The Black Panther Coloring Book

This is but one horrific example of the tactics used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stifle legitimate dissent and violate the civil rights of political groups that the administration dislikes. Along with the anti-war movement, the Nixon White House targeted the civil rights movement for disruption, using on-campus informants to infiltrate and in many cases to disrupt legal protests and activism.
This coloring book, which was purported to be from the Black Panthers, had actually been rejected by them when it was brought to them by a man later revealed to have intelligence connections. Not to be troubled by the fact that the Panthers found the coloring book revolting, the FBI added even more offensive illustrations, and mass mailed it across America. It so infuriated the white population that they stopped listening to the legitimate grievances of the black people.
While it can be argued that such an action did not technically violate the right of the Black Panthers to free speech (even as it sabotaged the willingness of the people to listen), it is apparent than such a divisive act violated the right of the people, black and white, to peacefully assemble.
At the time, I asked my parents if it didn't seem odd to have a book purported to be by blacks for black children mailed to a white household, but I was outvoted in what was a functionally democratic household. But heck, most of us still thought Oswald acted alone then as well.
I had thought the actual coloring book lost forever, relegated to a mere footnote in the Congressional inquiry into COINTELPRO, when the wonder that is the internet brought it into the light again.

THE COLORING BOOK

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Shares, bonds rally, dollar tumbles after Fed cools taper talk

By Marc Jones

LONDON (Reuters) - Shares and bonds rallied globally on Thursday and the dollar tumbled after the head of the U.S. central bank signaled it may not be as close to winding down its stimulus policy as markets had begun to think.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday the overall message coming from the central bank was that "a highly accommodative policy is needed for the foreseeable future.
Despite minutes from the Fed's June meeting showing half of its policymakers think its $85 billion-a-month stimulus program should be wound down by the end of the year, his message was enough to snap markets back into buying mode.
European bonds from Germany to Greece tracked gains in U.S. debt and European shares (.FTEU3) climbed almost 1 percent to push MSCI's world index <.miwo00000pus> to its highest in almost a month.
"Bernanke's comments were taken by the markets as much more dovish so I suspect it will be a good day for risk markets," said Saxo bank Chairman and senior market analyst Nick Beecroft.
"We are still in a bit of a sweet spot for equity markets. The economy is doing well enough to encourage equity markets about future earnings, but not too hot to cause the Fed to remove accommodation."
The dollar (.DXY), which had touched three-year highs before Wednesday's Fed remarks, tumbled 1.2 percent against a basket of major currencies, while the euro roared to a three-week high of $1.32085 before easing to $1.3042 by 0920 GMT (5.20 a.m. EDT).
The big stock and bond swings over the last few weeks have highlighted the tricky task the Fed and other central banks have as they try and wean markets off the cheap and easy money they have provided during the global financial crisis.
"Communication is a real challenge for the Fed so brace for further whipsaws on Bernanke's semi-annual testimony (next week)," said Sean Callow, a currency strategist at Westpac.
HSBC currency analyst Daragh Maher said there had actually been very little difference in Bernanke's wording compared with last month's Fed press conference, and that the volatility was down to markets' habit of overreacting.
"The things he said were almost exactly the same... A mixed emphasis from the market is what we are really seeing rather than it being a mixed message from the Fed."
EMERGING RELIEF
Relief was also evident in emerging markets, some of the hardest hit by the idea of a change in tack in global monetary policy, with emerging equities and currencies rising including the recently-battered Turkish lira (EMRG/FRX).
Commodity markets took a boost from the prospect of sustained support by the Fed, along with European and Japanese central banks, supporting global economic growth.
Copper prices gained 3.2 percent to exceed $7,000 a metric ton (1.1023 tons), hitting a three-week high. Gold climbed 2.7 percent to a three-week high and was on track for a fourth straight day of gains while U.S. crude oil prices added 0.7 percent to their highest level since March 2012.
Commodity currencies also jumped, with the Australian dollar climbing as high as $0.9306, further off a 34-month trough of $0.9036 plumbed just last week. It was helped by a surprise increase in Australian employment in June, which may lessen any near-term risk of more interest rates cuts.
But as the yen strengthened, Tokyo's Nikkei share average (.N225) underperformed other Asian markets, up 0.4 percent.

The Bank of Japan kept monetary policy steady at its latest meeting but said an economic recovery was underway, its most optimistic view in 2-1/2 years reflecting the positive impact of a weakening yen and its massive stimulus plan.

(Editing by Susan Fenton/Ruth Pitchford)

Foreclosures fall to pre-housing bust levels

The long national foreclosure nightmare is nearing its end, with foreclosure filings hitting their lowest level since before the housing bust.

Total foreclosure filings, including notices of default, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, dropped to 127,790 in June, down 35% over the past 12 months, according to RealtyTrac. Overall, filings have hit their lowest monthly level since December 2006.

The number of foreclosure filings have plunged so fast -- down 14% since May -- that the housing market could be back to pre-mortgage meltdown levels before the end of the year, according to Daren Blomquist, a vice president at RealtyTrac.

Related: How smart are you about mortgages?
"Halfway through 2013 it's becoming increasingly evident that foreclosures are no longer a problem nationally, [although] they continue to be a thorn in the side of several state and local markets," he said.
The five states with the highest percentage of foreclosure filings last month were Florida, Nevada, Illinois, Ohio, and Georgia. In Florida, Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Ocala, and Tampa held the top five spots for filings among the nation's metro areas.
While initial filings for foreclosures dropped by 45% year-over-year to a seven and a half year low, the number of homes that were further along in the process and were repossessed have not fallen as quickly.

"[At the last stage of foreclosure] they trail other filings," said Blomquist.

Related: Thousands of borrowers to get mortgage payments reduced
Bank repossessions are still trending at a rate of more than 420,000 a year, compared with a historical average of 250,000, said Blomquist.

Many of these repossessions are occurring in states where courts supervise the foreclosure process and they are just now working through a backlog of foreclosures that built up after the so-called robo-signing scandal.

"The increases in judicial foreclosure auctions demonstrate that these delayed foreclosure cases are now being moved more quickly through to completion," said Blomquist. "Given the rising home prices in most of these markets, it is an opportune time for lenders to dispose of these distressed properties."

And as home values rise nationwide, more homeowners are able to keep their homes or sell them before they lose them to foreclosure.

View this article on CNNMoney

Excess Reserves at the Federal Reserve. One of The Biggest Financial Scams In History: A Whopping US$1.794 Trillion

