Conspiracy Theorists Were Right All Along!
Posted by sakerfa on April 18, 2009
The Department of Homeland Security is warning “law enforcement officials” (jackbooted criminal types) about a rise in “rightwing extremist activity,” but a footnote in this report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines rightwing extremism as “including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that (don’t miss this part) reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” If I’m interpreting this correctly, this report is going after anyone who dares to question federal authority._______
As I opened up an e-copy of the Washington Times today, the headline read: “Federal agency warns of radicals on right.” Many have talked about this and Karen DeCoster in today’s LRC blog here mentioned this report. Fox News, Drudge and many other “conservative” commentators are up in arms claiming that this is a direct attack against conservatives. I beg to differ. It is an attack against Americans!
The Department of Homeland Security is warning “law enforcement officials” (jackbooted criminal types) about a rise in “rightwing extremist activity,” but a footnote in this report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines rightwing extremism as “including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that (don’t miss this part) reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” If I’m interpreting this correctly, this report is going after anyone who dares to question federal authority. This would put libertarians directly in the government’s crosshairs. In fact, I have been against federal authority my entire life, so am I a prime target? In addition, this report was sent to police and sheriff’s departments all over the country. This is after thousands of combat troops have taken up permanent residence as domestic police, with thousands more on the way. This sounds like nothing more than a recipe for tyranny.
The government’s destruction of liberty has been with us for generations, but due to the incremental nature of this assault on freedom in the past most paid little attention. But now our liberty is being pushed aside like a bulldozer mowing over anthills. Is anyone other than LRC readers and small (l) libertarians watching?
In the past I have talked about illegal wiretapping, illegal spying, government/private spying partnerships (Infragard), thought crime legislation, financial transaction monitoring, anti-money laundering legislation, immoral taxation policies and privacy invasions among many other government indiscretions, and many thought that I was too negative or too cynical. I even wrote an article about pending legislation that would allow government to round us all up and put us in federal camps. Now, after just recently seeing the leaked Missouri MIAC Strategic Report, The Department of Homeland Security is informing police to be on the lookout for any who would not be in favor of federal authority. Orwell as prognosticator has been well vindicated; more so than even he probably could have imagined.
I write this today after just learning this morning that in Billings, Montana (population 100,000) the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Department rolled out its new 13-foot tall, 35,000-pound Ballistic Engineered Armored Response vehicle (BEAR) purchased with, you guessed it, a Homeland Security grant. It is to be used by not only the sheriff’s department but also by the Billings Police Department. They got this war machine just in time to tame those who are not in favor of federal authority. It is bullet-proof, has 2-inch shatterproof glass and gun ports on both sides. This idiocy is going on all over the country, and why more aren’t fearful of the danger of this military arming of local police I don’t know. In order for the normal citizenry to defend themselves from this onslaught of military weaponry, rifles and shotguns will need to be traded in for bazookas and hand-held rocket launchers. Unfortunately, these are still illegal.
All the federal government’s offensive and defensive mechanisms are being put in place while the lowly sheep await the slaughter. More economic tensions with more unemployment along with over-zealous police thugs bent on revenue creation; what will be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back? What will it take before civil unrest is not just discussed on talk shows, but is evident in the streets of America? How much unrest will be tolerated by the now fully armed military-type police before they become physical?
If you want to continue to hide your head in the sand, don’t dare connect these dots! We now have militarized police, combat soldiers on our streets, war-zone materials and weaponry in the hands of domestic government agents, FEMA camps, and a neutered rule of law. These atrocious changes have happened quickly, and at a time of civil restlessness. Is this a coincidence? I think not. Everything happens for a reason, and this time that reason is easy to spot. Are you looking? If not, you had better open your eyes soon!
Source: Lew Rockwell
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Cyber-Security Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA Takeover
Cyber-Security Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA Takeover
By Noah Shachtman March 06, 2009 | 11:52:14 AMCategories: Homeland Security
Rod Beckström, the Department of Homeland Security's controversial cyber-security chief, has suddenly resigned amid allegations of power grabs and bureaucratic infighting.
Beckström — a management theorist, entrepreneur and author — was named last year to head up the new National Cybersecurity Center, or NCSC. To some, it seemed an odd choice since Beckström isn't an expert in security. But the hope was that he could use his management skills to help coordinate the nation's often-dysfunctional network defenses.
Part of the Department of Homeland Security — for now, the government's lead agency for cyber protection — the Center was supposed to be the one place where the defense of civilian, military and intelligence networks could all be marshaled together.
At least, that was the idea. But the Center never had a chance to even start doing its job, Beckström complained in a resignation letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that has been obtained by Danger Room. The Center "did not receive appropriate support" from the Department of Homeland Security to help coordinate network defenses, he said.
"During the past year the NCSC received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of Management and Budget."
What's more, Beckström said, it is a fiction that DHS is in charge of the country's cyber security. That power, he asserts, is held by the National Security Agency — the supersecret signals intelligence service — that "currently dominates most national cyber efforts." And that, he says, is not a good idea.
While acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds. The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations of security culture. In addition, the threat to our democratic processes are significant if all top government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization (either directly of indirectly). During my term as Director we have been unwilling to subjugate the NSCS underneath the NSA.
Last Thursday, the new Director of National Intelligence told Congress that the NSA, not Homeland Security, should be put in charge of network defense. A week and a day later, Beckström told his bosses that he was through.
"Rod [was] trying to get over NSA's power grab," a cyber-security source with deep government ties tells Danger Room. But in the end, Beckström couldn't. "He jumped nanoseconds before being pushed."
Photo: Experience Economy
By Noah Shachtman March 06, 2009 | 11:52:14 AMCategories: Homeland Security
Rod Beckström, the Department of Homeland Security's controversial cyber-security chief, has suddenly resigned amid allegations of power grabs and bureaucratic infighting.
Beckström — a management theorist, entrepreneur and author — was named last year to head up the new National Cybersecurity Center, or NCSC. To some, it seemed an odd choice since Beckström isn't an expert in security. But the hope was that he could use his management skills to help coordinate the nation's often-dysfunctional network defenses.
Part of the Department of Homeland Security — for now, the government's lead agency for cyber protection — the Center was supposed to be the one place where the defense of civilian, military and intelligence networks could all be marshaled together.
At least, that was the idea. But the Center never had a chance to even start doing its job, Beckström complained in a resignation letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that has been obtained by Danger Room. The Center "did not receive appropriate support" from the Department of Homeland Security to help coordinate network defenses, he said.
"During the past year the NCSC received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of Management and Budget."
What's more, Beckström said, it is a fiction that DHS is in charge of the country's cyber security. That power, he asserts, is held by the National Security Agency — the supersecret signals intelligence service — that "currently dominates most national cyber efforts." And that, he says, is not a good idea.
While acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds. The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations of security culture. In addition, the threat to our democratic processes are significant if all top government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization (either directly of indirectly). During my term as Director we have been unwilling to subjugate the NSCS underneath the NSA.
Last Thursday, the new Director of National Intelligence told Congress that the NSA, not Homeland Security, should be put in charge of network defense. A week and a day later, Beckström told his bosses that he was through.
"Rod [was] trying to get over NSA's power grab," a cyber-security source with deep government ties tells Danger Room. But in the end, Beckström couldn't. "He jumped nanoseconds before being pushed."
Photo: Experience Economy
The New World Order Conspiracy Is A Fact
The New World Order Conspiracy Is A Fact…
Posted by sakerfa on April 15, 2009
At the time of me writing this there are a Series of Un-Constitutional Laws attempting to be passed through our oppressive government. The first is, H.R.1388 and H.R.1444, these laws contain within them the idea of “Mandatory Volunteerism” this idea is uniquely Un-American as it coerces the youth (from middle school up to college) of this country to participate in state approved services and orientation that they would not want to necessarily participate in. We fought a war over this idea of slavery and involuntary servitude; automatically this will violate the 13th and 14th Amendment of our Constitution. The second is, HR 875 and S 425 which essentially makes small farms and backyard farming illegal or at least heavily regulated by the state, these bills have been sponsored however by The Monsanto Agriculture Corporation, clearly the intentions of this potential law are designed to allow major corporations to secure more market space at the expense of the small farms, this is a Violation of the 9th and 10th Amendment of the US Constitution. Finally, HR 645 is a potential law floating around in government to allow emergency centers to be opened in the event of economic downturn or terrorist attacks, however these institutions are nothing more than the oppressive FEMA Concentration Camps being set up across this country, this potential law violates the founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as do the others above. It sickens me how our government has sold us out in the name of profit and power for the few at the expense of the many.
The Bankers Plan is actually simple, they intended on bankrupting the entire global market and in effect make all nations fall to their knees. In America, one should brace for hyper-inflation the likes of which have not been seen since The Weimar Republic and the collapse of the commercial sector of the US Economy, perhaps even our own currency. From the controlled demolition of the global economy chaos will emerge and from it, will arise a new order one that will allow all nations to be controlled not for their own sake but will be at the mercy of an international bank headed and created by the very international bankers who run our Federal Reserve and The Bank of England. This New World Order of the Elite is an Orwellian one, big brother will be watching everyone, civil liberties will only be recognized as a dispensation of government and as such they will be violated, one need only look at our current violations of civil liberties in government to understand that they are conditioning us to accept it. This world will be a hell on earth, if we the people refuse to act!
There will be a Coming Revolution, one need only Google “Second American Revolution” to see the amount of distrust, we the people have against a socialist agent of Wall Street who promised “change” and only asked for “Hope”. The founders of this country made it clear in our Declaration of Independence that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among [people], deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” (I prefer alteration) Our government has been perverted and corrupted from its original form, the role of government is, To protect our Civil Liberties, not to tell us what to do and how to live or think. The Second Amendment was meant to aid in the protection against government from the violation of our liberties, to fight against the tyranny of our government. This moment in human history is filled with uncertainty and when chaos ensues there will be only two sides to choose from: Liberty or Global Slavery to the Few, where will you stand?
Jim Andersen
4/2/2009
Posted by sakerfa on April 15, 2009
At the time of me writing this there are a Series of Un-Constitutional Laws attempting to be passed through our oppressive government. The first is, H.R.1388 and H.R.1444, these laws contain within them the idea of “Mandatory Volunteerism” this idea is uniquely Un-American as it coerces the youth (from middle school up to college) of this country to participate in state approved services and orientation that they would not want to necessarily participate in. We fought a war over this idea of slavery and involuntary servitude; automatically this will violate the 13th and 14th Amendment of our Constitution. The second is, HR 875 and S 425 which essentially makes small farms and backyard farming illegal or at least heavily regulated by the state, these bills have been sponsored however by The Monsanto Agriculture Corporation, clearly the intentions of this potential law are designed to allow major corporations to secure more market space at the expense of the small farms, this is a Violation of the 9th and 10th Amendment of the US Constitution. Finally, HR 645 is a potential law floating around in government to allow emergency centers to be opened in the event of economic downturn or terrorist attacks, however these institutions are nothing more than the oppressive FEMA Concentration Camps being set up across this country, this potential law violates the founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as do the others above. It sickens me how our government has sold us out in the name of profit and power for the few at the expense of the many.
The Bankers Plan is actually simple, they intended on bankrupting the entire global market and in effect make all nations fall to their knees. In America, one should brace for hyper-inflation the likes of which have not been seen since The Weimar Republic and the collapse of the commercial sector of the US Economy, perhaps even our own currency. From the controlled demolition of the global economy chaos will emerge and from it, will arise a new order one that will allow all nations to be controlled not for their own sake but will be at the mercy of an international bank headed and created by the very international bankers who run our Federal Reserve and The Bank of England. This New World Order of the Elite is an Orwellian one, big brother will be watching everyone, civil liberties will only be recognized as a dispensation of government and as such they will be violated, one need only look at our current violations of civil liberties in government to understand that they are conditioning us to accept it. This world will be a hell on earth, if we the people refuse to act!
There will be a Coming Revolution, one need only Google “Second American Revolution” to see the amount of distrust, we the people have against a socialist agent of Wall Street who promised “change” and only asked for “Hope”. The founders of this country made it clear in our Declaration of Independence that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among [people], deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” (I prefer alteration) Our government has been perverted and corrupted from its original form, the role of government is, To protect our Civil Liberties, not to tell us what to do and how to live or think. The Second Amendment was meant to aid in the protection against government from the violation of our liberties, to fight against the tyranny of our government. This moment in human history is filled with uncertainty and when chaos ensues there will be only two sides to choose from: Liberty or Global Slavery to the Few, where will you stand?
Jim Andersen
4/2/2009
"Revolution" as the Only Solution
April 13, 2009
Celente Calls for "Revolution" as the Only Solution
Kingston NY -- Taxed to death, angry at government bailouts, outraged by Wall Street greed, and bitterly resentful of a system that rewards the undeserving rich, the American public is ready to revolt.
"The Tea Parties and Tax Protests sprouting across the nation, which we had predicted, are harbingers of revolution," said Gerald Celente, Director of The Trends Research Institute. "But they are not enough. Much stronger and directed action is required. Our call for 'Revolution' will galvanize the people, destroy the corrupt ruling systems, and produce a prosperous and more just nation."
The Revolution Celente proposes is unique in concept and bold in execution. It is about a lot more than just "taxation without representation."
"Nothing short of total repudiation of our entrenched systems can rescue America," said Celente. "We are under the control of a two-headed, one party political system. Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation."
The country is restless, and ripe for radical reform. There is no doubt protests will proliferate and intensify. In response, the government will call out the troops and bring in the police. They will use the Patriot Act to silence, detain, harass, persecute and prosecute groups and individuals exercising their Constitutional rights.
But Celente's Revolution need not degenerate into violence or open warfare.
"Intellectual Revolution"
"I am calling for an 'Intellectual Revolution'. I ask American citizens to free their minds from the tyranny of 'Dumb Think.' This is a revolution about thinking - not manning the barricades. It's about brain power - not brute force."
For society to survive and grow, it must wake up and grow up. Americans must acknowledge what their opinions are based on, who they listen to ... and why.
What are America's prime information sources? CNN, "The most trusted name in news"? Fox, "Fair and balanced"?
CNBC, "First in Business Worldwide"? The New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print"?
Who do the people listen to? A closed circuit of familiar faces guaranteed to take predictable positions. Authorities on nothing, yet pronouncing upon everything; a cadre of media aristocrats, pretending they're the people's voice.
Bill O'Reilly, Steven Colbert, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, Jim Cramer, Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher.
TV tough guys, broadcast big mouths and Beltway blowhards have now been joined by featherweight comics throwing powder puff punches at sitting targets.
This new addition to the critical debate is celebrated by the world's leading financial newspaper:
Wall Street Riveted by Comedy Clash
Financial Times, 13 March 2009
"A showdown between a comedian who has become one of America's most challenging commentators and a news commentator known for his comedic antics has shown the brightest spotlight on the media's market coverage since the financial crisis began.
On Thursday night, two cable television celebrities squared off as Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show ... on Comedy Central ... confronted Jim Cramer ... star of CNBC's Mad Money programme."
Without a hint of irony, FT bestows the title of highest American intellectual common denominator upon a clown. A pencil throwing, screaming, wryly grimacing professional comedian has become "... one of America's most challenging commentators"?
"Wall Street riveted by comedy clash"? "The brightest spotlight on the media's market coverage"?
With the world financial markets in collapse, this rivets Wall Street? Nearly two years into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, this shines as "the brightest spotlight"?
From Wall Street, comedy moves to the White House. President Obama made history using comic Jay Leno's Tonight Show as a platform to peddle his policies.
World shaping decisions are packaged in sound bites and pitched by the nation's Showman-in-Chief. There is no time or place for debate or discussion. It's all entertainment.
"The 'Intellectual Revolution' must be waged on the battlefield of the mind," said Celente. "Americans are doomed unless they kick the junk news habit, deprogram themselves from celebrity worship, refuse to blindly follow political leaders and question all ideological dogmas ... especially their own.
"For the revolution to succeed, people must repudiate the one-headed, two party system, and learn to think for themselves," said Celente.
While the corporate-owned mainstream media and the government still control the broad avenues of news and information, only willing and lazy minds need be held hostage to it. The Internet world is awash in data, facts, analyses and opinions (independent and mainstream) for all to access and assess.
Think for Yourself. The "Intellectual Revolution” has begun.
Trend Call-to-Action:
What can you do? Participating in an April 15th tax protest may be your cup of tea. Pester your politicians. Make your voice heard, your discontent felt and your solutions known. Band with others who share similar objectives and common goals.
Source: the yonkers tribune
Celente Calls for "Revolution" as the Only Solution
Kingston NY -- Taxed to death, angry at government bailouts, outraged by Wall Street greed, and bitterly resentful of a system that rewards the undeserving rich, the American public is ready to revolt.
"The Tea Parties and Tax Protests sprouting across the nation, which we had predicted, are harbingers of revolution," said Gerald Celente, Director of The Trends Research Institute. "But they are not enough. Much stronger and directed action is required. Our call for 'Revolution' will galvanize the people, destroy the corrupt ruling systems, and produce a prosperous and more just nation."
The Revolution Celente proposes is unique in concept and bold in execution. It is about a lot more than just "taxation without representation."
"Nothing short of total repudiation of our entrenched systems can rescue America," said Celente. "We are under the control of a two-headed, one party political system. Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation."
The country is restless, and ripe for radical reform. There is no doubt protests will proliferate and intensify. In response, the government will call out the troops and bring in the police. They will use the Patriot Act to silence, detain, harass, persecute and prosecute groups and individuals exercising their Constitutional rights.
But Celente's Revolution need not degenerate into violence or open warfare.
"Intellectual Revolution"
"I am calling for an 'Intellectual Revolution'. I ask American citizens to free their minds from the tyranny of 'Dumb Think.' This is a revolution about thinking - not manning the barricades. It's about brain power - not brute force."
For society to survive and grow, it must wake up and grow up. Americans must acknowledge what their opinions are based on, who they listen to ... and why.
What are America's prime information sources? CNN, "The most trusted name in news"? Fox, "Fair and balanced"?
CNBC, "First in Business Worldwide"? The New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print"?
Who do the people listen to? A closed circuit of familiar faces guaranteed to take predictable positions. Authorities on nothing, yet pronouncing upon everything; a cadre of media aristocrats, pretending they're the people's voice.
Bill O'Reilly, Steven Colbert, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, Jim Cramer, Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher.
TV tough guys, broadcast big mouths and Beltway blowhards have now been joined by featherweight comics throwing powder puff punches at sitting targets.
This new addition to the critical debate is celebrated by the world's leading financial newspaper:
Wall Street Riveted by Comedy Clash
Financial Times, 13 March 2009
"A showdown between a comedian who has become one of America's most challenging commentators and a news commentator known for his comedic antics has shown the brightest spotlight on the media's market coverage since the financial crisis began.
On Thursday night, two cable television celebrities squared off as Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show ... on Comedy Central ... confronted Jim Cramer ... star of CNBC's Mad Money programme."
Without a hint of irony, FT bestows the title of highest American intellectual common denominator upon a clown. A pencil throwing, screaming, wryly grimacing professional comedian has become "... one of America's most challenging commentators"?
"Wall Street riveted by comedy clash"? "The brightest spotlight on the media's market coverage"?
With the world financial markets in collapse, this rivets Wall Street? Nearly two years into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, this shines as "the brightest spotlight"?
From Wall Street, comedy moves to the White House. President Obama made history using comic Jay Leno's Tonight Show as a platform to peddle his policies.
World shaping decisions are packaged in sound bites and pitched by the nation's Showman-in-Chief. There is no time or place for debate or discussion. It's all entertainment.
"The 'Intellectual Revolution' must be waged on the battlefield of the mind," said Celente. "Americans are doomed unless they kick the junk news habit, deprogram themselves from celebrity worship, refuse to blindly follow political leaders and question all ideological dogmas ... especially their own.
"For the revolution to succeed, people must repudiate the one-headed, two party system, and learn to think for themselves," said Celente.
While the corporate-owned mainstream media and the government still control the broad avenues of news and information, only willing and lazy minds need be held hostage to it. The Internet world is awash in data, facts, analyses and opinions (independent and mainstream) for all to access and assess.
Think for Yourself. The "Intellectual Revolution” has begun.
Trend Call-to-Action:
What can you do? Participating in an April 15th tax protest may be your cup of tea. Pester your politicians. Make your voice heard, your discontent felt and your solutions known. Band with others who share similar objectives and common goals.
Source: the yonkers tribune
America's Imperial Wars: We Need to See the Sickening Reality
America's Imperial Wars: We Need to See the Sickening Reality
Fri, 04/10/2009 - 14:43 — dlindorff
When I was a 17-year-old kid in my senior year of high school, I didn’t think much about Vietnam. It was 1967, the war was raging, but I didn’t personally know anyone who was over there, Tet hadn’t happened yet. If anything, the excitement of jungle warfare attracted my interest more than anything (I had a .22 cal rifle, and liked to go off in the woods and shoot at things, often, I’ll admit, imagining it was an armed enemy.)
But then I had to do a major project in my humanities program and I chose the Vietnam War. As I started researching this paper, which was supposed to be a multi-media presentation, I ran across a series of photos of civilian victims of American napalm bombing. These victims, often, were women and children—even babies.
The project opened my eyes to something that had never occurred to me: my country’s army was killing civilians. And it wasn’t just killing them. It was killing them, and maiming them, in ways that were almost unimaginable in their horror: napalm, phosphorus, anti-personnel bombs the threw out spinning flechettes that ripped through the flesh like tiny buzzsaws, the gunships that spew out random fire that kills or maims anything within the area of several football fields. I learned that scientists like what I at the time wanted to become were actually working on projects to make these weapons even more lethal, for example trying to make napalm more sticky so it would burn longer on exposed flesh.
By the time I had finished my project, I had actively joined the anti-war movement, and later that year, when I turned 18 and had to register for the draft, I made the decision that no way was I going to allow myself to participate in that war.
A key reason my—and millions of other Americans’--eyes were opened to what the US was up to in Indochina was that the media at that time, at least by 1967, had begun to show Americans the reality of that war. I didn’t have to look to hard to find the photos of napalm victims, or to read about the true nature of the weapons that our forces were using.
Today, while the internet makes it possible to find similar information about the conflicts in the world in which the US is participating, either as primary combatant or as the chief provider of arms, as in Gaza, one actually has to make a concerted effort to look for them. The corporate media which provide the information that most Americans simply receive passively on the evening news or at breakfast over coffee carefully avoid showing us most of the graphic horror inflicted by our military machine.
We may read the cold fact that the US military, after initial denials, admits that its forces, in early April, killed not four enemy combatants in an assault on a house in Afghanistan, but rather five civilians—including a man, a female teacher, a 10-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy and a tiny baby. But we don’t see pictures of their shattered bodies, no doubt shredded by the high-powered automatic rifles typically used by American forces.
We may read about wedding parties that are bombed by American forces—something that has happened with some frequency in both Iraq and Afghanistan-- where the death toll is tallied in dozens, but we are, as a rule, not provided with photos that would likely show bodies torn apart by anti-personnel bombs—a favored weapon for such attacks on groups of supposed enemy “fighters.” (A giveaway that such weapons are being used is a typically high death count with only a few wounded.)
Obviously one reason for this is that the US military no longer gives US journalists, including photo journalists, free reign on the battlefield. Those who travel with troops are under the control of those troops and generally aren’t allowed to photograph the scenes of devastation, and sites of such “mishaps” are generally ruled off limits until the evidence has been cleared away.
But another reason is that the media themselves sanitize their pages and their broadcasts. It isn’t just American dead that we don’t get to see. It’s the civilian dead—at least if our guys do it. We are not spared gruesome images following attacks on civilians by Iraqi insurgent groups, or by Taliban forces in Afghanistan. But we don’t get the same kind of photos when it’s our forces doing the slaughtering. Because often the photos and video images do exist—taken by foreign reporters who take the risk of going where the US military doesn’t want them.
Afghan child burned by a US bomb
No wonder that even today, most Americans oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan not because of sympathy with the long-suffering peoples of those two lands, but because of the hardships faced by our own forces, and the financial cost of the two wars.
