Regime Change Libya: Privatization of their Central Bank and the Theft of their Nationalized Oil Profits

by Scott Creighton

(I couldn’t resist)

“Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I’ll piss on em

that’s what the Statue of Bigotry says

Your poor huddled masses, let’s club em to death

get it over with and dump them on the boulevard” Lou Reed

There is no question anymore as to why the Obama administration is attempting to impose a change of the regime of Libya.

On March 17th I wrote about the invasion of Libya being about two main objectives: privatizing the national oil company and the state-owned central banking system. I pointed out that the US and British inserted language in the UN resolution that allowed them to freeze the accounts of the nationalized oil company as well as the central bank of Libya. Well, before they have even won their coup, the CIA backed pro-west opposition has taken the time to announce that they have formed a new national oil company and central bank. Obviously they have allowed our neo-liberal economic hit-men to write-up the legal documentation for this action and I am sure it hands over control to multinationals outside Libya. This is why so many globalist apologists and neo-liberals have been running around the last week claiming that the real government in Libya is the Transitional National Council.

It has always been about gaining control of the central banking system in Libya. Oil is just a profitable side issue like every other state asset that is waiting in Libya to be privatized and sold off to multinational corporations like Bechtel, GE, and Goldman Sachs. Oil is important and it is certainly a target but it isn’t the driving force behind these global wars for profit. Banking is.

Once the Coalition Provisional Authority took over in Iraq, the second thing they did, after signing a law banning the Baathists and disbanding the military, was to sign over the state-owned central banking system to privately held banking interests, bringing Iraq online with the web of private central banks. That took place the very first day of the CPA’s control of Iraq.

“United Nations resolution 1483 transferred the authority to authorize expenditures from Iraq’s oil revenue from the United Nations to the Coalition Provisional Authority… The International Advisory and Monitoring Board consisted of senior financial experts from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank...

… After the U.S. military came in and took over Iraq, the CPA quickly began issuing many binding orders privatizing Iraq’s economy and opening it up to foreign investment. This was welcomed by many multinational corporations who saw the war as an opportunity to make billions of dollars in profits.“ Wiki

If you control the issuance of money in a country and can turn huge profits while enslaving the population with the debt that it produces, then everything, everything including the oil and everything else, belongs to you.

“You control the debt, you control everything. This is the very nature of banking. To make us all, whether it is a nation or an individual, slaves to debt.” The International

That is why control of the central bank was far more important than the oil in Iraq or in Libya.

“The rebels in Libya are in the middle of a life or death civil war and Moammar Gadhafi is still in power and yet somehow the Libyan rebels have had enough time to establish a new Central Bank of Libya and form a new national oil company.

… According to Bloomberg, the Transitional National Council has “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.” Apparently someone felt that it was very important to get pesky matters such as control of the banks and control of the money supply out of the way even before a new government is formed.” The Economic Collapse

The UN security council resolution was passed on the 17th of March late in the day. I wrote about it the very same night. According to the statement released by the “new government” of Libya, they met and hashed out the details of their new oil company and central bank system on the 19th, not 48 hours after the UN resolution promised ONLY to provide an no-fly zone over Libya for “humanitarian purposes”.

More than anything else, this new disclosure from the “new government” of Libya proves that this was NEVER about protecting the civilians, it was ALWAYS about stealing from them control of their monetary system and the nationalized oil profits that provide them with health-care, education, and even cash put right into each and every Libyan bank account as their part of the profits derived from a natural resource that belongs to them.

“The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a March 19 meeting to establish the “Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general” of the company.

The Council also said it “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”

The Security Council adopted a resolution on March 17 that froze the foreign assets of the Libyan National Oil Corp. and the Central Bank of Libya, both described in the text as “a potential source of funding” for Qaddafi’s regime.” Bloomberg

Obama prevented no humanitarian catastrophe, he saved not one single life. What he has done is not in service to the people of Libya but rather those who he serves, the banking interests that put him in power in the first place. In Libya, Obama’s intervention was not designed to protect the people but to ensure that they too are enslaved just as we are enslaved. That is why a waitress at the hotel the press corp was staying at called Eman a traitor. They know what is at stake here just like most American liberals know. But to them it is more important to maintain the shared illusion in the face of a crumbling liberal ideology that is literally rotting from the inside.

What is happening in Libya will hurt the people of Libya, not help them. It will steal from them their health-care and their education. It will return them to a time before Gadhafi when they had an literacy rate of only 10% and sky-rocketing poverty. It will impose upon them the same crippling banking structure that the people of this country know altogether too well. There is no question anymore, there is no argument. The only question is how much damage will we allow our corrupt government to inflict on the rest of the world before we stand up and say enough. That is the only question that is left and the only question worth discussing.

Are we as morally bankrupt as the phonies who run our country or not? It’s just that simple.

“Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I’ll piss on em

that’s what the Statue of Bigotry says

Your poor huddled masses, let’s club em to death

get it over with and dump them on the boulevard” Lou Reed

Libya: Oil, Banks, Water, the United Nations, and America’s Holy Crusade by Felicity Arbuthnot

Image by Sree_ via Flickr

“America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam.” (President Barack Hussein Obama, Al-Azar University, Cairo, 4th June 2009.)

George W. Bush embarked on the casual snuffing out of uncounted, unique, human lives in majority Muslim populations, chillingly called it a “Crusade.” President Barack Hussein Nobel Obama did not go that far, he left that to the French Minister of the Interior, Claude Guéant who, on 21st March, praised President Nicholas Sarkozy for having: “headed the Crusade …”

For the “change we can believe in” President, reducing another ancient land of eye watering archeological gems, massive oil and water resources and a population of six million – little more than Scotland – it is, reportedly, a “turd sandwich.”

