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Banking, Basel, Marks and Markets

Banking, Basel, Marks and Markets

Both the “mark to market” valuations for businesses set by FAS157 and the same effectivley for banks through Basel 11 which built on the original Basel accord, have set in place mechanisms which are prone to, and I believe designed to, the cascading effect. Looking at the effects of this or that regulation is a bit like trying to piece together what happened after a nuclear explosion by focusing on the cascading atomic reaction rather than on who designed and built this bloody bomb and who triggered it. In our case it is the bankers and their various regulatory bodies such as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Here we have the industry looking at the cascading effect:-

“ In short, the rules are seen as being pro-cyclical.
"There's a fundamental weakness in the regulatory framework because it puts no constraints on banks' rate of growth when things are going well then bites deeply later on, which could mean each boom is followed by a credit crunch - when what you really want is to moderate the boom in advance," says the LSE's [London School of Economics] Goodhart.”

Yeah well, Goodhart may well say, “what YOU (that's us, folks) really want...” but he could have added, “What WE really want (speaking for the bankers) is ever wilder cycles up and down.”

Cycles of boom and bust suit bankers. This can be determined rather simply because bankers are the ones who create this yo-yo cycle and it takes deliberate decisions on their part to do it. And they are the ones who profit from it every time. They do it by pumping the money supply up with lotsa loans and then deflating it and collecting lotsa cheap assets. This is the same mechanism behind the mysterious "business cycle". That some banks are going bust now does not mean that the bankers at the centre of control (BIS) are suffering. They're thinning out the competition.

When the Basel Accord was adopted by various governments, it took away control of banks by the host governments. Bank lending was no longer constrained by the government. The government in Australia, for instance, previously could regulate the lending of banks, in theory at least, (but in practice, the banks told the government what to do) independent of the market through Statutory Reserve Deposits i.e. it could go against the Market to damp it down. But now the banks would be regulated BY the market i.e go with it with no restraint now. “The Market” reigns supreme now but the market is and always has been subject to manipulation. And guess who is in the best position to manipulate it? Yes, our old friends the international bankers who own and control the major central banks of the world and their co-ordinating body, the BIS.

The Basel accord imposed on banks an overall set ratio of 8% capital to loans to non government bodies. But the ratio varied between loans for real estate (favoured), for instance, and commercial loans to industry (penalised by a higher ratio). The first thing that happened was that productive industry suffered and speculation in real estate and securities took off. Then these more speculative loans were onsold for a profit and this took them off their balance sheets which allowed the banks to lend more and more while still remaining within their capital ratio.

Meanwhile, they are making more and more profits from these activities plus, they are now price gouging through the imposition of all sorts of fees. This meant massive profits which then increased their capital which meant they could loan evermore money into the speculative sector. Banks were competing with each other for this largesse. Truly pigs at the trough. This self feeding cascading effect facilitated the long boom through the nineties till now, while all the while, industry is suffering and shrinking. The parasite is killing the host. But this situation can't keep going forever and eventually must slow and then the freefall starts. The system reverses itself. There's no mystery here. It was all predictable and therefore must be seen as deliberate on the part of the regulators who designed and brought this system in; the Bank for International Settlements and all the government officials who obliged in adopting it. Now the arguments start.

But arguing with bankers or investment people over regulations is a bit like arguing with a bunch of alcoholics, who have been left in charge of the liquor store, over the trading hours. The whole thing is nuts. One just should not be in this situation.

When I rule the world, these are the laws I will impose smiling !

1 The only body that will issue currency i.e. the money supply, is a government central bank.

2 Governments will only borrow from their own bank.

3 Private banks will be reduced to the status of Credit Co-ops or S&Ls in that they can only lend out funds what they have previously taken in as deposits.

4 No one will be able to on-sell a loan without incurring penalties (to discourage speculation) and with the specific permision of the borrower.

5 Short selling will be illegal in all markets, period. It is fraud to sell something you don't have or own. Future positions can be covered by put and call options or common insurance.

6 Foreign exchange can be handled internally via a government run market in which exporters are able to sell their well earned foreign currency to importers (who have to produce trade contracts to validate their need for it) and the price is set by normal market supply and demand. No foreign debt can be accululated in this fashion and foreign trade does not imbalance the domestic market; it's self regulating. This system was first proposed by John Iggulden of Australia some years ago. He called it Impex. And it's nothing short of brilliant in it's simplicity and elegance.

7 All financial markets will be subjected to a turnover tax to raise taxes from those that can afford them and to discourage speculation. Currently, close to 98% of turnover in foreign exchange markets is speculation and has nothing to do with foreign trade. Our economies are being run by gamblers. And addicted gamblers, at that.

8 The money earned from financial market turnover and interest gained from creating the money supply would go a long way, if not all the way, to providing the government's revenue requirements.

All pretty simple.

The whole financial industry as it is, this bloated, blind and toxic parasite, should be as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool in any decent, just and well run society.

On Some Basics of Economics

On Some Basics of Economics

McJ asked some very thoughtful questions in the comments section and I started to answer them but “it just growed” like Topsy did and on rereading my answer and thinking it might interest others with the same questions, I have put it up here on the main page. So, to the answer:-

These are good questions, McJ. There's a lot to them and I'll answer in installments if I may.
To start with your last point first re Uni economics and this so called “high finance” being over your head, I'll say you are probably better off not knowing or remembering much about it from those uni days. This comment at the end of your questions was probably more of a quip but I think it goes to the heart of much of this. I have had better luck explaining the reality of money/banking/economics to complete neophytes than to those educated to the “dismall science”. The reason is that this “education” amounts to indoctrination and, like all indoctrination, it is based on false information and for reasons of an hidden agenda i.e. exploitation. One example of this is Milton Friedman (who can't be dead enough nor buried deep enough – to borrow a phrase from Professor As'ad AbuKhalil aka Angry Arab) and the so called “Chicago School” of economics. Friedman was responsible for providing the academic cover for “Thatcherism” and “Reagonomics” of the eighties which rapidly accelerated the shift in wealth from the general populace, including the sale of publicly owned utilities, to the already very wealthy.

The Chicago School was, in fact, the economics department at the University of Chicago which Friedman headed. Now here's the sting - the University of Chicago was established with Rockefeller money and, by all things observable, still controls it. Another example is that “The Economist” magazine in England is largely owned and controlled by the Rothschilds. These people have interests diametrically opposed to the rest of us. It is vital to their interests that they control economics education so as to distort it to justify their position as essential to society and generally mislead everybody.

So if you will indulge me in a little rant here, I'll try to demystify a couple of things. Economics justifies itself by reciting the following Mission Statement that “it accomplishes the greatest good for the greatest number with the scarce resources available”. It then immediately goes on to teach (if you were studying it) that the first law of economics is the Law of Supply and Demand. This says that supply follows demand i.e. that production will respond to those with a demand (and you are left to think, need) willing to purchase this same production. The trouble is that those with needs but no money are not catered for in this scenario and therefore this gives the lie to the initial justification, the “Mission Statement”, of doing the greatest good for the greatest number.

What happens in practice is that the whims of the wealthy, those with money, are met at the expense of the needs of the poor. An extreme, but by no means isolated, example is the case of strawberries being grown and exported to the West from Ethiopia some years ago at the time it was suffering from a severe famine!

The other half of the “Mission Statement” mentions the scarce resources as if this were a fact. Often it is not. Finite limits does not necessarily mean scarcity. Though, resources are often made apparently scarce by tying their supply to scarce money either in the community as a whole (as in Depressions and is happening now) or in the pockets of a section of the community (such as through class exploitation – also happening now). These scarcities are facilitated by government action responding to banks and bankers interests which are always directly counter to everyone else's.