For some real information on the horror that is being perpetrated on one of the poorest countries in the world by the greatest military power the world has ever known, check out the excellent work by Professor Marc Herold at the University of New Hampshire.
When we look at President Obama's $83.4-billion special funding request for the Afghanistan and Iraq War, and his new record $664-billion 2010 military budget, we need to have those images in our minds.
Meanwhile, the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan is only likely to increase with the expanding use of Predator drone aircraft which kill from the sky, piloted by pilots based in control trailers in remote places like Nevada. Here's what Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace activist John Grant of Philadelphia has to say on that topic:
Opposing Immoral Drone Warfare:
By John Grant
Here's an important civil disobedience action that occurred yesterday at a base in the Nevada desert near Indian Springs. This is a moral issue that demands more coverage in our media and more understanding by a cross section of American citizens. This action raises many questions for Americans, since we are now on the cusp of a future of drone/robot warfare. Do we want to be a people who sit in fear in the comfort of our homes as our military, in secret, sends out flying robots armed with lethal rockets (and who knows what in the future) that have regularly killed a significant number of innocent civilians in the process of targeting "terrorists" in the remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan? These drones are controlled by operators in air-conditioned rooms on bases like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. There have been reports of operators suffering Traumatic Distress from witnessing the deaths or maimings of victims on the video screens in front of them. Is this who we want to be as citizens of the world, essentially hiding away in our comfy homes afraid of engaging with the world except through remotely piloted drones or controlled visits to Disney World? Considering the long history of warfare, why is this kind of warfare not cowardly? Are drones the answer to not wanting our young men and women brought home in aluminum boxes? These are questions we need to ask ourselves and that this action raises. Please pass this on and support the men and women arrested in Nevada.
Source: thiscantbehappening.net
Fri, 04/10/2009 - 14:43 — dlindorff
When I was a 17-year-old kid in my senior year of high school, I didn’t think much about Vietnam. It was 1967, the war was raging, but I didn’t personally know anyone who was over there, Tet hadn’t happened yet. If anything, the excitement of jungle warfare attracted my interest more than anything (I had a .22 cal rifle, and liked to go off in the woods and shoot at things, often, I’ll admit, imagining it was an armed enemy.)
But then I had to do a major project in my humanities program and I chose the Vietnam War. As I started researching this paper, which was supposed to be a multi-media presentation, I ran across a series of photos of civilian victims of American napalm bombing. These victims, often, were women and children—even babies.
The project opened my eyes to something that had never occurred to me: my country’s army was killing civilians. And it wasn’t just killing them. It was killing them, and maiming them, in ways that were almost unimaginable in their horror: napalm, phosphorus, anti-personnel bombs the threw out spinning flechettes that ripped through the flesh like tiny buzzsaws, the gunships that spew out random fire that kills or maims anything within the area of several football fields. I learned that scientists like what I at the time wanted to become were actually working on projects to make these weapons even more lethal, for example trying to make napalm more sticky so it would burn longer on exposed flesh.
By the time I had finished my project, I had actively joined the anti-war movement, and later that year, when I turned 18 and had to register for the draft, I made the decision that no way was I going to allow myself to participate in that war.
A key reason my—and millions of other Americans’--eyes were opened to what the US was up to in Indochina was that the media at that time, at least by 1967, had begun to show Americans the reality of that war. I didn’t have to look to hard to find the photos of napalm victims, or to read about the true nature of the weapons that our forces were using.
Today, while the internet makes it possible to find similar information about the conflicts in the world in which the US is participating, either as primary combatant or as the chief provider of arms, as in Gaza, one actually has to make a concerted effort to look for them. The corporate media which provide the information that most Americans simply receive passively on the evening news or at breakfast over coffee carefully avoid showing us most of the graphic horror inflicted by our military machine.
We may read the cold fact that the US military, after initial denials, admits that its forces, in early April, killed not four enemy combatants in an assault on a house in Afghanistan, but rather five civilians—including a man, a female teacher, a 10-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy and a tiny baby. But we don’t see pictures of their shattered bodies, no doubt shredded by the high-powered automatic rifles typically used by American forces.
We may read about wedding parties that are bombed by American forces—something that has happened with some frequency in both Iraq and Afghanistan-- where the death toll is tallied in dozens, but we are, as a rule, not provided with photos that would likely show bodies torn apart by anti-personnel bombs—a favored weapon for such attacks on groups of supposed enemy “fighters.” (A giveaway that such weapons are being used is a typically high death count with only a few wounded.)
Obviously one reason for this is that the US military no longer gives US journalists, including photo journalists, free reign on the battlefield. Those who travel with troops are under the control of those troops and generally aren’t allowed to photograph the scenes of devastation, and sites of such “mishaps” are generally ruled off limits until the evidence has been cleared away.
But another reason is that the media themselves sanitize their pages and their broadcasts. It isn’t just American dead that we don’t get to see. It’s the civilian dead—at least if our guys do it. We are not spared gruesome images following attacks on civilians by Iraqi insurgent groups, or by Taliban forces in Afghanistan. But we don’t get the same kind of photos when it’s our forces doing the slaughtering. Because often the photos and video images do exist—taken by foreign reporters who take the risk of going where the US military doesn’t want them.
Afghan child burned by a US bomb
No wonder that even today, most Americans oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan not because of sympathy with the long-suffering peoples of those two lands, but because of the hardships faced by our own forces, and the financial cost of the two wars.
For some real information on the horror that is being perpetrated on one of the poorest countries in the world by the greatest military power the world has ever known, check out the excellent work by Professor Marc Herold at the University of New Hampshire.
When we look at President Obama's $83.4-billion special funding request for the Afghanistan and Iraq War, and his new record $664-billion 2010 military budget, we need to have those images in our minds.
Meanwhile, the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan is only likely to increase with the expanding use of Predator drone aircraft which kill from the sky, piloted by pilots based in control trailers in remote places like Nevada. Here's what Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace activist John Grant of Philadelphia has to say on that topic:
Opposing Immoral Drone Warfare:
By John Grant
Here's an important civil disobedience action that occurred yesterday at a base in the Nevada desert near Indian Springs. This is a moral issue that demands more coverage in our media and more understanding by a cross section of American citizens. This action raises many questions for Americans, since we are now on the cusp of a future of drone/robot warfare. Do we want to be a people who sit in fear in the comfort of our homes as our military, in secret, sends out flying robots armed with lethal rockets (and who knows what in the future) that have regularly killed a significant number of innocent civilians in the process of targeting "terrorists" in the remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan? These drones are controlled by operators in air-conditioned rooms on bases like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. There have been reports of operators suffering Traumatic Distress from witnessing the deaths or maimings of victims on the video screens in front of them. Is this who we want to be as citizens of the world, essentially hiding away in our comfy homes afraid of engaging with the world except through remotely piloted drones or controlled visits to Disney World? Considering the long history of warfare, why is this kind of warfare not cowardly? Are drones the answer to not wanting our young men and women brought home in aluminum boxes? These are questions we need to ask ourselves and that this action raises. Please pass this on and support the men and women arrested in Nevada.
Source: thiscantbehappening.net
The Global Coup d’Etat
The Global Coup d’Etat
Posted by sakerfa on April 8, 2009
The term “New World Order” refers to the advent of a Totalitarian World Government. The current push towards achieving this nirvana has at it’s core, a powerful and secretive group known as the Illuminati, which has been conspiring to take control of the the world for millennia. They aim to do this by the introduction of an autonomous Global State, which would supersede and replace the sovereign nations of the world. Most if not all significant occurrences in politics and international business are manipulated, orchestrated and designed by this extremely influential cabal operating through many front organisations, such as the Bilderberg Group, The Club Of Rome, The Royal Institute For International Affairs and a plethora of others, all of which connect at the very top of the Illuminati’s symbolic pyramid.
But the idea of such a `One World State` is not new, and the origins go back into the very shadows of antiquity, and to a presence that has been a constant thorn in the side of mankind since it’s very beginning.
The One World State and the Temptation of Christ
The Bible tells us that the concept of a `One World State` was put forward by Satan to Christ as one of the `Temptations in the Wilderness`. We are told that it was firmly rejected by Jesus. Whether one accepts the Scriptures or not, it cannot be argued that Christ’s teachings, which involve personal freedom and free will, are totally incompatible with the concept of a `One World State` which would mandate and coerce diverse peoples and cultures into a centralised dictatorship. Satan’s offer was conditional on Christ’s worship of him. This temptation has been put to men throughout the ages, and it is not surprising to discover that many of the most influential men throughout history, and enthusiastic advocates of world government, have been Satanists. I speak of men such as Marx, Bakunin, Moses Hess, Stalin, to name but a few, together with a near full compliment of the more recent crop of Satan worshiping world `leaders` such as the Bush’s, Clintons, Blairs and the current `Saviour` of the `Free World` along with them`
The outlines of the centuries old conflict between good and evil were laid down in the Gospels in as much as `God is the god of truth`, while Satan is the `father of lies and there is no truth in him`. And still on yet another level “You must serve God or money. You cannot serve both”.
The present drive towards the setting up of a World State, that can increasingly be seen to be not atheist in construct, but Satanic and Anti God, has it’s origins in Ancient Babylon, with the coalescing of the `Kabballah`, but which in it’s modern form can be said to have begun gaining impetus in the 19th century, with the advent of Marxist Socialist theory, together with the growth of International Banking.
“Marxism you say is the bitterest opponent of Capitalism, which is sacred to us. For the simple reason that they are opposite poles, they deliver over to us the two poles of the earth and permit us to be it’s axis. Within these two opposites, we find ourselves identified in the Internationale. And these doctrines of the two poles of society, meet in their unity of purpose, the renewal of the world from above by the control of wealth, and from below by revolution”. The Comte de Saint Aulair in `Geneve contre la Paix` Libraire Plan, Paris 1936.
Communism
Among the requirements outlined in the `Communist Manifesto` for the establishment of a One World Dictatorship were:
1.The abolition of private property;
2.The abolition of the family;
3.The abolition of countries and nationalities;
4.The abolition of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, together with all religion and all morality.
In the context of the above, the word `Communist` is in many ways interchangeable with all those who aspire to a One World State, including Marxists, Zionists, Fabian Socialists, The United Nations, The Parliamentary Group for World Government, Trilateral Commission, CFR, Bilderberg Group, and even the World Council of Churches, plus a plethora of fellow travelers.
Marx formed the first `Internationale` with Mikhail Bakunin, the `God Father` of Anarchism who wrote,
“In this revolution, we will have to awaken the devil in people, to stir up the basest passions”.
Doesn’t this describe the world we live in today? All around is social decay and chaos, intended and designed to create the desired response in the people, that `something must be done`. We see violence, pornography, gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, all the vices extolled and normalised, together with the perverse promotion of homosexuality as a `valid lifestyle choice` and extreme feminism, disguised as `women’s rights` being used to socially and morally emasculate men, turning God’s natural order on it’s head, and weakening that element in society most likely to become an obstruction to the plan. More recently, the European Union tabled a motion to legalise Pedophilia. How far down this road do we need to be driven before people say enough? The Masonic Motto `Out of Chaos Order` aptly applies to our world today, and Satan appears to reign supreme.
When Satanists are initiated into the seventh degree, they swear that their overriding principal will be, ” Nothing is true and everything is permitted”.
Is this not indicative of the attitudes and conduct of our leaders and so called celebrities today? Whether they be Bankers, Politicians, Senior Police Officers, Professionals, Bureaucrats, Pop Stars or Film Actors, I believe that even the most cursory examination of all or any of the most prominent individuals active in the above spheres of influence will show that they are deeply connected to both Freemasonry and Satanism, and are working knowingly or otherwise, to bringing their `Master’s` goal of a tyrannical world state into being, and sooner rather than later.
In `On Hegel`, Marx wrote,
” Words I teach all mixed up in a devilish muddle. Thus anyone may think just what he chooses to think”.
And that is exactly why so many have followed `the yellow brick road`, towards the Dictatorial One World State that the followers of Satan advocate. They have been duped, confused, mesmerised. They have not thought out what it means to lose one’s freedom and national identity, or that the diabolical depopulation agenda is real and evidential and that the slaughter of millions is a very real possibility, to be achieved via a bewildering array of means not least of which might include a `stage managed` Third World War. The `FEMA` camps in the US and the massive number of similar installations throughout Europe http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8134 attest to the deadly seriousness of the situation. The `Dark One` is playing for keeps this time.
The Genetic Requirements
For the establishment of a World Dictatorship, there were three main requirements. The Communist and revolutionary teachings of Marx and associates must be integrated, disseminated and universally accepted. The destabilizing of nations morally and financially with the draining away of money and assets outside of the control of any nation would have to be achieved, along with the provision of a `Master Race` to provide the dictators and rulers.
In his book `Terrorism and The Illuminati`, Canadian Author David Livingstone describes such a `race` in the clearest of terms thus;
“The Illuminati represent the descendants of the Fallen Angels who inhabited the lost continent of Atlantis. These Fallen Angels interbred with humans, to whom they taught the Ancient Wisdom. Therefore, throughout the centuries, the Illuminati have been carefully intermarrying with each other, to preserve their “sacred” bloodline, handing on their esoteric knowledge from generation to generation. For this reason, they also refer to themselves as “the Family”.
There are thirteen core bloodlines at the top of this `Family` and it is these `people`, who allegedly trace their lineage back to Babylon, and beyond into the distant past, who intend to become `Again as Gods` once their `Dark Lord’s` World State becomes at last a reality. From one of these lines of decent, believed by many to be the Merovingian Bloodline, will come it is said, the supposedly beneficent `World Leader`, sometimes referred to as the `Anti Christ`.
These people or rather `things` see us as cattle, for culling and they have been very busy doing so throughout history. But today with the weaponry, medicines, vaccines and poisons available to them, it is difficult to see how their `Agenda` can be halted. Particularly when one considers the levels of apathy prevalent amongst what they term `The Sheeple`..
The British writer, `Bertrand Russell` had this to say back in 1954, “Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will continue until they become separate species. A revolt of the plebs against the masters would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton”.
Mr Russell wasn’t so far `off base` as a walk down any City High Street these days will confirm. However, knowing how deeply `connected` Bertrand Russell was, I am convinced he knew that the `rulers and ruled` have always been different species.
In `Treason at Westminster` Kitty Little writes, “By 1963, the UN Convention on Racial Discrimination had provided for the massive movements of population that would in turn provide for the interbreeding of genetically incompatible races, and for the positive discrimination against the native populations of European decent who were considered to be the greatest obstacle to their plans. A parallel UNESCO Convention against `discrimination` in education had provided the impetus for race, sex, parentage, local and national loyalties and all forms of religion as well as ability, to be regarded as forms of `discrimination` and therefore to be abolished. Children were deemed to have a `human right` to be protected from religious indoctrination. All this, in addition to the encouragement of oral contraceptives (that lead to physical, mental and moral degeneration) vasectomy, drug abuse, and the current fashion for genetic engineering with artificial insemination and `test tube` babies, was designed for the debasing of the human race”.
Financial Requirements
Taking financial control out of the hands of national governments was an absolute requirement if the Global Dictatorship was to become a reality. This was seen as a preliminary to the operation of a system of credit whereby only those in good standing with the `World Government` would receive the means of subsistence. Hence the fact that the EU, the prototype for World Government, has concentrated it’s focus on undermining national industries, taking control of food supplies, and by dictating farming and fishing policies, ensuring that the member nations remain dependent on the centralized European State for essentials.
Another example of how the `One Worlders` coerce and manipulate countries economically is the way the World Bank discriminates in favour only of those nations who comply with it’s genocidal depopulation goals, mandating the use of `family planning` via contraception, and implementing compulsory vaccination policies on whole swathes of people in the developing world, resulting in the mass sterilisation of native women as a primary goal, and chemically induced miscarriages as an important secondary `failsafe`..
The fanatical opposition to South Africa, before the takeover by the majority population can also be placed into context when one comprehends the `Agenda`. South Africa had and still has the largest gold reserves on this planet, and without taking control of that, the credit trap could not be sprung.
Development of the Plan
Since the launch of World Communism, the Illuminati’s plans have developed and matured. In 1928, the Communist Internationale presented a three stage plan for achieving World Government:
1.
Socialise the economies of all nations.
2.
Bring about the regional unions of various groupings of these nations.
3.
Amalgamate all these groupings into a final World Union.
In 1942 Stalin, in cooperation with Western Marxists was intent on laying the foundations of the UN. He defined the necessary goals for the final World Coup d ‘Etat as:
1.
Confuse, disorganise and destroy the forces of private capitalism.
2.
Bring all nations together into a single world system of economy.
3.
Force the industrialised nations to pour prolonged financial aid into the developing countries.
4.
Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to total World Government.
As any informed observer must be able to see, the plan is far advanced and in it’s final stages. Can anyone argue that goals one and three have not already been attained. Number four is partly fulfilled in the form of the European Union, and plans for a North American Union are beyond the planning stages. The European Single Currency or Euro is a `stepping stone` towards the World Currency, to be possibly called the `Phoenix`, symbolising Satan rising from the ashes of the old order to establish the new.
Working on the assumption that the point of no return would be reached with the establishment of European Union, the Illuminati in their obsession with all things Satanic, created a symbolic `Monetary Snake` that would penetrate into the heart of nations and undermine their power. They saw it primarily as an encirclement of Europe and in as much as, “When this ring closes, all the States Of Europe will be locked in it’s coil as in a powerful vice”. This statement was made in the 19th Century and it was considered that by `enchanting` Europe, it would ultimately encompass the whole world..
The current manipulated global financial crisis is a ruse to achieve a universal system of money, and with it, World Government will be achieved by `hook or crook`, by financial or murderous means. Either way, the point of no return seems long past..
The United Nations and The European Union
Together with UNESCO, the UN has insinuated itself globally into the very fabric of nation states, corrupting and undermining them at every turn. In the field of education for example, the intentions of the `One Worlders` who controlled UNESCO (and still do) were:
1.
To deride, ridicule and destroy any feelings of patriotism or loyalty to their country amongst the youth.
2.
Instill in the youth an outlook of internationalism that could easily be reconciled at a later date with the concept of a One World Dictatorship.
3.
Indoctrinate the youth to embrace Marxist Socialism (under different labels such as Social Democracy for example) as being the correct social and political outlook.
4..
Neutralize the youth against the religious influences in the home along with all concepts of rigid morality.
The establishment of a European Union has been critical for the Illuminati’s plans to create a `World Government` and the formation of the UN was seen as a necessary preliminary, in the same way as the EU and NAU are seen as stepping stones to World Government. When the UK entered the EEC back in 1973, the British people were told deliberate lies about the intentions and significance of that move. The now familiar deceits were new back then, the primary `mother of all lies` being no loss of sovereignty. The Treaty of Rome empowered the Commission to formulate Directives which took precedence over national laws. There was no requirement to make these laws public, even though they had to be implemented.
Since then, with each treacherous treaty signed, the peoples of Europe have been lead by the nose ever closer into a Federal `Rat Trap` from which there is no way out. Jean Monnet, the so called `father` of the EU put it like this;
“Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation’.
Last years Irish referendum debacle exposed the EU for what it is; A Totalitarian State in the making, albeit of the `drip by drip variety`. It’s refusal to accept the `democratic` will of the Irish people is little more than a precursor of what is to come.
The Treaty of Lisbon had been absolutely critical for the Illuminati/Communist plans for the World Dictatorship, and having come thus far, it was clear even before the Irish Referendum that the `Euro Marxists` would not allow something as insignificant as Democracy to get in their way. But the question begs to be asked; “How on earth have they managed to come this far without detection ?
The research of Dr Kitty Little back in the 1960’s and on through the 1980’s describes how the activities of the members of a nameless subversive organisation at Oxford University back in 1940 set the agenda for how the goal of a Federal European State would be achieved. In her pamphlet, `Treason at Westminster, she writes;
” At a meeting in Oxford in 1940, the head of the political section of the subversive organisation described it’s intentions, and MI5 received a report from Moscow the following year outlining the same plans. Members of the political section of the subversive organisation were to infiltrate the Political Parties. Those in the Conservative Party would lean to the left, those in Labour to the right. The reason being that the British it was said, distrust extremists. Those infiltrating the Conservatives were to be responsible for the `financial smokescreen` that would conceal the changeover from democracy to a Marxist Dictatorship. The description given fits entirely the manner in which the Heath Government took us into the EEC and explains the Tory party’s support for the Treaty establishing European Union.”
Throughout, the method has been infiltration from the top. Although the people of a `member state` may continue to vote in national elections, the candidates are chosen by a very small select number of people, and since WWII, large numbers of the subversive organisation have entered the various national parliaments. I think it is now safe to say that this insinuation of subversives is mirrored globally and particularly throughout the west, and since the great weakness in the `party` system is the manner in which candidates are chosen, this provides fertile ground for subversive activity. A further weakness in the electoral system of the UK for example has been the `packing` of marginal `seats` where strong Anti Marxist candidates are standing, with immigrants who vote the way their own `bought and paid for` leaders tell them. Thereby circumventing true democracy, and undermining those prepared to make a stand against the subversives bent on achieving the Federal Superstate as the initial goal, and the `World State` as the final solution to the `democratic question`.
The Damage Done
Over the past thirty or so years, the primary objectives of the EEC Commission has been to pave the way for the Treaty Establishing European Union, and thereafter the creation of the Federal Superstate. The laws emanating from Brussels have seriously damaged the industry and defenses of member states and have introduced many changes needed for the smooth transition to a dictatorship. The significance of handing over vast sums of taxpayers money to the EU, only to have them returned, should not be overlooked. The money returned is spent according to the wishes of the Commissioners , mostly on altering the infrastructure of the nation that it may more easily be split into smaller administrative units, thereafter to be more easily absorbed into the Federation..
In all of this, the complicity of national governments has been imperative, and the levels of treachery unprecedented in human history.
The Penultimate Step
Later this year, the Irish will be coerced into another referendum, and this time, there will be nothing left to chance. One way or the other, the Communitarian’s of the EU will fabricate their `yes` vote and with the Lisbon Treaty finally ratified, it will be full steam ahead towards the Supestate.
Within it’s murky pages, the Lisbon Treaty holds no provision for the continuation of the Monarchy (not that in this writer’s opinion that is any great loss, considering who and what they are) or National Governments. The Commissioners would become absolute rulers, with a Presidential `Puppet` fronting the tyranny. The Nation States of Europe will be divided into geographical regions divorced from all historical and traditional reality. The Map Of The Superstate to be, shows ten such regions in Britain including Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland, and four in the Irish Republic. It rejects entirely the existence of England.
The European Union is the `prototype` for the other world `Super Regions` intended to become a reality in the near future as illustrated in the diagram below.
The Final Solution
The current financial crisis is intended to terrify the people of the world into accepting World Government. The calls for `New World Order` and for `global solutions for global problems` are increasingly being heard and transmitted across the airwaves by the media sycophants in thrall to the Globalists. Meanwhile, the political puppets are playing their part as dictated to them by their Illuminati masters, and although the `economic` route appears to be the chosen vehicle to attain World Power for now, does anyone doubt that if they feel it expedient, they will launch a global war on a scale hitherto thought unimaginable. We are not there yet, but the world situation deteriorates daily.
This intended `Coup d’ Etat` with the installation of Satan’s’ World State the intended `Final Solution`, is by far the most far reaching and sweeping change seen in human affairs in millenia, yet we have not been told about it by our elected leaders. The reason for this deafening silence is quite simple. The `Family` controls virtually everything it needs to ensure that the secrecy of the `Great Work` remains hidden, right up until that time, when like all conspiracies, it must raise it’s head above the `ramparts` for all to see. This is happening now, but the mass of humanity is still in total denial, and seems to prefer to stick it’s collective head in the sand and hope all the bad things just go away. There are comparatively few involved in this criminal conspiracy and if all those who are unconsciously helping them stopped doing so, the plan would collapse.
As Kitty Little wrote, “Publicity is what they fear most and it will defeat them”.
Further Reading:
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Russia_China_cooperate_on_new_currency_proposals_Kremlin_999.html
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/index.htm
Treason At Westminster by Dr Kitty Little
Terrorism and the Illuminati by David Livingstone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_State (vital reading) the parallels are frightening.
