Here are the rantings of a few infected. A few who have conceded to the pathological ailment of a disease bent on purifying our impulses. A passion, lusting to unveil the obscure. A calling, to voice the rhythm of our pulse.
Below is an exceprt from Mark Dice's book, The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction from the section about Dan Brown's novel Angels & Demons.
Published in the year 2000, Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons is a fictional novel revolving around the Catholic Church and the Illuminati, and is a prequel to The Da Vinci Code which was later published in 2003. The common theme in The Da Vinci Code, as many know, is that the Catholic Church allegedly has been trying to cover up a family tree containing the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene which still exists today.
According to Brown and supporters of this widely discredited theory, numerous secret societies have been protecting this bloodline from the Catholic Church, who allegedly will do anything to keep this “secret” from getting out and ruining Christianity and the Vatican’s grip on power.
In Angels & Demons, the Illuminati is set out to destroy Vatican City as retribution for suppressing them hundreds of years ago and forcing them deeper underground. The story is most likely a purposeful whitewash of the real Illuminati, or the result of a creative writer seizing on topics of interest in the underground and making them mainstream. Either way, Brown’s writings and subsequent films which followed can only be seen as a deliberate attack on Christianity and muddying the water for real researchers of the Illuminati.
Thanks to Brown, the brainwashed masses of people think that when someone discusses the Illuminati and the very real effects the organization has on society and Bible prophecy, that one is too wrapped up in Angels & Demons. Many of those who have become victims of the Illuminati’s agendas don’t even believe such a thing exists. Angels & Demons was made into a motion picture starring Tom Hanks and released in May 2009. (See Angels & Demons the movie on page 335)
The main character, Robert Langdon, is a Harvard professor and expert on religious symbology. He becomes involved in trying to stop the Illuminati from destroying Vatican City in Rome by using an anti-matter bomb. Brown cleverly mixes historical facts into the plotline and blurs the line between fact and fiction by referencing actual quotes about the Illuminati from historical figures. Most of Brown’s readers (and viewers of the film) have no idea that the Illuminati he is referring to is a real organization and some of the “historical facts” he writes in his book are actually true.
For example, he writes that the Illuminati infiltrated Freemasonry, saying “…in the 1700’s, the Masons unknowingly became a front for the Illuminati. The Illuminati grew within their ranks, gradually taking over positions of power within the lodges. They quietly reestablished their scientific brotherhood deep within the Masons—a kind of secret society within a secret society. The Illuminati used the worldwide connection of Masonic lodges to spread their influence.”181
Brown even explains that the Illuminati are satanic, writing, “The church claimed Lucifer was a reference to the devil, but the brotherhood insisted Lucifer was intended in its literal Latin meaning—bringer of light. Or Illuminator.”182
Dan Brown even cleverly refers to numerous websites which feature material about the Illuminati and the New World Order. At one point his book reads, “This morning” Kohler challenged, “when I typed the word ‘Illuminati’ into the computer, it returned thousands of current references. Apparently a lot of people think this group is still active.”
“Conspiracy buffs,” Langdon replied. He had always been annoyed by the plethora of conspiracy theories that circled in modern pop culture. The media craved apocalyptic headlines, and self-proclaimed “cult specialists” were still cashing in on millennium hype with fabricated stories that the Illuminati were alive and well and organizing their New World Order.”183
Besides weaving in various historical facts about the Illuminati, Brown also includes some far-fetched ideas that have no basis in reality at all. He makes his readers think the Illuminati were a group of scientists that included Galileo, as well as famous artists such as Bernini, when both men had died a hundred years before the Illuminati had actually formed.184 He also includes other ideas that have never been associated with the Illuminati, and are clearly fictions created by Brown. One such example is his claim that the Vatican holds in its possession several “Illuminati brands” which consist of ambigrams in the names of earth, air, fire, and water, which he says the “scientific Illuminati” had designed to depict the four elements ancient scientists believed made up the physical universe. An ambigram is a design that spells out one or more words that can be read whether looked at right-side up or upside down. These “Illuminati brands” are heated up and used to burn the different symbols into the chests of various Cardinals who the Illuminati murder in the novel as revenge for the Catholic Church allegedly burning a brand of a cross in the chests of heretics in the past.
Brown even says that the Catholic Church murdered Nicolaus Copernicus for introducing heliocentrism, the idea that the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice versa as the church had claimed. I’m certainly not a supporter of the Catholic Church nor a defender of their past and present atrocities, but to say that they murdered Copernicus is simply a lie. He died at the age of seventy, which in the sixteenth century was quite an old age. There are numerous other lies and disinformation in Brown’s book as he repeatedly paints the Illuminati as a group of innocent scientists and artists who the Church had set out to torture and kill. Brown is clearly well informed regarding conspiracy theory culture and at one point has Robert Langdon discuss the mysterious all-seeing eye on the back of the one dollar bill and explains that mysterious symbol is what got him interested in the Illuminati. At one point he also mentions that the Bilderberg group financed the Illuminati. (See Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary page 110)
Brown actually defends the Illuminati in his novel. His character Robert Langdon, who is an “expert” on the Illuminati, fails to see them as a sinister power hungry gang, but instead says, “The Illuminati may have believed in the abolition of Christianity, but they wielded their power through political and financial means, not through terrorists acts. Furthermore, the Illuminati had a strict code of morality regarding who they saw as enemies.”185
Regardless of how entertaining and captivating Brown’s novel may be, it serves only to disarm an already ignorant and degenerate public, leading them to believe that the Illuminati is a fictional creation. When told it is a historically verifiable secret society that continues to exist today, many are only reminded of the doubtful Robert Langdon from Angels & Demons and the sinister satanic cult which plotted to blow up the Vatican with an anti-matter bomb.
At the very end of Angels & Demons, in a very dramatic twist, Dan Brown writes that there is actually no such thing as the Illuminati, and that a demented Vatican official who holds the position of the Camerlengo had concocted the story and was actually behind the plot himself. In the book, it turns out that the Illuminati really did go into extinction in the late 1700s and the Camerlengo played off of people’s fears that they had secretly continued to exist.
The success of Dan Brown’s books are not due to their exceptional quality, but rather that the Illuminati had used their influence to promote both The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons to spread their tainted message about Jesus and the Illuminati. Dan Brown himself has some interesting ties to the real Illuminati, and it’s possible that he was used for the purpose of muddying the waters surrounding Christianity, the Illuminati, and the New World Order. Brown is a graduate of Philips Exeter Academy which is a private boarding school which was set up for the children of the elite. The Illuminati has largely funded this school and used it to educate their children and prepare them for their duties later in life.
In 1930 Edward Harkness donated 5.8 million dollars to the school with the conditions that their method of teaching students would change to what he called the Aristotelian method of antiquity. Harkness was the second largest share holder in Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in the early 1900s and was in John D. Rockefeller’s inner circle. The Rockefeller family has been one of the most powerful Illuminati families for generations. Aristotle was a student of Plato who believed that most people were too stupid to govern themselves, and that society should be structured in a way that “philosopher kings” would rule and decided what was best for the people.
Dan Brown’s publisher for the first printing of Angels & Demons was Random House186 which is owned by the Bertelsmann media group in Germany which was the largest producer and publisher of Nazi propaganda during World War II.187 The Bertelsmann media group is a private company that has its primary owner listed as the Bertelsmann Foundation, the largest “non-profit” organization and think tank in Germany. The Da Vinci Code was also originally published by Random House through its subsidiary Doubleday. The reprint rights for Angels & Demons have since been sold to Simon and Shuster. The Illuminati thread leading through Dan Brown’s education, publisher, and themes of his books, clearly raises strong questions about his novels’ success and the messages they spread. It could very well be that Dan Brown is a willing participant in one of the biggest disinformation campaigns waged by the Illuminati in history.