Humanity is not “at the crossroads.” It is on the Cross, scourged, nailed (in all senses) and utterly inconsequential, in face of murdering, marauding, looting Empire.

When President Obama: “updated the American people on the international effort we have led in Libya”, on 29th March, he stated that: “we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges” and referred to: “our interests …” being: “at stake.” Reluctance would be a first. America’s bombing for “interests” would be an encylopaedia.

Colonel Quaddafi, had, of course, stated the President: “denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world …” busy man. Heaven forbid “NATO’s” blitzkrieg should send the occasional shiver down a spine.

However, interestingly, at the end of March, a Report was due to be presented by the UN Human Rights Council leading to a Resolution commending Libya’s progress in a wide aspect of human rights. Numerous quotes from UN diplomatic delegations of many countries commented. Citations included: ” … achieving a high school enrolment rate and improvements in the education of women”, Libya’s: ” … serious commitment to, and interaction with, the Human Rights Council … enhanced development of human rights … while respecting cultural and religious traditions.”

Also mentioned was: ” … establishment of the national independent institution entrusted with promoting human rights, which had many of the competencies set out in the Paris Principles.” The country had: “become party to many human rights conventions and had equipped itself with a number of institutions, national, governmental and non governmental tasked with promoting human rights …”

The country was commended: “for the progress made in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, namely universal primary education (and) firm commitment (to) health care.” There was “praise” for “cooperation with international organizations in combating human trafficking and corruption ..” and for cooperation with “the International Organization for Migration.”

“Progress in enjoyment of economic and social rights, including in the areas of education, health care, poverty reduction and social welfare” with “measures taken to promote transparency”, were also cited. Malaysia: “Commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for being party to a significant number of international and regional human rights instruments.” Promotion: “of the rights of persons with disabilities” and praise for “measures taken with regard to low income families”, were cited.

In May 2010, Libya had also been voted on to the UN Human Rights Council by a veritable landslide, 155 of 192 UN General Assembly votes. As noted previously (i) Libya comes top in Africa on the Human Development Index, which measures longevity (the longest) infant mortality (the lowest) education, health services, well being. (ii)

All that said, before this publication is flooded with complaints about the writer’s naivety, “propagandist flights of fancy” (an orchestrated old favourite) or whatever, some of the countries making positive recommendations regarding Libya did not have the most shining human rights records. But then the US., UK., and NATO Member countries, pontificate from the high moral molehills of the mass graves of the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, overtly, and Yemen, Somalia and other countries, covertly. And of course there is Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, rendition flights and secret torture programmes and prisons across the globe for US., UK., convenience.(iii)

Further, in a train wreck of factual inaccuracies in President Obama’s speech, a (possibly) Freudian slip crept in. “Benghazi”, he said, was: “a city nearly the size of Charlotte” in danger of suffering: “a massacre (staining) the conscience of the world.”

A quick check shows that Charlotte, North Carolina: ‘has a major base of energy orientated organisations and has become known as “Charlotte, USA – The New energy Capital.” In the region there are 240+ companies directly tied to the energy sector … Major players are AREVA, Babcock and Wilcox, Duke Energy, Electric Power Research Institute, Fluor, Metso Power, Piedemont Natural Gas, Siemens Energy, Shaw Group, Toshiba, URS Corp., and Westinghouse.The University of North Carolina at Charlotte has a reputation in energy education and research and its “Energy Production and Infrastructure Center” trains energy engineers and conducts research.” ‘ (Wikipedia.)

Whilst many respected oil experts have argued that since so many western energy companies operate in Libya, this is not about oil, there are some points worth pondering. All companies operating in Libya must have Libyan partners, entitled to 35% of profits.(iv) Trading is via the Libyan Central Bank, in the Libyan Dinar, not US$s. The Libyan Central Bank is also independently outside the IMF and the World Bank.

There are only 5 nations without a Rothschild model central bank: North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Cuba and Libya.

There were two others: Afghanistan and Iraq, but they were gobbled up by the international banking system within a heartbeat of the invasions.

“It has always been about gaining control of the central banking system in Libya. Oil is just a profitable side issue like every other state asset that is waiting in Libya to be privatized and sold off to multinational corporations like Bechtel, GE, and Goldman Sachs. Oil is important and it is certainly a target but it isn’t the driving force behind these global wars for profit. Banking is.” (v)

That said, as President Obama was busy being inaugurated, Colonel Quaddafi (January 2009) was mooting nationalizing : “US oil companies, as well of those of UK, Germany, Spain, Norway Canada and Italy . “Oil should be owned by the State at this time, so we could better control prices by the increase or decrease in production”, stated the Colonel. (vi)

So how does the all tie together? Libya, in March being praised by the Majority of the UN., for human rights progress across the board, to being the latest, bombarded international pariah? A nation’s destruction enshrined in a UN., Resolution?

The answer lies in part with the Geneva based UN Watch.(vii) UN Watch is : “a non-governmental organization whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations.” With Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council, with ties to the UN Department of Public Information, “UN Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.” (AJC.)

