Bilderberg.org

[marektysis]

WTO NEWS: SPEECHES — DG PASCAL LAMY

15 May 2013
Lamy urges further opening of Europe’s services sector

Director-General Pascal Lamy, in a speech at the European Business Summit in Brussels on 15 May 2013, said that “a big part of the answer to improving European competitiveness lies in a greater and better leveraging of Europe’s comparative advantage: the size of its internal market”. He added that “a further effort in opening up the services sector in Europe would go a long way in improving European competitiveness”. This is what he said:

Unlocking Europe’s Business Potential; Navigating a Globalized World



Mr Reynders, Cher Didier,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to attend this eleventh edition of the European Business Summit. It provides a nice opportunity to return to Brussels at a very propitious time, i.e. when spring is back after a long and grey winter!

And let me start by thanking BusinessEurope for the support you have afforded to the WTO and to me personally during what has certainly been challenging times. I would like to extend particular thanks to President Jurgen Thumann for having accepted to serve on the panel that I composed to look into the future of world trade and which delivered its report a couple of weeks ago. When I composed this panel, I wanted to have a strong business presence since business is a major stakeholder in the world trading system; one we should do well to listen to, one which we should engage with given your role in fostering innovation, generating growth and creating jobs.

Unlocking European competitiveness

Ladies and gentlemen, the weather in Brussels has certainly improved. But the grey, turbulent and long winter of the economic crisis is still with us. Economic hardship in Europe remains and unemployment is the single largest concern across Europe. And this is taking its toll on support for the European project, as we have seen in a Pew poll released just this week.

You have chosen “Unlocking European Competitiveness” as the main theme of this year's summit. I think this is both timely and relevant.

“Timely” because the key to maintaining Europe's place in the world economy has a lot to do with improving its competitiveness, especially at a time when the geography of the world economy is changing with the rise of emerging countries.

“Relevant” because job creation is largely the result of your own economic activities. It is only business that can create the much needed jobs. And for that stability and certainty, there are necessary pre-conditions.

While doubts remain concerning the direction, shape and depth of domestic reforms, while uncertainties persist about the soundness of the financial sector, while the flow of credit to business and in particular SMEs remains slow, while doubts remain about the further economic integration of the Euro-zone, business will remain coy, there will be limited appetite for new investments and job creation will remain below potential.

So what should be done to unlock European competitiveness?

My starting point is that Europe is favourably positioned in the global economy. Europe has so far managed to retain its share of around 20% of world exports while the United States and Japan have seen their shares decline. Its trade balance is positive overall, and it has multiplied by a factor of five since 2005.

But what is also clear is that sharp differences remain within the European Union. The risk is clearly one of increasing divergence between European countries, both in terms of industrial development and in terms of trade. This divergence has little to do with trade rules, which are the same in all European countries since the European Union has a common external trade policy. It has more to do with labour costs, with price and non-price competitiveness, with the structure of the business sector and with productivity, to name a few factors.

Better leveraging the European internal market

In my view, a big part of the answer to improving European competitiveness lies in a greater and better leveraging of Europe's comparative advantage: the size of its internal market.

The EU’s internal market has helped enlarge and deepen European supply chains. Trade is no longer about finished products or services. It is about trade in tasks. In fact, 60% of merchandise trade is in intermediates. It is about adding value by contributing to a stage in the production of a finished product or by providing services. And the European market offers business an excellent setup for value chains to thrive.

But there is an area where the potential of the EU's internal market is not fully exploited and this is in the area of services. While services represent about 20% of total trade, their share doubles when we consider their contribution to global “value-added” trade. The services that are incorporated into the value of traded products include, among other things, research and development, and modern logistics. In fact, in a world of value chains, the frontier between goods and services is blurred.

Understanding the crucial role of high value-added services in the success of value chains is particularly important for industrialized countries, as it indicates where their competitive advantage may be and where trade can create jobs. On the other hand, it is vital for developing countries as well, as it shows the importance of trade facilitation and good transport and logistical services in enabling trade in value-added.