Source: Rense
Posted by sakerfa on April 8, 2009
The term “New World Order” refers to the advent of a Totalitarian World Government. The current push towards achieving this nirvana has at it’s core, a powerful and secretive group known as the Illuminati, which has been conspiring to take control of the the world for millennia. They aim to do this by the introduction of an autonomous Global State, which would supersede and replace the sovereign nations of the world. Most if not all significant occurrences in politics and international business are manipulated, orchestrated and designed by this extremely influential cabal operating through many front organisations, such as the Bilderberg Group, The Club Of Rome, The Royal Institute For International Affairs and a plethora of others, all of which connect at the very top of the Illuminati’s symbolic pyramid.
But the idea of such a `One World State` is not new, and the origins go back into the very shadows of antiquity, and to a presence that has been a constant thorn in the side of mankind since it’s very beginning.
The One World State and the Temptation of Christ
The Bible tells us that the concept of a `One World State` was put forward by Satan to Christ as one of the `Temptations in the Wilderness`. We are told that it was firmly rejected by Jesus. Whether one accepts the Scriptures or not, it cannot be argued that Christ’s teachings, which involve personal freedom and free will, are totally incompatible with the concept of a `One World State` which would mandate and coerce diverse peoples and cultures into a centralised dictatorship. Satan’s offer was conditional on Christ’s worship of him. This temptation has been put to men throughout the ages, and it is not surprising to discover that many of the most influential men throughout history, and enthusiastic advocates of world government, have been Satanists. I speak of men such as Marx, Bakunin, Moses Hess, Stalin, to name but a few, together with a near full compliment of the more recent crop of Satan worshiping world `leaders` such as the Bush’s, Clintons, Blairs and the current `Saviour` of the `Free World` along with them`
The outlines of the centuries old conflict between good and evil were laid down in the Gospels in as much as `God is the god of truth`, while Satan is the `father of lies and there is no truth in him`. And still on yet another level “You must serve God or money. You cannot serve both”.
The present drive towards the setting up of a World State, that can increasingly be seen to be not atheist in construct, but Satanic and Anti God, has it’s origins in Ancient Babylon, with the coalescing of the `Kabballah`, but which in it’s modern form can be said to have begun gaining impetus in the 19th century, with the advent of Marxist Socialist theory, together with the growth of International Banking.
“Marxism you say is the bitterest opponent of Capitalism, which is sacred to us. For the simple reason that they are opposite poles, they deliver over to us the two poles of the earth and permit us to be it’s axis. Within these two opposites, we find ourselves identified in the Internationale. And these doctrines of the two poles of society, meet in their unity of purpose, the renewal of the world from above by the control of wealth, and from below by revolution”. The Comte de Saint Aulair in `Geneve contre la Paix` Libraire Plan, Paris 1936.
Communism
Among the requirements outlined in the `Communist Manifesto` for the establishment of a One World Dictatorship were:
1.The abolition of private property;
2.The abolition of the family;
3.The abolition of countries and nationalities;
4.The abolition of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, together with all religion and all morality.
In the context of the above, the word `Communist` is in many ways interchangeable with all those who aspire to a One World State, including Marxists, Zionists, Fabian Socialists, The United Nations, The Parliamentary Group for World Government, Trilateral Commission, CFR, Bilderberg Group, and even the World Council of Churches, plus a plethora of fellow travelers.
Marx formed the first `Internationale` with Mikhail Bakunin, the `God Father` of Anarchism who wrote,
“In this revolution, we will have to awaken the devil in people, to stir up the basest passions”.
Doesn’t this describe the world we live in today? All around is social decay and chaos, intended and designed to create the desired response in the people, that `something must be done`. We see violence, pornography, gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, all the vices extolled and normalised, together with the perverse promotion of homosexuality as a `valid lifestyle choice` and extreme feminism, disguised as `women’s rights` being used to socially and morally emasculate men, turning God’s natural order on it’s head, and weakening that element in society most likely to become an obstruction to the plan. More recently, the European Union tabled a motion to legalise Pedophilia. How far down this road do we need to be driven before people say enough? The Masonic Motto `Out of Chaos Order` aptly applies to our world today, and Satan appears to reign supreme.
When Satanists are initiated into the seventh degree, they swear that their overriding principal will be, ” Nothing is true and everything is permitted”.
Is this not indicative of the attitudes and conduct of our leaders and so called celebrities today? Whether they be Bankers, Politicians, Senior Police Officers, Professionals, Bureaucrats, Pop Stars or Film Actors, I believe that even the most cursory examination of all or any of the most prominent individuals active in the above spheres of influence will show that they are deeply connected to both Freemasonry and Satanism, and are working knowingly or otherwise, to bringing their `Master’s` goal of a tyrannical world state into being, and sooner rather than later.
In `On Hegel`, Marx wrote,
” Words I teach all mixed up in a devilish muddle. Thus anyone may think just what he chooses to think”.
And that is exactly why so many have followed `the yellow brick road`, towards the Dictatorial One World State that the followers of Satan advocate. They have been duped, confused, mesmerised. They have not thought out what it means to lose one’s freedom and national identity, or that the diabolical depopulation agenda is real and evidential and that the slaughter of millions is a very real possibility, to be achieved via a bewildering array of means not least of which might include a `stage managed` Third World War. The `FEMA` camps in the US and the massive number of similar installations throughout Europe http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8134 attest to the deadly seriousness of the situation. The `Dark One` is playing for keeps this time.
The Genetic Requirements
For the establishment of a World Dictatorship, there were three main requirements. The Communist and revolutionary teachings of Marx and associates must be integrated, disseminated and universally accepted. The destabilizing of nations morally and financially with the draining away of money and assets outside of the control of any nation would have to be achieved, along with the provision of a `Master Race` to provide the dictators and rulers.
In his book `Terrorism and The Illuminati`, Canadian Author David Livingstone describes such a `race` in the clearest of terms thus;
“The Illuminati represent the descendants of the Fallen Angels who inhabited the lost continent of Atlantis. These Fallen Angels interbred with humans, to whom they taught the Ancient Wisdom. Therefore, throughout the centuries, the Illuminati have been carefully intermarrying with each other, to preserve their “sacred” bloodline, handing on their esoteric knowledge from generation to generation. For this reason, they also refer to themselves as “the Family”.
There are thirteen core bloodlines at the top of this `Family` and it is these `people`, who allegedly trace their lineage back to Babylon, and beyond into the distant past, who intend to become `Again as Gods` once their `Dark Lord’s` World State becomes at last a reality. From one of these lines of decent, believed by many to be the Merovingian Bloodline, will come it is said, the supposedly beneficent `World Leader`, sometimes referred to as the `Anti Christ`.
These people or rather `things` see us as cattle, for culling and they have been very busy doing so throughout history. But today with the weaponry, medicines, vaccines and poisons available to them, it is difficult to see how their `Agenda` can be halted. Particularly when one considers the levels of apathy prevalent amongst what they term `The Sheeple`..
The British writer, `Bertrand Russell` had this to say back in 1954, “Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will continue until they become separate species. A revolt of the plebs against the masters would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton”.
Mr Russell wasn’t so far `off base` as a walk down any City High Street these days will confirm. However, knowing how deeply `connected` Bertrand Russell was, I am convinced he knew that the `rulers and ruled` have always been different species.
In `Treason at Westminster` Kitty Little writes, “By 1963, the UN Convention on Racial Discrimination had provided for the massive movements of population that would in turn provide for the interbreeding of genetically incompatible races, and for the positive discrimination against the native populations of European decent who were considered to be the greatest obstacle to their plans. A parallel UNESCO Convention against `discrimination` in education had provided the impetus for race, sex, parentage, local and national loyalties and all forms of religion as well as ability, to be regarded as forms of `discrimination` and therefore to be abolished. Children were deemed to have a `human right` to be protected from religious indoctrination. All this, in addition to the encouragement of oral contraceptives (that lead to physical, mental and moral degeneration) vasectomy, drug abuse, and the current fashion for genetic engineering with artificial insemination and `test tube` babies, was designed for the debasing of the human race”.
Financial Requirements
Taking financial control out of the hands of national governments was an absolute requirement if the Global Dictatorship was to become a reality. This was seen as a preliminary to the operation of a system of credit whereby only those in good standing with the `World Government` would receive the means of subsistence. Hence the fact that the EU, the prototype for World Government, has concentrated it’s focus on undermining national industries, taking control of food supplies, and by dictating farming and fishing policies, ensuring that the member nations remain dependent on the centralized European State for essentials.
Another example of how the `One Worlders` coerce and manipulate countries economically is the way the World Bank discriminates in favour only of those nations who comply with it’s genocidal depopulation goals, mandating the use of `family planning` via contraception, and implementing compulsory vaccination policies on whole swathes of people in the developing world, resulting in the mass sterilisation of native women as a primary goal, and chemically induced miscarriages as an important secondary `failsafe`..
The fanatical opposition to South Africa, before the takeover by the majority population can also be placed into context when one comprehends the `Agenda`. South Africa had and still has the largest gold reserves on this planet, and without taking control of that, the credit trap could not be sprung.
Development of the Plan
Since the launch of World Communism, the Illuminati’s plans have developed and matured. In 1928, the Communist Internationale presented a three stage plan for achieving World Government:
1.
Socialise the economies of all nations.
2.
Bring about the regional unions of various groupings of these nations.
3.
Amalgamate all these groupings into a final World Union.
In 1942 Stalin, in cooperation with Western Marxists was intent on laying the foundations of the UN. He defined the necessary goals for the final World Coup d ‘Etat as:
1.
Confuse, disorganise and destroy the forces of private capitalism.
2.
Bring all nations together into a single world system of economy.
3.
Force the industrialised nations to pour prolonged financial aid into the developing countries.
4.
Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to total World Government.
As any informed observer must be able to see, the plan is far advanced and in it’s final stages. Can anyone argue that goals one and three have not already been attained. Number four is partly fulfilled in the form of the European Union, and plans for a North American Union are beyond the planning stages. The European Single Currency or Euro is a `stepping stone` towards the World Currency, to be possibly called the `Phoenix`, symbolising Satan rising from the ashes of the old order to establish the new.
Working on the assumption that the point of no return would be reached with the establishment of European Union, the Illuminati in their obsession with all things Satanic, created a symbolic `Monetary Snake` that would penetrate into the heart of nations and undermine their power. They saw it primarily as an encirclement of Europe and in as much as, “When this ring closes, all the States Of Europe will be locked in it’s coil as in a powerful vice”. This statement was made in the 19th Century and it was considered that by `enchanting` Europe, it would ultimately encompass the whole world..
The current manipulated global financial crisis is a ruse to achieve a universal system of money, and with it, World Government will be achieved by `hook or crook`, by financial or murderous means. Either way, the point of no return seems long past..
The United Nations and The European Union
Together with UNESCO, the UN has insinuated itself globally into the very fabric of nation states, corrupting and undermining them at every turn. In the field of education for example, the intentions of the `One Worlders` who controlled UNESCO (and still do) were:
1.
To deride, ridicule and destroy any feelings of patriotism or loyalty to their country amongst the youth.
2.
Instill in the youth an outlook of internationalism that could easily be reconciled at a later date with the concept of a One World Dictatorship.
3.
Indoctrinate the youth to embrace Marxist Socialism (under different labels such as Social Democracy for example) as being the correct social and political outlook.
4..
Neutralize the youth against the religious influences in the home along with all concepts of rigid morality.
The establishment of a European Union has been critical for the Illuminati’s plans to create a `World Government` and the formation of the UN was seen as a necessary preliminary, in the same way as the EU and NAU are seen as stepping stones to World Government. When the UK entered the EEC back in 1973, the British people were told deliberate lies about the intentions and significance of that move. The now familiar deceits were new back then, the primary `mother of all lies` being no loss of sovereignty. The Treaty of Rome empowered the Commission to formulate Directives which took precedence over national laws. There was no requirement to make these laws public, even though they had to be implemented.
Since then, with each treacherous treaty signed, the peoples of Europe have been lead by the nose ever closer into a Federal `Rat Trap` from which there is no way out. Jean Monnet, the so called `father` of the EU put it like this;
“Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation’.
Last years Irish referendum debacle exposed the EU for what it is; A Totalitarian State in the making, albeit of the `drip by drip variety`. It’s refusal to accept the `democratic` will of the Irish people is little more than a precursor of what is to come.
The Treaty of Lisbon had been absolutely critical for the Illuminati/Communist plans for the World Dictatorship, and having come thus far, it was clear even before the Irish Referendum that the `Euro Marxists` would not allow something as insignificant as Democracy to get in their way. But the question begs to be asked; “How on earth have they managed to come this far without detection ?
The research of Dr Kitty Little back in the 1960’s and on through the 1980’s describes how the activities of the members of a nameless subversive organisation at Oxford University back in 1940 set the agenda for how the goal of a Federal European State would be achieved. In her pamphlet, `Treason at Westminster, she writes;
” At a meeting in Oxford in 1940, the head of the political section of the subversive organisation described it’s intentions, and MI5 received a report from Moscow the following year outlining the same plans. Members of the political section of the subversive organisation were to infiltrate the Political Parties. Those in the Conservative Party would lean to the left, those in Labour to the right. The reason being that the British it was said, distrust extremists. Those infiltrating the Conservatives were to be responsible for the `financial smokescreen` that would conceal the changeover from democracy to a Marxist Dictatorship. The description given fits entirely the manner in which the Heath Government took us into the EEC and explains the Tory party’s support for the Treaty establishing European Union.”
Throughout, the method has been infiltration from the top. Although the people of a `member state` may continue to vote in national elections, the candidates are chosen by a very small select number of people, and since WWII, large numbers of the subversive organisation have entered the various national parliaments. I think it is now safe to say that this insinuation of subversives is mirrored globally and particularly throughout the west, and since the great weakness in the `party` system is the manner in which candidates are chosen, this provides fertile ground for subversive activity. A further weakness in the electoral system of the UK for example has been the `packing` of marginal `seats` where strong Anti Marxist candidates are standing, with immigrants who vote the way their own `bought and paid for` leaders tell them. Thereby circumventing true democracy, and undermining those prepared to make a stand against the subversives bent on achieving the Federal Superstate as the initial goal, and the `World State` as the final solution to the `democratic question`.
The Damage Done
Over the past thirty or so years, the primary objectives of the EEC Commission has been to pave the way for the Treaty Establishing European Union, and thereafter the creation of the Federal Superstate. The laws emanating from Brussels have seriously damaged the industry and defenses of member states and have introduced many changes needed for the smooth transition to a dictatorship. The significance of handing over vast sums of taxpayers money to the EU, only to have them returned, should not be overlooked. The money returned is spent according to the wishes of the Commissioners , mostly on altering the infrastructure of the nation that it may more easily be split into smaller administrative units, thereafter to be more easily absorbed into the Federation..
In all of this, the complicity of national governments has been imperative, and the levels of treachery unprecedented in human history.
The Penultimate Step
Later this year, the Irish will be coerced into another referendum, and this time, there will be nothing left to chance. One way or the other, the Communitarian’s of the EU will fabricate their `yes` vote and with the Lisbon Treaty finally ratified, it will be full steam ahead towards the Supestate.
Within it’s murky pages, the Lisbon Treaty holds no provision for the continuation of the Monarchy (not that in this writer’s opinion that is any great loss, considering who and what they are) or National Governments. The Commissioners would become absolute rulers, with a Presidential `Puppet` fronting the tyranny. The Nation States of Europe will be divided into geographical regions divorced from all historical and traditional reality. The Map Of The Superstate to be, shows ten such regions in Britain including Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland, and four in the Irish Republic. It rejects entirely the existence of England.
The European Union is the `prototype` for the other world `Super Regions` intended to become a reality in the near future as illustrated in the diagram below.
The Final Solution
The current financial crisis is intended to terrify the people of the world into accepting World Government. The calls for `New World Order` and for `global solutions for global problems` are increasingly being heard and transmitted across the airwaves by the media sycophants in thrall to the Globalists. Meanwhile, the political puppets are playing their part as dictated to them by their Illuminati masters, and although the `economic` route appears to be the chosen vehicle to attain World Power for now, does anyone doubt that if they feel it expedient, they will launch a global war on a scale hitherto thought unimaginable. We are not there yet, but the world situation deteriorates daily.
This intended `Coup d’ Etat` with the installation of Satan’s’ World State the intended `Final Solution`, is by far the most far reaching and sweeping change seen in human affairs in millenia, yet we have not been told about it by our elected leaders. The reason for this deafening silence is quite simple. The `Family` controls virtually everything it needs to ensure that the secrecy of the `Great Work` remains hidden, right up until that time, when like all conspiracies, it must raise it’s head above the `ramparts` for all to see. This is happening now, but the mass of humanity is still in total denial, and seems to prefer to stick it’s collective head in the sand and hope all the bad things just go away. There are comparatively few involved in this criminal conspiracy and if all those who are unconsciously helping them stopped doing so, the plan would collapse.
As Kitty Little wrote, “Publicity is what they fear most and it will defeat them”.
Further Reading:
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Russia_China_cooperate_on_new_currency_proposals_Kremlin_999.html
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/index.htm
Treason At Westminster by Dr Kitty Little
Terrorism and the Illuminati by David Livingstone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_State (vital reading) the parallels are frightening.
Source: Rense
“Geo-Engineering” The Environment
The Government Is Already “Geo-Engineering” The Environment
Posted by sakerfa on April 9, 2009
The Associated Press reports today that the Obama administration has held discussions regarding the possibility of “geo-engineering” the earth’s climate to counter global warming by “shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays.” However, such programs are already being conducted by government-affiliated universities, government agencies, and on a mass scale through chemtrail spraying.The AP report states that Obama’s science advisor John Holdren is pushing for radical terra forming programs to be explored such as creating an “artificial volcano”. Despite Holdren’s admission that such measures could have “grave side effects,” he added that, “we might get desperate enough to want to use it.”
“Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea,” reports AP.
“The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says “it is prudent to consider geoengineering’s potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment.”
However, a study of past and ongoing upper atmosphere aerosol programs confirms that the government has been active in this field for years.
The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program was created in 1989 with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and is sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Science and managed by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research.
One of ARM’s programs, entitled Indirect and Semi-Direct Aerosol Campaign (ISDAC), is aimed at measuring “cloud simulations” and “aerosol retrievals”.
Another program under the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Science Program is directed towards, “developing comprehensive understanding of the atmospheric processes that control the transport, transformation, and fate of energy related trace chemicals and particulate matter.”
The DOE website states that, “The current focus of the program is aerosol radiative forcing of climate: aerosol formation and evolution and aerosol properties that affect direct and indirect influences on climate and climate change.”
U.S. government scientists are already bombarding the skies with the acid-rain causing pollutant sulphur dioxide in an attempt to fight global warming by “geo-engineering” the planet, despite the fact that injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere carries with it a host of both known and unknown dangers.
The proposal to disperse sulphur dioxide in an attempt to reflect sunlight was discussed in a September 2008 London Guardian article entitled, Geoengineering: The radical ideas to combat global warming, in which Ken Caldeira, a leading climate scientist based at the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, promoted the idea of injecting the atmosphere with aerosols.
“One approach is to insert “scatterers” into the stratosphere,” states the article. “Caldeira cites an idea to deploy jumbo jets into the upper atmosphere and deposit clouds of tiny particles there, such as sulphur dioxide. Dispersing around 1m tonnes of sulphur dioxide per year across 10m square kilometres of the atmosphere would be enough to reflect away sufficient amounts of sunlight.”
Experiments similar to Caldeira’s proposal are already being carried out by U.S. government -backed scientists, such as those at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C, who last year began conducting studies which involved shooting huge amounts of particulate matter, in this case “porous-walled glass microspheres,” into the stratosphere.
The project is closely tied to an idea by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, who “proposed sending aircraft 747s to dump huge quantities of sulfur particles into the far-reaches of the stratosphere to cool down the atmosphere.”
Such programs merely scratch the surface of what is likely to be a gargantuan and overarching black-budget funded project to geo-engineer the planet, with little or no care for the unknown environmental consequences this could engender.
What is known about what happens when the environment is loaded with sulphur dioxide is bad enough, since the compound is the main component of acid rain, which according to the EPA “Causes acidification of lakes and streams and contributes to the damage of trees at high elevations (for example, red spruce trees above 2,000 feet) and many sensitive forest soils. In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation’s cultural heritage.”
The health effects of bombarding the skies with sulphur dioxide alone are enough to raise serious questions about whether such programs should even be allowed to proceed.
The following health effects are linked with exposure to sulphur.
- Neurological effects and behavioral changes
- Disturbance of blood circulation
- Heart damage
- Effects on eyes and eyesight
- Reproductive failure
- Damage to immune systems
- Stomach and gastrointestinal disorder
- Damage to liver and kidney functions
- Hearing defects
- Disturbance of the hormonal metabolism
- Dermatological effects
- Suffocation and lung embolism
According to the LennTech website, “Laboratory tests with test animals have indicated that sulfur can cause serious vascular damage in veins of the brains, the heart and the kidneys. These tests have also indicated that certain forms of sulfur can cause foetal damage and congenital effects. Mothers can even carry sulfur poisoning over to their children through mother milk. Finally, sulfur can damage the internal enzyme systems of animals.”
Fred Singer, president of the Science Environmental Policy Project and a skeptic of man-made global warming theories, warns that the consequences of tinkering with the planet’s delicate eco-system could have far-reaching dangers.
“If you do this on a continuous basis, you would depress the ozone layer and cause all kinds of other problems that people would rather avoid,” said Singer.
Even Greenpeace’s chief UK scientist - a staunch advocate of the man-made global warming explanation - Doug Parr has slammed attempts to geo-engineer the planet as “outlandish” and “dangerous”.
Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, who recently proposed a bizarre plan to send spaceships into the upper atmosphere that would be used to block out the Sun, admits that geo-engineering could cause “conflicts between nations if geoengineering projects go wrong.”
Given all the immediate dangers associated with bombarding the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide, along with the unknown dangers of other geo-engineering projects, many people are concerned that “chemtrails” are a secret component of the same agenda to alter the Earth’s eco-system.
This graphic proposes, “Spraying aluminum powder and barium oxide into high levels of the atmosphere, again delivered by aircraft, to increase planetary reflectance (albedo) and cloud cover.” High levels of barium have been found in substances associated with chemtrails.
Reports of chemtrails, jet plumes emitted from planes that hang in the air for hours and do not dissipate, often blanketing the sky in criss-cross patterns, have increased dramatically over the last 10 years. Many have speculated that they are part of a government program to alter climate, inoculate humans against certain pathogens, or even to toxify humans as part of a population reduction agenda.
In conducting Google searches, one finds discussion, such as this example, of using sulphur dioxide as a jet fuel additive to be dispersed over the world during routine commercial flights.
“I suggest that both the sulphur dioxide and the silica particles could be delivered into the stratosphere by dissolving an additive in jet aviation fuel,” writes engineer John Gorman, who has conducted experiments to test the feasibility of such a scenario.
“We would want to burn fuel containing the additive specifically when the aircraft was cruising in the lower stratosphere,” he adds.
Earlier this year, KSLA news investigation found that a substance that fell to earth from a high altitude chemtrail contained high levels of Barium (6.8 ppm) and Lead (8.2 ppm) as well as trace amounts of other chemicals including arsenic, chromium, cadmium, selenium and silver. Of these, all but one are metals, some are toxic while several are rarely or never found in nature.
The newscast focuses on Barium, which its research shows is a “hallmark of chemtrails.” KSLA found Barium levels in its samples at 6.8 ppm or “more than six times the toxic level set by the EPA.” The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality confirmed that the high levels of Barium were “very unusual,” but commented that “proving the source was a whole other matter” in its discussion with KSLA.
KSLA also asked Mark Ryan, Director of the Poison Control Center, about the effects of Barium on the human body. Ryan commented that “short term exposure can lead to anything from stomach to chest pains and that long term exposure causes blood pressure problems.” The Poison Control Center further reported that long-term exposure, as with any harmful substance, would contribute to weakening the immune system, which many speculate is the purpose of such man-made chemical trails.
