Friday, July 11, 2008

A Catholic returns to Adventism

A CATHOLIC RETURNS TO ADVENTISM

Bill Cork, associate pastor of a Seventh-day Adventist church in Houston, Texas, is used to switching team jerseys. Bill has been SDA, Lutheran, Catholic, and SDA again over the years. Before his decision to return to the mother ship of his youth, he was Director of Young Adult & Campus Ministry for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston for nine years.

In April, he came back. He recounted his reasons for leaving Catholicism in his blog Oak Leaves.

Reactions from the Catholic blog community was mixed:

~ SDA To RC
~ CVSTOS FIDEI: Defending the Faith
~ Musings of a Pertinacious Papist
~ Dei Gratia

Source: : www.atoday.com/news/atnewsbreak/2007/10/15

Popery Drunk with The Blood of The Saints

POPERY DRUNK WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS

PERSECUTIONS OF POPERY TO THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES, A. D. 1685.

BY JOHN DOWLING

[The following is from The History of Romanism by John Dowling, New York: 1853]

Way of Life Literature electronic edition, July 2000

[Note from the publisher. This valuable out-of-print book was carefully scanned and formatted for electronic publication by Way of Life Literature. For a catalog of other books, both current and old, in print and electronic format, contact us at P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail), http://www.wayoflife.org (web site).]

The Burning of Protestants by Catholic Authorities

CHAPTER I. -- PERSECUTION PROVED FROM DECREES OF GENERAL COUNCILS AND WRITINGS OF CELEBRATED DIVINES TO BE AN ESSENTIAL DOCTRINE OF POPERY

CHAPTER II. -- SUFFERINGS OF THE ENGLISH PROTESTANTS UNDER BLOODY QUEEN MARY.—THE BURNING OF LATIMER, RIDLEY, CRANMER, &C.

CHAPTER III. -- THE INQUISITION.—SEIZURE OF THE VICTIMS.—MODES OF TORTURE, AND CELEBRATION OF THE AUTO DA FE.

CHAPTER IV. -- INHUMAN PERSECUTIONS OF THE WALDENSES

CHAPTER V. -- PERSECUTIONS IN FRANCE.—MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, AND REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.

Source: www.wayoflife.org/articles/dowling00.htm

Thursday, July 10, 2008

OBAMA: Sparring Partner 2008



The Greatest Ploy in American History

Barak Husein Obama is the Pseudo-Candidate for President of the United States in 2008.
He is the last alternative to a John McCain Presidency; He's the best Sparring Partner money can buy, in a land where money buys everything, even the "White House".
Obama doesn't stand a chance in the "great White South", or the "liberal North"; Yet, this is still being billed as an election. When there's no difference in this election, and the Zimbabwe Election in which Mugabe was the 'sole' Candidate; Here's the similartity: McCaine has no palpable opposition. He's a shoo in!

Does a Sparring Partner ever stand a chance of winning a Title Boxing Match, a Heavy Weight Championship?
No, he's just a 'dummy' who prepares the champ or contender for a title match. That's all, nothing more.

Obama is collecting millions in donations and contributions; To pay for his "CAMPaign", and now for Hillary Rodham Clinton's Sham Democrat Party Presidential candidacy nomination, which she lost to Obama. Now Obama, the 'Good-Olde' Boy, returns the insults,and accusations by bailing out his 'nemesis', Hilliray.

Three shams so far this Century:


  1. The 2000 Election: Bush vs Gore;
  2. The 2004 Election: Bush vs 'Cousin' Kerry;
  3. The 2008 'Mock Election': McCain vs 'Fall-Guy' Obama.

Arsenio.

Next they'll give Obama a "standing eight count", and declare McCain the Winner! TKO!

Candidate Obama: A Less Risky Alternative

Monday, July 7, 2008

Candidate Obama: A Less Risky Alternative

by Rodrigue Tremblay

"All you have to do is to tell them [the people] they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering, Germany's Nazi leader

"Essential to this strategy is the UN Security Council, which should impose progressively tougher political and economic sanctions [on Iran]. Should the Security Council continue to delay in this responsibility, the United States must lead like-minded countries in imposing multilateral sanctions outside the UN framework."

Sen. John McCain, June 2, 2008, before the annual AIPAC Conference, Washington D.C.

“The Iranian threat must be stopped by all possible means, and [it was a global duty to take] drastic measures' to prevent it.”

Ehud Olmert, Israeli Prime Minister, June 4, 2008, before the annual AIPAC Conference, Washington D.C.

I have proposed a responsible, phased redeployment of our troops from Iraq. We will get out as carefully as we were careless getting in.

...[The]danger from Iran is grave, [and I would] do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything.”

Sen. Barack Obama, June 4, 2008, before the annual AIPAC Conference, Washington D.C.

“...I know that when I visit with AIPAC, I am among friends. Good friends. Friends who share my strong commitment to make sure that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow, and forever.”

Sen. Barack Obama, June 4, 2008, before the annual AIPAC Conference, Washington D.C.

A few weeks ago, I analyzed the relative worthiness of the candidacy of presumptive Republican Candidate McCain. In all fairness, a similar assessment of Senator Barack Obama's candidacy would appear necessary.

Indeed, the Bush-Cheney administration will be history at 11:59 pm on January 20, 2009. On November 4, 2008, their successors, a new president and a new vice president, will have been chosen. Will it be an Obama team or a McCain team?

Sen. Barack Obama (D. IL) is the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate and the U.S.'s first African-American presidential nominee from a major party. Considering the racial past of the United States, if he were to be elected President, this will have to be considered close to being a political revolution. The political climate for such an important shift in American politics is, as of now, most favorable to electing a Democrat as President.

For one, the current Republican administration, after eight years of blunder upon blunder, is the most unpopular of any administration in a long time, with a massive 65 percent disapproval rating, according to a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll, while President George W. Bush is in the political cellar with a 28 percent approval rating. Even more revealing perhaps, very few Americans say their country is heading in the right direction.

