needing to first negotiate a bailout program. The EFSF can even extend credit to states that were considering internal bailouts of their banking systems. It is a massive debt consolidation program for both private and public sectors. In order to get the money, distressed states merely have to do whatever Germany — the manager of the fund — wants. The decision-making occurs within the fund, not at the EU institutional level.
In practical terms, these changes cause two major things to happen. First, they essentially remove any potential cap on the amount of money that the EFSF can raise, eliminating concerns that the fund is insufficiently stocked. Technically, the fund is still operating with a 440 billion-euro ceiling, but now that the Germans have fully committed themselves, that number is a mere technicality (it was German reticence before that kept the EFSF’s funding limit so “low”).
Second, all of the distressed states’ outstanding bonds will be refinanced at lower rates over longer maturities, so there will no longer be very many “Greek” or “Portuguese” bonds. Under the EFSF all of this debt will in essence be a sort of “eurobond,” a new class of bond in Europe upon which the weak states utterly depend and which the Germans utterly control. For states that experience problems, almost all of their financial existence will now be wrapped up in the EFSF structure. Accepting EFSF assistance means accepting a surrender of financial autonomy to the German commanders of the EFSF. For now, that means accepting German-designed austerity programs, but there is nothing that forces the Germans to limit their conditions to the purely financial/fiscal.
For all practical purposes, the next chapter of history has now opened in Europe. Regardless of intentions, Germany has just experienced an important development in its ability to influence fellow EU member states — particularly those experiencing financial troubles. It can now easily usurp huge amounts of national sovereignty. Rather than constraining Germany’s geopolitical potential, the European Union now enhances it; Germany is on the verge of once again becoming a great power. This hardly means that a regeneration of the Wehrmacht is imminent, but Germany’s re-emergence does force a radical rethinking of the European and Eurasian architectures.
Reactions to the New Europe
Every state will react to this new world differently. The French are both thrilled and terrified — thrilled that the Germans have finally agreed to commit the resources required to make the European Union work and terrified that Berlin has found a way to do it that preserves German control of those resources. The French realize that they are losing control of Europe, and fast. France designed the European Union to explicitly contain German power so it could never be harmed again while harnessing that power to fuel a French rise to greatness. The French nightmare scenario of an unrestrained Germany is now possible.
The British are feeling extremely thoughtful. They have always been the outsiders in the European Union, joining primarily so that they can put up obstacles from time to time. With the Germans now asserting financial control outside of EU structures, the all-important British veto is now largely useless. Just as the Germans are in need of a national debate about their role in the world, the British are in need of a national debate about their role in Europe. The Europe that was a cage for Germany is no more, which means that the United Kingdom is now a member of a different sort of organization that may or may not serve its purposes.
The Russians are feeling opportunistic. They have always been distrustful of the European Union, since it, like NATO, is an organization formed in part to keep them out. In recent years the union has farmed out its foreign policy to whatever state was most affected by the issue in question, and in many cases these states has been former Soviet satellites in Central Europe, all of which have an ax to grind. With Germany rising to leadership, the Russians have just one decision-maker to deal with. Between Germany’s need for natural gas and Russia’s ample export capacity, a German-Russian partnership is blooming. It is not that the Russians are unconcerned about the possibilities of strong German power — the memories of the Great Patriotic War burn far too hot and bright for that — but now there is a belt of 12 countries between the two powers. The Russo-German bilateral relationship will not be perfect, but there is another chapter of history to be written before the Germans and Russians need to worry seriously about each other.
Those 12 countries are trapped between rising German and consolidating Russian power. For all practical purposes, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova have already been reintegrated into the Russian sphere. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria are finding themselves under ever-stronger German influence but are fighting to retain their independence. As much as the nine distrust the Russians and Germans, however, they have no alternative at present.
The obvious solution for these “Intermarium” states — as well as for the French — is sponsorship by the United States. But the Americans are distracted and contemplating a new period of isolationism, forcing the nine to consider other, less palatable, options. These include everything from a local Intermarium alliance that would be questionable at best to picking either the Russians or Germans and suing for terms. France’s nightmare scenario is on the horizon, but for these nine states — which labored under the Soviet lash only 22 years ago — it is front and center.
Read more: Germany's Choice: Part 2 | STRATFOR
Germany's Choice: Part 2
July 26, 2011 | 0849 GMT
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Germany's Choice: Part 2
Related Link
Germany’s Choice
Germany: Mitteleuropa Redux
By Peter Zeihan and Marko Papic
Seventeen months ago, STRATFOR described how the future of Europe was bound to the decision-making processes in Germany. Throughout the post-World War II era, other European countries treated Germany as a feeding trough, bleeding the country for resources (primarily financial) in order to smooth over the rougher portions of their systems. Considering the carnage wrought in World War II, most Europeans — and even many Germans — considered this perfectly reasonable right up to the current decade. Germany dutifully followed the orders of the others, most notably the French, and wrote check after check to underwrite European solidarity.
However, with the end of the Cold War and German reunification, the Germans began to stand up for themselves once again. Europe’s contemporary financial crisis can be as complicated as one wants to make it, but strip away all the talk of bonds, defaults and credit-default swaps and the core of the matter consists of these three points:
Europe cannot function as a unified entity unless someone is in control.
At present, Germany is the only country with a large enough economy and population to achieve that control.
Being in control comes with a cost: It requires deep and ongoing financial support for the European Union’s weaker members.
What happened since STRATFOR published Germany’s Choice was a debate within Germany about how central the European Union was to German interests and how much the Germans were willing to pay to keep it intact. With their July 22 approval of a new bailout mechanism — from which the Greeks immediately received another 109 billion euros ($155 billion) — the Germans made clear their answers to those questions, and with that decision, Europe enters a new era.
The Origins of the Eurozone
The foundations of the European Union were laid in the early post-World War II years, but the critical event happened in 1992 with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty on Monetary Union. In that treaty, the Europeans committed themselves to a common currency and monetary system while scrupulously maintaining national control of fiscal policy, finance and banking. They would share capital but not banks, interest rates but not tax policy. They would also share a currency but none of the political mechanisms required to manage an economy. One of the many inevitable consequences of this was that governments and investors alike assumed that Germany’s support for the new common currency was total, that the Germans would back any government that participated fully in Maastricht. As a result, the ability of weaker eurozone members to borrow was drastically improved. In Greece in particular, the rate on government bonds dropped from an 18 percentage-point premium over German bonds to less than 1 percentage point in less than a decade. To put that into context, borrowers of $200,000 mortgages would see their monthly payments drop by $2,500.
Faced with unprecedentedly low capital costs, parts of Europe that had not been economically dynamic in centuries — in some cases, millennia — sprang to life. Ireland, Greece, Iberia and southern Italy all experienced the strongest growth they had known in generations. But they were not borrowing money generated locally — they were not even borrowing against their own income potential. Such borrowing was not simply a government affair. Local banks that normally faced steep financing costs could now access capital as if they were headquartered in Frankfurt and servicing Germans. The cheap credit flooded every corner of the eurozone. It was a subprime mortgage frenzy on a multinational scale, and the party couldn’t last forever. The 2008 global financial crisis forced a reckoning all over the world, and in the traditionally poorer parts of Europe the process unearthed the political-financial disconnects of Maastricht.
The investment community has been driving the issue ever since. Once investors perceived that there was no direct link between the German government and Greek debt, they started to again think of Greece on its own merits. The rate charged for Greece to borrow started creeping up again, breaking 16 percent at its height. To extend the mortgage comparison, the Greek “house” now cost an extra $2,000 a month to maintain compared to the mid-2000s. A default was not just inevitable but imminent, and all eyes turned to the Germans.
A Temporary Solution
It is easy to see why the Germans did not simply immediately write a check. Doing that for the Greeks (and others) would have merely sent more money into the same system that generated the crisis in the first place. That said, the Germans couldn’t simply let the Greeks sink. Despite its flaws, the system that currently manages Europe has granted Germany economic wealth of global reach without costing a single German life. Given the horrors of World War II, this was not something to be breezily discarded. No country in Europe has benefited more from the eurozone than Germany. For the German elite, the eurozone was an easy means of making Germany matter on a global stage without the sort of military revitalization that would have spawned panic across Europe and the former Soviet Union. And it also made the Germans rich.
