You and Whose Army? When Sovereign Citizens Met The Gaddafi Wall

February 26, 2011 By 127 Comments

Q: Do dictators have any rights when ‘the international community’ come calling? -

By Cochise Johnson 21st Century Wire Feb 26, 2011 Freeman on the land? It’s easy to be critical of people who want to be free and wear their heart on a sleeve of sincerity. The junior psychologist in everyone who comes across these folks can’t help the rumination that follows. An overabundance of disjointed information raised their hackles, leaving them buzzing like angry hornets ready to sting all and sundry who mock their newfound vocation… barracks lawyering. Words like obsessive and compulsive come to mind but they’re too technical and someone else’s tools of explanation, which never really get to the heart of the matter. It’s the affliction and not the result that we’re interested in but it is also important to consider the circumstances that make people throw caution to the wind to step-up to big brother. Latter day sovereign citizens if nothing else are wide awake, they’ve had a mega-jolt in their lives not a simple rude awakening and they’re righteously peeved with the man!

EMBATTLED: Gaddafi now finds himself in the crosshairs of globalist nation builders.

Not surpisingly, sovereigns are found on the margins of society and it’s never clear if they went there under duress or sheer disgust with the world. The other noteworthy aspect of self-declared freemen is that they’re definitely not ideal consumers, in fact quite the opposite. Goods don’t have much value to anyone who knows the Circus will leave town as soon as enough tickets are sold. It’s like meeting an old girlfriend on the street, one may still feel pangs of desire but she’s definitely not invited home. Undereducated legal eagles are a dime a dozen at the Law Society, it’s the profession middle-class parents always choose for their less than brilliant offspring. Sovereigns too tend to have a prosperous provenance and some hopes and dreams they didn’t quite live up. Their path was cut short by some slight of the system, a small injustice that’s slashed too deep, made them decide the rest of the life journey wasn’t really worth all the trouble. Everything will be fine once they get their head round the UCC. Operating in Commerce and dissecting the rules of  Trusts may seem like the best route to breaking the chains of subtle serfdom but it’s actually less important than understading why such things exist in the first place. Mention this to any acolyte of the movement and they turn off their hearing to peg you as the servant of the enemy or ignorant of your own chains at the very least. The resistence to any deviation from the path can be put down to a ‘don’t confuse me with the facts’ scenario, or just plain “don’t spoil my fun”. Misery loves company and the numbers of disgruntled are growing daily if visitor count to alternative web space is anything to go by. Since the nature of the law expounds that all who seek remedy should have it, infringements to one’s person or property are intentionally ring-fenced by authorities maintaining the Status Quo. As it becomes ever more clear that a human’s purpose, as far as government is concerned is to pay lots of taxes and die quickly, the bandwagon creaks under the weight of passenger overload. People with a bone to pick should be allowed their amusement because it’s not going to change the world or harm it irreparably. The downside in it’s entirety is that government finds it very useful to have enemies of whichever hue or shade. One man’s sovereign is another’s Al Qaeda so the trick is for authorities to clandestinely gather round the fire with marginals and sneak in a splash of gasoline when necessary or simply start an evil splinter group to discredit any success. It’s a deviant, happy partnership of sorts. The last thing someone recently awakened wants to hear is that they are still part of the problem, a cog in the wheel of planned obsolescence and pretty much another useful idiot. The system is designed to fail but that notion is more than difficult to get across to anyone who’s only now joined in battle. How can it possibly make sense that someone fighting the authorities is performing a critical function for them, a service to society as a whole? It all goes back to the ‘sanctity of contracts’ and treaties. People who break the rules every day and have teams of lawyers at the ready would have us believe that written, signed and witnessed obligations cannot be broken yet they do it all the time. And treaties? Look at any history book and you’ll know what one of those is worth, the paper it’s written on. Freebooting businessmen and corrupt authorities are good enough reason for someone to stand and be counted but what if a stance wasn’t completely their own idea, if undue influence negated all other options? As freemen go, the most amusing of the bunch is Robert Mennard, a Canadian to be reckoned with. His travails with authority and injustice caused him to speak out and plenty of people have heard him by now, only the message isn’t the same to each individual receiver. His life experience with the law has been fairly cruddy, they go after him and he slaps them back. Mennard is actually the worst example of futility in this cause, he’s one of the few practitioners appearing to want to be left in peace. Fixating on a female denotes falling in love whereas doing the same with an idea is classified as a mental illness when both fit snugly into this category. If the choice in life is living with potential stalkers or letting people express their wildest thoughts, the former is definitely more of a danger than the latter except when the subject matter threatens to undermine the mighty. Only one explanation satisfactorily defines why such people are permitted to continue their anti-authoritarian rants ad nauseum, they’re invaluable. The statutes and codes that regulate commerce and therefore our lives are without doubt a gilded cage if one is fortunate enough to live in a caring society that looks after their own. Many have pointed to the fact that the majority of the complainants against the system are also it’s socialist beneficiaries. The welfare queen label saps the credibility of most wannabe freemen at the first outing and takes the wind out of their sails till the next futile round of court filings. Freemen don’t realise how happy courts are to see them. As long as the arguments remain in the nit-picking, hair-splitting range, judges can see them off without ever touching on the real problems in society. The level of expertise in court procedure from these novice Darrows is astounding to the courts themselves but ultimately, case filers are looking for a pat on the back, a ray of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day. A simple ‘motion’ to continue is always cause for exuberant celebration and hoorays for our side but judges get paid regularly and these folks don’t. To be wholly sovereign, one requires an army, a navy and perhaps an air force but even that may not be enough to deter others infringeing on one’s territory. Whacko, self-declared sovereigns don’t come any fruitier than Muammar Gaddafi- and look what’s happening to him. In the blink of an eye, his treaties and business contracts were torn up in favour of a campaign to dislodge him from his asset claims. That’s sanctity for you when it comes to making a quick buck and sovereignty is a luxury one can afford for just so long. Whatever they want to call themselves, seekers of liberty in this day and age scale a wall of their prison only to find out there’s a mine field on the other side spanning to the horizon. There’s a good reason for it, change will come when it’s deemed to be the correct time and like it or not, that decision rests in the hands of nameless, faceless oligarchs of the highest order. The mission is to make Democracy so intolerable, we’ll beg for their system to replace it, please don’t expect to be a free man on their land. – Author Cochise Johnson is a guest writer for 21st Century Wire, Gonzo Town and is a featured writer for the Runnymede Institute.facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: America, Banking, Business, International News, Libya, Middle East, New World Order, Politics, Propaganda, REVOLUTION, Terrorism, Trends, Uncategorized, US Politics, WAR ON TERROR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

ARAB REVOLTS HOLD OFF A NUCLEAR SUB-PRIME FALLOUT

February 26, 2011 By 122 Comments
By Andrew MacKillop 21st Century Wire February 26, 2011 - Top and bottom, or truth and beauty quarks interest nuclear physicists, but the mutually assured destruction of both the top and bottom, namely- both the North and South parts of the global economy. It came very close indeed, programmed and running to schedule right until the end of December 2010. Using the lever of nuclear power and the ‘creative’ financial assets generated around them, the intended mechanism featured a massive finance bubble driven by a construction spree of new, industry standard, Chernobyl-sized (900 MW and over) reactors right across the Southern emerging and developing countries, scheduled to take place between 2010-2020.

M.A.D. aka 'MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION'- Formerly the stuff of Cold War games, later becoming playground rules for Wall Street and City speculators.