References
#181 Brown, Dan – Angels & Demons page 38
#182 Brown, Dan – Angels & Demons page 39
#183 Brown, Dan – Angels & Demons page 40-41
#184 Galileo died in 1642 and Bernini died in 1680
An article in the NY Times refers to an economic collapse of a nation just sticking its head into the club of Europe. A nation that just recovered from a bout with communism, still reeling from its trip to the West, spinning so fast, its about to topple right over in its new dancing shoes.
The contrast of change we have witnessed in the past ten years might not be as stark as what the author experienced in 20, but even that is nothing short of amazing. Each day I walk the streets, it hits me again and again the potential this city has.
The author does seem to take a shallow surface view of the situation... and for him, like many others, Budapest is Hungary, and infrastructure is the yardstick for progress. The infrastick is far outpacing both the culturestick or the ecostick, and the sensei Budastick burns much greener than the swaggy videkstick. But this country is being led by cosmopolitan Budapesters on one hand and self-righteous nationalists who feel they deserve much better without having to work for it, on the other. The crowds in between are a victim of their own vices...
Most Hungarians want it all with no sacrifice (praise goes for the exceptions). Ruthless every-man-for-himself living, fueled by the refusal to give in to hopelessness, pervades the self-destructive mentality and prolongs the dire economic situation. Give me socialist welfare but I wont pay my taxes; good service, but don't expect a smile from me; capitalist prosperity with a socialist safety net; honest business partners so we can screw others together before we screw each other. They are schico's caught in a limbo of corrupt balkan cronyism, german rigidity, mediterranean 'I dont give a fuck' business attitude, and Swedish socialist expectations.
Despite self-defeating mentality of the many, there is hope fueling a few. There is a vibe magnetic and infecting about the country, and especially Budapest. I had a conversation just yesterday with a Turkish friend who seems to have just realized after two years this will be his home. His family, friends and career are all waiting for him in Istanbul, but still he chooses Budapest. The author's description of the crowds walking the streets with "furtive energy, muffled pride" sums it up well. Scores of youth complain and talk about moving West, but when an opportunity arises, they stick it through and stick around. Despite the lingering cloud of pessimism formed the day children look into their parents eyes and crystallized the day they first learn their history, hope seems to shine through with the pulse of a city unlike any other in Europe. A love and hate relationship of the worst kind.
Hungary is infected by its own culture, at awe with its own potential, and angry at the world at its own failure to change. Hopefully, they will emerge from this crisis with renewed determination to put history on their side once and for all, but for that, constructive self-criticism needs to be fueled with determination and optimism, as opposed to resentment and greed.
ok, some specifics: - Companies were firing people left & right in the first 3 months of the yr. Officially, unemployment stagnated at 7.8%, since March, which could be viewed as even positive if exports wouldnt have fallen by 30% since January and imports by even more. The central statistics office said thats probably the largest monthly fall since the collapse of Communism. - Loan default rates will rise to nearly 25%! Thats Europe's highest rate and the biggest threat to the economy. The weaker the forint gets, the greater the threat. - BP and Citibank are opening up 1000+ people operations in Q1,Q2 of this year. As industrial production dries up, the only source of new jobs will be back office deskwork at multinationals. That will only serve to further 'greenify' the budastick at the expense of the swiggity. - some positive news - palacsinta, paprikas krumpli, rakott krumpli and fozeleks of all sorts are back in style! Cheap, filling recession food we all love when on a tight budget!
So the effects of the slowdown have barely begun to take effect... If anyone has any money to spare, look for investing in an apartment here towards the end of the year when desperation for cash really kicks in!
On the other hand, the city is full of smiling bikies enjoying cheap frocs at Godor and saving up for some of the kick-ass festivals about to rock our summer! :D
Back in the late 70's and early 80's when hip-hop was in its embryonic stages, most rap and hip-hop tracks had a happy-go-lucky vibe, with lyrics that talked about such things as who was the best MC or DJ.
There were more serious rappers, like Grandmaster Flash, who rapped about life in the ghetto. But even then, the songs had an overall positive vibe and the lyrics, although sometimes a bit deep and serious, usually tried to positively educate the young listener by speaking to them on their level and using terms that they can relate to. It was when we reached the mid 80's that hip-hop really started to evolve and many sub-genres started to develop. There were artists like Rob Base, Ice-T, Public Enemy, Run DMC, The Beastie Boys, Tone-Loc, De La Soul, and countless others.
Whatever you thought about any of these artists, hip-hop had a sense of honesty and integrity about it. For the most part, it appears that the genre sprang out of the grassroots. A lot of rap artists had actually lived the kind of life they rapped about. To some extent or other, many of them had already gained first-hand experience of the guns, drugs, racism, gang warfare, and the general despair of living life in the ghetto. For example, many of these issues were covered in a song called Colors, by Ice-T. In this song, Ice-T plays a character who lives this kind of life. Ice-T admits that he didn't personally live that kind of life but the character is based on the kind of person who does. Then a couple of years later, a rap outfit called NWA started rapping about the same issues in their debut album, Straight Outta Compton. And although the music was very good, they gave the misleading impression that they were actually living lives as gangsters in the ghetto. But in reality these guys were living millionaire lifestyles in the lap of luxury. I personally found this to be somewhat hypocritical and it was at this point that I realised that hip-hop had been taken over by the marketing gurus, who weren't just selling a lie, they were selling it to kids under the pretence that artists like "Vanilla Ice" had actually tasted life in the ghetto - yeah right!
Now hip-hop has reached the stage where it is being used to predictively program the minds of today's youth. In addition, many of today's top hip-hop artists are clearly involved to some degree in secret fraternal orders. They even have the audacity to flash masonic symbols all over the place. To me, this is an insult to the people who buy their music, and it shows that freemasonry has infiltrated just about every part of society, right down to the grassroots levels. I mean, if you can't even buy an album from your favorite rap artist without being predictively programmed and bombarded with masonic symbols and terms, what is the world coming to?
Don't get me wrong though, there are still plenty of great rap artists out there who haven't been compromised by the elite - such as Immortal Technique. And even the ones who have been compromised in some way, are not necessarily bad people and they may not even know that their strings are being pulled. All I can advise people to do is be aware of the symbolism, and be aware of how the music and film industries are being used to alter our behaviour by influencing the way we think about things.
We've been hearing about the whole GMO, Monsanto, Codex Alimentarius, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization scandal for quite some time now. We know it's coming and major steps are being taken towards its implementation. I just came across this article recently and it blew my mind when I read who Obama appointed as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. None other than Margaret Hamburg, MD.
From the article:
She sits on the board of directors at the Trust for America's Health. Hamburg, a well-connected player in the public health field, also serves on the board of directors of the Rockefeller Foundation. Among other things, the Rockefeller's vast fortune is responsible for funding foundations and institutes that spread unsafe genetically-engineered food crops around the world. A notable craftsman at the Trust for America's Health is none other than the notorious Michael R. Taylor, JD. Most people who know Michael Taylor's name recall that he worked as Monsanto's lawyer at King & Spalding for years before being appointed to the FDA to oversee the swift introduction into the marketplace of GMOs.
What the article does not state is the reason why the Rockefellers are pushing these GMO's. It's a Eugenics Agenda Their whole campaign is geared towards reducing the worlds population by 80%. If you're not in their elite club, sorry you're shit out of luck!
Are you serious Obama? This in your face blatancy is unbelievable! This is the same crap as when we're told fluoridation of water is good for us because it protects our teeth.... and we have to get vaccinated because we'll get really sick if we don't. Vaccinations are becoming mandatory in many schools and hospitals nowadays. On a sidenote...
"I think it's time to de-professionalize the public debate on matters that vitally affect the lives of ordinary people. It's time to snatch our futures back from the "experts." Time to ask, in ordinary language, the public question and to demand, in ordinary language, the public answer." -- Arundhati Roy, Power Politics
It's enough to make you so queasy you lose your lunch. HR 875, the "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009," is a head-spinning piece of legislation that would radically change the structure of the US government's regulatory agencies, usurping states rights to federalize food inspection and determine what agricultural practices are permissible. Considerable concern has been voiced about what this bill would mean for small and medium sized farmers, organic farming, the future of conventional and organic seeds, the food localization movement, and even home gardens. HR 875 would give regulators the power to enter private property, which is conveniently redefined as "premises," and impose enormous fines for noncompliance. Though not discussed in the corporate media, numerous articles about it appear on the internet, launching a debate about whether or not Monsanto is behind the bill.