But this was not obvious to the average German voter. From this voter’s point of view, Germany had already picked up the tab for Europe three times: first in paying for European institutions throughout the history of the union, second in paying for all of the costs of German reunification and third in accepting a mismatched deutschemark-euro conversion rate when the euro was launched while most other EU states hardwired in a currency advantage. To compensate for those sacrifices, the Germans have been forced to partially dismantle their much-loved welfare state while the Greeks (and others) have taken advantage of German credit to expand theirs.
Germany’s choice was not a pleasant one: Either let the structures of the past two generations fall apart and write off the possibility of Europe becoming a great power or salvage the eurozone by underwriting 2 trillion euros of debt issued by eurozone governments every year.
Beset with such a weighty decision, the Germans dealt with the immediate Greek problem of early 2010 by dithering. Even the bailout fund known as the European Financial Security Facility (EFSF) was at best a temporary patch. The German leadership had to balance messages and plans while they decided what they really wanted. That meant reassuring the other eurozone states that Berlin still cared while assuaging investor fears and pandering to a large and angry anti-bailout constituency at home. With so many audiences to speak to, it is not at all surprising that Berlin chose a solution that was sub-optimal throughout the crisis.
That sub-optimal solution is the EFSF, a bailout mechanism whose bonds enjoyed full government guarantees from the healthy eurozone states, most notably Germany. Because of those guarantees, the EFSF was able to raise funds on the bond market and then funnel that capital to the distressed states in exchange for austerity programs. Unlike previous EU institutions (which the Germans strongly influence), the EFSF takes its orders from the Germans. The mechanism is not enshrined in EU treaties; it is instead a private bank, the director of which is German. The EFSF worked as a patch but eventually proved insufficient. All the EFSF bailouts did was buy a little time until investors could do the math and realize that even with bailouts the distressed states would never be able to grow out of their mountains of debt. These states had engorged themselves on cheap credit so much during the euro’s first decade that even 273 billion euros of bailouts was insufficient. This issue came to a boil over the past few weeks in Greece. Faced with the futility of yet another stopgap solution to the eurozone’s financial woes, the Germans finally made a tough decision.
The New EFSF
The result was an EFSF redesign. Under the new system the distressed states can now access — with German permission — all the capital they need from the fund without having to go back repeatedly to the EU Council of Ministers. The maturity on all such EFSF credit has been increased from 7.5 years to as much as 40 years, while the cost of that credit has been slashed to whatever the market charges the EFSF itself to raise it (right now that’s about 3.5 percent, far lower than what the peripheral — and even some not-so-peripheral — countries could access on the international bond markets). All outstanding debts, including the previous EFSF programs, can be reworked under the new rules. The EFSF has been granted the ability to participate directly in the bond market by buying the government debt of states that cannot find anyone else interested, or even act pre-emptively should future crises threaten, without needing to first negotiate a bailout program. The EFSF can even extend credit to states that were considering internal bailouts of their banking systems. It is a massive debt consolidation program for both private and public sectors. In order to get the money, distressed states merely have to do whatever Germany — the manager of the fund — wants. The decision-making occurs within the fund, not at the EU institutional level.
In practical terms, these changes cause two major things to happen. First, they essentially remove any potential cap on the amount of money that the EFSF can raise, eliminating concerns that the fund is insufficiently stocked. Technically, the fund is still operating with a 440 billion-euro ceiling, but now that the Germans have fully committed themselves, that number is a mere technicality (it was German reticence before that kept the EFSF’s funding limit so “low”).
Second, all of the distressed states’ outstanding bonds will be refinanced at lower rates over longer maturities, so there will no longer be very many “Greek” or “Portuguese” bonds. Under the EFSF all of this debt will in essence be a sort of “eurobond,” a new class of bond in Europe upon which the weak states utterly depend and which the Germans utterly control. For states that experience problems, almost all of their financial existence will now be wrapped up in the EFSF structure. Accepting EFSF assistance means accepting a surrender of financial autonomy to the German commanders of the EFSF. For now, that means accepting German-designed austerity programs, but there is nothing that forces the Germans to limit their conditions to the purely financial/fiscal.
For all practical purposes, the next chapter of history has now opened in Europe. Regardless of intentions, Germany has just experienced an important development in its ability to influence fellow EU member states — particularly those experiencing financial troubles. It can now easily usurp huge amounts of national sovereignty. Rather than constraining Germany’s geopolitical potential, the European Union now enhances it; Germany is on the verge of once again becoming a great power. This hardly means that a regeneration of the Wehrmacht is imminent, but Germany’s re-emergence does force a radical rethinking of the European and Eurasian architectures.
Reactions to the New Europe
Every state will react to this new world differently. The French are both thrilled and terrified — thrilled that the Germans have finally agreed to commit the resources required to make the European Union work and terrified that Berlin has found a way to do it that preserves German control of those resources. The French realize that they are losing control of Europe, and fast. France designed the European Union to explicitly contain German power so it could never be harmed again while harnessing that power to fuel a French rise to greatness. The French nightmare scenario of an unrestrained Germany is now possible.
The British are feeling extremely thoughtful. They have always been the outsiders in the European Union, joining primarily so that they can put up obstacles from time to time. With the Germans now asserting financial control outside of EU structures, the all-important British veto is now largely useless. Just as the Germans are in need of a national debate about their role in the world, the British are in need of a national debate about their role in Europe. The Europe that was a cage for Germany is no more, which means that the United Kingdom is now a member of a different sort of organization that may or may not serve its purposes.
The Russians are feeling opportunistic. They have always been distrustful of the European Union, since it, like NATO, is an organization formed in part to keep them out. In recent years the union has farmed out its foreign policy to whatever state was most affected by the issue in question, and in many cases these states has been former Soviet satellites in Central Europe, all of which have an ax to grind. With Germany rising to leadership, the Russians have just one decision-maker to deal with. Between Germany’s need for natural gas and Russia’s ample export capacity, a German-Russian partnership is blooming. It is not that the Russians are unconcerned about the possibilities of strong German power — the memories of the Great Patriotic War burn far too hot and bright for that — but now there is a belt of 12 countries between the two powers. The Russo-German bilateral relationship will not be perfect, but there is another chapter of history to be written before the Germans and Russians need to worry seriously about each other.
Those 12 countries are trapped between rising German and consolidating Russian power. For all practical purposes, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova have already been reintegrated into the Russian sphere. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria are finding themselves under ever-stronger German influence but are fighting to retain their independence. As much as the nine distrust the Russians and Germans, however, they have no alternative at present.
The obvious solution for these “Intermarium” states — as well as for the French — is sponsorship by the United States. But the Americans are distracted and contemplating a new period of isolationism, forcing the nine to consider other, less palatable, options. These include everything from a local Intermarium alliance that would be questionable at best to picking either the Russians or Germans and suing for terms. France’s nightmare scenario is on the horizon, but for these nine states — which labored under the Soviet lash only 22 years ago — it is front and center.
Read more: Germany's Choice: Part 2 | STRATFOR
Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy?
Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy?
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Trusting media portrayal of gunman foolish given how press got it spectacularly wrong in blaming Muslims
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, July 25, 2011
Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy? 250711top
Given the fact that the establishment media got it spectacularly wrong by instantly jumping to the conclusion that Friday’s deadly attack in Norway was the work of Al-Qaeda Muslims, placing complete trust in the details emerging about gunman Anders Behring Breivik would be foolish, especially since there are innumerable inconsistencies and contradictions that need to be studied before a fuller picture of what motivated the bloodshed can be established.
The rush to blame Muslims for the carnage, hastily parroted by an onslaught of mainstream “terror experts,” was a startling insight into how the propaganda that fuels the war on terror is so unquestionably bounced around the echo chamber of the corporate media.
It’s also a reminder that the mainstream press instantly falls in line with whoever the establishment designates the enemy du jour to be at any given time. Now that Muslims have been so vehemently demonized as terrorists, it’s the turn of so called “right-wing extremists,” or anyone who disagrees with mass immigration, loss of sovereignty and globalist financial looting, to feel the heat.
The effort to smear European conservatives as unhinged radicals who harbor simmering urges for bloodlust is now in full swing, and it’s a demonization campaign firmly founded on the carefully crafted public portrayal of Anders Behring Breivik.
However, it’s quickly becoming apparent that just as many eyewitnesses reported two gunmen on the island where the rampage unfolded, there are two different personas behind Breivik himself.
Indeed, there are two different Facebook profiles for Breivik, one from before the massacre and one from after. The latter profile appears to have been embellished and deliberately altered to emphasize the notion that the gunman was motivated by his “Christian conservative” beliefs.