Banks’ excess reserves at FED is one of the biggest scam by the FED and there is a conspiracy of silence as to its actual implications. Economists and financial analysts spewing nonsense to mislead and divert attention to non-issues so that the public is kept in the dark.
The issue of banks’ reserves at the FED and other central banks in the world is a complex subject with much technical jargons that confuses a lot of people. Besides, don’t be surprised that your bank branch manager on Main Street as well as lecturers in finance and economics are also ignorant on this issue. In the case of the latter, this subject is hardly taught in universities. And this is the reason why the scam has not been exposed till today.
But, for those who have a basic idea of bank reserves and how this huge amount of “excess reserves” have been created by the FED, have you asked yourself, “Why have I not spotted this scam earlier?”
Many have been taken in by the propaganda that “excess reserves” is the means to encourage banks to extend credit (give out loans) to desperate borrowers who needed urgent funds to survive and to jump-start their businesses. This propaganda is grounded on the assumption that there is insufficient liquidity in the market.
This assumption is misleading.
What are Excess Reserves
The latest figures obtained from the H.3 release from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the FED) shows excess reserves of about $1.794 trillion (data as of April 17, 2013), This level of excess reserves is unprecedented and is the highest since reserves were legislated as a requirement.
Please read the below paragraph carefully, ponder deeply before proceeding further. Don’t rush. It is important that you understand this simple fact as otherwise you would not appreciate the audacity of this financial scam!
Excess reserves are the surplus of reserves against deposits and certain other liabilities that depository institutions (collectively referred to as “banks”) hold above the statutory amounts that the FED requires in accordance with the law. The general requirement is that banks maintain reserves at least equal to ten percent of liabilities payable on demand. There is now data to show that as much as 50% of these “excess reserves” are held for United States banking offices of foreign banks.
Let me elaborate. Banks receives deposits from their customers which are inter-alia placed in current accounts (checking accounts) or time deposits (fixed deposit accounts) and which the customer can at any time withdraw from the bank. But, banking practice shows that at any one time, only a small fraction of customers would withdraw their deposits in full. So, there was no need for banks to keep all the deposits in their vaults to meet such a demand for payment. Laws were enacted to allow banks to keep in reserve a small amount of monies to meet such demands.
That being the case – if only 10% reserves is all that is required according to banking regulations to meet repayment demands, why should there be such a huge amount of reserves, beyond the legal requirement of 10%?
Keep this question at the back of your mind to understand the huge scam by the FED.
A Slight Digression
In a previous article, I had exposed the fact that when a customer deposits monies in a bank, he is in law a “creditor” (he has loaned the monies to the bank) and the bank is a “debtor” (and he can use the money in any way at his absolute discretion, even to speculate).
This is because the ownership of the money has been transferred to the bank. The money is no longer the money of the customer. It now belongs to the bank. And as long as the bank is solvent, and there is a demand for repayment of the deposit, the law of contract stipulates that the bank must repay together with the agreed interest that has accrued.
However, if at the time when demand for repayment is made, the bank is bankrupt (i.e. in a liquidation) then the depositor/customer in law is deemed an “unsecured creditor” and must join the queue of all unsecured creditors to share the proceeds of any remaining assets after all secured creditors have been paid. If there are no remaining assets, the depositors get zilch! Ouch!!!!!!
That is why and as illustrated in the bank confiscation of deposits in Cyprus banks acting in concert with central banks can expropriate all customers’ deposits to pay their secured creditors.
I will elaborate on this issue later.
Let’s return to the issue of excess reserves.
How Did The Excess Reserves Balloon To A Massive US$1.794 Trillion? A Simple Summary
The Fed’s overall balance sheet has expanded from about $909 billion before the crisis (i.e. before 2008) to about $3.3 trillion in 2013. Of the $2.4 trillion increase, approximately $1.8 trillion is excess reserves.
Banks were up to their eyeballs in toxic assets (financial sewage) and they are drowning in this cesspool but for the rescue efforts of the FED and other central banks they would have sunk to the bottom of the cesspool.
First Stage of Excess Reserves Scam
From the diagram below, you will see that the FED created trillions of money out of thin air by a digital entry in its books to purchase the toxic assets (financial sewage) in batches from the banks. The objective of QEs is to save the banks and to save the US Treasury from bankruptcy and not Joe Six-Packs. However, in this article we are focusing on the banks.
So, let’s say that the banks HAVE OVER US$10 trillion of financial sewage AND WANT TO DISPOSE THEM WITHOUT AROUSING ANY ALARM.
From the diagram below, you will see the monies flowing from the FED to the banks to purchase the financial sewage. The financial sewage is sucked into the FED’s financial vacuum. However the monies are not channeled to the banks’ branches in Main Street to be loaned out to Joe Six-Packs. It is re-routed back to the FED as “reserves”. When the reserves exceed the minimum 10% requirement, the excess is classified as “excess reserves.”
This is merely a book entry! And adding insult and injury to Joe Six-Packs, interest of 0.25% is paid on the reserves (i.e. giving profits to the banks).
The banks are allowed to survive in spite of their massive frauds and other financial hanky-pankies. The banks are allowed to use digital technology (e.g. high-frequency trading) to corner the market and destroy Joe-Six-Packs. But, Joe-Six-Packs have to suffer the indignity of unemployment, foreclosures, reduced unemployment benefits, survive on food-stamps, and other austerity measures. Additionally, and to prevent any opposition to the financial and ruling elites, Joe-Six-Packs are now under intense surveillance by NSA’s Prism Program that tracks every move, phone calls, emails, etc.
Can you now see the audacity of this scam?

The money flows from the FED to the Too Big To Fail (TBTF) Banksters to Buy Toxic Assets, which is sucked in by the FED’s Financial Vacuum, thereby cleansing the TBTF banks’ balance sheets. The money is then re-routed back to the FED as “excess reserves”.

The FED create monies out of thin air to bail-out the Too Big To Fail banks (TBTF banks) by purchasing their financial sewage (valued at book value as opposed to mark-to-market i.e. instead of paying only 10 cents on the dollar or less, the FED pays dollar for dollar) thereby removing the financial sewage from the balance sheet of the TBTF banks to reflect a “healthier” balance sheet as there are now less financial sewage in the banking system.
And, because the TBTF banks are suffering losses, the FED pays 0.25% interest on the “excess reserves” created so as to generate easy profits for the TBTF banks for doing nothing at all. They are earning profits merely from a book-entry in the FED’s books!
The propaganda which I referred to earlier that such monies were meant to enable the TBTF banks to extend credit is therefore bullshit and a load of financial nonsense. So why are the so-called reputable economists at leading universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford etc. touting this propaganda?
There is so much financial sewage in the banking system, that in law the banks cannot extend further credits to Joe Six-Packs unless and until the balance sheets of the TBTF banks are cleaned up, and the banks properly re-capitalised to continue with their banking business. (See Basel III Accords).
The so-called record profits declared by the TBTF banks and the huge bonuses given out to the bankers and their hire-lings are all window dressing as long as the toxic assets are not marked-to-market and not declared as junk. If such assets are properly declared, the fiat money banking system would be staring at a bottomless black-hole of toxic assets and indebtness!
This is the reason why QE has to continue. The QE programs are to drain the financial sewage from the banking system.
I had earlier stated that banks are required at have at least 10% of the deposits as reserves.
This has compounded the problem. After the Global Financial Tsunami, all the TBTF banks don’t have enough reserves to meet the withdrawal of deposits placed by customers before the crash. The TBTF banks don’t even have the requisite 10% reserves to meet these demand deposits (Old Deposits). That is why this scam was perpetrated by the FED as illustrated in the above diagram.
However, banks are continuing to receive deposits from customers of which 10% of these deposits must be transferred to the FED as reserves.
Under the fractional reserve banking system, the banks are allowed and can loan out the remaining 90% of the deposits as loan by a multiplier of ten – i.e. if new deposits total US$100 million, US$10 million will be transferred to reserves to meet withdrawals as explained above. By fractional reserve banking principles, the bank can loan out (based on a multiplier of ten) US$90 million x 10 = US$900 million. Data shows that customers’ deposits are at an all time high (since 2007), but bank lending is not keeping pace.
Banks are not lending out what they are entitled to do so for two reasons:
1) The banks are using a portion of the “New Deposits” to meet the liability of having to repay the “Old Deposits” in the system. This is because even the excess reserves (created under the QE) are insufficient to meet the demand for repayment of the Old Deposits. So, part of the current New Deposits would be utilised for that purpose. This is the Deposit Ponzi Scheme.
2) Banks are earning no risk profits from interests on “Excess Reserves” at the FED and are only willing to lend to credible borrowers. In the present economic climate, there are just too few credible customers. This is another reason why banks are not lending.
Therefore, and as stated earlier, the problem is not liquidity but rather, it is and always has been the insolvency of the TBTF banks and the financial sewage clogging the entire fiat money banking system.
Food For Thought