The lynchpin target for this so-called “Nuclear Renaissance” was the entire Middle East and North African region– the Arab world, including outlier countries such as Sudan and the Central Asian muslim republics. As late as mid-year 2007, France’s President Sarkozy could crow about French success in selling its nuclear power to his respected, or at least petrodollar-flush fellow head of state, received with pomp and circumstance at the Elysee Palace(with tent and gorilla bodyguard)… Mr Muammar Gaddafi. INFLATING THE BUBBLE The nuclear bubble plan originated inside a small, shadowy core group of global finance and geopolitical players. The earliest coming out the so-called plan to build more nuclear reactors through 2010-2020 than in any previous period in history, took place at the UN’s Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009. Upon exposure, the first plan experienced its first defeat. Even as vaguely sketched out, or alluded to by the four heads of state of leading nuclear suppliers- Obama, Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown (succeeded later by Cameron), it was promptly met with disbelief and outright hostility by leaders of China, Russia, India, Brazil and others. Bruised but undeterred by this first failure to sell the scam, its pilot group continued its work through 2010. Their members included the likes of George Soros and his foundation, the World Shift Network, including pro-nuclear activists like Al Gore, nuclear boomers coordinated by the WNA (World Nuclear Association) and by a string of finance industry and institutional players led by the IMF, World Bank, the US Ex-IM Bank, as well as some notable major Ponzi scheme finance operators like Goldman Sachs Co. and its finance industry allies. They were frequently joined by the other three heads of government of the top 7 core nuclear industry supplier countries. Together they comprise the present 46-nation NSG-Nuclear Suppliers Group, hatched in 1974. UNDERSTANDING THE NUCLEAR BUBBLE Understanding why the attempt at floating a massive nuclear finance bubble – one which is approximately 10 to 50 times the size of the US sub-prime housing bubble – was doomed to either economic failure, or financial failure, or government debt and monetary failure- or all three, one only needs a flashback to the nuclear industry’s first finance bubble and meltdown, the period around 1974-1979. But at least as important, we have to add another cause of near-certain failure, along with the potential menace of massive loss of life, almost open-ended economic loss, and the ensuing environment damage. Until the Arab youth revolt started sweeping the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in January 2011, the key geographic region for selling nuclear reactors and creating the new “Nuclear South” – was MENA. One may ask the question: who in their right mind, 6 weeks later at end-February 2011, would suggest it is still a nice, progressive and productive, secure and useful idea to sell industry standard, Chernobyl-sized nuclear power plants to countries like Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Syria,Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Iran, the Central Asian republics, or any other civil war-prone country of the region, like Sudan ? At this moment in time any fast forward scenarios for the MENA region remain cloudy, but above all, they are troubled. Today, few could tell you the sell-by-date for remaining regimes in place in these countries.

California's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant completed in 1973, but earthquake fears delayed online deployment until 1981.

Apart from minor details like nuclear power plants being likely early collateral damage in civil wars of the region with massive destructive potential, the collapse of friendly dictators in the region heavily weakens another basic need of the nuclear bubble scam – for the borrowing parties to remain inexistence throughout the life of this global Ponzi scheme that was going to be operated, using nuclear assets in the South as the underlying security. Why the plan or scheme to off-load, dilute or dissolve unpayable OECD debt with this scam had to be big- and would have started big, is as simple to understand as flipping through debt and deficit statistics and forecasts for the leading economies of the OECD group. Any so-called “reserve currency” or money, whether in paper dollars, paper euros, paper yen or any others, today faces mortal threat of meltdown. The traditional central banker’s game of turning the printing press and crossing one’s fingers has been shaken to its core of confidence by the global financial and monetary meltdown- a disaster which was triggered by the US sub-prime housing scam. NUCLEAR SUB-PRIME DWARFING THE HOUSING BUBBLE The nuclear sub-prime bubble, we can be sure, was schemed as an operation tens of times bigger than the global housing bubble. The scheme was promoted as an “energy independence” and/or low-carbon plan for emerging and developing countries of the South, but under the table featured a huge off-load of debt from the OECD super-debt countries which could supply the necessary nuclear tech, fuel and engineering services – and above all the finance packages. The scam would have spread its wings the encompass government debt, currency and credit default swaps, SIVs (Structured Investment Vehicles) and a string of interest rate and other derived products, only limited in size and arcane complexity by the same cynical imagination of the nimble minds who gave an unsuspecting world the US sub-prime bubble – and crash. THE FIRST ASSET BUBBLE In market jargon anything that goes North is growing and profitable, while going South means losing money, likely going out of business. Turning this around in geographic terms, the nuclear sub-prime scam was conceived with a Southern base, but for the world nuclear industry ‘going south’ already happened- its first asset bubble still remains as a trace memory, haunting analysts and  industry advocates. The first time the industry almost died on its feet started exactly when the NSG was first founded by the original 7 pro-nuclear OECD countries, including the 3 Western members of the UN Security Council. Between 1974-1979 the industry rode a massive upsurge in asset values with reactor costs rising almost daily as the whole nuclear supply chain from uranium mining, enrichment and fuel fabrication, through reactor building and waste handling suffered double-digit annual inflation. By 1978 US Westinghouse (now Toshiba-Westinghouse) was forced to declare force-majeure on its uranium fuel supply contracts, and then on all of its new orders, reactor building and completions. POPULAR NUCLEAR MYTHS Elsewhere in the NSG world, financial meltdown became a threat, followed by a reality much more dire than core meltdown– as the core business of nuclear industrial players became too hot to handle. The reason was simple. The 1973-1974 oil shock generated a wave of panic in decider mindsets right across the developed OECD North, at a time when the only users of nuclear power along with communist Russia and communist China. The atom in economic folklore became the quick fix silver bullet able to shield their oil-based economies from oil price rises, despite the fact that an average intelligence child with a two-dollar pocket calculator could show, and can show today, that nuclear power saves little oil- or indeed, no oil at all. Uninterested by such tiring details, governments and corporate deciders stampeded into their farcical attempt at saving the economy with atomic power. Reactor orders exploded. Inflation followed, and financial meltdown naturally ensued, creating what the nuclear industry still calls its ‘nuclear winter’ – stretching from the early 1980s until the late 1990s, during which a single reactor order or completion was a hailed and rare event! NUCLEAR SALVATION So looking back we can see clearly that through 1974-1979 the exploding track of reactor and nuclear costs was exactly the same as what has happened through 2006-2011 to date. Selling nuclear salvation from high-priced oil to know-nothing heads of state, was then, and still remains today, an easy task in the run up to, and after-glow from the recent all-time high barrel price for oil (US $ 147 on the US NYMEX in 2008). This, we can note, was likely goosed by Goldman Sachs Co. The record price peak also included a 15-20 dollars special GS Co. premium specifically designed to bankrupt its client and victim, Semgroup Holdings, which was advised to bet, and lent funds to bet on falling oil prices… by Goldman Sachs. READY, STEADY… OOPS Primed and ready for the second nuclear asset bubble – this time a super-production – the world finance industry teamed with a mix and match of new-time, and old-time nuclear boomers through the years 2006-2009. This new Atomic Rat Pack ranges from the loony fringe of global warming hysterics like Jim Lovelock, James Hansen and Al Gore, to Whole Earth Catalog changeling and businessman Stewart Brand, completing his coming-out by discovering he’d always loved nuclear power all along but had been too shy to say it. More important for the hard-sell in the South, heads of state of the 7 key NSG countries, Sarkozy and Merkel, soon joined by Obama and Brown, fell over themselves to sell the atom to literally any country at all– in Sarkozy’s case to his friend and highly respected head of state Muammar Gaddafi back in 2007. The list of nuclear-possible or likely countries in the South at end 2010 makes a lurid read. In all cases the projects include (or included, as of end 2010, the probable end of this scam) big or very big civil reactor orders, for industry standard 900MW and larger power reactors. Apart from the MENA and the Muslim world, we find a bizarre array of crumbling dictatorships, one party states tricked out as democracies, and banana-or-oil republics, such as: Nigeria, Ghana, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Belarus,Pakistan and Indonesia. Through year 2010, in a flurry of mostly closed-door meetings, the nuclear industry boomers headed by the WNA and leading lights in the world finance industry honed down their strategy for building and launching the ultimate asset bubble. The reason for Southern tilt was not only the lack of debt and sometimes current account surpluses in these countries, but simple facts of life in the North. In the North, environment militants, knowledge and fear of nuclear power, high costs, and the many alternatives to the atom which now include vast reserves of unconventional gas, made their sales pitch a no-go… compared with the home run in the South. In the background, this was further powered by IMF-coordinated attempts to create new mechanisms for re-indebting the emerging and developing countries, and use the South as a place to offload OECD nation debt into a massive new pool of financial paper riding the nuclear asset bubble. Also add here a rather flagging green energy asset bubble. Perhaps the biggest reason we have to thank the cellphone-wielding Flash Mob youth of the Arab world is this: the potential for launching the new nuclear finance scam is now almost zero in the MENA region – the lynchpin for this attempt at out-doing the US sub-prime bubble. The life expectancy of such a scam today is not much more than that of a quark – about 10 to the minus 25 seconds. COPYRIGHT ANDREW MCKILLOP 2011 – Andrew McKillop is guest writer for 21st Century Wire. He has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: 2012, America, Banking, Business, Climate Change, Economic collapse, Economy, Energy, Environment, IMF, International News, Libya, Middle East, money, Nuclear, Politics, REVOLUTION, Science, Technology, Trends, Uncategorized, US Politics, World Bank Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

