NO QUARTER FOR CORRUPTION (Focussing on The Fed./FRBS)

[Vexari]

nice find lunati

subtle changes have gradually paved the way

for the united nations to be the world's governance

this has been the plan

for quite some time


why else would ny ny be considered

the capital of the world..

[lunati]

In 1961 Public Law 87-297 was passed, paving the way to the United States to be merged into the United Nations.

http://www.libertygunrights.com/PublicLaw87-297.html

[toddao]

Hawaii elections clerk: Obama not born here


http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=165041

[Vexari]

to say the least!!


am already off the grid

thinking about a start up

to show others the same


wonder how that will be accepted?

by those it would negatively affect

like i really give a shit..

[IxCimi]

LOL! Pretty fucked up, huh?

[Vexari]

what is really incredible

they use money made out of thin air

to buy the globe..

[Vexari]

Time Banks are springing up in communities hard hit by the economic downturn.

They are membership groups that agree to barter services (expressed in "Time Dollars") for other members' services and goods ? and the swap is non-taxable.

An interesting and workable alternative to bank loans and Federal Reserve Notes.


`Banks' allow members to pay with time, not cash

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM
Associated Press Writer – Thu Jun 3, 5:48 am ET


ALLENTOWN, Pa. – No money? No problem! Pay with time, instead.

That's what Maria Villacreses did when the economy put a hitch in her wedding plans: She used "time dollars" on everything from a wedding-day makeover to an elaborate seven-layer cake.

In a modern twist on the ancient practice of barter, people like Villacreses are joining time banks to help them get the things they need or want without having to spend cash.

In a time bank, members get credit for services they provide to other members, from cooking to housekeeping to car rides to home repair. For each hour of work, one time dollar is deposited into a member's account, good for services offered by other members.

Scores of time banks are being started in hard-hit communities around the nation — and thousands of devotees are helping each other survive tough financial times.

"Even though we were planning to do something small and simple, it takes a lot of money, time and effort. Through time banking, I got a lot of help," said Villacreses, who belongs to Community Exchange, a 10-year-old time bank in Allentown, where 500 members offer everything from electrical work to tai chi.

As the economy recovers amid stubbornly high unemployment, newer banks with names like "Back On Track" have joined Community Exchange in offering an alternative to cash. Time Banks USA, an advocacy group in Washington, says interest in time banking has surged: About 115 now operate nationwide, with 100 more in early stages of development. Membership fluctuates but is believed to total more than 15,000.

"People see time banking as a way to deal with the economic pressures they are feeling," especially in places hit hardest by the recession, said Jen Moore, membership and outreach coordinator for Time Banks USA.

In Maine, where paper mills and shoe manufacturers have closed, time dollars buy everything from guitar lessons to yard work — even prayer. In California, they buy haircuts, tax help and aromatherapy. In Michigan, child care, plumbing and yoga.

In South Carolina, Back on Track Charleston was launched recently to help down-on-their-luck residents get, well, back on track. It's already got 80 members.

Winborne Evans relies on Back on Track to supply her with baby-sitting while she picks up extra shifts as a waitress. She's also using time dollars, which she earns by sitting for other members' kids, to help get her fledgling beekeeping business off the ground.

"Becoming a single mom recently ... I truly can't imagine where I would be without it, mostly because I can't afford a baby-sitter, and I can't afford to pay people to help me with my bees," said Evans, 29.

Unlike bartering, transactions in time banking are not usually reciprocal. Instead, Jane baby-sits for John, John fixes Mary's leaky faucet, Mary drives Tom to the doctor's office, and so on, all of them earning and spending time dollars. Their labor is valued equally: One hour is always worth one time dollar. (Time dollars are not taxable, according to Time Banks USA.)

People often join for economic reasons but wind up getting more out of it. Among the benefits: networking, getting to know neighbors, building a sense of community and keeping skills sharp.

"Part of it is very practical," said Judith Lasker, a professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem who is co-writing a book on time banking. "There's another part of it that's very ideological. People believe the best way to survive in this crazy, unpredictable world is to forge local ties, support local economies ... and support local people in a variety of ways."

Services provided by Allentown's Community Exchange — including gardening, cleaning, cooking and transportation — have allowed 79-year-old Joan Stevenson to stay in her home and out of assisted living.

"I'm enriched by it, not only from the services I receive but by being able to contribute," said Stevenson, who earns time dollars by writing for the Community Exchange newsletter, hosting Community Exchange meetings at her house and helping other members with their resumes and job searches.

Time banks are labor intensive and can be difficult to keep going. Most of the successful ones eventually get a paid staff, either by raising grant money or affiliating with a larger organization. Lehigh Valley Hospital & Health Network, the Allentown region's largest employer, pays the small staff of Community Exchange.

Manager Laura Gutierrez said time banks are worth the effort.

"Since the economy has been poor, people need to be a little more creative about using resources within a community that might not have been considered resources in the past," she said.

Which is exactly what Villacreses did to salvage her wedding plans.

The 28-year-old, who is fluent in English and Spanish and earns time dollars as a medical interpreter and by offering rides and pet-sitting, thought she would have to scale back when her fiance's hours at work were cut in half. Then fellow Community Exchange members suggested she use time dollars to pay for services that would typically cost hundreds of dollars.

On the big day, the bride sat at her dining room table while a complete stranger, Marilyn Shive, did her makeup.

"Show me which colors you tend to like," said Shive, a Community Exchange member who sells beauty products.

As Shive applied foundation and eyeliner, another member of Community Exchange delivered the cake. Others brought food and decorated the sanctuary and reception hall. During the service, time bankers took photos and played the organ.

In all, the wedding cost about 200 time dollars. By spending her time wisely, Villacreses figures she saved about $2,000.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100603/ap_on_re_us/us_banking_time;_ylt=AssTxpQ67GHPcAIPuX_ssuWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlbThyMGVhBHBvcwM3MARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3Vfc19uZXdzBHNsawNiYW5rc2FsbG93bWU-

[Vexari]

How can the G-20 finance chiefs?

curb deficits with fiat currencies

the world system is based on debt

and can never be paid off..


G-20 finance chiefs agree on need to curb deficits


By KELLY OLSEN - AP Business Writer
BUSAN, South Korea

Finance ministers and central bankers from the world's leading economies agreed Saturday on the need to cooperate in fending off financial market turmoil and keeping the world economic recovery on track.

In a statement that will serve as an outline for talks later this month by national leaders, including President Barack Obama, the Group of 20 endorsed rescue policies for Europe and the need to rebalance growth by supporting more domestic demand and greater trade by developing countries.

The agreement included no major new initiatives, but bridged differences over details of far-reaching financial reforms with calls to step up regulatory changes and cut back on massive budget deficits.



Managing Director of the World Bank Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, left, listens to Il SaKong, chairman of the World Bank conference during an opening press conference at the G-20 Finance and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Busan, South Korea Friday, June 4, 2010. The Group of 20 leading economies should look to supporting growth in the developing world to help ensure a sustainable long-term global recovery, World Bank officials said Friday.


"The recent volatility in financial markets reminds us that significant challenges remain and underscores the importance of international cooperation," the statement said.

Countries must "put in place credible, growth-friendly measures, to deliver fiscal sustainability," it said, noting that the policies would have to fit each country's unique situation.

Europe's sovereign debt crisis has sparked worries that the global economy could succumb to a second downturn following the meltdown sparked by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.

"We welcome the determined actions taken by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF," the statement said, referring to a $1 trillion bailout to help countries cope with the fallout from unsustainably high debt levels.

Yoon Jeung-hyun, South Korea's minister of strategy and finance, said concerns over the crisis in Greece and other European countries added urgency to the work on regulatory reforms.

As the ministers hashed out the priorities to forward to their leaders, Geithner urged his counterparts to reaffirm their commitment to safeguarding the recovery.

"The G-20's strong policy response has played a pivotal role in restoring economic growth but concerns about growth as Europe makes needed policy adjustments threaten to undercut the momentum of the recovery," Geithner said in a letter published online by the Wall Street Journal. Its authenticity was confirmed by his staff.

Hungary warned Friday it was the latest European country facing problems following Greece, Spain and Portugal, prompting the euro to fall below $1.20 for the first time in more than four years.

The G-20, founded in 1999, shifted its focus to crisis management after the Lehman Brothers collapse. In addition to its annual finance meetings, it has been holding summits since late 2008.

A chief concern is how to rein in ballooning fiscal deficits without hobbling growth.

The G-20 is working hard on technical details for reforming financial regulations and participants said there was a basic consensus for the first time on the need for banks and other financial institutions to bear the burden for government bailouts and other interventions.

"The financial sector should make a fair and substantial contribution toward paying for any burdens associated with government interventions," the statement said, noting that such an approach could involve a "range of policy approaches."

It said banks should be discouraged from excessive indebtedness and risk taking.

"It is critical that our banking regulators develop capital and liquidity rules of sufficient rigor to allow our financial firms to withstand future downturns in the global financial system," it said.

Details of such initiatives are still being worked out. Some members worry that an increase in the capital reserves banks must hold to cushion themselves against potential loan losses could hinder lending, possibly crimping funding crucial for the recovery.


http://www.thestate.com/2010/06/04/1316424/world-bank-meet-g20-agenda-should.html

[NYBob]

Is Obama constitutionally eligible to serve?
WND's complete archive of news reports on the issue

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=98546

New eligibility strategy working' Petition drive spurs action in half a dozen states

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=146885

The birth certificate movie every American must see
'A Question of Eligibility' lays foundation
for understanding hot issue

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=114271

BORN IN THE USA? Poll shocker! Majority wants Obama records
Maintain president should be chased from office
if he doesn't come clean

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=159317

Army slams door on Obama details


Lt. Col. Lakin
hearing: 'Items pertaining to president's credentials
are not relevant'

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=161961

http://www.eutimes.net/?s=9%2F11

http://www.texemarrs.com/

[toddao]

It is Not Anti-Anything to Tell the Truth

[IxCimi]

Incredible the lies they are willing to deseminate. "Everything we do is so special and pretty!"

Makes me wanna do my own Youtube video on how they fuck over nations by collusion to steal natural resources through associate organizations such as the IMF, bribe political figures to do their bidding, destroy national sovereignty, strip away inherent rights, more specifically those of the common man or woman.

[toddao]

CONSPIRACY! Theory No More_ Commentary By Brian William Hall
Copyright © 2004

http://conspiracycon.com/articles.html
I'll begin with a question that simply needs to be asked. Why is there a pathological obsession in this country with putting the words "theory” and "theorist” after "conspiracy?” There are, at least, two possibilities that come to mind. The first is that the word "conspiracy” is like a Rorschach test. It inherently comes with a variety of psychological responses upon hearing the very word - the primary reaction (so far) being closed-mindedness. The second possibility would, indeed, suggest a conspiracy. This severe skepticism (or pathos) by most against anything that challenges traditional lore is in place by design and derived from years of indoctrination through a carefully conceived program within mainstream education, politics and media for the purpose of social, financial, political and intellectual control of the masses. Most recently, this ideology was supported (and even demanded) by George W. Bush who, after 9-11, stated publicly, "Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories…”

Why would the President make such a proclamation? When something negative occurs (murder, assassination, terrorist attack, etc.) any good investigator will ask him or herself one very important question, "Who benefits from this?” Then one simply follows where the evidence and money & paper trails lead him. Why, then, wouldn't the President want people to theorize about who or what was behind the most devastating attack on American soil in history? After some thought, his decree would seem counter-productive. Unless, that is, Mr. Bush and his administration would benefit from little or no inquiry from those he professes to protect just as, say, Lyndon Johnson may have benefited from appointing the very biased Warren Commission to investigate the death of his predecessor.

Well, growing numbers of U.S. citizens are simply not wanting to trust the words of our current White House occupant and the media giants anymore. This sentiment is shared by those Americans (especially in our post 9-11 world) who are deciding to think outside of the box and do their own homework on both history and current world events. And by doing so, they have discovered that things are truly not what they appear to be on planet Earth. How do I know these people are out there? Because, I've had the honor of getting to personally know them. Furthermore, most are extremely credible individuals who simply choose to defy the mainstream and think for themselves. Each possess a passion to ask the right questions on many issues that demand further investigation, regardless of where the truth or controversy may take them. For example:

Is it a "theory” that the CIA is deeply involved in drug dealing and mind control programs; that the Federal Reserve and the IRS are not government bodies, but privately owned; that there are blatant inconsistencies in the "official” versions of the Oklahoma City bombing and 9-11; that the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor (perhaps like 9-11) was allowed to happen; that the government for 50+ years has had a sophisticated program in place to cover up the UFO phenomenon; that there was more than one gunman in the JFK assassination; that occult technologies, which may have devastating effects on our health and the environment, are being developed above and below ground; that the Chemtrail phenomenon is real and many "trails” contain hazardous chemicals and/or biologicals; that AIDS and other "designer” diseases were manufactured for depopulation purposes; that non-polluting free energies and life-saving alternative medicines are suppressed by powerful corporations and corrupt government agencies; that Secret Societies like The Skull & Bones (George W. Bush and John Kerry are members) do exist and hold strong influence over who is elected to positions of both political and financial power? And the list of questions goes on and on.