Compare the two profiles below (click to enlarge). The first one in Norwegian was deleted minutes after Breivik’s identity became public. The second profile in English appeared after the original was deleted, and became the de facto profile of the killer.
Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy? 250711facebook1 Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy? 250711facebook2
Before/After
“Several things have been doctored up to alter the suspects political views. First a section titled “Philosophy” has been added to include “Christian,” and “Conservative.” The media has used this to great lengths,” notes the Council of Conservative Christians website.
In the second profile, Breivik’s interest in Winston Churchill and Max Manus, the leader of the Norwegian anti-Nazi resistance, have been deleted, presumably because they don’t fit with the psychological profile that Breivik was a right-wing neo-Nazi who had links with the English Defence League.
There was clearly manipulation surrounding Breivik’s Facebook page after the attack. As Madison Ruppert notes, “Someone was active on Breivik’s Facebook accepting friend requests after the massacre took place.” People were also tricked into registering on a fake Facebook page set up in support of the gunman’s actions.
Additionally, in a series of Internet postings, Breivik clearly characterizes himself not as a populist Christian conservative, as the media has attempted to push, but as a Bill Kristol style neo-con, an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, attacking racists and accusing others of being “anti-gay”.
“None of the comments are extreme or hint at a desire to commit violence,” notes the CCC website, adding that Breivik was a supporter of the website which was run by Hans Rustad, a former Jewish left-winger turned neo-conservative.
It seems as if there are two Breivik’s, the original, a socially liberal, pro-Israel neo-con, and the second post-massacre profile of a Christian conservative, white supremacist. The second profile has clearly been embellished to push the notion that Breivik’s rampage was driven by his Christian conservative beliefs, which is convenient given the fact that governments recently introduced the meme that white, Christian conservatives were the leading terror threat.
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A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Breivik’s character of an enraged psychopath intent on butchering as many people as possible in the name of his cause is also contradicted by people who knew him personally.
In an interview with Russia Today, Ulav Andersson, who worked closely with Breivik, said that the killer showed behavior “absolutely nothing anywhere near that” depicted by the media’s characterization of him, and that his apparent racism was never expressed in terms any harsher than mild and “mundane” annoyance at being rejected by women. Andersson said that Breivik was not opinionated, “never came across as some kind of religious fanatic or anything,” and did not have a well developed ideology.
Adding that he never imagined Breivik would be capable of committing such an atrocity, Andersson says that he thinks Breivik was “brainwashed,” a judgment which correlates with eyewitness reports stating Breivik carried out what would have undoubtedly been an intense and stressful rampage with complete calmness and a blank expression on his face.
Andersson’s portrayal of Breivik seems to fit far more with the pre-massacre Facebook profile of the gunman as oppose to the post-massacre profile which seems to have been embellished to a significant degree.
A plethora of other questions continue to circulate surrounding Breivik and his motives. Why did this supposedly anti-Muslim crusader slaughter dozens of white Norwegian teenagers? Why didn’t he target a mosque? Why did this supposed “Christian conservative” list a television series that glorifies vampirism (True Blood) as his favorite show? How did Breivik’s ties to freemasonry and his obsession with the Knights Templar play into his rampage? Why did Breivik lift entire portions of leftist Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto and incorporate them into his own screed?
Just like the Oklahoma City bombing, which the case has been obsessively likened with, the evidence is starting to point to a wider plot, but concurrently there seems to be a deliberate effort to manufacture a profile of Breivik as a lone-nut psychopath who was influenced by racism, nationalism, Christianity, and a hatred for Europe’s predominantly neo-liberal elite, who coincidentally will reap the greatest political benefits from this tragic massacre.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
Sponsored Link: A $34,000 income secret Congress won’t tell you about... Because it could help make you thousands of dollars in dividends every year... without touching regular Wall Street investments. Click here to learn more.
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Trusting media portrayal of gunman foolish given how press got it spectacularly wrong in blaming Muslims
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, July 25, 2011
Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy? 250711top
Given the fact that the establishment media got it spectacularly wrong by instantly jumping to the conclusion that Friday’s deadly attack in Norway was the work of Al-Qaeda Muslims, placing complete trust in the details emerging about gunman Anders Behring Breivik would be foolish, especially since there are innumerable inconsistencies and contradictions that need to be studied before a fuller picture of what motivated the bloodshed can be established.
The rush to blame Muslims for the carnage, hastily parroted by an onslaught of mainstream “terror experts,” was a startling insight into how the propaganda that fuels the war on terror is so unquestionably bounced around the echo chamber of the corporate media.
It’s also a reminder that the mainstream press instantly falls in line with whoever the establishment designates the enemy du jour to be at any given time. Now that Muslims have been so vehemently demonized as terrorists, it’s the turn of so called “right-wing extremists,” or anyone who disagrees with mass immigration, loss of sovereignty and globalist financial looting, to feel the heat.
The effort to smear European conservatives as unhinged radicals who harbor simmering urges for bloodlust is now in full swing, and it’s a demonization campaign firmly founded on the carefully crafted public portrayal of Anders Behring Breivik.
However, it’s quickly becoming apparent that just as many eyewitnesses reported two gunmen on the island where the rampage unfolded, there are two different personas behind Breivik himself.
Indeed, there are two different Facebook profiles for Breivik, one from before the massacre and one from after. The latter profile appears to have been embellished and deliberately altered to emphasize the notion that the gunman was motivated by his “Christian conservative” beliefs.
Compare the two profiles below (click to enlarge). The first one in Norwegian was deleted minutes after Breivik’s identity became public. The second profile in English appeared after the original was deleted, and became the de facto profile of the killer.
Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy? 250711facebook1 Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy? 250711facebook2
Before/After
“Several things have been doctored up to alter the suspects political views. First a section titled “Philosophy” has been added to include “Christian,” and “Conservative.” The media has used this to great lengths,” notes the Council of Conservative Christians website.
In the second profile, Breivik’s interest in Winston Churchill and Max Manus, the leader of the Norwegian anti-Nazi resistance, have been deleted, presumably because they don’t fit with the psychological profile that Breivik was a right-wing neo-Nazi who had links with the English Defence League.
There was clearly manipulation surrounding Breivik’s Facebook page after the attack. As Madison Ruppert notes, “Someone was active on Breivik’s Facebook accepting friend requests after the massacre took place.” People were also tricked into registering on a fake Facebook page set up in support of the gunman’s actions.
Additionally, in a series of Internet postings, Breivik clearly characterizes himself not as a populist Christian conservative, as the media has attempted to push, but as a Bill Kristol style neo-con, an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, attacking racists and accusing others of being “anti-gay”.
“None of the comments are extreme or hint at a desire to commit violence,” notes the CCC website, adding that Breivik was a supporter of the website which was run by Hans Rustad, a former Jewish left-winger turned neo-conservative.
It seems as if there are two Breivik’s, the original, a socially liberal, pro-Israel neo-con, and the second post-massacre profile of a Christian conservative, white supremacist. The second profile has clearly been embellished to push the notion that Breivik’s rampage was driven by his Christian conservative beliefs, which is convenient given the fact that governments recently introduced the meme that white, Christian conservatives were the leading terror threat.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (AD)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Breivik’s character of an enraged psychopath intent on butchering as many people as possible in the name of his cause is also contradicted by people who knew him personally.
In an interview with Russia Today, Ulav Andersson, who worked closely with Breivik, said that the killer showed behavior “absolutely nothing anywhere near that” depicted by the media’s characterization of him, and that his apparent racism was never expressed in terms any harsher than mild and “mundane” annoyance at being rejected by women. Andersson said that Breivik was not opinionated, “never came across as some kind of religious fanatic or anything,” and did not have a well developed ideology.
Adding that he never imagined Breivik would be capable of committing such an atrocity, Andersson says that he thinks Breivik was “brainwashed,” a judgment which correlates with eyewitness reports stating Breivik carried out what would have undoubtedly been an intense and stressful rampage with complete calmness and a blank expression on his face.
Andersson’s portrayal of Breivik seems to fit far more with the pre-massacre Facebook profile of the gunman as oppose to the post-massacre profile which seems to have been embellished to a significant degree.