In response to these articles, Brad Mitchell, a member of Monsanto's public relations staff who writes for the company's new blog -- a less-than-stealth effort to counter the public's deep distrust of the predatory corporation -- has gone on record stating that Monsanto has absolutely nothing at all to do with the bill.
Brad's assurances aside, experience dictates that taking Monsanto at its word is patently foolish. But for those who need a bit more proof, like the Organic Consumers Association and Food and Water Watch, let's settle the issue, once and for all: Who crafted the legislation and what do they hope to gain by it? Would it really make our food safer as it claims, or would it make mandatory the industrial agricultural practices that are the root cause of the food-borne illnesses it claims to vanquish? And what else might be at stake?
After a series of well-publicized cases of food contamination – E. coli-tainted meat, melamine-adulterated pet food and baby formula, salmonella-infected peanut butter – the public has been well primed to look toward Congress to fix a poorly funded and insufficiently staffed food safety inspection system. And, right on cue, a crop of "food safety" bills gets dumped our way. The most controversial and transformational of these pieces of legislation, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro's HR 875, can be traced directly to recommendations made by the Trust for America's Health, a non-profit organization sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Trust for America's Health has produced reports that serve as blueprints for a major restructuring of the agencies involved in overseeing food safety policy as well as eye-popping changes to the public health system. Its recommendations also have also made their way into the other food safety bills that have been recently introduced in Congress: SB 425, the "Food Safety and Tracking Improving Act;" HR 814, the "Trace Act of 2009;" and HR 759, the "Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2009."
While the vaguely worded HR 875 gives the appearance of being a reasonable attempt to fix the problems outlined, a close inspection of the blueprints on which they are based --and a bit of knowledge about the industry players who crafted them -- reveals critical clues about how the public health system would be transformed for the benefit of biotech, pharmaceutical and agribusiness giants. Non-profit foundations have long served as effective tools for corporate wealth to influence public policy, providing the means to guarantee outcomes that enrich corporations at the public's expense. The global pharmaceutical and consumer product company Johnson & Johnson's tax-exempt foundation is no different.
Tayloring the Message: The Trust for America's Health
The public should familiarize itself with three key reports produced by The Trust for America's Health: "Keeping America's Food Safe: A Blueprint for Fixing the Food and Safety System at the US Department of Health and Human Services,"(1) "Fixing Food Safety: Protecting America's Food Supply from Farm-to-Fork,"(2) and the "Blueprint for a Healthier America: Modernizing the Federal Public Health System to Focus on Prevention and Preparedness."(3)
President Obama's nominee for Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Margaret Hamburg, MD, sits on the board of directors at the Trust for America's Health. Hamburg, a well-connected player in the public health field, also serves on the board of directors of the Rockefeller Foundation. Among other things, the Rockefeller's vast fortune is responsible for funding foundations and institutes that spread unsafe genetically-engineered food crops around the world.(4) Sadly, those who hoped that Obama's election would herald positive changes have repeatedly found themselves duped: the deep corporate ties of his appointees guarantee a continuation of corporate control over the US government, a veritable concierge service on steroids for private interests.
A notable craftsman at the Trust for America's Health is none other than the notorious Michael R. Taylor, JD. Taylor penned a paper included as an appendix of "Keeping America Safe: A Blueprint for Fixing the Food Safety System at the Department of Health and Human Services" called "Restructuring Food Safety at HHS: Design and Implementation." In it, Taylor prescribes the creation of a new Food Safety Administration that consolidates all safety functions formerly performed by a host of other government regulatory agencies and institutes on a federal level the use of industry-friendly "risk assessment" methods.
Monsanto's Jack of All Trades
Most people who know Michael Taylor's name recall that he worked as Monsanto's lawyer at King & Spalding for years before being appointed to the FDA to oversee the swift introduction into the marketplace of GMOs. He did so by ramming through a faux scientific regulatory conceit called "substantial equivalence."
Industry-independent scientists have rightly criticized the concept of substantial equivalence as an inappropriate method for determining safety, calling it "a pseudo-scientific concept because it is a commercial and political judgment masquerading as it if were scientific. It is, moreover, inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests. It therefore serves to discourage and inhibit potentially informative scientific research."(5)
FDA scientists at the Division of Food Chemistry and Technology wanted to see testing performed to ensure that GMO foods didn't increase levels of naturally occurring toxins, create new, previously unidentified toxins, increase the tendency to gather toxic substances from the environment such as pesticides or heavy metals, and alter the level nutrients.(6) Ignoring their scientific objections, the politically-appointed Taylor let loose GMO technology on the nation of guinea pigs without requiring any legitimate safety and toxicology investigations to protect public health. He also ensured that the public would remain ignorant of GMOs in their food by instituting a no-labeling policy. Now, almost 80% of the food sold in grocery stores contains GMOs. Monsanto subsequently rewarded Taylor for his government work by making him its Vice President of Public Policy.
These days, we find that Taylor has morphed from Monsanto's VP into a "research professor" at George Washington University School of Public Heath and Health Services. He also spends his time writing policy at a number of industry-funded think tanks, including Resources for the Future, Resolve Inc, the Food Safety Research Consortium, and the Alliance to End Hunger,
Those who are concerned about what the Organic Consumers Association calls the real Monsanto bill, The Global Food Security Act (SB 384), can see Taylor's contribution to that piece of legislation by reviewing a report he wrote for a think tank called the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. The report, "Beating Africa's Poverty By Investing in Africa's Infrastructure,"(7) supports the expansive agenda of biotech firms. The organization is funded in part by the Rockefeller and Gates foundations, and Taylor's work product provides the rational for SB 384.(8) According the organization's website, it aims to "implement Partnership activities to strengthen agricultural and rural enterprises and to facilitate their integration into regional, national and global markets" by bringing together "core representatives from U.S. and Africa-based private and public organizations who have experience with Africa's agriculture and trade-related issues." To give him credit, Taylor is relentless and prolific. If only his work sought to empower rather than enslave.
Since shedding the title of Vice President of Monsanto, Taylor has been busy promoting the concept of "risk assessment" as a means to deal with food-borne illness as an alternative to urging regulatory agencies to actually enforce laws already on the books and to adequately fund them so they could do so. Like "substantial equivalence," the risk assessment conceit offers a great opportunity to change the system to benefit corporate interests. Taylor has spent years churning out the necessary conceptual building blocks in cross-pollinating think tanks and foundations to create the intellectual framework for legislative proposals like these food "safety" bills.
The reports produced by the Trust of America's Health rely heavily on "risk assessment, management and communication," a form of message control hatched at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, a corporate-funded affair that provides "scientific" justification for a wide range of policies corporations want to see implemented. Using this method of risk analysis, the necessary justification can be produced for just about whatever outcome is wished by the underwriters.
It's no real surprise that Taylor's think-tank-funded policy on risk assessment, like his report "Food Safety Updated: Developing Tools for a More Science- and Risk-Based Approach,"(9) underwritten by the Milbank Memorial Fund and Resources for the Future, has been embraced and institutionalized by the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
Codex – A Tool of Global Governance by Corporate Command
If some variation of this batch of bad bills is passed into legislation, US citizens will find their laws considerably closer to becoming harmonized with Codex Alimentarius, a set of international food codes crafted by unaccountable and unelected bureaucrats in conjunction with vested industry and trade interests. It's important that the public learns more about Codex, because its "standards" will be enforced by the World Trade Organization to govern global trade practices of all its member nations. Furthermore, this body of food codes will take legal precedence over national laws, like the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).