Secondly, the American electorate is moving toward the Democrats with registration in both parties running 41 percent to 32 percent in favor of the Democrats. Thirdly, candidate Obama is much more intelligent, much younger, much more appealing and much more charismatic than candidate McCain. And, on issues, the Democrats should have a huge edge because people are tired of an expensive and unpopular war, because the economy is in bad shape and getting worse with the deepening financial crisis, and because a lot of people are suffering economically and financially, while oil prices are going through the roof. Many middle class Americans also have concluded that the time has come to improve the American health care system and the American pension system.

Therefore, since a Democratic presidential candidate should logically be the overwhelming favorite to defeat the Republican nominee in November, is this an election for Sen. Obama to lose? Will there be a “Bradley effect” with white voters telling pollsters they intend to vote for a black candidate, such as Senator Obama, but could instead vote their prejudice? Will there be a backlash from progressive Democrats as their candidate moves more and more to the right?

In theory, candidate Obama and his advisers would have to make a bundle of mistakes and come out with very bad decisions to lose this election, when everybody is expecting the Democrats to gain several seats in both the Senate and House of Representatives on November 4.

As of now, it is widely recognized that candidate Obama has begun his official presidential campaign on the wrong foot by disillusioning his own progressive political base by wavering on issues.

Indeed, on June 4, candidate Obama went before the 2008 annual AIPAC conference and mimicked nearly word for word his hawkish Republican opponent, candidate McCain.

In fact, you would not believe from the quotes placed above this article that the two main American presidential candidates are from two different parties, at least, as they position themselves toward AIPAC's political agenda regarding U.S. foreign policy. When it comes to AIPAC, both presidential candidates seem to have the same speechwriters and they behave as if they were members of a common plutocratic one party political system.

They both would not hesitate to bomb Iran and they both are pledging to make the world safe for Israel. One can also expect that neither would refrain from fomenting armed conflicts around the world. Even on some crucial domestic issues, such as government warrantless electronic surveillance, both candidates seem to be in agreement. Indeed, Sen. Obama has sided with the AIPAC-inspired so-called Bush Democrats in approving warrantless surveillance of citizens by the government. On that issue, he has flip-flopped in approving immunity for George W. Bush and the telecom companies who wiretapped American citizens without a warrant before 9/11. Both candidates also rely on rich lobbyists for political advice. Last June 11, for example, candidate Obama had to remove longtime Washington lobbyist Jim Johnson from his vice president running-mate search team after it became known that Mr. Johnson had received preferential loan terms from the large mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, a firm that Sen. Obama had sharply criticized before.

On constitutional matters, Sen. Obama would not be that reluctant in emulating George W. Bush by using public funds to finance church-run activities. Indeed, he even wants to expand tax-financed faith based programs. The American military-industrial complex has also little to fear from an Obama presidency, since Sen. Obama intends to maintain the high level of U.S. military spending.

All this smacks of some improvisation, despondency and an absence of firm ideological commitments on Sen. Obama's part, and this plays into his opponent's charges. But more risky for him, this may persuade some voters that the two main presidential candidates are only marginally different and are controlled by the same plutocratic interests.

What the two presumptive U.S. presidential candidates also have in common is that both have been raised partly outside their own country, Obama in Indonesia and McCain in Panama. On this score, they are most unusual candidates and can be expected to be sensitive to international issues. In fact, both would be expected to be interventionist, McCain being only slightly more a military interventionist than Obama. This is because both adhere to the hubristic and imperialistic ideology that the United States government, without any democratic or legal mandate to that effect whatsoever, should rule the world. On the whole, however, it is to be expected that a President Obama would adopt a somewhat more "pragmatic" and a somewhat more “realist” foreign policy, in the Bill Clinton administration's style, while a President McCain would be inclined to duplicate more closely George W. Bush in following a more “rigidly ideological” and a more unilateral foreign policy.

It is probably on the question of the Iraq war that Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain would seem to differ the most. Foremost among Sen. Obama's objectives is his desire to extirpate his country from the presently occupied Iraq and stop spending more than one hundred billion dollars a year in that never-ending war and to devote that money to domestic social programs. On that score, a strong majority of Americans would side with him. Sen. Obama's official timetable is to remove all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within sixteen months after becoming president. However, Sen. Obama now says that he can be flexible on this pledge and that he is keeping some room to manoeuvre based on future advice that he could receive from military commanders in the field!

This is still at variance with Sen. McCain's position on Iraq, which is closer to the current incumbent, George W. Bush. Indeed, McCain voted for the Iraq war in October 2002, and he would be very happy to continue Bush's policy in Iraq, even to the point of extending the military occupation of that country “one hundred years” into the future. On Iraq, therefore, the choice would seem to be clear: those who oppose the Iraq war should vote for Sen. Obama, and those who favor the Iraq war and other non U.N. approved wars would find in Sen. McCain a candidate more to their liking.

President George W. Bush sees that very clearly. Last May 15, (2008) President George W. Bush went to Israel and, speaking to the Israeli parliament (the Knesset), he did a most unusual thing: he attacked an American presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, while in a foreign country. It was certainly most inappropriate for a sitting president to campaign against a fellow American in a foreign land.

On some narrowly defined social issues, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain are further apart and it can be said that they offer a real choice. Indeed, on social issues, on the economy, and on budget priorities, Sen. Obama can be considered a progressive while Sen. McCain is a conservative. In fact, on the whole, Sen. McCain can be seen as the status quo candidate, while Sen. Obama is the candidate for change and reform.

Let us see the differences on key social and economic issues between Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain.

1. On Social Security, for instance, an issue closely followed by senior citizens and future retirees, Sen. McCain is on record as favoring a privatization of Social Security, while Sen. Obama strongly opposes such a privatization, as it could place retirees' incomes at the whim of the stock market. Here the choice is clear.