But this is never explained to the student. Money enters the scene when the mechanics of “production” are taught. Production is said to be the result of bringing together three elements or “factors”; Labor (workers/you and I), Resources (oil, timber etc) and Capital (Capitalists/Bankers and their money or Capital). Firstly, note the division of people into Labor (Workers) and Capital (Capitalists/nonworkers). Secondly, this formula is bullshit. You don't, in fact, need Capital or Capitalists to make something. If Labor co-operates and has access to Resources, then it actually doesn't need money. Therefore, Capital is not an essential element or factor of production or wealth creation. Yet, bankers have inserted themselves into every facet of society telling everybody how essential they are to everybody's wellbeing. For sure, having a money system facilitates production once we get much past the tribal level of complexity but it is nothing more than an abstract measuring and scoring system that we (Labor) can provide for ourselves at negligible cost.

Money is not a resource in the sense of being something physical or even resident in this world. I like to say that money is the only thing in this world that God didn't make and that is so because money doesn't actually exist in this world! Money exists only in the minds of people suitably indoctrinated to the notion. And that is all it is; a notion; an abstract mental notion. That notion is recorded in this world as a scoring system through various “double entry” bookeeping systems (banks) and as a measurement system through goods and services being given a price. But it is all arbitrary and captive to the whim of those owners of the bookeeping systems (bankers).

How we all view or conceive of money is crucial to the control the bankers have over maintaining their position of domination over us all. Money is taught as if it is a physical commodity with a finite existence and this is reinforced in the media and in conversation everyday. It is one hell of a mind job! It has been able to get this foothold in our minds because historically money (coins) had some intrinsic worth or demand for it as a commodity in itself such as a gold content or rum in the case of early White society in Australia! From there it went to a paper Banknote which was an IOU that could be exchanged for gold. Then the exchange was taken away. The remaining paper has no intrinsic value. It would take an awful lot of it to keep you warm on a cold night, for instance. What gives it value is our willingness to exchange goods for it instead of the bankers exchanging gold for it. WE provide its value! Now we have digital money, the ultimate in abstract. We have an instructive word in our language to describe the digital world, virtual i.e. something that has no existence but looks like it has. There is nothing more "Matrix" like in the world than money and understanding this is the key to freedom from this invisible oppression all around us. (Update, I just found this very pertinent blog entry from Suraci called Who Is The Lender? to which he could equally add the question, Where do the loan funds come from?)

It takes consistent effort to de-programme yourself from this notion of the existence of money. Keep contemplating it. Once fully grasped, it makes obvious the nonsense talked about in the name of economics and politics (often the same thing). As I said, in an earlier response, it took me months to finally “get it” (though I was referring to the mechanics of credit/money creation but it all fuses together). So don't be despondent if after reading this you feel you still don't “get it”. It's a process. Of course, if you do see it all, that's great. Tell someone about it! Doing so will reinforce it in your mind and/or point up gaps in your understanding.

An excellent book I can recommend is “The Truth In Money Book” by Theodore and Margaret Thoren and Richard Warner. It is out of print, unfortunately, but you might find a copy somewhere. It also describes the Fractional Reserve system in place in the US but now replaced in Canada and Australia, at least, with the “Mark to Market” system of bank control and credit (money) creation. More on the later system (and in answer to your question) in a following response.
Two other books that I haven't read but which have very good reviews are “The Creature From Jeckyl Island” by G. Edward Griffin and “The Web of Debt” by Ellen Brown whom we have talked of. None of these authors are economists, which is telling! The best books I have read have been by engineers. I like to think it is because they are trained in cause and effect and have to be rigorous in their thinking. They can't bullshit their way out of a collapsed bridge saying it isn't collapsed at all, or, “it's a temporary adjustment”!
What I am trying to get across is that economists are largely ignorant of the basic orientation (motivation) of their field of study together with an ignorance of its fundamental contradictions as a result of their “education” or more correctly, indoctrination or even mind control. Once people have accepted nonsense and their livelihood or psychological stability now depends on it, they will defend it vehemently to their own and others' cost. Those practitioners that can sophisticate it and obscure the simple truth are rewarded with advancement and are VERY unlikely to expose the nonsense. Though, there are always exceptions and I can point to one I have read, though, not extensively so the recommendation is tentative. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Professor Michael Hudson

Next up, credit creation or where money comes from which will include “Mark to Market” as it applies to banks (to the extent that I understand it, anyway). Right now I need a cup of tea and a little lie down! I find this stuff wearing to think and write about. So be encouraged, gentle reader, it's not just you! It's worth perservering with, though, for your own freedom and for the next generation's. One thing that is helpful to bear in mind is that if you have a measure of discernment and intelligence (and you must have to be reading this! wink), and you don't understand something after giving it your attention, then it is almost always because you are being presented with false information or information is being withheld or both. Keep digging because truth is freedom and freedom doesn't exist in the absence of truth!

One World Currency (with addendum)

One World Currency

In this essay, I will be arguing against the use of a One World Currency; why it would be bad for everyone except bankers; how it will be brought in and how it will be made viable. I will also point out how all the strategies essential to its implementation have been employed before only not together and, lastly, how it has caused war in the past and will again in the very near future.

In the Forum section (link below in the right column) is the article “The Tower of Basel”by Ellen Brown. It gives a very brief but good history of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) which is the driving force behind the campaign for a One World Currency (OWC). I highly recommend reading it before you progress further with this essay.

Still here? You want the bottom line now, right? OK, but read it after!

The most important part of Ellen Brown's article for my purposes is the following paragraphs which are highlighted in the forum version-

“BIS regulations serve only the single purpose of strengthening the international private banking system, even at the peril of national economies. . . . The IMF and the international banks regulated by the BIS are a team: the international banks lend recklessly to borrowers in emerging economies to create a foreign currency debt crisis, the IMF arrives as a carrier of monetary virus in the name of sound monetary policy, then the international banks come as vulture investors in the name of financial rescue to acquire national banks deemed capital inadequate and insolvent by the BIS.

Ironically, noted Liu, developing countries with their own natural resources did not actually need the foreign investment that trapped them in debt to outsiders:

Applying the State Theory of Money [which assumes that a sovereign nation has the power to issue its own money], any government can fund with its own currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain full employment without inflation.”

The first paragraph clearly spells out that having anything to do with the world banking bodies is akin to national suicide. These bodies are entirely predatory. The second paragraph says that involvement with these bodies has been entirely unnecessary as each country has the ability to issue its own currency backed by its own resources, skills and production. These resources are owned by or are integral to the population as a whole in whichever nation we happen to be looking at. So long as someone holding that nation's currency (whether that person is residing in that particular country of outside of it) can exchange it for goods of intrinsic value, then that currency is valuable and viable. It needs no gold hidden in vaults anywhere to back it up.

There is another factor that gives a nation's currency value domestically and that is the demand for it imposed by the government that demands taxes and will only accept payment in “legal tender” i.e. the national currency. If you don't pay your taxes with this curency, ultimately, they will lock you up. So “you gotta get you some”. Pretty hard to argue with!

The leadership of every country in the world (except the Channel Island of Guernsey, as far as I know) (I have since determined that the list also includes Russia, China and Syriah, Ed) as either been corrupted or tricked into acquiescing to the practice of private banks issuing their currencies and pocketing the interest from it. Given that the entire Money Supply of most countries comes into being through loans from these banks, that's a lot of interest money. This gives enormous power to these banks (or bankers) who, conscious of their trickery, set about corrupting the whole fabric of society to gain control over it and ward off any possible challenge to their position.

If the sovereign Government issued the currency (out of the same thin air that the private banks use), they would have all the interest free capital they need to provide infrastructure and services. (Indeed, this is what the Australian Federal Government did in the very early part of the 20th Century). Interest charged to private borrowers would go towards funding services as well. It is quite possible to run a prosperous nation without taxes!

