"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years, it would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years, but, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
David Rockefeller
Council on Foreign Relations
Black Nobility
Corrupt
“Today, Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil….individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government.”
Henry Kissinger
Bankster Filth
"We shall have world government whether or not we like it. The only question is whether world government will be achieved by conquest or consent."
James Warburg to the United States Senate Committee on foreign relations, 1950
Corrupt
"Our great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men...who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.
We have come to be one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world - No longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men."
Woodrow Wilson
Crushing Defeat for Germany’s Merkel as Voters Reject Austerity
- Common Dreams staff
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative party suffered a crushing defeat on Sunday in an election in Germany’s most populous state, a result which should embolden the left opposition to step up its criticism of her European ‘austerity’ policies. The victory of socialist François Hollande in the French presidential election was a repudiation of the austerity policies imposed on the euro zone by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, in collaboration with German chancellor Angela Merkel, who had endorsed Sarkozy in the election.
The crushing defeat leaves her vulnerable at a time when a backlash against her insistence on austerity is building across Europe. Recent elections have rejected austerity policies in Greece, France and Italy, severely weakening Chancellor Merkel.
According to early projections, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) won 38.8 percent of the vote and will have enough to form a stable majority with the Greens, who scored 12.2 percent.
Voters in Germany’s most populous state handed a resounding victory to the center-left , dealing a heavy blow to Angela Merkel’s conservatives in what was interpreted as a backlash against the chancellor’s European austerity campaign.
The worst result in the state for the conservatives since 1949Exit polls in the election in North Rhine-Westphalia showed Hannelore Kraft of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) had soundly beat her Christian Democrat (CDU) rival Norbert Röttgen, Merkel’s environment minister.
The SPD secured 39% of the vote to the CDU’s 26% in what amounted to the worst result in the state for the conservatives since 1949. The Greens took 12%, ensuring that a coalition with the SPD would mean a 10-seat majority in the state parliament. The Free Democratic party (FDP), Merkel’s coalition partner in the federal government, took 8.5% of the vote.
The parvenu Pirates party, whose platform is based on greater openness in government through technology, were celebrating their fourth successive entry into a regional parliament after polling 7.5%.
The result in North Rhine-Westphalia – whose 18-million population makes it bigger than EU countries including Greece whose perilous economic situation and Germany’s approach to it was often the focus of the campaign – is seen as setting the tone for next year’s federal elections.
Greek Town Implements Revolutionary Barter System Without Euro
Greece continues along a path toward self-sufficiency that could very well see them break free from their debt servitude.
In the wake of their pillaging by international financiers, Greeks who have realized that protesting is likely to bring little relief have begun to implement barter systems to meet their local community needs. Through a combination of decentralization from the Euro, free markets, local cooperation, and the creation of a new currency based on productivity, markets like the one below in Volos are leading the charge to a restoration of the principles that build truly sustainable economies.
This is an encouraging sign, and one that is replicating throughout austerity-ridden economies the world over. International currencies are increasingly being rejected in the face of reduced living standards through inflation and outright theft by global banksters.
Americans would do well to learn from the truly revolutionary actions taken by individuals in deliberately collapsed countries, because if global (mis)managers have their way, a similar scenario is guaranteed to unfold in the United States.
IT WAS a day when old acquaintances simply could not say enough good things about one another. When Taoiseach Enda Kenny met his Italian opposite number Mario Monti at Palazzo Chigi, government house, yesterday, the reciprocal compliments flew through the sunny Rome air.
Mr Monti described the Taoiseach as the “author of an important turning point” in the Irish economy, while the Taoiseach underlined on at least three occasions just how Mr Monti had “restored the reputation of Italy”, repositioning Italy right at the very heart of the EU economic debate.
It was all rather a change from the last time, back in May 2004, when a taoiseach travelled to Rome for a bilateral with the Italian prime minister. On that occasion, the two protagonists, Messrs Berlusconi and Ahern, probably spent more time considering AC Milan’s Champions League form than the EU’s balance sheet.
The fact that eight years have past since the last Italian-Irish bilateral possibly says much about the failings of recent ruling regimes. Yesterday, both leaders were keen to stress their common vision for the immediate future of the EU, a vision that includes job creation initiatives as much as austerity.
Mr Monti expressed his satisfaction that Ireland was one of those 12 countries (France and Germany excluded) that, in view of next week’s EU summit, had signed a letter to EU presidents Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, calling for a set of growth-related measures.
Mr Kenny, who has known Mr Monti since the latter’s mid-1990s days as a European commissioner, emphasised Mr Monti’s European pedigree, clearly suggesting that this is one dude to whom everybody listens, Merkel and Sarkozy included.
One had the distinct sensation that the EU “B” team, ie the Minnows, may well have found itself a charismatic, heavyweight centre-forward for its forthcoming battles with the “A” team, ie Merkozy.
