War By Other Means

John Pilger and David Munro examine the policy of First World banks agreeing loans with Third World countries, who are then unable to meet the crippling interest charges.

War By Other Means

John Pilger travels to many third world countries to investigate the devastating results of loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

This film shows how many wars today are not carried out at the barrel of a gun, but by the monetary policies of global banking institutions. 

Instead of bombs, it has been discovered that debt is a far more powerful weapon to control and maintain the power of global economic interests. 

It turns out that the "structural-adjustment" policies of neo-liberal economics are even more deadly than nerve gas and many other weapons of war. 

This documentary backs up many of the claims made by John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

IMF May Relocate To Beijing In The Future

The International Monetary Fund’s headquarters may one day shift to Beijing from Washington, aligning with China’s growing influence in the world economy, the fund’s managing director said.

Christine Lagarde, speaking late today in London, said IMF rules require the main office be located in the country that is the biggest shareholder, which the U.S. has been since the fund was formed 70 years ago.

The IMF founding members “decided that the institution would be headquartered in the country which had the biggest share of the quota, which chipped in the biggest amount and contributed most. And that is still today the United States,” she said in response to questions at the London School of Economics.

“But the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days the IMF was headquartered in Beijing for instance,” she said. “It would be the articles of the IMF that would dictate it.”

Lagarde said the IMF has a good relationship with China, the world’s second largest economy and she praised the government’s commitment to fighting corruption.

She had less kind things to say about the U.S., which remains the “outlier” among Group of 20 countries to approve an overhaul of the ownership of the 188-member organization. The plan would give emerging markets more influence and would elevate China to the third-largest member nation.

Lagarde said there is “frustration by countries like China, like Brazil, like India, with the lack of progress in reforming the IMF by adopting the quota reform that would give emerging-market economies a bigger voice, a bigger vote, a bigger share in the institution and I share that frustration immensely.”

“The credibility of the institution, its relevance in the world in conducting the mission that it was assigned 70 years ago is highly correlated with its good representation of the membership,” she said. “We cannot have a good representation of the membership when China has a teeny tiny share of quota, share of voice when it has grown to where it has grown.”

By Sandrine Rastello

The International Banking Cartel

Courtesy Of: PressTV

A look at the International Banking Cartel led by the Bank for International Settlement (in Basel, Switzerland) known as the bank of central banks (58 central banks) and The US Federal reserve System. 

Also a look at banking tycoons: from the Rothschild family in Europe to JP Morgan and others in the US. How banks not only control governments but also appoint politicians through huge campaign donations. 

Governments at the service of the major banks, the best example: the Obama administration and the history's biggest bail out of the same institutions that caused the Great Recession.

Four Horseman Of The Banking Cartel

They Rule The World

Courtesy Of Press TV

Rothchilds family are worth over 100 trillion dollars. This name Rothchild comes from Germany, The Rothchilds real family name is really Bauer. This Family changed the last name to match the name of a old Masonic German bank. 

There are 13 Families that rule the world

Capitalism Has Failed The World

Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

It seems that mistakes made in Wall Street and the City of London are paid for by people around the world, but can we govern greed within the realm of capitalism or is it all just money down the drain? Is austerity really needed? Can we trust the banks?

Lord Turner said: “I’m not an egalitarian, I’m not a socialist, but I am worried about the sheer extent of the inequality that’s now growing. I think finance is part of that story.”

Lord Turner was at the helm of the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the wake of the financial meltdown and is now trying to find ground-breaking solutions to global problems at the Institute of New Economic Thinking. Hasan challenges a man at the heart of rethinking the global economic system about his past experience, his present thoughts, and our future.

“I am concerned that we have not been radical enough in our reform,” concluded Lord Turner.

But he also sounded a note of hope based on some of the new ideas and policies coming out from previously orthodox bastions of economic thinking.

Joining our discussion are: Jon Moulton, a venture capitalist and the founder of the private equity firm Better Capital. He has nurtured a reputation for forthrightness even to point of challenging his private equity peers for abusing tax regimes. He is also one of the few men in the City of London who warned about the impending crash before it happened; Professor Costas Lapavitsas, who teaches economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and is the author of several notable books on the crash and its consequences including Crisis in the Eurozone and Financialisation in Crisis; and Ann Pettifor, the director of PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics),

and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation. She was one of the first to warn about the debt crisis in her bookThe Coming First World Debt Crisis, and is also well-known for her leadership of the successful worldwide campaign to cancel developing world debt - Jubilee 2000.