Among those involved in UN Watch are Co-Chair, AJC’s David A. Harris. Core values: “AJC has long believed that the development of a comprehensive U.S., energy program is essential to the economic and social well-being of our country.” Their website is an exceptionally instructive listen and read. (viii)

Ambassador Alfred Moses, former US Ambassador to Romania, Heads UN Watch. His company, Secure Energy’s Mission : “Improving US., Energy security”, “Securing America’s Energy Future.” (ix)

Board Member Ruth Wedgwood is : “an international law expert … at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) a former member of Donald Rumsfeld’s Defence Policy Board (formerly headed by Richard Perle.) Closely associated with: “a number of neo-conservative and rightist pro-Israeli groups – including Freedom House, UN Watch and Benador Associates – a neo-con dominated public relations firm.” She “has been a vocal advocate of the war on terror … strong defender of the Patriot Act and decision to invade Iraq.” (x)

Executive Director Hillel Neuer, has served as law clerk to the Supreme Court of Israel, is a Graduate Fellow at the Shalem Center think tank and holds a host of law degrees. In addition to extensive human rights legal Advocacies and Testimonies, as associate in the international law firm of Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison llp., (New York) “He was associate in the legal team that successfully represented Raytheon Company in various claims against Hughes Electronics Corporation.” Neuer was also instrumental in achieving victory for the California Public Utilitites Commission in: “various disputes with Pacific Gas and Electric Company …” (xi)

Speakers at events hosted by the company have included Hillary “I met the rebel leader in Paris” Clinton (xii) and Vernon Jordan, former political advisor to Bill “I would be inclined to arm the rebels” Clinton. (xiii)

The UN Watch’s relentless campaign: “to remove Libya from the Human Rights Council” began in May 2010: ” .. working closely with Libyan dissident Mohamed Eljahmi.”(see vii) Mr Eljahmi is: ” … a Libyan/American human rights activist. He is a co-founder and former Communication Officer of American Libyan Freedom Alliance. ALFA was founded 2003 to help educate and inform US government and media about Libya. Mr. Eljahmi actively educates and informs US government, national and international media and NGOs about Libyan affairs.” (xiv)

An aspect of especial ire for UN Watch has been Libya’s place on the five Member investigation by the Human Rights Council, on the use of mercenaries. Given their woeful excesses from Blackwater’s (now Xe) shoot ups to CACI’s man-management at Abu Ghraib (then there’s Paravant, an Xe subsiduary at Bagram; Guantanamo and KBR) it is a supreme irony that UN Watch’s cry of “foul” over Libya has won out, as the US place on the Council is unsullied. (Libya was suspended from the Human Rights Council on 25th February this year.) And did Libya employ “black African mercenaries”, to fight the rebels? In the fog of disinformation, certainties are scarce, but it is a story which would seem to be unravelling.

Then there is the water. Quaddafi’s project to make Libya’s vast desert bloom, has been dubbed by some “The eighth wonder of the world.” A succinct over view cites: ” .. the large quantities of water in Libya deep beneath the desert … Libya’s Great Man-Made River Project. A project worth 33 billion dollars. The value of the small reservoirs is about 70,000,000,000,000 dollars.” (xv) When the project was announced in September 1991, London and Washington were reported to be “ballistic.” At a ceremony attended by Arab and African heads of state, foreign diplomats and delegations, including President Mubarak of Egypt, King Hassan of Morocco, Quaddafi called it a gift to the Third World. He also said: “American threats against Libya will double.” (xvi)

Looking at the all, it is impossible not to think the truth of an attack of over thirty nations on a country of six million is buried deeper than Libya’s aquifers. “Operation Odyssey Dawn”, was well named. An odyssey indeed. Odysseus’s tortured journey lasted ten years.

End Note:

‘Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Qaddafi whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council.

The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a March 19 meeting to establish the “Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general” of the company.

The Council also said it “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.’ (xvii)

And of course, given Israel’s chronic water shortage, Libya’s abundant underground blessings, and the close geographical proximity of the two countries, there might be other regional advantages mooted in regime change.

Notes

i. http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/britains-failed-intel-operation-in-libya-her-majestys-bungling-secret-intelligence-service/

ii. http://hdr.undp.org/en/

iii. http://www.statewatch.org/rendition/rendition.html

iv. http://www.benlawyers.com/law-of-libya/the-obligation-for-foreign-companies-which-execute-a-contract-in-libya-to-create-a-235.html

v. http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/un-resolution-in-libya-is-about-oil-and-their-central-banking-system-updated/#more-15364

vi. http://english.pravda.ru//hotspots/crimes/25-03-2011/117336-reason_for_war_oil-0/

vii. Full chronology of the Campaign against Libya: http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1316871&ct=9142899

See also : http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/category/libya/

viii. http://www.ajc.org/

ix. http://www.secureenergy.org/diplomatic-council-energy-security/ambassador-alfred-moses

x. http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Wedgwood_Ruth

xi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_Neuer

xii. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12741414

xiii. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/52466.html see also: http://www.paulweiss.com/

xiv. http://www.genevasummit.org/speaker/71 ALFA about which not a lot can be found: http://www.alfa-online.net/

xv. http://www.wearechange.org/?p=7359

xvi. http://american_almanac.tripod.com/libya.htm

See also: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24096

xvii. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/libyan-rebel-council-sets-up-oil-company-to-replace-qaddafi-s.html

see

Libya and the World of Oil by Noam Chomsky

Libyan War In Third Week As NATO Takes Command by Rick Rozoff

Michel Chossudovsky: Operation Libya: Insurrection and Military Intervention

The Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics by James Petras and Robin E. Abaya

Libya Protests Revolution 2011

http://vodpod.com/dandelionsalad/tag/libya

"The American System Become Dysfunctional" - Marc Faber on CNBC 04/08/11

Watch this link .... http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=14533

Monsanto cash helped fund bill to stifle whistleblowers in Iowa

Speaking of Monsanto, it turns out they are playing a role in Iowa's proposed anti-whistleblower bill -- a bill focused primarily on agriculture. Should the bill pass, it will become illegal to produce undercover videos at various types of agricultural facilities (as well as to get a job at a facility with the express intent of producing a video). Sarah Damian of the Government Accountability Project, a "whistleblower advocacy organization," observes over at the Food Integrity Campaign's blog that Monsanto has been throwing lobbying dollars behind Iowa's effort to draw a steel curtain around food production. And not without reason:

... Monsanto has more facilities in Iowa than in any other state in the country, with more than 25 offices. The company is heavily invested in the bill's outcome because "crop operations" are also covered, which would apply to Monsanto's seed houses, pesticide manufacturing plants and research facilities throughout Iowa. The biotech and crop chemical giant wouldn't want any undercover videos produced on its clock, apparently.