KISS EGYPT’S REVOLUTION GOOD-BYE

February 25, 2011 By 443 Comments

After the ecstasy of revolution, the Bankers quietly begin carving up Egypt and North Africa

By Richard Eastman 21st Century Wire Feb 25, 2011 The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is ready to lend one billion EUROS a year to Egypt for reconstruction and “free-market reform”- even as Egypt’s Minister of Finance Samir Radwan has gone begging to the City of London bankers and the British Ministry of Trade and Investment  for relief on debt payments that are about to throw Egypt into bankruptcy. All this, as Egypt has been such a good boy with regards to privatization and austerity, measures which awarded Egypt its celebrated 7 percent growth rate- mostly in investments that will end up in international hands as ventures fail to pay out with ever diminishing Egyptian domestic purchasing power. FRESH CYCLES OF DEBT First EBRD will lend at interest and build what they want backed by Egyptian collateral and the value of the projects themselves.  Then when it turns out they can’t make the debt payments because of all the interest we have sucked from them, we take over all of the assets we have developed.  That’s freedom and EBRD is really going to give it to them.  After all EBRD is  experienced at this.  In 1991 the EBRD was organized to financially lead  Russia and Eastern Europe in their transition from paternalistic socialism to sustainable  free-market economies open to international investment.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE: World Bank and hatchet institutions like the EBRD begin carving up Egyptian assets against new loans.

The U.S. is the EBRD’s largest shareholder, although the combined stakes of European Union nations give that bloc the greatest say in how it operates. EBRD President Thomas Mirow in a speech at Oxford University declared:

“Twenty years ago, the EBRD rose to the challenge posed by the collapse of communism. Today, in the Middle East… we are ready to act again, championing the values that we hold dear. . .  We have the ability to deliver the development of the private sector, particularly the small and medium-sized enterprises which drive job creation and thus supplement the efforts of other international financial institutions which focus on public infrastructure.”

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit that the EU will permit new loans and provide “expertise” if Egypt ‘willing to make the necessary economic reforms’ in order to get them. Meanwhile new parties are being formed through Facebook to counter, and crowd out traditionally popular organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.  New Parties like the “25th of January Party” — no indication of what it stands for in the name — has garnered hundreds of thousands of “likes”.  Another Party, the “Freedom and Justice Party” is a magnet for a secular pro-free-market Egyptians looking for power and position in the new Egypt.  But a hundred other parties are being financed, each directed at peeling away one or more demographic groupings from the Muslim Brotherhood. This important work is proceeding as the world is distracted by the violence in Libya.  By the time the world is ready to look at Egypt again, the nation will show an entirely different political landscape. It is clear that the little people have lost again, that Egyptians have lost their  revolution and that the people simply are not well enough informed to raise up their own alternative to domination by International Finance.  The so-called Egyptian revolution has been hijacked by the Rothschilds while the world has shifted its eyes to Libya. Meanwhile, Citi Group and the global banking elite continue formulating and farming their emerging markets: “Citi has unveiled what it dubs the ‘3G’ countries: Global Growth Generators. The 11 countries it picks out as leading lights are Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.” - The Wall Street Journal  2-24-2011 The closure of Egypt’s banks for two of the past three weeks has added strain on an economy already reeling from the evaporation of tourism and a prolonged stock market closure caused by the political upheaval that ousted long-time leader Hosni Mubarak.  The bank shutdown and the draining of ATM machines have paralyzed businesses and left ordinary people scrambling for cash.

INVISIBLE HAND: US and Israeli regional policy goals are steering 'banking reconstruction' efforts in Egypt.

The country’s banks had long been a source of pride for Egyptians, with its strong regulatory environment and their lack of investments in the kind of toxic assets that hammered Western banks helped Egypt weather the worst of the global financial meltdown. Two weeks Moody’s Investors Service downgraded its credit ratings for five Egyptian banks.  Future loans from international agencies will depend on eliminating those regulations and meeting other benchmarks for “free-market reform”. BANK HOLIDAY: ORDER OUT OF CHAOS Banks remained open the first few days of the 18-day democracy uprising. But after a weekend of looting, arson and lawlessness on Jan. 28-29, they closed for a week and many ATMs  ran out of cash. The following week, the banks closed. They reopened the week of Feb. 6-10 and this week on Sunday.  The military-led caretaker government has sought to re-establish a measure of normalcy after Mubarak’s ousting. Banks reopened on Sunday and officials breathed a sigh of relief when a much-feared run on them did not materialize— the first weekday following Mubarak’s exit. They closed again on Monday, the central bank ordering them to remain shut at least until the start of next week on Sunday. A week ago, Credit Suisse estimated that the unrest had cost the country at least $310 million per day, and predicted the Egyptian currency would come under heavy pressure as investors shifted to dollar deposits or pulled their money out entirely. Those projections for economic growth this year were quickly revised down from 6 percent, to between 2 and 4 percent respectively. The European Investment Bank (EIB) , on Tuesday,  requested $1.4 billion is needed for lending from the European Union to support the transition to democracy in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries. In addition, the bank wants clearance to reinvest money repaid from earlier transactions which will raise the total to $8.2 billion over three years. EIB President Philippe Maystadt said the $8.2 billion would allow them  to do something significant in coming years, especially for new projects in job creation for young people, who have become frustrated with lack of job opportunities and as a result, become the main drivers… for uprisings. FINAL NOTE: In 2010, the EIB lent a record $3.5 billion to projects in the Arab region, making it the biggest provider of long-term financing there, Maystadt said. That being said, Maystadt admitted of the $11.9 billion allocated between 2008 and 2013, only about $3.8 billion is left, and they are ready to do more. The EIB invests in new enterprises, lending funds to small and medium-sized companies, as well as investing in new transport, energy and infrastructure for new developments. Typically, it raises money by issuing bonds, guaranteed by the EU against political risk. Current projects include Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon and Algeria, but has not been authorized to invest in Libya. — Author Richard Eastman lives in Yakima, Washington and is a guest writer for 21st Century Wire. He provides a free clipping service to “populist activists” along with his own commentary advancing several  conspiracy theories, and  is an advocate of Social Credit. –facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: America, Banking, Economy, Egypt, History, IMF, International News, Israel, Libya, Middle East, money, NATO, New World Order, Obama, Politics, REVOLUTION, Uncategorized, US Politics, World Bank Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

