> Subject: US Military opposes Obama's wars

> Subject: US Military opposes Obama's wars
>
> The only reason that the world is not already engaged in a global nuclear war is that top US military leaders including the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, have openly picked a fight with the mad President Obama and his British and Israeli cohorts, to refute the lie that Iran is on the verge of building nuclear weapons, and warned that any new war in the Mideast could rapidly escalate out of control - exactly as LaRouche has warned, adding that this is in fact the British intention.
>
> The following articles from the current EIR must be read and disseminated widely:
> 1) U.S. Military's Efforts Alone Can't Stop Empire's War Drive by an EIR Investigative Team, reporting on the fight by Gen. Dempsey, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Gen. James Clapper, and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) head Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, to stop Obama's lunatic war plans.
> 2) Documentation: Russian Spokesmen See Threat of Nuclear War.
> 3) LT. COL. DANIEL DAVIS -- Officer Risks Career: 'I Knew Too Much To Remain Silent' on the active-duty Colonel who has blown the whistle on the lies of the official reporting from Afghanistan, making clear that the US war has been lost, and done horrible damage in the process.
> Mike Billington
> U.S. Military's Efforts Alone Can't Stop Empire's War Drive
>
> by an EIR Investigative Team
>
> [PDF version of this article]
>
> Feb. 20—We are on the very edge of the potential breakout of World War III, Lyndon LaRouche warned during a Feb. 18 broadcast on Lyndon LaRouche PAC-TV, and we're looking at the month of March. Leading figures in the U.S. military, and others, have delayed this outbreak over the last months, but as long as President Barack Obama remains in power, there is a very real danger that such a war could occur. The British Empire and Obama are committed to it, so they must be stopped.
>
> The leading triggers for the thermonuclear confrontation the British are seeking, of course, are Syria and Iran, but those are only triggers. Should attacks occur on these nations, these will only function as detonators for attacks on the real targets, Russia and China, which are well aware that this is the case.
>
> LaRouche said that the month of March is shaping up to be a potentially critical point in this strategic battle. First, and of extreme concern to the British, comes the first round of the Russian Presidential elections on March 4, where Vladimir Putin, whom the British hate and fear, is the leading candidate. Second comes a scheduled issuance of a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran's nuclear capability, which the warhawks expect will support their cause. Third is the annual meeting of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), moved up to March 5, which will feature British puppet and warmonger Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and provide the occasion for a major war rally, attended up hundreds of members of Congress.
>
> There is also the very real question of whether the bankrupt world financial system will even exist, into the month of March.
>
> Thus, the British imperial circles have accelerated their war drive—only to be checkmated, so far, by determined efforts from the top levels of the U.S. military command, buttressed by Russian and Chinese officials. But the military cannot do it alone. Either leading political figures in the United States take the necessary public steps to get rid of the British-controlled madman in the White House immediately, or the chances of survival are bad, to nil.
> General Dempsey Speaks Out
>
> Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey has been a consistent voice calling for restraint by Israel against Iran, over the last months, but his statements during a Feb. 19 interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria were the strongest yet, on both the Iran and Syria questions:
>
> "I think it's premature to take a decision to arm the opposition movement in Syria because I would challenge anyone to clearly identify for me the opposition movement in Syria at this point. And let me broaden the conversation a bit. Syria is an arena right now for all of the various interests to play out. And what I mean by that is you've got great power involvement. Turkey clearly has an interest, a very important interest. Russia has a very important interest. Iran has an interest. And what we see playing out is that not just those countries, in fact, potentially not all of them in any case, but we see the various groups who might think that at issue is a Sunni-Shi'a competition for regional control."
>
> On Syria, Dempsey added that the United States should not arm the opposition, adding that "there are indications that al-Qaeda is involved, and that they're interested in supporting the opposition."
>
> Asked about a pre-emptive strike on Iran, he replied:
>
> "I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us. I think that the economic sanctions and the international cooperation that we've been able to gather around sanctions is beginning to have an effect.... I mean, fundamentally, we have to be prepared. And that includes, for the most part, at this point, being prepared defensively."
>
> On Tehran's leadership:
>
> "I'll tell you that I've been confronting that question since I came into Central Command in 2008. And we are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor. And it's for that reason, I think, that we think the current path we're on is the most prudent path at this point."
>
> Dempsey emphasized that
>
> "we also know—or believe we know—that the Iranian regime has not decided that they will embark on the effort to weaponize their nuclear capability."
>
> When asked by Zakaria whether the Israelis understand that the United States is urging them not to strike Iran, and whether he thinks that Israel will be deterred from striking in the near future, Dempsey did not answer directly, but said that he is "confident that they understand our concerns, that a strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn't achieve their long-term objectives." He noted that he was in Israel three weeks ago engaging in dialogue on the matter.
>
> Indeed, sources familiar with Dempsey's visit to Israel report that he delivered the most blunt and unequivocal message from the United States, perhaps since President Dwight Eisenhower ordered Israel, Great Britain, and France to withdraw from their invasion of the Suez Canal in 1956. His message to Tel Aviv was, in effect: "Don't you dare!"
>
> In addition to calling for restraint with respect to the flashpoints around Syria and Iran—in stark contrast to Obama's British-scripted bellicosity—Dempsey stated that the U.S. military's strategic shift to the Pacific region provides an opportunity to improve U.S.-China relations. "I think this is more opportunity than liability to improve our relationship with China," Dempsey said, "and I am personally committed to having that as the outcome, rather than get into an arms race or into some kind of confrontation with China."
> He's Not Alone
>
> Dempsey's interview followed significant war-avoidance testimony given in the U.S. Congress on Feb. 15 by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Gen. James Clapper and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) head Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess. Both made several additional points against military intervention.
>
> In response to questions from Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Clapper described a Syrian opposition that is mostly based outside the country, and is torn by an internal feud over who is going to lead it. He noted that the recent suicide bombings were all targeted against security and intelligence facilities and "had all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda-like attack. And so we believe that 'al-Qaeda in Iraq' is extending its reach into Syria."
>
> The next day, Clapper's remarks about al-Qaeda involvement were picked up by the leading Russian online news outlet, Russia Today—a sharp contrast with the lack of coverage in the largely British-controlled mainstream news outlets in the U.S.
>
> Clapper repeated his earlier testimony that the intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear program is that Iran is retaining the option of being able to build nuclear weapons, but has not yet decided to do so. "And we believe that the decision would be made by the Supreme Leader himself, and he would base that on a cost-benefit analysis in terms of—I don't think he'd want a nuclear weapon at any price," he said.
>
> Clapper also expressed a certain disagreement with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who told the same committee that if Iran decided to weaponize, "It would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb, and then possibly another one or two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon." Clapper said, with respect to the one-year perspective, that it was technically feasible, but not very likely. "There are all kinds of combinations and permutations that could affect how long it might take the Iranians to make a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon."
>
> In his testimony, DIA chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess stated what should be obvious, but is usually ignored by the pro-war crowd: Iran is likely to respond if attacked, but "the Agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict."
> The Warmongers Can't Wait
>
> Provoking a conflict is precisely what the British Empire and its assets are anxious to do. And they are revving up the political environment precisely in this direction.
>
> One of the major problems they face is that Iran has agreed to resume talks with the so-called P5+1 (the Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council—the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China—plus Germany), which had been formed to discuss the nuclear issue. For months, the whining establishment line about Iran has been that Tehran has never responded to an October 2011 letter from EU Foreign Minister Lady Catherine Ashton, offering to start talks with preconditions such as Iran's agreeing to stop uranium enrichment, as a basis for the talks. The Ashton letter was a provocation, aimed at guaranteeing that no talks would resume. That has now been trumped by Iran.
>
> This is the setting for an escalation of measures against Iran which amount to a de facto embargo, in addition to the squeezing of Syria, an Iranian ally—both calculated to pressure Iran into retaliation. The British warmongers won't take peace for an answer.
>
> On Feb. 16, warhawk Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) launched their effort to prevent any possible peaceful resolution to the conflict. Twenty-nine other Senators, including a number of "liberal" Democrats, signed on to S. 3112, a sense of the Senate resolution which tells President Obama that he will have strong bipartisan support in Congress if he launches a military attack on Iran. The resolution defies all sound military and intelligence judgment and declares that Iran must be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability, and rejects any policy of containment of a nuclear Iran.
>
> The U.S. could have diplomacy and war avoidance with the nuclear-armed Soviet Union for four decades, but can't contain Iran? The resolution is just a blatant push for war.
> And Now Syria
>
> Meanwhile, the Obama Administration, primarily through British-trained asset and UN Ambassador Susan Rice, is escalating against Syria, again ignoring the U.S. military's warnings about al-Qaeda's role in the opposition, and it's being pressured to go even further along the Libyan path, specifically to set up a so-called "humanitarian corridor" that would serve as a base for the violent overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.
>
> On Feb. 17, fifty-six pro-British ass-kissing neoconservative liars and chickenhawks who brought the world the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan issued an open letter to Barack Obama, demanding an "immediate" U.S. intervention into Syria, in the name of "humanitarian" concerns. Sponsoring the letter is the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the same group that LaRouchePAC fingered last week as a key promoter of the Mossad-funded and -trained Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) terrorists being deployed as assassins inside Iran. The signators' demands are a virtual carbon copy of a war plan put out earlier by the London-headquartered Henry Jackson Society: U.S. and other foreign forces must establish "safe zones within Syrian territory," and "no-go zones for the Assad regime's military and security forces," and work with Congress to impose "crippling" sanctions against Syria's energy supplies, banking, and shipping. Plus supplying military aid to the non-existent Free Syrian Army, and coordinating with and supplying communications technologies to the very "political opposition" that U.S. intelligence officers, including DNI Clapper, say is fragmented and infiltrated by al-Qaeda. The reality is that the armed opposition in Syria is al-Qaeda, with some equally odious Salafi fanatics thrown in for good measure.
>
> UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is lining up behind the views of the interventionists, and in separate meetings in Europe on Feb. 16, informed the French and Russian foreign ministers that the UN's "top priority" is to establish "humanitarian access" for foreign forces inside Syria. So, too, like sheep lining up for their own slaughter, a majority of the nations of the world then voted up, 135 to 12, with 17 abstentions, a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution demanding that the Syrian government allow such "humanitarian assistance."
>
> Not to be left out, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Feb. 16 introduced Senate Resolution 379, "Condemning Violence by the Government of Syria Against the Syrian People," which promises that the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will immediately schedule a hearing to assess "international options available" to be taken against Syria. Like his neocon allies, Kerry's resolution singles out Russia and China for refusing to capitulate to this demanded new war. It cannot be forgotten that Kerry's similar treasonous defense of Barack Obama's unconstitutional Libya War was crucial in bringing the world to the brink of the global thermonuclear war which the now-demanded action against Syria may well trigger.
>
> Russian Spokesmen See Threat of Nuclear War
>
> Sergei Markov, a public policy expert with close ties
> to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said the
> Kremlin sees the U.S./NATO goal of overthrowing
> Syrian President Hafez al-Assad as a first step to war
> against Iran, the Christian Science Monitor reported on
> Feb. 13. “We’ve been deceived over and over again,”
> Markov said. “We consider the claims that Assad is
> massacring people are falsifications, basically a pretext
> to introduce troops and start a war there. We saw the
> U.S. invade Iraq on false pretenses. Then they lied
> about the humanitarian situation in Libya, and per-
> suaded Russia to allow a UN resolution on a no-fly zone
> to protect civilians. Why should we believe them now?
> [Russia thinks] the purpose of the West is not peace but
> war in Syria. They have their own goals which they are
> cynically pursuing.”
> Gen. Nikolai Makarov, Russia’s Chief of the
> General Staff, told reporters on Feb. 14 that an attack
> from the West against Iran could take place as early as
> this Summer. The RIA News Agency said that Makarov
> “expects Iran’s enemies to decide in the next
> few months how to deal with a nuclear program that
> the United States and Israel have said they might
> attack.”
> “Iran, of course, is a sore spot,” Makarov said.
> “. . .There has to be some kind of decision about it now.
> It will be made, probably, closer to Summer.”
> He also spoke, according to the Chinese news
> agency Xinhua, against the U.S./NATO forward-basing
> of missile defense installations in Eastern Europe,
> which the U.S. claims is to counter potential missile
> threats from Iran. “By 2018,” Xinhua reported, “an entirely
> differenct generation of those missiles would be
> ‘capable of shooting down strategic missiles over our
> territory,’ Makarov said.”
> Russia’s highest military official also warned of the
> prospect of the United States deploying warships in the
> Black Sea or in the Arctic. “In a case where [Aegis antimissile
> system-equipped] ships appear in the Barents
> Sea, or in the Black Sea, for instance, we will likely
> take special measures in the frame of the state rearmament
> program,” Marakarov told reporters. “But we
> would not like to use these measures, as they increase
> the financial burden for us.”
> On Feb. 15, General Makarov told the Russian
> Public Chamber that “the possibility of local armed
> conflicts virtually along the entire perimeter of [Russia’s]
> border has grown dramatically. I cannot rule out
> that, in certain circumstances, local and regional armed
> conflicts could grow into a large-scale war, possibly
> even with nuclear weapons.”
> Russia Today news service quoted him saying that
> “almost all countries formerly belonging to the Warsaw
> Pact have become NATO members, and the Baltic
> States that were earlier a part of the U.S.S.R. have also
> joined the alliance.”
> The online news service noted an earlier statement
> by Prime Minister Putin, that “at time of the withdrawal
> from Eastern Europe, the NATO Secretary General
> promised the U.S.S.R. it could be confident that
> NATO would not expand beyond its current boundaries.
> So where is it now? I asked them [the NATO officials].
> They have nothing to say. They deceived us in
> the rudest way.”
> Then on Feb. 16, radio Ekho Moskvy interviewed
> General Makarov, who warned that Russia has the
> right to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty is
> threatened.
> Expanding on a theme he had developed in November
> of last year, when he warned of the danger of
> nuclear war, Makarov said: “We are certainly not
> planning to fight against the whole of NATO, but if
> there is a threat to the integrity of the Russian Federation,
> we have the right to use nuclear weapons, and we
> will.”
> The general said that Russia’s nuclear deterrent is
> the cornerstone of strategic stability, and serious efforts
> are being taken by the Russian government to modernize
> the country’s nuclear triad. These include adding ten
> Borey-class strategic nuclear submarines, bringing its
> Tu-160 Blackjack and Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers up
> to date, and adding Yars mobile ballistic missile systems.
> Makarov stressed that the country should also maintain
> efficient conventional forces: “Unfortunately, we
> are facing threats from a number of unstable states,
> where no nuclear weapons, but well-trained, strong,
> and mobile armed forces are required to resolve any
> conflict situation.”
> On Feb. 16, Russian Security Council head Nikolai
> Patrushev was quoted by the daily Komsomolskaya
> Pravda, citing comments made this week at a hearing
> by Gen. James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National
> Intelligence, about Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Patrushev
> said that Russia has no intention of attacking the NATO
> alliance or any other countries.
> But, he added, “our Army must fulfill its deterrent
> function and maintain the country’s sovereignty and
> peaceful life. And if the United States ignores our proposals
> regarding a missile defense system in Europe,
> we will be forced to prepare an asymmetric response.
> That global system is clearly aimed at Russia. And at
> China. Earlier the irritant was Moscow. Now it’s
> Beijing, although the theme of the break-up of Russia
> is still a current one for them. In certain circles, they
> sleep and dream about how to get the resources of
> Siberia and the Far East. And gain access to the Caspian
> and to the transportation corridor of Central
> Asia.”
>
> LT. COL. DANIEL DAVIS
> Officer Risks Career:
> 'I Knew Too Much To Remain Silent'
>
> by Carl Osgood
>
> [PDF version of this article]
>
> Feb. 20—Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, in a scathing 84-page report entitled "Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders' Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort," takes apart, with meticulous documentation, and from his own experiences, the lies of senior military officers and defense officials that are being used to mischaracterize the war in Afghanistan as some kind of success, when the reality is that it's anything but. He not only names names, but takes on the largest icon of the war, Gen. David Petraeus (ret.), a virtual super-hero among some military and neocon circles, who believe that Petraeus snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in Iraq in 2007.
>
> Davis demonstrates that the truth in Iraq is quite different from legend, but that the legend is doing us great damage in Afghanistan. Davis knows, by telling these unvarnished truths, that he has sacrificed his career. "Why write this report when you know you're going to get flamed by the Army brass?" is the question that many have asked of him, he writes. "Honestly, after all I've seen over the past decade and a half, I felt a moral obligation to do so. I believe that with knowledge comes responsibility; I knew too much to remain silent."
>
> Davis has not only confronted us with the reality on the ground in Afghanistan, a reality that contradicts the official pronouncements about the war, but has also challenged members of Congress: Do you have the guts to put the future of the nation ahead of your own political career?
>
> Davis's critique first emerged on Feb. 5, in an article he authored for the Armed Forces Journal, and a profile of him in the New York Times that appeared the same day. By his own account, Davis was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, as part of the Rapid Equipping Force, an acquisition task force set up to bypass the Army's normal bureaucratic channels to get soldiers in the field what they need as quickly as possible. In the course of that assignment, he traveled over 9,000 miles, interviewed more than 250 soldiers, from 19-year-old privates up to two-star generals, as well as Afghan soldiers, police, and others, and walked patrols in some of Afghanistan's most dangerous districts. What he saw and was told was at such variance with the official statements from Petraeus, who was the U.S./NATO Commander in Afghanistan until last July, and others, that he felt compelled to do something about it.
>
> So, after conferring with his pastor, he wrote two reports, one classified, one not, took them to four members of Congress, briefed a dozen staff members, spoke to a reporter for the New York Times, and sent his reports to the Department of Defense Inspector General. Only then, did he inform his chain of command what he was doing. Davis had no intention of releasing his unclassified report without screening it through the Army's public affairs office, but it was leaked on Feb. 10 by Rolling Stone magazine, making it available to a much wider audience.
>
> If the Army has not yet acted against him, it's likely because he has generated sympathy for his views on Capitol Hill. "For Col. Davis to go out on a limb and help us understand what's happening on the ground, I have the greatest admiration for him," Rep. Walter Jones (R-S.C.) told the New York Times' Scott Shane. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Colo.) called him a valuable witness because his extensive travels and mid-level rank gave him access to a wide range of soldiers. And Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta suggesting that he set up an independent panel to review the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, citing Davis's report, along with a very pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate that was leaked to the press last month.
>
> On Feb. 16, The Hill reported that Davis had briefed five members of Congress, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), at their invitation, on the situation in Afghanistan.
>
> The title that Davis chose for his unclassified report is itself significant. It refers to the 1997 book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, by then-Army Major H.R. McMaster, who is now a brigadier general. McMaster's book created quite a stir at the time because he had taken on an icon of an earlier time, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, who played a key role in the lies that he writes about.
> Debunking Counterinsurgency Theory
>
> Davis's "Dereliction of Duty II" is not simply an indictment of those leaders of the U.S. military for the deception they have engaged in with respect to what is actually happening in Afghanistan. It is, in fact, a direct challenge to the undermining of the institution of the U.S. military that has been underway since the Vietnam era. He goes so far as to quote Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who compared the statements of U.S. military leaders concerning conditions on the ground in Afghanistan, with the infamous "five o'clock follies" of Gen. William Westmoreland in Vietnam.
>
> In other words, the claims of "progress" are so at variance with the realities on the ground that you can't trust any official statements that come out of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters, or from the military and civilian leadership at the Pentagon.
>
> How did this situation come about? How is it that the leadership of the U.S. military is engaged in such delusion and deception and, perhaps, even outright lying, to claim that the strategy is working, when it clearly is not? What are the consequences for American troops in Afghanistan, for Afghans, and for the future course of America in the world? Davis attempts, with his 84-page report, to answer these questions.
>
> The first target of Davis's report is the counterinsurgency doctrine that is being employed in Afghanistan. The man most closely identified with that doctrine is Petraeus, now director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. As is well known, Petraeus oversaw the development of the counterinsurgency doctrine manual at the Army's Combined Armed Center in 2004. That doctrine derives from two historical sources: the U.S. experience in Vietnam, where the so-called CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support) program has been deemed a success by military historians; and the Anglo-French experience of the 1950s and '60s, especially the British campaign in Malaya.
>
> However, it is not the case that American officers came across the British Malayan experience just while doing their research. It was explicitly pushed on the U.S. Army by the British themselves. Maj. Gen. Jonathon Riley, formerly the senior British officer assigned to U.S. Central Command, during a panel discussion at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference in October 2006, indicated as much. He invoked the image of the 1950s British campaign in Malaya "as the textbook example of counterinsurgency," and suggested that that may be the model for the future.
>
> British success in Malaya has been attributed to two things, Riley said: British experience in imperial policing, and the development of concepts and techniques for waging limited war. Riley cited the 1966 book by Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, which enshrined Malaya as the "touchstone" of British expertise in counterinsurgency methods, and said, "Now that the Cold War is over, perhaps the long view may give us a different perspective, although I think [Thompson]'s wrong to dismiss imperial policing, which one can characterize as expeditionary campaign to seize the territory followed by counterinsurgency to keep it."
>
> Petraeus incorporated these British theories (along with certain French theories with which he was also enamored) into U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, and then took that doctrine to Iraq in 2007 as leader of the Iraq "surge." The outcome over the next two years made Petraeus an icon of almost god-like proportions in certain circles in Washington. But did the doctrine actually work as advertised? Davis proves in spades that the surge had little to do with the turnaround in Iraq in 2007; rather, it was the Sunni insurgency's break with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) that did it.
>
> AQI originally showed up as an ally of the Sunnis who were fighting the U.S. occupation, but it was so brutal towards the Sunnis that they eventually had no choice but to side with U.S. forces in order to get rid of this menace. Davis credits Petraeus with recognizing the significance of the Sunni Awakening that had actually begun in Anbar Province months before the first surge troops arrived. But he then quotes a number of U.S. commanders and former Iraqi insurgents to the effect that had the Sunni/al-Qaeda break never occurred, the surge and its accompanying strategy of "protecting the population" would have had little effect on the level of violence there.
>
> The story that was told back in Washington, however, was that it was Petraeus's "brilliant generalship" that "won the war" in Iraq, a narrative that became so hegemonic, nobody could counter it. The failure to properly understand what had happened in Iraq meant that when it was time for the Obama Administration to make some decisions about its future policy in Afghanistan, the Petraeus template became the strategy. The problem is, there is no al-Qaeda anymore in Afghanistan, and there's no "Awakening" movement to take a large portion of the fighters away from attacks on U.S. troops. As Davis documents, the civilian casualties have risen to their highest levels since the war began, and U.S. casualties rise and fall with the numbers of U.S. troops engaged on the ground, unlike what happened in Iraq. And yet the happy talk continues, as Davis thoroughly documents.
>
> What may be the most important aspect of this part of the story, however, is left unsaid by Davis. He notes that AQI's attacks on Shi'ite civilians inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq, and its brutal treatment of the Sunnis alienated the Sunni insurgency. Left implied is that AQI, by its actions, prevented the Sunni and Shi'a resistance to the U.S. occupation from uniting, a strategy which bears the hallmarks the classical British method of controlling subject peoples by dividing them, and setting them against each other.
>
> As EIR Online reported on Sept. 27, 2005, many in Iraq and the Arab world were already suspicious that the secret services of the U.S., Britain, and Israel were stoking the sectarian fires in Iraq. The same report noted that it was Anglo-American intelligence networks that set up what became al-Qaeda in the first place, under Osama bin Laden, during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
> Psywar Against the U.S. Public
>
> Davis devotes considerable space to the "information operations" aspect of the Afghanistan War. He documents conclusively that the information being provided to the American public is based, not on any effort to be truthful, but on political considerations. He cites a 2006 article in Military Review that advocated changing Federal law so that "Military Information Operations" could be more effective, by defining acceptable activities "that organizations may perform to protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit, U.S. national will." What has happened, is that the public affairs function, which, by definition, is supposed to merely inform the American public about military policies and activities, has become intertwined with the psychological operations function, which, by definition, targets foreign audiences to influence them to support U.S. military policies.
>
> The author of the cited article, as well as another one that Davis cites, completely ignores the possibility that U.S. public support for the war in Iraq might have been falling because of events on the ground there. This is reminiscent of those historians of a conservative bent who blame the U.S. defeat in Vietnam on the news media and the anti-war movement, rather than on anything that was happening on the ground. Without characterizing it as such, Davis is actually describing the Goebbels propaganda method—repeat a lie often enough and people will accept it as the truth without question—as applied by the U.S. military.
>
> Davis realizes that the deception didn't begin with, nor is it limited to the current wars. He describes his own involvement in two programs, the Advanced Warfighting Experiment (AWE) of 1997, and the Future Combat System (FCS) in 2003-07, to illustrate how the Army's modernization programs have been victims of the same problem. The AWE was supposed to demonstrate the efficacies of "digitization" of an entire Army division to increase its speed and lethality. The idea was that information technology would make the division so much more lethal that its force structure could be reduced, thereby making it lighter and more agile. The problem was that the experiment showed that the only thing that was accomplished was to reduce its combat power.
>
> Similarly with the FCS, which was supposed to replace the array of different vehicles and systems in an Army brigade with a single family of vehicles and reconnaissance systems all tied together with a network. Neither program worked, but Army leaders (probably encouraged by the contractors who were making billions off these programs) hid the failures from Congress and the American public.
>
> Perhaps what Davis doesn't realize is that these failures also proved that the whole Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) concept, which was the theory behind these programs, itself didn't work: the notion that new information age technologies, combined with new operating concepts, would give us perfect knowledge of the battlefield and make us unbeatable.
>
> The driving force within the Pentagon behind this concept has been Andrew Marshall, the director of the Office of Net Assessment since 1973. He's an example of the permanent bureaucracy in the British government that Franklin Roosevelt once complained about: "Governments come and governments go," Roosevelt was reported to have said, "but the permanent undersecretary is always there." Marshall has been the continuity of policy within the Pentagon on the RMA, and is also the force behind the Obama Administration's "Asia pivot." The RMA has been proven to be a failure several times since 1997, yet it remains the underlying concept for restructuring U.S. military forces.
> From Afghanistan to Iran?
>
> The wide gulf between what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan and what our top civilian and military leaders say about Afghanistan has serious domestic policy implications. Davis writes:
>
> "If the American people do not demand their leaders be completely honest with them, we all forfeit the ability to determine our own destiny. If our acquiescence for a war decision is gained by some leader telling us a version of events that will result in our support, but that version is not in accordance with what really exists, how can we know whether war or supporting a war is really a good idea or not? Are the American people content to allow selected individuals, for reasons important to them, to decide when they are told the truth and when they are given fiction? When we tacitly know leaders don't tell the truth and yet do nothing about it, we effectively surrender control to our leaders and give them free reign to do as they see fit. Already we have gone far down this path and as a public have already relinquished considerable control that ought to reside in the people's hands."
>
> Davis has just described how we got into the Iraq War in the first place. It takes not only the deception and lies of the leadership of the country, but the corruption of the population to acquiesce in those lies. The exact same game is being played with respect to Iran, a war, that, if allowed to occur, would be far more devastating, indeed, civilization threatening, than anything we have seen up until now. Will the elected members of the Congress again "go along to get along" or will they put the fate of the nation ahead of their own political interests, and act to remove Obama from office in time to prevent this catastrophe from happening?
>
> —cjosgood@att.net