2. On Health care, Sen. Obama favors public health care and cheaper drugs; Sen. McCain opposes this approach. Sen. Obama would like to see a comprehensive health care system that would be compulsory for children but voluntary for adults. Sen. McCain wants to keep the current health system pretty much intact, while providing individuals with a $2500 refundable tax credit for health expenditures. Here again the choice is pretty clear.

3. On the social issue of women's rights, Sen. Obama clearly sides on the side of women and their right to control their own body. Therefore, he considers that decisions about abortion must remain a matter between a woman and her doctor, and not be dictated by religious or political authorities. By contrast, Sen. McCain has moved closer to religious activists and now favors overriding the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, while keeping incest and rape as the only exceptions for abortion. It would seem that those who believe in women's rights should vote for Sen. Obama and those who believe that the state should impose its decisions on women should vote for Sen. McCain.

4. On the crucial related issue of who should sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, the choice between the two presidential candidates would also seem to be clear-cut. Sen. Obama could be expected to nominate progressive judges on the Supreme Court, while Sen. McCain would like to push the Supreme Court even further to the right than it is now. For instance, Sen. Obama opposed Judge Samuel Alito's confirmation (Jan. 2006) and Judge John Roberts' nomination for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Sept. 2005). That could be the most long-term contentious difference between the two candidates.

5. On taxes and budget choices, the two candidates are way apart. For one, Sen. McCain was initially against the Bush administration tax cuts in 2003. Since then, he has embraced those cuts and the resulting deficits, while proposing a sizeable increase in defense spending. Sen. McCain would even go as far as requiring a two-thirds majority of Congress before raising taxes. Since expenditures would not be so constrained, this would insure permanent budgetary deficits for years to come. On the other side, Sen. Obama proposes that very wealthy individuals contribute more to financing Social Security. He would repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. He would also like to make the U.S. tax system more progressive by requiring wealthy individuals to contribute proportionally more than those with lower incomes, while providing tax relief to the majority of American taxpayers. On that score, Sen. McCain is more a follower of George W. Bush, while Sen. Obama adopts the standard Democratic position of favoring the middle class and the poor at the expense of the very rich. The choice on this issue is fairly clear.

Overall, Sen. Obama seems to be surrounding himself with intelligent, competent and experienced advisers such as former Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former general William Odom. On the other hand, Sen. McCain seems to be emulating President George W. Bush by surrounding himself with lobbyists, and with neocon and far right advisers.

To conclude, Sen. Obama may be a better alternative than Sen. McCain, but his propensity to double-talk can be disconcerting. Let's say that he is possibly the least worst of the two main presidential candidates. It is my contention that former Vice President Al Gore, the candidate for whom a majority of Americans voted in 2000, would have been a better and more logical, and most likely, a more successful Democratic choice as a presidential candidate.

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com

He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'

Visit his blog site at: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.

Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/

Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

Posted, Monday, July 7, 2008, at 5:30 am

Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to:

bigpictureworld@yahoo.com

N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise.

(Home: TheNewAmericanEmpire.com)

The above is presented for educational purposes only.

© 2008 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

The Final Gloalization of the U.S. Banking System


THE FINAL GLOBALIZATION OF THE U.S. BANKING SYSTEM





By Joan Veon
July 8, 2008
NewsWithViews.com


We live in a globalized world—a world without barriers or borders, which means every aspect of our economic structure has to change. A private corporation, we call the Federal Reserve, controls the majority of our monetary system. To understand the new set of powers being advanced by the U.S. Treasury Department to the Federal Reserve, we first must recognize that the Federal Reserve Act passed in 1913 never gave them (the Feds) total power over our economy.

To appreciate the importance of what is currently taking place, we must first realize that as a private corporation, the Federal Reserve is not required to make public who sits on their board of Directors nor who or what banks and corporations hold stock in their private company. Additionally, they are not required to publish an annual report, and I am told, they pay no taxes. So why is it that the American people cannot forgive themselves the interest on their debt? It is because it is owed to a private corporation!


The entire financial and business cycle of market highs and lows is controlled by how much money the Feds pump into or glean from the banking system. When they add money to the system, interest rates fall and the market rises and when they take money out of the system, interest rates rise and the stock market falls or corrects. In doing so, this private corporate structure allows for an elite group of people to literally buy low and sell high, thus transferring the wealth into their pockets while those who continue to hold take the “hit.”


The globalization of our financial system goes hand in hand with the need for a global stock exchange and global accounting system to harmonize the cross-border activities of transnational corporations and banks. To facilitate this process is the interdependence, or mutual dependence between countries, which came about as the barriers fell. With a globalized stock exchange, insurance system, and accounting system, we will need a GLOBAL REGULATORY SYSTEM to accommodate the changes from national to international. This will all fit in with recent calls for a global central bank.


In June 1999, then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said, “Reforming international financial institutions, strengthening the international financial architecture and maintaining open markets are not simply questions of economics but politics.” That same year, after a great deal of media and stock market hype and hysteria, Congress passed the “Banking Modernization Act” also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLB Act) which tore down all the protections that the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act had put in place, including the separating of commercial banking from investment banking, designed to protect the investor. The GLB Act allows for U.S. banks to become “financial conglomerates” meaning they can expand their services to sell insurance, stocks and bonds, as well as perform investment bank functions initially outlawed in 1933. Although the banking structure of other countries already had financial conglomerates, our system did not and had to be harmonized with theirs. This is why we have non-American names like AXA, Deutsche Bank, ABN, etc.


According to my analysis of the various activities, which are now referred to as the sub-prime crisis, the mortgage crisis, and the world liquidity crisis, our financial system, which reflects the last vestiges of national sovereignty, must be changed. The recent proposal by the Treasury Department called “Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure” is being touted as the antidote for our sick economy.