Indeed, barium oxide has cropped up repeatedly as a contaminant from suspected geoengineering experimentation.
KSLA also put aerosolized-chemical testing in its historical context, citing a voluminous number of unclassified tests exposed in 1977 Senate hearings. The tests included experimenting with biochemical compounds on the public. KSLA reports that “239 populated areas were contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969.”
One of the accepted truisms of scientific study is the fact that if scientists are proposing an idea, then those scientists with access to the bottomless pit of black-budget secret government funding are already doing it..
It is highly likely that chemtrails are merely one manifestation of “geo-engineering” that is taking place without proper debate, notification or any form of legality, and with a callous disregard for the potential dangers to both our health and our environment.
Source: InfoWars
Posted by sakerfa on April 9, 2009
The Associated Press reports today that the Obama administration has held discussions regarding the possibility of “geo-engineering” the earth’s climate to counter global warming by “shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays.” However, such programs are already being conducted by government-affiliated universities, government agencies, and on a mass scale through chemtrail spraying.The AP report states that Obama’s science advisor John Holdren is pushing for radical terra forming programs to be explored such as creating an “artificial volcano”. Despite Holdren’s admission that such measures could have “grave side effects,” he added that, “we might get desperate enough to want to use it.”
“Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea,” reports AP.
“The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says “it is prudent to consider geoengineering’s potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment.”
However, a study of past and ongoing upper atmosphere aerosol programs confirms that the government has been active in this field for years.
The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program was created in 1989 with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and is sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Science and managed by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research.
One of ARM’s programs, entitled Indirect and Semi-Direct Aerosol Campaign (ISDAC), is aimed at measuring “cloud simulations” and “aerosol retrievals”.
Another program under the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Science Program is directed towards, “developing comprehensive understanding of the atmospheric processes that control the transport, transformation, and fate of energy related trace chemicals and particulate matter.”
The DOE website states that, “The current focus of the program is aerosol radiative forcing of climate: aerosol formation and evolution and aerosol properties that affect direct and indirect influences on climate and climate change.”
U.S. government scientists are already bombarding the skies with the acid-rain causing pollutant sulphur dioxide in an attempt to fight global warming by “geo-engineering” the planet, despite the fact that injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere carries with it a host of both known and unknown dangers.
The proposal to disperse sulphur dioxide in an attempt to reflect sunlight was discussed in a September 2008 London Guardian article entitled, Geoengineering: The radical ideas to combat global warming, in which Ken Caldeira, a leading climate scientist based at the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, promoted the idea of injecting the atmosphere with aerosols.
“One approach is to insert “scatterers” into the stratosphere,” states the article. “Caldeira cites an idea to deploy jumbo jets into the upper atmosphere and deposit clouds of tiny particles there, such as sulphur dioxide. Dispersing around 1m tonnes of sulphur dioxide per year across 10m square kilometres of the atmosphere would be enough to reflect away sufficient amounts of sunlight.”
Experiments similar to Caldeira’s proposal are already being carried out by U.S. government -backed scientists, such as those at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C, who last year began conducting studies which involved shooting huge amounts of particulate matter, in this case “porous-walled glass microspheres,” into the stratosphere.
The project is closely tied to an idea by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, who “proposed sending aircraft 747s to dump huge quantities of sulfur particles into the far-reaches of the stratosphere to cool down the atmosphere.”
Such programs merely scratch the surface of what is likely to be a gargantuan and overarching black-budget funded project to geo-engineer the planet, with little or no care for the unknown environmental consequences this could engender.
What is known about what happens when the environment is loaded with sulphur dioxide is bad enough, since the compound is the main component of acid rain, which according to the EPA “Causes acidification of lakes and streams and contributes to the damage of trees at high elevations (for example, red spruce trees above 2,000 feet) and many sensitive forest soils. In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation’s cultural heritage.”
The health effects of bombarding the skies with sulphur dioxide alone are enough to raise serious questions about whether such programs should even be allowed to proceed.
The following health effects are linked with exposure to sulphur.
- Neurological effects and behavioral changes
- Disturbance of blood circulation
- Heart damage
- Effects on eyes and eyesight
- Reproductive failure
- Damage to immune systems
- Stomach and gastrointestinal disorder
- Damage to liver and kidney functions
- Hearing defects
- Disturbance of the hormonal metabolism
- Dermatological effects
- Suffocation and lung embolism
According to the LennTech website, “Laboratory tests with test animals have indicated that sulfur can cause serious vascular damage in veins of the brains, the heart and the kidneys. These tests have also indicated that certain forms of sulfur can cause foetal damage and congenital effects. Mothers can even carry sulfur poisoning over to their children through mother milk. Finally, sulfur can damage the internal enzyme systems of animals.”
Fred Singer, president of the Science Environmental Policy Project and a skeptic of man-made global warming theories, warns that the consequences of tinkering with the planet’s delicate eco-system could have far-reaching dangers.
“If you do this on a continuous basis, you would depress the ozone layer and cause all kinds of other problems that people would rather avoid,” said Singer.
Even Greenpeace’s chief UK scientist - a staunch advocate of the man-made global warming explanation - Doug Parr has slammed attempts to geo-engineer the planet as “outlandish” and “dangerous”.
Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, who recently proposed a bizarre plan to send spaceships into the upper atmosphere that would be used to block out the Sun, admits that geo-engineering could cause “conflicts between nations if geoengineering projects go wrong.”
Given all the immediate dangers associated with bombarding the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide, along with the unknown dangers of other geo-engineering projects, many people are concerned that “chemtrails” are a secret component of the same agenda to alter the Earth’s eco-system.
This graphic proposes, “Spraying aluminum powder and barium oxide into high levels of the atmosphere, again delivered by aircraft, to increase planetary reflectance (albedo) and cloud cover.” High levels of barium have been found in substances associated with chemtrails.
Reports of chemtrails, jet plumes emitted from planes that hang in the air for hours and do not dissipate, often blanketing the sky in criss-cross patterns, have increased dramatically over the last 10 years. Many have speculated that they are part of a government program to alter climate, inoculate humans against certain pathogens, or even to toxify humans as part of a population reduction agenda.
In conducting Google searches, one finds discussion, such as this example, of using sulphur dioxide as a jet fuel additive to be dispersed over the world during routine commercial flights.
“I suggest that both the sulphur dioxide and the silica particles could be delivered into the stratosphere by dissolving an additive in jet aviation fuel,” writes engineer John Gorman, who has conducted experiments to test the feasibility of such a scenario.
“We would want to burn fuel containing the additive specifically when the aircraft was cruising in the lower stratosphere,” he adds.
Earlier this year, KSLA news investigation found that a substance that fell to earth from a high altitude chemtrail contained high levels of Barium (6.8 ppm) and Lead (8.2 ppm) as well as trace amounts of other chemicals including arsenic, chromium, cadmium, selenium and silver. Of these, all but one are metals, some are toxic while several are rarely or never found in nature.
The newscast focuses on Barium, which its research shows is a “hallmark of chemtrails.” KSLA found Barium levels in its samples at 6.8 ppm or “more than six times the toxic level set by the EPA.” The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality confirmed that the high levels of Barium were “very unusual,” but commented that “proving the source was a whole other matter” in its discussion with KSLA.
KSLA also asked Mark Ryan, Director of the Poison Control Center, about the effects of Barium on the human body. Ryan commented that “short term exposure can lead to anything from stomach to chest pains and that long term exposure causes blood pressure problems.” The Poison Control Center further reported that long-term exposure, as with any harmful substance, would contribute to weakening the immune system, which many speculate is the purpose of such man-made chemical trails.
Indeed, barium oxide has cropped up repeatedly as a contaminant from suspected geoengineering experimentation.
KSLA also put aerosolized-chemical testing in its historical context, citing a voluminous number of unclassified tests exposed in 1977 Senate hearings. The tests included experimenting with biochemical compounds on the public. KSLA reports that “239 populated areas were contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969.”
One of the accepted truisms of scientific study is the fact that if scientists are proposing an idea, then those scientists with access to the bottomless pit of black-budget secret government funding are already doing it..
It is highly likely that chemtrails are merely one manifestation of “geo-engineering” that is taking place without proper debate, notification or any form of legality, and with a callous disregard for the potential dangers to both our health and our environment.
Source: InfoWars
How Freedom Was Lost
How Freedom Was Lost - Paul Craig Roberts
Posted by sakerfa on April 7, 2009
Americans no longer know what freedom is. Historically, the definition of a free person is one who owns his own labor. Serfs and slaves were not free, because they do not own all of their own labor.________
Envy, one of the seven deadly sins, is not unknown to Americans.
My last column noted the absurdity of Obama lumping the upper middle class in with the rich. The income distribution in the US is so skewed that the rich are found in the top one percent. The truly rich with the accoutrements associated with that class are in the top half of one percent.
Those points were lost on those Americans who regard anyone slightly better off than themselves as “rich.” A slightly bigger house in a better neighborhood, a BMW instead of a Toyota, and the ability to go on vacation without going into debt is all it takes to be rich in the minds of those whose eyes are green with envy.
This observation led me to the realization that freedom has been lost to envy.
Americans no longer know what freedom is. Historically, the definition of a free person is one who owns his own labor. Serfs and slaves were not free, because they do not own all of their own labor.
An income tax is inconsistent with the historical definition of freedom. Today in America government has a claim on every person’s labor, just as feudal lords, the government of that time, had claims on the labor of serfs and nineteenth century plantation owners had on slaves.
Understanding that an income tax was serfdom, our Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution in a way that prevented an income tax. This was altered in 1913 with a constitutional amendment that some claim was not properly carried out.
This first step in the enserfment of the American people was taken in envy. The rich were the targets of the income tax. Once in place, the income tax was extended by law and by inflation until ordinary people were being taxed at rates several times as high as the original top rate for the rich..
After almost 100 years of income tax, generations have been born into serfdom and accept the government’s claim on their labor as normal, even just. Some say they don’t mind paying taxes to help the poor. They should look to see what share goes to the poor and what share to war, armaments, and the bailout of the Treasury Secretary’s rich friends.
The problem with a tax on a person’s labor is that it subtracts from a person’s independence. Without independence, it is difficult to exercise constitutionally protected rights, such as free speech.
In former times, family farms and businesses provided a measure of independence for many Americans. Today, most work for wages and salaries. The only real avenue to independence is to save part of one’s earnings and acquire enough wealth upon which to live. For most Americans, the government’s claim on their labor makes this impossible.
This is even more the case when government fails in its regulatory responsibilities and allows banksters to join in the plunder of the hard-pressed citizens.
The inheritance tax, another product of envy, has also done much to destroy the independence of the citizenry. For example, family owned independent media, once a source of independent power that held government accountable, has been lost to corporate media chains in order that families could pay inheritance taxes.
The same people who complain of rule by giant corporations support the inheritance taxes that transformed the face of American business. A family owned business has community roots and loyalties. A corporation’s owners are spread across the country and abroad. Their interest is the share price. The consequence has been that many corporations no longer even have national loyalties.
A corporation’s existence is not threatened by inheritance taxes, but a family owned business is. An inheritance tax is a tax on assets accumulated from income that has already been taxed. To raise the cash to pay the inheritance tax, businesses have to be sold or taken public. Eventually, their ownership is divorced from the community.
In the past, great wealth accumulations found their way into endowments of private universities, museums and public libraries, institutions that also contributed to the independence of citizens from government control.
Today even private universities and tenured faculty have lost pieces of their independence. There are subjects that cannot be investigated and opinions that cannot be expressed. We can rationalize the inhibitions by saying that they are proper subjects for censorship. However, once the process of suppressing thought and speech begins, it spreads.
The Tax Foundation has calculated that tax freedom day arrives on May
29 this year if the federal government’s budget deficit is included, as it should be, in the tax burden. That means that Americans work 42 percent of the year for the government, a higher tax rate than was endured by medieval serfs and one approaching that of a nineteenth century slave.
In the nineteenth century, there were “underground railways” that slaves could use to escape to freedom. In our time, “underground railways” are known as “tax havens.” Just as slave owners sought to abolish “underground railways,” our owners today seek to outlaw “tax havens.”
Some Americans will reject these analogies. They can test the validity of the analogies by refusing the government’s claim on their labor.. Perhaps the best evidence of American serfdom is that most Americans do not even have the ability to test the validity of the analogy, because the government takes its share in withholding tax before wages and salaries are paid to us serfs.
Source: Information Clearing House
Posted by sakerfa on April 7, 2009
Americans no longer know what freedom is. Historically, the definition of a free person is one who owns his own labor. Serfs and slaves were not free, because they do not own all of their own labor.________
Envy, one of the seven deadly sins, is not unknown to Americans.
My last column noted the absurdity of Obama lumping the upper middle class in with the rich. The income distribution in the US is so skewed that the rich are found in the top one percent. The truly rich with the accoutrements associated with that class are in the top half of one percent.
Those points were lost on those Americans who regard anyone slightly better off than themselves as “rich.” A slightly bigger house in a better neighborhood, a BMW instead of a Toyota, and the ability to go on vacation without going into debt is all it takes to be rich in the minds of those whose eyes are green with envy.
This observation led me to the realization that freedom has been lost to envy.
Americans no longer know what freedom is. Historically, the definition of a free person is one who owns his own labor. Serfs and slaves were not free, because they do not own all of their own labor.
An income tax is inconsistent with the historical definition of freedom. Today in America government has a claim on every person’s labor, just as feudal lords, the government of that time, had claims on the labor of serfs and nineteenth century plantation owners had on slaves.
Understanding that an income tax was serfdom, our Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution in a way that prevented an income tax. This was altered in 1913 with a constitutional amendment that some claim was not properly carried out.
This first step in the enserfment of the American people was taken in envy. The rich were the targets of the income tax. Once in place, the income tax was extended by law and by inflation until ordinary people were being taxed at rates several times as high as the original top rate for the rich..
After almost 100 years of income tax, generations have been born into serfdom and accept the government’s claim on their labor as normal, even just. Some say they don’t mind paying taxes to help the poor. They should look to see what share goes to the poor and what share to war, armaments, and the bailout of the Treasury Secretary’s rich friends.
The problem with a tax on a person’s labor is that it subtracts from a person’s independence. Without independence, it is difficult to exercise constitutionally protected rights, such as free speech.
In former times, family farms and businesses provided a measure of independence for many Americans. Today, most work for wages and salaries. The only real avenue to independence is to save part of one’s earnings and acquire enough wealth upon which to live. For most Americans, the government’s claim on their labor makes this impossible.
This is even more the case when government fails in its regulatory responsibilities and allows banksters to join in the plunder of the hard-pressed citizens.
The inheritance tax, another product of envy, has also done much to destroy the independence of the citizenry. For example, family owned independent media, once a source of independent power that held government accountable, has been lost to corporate media chains in order that families could pay inheritance taxes.
The same people who complain of rule by giant corporations support the inheritance taxes that transformed the face of American business. A family owned business has community roots and loyalties. A corporation’s owners are spread across the country and abroad. Their interest is the share price. The consequence has been that many corporations no longer even have national loyalties.
A corporation’s existence is not threatened by inheritance taxes, but a family owned business is. An inheritance tax is a tax on assets accumulated from income that has already been taxed. To raise the cash to pay the inheritance tax, businesses have to be sold or taken public. Eventually, their ownership is divorced from the community.
In the past, great wealth accumulations found their way into endowments of private universities, museums and public libraries, institutions that also contributed to the independence of citizens from government control.
Today even private universities and tenured faculty have lost pieces of their independence. There are subjects that cannot be investigated and opinions that cannot be expressed. We can rationalize the inhibitions by saying that they are proper subjects for censorship. However, once the process of suppressing thought and speech begins, it spreads.
The Tax Foundation has calculated that tax freedom day arrives on May
29 this year if the federal government’s budget deficit is included, as it should be, in the tax burden. That means that Americans work 42 percent of the year for the government, a higher tax rate than was endured by medieval serfs and one approaching that of a nineteenth century slave.
In the nineteenth century, there were “underground railways” that slaves could use to escape to freedom. In our time, “underground railways” are known as “tax havens.” Just as slave owners sought to abolish “underground railways,” our owners today seek to outlaw “tax havens.”
Some Americans will reject these analogies. They can test the validity of the analogies by refusing the government’s claim on their labor.. Perhaps the best evidence of American serfdom is that most Americans do not even have the ability to test the validity of the analogy, because the government takes its share in withholding tax before wages and salaries are paid to us serfs.
Source: Information Clearing House
A Global Currency and World Government
The Financial New World Order - Towards a Global Currency and World Government
Posted by sakerfa on April 7, 2009
Introduction
APRIL 07, 2009 “Global Research” — -Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the US dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity.” SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights, are “a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund.” As the Telegraph reported, “the G20 leaders have activated the IMF’s power to create money and begin global “quantitative easing”. In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.”[1]
The article continued in stating that, “There is now a world currency in waiting. In time, SDRs are likely to evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the People’s Bank of China.” Further, “The creation of a Financial Stability Board looks like the first step towards a global financial regulator,” or, in other words, a global central bank.
It is important to take a closer look at these “solutions” being proposed and implemented in the midst of the current global financial crisis. These are not new suggestions, as they have been in the plans of the global elite for a long time. However, in the midst of the current crisis, the elite have fast-tracked their agenda of forging a New World Order in finance. It is important to address the background to these proposed and imposed “solutions” and what effects they will have on the International Monetary System (IMS) and the global political economy as a whole.
A New Bretton-Woods
In October of 2008, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK, said that we “must have a new Bretton Woods - building a new international financial architecture for the years ahead.” He continued in saying that, “we must now reform the international financial system around the agreed principles of transparency, integrity, responsibility, good housekeeping and co-operation across borders.” An article in the Telegraph reported that Gordon Brown would want “to see the IMF reformed to become a ‘global central bank’ closely monitoring the international economy and financial system.”[2]
On October 17, 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he said, “This week, European leaders came together to propose the guiding principles that we believe should underpin this new Bretton Woods: transparency, sound banking, responsibility, integrity and global governance. We agreed that urgent decisions implementing these principles should be made to root out the irresponsible and often undisclosed lending at the heart of our problems. To do this, we need cross-border supervision of financial institutions; shared global standards for accounting and regulation; a more responsible approach to executive remuneration that rewards hard work, effort and enterprise but not irresponsible risk-taking; and the renewal of our international institutions to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy.[Emphasis added]”[3]
In early October 2008, it was reported that, “as the world’s central bankers gather this week in Washington DC for an IMF-World Bank conference to discuss the crisis, the big question they face is whether it is time to establish a global economic “policeman” to ensure the crash of 2008 can never be repeated.” Further, “any organisation with the power to police the global economy would have to include representatives of every major country – a United Nations of economic regulation.” A former governor of the Bank of England suggested that, “the answer might already be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS),” however, “The problem is that it has no teeth. The IMF tends to couch its warnings about economic problems in very diplomatic language, but the BIS is more independent and much better placed to deal with this if it is given the power to do so.”[4]
Emergence of Regional Currencies
On January 1, 1999, the European Union established the Euro as its regional currency. The Euro has grown in prominence over the past several years. However, it is not to be the only regional currency in the world. There are moves and calls for other regional currencies throughout the world.
In 2007, Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, ran an article titled, The End of National Currency, in which it began by discussing the volatility of international currency markets, and that very few “real” solutions have been proposed to address successive currency crises. The author poses the question, “will restoring lost sovereignty to governments put an end to financial instability?” He answers by stating that, “This is a dangerous misdiagnosis,” and that, “The right course is not to return to a mythical past of monetary sovereignty, with governments controlling local interest and exchange rates in blissful ignorance of the rest of the world. Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory. National currencies and global markets simply do not mix; together they make a deadly brew of currency crises and geopolitical tension and create ready pretexts for damaging protectionism. In order to globalize safely, countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of today’s instability.”
The author explains that, “Monetary nationalism is simply incompatible with globalization. It has always been, even if this has only become apparent since the 1970s, when all the world’s governments rendered their currencies intrinsically worthless.” The author states that, “Since economic development outside the process of globalization is no longer possible, countries should abandon monetary nationalism. Governments should replace national currencies with the dollar or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate to produce a new multinational currency over a comparably large and economically diversified area.” Essentially, according to the author, the solution lies in regional currencies.[5]
In October of 2008, “European Central Bank council member Ewald Nowotny said a “tri-polar” global currency system is developing between Asia, Europe and the U.S. and that he’s skeptical the U.S. dollar’s centrality can be revived.”[6]
The Union of South American Nations
The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) was established on May 23, 2008, with the headquarters to be in Ecuador, the South American Parliament to be in Bolivia, and the Bank of the South to be in Venezuela. As the BBC reported, “The leaders of 12 South American nations have formed a regional body aimed at boosting economic and political integration in the region,” and that, “The Unasur members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.”[7]
The week following the announcement of the Union, it was reported that, “Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday that South American nations will seek a common currency as part of the region’s integration efforts following the creation of the Union of South American Nations.” He was quoted as saying, “We are proceeding so as, in the future, we have a common central bank and a common currency.”[8]
The Gulf Cooperation Council and a Regional Currency
In 2005, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional trade bloc among Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), announced the goal of creating a single common currency by 2010. It was reported that, “An economically united and efficient GCC is clearly a more interesting proposition for larger companies than each individual economy, especially given the impediments to trade evident within the region. This is why trade relations within the GCC have been a core focus of late.” Further, “The natural extension of this trend for increased integration is to introduce a common currency in order to further facilitate trade between the different countries.” It was announced that, “the region’s central bankers had agreed to pursue monetary union in a similar fashion to the rules used in Europe.”[9]
In June of 2008, it was reported that, “Gulf Arab central bankers agreed to create the nucleus of a joint central bank next year in a major step forward for monetary union but signaled that a new common currency would not be in circulation by an agreed 2010 target.”[10] In 2002, it was announced that the “Gulf states say they are seeking advice from the European Central Bank on their monetary union programme.” In February of 2008, Oman announced that it would not be joining the monetary union. In November of 2008, it was announced that the “Final monetary union draft says Gulf central bank will be independent from governments of member states.”[11]
In March of 2009, it was reported that, “The GCC should not rush into forming a single currency as member states need to work out the framework for a regional central bank, Saudi Arabia’s Central Bank Governor Muhammad Al Jasser.” Jasser was further quoted as saying, “It took the European Union 45 years to put together a single currency. We should not rush.” In 2008, with the global financial crisis, new problems were posed for the GCC initiative, as “Pressure mounted last year on the GCC members to drop their currency pegs as inflation accelerated above 10 per cent in five of the six countries. All of the member states except Kuwait peg their currencies to the dollar and tend to follow the US Federal Reserve when setting interest rates.”[12]
An Asian Monetary Union
In 1997, the Brookings Institution, a prominent American think tank, discussed the possibilities of an East Asian Monetary Union, stating that, “the question for the 21st century is whether analogous monetary blocs will form in East Asia (and, for that matter, in the Western Hemisphere). With the dollar, the yen, and the single European currency floating against one another, other small open economies will be tempted to link up to one of the three.” However, “the linkage will be possible only if accompanied by radical changes in institutional arrangements like those contemplated by the European Union. The spread of capital mobility and political democratization will make it prohibitively difficult to peg exchange rates unilaterally. Pegging will require international cooperation, and effective cooperation will require measures akin to monetary unification.”[13]
In 2001, Asia Times Online wrote an article discussing a speech given by economist Robert A. Mundell at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, at which he stated that, “[t]he “Asean plus three” (the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus China, Japan, and Korea) ‘should look to the European Union as a model for closer integration of monetary policy, trade and eventually, currency integration’.”[14]
On May 6, 2005, the website of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced that, “China, Japan, South Korea and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to expand their network of bilateral currency swaps into what could become a virtual Asian Monetary Fund,” and that, “[f]inance officials of the 13 nations, who met in the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) annual conference in Istanbul, appeared determined to turn their various bilateral agreements into some sort of multilateral accord, although none of the officials would directly call it an Asian Monetary Fund.”[15]
In August of 2005, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank published a report on the prospects of an East Asian Monetary Union, stating that East Asia satisfies the criteria for joining a monetary union, however, it states that compared to the European initiative, “The implication is that achieving any monetary arrangement, including a common currency, is much more difficult in East Asia.” It further states that, “In Europe, a monetary union was achievable primarily because it was part of the larger process of political integration,” however, “There is no apparent desire for political integration in East Asia, partly because of the great differences among those countries in terms of political systems, culture, and shared history. As a result of their own particular histories, East Asian countries remain particularly jealous of their sovereignty.”