That's a bit ironic, however, given the fact that Monsanto investigators are notorious for trespassing on farmers' property and going to extreme measures to produce evidence of seed patent infringement, including posing as land mappers or even joining a local Alcohol Anonymous group to gain the farmers' trust and gain video access to their fields. Talk about undercover.

And don't think that Monsanto hasn't planned ahead. According to Damian, there are provisions in the bill that would allow Monsanto to continue snooping around farmers' fields in its ongoing search for so-called "seed thieves" aka "patent infringers."

Despite occasional setbacks and even uncertainty in the marketplace, let it not be said that Monsanto has lost its taste for playing the heavy.

Tom is a writer and a media & technology consultant who thinks that wrecking the planet is a bad idea. He twitters and blogs here and at Beyond Green about food policy, alternative energy, climate science and politics as well as the multiple and various effects of living on a warming planet.

Banks in Ill., Nev. fail; makes 28 closed in 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — Regulators on Friday shut down small banks in Illinois and Nevada, lifting the number of U.S. bank failures so far this year to 28 after 157 succumbed in 2010 to the gutted economy and mounting bad loans.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Western Springs National Bank and Trust, in Western Springs, Ill., with $186.8 million in assets and $181.9 million in deposits. It also closed Las Vegas-based Nevada Commerce Bank, with $144.9 million in assets and $136.4 million in deposits.

The failures of Western Springs and Nevada Commerce are expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $31 million and $31.9 million, respectively.

Heartland Bank and Trust Co., based in Bloomington, Ill., will assume the assets and deposits of Western Springs National Bank. Los Angeles-based City National Bank is taking over Nevada Commerce Bank.

The FDIC and Heartland Bank and Trust will share losses on $100.8 million of Western Springs' loans and other assets. It will share losses on $111.1 million of Nevada Commerce Bank's assets with City National.

Illinois has been one of the hardest-hit states for bank failures. Sixteen banks were shuttered in the state last year. The shutdown of Western Springs National Bank was the fourth bank failure in Illinois this year.

California, Florida and Georgia also have seen large numbers of bank failures.

The 157 bank closures last year topped the 140 shuttered in 2009. It was the most in a year since the savings-and-loan crisis two decades ago.

The FDIC has said that 2010 likely would mark the peak for bank failures. Already this year the pace of closures has slowed: By this time last year, regulators had closed 42 banks.

The 2009 failures cost the insurance fund about $36 billion. The failures last year cost around $21 billion, a lower price tag because the banks that failed in 2010 were smaller on average. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three were closed in 2007.

The growing number of bank failures has sapped billions of dollars out of the deposit insurance fund. It fell into the red in 2009, and its deficit stood at $7.4 billion as of Dec. 31.

The number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem" list rose to 884 in the final quarter of last year from 860 three months earlier. The 884 troubled banks is the highest number since 1993, during the savings-and-loan crisis.

The FDIC expects the cost of resolving failed banks to total around $52 billion from 2010 through 2014.

Depositors' money — insured up to $250,000 per account — is not at risk, with the FDIC backed by the government. That insurance cap was made permanent in the financial overhaul law enacted in July.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Mike Krieger Explains Why Silver Bullets Are The Only Defense Against Modern Financial Vampires

Definition of VAMPIRE

1: the reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep

2 a : one who lives by preying on others

Does the above definition of vampire by Merriam Webster remind you of anything? Yes of course it does, it reminds you of the Too Big To Fail Banks. It was extremely appropriate for Matt Taibbi to refer to Goldman Sachs as the “Vampire Squid.” Just as the above definition lays out, vampires are able to come back from the dead and once they have done so they drain the life out of the living while they sleep. Need I say more? The big banks and the Federal Reserve are modern day vampires and they are feeding off what remains of the living (productive) parts of the economy while the majority of Americans are stuck in a reality tv, Prozac induced coma of endless propaganda and brainwashing. Indeed the vampires are feeding off of an American public that still by and large remains “asleep.” These are ideal hunting grounds for vampires.

The reason vampires feed on people that are asleep of course is that they attempt to attack when their victim is most vulnerable. The cover of night is when vampires are active, which is exactly why the Federal Reserve must operate in the shadows and why it fiercely fights off attempts to disclose its activities to the public. The TBTF banks and the big trading brokers that scamper off like cry babies to their sugar daddy Ben Bernanke every time they have a losing trading day must be exposed as the economic life sucking vampires and financial terrorists that they are. They must be brought out into the light of day and exposed for the unproductive, unable to compete in the free market jokers that they are. I have said it before and I will say it again. Until these entities are put out of their misery, restructured and key executives now and from the crisis are prosecuted there will be no sustainable recovery other than repeated phony boosts in aggregate demand created by printing money. More worryingly, the social fabric of the country will continue to deteriorate.

So all this vampire talk leads me to an obvious conclusion. Silver! When I was last on Max Keiser’s show the “Keiser Report” a few weeks ago we discussed the latent power in the hands of the people via their ability to buy physical bullion and take delivery. There is no more powerful and effective vehicle of political protest than taking this action as a vote against the fascist policies of the Federal Reserve and its abusive money monopoly. This is because the Federal Reserve’s power lies in its ability to create AT WILL as many fiat dollars as it pleases to further its agenda, which at this point is clearly entirely aligned toward helping the bankers and the politicians in what I call the NYC/Washington D.C. cancer center. Gold and silver are the historical and indeed the modern day competitors to fiat money, which is why they tend to be demonized so much by the mainstream media and financial press and are almost never addressed by Federal Reserve members even though they have been at the heart of global finance for millennia. Ever since our conversation, Max has launched a very powerful campaign aimed at the silver market as a way for the average citizen to fight back against the criminal banking system intent on turning the vast majority of the Western world’s population into modern day serfs. It is prescient and it will succeed.