That is briefly how a currency is supposed to work. Government issued currency, managed well, leads to prosperity with little or no taxation and national independence. What's not to like?
Privately issued currency, which also leads to foreign loans from more private banks, leads to poverty, oppressive taxes and loss of sovereignty. With the loss of sovereignty comes the inevitable risk of involvement in foreign wars that have nothing to do with you. What's not to loathe?

If the drive to one world currency is resisted and should the resistance prove successful, it should immediately be followed with a campaign for a nationalized banking system to return the wealth to the people of the nation.

So that's what's wrong with a privately issued national currency. Does it apply to a One World Currency? Yes, indeed, and more. While there is a general loss of sovereignty within all countries (and it is much more than most people would like to think) there remains the possibility of it being regained by the populace of any particular nation. A nation that successfully financed itself would then be a shining example for others to follow. A global currency would take away that possibility or at least place it so far out of reach to make it virtually impossible. Thereafter, if a nation tried to establish its own currency, it would find it couldn't convert it to carry out foreign trade plus it would have the armies of the world surrounding it because the bankers would be in effective control of all the world's governments (and their armies) just as national banks are in control of national governments now. It just gets that much harder to have an economically just system.

So how are the “Powers That Be” going to bring in a One World Currency? Well, they've already started. They have had a trial run with the Euro for Western Europe which has no doubt provided useful lessons. It is interesting to note that Ireland boomed after it join the European Union with the injection of loan funds which increased the money supply and after they refused (twice) to adopt the Euro as their national currency, they now find themselves deep in recession; carrot and stick. This will be used more and more.

The current derivatives meltdown around the world is a necessary part of this plot to a One World Currency. The PTB get people to adopt unpalatable changes by first creating a problem or crisis and then presenting the change as the solution; “the medicine will taste better than the disease”, sort of thing; along with such platitudes as “Short term pain for long term gain”.

Anyway, you can read more about Stage One, "Into The Valley of Debt" here. It's not over either. There's more of stage one to come. All the trillions of dollars that have been created to “bail out the banks” will inevitably lead to inflation, probably massive. There's no escaping it. The mechanicism for that is explained in the above link. People (political shills) will call out for a stable one world currency and some countries will go for it. But not every country will be keen on it particularly if they know what's in store. So there's a need for something to provide value to and to enforce the adoption of this OWC by reluctant countries. China, for instance, might not be too keen to hear that this new currency will be backed up in part by their own resources yet they will have no say in the issuance of the currency nor share in part of the consequently massive profits. Nevermind the loss of control of their own economy.

I believe the proposed new currency will be backed by oil. The international bankers behind the BIS will not need to own the oil (though they own quite a lot through their oil companies). All they need is for the oil to be sold, and only sold, in exchange for their new currency. This will ensure an instant and massive demand for this currency. This sleight of hand requires the control of or agreement from the world's oil supplier countries. We already have a similar system in place in the world.

In the early seventies, OPEC was formed and then massively increased the price of oil over the following years. The major oil companies (and their client governments) rolled over without much fuss at all and accepted the new staus quo. There were no invasions. I remember being surprised at the time and the answer to the riddle came along in due course. The oil majors (who, remember, are owned by the major banking families) made a deal with the Saudis (and the other OPEC nations followed) to only sell their oil through the oil “bourses” in London and New York and the sales to be denominated in US dollars. This neat trick meant that the major banks could issue huge amounts of dollars (out of thin air) as loans to the value of the world's oil sales because everyone now needed to get the US$ before they could get the oil. This is how the US dollar was cemented in place as the reserve currency of the world. And this is how, too, they have been able to deliberately dismantle the US domestic economy over the last thirty years through globalisation (thank you Milton Freidman!) and not see the value of the US dollar plummet. This is how the US has financed its huge military buildup. It would have not been possible otherwise. It has been able to spend, spend, spend all this new found wealth from the interest gained from the vast loans as well as spending the money outright. It may take a while to get your head round this but, believe me, it really is as simple as its sounds.

Perhaps now you will see new meaning in Saddam Hussein's selling of oil in currencies other than the US$ which he started shortly before he (and all Iraqis) came to grief. This accounted for the timing of the war as well as its raison d'etre. Perhaps you will extend that new meaning to encompass Iran's decision to do likewise. Not only has this threatened the viability of the US's continued military dominance (it buys from all over the world with its currency backed by others oil), but just as importantly, it threatens the introduction and viability of their projected New World Order currency. This makes Iran target number one. If the US and these bankers can't control or own Iran's oil, they must, at least, stop them from selling it in anything other than $US for the moment and the OWC in the future. Bombing their oil fields and have the Iranians block the Straits of Hormuz in retaliation would achieve that just fine.

But that would be a temporary solution. What is needed really is complete control of Iran. This same scenario applies to Russia as well. The oil fields need to be under the international bankers control before the OWC can be introduced. Time is running out. This juggernaut has been put in motion and they cannot afford to stop it in mid stride for fear the whole plot, hatched over decades (if not longer), will collapse.

Here are two articles for added background and comment. The first is from Mike Whitney entitled, "Fragile Dollar Hegemony" and I aggree with him wholeheartedly.

The second is from William Engdahl (his website is here, lots of good stuff there) and has valuable background, though, I have some disagreement (apart from the major point of his article!). For instance,
“the status of the dollar as reserve currency depends on the status of the United States as the world’s unchallenged military superpower. In a sense, since August 1971 the dollar is no longer backed by gold. Instead, it is backed by F-16’s and MI Abrams battle tanks, operating in some 130 US bases around the world, defending liberty and the dollar.”

I believe he has this relationship exactly backwards as I argued further up in the essay.
Also, Engdahl quotes the former Director of the London International Petroleum Exchange, Chris Cook, as saying, “It is therefore with wry amusement that I have seen a myth being widely propagated on the Internet that the genesis of this "Iran bourse" project is a wish to subvert the US dollar by denominating oil pricing in euros.

’As anyone familiar with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will know, the denomination of oil sales in currencies other than the dollar is not a new subject, and as anyone familiar with economics will tell you, the denomination of oil sales is merely a transactional issue: what matters is in what assets (or, in the case of the United States, liabilities ) these proceeds are then invested.’

This is pure bullshit, as one might expect from someone in Cook's position. BTW, anytime you read, “as anyone familiar with (whatever) will tell you ...” suspect nonsense is being peddled. It's an oft used rhetorical ruse thrown at an uneducated audience (on the particular topic) to counter possible questions. I don't have space to elaborate further here on the above errors but I will answer any questions raised in the comments section.

So, to summarise, the world's international bankers, through owning the Bank for International Settlements and the US Federal Reserve, have been robbing the rest of the world blind ever since oil sales were denominated in US currency in the seventies. This grand theft has allowed them to build this massive military machine with which they are presently dominating the world. Further, they will use this war machine to intimidate the rest of the world into accepting an even more insidious currency, the One World or Global Currency from which it will be exceedingly difficult, indeed, to escape from. The pillaging will be massive and dominance will then be complete. The world will, indeed, "be their footstool". This is the bad news.

The good news is that if this juggernaut that has been launched now is delayed or sidetracked in any way, it will crash, I believe. If the approaching war with Iran in June is stymied, even temporarily, the bankers will miss their opportunity to use oil as the backing for their planned One World Currency and this will take away its viability. The current economic mess will be cleaned up in some other way other than instituting a global currency and maybe, just maybe, the truth will out and the bankers and their corruption of our societies will all start to collapse. Certainly, though, the world will have avoided massive death and destruction from yet another of their wars.
So spread the word!

Addendum.