How Money Drives The ‘Cycle Of Tyranny’

In Order For The “Cycle Of Tyranny” To Exist, There Are 4 Key Institutions That Must Be Totally Co-Opted

By Jason Charles

This process can be termed the “Cycle of Tyranny” and is basically the method large institutions such as government, corporations, and banks participate in as a on going feed back loop that is totally driven by money and power.

This cycle is designed to centralize power, rob people of their liberties, wealth and ultimately dignity due to the very dehumanizing and egregious actions of the men who sell themselves to this system. In fact, this whole system thrives on the dehumanizing process and erosion of individual rights enshrined in the Constitution.

To achieve this effect in a society large amounts of money are infused at every layer of the targeted and co-opted institution to assure that typically good moral people are bribed and in continual defense of the corrupted institution. With out the money factor the internationalist system simply would not work because the incentive component with in the cycle would be removed. The ablity for banks to create money out of thin air is the driving force behind the “Cycle of Tyranny”. 

The Banks

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.  Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”  - Thomas Jefferson

The banking families of Europe have utilized a debt based system to centralize a vast empire of wealth and power over the course of hundreds of years. By lending governments and institutions money, it creates a state of perpetual dependence, the fear of losing the money source is how banks control and socially engineer these institutions to pliable agencies of the internationalists worldview. Money truly corrupts the hearts of man, as long as the money is flowing men will turn a blind eye to atrocities of all types. It is through the corrupting influence money has had on mankind we begin to see how money and it’s love is truly the engine in the “Cycle of Tyranny”.

Today’s America serves as a perfect model as to how the old banking families have been able to leverage their large financial capabilities into a free country in order to corrupt and take over all of the major institutions with in a society. America was founded on the Principles of Liberty which detested banking institutions to the point of war with England and the British monarchy.

The process begins with the establishment of a central bank, in America’s case the Federal Reserve in the year 1913. It is no coincidence that the American Industrial Revolution coincided with the founding of the Federal Reserve. What we termed the “Robber Barons” during the early 20th century like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, J.P. Morgan were really no more than agents of the Federal Reserve and the European financial elite. These agents were lent massive sums of money through the banking apparatuses backed by the newly formed Federal Reserve. They then took over their respective sectors of society. For example, Rockefeller took the Pharmacological/Medical/Education and also Oil sector, while Carnegie took over the Steel and Railroads, J.P. Morgan served as a financial agent etc. etc.

All of these men became exceedingly wealthy because they were financed agents who built the mega corporations of today. It is these corporations that had an unfair advantage because they were specially trained, and groomed by the international elite for the sole purpose of building up all of America, with the long term plan of turning it back over to the globalists at a later date.

The bankers utilize the “Boom and Bust Cycle” of the economy to first “Boom”, or build up large corporations through influxes of capital that then creates large, businesses, property, inventions, and institutions. The bankers can then “Bust” the economy by drying up the lending credit suddenly to these reliant businesses and institutions. This sudden collapse in capital is called a “Depression” it is an orchestrated event planned by the central bank to purposely collapse companies into bankruptcy. Once bankrupt the bank can then buy up the company assets pennies on the dollar funneling these new assets to the share holders of the banks.

This “Boom and Bust” cycle is the verbatim tactic that our founding fathers warned us time and time again having seen this happen in European nations. They hated the bankers and fought tooth and nail to keep a central bank out of our country knowing their money is the moral ruin to everything America stood for.

One hundred years later we have forgot history and the bankers have utilized this system to create, crash then buy up resources and the wealth of nation in every country on the planet. This financial boom and bust is the mechanism of control they have used to enslave countries world wide in debt and are now bringing about their international global system called the New World Order. A banking order controlled by organizations such as the IMF, UN, and World Bank.

The Corporations

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” -Thomas Jefferson
 

The companies that have been built up by the lending power of the central banks are controlled and sustained through bank capital and the drive of the share holders whose only motive is profit. This creates an amoral environment where everybody from the CEO down to the mail-room clerk are chasing dollar signs at every turn. Their only concern is how they can make more profit.

They do this by a variety of ways, they will cheapen the quality of their product, they will identify populations with low standards of living and human rights to exploit for little to no wages, they will also lobby government to create laws and regulations that favor them and harm their competition.

Through this process, of receiving unfair financial lending advantage, reducing ethics with in the institution, and creating fascist partnerships with government, corporations that place money first almost always inevitable become so corrupt that they begin to create even more and more devious ways to assure the take over and monopolization of their host countries competition. They soon grow so large they begin to covet the resources and wealth of neighboring nations, which put’s them in a new strata of power called the multinational corporation.

It is much harder to employee these tactics on an international scale because without the protection of the target countries government, the unethical and dirty dealings almost always lead to war.