When the Blueprint was published at the end of March the stock market recovered for a week or two, but now there is a new and constant stream of market hype with some hysteria to ensure that all of its proposals are implemented as soon as possible. On July 10, history will take place when the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson (who’s roots are in Wall Street) and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sit on the SAME panel to testify before Congress. At that time they will provide enough data to secure the Blueprint’s immediate passage. Until Congress assures these financial tyrants of its passage, the stock market will continue to drop as a warning to their all encompassing power; then miraculously the stock market will have one of its largest rallies to commemorate victory. As an international reporter, this is a pattern I have observed time and time again since 1994.


The Blueprint states “Foreign economies are maturing into market-based economies, contributing to global economic growth and stability and providing deep and liquid sources of capital outside the United States. The increasing interconnectedness of the global capital markets poses new challenges: an event in one jurisdiction may ripple through to other jurisdictions. The convergence of financial services providers [the Banking Modernization Act] and financial products has increased over the past decade. Financial intermediaries and trading platforms are converging. Financial products may have insurance, banking, securities, and futures components” (emphasis added). The Blueprint constitutes the final take-over by the Federal Reserve of our nation’s economy.


The Blueprint recommends changing the banking charter to include all financial institutions, thus effectively transferring, control over “national banks, federal savings associations, and federal [and state] credit union charters, and be available to all corporate forms, including stock, mutual and ownership structures.” While the Fed was originally given power over the banking system, they were not given power over savings and loans, state chartered banks, or credit unions.


To give you a sense of the immense transfer of wealth that is taking place, understand that the U.S. insurers hold $6T in assets, the U.S. banking sector holds $12.6T, and the U.S. securities sector holds $12.4T, for a total of $31T in assets. Are you seeing what they see? Dollar signs and control—control of our financial future, control of where we can live, and control of how we will live. In Medieval times this was called feudalism.


Moreover, the Feds are to be given authority over the U.S. Payment and Settlement System thereby controlling the settlement process for securities, which is the three-day waiting period for the processing of payment, proper paper documentation and titling of the shares.


It is further stated that the Fed be given the role of Market Stability Regulator. This is highly unprecedented. By doing so, the Fed will have total control over what happens in the market; not just the amount of liquidity they funnel in and channel out. The Blueprint states the Fed should be given responsibility to: gather appropriate information, disclose information, collaborate with other regulators [international] on rule writing and take corrective actions when necessary in the “interest of overall financial market stability”. “This new role would replace its traditional role as a supervisor of certain banks and all bank holding companies. The Fed’s responsibilities would be broad, important and difficult to undertake.”


As our country is being federalized the rights of the individual states are also in the process of being eroded and reduced. In order to allow for America’s independence from a king who had total control, our Forefathers set up our country’s structure to allow the power of government to reside at the state level. It was the state that would provide services for its citizenry. Over the years, there has been a major transfer of powers from the state to the federal level.


The Blueprint also provides for the entire mortgage system of the U.S. to be federalized. This is as a result of the sub-prime crisis which appears to be an event that just happens to fit into the changes our national system needs in order to be globalized. The establishment of a new federal commission, The Mortgage Origination Commission, and its director would chair representatives from the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration and the Conference of States Bank Supervisors. Among some of the changes in responsibility, the Blueprint states that the Feds “enforcement authority for federal laws should be clarified and enhanced.” To understand how much their control is expanding, total mortgages outstanding, according to the 2006 U.S. Census, grew from $8,364B in 2002 to $13,306B in 2006, an increase of 59%!


Additionally, the Fed will be given a say in the insurance industry. For the past 135 years, the States have regulated all types of insurance with little involvement from the federal level of government. The Blueprint provides for the establishment of an Office of National Insurance within the Treasury to regulate those engaged in the business of insurance and for Congress to establish an Office of Insurance Oversight to address international regulatory issues. Essentially, in a globalized world what is then needed is a world central bank. Could the Fed be a world central bank or will all of the individual central banks merge to become the “global central bank”? If that is the case then the Bank for International Settlements is a world (global) central bank and the Fed is a global-regional bank.


Lastly, if we are going to live in a globalized world with a global stock exchange, a global central bank, a global tax, a global currency, and a global regulatory system, then we need a Global Commodities Regulator.


As recent as last week, it was reported in The Wall Street Journal that in order for the investment banks to be bailed out, the only place they can go is to buy commercial banks that have strong balance sheets, deposits, and the assets they will need to improve their financial situation. This will bring our entire financial system to a pre-1929 state in a globalized world. Glass and Steagall will spin in their graves!



Once the last vestiges of American financial sovereignty are transferred to this private corporation, Congress becomes obsolete and useless. Up until this time, they were needed to help approve the various incremental transfers of financial sovereignty. Now, they will not be needed and if they think they have any power, they will find that they gave it all away. How pathetic of them, they should all be hanged for treason.



As for you and me, all of the safety nets that once protected our freedoms and sovereignty as a product of local, county, state and federal government are in effect gone. We are now left to fend for ourselves in a country where the American government has abandoned their responsibility to us, their citizenry. So that we may survive, we will need to don our own lifejacket—one of faith in the God who rules over the affairs of men.




© 2008 Joan Veon - All Rights Reserved


Source: http://www.newswithviews.com/Veon/joan54.htm

America seized with fear and trembling, again!



AMERICA SEIZED WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING, AGAIN!





By Joan Veon
July 1, 2008
NewsWithViews.com


Unbeknownst to the American people who are besieged with a fear and trembling over the falling stock market, the sub-prime credit crisis, the flooding in the Midwest, and the all-time oil, gas and food prices, a much greater, more enduring and lasting evil is taking over the country through new regulations proposed by the U.S. Treasury Department. To give you a better understanding of the BIG picture, we will address it in three segments: (1) “America Seized with Fear and Trembling--Again” (2) “The Final Globalization of the U.S. Banking System by the Federal Reserve”, and (3) “How to Survive in a World Without Safety Nets.”