Another way of seeing this whole issue of the One World Currency is to see it not so much as the introduction of a new currency but rather as the removal of alternate and competing national currencies (such as the Yen and Ruble, in fact, any other currency at all) to the US dollar, which is undeniably our present de facto global currency. Largely, it is just a name change because the same people (private international bankers – Rothschilds et. al.) will be issuing the new currency using the same backing, international oil sales, except now there won't be any alternatives to turn to. There will be no escape.

This changover from $US to $Global needs to be seemless. If the rest of the world starts using their own currencies in a major way in the meantime and see that it works just fine (in fact, better) then the spell will be broken. Everyone may well see that a Global or One World Currency is not only entirely unnecessary, but is (and always has been) a positive menace to world peace and prosperity. A universal currency is a necessary ingredient in establishing and maintaining an empire.

Currently, the $US is being collapsed in preparation for the changover. This has been set in motion and its course is set as the inevitable inflation reeks its damage. The bankers have their One World Currency ready in the wings to implement. BUT, they need control over the sale of ALL the oil to bring it in and to enforce its use. Any alternative to using the OWC to purchase oil will wreck it's viability and its enforcement. They don't have control of Iran's oil and Russia's oil sales yet and time is running out.

The financial meltdown has been years in gestation and once set in motion had a timing of its own. The bankers had planned on a world war before this. Lebanon in 2006 was supposed to provide the spark; the attack on Syria a year or so later, as well; then finally the attack on Gaza. None have worked. What I'm saying is that the global financial meltdown, the One World Currency and all the troubles in the Middle East and now Central Asia are intimately connected and there is a critical timeline involved. Upset that timeline through further delays in bringing all the worlds oil sales under the world bankers' control (either diplomatically or militarily) and their opportunity to switch seemlessly from $US to $Global will disappear.

The $US is imploding and it will be replaced with either nothing (best alternative) or a basket of currencies or the OWC. But this last one needs the control of the oil sales in place first, as I have argued. Hence, the urgency on the bankers part and also the opportunity on everybody else's part to scuttle the whole thing.

Into The Valley of Debt

I would like to tie together three subjects that are in the forefront at the moment with three separate essays and argue how they are parts of a whole. Three areas of capitalism are involved; the banking/investment/insurance or financial industry; the oil and resources industry; and the armaments and military services industry. These industries are, of course, controlled by the same group of people and so are readily co-ordinated and this should not surprise us. Indeed, we should expect it. The three subjects or issues breathlessly and inaccurately reported to us are the financial meltdown/bailout fiasco, the moves for a One World Currency and the ever building number and intensity of wars in the the Middle East and Central Asia for the control of oil. The “whole” I speak of is the domination or rulership of the whole world or more succinctly, One World Government.

This first part concerns the financial industry and the derivatives meltdown and the attendant bailout scandal. This essay is in large part a rewrite of part of James Lieber's excellent article, “What Cooked The World's Economy”. I have attempted to expand on some of his points with some logical deductions and also some opinions together with a few added bits of information from the public domain.
All quotes in this essay come from the above article and the first quote will start at the “bottom line”-

“The bottom line in this scandal is that fantastically wealthy entities positioned themselves to make unfathomable fortunes by betting that average Americans - Joe Six-Packs and hockey moms - would fail.“
Bearing this in mind will help makes sense of what I write below, I hope!
So after that introduction, let us deconstruct the scam.

INTO THE VALLEY OF DEBT

It struck me, at first, as very odd that the derivative scam artists are walking around very much alive. They have caused some major financial institutions that were very much a part of the establishment to go belly up apparently because of their reckless yet deliberate actions. Personally, I would rather scam the Gambino family than mess with the likes of the Rockefellers or the Rothschilds. These people are seriously attached to money. Bankers have a habit of washing up on the ebb tide and or dying from heart attacks in the peak of health or leaving suicide notes that don't sound like them and swinging from bridges. We've had a rash of them over the last few years though they didn't get much play in the MSM, surprisingly . . . not. So how come the likes of Joseph Cassano of AIG Financial Products are not only alive and still in employment but also receiving huge bonuses. Something is seriously wrong with this picture, is it not?

From this evidence, one must immediately conclude that the Rockefellers and Rothschilds et.al. have not been burnt which means that they were not involved in any way. But given the interconnectedness of everything financial and their attraction to huge profits, this would seem highly unlikely, indeed. The other option is that they were involved but on the winning side. This would account for Cassano et. al. remaining alive after (or even before) the collapse became public knowledge.

Not only are they still alive, but they are still in employment at the scene of the various disasters and still at the helm. For this situation to continue, the apparently incompetent fraudsters must be under the control and protection of whomever is benefitting from this situation, past and present. So all this would indicate there is still evidence to conceal and James Lieber quotes William Black, a former financial regulator, suggesting that very thing, ' "Don't count on them keeping records for long," Black warns. "It's time to get out the subpoenas."'
/This would also account for the obscene and PR risky bonuses these snake oil salesmen have received. But I will be suggesting that there is more to it and that is that the derivative scam is still in process and the “backsheesh” is to ensure that the salesmen stay in place for the time being, at least, as they still have work to do. After the party's over, though, they may have to avoid taking rides on boats; or flights in small planes; or bending over bridges . . . or bending over anything, really.

I found James Lieber's article very illuminating. Crucial to my understanding from his article is this,
'“Derivatives weren't initially evil. They began as insurance policies on large loans. A bank that wished to lend money to a big, but shaky, venture, like what Ford or GM have become, could hedge its bet by buying a credit derivative (insurance policy) to cover losses if the debtor defaulted.”

A market or trading forum was needed to facilitate the selling of these loan insurance policies (a.k.a. Credit Derivatives or CDs or just “derivatives”) on a large scale and thereby create a new financial services industry (and new profit centre) and was duly supplied in the form of a computer network. From Leiber again,

“the company that put the basic hardware and software together for pricing and clearing derivatives was Bloomberg. It was quite expensive for a financial institution - say, a bank - to get a Bloomberg machine and receive the specialized training required to certify analysts who would figure out the terms of the insurance. These Bloomberg terminals, originally called Market Masters, were first installed at Merrill Lynch in the late 1980s.
Subsequently, thousands of units have been placed in trading and financial institutions; they became the cornerstone of Michael Bloomberg's wealth, marrying his skills as a securities trader and an electrical engineer.

It's an open question when or if he or his company knew how they would be misused over time to devastate the world's economy.”

The scale of this operation, even granting that it was builtup over years, together with the fact that Bloomberg's company is privately owned, suggests to me that Bloomberg needed lots of finance to not only develop and provide the hardware and software but also for promotion and, critical in this industry, he would have needed influential sponsorship to put this system in place and the most likely place that would come from is within this same industry. If I were investigating this meltdown, one of the first questions I would want answered is, “who financed this time bomb?” I suspect the answer would be very revealing and would be at least one of the major anonymous “counterparties”.

So how was it a time bomb? How did legitimate insurance on a loan mutate so badly? Well, it soon became apparent (if it wasn't the purpose from the begining) that with the insurance (derivative) in place, there was more money to be made from a loan going bad and collecting on the insurance than if the loan was secure and paid off in due course. Particularly if the loan could be insured for more than it was worth or was purchased for. Coupled with the fact that the loan could be insured multiple times and the fact that you didn't even need to own the loan yourself. So if you insure a loan a hundred times over so that when it falls over, you are paid its full book value one hundred times. This is more than a “goldmine”; this is an exponential formula to unlimited wealth if the fabulous profits are parlayed a few times. Imagine betting on the winning number on a roulette table and letting the winnings ride and having the number come up again . . . and then keep on repeating this process with no pit-boss (or regulator) to shut the table down!
Now think in trillions!