Part of why I have liked precious metals for many years now is because I knew that this day would eventually come. That the suffering people of the world would finally have had enough and would fight back. I knew that the most effective way to fight the system would be to take physical delivery of precious metals as the surge this would cause in the price would be evidence of a total loss of confidence in fiat money, which could only then be countered by a return to some sort of hard money or revaluation of the dollar in order to reset the system, or the “ctrl alt del” print.

This campaign is not just brilliant in its potential effectiveness but its real power comes from the inclusion of as many everyday citizens as possible in the fight. You see, back in the late 1970s when the Hunt brothers and others bought up a large percentage of the world’s available silver, they were relatively easily demonized and stopped by the government.. No government no matter how thuggish is going to be able to stop millions and millions of people the world over from buying a few ounces of silver. Silver is also in much shorter overall supply than gold since pretty much all 160,000 tons of gold estimated to have been produced over the course of human existence is still around somewhere. Silver is largely consumed and its annual production is estimated at only around 600 million ounces a year. Think about this for a second. While every adult American doesn’t have the $1400 to buy an ounce of gold, they do have the $75 dollars to buy three ounces of silver. So if every adult American spent $75 on silver that is total annual global production folks. See how powerful this is?

Ah but there is more. Keiser’s campaign has been accepting videos from members of its audience that support the campaign and he has then been posting the best one’s on the website. This takes the focus away from any one particular individual and puts it in the hands of the people that are participating. This is extremely empowering just as youtube and the internet in general are extraordinarily empowering. Someone that has never reached more than ten or twenty people in their lives with their views are now reaching thousands through the internet. The establishment “filter” on news and ideas is gone. The internet is the Guttenberg printing press on steroids. Let’s not forget that the Guttenberg press was key in sparking the Renaissance. This is why I am completely convinced that the current system will collapse. It has run its course and is no longer helpful to humanity’s progress in the 21st century. The people do not want things to stay the way they are and in fact the means of ending it are very simple. Much more simple than voting at the polls for politicians that know nothing and can be bought off within a week. Vote with your money. Buy silver.

All the best from sunny (and warm) Colorado,
Mike

As I predicted, after Goldman Sachs broke the law, they lobbied the SEC to change the law

• SEC Might Delay Tech IPOs Even Further By Raising Shareholder Limit

This has been a recurring pattern on Wall St. for years. Firms like Goldman and JP Morgan break various laws all the time, but then they lobby to have the laws changed retroactively (yes, this law will change – and the talk now is to make it look like they are weighing some issues other than the massive kickback in cash they’ll get to change this law). This is obviously a complete breakdown in the concept of the rule of law. BusinessInsider shamefully carries the headline that insiders will have to wait for an IPO – instead of covering the fact that there’s been a miscarriage of justice. Any wonder Americans are becoming poorer? The average American can’t make up laws and rules to suit their personal net worth interests, but they are forced to compete with banks like Goldman that do.

This is BusinessInsider’s spin: “So if the SEC changes the rule it might be a further disincentive for tech companies to go public.” Huh? What about the fact that Goldman Sachs BROKE THE LAW!!!!

Furthermore, let me add that complete disregard for the rule of law is at the heart of the issue as to why the U.S. dollar is selling off. There are simply no rules against counterfeiting, insider trading, and market manipulation at every level of the banking system including the Fed and the Treasury . . . So why would anyone want to own the instrument of this deceit? Why would anyone want to be the last guy into a burning building, the last lottery ticket holder in a drawing for an anvil dropped on your head? It is so unbelievably ludicrous to think that the U.S. dollar is going to survive Goldman and JPM’s rape and pillage of the banking system that anyone left holding dollars deserves to get wiped out in my opinion.

It Time The Tea Party Give the Boot to Boehner as the First to go after this Deal he made in the dark of night.

Does these people think we are stupid? Making a deal to cut 38billion? Cut 500 billion over the next 10 years?That is chum change and does not amount a hill of beans. We need a half a trillion dollars cut NOW!There is nothing to clap about or celebrate. There is nothing historic about this deal made. All it did was remind the grassroots we need to remove Boehner as speaker of the house and from congress period.The people are tired of deals and compromise as their futures slip away slower instead of faster.
The Republicans did not take over the house to barrow and spend at all. They shellacked and cleaned the Democrats clock in last November Election. There was no need to negotiate with the losers for any deals. Coming to an understanding and compromise got this nation in the sad shape. For the Democrats and the President to hold the troops pay and the elderly hostage for political purposes would have backfired if the Leadership in the GOP held there line in the sand.
This deal was a failure in leadership.The Republicans sent a bill to the president to sign and threatened to Veto it would have been seen who was the obstructionist or who was being fiscally responsible. This spending deal that was reached tells me no one won.There was no winners in this.It just says we need to get rid of the RINOs starting with Speaker of the House Boehner for his unwillingness to keep the President in check on wars especially Libya ,his encroachment on the Constitution and his fiscal irresponsibility.
There was no winners because the American people have to pay for it without a say. The government should have shut down. This was a bad deal. This shows me that the leadership in the GOP needs to go overboard like heavy cargo on a ship in a storm. If the crew does not toss the heavy cargo overboard the ship will sink. The tea party should throw Boehner over board because his deal making is helping to sink the ship we call these United States.Boehner and the RINOs are that dead weight cargo that will sink us if we do not act.