A further effort at opening up the services sector in Europe would therefore go a long way in improving European competitiveness. Whether this is done internally or as a result of trade agreements, the result would be the same. At the end of the day, trade opening — if done in a deep and comprehensive way, tackling both tariffs and non-tariff barriers — can be a powerful trigger for structural reforms.

But European competitiveness also hinges on investing in its biggest asset: the skills of its workforce. A key labour market policy worth promoting is precisely the creation and the promotion of a trained workforce, through bargaining between employers and employees, to help that workforce adapt to technological and market changes. The European knowledge economy must be firmly based in the knowledge and skills of its workforce. And maybe this is an area where pooling resources on a European scale would allow better economies of scale and positive spillovers.

Linked to skills are obviously the technology programmes in areas such as energy, environment or applied research. These should encourage co-operation among firms, including those that compete against each other rather than support national champions. And this is why, here again, Europe would do well in leveraging its size.

But in my view, the biggest task ahead of you is to re-establish the conditions for real convergence within the European Union. This requires reconsidering both national and European policies that are growth-enhancing, whether in the form of regional policies, labour policies, skills and innovation policies or competition policies.

You would have noticed that in my intervention I have carefully avoided entering into the current debate of austerity versus growth. I have not done it because I think this is the wrong debate to have today. The United States which is going through a fiscal adjustment twice as fast as that of the European Union is also showing positive growth rates. Both are needed. Doing both is perfectly possible, provided that they are done in the right doses and in the right sequence.

One last point, fiscal prudence and growth need not be at the expense of social safety nets. We also have the example of this in Europe. And this is precisely the specificity of the European model: “Sozialmarktwirtschaft”, somewhere between “big Wirtschaft” and “small Sozial” or “small Wirtschaft” and “small Sozial”!

Thank you for your attention.
http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/sppl_e/sppl281_e.htm

[marektysis]

n application to hold a "family event" in a field opposite The Grove hotel while the Bilderberg Group is meeting there has been withdrawn.

The request for a temporary events notice in West Field at the junction of Hempstead Road and North Western Avenue was due to be considered this morning by Watford Borough Council’s licensing sub-committee.

The event had been planned to run from June 8 to June 12 and promises entertainment including folk music, children’s entertainers, face painting, craft workshops and stalls.


The application also sought a late night alcohol sales license.

Documents show Herts police objected to the application due to "concerns over possible crime and disorder linked to a nearby conference at The Grove".

Su Murray, the applicant who stood as a Green Party candidate in the recent county council elections, said she was organising a Green event but hoped to work with the people drawn to the area by the Bilderberg Meeting.

However, speaking on Tuesday she has since chosen to withdraw the application fearing it would become too disruptive to the public and could be over-run by anti-Bilderberg protestors.

Opponents of the shadowy meeting of world leaders from business, politics and academia are organising a fringe festival to coincide with the meeting next month.

An Occupy Bilderberg Facebook group already has more than 800 people listing themselves as attending.
http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/10432389._Anti_Bilderberg__event_application_withdrawn/

[marektysis]

Whether it’s the shape-shifting group of reptilian descendants from the constellation Draco who control humanity, or the shadowy cabal of powerful financiers and politicians who covertly run all governments, conspiracy theorists are once again preparing for their annual jamboree of protest against those who really rule the world, this year in the highly secretive destination of... Watford.

For three days beginning on 6 June, a five-star hotel in Chandler’s Cross that normally hosts the England football team before Wembley matches, will turn over its 227 luxury rooms and 300-acre estate grounds to the über-secretive Bilderberg Group.

The Grove, once the home of the earls of Clarendon where prime ministers such as Palmerston and Walpole were guests and where a young Queen Victoria started the fashion for “the weekend break”, will turn back the clock when it welcomes around 140 of Europe and America’s most powerful leaders from banking, finance and politics with a scattering of royalty and aristocracy adding to the elite guest list.

Due to a tradition that stretches back to 1954 and the first conference held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands, nothing that is discussed or agreed at a Bilderberg meeting is reported. Until recently even the names of those who were invited was kept secret.

That tradition, however, according to discreet soundings made by The Independent on Sunday, could be about to change with the new generation of Bilderbergers, who are apparently uncomfortable with the total exclusion of the media.