But this jackpot payoff is dependent on the insured loan going bad. So now there is a market for bad or high risk loans and it is an exponentially ever-growing market because once a derivative buyer or “counterparty” (as he is known in the business) has collected big time on his “investment” he naturally wants to plough it all back into the same glorious, no risk, bonanza. But our counterparty's capital has grown like Topsy and he needs a hundred bad loans this time. How many bad loans will he need after a few circuits on this magic merry-go-round? Clearly the “Bad Loan” business needs to go “bigtime” and to do that the financial regulations and supervision need to be eradicated. Bye-bye Glass-Steagall Act. Hello Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA). And thank you, Bill Clinton.

This need for loans to be defaulted on is one of the reasons why Obama and his backers on Wall Street will not help rescue ordinary, but over committed, people struggling to stay in their homes or pay off their credit cards. There are still derivatives in play to be collected on.
Lieber again, “By plunking down millions of dollars, a hedge fund could reap billions once these fatally constructed securities plunged. Again, the funds did not need to own the securities; they just needed to pay for the derivatives - the insurance policies for the securities. And they could pay for them again and again. This was known as replicating. It became an addiction. “

It's not over, either. To repeat, its still in play and there are still loans to fall over and there are still payoffs to collect for the mysterious counterparties whom the Fed and everyone else involved refuse to identify.
“What about the $600 trillion in credit derivatives that are still out there, sucking vital liquidity and credit out of the system? It's the tyrannosaurus in the mall, the one that made Henry Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary who looks like Daddy Warbucks, get down on his knees and beg Nancy Pelosi for a bailout.
Even with the bailout, no one can get their arms around this monster. Obviously, the $600 trillion includes not only many unseemly replicated death bets, but also some benign derivatives that creditors bought to hedge risky loans. Instead of sorting them out, the Bush administration tried to protect them all, while keeping the counterparties happy and anonymous.”

Note well that last clause, “while keeping the counterparties happy and anonymous.” And Obama is in the continuity business here as well, it seems.

But let me backtrack a little to how the first half of the scam operated before the government intervention and the second half began.
The challenge was how to do it on a mass scale. It needed to pull most of the financial industry in because the object was to firstly, loot whole economies and secondly, set the stage for a one world currency which would give the issuers of this currency a de facto world government. If you control the issue of money then you control the economy. You can run it up and you can run it down through the simple expedient of how much money you put into circulaton or withdraw from circulation via bank lending policy. With the control of the economy, you control the government and more besides because you can buy and sell anything and anybody you please.

So they needed a respectable and respected front to lead the way for others to follow; to assure the nervous Nellies that success lay in joining “The Charge of the Blight Brigade into the Valley of Debt”.
What better vehicle than AIG, the biggest insurance company in the world. You are probably protesting that this company is “one of their own”. Yes, but many a fortune has been made from bankrupting a company, particularly, one's own. Greenburg, the head of AIG, established the demolition team in London, AIG Financial Products by name. I suggest this was not only to escape the rather non-existent regulatory control but also to escape internal detection and intervention from senior executives at the parent company who might not be too exicted about the prospect of their careers, status and livelihoods going up in smoke and so "out" the operation before its time is due. Lieber points out,

“ . . . William Black, an effective federal litigator and regulator during the 1980s savings-and-loan scandal . . . . . has testified to Congress about the current crisis and paints it as "control fraud" at every level. Such fraud flows from the top tiers of corporations - typically CEOs and CFOs, who control perverse compensation systems that reward cheating and volume rather than quality, and circumvent standard due diligence such as underwriting and accounting. For instance, AIGFP's Cassano reportedly rebuffed AIG's internal auditor.”

And also, “In 2000, AIG asked the New York State Insurance Department to decide if it wanted to regulate them, but the department's superintendent, Neil Levin, said no. The question was not posed by AIGFP, but by the company's main office through its general counsel”.
Perhaps head office was trying to get the regulator to do what it ironically couldn't i.e. audit its own subsiduary.

With the solid looking facade of AIG in place all that's needed now is an outside “seal of good housekeeping” for the bait which was provided by Standard & Poors and the other rating agencies. The bait made up of mortgages, credit card debt and sundry other things and otherwise known as CDOs (Collateralised Debt Obligations) was sold to,
“Banks like Wachovia, National City, Washington Mutual, and Lehman Brothers (who) loaded up on this financial trash, which soon proved to be practically worthless. Today, those banks are extinct” (unlike the ratings agencies)

Presumably these banks did not take out CDs (Credit Derivatives) on their new assets, the CDOs. Why not? If they had have, they would be in clover now and not in bankrupcy.
Either these institutions were kept in ignorance and were set up by their fellow bankers to fail with the view to taking out the competition.
Or, they were gutted and offered up as sacrificial lambs; that the derivatives were, indeed, taken out on the bad loans (CDOs) by the principals of these firms but held in other companies away from the creditors and eventual liquidators. All sorts of other obligations would be conveniently voided, too, and the victims (shareholders and creditors) wouldn't realise that it was deliberate and thinking that Lehman Brothers, for instance, wouldn't deliberately bring down the house on top of their heads like Samson did; and the wholesale looting put down to incompetence instead of larceny.

I think it likely that both these scenarios were in play with different individual companies and for both the reasons outlined above.

But this bomb is a time bomb and these institutions (and also private investors) are loaded up with these explosive bad loans, we need a trigger to set the chain reaction off. This was supplied by the banks tightening up consumer credit causing the CDOs to start popping off and then . . .
“the raters rushed to downgrade them to junk status. This occurred suddenly with more than 4,000 CDOs in the first quarter of 2008 - the financial community now regards them as "toxic waste."
To top it all off, JP MorganChase and others delivered the “coup de grace” by freezing interbank lending with instantaneous catastrophic results.

Part one of the scam was complete by this stage. The fiasco had now entered the public arena through the media coverage. And Part Two was about to start.

The Fed went to Congress to appeal for funds to ease the “credit crisis” which had been deliberately created, of course. After initially baulking, Congress handed over the funds and the Fed promptly gave it to the insurers such as AIG who almost certainly turned this money over to the derivative holders, the anonymous “counterparties” i.e. the scammers and builders of this massive operation. This has to be be part of the original plot because AIG and other insurers simply had nowhere near the capital to pay out on the derivatives and the whole operation only makes sense if the scammers can collect which means the government was meant to pay and pay big right from the beginning. This was the prize, the goal of the whole exercise And the government did pay up and is continuing to pay up, what's more. The scam is still in operation.

In the tight monetary conditions i.e. tight lending practices of the banks to the hoi poloi, loans are continuing to fall over and derivatives are continuing to be triggered and are continuing to be payed out and Congress, via the Fed, is continuing to fund it all. The strugglers out there in mortgageland will not be helped in any meaningful way because that would stop this process that provides the continuing shower of funds down on the pigs at the trough.

But it gets even better because the scammers now have enormous funds to buy up all those cheap assets that are up for fire sales by their victims amongst whom are their once upon a time competitors. And they are, no doubt, hoping to convert the bulk of this ill gotten plunder into assets before inflation caused by all this extra money has its effect on prices. The coming inevitable inflation is the cost that everyone will bear. Any savings will effectively be halved in value as prices double or triple or . . . .

I think it is worth taking a side trip to explain the mechanism of inflation. Initiates of this mysterious knowledge can take a break here and rejoin us further down-
The value of one dollar (in theory and also roughly in practice) is calculated by the wealth of a country (which is conveniently measured by the GDP of the country) divided by the number of dollars in existence. The GDP is the amount of wealth collectively created in any given year within the nation. Given that the GDP will only vary by a few percent (if that) year to year, the amount of dollars on issue is crucial to the value of each dollar. i.e. whether there is inflation or not. If the amount of dollars on issue is doubled then the value of each one is halved. There is a simple symmetry involved. To say it another way, if the amount of money on issue is doubled then the prices of everything must double too. You will need twice as many dollars to buy the same thing so each dollar is worth half of what it was before. Or from yet another perspective, the extra money will compete for the goods on sale and thus push the prices up until an equilibrium between the amount of dollars in circulation matches the collective or sum price of everything that it can buy.