While covering global meetings I have observed over and over again that most of the “problems”, which arise, are often part of the agenda of whatever global meeting is being held at the time. During the past twelve months, beginning specifically the end of July, 2007, I started to understand that the sub-prime crisis had another side to it—the globalization our entire financial structure. To understand what is at stake, we’ll review first the changes to our Republic.


The first major change came in 1913 with the establishment of a new central bank; a private corporation we call the Federal Reserve, setup to control the financial, economic and monetary system of the United States, and run by a group of powerful financial opportunists. (It was Andrew Jackson who shutdown the second of the two original central banks, approved with limited charters by our Founding Fathers.) This is why we, the American people, cannot forgive ourselves the interest on our current the debt. We do not owe it to ourselves, but rather to our privately-owned Federal Reserve Corporation. Since its inception, the Federal Reserve charter has been amended more than 195 times, which included the passage of HR12, “The Banking Modernization Act.” According to the March 31, 2008 “Treasury Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure,” the Fed is about to seize its final empowerment over the rest of the American banking and financial system. While the Blueprint states it will take years for all of this legislation to be put in place, Paulson gave a speech on June 19 to Women in Housing and Finance in which he stated, “[W]e must dramatically expand our attention to the fundamental needs of our system, and move much more quickly to update [the outdated nature of our financial regulatory] system.” Once this is finalized, the Congress of the United States of America become useless because their main purpose since 1913 has been to surrender to the Federal Reserve more and more powers over our economic and financial structure. In other words, what we are witnessing a complete take over of our economy by a private corporation!


The second series of major changes is called “globalization”. This is the tearing down of barriers between the nation-states. When Presidents Clinton and G.W. Bush along with England’s Prime Ministers Tony Blair and the current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, refer to “interdependence” they are speaking of the fact that there are no more economic, political, legal, trade, military, or intelligence barriers separating the nation-states. In 1944, a post-World War II economic conference was held in New Hampshire. “Bretton Woods”, dubbed after the conference hotel, birthed the first two international pieces, which now comprise an international/global world- government structure: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Today on a regular basis, all the treasury secretaries of the world meet to resolve how to change their nation’s financial and economic laws to meld into an ever evolving international financial and economic world.


In 1945, the United Nations was founded in San Francisco. Today, all the foreign ministers of the UN meet to “keep the peace”. That is so laughable considering the fact that the UN is ready to sign off on its biggest peacekeeping budget, $7.3B, in their history. There are more wars now globally than at any other time in the history of the UN. They have failed miserably at keeping the peace. Primarily because there are those who only want the WHOLE PIECE and not PEACE as we think of it. The U.S. should not only withdraw from the United Nations but all of the related UN organizations. It should also be remembered that the Commonwealth of Nations, a special league of nations which pledge allegiance to the Queen of England operate within the UN and have the potential of 54 votes to our ONE vote.


As the trade barriers fell in 1994 it changed the entire structure of the world. No longer could the average American compete with his neighboring farmer, manufacturer, architect, or technician, but now would compete with ALL counterparts worldwide. The globalized workplace has affected many American industry workers. We cannot, with our higher standard of living, compete with the Chinese slave laborers. Buying cheaper cannot be better when it destroys the very backbone of the American dream.


In 1998, the foreign ministers of the world approved an International Criminal Court. For the first time since the Roman Empire, a global body now has the right to transcend national sovereignty in order to search, seize, arrest and deport an alleged international criminal. What else can I say? We are all terrorists until proven innocent.


In 2001, the final barriers between the nation-states came down when alleged terrorists attacked the World Trade Towers in New York City. My extensive research revealed very simply that if all the other barriers between states had already fallen, then the two most sensitive barriers still remaining had to be erased: the military and intelligence barriers. Currently we have two global militaries: the U.S. “Coalition of the Willing” and 90,000 United Nations peacekeepers. In regard to the UN, when they need more supplies, i.e., food, uniforms, guns, ammunition, tents, planes, boats, etc., they basically call on the countries of the world to ante up. Britain might supply uniforms while the U.S. provides military transport planes. In regard to the intelligence barriers, beginning as early at 1996, the G8 countries were working to establish a global intelligence gathering room where the CIA, Britain’s MI6, Russia’s KGB and other G8 intelligence agencies would work together to help maintain world peace and to track international terrorism. Today it is fully functional.



The various barriers, which once protected the citizens of each respective country, vanished as the IMF/World Bank, United Nations, World Trade Organization, International Criminal Court, etc. were set in place above the nation-state. Today and with the handover of the remaining parts of our financial structure by Congress, there are no safety nets to protect us. In other words, the big powerful money lords who rule the world—people like George Soros, the Rockefellers, European royal families, and the most powerful banking families–will be able to operate with impunity while the average American will be rendered helpless. Our Constitution will become nothing more than a piece of worthless paper because the power of Congress will be eliminated with the final sell-out of our economic system. Without national barriers to protect us, America is now part of a “level landscape”. As a result, when the powerful sell their investment positions, they can take their gains all at once, globally, instead of country by country.



Lastly, the fear and trembling is used as a tool to force people into change. The fear is created through a constant stream of negativity and used as a process. First the situation is created (Sept. 11) and then solved so that people think they are safe (Anti-terrorist Bill) when in fact, the wool has just been pulled over their eyes. Fear and trembling can also be associated with “creative destruction.” Our once great country, way of life, livelihood and future is being destroyed before our very eyes. We have a choice: to operate in fear or turn to faith. Next article: July 8.


© 2008 Joan Veon - All Rights Reserved



Source: http://www.newswithviews.com/Veon/joan52.htm

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Who runs the world?


Who runs the world?

Wrestling for influence
Jul 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

The post-war global institutions have largely worked well. But rising countries and growing threats are challenging their pre-eminence

THE powerful, like the victorious, do not just write history. They grab the seats at the top tables, from the United Nations Security Council to the boards of the big international economic and financial institutions. They collude behind closed doors. They decide who can join their cosy clubs and expect the rest of the world to obey the instructions they hand down.