Obama's War, Clinton's Mistake

> This release is being distributed throughout the United States and worldwide by the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) and friends and supporters of our work, as part of an effort to shake sense into a population and a political leadership which is rapidly marching the U.S. and the world into global war. Please distribute -- Mike Billington
> Obama's Thermonuclear Holocaust: President Clinton's Fatal Mistake
> Feb 27, 2012 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
>
> Today, as we go about our usual business, few among us have even a clue that we are all living on borrowed time. In fact, were it not for the efforts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, and a small handful of others among our patriotic military, much of human civilization would already have been annihilated in a global thermonuclear war.
>
> One need only pick up a newspaper to know that the entire, rotten global financial system is but a rotting corpse. That fact is not breaking news. However, faced with the bankruptcy of the entire trans-Atlantic system, the dying British Empire is currently using the threat of thermonuclear war to induce the nations of Russia and China to give up their commitment to economic sovereignty and progress. If Russia and China continue to refuse to submit, London intends to provoke a thermonuclear exchange between the United States and Russia that would render the human species extinct. Were an attack initiated from the United States, Russia and China would have no other option than to respond with their full capabilities. The implications of this scenario mean the probable extinction of human civilization as we know it, precisely as Gen. Dempsey's warnings have implied. This is a truth that few of America's so-called leaders are willing to face. And, as Lyndon LaRouche has warned, the upcoming March 4 elections in Russia, might just be the trigger for them to let those missiles fly — and they will strike suddenly and without warning.
>
> Despite attempts by the British Empire to bring regime change to Moscow, Vladimir Putin remains strong, and has resisted all efforts to force him to fold. Open death threats have been printed in the mainstream press, typified by Foreign Policy magazines 'Putin Is Already Dead,' and Boris Berezovsky's remarks that Putin deserves the "Qaddafi treatment." In stark contrast to every national leader in Europe, however, Russia has steadfastly refused to surrender its national sovereignty to London's monetary empire, and instead, in partnership with China, has pursued an aggressive commitment to science and progress — nuclear power, fusion research, Arctic exploration, lunar colonization — everything which the trans-Atlantic world has rejected in the name of going green.
>
> But, the most dangerous aspect of the current situation is that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, is a homicidal puppet of the British Empire. Obama has already shown himself to be a killer—look at the precedent of Muammar Qaddafi. Just like Hitler before him, Obama will eliminate his opposition unless he is removed from office first. Who else is Obama prepared to kill?
>
> There is no hope for the United States or anyone else on this planet, unless the President to be elected is neither one of the four Republicans now on stage, nor the treasonous mimic of the ancient Roman Emperor Nero, British imperial puppet and established mass-murderer Barack Obama.
>
> Any Democrat who supports an Obama re-nomination must be either mentally deficient, or as Lyndon LaRouche has described it, a Democrat who suffers a tendency for a lack of excessive courage for the true cause, at this time of truly existential world crisis.
>
> Take the case of former President Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton is highly intelligent and a usually highly moral American patriot. But, he has made a terrible mistake by capitulating and agreeing to give public support to Obama. It is a mistake that, if not corrected, could be fatal for the nation. What possible excuse could account for this? Perhaps he will argue that the Republican candidates are worse. Or, perhaps the unspoken excuse is his attempt to protect his wife from further brutalization at the hands of Obama. Or perhaps the former President is gun shy following the assault that was launched against him (and almost cost him his presidency) following his attempt to do something great: to initiate a new, more just world economic order.
>
> Ultimately, none of the excuses are important. President Clinton's capitulating to Obama is demoralizing the Democrats, by insisting on trying to rally them around the Democratic party rather than providing them with a real viable alternative. Support for Obama may mean the death of most people of the United States, yet Clinton is still pushing it.
>
> In a statement released today, LaRouche was blunt:
>
> "Obama's operation is key to sending the United States into a thermonuclear global warfare! It's only to the degree that we're out to dump Obama, that we can possibly save this nation from destruction. Therefore, anyone who is supporting Obama has to be denounced as a damn fool, or worse. If we're serious, that's the issue. President Clinton has made a terrible mistake. We hope he corrects it. What he's put forth as a policy can result in the death of the nation."

Wikileaks Pairs with Anonymous to Publish Intelligence Firm’s Dirty Laundry

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/wikileaks-anonymous-partners/

Wikileaks Pairs with Anonymous to Publish Intelligence Firm’s Dirty Laundry

By Quinn Norton
Email Author
February 26, 2012

In an unprecedented collaboration between Anonymous and WikiLeaks, the secret spilling site began leaking Sunday night portions of a massive trove of e-mails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor that Anonymous obtained by hacking the company in December.

WikiLeaks did not mention the source of the reported five gigabytes of e-mails in its press release, but did say it has been working for months with 25 media outlets from around the world to analyze the documents.

The first batch of leaked e-mails purport to show that Stratfor monitored the political prankster group known as The Yes Men on behalf of Dow Chemical, which has been targeted by The Yes Men over the company’s handling of the Bhopal disaster. The e-mails also purport to show Stratfor’s attempt to set up an investment fund with a Goldman Sachs director to trade on the intelligence Stratfor collects, as well as give insight into how the private intelligence firm acquires, and sometimes pays for, information.

Stratfor, somewhat akin to a privatized CIA, sells its analyses of global politics to major corporations and government agencies.

Members of Anonymous with direct knowledge of the hack and transfer of data to WikiLeaks told Wired that the group decided to turn the information over to WikiLeaks because the site was more capable of analyzing and spreading the leaked information than Anonymous would be.

“WikiLeaks has great means to publish and disclose,” the anon told Wired. “Also, they work together with media in a way we don’t.”

“Basically, WL is the ideal partner for such stuff,” the anon continued. “Antisec acquires the shit, WL gets it released in a proper manner.” Antisec is the arm of Anonymous that is known for hacking into servers.

According to Antisec participants, Stratfor was targeted not just for its poor security, but also because of its client list, which includes major companies and government entities

“We believe police and employees who work for the most significant fortune 500 companies are the most responsible for perpetuating the machinery of capitalism and the state,” said one Antisec participant in December, “That there will be repercussions for when you choose to betray the people and side with the rich ruling classes.”

Anons also told Wired that future collaborations with WikiLeaks could involve a series of hacks that will be announced, one after another, every Friday for the foreseeable future. If that happens, the Stratfor e-mail release could be the first sign of a new, powerful alliance between the two groups, each of which has vexed and angered the world’s most powerful governments and corporations.

A document provided to Wired that could not be authenticated indicated that the media partners of WikiLeaks agreed to parcel out stories on the leaks over the coming week and a half. Those media partners do not include previous partners such as the Guardian and U.S. partners The New York Times and the Washington Post.

According to the document, e-mails about WikiLeaks and Anonymous will be disclosed Wednesday, followed by separate disclosures on Italy, the Middle East and then Asian countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, among others. The project, code-named Rock Guitar, is officially named “The Global Intelligence Files.”

Stratfor had been aware that the e-mails would likely be published in some form by Anonymous, but said in January that the e-mails should not embarrass the company.

The collaboration between WikiLeaks and Anonymous is an odd couple pairing. WikiLeaks has largely crumbled over the last 18 months, due to internal disagreements over the management style and legal problems of its outspoken leader Julian Assange. By contrast, Anonymous is an amorphous group with no leadership structure.

If Anonymous continues feeding WikiLeaks with documents, the secret spilling site could return to a prominence that seemed lost due to technical difficulties, legal troubles, in-fighting and public fallings out with media partners in the wake of the site’s publication of a massive trove of U.S. documents in 2010 and 2011.

WikiLeaks’s alleged source for those documents, Pfc. Bradley Manning, is facing a U.S. army court martial and a possible sentence of life imprisonment.

As for how the collaboration between the two groups went, an anon with direct knowledge of it indicated that the new relationship had some tough moments.

“There were some natural tensions as usually can happen inside partnership,” the anon said. ”I hope this was only the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”

Pressure builds for civilian drone flights at home

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20120226/news/702269954/

Pressure builds for civilian drone flights at home

A ShadowHawk drone with Montgomery County, Texas SWAT team members. Unmanned military aircraft have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia. Their civilian cousins are now in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a birdís-eye view thatís too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get. Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms. Drones overhead could invade peopleís privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more widespread adoption of the technology.

A ShadowHawk drone with Montgomery County, Texas SWAT team members. Unmanned military aircraft have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia. Their civilian cousins are now in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a birdís-eye view thatís too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get. Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms. Drones overhead could invade peopleís privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more widespread adoption of the technology.


Vanguard Defense Industries
Mesa County, Colo. Sheriff’s Deputy Amanda Hill of the Mesa County Sheriffís Office in Colorado prepares to use a Draganflyer X6 drone equipped with a video camera to help search for a suspect in a knife attack in Mesa County, Colo. Unmanned military aircraft have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia. Their civilian cousins are now in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a birdís-eye view thatís too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get. Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms. Drones overhead could invade peopleís privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more widespread adoption of the technology.

Mesa County, Colo. Sheriff’s Deputy Amanda Hill of the Mesa County Sheriffís Office in Colorado prepares to use a Draganflyer X6 drone equipped with a video camera to help search for a suspect in a knife attack in Mesa County, Colo. Unmanned military aircraft have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia. Their civilian cousins are now in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a birdís-eye view thatís too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get. Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms. Drones overhead could invade peopleís privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more widespread adoption of the technology.


Mesa County Sheriff’s Unmanned Operations Team
1 of 2
View other photograph collections

By Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Heads up: Drones are going mainstream.

Civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird’s-eye view that’s too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get.

Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms.

Drones overhead could invade people’s privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more widespread adoption of the technology.

Despite that, pressure is building to give drones the same access as manned aircraft to the sky at home.