“Reserves don’t even factor into my model, that’s not what causes inflation and not how the Fed stimulates the economy. It’s a side effect.” – Former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer, co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers

Second Stage of Excess Reserves Scam
If and when the economy recovers (maybe 2019??), the FED will repackage the toxic assets into new financial products to be sold to a new generation of stupid investors. Banks are not even required to pay, as the monies are still kept with the FED (book entry). In this final transaction, there will be a reverse-entry in the banks’ books.
Laurence Meyer is saying what many has deliberately ignored and or missed out completely. When QE stops, the FED would not be out on a limp because the monies used to purchase the financial sewage from the TBTF banks are still in the FED’s books.
The Fed need only to have a reverse entry in it’s books after re-packaging the financial sewage INTO SOME NEW FORM OF FINANCIAL PRODUCT OR WHATEVER (which the TBTF banks are adept at doing before the crash and are still continuing to do so) and dumping them back to the banks and another generation of stupid investors at such time when and if the banks have recovered – maybe 2019?
Further, with the bank’s unbridled right (sanctioned by law) to confiscate the customers’ deposits (now commonly referred as “Bail-In”) using the Cyprus template, banks have additional financial resources to continue with the plunder and financial rape of the public. Wake Up, I rest my case.

Billionaire Koch Brother Says Eliminating The Minimum Wage Will Help The Poor

Think Progress – by Rebecca Leber
A conservative mogul worth $43 billion says he knows the secret to helping poor people. According to Charles Koch, the U.S. needs to get rid of the minimum wage, which he counts as a major obstacle to economic growth.
On Wednesday, the Charles Koch Foundation launched a $200,000 media campaign in Wichita, Kansas, with a hint of expanding it elsewhere. It is the Kochs’ biggest media buy since they promised to do more to “persuade politicians” after suffering losses in the 2012 election.  
In an interview with the Wichita Eagle published Tuesday, Koch said that the minimum wage is one policy he is working against:

We want to do a better job of raising up the disadvantaged and the poorest in this country, rather than saying ‘Oh, we’re just fine now.’ We’re not saying that at all. What we’re saying is, we need to analyze all these additional policies, these subsidies, this cronyism, this avalanche of regulations, all these things that are creating a culture of dependency. And like permitting, to start a business, in many cities, to drive a taxicab, to become a hairdresser. Anything that people with limited capital can do to raise themselves up, they keep throwing obstacles in their way. And so we’ve got to clear those out. Or the minimum wage. Or anything that reduces the mobility of labor.

The Kansas ad does not specifically mention the minimum wage, but it does claim that Americans earning $34,000 a year should count themselves as lucky, because that puts them in the top 1 percent of the world. “That is the power of economic freedom,” the ad concluded. Meanwhile, Charles and David Koch are the ones comfortably in the 1 percent, with a net worth of about 1 million times that figure. Watch the ad:


The ad cites a report from the Koch-funded Fraser Institute showing that “The United States used to be a world leader in economic freedom but our ranking fell. And it’s projected to decline even further.” (That same Fraser report interestingly ranks Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Chile ahead of the U.S. Those places all have government-run health care, which the Kochs adamantly oppose.) In the U.S., economic inequality has grown rapidly, and the lagging minimum wage is in large part to blame. Some states have moved to address the growing gap between what people earn and the rising cost of living, but nationally the minimum wage has barely moved in decades. Little to no evidence exists to support Koch’s claim that the minimum wage impedes companies or causes them to fire employees. In fact, raising the minimum wage to $9 would pump up to $48 billion into the economy by the next year and ease the income gap for 15 million low-wage workers.
Koch maintained his and his brother’s political efforts are not for their own benefit, but for the country’s greater good. “All the other large companies, or the great majority of them, are promoting some kind of special cronyism where they’re undermining economic freedom.” Although he deems low-wage workers part of a “culture of dependency” on the government, Koch Industries is on the receiving end of oil subsidies, government contracts, and bailouts.

The Economic “Miracle” Has Failed… What’s Next For the Markets?

by Phoenix Capital Research

China, which the investment world blindly continues to believe will power the global economy to growth, just posted its single worst export data since 2009.
All in all, Chinese exports fell 3.1% from a year earlier. Analysts had forecast growth of 3.7%. The reason? They continue to believe China will somehow pull a rabbit out of a hat and grow exports at a time when the global economy is sharply contracting.
Let’s look at the facts here.
In the last six months, China has pumped roughly $1.6 trillion in new credit (that’s 21% of GDP) into its economy. Despite this incredible monetary expansion, Chinese GDP growth isslowing.
Mind you, this slowing growth is occurring even after China massages the heck out of its GDP data. As I recently told my Private Wealth Advisory subscribers, when you look at electrical usage by the People’s Republic, real GDP growth is likely just 2.9%.

This is truly astounding: a country has expanded its credit by 21% of GDP in just six months and is barely able to generate positive GDP growth. Small wonder that the Chinese stock market has taken out its post-2009 trendline.

China is giving us a taste of what will be spreading throughout the global economy: a collapse in spite of massive monetary expansion. The entire “recovery” since 2009 has been based Central banks pushing money into the financial system… which did little more than allow corporations to borrow even moredebt.
Indeed, globally the leverage in the financial system today is as bad if not worse than it was going into the 2008 Crash. Can you imagine what would happen if we suffered another collapse now, when Central Banks are already pumping their brains out trying to push market higher?
On that note, NOW is the time to prepare for another stock market bloodbath BEFORE this happens.
For more market insights and commentary, visit us at:
www.gainspainscapital.com
Best Regards
Graham Summers

BREAKING: HALF OF FED SAYS END QE BY END OF YEAR (NOT SLOW END)

Discord appears to be the best word to describe the FOMC minutes but the baffle ‘em with bullshit seems like the order of the day:

• FED SAYS SEVERAL ON FOMC SAW QE TAPERING LIKELY WARRANTED SOON
• FED SAYS MANY ON FOMC SAID LABOR GAINS NEEDED BEFORE QE TAPER
• FED SAYS FOMC SAW FISCAL POLICY RESTRAINING ECONOMIC GROWTH

As a reminder, uberdove Charles Evans wanted 200K or more in job gains in the past two quarters. Here’s the thing – the average monthly job gain in the past 6 months is… 201,000. As for the punchline:

• HALF OF THE FED INDICATED IT LIKELY WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO END ASSET PURCHASES LATE THIS YEAR -NOT SLOW END
• A FEW PARTICIPANTS INDICATED THAT THE COMMITTEE SHOULD SLOW OR STOP ITS PURCHASES AT THE JUNE MEETING - “OR STOP”

Communication matters apparently. But the key is that taper appears (forget about an all out stop) to be coming soon – and as usual – it’s all data-dependent. Aside from that, it is the usual baffle with BS schtick. Most importantly, with half the Fed saying not just taper, but flat out end to QE by 2014, we now have a full blown mutiny in the Fed.

Pre: S&P 500 futures 1644.50 (VWAP), EURUSD 1.2850, 10Y 2.66%, Gold $1250, WTI $106.45
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-10/fomc-minutes-some-say-tapering-warranted-soon-many-said-labor-gains-needed-taper
Half of Fed sees ‘QE’ ending late this year

About half of the Federal Reserve’s 19 senior officials said they would support ending the central bank’s monthly purchase of $85 billion in bonds by year-end, according to an account of the most recent Fed policy meeting released Wednesday.