In that context, the Taoiseach pointed out that at his meeting with the German chancellor on Thursday, he had stressed the need for “strong firewalls to prevent contagion”, in the process using almost exactly the same words as Mr Monti did last week. All in all, it was a very satisfied Taoiseach who met the media yesterday morning, reporting on this week’s meetings with senior partners, Italy and Germany, saying: “Both were very good meetings and in both I gave an update of the actions taken by the Irish Government in respect of addressing our public finance problem and in respect of dealing with our agenda for growth and jobs . . . I also reported on the preparatory work . . . prior to Ireland holding the EU presidency for the first half of 2013 and some of issues we would like to raise and deal with during that presidency . . . ”
The Taoiseach also stressed the importance of EU leaders meeting “outside the formality of EU Council meetings” in a context where a more “normal” discussion might take place.
The Monti government, he said, was very “open and accessible”. As we said, it was a day when the compliments were flying.
Can Europe escape the debt trap? Yes – and here’s how
Today activists in Ireland are following Greece’s example by launching a public audit of the country’s debt to establish its legitimacy
Financial markets have successfully demanded the imposition of severe austerity on the periphery of the eurozone – Greece, Ireland and Portugal – to deal with public debt. The markets have also raised concerns about it in the United States, Britain and Japan, clamouring for austerity. Public debt seems to operate like a mask behind which lies a shadowy world of creditors to whose upkeep entire economies are mortgaged.
Can that mask be lifted? It has been in other countries, through the mechanism of a debt audit. Initiatives like this have happened in Brazil, Ecuador and elsewhere in order to untangle the web of secrecy around the debt and work out who lent what to whom, when and for what purpose. Typically, there is an expectation that some, at least, of the debt, will be found to be “illegitimate”, and can therefore be repudiated.
Ecuador provides a striking example. In 2007 President Correa established a debt audit commission, which reported in 2008 that a portion of the country’s debt was indeed illegitimate and had done “incalculable damage” to Ecuador’s people and environment. The price of illegitimate debt subsequently collapsed in the open markets, and Ecuador got rid of it easily.
Despite predictions of economic disaster the country registered 3.7% economic growth in 2010, and the forecast is for growth in excess of 5% in 2011. The salience of the Ecuadorian example for current debates in Europe is obvious.
This is why a campaign for a Greek audit commission was launched in March with the support of civil organisations, trade unions and political parties. One of its greatest successes has been the documentary Debtocracy, which has been watched by a million people. In a country that feels humiliated and dejected, the campaign has offered a modicum of hope. Such has been its popular appeal that, in a singularly ill-judged remark, a minister denounced it for equating Greece with “Latin American banana republics”.
In an example of European solidarity several bodies, including Action from Ireland, the Irish Debt and Development Coalition and the trade union Unite, are, on 4 May, launching a debt audit in Ireland. Academics with expertise in economics, finance, law and related disciplines are being commissioned to trawl through the public accounts to tackle several questions. To whom is the bank debt owed? When was it contracted? Specifically, was it before or after the government’s September 2008 bank guarantee was issued? When is the debt due for repayment? How much has already been repaid, and to whom?
Meanwhile the Greek campaign is taking steps to start its own investigations. What is the legal status of debt contracted with the helpful services of Goldman Sachs that presented public borrowing as a derivative transaction? How legal is debt to finance further arms procurement in one of the most militarised countries in the world? Above all, how legitimate is the extraordinary loan of €110bn by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund that it is claimed is needed to “bail out” the country – at the price of ferocious public spending austerity? The loan did not follow the normal procedure for contracting public debt, including approval by Greece’s parliament.
These preliminary investigations will establish facts to further the demand for a full democratic audit and a sovereign response to debt. What is ultimately necessary is full access to debt data, the power to examine witnesses, and even the ability to examine bank accounts. On this basis properly constituted audit commissions could make credible recommendations on debt that is illegitimate or simply unsustainable. The sovereign state could then take appropriate action, including repudiation of debt and cessation of payments.
The campaigns for debt audits will also have an important educational function to perform across Europe. People in core countries, including Germany, seem not to have yet grasped that the loans provided by the EU and the IMF are not bailing out feckless Mediterraneans and Celts. In fact they are bailing out banks that engaged in profitable and irresponsible lending throughout the 2000s. And that will be a theme of a gathering of activists in Athens on 6-8 May. Participants from across the world will trade ideas on how to tackle European public debt. After more than three years of crisis, grassroots movements are at last emerging to oppose the grip of debt, austerity and neoliberalism across Europe.
Brazilian national, Maria Lucia Fatoreli has taken part in the world’s first audit commission that brought significant change in Equador.
Athens International Radio (www.air1044fm.gr) and journalist Helen Skopis, spoke to her to find out what prompted the introduction of this initiave and the impact it has had worldwide.
"The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen...At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as International Bankers. This little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties."
- John F. Hylan, New York City Mayor, 1922
Woodrow Wilson, 1913
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
- Woodrow Wilson, 1913
Thomas Jefferson
"If the people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny"
Thomas Jefferson (1778)
General Douglas MacArthur
“I am concerned for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”
General Douglas MacArthur
Thomas Jefferson
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
The victory of socialist François Hollande in the French presidential election was a repudiation of the austerity policies imposed on the euro zone by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, in collaboration with German chancellor Angela Merkel, who had endorsed Sarkozy in the election.