Ask yourself then. Are the examples above really conspiracy "theories” or are they programs and agendas that are not only conspiratorial in nature, but have been proven to exist based on research, documentation and testimony by many hardworking, dedicated and concerned people? I personally know the answer to this because I, too, am one of those so-called "wacko conspiracy theorists” who has actually taken the time to research these very issues and much more. And my personal findings are nothing short of shocking. But, for those of you who are not quite sure yet and require more confirmation on these and other conspiracy topics… well, there is a little conference I know of.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MEMOIRS OF A CONSPIRACY “REALIST”
Copyright © 2007
There are many motivating factors behind why I fund and organize an annual conspiracy conference, which I will fully detail. I started CONSPIRACY CON (and chose that specific name) from the standpoint of being a concerned citizen who is well aware of the many "real" conspiracies and "real" hidden agendas that absolutely do impact humankind. What I've learned these past twelve years is that there is a giant sphere of knowledge with many doors. A dozen years ago I entered, interestingly, through the "UFO" door, but discovered the connectedness of everything, along with some disturbing aspects, at least, in our neck of the “multi-verse.” Yes, watch the skies, but, I say, watch your back too. There are many things going on not just above us, but right under our very noses. We as people are not privy to these realities... by design. There are powerful hidden groups operating on (and, perhaps, in) this planet whose decisions affect all of us, but these same groups answer to none of us. "They" are brilliant at what "they" do (after eons of practice), and "they" are organized and well connected through a series of secret (and not so secret) societies, banking/industrial dynasties and multi-generational royal (by decree) bloodlines existing and operating all over the world.

However, these secret elite we expose at (for example) my conference are the subject of much public skepticism with regards to the reality of their very existence and so-called nefarious agendas. To best explain the current skepticism of anything that challenges the status quo is to understand what is known as "cognitive dissonance." Most of the masses operate day to day with unchallengeable belief-systems as a result of years, if not decades, of carefully calculated programming and indoctrination (again, by design). For example, Hitler knew that if you told a big enough lie long enough that people would believe it, and he was (and is) not alone in this practice. Therefore, challenging any pre-ordained "belief systems" can be especially daunting for those of us in the truth-movement, which for the moment is still somewhat “embryonic” in size.

For those who are skeptical of what I am addressing here, please consider for a moment that what we "believe" (as opposed to intellectually knowing) often has little or nothing to do with the truth. That concept, though, doesn't stop people from having blind faith in their respective gods and/or blind patriotism for their respective governmental leaders. These same people are easily programmed to label people like me as a “Conspiracy Theorist.” Fine, I say. Then I get to call them “Accident Theorists” or “Coincidence Theorists” or “Whoopsy-Daisy Theorists” who truly have not bothered to even attempt thinking outside of the proverbial box.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are many open-minded (or rather far less mind-controlled) truth-seekers who are actually looking for the "truth" or, at least, answers. However, if the truth and honest answers are being consciously suppressed from us or manipulated through MIS and DIS-information programs (and said indoctrination) for the purposes of control, domination and enslavement, then it is time we take another approach. This is where I believe I come in, at least, with my own personal philosophy on how to breach that barrier between us and the very truths that shall allegedly set us free.

I would submit for those who "can handle the truth" that the best approach to learning the biggest secrets of this world is to analyze and expose the SECRET-KEEPERS of this world. We may want to consider what the so-called "conspiracy theorists" (a damage-control label) have been telling us all for a very long time... that world events, especially if they are negative, are being plotted out by a handful of elites, or world puppet-masters, (already drunk with power) for the purposes of more and more control over our lives and ultimately total enslavement. Once we accept this hypothesis, we are then going to want to do what any good investigator subsequently does after any negative event... ask himself, "Who benefits the most from this." Then, once one follows the clues, the money & paper trails, one will discover more often than not that they do, in fact, lead to this same group of elites and their organizations. This is certainly what I and many of my colleagues have discovered for ourselves, based on all available evidence… and there’s enough to sink twelve Titanics.

Then, once one accepts where the facts lead him (or her), one must then take another step that any good investigator would take. In order to understand how these secret groups can do the horrible things they do on a daily and planetary basis, one must then "psychologically profile" the minds of this elite group of evil-doers. The best way to do that is to understand and acknowledge something called "pattern recognition." Once one establishes a pattern of behavior (or world-event planning in this case), one can begin to see a larger picture as to the ultimate goals of said elite. In Earth's
case, it is total centralization of literally everything on this planet (power, money, commerce, trade, religion, esoteric knowledge, etc.) into the hands of a very few, along with a massively reduced global population... the survivors of which to be micro-chipped and monitored constantly for total control purposes. There is massive evidence to support this rather grim conclusion.

Another method of understanding the mental and psychological perspectives of the global elite is to study their methods of communication, address and identification. This is usually in the form of symbols and symbolism about
which the elite are totally obsessed. Look at the symbols of any powerful organization, be it a bank, government office, royalty (especially), etc. A tremendous amount of research has been done on the subversive use of symbolism in our world with stunning findings. Sacred symbols (especially) and many archetypes are being use to: 1) classify who and/or what is behind any given organization and 2) to control the people.

I like to give examples. One of which is the symbol used by the Shell Oil Corporation. Many of the symbols used by large corporations date back to the ancient world and the very ancient practice of sun worship. The so-called innocent
looking "shell" in Shell's logo, yes, looks like a shell. But, once you do a little research and understand key archetypes, which are subversively used, you will realize that this very logo, in fact, represents the rays of the sun… and why. NBC (National Broadcasting Company) does an extraordinarily similar thing. The peacock logo also looks suspiciously like the rays of the sun. Again, not an accident. Similarly, you will also see the very significant "pyramid and all-seeing eye" logo, which is, of course, on the back of the (debt-based) One Dollar Bill (or, more accurately, Federal Reserve Note). This symbol (used by the infamous "Illuminati" --- a long story there) is also represented by the Trans-America building in San Francisco and utilized by other banking and corporate entities. There is much history and debate about this particular symbol. However, its importance and significance is obvious simply by the very nature of how often and prominently it is used.

However, in my humble opinion, the most telling and important symbol that is used is the "fasci" (for fascist or fascism). It is represented by a hatchet head wrapped by a bundle of sticks around its handle. This is the classic symbol of fascism, which dates back to ancient Rome. I ask you... if everything is hunky-dory here in America... if we supposedly live in the greatest country on God's green earth... then what the hell is the fasci... the very symbol of fascism... hanging on the wall on either side of the presidential podium in the House of Representatives? Why is it also located on either side of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.? No conspiracy, you say? Pshaw. This is a transparent clue as to how this world is truly run, not to mention a very significant clue as to the mindset of who or what is bent on total control of this country in particular. Unfortunately, as my colleague (and a fantastic researcher), Michael Tsarion, has so aptly observed, most Americans are "symbol-illiterate” (yet again by design). I would say that this even includes those who actually live and work in our nation's capitol.

And, that is not all there is to it. There is an a myriad of other concerns that we address each year, which growing numbers of people are also beginning to voice... like 9-11 and the OK City Bombing (both proven to be inside jobs, which serve only to rob us of more freedoms), Chemtrails (Weather Modification with dangerous Chemicals and Biologicals sprayed from the sky by mysterious aircraft), Mind Control (not just individuals, but the masses through TV, ELFs, HAARP, etc.), the Federal Reserve & IRS (neither government bodies, but privately owned by white-collar criminals bent on pilfering this nation), and any agenda (overt or covert) that falls under the umbrella of the infamous NEW WORLD ORDER about which both Hitler and Bush Sr. publicly addressed (which should provide a small clue about the Bush "crime" family. NOTE: Senator Prescott Bush actually aided in funding Hitler both before and during WWII). More topically, ask yourself… Was Bush Jr. elected or "selected” twice in a row?" Consider for a moment how someone so (allegedly) inept can reach such a position of immense power. I would suggest you look into researching the secret monarchy in this country and its intimate relationship with vote fraud.

And finally, since I have done a considerable amount of homework on the UFO/ET issue, and pairing that with the more terrestrial concerns that I maintain, I have come to a conclusion. I will first qualify what I am about to impart by stating that this is my CURRENT world view. Truth and reality are fluid... constantly flowing and changing. So, my opinions and observations may change in five years --- they may change in five minutes. However, at this moment in time, I am convinced that the very forces I personally wish to expose outright may NOT be human as we know it. “They” certainly do not act human or humanely towards humanity. NOTE: It is much easier to send a species other than your own to the slaughter. Yes? Perhaps then, it is so easy for "them" to do what "they" do to us because "they" are... (drum roll please)... NOT us. We may be dealing with a level of consciousness that could be alien, reptilian, inter-dimensional, satanic, demonic, all of the above, other (than us), etc.

This particular hypothesis would, perhaps, best explain much of the (premeditated) chaos on this planet throughout known history, courtesy of an existing third-party Machiavellian group (which looks upon itself as gods or custodians) who constantly engage earth's population in a variety of dialectics that usually serve to divide a genetically dumbed-down race (the human experiment via evolution intervention). That population (no matter how large) can then be much easier ruled and conquered. Classic! Think of yourselves as pawns in this global game of chess played by the worst of tyrants. For those of you reading this who act as the very servants (military, intelligence, shadow government, etc.) of our country's self-appointed "Monarch Masters," keep in mind that like the Rook, the Knight, and even the Bishop, you too will be sacrificed if necessary to protect the King and Queen.

I have a right and a need to know about our world's true planetary heritage. You have a right and a need to know, as well. We all do. But, conspiracies DO exist, and the suppression of the very answers we seek is an intricate part of that. The problem is that most people don't know... that they "don't know." This is a very bad place to be mentally and spiritually. Many are convinced that they have independently come up with their own world views based on “mainstream" information, which is, unfortunately, totally controlled and, therefore, dangerous pabulum to swallow unchallenged.

Therefore, my mission is to provide a bold forum at which lecturers (who say what few are willing to say) can empower those in attendance with true knowledge and information about why things are the way they are, along with providing potential courses of action and possible solutions to the problems that are literally consciously created for us by the very forces we expose each and every year. Then, it is my hope and wish that those (who traveled for miles from all parts of the country to attend) spread the word in their own respective communities. To further understand my goals and intentions, it is important to know that I have never been politically involved (nor will I ever be) because our political system is already too deeply corrupt and corruptible. This is the reason that I am “educationally” involved. It is our first/best destiny to educate ourselves with as much truth as possible, and then share it with as many who will listen.

Some have asked me if I feel unsafe or at risk because of what I do. They sometimes fear that I’ll be put on some “list” that tags or classifies me according to the ever watchful eyes of our shadowy friends out there. My response is that, again based on all available information, we are ALL on the list… or some kind of list. The human race has been targeted. Get over it! So, let us all step forward and be counted. Others ask about the risk of disinformation being spread at my forum or that spying will occur. Of course, this is a potentiality. We encourage all attendees to maintain their discernment, and we are glad to be spied on… so long as any so-called “Men In Black” purchase a ticket like everyone else and behave themselves. Yes, CONSPIRACY CON may (admittedly) ultimately put me at a bit more risk. But, that’s the sap that gets on your hands when climbing the tall pine tree to get a better view… a bigger picture.

And, what about the ultimate results of my efforts. Do they have any benefits to society? I hope so. Otherwise, I wouldn't get out of bed each day. Seriously. Many ask me, "Brian, what ARE the solutions, etc. We've only heard the BAD news, etc." I say first and foremost that awareness is the most important aspect of the overall solution. If you are not aware of something that is truly affecting you and the entire planet, then how are you even going to know how to deal with it. To know a thing is to change a thing. Or, more familiarly... to be forewarned is to be forearmed. If your enemy knows that you know he or she is going to attack (let's say), he or she will think twice about attacking.