The conference is the only “activity” of the secretive Bilderberg Group. The list of participants usually includes former US presidents, soon-to-be presidents, UK prime ministers-in-waiting, finance ministers from the leading Western democracies, and presidents of organisations such as the World Bank and the bosses of the largest multinational corporations.

Clinton, Blair, Bushes senior and junior, Cameron, Osborne, Kissinger, Bill Gates and, strangely, Peter Mandelson, have all been Bilderberg invitees in recent years.

Putting a global elite all in one place, and banning any media from attending or reporting what has been said, has led to a vast industry of wild conspiracy which suggests Bilderberg is a “world government meeting in the shadows”.

Watford, if the conspiracy theorists are correct, will be the place where the locations of the next wars are decided and where the next global pandemics will be created to boost the profits of the giant pharmaceutical industries. And forget democracy and ballot boxes – Watford will be where the next leaders of major world powers are actually anointed.

The masses expected to travel to Watford to protest at Bilderberg’s alleged grand design of one world government, centralised foreign policy, global obedience, enslavement, and global tax strategy, appear not to be worrying Hertfordshire Police.

“We’ve experience of dealing with these things,” said a force spokesman, “Some of our senior officers went to the G8 at Gleneagles – we’ve a resilient set-up.”

The force were less than pleased when Watford’s elected mayor, Dorothy Thornhill, warned that the town should be prepared for violent protests. “That was less than helpful,” said one officer. “But she’s revisited her comments. This is being blown up to be a bit bigger than it’s going to be.”

Nevertheless, specialist officers from the Metropolitan Police are being drafted in to assist a combined team from Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridge constabularies who are advanced in their preparations for Bilderberg 2013.

Five pitches belonging to the Fullerians Rugby Club, which backs on to The Grove estate, will be used as the police’s security headquarters for the three days of Bilderberg. “We’d no idea why the police wanted to hire the entire club,” said one Fullerians’ committee member. “But the season is finished, so we didn’t care. We took their money. But if we still had games left, then world government or not, we’d have said find somewhere else.”

Hertfordshire Police would make no comment on the potential security implications of discovering “giant lizards” in the grounds of The Grove. The throwaway line was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the belief of leading New Age conspiracy guru, David Icke. The former BBC presenter has written about the “Babylonian Brotherhood” of “inter-stellar reptilian humanoids” whose bloodline now includes US presidents, UK and Canadian prime ministers; with the House of Windsor described by Icke as “seriously reptilian”.

Icke has suggested that the Bilderberg Group, along with Illuminati, Chatham House, the IMF and the UN, all have a goal of world domination by micro-chipping the world’s population.

“Reporters” from some of the US’s most visited conspiracy websites, have already visited The Grove and claim the 2013 agenda will be focusing on “intellistreet” surveillance technology that can spy on populations 24/7; how the democratisation of 3-D printing of guns must be stopped; and how new strains of bird flu will be used to boost profits of leading drugs companies.

Although those who attend Bilderberg Group gatherings are sworn to secrecy, the Independent on Sunday spoke to a number of delegates who had attended some of the gatherings over the last four years. One, a UK politician, said: “It really is not that exciting, in fact it’s a bit run of the mill.” He compared it to the annual World Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Another delegate said that most of the three days was taken up by “intense plenary sessions that focused on major global issues – but a lot of the most valued contact centred on informal lunch chats”.

Although the tradition of confidentiality was mostly defended, another diplomatic delegate said the younger generation of Bilderberg guests felt different about how useful the closed-door approach had become and were uncomfortable with the policy of total media exclusion. He said : “I sympathise with those who tell us the confidentiality policy only encourages the conspiracy theorists. It does.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/watch-out-watford-here-comes-the-secretive-bilderberg-group-8626134.htr

[marektysis]

Technocracy And The Making of China

Find­ings & Fore­casts 05/22/2013
It was no mis­take of his­tory that China trans­formed from a Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship into a neo-authoritarian Technocracy.