A plethora of other questions continue to circulate surrounding Breivik and his motives. Why did this supposedly anti-Muslim crusader slaughter dozens of white Norwegian teenagers? Why didn’t he target a mosque? Why did this supposed “Christian conservative” list a television series that glorifies vampirism (True Blood) as his favorite show? How did Breivik’s ties to freemasonry and his obsession with the Knights Templar play into his rampage? Why did Breivik lift entire portions of leftist Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto and incorporate them into his own screed?
Just like the Oklahoma City bombing, which the case has been obsessively likened with, the evidence is starting to point to a wider plot, but concurrently there seems to be a deliberate effort to manufacture a profile of Breivik as a lone-nut psychopath who was influenced by racism, nationalism, Christianity, and a hatred for Europe’s predominantly neo-liberal elite, who coincidentally will reap the greatest political benefits from this tragic massacre.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
Sponsored Link: A $34,000 income secret Congress won’t tell you about... Because it could help make you thousands of dollars in dividends every year... without touching regular Wall Street investments. Click here to learn more.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Dangerous lunatic or savvy terrorist? Anders Behring Breivik planned his actions meticulously.
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/norway-nightmare-security-services
Home
Monday 25 July RNW - NEWS AND ANALYSIS FROM THE NETHERLANDS IN 10 LANGUAGES, WORLDWIDE 24/7 ON RADIO, TV AND ONLINE
Dangerous lunatic or savvy terrorist? Anders Behring Breivik planned his actions meticulously. In a manifesto of more than 1,400 pages the Norwegian bomber and gunman described the reasons for his attacks. The Netherlands plays a prominent role.
The manifesto, written under the pseudonym Andrew Berwick, is one long accusation aimed at political parties and the media for failing to do anything to prevent the Islamisation of Europe. He sets out a complete scenario for a revolution in three phases to bring down what he calls the ‘Marxist multiculturalists’ in Europe.
Demographic warfare
The Norwegian Labour Party and its relatively liberal immigration policy is his immediate target, but he also fulminates against Dutch parties like the conservative VVD, the Christian Democrats and the Dutch Labour Party whom he accuses of being "traitors".
Breivik praises Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders and the late Pim Fortuyn, three Dutch politicians known for their criticism of Islam. However, he believes that the Netherlands too will fall prey to the ‘demographic warfare’ of Islam as he terms it. He predicts that the Netherlands will be 55 percent Muslim in the year 2070.
Beet farmer
The Norwegian terrorist says he would like to meet Geert Wilders and Radovan Karadzic. He expresses sympathy for the Serbian’s war crimes, since he was supposedly attempting to stop Islamisation in Bosnia. Geert Wilders has responded by calling Breivik “a violent psychopath”.
Breivik describes the careful planning behind his attacks. Even his best friends had no idea what he was doing. He started a beet farm as a cover enabling him purchase the 6,000 kilograms of fertiliser he used to make explosives. Terrorism expert Bibi van Ginkel points out that it is difficult for the authorities to track down ‘lone wolf’ terrorists like Breivik:
“It is extremely difficult for the authorities to identify these people beforehand. With terrorist organisations you generally have cells and networks. There are far greater opportunities to spot the movements of a network at an early stage and intercept them. It’s much more difficult when it’s just an individual, as in this case. It’s a real nightmare for authorities.”
Terrorist network
Breivik suggests that he was an independent cell of a much larger European network of revolutionary activists known as the PCCTS Templars. The name is a reference to the Knights Templar, a mediaeval religious order which fought Islam during the crusades. Terrorism expert Beatrice de Graaf says she has never heard of any such movement.
In the United States, Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, who sent 16 letter bombs between 1978 and 1995, and Timothy McVeigh, who was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, also wrote manifestos claiming to be part of larger networks.
Lone wolves
De Graaf rejects claims that secret services are too concerned with Muslim terrorists and not enough with right-wing extremists:
“In fact it’s a striking fact that intelligence services, including our own, have regularly stated that Jihadist networks are reasonably well under control. They have repeatedly warned about ‘system haters’, lone wolves or right-wing extremists. Those warnings have not really been listened to. The fear of terrorism is largely culturally determined. The immediate reaction to the early reports of the attacks in Norway was that it must be an al-Qaeda type organisation.”
Comparisons with Dutchman Tristan van der Vlis who went on a shooting rampage in a shopping centre in Alphen aan den Rijn in April don’t hold up. Bib van Ginkel notes:
“That wasn’t someone with a political agenda motivating him to commit acts of violence. Those people are essentially alienated from society. The violence is not directed at specific people or groups of people. And they’re not trying to get any kind of message across.”
Breivik, on the other hand, clearly did have a message. In his manifesto he refers to himself as a knight of cell 8. Elsewhere in his lengthy diatribe he mentions that he has to make contact with ‘cell 8b and cell 8c’. Even a lone wolf with delusions of grandeur can scare the living daylights out of the security services.
(imm)
Home
Monday 25 July RNW - NEWS AND ANALYSIS FROM THE NETHERLANDS IN 10 LANGUAGES, WORLDWIDE 24/7 ON RADIO, TV AND ONLINE
Dangerous lunatic or savvy terrorist? Anders Behring Breivik planned his actions meticulously. In a manifesto of more than 1,400 pages the Norwegian bomber and gunman described the reasons for his attacks. The Netherlands plays a prominent role.
The manifesto, written under the pseudonym Andrew Berwick, is one long accusation aimed at political parties and the media for failing to do anything to prevent the Islamisation of Europe. He sets out a complete scenario for a revolution in three phases to bring down what he calls the ‘Marxist multiculturalists’ in Europe.
Demographic warfare
The Norwegian Labour Party and its relatively liberal immigration policy is his immediate target, but he also fulminates against Dutch parties like the conservative VVD, the Christian Democrats and the Dutch Labour Party whom he accuses of being "traitors".
Breivik praises Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders and the late Pim Fortuyn, three Dutch politicians known for their criticism of Islam. However, he believes that the Netherlands too will fall prey to the ‘demographic warfare’ of Islam as he terms it. He predicts that the Netherlands will be 55 percent Muslim in the year 2070.
Beet farmer
The Norwegian terrorist says he would like to meet Geert Wilders and Radovan Karadzic. He expresses sympathy for the Serbian’s war crimes, since he was supposedly attempting to stop Islamisation in Bosnia. Geert Wilders has responded by calling Breivik “a violent psychopath”.
Breivik describes the careful planning behind his attacks. Even his best friends had no idea what he was doing. He started a beet farm as a cover enabling him purchase the 6,000 kilograms of fertiliser he used to make explosives. Terrorism expert Bibi van Ginkel points out that it is difficult for the authorities to track down ‘lone wolf’ terrorists like Breivik:
“It is extremely difficult for the authorities to identify these people beforehand. With terrorist organisations you generally have cells and networks. There are far greater opportunities to spot the movements of a network at an early stage and intercept them. It’s much more difficult when it’s just an individual, as in this case. It’s a real nightmare for authorities.”
Terrorist network
Breivik suggests that he was an independent cell of a much larger European network of revolutionary activists known as the PCCTS Templars. The name is a reference to the Knights Templar, a mediaeval religious order which fought Islam during the crusades. Terrorism expert Beatrice de Graaf says she has never heard of any such movement.
In the United States, Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, who sent 16 letter bombs between 1978 and 1995, and Timothy McVeigh, who was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, also wrote manifestos claiming to be part of larger networks.
Lone wolves
De Graaf rejects claims that secret services are too concerned with Muslim terrorists and not enough with right-wing extremists:
“In fact it’s a striking fact that intelligence services, including our own, have regularly stated that Jihadist networks are reasonably well under control. They have repeatedly warned about ‘system haters’, lone wolves or right-wing extremists. Those warnings have not really been listened to. The fear of terrorism is largely culturally determined. The immediate reaction to the early reports of the attacks in Norway was that it must be an al-Qaeda type organisation.”
Comparisons with Dutchman Tristan van der Vlis who went on a shooting rampage in a shopping centre in Alphen aan den Rijn in April don’t hold up. Bib van Ginkel notes:
“That wasn’t someone with a political agenda motivating him to commit acts of violence. Those people are essentially alienated from society. The violence is not directed at specific people or groups of people. And they’re not trying to get any kind of message across.”
Breivik, on the other hand, clearly did have a message. In his manifesto he refers to himself as a knight of cell 8. Elsewhere in his lengthy diatribe he mentions that he has to make contact with ‘cell 8b and cell 8c’. Even a lone wolf with delusions of grandeur can scare the living daylights out of the security services.