Furthermore, beyond the awareness issue, many of the speakers I invite each year are, indeed, solution-oriented. But, not everyone in attendance is going to agree with each person's ideas on how to fix our current problems. But, again awareness is a fantastic start. If enough “sleeping giants” wake up, then, theoretically, the jig is up and the game is over. Things will dramatically change over the entire planet. The good news (or the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel) is that there is only a handful of world manipulators compared to the 6 billion+ card-carrying earthlings walking the surface of the earth. What if even a fraction of the human race woke up to these realities? Imagine, say, if even just 10% of the world’s (human) population became real truth-based spiritual warriors prepared to create positive critical mass for the rest of the planet. It would be a powerful force and an encouraging goal towards which to work. I live for that day. It must come, or the future of humankind is in serious trouble. It is already… right now. For more information on my conference, as well as my intentions, visit www.conspiracycon.com, and navigate to the index/greetings page, which displays my mission statement, as well as my article on the nature of conspiracy.

Finally, much of what I have learned and subsequently shared in this article came from my exposure to the decades-long research of Master Scholar, Jordan Maxwell, who is one of my heroes. He is a honored researcher, a colleague and a good friend. Jordan is one of the people to whom I refer others when it comes to who best can describe how this planet is run and by whom. His knowledge of religion, secret societies, symbols, emblems, language, commerce, etc. is almost completely unsurpassed. As far as I am personally concerned, Jordan Maxwell is a national treasure and an inspiration. He has spoken for CONSPIRACY CON many times, and he will be with us again this year as a special guest to be available all weekend for networking and conversation. His mere presence always improves the credibility, the class and the impact of our conferences dramatically.

As Jordan would say... "You'd better do your homework."

Brian William Hall
Executive Producer
CONSPIRACY CON

[toddao]

http://www.henrymakow.com/uw/main.html

[Vexari]

Council on Foreign Relations work to defeat end to "Too Big To Fail" & FED accountablity?

From: [e-mail] on behalf of roundtable ([e-mail])
Sent: Tue 5/25/10 6:05 PM
To: PEPIS ([e-mail])

Council on Foreign Relations members surrounding the President, in Congress, running the Federal Reserve Bank and controlling the Treasury are working to defeat legislation to make the Federal Reserve more accountable and put an end to “Too Big To Fail” banks.

The Council on Foreign Relations connection to the story is not being reported

Why is that?

Neil Barofsky was Assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York from 2000 to 2008; A lawyer at the New York law firm Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer.

Since December 2008 he has been Special Investigator General of the TARP funds. The Washington Post identifies his key Associates as: Council on Foreign Relations member Treasury Secretary (since January 2009) Timothy Geithner, Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Herbert M.Allison Jr. (since June 2009), Council on Foreign Relations member U.S. Senator (since January 1981) Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), U.S.Representative (since January 1981) Barney Frank (D-Mass.), and Council on Foreign Relations member Deputy Treasury Secretary (since May 2009) Neal S. Wolin. (http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Neil_Barofsky )

In November 2009, Barofsky and his team of inspectors released a scathing report on the bailout of insurance giant AIG.

Most notably,Barofsky specifically cited Council on Foreign Relations member Treasury Secretary Geithner's failure to argue for better conditions when negotiating the AIG bailout while heading the New York Federal Reserve.
(http://www.sigtarp.gov/reports/audit/2009/Factors_Affecting_Efforts_to_Limit_Payments_to_AIG_Counterparties.pdf )

In April 2009, Barofsky released a report that highlighted ways in which the programs created to save financial institutions from bankruptcy, like TARP, were vulnerable to corruption, including fraud,tax violations and insider trading.

The report revealed 20 openfederal investigations into possible crimes committed with the use ofthe TARP funds.

(http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/21/nation/na-tarp-fraud21 ).

The April report warns congress of a system forcing the taxpayer to provide the banks with the use of $14 trillion from the Federal Reserve, much of the $7 trillion outstanding at the US Treasury and $2.3 trillion at the FDIC.

Barofsky, also accuses the Treasury Department of repeatedly failing to adopt recommendations aimed at making one component of the government financial rescue effort more accountable and transparent.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/20/bailout-may-cost-237-tril_n_241512.html )

In July 2009, Barofsky released another report that outlined how the banks used the TARP funds.

The original purpose of TARP was to increase lending among banks, but the report concluded that banks used much of the funds for investing, to pay off debt or even to purchaseother banks.

Of the 360 banks that received TARP funds by the end of January 2009, 110 had invested some of the money, 52 repaid debts with the funds and 15 used it to acquire other banks.

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901770.html?wprss=rss_print/asection)

In January 31 2010, Barofsyk released a report that told congress the government's bailout of financial institutions deemed "too big to fail" has created a risk that the United States could face a worse fiscal meltdown in the future.

Barofsky’s report warned the Troubled Assets Relief Program, known as TARP, has not addressed the problems that led to the last crisis and in some case those problems have festered and are a bigger threat than before.

(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/31/watchdog-bailouts-created-risk/ )

On May 6th 2010 Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke

(http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/05/06/bernanke-letter-to-dodd-opposing-amendments-to-audit-the-fed/)

and former Federal Reserve Chairman Council on Foreign Relationsmember Paul Volker

(http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/05/06/volcker-letter-to-lawmakers-opposing-amendments-to-audit-the-fed/ )

wrote letters opposing amendments to audit the Federal Reserve.

On May 6th 2010 a move to break up major Wall Street banks failed by a vote of 61 to 33.

Ryan Grim and Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post wrote,

( The article has been modified to identify Council on Foreign Relations members http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/06/senate-votes-for-wall-str_n_567063.html) :

“Three Republicans, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Ensign of Nevada, voted with 30 Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in support of the provision.

The author of the pending overall financial reform bill in the Senate,Banking Committee Chairman [Council on Foreign Relations member ]Christopher Dodd, voted against it. (See the full roll call.) The amendment, sponsored by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), would have required megabanks to be broken down in size and capped so that their individual failure would not bring downthe entire system.

Under Brown-Kaufman, no bank could hold more than 10 percent of the total amount of insured deposits, and a limit would have been placed on liabilities of a single bank to two percent of GDP.

In practice, the amendment required the six biggest banks -- Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- to significantly scale down their size.

It was touted as a way to end Too Big To Fail.

Though top Obama administration officials have not publicly opposed the amendment, its leading economists have opposed ending Too Big ToFail simply by breaking up the nation's financial behemoths.

Austan Goolsbee and [Council on Foreign Relations member ] Larry Summershave both fought back against this idea, as has [Council on Foreign Relations member ] Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

"This is certainly a defeat for those who are concerned about the dangers of financial concentration in this country," Kaufman said in a statement after the vote.

"Some causes are worth fighting for, and for me, the concern about the risks 'too big to fail' banks pose to the American economy and people is deep and profound given the economic tragedy millions of American have endured.

I believe the debate itself-- though failing to gain a majority of votes -- has helped to change attitudes about the degree of financial concentration and power these megabanks now represent."

The banks owned by the four largest financial firms in the U.S. collectively account for about 45 percent of all assets in the U.S.banking system, according to a Huff Post analysis of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation data.

Those four megabanks collectively hold about $7.4 trillion in assets,according to the most recent regulatory filings with the Federal Reserve.

That's equal to about 52 percent of the nation's estimated total output last year.

The top 12 banks in the U.S. control half the country's deposits.

By comparison, it took 25 banks to accomplish this feat in 2003 and 42 banks in 1998, according to a Jan. 4 research note by Jason M.Goldberg of Barclays Capital.

There are 23 bank-holding companies in the U.S. with more than $100 billion in assets, according to Federal Reserve data.

[Council on Foreign Relations member ] Richard W. Fisher, president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is among a group of at least three current regional Fed presidents that have called for the nation's megabanks to be broken up, joining Kansas City Fed president Thomas M. Hoenig and St. Louis Fed president James Bullard.

Fisher has suggested a ceiling on bank assets placed at $100 billion.

"In the past two decades, the biggest banks have grown significantly bigger," [Council on Foreign Relations member ] Fisher said lastmonth.

"The average size of U.S. banks relative to gross domestic product has risen threefold. The share of industry assets for the 10 largest banks climbed from almost 25 percent in 1990 to almost 60 percent in 2009."

Of course, size is not the only danger -- Lehman Brothers, whose crash rocked the financial system, would have been under the size caps proposed by the amendment.

To that end, the Brown-Kaufman amendment limited the amount of leverage an institution can take at about 16-to-1.

Hoenig has suggested a 15-to-1 ratio.

Leverage is the use of debt to increase assets without a corresponding increase in capital.

The amendment began as a wild longshot, backed by the junior senator from Ohio, Brown, and a long time aide to Joe Biden, Kaufman, appointed to keep his seat warm for two years until the 2010 election.

That the amendment gained as much support as it did is an indication of the depth of the populist anger.

[Council on Foreign Relations member ] Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and[Council on Foreign Relations member ] Dodd of Connecticut spoke against the amendment.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) was indignant.

"I don't understand this Brown-Kaufman amendment. Basically, what it says is if you're successful...you're going to break them up?

I mean, where does this stop?

Do we take McDonald's on? It really doesn't make any sense to me," he said.

After the vote, Kaufman defended the provision. "I believe this idea was sound policy -- and I further believe that a mainstream consensus will continue to grow that these megabanks are too large, too complex and too internally conflicted to regulate successfully," he said, echoing a position voiced by regional Fed presidents, former top Fed officials, and former top bankers on Wall Street.

The Senate will resume voting on amendments to the legislation next week.”

The Vote grouped by position with CFR members identified was:
(http://senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=2&vote=00136 )

Grouped By Vote Position YEAs ---33Begich (D-AK)Bingaman (D-NM)Boxer (D-CA)Brown (D-OH)Burris (D-IL)Cantwell (D-WA)Cardin (D-MD)Casey (D-PA)Coburn (R-OK)Dorgan (D-ND)Durbin (D-IL)Ensign (R-NV)Feingold (D-WI)Franken (D-MN)Harkin (D-IA)Kaufman (D-DE)Leahy (D-VT)Levin (D-MI)Lincoln (D-AR)Merkley (D-OR)Mikulski (D-MD)Murray (D-WA) Pryor (D-AR)Reid (D-NV)CFR member Rockefeller (D-WV)Sanders (I-VT)Shelby (R-AL)Specter (D-PA)Stabenow (D-MI)Udall (D-NM)Webb (D-VA)Whitehouse (D-RI)Wyden (D-OR) NAYs ---61Akaka (D-HI)Alexander (R-TN)Barrasso (R-WY)Baucus (D-MT)Bayh (D-IN)Bennet (D-CO)Bond (R-MO)Brown (R-MA)Brownback (R-KS)Burr (R-NC)Carper (D-DE)Chambliss (R-GA)Cochran (R-MS)Collins (R-ME)Conrad (D-ND)Corker (R-TN)Cornyn (R-TX)Crapo (R-ID)CFR member Dodd (D-CT)Enzi (R-WY)CFR member Feinstein (D-CA) Gillibrand (D-NY)Graham (R-SC)Grassley (R-IA)Gregg (R-NH)Hagan (D-NC)Hatch (R-UT)Hutchison (R-TX)Inhofe (R-OK)Inouye (D-HI)Isakson (R-GA)Johanns (R-NE)Johnson (D-SD)CFR member Kerry (D-MA)Klobuchar (D-MN)Kohl (D-WI)Kyl (R-AZ)Landrieu (D-LA)Lautenberg (D-NJ)LeMieux (R-FL)CFR member Lieberman (ID-CT)McCain (R-AZ) McCaskill (D-MO)McConnell (R-KY)Menendez (D-NJ)Murkowski (R-AK)Nelson (D-FL)Nelson (D-NE)CFR member Reed (D-RI)Risch (R-ID)Roberts (R-KS)Schumer (D-NY)Sessions (R-AL)Shaheen (D-NH)CFR member Snowe (R-ME)Tester (D-MT)Thune (R-SD)Udall (D-CO)Voinovich (R-OH)CFR member Warner (D-VA)Wicker (R-MS) Not Voting - 6Bennett (R-UT)Bunning (R-KY) Byrd (D-WV)DeMint (R-SC) Lugar (R-IN)Vitter (R-LA) --

Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?

There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World.

They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button!

Armageddon is closer than you thought.

Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion -

[toddao]

Britain bans doctor who linked autism to vaccine
By MARIA CHENG (AP) – 19 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ikJETNVBSJw_7bjEVDbFBwncE0EAD9FTEALO0

LONDON — The doctor whose research linking autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella influenced millions of parents to refuse the shot for their children was banned Monday from practicing medicine in his native Britain.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study was discredited — but vaccination rates have never fully recovered and he continues to enjoy a vocal following, helped in the U.S. by endorsements from celebrities like Jim Carrey.

Wakefield was the first researcher to publish a peer-reviewed study suggesting a connection between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. Legions of parents abandoned the vaccine, leading to a resurgence of measles in Western countries where it had been mostly stamped out. There are outbreaks across Europe every year and sporadic outbreaks in the U.S.

"That is Andrew Wakefield's legacy," said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania. "The hospitalizations and deaths of children from measles who could have easily avoided the disease."

Wakefield's discredited theories had a tremendous impact in the U.S., Offit said, adding: "He gave heft to the notion that vaccines in general cause autism."

In Britain, Wakefield's research led to a huge decline in the number of children receiving the MMR vaccine: from 95 percent in 1995 — enough to prevent measles outbreaks — to 50 percent in parts of London in the early 2000s. Rates have begun to recover, though not enough to prevent outbreaks. In 2006, a 13-year-old boy became the first person to die from measles in Britain in 14 years.

"The false suggestion of a link between autism and the MMR vaccine has done untold damage to the UK vaccination program," said Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. "Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that it is safe."

On Monday, Britain's General Medical Council, which licenses and oversees doctors, found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct and stripped him of the right to practice medicine in the U.K. Wakefield said he plans to appeal the ruling, which takes effect within 28 days.

The council was acting on a finding in January that Wakefield and two other doctors showed a "callous disregard" for the children in their study, published in 1998 in the medical journal Lancet. The medical body said Wakefield took blood samples from children at his son's birthday party, paying them 5 pounds (about $7.20) each and later joked about the incident.

The study has since been widely rejected. From 1998-2004, studies in journals including the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics and BMJ published papers showing no link between autism and the measles vaccine.

Wakefield moved to the U.S. in 2004 and set up an autism research center in Austin, Texas, where he gained a wide following despite being unlicensed as a doctor there and facing skepticism from the medical community. He quit earlier this year.

Offit said he doubted Britain's decision to strip the 53-year-old Wakefield of his medical license would convince many parents that vaccines are safe.

"He's become almost like a Christ-like figure and it doesn't matter that science has proven him wrong," Offit said. "He is a hero for parents who think no one else is listening to them."

Appearing from New York City on NBC's "Today Show" on Monday, Wakefield described Britain's decision as "a little bump on the road" and vowed to continue his research into vaccines and autism.

"These parents are not going away; the children are not going to go away and I most certainly am not going away," he said.

He claimed the U.S. government has been settling cases of vaccine-induced autism since 1991.

However, two rulings by a special branch of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in March and last year found no link between vaccines and autism. More than 5,500 claims have been filed by families seeking compensation for children they claim were hurt by the vaccine.

Attempts to reach Wakefield through the Texas research center and his publisher were unsuccessful.

Wakefield has won support from parents suspicious of vaccines, including Hollywood celebrities like Jim Carrey.

Carrey and his former partner, actress Jenny McCarthy, who has an autistic son, issued a statement in February asserting Wakefield was "being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign."

"It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers," they said.

In Monday's ruling, the medical council said Wakefield abused his position as a doctor and "brought the medical profession into disrepute."

At the time of his study, Wakefield was working as a gastroenterologist at London's Royal Free Hospital and did not have approval for the research. The study suggested autistic children had a bowel disease and raised the possibility of a link between autism and vaccines. He had also been paid to advise lawyers representing parents who believed their children had been hurt by the MMR vaccine.

Ten of the study's authors later renounced its conclusions and it was retracted by the Lancet in February.

At least a dozen British medical associations, including the Royal College of Physicians, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust have issued statements verifying the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

This verdict is not about (the measles) vaccine," said Adam Finn, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Bristol Medical School. "We all now know that the vaccine is remarkably safe and enormously effective... We badly need to put this right for the sake of our own children and children worldwide."
..................................................................
Why Medical Authorities Went to Such Extremes to Silence Dr. Andrew Wakefield

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield-interview.aspx

[Vexari]

The Cantwell-McCain Glass-Steagall amendment

is the true test of patriotism at this moment..


Your Survival Depends On The Passage Of Cantwell-McCain's Glass Steagall
5-14-10

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=50347906


(LPAC) -- Lyndon LaRouche today declared that the only hope for avoiding a near-term collapse of the entire global financial system is for the U.S. Senate to pass the Cantwell-McCain amendment, reinstating the Glass Steagall Act, that separated commercial banks from brokerage and insurance firms in 1933. "If the White House and the Senate Democratic leadership don't succeed in sabotaging the vote on the Cantwell-McCain amendment next week, I believe it will pass with significant bipartisan support,'' LaRouche said.

LaRouche reiterated his warning of May 11, that the $1 trillion-plus 'super-TARP' bailout of the entire bankrupt European Monetary Union, which was announced on Sunday night by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank, is doomed to fail. "The entire purpose of the way the Greek debt crisis was handled, was to destroy the United States," LaRouche declared. "The Greek debt crisis could have simply been handled by a sovereign restructuring of their own debt.

Instead, they saddled the Greek debt, and then the Portuguese, Spanish, Irish and Italian debt on Germany, which has no capacity to pay. So, now the United States has been drawn in, courtesy of President Obama and Tim Geithner, to subsidize the whole mass of unpayable and, for the most part, illegitimate debt. This will destroy the United States, just as I warned. If President Obama were not such a toy of the British, none of this would be even conceivable.''

LaRouche declared that the only option is for the U.S. Senate to pass the Cantwell-McCain amendment to the Dodd bill, that would reinstate the Glass Steagall separation of commercial banking from the speculative mess. "Otherwise, under the policy announced on Sunday night by the Fed, the United States and Europe are headed for 1923 Weimar-style hyperinflation, right now! Unless we stop this madness through the restoration of Glass Steagall, the entire planet is doomed to a rapid plunge into a new dark age.''

British Foreign Office Declared War

LaRouche reported that "reliable sources have informed me that they have first-hand knowledge that the British Foreign Office has communicated direct threats to the U.S. Department of State, warning, in effect, that any move to reinstate Glass Steagall will be considered an act of agression against the British government, by which they mean the British Monarchy and the City of London financiers. Wall Street is not the center of the problem. Wall Street is merely an appendage of the British. That is an old story. It goes back to the time of the British East India Company, and the actions of traitors like Aaron Burr and August Belmont.

"The question, therefore, that must be asked, is: How many members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, today, are prepared to kiss the Queen's rump? It really comes down to that. The Foreign Office has made a direct threat, that the only sane action for the United States at this time--the reinstatement of Glass Steagall as a first step towards re-establishing a viable commercial banking system, freed from the trillions of dollars in illegal speculative debt--is considered an act of agression against Britain.''

LaRouche reiterated that "over 80 percent" of the American people support the restoration of Glass-Steagall.

The Cantwell-McCain amendment to the Dodd bill, now being debated on the floor of the U.S. Senate, is scheduled to be taken up early next week, perhaps as early as Tuesday. LaRouche called on all of his supporters to "turn the country upside down, mobilizing support for the passage of the Cantwell McCain amendment."

"Senators Cantwell and McCain have shown what it means to be a true patriot at a moment of grave crisis," LaRouche concluded. "I know something about why they have taken up this responsibility at this time. They deserve our total support. The Cantwell-McCain Glass-Steagall amendment is the true test of patriotism at this moment. Whether you realize it fully or not, trust me: The very survival of the United States is on the line in this vote. And if the U.S. goes down, in a hyperinflationary collapse, due to a failure to stand up against the British, then all of the planet is doomed. That is no exaggeration."

http://www.rense.com/general90/survv.htm

[Vexari]

Eustace Mullins presents: The World Order

Eustace Mullins argues that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, drafted by German banker Paul Warburg and others in a secret meeting, defies Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 5 of the US Constitution by creating a "central bank of issue" for the United States. Mullins goes on to claim that World War I, the Agricultural Depression of 1920, the Great Depression of 1929, and Adolf Hitler's rise to power were brought about by international banking interests in order to profit from conflict and economic instability.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5224839731207532170#docid=-7644857907453201814

138:40 - 3 years ago

[toddao]

TV Weatherman Admits Military Is Spraying

http://www.noonehastodietomorrow.com/agenda/weather-modification/2259

[Vexari]

The biggest asset grab in history is quietly moving forward as the federal government prepares to take control of all 401(k) savings and IRA investments

The spin is that this will be good for Americans because it will move their money from "risky" stocks into "safe" annuities and government bonds


The reality is the annuities would be issued by government-controlled insurance companies such as AIG, which is such a safe place for your money that it recently was bailed out to the tune of $182.3 billion

Also, the government must sell $2 trillion in bonds this year, and foreign buying has dried up


China doesn't want them, so you have been selected to fill the gap..


401(k) / IRA Nationalization *** Quietly Moves Forward *** The BIGGEST Scam

Updated: May 12, 2010 01:06 PM EDT


Recent information from Restore The Republic has again raised the alarm regarding your 401k's & IRA's. The BIGGEST Scam was a previous warning. Please take note what is happening under the radar, as things of this nature notoriously do. You may not get another chance to get or take control of your money.

I've already taken care of this and taken everything out so I have control of my own money. You should research and do what is best for you and your family. Having others control you money is very naive, especially the government. If you read the fine print, they OWN them already therefore make the rules/mandates and can change whenever they choose.

Food storage, physical silver and gold are the best places for your money. Notice how the price has gone up as we printed more money to bail out Greece?


Wealth protection has never been more critical.


********


40l(k)/IRA Nationalization Quietly Moves Forward

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

They want to "get people to invest their 401k's and IRA's into annuities, or likely into U.S. T-Bonds, which are in the biggest overvalued bubble the world has ever seen.

They are doing this because they will have $2 Trillion Dollars in bonds to sell this year, and foreign buying is drying up. China doesn't want them.... Do you?

Who's behind it? The White House and a powerful network of Congressional activists, and the highly-influential Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. They are engineering a new regulatory and tax-incentive. The purpose is to herd and ultimately force Americans to convert their 40l(k)s and IRAs into government-directed retirement accounts.

The 40l(k)/IRA de-privatization plan is the brain-child of Teresa Ghilarducci of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis " "SCEPA", who is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The extreme tactics used to ram Nationalized Health care down the country's throat are a blueprint for what could be the biggest asset grab in history. This is exactly what took place in Argentina. Yes, Argentina was once a powerful nation; the 3rd wealthiest nation until the 20th Century. Another reason as to why our government needs to nationalize retirement accounts...

Is reported by the New York Times, "This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, this important threshold was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office." The trickle of red ink will soon become a flood under the pressure of 78 million retiring Baby Boomers....

Less money going into the system! Who will you need to Trust in the Handling of your money?

The March 9 edition of Business Week notes that new federal regulations designed to "promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams" would help drive cash into government-controlled entities such as American International Group (AIG), which was bailed out to the tune of $182.3 billion.

You Do Trust AIG.. right?

The Real Question Is..

Is there a safe haven for retirement accounts?

Restore The Republic
3149 Dundee Rd #176
Northbrook, Illinois 60062, USA

http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978230126

[toddao]

Growing awareness of the CFR's role in leading America into global collectivist government has led them to produce a public relations video to brighten their image. Using the same production style seen on TV ads selling pharmaceutical drugs, watch these well known personalities sell the CFR as ohhh so wonderful.


Official Video: About The Council on Foreign Relations

[Vexari]

Tragedy and Hope

A History of the World in Our Time

by Carroll Quigley

http://www.archive.org/details/TragedyAndHope

http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119975.pdf


Shadow Government

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/shadow/tragedyandhope.htm


Dr. Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope reveals a Call by Cecil Rhodes for an “American Union”

http://www.jonesreport.com/article/05_08/30quigley.html


Learn more about Carroll Quigley



Date of birth: November 9, 1910
Date of death: January 3, 1977
Profession: Historian, Writer, Professor
Works written: The evolution of civilizations, ...
Nationality: American
Place of birth: Boston
Source: Freebase

http://www.bing.com/reference/semhtml?title=Carroll_Quigley&qpvt=tragedy++and+hope&src=abop&q=tragedy+and+hope&fwd=1

[toddao]

Prepared by the Russian Academy of Medical and Technical Science

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_geneticfood26.htm

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_depopu58.htm

[toddao]

World’s First Oil Volcano

http://agriculture.imva.info/?p=152

[toddao]

The One Percent Jamie Johnson 1 of 8

[Vexari]

Greece is offered a bailout by EU and UN in exchange for its financial sovereignty and for austerity commitments.