“It’s going to be the next big revolution in aviation. It’s coming,” says Dan Elwell, the Aerospace Industries Association’s vice president for civil aviation.

Some impetus comes from the military, which will bring home drones from Afghanistan and wants room to test and use them. In December, Congress gave the Federal Aviation Administration six months to pick half a dozen sites around the country where the military and others can fly unmanned aircraft in the vicinity of regular air traffic, with the aim of demonstrating they’re safe.

The Defense Department says the demand for drones and their expanding missions requires routine and unfettered access to domestic airspace, including around airports and cities. In a report last October, the Pentagon called for flights first by small drones both solo and in groups, day and night, expanding over several years. Flights by large and medium-sized drones would follow in the latter half of this decade.

Other government agencies want to fly drones, too, but they’ve been hobbled by an FAA ban unless they first receive case-by-case permission. Fewer than 300 waivers were in use at the end of 2011, and they often include restrictions that severely limit the usefulness of the flights. Businesses that want to put drones to work are out of luck; waivers are only for government agencies.

But that’s changing.

Congress has told the FAA that the agency must allow civilian and military drones to fly in civilian airspace by September 2015. This spring, the FAA is set to take a first step by proposing rules that would allow limited commercial use of small drones for the first time.

Until recently, agency officials were saying there were too many unresolved safety issues to give drones greater access. Even now FAA officials are cautious about describing their plans and they avoid discussion of deadlines. ...

...Potential civilian users are as varied as the drones themselves.

Power companies want them to monitor transmission lines. Farmers want to fly them over fields to detect which crops need water. Ranchers want them to count cows.

Journalists are exploring drones’ newsgathering potential. The FAA is investigating whether The Daily, a digital publication of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., used drones without permission to capture aerial footage of floodwaters in North Dakota and Mississippi last year. At the University of Nebraska, journalism professor Matt Waite has started a lab for students to experiment with using a small, remote-controlled helicopter.

“Can you cover news with a drone? I think the answer is yes,” Waite said.

The aerospace industry forecasts a worldwide deployment of almost 30,000 drones by 2018, with the United States accounting for half of them.

“The potential ... civil market for these systems could dwarf the military market in the coming years if we can get access to the airspace,” said Ben Gielow, government relations manager for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group.

The hungriest market is the nation’s 19,000 law enforcement agencies.

[JR: The use of drones by "law enforcement agencies will be abused like the tasers.]

Customs and Border Patrol has nine Predator drones mostly in use on the U.S.-Mexico border, and plans to expand to 24 by 2016. Officials say the unmanned aircraft have helped in the seizure of more than 20 tons of illegal drugs and the arrest of 7,500 people since border patrols began six years ago.

Several police departments are experimenting with smaller drones to photograph crime scenes, aid searches and scan the ground ahead of SWAT teams. The Justice Department has four drones it loans to police agencies.

“We look at this as a low-cost alternative to buying a helicopter or fixed-wing plane,” said Michael O’Shea, the department’s aviation technology program manager. A small drone can cost less than $50,000, about the price of a patrol car with standard police gear.

Like other agencies, police departments must get FAA waivers and follow much the same rules as model airplane hobbyists: Drones must weigh less than 55 pounds, stay below an altitude of 400 feet, keep away from airports and always stay within sight of the operator. The restrictions are meant to prevent collisions with manned aircraft.

Even a small drone can be “a huge threat” to a larger plane, said Dale Wright, head of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association’s safety committee. “If an airliner sucks it up in an engine, it’s probably going to take the engine out,” he said. “If it hits a small plane, it could bring it down.”

Controllers want drone operators to be required to have instrument-rated pilot licenses — a step above a basic private pilot license. “We don’t want the Microsoft pilot who has never really flown an airplane and doesn’t know the rules of how to fly,” Wright said.

Military drones designed for battlefields haven’t had to meet the kind of rigorous safety standards required of commercial aircraft.

“If you are going to design these things to operate in the (civilian) airspace you need to start upping the ante,” said Tom Haueter, director of the National Transportation Safety Board’s aviation safety office. “It’s one thing to operate down low. It’s another thing to operate where other airplanes are, especially over populated areas.”

Even with FAA restrictions, drones are proving useful in the field.

Deputies with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado can launch a 2-pound Draganflyer X6 helicopter from the back of a patrol car. The drone’s bird’s-eye view cut the manpower needed for a search of a creek bed for a missing person from 10 people to two, said Ben Miller, who runs the drone program. The craft also enabled deputies to alert fire officials to a potential roof collapse in time for the evacuation of firefighters from the building, he said.

The drone could do more if it were not for the FAA’s line-of-sight restriction, Miller said. “I don’t think (the restriction) provides any extra safety,” he said.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, north of Houston, used a Department of Homeland Security grant to buy a $300,000, 50-pound ShadowHawk helicopter drone for its SWAT team. The drone has a high-powered video camera and an infrared camera that can spot a person’s thermal image in the dark.

“Public-safety agencies are beginning to see this as an invaluable tool for them, just as the car was an improvement over the horse and the single-shot pistol was improved upon by the six-shooter,” said Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel, who runs the Montgomery drone program.

The ShadowHawk can be equipped with a 40 mm grenade launcher and a 12-guage shotgun, according to its maker, Vanguard Defense Industries of Conroe, Texas. The company doesn’t sell the armed version in the United States, although “we have had interest from law-enforcement entities for deployment of nonlethal munitions from the aircraft,” Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher said.

The possibility of armed police drones someday patrolling the sky disturbs Terri Burke, executive director of the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The Constitution is taking a back seat so that boys can play with their toys,” Burke said. “It’s kind of scary that they can use a laptop computer to zap people from the air.”

A recent ACLU report said allowing drones greater access takes the country “a large step closer to a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the authorities.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on civil liberties threats involving new technologies, sued the FAA recently, seeking disclosure of which agencies have been given permission to use drones. FAA officials declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about the lawsuit.

Industry officials said privacy concerns are overblown.

“Today anybody— the paparazzi, anybody — can hire a helicopter or a (small plane) to circle around something that they’re interested in and shoot away with high-powered cameras all they want,” said Elwell, the aerospace industry spokesman. “I don’t understand all the comments about the Big Brother thing.”
Online

Federal Aviation Administration: http://www.faa.gov

Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International: http://www.auvsi.org

Aerospace Industries Association: http://www.aia-aerospace.org/

ACLU report: http://tinyurl.com/77n9h7m

Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit: http://tinyurl.com/7feyfv9

Obama’s Planned War on China Could be Stymied in the Philippines

Obama’s Planned War on China Could be Stymied in the Philippines

by Mike Billington

Feb. 19 — President Barack Obama’s intention to impose the British Empire’s thermonuclear war policy against Asia has rested in part on his “tilt” toward Asia – a tilt which is entirely directed towards economic and military confrontation with China (see “Brits, Obama Push World War Against Russia and China,”http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2012/2012_1-9/2012-06/pdf/29-31_3906.pdf). During his trip to Asia in November, Obama announced two primary military deployments designed to facilitate a war on China — the establishment of huge military bases in Australia, out of range of Chinese missiles, and the reintroduction of Air, Naval and Marine bases in the Philippines. The Philippine bases are crucial as a take off point for air and sea assaults against the mainland of China, under the “Air-Sea Battle” military doctrine recently adopted by the Obama Administration.

There is one problem – the deployment of foreign military bases in the Philippines is explicitly forbidden in the Philippine Constitution.

To solve that pesky impediment, Obama has called upon his faithful puppet currently occupying the Philippine Presidency, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, to impose a virtual dictatorship upon the nation, by destroying the Supreme Court – the only institution which could stop the effort to rip up the Constitution and turn the Philippines into a military base, and canon fodder, in the intended war on China.

President Aquino is the son of Cory Aquino, who was placed in office as Presdident of the Philippines in 1986 following the military coup against the nation’s last nationalist leader, Ferdinand Marcos, a “regime change” that was orchestrated by U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz. As President, Cory faithfully followed the dictates from Washington, shutting down the industrial and agricultural programs Marcos had implemented to transform the Philippines into a modern nation, including the first nuclear power plant in Southeast Asia, a dozen industrial projects, and a rice self-sufficiency program.

The nation has never recovered, and is now totally destitute, within an Asian region which is otherwise experiencing significant progress despite the global economic crisis.
Aquino and Obama – Rip Up the Constitution

President Aquino’s assault against the Supreme Court takes the form of an impeachment of the Chief Justice Renato Corona. There is a degree of pure personal corruption involved on Aquino’s part — the Court recently ruled that the national land reform policy must be implemented at the vast sugar plantation owned by President Aquino and his family, Hacienda Luisita. But the primary purpose is to prevent any discussion of the unconstitutional and suicidal intention of Aquino and Obama to use the nation as a base for world war.

The Supreme Court once before stymied a government plan, under former President Gloria Arroyo, to make part of the southern island of Mindanao an autonomous region under control of certain factions of the Muslim community living there. The fact that this deal would have given the autonomous government the power to allow foreign military bases (contrary to the national Constitution) was one crucial reason for the Supreme Court’s decision to forbid the deal.

Now, Aquino and Obama are implementing the basing policy through outright dictatorial means, attempting to castrate the Supreme Court while preventing the issue from even being discussed in the Congress (which is largely controlled by the President, especially the House). The entire nation is caught up in the melodrama of an impeachment trial now going on in the Senate, and there is virtually no discussion of the illegality of the blatant move to establish the U.S. bases. To add farce to insanity, both Aquino and Obama are claiming that the deployment of advanced naval warships and air power, as well as more marine bases (some moving from the current bases in Okinawa), are not “bases” at all, but only “temporary” visits on a “rotating” basis. A similar subterfuge has been used to explain the hundreds of marines based in Mindanao to aid in the war on terrorist elements – “temporarily” there for the past ten years!
Backfire — Impeach Aquino?

There is mounting resistance, especially since the impeachment trial has shown that the prosecution, openly sponsored and promoted by the President (another overt breach of the Constitutional separation of powers), has no evidence of wrong doing, and has even presented banking documents (aimed at showing the Chief Justice had unexplained wealth) which were exposed as fraudulent by the prosecution’s own witness!

The organization “Solidarity for Sovereignty,” co-founded by Butch Valdes, the head of the Philippine LaRouche Society, intervened in the impeachment farce by organizing a series of prayer vigils at the Supreme Court, calling on the Chief Justice and the Catholic Church (and other religious organizations) to fight the impeachment by defending the Constitution, rather than simply defending the Chief Justice himself against contrived charges.

Valdes, speaking on his weekly radio show Sunday night Feb. 19, said in regard to the Aquino-Obama military deals: “The secrecy of this agreement and its dire implications may also be a principal reason as to why [Aquino] is hell-bent on controlling the judiciary as a defacto dictator – so he would not have to explain to the Filipino people why he has placed the lives of 97 million in harm’s way. It should be known to all, including Noynoy supporters, that the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Corona, is not merely about the Hacienda Luisita, nor [former President] Gloria M. Arroyo, but more importantly about putting all our lives at risk at a time when a global thermonuclear war is imminent. It is our duty to assert our sovereignty as a people, not to be used by any foreign interest, especially a clinically insane American leader, as dispensable human beings in their deadly plan to burn the world.”

Others are speaking out. Former Senator Kit Tatad, who is now a leading advisor to the Vice President Jejomar Binay (Joe Biden, are you listening?)has called for the impeachment not of the Chief Justice, but of President Aquino, for his blatant attack on the Constitutional separation of powers. Tatad wrote in an op-ed in the Manila Times Feb. 14 that the last straw was the revelation that the President’s Executive Secretary “started asking individual senators, in the name of the President, not to honor the Supreme Court’s Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on the opening of [Chief Justice] Corona’s alleged dollar account at the Philippine Savings Bank…. [S]ome senators, speaking in the strictest confidence, revealed having received a call from the Executive Secretary allegedly to transmit an urgent personal request from the President that they not honor the TRO. This suggests a constitutional crime of incalculable magnitude, given the President’s oath of office…. No president should ever inveigh against the law, and ask other government officials to defy the law or an order of the highest court, based on its interpretation of the law, just because he does not like or agree with it…. By this very act, PNoy may have rendered himself completely impeachable and unfit to continue in office. He may have placed himself not just above the law but against the law, the exact opposite of what a president should be.”

Chief Justice Corona himself also went public with a call for the President’s impeachment, issuing a public letter stating that “the President has clearly committed an impeachable offense when he came out swinging by openly urging the Senator-Judges to disobey the Constitution he has personally sworn to uphold.”
People’s Power?

President Aquino has attempted to mount a repeat of the “People’s Power” which was used to overthrow Marcos and install his Mother as a puppet President. But despite his support in opinion polls, no one showed up. While the Solidarity for Sovereignty and other organizations rallied 5,000 people to the Supreme Court to defend the Constitution, Aquino’s call for a mass People’s Party rally in favor of his attempt to seize all power flopped, with only 200 people showing up.

Nonetheless, on February 26, in celebration of the 1986 People’s Power, Aquino is calling for a million people to come to the national park in Manila. There are concerns that Aquino could use the occasion to declare a national emergency, to force the issue he is losing in the impeachment process.

President Obama, meanwhile, is praising Aquino for “fighting corruption,” using dictatorial methods much admired by Obama.

If the Filipino people rise to this historic occasion, exposing the criminal and suicidal crimes of their President in his collaboration with Obama, then this small nation could help stop a rush for global war which threatens the very existence of civilization as we know it.

mobeir@aol.com

The “Global Crises of Capitalism”; Whose Crises, Who Profits?

The “Global Crises of Capitalism”; Whose Crises, Who Profits?

by Prof. James Petras


Global Research, February 20, 2012
- 2012-02-19

Email this article to a friend
Print this article

0digg 115Share

Introduction

From the Financial Times to the far left, tons of ink has been spilt writing about some variant of the “Crises of Global Capitalism”. While writers differ in the causes, consequences and cures, according to their ideological lights, there is a common agreement that “the crises” threatens to end the capitalist system as we know it.

There is no doubt that, between 2008-2009, the capitalist system in Europe and the United States suffered a severe shock that shook the foundations of its financial system and threatened to bankrupt its ‘leading sectors’.

However, I will argue the ‘crises of capitalism’ was turned into a ‘crises of labor’. Finance capital, the principle detonator of the crash and crises, recovered, the capitalist class as a whole was strengthened, and most important of all, it utilized the political, social, ideological conditions created as a result of “the crises” to further consolidate their dominance and exploitation over the rest of society.

In other words, the ‘crises of capital’ has been converted into a strategic advantage for furthering the most fundamental interests of capital: the enlargement of profits, the consolidation of capitalist rule, the greater concentration of ownership, the deepening of inequalities between capital and labor and the creation of huge reserves of labor to further augment their profits.

Furthermore, the notion of a homogeneous global crisis of capitalism overlooks profound differences in performance and conditions, between countries, classes, and age cohorts.

The Global Crises Thesis:The Economic and Social Argument

The advocates of global crises argue that beginning in 2007 and continuing to the present, the world capitalist system has collapsed and recovery is a mirage. They cite stagnation and continuing recession in North America and the Eurozone. They offer GDP data hovering between negative to zero growth. Their argument is backed by data citing double digit unemployment in both regions. They frequently correct the official data which understates the percentage unemployed by excluding part-time, long-term unemployed workers and others. The ‘crises’ argument is strengthened by citing the millions of homeowners who have been evicted by the banks, the sharp increase in poverty and destitution accompanying job loses, wage reductions and the elimination or reduction of social services. “”Crises” is also associated with the massive increase in bankruptcies of mostly small and medium size businesses and regional banks.

The Global Crises: The Loss of Legitimacy

Critics, especially in the financial press, write of a “legitimacy crises of capitalism” citing polls showing substantial majorities questioning the in justice s of the capitalist system, the vast and growing inequalities and the rigged rules by which banks exploit their size (“too big to fail”) to raid the Treasury at the expense of social programs.

In summary the advocates of the thesis of a “Global Crises of Capitalism” make a strong case, demonstrating the profound and pervasive destructive effects of the capitalist system on the lives of the great majority of humanity.

The problem is that a ‘crises of humanity’ (more specifically of salary ad wage workers) is not the same as a crisis of the capitalist system. In fact as we shall argue below growing social adversity, declining income and employment has been a major factor facilitating the rapid and massive recovery of the profit margins of most large scale corporations.

Moreover, the thesis of a‘global’ crises of capitalism amalgamates disparate economies, countries, classes and age cohorts with sharply divergent performances at different historical moments.

Global Crises or Uneven and Unequal Development?

It is utterly foolish to argue for a “global crises” when several of the major economies in the world economy did not suffer a major downturn and others recovered and expanded rapidly. China and India did not suffer even a recession. Even during the worst years of the Euro-US decline,the asian giants grew on average about 8%. Latin America’s economies especially the major agro-mineral export countries (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, ) with diversified markets, especially in Asia, paused briefly (in 2009) before assuming moderate to rapid growth (between 3% to 7%) from 2010-2012.

By aggregating economic data from the Euro-zone as a whole the advocates of global crises, overlooked the enormous disparities in performance within the zone. While Southern Europe wallows in a deep sustained depression,by any measure, from 2008 to the foreseeable future, German exports, in 2011, set a record of a trillion euros; its trade surplus reached 158 billion euros, after a155 billion euro surpluses in 2010. (BBC News, Feb. 8 2012).

While aggregate Eurozone unemployment reaches 10.4%, the internal differences defy any notion of a “general crises”. Unemployment in Holland is 4.9%, Austria 4.1% and Germany 5.5% with employer claims of widespread skilled labor shortages in key growth sectors. On the other hand in exploited southern Europe unemployment runs to depression levels, Greece 21%, Spain 22.9%, Ireland 14.5%, and Portugal 13.6% (FT 1/19/12, p.7). In other words, “the crises” does not adversely affect some economies, that in fact profit from their market dominance and techno-financial strength over dependent, debtor and backward economies. To speak of a ‘global crises’ obscures the fundamental dominant and exploitative relations that facilitate ‘recovery’ and growth of the elite economies over and against their competitors and client states. In addition global crises theorists wrongly amalgamated crises ridden, financial-speculative economies (US, England ) with dynamic productive export economies ( Germany , China ).