Glamour and the Ghost Cities of the Moon.

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

‘Dogs in the water are no match for a raccoon’.

I speak often about attractions and desires. I think the richest person in France is the lady who is the heir to the L’Oreal fortune. When you consider the commercial industry of glamour and all that it connects to, directly and indirectly, you’re looking at one of the biggest industries on the planet and it’s all about appearances. It’s all about altering and camouflaging appearances, actually.

Glamour is possibly one of the most insidious forces on Earth. Look at the things we glamorize. I don’t think I have to itemize. It’s one of the major hypnotics on the planet, along with money, power and fame. Glamour is intimately connected to all of them. The given purpose of cosmetics is to enhance beauty but its actual result is to obscure it.

I don’t know a great deal about Steven Gaskin. I’ve never heard anything bad about him but I can only anticipate someone will tell me something (grin). That’s beside the point. He once made a comment about women. I can’t remember the actual quote. He said something to the effect that it is one of the saddest things on Earth to see a woman coming into her full glory and beauty, only to cover it up with cosmetics. I can’t say too much about this because it is a product of the times in which we live. One can’t really be blamed too harshly for giving in to such a significant power to some degree.

I try to be mindful of this force in my own life. I have no jewelry. I don’t wear a watch either, because I don’t care what time it is. I don’t use any ointments or unguents for my skin or make concessions to suppress my smell, which I leave to diet to regulate. I wear common and generally used clothing that I buy from EBay; blue jeans, types of shirts and I’ve got some rock and roll outfits for that kind of thing, which is about as rare as hen’s teeth these days. The only new clothes I ever buy are sneakers and socks.

I note that there are people who can tell the brand label of clothing and measure people according to it. That amazes me. I note the near obsession that many people have with their appearance; the awful trauma of hair loss and the fear of aging, as if the currency of their being relied upon something that is going by the day. That’s by turns, tragic and amusing. I often think of Donald Trump’s hair. With all his money that was the best he could come up with?

I experience a keen sorrow when I see the things that women have to go through to make their way through the bombed out wasteland of contemporary culture. On psychedelics, it all looks like a cartoon. I watch the poses and postures and the mating games, cries for attention that go on all around me on a given day, as I make a brief trip to the store or into a larger town for one reason or another.

I was in Basel the other day. Basel is infamous for several reasons. The reader can find those out on their own, should they be curious. It’s been a glorious Spring here. I was walking along the Rhine into the main part of town and here and there I passed someone naked laying right out on the walkway. They could have positioned themselves better but maybe not, given what I intuit as their reasons for being there. You can find naked people for all sorts of reasons, once the weather permits it. A man walked by me with his shirt off, exposing his shaved and bronzed chest. He was in his fifties and extraordinarily attentive to any interest that might be shown.

I came into town and went to the library and afterwards I thought I would go to a Sushi restaurant that was on Barfusserplatz; the main drag for theaters, bars and sundry. I sat outside and then noticed a woman in her fifties, dressed up in a little girl’s party dress. She had a music box of some sort and was doing some of the worst, most awkward and comical ballet I’ve ever seen. You wanted to avert your eyes as if you were passing a roadside accident, unless you’re most people, with rubberneck syndrome.

On my way in I passed a 6 and a half foot transvestite, walking with a female companion. I’ve seen them done up to a T but this was another train wreck. Everything was surreal for me. I don’t go into large urban areas very often. What I noted was the concern for glamour everywhere and all of the shops that supported it. That was pretty much the majority of what there was, if you eliminate feeding zones. The urban Swiss can be a tad difficult in a lot of ways. Money rules the waters and the prices reflect that. Comfort and PC freedom are main areas of focus here. Should a few drops of rain fall, thousands of umbrellas go up and they DO NOT watch where they are going.

In Europe, sexual activity starts very early and they don’t make the hue and cry about it that they make in the US, where they’re also lowering the bar by the day, because of glamour. So, you tend to see a lot of teenagers with sullen faces. The force of glamour and the sexual attractive power that has generated it is possibly the most powerful force on Earth. It’s one of the perversions of this force that expresses itself in war and combat. Most things are some channeling, perversion or modification of this force. I can see that now more clearly than I’ve ever seen it in my life.

Something is happening to me, now that I’ve lost nearly all of my attractions. I’m beginning to see them for what they are. I can see the electronic nature of the male force and the magnetic attractive force of the female nature. I can also see the lies, busily at work, which are a ground zero essential to the interplay. Various forms of deception and seduction are at work all around. Sometimes you even see a form of love, in its present permutation of whatever passes for romance. I don’t mean to be cynical, because I’m not. What I see are a multitude of trapping devices; a certain relative ease going in and various degrees of difficulty getting out. When what is called Love, can be so quickly turned to anger and resentment, it’s not Love at all. It’s a glamorization of it.

Everyone is looking at themselves in the big store windows and that is their sole focus, except for the constant searching for interest in them. There’s such a controlling aspect to all of it, as if they were all contained within a limited field of programming. It fascinates me. With the falling away of attractions, I am noticing other things; the state of being for people of any particular age, the level of self obscuration. revealed in the attention of their eyes to given objects, the hunger and the way it keys on whatever is needed to satisfy it and all through the sequences and progressions is the glamour; the glamour of callow youth, the glamour of presentations in person and object and all of it taking place beneath the eternal skies, within a confined time zone that is the temporary reality, which is changing into something else as you are moving through it.