In this regard, the influ­ence of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, its mem­bers and poli­cies on the world stage can hardly be quan­ti­fied. The Com­mis­sion, founded by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski in 1973, drew mem­ber­ship from North America, Europe and Japan. Out of approx­i­mately 300 mem­bers, only 86 were orig­i­nally from the United States, and yet they cor­po­rately devised and pushed poli­cies that suited the entire mem­ber­ship, and did so under a vir­tual cloak of invis­i­bility that lasts even into 2013.

Today, we reap the “ben­e­fits” of Tri­lat­eral manip­u­la­tion. The Euro­pean economy is trashed, Japan’s economy is still smol­dering from the mid-1990′s and the U.S. is much worse off today than in the late 1960′s. But, the polit­ical sys­tems of these coun­tries are not much better off than their economies. The fruit of decay in the United States is painfully evi­dent with a frac­tured and con­tentious politic that defies rec­on­cil­i­a­tion on even the most minor issues.

My friends at Coali­tion for a Pros­perous America and Economy in Crisis, among others, are working hard to offset messed-up trade poli­cies that put Amer­ican industry in the toilet over the last 30 years. As long as we have some freedom of speech left, orga­ni­za­tions like these are a wel­come voice, even if they are shouted down by the global free-trade cartel.

How­ever, people need to know where and how this all started, and who was respon­sible for it. Only by under­standing the gen­esis of glob­al­iza­tion can modern eco­nomics, pol­i­tics and social trends be under­stood. Can anyone say, “Pin the tail on the donkey?”

Thirty-five years ago, in the November 1978 and April 1979 issues of Tri­lat­eral Observer, Antony C. Sutton and myself wrote the fol­lowing analysis on China. We warned of the dis­as­trous effects that would result if these poli­cies moved for­ward, and we thor­oughly exposed the mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion who were almost solely respon­sible for China’s ascen­dent rise as a world power. That no one lis­tened at the time is self-evident, because nothing changed and no one resisted. (For clar­i­fi­ca­tion, names of Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers are in bold type.)

Tri­lat­eral China Policy
The policy of “nor­mal­iza­tion” of rela­tions with Com­mu­nist China – in effect a pro­gram to build China tech­no­log­i­cally into a super power – was imple­mented by Zbig­niew Brzezinski.

A high ranking Admin­is­tra­tion source is reported as saying: “This was Zbig’s baby more than anyone else’s.:

From out­side the White House (from a top policy maker who gen­er­ally sides with Cyrus Vance):

“Zbig is really riding high now. He had the cen­tral role behind the scenes, and he was all alone in the press play. I’m told the Pres­i­dent thinks Zbig did 99 per­cent of the work on China.”

More likely, how­ever, the China policy was for­mu­lated and imple­mented by a Tri­lat­er­alist troika: Jimmy Carter, Cyrus Vance and Brzezinski. And this policy was only a con­tin­u­a­tion of a policy begun under a “Repub­lican” Admin­is­tra­tion, that of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, another Trilateralist.

The heady effect that these vast policy making exer­cises have on these men, almost an infan­tile reac­tion, is well reported in the Wash­ington Post on Feb­ruary 8, 1979 with the head­line, China Policy: A Born-Again Brzezinski, describing how Brzezinski excit­edly describes his meeting with Teng [aka Deng Xiaoping]:

FEBURARY 1979 — The eyes sparkle with excite­ment even days later. The arms erupt in sudden sweeping ges­tures when he talks about it. And that causes the photos — about a dozen of them — to fly out of Zbig­niew Brzezinski’s hands and scatter over the floor of his office as he is speaking.

”Here’s Cy… and here I am… and there is Teng right between us…. “

Brzezinski is talking in that quick. clipped, excited style that is his way, and he is pointing at one photo that remains in his hand while he bends to scoop up the rest, talking all the while.

”It’s amazing, when you think of it. The leader of a bil­lion people — having dinner in my house just two hours after he arrived in this country!

”I mean, it really is rather amazing!”