The second problem with the thesis of a “global crises” is that it overlooks profound internal differences between age cohorts. In several European countries youth unemployment (16-25) runs between 30 to 50% (Spain 48.7%, Greece 47.2%, Slovakia 35.6%, Italy 31%, Portugal 30.8% and Ireland 29%) while in Germany, Austria and Holland youth unemployment runs to Germany 7.8%, Austria 8.2% and Netherlands 8.6% (Financial Times (FT) 2/1/12, p2). These differences underlie the reason why there is not a ‘global youth movement’ of “indignant” and “occupiers” .Five-fold differences between unemployed youth is not conducive to ‘international’ solidarity. The concentration of high youth unemployment figures explains the uneven development of mass- street protests especially centered in Southern Europe . It also explains why the northern Euro-American “anti-globalization” movement is largely a lifeless forum which attracts academic pontification on the “global capitalist crises” and the impotence of the “Social Forums” are unable to attract millions of unemployed youth from Southern Europe .They are more attracted to direct action. Globalist theorists overlook the specific way in which the mass of unemployed young workers are exploited in their dependent debt ridden countries. They ignore the specific way they are ruled and repressed by center-left and rightist capitalist parties. The contrast is most evident in the winter of 2012. Greek workers are pressured to accept a 20% cut in minimum wages while in Germany workers are demanding a 6% increase.

If the ‘crises’ of capitalism is manifested in specific regions, so too does it affect different age/racial sectors of the wage and salaries classes. The unemployment rates of youth to older workers varies enormously: in Italy it is 3.5/1, Greece 2.5/1, Portugal 2.3/1, Spain 2.1/1 and Belgium 2.9/1. In Germany it is 1.5/1 (FT 2/1/12). In other words because of the higher levels of unemployment among youth they have a greater propensity for direct action ‘against the system’; while older workers with higher levels of employment (and unemployment benefits) have shown a greater propensity to rely on the ballot box and engage in limited strikes over job and pay related issues. The vast concentration of unemployed among young workers means they form the ‘available core’ for sustained action; but it also means that they can only achieve limited unity of action with the older working class experiencing single digit unemployment.

However, it is also true that the great mass of unemployment youth provides a formidable weapon, in the hands of employers to threaten to replace employed older workers. Today, capitalists constantly resort to using the unemployed to lower wages and benefits and to intensify exploitation(dubbed to “increase productivity”) to increase profit margins. Far from being simply an indicater of ‘capitalist crises’, high levels of unemployment have served along with other factors’ to increase the rate of profit, accumulate income, widen income inequalities which augments the consumption of luxury goods for the capitalist class:the sales of luxury cars and watches is booming.

Class Crises: The Counter-Thesis

Contrary to the “global capitalist crises” theorists, a substantial amount of data has surfaced which refutes its assumptions. A recent study reports “US corporate profits are higher as a share of gross domestic product than at any time since 1950” (FT 1/30/12). US companies cash balances have never been greater, thanks to intensified exploitation of workers, and a multi-tiered wage systems in which new hires work for a fraction of what older workers receive (thanks to agreements signed by ‘door mat’ labor bosses).

The “crises of capitalism” ideologues have ignored the financial reports of the major US corporations.According to General Motors 2011 report to its stockholders,they celebrated the greatest profit ever,turning a profit of $7.6 billion, surpassing the previous record of $6.7 billion in 1997.A large part of these profits results from the freezing of its underfunded US pension funds and extracting greater productivity from fewer workers-in other words intensified exploitation-and cutting hourly wages of new hires by half.(Earthlink News 2/16/12)

Moreover the increased importance of imperialist exploitation is evident as the share of US corporate profits extracted overseas keeps rising at the expense of employee income growth.In 2011, the US economy grew by 1.7%,but median wages fell by 2.7%.Accordingto the financial press”the profit margens of the S and P 500 leapt from

6% to 9% of the GDP in the past three years,a share last achieved three generations ago.At roughly a third, the foreign share of these profits has more than doubled since 2000”(FT 2/13/12 P9.If this is a “capitalist crises”then who needs a capitalist boom ?

Surveys of top corporations reveal that US companies are holding 1.73 trillion in cash, “the fruits of record high profit margins” (FT 1/30/12 p.6). These record profit margins result from mass firings which have led to intensifying exploitation of the remaining workers. Also negligible federal interest rates and easy access to credit allow capitalists to exploit vast differentials between borrowing and lending and investing. Lower taxes and cuts in social programs result in a growing cash pile for corporations. Within the corporate structure, income goes to the top where senior executives pay themselves huge bonuses. Among the leading S and P 500 corporations the proportion of income that goes to dividends for stockholders is the lowest since 1900 (FT 1/30/12, p.6).

A real capitalist crisis would adversely affect profit margins, gross earnings and the accumulation of “cash piles”. Rising profits are being horded because as capitalists profit from intense exploitation , mass consumption stagnates.

Crises theorists confuse what is clearly the degrading of labor, the savaging of living and working conditions and even the stagnation of the economy, with a ‘crises’ of capital: when the capitalist class increases its profit margins, hoards trillions, it is not in crises. The key point is that the ‘crises of labor’ is a major stimulus for the recovery of capitalist profits. We cannot generalize from one to the other. No doubt there was a moment of capitalist crises (2008-2009) but thanks to the capitalist state’s unprecedented massive transfer of wealth from the public treasury to the capitalist class – Wall Street banks in the first instance – the corporate sector recovered, while the workers and the rest of the economy remained in crises, went bankrupt and out of work.

From Crises to Recovery of Profits: 2008/9 to 2012

The key to the ‘recovery’ of corporate profits had little to do with the business cycle and all to do with Wall Street’s large scale takeover and pillage of the US Treasury. Between 2009-2012 hundreds of former Wall Street executives, managers and investment advisers seized all the major decision-making positions in the Treasury Department and channeled trillions of dollars into leading financial and corporate coffers. They intervened financially troubled corporations,like General Motors, imposing major wage cuts and dismissals of thousands of workers.

Wall Streeters in Treasury elaborated the doctrine of “Too Big to Fail” to justify the massive transfer of wealth. The entire speculative edifice built in part by a 234 fold rise in foreign exchange trading volume between 1977-2010 was restored (FT 1/10/12, p.7). The new doctrine argued that the state’s first and principle priority is to return the financial system to profitability at any and all cost to society, citizens, taxpayers and workers. “Too Big to Fail” is a complete repudiation of the most basic principle of the “free market” capitalist system: the idea that those capitalists who lose bear the consequences; that each investor or CEO, is responsible for their action. Financial capitalists no longer needed to justify their activity in terms of any contribution to the growth of the economy or “social utility”. According to the current rulers Wall Street must be saved because it is Wall Street, even if the rest of the economy and people sink (FT 1/20/12, p.11). State bailouts and financing are complemented by hundreds of billions in tax concessions, leading to unprecedented fiscal deficits and the growth of massive social inequalities. The pay of CEO’s as a multiple of the average worker went from 24 to 1 in 1965 to 325 in 2010 (FT 1/9/12, p.5).

The ruling class flaunts their wealth and power aided and abetted by the White House and Treasury. In the face of popular hostility to Wall Street pillage of Treasury, Obama went through the sham of asking Treasury to impose a cap on the multi-million dollar bonuses that the CEO’s running bailed out banks awarded themselves. Wall Streeters in Treasury refused to enforce the executive order, the CEO’s got billions in bonuses in 2011 . President Obama went along, thinking he conned the US public with his phony gesture,while he reaped millions in campaign funds from Wall Street!

The reason Treasury has been taken over by Wall Street is that in the 1990’s and 2000’s, banks became a leading force in Western economies. Their share of the GDP rose sharply (from 2% in the 1950’s to 8% in 2010” (FT 1/10/12, p.7).

Today it is “normal operating procedure” for President’s to appoint Wall Streeter’s to all key economic positions; and it is ‘normal’ for these same officials to pursue policies that maximize Wall Street profits and eliminate any risk of failure no matter how risky and corrupt their practioners.

The Revolving Door: From Wall Street to Treasury and Return

Effectively the relation between Wall Street and Treasury has become a “revolving door”: from Wall Street to the Treasury Department to Wall Street. Private bankers take appointments in Treasury (or are recruited) to ensure that all resources and policies Wall Street needs are granted with maximum effort, with the least hindrance from citizens, workers or taxpayers. Wall Streeters in Treasury give highest priority to Wall Street survival, recovery and expansion of profits. They block any regulations or restrictions on bonuses or a repeat of past swindles.

Wall Streeters ‘make a reputation’ in Treasury and then return to the private sector in higher positions, as senior advisers and partners. A Treasury appointment is a ladder up the Wall Street hierarchy. Treasury is a filling station to the Wall Street Limousine: ex Wall Streeters fill up the tank, check the oil and then jump in the front seat and zoom to a lucrative job and let the filling station (public) pay the bill.

Approximately 774 officials (and counting) departed from Treasury between January 2009 and August 2011 (FT 2/6/12, p. 7). All provided lucrative “services” to their future Wall Street bosses finding it a great way to re-enter private finance at a higher more lucrative position.

A report in the Financial Times Feb. 6, 2012 (p. 7) entitled appropriately Manhattan Transfer” provides typical illustrations of the Treasury-Wall Street “revolving door”.

Ron Bloom went from a junior banker at Lazard to Treasury, helping to engineer the trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street and returned to Lazard as a senior adviser. Jake Siewert went from Wall Street to becoming a top aide to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and then graduated to Goldman Sachs, having served to undercut any cap on Wall Street bonuses.

Michael Mundaca, the most senior tax official in the Obama regime came from the Street and then went on to a highly lucrative post in Ernst and Young a corporate accounting firm, having help write down corporate taxes during his stint in “public office”.

Eric Solomon, a senior tax official in the infamous corporate tax free Bush Administration made the same switch. Jeffrey Goldstein who Obama put in charge of financial regulation and succeeded in undercutting popular demands, returned to his previous employer Hellman and Friedman with the appropriate promotion for services rendered.

Stuart Levey who ran AIPAC sanctions against Iran policies out if Treasury’s so-called “anti- terrorist agency” was hired as general counsel by HSBC to defend it from investigations for money laundering (FT 2/6/12, p. 7). In this case Levey moved from promoting Israels ’ war aims to defending an international bank accused of laundering billions in Mexican cartel money. Levey, by the way spent so much time pursuing Israels ’ Iran agenda that he totally ignored the Mexican drug cartels’ billion dollar money laundering cross-border operations for the better part of a decade.

Lew Alexander a senior advisor to Geithner in designing the trillion dollar bail out is now a senior official in Nomura, the Japanese bank. Lee Sachs went from Treasury to Bank Alliance, (his own “lending platform”). James Millstein went from Lazard to Treasury bailed out AIG insurance run into the ground by Greenberg and then established his own private investment firm taking a cluster of well-connected Treasury officials with him.

The Goldman-Sachs-Treasury “revolving door” continues today. In addition to past and current Treasury heads Paulson and Geithner, former Goldman partner Mark Patterson was recently appointed Geithner’s “chief of staff”. Tim Bowler former Goldman managing director was appointed by Obama to head up the capital markets division.

It should be abundantly clear that elections, parties and the billion dollar electoral campaigns have little to do with “democracy” and more to do with selecting the President and legislators who will appoint non-elected Wall Streeters to make all the strategic economic decisions for the 99% of Americans. The policy results of the Wall Street-Treasury revolving door are clear and provide us with a framework for understanding why the “profit crises” has vanished and the crises of labor has deepened.

The “Policy Achievements” of the Revolving Door

The Wall Street-Treasury conundrum (WSTC) has performed herculean and audacious labor for finance and corporate capital. In the face of universal condemnation of Wall Street by the vast majority of the public for its swindles, bankruptcies, job losses and mortgage foreclosures, the WSTC publically backed the swindlers with a trillion dollar bailout. A daring move on the face of it; that is if majorities and elections counted for anything. Equally important the WSTC dumped the entire “free market” ideology that justified capitalist profits based on its “risks”, by imposing the new dogma of “too big to fail” in which the state treasury guarantees profits even when capitalists face bankruptcy, providing they are billion dollar firms. The WSTC dumped the capitalist principle of “fiscal responsibility” in favor of hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the corporate-financial ruling class, running up record peace time budget deficits and then having the audacity to blame the social programs

supported by popular majorities. (Is it any wonder these ex-Treasury officials get such lucrative offers in the private sector when they leave public office?) Thirdly, Treasury and the Central Bank (Federal Reserve) provide near zero interest loans that guarantees big profits to private financial institution which borrow low from the Fed and lend high, (including back to the Government!) especially in purchasing overseas Government and corporate bonds. They receive anywhere from four to ten times the interest rates they pay. In other words the taxpayers provide a monstrous subsidy for Wall Street speculation. With the added proviso, that today these speculative activities are now insured by the Federal government, under the “Too Big to Fail” doctrine.

Under the ideology of “regaining competitiveness” the Obama economic team (from Treasury, the Federal Reserve, Commerce, Labor) has encouraged employers to engage in the most aggressive shedding of workers in modern history. Increased productivity and profitability is not the result of “innovation” as Obama, Geithner and Bernache claim; it is a product of a state labor policy which deepens inequality by holding down wages and raising profit margins. Fewer workers producing more commodities. Cheap credit and bailouts for the billion dollar banks and no refinancing for households and small and medium size firms leading to bankruptcies, buyouts and ‘consolidation’ namely, greater concentration of ownership. As a result the mass market stagnates but corporate and bank profits reach record levels. According to financial experts under the WSTC “new order” “bankers are a protected class who enjoy bonuses regardless of performance, while relying on the taxpayer to socialize their losses” (FT 1/9/12, p.5). In contrast labor, under Obama’s economic team, faces the greatest insecurity and most threatening situation in recent history: “in what is unquestionably novel is the ferocity with which US business sheds labor now that executive pay and incentive schemes are linked to short term performance targets” (FT 1/9/2012, p. 5).

Economic Consequences of State Policies

Because of the Wall Street “ takeover” of strategic economic policy positions in Government we can now understand the paradox of record profit margins in the midst of economic stagnation. We can comprehend why the capitalist crises has, at least temporarily, been replaced by a profound crises of labor. Within the power matrix of Wall Street-Treasury Dept. all the old corrupt and exploitative practices that led up to the 2008-2009 crash have returned: multi-billion dollar bonuses for investment bankers who led the economy into the crash; banks “snapping up billions of dollars of bundled mortgage products that resemble the sliced and diced debt some (sic) blame for the financial crises” (FT 2/8/12, p.1). The difference today is that these speculative instruments are now backed by the taxpayer (Treasury). The supremacy of the financial structure of the pre-crises US economy is in place and thriving … “only” the US labor force has sunk into greater unemployment, declining living standards, widespread insecurity and profound discontent.

Conclusion: The Case Against Capitalism and for Socialism

The profound crises of 2008-2009 provoked a spate of questioning of the capitalist system, even among many of its most ardent advocates (FT 1/8/12 to 1/30/12) criticism abounded. ‘Reform, regulation and redistribution’ were the fare of financial columnists. Yet the ruling economic and governing class took no heed. The workers are controlled by door mat union leaders and lack a political instrument. The rightwing pseudo populists embrace an even more virulent pro capitalist agenda, calling for across the board elimination of social programs and corporate taxes. Inside the state a major transformation has taken place which effectively smashed any link between capitalism and social welfare, between government decision-making and the electorate. Democracy has been relaced by a corporate state, founded on the revolving door between Treasury and Wall Street, which funnels public wealth to private financial coffers. The breach between the welfare of society and the operations of the financial architecture is definitive.

The activity of Wall Street has no social utility, its practioners enrich themselves with no redeeming activity. Capitalism has demonstrated conclusively, that it thrives through the degradation of tens of millions of workers and rejects the endless pleas for reform and regulation. Real existing capitalism cannot be harnessed to raising living standards or ensuring employment free of fear of large scale, sudden and brutal firings. Capitalism, as we experience it over the past decade and for the foreseeable future, is in polar opposition to social equality, democratic decision-making and collective welfare.

Record capitalist profits are accrued by pillaging the public treasury, denying pensions and prolonging ‘work till you die’, bankrupting most families with exorbitant private corporate medical and educational costs.

More than ever in recent history, record majorities reject the rule by and for the bankers and the corporate ruling class (FT 2/6/12, p. 6). Inequalities between the top 1% and the bottom 99% have reached record proportions. CEO’s earn 325 times that of an average worker (FT 1/9/12, p.5). Since the state has become the ‘foundation’ of the economy of the Wall Street predators, and since ‘reform’ and regulation has dismally failed , it is time to consider a fundamental systemic transformation that begins via a political revolution which forcibly ousts the non-elected financial and corporate elites running the state for their own exclusive interests. The entire political process,including elections, are profoundly corrupt: each level of office has its own inflated price tag.The current Presidential contest will cost $2 to $3 billion dollars to determine which of the servants of Wall Street will preside over the revolving door.

Socialism is no longer the scare word of the past. Socialism involves the large-scale reorganization of the economy, the transfer of trillions from the coffers of predator classes’ of no social utility to the public welfare. This change can finance a productive and innovative economy based on work and leisure, study and sport. Socialism replaces the everyday terror of dismissal with the security that brings confidence, assurance and respect to the workplace. Workplace democracy is at the heart of the vision of 21st century socialism. We begin by nationalizing the banks and eliminating Wall Street. Financial institutions are redesigned to create productive employment, to serve social welfare and to preserve the environment. Socialism would begin the transition, from a capitalist economy directed by predators and swindlers and a state at their command, toward an economy of public ownership under democratic control.

James Petras' most recent book is The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counter Attack (Clarity Press 2012) 2nd edition.