The US media are assiduously silent on the matter of Codex. Under the helpful cover of the media's information blackout, Codex Alimentarius Commission meetings are regularly attended by officials from the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, State, Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of US Trade Representative, and the US Codex Office. Non-governmental agencies in attendance at the meetings include the 49th Parallel Biotechnology Consortium, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, Consumers Union, Crop Life International, Dow Chemical, Dupont, the European Association of Bioindustries, the Grain and Feed Trade Association, the International Cooperative Alliance, the International Council of Beverages Associations, the International Council of Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Institute of Food Technologists, the International Glutamate Technical Committee and the International Life Sciences Institute, Monsanto, and Sygenta, among others –with the exception, that is, of any democratically elected and accountable representatives of citizens these food codes will affect.
The standards created by the Codex Alimentarius Commission are set to enable industry interests to dictate and control rules covering vitamins, minerals and nutrients, genetically modified plants and livestock, toxic residues, antibiotics, drugs, growth stimulants and other hormones in food and animals, organic foods, the irradiation of plants and animal food and nanotechnology. Scott Tips, President of the National Health Federation, the only accredited health freedom organization allowed to participate at Codex meetings, projects that these standards are on tract to be implemented sometime between 2011 and 2013.
Codex committees -- such as the Codex Committees on Food Additives and Contaminants (CCFAC), Pesticide Residues (CCPR), Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Foods (CCRVDF), Food Hygiene (CCFH), General Principles (CCGP), Food Labeling (CCFL), Nutrition and Food for Dietary Uses (CCNFDU), Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems (CCFICS) and Methods of Analysis an Sampling (CCMAS) – all employ the concept of risk management to determine the rules they recommend to the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC).
Codex standards are of critical importance to agribusiness, because they are acknowledged as the appropriate guidelines in the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreements of the WTO Agreement. While the WTO had provisions that allowed member states to create barriers to trade by citing national legislation to ensure food safety, those provisions would become void, thanks to the SPS and TBT agreements, if an international safety standard created by Codex determined otherwise. So, thanks to the unelected and unaccountable private deal-makers who wrote these trade agreements, Codex rules will trump national law.
Meet the Missus -- Christine Lewis Taylor
Undermining US law for the benefit of multinational corporations is a family affair in the Taylor household. To see how the concept of "risk assessment" can be usefully abused, let's look at how Mrs. Michael Taylor adopts the conceit to her purposes.
Christine Lewis Taylor, a veteran FDA employee, has been busy working up the "scientific" justification for placing a cap on the level of nutrients people should be allowed to consume. To do so, she pushes a perverse concept that defines nutrients as toxins. In other words, Mrs. Taylor would like us all to believe that the vitamins and minerals needed by cells throughout the body in order to function and detoxify should be considered hazardous, requiring governmental oversight that would limit people's exposure to them under law.
After a stint heading up the Codex delegation on the Committee on Food Labeling and another as a delegate to Codex's Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, Christine Lewis Taylor was farmed out by the Institute of Medicine to the World Health Organization, where she played an instrumental role as Project Director in applying the risk assessment model to redefine nutrition as we know it. Her mission: To develop the framework whereby an "upper safe limit" would be set, defining the amount supplements the public should be allowed to purchase except by prescription. In her WHO capacity, she organized a seminar, selected the scientists who would be allowed to participate in it, and oversaw the group's published conclusion.(10)
US law regulates supplements as food. But the pharmaceutical industry wants to change that and have supplements regulated as drugs, and bureaucrats like Mrs. Taylor are doing what they can to comply. Taylor argues that people are exposed to too many nutrients and wants to see the establishment of a one-size-fits-all international standard set that stipulates how much of each nutrient people need, a amount that in some cases is less than the already established recommended daily allowances.(11)
But the good news, at least for pharmaceutical companies, is that there would be more profit to be made in treating a host of vitamin-deficiency diseases. And, once these guidelines are adopted by Codex, people would no longer have the freedom to purchase therapeutic amounts of dietary supplements to compensate for a nutrient-deficient and legally poisoned food supply to which we're subjected. Supplements would no longer be consider food as they are under DSHEA but instead would be regulated as drugs, available only by prescription or in amounts so limited as to render them insufficiently helpful in the prevention of disease.
People are subject to disease not because they are deficient in pharmaceuticals. We are subject to disease because we either do not get the nutrients we need from our food sources or because we are exposed to environmental toxins and harmful food adulterants like hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, pesticide residues, aspartame, and GMOs, falsely deemed safe by the FDA. These adulterants contribute directly to a long list of predictable degenerative diseases. But thanks to the tireless work of Mrs. Taylor, the chemical cartel will get wealthier by making us sick and wealthier still by treating us for illnesses its products cause.
Sweeping Inconvenient Facts Under the Rug
In addition to her work toward the implementation of Codex, it's worth noting that Christine Taylor Lewis has done her part to rewrite history to make her husband's tenure at the FDA to appear less corrupt than it, in fact, was. Talk about housekeeping. While serving as the thesis advisor to a Tuft's university student, Taylor oversaw the details of a dissertation entitled the "Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods: Stakeholder Perceptions of the Food and Drug Administration's Public Consultation Processes and Food Industry Reactions to the United States Voluntary and European Union Mandatory Policies."(12)
This thesis belongs to Janice Lee Albert, who happened to be an employee of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome while working on her dissertation. Albert's dissertation focuses on the controversy over labeling GMOs, a topic that deeply involved Michael Taylor, her thesis advisor's husband. However, that marital relationship is never disclosed in the dissertation. In fact, while Mr. Taylor's work is described throughout the dissertation, Albert fails to identify him by name as a key participant in the controversy. On the contrary, when Michael Taylor is – finally – mentioned by name, it is as one of twenty-four people Albert interviewed to obtain their views on the appropriateness of the FDA's labeling decisions. Astonishingly, Albert identifies Michael Taylor as an "Independent Expert," revealing nothing about the fact he (1) previously worked as a lawyer for the company who's product was getting special treatment or (2) the fact that he was the one in charge of implementing the concept of "substantial equivalence" at the FDA or (3) went to work for Monsanto afterwards.
Under Christine Lewis Taylor's supervision, Albert's thesis defends the FDA's controversial labeling decision and its consultation processes with the public as being "conducted as intended by law." Albert claims that members of the public who are dissatisfied with the FDA's decision not to label GMO products just don't understand the all the factors that go into making decisions at the FDA. She's probably correct on that point: Most of the public is under the mistaken assumption that the FDA has a responsibility to protect it from the unsafe products of an untested technology. Thanks to her explanation, at least we now know that certain employees of the FDA consider their only legal obligation is to offer the public an opportunity to voice its concerns, not act upon them.
Albert contends that the exact nature of the public concerns about GMOs was outside the scope of her dissertation and therefore unnecessary for her to address or even note. Nevertheless, a thorough pre-market study of the health risks associated with GMOs should never have been outside the scope of the FDA's responsibilities.
Scientists and journalists have lost their jobs for daring to cross the powerful biotech industry to publicize the health risks of GMOs.(13) The well-controlled media dutifully ignores the pile up of evidence of the nature of the dangers. In recent months, research has been published showing that GM corn increases infertility (14) and that the key ingredients in Monsanto's Round-Up Ready, the herbicide used on all GMO crops, cause death to human cells.(15)
Given what we now know about the dangers of GMOs, we should dispense with the discussion of whether or not to label them and move right to the topic of banning them altogether.
Identifying What Ails Us
Americans should be able to have confidence that the food they eat is safe. The Trust for America's Health, however, is using recent food-borne illness events as an excuse to make radical and unnecessary changes to a regulatory system has been purposely underfunded and understaffed.(16) While focusing exclusively of food borne illnesses, it has ignored the predictable diseases suffered by millions that are caused by the chronic consumption of foods adulterated with ingredients that an industry-dominated FDA deems to be GRAS, that is, "generally regarded as safe."
Restoring and protecting our health requires a real understanding about what ails us. To put things in perspective, food borne illnesses are responsible for some 5,000 death a year; but over 700,000 people die each year from government-approved medicine(17), and millions more suffer from predictable diseases that could be prevented if we had a safe, clean, whole-foods based food supply. If we allow those behind the food "safety" bills to use this crisis as an opportunity to change the food safety system, transnational corporations will have even more control over our health than they do now.