The people will never go to war for a corporation. The vast majority of people wish to live in peace and harmony with their neighbors, but corporations have insatiable need for control, power and money and have to find more and more dubious ways to push their corporation into other countries to keep the feeding cycle going.

This is where companies can then hire think tanks to devise devious, far reaching plans that allow them eventual access to the resources of other countries as well as their own when they come up against obstacles towards their agenda.

Think Tanks

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” – Samuel Adams
 

Think tanks are made up of individuals who have been long time agents of the system. They are usually made up of very smart people who have bounced back and forth between corporate and government structures gaining reputation, influence and command over the intricacies of corporate, banking and government institutions.

Whether it be military, intelligence, financial, social, political or international needs a corporation can hire a wide variety of think tanks to create plans that utilize the various sectors of societal institutions to further the agenda of their client. Both governments and corporations hire these companies for large sums of money for the sole purpose of creating facilitating plans to push their agenda forward.

Now that America is a fascist state, it is very, very difficult to determine where the corporate objectives end and the governmental objectives begin, often times they are one in the same. The think tanks are able to utilize assets of both institutions by pulling together military, intelligence and corporate teams to formulate plans to access resources and strategic objects that are beneficial for the corporation, the government and also the banks.

This partnership is very dangerous for the general public and society at large and is often wrought with corruption and shadowy dealings that must be hidden through the cloud of top secrecy and clandestine operations. Tactics of extortion, racketeering, money laundering, assassination and other criminal activity are almost always considered in the think tank atmosphere. There are expensive ways and moral ways to gain access to resources or their are covert ways often touted as much cheaper but are ethically bankrupt and criminal to gain the desired access.

The more covert means always need cooperation and cover by the government through national security and official channels. The think tank will then utilize their influence and lobby and produce policy that impacts political parties towards their “prescribed” resolutions.

Often times it is the government or corporation that comes to the think tank saying we want to invade here or secure our corporation here, the think tank provides both the plan to create a facilitating event which is carried out covertly through sabotage campaigns, or false flag attacks, or stage bombings and then when the crisis reaches a climax it will lend it’s credibility and solution towards dealing with the crisis they created. This is called “Problem, Reaction, Solution”. They simply create the problem, the reaction is the politicians and public demand action and then they turn around and offer the solution of sending in their corporations or military towards resolution. A resolution that just so happens to give them full access strategically, militarily, and politically to a targeted nation.

A successful mission will given them the desired result every-time, enriching multinational corporations, banks and governments alike as they split up the loot and resources of taking over countries and conquering. A program as old as time itself.

Government comes into play to provide PR and official cover for these programs. Obviously war and invading nations is nasty business and the government has to be on board, that is why you always see politicians defaulting to the think tanks who write the policies as specialists and advisers on such things.

Government

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” – George Washington

The government is an institution charged with securing the liberties and security of their population. That is the sole reason for them to exist and is always formed through a unified agreement of the people towards this end.

The Declaration of the United States is a beautiful word picture of why governments are formed, who forms and empowers them which is the people, and when it is appropriate to disband them in favor of a new government body. The only proper way and time to disband a government is when it becomes so corrupt that it encroaches on the liberties, wealth and prosperity of the people. At that point the people have every right to nullify and succeed from corrupt government. Seeing it was them who formed the state they too can end the state.

Self-defense is a natural right of man, government is instituted to aid this natural right, but sometimes governments become so out of touch with the original charter they begin to infringe on the rights of the people to point of distress and ruin with in society. When this happens it no longer serves the interest of the people and must be opposed and resisted by force if necessary, why, because again self-defense of life and  the liberties of the people is a universal law that trumps all institutional agendas including government.

The people, if they through apathy allow government to get out of control, have a natural right to defend themselves against their own government that seeks their ruin. Nothing is more destructive than wicked government. Government, once taken over by politicians, corporate agents and banking controllers, history shows will act in the most dehumanizing, repulsive and tyrannical way possible. Instead of fulfilling their oath to the Constitution, they side with agents of the fascist system as it is taken over lock stock and barrel by the banking elite.

Why the government is such a powerful vehicle towards tyranny and oppression is because it has the power to tax the people to pay it’s debt to the banks i.e. IRS, it also is in control of standing armies which can be easily directed through manufactured crisis events either in the homeland or abroad wreaking havoc on society, and it also provides political and official cover for corporate and globalist agendas, agendas that are a determent to the people.

Tyrannical government has murdered, enslaved, imprisoned and bankrupted countless millions over the eons of human history. To allow it to get out of control is to invite destruction and destitution on a society.