There is yet another variation on how to see this relationship and that is through the the realisation that in a stable economy, the money supply not only matches the value of the GDP or wealth of the country but that this GDP is what gives the currency or money supply its value. This is what backs the face value of the currency. This value belongs the citizens of the country as a whole as they largely own it. Yet it is “borrowed” by the bankers to give their issued money value. But that's another scam for another essay which will look at the One World Currency. But bearing this relationship in mind between GDP and Money Supply/Currency will be very helpful in understanding the scams involved with the proposed, and perhaps immanent, One World Currency.

Anyway, back to the topic of this essay (and to the initiates amongst us), all this is to say that the bailouts give massive dollar amounts to the already wealthy and every one pays for it because, for one, the value of the dollars everyone else is holding goes down to accommodate and facilitate this shift of wealth.

In summary, with AIG and JP Morgan in the lead, insurers, investment houses and banks created subprime loan assets and had the rating agencies give them prime rating. These subprime assets had higher subprime returns with apparent prime safety. This was irresistable bait for the greedy. The anonymous “counterparties” behind the AIG/JP Morgan push insured these subprime loans (CDOs) with derivatives (CDs or Credit Derivatives) betting that the loans would fall over and thus collecting handsomely. And in the process, bleeding the above companies and others dry and then bleeding the whole nation dry through the government and its bailouts which was the real and ultimate "mark" all along.

The concept was simple. However, the implementation took some doing over many years including dismantling the regulatory provisions and hobbling the oversight bodies.

With this information, looking back over those years makes it plain that it was all deliberately engineered. The same cast of characters are present at every step; building, priming, selling and setting off the charges and then lobbying excitedly and making threats for the compensation or more correctly, the payoff.

Many privately wealthy people have lost much of their capital by buying CDOs directly without attendant derivatives or by investing in companies that got caught with them.

Many people of more modest means have lost investments, too, and seen the value of their superannuation plummet, as well. Their Mutual Funds have been caught with CDOs and also hold shares that have lost value through the same process.

And lastly, everyone, again, will suffer from the coming inflation and from future increased taxes to pay off the government debts incurred to make the filthy rich obscenely rich.

And all this through a simple scam. To repeat James Lieber's bottom line -
““The bottom line in this scandal is that fantastically wealthy entities (aided and abetted by both political parties ed.) positioned themselves to make unfathomable fortunes by betting that average Americans - Joe Six-Packs and hockey moms - would fail.“

I believe this is called “anti-social behaviour”.

With the economy and population financially bloodied, beaten and fearful (and it ain't over yet by any means) we are all open to being lead over the cliff of a One World Currency and then it's a freefall down into the abyss of a One World Government.

That's the bad news. The good news is that we aren't over the cliff, yet. And we know what's happening and who's doing it and who not to turn to for help. And that's a good start.

"Step Into My Parlour", said The Spider to The Fly.

After giving M.K. Bhadrakumar a boost the other day I am now regretting it. He writes in “Obama may cede Iran's nuclear rights” (thanks, McJ, nice map!) that the US may offer to forego opposition to Iran's nuclear power program in exchange for agreeing to buy their enriched uranium fuel from Kazakhstan who would warehouse and supply it under “international” supervision or control. He goes on to describe (but not identify) quite a web of intrigue and a list of characters involved.

But Bhadrakumar seems to be spinning a web of his own. He prevaricates in introducing the topic (the web) and the chief characters (can we call them spiders?). For instance, “It (the US) sought a rethink of Washington's insistence on Iran jettisoning its pursuit of uranium enrichment as a pre-requisite of commencement of direct talks between the two countries.” Talks about what? Talks about “jettisoning its pursuit of uranium enrichment.” It's circular and nonsensical, no? Yes, but that is how Israel and the US “negotiate” but Bhadrakumar reframes it as something sensible or reasonable.
And there's more, “This was borne out of a growing realization that the US insistence was no longer tenable.” It would have been much clearer and upfront to say, “the bullying didn't work so we'll move to plan B”. The article seeks to present the US Administration as (now) being reasonable in their approach and demeanour. But since when do leopards change their spots?

McJ asks (somewhat rhetorically, perhaps), “I'm curious as to what the reason is that it is 'OK' for Kazakhstan to enrich and store uranium for fuel and not Iran”.
The implication in the article (and in the proposal from the US presumably) is that Kazakhstan is not going to produce nuclear weapons. But Iran has made that same commitment over and over. The Ayatollah Khamenei has even issued a fatwa against their developing them i.e. they are against God. How does Nurusultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan compare with that? Here's the Islamic Human Rights Commission view on him, “government oil and gas revenues, along with secret bribery payments from US oil company Exxon Mobil , amounting to one billion dollars were diverted to secret swiss bank accounts controlled by Nazarbayev and other senior Kazakh autocrats.
Following the freezing of Swiss bank accounts, Nazarbayev made a January 2003 trip to Switzerland, speculated to ensure his immunity from prosecution in return for testimonials against other senior Kazakh government officials.”
I think we can safely say, “he's in the bag”. And there's torture, too, but, hey, everybody is into that these days.

How could the Iranians ever be persuaded to trust Nazarbayev? They can't. Bhadrakuman describes him as “the veteran Kazakh statesman”. He may well be a veteran and be as cunning as a shithouse rat but he is no statesman and the Iranians would know that full well. And the Japanese are hardly neutral go-betweens. So what's gong on here?

In international diplomacy, nobody is honest. There's always a hidden agenda. So how do you get a hidden agenda past your opponent when every one is looking for it? Provide a decoy. So, what's the decoy here? It might be a number of things, of course, but I'll suggest one; the Iranians might see that the US is trying to use this “uranium bank” as a wedge between Russia, China and Iran. The Americans might be hoping that the Iranians will see this and (though they will never agree to “the Bank”) will try and use the situation to winkle more nuclear (or other) concessions out of the Russians. Meanwhile, this whole piece of theatre is occupying the Iranian leadership's attention (and everybody else's) and distracting them from something else that's going on; something that is very much to their detriment. And that something may well be the large troop and materiel buildups taking place on their borders right now.

There has been a recent troop increase in Iraq as a result of the “surge” and now there is a similar buildup on Iran's other flank in Afghanistan together with transit agreements entered into with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on their northern border and Kazakhstan, in turn, behind them. Tehran is in the north of the country and is roughly equidistant from Baghdad in Iraq, Baku in Azerbaijan, Ashabad in Turkmenistan and a little further away, but still close, is Herat in Afghanistan. This is the Silk Road (or part of it) and further on down this Road is China.

It is a standard tactic that when you are about ready to attack your enemy, you start peace negotiations. Remember Saakashvili telling South Ossetia that he has renounced military intervention as an option in Georgia's dispute with them? Within days, he attacked. This would certainly have been on instructions from the US and Israel.

It seems, too, that there was much more to the attack on South Ossetia than was first apparent. From “Eurasian Crossroads: The Caucasus In US-NATO War Plans - by Rick Rozoff,
“Last September Russian envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said that "Russian intelligence had obtained information indicating that the Georgian military infrastructure could be used for logistical support of U.S. troops if they launched an attack on Iran. (This would presumably been obtained from Georgian military barracks raided by the Russians in their reciprocal invasion).
"'This is another reason why Washington values Saakashvili's regime so highly,' Rogozin said, adding that the United States had already started 'active military preparations on Georgia's territory' for an invasion of Iran."(31)
Other Russian sources affirmed that Russia's defeat of Georgia last August preempted a planned attack on Iran, and commentators in the Caucasus have speculated that had Saakashvili succeeded in South Ossetia not only would he have immediately turned on Abkhazia but Azerbaijan would have launched a similar assault on Nagorno-Karabakh which would have led to Armenia certainly, Turkey probably and Iran possibly being dragged into a regional conflagration.”