When it fails to keep those commitments, the hapless nation will be virtually foreclosed and absorbed into the New World Order.

Expect to see this same sequence in all nations in deep debt.

Globalists have led those nations into economic crisis because, from the beginning,

they have anticipated this end game..



Why You Should Be VERY CONCERNED About The Financial Crisis In Greece

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/why-you-should-be-very-concerned-about-the-financial-crisis-in-greece


Up to this point, it seems as though most Americans have not really been too concerned about the financial meltdown that is taking place in Greece. But they should be. The truth is that the debt crisis we see playing out in Greece may soon repeat itself in some of the largest nations in the world such as Japan, the U.K. and even the United States. Once upon a time, this kind of thing only happened in third world nations, but now virtually every nation on earth has a debt problem. As the saying goes, the borrower is the servant of the lender, and so when a country like Greece gets in way, way too deep financially, it ends up having to give up a portion of its sovereignty to those controlling the purse strings. In the case of Greece, those controlling the purse strings are the IMF and the EU. But it just isn't Greece that is in trouble. Dozens of nations are in serious financial trouble and are at the mercy of those who can bail them out. The truth is that global financial institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve are increasingly gaining power all over the globe as governments around the world continue to accumulate frightening amounts of debt.

This has been quite a week for Greece and for the other nations in Europe teetering on the edge of financial disaster. Standard & Poor's reduced Greek debt to "junk" status, and Spain and Portugal's debts were also downgraded substantially. These unprecedented steps by Standard & Poor’s have many concerned that this financial "contagion" could start spreading across all of Europe.

We'll take a look at the "austerity measures" being forced on Greece in a moment, but first it is important to note that financial panic is already spreading to other nations in the region.

In Portugal, the government has announced that additional "austerity measures", beyond those in the current three year plan, are expected to be implemented. Perhaps they wouldn't need to take such drastic steps if they hadn't spent all of those millions constructing those shiny new soccer stadiums a few years ago. But in any event, many analysts are now forecasting that Portugal will be the next domino to fall.

Officials in Spain are expected to announce this week that unemployment has hit 20%. But of course any nation that implements a hardcore "cap and trade" law like the one in Spain should expect unemployment to soar into the stratosphere. So they are just reaping what they have sown, but the fallout could end up being very painful. Spain's economy is approximately five times larger than Greece's so if Spain ends up defaulting it will create a financial nightmare for all of Europe.

There are now rumors that even Italy and Ireland are in a massive amount of trouble financially.

So will the EU and the IMF end up having to bail all of them out?

Well, for now Greece is first in line.

European officials said on Friday that the Greek government, facing a rapidly deteriorating financial situation, is close to completing negotiations for assistance from the International Monetary Fund.

So Greece is going to get the money that it needs - but it comes with strings.

Greece must surrender some of its fiscal sovereignty and adopt a three year program of severe spending cuts and higher taxes.

In fact, one major Greek newspaper says that wage and job cuts for public workers will also be ordered alongside the spending cuts and tax increases to get through what they are calling "three hard years".

You see, the truth is that Greece is a highly socialized nation. In a population of just over 11 million people, Greece employs more than a million in the public sector.

Just think about that for a moment.

That is huge.

They get paid extremely well, and Greek civil servants also enjoy very generous pension benefits and early retirement.

Needless to say a lot of these Greek civil servants are not happy at all about the changes the IMF is forcing upon them, and they have called a general strike for May 5th.

For his part, the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, is trying to convince the Greek people that these new spending cuts and tax increases are necessary to keep his nation afloat. According to The Associated Press, Mr. Papandreou recently told the Greek Parliament the following....

"The measures we must take, which are economic measures, are necessary for the protection of our country — for our survival, for our future, so we can stand firmly on our feet."

There are even fears that this sovereign debt crisis could spell the end for the Euro. Back on Wednesday, the leaders of the 16 countries currently using the Euro called an emergency meeting to attempt to avert a Euro meltdown triggered by Greece's financial collapse.

Of course the Euro is not actually going to collapse, but the fact that they all felt the need to get together and talk about this situation is quite telling.

In fact, the language used by some of the top financial authorities in the world when speaking about the Greek debt crisis is quite alarming....

Angel Gurría, head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:

"This is like Ebola. It’s threatening the stability of the financial system."

Colin Ellis, economist at Daiwa Capital Markets:

"The time for horse-trading, prevarication and posturing is over. Arguably, the very future of the euro area is now teetering on a knife edge."

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund:

"If we don't fix it in Greece, it may have a lot of consequences on the EU."

But for the people of Greece, getting help with their debt means giving up their ability to determine their own affairs. They have gotten into so much debt that now they are forced to do whatever the IMF and the EU tell them to do. Of course there are many in Greece who are extremely upset by this as evidenced by the recent riots there....



But this is what happens when a nation allows itself to get into way too much debt. In fact, this has been done by design in third world nations for decades. In his extraordinary book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins explained how it was his job to go around the world and get third world governments to accept multibillion-dollar loans that he knew they would never be able to repay. Of course when the time came and they could not repay the loans, the big global institutions would go in and confiscate natural resources and impose "conditions" and implement "austerity measures" similar to the ones they are currently imposing on Greece.

The alarming thing today is that it just isn't third world nations where this game is being played anymore. Now that they have perfected the blueprint, they are trying it out on nations like Greece.

The reality is that this is all part of the push towards globalization. In fact, Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, emphasized the need for global coordination in financial matters during his April 26th address at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Global coordination" sounds nice, but just like "global governance" and "global cooperation", it is just another way of saying that we need to transfer more power and more authority to globalist institutions.

You see, whatever problem that pops up (in this instance it is the Greek debt crisis), the solution always seems to be to transfer more power to global institutions.

In fact, as a "solution" to the global financial crisis, the IMF is proposing two new taxes on financial institutions worldwide: a "financial stability contribution" which levies a small charge on financial institution balance sheets, and a "financial activities tax", which would tax "excess profits" and bonuses.

As the nations of the world continue to get deeper in debt, and as more power and more money is transferred to unelected global institutions, the people of the world may find their lives increasingly being run by heartless bureaucrats on the other side of the globe.

For anyone who loves freedom, that is a very sobering thought..

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/why-you-should-be-very-concerned-about-the-financial-crisis-in-greece

[Vexari]

FDIC shuts down seven more banks at a cost of over $7 billion,

bringing total closures to 64 so far this year

The agency expects to run out of money soon.


When that happens, it will turn to the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve to simply create money as needed

a process that passes the cost to the public through inflation and higher consumer prices..


FDIC Shuts Seven More Banks at a Cost of Over $7 Billion

By DOUGLAS MCINTYRE

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation closed seven more banks on Apr. 30, bringing the total to 64 for the year. The day was particularly expensive, costing the agency just over $7 billion.

According to the FDIC website, the banks were Frontier Bank (Everett, Wash.), National Banks (Butler, Mo.), Champion Bank, (Creve Coeur, Mo.), CF Bancorp (Port Huron, Mich.), Westernbank Puerto Rico (Mayaquez, Puerto Rico), R-G Premier Bank of Puerto Rico (Hato Rey, Puerto Rico), and Eurobank (San Juan, Puerto Rico).

Frontier Bank's shuttering will be particularly expensive, costing the insurance fund that protects bank depositors $1.37 billion.

FDIC's Shaky Finances

The health of the FDIC's funds depend on the pace of bank closures, which will certainly top 200 this year. If the agency runs out of money, it has nowhere to turn to but the U.S. Treasury -- another way of saying taxpayers will be on the hook. Last November, the agency brought in $45 billion by having the banks under its umbrella pay their fees through 2012. At that time, the FDIC said it was about to run out of money -- the $50 billion it had before the crisis began was gone.

The bank closures are a repercussion of the wave of losses that hit large banks, which were aided by the Troubled Asset Relief Program fund. Most of the banks being closed now are medium-size or small banks that have exposure to commercial and residential mortgages. Many of the properties they made loans for are going into default, and this damaging process is expected to continue.

The $45 billion seemed like a lot when the FDIC raised it. It doesn't seem very much now.


http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/fdic-shuts-seven-banks-cost-of-over-7-billion/19461244/

[Vexari]

US Taxpayers will fund a major portion of the Greek bailout

because the Federal Reserve provides 20% of the money for the IMF, the entity that will lend the money.

This will be used to pay back the banks that made unwise loans to Greece previously

so they will be saved while taxpayers will absorb the losses..


If you have friends who still don't think there are conspiracies in government, ask them to explain this..



Guess Who's Paying For The Greece Bailout? That's Right -- YOU



The bailout outrages never stop.

Of the 110-billion Euro Greece bailout, 30-billion (approx $40 billion) will be paid for by the IMF.

The US supplies almost 20% of the IMF's funding (per quotas). So that means US taxpayers are providing ~$8 billion of the $145 billion going to kick the Greek can down the road.

That's the first outrage. (Why is this our problem?)

The second outrage is that, as in some of the US bailouts, our bailout money is JUNIOR to Greece's existing debt. That means that, over the next couple of years, the idiot banks that loaned bankrupt Greece money will get their money back. And then, when Greece runs out of cash again, we'll be left holding the bag (along with Germany and the rest of the folks who bailed Greece out).

In any normal financing, the lender of last resort would be SENIOR to all existing debt. It would get its money back first, before the other idiots got a penny.

In the Greece bailout, however, the new money we're putting in will be going right out the door to pay off existing lenders who would have lost their shirts. And if the Greece austerity measures don't work and there's nothing left for us? Tough.

(Why don't the existing creditors have to lose a penny? Same reason the AIG creditors didn't lose a penny. Because it would apparently be too traumatic to ask them to do that. The idea that the existing creditors might have to lose money was apparently so unthinkable that it was never even on the table).

It's nice of us to bail out Greece, isn't it? Can't we at least get the Parthenon as collateral or something?

Now see: How much the bailout is costing YOU

http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-guess-whos-paying-for-that-greece-bailout-thats-right-you-2010-5

[Vexari]

8 Theories For Why The Stock Market Plunged

Almost 1000 Points In A Matter Of Minutes On May 6th

~~~~~~~

Stock market plunged almost 1000 points in a matter of minutes on May 6th.

This article lists 8 popular theories for why it happened.


[Our opinion is that theories 3, 6, and 8 are correct – especially #8 which mentions the "plunge-protection team".

The market badly needed to contract to a realistic level and was attempting to do so

until the government intervened to block the free-market from functioning.]


~~~~~~~



In one of the most dizzying half-hours in stock market history, the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points on Thursday, May 6th before bouncing back to close down 347.80 points. This represented the biggest intraday decline since 1987. But what made this crash so absolutely shocking is that it happened in the course of less than an hour. Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. the Dow lost over 700 points before dramatically bouncing back about 600 points. Two of the 30 stocks in the Dow, Procter & Gamble and 3M, plunged more than 30% in just 15 minutes. Accenture went from trading at around 40 dollars a share all the way down to one cent before bouncing back. Traders and investors were left completely stunned and wondering what in the world had just happened.


So what did happen?

The following are some of the most common theories being put forward to explain what happened....


#1) A Bad Trade

It has been widely suggested that a "fat finger trade" was responsible for triggering the panic. According to CNBC, "sources" have told that network that a trader (possibly at Citigroup) entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million in a trade involving Procter & Gamble.

However, Citigroup has already announced that it has found "no evidence" that it was involved in any erroneous trades. In fact, a statement was released in which Citigroup spokesman Stephen Cohen said this....

"At this point, we have no evidence that Citi was involved in any erroneous transaction."


#2) A Computer Glitch

New York Stock Exchange spokesman Rich Adamonis says that "there were a number of erroneous trades" on May 6th, and that these could have been caused by computer error.

And the truth is that trading in the financial markets is more automated and more reliant on computers than it ever has been before. Trading literally moves at lightning speed now, and a number of analysts are warning that the pace of the market is so fast at this point that it is really easy for things to spin out of control very quickly.

But if this was really primarily caused by a "computer glitch", how are investors supposed to have any confidence at all in the market? After all, if a computer error can wipe out half your account in less than an hour, why invest at all?


#3) Cascading Stop Losses

Once the market hits certain technical levels, it is going to automatically start triggering stop loss orders. Once those stop loss orders are triggered, it will push the market down further thus triggering more stop loss orders.