James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Petras

"10 Surprising Geopolitical Threats: What You Must Know to Protect your Money Now"

> www.thedailybell.com
>
>
> SECRET ATTACKS BY THE GLOBAL ELITE
> and the truth that will set you free.
>
> "10 Surprising Geopolitical Threats: What You Must Know to Protect your Money Now"
>
> PRESENTED BY
> Anthony Wile and the editorial staff of The Daily Bell
>
> ATTENTION! ... YOU ARE BEING LIED TO! ...
> This is being sent to you because you have an open, questing mind and want to understand the TRUTH – to protect your investments and your family. Almost everything the mainstream media has explained to you is inaccurate and untrue. You are being fed DISINFORMATION. Fortunately, there is the Bell. Let truth ring out!
>
>
>
> Here are some mainstream media "themes" as catalogued by the Bell. They are "fear-based promotions" – LIES – designed to confuse you and part you from your money ...
>
> LIE #1: Soon the gold bubble will burst.
>
> LIE #2: Paper money around the world is doing just fine.
>
> LIE #3: The US will treat its currency in a responsible way for the betterment of the world
>
> LIE #4: Gold is getting far too expensive for a barbaric relic.
>
> LIE #5: The world is chaotic – and we, the Western elites, have no idea how it happened.
>
> LIE #6: WikiLeaks is a terrible threat to democracy worldwide.
>
> LIE #7: Don't worry about Chinese inflation or its empty cities.
>
> LIE #8: Everything is going to Hell and nothing can be done about it.
>
> LIE #9: We need to combat global warming – harder than ever.
>
> LIE #10: Whatever happens to the dollar is out of "our" control.
>
> •••
>
> None of the above threats are true! Believe it or not, you've been lied to. If you are making decisions based on these lies, you are operating without the necessary – critical! – information. Garbage in, garbage out! FIND OUT THE TRUTH!
>
> Hi, I'm writing to you from the Daily Bell. Sorry to be so emphatic, but time is short. Things are getting worse around the world as globalization continues and leaves authoritrianism empowered in its wake. If you are at all concerned about your wealth or your loved ones, you need to understand the truth now.
>
> The Daily Bell has been designed to offers a comprehensible roadmap to these tumultuous times. Over the past years (a decade in fact) the modest brain trust of the Daily Bell has preached that the Internet is sparking a second Renaissance or Reformation, just as the Gutenberg press originally did.
>
> It's tolling the truth in an epoch of lies. Every day at the daily Bell we address ‘suggestions" from the media designed to scare you into putting your hard-earned money in depreciating assets that are then used by Western elites to build the machinery of global governance.
>
> You are literally paying for your own enslavement.
>
> In our reports, we describe the fear-based mechanisms that manipulate you as dominant social themes.
>
> Dominant social themes are the messages the elites attempt to put out to the public through the media and their agents (knowing and unknowing). These are the talking points designed to form and shape public opinion in order to move forward the elite's designs on wealth gathering and global governance.
>
> Also throughout this report you'll read about memes.
>
> For the purpose of this report a meme is an idea that has become viral. It is propagated through repetition in the media and in government and agencies of the elite. For instance, global warming is a meme.
>
> These threats are real. For the last 100 years the elites have made huge inroads in increasing sociopolitical centralization of nation-states. But despite these inroads, the UNEXPECTED impact of the Internet has been so strong that it has overwhelmed elite ambitions to build centralized international organizations.
>
> It is knowledge itself about the realities of the human condition, economic and otherwise, that is overwhelming these dominant social themes the elite attempts to inculcate to control society.
>
> Knowledge—truth telling—brought to you by the Daily Bell, can help you discern the pattern behind elite disinformation. Once you begin to understand, decision-making becomes clearer, whether it has to do with investments, family matters or personal and career choices.
>
> What is occurring today is a very quiet revolution in the fundamental fabric of human existence. It is quiet because the mainstream media—and even most of the alternative press—will not report on it. But we will and we are.
>
> WE HOPE YOU FIND THIS SPECIAL REPORT HELPFUL. IT INCLUDES STORIES THAT APPEARED ON THE BELL THROUGHOUT 2010.
>
> STOP BY AND CHECK THE BELL EVERY DAY.
>
> Our bell rings out for truth.
>
> Anthony Wile
> Senior Editor, The Daily Bell
> Chairman and CEO, Appenzeller Business Press AG
>
>
>
>
>
> LIE #1: Soon the gold bubble will burst.
>
> The Golden Bubble
>
> "Few silver linings when gold bubble bursts ... Beware of bubbles. Tulips, the dotcom boom and pre-credit crunch real estate have a lot in common; they are assets that were in vogue, became overbought and eventually fell to earth. And now it's gold. Historically, two-thirds of gold demand comes from the jewelry industry and from countries like India and China. The remaining industry is from countries like India and China. The remaining demand is generated by investors, manufacturing and the dental industry. But over the last four years, gold has staged a spectacular price rise and won many new investors. Everyone from hedge funds to individuals has jumped in, seeing gold as a way to improve portfolio diversification. Today portfolios often allocate 5 per cent or more to gold. A decade ago such an allocation in sound investment circles would have been heresy. Market dynamics have changed too, with investors playing a larger part in what is driving prices higher. Now private investors hold over 30,000 tons of gold, more than the entire holdings of all the central banks on the planet. In short, gold fever has arrived on both Wall Street and Main Street. But all fevers eventually break." — Financial Times
>
> Dominant Social Theme: Gold is just another bubble, like housing or cotton.
>
> Free-Market Analysis: We have dealt with the "gold is in a bubble" story several times already. Initially, we poked fun at the idea that gold can evolve into a bubble, but given the persistent mismanagement of Western countries, especially the United States, it is perfectly possible at some point that gold will swell in an illogical way relative to other commodities and cash. But from our point of view a real "bubble" in gold (or silver) is far away. Stories such as this one in the Financial Times are merely propaganda, and a weak sort at that.
>
> Sub-dominant social theme: "Be afraid of gold (and silver) be very afraid. The current price levels are ludicrous."
>
> Money metals, of course, are not merely commodities; they are repositories of value and provide an alternative to paper currency. Thus their price behavior is significantly different and affected by the business-cycle itself. In fact prices can advance for years in a distinctly un-commodity like way, as they are doing now. To confuse money metals with commodities is basic investment error.
>
> Still, gold (and silver) are often attacked for a variety of reasons. In the past, attacks have been quite ferocious. The power elite despise and fear gold, which at certain times in the business cycle (such as now) threatens the credibility and even the existence of central banks. With gold and silver rising powerfully, we have expected a concerted media attack against precious metals. The lack of such action only confirms our working hypothesis that the power elite is in some confusion. The Internet has been blowing up power elite fear-based themes with such enthusiasm that the elite, perhaps, is not sure how to counterattack.
>
> Of course, an argument can be made that at this point the Anglo-American power elite simply wants to see maximum chaos sweep the world so that it can step in with a new solution, presumably one that might include a gold-backed currency controlled by a world-spanning authority such as the International Monetary Fund. This is the same argument that has been made regarding the EU in particular. The idea is that the Western elite standing behind the EU expected and encouraged a collapse of the PIGS so that "austerity" could be implemented, EU authority could be expanded and ultimately martial law could be imposed on Europe out of Brussels.
>
> Here at the Daily Bell, we have presented an alternative point of view generally. We believe that the Internet, like the Gutenberg Press before it, is radically altering the balance of power between the elite and the rest of humanity. The truth-telling of the Internet, when combined with the economic unraveling of the financial crisis, is exposing power elite control and devaluing the methodologies that it uses for its command strategies. Thus, it is our argument that the elite is not being devious. It is merely in disarray.
>
> It is perhaps the combination of the Internet and the financial crisis that has generated an unusual level of indecisiveness within the few, elite families that seem to run the West, if not the world. Once upon a time it was easy to denigrate gold, especially, as a Keynesian "barbarous" relic. Even in the 1970s, when gold and silver moved up impressively (after the central banking attacks of the earlier 20th century) the counterattack by the elites was fairly ferocious. Gold and silver were firmly hammered back down for the next 20 years.
>
> It was only after the bursting of the Tech Bubble in 2000 that gold began to climb again from a low of US$250. Here at the Daily Bell (its forerunners actually) we estimated at that time that gold might reach US$1,000 by the end of the decade, or maybe even more. We have been on record since then stating this next bull-market in precious metals will last at least until 2015. Thus we would expect gold to go a good deal higher, and silver as well.
>
> This is, we know, a somewhat unmathematical way of looking at it. But we are Austrian in our approach and do not believe that one can necessarily make a quantitative argument that is any better than a qualitative one. We remember as late as 2004 that Harry Dent was predicting "Dow 40,000, Nasdaq 20,000 by 2009." Dent's argument was seemingly irresistible. US Baby Boomers, the largest and most monied generation in history, would simply force the Dow up by the sheer weight of their numbers. Dent was able to muster all sorts of quantitative logic for his viewpoint, and it sounded wonderfully convincing but in the end reality did not support his logical arguments.
>
> Our point is merely that the elite's desperate attempts to shore up the financial system have elongated its unwinding considerably. Instead of a short and sharp depression, we are entering the second leg of what is yet, perhaps, a shallow depression (but one which may deepen). The unwinding that would have allowed bad companies to go bust has not taken place. Government itself, along with the banking industry and the West's international corporations, have not been sorted out by the market. Because the elite's counterattack has been so fierce, the current distortions will probably take at least another five years or so to sort out.
>
> For those who want quantitative reinforcement about the price of gold, we can point to numerous articles that attempt to measure gold's current price against paper currencies and other commodities to determine if gold (and silver) is in a bubble yet – and when or if such a bubble would occur. Here's an excerpt from one such (recent) analysis, as follows from "Gold Bubble? Think Again" posted at Seeking Alpha:
>
> Even using as a base gold's 1979-1980 nominal price of $600 before it spiked, gold has been up about 100%. For gold to match the growth in M1, M2, public debt and budget deficit, gold will have to reach $1,800, $2,400, $7,800 and $13,200, respectively. While I cannot imagine gold going to $13k, these numbers tell me that calling gold a bubble is a bit pre-mature. In my view, money supply, public debt and the budget deficit are in a bubble, not gold, not yet.
>
> We recommend that one read the feedback commentary as well, below the article, because readers offer other analyses and make very cogent quantitative comments. From our humble point of view it is important to add that these numerical comparisons may soon be out of date, however. We cannot imagine that gold will get to, say, US$3,000 without some massive socio-economic changes taking place. A US$3,000-US$5,000 per gold ounce number would be an effective repudiation of Anglo-American dollar reserve system.
>
> The elite seems to be betting on the IMF being able to introduce some of sort of worldwide SDR/bancor paper gold currency system that would effectively reconfigure the IMF as a global central bank. In order for this work, however, the Anglo-American elite needs to keep control of the IMF and there are many nations in the world whose leaders remain either angry or uncomfortable with the IMF's previous arrogance and destructive unaccountability.
>
> The IMF's noxious approach to necessary "austerity" for client countries includes tax hikes, major budgetary cuts in social programs and "privatization" of national assets that are often purchased by Anglo-American corporations at very low prices. The IMF recipe is usually a middle-class killer. The population at large ends up suffering for the greed of the elite, which often flees with the billions that the country's citizens are then compelled to pay back to international banks.
>
> We are not at all sure that the IMF has sufficient authority to create a new international financial system. As we have pointed out before, the Pax Americana that has thrived so far was put in place after World War II when America was literally the last country standing. Today, the Anglo-American run IMF must contend with major economic players such as China, India and Brazil. None of these countries citizens have any cause to place themselves voluntarily in a position subservient to an Anglo-American dominated IMF. And for the Western elites, creating a democratic financial structure would be an unthinkable abrogation of power.
>
> Conclusion: We have always suggested that the best case (though certainly a painful one) would be a full unraveling of the Anglo-American central bank economy that has bestrode the world like a psychotic colossus these past 100 years (and especially these past 50). The economic default in such cases is a private-market gold and silver system, such as one that has historically been popular around the world at least since the Neolithic era in our view. In such a chaotic environment, there would be no "smooth" transition to a money metals economy. People would simply start using them. Those who had them, of course, would be a great deal better off than those that did not.
>
>
>
> LIE #2: Paper money around the world is doing just fine.
>
> The West's Pending Paper Money Implosion
>
> "In China, a City With Lots of Buildings, but Few People ... Patrick Chovanec, who teaches business at Tsinghua University in Beijing, says the building boom is driven by frenzied investors — not the housing needs of millions of migrating workers. ‘People are using real estate as an investment, as a place to store cash — they treat it like gold,' Professor Chovanec said. ‘They're stockpiling empty units. This is going on in cities of virtually every size.' ... Property development here is so hot that last year, housing sales in Ordos reached $2.4 billion, up from $100 million in 2004, according to government statistics. ... ‘This is a city of the future,' Li Hong, a government official, said during a recent tour of Kangbashi. But the future has not yet arrived, despite Mr. Li's best efforts to persuade a visitor otherwise... Only a few minutes earlier, Mr. Li escorted a reporter through an empty 500,000-square-foot convention center and a 12-story office tower that had dark hallways, locked doors and just a few scattered souls." — New York Times
>
> Dominant Social Theme: All across the world, the kids are OK! And so are their investments!
>
> Free-Market Analysis: We begin with China and its empty cities, but we want to mention Brazil as well. In a move that has not received much coverage, Brazil is dissociating itself from certain IMF deliberations regarding the nascent currency war. The Western elites, in their increasingly obvious desperation, had hoped to turn the IMF into a kind of global central bank, but Brazil's leaders seem not to go wish to along with that scenario. In fact, it is not 1945 and the Anglo-American axis cannot bully its way to a new economic order simply because it wishes too.
>
> Brazil's top economic officials won't attend G20 ... Brazil's top economic officials will not be attending meetings of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in South Korea this week, the finance ministry and central bank press offices said on Monday. ... Reuters reported on Friday that Finance Minister Guido Mantega would not be attending the meeting and would unveil new currency measures aimed at containing a rapid rise in the real BRBY this week. —Reuters
>
> Meanwhile, China's endless struggle with real-estate inflation was further emphasized yesterday when the Chinese central bank announced it was raising interest rates. This is a kind of one-two punch in our estimation. China is the most important economy in the world that has not collapsed yet. Once China collapses and the plan to further expand the wretched Western central banking system is revealed as unworkable, the 100-year old Western banking system may begin to implode in earnest.
>
> The problem with free-market economic analysis is that it is impossible (usually) to get the timing right. The larger, macro business cycles may be apparent, but predicting when China's real-estate bubble is going to burst is a fool's errand. No one knows with any certainty. These bubbles can go on for years, decades even, though in China's case the bubble is likely long in the tooth, just as China's "expansion" is. China's entire economy is terribly distorted now. Even the New York Times has discovered this (see excerpt above). Surprisingly, Bloomberg has too. Here's Bloomberg on China yesterday:
>
> China Hides Rampant Inflation in Money Binge ... Money, money everywhere. At least that's what it feels like at the moment in China. Awash in luxury cars, condos and expensive jewelry, the Chinese are enjoying what looks to be an unstoppable boom. But inflation figures due to be released tomorrow should give pause to those who assume China's economy is on sound footing. To an extent few fully appreciate, China's astonishing growth rates these past two years have been fueled by an even more astonishing expansion of its money supply, by more than 50 percent. Until now, the inflationary consequences have been largely camouflaged in the form of rising asset prices. —Bloomberg/BusinessWeek
>
> The ruination of the Chinese economy will likely end the horrible communist experiment that the Anglo-American axis helped inflict on the long-suffering Chinese. The vicious ChiComs and their oppressive system are only tolerated today because they have managed to create a good deal of "wealth' of late. But when it evaporates, the poor Chinese who have been buying empty flats in unpopulated cities as "investments" won't know what hit them. It is obvious the Anglo-American axis has been patiently tutoring the Chinese. The system that the Chinese operate currently didn't spring out of the ground fully formed. It is a mimic of the worst parts of the Anglo-American free-enterprise system; almost all "enterprise" and little that is "free."
>
> Once the system implodes, the Chinese likely will stop cooperating with the Anglo-American elite. This will be another change. Currently, the Chicoms are enthusiastic players in many of Western elite power promotions. The Chicoms can be found in Afghanistan eagerly making deals with the corrupt Karzai government to exploit Afghanistan resources. They pop up after meeting Eurocrats to claim they have confidence in the foundering euro and are willing to buy Greek debt. They speak out after IMF meetings to explain that the world does indeed need a global central bank and global currency. The ChiComs and the Anglo-American elite think alike.
>
> They are brethren. Intertwined. It is perhaps a kind of love-hate relationship.
>
> If the West unravels any more rapidly or ruinously, it can take China down with it. Likewise, when China falls, (and it will) the crash will resound worldwide. India, too, is awash with money; one the country's wealthiest citizens just built an extravagant US$1 billion "house" (actually a serial apartment building) in the middle of impoverished Mumbai. Brazil is no different. Money is sloshing around the world, and the US and Britain have led the way with their insatiable and reckless money printing. It is a 'boom-time," yes, but a terminal one, and soon comes the bust for the countries that have not experienced it yet.
>
> The Chinese crash, when it occurs, will be truly resonant, like Ulysses impaling of Polyphemous' single Cyclopean eye. Or perhaps it is better to compare it to a nuclear device, one unleashing the distortions of 20 years of relentless monetary stimulation with truly unbelievable 10% per quarter growth rates. And in the aftershocks, a significant percentage of China's real estate will prove worthless or unlivable in our view.
>
> The huge Chinese banking system, which is merely a facade for governmental control, will begin to crumble. As will the country's rigged stock exchanges and some or much of its international industry. Whole cities may have to be razed (if there is the money to do so). Much of the government-built infrastructure, its roads, sewer systems, etc., will prove to be unreliable. The endemic corruption of the Chinese system will be revealed in all its ugliness as the money tide recedes.
>
> The ChiComs, in our view, will not have the time, the patience or the wherewithal to print more money – to generate a Bernanke-Paulson style artificial boomlet to stabilize the financial system. When the economy begins to fail (and it is a huge economy) the Chinese state will begin to unravel as well. The fury of the Chinese people will likely spill over; especially those in the country who never participated in the boom. Starved in the 1950s and 1960s and oppressed since then in various authoritarian ways, the Chinese have kept quiet in return for government-provided wealth and security. When it turns out that once again the government again has failed, the social pact will be seen as abrogated and the leadership will not be able to recover. This is what the top level of the party grimly and correctly fears.
>
> The coming failure of the Chinese economy could wipe away the current leadership and usher in a new form of government. Perhaps it will be a democratic one or perhaps it will entail radical democratic socialism. The Chinese protests at Tiananmen Square were actually socialist protests. The demonstrators may have wanted more freedom, but it was freedom that was to be used to demand a more extensive welfare state. So China remains a damaged and conflicted society with a historically authoritarian culture and little experience with sociopolitical freedom. It is not the United States (or at least what the United States was).
>
> Even if China does not crash in the near future, the West's unraveling is likely to continue. Europe is already ablaze, as we predicted, and if observers believe the current protests are about "austerity," we think they are misinformed. A class war has started in Europe as we pointed out just yesterday. In America the class war has found its voice in Tea Party agitation. But once the Republicans return to the center and begin to "legislate" because "that is what the people want," the fury that is building in the US will become unstoppable in our view. There will come a European moment.
>
> The Western elite wished to use the economic crisis (which we think is far-worse than expected) to create a significantly tighter global, financial system with one IMF-run central bank and a single currency as well. But the globalist aspirations of this familial Anglo-American conspiracy are increasingly shattered in our view. The shards of these insane manipulations are beginning to rain down upon them.