Another major problem, as presented by the San Francisco Fed, is that, “East Asian governments appear much more suspicious of strong supranational institutions,” and thus, “in East Asia, sovereignty concerns have left governments reluctant to delegate significant authority to supranational bodies, at least so far.” It explains that as opposed to the steps taken to create a monetary union in Europe, “no broad free trade agreements have been achieved among the largest countries in the region, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China.” Another problem is that, “East Asia does not appear to have an obvious candidate for an internal anchor currency for a cooperative exchange rate arrangement. Most successful new currencies have been started on the back of an existing currency, establishing confidence in its convertibility, thus linking the old with the new.”
The report concludes that, “exchange rate stabilization and monetary integration are unlikely in the near term. Nevertheless, East Asia is integrating through trade, even without an emphasis on formal trade liberalization agreements,” and that, “there is evidence of growing financial cooperation in the region, including the development of regional arrangements for providing liquidity during crises through bilateral foreign exchange swaps, regional economic surveillance discussions, and the development of regional bond markets.” Ultimately, “East Asia might also proceed along the same path [as Europe], first with loose agreements to stabilize currencies, followed later by tighter agreements, and culminating ultimately in adoption of a common anchor—and, after that, maybe an East Asia dollar.”[16]
In 2007, it was reported that, “Asia may need to establish its own monetary fund if it is to cope with future financial shocks similar to that which rocked the region 10 years ago,” and that, “Further Asian financial integration is the best antidote for Asian future financial crises.”[17]
In September of 2007, Forbes reported that, “An East Asian monetary union anchored by Japan is feasible but the region lacks the political will to do it, the Asian Development Bank said.” Pradumna Rana, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) economist, said that, “it appears feasible to establish a currency union in East Asia — particularly among Indonesia, Japan, (South) Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand,” and that, “The economic potential for monetary integration in Asia is strong, even though the political underpinnings of such an accord are not yet in place.” Further, “the real integration at the trade levels ‘will actually reinforce the economic case for monetary union in Asia, in a similar way that real-sector integration did so in Europe,” and ultimately, “the road to an Asian monetary union could proceed on a ‘multi-track, multi-speed’ basis with a seamless Asian free trade area the goal on the trade side.”[18] In April of 2008, it was reported that, “ASEAN bank deputy governors and financial deputy ministers have met in Vietnam’s central Da Nang city, discussing issues on the financial and monetary integration and cooperation in the region.”[19]
African Monetary Union
Currently, Africa has several different monetary union initiatives, as well as some existing monetary unions within the continent. One initiative is the “monetary union project of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),” which is a “regional group of 15 countries in West Africa.” Among the members are those of an already-existing monetary union in the region, the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). The ECOWAS consists of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Cape Verde, Liberia, Ghana, Gambia, and Nigeria.[20]
The African Union was founded in 2002, and is an intergovernmental organization consisting of 53 African states. In 2003, the Brookings Institution produced a paper on African economic integration. In it, the authors started by stating that, “Africa, like other regions of the world, is fixing its sights on creating a common currency. Already, there are projects for regional monetary unions, and the bidding process for an eventual African central bank is about to begin.” It states that, “A common currency was also an objective of the Organization for African Unity and the African Economic Community, the predecessors of the AU,” and further, that, “The 1991 Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community outlines six stages for achieving a single monetary zone for Africa that were set to be completed by approximately 2028. In the early stages, regional cooperation and integration within Africa would be strengthened, and this could involve regional monetary unions. The final stage involves the establishment of the African Central Bank (ACB) and creation of a single African currency and an African Economic and Monetary Union.”
The paper further states that the African Central Bank (ACB) “would not be created until around 2020, [but] the bidding process for its location is likely to begin soon,” however, “there are plans for creating various regional monetary unions, which would presumably form building blocks for the single African central bank and currency.”[21]
In August of 2008, “Governors of African Central Banks convened in Kigali Serena Hotel to discuss issues concerning the creation of three African Union (AU) financial institutions,” following “the AU resolution to form the African Monetary Fund (AMF), African Central Bank (ACB) and the African Investment Bank (AIB).” The central bank governors “agreed that when established, the ACB would solely issue and manage Africa’s single currency and monetary authority of the continent’s economy.”[22]
On March 2, 2009, it was reported that, “The African Union will sign a memorandum of understanding this month with Nigeria on the establishment of a continental central bank,” and that, “The institution will be based in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs Maxwell Mkwezalamba told reporters.” Further, “As an intermediate step to the creation of the bank, the pan- African body will establish an African Monetary Institute within the next three years, he said at a meeting of African economists in the city,” and he was quoted as saying, “We have agreed to work with the Association of African Central Bank Governors to set up a joint technical committee to look into the preparation of a joint strategy.”[23]
The website for the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that, “The African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs Dr. Maxwell Mkwezalamba has expressed optimism for the adoption of a common currency for Africa,” and that the main theme discussed at the AU Commission meeting in Kenya was, “Towards the Creation of a Single African Currency: Review of the Creation of a Single African Currency: Which optimal Approach to be adopted to accelerate the creation of the unique continental currency.”[24]
A North American Monetary Union and the Amero
In January of 2008, I wrote an article documenting the moves toward the creation of a North American currency, likely under the name Amero. [See: Andrew G. Marshall, North-American Monetary Integration: Here Comes the Amero. Global Research: January 20, 2008] I will briefly outline the information presented in that article here.
In 1999, the Fraser Institute, a prominent and highly influential Canadian think tank, published a report written by Economics professor and former MP, Herbert Grubel, called, The Case for the Amero: The Economics and Politics of a North American Monetary Union. He wrote that, “The plan for a North American Monetary Union presented in this study is designed to include Canada, the United States, and Mexcio,” and a “North American Central Bank, like the European Central Bank, will have a constitution making it responsible only for the maintenance of price stability and not for full employment.”[25] He opined that, “sovereignty is not infinitely valuable. The merit of giving up some aspects of sovereignty should be determined by the gains brought by such a sacrifice,” and that, “It is important to note that in practice Canada has given up its economic sovereignty in many areas, the most important of which involve the World Trade Organization (formerly the GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement,” as well as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.[26]
Also in 1999, the C.D. Howe Institute, another of Canada’s most prominent think tanks, produced a report titled, From Fixing to Monetary Union: Options for North American Currency Integration. In this document, it was written that, “The easiest way to broach the notion of a NAMU [North American Monetary Union] is to view it as the North American equivalent of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and, by extension, the euro.”[27] It further stated that the fact that “a NAMU would mean the end of sovereignty in Canadian monetary policy is clear. Most obviously, it would mean abandoning a made-in-Canada inflation rate for a US or NAMU inflation rate.”[28]
In May of 2007, Canada’s then Governor of the Central Bank of Canada, David Dodge, said that, “North America could one day embrace a euro-style single currency,” and that, “Some proponents have dubbed the single North American currency the ‘amero’.” Answering questions following his speech, Dodge said that, “a single currency was ‘possible’.”[29]
In November of 2007, one of Canada’s richest billionaires, Stephen Jarislowsky, also a member of the board of the C.D. Howe Institute, told a Canadian Parliamentary committee that, “Canada should replace its dollar with a North American currency, or peg it to the U.S. greenback, to avoid the exchange rate shifts the loonie has experienced,” and that, “I think we have to really seriously start thinking of the model of a continental currency just like Europe.”[30]
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, while appearing on Larry King Live in 2007, was asked a question regarding the possibility of a common currency for Latin America, to which he responded by saying, “Long term, very long term. What we propose together, President Bush and myself, it’s ALCA, which is a trade union for all of the Americas. And everything was running fluently until Hugo Chavez came. He decided to isolate himself. He decided to combat the idea and destroy the idea.” Larry King then asked, “It’s going to be like the euro dollar, you mean?” to which Fox responded, “Well, that would be long, long term. I think the processes to go, first step into is trading agreement. And then further on, a new vision, like we are trying to do with NAFTA.”[31]
In January of 2008, Herbert Grubel, the author who coined the term “amero” for the Fraser Institute report, wrote an article for the Financial Post, in which he recommends fixing the Canadian loonie to the US dollar at a fixed exchange rate, but that there are inherent problems with having the US Federal Reserve thus control Canadian interest rates. He then wrote that, “there is a solution to this lack of credibility. In Europe, it came through the creation of the euro and formal end of the ability of national central banks to set interest rates. The analogous creation of the amero is not possible without the unlikely co-operation of the United States. This leaves the credibility issue to be solved by the unilateral adoption of a currency board, which would ensure that international payments imbalances automatically lead to changes in Canada’s money supply and interest rates until the imbalances are ended, all without any actions by the Bank of Canada or influence by politicians. It would be desirable to create simultaneously the currency board and a New Canadian Dollar valued at par with the U.S. dollar. With longer-run competitiveness assured at US90¢ to the U.S. dollar.”[32]
In January of 2009, an online publication of the Wall Street Journal, called Market Watch, discussed the possibility of hyperinflation of the United States dollar, and then stated, regarding the possibility of an amero, “On its face, while difficult to imagine, it makes intuitive sense. The ability to combine Canadian natural resources, American ingenuity and cheap Mexican labor would allow North America to compete better on a global stage.” The author further states that, “If forward policy attempts to induce more debt rather than allowing savings and obligations to align, we must respect the potential for a system shock. We may need to let a two-tier currency gain traction if the dollar meaningfully debases from current levels,” and that, “If this dynamic plays out — and I’ve got no insight that it will — the global balance of powers would fragment into four primary regions: North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In such a scenario, ramifications would manifest through social unrest and geopolitical conflict.”[33]
A Global Currency
The Phoenix
In 1988, The Economist ran an article titled, Get Ready for the Phoenix, in which they wrote, “THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let’s say, the phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it will be more convenient than today’s national currencies, which by then will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the late twentieth century.”
The article stated that, “The market crash [of 1987] taught [governments] that the pretence of policy cooperation can be worse than nothing, and that until real co-operation is feasible (ie, until governments surrender some economic sovereignty) further attempts to peg currencies will flounder.” Amazingly the article states that, “Several more big exchange-rate upsets, a few more stockmarket crashes and probably a slump or two will be needed before politicians are willing to face squarely up to that choice. This points to a muddled sequence of emergency followed by patch-up followed by emergency, stretching out far beyond 2018-except for two things. As time passes, the damage caused by currency instability is gradually going to mount; and the very trends that will make it mount are making the utopia of monetary union feasible.”
Further, the article stated that, “The phoenix zone would impose tight constraints on national governments. There would be no such thing, for instance, as a national monetary policy. The world phoenix supply would be fixed by a new central bank, descended perhaps from the IMF. The world inflation rate-and hence, within narrow margins, each national inflation rate-would be in its charge. Each country could use taxes and public spending to offset temporary falls in demand, but it would have to borrow rather than print money to finance its budget deficit.” The author admits that, “This means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the trends that make the phoenix so appealing are taking that sovereignty away in any case. Even in a world of more-or-less floating exchange rates, individual governments have seen their policy independence checked by an unfriendly outside world.”
The article concludes in stating that, “The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of national currencies, just as the Special Drawing Right is today. In time, though, its value against national currencies would cease to matter, because people would choose it for its convenience and the stability of its purchasing power.” The last sentence states, “Pencil in the phoenix for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes.”[34]
Recommendations for a Global Currency
In 1998, the IMF Survey discussed a speech given by James Tobin, a prominent American economist, in which he argued that, “A single global currency might offer a viable alternative to the floating rate.” He further stated that, “there was still a great need” for “lenders of last resort.”[35]
In 1999, economist Judy Shelton addressed the US House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services. In her testimony, she stated that, “The continued expansion of free trade, the increased integration of financial markets and the advent of electronic commerce are all working to bring about the need for an international monetary standard—a global unit of account.” She further explained that, “Regional currency unions seem to be the next step in the evolution toward some kind of global monetary order. Europe has already adopted a single currency. Asia may organize into a regional currency bloc to offer protection against speculative assaults on the individual currencies of weaker nations. Numerous countries in Latin America are considering various monetary arrangements to insulate them from financial contagion and avoid the economic consequences of devaluation. An important question is whether this process of monetary evolution will be intelligently directed or whether it will simply be driven by events. In my opinion, political leadership can play a decisive role in helping to build a more orderly, rational monetary system than the current free-for-all approach to exchange rate relations.”
She further stated that, “As we have seen in Europe, the sequence of development is (1) you build a common market, and (2) you establish a common currency. Indeed, until you have a common currency, you don’t truly have an efficient common market.” She concludes by stating, “Ideally, every nation should stand willing to convert its currency at a fixed rate into a universal reserve asset. That would automatically create a global monetary union based on a common unit of account. The alternative path to a stable monetary order is to forge a common currency anchored to an asset of intrinsic value. While the current momentum for dollarization should be encouraged, especially for Mexico and Canada, in the end the stability of the global monetary order should not rest on any single nation.”[36]
Paul Volcker, former Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, stated in 2000, that, “If we are to have a truly global economy, a single world currency makes sense.” In a speech delivered by a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, it was stated that Paul Volcker “might be right, and we might one day have a single world currency. Maybe European integration, in the same way as any other regional integration, could be seen as a step towards the ideal situation of a fully integrated world. If and when this world will see the light of day is impossible to say. However, what I can say is that this vision seems as impossible now to most of us as a European monetary union seemed 50 years ago, when the process of European integration started.”[37]
In 2000, the IMF held an international conference and published a brief report titled, One World, One Currency: Destination or Delusion?, in which it was stated that, “As perceptions grow that the world is gradually segmenting into a few regional currency blocs, the logical extension of such a trend also emerges as a theoretical possibility: a single world currency. If so many countries see benefits from currency integration, would a world currency not maximize these benefits?”
It outlines how, “The dollar bloc, already underpinned by the strength of the U.S. economy, has been extended further by dollarization and regional free trade pacts. The euro bloc represents an economic union that is intended to become a full political union likely to expand into Central and Eastern Europe. A yen bloc may emerge from current proposals for Asian monetary cooperation. A currency union may emerge among Mercosur members in Latin America, a geographical currency zone already exists around the South African rand, and a merger of the Australian and New Zealand dollars is a perennial topic in Oceania.”
The summary states that, “The same commercial efficiencies, economies of scale, and physical imperatives that drive regional currencies together also presumably exist on the next level—the global scale.” Further, it reported that, “The smaller and more vulnerable economies of the world—those that the international community is now trying hardest to help—would have most to gain from the certainty and stability that would accompany a single world currency.”[38] Keep in mind, this document was produced by the IMF, and so its recommendations for what it says would likely “help” the smaller and more vulnerable countries of the world, should be taken with a grain – or bucket – of salt.
Economist Robert A. Mundell has long called for a global currency. On his website, he states that the creation of a global currency is “a project that would restore a needed coherence to the international monetary system, give the International Monetary Fund a function that would help it to promote stability, and be a catalyst for international harmony.” He states that, “The benefits from a world currency would be enormous. Prices all over the world would be denominated in the same unit and would be kept equal in different parts of the world to the extent that the law of one price was allowed to work itself out. Apart from tariffs and controls, trade between countries would be as easy as it is between states of the United States.”[39]
Renewed Calls for a Global Currency
On March 16, 2009, Russia suggested that, “the G20 summit in London in April should start establishing a system of managing the process of globalization and consider the possibility of creating a supra-national reserve currency or a ‘super-reserve currency’.” Russia called for “the creation of a supra-national reserve currency that will be issued by international financial institutions,” and that, “It looks expedient to reconsider the role of the IMF in that process and also to determine the possibility and need for taking measures that would allow for the SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) to become a super-reserve currency recognized by the world community.”[40]
On March 23, 2009, it was reported that China’s central bank “proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.” The goal would be for the world reserve currency that is “disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.” The chief China economist for HSBC stated that, “This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money.” The Governor of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, “suggested expanding the role of special drawing rights, which were introduced by the IMF in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime but became less relevant once that collapsed in the 1970s.” Currently, “the value of SDRs is based on a basket of four currencies – the US dollar, yen, euro and sterling – and they are used largely as a unit of account by the IMF and some other international organizations.”
However, “China’s proposal would expand the basket of currencies forming the basis of SDR valuation to all major economies and set up a settlement system between SDRs and other currencies so they could be used in international trade and financial transactions. Countries would entrust a portion of their SDR reserves to the IMF to manage collectively on their behalf and SDRs would gradually replace existing reserve currencies.”[41]
On March 25, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary and former President of the New York Federal Reserve, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, when asked a question about his thoughts on the Chinese proposal for the global reserve currency, Geithner replied that, “I haven’t read the governor’s proposal. He’s a remarkably — a very thoughtful, very careful, distinguished central banker. Generally find him sensible on every issue. But as I understand his proposal, it’s a proposal designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights. And we’re actually quite open to that suggestion. But you should think of it as rather evolutionary, building on the current architectures, than — rather than — rather than moving us to global monetary union [Emphasis added].”[42]
In late March, it was reported that, “A United Nations panel of economists has proposed a new global currency reserve that would take over the US dollar-based system used for decades by international banks,” and that, “An independently administered reserve currency could operate without conflicts posed by the US dollar and keep commodity prices more stable.”[43]
A recent article in the Economic Times stated that, “The world is not yet ready for an international reserve currency, but is ready to begin the process of shifting to such a currency. Otherwise, it would remain too vulnerable to the hegemonic nation,” as in, the United States.[44] Another article in the Economic Times started by proclaiming that, “the world certainly needs an international currency.” Further, the article stated that, “With an unwillingness to accept dollars and the absence of an alternative, international payments system can go into a freeze beyond the control of monetary authorities leading the world economy into a Great Depression,” and that, “In order to avoid such a calamity, the international community should immediately revive the idea of the Substitution Account mooted in 1971, under which official holders of dollars can deposit their unwanted dollars in a special account in the IMF with the values of deposits denominated in an international currency such as the SDR of the IMF.”[45]
Amidst fears of a falling dollar as a result of the increased open discussion of a new global currency, it was reported that, “The dollar’s role as a reserve currency won’t be threatened by a nine-fold expansion in the International Monetary Fund’s unit of account, according to UBS AG, ING Groep NV and Citigroup Inc.” This was reported following the recent G20 meeting, at which, “Group of 20 leaders yesterday gave approval for the agency to raise $250 billion by issuing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, the artificial currency that the IMF uses to settle accounts among its member nations. It also agreed to put another $500 billion into the IMF’s war chest.”[46] In other words, the large global financial institutions came to the rhetorical rescue of the dollar, so as not to precipitate a crisis in its current standing, so that they can continue with quietly forming a new global currency.
Creating a World Central Bank
In 1998, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for the New York Times advocating a “global Fed.” Garten was former Dean of the Yale School of Management, former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, previously served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and on the policy planning staffs of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance of the Ford and Carter administrations, former Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his article written in 1998, he stated that, “over time the United States set up crucial central institutions — the Securities and Exchange Commission (1933), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1934) and, most important, the Federal Reserve (1913). In so doing, America became a managed national economy. These organizations were created to make capitalism work, to prevent destructive business cycles and to moderate the harsh, invisible hand of Adam Smith.”
He then explained that, “This is what now must occur on a global scale. The world needs an institution that has a hand on the economic rudder when the seas become stormy. It needs a global central bank.” He explains that, “Simply trying to coordinate the world’s powerful central banks — the Fed and the new European Central Bank, for instance — wouldn’t work,” and that, “Effective collaboration among finance ministries and treasuries is also unlikely to materialize. These agencies are responsible to elected legislatures, and politics in the industrial countries is more preoccupied with internal events than with international stability.”
He then postulates that, “An independent central bank with responsibility for maintaining global financial stability is the only way out. No one else can do what is needed: inject more money into the system to spur growth, reduce the sky-high debts of emerging markets, and oversee the operations of shaky financial institutions. A global central bank could provide more money to the world economy when it is rapidly losing steam.” Further, “Such a bank would play an oversight role for banks and other financial institutions everywhere, providing some uniform standards for prudent lending in places like China and Mexico. [However, t]he regulation need not be heavy-handed.” Garten continues, “There are two ways a global central bank could be financed. It could have lines of credit from all central banks, drawing on them in bad times and repaying when the markets turn up. Alternately — and admittedly more difficult to carry out — it could be financed by a very modest tariff on all trade, collected at the point of importation, or by a tax on certain global financial transactions.”
Interestingly, Garten states that, “One thing that would not be acceptable would be for the bank to be at the mercy of short-term-oriented legislatures.” In essence, it is not to be accountable to the people of the world. So, he asks the question, “To whom would a global central bank be accountable? It would have too much power to be governed only by technocrats, although it must be led by the best of them. One possibility would be to link the new bank to an enlarged Group of Seven — perhaps a ”G-15” [or in today’s context, the G20] that would include the G-7 plus rotating members like Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Poland, India, China and South Korea.” He further states that, “There would have to be very close collaboration” between the global bank and the Fed, and that, “The global bank would not operate within the United States, and it would not be able to override the decisions of our central bank. But it could supply the missing international ingredient — emergency financing for cash-starved emerging markets. It wouldn’t affect American mortgage rates, but it could help the profitability of American multinational companies by creating a healthier global environment for their businesses.”[47]
In September of 2008, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for the Financial Times in which he stated that, “Even if the US’s massive financial rescue operation succeeds, it should be followed by something even more far-reaching – the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to oversee markets that have become borderless.” He emphasized the “need for a new Global Monetary Authority. It would set the tone for capital markets in a way that would not be viscerally opposed to a strong public oversight function with rules for intervention, and would return to capital formation the goal of economic growth and development rather than trading for its own sake.”
Further, the “GMA would be a reinsurer or discounter for certain obligations held by central banks. It would scrutinise the regulatory activities of national authorities with more teeth than the IMF has and oversee the implementation of a limited number of global regulations. It would monitor global risks and establish an effective early warning system with more clout to sound alarms than the BIS has.” Moreover, “The biggest global financial companies would have to register with the GMA and be subject to its monitoring, or be blacklisted. That includes commercial companies and banks, but also sovereign wealth funds, gigantic hedge funds and private equity firms.” He recommends that its board “include central bankers not just from the US, UK, the eurozone and Japan, but also China, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. It would be financed by mandatory contributions from every capable country and from insurance-type premiums from global financial companies – publicly listed, government owned, and privately held alike.”[48]
In October of 2008, it was reported that Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack stated that, “it may take continued international coordination to fully unlock the credit markets and resolve the financial crisis, perhaps even by forming a new global body to oversee the process.”[49]
In late October of 2008, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for Newsweek in which he stated that, “leaders should begin laying the groundwork for establishing a global central bank.” He explained that, “There was a time when the U.S. Federal Reserve played this role [as governing financial authority of the world], as the prime financial institution of the world’s most powerful economy, overseeing the one global currency. But with the growth of capital markets, the rise of currencies like the euro and the emergence of powerful players such as China, the shift of wealth to Asia and the Persian Gulf and, of course, the deep-seated problems in the American economy itself, the Fed no longer has the capability to lead single-handedly.”
He explains the criteria and operations of a world central bank, saying that, “It could be the lead regulator of big global financial institutions, such as Citigroup or Deutsche Bank, whose activities spill across borders,” as well as “act as a bankruptcy court when big global banks that operate in multiple countries need to be restructured. It could oversee not just the big commercial banks, such as Mitsubishi UFJ, but also the “alternative” financial system that has developed in recent years, consisting of hedge funds, private-equity groups and sovereign wealth funds—all of which are now substantially unregulated.” Further, it “could have influence over key exchange rates, and might lead a new monetary conference to realign the dollar and the yuan, for example, for one of its first missions would be to deal with the great financial imbalances that hang like a sword over the world economy.”