That is how many outsiders, not just in the poor world, will see the summit that takes place from July 7th to 9th of the G8, the closest the world has to an informal (ie, self-appointed) steering group. Leaders of seven of the world’s richest democracies, plus oil-and gas-fired Russia, gather this year in Toyako, on Hokkaido in northern Japan, to ruminate on climate change, rising food and energy prices, and the best way to combat global scourges from disease to nuclear proliferation.

But in an age when people, money and goods move around as never before, this little group no longer commands the heights of the global economy and the world’s financial system as the core G7 used to do when their small, purposeful gatherings of the democratic world’s consenting capitalists first got going in the 1970s. Nowadays summits produce mostly lengthy communiqués and photo-opportunities. And Russia’s slide from democracy into state-directed capitalism has lowered the club’s political tone.

In an effort to show that the G8 is still up with the times, Japan, like Germany last year, has invited along for a brief chat leaders from five “outreach” countries: Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Yet this handshake between those who did best out of the 20th century and some potential shapers of the 21st leaves hanging the question of how the old world order should be adapting to the new.

Might the world be better managed by such a G13? Or a G15 or G16, to include a couple of weighty Islamic states too? Or, to preserve the group’s original globe-steering purpose, by a G12 of the world’s biggest economies? Meanwhile, the global institutions set up after the second world war are also having to look hard at their own futures. Unlike the G7/8, which takes on a bit of everything, these institutions basically divide into two sorts: economic and financial, and political.

At the pinnacle of world political management, but looking increasingly anachronistic, is the UN Security Council. Of its 15 members, ten rotate at the whim of the various UN regional groupings. The other five, which wield vetoes and are permanent, are America, Russia, China, Britain and France, roughly speaking the victors of the last long-ago world war. Alongside them is a secretary-general (currently Ban Ki-Moon from South Korea; this job, too, tends to go by regional turn), a vast bureaucracy at UN headquarters in New York, and hundreds of specialised agencies and offshoots (see table).


The world had to be saved not just from another war, but from a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That job went to a clutch of institutions: the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), jointly known as the Bretton Woods institutions after the place of their creation; the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a rich-country think-tank set up in 1961; the much older central bankers’ Bank for International Settlements; and the World Trade Organisation (WTO, formerly the GATT).

They have been buttressed too by conventions, conferences, courts, declarations, dispute-mechanisms, special mandates and treaties governing everything from human rights to anti-dumping complaints. The whole elaborate architecture has had extra underpinning from strong regional organisations, such as the European Union, and less elaborate ones like the African Union and the various talking-shops of Latin America, the Arab world and Asia, as well as from steadying alliances, such as NATO. As a result, there has been no return to the disastrous global conflicts of the first half of the 20th century.

Yet that very success has become one of three powerful pressures to adjust the way the world is run, as new economic winners (and some new losers) demand a say. Pressure also stems from intensifying resentment and frustration. After ringing declarations on human rights and even the adoption by a UN world summit in 2005 of a “responsibility to protect” against genocide and crimes against humanity, the UN Security Council still finds itself unable to agree to do much to protect the people of Darfur, Zimbabwe, Myanmar and others from the murderous contempt of their rulers—just as in the 1990s the UN failed the genocide victims in Rwanda.

If the Security Council, with a charter of high principles at its back, shows such feebleness towards tyrants (or to those who cavalierly flout nuclear treaties), doesn’t it deserve to be bypassed? John McCain, the Republican candidate for president of the United States, supports the creation of a new League of Democracies which, its boosters argue, would have not only the moral legitimacy but also the will to right the world’s wrongs effectively.

The third impetus to rejig the way the world organises itself is a dawning realisation on the part of governments, rich and poor, that the biggest challenges shaping their future—climate change, the flaws and the forces of globalisation, the scramble for resources, state failure, mass terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction—often need global, not just national or regional, solutions. The shift in 21st-century economic power alone is justification for rebalancing influence in the top clubs. Much harder to figure out is which bits of the global architecture need mere tweaking, which need retooling or replacing—and who should have the right to decide.

After decades of dividing the world into the rich and powerful West and the developing (or emerging) “rest”, China’s rapid growth and the economic dynamism of East Asia had led to talk of a new “Pacific” century well before the old “Atlantic” one had ended. On present trends, somewhere between 2025 and 2030 three of the world’s four largest economies will be from Asia. China will just pip America to top the global league, with India and Japan, both determined but so far unsuccessful campaigners for permanent seats on the UN Security Council, following on (though Chinese and Indians will still be, on average, much poorer than Americans or Japanese).

Not unipolar but what?
Yet talk of an Asian century sounds quaint. Despite America’s brief “unipolar moment” as its rival pole, the Soviet Union, collapsed, Russia has recovered to join a rising China, America, Europe and Japan in a new constellation of big powers that is based on far more than the old boot-and-rocket counts of the cold war. Bring India into the snapshot, and you capture 54% of the world’s population and 70% of GDP. Whether the leaders of this multipolar world will rub along or bash elbows remains to be seen.

Globalisation’s increasingly unfettered flow of information, technology, capital, goods, services and people has helped spread opportunity and influence far and wide. To re-emergent China and Russia, add not just India but Brazil (these four bracketed by Goldman Sachs in 2001 as the upcoming BRICs), Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Australia, to name just some of the new winners as money changes pockets and the world turns faster.

A modern map of power and influence should also include transformational tools such as the internet; manipulators from lobbying NGOs to terrorist groups; profit-takers such as global corporations and sovereign wealth funds; and unpredictable forces such as global financial flows. The principal characteristic of this world, argues Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations in a recent Foreign Affairs article, is not multipolarity but “nonpolarity”. Dozens of actors, exercising different kinds of power, vastly complicate the effort to find a better balance of influence and responsibility. But the excuse of complexity is no answer to the demand for equity.