YOUTH UPRISING 2011: A PLANETARY 1968

February 24, 2011 By 402 Comments
By Andrew McKillop 21st Century Wire February 24, 2011 Today’s surging youth-led revolution in the Arab world has common points with the 1968 student’s revolt that rocked developed countries including the USA, France and several other European countries, with lasting sequels – of student and youth unrest – in Latin America, the then-USSR, Japan, developed countries in East and SE Asia, and even Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. THEN AND NOW… But the shared themes and common goals tend to stop there: today’s youth revolt has a planetary dimension, already moving out from the Arab world, and changing as it goes. The uprising, today, may be mostly of young persons but the goals and themes of this much more massive, probably world scale revolt are not only political, but also economic. In turn this likely makes them even more “impossible” than the euphoric hippy-oriented peace and love, anti-war, drug influenced alternate society dreams of the 1968 revolt in the rich world, that carefully ignored such boring old-style issues such as the economy. A key slogan of the French 1968 student revolt summed this up:  ”… be reasonable – demand the impossible”. By an interesting time warp, Mouammar Gaddafi’s rise to power was under way in 1968 and was completed in 1969. This part-educated self-declared tribal ruler, himself drug-influenced, at first claimed to be reproducing the power grab of his supposed mentor, Nasser’s mid-rank army revolt in Egypt, and both of these models served elsewhere in Africa- for example in the bloody coup that gave sergeant Mobutu Sese Soko decades of corrupt power in the Congo. This he promptly renamed Zaire, like Gaddafi renamed Libya as the Arab Jamahiriya, but for any average citizen of these 3 countries little or nothing changed for the better and almost everything changed for the worse. The antiquated other-worldliness of these flashback regimes takes us back to the postwar world of two competing superpowers in an abundant oil and other fossil-fuelled era of constant economic growth. The difference with today’s real world is massive and striking. With the fall of the dictator and mass killer Gaddafi, following hard on the heels of Tunisia’s and Egypt’s creaking leaderships being overthrown, a page of history is being rapidly turned, after decades of being frozen into deathlike inertia. But today’s world is vastly different from that of 1968, and the differences do not only include mass cellphone and Internet-based communications. Through 1968-2008 world population almost exactly doubled, adding 3 400 million people. If by some miracle of 1950s and 1960s style economic growth– as in China and India today, the world’s 3.4 billion population increment could consume oil at today’s OECD average of about 12 barrels per person each year, world oil demand would be about 90 million barrels a day more than present. In other words demand would be more than double today’s demand, needing roughly 50 or 60 “New Libyas” to make up the difference.

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: Libya was worth approximately 1.4 million barrels a day.

This immediately sets one parameter for the post-revolutionary world of the next 10 years or so, and generates one basic need:  learning what is possible to change, and eschewing economic growth dreams of the 1950s and 1960s variety, even if China and India are soldiering along that path. For delirious and malevolent dreamers like Gaddafi, and like the 1968 crop of student and alternate society leaders of the rich world, all and every economic detail was as uninteresting as it was unimportant. In both cases there was however sufficient fat to trim, or existing wealth slopping around the system to permit these almost 18th century mindsets, more influenced by J-J Rousseau than by Nietzsche or Sartre– or effectively and in reality by Hitler and Mussolini in the case of Gaddafi. Both the type and kind of Flash Mob cellphone and Internet-based revolutions that are possible, today, will be heavily influenced by existing wealth, and the lack of it in affected countries- and as noted the current wave of revolutionary change is potentially global, exactly like the economy. GMO EPOCH AND THE NEW FOOD CRISIS Another interesting flashback to the late 1960s and early 1970s is that period was marked by serious and recurring famine outbreaks which were solved by the one-time, once-only science and technology quick fix called the Green Revolution. Today’s GM crop hybrid “revolution” is far behind in its scope and potential for raising world food output, despite loud claims to the contrary, and for a battery of simple and basic reasons. These start with the fact, using FAO and other data, the world had an average of nearly 1 hectare of arable land per person in 1968, but today has less than 0.25 hectares per person.

THE GREEN REVOLUTION: Monsanto and GMO giants work to create global food markets for their products.

Food shortages- even famine, therefore has a short fuze today.  As the initially joyful Flash Mob youth rebellion in some countries (Tunisia is in fact the only one) are followed by increasingly bloody and lengthening struggles we can easily fear these will degenerate into, and generate, long civil wars. Prolonged breakdown of civil society is a sure and certain threat. During civil wars, all through history, famine is the common fellow rider able to further intensify the loss of life and trigger further, more bloody struggles and massive flows of refugees. It is likely- but not certain, that this parameter is understood by leaders of the developed world, somewhat rocked and shocked by the rapidity and intensity of events in the Arab world since this new start of 2011. The non-ideological dimension is also troubling – so troubling that conspiracy theories are flocking to fill the void: obviously Iran is behind the Bahraini uprising, to inflict collateral damage on Saudi Arabia and deprive the west (and China, India and more than 100 other importer countries) of Saudi oil. Egypt’s uprising, when it is not the fruit of CIA and US Joint Chiefs of Staff plotting, is surely the result of Hamas infiltrating Egyptian youths’ minds using Facebook. Tunisia’s revolution was almost certainly remote-controlled by neighboring ex-Algerian islamic terrorists, when it was not the product of French socialist intellectuals and trade unionists. And so Western conventional wisdom goes. Gaddafi’s very welcome downfall poses problems for cobbling rosy conspiracy theories, but with time these will flourish. We might suggest his downfall could or might be linked to Wikileaks, like any other unexplained geopolitical event, inch’allah. But in all cases of revolt in the Arab world no conspiracy theory can claim the objective is to deprive the world of food supply. Taking simply Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, these 4 countries import more than 45 percent of world total wheat export supply. As traders in their exuberant excesses of panic and euphoria reasoned, in their own way through February 21-23, any prolonged civil strife in the Arab food importer countries could crater demand, and therefore a rigorous sell-off was needed. To be sure, the long-only bets will be back in a few days. Much more important and more grave, the world is in a long-term process of depriving itself with food. Rebellion, revolt and revolution inside countries totally dependent on food imports is a dangerous signal not only for their citizens but for the world. The list of urgent measures in these countries – and in the huge number of countries outside the Arab world but like them heavily dependent on food imports – starts with the development of farming and food production. To date, this basic need is almost inaudible, along with other economic realities. THE FOOD AND JOB CRISIS One sure cause or intensifier and accelerator of today’s Arab revolt is the twin – in fact interrelated – crises of not enough food and not enough jobs. To be sure, citizens listening to the high-flown delirium of a megalomaniac like Gaddafi, or a despot like Mubarak or Ahmedinejad of Iran will be less than thrilled by the ranting rhetoric, when they do not have enough to eat and their job outlook is close to zero. We can suggest that rising strains, and coming fractures in the world food production and supply system will initially be good for democracy but the best-before date on the packaging will be short. The massive rate of urban growth in the Arab world, both due to and causing rural and agricultural under-development, low productivity and poor paid jobs outside cities, is only an extreme version of the same general process in all developing and emerging countries. Inside the fast-growing cities of the entire world outside the OECD countries, which count for 15 percent of world population, the growing capital intensity of low paid manufacturing jobs, to play a humble export platform role in the global economy, also chokes off job growth. Solving both these crises is the challenge for the world that arises from the ashes of the fossil regimes of the Arab world, in Africa and elsewhere, set in a moment of time that disappeared decades ago. Returning again to their time, in the 1960s and 1970s, we can take a swift look at Mao’s failed but deadly rural development and regeneration revolution, and the extreme war crimes of the Khmer Rouge forced return to village living in Cambodia. Both these acts of criminal folly were failures. Their total body count was perhaps as high as 40 million – the same as the total death toll from World War 2. What is important and usually missed out in analyzing these sombre events is that both were either directly, or in major part driven by an attempt to solve chronic or acute food shortage – and create jobs. We are currently offered a bizarre, even eccentric mix-and-match of supposed Green Growth, and intensified consumer society growth economy, by institutions and agencies such as World Bank, IMF, the UN development and economic agencies and some major private corporations. We might ironically think that the dreamers producing these concepts for the economic way ahead are working on a basis that if one fails the other could work, if God wills. The gravest problem is that neither can or will work due to these models being totally antinomic or exclusive. Case in point: at this moment in time, when the post-uprising civil societies of countries experiencing the Flash Mob youth revolt need support, advice, help and direction, the policy void in the OECD developed countries is a grave threat to recovery and sustained change in the world.