Prevention, as they say, is the best cure.
(2) "Keeping America's Food Safe: A Blueprint for Fixing the Food Safety System at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services," a report from The Trust for America's Health
(3) "Blueprint for a Healthier America: Modernizing the Federal Public Health System to Focus on Prevention and Preparedness," a report from The Trust for America's Health,
(6) Citizen Petition Before the United States Food and Drug Administration: Petition Seeking the Establishment of Mandatory Pre-Market Safety Testing, Pre-Market Environmental Review & Labeling for all Genetically Engineered Foods" filed by Center for Food Safety, Washington DC, et al., with Jane Henney, Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration, March 21, 2000. http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/PetitionGEFoodRegs3.2000.pdf
(7) "Investing in Africa's Future – US agricultural development Assistance for Sub-Saharan Africa" By Michael R Taylor and Julie Howard, 2005, The Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa:
(9) "Food Safety Updated: Developing Tools for a More Science-and Risk-Based Approach," Michael R. Taylor, Margaret O'K.Glavin, J. Glenn Morris, Jr., and Catherine E. Woteki. Published by the Milbank Memorial Fund and Resources for the Future, July 2003. http://www.milbank.org/reports/2003foodsafety/030731foodsafety.html
(10) "Highlights of 'A Model for Establishing Upper Levels of Intake for Nutrients and Related Substances: Report of a Joint FAO/WHO Technical Workshop on Nutrient Risk Assessment, May 2-6, 2005" by Christine Lewis Taylor, PhD, Nutrient Reviews, Vol 65, Issue 1, pp 31-38. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?term=17310857&cmd=search&db=pubmed
(11) "The NAS Risk Assessment Model for Establishing Upper Intake Levels for Nutrients: A Critical Perspective From Psycho-physiological Perspective," Richard Malter, PhD. 2000.
(12) "Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods: Stakeholder Perceptions of the Food and Drug Administration's Public Consultation Processes and Food Industry Reactions to the United States Voluntary and European Union Mandatory Policies." Janice Lee Albert
(13) Jeffrey M. Smith, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Altered Foods You're Eating. Yes! Books, 2003.
(14) "Biological effects of transgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice" Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, managed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health, Family and Youth, and carried out by Veterinary University Vienna. November 2008
(16) "Starvation Diet: FDA Lacks Adequate Resources for its Nutritional Health and Consumer Protection Missions" published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Washington DC. October 2003.
(17) "Death by Medicine" by Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, and Dorothy Smith PhD. Life Extension Magazine, March 2004. http://www.webdc.com/pdfs/deathbymedicine.pdf
From protecting Bush officials who ordered torture from prosecution, to maintaining and expanding the American empire, to warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, all have remained and intensified under Obama.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Monday, April 20, 2009
As President Barack Obama approaches his first 100 days in office, the corporate media prepares a new round of fawning idolatry about the Obama administration’s “achievements,” yet a summary glance at what Obama has actually done in that short time with regard to expanding the Bush police state and the Neo-Con empire is worse than even we predicted.
The day after Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States in November last year, we challenged Obama supporters and the administration itself to follow through on the rhetoric of “change” by starting to dismantle the architecture of the Bush police state and beginning to roll back the unwieldy morass of the American empire. Obama has done neither, and in fact his every action has been about ensuring the Bush police state remains in place, that the people who put it in place are protected from prosecution, and that the empire continues to expand.
We presented Obama and his supporters with a series of issues on which to make progress. While we did not expect Obama to accomplish much in his first few months in office, we at least challenged the new President to take the first steps in reversing eight years of what was a de facto dictatorship and plotting the course for the “change” that was so consistently promised.
We asked the following questions of an Obama presidency;
- Will Obama support Dennis Kucinich’s efforts to bring war crimes charges against Bush, Cheney and others for deceiving the country into a war or will he protect them against such charges like Nancy Pelosi has done?
In April 2008, Obama promised that as President he would ask his Attorney General to “immediately review” potential war crimes that occurred under the Bush White House. Obama or his Attorney General have done no such thing, and every noise they have made suggests that top Neo-Cons will be protected from deceiving America into a war.
Similarly we asked;
- Will Obama bring war crimes charges against Bush, Cheney and others for authorizing torture and will the torture of suspects under U.S. detention, a complete violation of both the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, cease under an Obama administration?
As we found out last week, the answer was a resounding NO. Upon the release of the torture memos, Obama’s right-hand man, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, told ABC News that top Bush administration officials “should not be prosecuted either and that’s not the place that we go.” In addition, Obama’s statement that accompanied the release of the torture memos stated, “In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”
So no retribution for the people who ordered the torture, and no retribution to the people who carried it out, thus setting the precedent that future administrations are free to order torture - safe in the knowledge that they will face no consequences whatsoever.
- Will Obama withdraw American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan without sending them away again to bomb another broken-backed third world country?
The answer again is a resounding NO. Upon taking office, Obama announced that he would be sending another 17,000, and eventually perhaps as many as 30,000, extra troops to Afghanistan.
Regarding Iraq, after the “withdrawal” of U.S. troops in 19 months, a timescale that has since been put back again, “Mr. Obama plans to leave behind a “residual force” of tens of thousands of troops to continue training Iraqi security forces, hunt down foreign terrorist cells and guard American institutions,” reported the New York Times.
In terms of bombing another broken-backed third world country, Obama has beefed the U.S. military role in Pakistan beyond that pursued by the Bush administration and “expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan,” according to the New York TImes, with an increase in missile attacks by drone aircraft.
Meanwhile, Obama’s war chest demands came to a total of around $800 billion in war funds and subsidiary costs just to cover the rest of 2009.
Does any of this sound like a move towards bringing the troops home and rolling back the American empire, as Obama promised before he was elected?
- Will Obama end the warrantless secret surveillance and phone-taps of American citizens?
You’ll be shocked the learn that the answer was a resounding NO. Earlier this month, “The Obama administration formally adopted the Bush administration’s position that the courts cannot judge the legality of the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) warrantless wiretapping program,” reported the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration’s cover-up of the National Security Agency’s dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a ’secret’ that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again.”
- Will Obama cease his support for the Bush-administration backed banker bailouts, hated by the majority of Americans, and target the real cause of the problem - the Federal Reserve - or will he continue to give taxpayers’ money to banks who are merely hoarding it all for themselves?
Obama’s zealous push for more bailouts, along with increased power for the Federal Reserve and the implementation of global regulations that will effectively end any notion of a free market was perhaps the defining issue of his first 100 days as President. Obama has vigorously promoted the same financial policies that were introduced by the Bush administration in its final few months.
- Will Obama repeal Patriot Acts I and II as well as reversing Bush’s signing statement and acknowledging the repeal of the John Warner Defense Authorization Act? Will Obama seek to continue the militarization of America and preparations for martial law through Northcom and the secret government or will he dismantle the police state that has been constructed over the last eight years by the Bush administration?
Despite initial rhetoric about reversing Bush’s infamous signing statements, Obama himself stated that he will continue to use signing statements. The Patriot Act and its additions as well as the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, both core planks of the Bush police state, remain firmly in place, with no sign of any reversal.
Regarding militarization through Northcom, weeks after Obama’s election victory it was announced that, “The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.” Militarization of law enforcement and troops being used domestically in preparation for martial law is continuing apace under the Obama administration.
- Will Obama follow through on his rhetorical support for the second amendment or will he seek to ban guns as he did in Illinois?
Despite Obama promising that he was not interested in going after the second amendment before his election, one of his first actions was to appoint the rabidly anti-gun Eric Holder as his Attorney General. Obama has also falsely blamed the drug war crisis in Mexico on American gun shops. The leaked Obama gun ban list would make millions of Americans criminals for owning weapons such certain types of rifles or pistols. Anti-gun legislation has found its way into stimulus and other unrelated bills as pork barrel. The first steps of the Obama administration with regard to gun control have resulted in record firearm and ammunition purchases across the country.