(imm)
Breivik claims collaboration with two cells
http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/breivik-claims-collaboration-two-cells
Breivik claims collaboration with two cells
Published on 25 July 2011 - 9:19pm
Home
The Oslo court has questioned Anders Breivik behind closed doors for half an hour. During the hearing, the suspect said there were ‘two more cells in his organisation’. It is not clear whether he meant to say that he had accomplices.
Breivik told the judge that he was responsible for the shooting on Utøya island and the bomb attack on government buildings in Oslo. However, he did not plead guilty because he believed his actions were necessary to save Norway and Western Europe as a whole from being taken over by Muslims. Breivik said he wanted to create the greatest loss possible to Norway's governing Labour Party, which he accused of being responsible for the large number of Muslim immigrants.
Terror
The judge charged Breivik with the destabilisation of vital functions of society, including government, and causing serious fear in the population. The suspect was remanded in custody for eight weeks, the first four of which to be spent in full isolation.
In Norway, the maximum prison sentence for acts of terror is 21 years, but those who are perceived as posing a continued danger to society can be detained longer.
The court hearing took place behind closed doors to deny Anders Breivik a platform for spreading his extremist right-wing ideology, which focused on the Marxist and Muslim colonisation of Europe.
Dutch national intelligence service
In his manifesto, which he published on the internet, Breivik claims to be a member of a big European network of revolutionary activists, the PCCTS, Knights Templar Europe. The name refers to an order of Mediaeval knights who took part in the crusades.
The Dutch national intelligence service AIVD refused to comment on whether the organisation is known in the Netherlands. The AIVD did say that – in as far as possible, it is assisting the Norwegian police in its investigation.
Death toll
The Norwegian authorities have adjusted the death toll in Friday’s double terror attack downward from 93 to 76. Sixty-eight people were killed on Utøya island instead of 86 as initially assumed. The bomb attack in Oslo claimed the lives of eight people instead of seven.
(gsh)
© Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Breivik claims collaboration with two cells
Published on 25 July 2011 - 9:19pm
Home
The Oslo court has questioned Anders Breivik behind closed doors for half an hour. During the hearing, the suspect said there were ‘two more cells in his organisation’. It is not clear whether he meant to say that he had accomplices.
Breivik told the judge that he was responsible for the shooting on Utøya island and the bomb attack on government buildings in Oslo. However, he did not plead guilty because he believed his actions were necessary to save Norway and Western Europe as a whole from being taken over by Muslims. Breivik said he wanted to create the greatest loss possible to Norway's governing Labour Party, which he accused of being responsible for the large number of Muslim immigrants.
Terror
The judge charged Breivik with the destabilisation of vital functions of society, including government, and causing serious fear in the population. The suspect was remanded in custody for eight weeks, the first four of which to be spent in full isolation.
In Norway, the maximum prison sentence for acts of terror is 21 years, but those who are perceived as posing a continued danger to society can be detained longer.
The court hearing took place behind closed doors to deny Anders Breivik a platform for spreading his extremist right-wing ideology, which focused on the Marxist and Muslim colonisation of Europe.
Dutch national intelligence service
In his manifesto, which he published on the internet, Breivik claims to be a member of a big European network of revolutionary activists, the PCCTS, Knights Templar Europe. The name refers to an order of Mediaeval knights who took part in the crusades.
The Dutch national intelligence service AIVD refused to comment on whether the organisation is known in the Netherlands. The AIVD did say that – in as far as possible, it is assisting the Norwegian police in its investigation.
Death toll
The Norwegian authorities have adjusted the death toll in Friday’s double terror attack downward from 93 to 76. Sixty-eight people were killed on Utøya island instead of 86 as initially assumed. The bomb attack in Oslo claimed the lives of eight people instead of seven.
(gsh)
© Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Monday, July 25, 2011
RSIS Commentary 110/2011 Looking West: Australian Defence Force Posture Review by Sam Bateman
Subject: RSIS Commentary 110/2011 Looking West: Australian Defence Force Posture Review by Sam Bateman
RSIS presents the following commentary Looking West: Australian Defence Force Posture Review by Sam Bateman. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg
No. 110/2011 dated 25 July 2011
Looking West:
Australian Defence Force Posture Review
By Sam Bateman
Synopsis
Australia is undertaking a comprehensive review of its defence force posture that reflects a major shift in Canberra’s strategic thinking and its intention to expand its presence in the Indian Ocean.
Commentary
THE AUSTRALIAN government recently announced a wide-ranging review to assess whether the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is correctly positioned geographically to meet future strategic and security challenges. Factors driving the review include the growing strategic significance of the Indian Ocean; the increased military power projection capabilities of countries in the Asia Pacific; and the potential vulnerability of extensive offshore resource activities in Australia’s north-west.
The establishment of the Defence Force Posture Review suggests major shifts in Canberra’s strategic thinking and a clear intention to expand Australia’s strategic presence in the Indian Ocean.
Looking to the Indian Ocean
Canberra is showing increased awareness of developments in the Indian Ocean that are of strategic and economic significance to its interests. Previously, Australia focussed its strategic attention mainly to its North and the Pacific Ocean. Historically, most major Australian defence bases were located in the southeast of the continent. The Force Posture Review is likely to lead to significant shifts in the positioning of the ADF with new defence facilities on the West coast, as well as greater Australian military activity generally in the Indian Ocean.
The Review by the Department of Defence will be overseen by two leading Australian national security specialists: Dr Allan Hawke and Mr Ric Smith, both former secretaries of the Department of Defence in Canberra.
Canberra’s Force Posture Review is linked with the ongoing US Global Force Posture Review. Australian Minister for Defence Stephen Smith and the then US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates announced closer collaboration between their two countries on force posture issues in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore in June 2011.
This collaboration includes establishing a bilateral Force Posture Review Working Group to develop options to align Australian and US force postures in ways that benefit both countries' national security. This would include, for example, developing options for increased US access to Australian training, exercise and test ranges; prepositioning US equipment in Australia; and greater use by the US of Australian facilities and ports.
While there is certainly scope for wider US access to Australian facilities, major US bases are unlikely on Australian soil. The left-wing of the Australian Labor Party, currently in power in Canberra, and the Greens Party that holds the balance of power in the Australian Senate, both have a long history of opposing increased American military presence in Australia.
China is not mentioned specifically in the terms of reference for the Review although many analysts in Australia have assessed that it is mainly a response to China’s increased military capabilities. It is more likely that the review follows assessments of general regional instability with prospects of declining US influence and increased competition between the rising powers of Asia. Canberra remains very cautious of actions that might jeopardise its relations with China as its major trading partner.
Moving West
The greatest challenges to the protection of Australia’s offshore sovereignty and sovereign rights lie in the Indian Ocean. About one third of Australia’s maritime jurisdiction is in that ocean, including large exclusive economic zones (EEZs) around remote island territories, and large areas of extended continental shelf potentially rich in hydrocarbon resources.
Offshore developments in the west and north-west of the Australian continent have a key role in the future prosperity of the nation. Western Australia is currently experiencing its largest economic boom, due to its thriving resource sector. The state has 66% of Australia’s economic demonstrated reserves of crude oil and 57% of Australia’s LPG resources. The offshore rigs, floating gas platforms and pipelines being installed in these areas are vital national assets that create significant strategic vulnerabilities.
Despite the economic and strategic importance of these developments along Australia’s north-west coast, the ADF currently has limited presence on that coast to support operations in the region. The Force Posture Review reflects Canberra’s intention to increase the level of defence activities along and off Australia’s west coast.
The terms of reference for the Review also show increased interest in the potential strategic role of Australia’s offshore territories, particularly Cocos and Christmas Islands. These islands, far out in the Indian Ocean, have great strategic value to Australia, something that has been underappreciated in Canberra in the past. As Australia seeks to increase its ‘strategic footprint’ in the Indian Ocean, the airfield and secure anchorages at Cocos Island offer large benefits. However, the ADF currently makes relatively little use of those facilities, and Australian naval vessels rarely visit there.
Implications
The Defence Force Posture Review is a major development in Canberra with far-reaching implications both for the ADF and Australia’s regional partners. Australia’s 2009 Defence White Paper was an important milestone in Australian strategic thinking, especially with its emphasis on maritime and force projection capabilities. However, it gave relatively little attention to broader implications of strategic changes in the region, particularly with regard to the operational posture and positioning of the ADF. The new review suggests that the last two years have seen some maturing and development of Australian strategic thinking.