He further postulates that, “A global central bank would not eliminate the need for the Federal Reserve or other national central banks, which will still have frontline responsibility for sound regulatory policies and monetary stability in their respective countries. But it would have heavy influence over them when it comes to following policies that are compatible with global growth and financial stability. For example, it would work with key countries to better coordinate national stimulus programs when the world enters a recession, as is happening now, so that the cumulative impact of the various national efforts do not so dramatically overshoot that they plant the seeds for a crisis of global inflation. This is a big threat as government spending everywhere goes into overdrive.”[50]
In January of 2009, it was reported that, “one clear solution to avoid a repeat of the problems would be the establishment of a “global central bank” – with the IMF and World Bank being unable to prevent the financial meltdown.” Dr. William Overholt, senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, formerly with the Rand Institute, gave a speech in Dubai in which he said that, “To avoid another crisis, we need an ability to manage global liquidity. Theoretically that could be achieved through some kind of global central bank, or through the creation of a global currency, or through global acceptance of a set of rules with sanctions and a dispute settlement mechanism.”[51]
Guillermo Calvo, Professor of Economics, International and Public Affairs at Columbia University wrote an article for VOX in late March of 2009. Calvo is the former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, and is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and President of the International Economic Association and the former Senior Advisor in the Research Department of the IMF.
He wrote that, “Credit availability is not ensured by stricter financial regulation. In fact, it can be counterproductive unless it is accompanied by the establishment of a lender of last resort (LOLR) that radically softens the severity of financial crisis by providing timely credit lines. With that aim in mind, the 20th century saw the creation of national or regional central banks in charge of a subset of the capital market. It has now become apparent that the realm of existing central banks is very limited and the world has no institution that fulfils the necessary global role. The IMF is moving in that direction, but it is still too small and too limited to adequately do so.”
He advocates that, “the first proposal that I would like to make is that the topic of financial regulation should be discussed together with the issue of a global lender of last resort.” Further, he proposed that, “international financial institutions must be quickly endowed with considerably more firepower to help emerging economies through the deleveraging period.”[52]
A “New World Order” in Banking
In March of 2008, following the collapse of Bear Stearns, Reuters reported on a document released by research firm CreditSights, which said that, “Financial firms face a ‘new world order’,” and that, “More industry consolidation and acquisitions may follow after JPMorgan Chase & Co.” Further, “In the event of future consolidation, potential acquirers identified by CreditSights include JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.”[53]
In June of 2008, before he was Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, Timothy Geithner, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, wrote an article for the Financial Times following his attendance at the 2008 Bilderberg conference, in which he wrote that, “Banks and investment banks whose health is crucial to the global financial system should operate under a unified regulatory framework,” and he said that, “the US Federal Reserve should play a “central role” in the new regulatory framework, working closely with supervisors in the US and around the world.”[54]
In November of 2008, The National, a prominent United Arab Emirate newspaper, reported on Baron David de Rothschild accompanying Prime Minister Gordon Brown on a visit to the Middle East, although not as a “part of the official party” accompanying Brown. Following an interview with the Baron, it was reported that, “Rothschild shares most people’s view that there is a new world order. In his opinion, banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance.”[55]
In February of 2009, the Times Online reported that a “New world order in banking [is] necessary,” and that, “It is increasingly evident that the world needs a new banking system and that it should not bear much resemblance to the one that has failed so spectacularly.”[56] But of course, the ones that are shaping this new banking system are the champions of the previous banking system. The solutions that will follow are simply the extensions of the current system, only sped up through the necessity posed by the current crisis.
An Emerging Global Government
A recent article in the Financial Post stated that, “The danger in the present course is that if the world moves to a “super sovereign” reserve currency engineered by experts, such as the “UN Commission of Experts” led by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, we would give up the possibility of a spontaneous money order and financial harmony for a centrally planned order and the politicization of money. Such a regime change would endanger not only the future value of money but, more importantly, our freedom and prosperity.”[57]
Further, “An uncomfortable characteristic of the new world order may well turn out to be that global income gaps will widen because the rising powers, such as China, India and Brazil, regard those below them on the ladder as potential rivals.” The author further states that, “The new world order thus won’t necessarily be any better than the old one,” and that, “What is certain, though, is that global affairs are going to be considerably different from now on.”[58]
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In April of 2009, Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, said that, “If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.”[59]
David Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, and former managing director of Kissinger and Associates, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote a book titled, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making, of which he is certainly a member. When discussing the role and agenda of the global “superclass”, he states that, “In a world of global movements and threats that don’t present their passports at national borders, it is no longer possible for a nation-state acting alone to fulfill its portion of the social contract.”[60]
He writes that, “even the international organizations and alliances we have today, flawed as they are, would have seemed impossible until recently, notably the success of the European Union – a unitary democratic state the size of India. The evolution and achievements of such entities against all odds suggest not isolated instances but an overall trend in the direction of what Tennyson called “the Parliament of Man,” or ‘universal law’.” He states that he is “optimistic that progress will continue to be made,” but it will be difficult, because it “undercuts many national and local power structures and cultural concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock of human civilization, namely the notion of sovereignty.”[61]
He further writes that, “Mechanisms of global governance are more achievable in today’s environment,” and that these mechanisms “are often creative with temporary solutions to urgent problems that cannot wait for the world to embrace a bigger and more controversial idea like real global government.”[62]
In December of 2008, the Financial Times ran an article written by Gideon Rachman, a past Bilderberg attendee, who wrote that, “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible,” and that, “A ‘world government’ would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.”
He then asks if the European model could “go global,” and states that there are three reasons for thinking that may be the case. First, he states, “it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a ‘global war on terror’.” Secondly, he states that, “It could be done,” largely as a result of the transport and communications revolutions having “shrunk the world.” Thirdly, this is made possible through an awakening “change in the political atmosphere,” as “The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.”
He quoted an adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying, “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government,” and that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law.” However, Rachman states that any push towards a global government “will be a painful, slow process.” He then states that a key problem in this push can be explained with an example from the EU, which “has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic. [Emphasis added]”[63]
In November of 2008, the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC), the US intelligence community’s “center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking,” released a report that it produced in collaboration with numerous think tanks, consulting firms, academic institutions and hundreds of other experts, among them are the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London.[64]
The report, titled, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, outlines the current global political and economic trends that the world may be going through by the year 2025. In terms of the financial crisis, it states that solving this “will require long-term efforts to establish a new international system.”[65] It suggests that as the “China-model” for development becomes increasingly attractive, there may be a “decline in democratization” for emerging economies, authoritarian regimes, and “weak democracies frustrated by years of economic underperformance.” Further, the dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency, as there would likely be a “move away from the dollar.”[66]
It states that the dollar will become “something of a first among equals in a basket of currencies by 2025. This could occur suddenly in the wake of a crisis, or gradually with global rebalancing.”[67] The report elaborates on the construction of a new international system, stating that, “By 2025, nation-states will no longer be the only – and often not the most important – actors on the world stage and the ‘international system’ will have morphed to accommodate the new reality. But the transformation will be incomplete and uneven.” Further, it would be “unlikely to see an overarching, comprehensive, unitary approach to global governance. Current trends suggest that global governance in 2025 will be a patchwork of overlapping, often ad hoc and fragmented efforts, with shifting coalitions of member nations, international organizations, social movements, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and companies.” It also notes that, “Most of the pressing transnational problems – including climate change, regulation of globalized financial markets, migration, failing states, crime networks, etc. – are unlikely to be effectively resolved by the actions of individual nation-states. The need for effective global governance will increase faster than existing mechanisms can respond.”[68]
The report discusses the topic of regionalism, stating that, “Greater Asian integration, if it occurs, could fill the vacuum left by a weakening multilaterally based international order but could also further undermine that order. In the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, a remarkable series of pan-Asian ventures—the most significant being ASEAN + 3—began to take root. Although few would argue that an Asian counterpart to the EU is a likely outcome even by 2025, if 1997 is taken as a starting point, Asia arguably has evolved more rapidly over the last decade than the European integration did in its first decade(s).” It further states that, “movement over the next 15 years toward an Asian basket of currencies—if not an Asian currency unit as a third reserve—is more than a theoretical possibility.”
It elaborates that, “Asian regionalism would have global implications, possibly sparking or reinforcing a trend toward three trade and financial clusters that could become quasi-blocs (North America, Europe, and East Asia).” These blocs “would have implications for the ability to achieve future global World Trade Organization agreements and regional clusters could compete in the setting of trans-regional product standards for IT, biotech, nanotech, intellectual property rights, and other ‘new economy’ products.”[69]
Of great importance to address, and reflecting similar assumptions made by Rachman in his article advocating for a world government, is the topic of democratization, saying that, “advances are likely to slow and globalization will subject many recently democratized countries to increasing social and economic pressures that could undermine liberal institutions.” This is largely because “the better economic performance of many authoritarian governments could sow doubts among some about democracy as the best form of government. The surveys we consulted indicated that many East Asians put greater emphasis on good management, including increasing standards of livings, than democracy.” Further, “even in many well-established democracies, surveys show growing frustration with the current workings of democratic government and questioning among elites over the ability of democratic governments to take the bold actions necessary to deal rapidly and effectively with the growing number of transnational challenges.”[70]
Conclusion
Ultimately, what this implies is that the future of the global political economy is one of increasing moves toward a global system of governance, or a world government, with a world central bank and global currency; and that, concurrently, these developments are likely to materialize in the face of and as a result of a decline in democracy around the world, and thus, a rise in authoritarianism. What we are witnessing is the creation of a New World Order, composed of a totalitarian global government structure.
In fact, the very concept of a global currency and global central bank is authoritarian in its very nature, as it removes any vestiges of oversight and accountability away from the people of the world, and toward a small, increasingly interconnected group of international elites.
As Carroll Quigley explained in his monumental book, Tragedy and Hope, “[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”[71]
Indeed, the current “solutions” being proposed to the global financial crisis benefit those that caused the crisis over those that are poised to suffer the most as a result of the crisis: the disappearing middle classes, the world’s dispossessed, poor, indebted people. The proposed solutions to this crisis represent the manifestations and actualization of the ultimate generational goals of the global elite; and thus, represent the least favourable conditions for the vast majority of the world’s people.
It is imperative that the world’s people throw their weight against these “solutions” and usher in a new era of world order, one of the People’s World Order; with the solution lying in local governance and local economies, so that the people have greater roles in determining the future and structure of their own political-economy, and thus, their own society. With this alternative of localized political economies, in conjunction with an unprecedented global population and international democratization of communication through the internet, we have the means and possibility before us to forge the most diverse manifestation of cultures and societies that humanity has ever known.
The answer lies in the individual’s internalization of human power and destination, and a rejection of the externalization of power and human destiny to a global authority of which all but a select few people have access to. To internalize human power and destiny is to realize the gift of a human mind, which has the ability to engage in thought beyond the material, such as food and shelter, and venture into the realm of the conceptual. Each individual possesses – within themselves – the ability to think critically about themselves and their own life; now is the time to utilize this ability with the aim of internalizing the concepts and questions of human power and destiny: Why are we here? Where are we going? Where should we be going? How do we get there?
The supposed answers to these questions are offered to us by a tiny global elite who fear the repercussions of what would take place if the people of the world were to begin to answer these questions themselves. I do not know the answers to these questions, but I do know that the answers lie in the human mind and spirit, that which has overcome and will continue to overcome the greatest of challenges to humanity, and will, without doubt, triumph over the New World Order.
Endnotes
[1] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency. The Telegraph: April 3, 2009: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5096524/The-G20-moves-the-world-a-step-closer-to-a-global-currency.html
[2] Robert Winnett, Financial Crisis: Gordon Brown calls for ‘new Bretton Woods’. The Telegraph: October 13, 2008: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3189517/Financial-Crisis-Gordon-Brown-calls-for-new-Bretton-Woods.html
[3] Gordon Brown, Out of the Ashes. The Washington Post: October 17, 2008: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603179.html
[4] Gordon Rayner, Global financial crisis: does the world need a new banking ‘policeman’? The Telegraph: October 8, 2008: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3155563/Global-financial-crisis-does-the-world-need-a-new-banking-policeman.html
[5] Benn Steil, The End of National Currency. Foreign Affairs: Vol. 86, Issue 3, May/June 2007: pages 83-96
[6] Jonathan Tirone, ECB’s Nowotny Sees Global `Tri-Polar’ Currency System Evolving. Bloomberg: October 19, 2008: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=apjqJKKQvfDc&refer=home
[7] BBC, South America nations found union. BBC News: May 23, 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7417896.stm
[8] CNews, South American nations to seek common currency. China View: May 26, 2008: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/27/content_8260847.htm
[9] AME Info, GCC: Full steam ahead to monetary union. September 19, 2005: http://www.ameinfo.com/67925.html
[10] John Irish, GCC Agrees on Monetary Union but Signals Delay in Common Currency. Reuters: June 10, 2008: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&article=110727&d=10&m=6&y=2008
[11] Forbes, TIMELINE-Gulf single currency deadline delayed beyond 2010. Forbes: March 23, 2009: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/03/24/afx6204462.html
[12] Agencies, ‘GCC need not rush to form single currency’. Business 24/7: March 26, 2009: http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/3/pages/25032009/03262009_4e19de908b174f04bfb3c37aec2f17b3.aspx
[13] Barry Eichengreen, International Monetary Arrangements: Is There a Monetary Union in Asia’s Future? The Brookings Institution: Spring 1997: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1997/spring_globaleconomics_eichengreen.aspx
[14] atimes.com, After European now Asian Monetary Union? Asia Times Online: September 8, 2001: http://www.atimes.com/editor/CI08Ba01.html
[15] ASEAN, China, Japan, SKorea, ASEAN Makes Moves for Asian Monetary Fund. Association of Southeast Asian Nations: May 6, 2005: http://www.aseansec.org/afp/115.htm
[16] Reuven Glick, Does Europe’s Path to Monetary Union Provide Lessons for East Asia? Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: August 12, 2005: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2005/el2005-19.html
[17] AFP, Asian Monetary Fund may be needed to deal with future shocks. Channel News Asia: July 2, 2007: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/285700/1/.html
[18] AFX News Limited, East Asia monetary union ‘feasible’ but political will lacking – ADB. Forbes: September 19, 2007: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2007/09/19/afx4133743.html
[19] Lin Li, ASEAN discusses financial, monetary integration. China View: April 2, 2008: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/02/content_7906391.htm
[20] Paul De Grauwe, Economics of Monetary Union. Oxford University Press, 2007: pages 109-110
[21] Heather Milkiewicz and Paul R. Masson, Africa’s Economic Morass—Will a Common Currency Help? The Brookings Institution: July 2003: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2003/07africa_masson.aspx
[22] John Gahamanyi, Rwanda: African Central Bank Governors Discuss AU Financial Institutions. The New Times: August 23, 2008: http://allafrica.com/stories/200808230124.html
[23] Eric Ombok, African Union, Nigeria Plan Accord on Central Bank. Bloomberg: March 2, 2009: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=afoY1vOnEMLA&refer=africa
[24] Ministry of Foreign Affairs, AFRICA IN THE QUEST FOR A COMMON CURRENCY. Republic of Kenya: March 2009: http://www.mfa.go.ke/mfacms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=346&Itemid=62
[25] Herbert Grubel, The Case for the Amero. The Fraser Institute: September 1, 1999: Page 4: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/publication_details.aspx?pubID=2512
[26] Herbert Grubel, The Case for the Amero. The Fraser Institute: September 1, 1999: Page 17: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/publication_details.aspx?pubID=2512
[27] Thomas Courchene and Richard Harris, From Fixing to Monetary Union: Options for North American Currency Integration. C.D. Howe Institute, June 1999: Page 22:
http://www.cdhowe.org/display.cfm?page=research-fiscal&year=1999
[28] Thomas Courchene and Richard Harris, From Fixing to Monetary Union: Options for North American Currency Integration. C.D. Howe Institute, June 1999: Page 23:
http://www.cdhowe.org/display.cfm?page=research-fiscal&year=1999
[29] Barrie McKenna, Dodge Says Single Currency ‘Possible’. The Globe and Mail: May 21, 2007
[30] Consider a Continental Currency, Jarislowsky Says. The Globe and Mail: November 23: 2007:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071123.RDOLLAR23/TPStory/?query=%22Steven%2BChase%22b
[31] CNN, CNN Larry King Live. Transcripts: October 8, 2007: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/08/lkl.01.html
[32] Herbert Grubel, Fix the Loonie. The Financial Post: January 18, 2008:
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=245165
[33] Todd Harrison, How realistic is a North American currency? Market Watch: January 28, 2009: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Do-we-need-a-North/story.aspx?guid={D10536AF-F929-4AF9-AD10-250B4057A907}
[34] Get ready for the phoenix. The Economist: Vol. 306: January 9, 1988: pages 9-10
[35] IMF, IMF Survey. Volume 27, No. 9: May 11, 1998: pages 146-147:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/pdf/051198.pdf
[36] Judy Shelton, Hearing on Exchange Rate Stability in International Finance. Testimony of Judy Shelton Before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services: May 21, 1999: http://financialservices.house.gov/banking/52199she.htm
[37] ECB, The euro and the dollar - new imperatives for policy co-ordination. Speeches and Interviews: September 18, 2000: http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2000/html/sp000918.en.html
[38] IMF, One World, One Currency: Destination or Delusion? Economic Forums and International Seminars: November 8, 2000: http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/ecforums/110800.htm
[39] Robert A. Mundell, World Currency. The Works of Robert A. Mundell: http://www.robertmundell.net/Menu/Main.asp?Type=5&Cat=09&ThemeName=World%20Currency
[40] Itar-Tass, Russia proposes creation of global super-reserve currency. ITAR-TASS News Agency: March 16, 2009: http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13682035&PageNum=0
[41] Jamil Anderlini, China calls for new reserve currency. The Financial Times: March 23, 2009: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7851925a-17a2-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac.html
[42] CFR, A Conversation with Timothy F. Geithner. Council on Foreign Relations Transcripts: March 25, 2009: http://www.cfr.org/publication/18925/
[43] news.com.au, UN backs new new global currency reserve. The Sunday Telegraph: March 29, 2009: http://www.news..com.au/business/story/0,27753,25255091-462,00.html
[44] Ashima Goyal, Is world ready for a global currency? The Economic Times: April 3, 2009: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ET-Debate/Is-world-ready-for-a-global-currency/articleshow/4352581.cms
[45] R Agarwala, SDR should become the global currency. The Economic Times: April 3, 2009: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ET-Debate/SDR-should-become-the-global-currency/articleshow/4352573.cms
[46] Kim Kyoungwha and David Yong, Dollar’s Role Is Safe as IMF Expands Own Currency. Bloomberg: April 3, 2009: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBbu9JB2mGkc&refer=home
[47] Jeffrey E. Garten, Needed: A Fed for the World. The New York Times: September 23, 1998: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/23/opinion/needed-a-fed-for-the-world.html
[48] Jeffrey Garten, Global authority can fill financial vacuum. The Financial Times: September 25, 2008: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7caf543e-8b13-11dd-b634-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
[49] CNBC, Morgan’s Mack: Firm Was Excessively Leveraged. CNBC: October 16, 2008: http://www.cnbc.com/id/27216678
[50] Jeffrey Garten, We Need a Bank Of the World. Newsweek: October 25, 2008: http://www.newsweek.com/id/165772
[51] Sean Davidson, ‘Global central bank could prevent future crisis’. Business 24/7: January 10, 2009: http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/1/pages/01102009_350bc822e4ee4508b724e55b0f1393df.aspx
[52] Guillermo Calvo, Lender of last resort: Put it on the agenda! VOX: March 23, 2009: http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3327
[53] Walden Siew, Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report. Reuters: March 17, 2008: http://www.reuters.com/article/innovationNews/idUSN1743541720080317
[54] James Politi and Gillian Tett, NY Fed chief in push for global bank framework. The Financial Times: June 8, 2008: http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto060820081850443845
[55] Rupert Wright, The first barons of banking.. The National: November 6, 2008: http://www.thenational.ae/article/20081106/BUSINESS/167536298/1005
[56] Michael Lafferty, New world order in banking necessary after abject failure of present model. The Times Online: February 24, 2009: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/management/article5792585.ece
[57] James A. Dorn, Dangers in G20 currency moves. The Financial Post: April 2, 2009: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/04/02/dangers-in-g20-currency-moves.aspx
[58] Richard Gwyn, Change not necessarily for the better. The Toronto Star: April 3, 2009: http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/612822
[59] FE, Growth to slow down hitting hard the poor countries. The Financial Express: April 1, 2009: http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/search_index.php?page=detail_news&news_id=62661
[60] David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008), page 315
[61] David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008), pages 315-316
[62] David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008), page 316
[63] Gideon Rachman, And now for a world government. The Financial Times: December 8, 2008: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html
[64] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: Acknowledgements: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[65] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: page 11: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[66] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 11-12: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[67] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 94: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[68] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 81: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[69] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 83: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[70] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 87: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[71] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966), 324
Andrew G. Marshall is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is currently studying Political Economy and History at Simon Fraser University.
Andrew G. Marshall is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Andrew G. Marshall
Source: Information Clearing House
Posted by sakerfa on April 7, 2009
Introduction
APRIL 07, 2009 “Global Research” — -Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the US dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity.” SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights, are “a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund.” As the Telegraph reported, “the G20 leaders have activated the IMF’s power to create money and begin global “quantitative easing”. In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.”[1]
The article continued in stating that, “There is now a world currency in waiting. In time, SDRs are likely to evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the People’s Bank of China.” Further, “The creation of a Financial Stability Board looks like the first step towards a global financial regulator,” or, in other words, a global central bank.
It is important to take a closer look at these “solutions” being proposed and implemented in the midst of the current global financial crisis. These are not new suggestions, as they have been in the plans of the global elite for a long time. However, in the midst of the current crisis, the elite have fast-tracked their agenda of forging a New World Order in finance. It is important to address the background to these proposed and imposed “solutions” and what effects they will have on the International Monetary System (IMS) and the global political economy as a whole.
A New Bretton-Woods
In October of 2008, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK, said that we “must have a new Bretton Woods - building a new international financial architecture for the years ahead.” He continued in saying that, “we must now reform the international financial system around the agreed principles of transparency, integrity, responsibility, good housekeeping and co-operation across borders.” An article in the Telegraph reported that Gordon Brown would want “to see the IMF reformed to become a ‘global central bank’ closely monitoring the international economy and financial system.”[2]
On October 17, 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he said, “This week, European leaders came together to propose the guiding principles that we believe should underpin this new Bretton Woods: transparency, sound banking, responsibility, integrity and global governance. We agreed that urgent decisions implementing these principles should be made to root out the irresponsible and often undisclosed lending at the heart of our problems. To do this, we need cross-border supervision of financial institutions; shared global standards for accounting and regulation; a more responsible approach to executive remuneration that rewards hard work, effort and enterprise but not irresponsible risk-taking; and the renewal of our international institutions to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy.[Emphasis added]”[3]
In early October 2008, it was reported that, “as the world’s central bankers gather this week in Washington DC for an IMF-World Bank conference to discuss the crisis, the big question they face is whether it is time to establish a global economic “policeman” to ensure the crash of 2008 can never be repeated.” Further, “any organisation with the power to police the global economy would have to include representatives of every major country – a United Nations of economic regulation.” A former governor of the Bank of England suggested that, “the answer might already be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS),” however, “The problem is that it has no teeth. The IMF tends to couch its warnings about economic problems in very diplomatic language, but the BIS is more independent and much better placed to deal with this if it is given the power to do so.”[4]
Emergence of Regional Currencies
On January 1, 1999, the European Union established the Euro as its regional currency. The Euro has grown in prominence over the past several years. However, it is not to be the only regional currency in the world. There are moves and calls for other regional currencies throughout the world.
In 2007, Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, ran an article titled, The End of National Currency, in which it began by discussing the volatility of international currency markets, and that very few “real” solutions have been proposed to address successive currency crises. The author poses the question, “will restoring lost sovereignty to governments put an end to financial instability?” He answers by stating that, “This is a dangerous misdiagnosis,” and that, “The right course is not to return to a mythical past of monetary sovereignty, with governments controlling local interest and exchange rates in blissful ignorance of the rest of the world. Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory. National currencies and global markets simply do not mix; together they make a deadly brew of currency crises and geopolitical tension and create ready pretexts for damaging protectionism. In order to globalize safely, countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of today’s instability.”