LES FLASH MOBS: Tunisian youth takes to the streets with calls for reform.

SOME CONCLUSIONS The rate of change since the start of January 2011 is high and may be growing, not weakening. The Arab revolt now means what it says: anti-regime movements now span almost the whole Arab world, from Morocco to Yemen, and can likely soon spill over and spread to African countries, Iran, Armenia, the Central Asian republics, and perhaps China. All the autocratic and unelected governments unable or unwilling to solve the basic issues of food and jobs will now suffer rising popular opposition and the risk of overthrow by mass uprising. By contagion, this movement could spread to the elected governments in many countries which are unwilling or unable to solve exactly the same challenges and can lose what remains of their own popular credibility and support. Unlike the student revolts of 40 years ago, and totally unlike the rock-solid economic growth of the time, during les Trente Glorieuse, today’s weakened and fragile global economy is exposed to a host of challenges always bringing the economic issues closer to the surface. These as we said, start with the basic issues of failure to feed large chunks of humanity, or employ the youth of nearly all countries, whether rich or poor. Given the resource pinch, geopolitical climate change concerns, rising threats of major ecosystem collapse and heightened awareness of these economic constraints the way forward is both complex and difficult. This however does not mean we can avoid grasping the nettle: on the geopolitical front, endlessly avoiding the basic humanitarian need to eliminate toy-sized Hitlers (many of whom serve at the pleasure of Western powers) like Gaddafi- is returning home to roost. The coming storm of refugee, economic, security and energy problems for the whole Europe-North Africa region, and beyond, is a clear proof of this. Exactly the same applies to meeting the nested challenges of feeding humanity and creating sustained employment within resource and ecological limits, that is within a set of sometimes clear – and often growing – constraints and limits. Time is short, and the heavy weight of avoided and ignored problems over several decades, the ultimate in laisser faire, shows that finally action is the only choice. COPYRIGHT ANDREW MCKILLOP 2011 – Andrew McKillop is guest writer for 21st Century Wire. He has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO. -facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: 2012, America, China, CIA, Culture, Economic collapse, Economy, Egypt, Energy, FOOD, fuel, GMO, History, International News, Iran, Israel, Libya, Middle East, money, New World Order, Politics, REVOLUTION, Russia, Trends, Uncategorized, US Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Libya Conquered in the Dark

February 22, 2011 By 335 Comments
Tony Cartalucci Infowars.com Feb 21, 2011 Shut down the Middle East, you shut down China and Russia, then you rule the world. The current Middle East destabilization is a desperate gambit to eliminate the Near-East buffer, isolate the two rising superpowers, and force them to concede to their place within a unipolar New York-London centric world order. Libya is next in a long line of nations in the Middle East being destabilized and facing a Western-backed regime change. With the corporate owned mainstream media performing breathtaking acts of propagandizing, the US State Department’s army of bloggers coordinating Libya’s uprising on the ground, and nearly zero confirmed reports coming out, it seems the large North African nation is being dismembered entirely in the dark.

ALWAYS UP FOR MAKING A BUCK: Tony Blair doing his paid "business development" work whilst serving as PM, all for British companies in Libya.

Unlike in Egypt, where US International Crisis Group trustee Mohamed ElBaradei was talking daily to international reporters on the ground, and AlJazeera provided 24 hour coverage, Libya is a virtual blackhole. The mainstream media is relaying hearsay from “Libyan” bloggers and protesters on the ground. The tell-tale quotation marks peppering reports coming out of BBC and AlJazeera and a litany of weasel words indicate that the “revolution” will be feed to the public in the most disingenuous and unsubstantiated manner possible.