The meeting minutes showed that “many” other members said asset purchases would likely be needed into 2014.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-fed-sees-qe-end-late-this-year-2013-07-10
Fed Officials Showed Worry About Easing Policy
Federal Reserve officials expressed concern about how well the central bank was conveying its policy intentions to a jittery investing public, according to minutes from the most recent meeting.
The June FOMC session was significant in that Chairman Ben Bernanke followed it by telling the media that the Fed was prepared to start winding down its bond-buying program by the end of 2013.
That revelation, in a news conference, rattled markets, sending stocks on a 7 percent decline and interest rates surging higher.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100877101

Economic Collapse Survival Map – Risk Analysis of best area in United States

Where would be the place in the United States to be in the event of an economic collapse? What if you had to grow some of your own food to feed your family? What if utilities failed provide water, natural gas or electricity? How would you heat your home or cook your meals? What if riots and crime plagued large cities? What would happen if the government stopped handing out Foodstamps and Welfare? This is one analysis of where may be the best place to be in the United States?

‘Middle-class revolution’ fuels Pentagon war plan – Neither governments nor capitalists can stop these 12 forces

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

Early in the Iraq war the Bush Pentagon predicted that “by 2020 there is little doubt something drastic is happening,” reported Fortune. “As the planet’s carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge. … [W]arfare is defining human life.”

The ticking gets louder … the time bomb grows bigger … the explosive fuel goes global … and 2020 is dead ahead.

Recently the tick-tick-ticking became louder in “The Middle-Class Revolution,” a Wall Street Journal feature by the conservative Stanford University political scientist Francis Fukuyama, author of 1992’s “The End of History and the Last Man”: “All over the world,” he writes in the Journal, “today’s political turmoil has a common theme: the failure of governments to meet the rising expectations of the newly prosperous and educated.”

Failure of government? Since when is it the government’s job to “meet the rising expectations” of the middle class? What happened to capitalism? Isn’t this the America where free-market capitalism is the engine of economic growth and prosperity? A new age where government is, at best, a tool helping capitalism to thrive? And, at worst, an anchor slowing capitalists?

The ‘Pentagon 2020’ battle plan

Yes, there is a “middle-class revolution.” Yes, it is spreading worldwide, putting in place a network of ticking time bombs. But not only is government failing. Not only is capitalism failing. But Fukuyama is ignoring the real bomb, buried deep inside this new global revolution, the new age of global warfare that the Bush Pentagon warned of a decade ago:

“By 2020 there is little doubt something drastic is happening. … As the planet’s carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge … warfare is defining human life.”

Fukuyama does a great job of analyzing “the theme that connects recent events in Turkey and Brazil to each other, as well as to the 2011 Arab Spring and continuing protests in China, is the rise of a new global middle class. Everywhere it has emerged, a modern middle class causes political ferment.”

The middle-class revolutionaries

But the protests have “been led not by the poor” as in many revolutions throughout history, “but by young people with higher-than-average levels of education and income,” states Fukuyama. “They are technology-savvy and use social media likeFacebook and Twitter.” Even in countries that “hold regular democratic elections,” he continues, “they feel alienated from the ruling political elite.”

This is gaining critical mass worldwide, and, yes, that may be great news for capitalism — in the short term — but it is also bad news for the long-term survival of the planet and for capitalism, because this angry middle class is adding fuel to the Pentagon 2020 war plans.

Why? Five years ago Goldman Sachs predicted the middle class would grow by some 2 billion people by 2030. Fukuyama also cites a European Union Institute for Security Studies prediction that membership in the global middle class would increase “from 1.8 billion in 2009 to 3.2 billion in 2020 and 4.9 billion in 2030 … mostly in China, India and a few hundred million in Africa.”

Billions of new consumers: “Corporations are salivating at the prospect of this emerging middle class because it represents a vast pool of new consumers,” says Fukuyama. Unfortunately, not only corporations and their CEOs, economists, marketers and analysts, but the entire capitalist world tends “to define middle-class status simply in monetary terms.”

They are wrong.

Middle-class success is breeding anti-government activists

The Pew Research Center and the University of Michigan’s World Values Survey have found that “middle-class status is better defined by education, occupation and the ownership of assets, which are far more consequential in predicting political behavior.” So, today, the new middle class is “much more likely to engage in political activism to get their way.” Not just protests and civil unrest but revolutions — the kind predicted by the Pentagon a decade ago.

Even among China’s billion-plus. Fukuyama says the Chinese middle class “now numbers in the hundreds of millions and constitutes perhaps a third of the total.” But the risks are accelerating. China’s “industrial job machine,” built by the regime beginning in 1978, “will no longer serve the aspirations of [a] population” that’s graduating as many as 7 million college graduates each year, who face job prospects “dimmer than those of their working-class parents.”

This “threatening gap between rapidly rising expectations and a disappointing reality” will have enormous implications for China’s stability. Reading “Middle-Class Revolution” and other Fukuyama works, it is obvious that the “Pentagon 2020” war scenario is accelerating everywhere — across Asia, India, Africa, Europe, South America and the United States — fueled by capitalists who only see population growth as an opportunity for new consumer markets.

Capitalism vs. Planet Earth

So let’s take a closer look at the Pentagon 2020 scenario, the ticking time bomb hiding in Fukuyama’s analysis.

But don’t wait too long. Next the chaos will spread to America. Yes, the same kind of middle-class revolution as in Egypt, Brazil, Turkey, et al. From China, accelerating globally, as more and more people, in more and more nations, wake up to the failures of governments and capitalists, and the “threatening gap between rapidly rising expectations and a disappointing reality” just keeps widening.

These are not new predictions. History tells us the minds of political, financial and business leaders are too often biased toward short-term optimism, while minimizing the long-term warnings of long-term thinkers like Fukuyama. Unfortunately for the masses trapped in denial, the day of reckoning is rapidly approaching, the day when reality overwhelms all the happy talk.

War scenario, with no winners

For several years we’ve been developing a working model for innovation, investing and survival based on the 12-part formula in Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Diamond discovered that throughout history a dozen economic factors have defined the reasons civilizations self-destruct or survive. “What really counts,” says Diamond, “is not the number of people alone, but their impact on the environment,” the “per-capita impact.”

In addition to population growth, lifestyle demands increase with “third-world inhabitants adopting first-world standards,” their own versions of the American Dream. Diamond details 12 macrotrends that impacted collapse for earlier civilizations: loss of agricultural lands, low food production, loss of forests, energy resources, alternative energies, solar resources, ozone layer, toxic minerals mining and species diversity.

Diamond’s alarm bells parallel Fukuyama’s, and it’s a blunt warning about short-term capitalism: “More people require more food, space, water, energy, and other resources.” As a result, the growing demands of these new consumers will also trigger more wars, more famine, more pandemics, more floods and fires, no-growth economics, and, worst of all, more miscalculations by overoptimistic politicians and profit excesses of capitalists.

Yes, the Pentagon 2020 war scenario was amazingly prescient, with a resigned sense of inevitability toward this clash of the titans: on one side, a myopic cartel of Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, big-money lobbyists like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Forbes 400 billionaires like the Koch brothers, all of them aligned against a ragtag bunch of well-meaning foes like Diamond, Bill McKibben’s 350.org and the many believers in climate science. But the betting odds heavily favor the super-rich cartels.

Consumers sucking life from the planet

Yes, the pressure becomes ever more intense as more and more nations increase consumption of natural resources toward America’s rate. Warning: Americans consume 32 times more resources, and dump 32 times more waste than do undeveloped nations. As a result, if all 7 billion inhabitants of Planet Earth consumed resources at America’s level, we’d need the resources of six Earths to survive.