While there have been some protections implemented to guard against this kind of thing, the reality is that it does still happen.


#4) Hackers

Hackers have become more sophisticated and more cunning than ever before. In fact, the bigger a target is, the more enjoyment most hackers get out of taking them down. Is it a possible that someone could have hacked in to the New York Stock Exchange?


#5) Cyberterrorism

Rogue nations and terrorist organizations have been developing their "cyber warfare" capabilities for some time now. We have been repeatedly warned that someday we will see an "Internet 9/11". Could this stock market plunge be a preview of that?


#6) Fear Of The European Debt Crisis Spreading

There are mounting concerns in the financial markets about Greece's financial condition and that the European debt crisis could spread around the globe.

In fact, the Dow has lost 631 points, or more than 5%, in just the last three days amidst worries about the situation in Greece. This represents the biggest three day drop since March 2009.


#7) Stop Hunting

Anyone who has spent much time in the Forex market knows what this is all about. The truth is that some of the big financial sharks in the marketplace seem to really enjoy blowing out stop losses.

So could have this have been a situation where a stop loss hunting expedition spun wildly out of control?


#8) A Real Panic

There is also the possibility that this was a real financial panic. There are huge concerns about what is going on in Europe and the currency markets are fluctuating wildly. The Dow was already down several hundred points even before the massive plunge took place. The reality is that there is a lot of fear in the financial markets right now.

But if it was a real panic, then why did the Dow bounce back so quickly? Well, it is the job of the "plunge protection team" to keep the stock market from declining too rapidly. So did the "plunge protection team" swing into action today? Well, the truth is that we will probably never know because the general public is not supposed to know when they intervene.

In any event, the next couple of days should hopefully make all of this a lot clearer. The trading during the afternoon of May 6th at the big firms will be gone over with a fine-toothed comb, and the exchanges will be closely analyzing their systems for any glitches.

It has already been announced that some of the most erroneous trades will be cancelled. The Nasdaq and NYSE's ARCA trading unit have both said that they will cancel trades executed between 2:40 p.m. and 3 p.m. on May 6th where a stock price rose or fell more than 60 percent from the last trade in that security at 2:40 p.m.

But this episode shows just how vulnerable our financial markets really are. After witnessing what we saw today, it is going to be really hard to have confidence in the system.

In fact, even if this was just one "bad trade" or a "simple computer glitch", the reality is that this episode is going to inject even more fear into a marketplace that is already filled with tension.

When fear grips a market things can go south very, very quickly. The truth is that markets tend to fall more quickly than they rise, and if a wave of panic starts sweeping over the financial markets we could see things get quite messy in the coming days.


http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/8-theories-for-why-the-stock-market-plunged-almost-1000-points-in-a-matter-of-minutes-on-may-6th

[toddao]

James Traficant Details How “We Are in A Soviet Style Implosion”

http://revolutionarypolitics.com/?p=3999

[toddao]

http://www.911-strike.com/

[toddao]

http://www.fbicover-up.com/

[toddao]

http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/wakeup.html

[toddao]

Copy Machines, a Security Risk?

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6412572n

[lrice]

Here's a link to fake-tungsten-gold-bars at gold-quote.net below

<a href="http://www.gold-quote.net/en/articles/fake-tungsten-gold-bars.php">; fake-tungsten-gold-bars </a> on www.Gold-Quote.net

[lrice]

Thanks, Vexari, i'm using your link, sending it a few places.

[toddao]

interesting video

http://healthfreedomconference.com/

[toddao]

What Are They Spraying Us With? - Pt II

http://rense.com/general90/spray.htm

[toddao]

Iraq War Vet: "We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us"

http://uruknet.info/index.php?p=m64885&hd=&size=1&l=e

[toddao]

Illuminati Who's Who Linked to Raelians

http://www.henrymakow.com/illuminati_linked_to_raelians.html

[toddao]

Remember in November: Take the 2010 Voter Pledge

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=133549

[toddao]

yes I agree. they have guts and I like it

[Vexari]

Congressional testimony reveals that gold and silver is traded on a fractional-reserve basis similar to how banks create money – except only more so.

Banks can loan 9 times the amount they possess, but bullion banks loan 100 times the amount they possess.

They call it "Paper gold." Some firms even charge storage fees for the imaginary commodity.

The system is hopelessly corrupt and is destined to collapse. If you buy gold, take delivery..



Former Goldman Commodities Research Analyst Confirms LMBA OTC Gold Market Is "Paper Gold" Ponzi

Submitted by Tyler Durden
03/28/2010 12:47 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/former-goldman-commodities-research-analyst-confirms-lmba-otc-gold-market-paper-gold-ponzi


When we put up a link to last week's CFTC hearing webcast little did we know that it would end up being the veritable (physical) gold mine (no pun intended) of information about what really transpires in the commodities market. First, we obtained direct evidence from Andrew Maguire (who may or may not have been the target of an attempt at "bodily harm" as reported yesterday) of extensive manipulation in the silver market. Today, Adrian Douglas, director of GATA, adds to the mountain of evidence that the commodities market, and the CFTC, stand behind what is potentially the biggest market manipulation scheme in the history of capital markets (we are assuming for the time being that all allegations of the Fed manipulating the broader equity and credit markets are completely baseless). Using the testimony of a clueless Jeffrey Christian, formerly a staffer at the Commodities Research Group in the Goldman Sachs Investment Research Department and now head and founder of the CPM Group, Douglas confirms that the "LBMA trades over 100 times the amount of gold it actually has to back the trades."

Christian, who describes himself as "one of the world’s foremost authorities on the markets for precious metals" yet, in the words of Gary Gensler, said "that the bullion banks had large shorts to hedge themselves selling elsewhere- how do you short something to cover a sale, I didn’t quite follow that?" and proves that current and former Goldman bankers are some of the most arrogant people alive, assuming that everyone else is an idiot and will buy whatever explanation is presented just because the CV says Goldman Sachs. Yet Christian confirms that the gold market is basically a ponzi: "in the “physical market” as the market uses that term, there is much more metal than that…there is a hundred times what there is." And there you have it: as Douglas eloquently summarizes: "the giant Ponzi trading of gold ledger entries can be sustained only if there is never a liquidity crisis in the REAL physical market. If someone asks for gold and there isn’t any the default would trigger the biggest “bank run” and default in history. This is, of course, why the Central Banks lease their gold or sell it outright to the bullion banks when they are squeezed by high demand for REAL physical gold that can not be met from their own stocks" and concludes "Almost every day we hear of a new financial fraud that has been exposed. The gold and silver market fraud is likely to be bigger than all of them. Investors in their droves, who have purchased gold in good faith in “unallocated accounts”, are going to demand delivery of their metal. They will then discover that there is only one ounce for every one hundred ounces claimed. They will find out they are “unsecured creditors”.

For those of you who missed the CFTC hearing, here are two of the must-watch clips. In the first one, Adrian Douglas introduces the underlying concerns about the Ponzi nature of the LBMA hedging situation, in which a wholesale rush to "physical delivery" would result in a one hundred fold dilution of gold holdings, and a 99% result of unsecured creditor claims (good luck collecting on that particular bankruptcy). We also meet Jeffrey Christian, formerly of Goldman and currently of CPM, in which not only does the "expert" state that a bullion bank short is hedged by further shorting, but confirms Douglas' and GATA's previous claims that the "physical" market, as defined, is a joke, as the OTC market treats gold purely as a financial asset, essentially conforming to the precepts of fractional reserve banking. As Douglas notes "He confirms that the LBMA trades hundreds of times the real underlying physical. This is even a higher estimate than I have previously made! It is, as I asserted before the Commission, a giant Ponzi Scheme."

Here is running commentary from Douglas based on a transcript of this part of the hearing:

S. O’MALIA: Both Mr. Organ and Mr. Epstein in the second panel, raised the concerns that short positions exceed the physical supply. The second panel kind of argued that that wasn’t a concern. Are you concerned that the shorts will not be able to deliver if called upon?



J. CHRISTIAN: No. I am not at all concerned. For one thing it has been persistently that way for decades. Another thing is that there are any number of mechanisms allowing for cash settlements and problems and a third thing is as many people who are actually knowledgeable about the silver market and the gold market have testified today that almost all of those short positions are in fact hedges, the short futures positions are hedges, offsetting long positions in the OTC market. So I don’t really see a concern there.



[Note: It is interesting that Mr. Christian is not concerned about the ability of the shorts to deliver because they can cash settle! He clearly has no understanding that when someone wants to buy precious metals giving them cash instead is a failure to deliver. It is a default! But he is not concerned! He says that the short position is actually hedged by a long position on the OTC but we will see later in this testimony how he describes the “OTC Physical Market” and we will see that the long position is not bullion but is in fact an unbacked (or only partially backed) I.O.U. bullion.]



S. O’MALIA: Mr Organ would you like to respond?



H. Organ: I do see a risk on this, and I think it is a risk that we have to be very, very careful of. As countries like China, South Korea and Russia start demanding and taking physical delivery of their gold and moving it offshore to their shores and putting pressure on the Comex, and we will probably come to a point in time where we will have a failure to deliver.



A DOUGLAS: Mr. Chairman, could I make a comment?



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: No! Who are you?



A DOUGLAS: I would…



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: No! I said “No!”



A DOUGLAS: Oh! You said “No”?



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: I don’t know who is this?



A DOUGLAS: I am Adrian Douglas; I am assisting Harvey.



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: Alright, Sir. Yes.



A DOUGLAS: I would just like to make a comment. We are talking about the futures market hedging the physical market. But if we look at the physical market,the LBMA, it trades 20 million ozs of gold per day on a net basis which is 22 billion dollars. That’s 5.4 Trillion dollars per year. That is half the size of the US economy. If you take the gross amount it is about one and a half times the US economy; that is not trading 100% backed metal; it’s trading on a fractional reserve basis. And you can tell that from the LBMA’s website because they trade in “unallocated” accounts. And if you look at their definition of an “unallocated account” they say that you are an “unsecured creditor”. Well, if it’s “unallocated” and you buy one hundred tonnes of gold even if you don’t have the serial numbers you should still have one hundred tonnes of gold, so how can you be an unsecured creditor? Well, that’s because its fractional reserve accounting, and you can’t trade that much gold, it doesn’t exist in the world. So the people who are hedging these positions on the LBMA, it’s essentially paper hedging paper. Bart Chilton uses the expression “Stop the Ponzimonium” and this is a Ponzi Scheme. Because gold is a unique commodity and people have mentioned this, it is left in the vaults and it is not consumed. So this means that most people trust the bullion banks to hold their gold and they trade it on a ledger entry. So one of the issues we have got to address here is the size of the LBMA and the OTC markets because of the positions which are supposedly backing these positions which are hedges, but it is essentially paper backing paper.



[8 seconds of silence]

CHAIRMAN GENSLER: Oh! I guess I get time. Errr…Umm. I don’t have any other questions. Commissioner Dunn.



M. DUNN: I appreciate the difficulty of trying to do this by remote but at the end of your testimony you start talking about bona fide hedge exemptions for commercial traders and must be part of position limits and not to grant hedge exemptions to swap dealers would be devastating for liquidity of exchanges and the price discovery capacity, and we got into who determines what is legitimate, but could you amplify on that a bit and what you see as a danger there?



J. CHRISTIAN: Yes I can amplify on it; but amplify on it a bit is more difficult because it is a very big subject. The first thing is that precious metals, copper, other metals, energy these are all traded internationally and are fungible commodities by and large. There are a lot of strange things that have been misspoken about the difference between the wholesale and the retail market and we don’t really have the time to go over those, I think. But the fact of the latter is…



[The lights go off]



J. CHRISTIAN: Oh excuse me. I am in a building with motion sensitive lighting and it doesn’t recognize what I do as human activity.

CHAIRMAN GENSLER: Those were your words not anybody’s here.



J. CHRISTIAN: No, they were my wife’s! If you start putting position limits on bona fide hedgers for example, the bullion banks, and the previous fellow was talking about hedges of paper on paper and that is exactly right. Precious metals are financial assets like currencies, T-Bills and T-bonds they trade in the multiples of a hundred times the underlying physical and so people buying them are voting and giving an economic view of the world or a view of the economic world and so when you start saying to a bank I have a number of people… [



Note: This is mind blowing. He openly admits that the LBMA OTC market is not trading in physical gold or silver; it is trading in paper promises. Gold is not intended to be a “financial asset” like T-Bills and currencies. That is the whole point of owning it. Actual physical bullion is a tangible asset with intrinsic value that doesn’t have counterparty risk. He believes the purpose of trading paper promises in gold is for investors to “vote” on their view of the economic world! He confirms that the LBMA trades hundreds of times the real underlying physical. This is even a higher estimate than I have previously made! It is, as I asserted before the Commission, a giant Ponzi Scheme.]