Unfortunately, when all we have to depend on during a crisis is the honor of the corporate owned media, where BBC itself is a major corporate member of the globalist nexus Chatham House, nothing can be trusted and we are left in confusion and uncertainty. Far too many people, however, will still fall for the thin veneer of legitimacy the mainstream media’s slick graphics and well-dressed shills lend it. BBC’s latest article regarding Sayf al-Islam’s address to the nation gives us an astounding example of the mainstream media forcing the scant facts coming out of Libya into a predetermined narrative to suit the global-combine’s interests. In his address to the Libyan nation, Sayf al-Islam accused opposition groups and outsiders of trying to transform Libya, that the foreign media was grossly exaggerating the government’s response to protesters, and compared the unrest to an Egypt-style Facebook revolution. While BBC concedes that “verifying information from Libya has been difficult,” within the text of the article they refer to the speech as a “rambling TV address.” In the side bar, we hear from BBC propagandist Jon Leyne, who covered the “bazillion-gagillion man march” in Egypt and told viewers it seemed as if “all of Egypt” had turned out in Tahrir Square. Best estimates of the crowd range from 50,000 to no more than 100,000 (0.1% of Egypt’s population.) Leyne says the following regarding Sayf al-Islam’s address, in an unprofessional bravado we should only have come to expect from the BBC: “That was one of the strangest political speeches I think I’ve ever sat through. He was completely and utterly detached from the reality of what is going on in his country. To put it bluntly, most Libyans will just treat it as gibberish – it was completely meaningless to them. The idea that they’re somehow going to sit down and have a national dialogue with a government that’s brought in foreign mercenaries to shoot at them is laughable.” What qualifies Leyne to speak on behalf of the Libyan people on a crisis his own network concedes is difficult to report on, thus “utterly detached” themselves, is beyond understanding, unless of course it is pure propaganda aimed at discrediting the address. What the mainstream media and Sayf al-Islam seem to agree on is that Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi has been overrun by mobs who have seized military tanks and weapons. For BBC and AlJazeera to call the government’s response to arsonists, looters, vandals, and now dangerously and overtly armed mobs, a “massacre,” seems somewhat disingenuous and very similar to their coverage of the US-backed mobs that took to the streets in Bangkok in May, 2010. While Sayf al-Islam admits security forces have made mistakes, the possibility that violence is also being employed by the protesters or their foreign agitators cannot be entirely ruled out. The US think-tank Brookings Institute dedicated an entire chapter in their report regarding Iran, to fueling color revolutions and the prospect of using military force to help counter Iranian security forces – who were sure to put down revolutions without US military intervention, covert or otherwise. In Bangkok, in 2010, protesters in the street following US-backed, deposed PM Thaksin Shinwatra were bolstered by a shadowy militant group under the command of key protest leaders. They instigated a bloodbath on April 10, 2010 in an attempt to force the government to take responsibility and step down. The violence and 91 deaths that resulted between Thai security forces and this militant group has laid the foundation of globalist lawyer Robert Amsterdam’s attempts to target the Thai government nearly a year later. Since the mainstream media is obviously compromised, it is up to us to discern what is really happening. The greatest clue that all is not what it seems and that foreign hands are meddling in the affairs of these nations is the fact that paid propagandists like BBC and AlJazeera are clearly taking sides instead of doing their supposed job of objective reporting. While the designs against Libya are somewhat ambiguous, we have already noted beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Egyptian and Tunisian protests are entirely the result of Western meddling, where even the props used by the protesters were “recycled” from a previous and admitted US-backed plot in Serbia. The hallmarks are there, and absent of objective reporting, caution is urged, further research is required, and without a doubt, our mainstream media is not to ever be trusted again. – Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer.facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: China, Egypt, International News, Libya, Media, Middle East, Politics, Propaganda, Russia, UK Politics, Uncategorized, US Politics, war zone Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

America: Repudiate your $17 trillion of debt

February 17, 2011 By 404 Comments

If all the $17 trillion were owed to one man, you would want everyone to repudiate that debt, wouldn’t you?  So what’s so special about Rothschild that you will sacrifice your country, your business, your home, your job and your family’s future to him?

By Richard Eastman 21st Century Wire Feb 17, 2011 Millions will die, and ten million minds will crack and a hundred million lives will fall apart.  The pain and grief for what has happened and the future that has been robbed will be intolerable.  And the talking heads go on:  The government must cut this, the people must do without that, wages must be cut drastically, benefits must disappear, packages smaller, ingredients more inferior etc.  Because the we owe $17 trillion and it has to be paid. But do we really have to pay Mr. Rothschild and Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Soros etc …? If all the $17 trillion were owed just to me, would you still feel obligated to inflict all that damage on so many lives?  Or would you repudiate and say, “To hell with you, Dick Eastman” And what kind of person would I be if I insisted that $17 trillion had to be taken from everyone so that I could possess that much wealth?

Millions of debt slaves are sacrificed to Goldman-Sachs each year.

Wouldn’t it be very strange that no one in the media or in government or in the economics departments of our great universities ever once asks, is Rothschild really that wonderful that 300 million people must live short lives of agony so that he can add to the astronomical amount of wealth he already possesses? All the news media talk about our debt and the suffering that must come of it. Where from our bodies we should cut our pound of flesh? And more than a pound! Hundreds of millions of people ruined and thrown into misery…  and not one of them ever asks the basic questions: Who is getting this $17 trillion dollars? Where is what we bought with that $17 trillion dollars? What did the lenders give up to make that $17 trillion available to us? Since we are the ones who work and invent and manage and they are the ones who make loans, how is it that they end up owning it all?

Trillion Dollar Bill: could become a lighter, more cost-effective way to buy a loaf of bread.

Did they provide the money for the bubbles- or in fact did we ourselves make the bubbles by putting up our own equity in second mortgage agreements?  Yet they get the houses and the compound interest over principal when all they put into the job was a half hour of keyboarding. Government can declare eminent domain and take our houses, they can vote to tax away all we have, but why do they never put a graduated earnings tax on interest earnings?  Why do they never pass a law requiring that debt burdens adjust to average household purchasing power? Why is government borrowing from international bankers the one thing in all the world that is not regulated in any way? Politicians don’t call for debt repudiation because they know doing so would get them killed. Arm chair economists don’t advocate repudiation because they think they know that a nation needs credit in order to have the money necessary for the economy to function at all.  If we repudiate, all loans will be recalled and no one will have money to buy anything. But guess what?  Social Credit makes them unnecessary.  The government can set up a system whereby all the new money that the economy needs can originate by fiat in the household sector, in the hands of the people, so they can go out and buy so that businesses can be profitable and keep people employed.  No longer will people have to trade their equity for purchasing power to meet their debt obligations.

This imp says: "Congress allowed the wars and voted the money- it would not be honorable for you to refuse to pay the debt they incurred- even if it was Rothschild/Rockefeller/Soros who bought their elections and own the political operatives who froze you out of the nominating process".

The answer is simple.  Repudiate… while at the same time issuing new money to households.  It would be like having an income tax refund every month — no interest, no pay back of principal. And if every nation in the world called for repudiation of national debt- and all interest due on loans to banks, so that only principal must be paid back-  then where would be the recession? Only repudiation and social credit together can save this country and every country.  You can’t repudiate national debt unless you have a system of social credit to replace the credit that Rothschild will forever withdraw. Repudiation is justified.  They have been running a crooked wheel and fraud vitiates all contracts. Repudiate all debt and remove any official that puts the Rothschilds above the nation and the people. If we make it a world repudiation and if we replace the withdrawn credit with social credit- it will not be the end.  It will be the beginning.  Recessions and economic scandals should never be. With Social Credit they won’t be ever again. And Rothschild is responsible to the billions who owe them money or owe them rent or pay them their monopoly profits.  Or, if he is not, then he has no business being the richest man on earth (I speak of course of Rothschild as representing all the breed of merchant bankers- I am not talking about one man, but a network of crime families who dominate high finance). Every man is responsible to every other man. – Author Richard Eastman lives in Yakima, Washington and is a guest writer for 21st Century Wire. He provides a free clipping service to “populist activists” along with his own commentary advancing several  conspiracy theories, and  is an advocate of Social Credit.

What is social credit?

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: America, Banking, China, Economic collapse, Economy, History, New World Order, Obama, Philosophy, Propaganda, Trends, Uncategorized, US Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

SHORT FILM: The American Dream

February 15, 2011 By 373 Comments
Gonzo Town Feb 15, 2011   The American Dream. This year’s Oscar winner for best short film?  facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: Banking, Business, Culture, Economic collapse, Economy, Max Keiser, Media, money, New World Order, Philosophy, Politics, Propaganda, UK Politics, Uncategorized, US Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

BEHIND THE SCENES OF A 21st CENTURY REVOLUTION

February 12, 2011 By 348 Comments
Alliance of Youth Movements: Color Revolution 2.0

‘Google’s revolution factory’

Tony Cartalucci Infowars.com Feb 12, 2011 In 2008, the Alliance of Youth Movements held its inaugural summit in New York City. Attending this summit was a combination of State Department staff, Council on Foreign Relations members, former National Security staff, Department of Homeland Security advisers, and a myriad of representatives from American corporations and mass media organizations including AT&T, Google, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and MTV. Download PDF document detailing activities of this globalist foundation: http://allyoumov.3cdn.net/f734ac45131b2bbcdb_w6m6idptn.pdf One might suspect such a meeting of representatives involved in US economic, domestic and foreign policy, along with the shapers of public opinion in the mass media would be convening to talk about America’s future and how to facilitate it. Joining these policy makers, was an army of “grassroots” activists that would “help” this facilitation.