And, actually, it’s much worse: Today Planet Earth’s resources cannot support even 5 billion people, says Jeff Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, a U.N. adviser and the author of several books, including “Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.” So by 2030, with a projected global population of 8 billion, it’s game over.

Why? Politicians and capitalists are in a state of denial. Their failings fuel more middle-class anger … as our leaders focus narrowly on more power and more profits … and keep blowing a toxic bubble … building to a critical mass … pushing the world ever closer to a point of no return … adding jet fuel to the Pentagon 2020 war scenario where, indeed, “there is little doubt something drastic is happening.”

And where, as “the planet’s carrying capacity shrinks … an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge.” Where “warfare is defining human life.”

Mad Latvia defies its own people to join the euro

EU finance ministers have just given the go-ahead for Latvia to join the euro in January 2014.
No matter that the latest SKDS poll shows that only 22pc of Latvians support this foolish step, and 53pc are opposed.
This is a very odd situation. The elites are pushing ahead with a decision of profound implications, knowing that the nation is not behind them. No country has ever done this before.
The concerns of the Latvian people are entirely understandable. Neighbouring Estonia found itself having to bail out Club Med states with a per capita income two and a half times as high after it joined EMU.
Latvia may find itself embroiled in an even bigger debacle if the contractionary fiscal and monetary policies of the eurozone push Slovenia, Portugal, Spain, and Italy over a cliff, and push Greece and Cyprus into yet deeper crisis.
Latvia has become the poster child for the EMU policy of internal devaluation – ie wage cuts. It is cited time and again by EU leaders, and by EU bail-out chief Klaus Regling, as the clinching evidence that austerity a l'outrance ultimately pays off.
But let us be clear about what Latvia has achieved, and not achieved, and whether it offers any meaningful example for the Club Med pack.
It is worth reading the European Commission's report earlier this year on poverty and social exclusion.
Latvia stands out – with Bulgaria – as the country that has seen worst increase in "severe material deprivation", with the rate surging from 19pc to 31pc since 2008. (Bulgaria also has a fixed exchange rate, by the way). Poland did far better with a floating Zloty through the crisis.

While Latvia's unemployment rate has dropped to 11.7pc from a peak of 20.5pc, this is not the full story. Another 7pc have dropped off the rolls (one of the highest rates of discouraged workers in the EU). Roughly 10pc of the population has left the country.
The blue collar working classes have borne the brunt of the deflation strategy, while the affluent middle class with foreign currency mortgages have been protected. Policy has been shaped for the class interest of the elites (sorry to sound like a Marxist, but Marx was good at spotting this kind of abuse). Many who lost their jobs in the crisis – often Russian ethnics – have not found work, and may never do so again in Latvia if they are over 50.
This is how internal devaluations work. They break the back of labour resistance to pay cuts by driving the jobless rate to excruciating levels. The policy is a moral disgrace. Mussolini pulled it off in 1927 with his Blackshirts to secure the Lira Forte, but is that supposed to be a pedigree?
The Latvian economy is growing briskly again but, as you can see from the IMF chart below, it has recouped just half of the 22pc collapse in GDP after the EMU bubble burst in 2008.

Real output is still 10pc below the peak even today. This is not a "success story". Latvia should be a post-Soviet tiger economy with turbocharged rates of growth. It should be 10pc above its 2008 peak by now.
What Latvia has achieved is to survive its deflation ordeal without losing its democracy – though the government did play the race card against ethnic Russians to clinch the last elections. It has held its pre-euro exchange rate peg in the ERM. Congratulations.
This may be a desirable political and strategic outcome, if your objective is to lock into the EU system as deeply as possible to protect against Vladimir Putin. But it is not an economic success.
Latvia's entered the crisis with public debt of just 17pc of GDP in 2008. It never faced a debt-deflation threat. It could deflate without the risk of exploding debt dynamics.
This is entirely different from Italy or Portugal, with debts above 120pc, or Spain with debts nearing 100pc (including arrears). If these countries succeed in carrying out an internal devaluation, they more or less guarantee that their debt ratios will rise even faster. It is the infamous "denominator effect". The debt rises on a contracting base. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
You can have deflation. Or you can have high debt. But you can't have both. This is a point that seems to elude the EU officials, with calamitous consequences. I would recommend posting Irving Fisher's 1933 "Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions" on the doors of the Berlaymont and the ECB's Eurotower in Frankfurt for mental improvement.
In any case, Latvia has an open economy with a high trade gearing. Exports make up 60pc of GDP, compared to nearer 30pc for Portugal, Spain, and Italy.
Overall export growth has been stellar, as you can see from this chart from the Latvia central bank:

Latvia is sui generis in all kinds of ways. Swedish banks own much of the banking system. It is surrounded by Nordic countries and by Poland, an oasis of growth in the Europe's economic desert.
The country's recovery does not vindicate EMU austerity doctrine in any way at all. It merely shows that states with low debt and high exports can survive such a policy.
A low bar, surely?
As for joining the euro, you must be mad.

Ex-Citigroup Chairman Says Banks Probably Need Capital

Richard Parsons, former chairman of Citigroup, said that the biggest U.S. banks probably need more capital as regulators seek to prevent another financial crisis.

“Stronger capital requirements, increased regulation, I think you’re going to see that wave continue for another couple of years,” Parsons, 65, said in an interview on CNBC today.

“Probably the banks should have more capital.”

U.S. regulators have proposed boosting the buffers that the biggest lenders must hold to protect against potential losses, as Wall Street recovers from the 2008 crisis.

The plans go beyond rules already approved by international regulators.

“There should be more thoughtful and insightful regulation,” said Parsons, who retired from the Citigroup board last year.

“But some of the reasons are just because we, the regulatory establishment, the legislative establishment, we don’t want to be blamed the next time one of these things blows up so let’s just throw the kitchen sink at them.”

New York-based Citigroup almost collapsed in 2008 and took a $45 billion government bailout, which it later repaid. Parsons was a member of the company’s board at the time.

Greece gets €4.8bn in staggered bailout payments

Greece will get its next EU-IMF bailout payment of €2.5bn on condition that it implements austerity measures including deeper spending cuts and public sector lay-offs within 10 days.

Municipal policemen during a rally by local government workers, against the public sector reforms and layoffs Greece has promised its international lenders, in Athens on July 8.

Last night's meeting of eurozone finance ministers agreed to pay the scheduled third quarter bailout instalment of €4.8bn (£4.1bn) but broke it down into three "disbursements" linked to reforms.

The first payment of €2.5bn from the eurozone will be paid after July 19 on condition that of "full implementation of the prior actions", including legislation that is passing through the Greek parliament over the next week.

"Significant further work is needed over the next weeks to fully implement all prior actions required for the next disbursement," said a eurozone statement.

"Especially, the required reforms of the public administration will need to be carried out so as to increase the efficiency of the public sector while it is being steadily downsized, and further efforts are needed to improve tax revenue collection."

The second instalment will be €1.8bn from the IMF in August followed by another €500m from the eurozone in October, which will be linked to privatisation targets and administrative reform in Greece.