>
> How did the Anglo-American elite anticipate that it would bully China, Brazil, India, etc. into going along with a system of world government in which the Anglo-American axis would take the lead? Colonialism is not a supportable strategy anymore, for the West. And then of course there is the truth-telling of the Internet, which has immeasurably complicated elite schemes.
>
> Conclusion: We will close with our usual disclaimer that we are following elite promotions as best we can and that the Western elites comprise a very formidable group. It could be that they manage to create a more unified world economic system out of the current crisis. It could be that a Chinese crash is averted or that the powers-that-be will figure out a way to declare and uphold martial law throughout the West, as the more paranoid are now predicting. We would find it surprising.
>
>
>
> LIE #3: The US will treat its currency in a responsible way for the betterment of the world
>
> The Coming Currency War?
>
> "QE2 risks currency wars and the end of dollar hegemony ... As the US Federal Reserve meets today to decide whether its next blast of quantitative easing should be $1 trillion or a more cautious $500bn, it does so knowing that China and the emerging world view the policy as an attempt to drive down the dollar. The Fed's ‘QE2' risks accelerating the demise of the dollar-based currency system, perhaps leading to an unstable tripod with the euro and yuan, or a hybrid gold standard, or a multi-metal ‘bancor' along lines proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1940s. China's commerce ministry fired an irate broadside against Washington on Monday. ‘The continued and drastic US dollar depreciation recently has led countries including Japan, South Korea, and Thailand to intervene in the currency market, intensifying a currency war. In the mid-term, the US dollar will continue to weaken and gaming between major currencies will escalate,' it said. — UK Telegraph
>
> Dominant Social Theme: The US, especially, must take more care – and grow more responsible.
>
> Free-Market Analysis: We have been examining in these past few days, the future of money and have offered our clairvoyant feedbackers and larger audience a perspective that is not focused necessarily on an imminent US economic meltdown. That is not to say it won't happen, but we have detected a certain level of promotional zeal that makes us a tiny bit uncomfortable.
>
> Everywhere we look right now, it seems the media – even the mainstream media – are filled with conversation about the untenable situation of the dollar.
>
> We do not deny this, of course. We have spent the better part of two years (and eight years before that) documenting the demise not only of the dollar but of the larger Anglo-American elite that has spent at least a century attempting to create one-world governance through the use of wars, horrible fear-based promotions and corrupt global vehicles of command and control.
>
> Let us begin at the beginning however, with the regime of George W. Bush. (Unhappy thought.) This Republican president could have reduced spending, cut social programs and generally enacted a fiscally conservative administration that would further have enhanced the dollar's standing in the world. Instead, from the outset, President Bush pushed for expanded social programs and more and more power for the US$3 trillion per year Leviathan; he even tried at one point to extend federal power directly into church programs. After 9/11 and without any precedent or even real justification, the US attacked both Afghanistan and Iraq in wars that will probably cost US$2 trillion or more before they are done – and those are only the direct costs.
>
> Under Bush, the various money schemes of the Anglo-American elite were left strictly alone. The Clinton Democrats had left a "surplus" and it would have been possible, perhaps, to start to undo the entire system, including the Fed's endless waves of money printing, without crashing it. But this was not Bush's agenda, nor the agenda of those around him.
>
> As a result, Bush questioned neither the US graduated income tax nor the Federal Reserve which kept rates so absurdly low under Alan Greenspan that an ever-increasing monetary bubble was all-but-assured. When the bubble finally popped, Bush approved of the TARP program of US$700 billion and then, under Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve began pumping out trillions and trillions to bail out preferred lenders and chosen bankers not only in the US but abroad as well.
>
> Our point here is not to rehearse the psychotic war-mongering and over-spending of George Bush but to point that Bush was able to do what he did without demure from the establishment wise men in both the US and Britain. This means to us that there was a level of de facto acceptance of his actions. The totality of his insane actions (mirrored in fact by Tony Blair in Britain) may not have been entirely pre-determined but they were not apparently unwelcome either.
>
> And this brings us back to the issue of whether the Anglo-American elite has actively sought a worldwide economic meltdown and, if so, whether they expected what they are now dealing with. We have suggested on many occasions that the elite may have wanted a depression but that the global crisis has spiraled out of control. We base this assumption on what seems to be a high level of desperation affecting elite actions at the moment.
>
> Yes, we can see this mechanism manifested in the lengths that the elite-controlled EU and Federal Reserve are willing to go to try to ensure the viability of the remnants of the current system. In the EU, the leading Eurocrats are willing once again – and in the hot spotlight of euro-condemnation – to revise the Lisbon Treaty without a vote so as to configure it in such a way that it provides necessary leeway to "handle" the ongoing crisis. In the US, the Federal Reserve is preparing to pump yet MORE money into the economy – perhaps trillions more – to try to kick-start employment and entrepreneurship. The elite is seemingly terrified of spiraling frustration in the US and Europe and increased civil unrest.
>
> The Fed's determination to pump trillions more into the US economy (and thence the world's) can be seen within this context as a desperate gambit to salvage elite ambitions regarding global governance. It is desperate (and rash) because the dollar remains the world's reserve currency and US monetary policy thus inevitably has a tremendous impact on other currencies and countries. Whenever the dollar moves (down) other economies, in fact even the largest, have to react.
>
> The US wants to inflate away dollar debts and cannot do so if everyone else joins in the game. Thus it has turned to the G20 and to an expanded and empowered IMF to twist arms and basically intimidate other countries into going along. But as we have pointed out that day is probably long past. China and the rest of the BRIC countries will likely do what they want, though still paying lip-service to the demands of the American behemoths.
>
> The Telegraph article lists several outcomes of the continual debasement of the dollar. The IMF and other countries could agree on an IMF-administered bancor. Alternatively, there is the concept of a "hybrid gold standard" (whatever that means) or merely more of what is taking place now – a continual appreciation of credibility for other currencies, especially the yuan, while the dollar sinks.
>
> Those who stop by the Bell may recognize some of these projections as we have mentioned them from time to time. In fact, an IMF bancor is probably unrealistic because the BRICs won't tolerate a further Anglo-American presidium. And other "solutions" are not likely to empower the Anglo-American axis, either. Of course we are aware of the argument that money power merely moves along with economic and military power wherever it needs to go. We find this argument dubious. Western money power has a locus: Washington DC, Brussels, Tel Aviv and most importantly London's City.
>
> The idea that Western elites can merely transfer their operations and headquarters to Beijing and continue business as usual among the Han is dubious from our point of view. There is also the possibility of China's imminent, or quasi-imminent collapse. The country's real estate is so inflated that entire CITIES are being built on speculation (as we have noted) and we have long-questioned the staying power of the current Chinese communist governments once the economy inevitably implodes.
>
> We are left with a (tentative) conclusion that we have already enunciated – that the Western elites in their pride, greed and arrogance may have started a conflagration that they cannot control. Perhaps if the Internet had not come on the scene to reveal their machinations, it would have been possible to manipulate the world's economies more effectively and to intimidate, in secret, those who needed to be brought along. But it's very hard to run a monetary and military conspiracy under the white-hot glare of a technological and electronic spotlight. Allies shy away and potential enemies are emboldened.
>
> What will happen next? Generally it does not seem to us that the elites will be able to create the necessary global currency they have sought and apparently are seeking, at least not in the short term. To us, anyway, this always seemed a long-term project and the ramifications of speeding it up (as the elite seem to be doing) are puzzling to say the least. Haste does not necessarily increase the potential for success.
>
> Another possibility is that the Anglo-American elite muddles along with an eroding dollar while China and Europe and other BRIC countries gradually attempt to co-opt the dollar's reserve status. Good luck with this however, as the dollar's strength is that it purchases oil and Saudi Arabia in particular would have to be "flipped," which American military power may preclude. Reserve currencies, generally, are treated in academic textbooks as both ancient and amiable. In fact the Anglo-American axis had to level the known world with its murderous military might to impose the hierarchy of the dollar and other Western economic mechanisms (the IMF, etc.). It is not so easy to end this kind of "reserve."
>
> Is it possible of course that the world returns to a de-facto gold standard and that there is some cooperation here between all the major powers. This may be a possibility, but it would end (at least in the short term) the Anglo-American dream of world dominance.
>
> Alternatively, the economic environment may simply continue to unravel. Gold and silver will go much higher in a fairly unconstrained environment as the Anglo-American grasp on events, both monetary and military, continues to erode. This might presage the evolution of a fairly unregulated free-banking environment complete with a privately evolving gold and silver standard (alongside real bills as well).
>
> The last time this sort of economic destabilization occurred (in the 1930s), panic set in as it has now. It was only via World War II that the world's economies were rescued and set on track for renewed growth. But a world war is infinitely more difficult to come by these days.
>
> With that option at least partially precluded (we think it is anyway, though a war with Iran is always a possibility) and with the truth-telling of the Internet continuing to expose every power elite machination literally in real time it is very difficult to tell what is going to happen next. Of course, as we wrote yesterday, we don't know if there will be a dollar meltdown (and a metals melt up) sooner – or later. Perhaps one will occur after the US elections as the shorts come under increased pressure. Timing is a lot harder to calculate than trends.
>
> Conclusion: What we do know is that the Western power elite is a stubborn and powerful force and that it has plenty of levers to pull that can still influence economies immensely in the West and around the world. As we were finishing this article, a feedbacker sent us a link to an announcement that the Fed is apparently about to hold a major conference at Jekyll Island, commemorating the secret meeting held 100 years ago that created of the Fed. (This just after initiating its controversial QE2 program.) The elite may be losing control, and may be increasingly panicked about it. But these kinds of tin-eared, self-congratulatory occurrences (such as the reported, upcoming Fed meeting) make us wonder increasingly if the powers-that-be have fully grasped the magnitude of what has been unleashed.
>
>
>
> LIE #4: Gold is getting far too expensive for a barbaric relic.
>
> The War on Gold
>
> "Return to the Gold Standard would be madness ... I was, until recently, Economics Editor of The Telegraph, but these days I am at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where I will blog occasionally when I'm not knee-deep in homework... I almost spat my coffee across the room when I saw the headline plastered across the front of the FT this morning: Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, is calling for a debate on the return to the Gold Standard, it said. Of course, when you read the column upon which the news story is based, it is far less clear that Zoellick really wants a return to the 19th century international macro-economic structure. Instead, he merely seems to have name-checked gold as a possible mechanism to help us wean ourselves off our reliance on the dollar as the world's reserve currency." — UK Telegraph/Edmund Conway
>
> Dominant Social Theme: Gold is a barbaric relic and the future of money has nothing to do with it.
>
> Free-Market Analysis: We will try to address Edmund Conway's screed against gold as best we can. The prejudice it shows is startling and reveals once again that intelligence, in our view, is no substitute for wisdom. It is interesting to note that those who may come from privilege and are numerically adept may have no deeper insights than anyone else – and often less – in the modern day. Professor Conway may be a brilliant man and a successful journalist, but he is apparently steeped in the intellectual prejudices of his class. He may teach at Harvard but when it comes to economic matters (apparently his specialty) he seems to have little taste for the sweep of monetary history. We will take his arguments one at a time:
>
> 1) If there were a major domestic recession, the countries would simply have to suffer it. They would not be able to cut interest rates to alleviate the pain. In other words, countries would have to deflate, and suffer the social pain that goes with this, if they are to keep to the Gold Standard in times of economic stress. This may have worked well in the 19th century, when the poorer households who would tend to be affected couldn't do anything about it, but I can think of few circumstances under which a democracy (with one-man one-vote) would allow it.
>
> How does one arrive at a "recession" – whatever that is, and why do "countries have to suffer it." We find these assumptions questionable. Countries are metaphorical entities to begin with and do not suffer through anything. PEOPLE suffer. Also, countries do not cut rates. People in certain roles with certain powers cut interest rates – and only when banks are under the thumb of the state. What this really means is that Professor Conway is satisfied with fiat currency because it is the most easily manipulated money and is satisfied with a regulatory regime in which banks and money are under the control of a given central bank and those behind it who pull the strings.
>
> Another point: In a normal, free-market economy, recessions and depressions are ameliorated by money itself. When a regional economy heats up, the price of money likely rises a little, which may put a natural brake on economic over-heating. As the economy cools down, the money supply shrinks. The market itself controls the volume of money and thus the business cycle itself is far less violent in a gold and silver based economy than one that is fueled by paper money.
>
> 2) There would also be a second possibility of deflation (or for that matter inflation) because of the arbitrary factor of tying one's currency to a metal. If there was suddenly a massive discovery of gold, this would pump extra inflation into the global system; if there was a drop-off in gold discoveries (as there was in the late 19th century), governments would find themselves having to impose swinging pay cuts on their populations in order to keep to the Standard. The fundamental point here is that the amount of gold in the ground is finite, whereas the capacity of humans to increase their economic output and productivity is still increasing exponentially, and should continue to do so, barring the possibility of falling back into the dark ages.
>
> This point dismisses the function of hoarding. Economist Murray Rothbard postulated that a gold standard could be run without a single new discovery of gold because people would hoard or dis-hoard as necessary. We don't entirely agree with that: We tend to believe that mines, too, are sensitive to the price of gold and silver and thus mines tend to produce more or less depending on the price. Certainly a large discovery of gold historically skews the price of gold, but this can be lessened by hoarding. When prices go down as a result of gold prices falling, people hoard more, taking supplies off the market. In any event, thanks to Rothbard, we understand function of hoarding. Conway apparently does not.
>
> 3) An end to banking as we know it. This might not sound so bad, given the horror the banks brought our way in the crisis, but it is worth dwelling on for a moment. The Gold Standard was incompatible with fractional reserve banking, and the Bank of England could barely carry out its role as lender of last resort in the 19th century without having to bend the rules significantly (which, as far as some are concerned, fatally undermined the system). I'm all for a reconsideration of how we structure the banking system (my favoured plan is to impose unlimited liability on bank owners) but let's not leap into another monetary system without considering how far reaching the consequences would be.
>
> Let it be so! An end to "banking as we know it" is fine with us. The "banking" in today's Western economies is simply a monopoly-distribution point for the dissemination of fiat currency. Central banks have got to distribute money through banks because the alternative – simply distributing it to people – would reveal the scam for what it is. By filtering the money-printed-from-nothing through banks, the process retains a mysterious quality. It is also rendered more complex, which is necessary when one is promoting a Ponzi scheme.
>
> Finally, bank distribution allows for a debt add-on that further controls the process. The situation is incredibly destructive, ruinous and benefits, essentially, on a very people who are the most direct beneficiaries of central bank funding stream. Conway concludes as follows:
>
> There is a half-century cycle at play here: we move from one macro-economic system, it works well for a few decades (due less to the explicit rules at play than the assumption that central banks will enforce them if necessary). Eventually, the system's credibility breaks down ... We are currently at the moment of hand-wringing and tears, which means the next few years will be both fascinating and terrifying. Eventually, we'll come to a solution. Everyone will believe the system has been repaired, and that Bretton Woods III or whatever we'll call it will solve our international monetary woes. And they'll be right. Until they're wrong.
>
> From our point of view, the idea that "we'll come to a solution" is a depressing one. "We" obviously means "world-leaders," the same group (controlled from behind the scenes by powerful banking families) that created the current mess. There is a solution of course, which is to let the market itself handle money. Perhaps it is too simple for someone used to the complex minds that populate Ivy League institutions.
>
> We have one area of commonality. We do not, either, know where the world's monetary system is going to end up, though given its chaos we have long predicted it is headed back to some sort of gold standard. There are many kinds of precious metals standards, of course. If new money, eventually, is to be based on gold, then governments might agree on certain percentages of gold necessary to hold in order to print currency, or even a certain amount of currency.
>
> Alternatively, government could simple set a gold-and-silver ratio and then let the market determine further price fluctuations. This would be a more laissez faire, free-banking solution.
>
> Here at the Daily Bell, we do believe in gold and silver as money – private money. In a private money system, absent government control, even the biggest holders of gold and silver would not be able to manipulate the market.
>
> The ratio between gold and silver, once tampered with, would sound the alarm as well. This kind of ancient money system has worked well, so far as we can tell, on and off for thousands of years. Our preference, therefore, is a scenario in which governments can come to no agreement on what money is or how much it is worth. This would leave it up to the market itself to decide – and there would then be no predetermined prices or price ratios to distort the market and cause trouble further down the road.
>
> Conclusion: Given digital technology and its infinite divisibility, there is no reason why a single additional ounce of gold (or silver) would need to be mined to produce a workable, free-market system. Do we believe we'll get there? Probably not. But whatever emerges out of the current chaos may be better than what we've got – even monetary writer Ellen Brown's municipally-based public fiat system would be better than a monetary system essentially run by a few powerful families behind the scenes – although let us be clear we are by no means supporting Ms. Brown's initiatives. US Congressman Ron Paul's call for competing currencies is certainly a much more attractive solution. Let systems compete and the best ones (or one) will win out. Unlike Professor Conway, we believe the closer we get to a truly free-market based precious metals system the better off we shall be.
>
>
>
> LIE #5: The world is chaotic – and we, the Western elites, have no idea how it happened.
>
> The Chaos of Nation States
>
> "China faces increased social unrest ... Chinese police investigating a robbery at a jewelry shop in Beijing yesterday. China faces rising crime rates and increased social unrest, according to the country's top think-tank. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said criminal prosecutions were up 10 percent and public security cases up nearly 20 per cent last year and it predicted the rise would continue even as the economy improved this year." — Times of Malta
>
> Dominant Social Theme: People are upset and we, your leaders, understand...
>
> Free-Market Analysis: Is the Anglosphere losing control on purpose or despite itself? The ratcheting chaos is not in fact restricted to the West. There are problems across the globe, from South America (Venezuela) to Afghanistan, Africa and of course the Koreas where a succession drama in North Korea threatens a wider war. We can see from the excerpt above from the Times of Malta that China too is suffering from increasing social disorder, in part because of the soaring inflation we have reported on in the past.
>
> In this article we will return to the theme of elite strategies and discuss whether the world's destabilization is purposeful or not. Is it a power elite strategy in other words: to destabilize important countries in the hopes of creating a global currency – one perhaps run by the IMF?
>
> Author and feedbacker Lila Rajiva sent us an interesting statement on a thread over at Veteran's Today. It reads as follows: "Bringing America's Fascist dictatorship to its knees" IS the MYTH of the WikiLeaks narrative ... The "nation" (i.e. the populace) may well be ready to plummet over the precipice but this IS the design of the SYSTEM itself and, to tie in with your NWO confusion, a necessary precondition to the furtherance of the NWO agenda."
>