Between North and South Ossetia is the Caucasian Mountains with the Roki Tunnel the main link between them. If South Ossetia were in Georgian hands and the tunnel blocked, Russia would be severely handicapped in coming through Georgia with troops and tanks (more info in the comments section as well) to Iran's aid and attacking both NATO's supply lines and their invading troops from behind.

But back to the negotiating table; or is it a stage? The proposal over nuclear fuel also doesn't make sense when held up against the US and Israel's major motivation; their goal of dominating the whole world, the New American Century and with, perhaps, yet another “Pearl Harbour”. The prime motivation or goal must always be borne in mind.

Iran is very definitely the next stepping stone to that goal. Control of Iran's oil and gas is crucial and this leopard ain't about to change its spots any day soon.

On The Evil In This World

On The Evil In This World.

I have to note first that in the following essay I have used masculine pronouns throughout. I have often wondered what it would be like for a woman to read about somone she is supposed to, or wants to, identify with only to be faced with “He” and “His” all the time. I have tried it by reversing it and it feels very exclusionary. Our language doesn't seem to have an answer to this problem. It is particularly unfortunate, in this instance, because I will be talking about victims and women, as a group, suffer much more from victimisation than men do. Also, of all the brave people I personally know, all bar one of them are women. In my defence, I can only point out that all the abusers and exploiters mentioned are also exclusively male. Never-the-less, women readers have my apologies in advance.

I will also be arguing for the existence of a benevolent God. I have come to this understanding through my experiences and through Christianity but I do not want to imply that I endorse any denomination. All the denominations I have had anything to do with have caused more harm than good through ignorance and hypocrisy. Mostly, I believe, it is the pathology of power behind the hypocrisy and wilfullignorance. My advice is to approach them with caution, if at all. So with those two qualifications out of the way (and if I haven't put you off already!), let's into it.

In another thread on this blog, some of us were discussing a brilliant, brilliant article from Joe Bageant and during the course of this, McJ made this comment,
“I would be interested in anyone has thoughts on how 'evil' exists. If God permeates us all, does evil come from one rejecting an orientation towards this 'animating spirit'? “
To which Tsisageya added this,
“I might add that, after awhile, there comes a point of no return---or forgiveness, if you will. I mean if a living being rejects/destroys life itself, then wouldn't that lead to death, hence, separation from God?”

I said I would like to comment on this but would need a little time to think it through and arrange it or to “get all my ducks in a row”! The following is the result:-

I'd like to go back to what I mentioned in the comment on the previous thread about the source of life and build up my argument from there.
Biologists and pathologists are unable to determine the source of life within any organism including humans. They can't establish where in the body the source of life is or, indeed, what it is. Nor can they establish what's not there after death. So if the source of life is not within the body, it must be without. The source cannot be located elsewhere in the world, either, so one has to conclude it comes from outside this world, outside the physical universe. A power from outside this physical realm that animates it and gives it life and is therefore integral with it must come from the same source as the physical creation. This being so, then it must come from God. If GOd is the ultimate source of life, then we are alive because God is alive in us. If God is alive in us then he must feel everything we feel including, and especially, our pain.

Now God is only creative and therefore cannot be destructive. Or as John says (1John 1:5) “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all”. If there were darkness in him, then God would be at war with himself. This is impossible. He would be doing violence to himself and denying his own nature. I have argued this further in “Introduction to the Enemy”.
But there is “darkness' in this world and it seems to be at war with all that is creative, everywhere. We read everyday in our news countless people being killed to satiate the greed of a few men. Our governments waging war against largely defenceless people for oil, uranium, gold, diamonds, water and goodness knows what else. They are destroying the world so they can rule it. They are destroying God's creation so that they can rule it in God's place. This creation is not only the physical territory and its resources but also includes all us human beings. This small handful of men behind our various governments want to be God. But they're not God! Are they mad? Yes, indeed. Insanity is being detached from reality i.e. deluded. And the ultimate delusion would have to be that you are God or that you could be God.

It reminds me of that great scene in “Life of Brian” where Eric Idle's character wants to be called Loretta from now on (fair enough) and to be acknowledged as having the “right” to have a baby (not so easy)! Eric's slippery grip on reality is humorous because of its lunacy. Unfortunately, these madmen that rule us and their lunacy cannot be laughed off as easily. If only they could be.

So how did we get to this sorry state when we were created by God in whom there is no darkness and created in his likeness? God created us with free will. We know this because we have choice and so we can, amongst a multitude of other things, choose him or reject him. To choose him is to accept the reality that he made and part of that reality is that the world is here for us to use and not to exploit. And to continue to use the world we have to leave it in a sustainable state. Sustainability must be a part of the plan. Also part of the world are our fellow human beings. They are here to help us and to be helped by us and not to be exploited, either. If God made us, and made us with free will, then he is into relationships. That being so, he would expect us to have relationships amongst each other which would reflect his (hoped for) relationship with us; supportive and non-exploitative relationships which also means sustainable relationships.

Implicit in granting us each free will, God also granted us authority over our own lives. It follows then that clearly we cannot have authority over anyone else's life. This is where all religions and religious leaders go wrong whether they realise it or not. If we try to gain authority or power over someone else, we are going against God's will for that person and ourselves. If we are then rebelling against God, then we are also rebelling against reality. If this is true, then we could expect things to start messing up because we are not driving this machine as it is supposed to be driven i.e. the way God designed this world and us in it to function. Are things screwing up? Absolutely and bigtime! And what's more, the last thing this situation is, is sustainable.

On an individual level, if we are rejecting God's will for us by exploiting others would we not be then rejecting God and some of the life he has for us? Yes, I believe so (and priests and pastors are by no means immune from this, either). I see evidence of it in increased stress levels that lead to increased disease and mental anguish and violent behaviour. Crucially, it removes the joy from one's life; the pure, literally invigorating, “joie de vivre” that is free from any other agenda. The closest the exploiter will get to this is glee which is a very bittersweet thing. There is always hatred at the back of it. The other quality to disappear from your life is peace; that ease that comes from being at ease with oneself.

So we have free will to choose God and God's reality with its sustainability or reject it. But given that God's reality is the only game in town, the only reality we have, we would be crazy to reject it. But we do and we are. The craziness comes from the rejection little by little. The really sad part is that a small rejection of reality, of going against God's will or desire for us all, results in a small amount of craziness because we tell ourselves it's right or worse, God's will. We are practising delusion and this same craziness prevents us from appreciating the little bit of sanity, the little bit of connection to reality we just lost. I don't know if you have ever tried to reason with someone who is seriously deluded or psychotic, but it is just hopeless. Or tried to talk sense to an addict who is still on the way up and thinks he is in control. Again, hopeless. We can readily recognise people who are crazier than we are and can understand why they are angry and driven (without any joy or peace) but it is a little harder to get a handle on people who are saner than we. They often look simple or guileless which can appear foolish or perhaps just serene. But it is very hard to understand why; to “get” what they “get”, if you know what I mean.

I have said before that I believe that the craziness that leads us to believe we can (and even should!) have power over others is addictive and has the same deluded pathology as any other addiction and that we all have the potential to go down this path. I have talked more at length about this addictive behaviour in “Introduction to the System”. What inhibits most people from going down this path to any great extent is something else God gave us, a conscience. You may think that conscience is a cultural thing but it is remarkably similar across all cultures. And nevermind that all cultures say one thing but do another. So we are all tempted to emulate God and seek power over others (even though God has this power he doesn't use it) but we have to actively reject God to do so by going against our conscience. It is definitely a choice. It most probably won't be verbalised but it is never-the-less a choice. And God has allowed us to do that. Why, when the consequences are so predictable and always bad? Because of love. You can't love someone if you don't have free will i.e. free will not to love that person. And you can't love someone fully if they don't have free will, either, because love, at its most complete, is a relationship and in this free will, you have to be equal.