Greece will also receive, on top of the bailout payments, €2bn on profits from Greek bonds bought by the European Central Bank under its Securities Market Programme (SMP).
"Agreement on Greece was made possible by progress in recent weeks. In many areas, more determined implementation of reforms now needed," said Olli Rehn, the EU monetary affairs commissioner.
Following talks in Athens on Monday morning, the "troika" of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF gave a green light to payments but linked the aid to controversial healthcare and public sector staff cuts.
"While important progress continues to be made, policy implementation is behind in some areas," said a troika statement.
"The authorities have committed to take corrective actions to ensure delivery of fiscal targets. These actions include concrete steps to gain control over health sector overspending. The income tax, property tax, and tax procedure codes are being reformed."
Greek plans to meet EU-IMF austerity targets led Antonis Samaras, Greece's prime minister, to close the country's national broadcaster last month triggering a wave of protests that nearly brought down his government.
The crisis deepened when the IMF informed the EU that without a deal, based on Greece meeting its targets, the Washington-based fund would have to suspend participation in the bailout.

US Bankrolled Anti-Morsi Activists: US Money Trail to Egyptian Groups that Pressed for President’s Removal.

President Barack Obama recently stated the United States was not taking sides as Egypt’s crisis came to a head with the military overthrow of the democratically elected president.

But a review of dozens of US federal government documents shows Washington has quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country’s now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

Documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley show the US channeled funding through a State Department programme to promote democracy in the Middle East region. This programme vigorously supported activists and politicians who have fomented unrest in Egypt, after autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in February 2011.

The State Department’s programme, dubbed by US officials as a “democracy assistance” initiative, is part of a wider Obama administration effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-Washington secularists, and to win back influence in Arab Spring countries that saw the rise of Islamists, who largely oppose US interests in the Middle East.

Activists bankrolled by the programme include an exiled Egyptian police officer who plotted the violent overthrow of the Morsi government, an anti-Islamist politician who advocated closing mosques and dragging preachers out by force, as well as a coterie of opposition politicians who pushed for the ouster of the country’s first democratically elected leader, government documents show

Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, interviews, and public records reveal Washington’s “democracy assistance” may have violated Egyptian law, which prohibits foreign political funding.

It may also have broken US government regulations that ban the use of taxpayers’ money to fund foreign politicians, or finance subversive activities that target democratically elected governments.

‘Bureau for Democracy’

Washington’s democracy assistance programme for the Middle East is filtered through a pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), USAID, as well as the Washington-based, quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

In turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.

The Middle East Partnership Initiative – launched by the George W Bush administration in 2002 in a bid to influence politics in the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks – has spent close to $900m on democracy projects across the region, a federal grants database shows.

USAID manages about $1.4bn annually in the Middle East, with nearly $390m designated for democracy promotion, according to the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

The US government doesn’t issue figures on democracy spending per country, but Stephen McInerney, POMED’s executive director, estimated that Washington spent some $65m in 2011 and $25m in 2012. He said he expects a similar amount paid out this year.

A main conduit for channeling the State Department’s democracy funds to Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents show NED, which in 2011 was authorised an annual budget of $118m by Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native country.

This appears to be in direct contradiction to its Congressional mandate, which clearly states NED is to engage only in “peaceful” political change overseas.

Exiled policeman

Colonel Omar Afifi Soliman – who served in Egypt’s elite investigative police unit, notorious for human rights abuses – began receiving NED funds in 2008 for at least four years.

During that time he and his followers targeted Mubarak’s government, and Soliman later followed the same tactics against the military rulers who briefly replaced him. Most recently Soliman set his sights on Morsi’s government.

Soliman, who has refugee status in the US, was sentenced in absentia last year for five years imprisonment by a Cairo court for his role in inciting violence in 2011 against the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two US allies.

He also used social media to encourage violent attacks against Egyptian officials, according to court documents and a review of his social media posts.

US Internal Revenue Service documents reveal thatNED paid tens of thousands of dollars to Soliman through an organisation he created called Hukuk Al-Nas (People’s Rights), based in Falls Church, Virginia. Federal forms show he is the only employee.

After he was awarded a 2008 human rights fellowship at NED and moved to the US, Soliman received a second $50,000 NED grant in 2009 for Hukuk Al-Nas. In 2010, he received $60,000 and another $10,000 in 2011.

In an interview with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, Soliman reluctantly admitted he received US government funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, but complained it wasn’t enough. “It is like $2000 or $2,500 a month,” he said. “Do you think this is too much? Obama wants to give us peanuts. We will not accept that.”

NED has removed public access to its Egyptian grant recipients in 2011 and 2012 from its website. NED officials didn’t respond to repeated interview requests.

‘Pro bono advice’

NED’s website says Soliman spreads only nonviolent literature, and his group was set up to provide “immediate, pro bono legal advice through a telephone hotline, instant messaging, and other social networking tools”.

However, in Egyptian media interviews, social media posts and YouTube videos, Soliman encouraged the violent overthrow of Egypt’s government, then led by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.

“Incapacitate them by smashing their knee bones first,” he instructed followers on Facebook in late June, as Morsi’s opponents prepared massive street rallies against the government. Egypt’s US-funded and trainedmilitary later used those demonstrations to justify its coup on July 3.

“Make a road bump with a broken palm tree to stop the buses going into Cairo, and drench the road around it with gas and diesel. When the bus slows down for the bump, set it all ablaze so it will burn down with all the passengers inside … God bless,” Soliman’s post read.

In late May he instructed, “Behead those who control power, water and gas utilities.”

Soliman removed several older social media posts after authorities in Egypt took notice of his subversive instructions, court documents show.

More recent Facebook instructions to his 83,000 followers range from guidelines on spraying roads with a mix of auto oil and gas – “20 liters of oil to 4 liters of gas”- to how to thwart cars giving chase.

On a YouTube video, Soliman took credit for a failed attempt in December to storm the Egyptian presidential palace with handguns and Molotov cocktails to oust Morsi.

“We know he gets support from some groups in the US, but we do not know he is getting support from the US government. This would be news to us,” said an Egyptian embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Funding other Morsi opponents

Other beneficiaries of US government funding are also opponents of the now-deposed president, some who had called for Morsi’s removal by force.

The Salvation Front main opposition bloc, of which some members received US funding, has backed street protest campaigns that turned violent against the elected government, in contradiction of many of the State Department’s own guidelines.

A longtime grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy and other US democracy groups is a 34-year old Egyptian woman, Esraa Abdel-Fatah, who sprang to notoriety during the country’s pitched battle over the new constitution in December 2012.

She exhorted activists to lay siege to mosques and drag from pulpits all Muslim preachers and religious figures who supported the country’s the proposed constitution, just before it went to a public referendum.

The act of besieging mosques has continued ever since, and several people have died in clashes defending them.

Federal records show Abdel-Fatah’s NGO, the Egyptian Democratic Academy, received support from NED, MEPI and NDI, among other State Department-funded groups “assisting democracy”. Records show NED gave her organisation a one-year $75,000 grant in 2011.

Abdel-Fatah is politically active, crisscrossing Egypt to rally support for her Al-Dostor Party, which is led by former UN nuclear chief Mohamed El-Baradei, the most prominent figure in the Salvation Front. She lent full support to the military takeover, and urged the West not call it a “coup”.

“June 30 will be the last day of Morsi’s term,” she told the press a few weeks before the coup took place.

US taxpayer money has also been sent to groups set up by some of Egypt’s richest people, raising questions about waste in the democracy programme.

Michael Meunier is a frequent guest on TV channels that opposed Morsi. Head of the Al-Haya Party, Meunier – a dual US-Egyptian citizen – has quietly collected US funding through his NGO, Hand In Hand for Egypt Association.

Meunier’s organisation was founded by some of the most vehement opposition figures, including Egypt’s richest man and well-known Coptic Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, Tarek Heggy, an oil industry executive, Salah Diab, Halliburton’s partner in Egypt, and Usama Ghazali Harb, a politician with roots in the Mubarak regime and a frequent US embassy contact.