The author explains that, “Monetary nationalism is simply incompatible with globalization. It has always been, even if this has only become apparent since the 1970s, when all the world’s governments rendered their currencies intrinsically worthless.” The author states that, “Since economic development outside the process of globalization is no longer possible, countries should abandon monetary nationalism. Governments should replace national currencies with the dollar or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate to produce a new multinational currency over a comparably large and economically diversified area.” Essentially, according to the author, the solution lies in regional currencies.[5]
In October of 2008, “European Central Bank council member Ewald Nowotny said a “tri-polar” global currency system is developing between Asia, Europe and the U.S. and that he’s skeptical the U.S. dollar’s centrality can be revived.”[6]
The Union of South American Nations
The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) was established on May 23, 2008, with the headquarters to be in Ecuador, the South American Parliament to be in Bolivia, and the Bank of the South to be in Venezuela. As the BBC reported, “The leaders of 12 South American nations have formed a regional body aimed at boosting economic and political integration in the region,” and that, “The Unasur members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.”[7]
The week following the announcement of the Union, it was reported that, “Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday that South American nations will seek a common currency as part of the region’s integration efforts following the creation of the Union of South American Nations.” He was quoted as saying, “We are proceeding so as, in the future, we have a common central bank and a common currency.”[8]
The Gulf Cooperation Council and a Regional Currency
In 2005, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional trade bloc among Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), announced the goal of creating a single common currency by 2010. It was reported that, “An economically united and efficient GCC is clearly a more interesting proposition for larger companies than each individual economy, especially given the impediments to trade evident within the region. This is why trade relations within the GCC have been a core focus of late.” Further, “The natural extension of this trend for increased integration is to introduce a common currency in order to further facilitate trade between the different countries.” It was announced that, “the region’s central bankers had agreed to pursue monetary union in a similar fashion to the rules used in Europe.”[9]
In June of 2008, it was reported that, “Gulf Arab central bankers agreed to create the nucleus of a joint central bank next year in a major step forward for monetary union but signaled that a new common currency would not be in circulation by an agreed 2010 target.”[10] In 2002, it was announced that the “Gulf states say they are seeking advice from the European Central Bank on their monetary union programme.” In February of 2008, Oman announced that it would not be joining the monetary union. In November of 2008, it was announced that the “Final monetary union draft says Gulf central bank will be independent from governments of member states.”[11]
In March of 2009, it was reported that, “The GCC should not rush into forming a single currency as member states need to work out the framework for a regional central bank, Saudi Arabia’s Central Bank Governor Muhammad Al Jasser.” Jasser was further quoted as saying, “It took the European Union 45 years to put together a single currency. We should not rush.” In 2008, with the global financial crisis, new problems were posed for the GCC initiative, as “Pressure mounted last year on the GCC members to drop their currency pegs as inflation accelerated above 10 per cent in five of the six countries. All of the member states except Kuwait peg their currencies to the dollar and tend to follow the US Federal Reserve when setting interest rates.”[12]
An Asian Monetary Union
In 1997, the Brookings Institution, a prominent American think tank, discussed the possibilities of an East Asian Monetary Union, stating that, “the question for the 21st century is whether analogous monetary blocs will form in East Asia (and, for that matter, in the Western Hemisphere). With the dollar, the yen, and the single European currency floating against one another, other small open economies will be tempted to link up to one of the three.” However, “the linkage will be possible only if accompanied by radical changes in institutional arrangements like those contemplated by the European Union. The spread of capital mobility and political democratization will make it prohibitively difficult to peg exchange rates unilaterally. Pegging will require international cooperation, and effective cooperation will require measures akin to monetary unification.”[13]
In 2001, Asia Times Online wrote an article discussing a speech given by economist Robert A. Mundell at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, at which he stated that, “[t]he “Asean plus three” (the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus China, Japan, and Korea) ‘should look to the European Union as a model for closer integration of monetary policy, trade and eventually, currency integration’.”[14]
On May 6, 2005, the website of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced that, “China, Japan, South Korea and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to expand their network of bilateral currency swaps into what could become a virtual Asian Monetary Fund,” and that, “[f]inance officials of the 13 nations, who met in the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) annual conference in Istanbul, appeared determined to turn their various bilateral agreements into some sort of multilateral accord, although none of the officials would directly call it an Asian Monetary Fund.”[15]
In August of 2005, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank published a report on the prospects of an East Asian Monetary Union, stating that East Asia satisfies the criteria for joining a monetary union, however, it states that compared to the European initiative, “The implication is that achieving any monetary arrangement, including a common currency, is much more difficult in East Asia.” It further states that, “In Europe, a monetary union was achievable primarily because it was part of the larger process of political integration,” however, “There is no apparent desire for political integration in East Asia, partly because of the great differences among those countries in terms of political systems, culture, and shared history. As a result of their own particular histories, East Asian countries remain particularly jealous of their sovereignty.”
Another major problem, as presented by the San Francisco Fed, is that, “East Asian governments appear much more suspicious of strong supranational institutions,” and thus, “in East Asia, sovereignty concerns have left governments reluctant to delegate significant authority to supranational bodies, at least so far.” It explains that as opposed to the steps taken to create a monetary union in Europe, “no broad free trade agreements have been achieved among the largest countries in the region, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China.” Another problem is that, “East Asia does not appear to have an obvious candidate for an internal anchor currency for a cooperative exchange rate arrangement. Most successful new currencies have been started on the back of an existing currency, establishing confidence in its convertibility, thus linking the old with the new.”
The report concludes that, “exchange rate stabilization and monetary integration are unlikely in the near term. Nevertheless, East Asia is integrating through trade, even without an emphasis on formal trade liberalization agreements,” and that, “there is evidence of growing financial cooperation in the region, including the development of regional arrangements for providing liquidity during crises through bilateral foreign exchange swaps, regional economic surveillance discussions, and the development of regional bond markets.” Ultimately, “East Asia might also proceed along the same path [as Europe], first with loose agreements to stabilize currencies, followed later by tighter agreements, and culminating ultimately in adoption of a common anchor—and, after that, maybe an East Asia dollar.”[16]
In 2007, it was reported that, “Asia may need to establish its own monetary fund if it is to cope with future financial shocks similar to that which rocked the region 10 years ago,” and that, “Further Asian financial integration is the best antidote for Asian future financial crises.”[17]
In September of 2007, Forbes reported that, “An East Asian monetary union anchored by Japan is feasible but the region lacks the political will to do it, the Asian Development Bank said.” Pradumna Rana, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) economist, said that, “it appears feasible to establish a currency union in East Asia — particularly among Indonesia, Japan, (South) Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand,” and that, “The economic potential for monetary integration in Asia is strong, even though the political underpinnings of such an accord are not yet in place.” Further, “the real integration at the trade levels ‘will actually reinforce the economic case for monetary union in Asia, in a similar way that real-sector integration did so in Europe,” and ultimately, “the road to an Asian monetary union could proceed on a ‘multi-track, multi-speed’ basis with a seamless Asian free trade area the goal on the trade side.”[18] In April of 2008, it was reported that, “ASEAN bank deputy governors and financial deputy ministers have met in Vietnam’s central Da Nang city, discussing issues on the financial and monetary integration and cooperation in the region.”[19]
African Monetary Union
Currently, Africa has several different monetary union initiatives, as well as some existing monetary unions within the continent. One initiative is the “monetary union project of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),” which is a “regional group of 15 countries in West Africa.” Among the members are those of an already-existing monetary union in the region, the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). The ECOWAS consists of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Cape Verde, Liberia, Ghana, Gambia, and Nigeria.[20]
The African Union was founded in 2002, and is an intergovernmental organization consisting of 53 African states. In 2003, the Brookings Institution produced a paper on African economic integration. In it, the authors started by stating that, “Africa, like other regions of the world, is fixing its sights on creating a common currency. Already, there are projects for regional monetary unions, and the bidding process for an eventual African central bank is about to begin.” It states that, “A common currency was also an objective of the Organization for African Unity and the African Economic Community, the predecessors of the AU,” and further, that, “The 1991 Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community outlines six stages for achieving a single monetary zone for Africa that were set to be completed by approximately 2028. In the early stages, regional cooperation and integration within Africa would be strengthened, and this could involve regional monetary unions. The final stage involves the establishment of the African Central Bank (ACB) and creation of a single African currency and an African Economic and Monetary Union.”
The paper further states that the African Central Bank (ACB) “would not be created until around 2020, [but] the bidding process for its location is likely to begin soon,” however, “there are plans for creating various regional monetary unions, which would presumably form building blocks for the single African central bank and currency.”[21]
In August of 2008, “Governors of African Central Banks convened in Kigali Serena Hotel to discuss issues concerning the creation of three African Union (AU) financial institutions,” following “the AU resolution to form the African Monetary Fund (AMF), African Central Bank (ACB) and the African Investment Bank (AIB).” The central bank governors “agreed that when established, the ACB would solely issue and manage Africa’s single currency and monetary authority of the continent’s economy.”[22]
On March 2, 2009, it was reported that, “The African Union will sign a memorandum of understanding this month with Nigeria on the establishment of a continental central bank,” and that, “The institution will be based in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs Maxwell Mkwezalamba told reporters.” Further, “As an intermediate step to the creation of the bank, the pan- African body will establish an African Monetary Institute within the next three years, he said at a meeting of African economists in the city,” and he was quoted as saying, “We have agreed to work with the Association of African Central Bank Governors to set up a joint technical committee to look into the preparation of a joint strategy.”[23]
The website for the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that, “The African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs Dr. Maxwell Mkwezalamba has expressed optimism for the adoption of a common currency for Africa,” and that the main theme discussed at the AU Commission meeting in Kenya was, “Towards the Creation of a Single African Currency: Review of the Creation of a Single African Currency: Which optimal Approach to be adopted to accelerate the creation of the unique continental currency.”[24]
A North American Monetary Union and the Amero
In January of 2008, I wrote an article documenting the moves toward the creation of a North American currency, likely under the name Amero. [See: Andrew G. Marshall, North-American Monetary Integration: Here Comes the Amero. Global Research: January 20, 2008] I will briefly outline the information presented in that article here.
In 1999, the Fraser Institute, a prominent and highly influential Canadian think tank, published a report written by Economics professor and former MP, Herbert Grubel, called, The Case for the Amero: The Economics and Politics of a North American Monetary Union. He wrote that, “The plan for a North American Monetary Union presented in this study is designed to include Canada, the United States, and Mexcio,” and a “North American Central Bank, like the European Central Bank, will have a constitution making it responsible only for the maintenance of price stability and not for full employment.”[25] He opined that, “sovereignty is not infinitely valuable. The merit of giving up some aspects of sovereignty should be determined by the gains brought by such a sacrifice,” and that, “It is important to note that in practice Canada has given up its economic sovereignty in many areas, the most important of which involve the World Trade Organization (formerly the GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement,” as well as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.[26]
Also in 1999, the C.D. Howe Institute, another of Canada’s most prominent think tanks, produced a report titled, From Fixing to Monetary Union: Options for North American Currency Integration. In this document, it was written that, “The easiest way to broach the notion of a NAMU [North American Monetary Union] is to view it as the North American equivalent of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and, by extension, the euro.”[27] It further stated that the fact that “a NAMU would mean the end of sovereignty in Canadian monetary policy is clear. Most obviously, it would mean abandoning a made-in-Canada inflation rate for a US or NAMU inflation rate.”[28]
In May of 2007, Canada’s then Governor of the Central Bank of Canada, David Dodge, said that, “North America could one day embrace a euro-style single currency,” and that, “Some proponents have dubbed the single North American currency the ‘amero’.” Answering questions following his speech, Dodge said that, “a single currency was ‘possible’.”[29]
In November of 2007, one of Canada’s richest billionaires, Stephen Jarislowsky, also a member of the board of the C.D. Howe Institute, told a Canadian Parliamentary committee that, “Canada should replace its dollar with a North American currency, or peg it to the U.S. greenback, to avoid the exchange rate shifts the loonie has experienced,” and that, “I think we have to really seriously start thinking of the model of a continental currency just like Europe.”[30]
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, while appearing on Larry King Live in 2007, was asked a question regarding the possibility of a common currency for Latin America, to which he responded by saying, “Long term, very long term. What we propose together, President Bush and myself, it’s ALCA, which is a trade union for all of the Americas. And everything was running fluently until Hugo Chavez came. He decided to isolate himself. He decided to combat the idea and destroy the idea.” Larry King then asked, “It’s going to be like the euro dollar, you mean?” to which Fox responded, “Well, that would be long, long term. I think the processes to go, first step into is trading agreement. And then further on, a new vision, like we are trying to do with NAFTA.”[31]
In January of 2008, Herbert Grubel, the author who coined the term “amero” for the Fraser Institute report, wrote an article for the Financial Post, in which he recommends fixing the Canadian loonie to the US dollar at a fixed exchange rate, but that there are inherent problems with having the US Federal Reserve thus control Canadian interest rates. He then wrote that, “there is a solution to this lack of credibility. In Europe, it came through the creation of the euro and formal end of the ability of national central banks to set interest rates. The analogous creation of the amero is not possible without the unlikely co-operation of the United States. This leaves the credibility issue to be solved by the unilateral adoption of a currency board, which would ensure that international payments imbalances automatically lead to changes in Canada’s money supply and interest rates until the imbalances are ended, all without any actions by the Bank of Canada or influence by politicians. It would be desirable to create simultaneously the currency board and a New Canadian Dollar valued at par with the U.S. dollar. With longer-run competitiveness assured at US90¢ to the U.S. dollar.”[32]
In January of 2009, an online publication of the Wall Street Journal, called Market Watch, discussed the possibility of hyperinflation of the United States dollar, and then stated, regarding the possibility of an amero, “On its face, while difficult to imagine, it makes intuitive sense. The ability to combine Canadian natural resources, American ingenuity and cheap Mexican labor would allow North America to compete better on a global stage.” The author further states that, “If forward policy attempts to induce more debt rather than allowing savings and obligations to align, we must respect the potential for a system shock. We may need to let a two-tier currency gain traction if the dollar meaningfully debases from current levels,” and that, “If this dynamic plays out — and I’ve got no insight that it will — the global balance of powers would fragment into four primary regions: North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In such a scenario, ramifications would manifest through social unrest and geopolitical conflict.”[33]
A Global Currency
The Phoenix
In 1988, The Economist ran an article titled, Get Ready for the Phoenix, in which they wrote, “THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let’s say, the phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it will be more convenient than today’s national currencies, which by then will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the late twentieth century.”
The article stated that, “The market crash [of 1987] taught [governments] that the pretence of policy cooperation can be worse than nothing, and that until real co-operation is feasible (ie, until governments surrender some economic sovereignty) further attempts to peg currencies will flounder.” Amazingly the article states that, “Several more big exchange-rate upsets, a few more stockmarket crashes and probably a slump or two will be needed before politicians are willing to face squarely up to that choice. This points to a muddled sequence of emergency followed by patch-up followed by emergency, stretching out far beyond 2018-except for two things. As time passes, the damage caused by currency instability is gradually going to mount; and the very trends that will make it mount are making the utopia of monetary union feasible.”
Further, the article stated that, “The phoenix zone would impose tight constraints on national governments. There would be no such thing, for instance, as a national monetary policy. The world phoenix supply would be fixed by a new central bank, descended perhaps from the IMF. The world inflation rate-and hence, within narrow margins, each national inflation rate-would be in its charge. Each country could use taxes and public spending to offset temporary falls in demand, but it would have to borrow rather than print money to finance its budget deficit.” The author admits that, “This means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the trends that make the phoenix so appealing are taking that sovereignty away in any case. Even in a world of more-or-less floating exchange rates, individual governments have seen their policy independence checked by an unfriendly outside world.”
The article concludes in stating that, “The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of national currencies, just as the Special Drawing Right is today. In time, though, its value against national currencies would cease to matter, because people would choose it for its convenience and the stability of its purchasing power.” The last sentence states, “Pencil in the phoenix for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes.”[34]
Recommendations for a Global Currency
In 1998, the IMF Survey discussed a speech given by James Tobin, a prominent American economist, in which he argued that, “A single global currency might offer a viable alternative to the floating rate.” He further stated that, “there was still a great need” for “lenders of last resort.”[35]
In 1999, economist Judy Shelton addressed the US House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services. In her testimony, she stated that, “The continued expansion of free trade, the increased integration of financial markets and the advent of electronic commerce are all working to bring about the need for an international monetary standard—a global unit of account.” She further explained that, “Regional currency unions seem to be the next step in the evolution toward some kind of global monetary order. Europe has already adopted a single currency. Asia may organize into a regional currency bloc to offer protection against speculative assaults on the individual currencies of weaker nations. Numerous countries in Latin America are considering various monetary arrangements to insulate them from financial contagion and avoid the economic consequences of devaluation. An important question is whether this process of monetary evolution will be intelligently directed or whether it will simply be driven by events. In my opinion, political leadership can play a decisive role in helping to build a more orderly, rational monetary system than the current free-for-all approach to exchange rate relations.”
She further stated that, “As we have seen in Europe, the sequence of development is (1) you build a common market, and (2) you establish a common currency. Indeed, until you have a common currency, you don’t truly have an efficient common market.” She concludes by stating, “Ideally, every nation should stand willing to convert its currency at a fixed rate into a universal reserve asset. That would automatically create a global monetary union based on a common unit of account. The alternative path to a stable monetary order is to forge a common currency anchored to an asset of intrinsic value. While the current momentum for dollarization should be encouraged, especially for Mexico and Canada, in the end the stability of the global monetary order should not rest on any single nation.”[36]
Paul Volcker, former Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, stated in 2000, that, “If we are to have a truly global economy, a single world currency makes sense.” In a speech delivered by a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, it was stated that Paul Volcker “might be right, and we might one day have a single world currency. Maybe European integration, in the same way as any other regional integration, could be seen as a step towards the ideal situation of a fully integrated world. If and when this world will see the light of day is impossible to say. However, what I can say is that this vision seems as impossible now to most of us as a European monetary union seemed 50 years ago, when the process of European integration started.”[37]
In 2000, the IMF held an international conference and published a brief report titled, One World, One Currency: Destination or Delusion?, in which it was stated that, “As perceptions grow that the world is gradually segmenting into a few regional currency blocs, the logical extension of such a trend also emerges as a theoretical possibility: a single world currency. If so many countries see benefits from currency integration, would a world currency not maximize these benefits?”
It outlines how, “The dollar bloc, already underpinned by the strength of the U.S. economy, has been extended further by dollarization and regional free trade pacts. The euro bloc represents an economic union that is intended to become a full political union likely to expand into Central and Eastern Europe. A yen bloc may emerge from current proposals for Asian monetary cooperation. A currency union may emerge among Mercosur members in Latin America, a geographical currency zone already exists around the South African rand, and a merger of the Australian and New Zealand dollars is a perennial topic in Oceania.”
The summary states that, “The same commercial efficiencies, economies of scale, and physical imperatives that drive regional currencies together also presumably exist on the next level—the global scale.” Further, it reported that, “The smaller and more vulnerable economies of the world—those that the international community is now trying hardest to help—would have most to gain from the certainty and stability that would accompany a single world currency.”[38] Keep in mind, this document was produced by the IMF, and so its recommendations for what it says would likely “help” the smaller and more vulnerable countries of the world, should be taken with a grain – or bucket – of salt.
Economist Robert A. Mundell has long called for a global currency. On his website, he states that the creation of a global currency is “a project that would restore a needed coherence to the international monetary system, give the International Monetary Fund a function that would help it to promote stability, and be a catalyst for international harmony.” He states that, “The benefits from a world currency would be enormous. Prices all over the world would be denominated in the same unit and would be kept equal in different parts of the world to the extent that the law of one price was allowed to work itself out. Apart from tariffs and controls, trade between countries would be as easy as it is between states of the United States.”[39]
Renewed Calls for a Global Currency
On March 16, 2009, Russia suggested that, “the G20 summit in London in April should start establishing a system of managing the process of globalization and consider the possibility of creating a supra-national reserve currency or a ‘super-reserve currency’.” Russia called for “the creation of a supra-national reserve currency that will be issued by international financial institutions,” and that, “It looks expedient to reconsider the role of the IMF in that process and also to determine the possibility and need for taking measures that would allow for the SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) to become a super-reserve currency recognized by the world community.”[40]
On March 23, 2009, it was reported that China’s central bank “proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.” The goal would be for the world reserve currency that is “disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.” The chief China economist for HSBC stated that, “This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money.” The Governor of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, “suggested expanding the role of special drawing rights, which were introduced by the IMF in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime but became less relevant once that collapsed in the 1970s.” Currently, “the value of SDRs is based on a basket of four currencies – the US dollar, yen, euro and sterling – and they are used largely as a unit of account by the IMF and some other international organizations.”
However, “China’s proposal would expand the basket of currencies forming the basis of SDR valuation to all major economies and set up a settlement system between SDRs and other currencies so they could be used in international trade and financial transactions. Countries would entrust a portion of their SDR reserves to the IMF to manage collectively on their behalf and SDRs would gradually replace existing reserve currencies.”[41]
On March 25, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary and former President of the New York Federal Reserve, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, when asked a question about his thoughts on the Chinese proposal for the global reserve currency, Geithner replied that, “I haven’t read the governor’s proposal. He’s a remarkably — a very thoughtful, very careful, distinguished central banker. Generally find him sensible on every issue. But as I understand his proposal, it’s a proposal designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights. And we’re actually quite open to that suggestion. But you should think of it as rather evolutionary, building on the current architectures, than — rather than — rather than moving us to global monetary union [Emphasis added].”[42]
In late March, it was reported that, “A United Nations panel of economists has proposed a new global currency reserve that would take over the US dollar-based system used for decades by international banks,” and that, “An independently administered reserve currency could operate without conflicts posed by the US dollar and keep commodity prices more stable.”[43]
A recent article in the Economic Times stated that, “The world is not yet ready for an international reserve currency, but is ready to begin the process of shifting to such a currency. Otherwise, it would remain too vulnerable to the hegemonic nation,” as in, the United States.[44] Another article in the Economic Times started by proclaiming that, “the world certainly needs an international currency.” Further, the article stated that, “With an unwillingness to accept dollars and the absence of an alternative, international payments system can go into a freeze beyond the control of monetary authorities leading the world economy into a Great Depression,” and that, “In order to avoid such a calamity, the international community should immediately revive the idea of the Substitution Account mooted in 1971, under which official holders of dollars can deposit their unwanted dollars in a special account in the IMF with the values of deposits denominated in an international currency such as the SDR of the IMF.”[45]
Amidst fears of a falling dollar as a result of the increased open discussion of a new global currency, it was reported that, “The dollar’s role as a reserve currency won’t be threatened by a nine-fold expansion in the International Monetary Fund’s unit of account, according to UBS AG, ING Groep NV and Citigroup Inc.” This was reported following the recent G20 meeting, at which, “Group of 20 leaders yesterday gave approval for the agency to raise $250 billion by issuing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, the artificial currency that the IMF uses to settle accounts among its member nations. It also agreed to put another $500 billion into the IMF’s war chest.”[46] In other words, the large global financial institutions came to the rhetorical rescue of the dollar, so as not to precipitate a crisis in its current standing, so that they can continue with quietly forming a new global currency.
Creating a World Central Bank
In 1998, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for the New York Times advocating a “global Fed.” Garten was former Dean of the Yale School of Management, former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, previously served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and on the policy planning staffs of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance of the Ford and Carter administrations, former Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his article written in 1998, he stated that, “over time the United States set up crucial central institutions — the Securities and Exchange Commission (1933), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1934) and, most important, the Federal Reserve (1913). In so doing, America became a managed national economy. These organizations were created to make capitalism work, to prevent destructive business cycles and to moderate the harsh, invisible hand of Adam Smith.”