Solutions

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams

The solution to these things is morality. Our founders were quite clear that without an ethical, knowledgeable moral, and well informed population these institutions would most certainly gain control.

If you as a philosophical libertarian equate freedom and liberty with living excessive lifestyles you are totally off base. These things have nothing to do with liberty, the moral resolve of our founders who many of them lost it all in the revolution is about understanding. They understood that defending life is paramount to anything we can do on this planet. Those who refuse to defend life, seeing that it is scared and worthy of protection have no concept of what it means to walk in the principles our forefathers bequeathed us. It is they who have sold themselves to these systems and jeopardize everything our country is founded on.

We have identified the “Cycle of Tyranny” it is driven by money, but equally so it is driven by those who have lost sight of the sacred principles enshrined in our Constitution, these men and women who put money and power over the moral, foundational Principles of Liberty are our enemies and must be treated and prosecuted as such.

World Bank Corruption Deceit and Greed

Note: This video was not part of the below article.

By James Turnage

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to John Taylor in 1816:  “And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

The World Bank was constructed to lend money to the developing countries of the world.  It was designed to help put an end to world poverty.  A whistleblower by the name of Karen Hudes, former Chief Council for the World Bank for 12 years, claims the organization is filled with corruption, deceit, and greed.

Ms. Hudes says that the World Bank, in collusion with major banking institutions all over the world, is funneling the money to unscrupulous individuals, as well as to the executives of the bank itself.   The bulk of funds never reaches the people for which it is intended.

Ms. Hudes, a lawyer herself, witnessed securities fraud.  Full disclosure of 180 billion dollars-worth of bonds was never made to investors.  It was her job to ensure financial statements for investors were accurate.  She followed the corporate ladder, and reported her findings to the audit committee.  When she received no response, she took her information to the U.S. Treasury Department.  Once again, she was ignored.  When she went to the United States Congress, Senator Richard Luger, Republican from Indiana, sent three letters to the World Bank, asking them not to fire her.  The promptly fired her.

She says that it became obvious to her that Congress had no knowledge of the World Bank’s operations.  Three additional Congressmen asked the General Accounting Office, the GAO, to investigate.

Ms. Hudes claimed the money was ‘going everywhere,’ because when anyone reported the misappropriation of funds, they were fired.  She cited one instance when 900 million dollars was supposed to go to the poor in the Philippines, and instead it was diverted to a man by the name of “Lucio Tonn,” who was behind on his loan payments.  The Philippine National Bank, which never received the money, eventually went bankrupt, and a 500 million dollar bailout ensued.

She says she was attempting to unveil a massive cover-up, that went all the way to Congress, and included 188 ministers of finance around the world.  She claims the result of all the corruption will be a currency war.

Ms. Hudes says there are several World Bank whistleblowers, including the United Kingdom, Mexico, India, and Ethiopia, and that they are all reporting the same information.  The institution is corrupt from top to bottom.

She was asked by Abby Martin of ‘RT’ if she had gone to the financial publications.  Ms. Hudes said she had, but she discovered they were owned by one major conglomerate, which includes nearly all the financial institutions in the world.  She stated that the aim of the Banking community is to control the people of the world and their finances.

She told of the ‘Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, Switzerland, where three mathematicians looked at corporate data from 43,000 trans-national companies.  Through complicated maneuvers, they increased their financial power 10 fold, and own 40 percent of the assets of all companies traded on the financial markets of the world, and 60 percent of the earnings yearly.  In many countries, the money being printed has no value.

Ms. Martin said these institutions are obviously laundering money, and hiding much of it in ‘offshore’ accounts.  There is no oversight for most of the institutions, including the World Bank, and that they control geopolitics by controlling many of the world’s governments.

Ms. Hudes said that during the 2012 presidential election, she went to CBS news with information regarding Robert Zellig.  Zellig was the man who would have headed Mitt Romney’s transition team.  He was allegedly part of the Bank’s corrupted management.  CBS declined, saying that “the American people don’t need to know.”  She said that in this way, they were also controlling voters.

When Ms. Martin asked her for names, Hudes said that they were the owners of institutions such as ‘Goldman-Sachs,’ and the ‘Bank of America.’  She further stated that they were all one enormous financial entity, dominating the economic future of the world.

Ms. Martin asked why she hasn’t been singled out, as were Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning.  Ms. Hudes said it may be because all the whistleblowers are working together.  She is surprised that Snowden has received so much attention, because the media is controlled by the government.  The mainstream media is not trusted by the American people, which was shown in a survey.  70 percent of the country said they did not believe what was reported in the news.