J. CHRISTIAN: well, actually let’s go back to a concrete example of Mr. Organ when he was talking about August of 2008 when there was an explosion in the short positions in gold and silver held by the bullion banks on the futures market and he seemed to imply that that was somehow driving the price down. If you understand how those bullion banks run their books the reason they had an explosion in their short positions was because they were selling bullion hand over fist in the forward market, in the physical market, and in the OTC options market. Everyone was buying gold everywhere in the world so the bullion banks who stand as market makers were selling or making commitments to sell them material and so they had to hedge themselves and they were using the futures market to do that. So if you place position limits on the futures market they will have to find some other mechanism to hedge themselves …and they will. And someone else will provide that market…



M. DUNN: Jeffery, I am going to cut you off because I want to ask another question of Mr. Organ.



[It is hard to imagine more inane drivel than this. He conjures up the image of bullion bankers selling bullion like crazy to the general public who are in a feeding frenzy and the bullion bankers are “hedging themselves” by selling gold short on the COMEX!!! Did he get that idea from a blonde? A little while later Chairman Gensler also realized that this was the biggest baloney ever concocted as a cover for massive gold market manipulation by JPMorgan and HSBC in 2008 and so poses a follow up question]……

And here is the second must watch clip:

CHAIRMAN GENSLER: I would like to follow up on Commissioner Dunn’s question for Mr. Christian, if I might, because I didn’t quite follow your answer on the bullion banks. You said that the bullion banks had large shorts to hedge themselves selling elsewhere, and I didn’t understand; I might just not have followed it and you’re closer to the metals markets than me on this, but how do you short something to cover a sale, I didn’t quite follow that?



J. CHRISTIAN: Well, actually I misspoke. Basically what you were seeing in August of 2008 was the liquidation of leveraged precious metals positions from a number of places and the bullion banks were coming back to buy it, and they were hedging those positions by going short on the COMEX and that is really what it was.



[Even on a second attempt Mr. Christian invents the most ridiculous poppycock to explain away the blatant manipulation of the precious metals in 2008. If, in his own words, investors were buying gold hand over fist everywhere in the world why would leveraged long holders dump all their long holdings? They would have ordinarily been making a fortune. The bank participation report of August 2008 shows that 2 or 3 bullion banks sold short the equivalent of 25% of world annual silver production in 4 weeks and the equivalent of 10% of world annual gold production. There was simultaneously a decrease in their long positions, which were almost non-existent anyway, which is incoherent with a notion the bullion banks were mopping up dumped leveraged investments. For an intelligent and coherent explanation of what happened in August 2008 read my CFTC written testimony here]



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: So I am glad I asked because I really didn’t follow that. But if I think of the earlier charts of the positions of the bullion banks that Mr. Sherrod had these concentrated shorts have been, well you know, reasonably consistent, they are not exactly the same on every day, but his charts showed a similarity across a couple of years. So what are bullion banks, I mean I am just trying to understand, what are bullion banks hedging on the other side, we heard from other panels, but you seem to be familiar, is it warehouse receipts, what is it?



J. CHRISTIAN: Well it’s a tremendous number of things. You were at Goldman shortly after me and we had an MIS system that kicked out a daily gold book.



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: That’s really remarkable because we don’t seem to have a lot of similar views, but you know, a lot of people were at Goldman Sachs.



J. CHRISTIAN: Well I didn’t like the trends at Goldman so I left in 1986. But honestly, and bad jokes aside, if you look at a bullion bank’s book, its gold book for example, you will see an enormous number of things; there will be gold forward purchases from mining companies, there will be forward purchases from refineries, there will be gold that has been leased out to electronics manufacturers, component manufacturers, and countless manufacturers and jewelers. As gold flows through the beneficiation process and again these are all long complex issues that are hard to reduce, but you know, a lot of producers will sell their gold the moment it leaves their possession at the mine. It might be in concentrate form or it might be in dore form. It then goes to a smelter or a refinery. The bullion bank buys that and it agrees a price at the time it is buying it but it won’t be allowed to sell that metal until the refinery outturn which maybe two weeks but it could be six months. So they will go into the market and short the market in order to cover the commitment they have made to buy at that price and then when they get the metal in the physical market then they can either sell that metal in the physical market and unwind the hedge in the futures market or the forward market or do something else. There are all sorts of other derivative contracts that investment banks and bullion banks will sell to investors, to other banks, pension funds, to insurance companies and each of those will often have a long exposure in gold which will be hedged with an offsetting short position [note: There he goes again with that blonde idea that when you sell gold to someone you hedge that with a short position!]. So if you look at a bullion bank’s gold book or silver book you would find a large range of topics. One of the things that the people who criticize the bullion banks and talk about this undue large position don’t understand what is the nature of the long positions of the physical market and we don’t help it; the CFTC when it did its most recent report on silver used the term that we use “the physical market”. We use that term as did the CFTC in that report to talk about the OTC market in other words forwards, OTC options, physical metal and everything else. People say, and you heard it today, there is not that much physical metal out there, and there isn’t. But in the “physical market” as the market uses that term, there is much more metal than that…there is a hundred times what there is. If I look at the large short positions on the COMEX my question is where are the other shorts being hedged? because the short position, that I believe the bullion banks use to hedge their physicals, is larger than their short position on the COMEX and the answer is that they hedge it in the OTC market in London.



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: I thank you for that detailed discussion



END

The CFTC position limits hearing was supposed to usher in a new era of transparency and honesty into the dealings of the gold market. In a very ironic way, it did just that.

Here is Douglas' must read conclusion - and a warning for anyone who believes that following a wholesale run on commodities, investors will be able to have access to what is contractually theirs.

This is a stunning revelation. Mr. Christian confirms that the “physical market” is not in fact a physical market at all. It is a loose description of all the paper trading and ledger entries and some physical metal movements that occur each day on behalf of people who believe they own bullion in LBMA vaults but in fact they don’t. They are told they have “unallocated gold” or “unallocated silver” but that does not mean the LBMA has physical metal set aside for those customers and has just not given specific bar numbers to the customers. No, it is the most cynical and corrupt definition of “unallocated”…the customer has NO bullion allocated to him. NONE! The LBMA defines the owners of “unallocated accounts” quite clearly as “unsecured creditors”. That means they have NO collateral. NONE. Can it be any clearer? It is a giant Ponzi scheme.



Mr. Christian confirms what many analysts and GATA have been alleging that there is not much REAL physical metal, but testifies that there is actually one hundred times the REAL Physical metal being sold based on the much more “loose” definition of what “physical” means to the bullion banks.



The last sentence of his statement is mind-blowing. He says the “physical” positions of the bullion banks are so huge that they are much bigger than the COMEX short position. He says the “physicals” are hedged on the OTC market in London! Did you get that? Let me walk you through it. The bullion banks are selling what is supposed to be vault gold but it is just a ledger entry if the customer never asks for delivery. They must balance their exposure with a ledger deposit entry. This has to be some paper promise of gold from a third party, or some derivative, or even some real gold bullion. If all the ledger entries balance out then the bullion bank has no net exposure in exactly the same way the futures market works with a short offsetting a long. A futures market can never default if no one asks for delivery as only paper contracts are traded. The loosely defined “physical” London market is an identical scheme. As long as everyone is prepared to buy and sell “ledger entries” for imaginary gold in the vault no one will ever discover the fraud.



The LBMA does, however, buy and sell some real physical metal as well. But we now know form Mr. Christian’s testimony that this is one one-hundredth the size of the paper gold trading. The LBMA states on its website that it trades 20 million ozs of gold each day on a net basis. We can calculate the net trade of REAL physical gold should be about 200,000 ozs each day; that is 6.25 tonnes per day or 1625 tonnes per year. This is very much in line with the size of total global mining output of approximately 2200 tonnes per year.



So the giant Ponzi trading of gold ledger entries can be sustained only if there is never a liquidity crisis in the REAL physical market. If someone asks for gold and there isn’t any the default would trigger the biggest “bank run” and default in history. This is, of course, why the Central Banks lease their gold or sell it outright to the bullion banks when they are squeezed by high demand for REAL physical gold that can not be met from their own stocks.



Almost every day we hear of a new financial fraud that has been exposed. The gold and silver market fraud is likely to be bigger than all of them. Investors in their droves, who have purchased gold in good faith in “unallocated accounts”, are going to demand delivery of their metal. They will then discover that there is only one ounce for every one hundred ounces claimed. They will find out they are “unsecured creditors”.



GATA has long advocated the ownership of real physical bullion. The “bombshells” dropped in the CFTC Public Hearing have only served to reinforce that view. We believe we have made significant new inroads into exposing the fraud, and the suppression of precious metals prices and it is documented in the CFTC’s own hearing.



March 27, 2010
Adrian Douglas
Director of GATA
Proprietor of Market Force Analysis
www.MarketForceAnalysis.com
[e-mail]

[mbc]

If you can leave the United States, I would suggest you GET OUT NOW
01:15 by Administrator. Filed under: Whatever
by John Galt

March 29, 2010

While I was out playing happy camper in the Everglades and checking on my ‘local’ BOL, some news snuck through the system but thankfully good old Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.com has the scoop:

It’s Official – America Now Enforces Capital Controls
This is not something I say lightly after reviewing this information and reinforcing the commentary from the Rangel rule which restricted and penalized voluntary emigration and/or renunciation of one’s citizenship from the United States.

If you can, even if it means a 75% loss of your fortunes, get out now.

If you have a universal skill set (Programmer, trader, medical skills, security skills, etc.) and can relocate with little resources, get out now.

If you have real estate holdings in certain nations (not Canada or Mexico) get out now.

The precursor to most major shifts within western civilization have always been the restrictions placed on the flow of capital. Without going off into woo-woo land on you, all I can say is that this is a warning shot that something major is about to occur which further restricts the freedoms of the citizens of this once great nation. When I did my radio show, I warned that this one event, a key moment or marker in any nation’s history was something to be taken deadly seriously. In my opinion it means that a currency realignment or change or outright revocation of rights taken for granted was certain with a 90 day, maybe if we’re lucky, 180 day window.

One more time:

If you can escape, do it now.

Good luck to all and God Bless.

Comments (109)
Comments
Leave a comment

C. W. Livingston
29.03.10

01:29
I’ve got no adequate sums of money to go anywhere. So my best bet is to keep building supplies and learning skills that will be useful for barter.
.
The best we all can do right now is to the greatest extent possible; freeing ourselves from government interference in out personal lives and other matters!

Tweets that mention If you can leave the United States, I would suggest you GET OUT NOW | Shenandoah -- Topsy.com
29.03.10

01:42
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by johngaltfla.com. johngaltfla.com said: New Entry: If you can leave the United States, I would suggest you GET OUT NOW http://bit.ly/cDmRdw [...]


Sam Adams
29.03.10

02:01
Yep, I’m with Livingston. I’m flat broke. I have a house and car that is paid for, no debt to speak of, but that’s about it. No job, and no prospect. I was learning to be a programmer, but school just got priced out of reach so there won’t be any graduation for me.

Looks like I get to stay here and shoot the jackboots while other folk get to run like cowards.

While I understand announcing this signal, and I appreciate it as a heads up, good riddance to anyone who leaves and may karma catch up with your a$$.


Sam Adams
29.03.10

02:03
By the way Mr. Galt, any word on these raids in Michigan, Indiana, and (I think, Ohio)??

There is some talk that the Michigan raids were ‘militia’ related.

No word yet on the other raids or any more details on any of them.


Crockett Almanac
29.03.10

02:09
These colors don’t run (Don’t Tread on Me).


wheedle
29.03.10

02:21
DID ANYBODY NOTICE THAT OBAMA GOT HIS CIVILIAN ARMY ?

Section 5210 under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,page 1312.

search,,,,,obama got his private army,,,,,


Administrator
29.03.10

02:22
No real word. I tend to dismiss the story until someone with some truth dares to talk to the national media. At this time I have no info as I do not follow that crowd…-John


Administrator
29.03.10

02:23
You will need some folks to leave to help those left behind. Don’t condemn everyone who leaves….Just my 0.02.-John


Connor
29.03.10

02:29
As has been asked before…Go where?