That’s not reality though. That’s what interposes itself between you and reality. It’s all serious business though. People believe in it and live their lives according to it. People lie and steal for it, die for it and kill for it. It’s possible, in a certain state of awareness, to see the whole spectacle as a progressive dance of death, among cob-webbing dreams. The princely settings at the tables of the privileged are filmed in dust. Corpses in rotting tuxedos and other ensembles sit there, engaged in animated conversation from some location on the moon. They think they’re here but they are on the moon.

The sum total of the manufactured world’s offerings is... colorful rubbish. They’ve found up to fifty pounds of waste and more in people’s colons, whose diet is predominantly meat. I’ve read where the average carnivore has seven pounds of putrefying waste in their colon by the time they are fifty. Well, it’s all a matter of personal choice here and... we’re all about personal choice and freedom. True freedom does not result in bondage. That’s what happens when freedom is seen as license. Most people don’t have to worry about being enslaved by others. They’ve already done the job on themselves which, is how the other happens anyway. You become a slave when you cease to be your own master.

Glamour is a predator that sits like a Moray eel at the mouth of a cave in the coral or wherever. It’s surrounded by color and the Moray eel I’m talking about; glamour, has all sorts of attractive features to lure you close enough to snatch. Informed divers know about the dangers of the deep; sticking your hands in dark places and so on and so forth. There's not much difference between the world you live in and the ocean. You can find parallels all day. One’s no less a dream world than the other and divers know what a dream world the ocean can be. Anyway, I’ve said enough for today. Good fortune to you all.


End Transmission.......

Song: Graveyards of the Heart

New home sales are at lowest level in almost 50 years

WASHINGTON — Home construction in the United States is all but coming to a halt.

Americans are on track to buy fewer new homes than in any year since the government began keeping data almost a half-century ago. Sales are just half the pace of 1963 — even though there are 120 million more people in the U.S.

The sliding sales show how far the housing market has fallen since the bubble burst four years ago. And they're a blow to the economic recovery as it draws strength from other places.

Diminished sales have driven the median price of a new home down to about $202,000, the lowest since 2003. If the sluggish sales continue, analysts say, small homebuilders will fold, meaning less competition as the market improves and higher prices later.

"The longer it goes on, the more builders will drift away from the industry altogether," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist of Capital Economics.

Ashworth noted that a surge in foreclosures is forcing down prices for previously occupied homes even faster than they're falling for new homes. As a result, new homes are less attractive to buyers.

"That's not going to change for at least another year or two," Ashworth said. "Under these conditions, you can't really see homebuilders willing to ramp up, and that's bad for buyers."

Read more: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110324/BUSINESS02/103240333/1003/BUSINESS#searchbox

Debt Jumped $54.1 Billion in 8 Days Preceding Obama-Boehner Deal to Cut $38.5 Billion for Rest of Year

wiki

Terrence P. Jeffrey
CNS News

The federal debt increased $54.1 billion in the eight days preceding the deal made by President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) to cut $38.5 billion in federal spending for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, which runs through September.

The debt was $14.2101 trillion on March 30, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, and $14.2642 on April 7.

Since the beginning of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, 2010, the national debt has increase by $653.4 billion.

Economists Shocked, Shocked: We Really Are Losing Jobs to China!

Ian Fletcher

Activist Post

There’s a nice new academic paper just out by an MIT economist and his friends that gives some hard data to back up everyone’s suspicion that the U.S. is losing jobs to China. It’s entitled The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States, by David Autor, which can be downloaded if you are curious.

The bottom line here probably won’t be all that surprising to most ordinary Americans, though it will annoy the living daylights out of most academic economists and our political establishment. In the authors' own words:

Our study suggests that the rapid increase in U.S. imports of Chinese goods during the past two decades has had a substantial impact on employment and household incomes, benefits program enrollments, and transfer payments in local labor markets exposed to increased import competition. These effects extend far outside the manufacturing sector, and they imply substantial changes in worker and household welfare.

In ordinary language, we’re getting scr*wed, folks. “Welfare,” in this context, doesn’t mean welfare checks; it is the economists’ term for, roughly, “economic well-being.” And the “substantial changes” mentioned are not for the better.

One key discovery of this study is hard data to back up the idea, which I have personally argued for years, that free trade is not a small-government policy. In reality, free trade tends to expand government, by increasing the demand for social services and transfer payments (unemployment, welfare etc.) needed to mitigate its social costs. As the authors put it:

"Growing import exposure spurs a substantial increase in transfer payments to individuals and households in the form of unemployment insurance benefits, disability benefits, income support payments, and in-kind medical benefits."

Quite. But don’t think the butcher’s bill is paid for by all this welfare-state generosity. The authors conclude that all this government assistance doesn’t cover the harm done by free trade:

Nevertheless, transfers fall far short of offsetting the large decline in average household incomes found in local labor markets that are most heavily exposed to China trade.

Now here’s the real kicker: the authors calculate that the economic efficiency lost due to increased transfer payments is quite likely big enough to cancel out all the supposed gains in economic efficiency due to trade with China!

Our estimates imply that the losses in economic efficiency from trade-induced increases in the usage of public benefits are, in the medium run, of the same order of magnitude as U.S. consumer gains from trade with China.

In other words, the blithe assumption of conventional economics that “Sure, free trade has its costs, but the benefits are infinitely larger” doesn’t hold up. We’re either not winning out, or winning only peanuts.

Finally, for any readers who have been smugly assuming that because they don’t personally work in manufacturing, none of this affects them, bad news. The authors report that:

Our analysis finds that exposure to Chinese import competition affects local labor markets along numerous margins beyond its impact on manufacturing employment. In particular, while growing exposure to Chinese imports reduces manufacturing employment in a local labor market, it also triggers a decline in wages that is primarily observed outside of the manufacturing sector. Reductions in both employment and wage levels lead to a steep drop in the average earnings of households. (Emphasis added.)