Upon Obama’s election we made a cynical but unfortunately accurate prediction of how the much vaunted promise of “change” would actually manifest itself. The fact is that the “change” began and ended on the day Obama won the election.
- Illegal warrantless surveillance and wiretapping of American citizens will continue under Obama.
- Top Bush administration officials who ordered torture and those that carried it out will be protected from prosecution under Obama.
- Top Bush administration officials who deceived America into a war will be protected from prosecution under Obama.
- The expansion of the military empire through continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and further military incursions into Pakistan will continue and expand under Obama.
- Banker bailouts, reckless spending, inflation of currency through overprinting and global regulations stifling the free market, all of which were initiated under Bush, will continue under Obama.
- The militarization of the United States and the architecture of the police state that was set up under Bush will be preserved and expanded under Obama.
- The attack on the second amendment right to bear arms will continue under Obama.
“The egregious spending will continue, government will balloon in size, American soldiers will be used as cannon fodder for more interventionist wars of the military-industrial complex, U.S. citizens will continue to have their phone calls tapped and their rights curtailed,” we forecast last year, “and the Federal Reserve will continue to rule the financial system with an iron fist while the middle class is squeezed out of existence.”
Who can deny that all those things have only intensified under the Obama administration?
The honeymoon is over - Barack Obama has proven himself to be nothing more than we predicted all along - another stooge for the global banking syndicate that has controlled every U.S. president since JFK, and nothing more than a black face on the new world order - sworn to continue and intensify the same agenda that the Bush-Clinton-Bush dynasty advanced before him.
The New York Times' David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Barstow uncovered. Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow's exposés:
Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.
By whom were these "ties to companies" undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as "analysts"? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox -- the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers. They kept completely silent about Barstow's story even though it sparked Congressional inquiries, vehement objections from the then-leading Democratic presidential candidates, and allegations that the Pentagon program violated legal prohibitions on domestic propaganda programs. The Pentagon's secret collaboration with these "independent analysts" shaped multiple news stories from each of these outlets on a variety of critical topics. Most amazingly, many of them continue to employ as so-called "independent analysts" the very retired generals at the heart of Barstow's story, yet still refuse to inform their viewers about any part of this story.
And even now that Barstow yesterday won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting -- one of the most prestigious awards any news story can win -- these revelations still may not be uttered on television, tragically dashing the hope expressed yesterday (rhetorically, I presume) by Media Matters' Jamison Foser that "maybe now that the story has won a Pulitzer for Barstow, they'll pay attention." Instead, it was Atrios' prediction that was decisively confirmed: "I don't think a Pulitzer will be enough to give the military analyst story more attention." Here is what Brian Williams said last night on his NBC News broadcast in reporting on the prestigious awards:
The Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and the arts were awarded today. The New York Times led the way with five, including awards for breaking news and international reporting. Las Vegas Sun won for the public service category for its reporting on construction worker deaths in that city. Best commentary went to Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, who of course was an on-air commentator for us on MSNBC all through the election season and continues to be. And the award for best biography went to John Meacham, the editor of Newsweek magazine, for his book "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House."
No mention that among the five NYT prizes was one for investigative reporting. Williams did manage to promote the fact that one of the award winners was an MSNBC contributor, but sadly did not find the time to inform his viewers that NBC News' war reporting and one of Williams' still-featured premiere "independent analysts," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was and continues to be at the heart of the scandal for which Barstow won the Pulitzer. Williams' refusal to inform his readers about this now-Pulitzer-winning story is particularly notable given his direct personal involvement in the secret, joint attempts by NBC and McCaffrey to contain P.R. damage to NBC from Barstow's story, compounded by the fact that NBC was on notice of these multiple conflicts as early as April, 2003, when The Nation first reported on them.
Identically, CNN ran an 898-word story on the various Pulitzer winners -- describing virtually every winner -- but was simply unable to find any space even to mention David Barstow's name, let alone inform their readers that he won the Prize for uncovering core corruption at the heart of CNN's coverage of the Iraq War and other military-related matters. No other major television news outlet implicated by Barstow's story mentioned his award, at least as far as I can tell.
The outright refusal of any of these "news organizations" even to mention what Barstow uncovered about the Pentagon's propaganda program and the way it infected their coverage is one of the most illuminating events revealing how they operate. So transparently corrupt and journalistically disgraceful is their blackout of this story that even Howard Kurtz and Politico -- that's Howard Kurtz and Politico -- lambasted them for this concealment. Meaningful criticisms of media stars from media critic (and CNN star) Howie Kurtz is about as rare as prosecutions for politically powerful lawbreakers in America, yet this is what he said about the television media's suppression of Barstow's story: "their coverage of this important issue has been pathetic."
Has there ever been another Pulitzer-Prize-winning story for investigative reporting never to be mentioned on major television -- let alone one that was twice featured as the lead story on the front page of The New York Times? To pose the question is to answer it.
UPDATE: Media Matters has more on the glaring omissions in Brian Williams' "reporting" and on the pervasive impact of the Pentagon's program on television news coverage. Williams' behavior has long been disgraceful on this issue, almost certainly due to the fact that some of the "analysts" most directly implicated by Barstow's story are Williams' favored sources and friends.
On a different note, CQ's Jeff Stein responds today to some of the objections to his Jane-Harman/AIPAC/Alberto-Gonazles blockbuster story -- quite convincingly, in my view -- and, as Christy Hardin Smith notes, the New York Times has now independently confirmed much of what Stein reported.
UPDATE II: For some added irony: on his NBS News broadcast last night suppressing any mention of David Barstow's Pulitzer Prize, Brian Williams' lead story concerned Obama's trip to the CIA yesterday. Featured in that story was commentary from Col. Jack Jacobs, identified on-screen this way: "Retired, NBC News Military Analyst." Jacobs was one of the retired officers who was an active member of the Pentagon's "military analyst" program, and indeed, he actively helped plan the Pentagon's media strategy at the very same time he was posing as an "independent analyst" on NBC (h/t reader gc; via NEXIS). So not only did Williams last night conceal from his viewers any mention of the Pentagon program, he featured -- on the very same broadcast -- "independent" commentary from one of the central figures involved in that propaganda program.
On a related note, Howard Kurtz was asked in his Washington Post chat yesterday about Mike Allen's grant of anonymity to a "top Bush official" that I highlighted on Saturday, and Kurtz -- while defending much of Allen's behavior -- said: "I don't believe an ex-official should have been granted anonymity for that kind of harsh attack."
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes has given perhaps his most dire warning yet, saying that the Obama administration is preparing to stage terror attacks, declare martial law and cancel the 2012 elections, which is why they are demonizing their political enemies as criminals and terrorists.
Keyes is best known for his performance during the 2000 Republican presidential debates, when he was accredited by many media outlets as being the clear winner during a series of debates with George W. Bush and John McCain.
“It’s obvious that they will stop at nothing,” Keyes told attendees of a reception in Fort Wayne, adding, “We may wake up one day and there’s a series of terrorist attacks, the economy is paralysed….martial law will be declared everywhere in the United States and it won’t end until the crisis ends.”
Keyes said that Americans should be thankful if they even see another election in 2012, stating, “If we don’t wake up and work to see that it happens, we will not see another election.”
“The minute they think they can get away with it, they will end this system of government and that is their intention,” added Keyes, noting that everyone acting as if the time we are in was just “business as usual” reminds him of the attitude of politicians in the Weimar Republic when Hitler was rising to power or eastern Europe when the Communists were taking over after the second world war.
Keyes said that because the majority of people are decent-minded, they believe others will play by the rules when this simply isn’t the case, warning that this attitude will allow evil to take over before we can do anything about it.
“It is so clear hat we have now put a faction in place - they are not playing by the rules and they don’t intend to play by the rules - if they were playing by the rules they wouldn’t have tried to identify their opposition as criminals,” added Keyes, making reference to the recent controversy surrounding the release of the MIAC and Homeland Security reports, which implied that Americans who exercise and are knowledgeable about their constitutional rights are a threat to law enforcement and potential domestic terrorists.