The focus on the west coast suggests an appreciation in Canberra that regional strategic instability may be particularly acute in the Indian Ocean. The close links to be developed between Australian and US force postures will help buttress US presence in the Indian Ocean, as well as in the Western Pacific. This may help ease any pressure on Southeast Asian countries to receive a larger US presence that might place the relations of those countries with Beijing in jeopardy.
Sam Bateman is a Senior Fellow in the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He is a former Australian naval commodore who has served in senior positions in strategic policy and force structure planning areas of the Department of Defence in Canberra.
RSIS presents the following commentary Looking West: Australian Defence Force Posture Review by Sam Bateman. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg
No. 110/2011 dated 25 July 2011
Looking West:
Australian Defence Force Posture Review
By Sam Bateman
Synopsis
Australia is undertaking a comprehensive review of its defence force posture that reflects a major shift in Canberra’s strategic thinking and its intention to expand its presence in the Indian Ocean.
Commentary
THE AUSTRALIAN government recently announced a wide-ranging review to assess whether the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is correctly positioned geographically to meet future strategic and security challenges. Factors driving the review include the growing strategic significance of the Indian Ocean; the increased military power projection capabilities of countries in the Asia Pacific; and the potential vulnerability of extensive offshore resource activities in Australia’s north-west.
The establishment of the Defence Force Posture Review suggests major shifts in Canberra’s strategic thinking and a clear intention to expand Australia’s strategic presence in the Indian Ocean.
Looking to the Indian Ocean
Canberra is showing increased awareness of developments in the Indian Ocean that are of strategic and economic significance to its interests. Previously, Australia focussed its strategic attention mainly to its North and the Pacific Ocean. Historically, most major Australian defence bases were located in the southeast of the continent. The Force Posture Review is likely to lead to significant shifts in the positioning of the ADF with new defence facilities on the West coast, as well as greater Australian military activity generally in the Indian Ocean.
The Review by the Department of Defence will be overseen by two leading Australian national security specialists: Dr Allan Hawke and Mr Ric Smith, both former secretaries of the Department of Defence in Canberra.
Canberra’s Force Posture Review is linked with the ongoing US Global Force Posture Review. Australian Minister for Defence Stephen Smith and the then US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates announced closer collaboration between their two countries on force posture issues in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore in June 2011.
This collaboration includes establishing a bilateral Force Posture Review Working Group to develop options to align Australian and US force postures in ways that benefit both countries' national security. This would include, for example, developing options for increased US access to Australian training, exercise and test ranges; prepositioning US equipment in Australia; and greater use by the US of Australian facilities and ports.
While there is certainly scope for wider US access to Australian facilities, major US bases are unlikely on Australian soil. The left-wing of the Australian Labor Party, currently in power in Canberra, and the Greens Party that holds the balance of power in the Australian Senate, both have a long history of opposing increased American military presence in Australia.
China is not mentioned specifically in the terms of reference for the Review although many analysts in Australia have assessed that it is mainly a response to China’s increased military capabilities. It is more likely that the review follows assessments of general regional instability with prospects of declining US influence and increased competition between the rising powers of Asia. Canberra remains very cautious of actions that might jeopardise its relations with China as its major trading partner.
Moving West
The greatest challenges to the protection of Australia’s offshore sovereignty and sovereign rights lie in the Indian Ocean. About one third of Australia’s maritime jurisdiction is in that ocean, including large exclusive economic zones (EEZs) around remote island territories, and large areas of extended continental shelf potentially rich in hydrocarbon resources.
Offshore developments in the west and north-west of the Australian continent have a key role in the future prosperity of the nation. Western Australia is currently experiencing its largest economic boom, due to its thriving resource sector. The state has 66% of Australia’s economic demonstrated reserves of crude oil and 57% of Australia’s LPG resources. The offshore rigs, floating gas platforms and pipelines being installed in these areas are vital national assets that create significant strategic vulnerabilities.
Despite the economic and strategic importance of these developments along Australia’s north-west coast, the ADF currently has limited presence on that coast to support operations in the region. The Force Posture Review reflects Canberra’s intention to increase the level of defence activities along and off Australia’s west coast.
The terms of reference for the Review also show increased interest in the potential strategic role of Australia’s offshore territories, particularly Cocos and Christmas Islands. These islands, far out in the Indian Ocean, have great strategic value to Australia, something that has been underappreciated in Canberra in the past. As Australia seeks to increase its ‘strategic footprint’ in the Indian Ocean, the airfield and secure anchorages at Cocos Island offer large benefits. However, the ADF currently makes relatively little use of those facilities, and Australian naval vessels rarely visit there.
Implications
The Defence Force Posture Review is a major development in Canberra with far-reaching implications both for the ADF and Australia’s regional partners. Australia’s 2009 Defence White Paper was an important milestone in Australian strategic thinking, especially with its emphasis on maritime and force projection capabilities. However, it gave relatively little attention to broader implications of strategic changes in the region, particularly with regard to the operational posture and positioning of the ADF. The new review suggests that the last two years have seen some maturing and development of Australian strategic thinking.
The focus on the west coast suggests an appreciation in Canberra that regional strategic instability may be particularly acute in the Indian Ocean. The close links to be developed between Australian and US force postures will help buttress US presence in the Indian Ocean, as well as in the Western Pacific. This may help ease any pressure on Southeast Asian countries to receive a larger US presence that might place the relations of those countries with Beijing in jeopardy.
Sam Bateman is a Senior Fellow in the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He is a former Australian naval commodore who has served in senior positions in strategic policy and force structure planning areas of the Department of Defence in Canberra.
RSIS Commentary 109/2011 Syrian Revolt: Protesters at a Crossroads by James M. Dorsey and Zulkifli Mohamed Sultan
Subject: RSIS Commentary 109/2011 Syrian Revolt: Protesters at a Crossroads by James M. Dorsey and Zulkifli Mohamed Sultan
RSIS presents the following commentary Syrian Revolt: Protesters at a Crossroads by James M. Dorsey and Zulkifli Mohamed Sultan. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg
No. 109/2011 dated 25 July 2011
Syrian Revolt:
Protesters at a Crossroads
By James M. Dorsey and Zulkifli Mohamed Sultan
Synopsis
After five months of mass anti-government protests and despite a brutal crackdown, opponents of Syrian president Bashar al Assad are struggling to contain sectarian strife, and prevent their demonstrations from turning violent. They need to unify their efforts to force political and economic change.
Commentary
SYRIAN PROTESTERS and opposition forces are at a crossroads five months into mass anti-government demonstrations in defiance of a violent government crackdown. The unflagging resilience and perseverance of the protesters in the face of a ruthless military has earned them international respect and admiration, but also created key issues they have to address to ensure that their effort to force the departure of Syrian president Bashar al Assad is not stymied.
Addressing those issues puts a heavy responsibility on the shoulders of the leaders of the protesters and opposition groups as well as on the country’s Islamic clergy.
Sectarian fighting
Two of the key issues -- the danger of the protests turning violent and transforming into a sectarian from a purely political struggle -- threaten to come to a head in Homs, Syria’s third largest city and become a focal point in confronting the Assad regime. Avoiding sectarian strife is not only crucial to the future of the uprising but is also key to depriving the Assad regime of one of its central arguments in defence of its crackdown and refusal to entertain political and economic reform. This in turn will influence attitudes of the international community.
Assad has denounced the protesters as “armed gangs” supported by foreign powers and warned that Syria, an ethnic and religious mosaic, could descend into civil war. Fears of increasing sectarian violence strengthen his argument and reinforce the reluctance of minorities and the business community to join the revolt. That is also likely to win him further support from Russia and China which have shielded him from condemnation in the United Nations Security Council.
Increased sectarian violence would furthermore make it difficult for the United States and Europe to support the protesters and increase Arab and Western concern that sectarian strife could spill across Syria’s borders into Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The fears of sectarian violence of the kind that tore Lebanon and Iraq apart were fuelled by a series of ominous killings in Homs against Alawites, the sect to which Assad and his clan belong. The killings have heightened tensions between Homs’ majority Sunni Muslim population and an Alawite minority.
Following an attack on a Sunni mosque by Alawites, Sunnis reportedly reacted by abducting and killing three Alawites. In response, Alawites went on a rampage, looting and burning Sunni shops, killing three Sunnis. Afraid of retaliation, Alawites are fleeing the city. In a Facebook page entitled Homs Revolution postings abused Alawites and urged Sunnis, who account for three quarters of the population, to take up arms against the government. The page has been endorsed by some 2,000 people.