The mobs in Egypt are not quite what they appear to be.

Among them was a then little known group called “April 6″ from Egypt. These Facebook “savvy” Egyptians would later meet US International Crisis Group trustee Mohamed ElBaradei at the Cairo airport in February 2010 and spend the next year campaigning and protesting on his behalf in his bid to overthrow the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The Alliance of Youth Movements mission statement claims it is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists to build their capacity and make a greater impact on the world. While this sounds fairly innocuous at first, even perhaps positive, upon examining those involved in “Movements.org,” a dark agenda is revealed of such nefarious intent it is almost difficult to believe.

A list US companies who are actively involved in the subversion of foreign governments

Movement.org is officially partnered with the US Department of State and Columbia Law School. Its corporate sponsors include Google, Pepsi, and the Omnicon Group, all listed as members of the globocrat Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CBS News is a sponsor and listed on the globocrat Chatham House’s corporate membership list. Other sponsors include Facebook, YouTube, Meetup, Howcast, National Geographic, MSNBC, GenNext, and the Edelman public relations firm. Movement.org’s “team” includes Co-Founder Jared Cohen, a CFR member, Director of Google Ideas, and a former State Department planning staff member under both Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton. Founding Movements.org with Cohen is Jason Liebman of Howcast Media which works with mega-corporate conglomerates like Proctor & Gamble, Kodak, Staples, Ford, and government agencies such as the US State Department and the US Defense Department, to create “custom branded entertainment, innovative social media, and targeted rich-media campaigns.” He was also with Google for 4 years where he worked to partner with Time Warner (CFR), News Corporation (FoxNews, CFR) Viacom, Warner Music, Sony Pictures, Reuters, the New York Times, and the Washington Post Company. Roman Sunder is also credited with co-founding Movements.org. He founded Access 360 Media, a mass advertising company, and he also organized the PTTOW! Summit which brought together 35 top executives from companies like AT&T (CFR), Quicksilver, Activision, Facebook, HP, YouTube, Pepsi (CFR), and the US Government to discuss the future of the “youth industry.” He is also a board member of Gen Next, another non-profit organization focused on “affecting change for the next generation.” It is hard, considering these men’s affiliations, to believe that the change they want to see is anything less than a generation that drinks more Pepsi, buys more consumerist junk, and believes the United States government every time they purvey their lies to us via their corporate owned media. While the activists attending the Movements.org summit adhere to the philosophies of “left-leaning” liberalism, the very men behind the summit, funding it, and prodding the agenda of these activists are American’s mega-corporate combine. These are the very big-businesses that have violated human rights worldwide, destroyed the environment, sell shoddy, overseas manufactured goods produced by workers living in slave conditions, and pursue an agenda of greed and perpetual expansion at any cost. The hypocrisy is astounding unless of course you understand that their nefarious, self-serving agenda could only be accomplished under the guise of genuine concern for humanity, buried under mountains of feel-good rhetoric, and helped along by an army of exploited, naive youth. What we see is not a foundation from which all activists can work from, but a foundation that has a very selective group of activists working on “problem spots” the US State Department would like to see “changed.” Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Eastern Europe, Venezuela, and even Thailand - where ever protesters and movements are working to undermine governments non-conducive to corporate America’s agenda, you will find Movements.org supporting their efforts. The April 6 Movement of Egypt is one of them, and their role in the apparent success of the US ousting of Hosni Mubarak that may see their man Mohamed ElBaradei in office is a perfect example of how this new army of prodded youth will be deployed. It is color revolution 2.0, run directly out of the US State Department with the support of corporate America. It would be strongly recommended that readers go to Movements.org themselves and explore the website, in particular the 3 summits they have held and those that were in attendance. Everyone from the RAND Corporation to the Council on Foreign Relations comes to “prod.” Movements.org truly is a new tentacle for manipulating and undermining the sovereignty of foreign nations. DOWNLOAD MORE GLOBALIST PDF BRIEFS HERE: 2008 Summit New York City .pdf 2009 Summit Mexico City .pdf 2010 Summit London — Tony Cartalucci writes the Land Destroyer blog.facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: CIA, Culture, Economic collapse, Egypt, History, International News, Iran, Middle East, New World Order, Obama, Politics, Propaganda, Uncategorized, US Politics, Wikileaks Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Scold’s Bridle: A practical solution to Egypt’s problems and our own

February 8, 2011 By 1 Comment
The Runnymede Institute Feb 8, 2011 Victors write the history of the human experience. We normally tend to speak in terms that give conflict a special place in our psyche and expect there will always be a loser to pity or despise. It’s believed this is a natural condition, part of the brain’s basic software package we’re all born with but we humans are not so one-dimensional. The question of Nature over Nurture has been debated in academia for decades and careers were built and destroyed on the notion of whether you could make a perfect man by design or if we’re born that way. If one were to ask, which attribute makes people good citizens, the natural modern answer is the same as anywhere in recorded time. It’s dependent on where you live, who you live with and under what conditions, making both sides of the argument redundant. Are Egyptians ogres, as TV News sez? Intellectual impasse means every Perfesser Nozalot is itching to spew his theories at the drop of a hat, via television best of all. After billions of dollars, trillions of hours and forests of ‘papers’, they weren’t able to divine what makes us tick yet they’re perpetually primed and ready to clean our clocks. Salary and tenure require output! We’ve seen publicly funded studies on every imaginable subject, some they made up out of thin air but there isn’t any social anthropolist’s guide to Middle Eastern people’s uniquesness setting them apart from the rest of us. That would require a good dose of politics to even come close to understanding the ‘radical’ behaviour stories we’re bombarded with ad nauseam, one and all enemies of Israel according to script. Isn’t it fair to ask the question whether there’s a direct relationship between their wall building and the caging of their own people in the past? We’re guessing it’s not, some people’s feelings are more delicate than others’. Oddly enough, Egyptians are probably Israel’s best friend in the Islamic world and they take the peace accords as seriously as they should. Somewhere deep in their sub-conscious, the true goodness of that culture does allow for other people’s self-determination and right to exist. Egyptian friends of Runnymede Institute tell us the troubles started with a perfectly peaceful protest and opportunists fomented the violence we’re faced with today. Our Israeli friends, tell us they’re very concerned, mirroring the man on the street in Cairo. One and all ask for nothing more than news, reality based missives but that’s not available on TV or in the print media as it’s replete with gossip and rumours. The proverbial elephant of many names, misinformation, product placement and biased ‘stories’ galore is all we get from those who would have us believe they perform a public service that ‘informs’ us. Morsels of fact don’t always add up to a palatable, wholesome meal when the news-chef’s spoiled the broth by spicing it with ambiguities and deviant mind massage additives. They’re talking to us like we’re children and that doesn’t bode well for ‘them’ in the near future. As any elementary school teacher will tell you, kids shouldn’t be pushed too far and watch out, they just might pull! Daring to question the validity of a news story has always been a good way to guarantee the donning of the modern day Scold’s Bridle. You know the name, RMI readers are smart ;-).
Brank

16th century Scottish brank or "scold's bridle", made of iron.