Some clubs have proved more responsive than others. China got a new economic start simply by ditching Marx, Lenin and Mao. But its reformers were able to tap the liberal rules-based system codified in the rules of the IMF and the World Bank (and later the WTO) for ideas as well as cash. China rejoined the bank in 1980 (the Nationalist government on Taiwan had been a founder member) just as its reforms got under way. Ironically, Communist-run China has since been one of the system’s biggest beneficiaries. But it is by no means the only one. Despite the latest stockmarket dips and credit squeezes, world income per head has increased by more over the past five years than during any other similar period on record.

The IMF and the World Bank, pragmatic institutions from the outset, have adapted already, in fits and starts. In April the IMF reformed the peculiar formula by which it allocates votes and financial contributions according to economic size, reserves and other measures (see chart). China’s share of votes will increase to 3.81%, still far short of its weight in the world economy. Meanwhile, old power patterns still determine who holds the two top jobs: the bank is run by an American, the fund by a European. But a bigger problem for both organisations is relevance.

Until the late 1990s the IMF, monitor of exchange rates and lender of last resort to struggling governments, had plenty of work. But emerging economies, once its chief clients and source of earnings in repaid interest and loans, are these days often awash with their own cash. Earlier this year the IMF board voted to cut staff and sell off about an eighth of its gold reserves (some 400 tonnes) to meet expected future funding shortfalls. With no obvious role in coping with the aftermath of the recent banking and stockmarket turbulence, its future role may be more as an expert economic adviser.

Some worry that the world may still need a lender of last resort. Critics think the fund’s days should be numbered and its reserves put to better use for development. Still others muse that what is needed is a World Investment Organisation, to set basic rules and better track the huge and complex flows of cash that now wash around in hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, banks and financial markets.

The World Bank has a more certain future, but still needs to retool. Competition has stiffened from private capital markets. Many governments that once needed the bank’s help for dams, roads and other big projects are earning plenty from the sale of raw materials. Even in Africa, the readiness of China and India to spend liberally without strings in pursuit of oil and minerals means that the Sudans and the Congos can take the bank’s cash and ignore the conditions attached.

Yet the bank still has a role lending to unfashionable causes, or countries which donors neglect. It could also provide global public goods: funding energy-infrastructure and climate-change projects are two examples, agriculture another.

A bit too equal
While the bank and the fund are steered by their biggest shareholders, the WTO, though relying on a representative caucus of states to hammer out deals, belongs to all its members: India and Brazil, for example, are at the heart of the Doha round of trade talks. But egalitarianism can be a weakness as well as a strength.

Much admired, at least by government lawyers, are the 60,000 pages of jurisprudence that govern the workings of the WTO dispute mechanism, which has helped resolve many a trade spat. The WTO ensures that members do not discriminate among each other—the best deal they offer to anyone must be extended to everyone. This has helped level the playing field and expand world trade. Russia’s is the only large economy still outside the WTO, and that is its choice.

Yet those wanting to join must strike deals with each of the existing members—now a daunting 152. Operating by consensus means that the Doha “development” round has bogged down in disputes between developed and developing countries over complex, reciprocal cuts in farm subsidies and tariff barriers. The prospects for moving on to services look dim. Slow progress has helped push many to forge bilateral or regional deals instead. And if the Doha round fails completely, the recriminations could run far and wide—threatening any attempt, for example, to get agreement between the developed and developing world on new mechanisms to deal with climate change.

Economic and financial power is to some extent up for bids by governments with a stake in the game, and trade rules are (arduously) negotiable. Yet the distribution of political power has proved stubbornly—debilitatingly—resistant to change.

Most bitterly contested is membership of the UN Security Council, which has the right (whether exclusively or not is hotly debated) to decide what constitutes a threat to world peace and security, and what to do about it. In the UN’s other big decision-making institution, the General Assembly, all the world can have its say, and does. But here outsiders take their revenge: a caucus of mostly developing countries called the G77 (but these days comprising 130 members including China) tends to dominate and filibuster.

Might it assuage resentment and improve the council’s authority and the UN’s effectiveness if America, Britain, France Russia and China invited other permanent members to join them—and considered giving up their veto? When the P5, as they are called, first grabbed the most powerful slots, the UN had 51 members; decades of decolonisation and splintering self-determination later, it has 192. The obstacles to reform grow no smaller either.

Most recently a concerted effort by Brazil, Germany, India and Japan (a self-styled G4) to join the council’s permanent movers and shakers was thwarted by a combination of foot-dragging, jealousy and stiff-arming. African countries failed to agree on which of their several aspirants should join the bid. Regional rivals—Argentina and Mexico, Italy, Indonesia, Pakistan and others—lobbied to block the front-runners. China made it clear it would veto Japan; America, in supporting only Japan, helped destroy its friend’s chances.

New permanent members would broaden the regional balance. That could add authority and legitimacy to council decisions. Bringing in not only nuclear-armed India, but soft-powered Japan and the rest, would undercut the notion, perpetuated by the P5, that to be a winner you need first to crash the nuclear club.

But might the price of a larger, permanently more diverse council be more potential spanner-tossers and thus greater deadlock? The hope would be that once difficult outsiders got their feet permanently under the table, sharing the responsibility for managing the world would stop them protecting bad elements, as South Africa (currently a rotating member) has been doing with Zimbabwe, in part to defy the permanent five.

Prising the P5 from their vetoes might, however, have adverse effects. It was dependable veto power, ensuring their vital interests were never overridden, that kept America and Russia talking at the UN—and Nikita Khrushchev shoe-banging—through the darkest episodes of the cold war. Russia will not forget the mistake of the brief Soviet boycott of the council that led to force being authorised to repel North Korea at the start of the Korean war in 1950. China shows no sign of veto self-effacement, either.