Peaceful protest call
Opposition groups have stressed the need to keep the protests peaceful despite the regime’s violence by which an estimated 2,000 people have been killed and thousands detained. Preventing violence would also limit the involvement of more radical religious forces. Sunni clerics have issued a fatwa, or religious edict, declaring the protests in line with Islamic law, but have yet to speak out forcefully against the sectarian violence.
Avoiding sectarian clashes and preventing violence are key prerequisites for an important task facing the opposition and the protesters: the formation of a council or shadow government that reflects the various strands arrayed against the Assad regime, including important segments of the country’s religious leadership. The inspiration to do so came from the success of the Libyan rebels’ Transition National Council that has recently been recognised as the country’s sole legitimate governing authority by the United States, the European Union, NATO and the Arab League.
The discussion of a Syrian council that would give the opposition a degree of temporary unity notwithstanding the opponents’ reluctance to identify a leadership because they feared that would provide the Assad regime targets for assassination. One problem Assad’s opponents have to overcome is the fact that those in exile and those inside the country barely know each other. To do so, they are establishing committees that will create the basis for an assembly to choose a shadow government.
Shadow government?
The creation of a Syrian shadow government is, however, unlikely to bring the fall of the Assad regime any closer. It will also not hasten international recognition even though the Obama administration and European leaders have asserted that Assad has lost the legitimacy to govern his country. That position stops short of calling for the president’s departure. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently encouraged the opposition to work for democracy in Syria, adding that it would “hopefully (be) with the government” of Assad.
The reluctance to call for Assad’s departure reflects concern about who might succeed him as well as a recognition that such a call would be worthless if the United States and Europe cannot enforce their will. US and European sanctions against Assad and his opponents have symbolic value but are ineffective, at least in the short term, in persuading the president to halt his crackdown and engage in a serious dialogue with his opponents about political and economic reform.
Tackling sectarian strife and violence and forging greater cohesion will allow the protesters and opposition to keep on track their struggle to topple the Assad regime. The effective stalemate between the government’s security forces and protesters on the streets of Syrian towns and cities constitutes an achievement. It is however a far cry from a victory that would open the door to reform. Getting there is likely to be a long and bloody process. The alternative, however, is more violence and potential defeat.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow and Zulkifli Mohamed Sultan a Research Analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. James M. Dorsey is also a columnist for Al Arabiya and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
RSIS presents the following commentary Syrian Revolt: Protesters at a Crossroads by James M. Dorsey and Zulkifli Mohamed Sultan. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg
No. 109/2011 dated 25 July 2011
Syrian Revolt:
Protesters at a Crossroads
By James M. Dorsey and Zulkifli Mohamed Sultan
Synopsis
After five months of mass anti-government protests and despite a brutal crackdown, opponents of Syrian president Bashar al Assad are struggling to contain sectarian strife, and prevent their demonstrations from turning violent. They need to unify their efforts to force political and economic change.
Commentary
SYRIAN PROTESTERS and opposition forces are at a crossroads five months into mass anti-government demonstrations in defiance of a violent government crackdown. The unflagging resilience and perseverance of the protesters in the face of a ruthless military has earned them international respect and admiration, but also created key issues they have to address to ensure that their effort to force the departure of Syrian president Bashar al Assad is not stymied.
Addressing those issues puts a heavy responsibility on the shoulders of the leaders of the protesters and opposition groups as well as on the country’s Islamic clergy.
Sectarian fighting
Two of the key issues -- the danger of the protests turning violent and transforming into a sectarian from a purely political struggle -- threaten to come to a head in Homs, Syria’s third largest city and become a focal point in confronting the Assad regime. Avoiding sectarian strife is not only crucial to the future of the uprising but is also key to depriving the Assad regime of one of its central arguments in defence of its crackdown and refusal to entertain political and economic reform. This in turn will influence attitudes of the international community.
Assad has denounced the protesters as “armed gangs” supported by foreign powers and warned that Syria, an ethnic and religious mosaic, could descend into civil war. Fears of increasing sectarian violence strengthen his argument and reinforce the reluctance of minorities and the business community to join the revolt. That is also likely to win him further support from Russia and China which have shielded him from condemnation in the United Nations Security Council.
Increased sectarian violence would furthermore make it difficult for the United States and Europe to support the protesters and increase Arab and Western concern that sectarian strife could spill across Syria’s borders into Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The fears of sectarian violence of the kind that tore Lebanon and Iraq apart were fuelled by a series of ominous killings in Homs against Alawites, the sect to which Assad and his clan belong. The killings have heightened tensions between Homs’ majority Sunni Muslim population and an Alawite minority.
Following an attack on a Sunni mosque by Alawites, Sunnis reportedly reacted by abducting and killing three Alawites. In response, Alawites went on a rampage, looting and burning Sunni shops, killing three Sunnis. Afraid of retaliation, Alawites are fleeing the city. In a Facebook page entitled Homs Revolution postings abused Alawites and urged Sunnis, who account for three quarters of the population, to take up arms against the government. The page has been endorsed by some 2,000 people.
Peaceful protest call
Opposition groups have stressed the need to keep the protests peaceful despite the regime’s violence by which an estimated 2,000 people have been killed and thousands detained. Preventing violence would also limit the involvement of more radical religious forces. Sunni clerics have issued a fatwa, or religious edict, declaring the protests in line with Islamic law, but have yet to speak out forcefully against the sectarian violence.
Avoiding sectarian clashes and preventing violence are key prerequisites for an important task facing the opposition and the protesters: the formation of a council or shadow government that reflects the various strands arrayed against the Assad regime, including important segments of the country’s religious leadership. The inspiration to do so came from the success of the Libyan rebels’ Transition National Council that has recently been recognised as the country’s sole legitimate governing authority by the United States, the European Union, NATO and the Arab League.
The discussion of a Syrian council that would give the opposition a degree of temporary unity notwithstanding the opponents’ reluctance to identify a leadership because they feared that would provide the Assad regime targets for assassination. One problem Assad’s opponents have to overcome is the fact that those in exile and those inside the country barely know each other. To do so, they are establishing committees that will create the basis for an assembly to choose a shadow government.
Shadow government?
The creation of a Syrian shadow government is, however, unlikely to bring the fall of the Assad regime any closer. It will also not hasten international recognition even though the Obama administration and European leaders have asserted that Assad has lost the legitimacy to govern his country. That position stops short of calling for the president’s departure. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently encouraged the opposition to work for democracy in Syria, adding that it would “hopefully (be) with the government” of Assad.
The reluctance to call for Assad’s departure reflects concern about who might succeed him as well as a recognition that such a call would be worthless if the United States and Europe cannot enforce their will. US and European sanctions against Assad and his opponents have symbolic value but are ineffective, at least in the short term, in persuading the president to halt his crackdown and engage in a serious dialogue with his opponents about political and economic reform.
Tackling sectarian strife and violence and forging greater cohesion will allow the protesters and opposition to keep on track their struggle to topple the Assad regime. The effective stalemate between the government’s security forces and protesters on the streets of Syrian towns and cities constitutes an achievement. It is however a far cry from a victory that would open the door to reform. Getting there is likely to be a long and bloody process. The alternative, however, is more violence and potential defeat.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow and Zulkifli Mohamed Sultan a Research Analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. James M. Dorsey is also a columnist for Al Arabiya and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
A real Planet of the Apes? UK scientists secretly grew human-animal hybrids in laboratory experiments
A real Planet of the Apes? UK scientists secretly grew human-animal hybrids in laboratory experiments
Saturday, July 23, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
(NaturalNews) One hundred and fifty animal-human hybrid embryos have been produced by mad scientists in the UK -- with full government approval -- under the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act. The UK's Daily Mail newspaper is reporting that a committee of scientists recently blew the whistle on the operation and expressed alarm over the possibility of the experiments going "too far" and resulting in a real Planet of the Apes scenario, where animals escape from the lab and begin reproducing in the wild.
Sound like science fiction? It's actually just an extension of science fact: human-animal hybrids have been produced by these UK scientists for the last three years. Among the monstrosities they created were animal eggs fertilized with human sperm, and cybrids -- animal cells that are injected with human cell nuclei. They also created chimeras, a mixture of human cells and animal cells, much like what happened in the sci-fi Planet of the Apes depiction of science gone wrong.