The major networks covering this ‘Egyptian Crisis’ of their own making don’t need any pesky inquisitors asking why the price of bread is suddenly so high in the region. That would mean bashing their own advertisers and in turn their suppliers in the Agro-biz. It would make their stock market reports less interesting to show how commodities brokers, from their perches in the financial ‘districts’ around the world successfully rig the lives of distant peoples everywhere. Our ancestors had simple, pragmatic solutions for troublemakers whose thoughtless ravings did actual harm to others, they didn’t need political correctness to show them the way. The Bridle gagged and muzzled the offenders to spare society having to chop off their heads. Perhaps this solution can be applied to network news readers to make them think about what tumbles out of their mouths in lieu of their quasi-authoritative delivery and plausible presentation of unadulterated schlock. ‘Free Press’ like ‘Free Trade’ is a misnomer, it puts us in a comfort zone that always gets uncomfortable as a rule. The Internet’s put paid to that and noises of an off-switch from a scolding government are akin to the master gossip fitting ‘us’ with a muzzle. We suggest re-instituting the original, an iron contraption with a pointy in-mouth piece to puncture the tongue if they wag it. It’s a good way to reindustrialize a small segment of the American economy because there’s no way to quantify potential demand. Let’s start off slowly, detain all the weathermen and dominoes will fall.   Weatherman Michael Fish keeping the public relaxed in the wake of a force ten hurricanefacebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: Economic collapse, Economy, Egypt, Media, Middle East, Philosophy, Politics, Trends, UK Politics, WAR ON TERROR, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CNN’s Anderson Cooper activates ‘Operation Mockingbird’ in Egypt

February 3, 2011 By 374 Comments
By Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
 Feb 3, 2011

In the latest cycle of news coverage out of Egypt, CNN’s award-winning TV personality Anderson Cooper, along with his CNN crew, claim to have been attacked by a violent mob of pro-Mubarak supporters in Cairo today. Far from constituting any real drama, his report does offer viewers an insight into how intelligence operatives within the media industrial complex are able to disseminate strategic talking points to millions of people at one time.

 Following CNN’s Anderson Cooper highlighting a series of key talking points for today’s news cycle- one of which appears to be, “We (the western press) were attacked by a pro-Mubarak mob…”, we can witness what came next- the near clockwork precision that followed as this talking point was successfully recycled through hundreds of news feeds and Youtube video clips. Cooper also claims to have been “punched in the head ten times…” giving the impression that he was somehow beaten within an inch of his life whilst helping hoist the torch of freedom in Egypt.

What this episode also achieves is to reinforce amongst Americans and Europeans the subtle idea that the masses in the Middle East, or in this case the ‘pro-Mubarak mob’, somehow dislike the western press, or the “free press” as Americans and Europeans often like to see themselves in media terms. Already, western media pundits are busy mulling over ‘regime change’ options for replacing President Mubarak. The eventual result will likely be read from the top of a list of various agency objectives from the Anglo-American and Israeli Axis.

One might also suspect that all the major news networks and newspapers are in collusion together because with every major domestic and world event, all the identical taking points seem to appear in near synchronicity. It’s almost as if there could be some covert government sponsored program in place which makes this machine work so efficiently.

   
CNN and Anderson Cooper: Operation Mockingbird in action.

 In reality, such a program does in fact exist and it has a name. Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence US domestic and foreign media beginning in the 1950s.

The sophisticated use of planting specific ideas and popular talking points like these serve to formulate a certain public opinion in the West. These opinions are set out in the orders and directives to agents of influence working within Operation Mockingbird and are subsequently passed down the chain of command within key media organisation to achieve results. One might ask the question: what are those results? Once the West’s public opinion is compatible with the foreign policy and economic interests of the Anglo-American and Israeli Axis powers then the said Western government will begin to enact their foreign strategy in real terms. This could include either regime change, a region’s territorial realignment, or to consolidate certain lucrative energy or geological interests into the hands of Anglo-American corporations. It could even be to maintain an air of instability in the region.

Decades on, Mockingbird is still an incredibly comprehensive CIA and State Department joint program where agents of influence are continually recruited and groomed for key positions on editorial boards of all major newspapers, magazines and most importantly, TV networks throughout the United States and certainly abroad too. Cooper, the silver haired award-winning CNN anchor, has been outed as being a former trainee in the CIA. Although it is not clear if he ever became a full-scale agent, many will certainly speculate that he has indeed infiltrated the high levels of journalism and is certainly in a position to mold public opinion- in classic the Edward Bernays tradition.
Operation Mockingbird

CNN’s star anchorman Anderson Cooper was tapped by the CIA early in his career (PHOTO: CNN)

As a result of the Frank Church investigations, a Congressional Report published in 1976 states:
“The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”
This particular frenzied chase featuring Anderson Cooper, which CNN managed to shoot with avant guard, obtuse camera angles, and shaky blurring action, through the streets of the rioting mob in Cairo, only serves to remind people of other infamous and often contrived media scenes. Perhaps the greatest known example of this was the fake toppling of Saddam Hussien’s statue in Iraq, a theatrical event which was meant to signify the liberation of the Iraqi people by the hand of the United States. After originally reporting this story in exactly the same way as CNN, FOX and ABC, years later producers at MSNBC were finally allowed to run a half-hearted, mostly apologetic expose on the Saddam statue hoax, an effort which had no impact at all on the status of the ongoing occupation.

   
Years later, MSNBC decided to finally expose the obvious hoax in 2003.

 Not so long ago, it was a cartel of major networks, including CNN, who worked tirelessly around the clock in order to promote Gulf Wars 1 & 2. In fact, producers at CNN thought it so important to paint events according to its Operation Mockingbird directives that it staged a faux missile attack from a broadcast studio- complete with blue screen back drops, potted palm trees and fake air-raid sirens. Normally, a stunt like this would discredit the network and force its producer and board to resign, none of which happened as a result.

   
CNN’s notorious staged missile attack broadcast in 1991.

 Well known by now are the major networks’ coordinated effort from late 2002 and through to March 2003, successfully floated the idea in the minds of Americans and British, that there were ” WMD’s in Iraq…”.  This was done in advance in order to secure the public perception, tilling the soil of public opinion for the Coalition’s imminent invasion. There is no doubt this focused media effort had cemented this idea into the minds of viewers across the US, and without it, the present ten year military occupation of Iraq could not have been possible. As much as CNN has tried to paint the angry mobs in Egypt as enemies of the free press, recent events on US soil, namely the recent G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, demonstrate that the real free press operating inside the US will not be attacked by angry mobs, rather it will be the National Guardsmen, Police and State Troopers (sometimes dressed as anarchists) who will supply the aggression. This of course, is the current state of affairs within the US itself- and one which networks like CNN itself refused to cover at all.

As a parting footnote, one might also marvel at CNN’s staged chase scene through the angry (and allegedly) ‘Pro-Mubarak’ mob, a scene that almost bordered on comic relief as CNN’s Cooper could be heard helplessly screaming phrases in English like “calm down!” back to a mob of obvious Arabic-speaking Egyptians. All of this provided great television theatre, and will no doubt net Anderson Cooper some new journalism award before the year’s end.

-facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: CIA, Egypt, History, International News, Israel, Middle East, Propaganda, UK Politics, Uncategorized, US Politics, WAR ON TERROR, war zone, Wikileaks Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
«Older Posts