He then explained that, “This is what now must occur on a global scale. The world needs an institution that has a hand on the economic rudder when the seas become stormy. It needs a global central bank.” He explains that, “Simply trying to coordinate the world’s powerful central banks — the Fed and the new European Central Bank, for instance — wouldn’t work,” and that, “Effective collaboration among finance ministries and treasuries is also unlikely to materialize. These agencies are responsible to elected legislatures, and politics in the industrial countries is more preoccupied with internal events than with international stability.”
He then postulates that, “An independent central bank with responsibility for maintaining global financial stability is the only way out. No one else can do what is needed: inject more money into the system to spur growth, reduce the sky-high debts of emerging markets, and oversee the operations of shaky financial institutions. A global central bank could provide more money to the world economy when it is rapidly losing steam.” Further, “Such a bank would play an oversight role for banks and other financial institutions everywhere, providing some uniform standards for prudent lending in places like China and Mexico. [However, t]he regulation need not be heavy-handed.” Garten continues, “There are two ways a global central bank could be financed. It could have lines of credit from all central banks, drawing on them in bad times and repaying when the markets turn up. Alternately — and admittedly more difficult to carry out — it could be financed by a very modest tariff on all trade, collected at the point of importation, or by a tax on certain global financial transactions.”
Interestingly, Garten states that, “One thing that would not be acceptable would be for the bank to be at the mercy of short-term-oriented legislatures.” In essence, it is not to be accountable to the people of the world. So, he asks the question, “To whom would a global central bank be accountable? It would have too much power to be governed only by technocrats, although it must be led by the best of them. One possibility would be to link the new bank to an enlarged Group of Seven — perhaps a ”G-15” [or in today’s context, the G20] that would include the G-7 plus rotating members like Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Poland, India, China and South Korea.” He further states that, “There would have to be very close collaboration” between the global bank and the Fed, and that, “The global bank would not operate within the United States, and it would not be able to override the decisions of our central bank. But it could supply the missing international ingredient — emergency financing for cash-starved emerging markets. It wouldn’t affect American mortgage rates, but it could help the profitability of American multinational companies by creating a healthier global environment for their businesses.”[47]
In September of 2008, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for the Financial Times in which he stated that, “Even if the US’s massive financial rescue operation succeeds, it should be followed by something even more far-reaching – the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to oversee markets that have become borderless.” He emphasized the “need for a new Global Monetary Authority. It would set the tone for capital markets in a way that would not be viscerally opposed to a strong public oversight function with rules for intervention, and would return to capital formation the goal of economic growth and development rather than trading for its own sake.”
Further, the “GMA would be a reinsurer or discounter for certain obligations held by central banks. It would scrutinise the regulatory activities of national authorities with more teeth than the IMF has and oversee the implementation of a limited number of global regulations. It would monitor global risks and establish an effective early warning system with more clout to sound alarms than the BIS has.” Moreover, “The biggest global financial companies would have to register with the GMA and be subject to its monitoring, or be blacklisted. That includes commercial companies and banks, but also sovereign wealth funds, gigantic hedge funds and private equity firms.” He recommends that its board “include central bankers not just from the US, UK, the eurozone and Japan, but also China, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. It would be financed by mandatory contributions from every capable country and from insurance-type premiums from global financial companies – publicly listed, government owned, and privately held alike.”[48]
In October of 2008, it was reported that Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack stated that, “it may take continued international coordination to fully unlock the credit markets and resolve the financial crisis, perhaps even by forming a new global body to oversee the process.”[49]
In late October of 2008, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for Newsweek in which he stated that, “leaders should begin laying the groundwork for establishing a global central bank.” He explained that, “There was a time when the U.S. Federal Reserve played this role [as governing financial authority of the world], as the prime financial institution of the world’s most powerful economy, overseeing the one global currency. But with the growth of capital markets, the rise of currencies like the euro and the emergence of powerful players such as China, the shift of wealth to Asia and the Persian Gulf and, of course, the deep-seated problems in the American economy itself, the Fed no longer has the capability to lead single-handedly.”
He explains the criteria and operations of a world central bank, saying that, “It could be the lead regulator of big global financial institutions, such as Citigroup or Deutsche Bank, whose activities spill across borders,” as well as “act as a bankruptcy court when big global banks that operate in multiple countries need to be restructured. It could oversee not just the big commercial banks, such as Mitsubishi UFJ, but also the “alternative” financial system that has developed in recent years, consisting of hedge funds, private-equity groups and sovereign wealth funds—all of which are now substantially unregulated.” Further, it “could have influence over key exchange rates, and might lead a new monetary conference to realign the dollar and the yuan, for example, for one of its first missions would be to deal with the great financial imbalances that hang like a sword over the world economy.”
He further postulates that, “A global central bank would not eliminate the need for the Federal Reserve or other national central banks, which will still have frontline responsibility for sound regulatory policies and monetary stability in their respective countries. But it would have heavy influence over them when it comes to following policies that are compatible with global growth and financial stability. For example, it would work with key countries to better coordinate national stimulus programs when the world enters a recession, as is happening now, so that the cumulative impact of the various national efforts do not so dramatically overshoot that they plant the seeds for a crisis of global inflation. This is a big threat as government spending everywhere goes into overdrive.”[50]
In January of 2009, it was reported that, “one clear solution to avoid a repeat of the problems would be the establishment of a “global central bank” – with the IMF and World Bank being unable to prevent the financial meltdown.” Dr. William Overholt, senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, formerly with the Rand Institute, gave a speech in Dubai in which he said that, “To avoid another crisis, we need an ability to manage global liquidity. Theoretically that could be achieved through some kind of global central bank, or through the creation of a global currency, or through global acceptance of a set of rules with sanctions and a dispute settlement mechanism.”[51]
Guillermo Calvo, Professor of Economics, International and Public Affairs at Columbia University wrote an article for VOX in late March of 2009. Calvo is the former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, and is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and President of the International Economic Association and the former Senior Advisor in the Research Department of the IMF.
He wrote that, “Credit availability is not ensured by stricter financial regulation. In fact, it can be counterproductive unless it is accompanied by the establishment of a lender of last resort (LOLR) that radically softens the severity of financial crisis by providing timely credit lines. With that aim in mind, the 20th century saw the creation of national or regional central banks in charge of a subset of the capital market. It has now become apparent that the realm of existing central banks is very limited and the world has no institution that fulfils the necessary global role. The IMF is moving in that direction, but it is still too small and too limited to adequately do so.”
He advocates that, “the first proposal that I would like to make is that the topic of financial regulation should be discussed together with the issue of a global lender of last resort.” Further, he proposed that, “international financial institutions must be quickly endowed with considerably more firepower to help emerging economies through the deleveraging period.”[52]
A “New World Order” in Banking
In March of 2008, following the collapse of Bear Stearns, Reuters reported on a document released by research firm CreditSights, which said that, “Financial firms face a ‘new world order’,” and that, “More industry consolidation and acquisitions may follow after JPMorgan Chase & Co.” Further, “In the event of future consolidation, potential acquirers identified by CreditSights include JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.”[53]
In June of 2008, before he was Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, Timothy Geithner, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, wrote an article for the Financial Times following his attendance at the 2008 Bilderberg conference, in which he wrote that, “Banks and investment banks whose health is crucial to the global financial system should operate under a unified regulatory framework,” and he said that, “the US Federal Reserve should play a “central role” in the new regulatory framework, working closely with supervisors in the US and around the world.”[54]
In November of 2008, The National, a prominent United Arab Emirate newspaper, reported on Baron David de Rothschild accompanying Prime Minister Gordon Brown on a visit to the Middle East, although not as a “part of the official party” accompanying Brown. Following an interview with the Baron, it was reported that, “Rothschild shares most people’s view that there is a new world order. In his opinion, banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance.”[55]
In February of 2009, the Times Online reported that a “New world order in banking [is] necessary,” and that, “It is increasingly evident that the world needs a new banking system and that it should not bear much resemblance to the one that has failed so spectacularly.”[56] But of course, the ones that are shaping this new banking system are the champions of the previous banking system. The solutions that will follow are simply the extensions of the current system, only sped up through the necessity posed by the current crisis.
An Emerging Global Government
A recent article in the Financial Post stated that, “The danger in the present course is that if the world moves to a “super sovereign” reserve currency engineered by experts, such as the “UN Commission of Experts” led by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, we would give up the possibility of a spontaneous money order and financial harmony for a centrally planned order and the politicization of money. Such a regime change would endanger not only the future value of money but, more importantly, our freedom and prosperity.”[57]
Further, “An uncomfortable characteristic of the new world order may well turn out to be that global income gaps will widen because the rising powers, such as China, India and Brazil, regard those below them on the ladder as potential rivals.” The author further states that, “The new world order thus won’t necessarily be any better than the old one,” and that, “What is certain, though, is that global affairs are going to be considerably different from now on.”[58]
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In April of 2009, Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, said that, “If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.”[59]
David Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, and former managing director of Kissinger and Associates, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote a book titled, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making, of which he is certainly a member. When discussing the role and agenda of the global “superclass”, he states that, “In a world of global movements and threats that don’t present their passports at national borders, it is no longer possible for a nation-state acting alone to fulfill its portion of the social contract.”[60]
He writes that, “even the international organizations and alliances we have today, flawed as they are, would have seemed impossible until recently, notably the success of the European Union – a unitary democratic state the size of India. The evolution and achievements of such entities against all odds suggest not isolated instances but an overall trend in the direction of what Tennyson called “the Parliament of Man,” or ‘universal law’.” He states that he is “optimistic that progress will continue to be made,” but it will be difficult, because it “undercuts many national and local power structures and cultural concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock of human civilization, namely the notion of sovereignty.”[61]
He further writes that, “Mechanisms of global governance are more achievable in today’s environment,” and that these mechanisms “are often creative with temporary solutions to urgent problems that cannot wait for the world to embrace a bigger and more controversial idea like real global government.”[62]
In December of 2008, the Financial Times ran an article written by Gideon Rachman, a past Bilderberg attendee, who wrote that, “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible,” and that, “A ‘world government’ would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.”
He then asks if the European model could “go global,” and states that there are three reasons for thinking that may be the case. First, he states, “it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a ‘global war on terror’.” Secondly, he states that, “It could be done,” largely as a result of the transport and communications revolutions having “shrunk the world.” Thirdly, this is made possible through an awakening “change in the political atmosphere,” as “The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.”
He quoted an adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying, “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government,” and that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law.” However, Rachman states that any push towards a global government “will be a painful, slow process.” He then states that a key problem in this push can be explained with an example from the EU, which “has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic. [Emphasis added]”[63]
In November of 2008, the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC), the US intelligence community’s “center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking,” released a report that it produced in collaboration with numerous think tanks, consulting firms, academic institutions and hundreds of other experts, among them are the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London.[64]
The report, titled, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, outlines the current global political and economic trends that the world may be going through by the year 2025. In terms of the financial crisis, it states that solving this “will require long-term efforts to establish a new international system.”[65] It suggests that as the “China-model” for development becomes increasingly attractive, there may be a “decline in democratization” for emerging economies, authoritarian regimes, and “weak democracies frustrated by years of economic underperformance.” Further, the dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency, as there would likely be a “move away from the dollar.”[66]
It states that the dollar will become “something of a first among equals in a basket of currencies by 2025. This could occur suddenly in the wake of a crisis, or gradually with global rebalancing.”[67] The report elaborates on the construction of a new international system, stating that, “By 2025, nation-states will no longer be the only – and often not the most important – actors on the world stage and the ‘international system’ will have morphed to accommodate the new reality. But the transformation will be incomplete and uneven.” Further, it would be “unlikely to see an overarching, comprehensive, unitary approach to global governance. Current trends suggest that global governance in 2025 will be a patchwork of overlapping, often ad hoc and fragmented efforts, with shifting coalitions of member nations, international organizations, social movements, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and companies.” It also notes that, “Most of the pressing transnational problems – including climate change, regulation of globalized financial markets, migration, failing states, crime networks, etc. – are unlikely to be effectively resolved by the actions of individual nation-states. The need for effective global governance will increase faster than existing mechanisms can respond.”[68]
The report discusses the topic of regionalism, stating that, “Greater Asian integration, if it occurs, could fill the vacuum left by a weakening multilaterally based international order but could also further undermine that order. In the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, a remarkable series of pan-Asian ventures—the most significant being ASEAN + 3—began to take root. Although few would argue that an Asian counterpart to the EU is a likely outcome even by 2025, if 1997 is taken as a starting point, Asia arguably has evolved more rapidly over the last decade than the European integration did in its first decade(s).” It further states that, “movement over the next 15 years toward an Asian basket of currencies—if not an Asian currency unit as a third reserve—is more than a theoretical possibility.”
It elaborates that, “Asian regionalism would have global implications, possibly sparking or reinforcing a trend toward three trade and financial clusters that could become quasi-blocs (North America, Europe, and East Asia).” These blocs “would have implications for the ability to achieve future global World Trade Organization agreements and regional clusters could compete in the setting of trans-regional product standards for IT, biotech, nanotech, intellectual property rights, and other ‘new economy’ products.”[69]
Of great importance to address, and reflecting similar assumptions made by Rachman in his article advocating for a world government, is the topic of democratization, saying that, “advances are likely to slow and globalization will subject many recently democratized countries to increasing social and economic pressures that could undermine liberal institutions.” This is largely because “the better economic performance of many authoritarian governments could sow doubts among some about democracy as the best form of government. The surveys we consulted indicated that many East Asians put greater emphasis on good management, including increasing standards of livings, than democracy.” Further, “even in many well-established democracies, surveys show growing frustration with the current workings of democratic government and questioning among elites over the ability of democratic governments to take the bold actions necessary to deal rapidly and effectively with the growing number of transnational challenges.”[70]
Conclusion
Ultimately, what this implies is that the future of the global political economy is one of increasing moves toward a global system of governance, or a world government, with a world central bank and global currency; and that, concurrently, these developments are likely to materialize in the face of and as a result of a decline in democracy around the world, and thus, a rise in authoritarianism. What we are witnessing is the creation of a New World Order, composed of a totalitarian global government structure.
In fact, the very concept of a global currency and global central bank is authoritarian in its very nature, as it removes any vestiges of oversight and accountability away from the people of the world, and toward a small, increasingly interconnected group of international elites.
As Carroll Quigley explained in his monumental book, Tragedy and Hope, “[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”[71]
Indeed, the current “solutions” being proposed to the global financial crisis benefit those that caused the crisis over those that are poised to suffer the most as a result of the crisis: the disappearing middle classes, the world’s dispossessed, poor, indebted people. The proposed solutions to this crisis represent the manifestations and actualization of the ultimate generational goals of the global elite; and thus, represent the least favourable conditions for the vast majority of the world’s people.
It is imperative that the world’s people throw their weight against these “solutions” and usher in a new era of world order, one of the People’s World Order; with the solution lying in local governance and local economies, so that the people have greater roles in determining the future and structure of their own political-economy, and thus, their own society. With this alternative of localized political economies, in conjunction with an unprecedented global population and international democratization of communication through the internet, we have the means and possibility before us to forge the most diverse manifestation of cultures and societies that humanity has ever known.
The answer lies in the individual’s internalization of human power and destination, and a rejection of the externalization of power and human destiny to a global authority of which all but a select few people have access to. To internalize human power and destiny is to realize the gift of a human mind, which has the ability to engage in thought beyond the material, such as food and shelter, and venture into the realm of the conceptual. Each individual possesses – within themselves – the ability to think critically about themselves and their own life; now is the time to utilize this ability with the aim of internalizing the concepts and questions of human power and destiny: Why are we here? Where are we going? Where should we be going? How do we get there?
The supposed answers to these questions are offered to us by a tiny global elite who fear the repercussions of what would take place if the people of the world were to begin to answer these questions themselves. I do not know the answers to these questions, but I do know that the answers lie in the human mind and spirit, that which has overcome and will continue to overcome the greatest of challenges to humanity, and will, without doubt, triumph over the New World Order.
Endnotes
[1] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency. The Telegraph: April 3, 2009: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5096524/The-G20-moves-the-world-a-step-closer-to-a-global-currency.html
[2] Robert Winnett, Financial Crisis: Gordon Brown calls for ‘new Bretton Woods’. The Telegraph: October 13, 2008: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3189517/Financial-Crisis-Gordon-Brown-calls-for-new-Bretton-Woods.html
[3] Gordon Brown, Out of the Ashes. The Washington Post: October 17, 2008: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603179.html
[4] Gordon Rayner, Global financial crisis: does the world need a new banking ‘policeman’? The Telegraph: October 8, 2008: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3155563/Global-financial-crisis-does-the-world-need-a-new-banking-policeman.html
[5] Benn Steil, The End of National Currency. Foreign Affairs: Vol. 86, Issue 3, May/June 2007: pages 83-96
[6] Jonathan Tirone, ECB’s Nowotny Sees Global `Tri-Polar’ Currency System Evolving. Bloomberg: October 19, 2008: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=apjqJKKQvfDc&refer=home
[7] BBC, South America nations found union. BBC News: May 23, 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7417896.stm
[8] CNews, South American nations to seek common currency. China View: May 26, 2008: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/27/content_8260847.htm
[9] AME Info, GCC: Full steam ahead to monetary union. September 19, 2005: http://www.ameinfo.com/67925.html
[10] John Irish, GCC Agrees on Monetary Union but Signals Delay in Common Currency. Reuters: June 10, 2008: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&article=110727&d=10&m=6&y=2008
[11] Forbes, TIMELINE-Gulf single currency deadline delayed beyond 2010. Forbes: March 23, 2009: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/03/24/afx6204462.html
[12] Agencies, ‘GCC need not rush to form single currency’. Business 24/7: March 26, 2009: http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/3/pages/25032009/03262009_4e19de908b174f04bfb3c37aec2f17b3.aspx
[13] Barry Eichengreen, International Monetary Arrangements: Is There a Monetary Union in Asia’s Future? The Brookings Institution: Spring 1997: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1997/spring_globaleconomics_eichengreen.aspx
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[16] Reuven Glick, Does Europe’s Path to Monetary Union Provide Lessons for East Asia? Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: August 12, 2005: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2005/el2005-19.html
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[18] AFX News Limited, East Asia monetary union ‘feasible’ but political will lacking – ADB. Forbes: September 19, 2007: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2007/09/19/afx4133743.html
[19] Lin Li, ASEAN discusses financial, monetary integration. China View: April 2, 2008: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/02/content_7906391.htm
[20] Paul De Grauwe, Economics of Monetary Union. Oxford University Press, 2007: pages 109-110
[21] Heather Milkiewicz and Paul R. Masson, Africa’s Economic Morass—Will a Common Currency Help? The Brookings Institution: July 2003: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2003/07africa_masson.aspx
[22] John Gahamanyi, Rwanda: African Central Bank Governors Discuss AU Financial Institutions. The New Times: August 23, 2008: http://allafrica.com/stories/200808230124.html
[23] Eric Ombok, African Union, Nigeria Plan Accord on Central Bank. Bloomberg: March 2, 2009: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=afoY1vOnEMLA&refer=africa
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[25] Herbert Grubel, The Case for the Amero. The Fraser Institute: September 1, 1999: Page 4: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/publication_details.aspx?pubID=2512
[26] Herbert Grubel, The Case for the Amero. The Fraser Institute: September 1, 1999: Page 17: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/publication_details.aspx?pubID=2512
[27] Thomas Courchene and Richard Harris, From Fixing to Monetary Union: Options for North American Currency Integration. C.D. Howe Institute, June 1999: Page 22:
http://www.cdhowe.org/display.cfm?page=research-fiscal&year=1999
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[29] Barrie McKenna, Dodge Says Single Currency ‘Possible’. The Globe and Mail: May 21, 2007
[30] Consider a Continental Currency, Jarislowsky Says. The Globe and Mail: November 23: 2007:
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[32] Herbert Grubel, Fix the Loonie. The Financial Post: January 18, 2008:
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[34] Get ready for the phoenix. The Economist: Vol. 306: January 9, 1988: pages 9-10
[35] IMF, IMF Survey. Volume 27, No. 9: May 11, 1998: pages 146-147:
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[36] Judy Shelton, Hearing on Exchange Rate Stability in International Finance. Testimony of Judy Shelton Before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services: May 21, 1999: http://financialservices.house.gov/banking/52199she.htm
[37] ECB, The euro and the dollar - new imperatives for policy co-ordination. Speeches and Interviews: September 18, 2000: http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2000/html/sp000918.en.html
[38] IMF, One World, One Currency: Destination or Delusion? Economic Forums and International Seminars: November 8, 2000: http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/ecforums/110800.htm
[39] Robert A. Mundell, World Currency. The Works of Robert A. Mundell: http://www.robertmundell.net/Menu/Main.asp?Type=5&Cat=09&ThemeName=World%20Currency
[40] Itar-Tass, Russia proposes creation of global super-reserve currency. ITAR-TASS News Agency: March 16, 2009: http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13682035&PageNum=0
[41] Jamil Anderlini, China calls for new reserve currency. The Financial Times: March 23, 2009: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7851925a-17a2-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac.html
[42] CFR, A Conversation with Timothy F. Geithner. Council on Foreign Relations Transcripts: March 25, 2009: http://www.cfr.org/publication/18925/
[43] news.com.au, UN backs new new global currency reserve. The Sunday Telegraph: March 29, 2009: http://www.news..com.au/business/story/0,27753,25255091-462,00.html
[44] Ashima Goyal, Is world ready for a global currency? The Economic Times: April 3, 2009: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ET-Debate/Is-world-ready-for-a-global-currency/articleshow/4352581.cms
[45] R Agarwala, SDR should become the global currency. The Economic Times: April 3, 2009: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ET-Debate/SDR-should-become-the-global-currency/articleshow/4352573.cms
[46] Kim Kyoungwha and David Yong, Dollar’s Role Is Safe as IMF Expands Own Currency. Bloomberg: April 3, 2009: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBbu9JB2mGkc&refer=home
[47] Jeffrey E. Garten, Needed: A Fed for the World. The New York Times: September 23, 1998: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/23/opinion/needed-a-fed-for-the-world.html
[48] Jeffrey Garten, Global authority can fill financial vacuum. The Financial Times: September 25, 2008: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7caf543e-8b13-11dd-b634-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
[49] CNBC, Morgan’s Mack: Firm Was Excessively Leveraged. CNBC: October 16, 2008: http://www.cnbc.com/id/27216678
[50] Jeffrey Garten, We Need a Bank Of the World. Newsweek: October 25, 2008: http://www.newsweek.com/id/165772
[51] Sean Davidson, ‘Global central bank could prevent future crisis’. Business 24/7: January 10, 2009: http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/1/pages/01102009_350bc822e4ee4508b724e55b0f1393df.aspx
[52] Guillermo Calvo, Lender of last resort: Put it on the agenda! VOX: March 23, 2009: http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3327
[53] Walden Siew, Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report. Reuters: March 17, 2008: http://www.reuters.com/article/innovationNews/idUSN1743541720080317
[54] James Politi and Gillian Tett, NY Fed chief in push for global bank framework. The Financial Times: June 8, 2008: http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto060820081850443845
[55] Rupert Wright, The first barons of banking.. The National: November 6, 2008: http://www.thenational.ae/article/20081106/BUSINESS/167536298/1005
[56] Michael Lafferty, New world order in banking necessary after abject failure of present model. The Times Online: February 24, 2009: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/management/article5792585.ece
[57] James A. Dorn, Dangers in G20 currency moves. The Financial Post: April 2, 2009: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/04/02/dangers-in-g20-currency-moves.aspx
[58] Richard Gwyn, Change not necessarily for the better. The Toronto Star: April 3, 2009: http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/612822
[59] FE, Growth to slow down hitting hard the poor countries. The Financial Express: April 1, 2009: http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/search_index.php?page=detail_news&news_id=62661
[60] David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008), page 315
[61] David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008), pages 315-316
[62] David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. (Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008), page 316
[63] Gideon Rachman, And now for a world government. The Financial Times: December 8, 2008: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html
[64] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: Acknowledgements: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[65] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: page 11: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[66] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 11-12: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[67] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 94: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[68] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 81: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[69] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 83: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[70] NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November, 2008: pages 87: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[71] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966), 324
Andrew G. Marshall is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is currently studying Political Economy and History at Simon Fraser University.
Andrew G. Marshall is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Andrew G. Marshall
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