Keyes said that the only solution was from the bottom up because our leaders “are so gutless that they won’t even ask that the Constitution be enforced for clear, plain, absolutely unequivocal requirements,” and respond meekly with “their lips shut and their hearts terrorized.”
Keyes also warned of Obama’s agenda to create a civilian security force and said it was part of the ultimate agenda to disarm American citizens and create a police state.
Keyes has been a vocal critic of Obama, warning that he is a radical Communist who is determined to destroy America, and that if his agenda is not stopped then the country as we know it will cease to exist.
BIS, founded in Basel, Switzerland, in 1930, it has been scandal-ridden from its beginnings. According to Charles Higham in his book Trading with the Enemy, by the late 1930s the BIS had assumed an openly pro-Nazi bias.
In an April 7 article in the London Daily Telegraph titled “The G20 Moves the World a Step Closer to a Global Currency,” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote:
“A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order.
“We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity,’ it said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.
“In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF’s power to create money and begin global ‘quantitative easing’. In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.”
Indeed they will. The article is subtitled, “The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity.” Which naturally raises the question, who or what will serve as this global central bank, cloaked with the power to issue the global currency and police monetary policy for all humanity? When the world’s central bankers met in Washington last September, they discussed what body might be in a position to serve in that awesome and fearful role. A former governor of the Bank of England stated:
“[T]he answer might already be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)…. The IMF tends to couch its warnings about economic problems in very diplomatic language, but the BIS is more independent and much better placed to deal with this if it is given the power to do so.”[1]
And if that vision doesn’t alarm conspiracy theorists, it should. The BIS has been called “the most exclusive, secretive, and powerful supranational club in the world.” Founded in Basel, Switzerland, in 1930, it has been scandal-ridden from its beginnings. According to Charles Higham in his book Trading with the Enemy, by the late 1930s the BIS had assumed an openly pro-Nazi bias. This was corroborated years later in a BBC Timewatch film titled “Banking with Hitler,” broadcast in 1998.[2] In 1944, the American government backed a resolution at the Bretton-Woods Conference calling for the liquidation of the BIS, following Czech accusations that it was laundering gold stolen by the Nazis from occupied Europe; but the central bankers succeeded in quietly snuffing out the American resolution.[3]
Modest beginnings, BIS Office, Hotel Savoy-Univers, Basel
First Annual General Meeting, 1931
In Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966), Dr. Carroll Quigley revealed the key role played in global finance by the BIS behind the scenes. Dr. Quigley was Professor of History at Georgetown University, where he was President Bill Clinton’s mentor. He was also an insider, groomed by the powerful clique he called “the international bankers.” His credibility is heightened by the fact that he actually espoused their goals. He wrote:
“I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. … [I]n general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”
Quigley wrote of this international banking network:
“[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”
The key to their success, said Quigley, was that the international bankers would control and manipulate the money system of a nation while letting it appear to be controlled by the government. The statement echoed an often-quoted one made by the German patriarch of what would become the most powerful banking dynasty in the world. Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild famously said in 1791:
“Allow me to issue and control a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.”
Mayer’s five sons were sent to the major capitals of Europe – London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Naples – with the mission of establishing a banking system that would be outside government control. The economic and political systems of nations would be controlled not by citizens but by bankers, for the benefit of bankers. Eventually, a privately-owned “central bank” was established in nearly every country; and this central banking system has now gained control over the economies of the world. Central banks have the authority to print money in their respective countries, and it is from these banks that governments must borrow money to pay their debts and fund their operations. The result is a global economy in which not only industry but government itself runs on “credit” (or debt) created by a banking monopoly headed by a network of private central banks; and at the top of this network is the BIS, the “central bank of central banks” in Basel.
Behind the Curtain
For many years the BIS kept a very low profile, operating behind the scenes in an abandoned hotel. It was here that decisions were reached to devalue or defend currencies, fix the price of gold, regulate offshore banking, and raise or lower short-term interest rates. In 1977, however, the BIS gave up its anonymity in exchange for more efficient headquarters. The new building has been described as “an eighteen story-high circular skyscraper that rises above the medieval city like some misplaced nuclear reactor.” It quickly became known as the “Tower of Basel.” Today the BIS has governmental immunity, pays no taxes, and has its own private police force.[4] It is, as Mayer Rothschild envisioned, above the law.
The BIS is now composed of 55 member nations, but the club that meets regularly in Basel is a much smaller group; and even within it, there is a hierarchy. In a 1983 article in Harper’s Magazine called “Ruling the World of Money,” Edward Jay Epstein wrote that where the real business gets done is in “a sort of inner club made up of the half dozen or so powerful central bankers who find themselves more or less in the same monetary boat” – those from Germany, the United States, Switzerland, Italy, Japan and England. Epstein said:
“The prime value, which also seems to demarcate the inner club from the rest of the BIS members, is the firm belief that central banks should act independently of their home governments… . A second and closely related belief of the inner club is that politicians should not be trusted to decide the fate of the international monetary system.”
In 1974, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision was created by the central bank Governors of the Group of Ten nations (now expanded to twenty). The BIS provides the twelve-member Secretariat for the Committee. The Committee, in turn, sets the rules for banking globally, including capital requirements and reserve controls. In a 2003 article titled “The Bank for International Settlements Calls for Global Currency,” Joan Veon wrote:
“The BIS is where all of the world’s central banks meet to analyze the global economy and determine what course of action they will take next to put more money in their pockets, since they control the amount of money in circulation and how much interest they are going to charge governments and banks for borrowing from them…
“When you understand that the BIS pulls the strings of the world’s monetary system, you then understand that they have the ability to create a financial boom or bust in a country. If that country is not doing what the money lenders want, then all they have to do is sell its currency.”[5]
The Controversial Basel Accords
The power of the BIS to make or break economies was demonstrated in 1988, when it issued a Basel Accord raising bank capital requirements from 6% to 8%. By then, Japan had emerged as the world’s largest creditor; but Japan’s banks were less well capitalized than other major international banks. Raising the capital requirement forced them to cut back on lending, creating a recession in Japan like that suffered in the U.S. today. Property prices fell and loans went into default as the security for them shriveled up. A downward spiral followed, ending with the total bankruptcy of the banks, which had to be nationalized – although that word was not used, in order to avoid criticism.[6]
Among other collateral damage produced by the Basel Accords was a spate of suicides among Indian farmers unable to get loans. The BIS capital adequacy standards required loans to private borrowers to be “risk-weighted,” with the degree of risk determined by private rating agencies; and farmers and small business owners could not afford the agencies’ fees. Banks therefore assigned 100 percent risk to the loans, and then resisted extending credit to these “high-risk” borrowers because more capital was required to cover the loans. When the conscience of the nation was aroused by the Indian suicides, the government, lamenting the neglect of farmers by commercial banks, established a policy of ending the “financial exclusion” of the weak; but this step had little real effect on lending practices, due largely to the strictures imposed by the BIS from abroad.[7]
Similar complaints have come from Korea. An article in the December 12, 2008 Korea Times titled “BIS Calls Trigger Vicious Cycle” described how Korean entrepreneurs with good collateral cannot get operational loans from Korean banks, at a time when the economic downturn requires increased investment and easier credit:
“‘The Bank of Korea has provided more than 35 trillion won to banks since September when the global financial crisis went full throttle,’ said a Seoul analyst, who declined to be named. ‘But the effect is not seen at all with the banks keeping the liquidity in their safes. They simply don’t lend and one of the biggest reasons is to keep the BIS ratio high enough to survive,’ he said…
“Chang Ha-joon, an economics professor at Cambridge University, concurs with the analyst. ‘What banks do for their own interests, or to improve the BIS ratio, is against the interests of the whole society. This is a bad idea,’ Chang said in a recent telephone interview with Korea Times.”