Zbig­niew Brzezinski (left) and Deng Xiaoping (right) – 1979

Tri­lat­er­al­ists And The China Trade
An example of the influ­ence of a mere handful of Tri­lat­er­al­ists in cre­ating self-serving poli­cies many thou­sands of miles from the United States, can be illus­trated by a recent con­fer­ence in Japan.

In early Feb­ruary 1979 a sym­po­sium on the China Trade was spon­sored by the Japanese news­paper Nihon Keizai. The few speakers were mainly Tri­lat­er­al­ists, and the Tri­lat­erals agreed with one anothers’ pro­posals thus cre­ating a power bloc. Reporting in the U.S., the Wash­ington Post (Feb­ruary 9, 1979) cited only Tri­lat­er­alist speakers.

The key Japanese speaker was Tri­lat­er­alist Kiichiro Kitaura, Chairman of Numuru Secu­ri­ties Com­pany, Ltd.

What were Kitaura’s pro­posals? They were:

Inter­na­tion­alize the yen
Con­sul­ta­tions and coop­er­a­tion between Japanese and Amer­ican busi­nessmen on ways to pen­e­trate the Chi­nese market
“Blending” Japanese and Amer­ican technology
Of course, Kitaura thor­oughly agreed with fellow Tri­lat­er­alist Philip Trezise (from Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion) that Japan’s large cur­rent account sur­plus should be invested abroad and not in Japan. Trezise was backed by another Amer­ican Tri­lat­er­alist, Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, Inc., who, like Kitaura, urged more Japanese trade.

In brief, this impor­tant con­fer­ence was dom­i­nated by Tri­lat­er­alist thinking, and that was the only thinking reported, yet on the sur­face the Tri­lat­eral link is not apparent to the lay reader.

Tri­lat­eral Buildup of Com­mu­nist China
Tri­lat­erals pro­pose to build up Com­mu­nist China. Tri­lat­er­alist policy is clear cut. The West must aid the con­struc­tion of Com­mu­nist China: this is expressed in An Overview of East-West Rela­tions (Tri­angle Paper No. 15, p. 57) as follows:

“To grant China favor­able con­di­tions in eco­nomic rela­tions is def­i­nitely in the polit­ical interest of the West” adding “…there seems to exist suf­fi­cient ways for aiding China in accept­able forms with advanced civilian technology.”

Tri­angle paper 15 also adds:

“The sit­u­a­tion is dif­ferent… where arms sup­plies or advanced mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies are con­cerned, except for types of equip­ment that by their nature serve purely defen­sive pur­poses.” (p. 5

In fact, as we shall see later, Tri­lat­eral firms have exported even advanced mil­i­tary tech­nology to Com­mu­nist China.

Fur­ther, as part of one world, Tri­lat­er­al­ists see an ulti­mate merging of free enter­prise Taiwan with the Com­mu­nist main­land. Even more remark­able, the paper envis­ages that Com­mu­nist China will return to an expan­sionist aggres­sive policy under two conditions:

as Com­mu­nist China “gets stronger,”
if rela­tions with the Soviets are “normalized.”
The paper adds, “already now, the activity of Com­mu­nist Guer­rillas in Thai­land and Malaysia, linked to each other and looking to China, per­sists and even seem to be on the increase.” (page 59)

So far as Com­mu­nist China is con­cerned, we may con­clude that Trilaterals:

Want to build Com­mu­nist China into a mil­i­tary superpower,
wish to do this with the full and clear under­standing that China will likely resume its expan­sionist course in the Far East, and
are willing to sub­si­dize guer­rilla activ­i­ties sin Thai­land and Malaysia (much of the “civilian tech­nology” cur­rently being trans­ferred has use­ful­ness for guer­rilla warfare.)
Tech­noc­racy Recognized
The transfer of tech­nology was a key aspect of early Tri­lat­eral policy. Admit­tedly, their stated goal of “fos­tering a New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” was not fully under­stood in 1978 – 79. How­ever, by June 2001, at least one writer for Time Mag­a­zine (con­nected with the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, by the way) got it per­fectly in Made in China: The Revenge of the Nerds: China had been con­verted into a Tech­noc­racy! According to the author, Kaiser Kuo:

The nerds are run­ning the show in today’s China. In the twenty years since Deng Xiaoping’s [Ed. Note: count back­ward to 1978 – 79] reforms kicked in, the com­po­si­tion of the Chi­nese lead­er­ship has shifted markedly in favor of tech­nocrats. …It’s no exag­ger­a­tion to describe the cur­rent regime as a tech­noc­racy.