Meunier has denied receiving US assistance, but government documents show USAID in 2011 granted his Cairo-based organisation $873,355. Since 2009, it has taken in $1.3 million from the US agency.

Meunier helped rally the country’s five million Christian Orthodox Coptic minority, who oppose Morsi’s Islamist agenda, to take to the streets against the president on June 30.

Reform and Development Party member Mohammed Essmat al-Sadat received US financial support through his Sadat Association for Social Development, a grantee of The Middle East Partnership Initiative.

The federal grants records and database show in 2011 Sadat collected $84,445 from MEPI “to work with youth in the post-revolutionary Egypt”.

Sadat was a member of the coordination committee, the main organising body for the June 30 anti-Morsi protest. Since 2008, he has collected $265,176 in US funding. Sadat announced he will be running for office again in upcoming parliamentary elections.

After soldiers and police killed more than 50 Morsi supporters on Monday, Sadat defended the use of force and blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, saying it used women and children as shields.

Some US-backed politicians have said Washington tacitly encouraged them to incite protests.

“We were told by the Americans that if we see big street protests that sustain themselves for a week, they will reconsider all current US policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood regime,” said Saaddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American politician opposed Morsi.

Ibrahim’s Ibn Khaldoun Center in Cairo receives US funding, one of the largest recipients of democracy promotion money in fact.

His comments followed statements by other Egyptian opposition politicians claiming they had been prodded by US officials to whip up public sentiment against Morsi before Washington could publicly weigh in.

Democracy programme defence

The practice of funding politicians and anti-government activists through NGOs was vehemently defended by the State Department and by a group of Washington-based Middle East experts close to the programme.

“The line between politics and activism is very blurred in this country,” said David Linfield, spokesman for the US Embassy in Cairo.

Others said the United States cannot be held responsible for activities by groups it doesn’t control.

“It’s a very hot and dynamic political scene,” said Michelle Dunne, an expert at the Atlantic Council think-tank. Her husband, Michael Dunne, was given a five-year jail sentence in absentia by a Cairo court for his role in political funding in Egypt.

“Just because you give someone some money, you cannot take away their freedom or the position they want to take,” said Dunne.

Elliot Abrams, a former official in the administration of George W. Bush and a member of the Working Group on Egypt that includes Dunne, denied in an email message that the US has paid politicians in Egypt, or elsewhere in the Middle East.

“The US does not provide funding for parties or ‘local politicians’ in Egypt or anywhere else,” said Abrams. “That is prohibited by law and the law is scrupulously obeyed by all US agencies, under careful Congressional oversight.”

But a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, said American support for foreign political activists was in line with American principles.

“The US government provides support to civil society, democracy and human rights activists around the world, in line with our long-held values, such as respecting the fundamental human rights of free speech, peaceful assembly, and human dignity,” the official wrote in an email. “US outreach in Egypt is consistent with these principles.”

A Cairo court convicted 43 local and foreign NGO workers last month on charges of illegally using foreign funds to stir unrest in Egypt. The US and UN expressed concern over the move.

Out of line

Some Middle East observers suggested the US’ democracy push in Egypt may be more about buying influence than spreading human rights and good governance.

“Funding of politicians is a problem,” said Robert Springborg, who evaluated democracy programmes for the State Department in Egypt, and is now a professor at the National Security Department of the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California.

“If you run a programme for electoral observation, or for developing media capacity for political parties, I am not against that. But providing lots of money to politicians – I think that raises lots of questions,” Springborg said.

Some Egyptians, meanwhile, said the US was out of line by sending cash through its democracy programme in the Middle East to organisations run by political operators.

“Instead of being sincere about backing democracy and reaching out to the Egyptian people, the US has chosen an unethical path,” said Esam Neizamy, an independent researcher into foreign funding in Egypt, and a member of the country’s Revolutionary Trustees, a group set up to protect the 2011 revolution.

“The Americans think they can outsmart lots of people in the Middle East. They are being very hostile against the Egyptian people who have nothing but goodwill for them – so far,” Neizamy said.

Republished with permission from: Global Research

Waging Guerrilla War on the Banksters

Dave Hodges
Activist Post

More and more people and organizations are becoming adept at identifying the evil injustices which have invaded every facet of our lives. Of all the identified enemies of humanity, there is one enemy which stands out among all others.

Pogo is correct. It is we the people who have become adept at mastering the craft of perpetuating our own enslavement. We provide the labor and the capital which enslaves us. This article illustrates one small example of how we are being enslaved and more importantly, what we can do about it.

Whether it is banking, healthcare or even public education, the globalists have virtual control over the entire system. They also control the dialogue through their domination of the mainstream media and they do so to their advantage and to our extreme detriment.

This article will take a very brief look at banking, and then propose solutions based upon common sense and from the field of psychology which could be used to mitigate the effectiveness of the globalists on a broad front in this arena.

Stop Feeding the Beast

The globalists have a definitive infrastructure and when we decide enough is enough and withdraw from this system, their house of cards will begin to crumble and could eventually collapse. The moment humanity realizes that we are contributing to our own enslavement and demise by our complicit participation in the globalists' rigged game, we can choose to alter our course by making different decisions. Our continuing decision to fully participate in the banking system is mind boggling because this system is sowing the seeds of humanity’s destruction.

First, it incomprehensible that people do not take the time to investigate with whom they are entrusting their money. The money changers represent the group most despised by Jesus; and if that is not enough, let us consider the fact these banksters contribute to the starting of every war in order to loan out the money for the arms build-up. And then the banksters loan out the money to clean up the mess and we repeat this scenario over and over and over again. To survive, the system needs your children’s involuntary servitude in the military. In other words, when you deposit money in the bank, you are participating in the future death of many of today’s children as they grow into young adulthood. Why would any reasonable person entrust their money to such a system of evil?

Second, the banksters take your money into their hallowed institutions and then multiply it by a factor of nine (i.e. fractional reserve banking) and then loan out this imaginary money at your expense by the inflationary practice that this culminates in. Then the banksters have the intestinal fortitude to loan us back the money at 15, 20, 25% interest on money created out of thin air. When you put money into the bank, you are committing financial suicide.

Third, when the banksters print their money out of thin air and then charge the government and the people for the right to use “their” money, we in effect are paying for the right to be their debt slaves. And all of this occurs despite the fact that the Constitution says that Congress shall coin money. Of course, a dumbed down populace cannot appreciate or be cognizant of the principles of the Constitution. Why? Because the globalists also control education which is another story for another time.

Fourth, the international banksters are hands down the most corrupt and evil influence on the planet. They perpetrated the Arab Spring in which many have died, and there is no end in sight.

The banksters, through the Bilderberg control over NATO, overthrew Libya because that country would not join the Bank of International Settlement’s central banking system and enslave their people into generations of crushing debt. Immediately prior to the time of Libya’s occupation, the Libyan people paid 14 cents for a gallon of gas, provided free education to their citizens as well as free health care. Young Libyan couples getting married were given a home. The banksters could not have that kind of wealth wasted on common people, because unless someone is a debt slave, they cannot be readily controlled.

Today, every one of the five megabanks are stealing the homes of their customers through the MERS fraud. The banks also launder money for the drug cartels (e.g. HSBC Bank and Wachovia Wells Fargo). They profit from child sex rings and they are using your bank deposits as a force multiplier to accomplish these evil deeds. Whether we want to face these facts or not, everyone who keeps their money in these institutions is an accomplice to these crimes.