When this thing goes down it is going to touch every corner of the globe. At least staying in the US we have a chance when enough have been effected to band together.

Just keep prepping and networking and choose now to make your stand.


Perspective
29.03.10

02:36
@JG: I know your warning is well intentioned. But for me, one of your keyboard commando’s, I’m done running. A long time ago, at least it seems like a long time ago now, I remember reading the following:
.
The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man but one.
.
I find I only have one death left in me. And as another blogger puts it: I’m not going to tiptoe through life only to arrive safely at death.
.
Besides, someone has to perform rearguard actions for those that have their circumstances signal a strategic retreat is in order.
.
@All you lurkers: Flags are flying from a number of sources that between now and June/July events, financial and otherwise, are set to break. Note that it happens Jim Sinclair is out of the country currently. Maybe he comes back one more time but the next time he leaves… Other things are in the rumor category, but enough from sources I deem reliable, plus my own personal read on things, that if you are going to do it, do it now.
.
It’s final exam time on liberty. Your liberty that is. And it’s your choice, no one is going say what is your particular best course of action for your particular circumstances. Well, the government might, but I assume you are discounting them. Feels darn lonely out there where liberty is so you better like your company. Goes with the territory of I decide for me.
.
@C.W. and Mr. Bigmutts: Pleasure chatting with you and a few others. Good luck to you and yours.


Sam Adams
29.03.10

02:36
Not sure I understand how people leaving will help those who are stay (by choice or by circumstance), but I take back my admonition for now till I know more…


Administrator
29.03.10

02:39
My nominations, should you have the money (in order):

1. New Zealand
2. Singapore
3. Hong Kong

If you are multilingual

4. Costa Rica
5. Netherland Antilles
6. Brazil
7. Chile
8. Bahrain (tough to get though)
9. India
10. Thailand


Administrator
29.03.10

02:41
For those of us who are here for the long run Perspective, I’m 100% with you. I’m playing it by the book, Atlas Shrugged, that is…..


Thors Hammer
29.03.10

02:54
Run, Hell!


Mark
29.03.10

03:31
Dang it, and I just paid $1.88 on a book called “The Complete Guide to Offshore Money Havens” at the thrift store. Actually, it’s still a pretty good find for the thrift store…


Patrick Henry
29.03.10

03:36
My blood has fought for this country in every war from 1776 on down and I’ll be DAMNED to let the republic fall under my watch. Now if it breaks apart to be reformed into something better I pray I live that long to see it. Remember shoot and scoot. Dont let them get ya. And as the great Ronald Regan said ” The bombing starts in five minutes.”


templar knight
29.03.10

03:50
I had a chance to leave this country for Australia 30 years ago, but my love for my land wouldn’t let me do it. Even though I had a good friend who made the change, and loves Australia now, I look at the land I inherited from my mother’s family and think of the effort expended by my ancestors to keep it. A Civil War ran through it, my grandfather wounded and humiliated on the Southern side, yet we endured, and eventually prospered. I would hardly be worth my salt, and would be unable to face my ancestors in Heaven were I to run away from this fight. No sir, I stand, right or wrong…I stand!

http://johngaltfla.com/blog3/2010/03/29/if-you-can-leave-the-united-states-i-would-suggest-you-get-out-now/

[IxCimi]

And when an entire system gives it weight, that counts for something.
Luckily, the bastards aren't trying to deny national sovereignty quite yet.

First came the sovereign being who was then made a "person".

These fucks act like they don't even know the basis of law in it's
evolutionary track.

I had a judge once ask me what the hell "natural law" was. He'd never heard of it...

I just about shit a brick! I'm sure he was lying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law#In_contemporary_jurisprudence

[toddao]

The IRS is Not An Agency of the US Government

[lrice]

ooo got his private army

http://noisyroom.net/blog/2010/03/26/obama-just-got-his-private-army/
======================
A Chilling Proposal by Barack Obama

=========================================
Obama Youth Brigade March in Formation

=========================================================
…And no one seems to have noticed. It is buried in the Senate revisions to the health care bill.

Subtitle C–Increasing the Supply of the Health Care Workforce
Sec. 5201. Federally supported student loan funds.
Sec. 5202. Nursing student loan program.
Sec. 5203. Health care workforce loan repayment programs.
Sec. 5204. Public health workforce recruitment and retention programs.
Sec. 5205. Allied health workforce recruitment and retention programs.
Sec. 5206. Grants for State and local programs.
Sec. 5207. Funding for National Health Service Corps.
Sec. 5208. Nurse-managed health clinics.
Sec. 5209. Elimination of cap on commissioned corps.
Sec. 5210. Establishing a Ready Reserve Corps.
Subtitle D–Enhancing Health Care Workforce Education and Training

See the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, page 1312:

SEC. 5210. ESTABLISHING A READY RESERVE CORPS.
Section 203 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 204) is amended to read as follows:
SEC. 203. COMMISSIONED CORPS AND READY RESERVE CORPS.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT–
(1) IN GENERAL.–here shall be in the Service a commissioned Regular Corps and a Ready Reserve Corps for service in time of national emergency.
(2) REQUIREMENT.–All commissioned officers shall be citizens of the United States and shall be appointed without regard to the civil-service laws and compensated without regard to the Classification Act 2 of 1923, as amended.
(3) APPOINTMENT.–Commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps shall be appointed by the President and commissioned officers of the Regular Corps shall be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
(4) ACTIVE DUTY.–Commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps shall at all times be subject to call to active duty by the Surgeon General, including active duty for the purpose of training.
(5) WARRANT OFFICERS.–Warrant officers may be appointed to the Service for the purpose of providing support to the health and delivery systems maintained by the Service and any warrant officer appointed to the Service shall be considered for purposes of this Act and title 37, United States Code, to be a commissioned officer within the Commissioned Corps of the Service.
(b) ASSIMILATING RESERVE CORP OFFICERS INTO THE REGULAR CORPS.—Effective on the date of enactment of the Affordable Health Choices Act, all individuals classified as officers in the Reserve Corps under this section (as such section existed on the day before the date of enactment of such Act) and serving on active duty shall be deemed to be commissioned officers of the Regular Corps.

[Note here that those personally appointed by BO -- without advice and consent of the Senate -- automatically become a part of the Regular Corps. Ed.]

(c) PURPOSE AND USE OF READY RESERVE.–
(1) PURPOSE.–The purpose of the Ready Reserve Corps is to fulfill the need to have additional Commissioned Corps personnel available on short notice (similar to the uniformed service’s reserve program) to assist regular Commissioned Corps personnel to meet both routine public health and emergency response missions.
(2) USES.–The Ready Reserve Corps shall–
(A) participate in routine training to meet the general and specific needs of the Commissioned Corps;
(B) be available and ready for involuntary calls to active duty during national emergencies and public health crises, similar to the uniformed service reserve personnel;
(C) be available for backfilling critical positions left vacant during deployment of active duty Commissioned Corps members, as well as for deployment to respond to public health emergencies, both foreign and domestic; and
(D) be available for service assignment in isolated, hardship, and medically underserved communities (as defined in section 399SS) to improve access to health services.
(d) FUNDING.—For the purpose of carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the Commissioned Corps under this section, there are authorized to be appropriated such sums as may be necessary to the Office of the Surgeon General for each of fiscal years 2010 through 2014. Funds appropriated under this subsection shall be used for recruitment and training of Commissioned Corps Officers.

How many of you, dear readers, were aware of the fact that the health care bill created another army?

[Vexari]

Yes and Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature

Source:
Upside Down World, September 25, 2008
Title: “Ecuador’s Constitution Gives Rights to Nature”
Author: Cyril Mychalejko

Student Researcher: Chelsea Davis
Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin, PhD
Sonoma State University

In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection.

Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” This right, the constitution states, “is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people that depend on the natural systems.”
The new constitution redefines people’s relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law.

Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Environmental Legal Defense Fund, worked closely over the past year with members of Ecuador’s constitutional assembly on drafting legally enforceable Rights of Nature, which mark a watershed in the trajectory of environmental law.

Ecuador’s leadership on this issue may have a global domino effect. Margil says that her organization is busy fielding calls from interested countries, such as Nepal, which is currently writing its first constitution.

For all of the hope and tangible progress the Rights of Nature articles in Ecuador’s constitution represent, however, there are shortcomings and contradictions with the laws and the political reality on the ground. A fundamental flaw in the constitution also exists due to Correa’s refusal to include a clause mandating free, prior, and informed consent by communities for development project that would affect their local ecosystems.

“I expect them [the multinational extractive industries] to fight it,” says Margil. “Their bread and butter is based on being able to treat countries and ecosystems like cheap hotels. Multinational corporations are dependent on ravaging the planet in order to increase their bottom line.”

The new Mining Law, introduced by Ecuador’s own President Rafael Correa and backed by Canadian companies, which hold the majority of mining concessions in Ecuador, is a testament to Margil’s forecast. The Mining Law would allow for large-scale, open pit metal mining in pristine Andean highlands and Amazon rainforest. Major nationwide demonstrations are being held in protest, with groups accusing Correa of inviting social and environmental disaster by selling out to mining interests.

Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag, who has been a tireless defender of the environment against transnational mining companies, says that while the new constitution looks good on paper, “in practice governments like Correa’s will argue that funding his political project, which will bring ‘well being and relieve poverty,’ overrules the rights of nature.”
Yet even as Ecuadoran President Correa embraces the extractive economic model of development, the inclusion of the rights of nature in a national constitution sets inspiring and revolutionary precedent. If history is any indicator, Ecuadorians will successfully fight for the Rights of Nature, with or without their president.

Update by Cyril Mychalejko
When Ecuadorians drafted and passed a new constitution, which gave nature inalienable rights, the US media largely ignored this historic development. In the case of the Los Angeles Times, one of the few mainstream outlets to cover the story, the newspaper’s editorial board trivialized the development (“Putting Nature in Ecuador’s Constitution,” September 2, 2008) by suggesting it sounded “like a stunt by the San Francisco City Council” and that it seemed “crazy.”

“As ecological systems around the world collapse, we need to fundamentally change our relationship with nature. This requires changes in both law and culture, and ultimately our behavior as part of nature,” said Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Defense Fund, who is disappointed in how the US media largely ignored the story.

In Ecuador, at the time of the constitutional vote, the optimism over how the “Rights of Nature” clauses would translate into policy was guarded.
“As exciting as these developments are, it was also inevitable that the people in power would, and will, find ways to circumvent, undermine, and ignore those rights,” said Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag.

According to Zorrilla, a major disappointment has been President Rafael Correa’s new mining law.

“The law takes rights-to-nature loopholes and widens them so that giant dirt movers could easily drive through them,” said Zorrilla, who has been working with communities of Ecuador’s Intag region to resist mining and promote sustainable development. “To mention a couple of examples, the law does not prohibit large-scale mining in habitats harboring endangered species, nor the dumping of heavy metals in rivers and streams.”

Indigenous leaders responded by filing a lawsuit before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court in March 2009, seeking to overturn the mining law, which they believe is unconstitutional. Article 1 of the “Rights of Nature” clauses states: “Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.”

Regardless of the ongoing struggles to ensure that the true meaning and scope of the constitution is upheld, Dr. Mario Melo, a lawyer specializing in Environmental Law and Human Rights and an advisor to Fundación Pachamama-Ecuador, believes that the nature clauses which reflect the traditions of indigenous peoples could offer a path to an ecologically sustainable future.
“I consider that the recognition of the ‘Rights to Nature’ as a progress on a global scale and one that deserves to be globally broadcast and commented on as a contribution from Ecuador towards the search of new ways of facing the environmental crisis due to climate change.”

The struggles of Ecuadorian social movements and the Ecuadorian government to uphold the “Rights of Nature” and to create a new development model that places human beings as interdependent parts of nature, rather than dominant exploiters of nature, is something we should continue to monitor and learn from.


http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/18-ecuadors-constitutional-rights-of-nature/

[Vexari]

hey chris

yeah, that is excellent

liken that to an individual that takes it to the defacto system dejure style

refreshing, to say the least..

[IxCimi]

Gotta love Ecuador!!! Getting way ahead of the game!
They are telling the likes of the IMF and World Bank and their ilk to fuck off and take a hike. Also kicked out the American Naval Station in Manta, Ecuador and is telling the world in general "hands off our resources!". They have even given the environment natural rights in their Constitutional law.

I could NOT be prouder of my little adopted country!

[Vexari]

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light

but by making the darkness conscious

The latter procedure, however

is disagreeable and therefore not popular..


~ Carl Jung ~