The World Bank was created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, along with three other institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The World Bank and the IMF are both based in Washington DC, and work closely with each other.

Traditionally, the World Bank has been headed by a citizen of the United States, while the IMF has been led by a European citizen.

The World Bank has two primary divisions.  The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has 188 member countries, while the International Development Association (IDA) has 172 members.  Each member state of IBRD should be also a member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and only members of IBRD are allowed to join other institutions within the Bank (such as IDA).

The World Bank requires sovereign immunity from countries it deals with.   Sovereign immunity waives a holder from all legal liability for their actions. It is proposed that this immunity from responsibility is a “shield which The World Bank wants to resort to, for escaping accountability and security by the people.”  As the United States has veto power, it can prevent the World Bank from taking action against its interests.

With no accountability, it’s easy for the World Bank to be filled with corruption, deceit, and greed.

Apologies Of An Economic Hitman

English Subtitles For Spanish Parts

By John Perkins, 

Former Economic Hitman

(Lynx Productions S.A., Athens Greece)

John Perkins' book and subsequent film reveals the ways in which the US-led Global Corporate Empire (GCE) has for the last 68 years (since WWII) pillaged the world for the wealth of the few and devastation of the billions of ordinary people who have fallen beneath it's wheels. With his book (2004) and film (2008), Perkins brought new information and focus to theGCE tracks crisscossing the countries of Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama and Iraq even as the prints of its hooves can be seen throughout Asia, Africa and today in Syria. He shows their strategy of first introducing theEconomic Hitmen to gain economic control of a country and when that fails to achieve their mission, bringing in the Jackals (assassins) and when the Jackals fail: war - bombing, invasion, terrorism, occupation and theft.

Surely not as an indulgence but only attempting to describe the power of this film, please allow me to share a couple of my personal reactions. The first was a sense of the burden this man carries after bringing about the suffering of so many in his work for the corporations, banks and US government. It's doubtful that any book, film or confessions can significantly lighten that burden and he appears to acknowledge this. The second is that for those who prize justice, peace, democracy in the world, viewing this film will probably be an emotional experience. Viewing this film was very emotional for me personally and not because of the violence of the United States against it's victims for domination; I already knew the essentials of that, albeit not some of the details. Rather, it was emotional for me to see once again the courage, strength and resolve of the people in Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama and Iraq to rid their countries of the cancers of the IMF, World Bank and US presence in their countries.

Today we are seeing the same qualities in extraordinary people throughout the world, the Muslim world, and particularly in Latin America. In the film you will see them - and the face of evil wearing the mask of democracy and cynical promises of alleviating poverty in red, white and blue. As one who lives out his life in Venezuela the film also gave me new appreciation for the courage, morality and wisdom of our late president, Hugo Chavez to confront, outmaneuver and defeat the United States in Venezuela with a peaceful and democratic revolution against seemingly impossible odds. That battle continues now under the government led by President Nicolas Maduro.

The film's parts which are spoken in Spanish are subtitled in English. It was produced by Lynx Productions S.A., Athens Greece in 2008, thus the Greek subtitles for the portions spoken in English.

- Les Blough in Venezuela

BRICs Bank To Rival World Bank / IMF and Challenge Dollar Dominance

Bloomberg News reports that:

The biggest emerging markets are uniting to tackle under-development and currency volatility with plans to set up institutions that encroach on the roles of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The leaders of the so-called BRICS nations -- Brazil, Russia,India, China and South Africa -- are set to approve the establishment of a new development bank during an annual summit that began today in the eastern South African city of Durban, officials from all five nations say. They will also discuss pooling foreign-currency reserves to ward off balance of payments or currency crises.

“The deepest rationale for the BRICS is almost certainly the creation of new Bretton Woods-type institutions that are inclined toward the developing world,” Martyn Davies, chief executive officer of Johannesburg-based Frontier Advisory, which provides research on emerging markets, said in a phone interview. “There’s a shift in power from the traditional to the emerging world. There is a lot of geo-political concern about this shift in the western world.”

The BRICS nations, which have combined foreign-currency reserves of $4.4 trillion and account for 43 percent of the world’s population, are seeking greater sway in global finance to match their rising economic power. They have called for an overhaul of management of the World Bank and IMF, which were created in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, and oppose the practice of their respective presidents being drawn from the U.S. and Europe.

“We need to change the way business is conducted in the international financial institutions,” South African International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said in a March 15 speech in Johannesburg. “They need to be reformed.”

The U.S. has failed to ratify a 2010 agreement to give more sway to emerging markets at the IMF, while it secured Jim Yong Kim, an American, as head of the World Bank last year over candidates from Nigeria and Colombia.