We need to collectively come to realize that we the people are playing in a rigged game and we desperately need to cash out and find a new game to play. And it is just not banking that we need to be worrying about. The globalists control the very foundations of civilization. However, at the heart of this control is banking and that is where our attack needs to begin. Yet, I know that it seems impossible for most of us to not play in the globalist game of domination because so much of our lives are wrapped up in these evil institutions. So what is a victim to do?

Psychological Manipulation

The answer to the above question may have its roots in the field of psychology. Through institutions such Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Tavistock Institute, which controls over 30 research and polling sites in America. Tavistock is well known for the science of creating phony polls to influence and alter the public’s perception of an event based upon group think principles. More importantly, Tavistock has been at the forefront of psychological research on the manipulation of the masses. The psychological research of Tavistock helps us to understand how so few on this planet can so completely control so many. The effectiveness of their developed psychological controls are so complete, that the masses have largely been reduced to a herd of mindless sheep in which the many are conditioned to embrace and rejoice in their slavery.

What is good for the goose is also good for the gander. We, as a people, have the same opportunity to use the same psychological principles against the banksters. There are literally dozens of psychological strategies which we as the common people could employ. In the remaining part of the article, two strategies will be discussed and if they were employed by the masses, we would see an immediate impact on the control level of the globalists.

The Hawthorne Effect

Since the discovery of the Hawthorne Effect by the Harvard School of Business, it was discovered that research subjects change their behavior when they realize that they are being watched. Today, this is a well-known principle in the arena of effective research in which researchers are trained to minimize their level of intrusiveness in their naturalistic field research.

Based upon this principle, and if I were a globalist, I would welcome the public revelations of the NSA spy scandal for all the apparent reasons listed above. How many of us will be prevented from speaking out as things continue to decline for fear of future retribution? Fortunately, we live in a universe of duality and, therefore, this same principle can be also be used against the globalists as well.

What happens when you shine a light on rats? Everybody knows that the rats run for cover. This knowledge should be an empowering motivator for the alternative media. This knowledge should also encourage all of us to become a citizen journalist. Being a citizen journalist whistleblower needs to become our national pastime in which we report every act of wrongdoing on the part of every corporation and every government official, whether their rank is high or low.

To be effective and to create our own cultural norms, the alternative media needs to exalt people like Ed Snowden and immortalize the memories of Michael Hastings and Andrew Breitbart. There needs to become so many of us, that the globalists need to feel that there is nowhere to hide.

An Army of Citizen Journalists

America, if you want to preserve what little freedom you have left, you have a duty to become a participant in the resistance against global tyranny. Our collective efforts could someday be sufficient in numbers to shift the consciousness of this planet and create counter-critical mass in which a tsunami of opposition beliefs to the prevailing status quo sweeps across the planet and removes much of the control the banksters enjoy today.

In a person’s role as a citizen journalist, the coverage can seem minuscule on the surface. Perhaps the event one can cover may be as mundane as children cited for drawing with chalk on the sidewalk or a 10-year-old girl ticketed for operating a lemonade stand without a license. Together, we can create a debris field which can impede and eventually turn back the progress of the globalists. No, I do not think we can eliminate the influence the money changers, but we can invoke change by utilizing the principle of the Hawthorne Effect. And if there was one thing that I could have personal influence over, I would encourage all of you to educate your neighbors and friends about fractional reserve banking. I know of nobody, who understands this principle, who agrees with it. Fractional reserve banking could be the beginning point for any discussion about the unwarranted globalist control over humanity (i.e. “Do you know what happens to your money when you deposit it in the bank?”).

What To Do About the Banks?

You work at your job, your employer sends your check to your bank and you make automated payments for your bills from your bank account and you do not have to lift a finger to make all of this happen once your sign the banks paperwork. If you are like me, you can go months without having to withdraw any cash from the bank because the bank, on our behalf, controls most of our financial obligations if we so permit. Our lives are so intertwined in these corrupt financial institutions, it is not practical to totally extricate ourselves from the banks in one decisive action. However, we can systematically starve the banks to death through the gradual withdrawal of our support and our money.

Is it possible for you to withdraw enough of your money to equal over 90% of your total holdings in the bank? On the surface, this would appear to be an impractical solution. The concept of fractional reserve banking has built in a very effective firewall to real globalist profits through the multiplication of your deposits by 900%. For even if we were to collectively withdraw 80% of our money from the banks, the globalists would still double their profits based upon this concept. If Ron Paul in his former role on the House Banking Committee could not even audit the Federal Reserve, it is safe to say that, for now, the tinkering of this system is nearly impossible. However, this is where the idea of financial guerrilla warfare comes into play.

Attacking the Banksters On Our Terms

The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe. -- Albert Einstein

Is your glass half empty or half full? We make the choice to become optimistic or pessimistic. Voluminous amounts of psychological research is replete with the established fact that optimists live longer, make more money, have happier marriages and enjoy many more social advantages than do pessimists. Our happiness, our success and our well-being largely boils down to our own choices. Freedom is the space between the prison bars of life. When we realize that even in the most dire of situations, we have some measure of freedom, we can initiate change. And when many people realize this fact, we can initiate change on a global scale.

If we come to view the evil monolithic organizations such as the IRS and the Federal Reserve as insurmountable foes with no weaknesses to exploit on our end, then our pessimism will rule the day and we will capitulate to this criminal system just the like a herd of sheep.

When you change the way that you look at things, the things you look at change.

The alternative media is excellent at identifying and exposing problems. However, if all we do talk, then our revelations begin to become irrelevant. When all we do is to call attention to the negativity, then we invite more negativity into our paradigm. Our glass will always be half empty. And now it is time to discuss the second psychological principle that we can employ against the globalists.

Some psychologists call the following attractor energy in that we invite into our lives the things that we pay the most attention to. And what we invite into our lives attracts more of what it is that we are paying attention to. If we only focus on the problems, then we will invite more problems. Therefore, it is incumbent upon all of us to focus mostly on changes that are needed. Thus, significant action must follow our observations and words. You will eventually become what you think

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. -- Proverbs 3:27

First, we must visualize being out of the corporate dominated system of the globalists. Ask yourself, what would that look like and then work to make it happen.

With regard to beginning to withdraw from the central banking system, people should not use direct deposit from their employer to the bank. Keep a minimal amount of cash in the bank so that you may cash your checks. Pay your mortgages with a money order. Do the same for your car loans. Better yet, do not make purchases that you cannot afford to pay cash for. Debt makes you a slave to the banksters.

Pay cash for as much as you can and limit the amount of cash that you let go into the bank. Remember, for every dollar that goes into the bank, the globalists multiply it times nine, and much of that money goes toward programs designed to maximize their control over us.

Shop at your local merchants. Avoid corporate chain stores, owned by the megabanks, like the plague. Regularly, hold and/or attend garage sales, swap meets and farmers' markets to find what you need. Learn to grow your own food and subsist on that food supply as much as possible. You get the idea, get out of their money system as much as possible and we will significantly weaken the money changers system. We are not going to be able to invade Wall Street, so we have attack it from the inside. This is financial guerrilla warfare.

There is also a side benefit to these withdrawal strategies. When the collapse of the dollar finally arrives, you will be better prepared to survive. It is time to roll up our sleeves and work towards getting out of this corrupt system.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world… -- Romans 12:2

Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, a college basketball coach, a mental health counselor, a political activist and writer who has published dozens of editorials and articles in several publications such as Freedoms Phoenix, News With Views and The Arizona Republic.

The Common Sense Show features a wide variety of important topics that range from the loss of constitutional liberties, to the subsequent implementation of a police state under world governance, to exploring the limits of human potential. The primary purpose of The Common Sense Show is to provide Americans with the tools necessary to reclaim both our individual and national sovereignty.