> The point being made here is that the chaos of nation states – the seeming growing awareness of the masses as they fight back against perceived injustice – is exactly what is necessary to make a move toward global governance. Out of chaos ... order. And thus a perception that protest and civil unrest is setting the elite back on its collective heels is actually a hoped-for outcome of an Anglosphere that thrives on disunion as a precondition for reshaping society.
>
> We would have no difficulty with this analysis were it not for the Internet, which in our view has reshaped awareness of what the Anglosphere has planned – and made its advent far more treacherous. As we have pointed out many times, it is hard to implement a conspiracy to create a One World Order when so many others – those NOT part of a seeming conspiracy – are following various unfolding patterns, commenting on them and in some cases trying to combat them.
>
> Will there be a series of civil collapses? Will these collapses lead to greater centralization from a sociopolitical perspective? These are not by any means theoretical questions. Portfolios, investments and general financial strategies are all affected by one's evaluation of how the Great Game is being played and what the ultimate result might be. Regardless of where the world is headed, one cannot deny that countries and regions are increasingly troubled, as The Australian summarizes only a few days ago:
>
> Unrest rocks Europe as debt crisis explodes ... London student protests ... ANGER and fear about a seemingly unstoppable debt crisis coursed through Europe yesterday. Striking workers shut down much of Portugal, Ireland proposed its deepest budget cuts in history and Italian and British students clashed with police over education cuts. ... In Italy, students occupied university buildings and piazzas to denounce proposed education cuts, clashing briefly with police in Rome and blocking five main bridges over the River Arno in Pisa. ... In Britain, students decried government plans to triple tuition fees. "Education is not a rich kid's game," said Tash Holway, a 19-year-old student in London.
>
> Of course it is not just civil unrest that is the problem. Ongoing wars, like the war in Afghanistan threaten to spread; other conflicts have not yet broken out but soon may. There is perhaps an Iranian war on the horizon, as well as one possible in the Koreas (though we find this more doubtful).
>
> Even Iraq remains chaotic and the Sunni-Shia Islamic split seems as wide as ever. Afghanistan is perhaps the most active war right now (certainly for the West) and it seems to us to be an open question as to whether that tortured country will see an expansion of violence or a potential contraction. Here is how the Pakistan Daily Times sums up the possibilities:
>
> The rise of the Right in Europe, especially the recent loss of the social democrats to the right-wing for a second time in Sweden, is being termed as a worrying sign for a West that is feeling the pain of the failure of the attempts to install neo-con capitalism through prosecuting wars from the banks of Tigris to the valleys of Bamiyan. Europe is faced with serious threats of renewed trade union and civil society resistance due to imminent heavy public spending cuts and so elites will have to pay more attention towards domestic unrest; accordingly, the war in Afghanistan will have to be brought to a 'logical' conclusion. The sooner the better. Hence the announcement at NATO's Lisbon gathering by British Prime Minister David Cameron to end Britain's combat role in Afghanistan by 2014 come what may!
>
> Pakistan, whose own elites blithely have bartered its sovereignty for a slavish allegiance to NATO, is now faced with a dilemma of its own. If it pulls out as a war partner, the role it embraced as a front-line state, then the Indian lobby in that country will earn even greater influence since they are already involved in development projects on a large scale. On the other hand, if Pakistan, under the pretext of gaining strategic depth against India, decides to continue to play the role of front-line state against threats to the neo-con agenda in the region and in return for its allegiance desires to continue probing into Afghanistan for a pro-Pakistani Afghan government, then its dependence on the jihadist pawns in the war will increase. A lose-lose situation, then.
>
> While we sympathize with the Pakistan Daily Times' perspective, we find it hard to believe that the Pakistan elites will attempt to broker some sort of grand bargain that will "stabilize" Afghanistan within the context of Western and Indian preferences. To us, this seems a non-starter. Pakistan's elites will no doubt pretend to make an effort, but we believe the ultimate outcome has already been cemented by the length of the war and the resistance of the Taliban. The Western elites, as this article points out, are beset at home by political unrest and by the ongoing costs of the war.
>
> And this brings us to our final point. The West does not want to lose in Afghanistan. The elites did not want, either, a momentum swing against global warming (which has taken place); and it seems to us that the Anglosphere, which is evidently and obviously behind the EU and its growth, does not want the EU sundered. We return, at the end of this analysis, to a previous conclusion: the elites are more comfortable with controlled chaos than uncontrolled chaos; and many of their cherished promotions are under considerable attack.
>
> This is just a matter of common sense. Controlled chaos can yield controlled results. Uncontrolled chaos is unpredictable. The elites may have a corner on the gold market but they are certainly outnumbered. And this is why the Internet is so dangerous to the status quo and why the elites have tended to pursue their strategies by subterfuge, using fear-based promotions as a manipulative device. With those promotions being relentlessly exposed, we wonder what the elite does to counterattack. Choking off certain kinds of information on the 'Net is one possibility, but we find it hard to believe (as we have written in the past) that this solution is entirely workable, or will have the desired effect.
>
> Conclusion: Being outnumbered in secret is one thing; being exposed (as the elite is, relentlessly these days) heightens the potential for more exposure (in real time) and makes the pursuit of certain goals more obviously dangerous. We are not sure that the chaos of nation states is desirable, at least not uncontrolled chaos. Nor are we sure, even, that war will create the opportunities the elites seek. There is already, it seems to us, too much knowledge about elite strategies available to too many non-elite populations. Could the chaos of nation-states work against the elites this time rather than to their advantage?
>
>
>
> LIE #6: WikiLeaks is a terrible threat to democracy worldwide.
>
> The Real Impact of WikiLeaks
>
> "Who is Behind Wikileaks? ... Wikleaks is upheld as a breakthrough in the battle against media disinformation and the lies of the US government. Unquestionably, the released documents constitute an important and valuable data bank. The documents have been used by critical researchers since the outset of the Wikileaks project. ... Progressive organizations have praised the Wikileaks endeavor. Our own website Global Research has provided extensive coverage of the Wikileaks project. The leaks are heralded as an immeasurable victory against corporate media censorship. But there is more than meets the eye." — Global Research, Michel Chossudovsky
>
> Dominant Social Theme: It's a great organization and questions should be ignored.
>
> Free-Market Analysis: We were pleased to see that Michel Chossudovsky has weighed in on WikiLeaks with a six page opus posted at Global Research. It is instructive to see what Chossudovsky has concluded.
>
> His general conclusion like ours is that Julian Assange is probably NOT what he appears to be, but some good is coming out of L'affaire Assange nonetheless—and we agree.
>
> From our point of view, Assange may possibly have links to the Anglo-American power-elite, but if so, his arrival on the scene shows once more the difficulty of the challenges that the Anglosphere is now encountering.
>
> Because of the truth-telling of the Internet, more than a century of mind control (the 20th century) has been diminished. Accept, as we do, that there is an Anglo-American inter-generational elite whose goal is to build a kind of one world order and Assange becomes a statement as much as the head of a powerful debunking movement. Acquiesce hypothetically to Assange-as-elite-ally and one can see how far away from its goals the elite has been forced to move.
>
> The elite has attempted to nudge the world toward global governance by using fear-based promotions, dominant social themes, that frighten the middle class into giving up wealth and power to a variety of specially created global facilities – the UN, WHO, World Bank, etc. These fear-based promotions are promulgated via what is called the Hegelian Dialectic, a public conversation that is controlled by the elite on both sides. Gradually the dialogue – argument – is moved toward the goals and objectives of the elite and away from undesirable conclusions.
>
> While the Hegelian Dialectic is a great society molding tool, it has one logical flaw: At certain times of great social stress the elite has to readjust the dialectic to include arguments that it had dealt with previously but which are reappearing. What this means practically is that it has to reintroduce spokespeople to represent the side of the argument that it has already left behind. If society in some fashion has reignited a debate that the elite believed was already doused, then the elite is a position of re-endorsing perspectives that it had intentionally done away with. This is what is happening now.
>
> What the elite may have failed to grasp is that the control mechanisms of the 20th century are not configuring the conversation in the desired manner in the 21st. Why is this the case? Because the Internet is a process not an episode. The Anglo-American axis is a linear enterprise with a single focus, apparently: world government. But linear solutions are not going to work in the Internet era. In fact, there is an argument that such solutions will actually make things worse from the Anglosphere's point of view.
>
> Granted Assange is in some way a controlled entity; nonetheless, a group of his peers have split away from WikiLeaks and are setting up their own enterprise, OpenLeaks. If this enterprise is not controlled as well then any control over Assange will make little difference. The larger conversation still remains out of control.
>
> Is Assange in a sense being positioned – knowingly or not – as the controlled opposition? (Perhaps he is merely a courageous individual motivated by strong convictions; and we have acknowledged this possibility as well.) Our suspicions regarding Assange are reinforced, nonetheless, by Chossudovsky, as follows. The following are direct quotes from the article:
>
> • There are reports from published email exchanges that Wikileaks had entered into negotiations with several corporate foundations for funding. (Wikileaks Leak email exchanges, January 2007). The linchpin of WikiLeaks's financial network is Germany's Wau Holland Foundation. ... "We're registered as a library in Australia, we're registered as a foundation in France, we're registered as a newspaper in Sweden," Mr. Assange said. WikiLeaks has two tax exempt = charitable organizations in the U.S., known as 501C3s, that "act as a front" for the website, he said. He declined to give their names, saying they could "lose some of their grant money because of political sensitivities."
>
> • The Role of the Corporate Media: The Central Role of the New York Times. Wikileaks is not a typical alternative media initiative. The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel are directly involved in the editing and selection of leaked documents. The London Economist has also played an important role. While the project and its editor Julian Assange reveal a commitment and concern for truth in media, the recent Wikileaks releases of embassy cables have been carefully "redacted" by the mainstream media in liaison with the US government. (See Interview with David E. Sanger, Fresh Air, PBS, December 8, 2010). This collaboration between Wikileaks and selected mainstream media is not fortuitous; it was part of an agreement between several major US and European newspapers and Wikileaks' editor Julian Assange.
>
> • The "redacting" role of The New York Times is candidly acknowledged by David E Sanger, Chief Washington correspondent of the NYT: "[W]e went through [the cables] so carefully to try to redact material that we thought could be damaging to individuals or undercut ongoing operations. And we even took the very unusual step of showing the 100 cables or so that we were writing from to the U.S. government and asking them if they had additional redactions to suggest." (See PBS Interview; The Redacting and Selection of Wikileaks documents by the Corporate Media, PBS interview on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross: December 8, 2010, emphasis added).
>
> • David E. Sanger cannot be described as a model independent journalist. He is member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Aspen Institute's Strategy Group which regroups the likes of Madeleine K. Albright, Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former CIA head John Deutch, the president of the World Bank, Robert. B. Zoellick and Philip Zelikow, former executive director of the 9/11 Commission, among other prominent establishment figures. (See also F. William Engdahl, Wikileaks: A Big Dangerous US Government Con Job, Global Research, December 10, 2010).
>
> • The leaks are being used to justify a foreign policy agenda. A case in point is Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, which is the object of numerous State Department memos, as well as Saudi Arabia's support of Islamic terrorism. The leaked cables are used to feed the disinformation campaign concerning Iran's Weapons of Mass Destruction. While the leaked cables are heralded as "evidence" that Iran constitutes a threat, the lies and fabrications of the corporate media concerning Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program are not mentioned, nor is there any mention of them in the leaked cables. The leaks, once they are funneled into the corporate news chain, edited and redacted by the New York Times, indelibly serve the broader interests of US foreign policy, including US-NATO-Israel war preparations directed against Iran.
>
> • In recent years, the CIA's relationship to the media has become increasingly complex and sophisticated. We are dealing with a mammoth propaganda network involving a number of agencies of government. Media disinformation has become institutionalized. The lies and fabrications have become increasingly blatant when compared to the 1970s. The US media has become the mouthpiece of US foreign policy. Disinformation is routinely "planted" by CIA operatives in the newsroom of major dailies, magazines and TV channels: "A relatively few well-connected correspondents provide the scoops, that get the coverage in the relatively few mainstream news sources, where the parameters of debate are set and the "official reality" is consecrated for the bottom feeders in the news chain."(Chaim Kupferberg, The Propaganda Preparation of 9/11, Global Research, September 19, 2002).
>
> • Wikileaks and The Economist have also entered into what seems to be a contradictory relationship. Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange was granted in 2008 The Economist's New Media Award. The Economist has a close relationship to Britain's financial elites. It is an establishment news outlet, which has, on balance, supported Britain's involvement in the Iraq war. It bears the stamp of the Rothschild family. Sir Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild was chairman of The Economist from 1972 to 1989. His wife Lynn Forester de Rothschild currently sits on The Economist's board. The Rothschild family also has a sizeable shareholder interest in The Economist.
>
> There is much more in the article, and we would encourage people to read it. Chossudovsky points out that "Limited forms of critical debate and 'transparency' are tolerated while also enforcing broad public acceptance of the basic premises of US foreign policy, including its 'Global War on Terrorism' ... We must ensure that the campaign against Wikileaks in the U.S., using the 1917 Espionage Act, will not be utilized as a means to wage a campaign to control the internet." What Chossudovsky does not suggest is that the elite in its desperation to control a freedom-oriented Internet conversation has put itself in the position of sponsoring a controlled opposition that cannot, ultimately, be controlled. (This is in part because as we understand it Chossudovsky, apparently a progressive of sorts, does not believe in an Anglo-American elite.)
>
> When the Gutenberg press came on the scene, the elite of the day apparently contemplated Assange-like strategies. Eventually – some believe – the Venetian banking elite sponsored Martin Luther and funded the Reformation to reduce the power of the Catholic Church. But one could make the case that the Reformation itself got out of hand, causing religious schisming that created more headaches for the powers-that-be than they ever intended; eventually what the Reformation began would contribute to the settling of the New World and the creation of a new and formidable opposition to elite, one-world aspirations.
>
> Conclusion: Even if the elite through its controlled intelligence agencies manages to control WikiLeaks, the evolution of the Internet may spawn other variants that are unexpected and potentially uncontrollable. Whatever Assange is or is not is probably not ultimately the issue (and hopefully WikiLeaks shall do some good). However, the entropy of the Internet is the real concern, and one that the Anglo-American axis has yet to solve in our humble view.
>
>
>
> LIE #7: Don't worry about Chinese inflation or its empty cities.
>
> Inflation Heard Round the World
>
> "Rising commodity prices threaten global economy ... Australians naturally regard high commodity prices as good, but they are now reaching levels that pose a threat to the world economy ... A range of forces operates on commodity markets. The weather in Europe, the continuing strength of the emerging economies and, for some of Australia's commodities, the recent floods all play a role. A common factor is the rise of financial investment, which has surpassed the levels of 2008. In part, there is a simple recognition by investors of the China story, with commodities providing a good way to obtain leverage. But there is also a flight from currencies, which has seen gold double since late 2008 with a 20 per cent rise this year. Many investors seek alternatives to the euro and the US dollar." — The Australian
>
> Dominant Social Theme: Prices are up. A little inflation is a good thing.
>
> Free-Market Analysis: When the Bell began reporting on Chinese price inflation a year-and-half ago, it was unfashionable and uncomfortable news. But in fact, inflation is a BRIC phenomenon, and is not merely restricted to China. This has tremendous implications that are not being reported by the mainstream press. It means that other larger industrial economies – specifically India's, Brazil's and Russia's – are in the throes of potentially destabilizing price rises that can derail the West's hesitant progress toward renewed economic stability.
>
> The Anglo-American power elite that has been responsible for setting up the world's central banking economy is evidently and obviously worried about civil unrest. We have argued of late that the West's economic downturn is in a sense manufactured, but that it has been far worse than the elite imagined. As a result, the elite has been preoccupied with "managing" the Greater Recession – attempting to ensure that it does not engender an over-throw of the system, but is merely bad enough to generate a pretext for increased global consolidation.
>
> Efforts at re-inflation taken by central banks around the world has been truly remarkable. Thus while prices have gone down and credit has contracted in the past two years, the larger trend of inflation gaining strength has not yet been adequately reported. What the mainstream press HAS reported on (see excerpt above) is commodity price inflation. This is perfectly congruent with our expectations; the arc of gold and silver price appreciation has to be put in SOME context after all.
>
> Given that printing presses worldwide have been steadily occupied for several years, we are perhaps moving past any likelihood of sustained price deflation or disinflation (certainly for non-Western, major economies). The predictable consequences of virtually endless money printing will be endlessly inflationary. Inflation is, of course, a monetary phenomenon. And printing money does not necessarily trigger it in the short term, but the long-term consequences are disastrous.
>
> Central banks around the world have been coordinating money printing in an attempt to re-stimulate the economy worldwide after the disaster of 2008. Printing yet more currency, and further distorting already moribund or over-stimulated economies just adds to the dislocation. The patient already lies bleeding on the rack. Monetary stimulation merely increases the pressure without providing real relief.
>
> In 2008, the fiat money economy that featured the dollar as the reserve currency basically died. We know it died because the biggest Western banking institutions were technically insolvent in 2008. It took a massive infusion of cash – one we then estimated would reach US$100 trillion – to restart Western economies. (We think we're getting close.)
>
> But even this amount of money merely provided liquidity and could not actually undo the damage caused by decades of economic distortion. The result is that the West, and especially Europe and America, remain in the throes of a jobless recovery, while the BRIC economies – the engines of the world right now – are entering a dangerous phase where price inflation (the result of monetary inflation) is threatening to race out of control.
>
> When the Bell began reporting on Chinese inflation a year-and-a-half ago, it was not the fashion to write about it. China was an economic miracle and any inflation in that country was bound to be easily controlled – or that was the story, anyway. Today, China's price inflation woes are a steady drumbeat. The world has discovered (as we recently reported) whole "ghost-cities," built on speculation, empty and waiting for a population that may never come. You can see the story here: China: That Urban Empty Feeling.
>
> Likewise, there has not much talk of Indian inflation and certainly not Brazilian inflation in the Western mainstream press. But the BRIC countries that having been driving the world with their economic performance are all beginning to overheat. Russia is in especially bad shape because that economy is already battered and citizens are not in a forgiving mood. There is unrest throughout Russia and it recently hit home with a series of violent protests in Moscow.
>
> Reuters reports the following:
>
> The head of Russia's top lender Sberbank, German Gref, said Monday he expects the 2011 inflation at 9% or higher. "We do not expect inflation to exceed 10% but it is highly likely that it will be above the 9% mark," Gref told the Rossiya 24 TV channel. He said he does not see any chance for the 2011 inflation to get lower than this year's figure of approximately 8.5%. The Statistics Service said in mid-December that since the year start, inflation hit the 8.1% mark. Gref said GDP will grow by over 4% in 2011.
>
> Then there is this report from BusinessInsider regarding India ...
>
> Here's One Crop Exemplifying The Massive Struggle With Inflation In India ... India's struggle with food inflation may be evident in one crop with surging prices the government is doing its best to control. Onion prices have sent India's food price index soaring, up 12.13% as at December 11. The 2% jump in onion prices forced a ban on exports of the vegetable until January 15. India's government also cut import duty on onions.