In a May 2002 article in The Asia Times titled “Global Economy: The BIS vs. National Banks,” economist Henry C K Liu observed that the Basel Accords have forced national banking systems “to march to the same tune, designed to serve the needs of highly sophisticated global financial markets, regardless of the developmental needs of their national economies.” He wrote:
“[N]ational banking systems are suddenly thrown into the rigid arms of the Basel Capital Accord sponsored by the Bank of International Settlement (BIS), or to face the penalty of usurious risk premium in securing international interbank loans… . National policies suddenly are subjected to profit incentives of private financial institutions, all members of a hierarchical system controlled and directed from the money center banks in New York. The result is to force national banking systems to privatize …
“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 had 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.”
When governments fell into the trap of accepting loans in foreign currencies, however, they became “debtor nations” subject to IMF and BIS regulation. They were forced to divert their production to exports, just to earn the foreign currency necessary to pay the interest on their loans. National banks deemed “capital inadequate” had to deal with strictures comparable to the “conditionalities” imposed by the IMF on debtor nations: “escalating capital requirement, loan writeoffs and liquidation, and restructuring through selloffs, layoffs, downsizing, cost-cutting and freeze on capital spending.” Liu wrote:
“Reversing the logic that a sound banking system should lead to full employment and developmental growth, BIS regulations demand high unemployment and developmental degradation in national economies as the fair price for a sound global private banking system.”
The Last Domino to Fall
While banks in developing nations were being penalized for falling short of the BIS capital requirements, large international banks managed to escape the rules, although they actually carried enormous risk because of their derivative exposure. The mega-banks succeeded in avoiding the Basel rules by separating the “risk” of default out from the loans and selling it off to investors, using a form of derivative known as “credit default swaps.”
BIS Tower Building, Basel
Botta 1 Building, Basel
However, it was not in the game plan that U.S. banks should escape the BIS net. When they managed to sidestep the first Basel Accord, a second set of rules was imposed known as Basel II. The new rules were established in 2004, but they were not levied on U.S. banks until November 2007, the month after the Dow passed 14,000 to reach its all-time high. The economy was all downhill from there. Basel II had the same effect on U.S. banks that Basel I had on Japanese banks: they have been struggling ever since to survive.[8]
Basel II requires banks to adjust the value of their marketable securities to the “market price” of the security, a rule called “mark to market.”[9] The rule has theoretical merit, but the problem is timing: it was imposed ex post facto, after the banks already had the hard-to-market assets on their books. Lenders that had been considered sufficiently well capitalized to make new loans suddenly found they were insolvent. At least, they would have been insolvent if they had tried to sell their assets, an assumption required by the new rule. Financial analyst John Berlau complained:
“The crisis is often called a ‘market failure,’ and the term ‘mark-to-market’ seems to reinforce that. But the mark-to-market rules are profoundly anti-market and hinder the free-market function of price discovery… . In this case, the accounting rules fail to allow the market players to hold on to an asset if they don’t like what the market is currently fetching, an important market action that affects price discovery in areas from agriculture to antiques.”[10]
Imposing the mark-to-market rule on U.S. banks caused an instant credit freeze, which proceeded to take down the economies not only of the U.S. but of countries worldwide. In early April 2009, the mark-to-market rule was finally softened by the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB); but critics said the modification did not go far enough, and it was done in response to pressure from politicians and bankers, not out of any fundamental change of heart or policies by the BIS.
And that is where the conspiracy theorists come in. Why did the BIS not retract or at least modify Basel II after seeing the devastation it had caused? Why did it sit idly by as the global economy came crashing down? Was the goal to create so much economic havoc that the world would rush with relief into the waiting arms of the BIS with its privately-created global currency? The plot thickens …
Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.
NOTES
1. Andrew Marshall, “The Financial New World Order: Towards a Global Currency and World Government,” Global Research (April 6, 2009).
2. Alfred Mendez, “The Network,” The World Central Bank: The Bank for International Settlements, http://copy_bilderberg.tripod.com/bis.htm.
3. “BIS – Bank of International Settlement: The Mother of All Central Banks,” hubpages.com (2009).
4. Ibid.
5. Joan Veon, “The Bank for International Settlements Calls for Global Currency,” News with Views (August 26, 2003).
6. Peter Myers, “The 1988 Basle Accord – Destroyer of Japan’s Finance System,” http://www.mailstar.net/basle.html (updated September 9, 2008).
"I BELIEVE THAT BANKING INSTITUTIONS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN STANDING ARMIES... IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE EVER ALLOW PRIVATE BANKS TO CONTROL THE ISSUE OF CURRENCY... THE BANKS AND CORPORATIONS THAT WILL GROW UP AROUND THEM WILL DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF THEIR PROPERTY UNTIL THEIR CHILDREN WAKE UP HOMELESS ON THE CONTINENT THEIR FATHERS CONQUERED"
THOMAS JEFFERSON1743 - 1826
"[OUR] GREAT INDUSTRIAL NATION IS CONTROLLED BY ITS SYSTEM OF CREDIT.
OUR SYSTEM OF CREDIT IS PRIVATELY CONCENTRATED, THE GROWTH OF THE NATION, THERFORE, AND ALL OUR ACTIVITIES ARE IN THE HANDS OF A FEW MEN... WHO NECESSARILY, BY VERY REASON OF THEIR LIMITATIONS, CHILL AND CHECK AND DESTROY GENUINE ECONOMIC FREEDOM.
WE HAVE COME TO BE ONE OF THE WORST RULED, ONE OF THE MOST COMPLETELY CONTROLLED AND DOMINATED GOVERNMENTS IN THE CIVILIZED WORLD
-NO GOVERNMENT BY FREE OPINION, NO LONGER A GOVERNMENT BY CONVICTION AND THE VOTE OF THE MAJORITY, BUT A GOVERNMENT BY THE OPINION AND DURESS OF SMALL GROUPS OF DOMINANT MEN."
WOODROW WILSON
"A WORLD BANKING SYSTEM WAS BEING SET UP HERE...A SUPERSTATE CONTROLLED BY INTERNATIONAL BANKERS...ACTING TOGETHER TO ENSLAVE THE WORLD FOR THEIR OWN PLEASURE. THE FED (FEDERAL RESERVE CORPORATION) HAS USURPED THE GOVERNMENT"
CONGRESSMAN LOUIS MCFADDEN
"UNDER THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT. PANICS ARE SCIENTIFICALLY CREATED. THE PRESENT PANIC IS THE FIRST SCIENTIFICALLY CREATED ONE, WORKED OUT AS WE FIGURE A MATHEMATICAL EQUATION"
CONGRESSMAN CHARLES LINDBERG
"GIVE ME CONTROL OF A NATION'S MONEY SUPPLY, AND I CARE NOT WHO MAKES ITS LAWS"
MAYER AMSCHEL ROTHSCHILD, FOUNDER OF THE ROTHSCHILD BANKING DYNASTY
"THE LARGE BANKING INTERESTS WERE DEEPLY INTERESTED IN THE WORLD WAR (I) BECAUSE OF THE WIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR LARGE PROFITS"
SECRETARY OF STATE, WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
"WE SHALL HAVE WORLD GOVERNMENT WHETHER OR NOT WE LIKE IT. THE QUESTION IS WHETHER WORLD GOVERNMENT WILL BE ACHIEVED BY CONQUEST OR CONSENT"
-JAMES WARBURG TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1950
"WE ARE GRATEFUL TO THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORK TIMES, TIME MAGAZINE AND OTHER GREAT PUBLICATIONS WHOSE DIRECTORS HAVE ATTENDED OUR MEETINGS AND RESPECTED THEIR PROMISES OF DESCRETION 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 TOWARD 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
"POWER CORRUPTS: ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY"
LORD ACTON ENGLISH HISTORIAN 1834 - 1902
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
-Sri Chinmoy Ghose
"IT IS NO MEASURE OF HEALTH TO BE WELL ADJUSTED TO A PROFOUNDLY SICK SOCIETY"
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"
-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 1749 - 1832
"...slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan... is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages-This can be done, by controlling the money. It will not do to allow the Greenback... as we cannot control that."
- "The Hazard Circular" - July, 1862
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt.
-John Adams-1735-1826
Famous Quotes from Zeitgeist the Movie http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