Finance ministers and central bank governors from the BRICS nations, who met in Durban today, agreed to set up currency crisis fund of about $100 billion, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega told reporters today. He didn’t give details of proposed funding for the new bank, which Brazil wants established by 2014. The nation’s leaders are due to sign a final accord tomorrow.

How To Rob Africa

Why Does The Western World Feed Africa With One Hand, While Taking From It With The Other?

The world's wealthy countries often criticise African nations for corruption - especially that perpetrated by those among the continent's government and business leaders who abuse their positions by looting tens of billions of dollars in national assets or the profits from state-owned enterprises that could otherwise be used to relieve the plight of some of the world's poorest peoples. 

Yet the West is culpable too in that it often looks the other way when that same dirty money is channelled into bank accounts in Europe and the US.

International money laundering regulations are supposed to stop the proceeds of corruption being moved around the world in this way, but it seems the developed world's financial system is far more tempted by the prospect of large cash injections than it should be.  

Indeed the West even provides the getaway vehicles for this theft, in the shape of anonymous off-shore companies and investment entities, whose disguised ownership makes it too easy for the corrupt and dishonest to squirrel away stolen funds in bank accounts overseas. 

This makes them nigh on impossible for investigators to trace, let alone recover.

A few years ago rich deposits were discovered there which held out the promise of billions of dollars of revenue that could have filled the public purse and from there have been spent on much needed improvements to roads, schools and hospitals. 

"When these diamonds came, they came as a God-given gift. So we thought now we are going to benefit from jobs, infrastructure, we thought maybe our roads were going to improve, so that generations and generations will benefit from this, not one individual. But what is happening, honestly, honestly it's a shame!"

What is happening is actually something of a mystery because though the mines are clearly in operation and producing billions of dollars worth of gems every year, little if any of it has ever been put into Zimbabwe's state coffers. 

"We have got evidence of the quantities that are being mined, the quantities that are being exported but nothing is coming to the fiscus .... All I know is that it's not coming to the treasury. So that is a self-evident question. It is not coming to us. That means someone is getting it. The person who is getting it is not getting it legally. Therefore, he's a thief, therefore she’s a thief." 

Sadly, as Stanley Kwenda has realised, it is typical of a problem found all over Africa. 

The continent is rich is natural resources that are being exploited for big profits, but the money is rarely used for the benefit of the people. Instead it goes to line the pockets of corrupt officials who then often smuggle it out to be deposited in secret offshore bank accounts in the developed world.

So who facilitates these transactions? And how and why does the developed world make it so easy to launder this dirty cash? 

Model For Colonizing Nations (National Destruction)

From The Banksters Handbook

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” –Nineteenth century Nēhilawē (Cree) proverb

This video by ex-IMF John Perkins aka Economic Hitman explains what happens when national leaders refuse to bow to the Banksters:

Model for Colonizing Nations (National Destruction) used repeatedly by Banksters around the World: Argentina, Iraq, Lybia, Serbia, Greece, South-America, etc. etc. Today, all nations have been placed on notice.  Today it’s Ghaddafi (he was a brute but now the Lybians have gone through hell and will go through worse just like the Iraqis), tomorrow it can be anybody anywhere, or everybody everywhere… 

Their Model for National Destruction uses Orwellian Newspeak and works something like this:

1.  The Global Power Mafia start by targeting a country ripe for “Regime Change” and brand it a “Rogue State”

2.  Then, they arm, train, finance local and foreign mercenaries/ terrorists through CIA, MI6, Mossad, Drug Cartels and call them “Freedom Fighters”

3.  Then, they stage mock UN Security Council Resolutions that rain death and destruction upon millions of civilians and they call it “UN sanctions to protect civilians”.

4.  Then, they spread flagrant lies through their media monopolies and paid journalists, and call it “International Community’s concern expressed by the Western Media”.

5.  Then, they invade and control the target country and call it ”Liberation” (poor Libya is in this stage right now)

6.  Then, when the target country falls fully under their control, they impose “The kind of democracy we want to see” (as Hillary Clinton said of Egypt on 22-March-2011)

7.      Finally, they steal appetizing oil reserves and all resources and call it “Foreign Investment and Reconstruction”

8.      Their keynotes are: Force and Hypocrisy, used to destroy whole countries in the name of “freedom”, “democracy”, “human rights” and “free trade”.  They use utmost force and violence to achieve their ends.  “What did you say…?  That you don’t want to be liberated and democratized?”  “Then take this Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hanoi, Berlin, Dresden, Bagdad, and Basra…”   “Take that Vietnam, Tokyo, Gaza, Kabul, Pakistan, Tripoli, Belgrade, Egypt, El Salvador and Grenada…”  “And that, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Somalia, Africa…”   Always bombing people to smithereens…  Of course, always in the name of “freedom”, “democracy”, “human rights” and “free trade”.