>
> Of all the BRIC countries, Brazil is perhaps the most stable in terms of labor peace. But that does not mean that Brazil is immune from price inflation. Like the other BRIC countries, Brazil's printing presses have obviously been working overtime and the results are increasingly obvious, according to Bloomberg:
>
> Brazil Inflation Outlook for Next Year Rises For Third Week in Bank Survey ... Brazilian economists lifted their forecast for 2011 inflation for a third straight week, according to the median forecast in a Dec. 24 central bank survey of about 100 economists published today. Consumer prices will rise 5.31 percent next year, according to the survey, up from a week-earlier forecast of 5.29 percent. Prices will appreciate 5.9 percent in 2010, up from a week- earlier forecast of 5.88 percent, the survey found.
>
> Price inflation is a problem in the West as well, but not an overwhelming one because money is not circulating with any ease. Once it does, however, conditions, in our view, may approach a kind of hyper-stagflation. We base this conclusion on the US stock exchange itself, which has seen a significant run-up now approaching 20 percent.
>
> Does anyone really believe that stimulating the stock market this way – by printing money – is a healthy way to go about generating an economic recovery? It may contribute to the bottom line of multinational corporations, but in the long run it is more likely to cause the aforementioned stagflation than a recovery.
>
> The big story in 2011 should be the looming inflationary pressures that threaten to derail the BRIC countries that have proven an engine of growth. If inflationary pressures continue to build, BRIC countries will raise rates and even implement price controls (which China is already considering) in order to counteract price rises.
>
> This worst-case scenario will likely depress the economic performance of BRIC countries and certainly in China, Russia and perhaps India could lead to significant civil unrest. Couple this with the austerity riots in Europe and the rising level of violence and dissatisfaction in America and it would seem there is the possibility of rising violence the world over. This is just what the Western elites fear and are working to avoid. But the only solution available to them is the blunt one of monetary policies—re-stimulation—and as we have just tried show above, it will likely cause more problems than it will cure.
>
> Conclusion: Far from moving swiftly or easily toward increased world governance, the elite may find it has its collective hands full just managing the current downturn. The truth-telling of the Internet, when coupled with Western economic unraveling, may continue to militate against world governance. Regimes in China and Russia are both fragile; many continue to predict the death of the euro and perhaps the splitting-up of the EU itself. Price inflation may be an aggravating factor in all these scenarios. While it has not been much remarked upon in 2010, it may be the defining story in 2011.
>
>
>
> LIE #8: Everything is going to Hell and nothing can be done about it.
>
> The Charade of World Depression
>
> "Self-righteous Germany must accept a euro-debt union or leave EMU If Germany and its hard-money allies genuinely wish to save the euro – which is open to doubt – they should stop posturing, face up to the grim imperative of a Transferunion, and desist immediately from imposing their ruinous and reactionary policies of debt deflation on southern Europe and Ireland ... One can sympathise with the German people. Their leaders in the 1990s told them "famine in Bavaria" was more likely than the preposterous suggestion that Germany might have to bail out countries as a result of EMU. But events have moved ... Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) must know that the Spanish state, juntas, and banks cannot refinance €300bn (£254bn) next year at a bearable cost if the Tesoro is already paying a decade-high of 5.45pc to sell 10-year bonds, yet she continues to play for time she does not have." — UK Telegraph
>
> Dominant Social Theme: Germany must grasp the nettle.
>
> Free-Market Analysis: The problem of the EU seems simple, as indicated by this article excerpt above. The Southern PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) are bankrupt but cannot devalue because of the euro contract. The wealthy North will therefore have to bail out the PIGS and in doing so, provide substantive oversight. Germany ends up being the guarantor of last resort and also the state providing the watchdogs, basically, since it is German money that will save the EU. It is a German EU after all, and the Germans will have to stop dithering ...
>
> This is one (fairly simplistic, we would argue) way of evaluating the situation that is currently evolving in the EU. But here at the Bell we have also argued that the Anglo-American axis is really behind the EU – and perhaps the average German won't have much say in the matter. The Anglosphere seeks world government and the EU is a basic building block.
>
> The point we want to advance in this article is that there is perhaps a deeper subterfuge going on. Yes, we've suggested this before, but as the EU unwinds, as America quakes from unemployment and China shudders from inflation, we continue to explore the possibility. And so we ask, once more ... Is the world being manipulated into an ever-more-massive depression? And how would that work exactly?
>
> In order to explain it, we need to establish (for purposes of argument anyway) that there is an Anglo-American power elite composed of certain fabulously wealthy families that seek one-world government. There has been speculation, for instance, that these families have a hand in the recent saga of Foundation X which sounds more like the plot of a bad paperback novel than anything real. Lord James of Blackheath mentioned Foundation X at the House of Lords in early November.
>
> It was his contention that 'Foundation X' had the resources to "bail out" the UK and that Foundation X's gold reserve was larger than what is considered to be the world's total mined reserves. Lord James of Blackheath was roundly derided as a "nutter." We don't find him so. We have asked if Foundation X was merely a cover for the financial interests of the Anglo-American power elite. It still seems a pertinent question. This kind of money is massive indeed, assuming Lord James didn't drop off his meds for a day. It reinforces the idea that what we are watching around the world is a charade.
>
> We have previously argued that there is a level of behind-the-scenes collusion between ALL the powers-that-be. All of them, East and West, may be cooperating to bring down the current system with an eye toward instituting something in its place that will be mutually agreed upon. (The IMF's bancor comes to mind.)
>
> Follow the logic, please. If indeed a family or group of families has now taken possession of more gold tonnage than people knew existed, then isn't the world's financial crisis perhaps less serious than it seems? A few tons of gold in the proper places would go a long ways to alleviate the debt problems of Portugal, Greece and Ireland.
>
> Much has been made of the difficulties that the big banks face. But we believe the banking system worldwide, is owned outright by this clique of banking families. What do they care, really, if their banks are insolvent? How much difference does it make?
>
> Are we witnessing a planned collapse? If so, the art of such an event will lie in its management. The collapse must be calibrated so that the people are made miserable without being brought to the point of total revolt. The progress that the elite has made in building one world government must not be compromised by the ongoing collapse, but must be supported by it.
>
> This would make sense even within the context of the nuttiness of the Foundation X episode. The Anglo-American elite may be nervous about British unrest (and unrest in the EU generally). It may feel it has pushed too far, too fast. If one traduces what one has created (the current Western system of finance) then what, ultimately does one have left but a small group with gold and billions without? Not a good survival equation.
>
> It sounds bizarre doesn't it, dear reader? The idea that a small group of elite families with a power-base in London's City has managed to accumulate all the wealth in the world and – like the hydra-headed leader of million-man orchestra – played the tune to which the world has danced for at least 100 years.
>
> And yet ... gaze at the 20th century without flinching (if that is possible) and take calm stock of history as it is commonly recited. Central banking – price fixing of the price and amount of money – spread throughout the world despite the ruin it inevitably causes.
>
> Two world wars were fought, neither one with very clear antecedents. One great depression engulfed the world, again without a very clear causation. Somehow the world drifted away from honest money – gold and silver – which people had depended upon for millennia. New ‘isms" sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere – Communism, Nazism, Socialism – and somehow, somewhere, found fertile soil and were adopted by governments.
>
> Psychology – the science built on analyzing the ghosts of mentality – became popular. Modern art flourished despite the great distaste of the masses. Serial wars were continually pursued; and world government was suggested as an antidote. In fact, a global financial infrastructure sprang up shortly after World War II, one that included the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and a much-empowered Bank of International Settlements. Even today, couriers for the BIS apparently operate with absolute immunity. Not a single nation or extra-national group as we understand it is empowered to search a BIS courier or inquire about the contents on his or her person.
>
> Does all of the above have a common denominator? Yes, it does. The history of the 20th century in almost every instance is one that seeks to reduce the self-reliance of the common man, to shatter families and to promote dependence on the state. It cannot be a coincidence in our view when everything from art to science, to literature, to history ... education, economics, finance, etc. all promote spiritual nihilism and ever-expanding statist enterprises. There are even questions as to whether the "state" that people relate to in America is actually a corporation that sees inhabitants as assets rather than sovereign citizens.
>
> Follow the money. Alternative history revealed on the ‘Net shows us that much of the funding for the 20th century "isms" came from Western financiers; much of the funding for the Red Russians came from Wall Street; Red China in turn received funding from the USSR. The Rockefellers, meanwhile, donated the land for the UN; David Rockefeller was intimately involved in the creation of the IMF, World Bank and even the BIS before the war.
>
> The royal families of Europe and Britain are mostly interrelated and own vast amounts of property and industry. Many nation-states are not nearly so independent as they seem. Israel is an almost personal project of the Rothschilds who engineered its creation and then physically provided the Knesset and the Supreme Court building with its all its strange Illuminati symbolism; Hitler's rise and Germany's rebuilding were funded by Western banking interests.
>
> On and on, when one follows the money trail (and the Internet makes it easy) it leads back only to a few individuals and groups. And this is as it should be; through some sort of mathematical formula, resources are always distributed unequally, with one group of individuals ending up with the majority of assets and everybody else making due with the leftovers. But in the case of the power elite, controlling the lion's share of assets has not been enough.
>
> In order to ensure their power continues and to gather even more assets if possible, the elites have pursued a horrible program of mercantilism. By using the color of government to justify and hide their activities, the powers-that-be have created intelligence operations, central banking economies and even whole armies that nominally belong to the state but in actuality are controlled by a shadowy handful of individuals and families standing behind Western governments.
>
> This program came into full-effect in the 20th century when central banks became ubiquitous and the money generated enabled the power elite to virtually buy control of the Western world. Accordingly, many of the West's most significant sociopolitical events were compromised and perhaps pre-planned. Everything from the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s to (possibly) the landings of men on the moon to the various Marxist-Leninist tides that swept the world in the 20th century were offered within the context of a larger script goading the globe toward a unitarian governance.
>
> The world's levers of power are seemingly controlled only by a few, and they are not those that are "democratically elected." Given that there is plenty of evidence that this singular elite orchestrates world wars and even globally-convulsing socio-political movements, is it so much of a stretch to speculate that the current, deepening economic depression is in a sense a managed one? The elite well understands the outcome of central banking economies.
>
> What is happening in Europe, what has happened in America and what will happen in China are both evident and obvious. A continued degradation of the world economy can likely be forecast.
>
> The only item that the elite in our view did not entirely anticipate was the Internet itself. The truth-telling of the Internet has literally blown-up the secrecy that veiled the elite conspiracy to rule the world. It has also illustrated the elite's lack of intellectual resources. When exposed, those behind the conspiracy have ignored the exposure and attempted to force through their plans with brute legislative, civil and military force – as if the popular approval they have stage-managed through their fear-based promotions no longer mattered.
>
> It is astonishing to us that people (even readers and commentators at the Bell) do not see fully the disaster that has overtaken the power elite. For 100 years the elite operated behind-the-scenes, carefully orchestrating dominant social themes to promote ever-more-unified global governance. But now these plans are exposed along with many of those who promote them. For this reason we continue to point out these strategies may not be brought to fruition (no matter what prophesy vaguely predicts).
>
> Investors, especially, should watch carefully. In the 20th century, those who understood the promotions being implemented were likely wise to help fund them. But in the 21st century, as we have pointed out, at least some of the high-profile themes that the elite had hoped to implement seamlessly have unraveled. The Chicago Climate Exchange just went out of business and we have the idea that much of the so-called Green economy may soon follow, (wind and solar power companies, electric car companies, etc.) just as it did in the 1970s.
>
> Conclusion: To orchestrate a global depression leading to a New World Order in these circumstances strikes us as foolhardy. Ordinarily such ruin would depress the world's masses and cause the requisite chaos. But too many understand too much of what is going on these days. When one wishes to cause maximum confusion, is it wise to do so with a target strapped to one's back?
>
>
>
> LIE #9: We need to combat global warming – harder than ever.
>
> Carbon Marts Launch Around the World
>
> "World Bank chief to launch carbon market fund ... World Bank President Robert Zoellick is set to launch a new multi-million dollar fund in Mexico on Wednesday to help emerging market countries set up their own carbon markets, the bank said on Tuesday. While the list of participating countries is still being finalized, they are expected to include China, Mexico, Chile and Indonesia. Zoellick will launch the fund in Cancun on Wednesday where countries are involved in global climate negotiations to toughen existing pledges to cut carbon emissions." — Reuters
>
> Dominant Social Theme: We, the deciders, need to help countries combat global warming as much as possible.
>
> Free-Market Analysis: Colonialism is alive and well. The World Bank is to encourage carbon trading in developing countries. Too bad. This will make it even harder for developing nations to grow up; and the ramifications are simple. It means more sickness, more starvation, more deprivation. The Anglo-American power elite has learned through harsh experience that slavery does not pay in the modern era – or not open slavery anyway. Thus carbon trading (to alleviate non-existent global warming) is used to cement yet more intergenerational servitude. Africa is not to escape Western-induced poverty any time soon.
>
> What do we have against carbon markets? The same thing you should have, dear reader. They are nothing more than an elaborate plot to increase the Anglosphere's ability to suck funds from the world's staggering middle class and poor while increasing control over energy usage.
>
> Carbon markets in fact are designed to distribute the ability of industry to pollute – and thus benefit large "polluters" at the expense of the small. To begin with, carbon (pollution) credits are issued to industrial players. Since the credits are worth what the market prices them at, industry has an incentive to try to pollute as little as possible because then a given company can go on the market and sell the remaining carbon credits for a profit. Alternatively, a company that is polluting too much must go into the market and buy credits. This is a kind of private-market fine.
>
> But what if the "pollution" is an entirely made-up phenomenon? This is, unfortunately, the case with "carbon" – carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is among the most necessary gases on the planet. The theory behind carbon pollution is that carbon dioxide "traps" greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and thus causes global warming. But in fact water vapor is responsible for most of the trapping effect and carbon dioxide for perhaps three-to-five percent. Proponents of global warming will explain that it is this three-to-five percent that is critical. But as we have already learned, global warmists will say almost anything.
>
> The rhetorical nomenclature has been ever changing. We are now to use the phrase "climate change" or perhaps "climate catastrophe" – one cannot keep up. But the main issue is that global warming is a phony, fear-based promotion based on manipulation of data. The weather stations from where the data was gathered were often chosen or even placed in the warmest possible places. The data itself was "cooked" so as to show a predetermined conclusion. Can you possibly envision governments or NGOs cooking their books dear reader?
>
> UN white papers consisted of outright lies, including the prediction that the Himalayas were melting away. This "cite" was later proven spurious, taken erroneously from an article and misinterpreted. The North Pole is not melting away either and the South Pole is apparently becoming more frozen. There is a good deal of speculation now that the world is entering another mini-ice age. Of course what finally unraveled the scam was the release of emails showing that a small group of scientists had actively manipulated data over a period of years.
>
> The scientists had suppressed data and articles that were contrary to the "theory" of global warming while ensuring that articles that supposedly established global warming were prominently published in scientific journals they either controlled or created.
>
> Global warming has been thoroughly discredited. Its theoretical underpinnings have proven untrue. It's nothing but a fundamental promotion of the Anglosphere – which uses such fear-based promotions in its attempts to frighten people (especially in the West) into giving up wealth and authority to elite, global institutions like the UN and WHO.
>
> There are in fact a number of promotional threads that the Western power elite is trying to weave together in the greenhouse promotion. There are electric cars, carbon markets, a larger environmental promotion (including green politics) and of course "smart grid." The end result would seem to be an environment where everything (including travel) is somehow controlled and metered. This fits into the Anglosphere's larger goal of one-world governance. The World Bank, as a prime facility of the Anglosphere, has now been tapped to move the promotion forward – as it has been stymied elsewhere.
>
> One can see the muzzy outlines of an Orwellian future in this sort of design. One's entire life could be easily tracked. Each different utility presumably could be logged – from the coffee-percolator in the morning to the use of an oven in the evening. We can easily see how carbon trading fits into this scheme. Eventually, carbon trading would trickle down from the large marts; what was industrial would become personal. People no doubt would end up with their own carbon credits, ones they would have to buy or sell depending on whether they had exceeded their carbon usage within a given time frame. This would not be all of course. Eventually, civil and criminal penalties would be brought to bear on carbon "abusers." Those responsible for too much carbon dioxide could go to jail.
>
> It is perfectly possible within this context, by the way, for one's own breathing to play a role in carbon-dioxide production. If it could be established, for instance, that a heavy person produced more carbon-dioxide than a lighter one, weight limits could be introduced whereby people over a certain poundage would be fined or have to pay some sort extra tax as a kind of penalty. Athletic events, where people breathed more heavily due to exertion, might have to pay some sort of surcharge. Construction firms, employing people out-of-doors in strenuous employment capacities might have to pay a surcharge as well.
>
> At every opportunity, Western societies have decried slavery in modern times and postured against it. The irony is of course that many in the West are now paying far more to the government than the annual 30 percent a serf tithed in the Middle Ages. Slavery is alive and well in our view. And the whole issue of carbon trading and carbon-dioxide-as-a-pollutant would seem to be slavery-by-another-name. What is being prepared for Western societies is a special kind of hell.
>
> How does all this carbon-trading nonsense affect developing countries? Leaving aside any personal carbon limits to be put in place at some point, carbon trading must eventually add entrepreneurial costs. A large company can afford an overage but a small company likely cannot. Carbon trading in Africa will hurt small businesses, create more corruption and give advantages to the largest players, businesses that inevitably have Western interests. The World Bank has no business helping fund carbon marts in the developing world. Questions come to mind: Who gave it that authority? Where is the science that the World Bank must cite before it begins to encourage impoverished countries to tax citizens' breathing?
>
> Of course the rule of law, whatever that can be construed to be in Western society these days, means nothing to those at the World Bank or its elite managers. Impoverished countries are easier to influence than wealthier ones, so the scam of global warming is to be re-initiated there. Africa we believe is the essential target. The Anglosphere wants to blow up Africa just they way it has blown up South America, Europe and (sooner or later) China. There are already plans on the books for an African Central bank and an active "African Union" to mimic the horror show now taking place in Europe.
>
> Conclusion: The elite is currently failing in their attempts to build an over-arching greenhouse gas economy in the West; and the UN meetings now taking place in Cancun, Mexico will bring modest or little relief – no matter how they are "spun." The strategy is shifting from grand UN treaties to building carbon economies from the ground up in individual countries. Certainly, the developing world i