It has not yet been revealed which animals were used in the chimera and cybrids, but it's almost certain that they were mammals. Furthermore, the closer the genetic code of the animals to humans, the more likely the embryos would be viable, so it seems likely that these mad scientists would have been using eggs from monkeys or apes combined with humans. Planet of the Apes suddenly doesn't seem so far-fetched, does it?
None of these embryos were allowed to grow into fetuses, by the way. Current UK law requires them to be destroyed after 14 days. But that's only the law. Who knows what kind of mad science is being conducted in the basement of corporate laboratories, away from the view of UK regulators and well outside the bounds of the law. For all we know, there could be a lab of half-apes living in laboratory cages right now, being studied in the name of "science" while plotting their own escape. Numerous animals around the world, by the way, have recently gained awareness and actively escaped their captors (http://www.naturalnews.com/032909_z...).
Creating yet more monstrosities in the name of science
Three laboratories in the UK were granted government licenses to play God with these human-animal embryos: King’s College London, Newcastle University and Warwick University. But what was the point of all this monkeying around with cross-species embryos?
The scientists claim it was to developing embronic stem cells that would be used to "treat incurable diseases." Yeah, right. What they really mean is that they would raise a secret lab full of half-human apes imprisoned in cages, then HARVEST their cells and sell them off to pharmaceutical companies which turn around and offer them to patients at a hundred thousand dollars per treatment. As usual, it's just another way to exploit living organisms (and put animals through medical hell) in order to make a buck.
Many people don't know it, but even today, entire rooms full of primates in cages are used to grow viral material that's harvested from their organs and blended with toxic chemicals to make vaccines. (http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=4...) The vaccine industry won't reveal this dirty little secret, of course, because it's all utterly inhumane (and downright gross). But now the mad scientists are playing around with half human embryos that could theoretically be used to grow ape men which are half ape and half human.
The history of medical science is rife with ethical abuses and horrifying medical experiments
That the UK "scientific" community is dabbling in such dark arts is, of course, shocking to many people. Although you might expect such activities to be taking place in nations like North Korea or China, where the black market harvesting of human organs is an everyday event, few people expect UK scientists to engage in such "Island of Dr. Moreau" types of scientific treachery. But that's only because those people don't know what UK scientists are really capable of (or U.S. scientists, for that matter).
Throughout the scientific community, ethical boundaries have been obliterated in the quest for profits. As long as there's money on the table, it seems, no violation of nature, God or just plain common sense will stand in the way of a group of (government-sanctioned!) mad scientists trying to feed their maniacal egos.
As another striking example, Dr. Jonas Salk, the famous developer of the polio vaccine, was actually a medical criminal who conducted illegal medical experiments on mental patients without their consent (http://www.naturalnews.com/031564_J...). NaturalNews has documented a partial history of "scientific" medical experiments on human beings that shows the shocking depths of this horrifying branch of so-called "science." See the list yourself at http://www.naturalnews.com/019189.html and http://www.naturalnews.com/019187.html
What's clear is that medical "science" respects no ethical boundaries and routinely tries to play God with genes, seeds and medicines in order to make more money -- all while putting the entire planet at risk from a runaway organism that escapes from the labs.
What if they manage to grow a race of half human / half ape creatures with an IQ of 180 who outsmart the scientists, escape their confines and give rise to a new species that enslaves the human race by injecting them with mind-altering drugs? Wait a sec... the drug companies have already done that, haven't they? Maybe we ARE the lab experiment...
Sources for this story include:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...
http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/ap/e...
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About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2010, Adams created NaturalNews.TV, a natural living video sharing site featuring thousands of user videos on foods, fitness, green living and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted technology pioneer and founded a software company in 1993 that developed the HTML email newsletter software currently powering the NaturalNews subscriptions. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033100_human-animal_hybrids_Planet_of_the_Apes.html#ixzz1TE5TJts5
Saturday, July 23, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
(NaturalNews) One hundred and fifty animal-human hybrid embryos have been produced by mad scientists in the UK -- with full government approval -- under the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act. The UK's Daily Mail newspaper is reporting that a committee of scientists recently blew the whistle on the operation and expressed alarm over the possibility of the experiments going "too far" and resulting in a real Planet of the Apes scenario, where animals escape from the lab and begin reproducing in the wild.
Sound like science fiction? It's actually just an extension of science fact: human-animal hybrids have been produced by these UK scientists for the last three years. Among the monstrosities they created were animal eggs fertilized with human sperm, and cybrids -- animal cells that are injected with human cell nuclei. They also created chimeras, a mixture of human cells and animal cells, much like what happened in the sci-fi Planet of the Apes depiction of science gone wrong.
It has not yet been revealed which animals were used in the chimera and cybrids, but it's almost certain that they were mammals. Furthermore, the closer the genetic code of the animals to humans, the more likely the embryos would be viable, so it seems likely that these mad scientists would have been using eggs from monkeys or apes combined with humans. Planet of the Apes suddenly doesn't seem so far-fetched, does it?
None of these embryos were allowed to grow into fetuses, by the way. Current UK law requires them to be destroyed after 14 days. But that's only the law. Who knows what kind of mad science is being conducted in the basement of corporate laboratories, away from the view of UK regulators and well outside the bounds of the law. For all we know, there could be a lab of half-apes living in laboratory cages right now, being studied in the name of "science" while plotting their own escape. Numerous animals around the world, by the way, have recently gained awareness and actively escaped their captors (http://www.naturalnews.com/032909_z...).
Creating yet more monstrosities in the name of science
Three laboratories in the UK were granted government licenses to play God with these human-animal embryos: King’s College London, Newcastle University and Warwick University. But what was the point of all this monkeying around with cross-species embryos?
The scientists claim it was to developing embronic stem cells that would be used to "treat incurable diseases." Yeah, right. What they really mean is that they would raise a secret lab full of half-human apes imprisoned in cages, then HARVEST their cells and sell them off to pharmaceutical companies which turn around and offer them to patients at a hundred thousand dollars per treatment. As usual, it's just another way to exploit living organisms (and put animals through medical hell) in order to make a buck.
Many people don't know it, but even today, entire rooms full of primates in cages are used to grow viral material that's harvested from their organs and blended with toxic chemicals to make vaccines. (http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=4...) The vaccine industry won't reveal this dirty little secret, of course, because it's all utterly inhumane (and downright gross). But now the mad scientists are playing around with half human embryos that could theoretically be used to grow ape men which are half ape and half human.
The history of medical science is rife with ethical abuses and horrifying medical experiments
That the UK "scientific" community is dabbling in such dark arts is, of course, shocking to many people. Although you might expect such activities to be taking place in nations like North Korea or China, where the black market harvesting of human organs is an everyday event, few people expect UK scientists to engage in such "Island of Dr. Moreau" types of scientific treachery. But that's only because those people don't know what UK scientists are really capable of (or U.S. scientists, for that matter).
Throughout the scientific community, ethical boundaries have been obliterated in the quest for profits. As long as there's money on the table, it seems, no violation of nature, God or just plain common sense will stand in the way of a group of (government-sanctioned!) mad scientists trying to feed their maniacal egos.
As another striking example, Dr. Jonas Salk, the famous developer of the polio vaccine, was actually a medical criminal who conducted illegal medical experiments on mental patients without their consent (http://www.naturalnews.com/031564_J...). NaturalNews has documented a partial history of "scientific" medical experiments on human beings that shows the shocking depths of this horrifying branch of so-called "science." See the list yourself at http://www.naturalnews.com/019189.html and http://www.naturalnews.com/019187.html
What's clear is that medical "science" respects no ethical boundaries and routinely tries to play God with genes, seeds and medicines in order to make more money -- all while putting the entire planet at risk from a runaway organism that escapes from the labs.
What if they manage to grow a race of half human / half ape creatures with an IQ of 180 who outsmart the scientists, escape their confines and give rise to a new species that enslaves the human race by injecting them with mind-altering drugs? Wait a sec... the drug companies have already done that, haven't they? Maybe we ARE the lab experiment...
Sources for this story include:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...
http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/ap/e...
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About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2010, Adams created NaturalNews.TV, a natural living video sharing site featuring thousands of user videos on foods, fitness, green living and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted technology pioneer and founded a software company in 1993 that developed the HTML email newsletter software currently powering the NaturalNews subscriptions. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training.
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