Call It Democracy

Padded with power here they come

International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor

Who rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity

By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament --
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology

North, south, east, west
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

By Bruce Cockburn

Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO

Posted by "Sayf Maslul"


"Our lives are all affected by three hugely powerful and well financed, but undemocratic, organizations: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These institutions share a common ideology. They aggressively promote "corporate" capitalism, neoliberalism, giving free rein to the interests of a small number of transnational corporations." [Richard Peet]




“...While the IMF certainly failed the people of Asia, it did not fail Wall Street - far from it. The hot money may have been spooked by the IMF's drastic measures, but the large investment houses and multinational firms were emboldened...These fun-seeking firms understood that as a result of the IMF's "adjustments," pretty much everything in Asia was now up for sale - and the more the market panicked, the more desperate Asian companies would be to sell, pushing their prices through the floor.” [Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism]

You can read passages from the selected pages of Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO, here: 
  "Google Books Online"

Disaster Capitalism Swoops Over Libya

By Pepe Escobar
August 25, 2011
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

Think of the new Libya as the latest spectacular chapter in the Disaster Capitalism series. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, we had R2P ("responsibility to protect"). Instead of neo-conservatives, we had humanitarian imperialists.

But the target is the same: regime change. And the project is the same: to completely dismantle and privatize a nation that was not integrated into turbo-capitalism; to open another (profitable) land of opportunity for turbocharged neo-liberalism. The whole thing is especially handy because it is smack in the middle of a nearly global recession.

It will take some time; Libyan oil won't totally return to the market within 18 months. But there's the reconstruction of everything the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombed (well, not much of what the Pentagon bombed in 2003 was reconstructed in Iraq ...)

Anyway - from oil to rebuilding - in thesis juicy business opportunities loom. France's neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's David of Arabia Cameron believe they will be especially well positioned to profit from NATO's victory. Yet there's no guarantee the new Libyan bonanza will be enough to lift both former colonial powers (neo-colonials?) out of recession.

President Sarkozy in particular will milk the business opportunities for French companies for all they're worth - part of his ambitious agenda of "strategic redeployment" of France in the Arab world. A compliant French media are gloating that this was "his" war - spinning that he decided to arm the rebels on the ground with French weaponry, in close cooperation with Qatar, including a key rebel commando unit that went by sea from Misrata to Tripoli last Saturday, at the start of "Operation Siren".

Well, he certainly saw the opening when Muammar Gaddafi's chief of protocol defected to Paris in October 2010. That's when the whole regime change drama started to be incubated.

Bombs For Oil 

As previously noted (see Welcome to Libya's 'democracy', Asia Times Online, August 24) the vultures are already circling Tripoli to grab (and monopolize) the spoils. And yes - most of the action has to do with oil deals, as in this stark assertion by Abdeljalil Mayouf, information manager at the "rebel" Arabian Gulf Oil Company; "We don't have a problem with Western countries like the Italians, French and UK companies. But we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil."

These three happen to be crucial members of the BRICS group of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which are actually growing while the Atlanticist, NATO-bombing economies are either stuck in stagnation or recession. The top four BRICs also happen to have abstained from approving UN Security Council resolution 1973, the no-fly zone scam that metamorphosed into NATO bringing regime change from above. They saw right through it from the beginning.

To make matters worse (for them), only three days before the Pentagon's Africom launched its first 150-plus Tomahawks over Libya, Colonel Gaddafi gave an interview to German TV stressing that if the country were attacked, all energy contracts would be transferred to Russian, Indian and Chinese companies.

So the winners in the oil bonanza are already designated: NATO members plus Arab monarchies. Among the companies involved, British Petroleum (BP), France's Total and the Qatar national oil company. For Qatar - which dispatched jet fighters and recruiters to the front lines, trained "rebels" in exhaustive combat techniques, and is already managing oil sales in eastern Libya - the war will reveal itself to be a very wise investment decision.

Prior to the months-long crisis that is in its end game now with the rebels in the capital, Tripoli, Libya was producing 1.6 million barrels per day. Once resumed, this could reap Tripoli's new rulers some US$50 billion annually. Most estimates place oil reserves at 46.4 billion barrels.

The "rebels" of new Libya better not mess with China. Five months ago, China's official policy was already to call for a ceasefire; if that had happened, Gaddafi would still control more than half of Libya. Yet Beijing - never a fan of violent regime change - for the moment is exercising extreme restraint.