So we've covered free will and rejecting God and the craziness and the destruction that comes from it but does this account for the evil in the world? I suppose for those that think evil is simply an absence of good, it does. But for those that perceive evil to be more than that, and I am one of them, it doesn't. For those of us that look into the atrocities of genocide and systematic rape and torture, it strikes us that something outside our understanding is going on here. Something is terribly wrong. It's much more than an argument that has gotten out of hand. There is a malevolence present. From here, I have to leave the logical argument behind and express my opinions and talk of the experiences that have shaped them. They will either strike you as true or not.

For those that have encountered evil, it is more than an idea; it is a force and, what is more, you can feel it. I have seen and experienced evil up close. I have seen people brutally murdered for the thrill of power and, quite literally, as an overt act of war against God. I have seen a satanic cult at work and, believe me, it was and they still are (as there are many of them throughout our societies) at war against God. The cult members, at times, displayed levels of hatred few would believe possible. They are at the extreme end of the psychopathic spectrum. It is the demonic force acting within them. How do I know this force is demonic? Because I once saw the demon that was in one of these cult members. It was total hatred. The force of that hatred hit me like a bow wave before it.

This demonic force wants to destroy everything that God created. It cannot destroy God so it will destroy everything that God loves. The more “good” a person is the more anathema they are to the demonic. The more helpless and innocent the victim, the better they like it because it is all the more an affront to God and to those that side with him. It is also an attempt to overwhelm and dominate the rest of us. That is its purpose from the demonic point of view and it is the demonic that is driving these offenders. So if you have ever heard yourself asking, “How on earth could someone possibly DO that?!”, now you know.

People are very imperfect as we all know but most of us would like to be and, indeed, try to be better; to be more helpful or more considerate or whatever. Some of us, though, don't try to be better or to co-operate more. At base these people are acting out of fear whether they realise it or not. These people can be reached through example and through cajoling and even a little behaviour modification or “re-education”such as isolation from the rest of us should they become convicted criminals to encourage their understanding of the need for co-operation and socialization. You won't change them through punishment, though, save for the isolation should it be employed. The desired behaviour has to be modelled to them (as distasteful as that may sound to many!).

But there are others, still, who are extremely destructive and who are beyond reach; beyond change. Psychiatry calls them sociopaths. We, in common everyday language, call them psychopaths. These people need to be isolated from the rest of society as other criminals (if they are ever convicted) until they exhibit change and as they never change, this means permanently. While maintaining this separation, they should be treated very humanely (because we are into humane treatment for everybody . . . aren't we?!)

How do some people become psychopaths? It is thought by some psychiatrists and research psychologists (and satanists, too, I might add!) that it comes through childhood abuse. It may appear to be severe or not. What it will always be about though, in my opinion, is a decision for or against compassion for others. Either the abused child decides, “So this is how the game is played. This is the totality of the world. You are either a victim or an abuser. I don't want to be a victim so I'll become an abuser”. This child will not see a third alternative. This child becomes a psychopath, I believe, because from here on in he has to push down the voice of his conscience and as the child is still very young and developing, it can be done very effectively.

Or alternatively, the child victim may reject being what he hates, an abuser, and decide to be a victim. This child probably will not see a third alternative either, at least not for the time being. But later, he might. And that third alternative is to be free. To reject the abusers' view of the world as divided neatly into perps and victims with no other options. To be free, the child, or more likely the adult by now, has to let go of the burning desire for revenge and hand it over to God to deal with. We simply aren't equipped to deal with it. It will destroy the victim as surely as if he had become an abuser because he will be harbouring violence in his heart. And violence is violence no matter how you might justify it and its effects are just the same. I know this truth from bitter experience. Revenge will often cloak itself as a desire for justice for oneself and for others so one has to be very discerning.

We, as a society, need for our own protection to identify and avoid or, better, isolate socially these psychopaths. I could list a string of tell-tales to look for but most of it is covered by:-
1. watching out for liars; three strikes and they're out! Be wary of people who are more charming than the situation calls for and

2. look for what a friend of mine calls “fish-eyes”. These are people who have no life in their eyes. You look in but get nothing back. They are completely blank.

3. “By their fruits you shall know them”, as someone wisely once said. If you suspect someone of being a psychopath, seek out people from their past to talk to and dig into their history.

4. Then share your knowledge with others. Stick to the facts. I wouldn't label them as psychopaths unless the person you are talking to is very familiar with the term and the condition. I would, instead, focus on the chronic lying and on them displaying no conscience and what that means.

It is right to be angry with these people, or more correctly, with what they have done and are doing but revenge is not an option. We don't know what we would have done in their shoes come decision time. I was treated in ways few people can imagine and I didn't decide to throw my lot in with the abusers. But to this day, I don't know how I chose the way I did. I don't take credit for it because I don't know what was at work in me and because of that I am not about to blame someone who chose differently. This still calls for their enforced separation from the rest of us, not as revenge but for our safety. It is or responsibility to keep ourselves, our families and our neighbours safe from harm. It is God's responsibility to judge and apply retribution, not ours. To do so would be to act in God's place and that is the start of the slippery slope that the perpetrators started on. Do we want to end up in their shoes?

As I have found out, if you entertain, or worse embrace, revenge and violence no matter how much you may think it justified, you will hurt people you didn't intend to. There are always unintended and unforeseen consequences. The only predictable aspect of violence is that it will lead to more violence. And from a satanic point of view, that is its purpose - ever more violence and destruction.

The Afghanistan and Iraqi wars were sold to the public as classic “bait and switch” gambits. They wouldn't have worked if the public at large didn't have violence in their hearts to start with; if they didn't have such concepts as righteous or redemptive violence within themselves. You see? It's a trap. It's always a trap. Judged from the results, there is no "good" violence.

When I talk of violence, I am not talking about the use of physical force needed to defend yourself. I am talking about anything that goes the slightest bit beyond that. I am talking, more particularly, about an attitude.

This decision in later life to not seek revenge has given me freedom from the trap of the endless violence/victim/revenge/violence/victim cycle. This is not to say I'm perfect at it, by any means, but I am no longer driven and do much less harm to those around me. I have choice in my life and a measure of peace. Violence in your heart will rob you of both joy and peace and also your ability to choose freely. I am not sure how it works but I have definitely noted this loss of autonomy or freedom and free will in myself and others. Perhaps fear blinds us to our choices or even that we can choose at all and perhaps also this is why our governments push fear at us all the time. Regardless, I know freedom and autonomy is much more likely to come from having peace rather than fear in our hearts and to have peace in our hearts we need to first eject violence from them.

So in conclusion, I'd like to say that if we embrace God and live as God intended (and you don't have to be Einstein to work out what that is!) then we will have a measure of peace and joy in our hearts and we will be creative. We will have life (joie de vivre/God's love) and life abundantly. If, on the other hand, we decide to exploit the world and everybody in it, we can expect to have fear and destruction all around us and, indeed, within us as individuals and collectively as societies because we are not using this world or ourselves as we were designed to function. And worse, once we decide to embrace violence and the exploitation of others i.e. evil, we leave our door wide open for demonic forces to enter the world through us and bringing their evil and hatred with them to add to our own heartlessness. This brings not only untimely physical death but spiritual death as well because we have chosen the ultimate insanity; to reject the very source of life itself. And God will honour that choice.

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