So don’t think there’s anywhere to hide from the China threat.

Make no mistake, people: the case for free trade is inexorably crumbling.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank founded in 1933 and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

US to delay China currency report

© AFP/File

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Treasury Department on Friday said it would delay a report that could label China a currency manipulator until at least May, after a series of top level meetings.

The semi-annual report, which was next due on April 15, has become a focal point for critics who accuse Beijing of unfairly keeping the yuan weak against the dollar to boost Chinese exports.

The US government said it would wait until a meeting of the G20 finance ministers and the IMF's annual spring meetings this month and a bilateral meeting in May before publishing the document.

The last report -- which also deals with the currency policies of other trade partners -- was published in February, after a delay of four months.

The report stopped short of labeling China a manipulator, a move which could have resulted in punitive sanctions on Chinese trade.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

A Militarized Economy Cannot Balance the Budget

By John Perkins

"Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.” Eisenhower, 1961 Military Industrial Speech

April 08, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- While we send our love and support to those so horribly impacted by the earthquake and tsunami, we must not allow this shock to divert us from the tsunami headed our way. Our business and political leaders will try to use this terrible catastrophe as a diversion to hoodwink us into budgetary reductions that will fatten their wallets and leave us and our children devastated.

It does not matter on what side of the political fence you sit during the current budget debates. The fact is that if our leaders are not willing to take into account our over-dependence on a militarized economy and change it, we will never balance the budget. Our progeny will face an endless struggle to clean up the debris.

Each year the Department of Defense’s tidal wave grows more menacing. We witness countless billions allocated for weapons research and development; nuclear warheads; and the secret and often illegal activities of the CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, and other “intelligence” agencies. We watch countries that are caught up in natural disasters and political upheavals and see how this “crisis elixir” attracts and profits predatory capitalists. Turmoil in foreign lands encourages U.S. hawks to party on at their military orgies. They stagger out to launch campaigns into new areas of conflict.

And they have the gall to do this under the guise of promoting democracy.

It is time for us to tell them that they are exposed, that we comprehend that what they are really doing is reaping huge profits and making other nations their financial servants for generations to come. Meanwhile, at home, we face severe cutbacks in social services, transportation, health care, the environmental and educational sectors, and other civil services.

Now is the time for us – you and me – to let our leaders know that we are no longer duped by their rhetoric. We understand they cannot bring our financial house to order without significant reductions in military spending. This includes calling our troops back from the Middle East and Afghanistan.

In 1961, President Eisenhower said, “As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.” There is a very sad irony in those words. We need to let those who have followed Ike’s footsteps to the halls of power in Washington know that we understand the relevance of those words to today’s economic and military crises.

The United States accounts for almost 50 percent of the world’s total military spending; yet our share of the world’s GDP is less than 25 percent. This official budget does not take into account the money that is secretly allocated in the “black” budgets of the Pentagon, CIA, and other clandestine operations.

We must all ask ourselves:

How can a nation that prides itself on government “of, for, and by the people,” justify hiding these black budget allocations from taxpayer scrutiny? How can a nation continue to prosper by ignoring its own long-term demise at the hands of a militarized economy?

If we truly want a real democracy to survive for generations to come, then we must demand extensive military reductions. We must demand a peaceful and sustainable path for our country and for the world at large. We must bring our soldiers home. We must protect ourselves from the tsunami that is building on Wall Street and in the halls of Washington DC.

See also:- Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

Government shutdown avoided with tentative budget deal - $39B in cuts, Planned Parenthood left alone

We've got a deal!

Democrats and Republicans reached a budget deal Friday night an hour before the midnight deadline, averting a potentially disastrous federal government shutdown.

Both sides agreed on plan that cuts $39 billion in federal spending - a mammoth amount, but far less than the $61 billion that Tea Party Republicans had been demanding.

President Obama, who rode herd on the negotiations, hailed the agreement.

"Americans with different beliefs came together again," he said in an address just minutes after the agreement from the White House.

The deal was reached as furlough notices were readied for legions of federal workers - and just as hope was running out that the shutdown might be prevented.

A few hours earlier, furious Democrats accused House Speaker John Boehner and the other Republicans of walking away from a deal that would have cut the budget by $38 billion.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the sticking point wasn't money - it was abortion and GOP calls for defunding Planned Parenthood.

"We all know the federal budget is very complex," Reid said. "The fact that Republicans made this about women's health and not about money is really a shame."

Mayor Bloomberg also blasted the Republicans for holding the budget hostage to an "ideological issue that has nothing to do with cutting the budget deficit."

Boehner, an Ohio Republican, insisted the fight was still about money.

"Most of the policy issues have been dealt with and the big fight is about spending," he said. "We have no interest in shutting down the government."

But Tea Party favorite Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, said he has no problem shutting down the government if it means defunding Planned Parenthood.

Joan Malin, president of Planned Parenthood of New York City, said they are barred by law from using federal money to fund abortions.

"It's an outrage to shut down the government over an extreme proposal that would deny millions of women Pap tests, breast cancer screenings and birth control," she said.

Meanwhile, the White House said both sides were still talking and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said "these are not unresolvable issues."

Just to be on the safe side, Reid also prepared a proposal to fund the government for another week and ensure the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan got paid.

The GOP offered it's own funding extension Thursday, but Reid said that's a non-starter because it's larded with language that would ban abortions in Washington.

Any shutdown would result in furloughs for thousands of federal workers in New York and tens of millions in lost revenue for the city.

Experts warned it would also endanger the slow recovery from the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2011/04/08/2011-04-08_government_shutdown_avoided_with_tentative_budget_deal__39b_in_cuts_planned_pare.html#ixzz1J6ly8TDt