Wen Zhongliang, the deputy head of the Ministry of Trade, willfully observed, "Libya will continue to protect the interests and rights of Chinese investors and we hope to continue investment and economic cooperation." Official statements are piling up emphasizing "mutual economic cooperation".

Last week, Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice president of the dodgy Transitional National Council (TNC), told Xinhua that all deals and contracts agreed with the Gaddafi regime would be honored - but Beijing is taking no chances.

Libya supplied no more than 3% of China's oil imports in 2010. Angola is a much more crucial supplier. But China is still Libya's top oil customer in Asia. Moreover, China could be very helpful in the infrastructure rebuilding front, or in the technology export - no less than 75 Chinese companies with 36,000 employees were already on the ground before the outbreak of the tribal/civil war, swiftly evacuated in less than three days.

The Russians - from Gazprom to Tafnet - had billions of dollars invested in Libyan projects; Brazilian oil giant Petrobras and the construction company Odebrecht also had intrests there. It's still unclear what will happen to them. The director general of the Russia-Libya Business Council, Aram Shegunts, is extremely worried: "Our companies will lose everything because NATO will prevent them from doing business in Libya."

Italy seems to have passed the "rebel" version of "you're either with us or without us". Energy giant ENI apparently won't be affected, as Premier Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi pragmatically dumped his previous very close pal Gaddafi at the start of the Africom/NATO bombing spree.

ENI's directors are confident Libya's oil and gas flows to southern Italy will resume before winter. And the Libyan ambassador in Italy, Hafed Gaddur, reassured Rome that all Gaddafi-era contracts will be honored. Just in case, Berlusconi will meet the TNC's prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, this Thursday in Milan.

Bin Laden To The Rescue 

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - of the famed "zero problems with our neighbors" policy - has also been gushing praise on the former "rebels" turned powers-that-be. Eyeing the post-Gaddafi business bonanza as well, Ankara - as NATO's eastern flank - ended up helping to impose a naval blockade on the Gaddafi regime, carefully cultivated the TNC, and in July formally recognized it as the government of Libya. Business "rewards" loom.

Then there's the crucial plot; how the House of Saud is going to profit from having been instrumental in setting up a friendly regime in Libya, possibly peppered with Salafi notables; one of the key reasons for the Saudi onslaught - which included a fabricated vote at the Arab League - was the extreme bad blood between Gaddafi and King Abdullah since the run-up towards the war on Iraq in 2002.

It's never enough to stress the cosmic hypocrisy of an ultra-regressive absolute monarchy/medieval theocracy - which invaded Bahrain and repressed its native Shi'ites - saluting what could be construed as a pro-democracy movement in Northern Africa.

Anyway, it's time to party. Expect the Saudi Bin Laden Group to reconstruct like mad all over Libya - eventually turning the (looted) Bab al-Aziziyah into a monster, luxury Mall of Tripolitania.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. 



(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The End Of The American Dream

July 2011
Courtesy Of "JourneyMan Pictures"



There will be more children in the US this year with bankrupt parents than divorced parents. With around 120,000 people declared bankrupt each month, many of the squeezed middle-class see the American dream slipping away.

"Our national myth is changing", explains author and journalist Thomas Hartmann. Whereas hard work was once seen as the route to prosperity in the US, nowadays the best most people can hope for is a lottery win. Three generations of farmers in Vermont ring the changes of the past fifty years. Doug Lyford remembers that his parents never argued about money: "There were five of us and we all went to college. No farmer could afford that any more".

Disenchanted with the mainstream politicians, who have not done enough to help them, many are turning to the traditionalist Tea Party. For others, such as bicycle shop manager Anthony Laskaris, hard times are only to be expected: "this is the effect of globalisation: our living standards go down a little, so that others' can rise".

Debtocracy

For the first time in Greece a documentary produced by the audience. "Debtocracy" seeks the causes of the debt crisis and proposes solutions, hidden by the government and the dominant media.

Editor/Script Katerina Kitidi
Aris Chatzistefanou
Scientific Research Leonidas Vatikiotis
Animation Magda Plevraki
Sokratis Galiatsakos
Music

Giannis Agelakas
Ermis Georgiadis
Aris RSN

Edit Aris Triantafillou
Camera Aris Papastefanou
ulia Reinecke
Coloring Thanos Tsantas
PR Michalis Alimanis
Contributors Aggeliki Gaidatzi
Fani Gaidatzi
Ioulia Kileri
Margarita Tsomou
Production Costas Efimeros
2011 - BitsnBytes.gr

http://www.debtocracy.gr/indexen.html