But staying at the table does not guarantee agreement. The UN is deliberately an organisation of states, and states differ for reasons good and bad. George Bush went to war in Iraq without explicit backing from the Security Council (just as NATO went to war to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, despite Russia’s certain veto had the issue come to a council vote). But the council’s divisions on the most contentious issues have not prevented responsible stewardship elsewhere. A Security Council summit in 1992 agreed that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was a “threat to peace and security” to be dealt with forcibly if need be. After the attacks of September 11th 2001, new resolutions were passed to curb terrorists’ finance and keep nuclear, chemical and biological weapons out of their hands.

There has been a huge increase over the past 15 years in the numbers of blue helmets, with 100,000 soldiers and police currently deployed. This is credited with helping to reduce the number of conflicts between states, as well as calming civil wars from Bosnia to Haiti, from Cambodia to Sudan, from Congo to Lebanon. Acceptance, at least politically, of a “responsibility to protect” takes the council towards territory which, earlier this decade, it would not have approached: an International Criminal Court, for example, separate from the UN but able to take its referrals, and ready to prosecute the worst crimes.

Yet divisions among the P5 have often slowed deployment of peacekeepers where they are most needed, such as in Sudan’s war-torn province of Darfur. Pessimists doubt that China and Russia, both arch-defenders of the Westphalian principle that state sovereignty trumps all, will ever seriously contemplate authorising forceful intervention even to end a genocide. A new UN Human Rights Council has yet to prove it is any better than its discredited predecessor at bringing brutal governments to book.

Meanwhile it took years, and North Korea’s 2006 bomb test, for China to condemn Kim Jong Il’s nuclear cheating and let the Security Council pass judgment on it. The P5 plus Germany have worked together over the past three years, slapping a series of UN resolutions and sanctions on the regime in Iran for defiance over its suspect nuclear work, yet Russia and China have doggedly watered down each text, line by line.

Doing it for themselves
There is much the UN Security Council will never be able to do, no matter who occupies its plushest seats. And there are lots of other ways to get useful things done these days. The internet helps campaigners on human rights, as on other issues, to get their message round the world rather effectively. Stung by constant exposure and criticism of its policy in Sudan and Darfur, China appointed a special envoy (who soon found he had a lot of explaining to do) and shifted ground on the need for a UN force, even though deployment is agonisingly slow.

In some cases, regional organisations are better equipped to take the strain. Enlargement of the EU and NATO has helped stabilise Europe’s borderlands, with mostly European troops and police these days in the Balkans. Russia may protest, but its western frontier has never been more peaceful.

On a similar principle of African solutions to African problems, the African Union has provided troops in Sudan and elsewhere. But devolving security jobs to the neighbours can be a disaster: the AU delegated the problem of what to do about Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to a southern African grouping, SADC, which left it to South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, who did nothing. The hard-pressed people of Zimbabwe are still waiting for relief.

East Asia, the other big potential battlefront in the cold war, used to look very different from Europe, which has long had more than its share of shock-absorbing regional clubs and institutions. Now, alongside the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), a still limited talking-shop, other regional conversations are starting up. The ASEAN Regional Forum draws in not only China, Japan and Korea, but Americans, Russians and Europeans; ASEAN-plus-three summits are clubbier, involving only regional rivals China, Japan and Korea. A new East Asian Summit excludes America but brings in India and Australia, among others; Americans naturally prefer to boost the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC). Meanwhile Russia, China and their Central Asian neighbours have founded the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, in part to counter Western influence in the region as NATO battles on in Afghanistan, but in part so that Russia and China can keep an eye on each other. Annual joint military exercises are a new feature.

Problem-solving groups come in all shapes and sizes, from quartets (for promoting Middle East peace or trying to settle the future of Kosovo) to entire posses. Some 80 countries in the Proliferation Security Initiative (an “activity not an organisation”) exchange information and train together to sharpen skills for blocking illicit shipments of nuclear or other weapons materials. Like the P5 plus 1 talks on Iran (sometimes called the E3 plus 3 by Europeans), there are six-party talks hosted by China on North Korea (and including America, South Korea, Japan and Russia), which could yet evolve into a formal north-east Asian security dialogue.

More countries are taking the initiative. China, Japan and South Korea, East Asia’s rival powers, will meet this year for a first 3-minus-ASEAN summit. China, India and Russia meet from time to time to re-swear allegiance to multipolarity. They may have little more in common than an ambition to put Europe and America in the shade, but earlier this year the foreign ministers of the four BRIC countries got together for the first time; their economic and finance ministers will soon meet too. And with a wary eye to China’s growing economic and military weight, America, Australia and Japan have formed something of a security threesome, though Japan’s plan to include India too was deemed a bit provocative.

Quirky but familiar globe-spanning organisations include the Commonwealth, which knits together Britain’s former colonies plus other volunteers and does good works in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, and the Non-Aligned Movement, a cold-war hold-over with 116 members and communiqués that leave no prejudice unrecorded. But what of Mr McCain’s endorsement of a League of Democracies?

The notion isn’t new. An American sponsored Community of Democracies got going with fanfare in 2000. There is nothing wrong with mobilising freedom-loving governments to speak up for democracy. But there are difficulties.

Last time, America found it hard to say no to friends, and not all its friends are democrats. The new League (or Concert) of Democracies would have clearer rules for ins and outs. Supporters see it as potentially an alternative source of legitimacy, should the Security Council be hopelessly divided: a two-thirds majority of the roughly 60 countries that might qualify could even authorise the use of force to deal with threats to peace or to uphold the principle of a “responsibility to protect”.

But would a group of countries that spans all continents from Botswana to Chile, and Israel to the Philippines, ever manage to agree on much? A supposed democracy caucus at the UN has achieved little. Dividing the world ideologically again seems a step backwards to some. Nor could such a club solve pressing global problems. Coping with climate change needs China as well as India; energy security needs Saudi Arabia and Russia, as well as oil-dependent Japan or the Europeans.

The good news, given the rise of lots of new powers and players, is that this is not the 19th century. Then governments had few means other than gunboats to settle their differences. There are plenty of guns about these days, but also many other ways to settle the world’s disputes.



Source: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11664289