After the Maoist mad­ness abated and Deng Xiaoping inau­gu­rated the opening and reforms that began in late 1978, sci­en­tific and tech­nical intel­lec­tuals were among the first to be reha­bil­i­tated. Real­izing that they were the key to the Four Mod­ern­iza­tions embraced by the reformers, con­certed efforts were made to bring the “experts” back into the fold.

During the 1980s, tech­noc­racy as a con­cept was much talked about, espe­cially in the con­text of so-called “Neo-Authoritarianism” — the prin­ciple at the heart of the “Asian Devel­op­mental Model” that South Korea, Sin­ga­pore, and Taiwan had pur­sued with apparent suc­cess. The basic beliefs and assump­tions of the tech­nocrats were laid out quite plainly: Social and eco­nomic prob­lems were akin to engi­neering prob­lems and could be under­stood, addressed, and even­tu­ally solved as such.

The open hos­tility to reli­gion that Bei­jing exhibits at times — most notably in its obses­sive drive to stamp out the “evil cult” of Falun Gong — has pre-Marxist roots. Sci­en­tism under­lies the post-Mao tech­noc­racy, and it is the ortho­doxy against which here­sies are mea­sured. [Emphasis added]

Thus, during the 1980′s Tech­noc­racy (and sci­en­tism) took deep root not only in China, but also in South Korea, Sin­ga­pore and Taiwan. Sim­ilar gains were seen in Europe during the 1990′s and in the United States since 1973. The Tri­lat­eral Commission’s utopian “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” is Tech­noc­racy, and China was the first modern exper­i­ment and trans­for­ma­tion. And, why not China? Dealing with a single Com­mu­nist dic­tator was a lot easier than dealing with a par­lia­ment, con­gress or senate in more demo­c­ratic nations. The so-called “Neo-Authoriarianism” men­tioned above is ample evi­dence that the cham­pions of Tech­noc­racy knew full-well that it would be easier to trans­form an already author­i­tarian nation into neo-authoriarianism one; in fact, as far back as 1932, orig­inal mem­bers of Tech­noc­racy, Inc. in the U.S. called for a dic­ta­tor­ship in the U.S. in order to imple­ment Technocracy.

This is the rest of the story, of which I was a keen observer at the time. What I lacked in edu­ca­tion and aca­d­emic dis­ci­pline was amply shored up by the con­sum­mate researcher and scholar, Antony Sutton, who was a pro­fessor of eco­nomics and a research fellow at Stanford’s pres­ti­gious Hoover Insti­tu­tion for War Peace and Rev­o­lu­tion in Cal­i­fornia. Sutton is widely rec­og­nized as most detailed and pro­lific writer in the 20th cen­tury on the transfer of tech­nology from the West to the East.

http://www.augustforecast.com/2013/05/22/technocracy-and-the-making-of-china/

[marektysis]

Despite the May 20 ruling by Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, which overturned the original verdict on procedural grounds, the May 10 conviction of that country’s former head of state, General Efrain Rios Montt, for the genocide of Guatemala’s Mayan people, could be a defining event in modern history.

For now, the original trial will pick up where it stood on April 19, when the court had heard all of the prosecution’s evidence, and most of the defense’s. Guatemala’s unrepentant oligarchy, and the lawyers (and judges) who represent them, will do everything they can to derail final resolution and sentencing. But regardless of what happens next, and whether the eighty-year-old genocidaire ever goes to jail, the case reverberates: Guatemala’s steely Attorney General, Claudia Paz y Paz, is likely to move forward with more prosecutions, and next door in El Salvador, bells are beginning to toll for the generals who ran death squads and ordered massacres. Here at home, too, the case sends signals to both current and former U.S. policymakers, if we step back and look at our own history.

Many commentators have stressed that for the first time a living head of state has been convicted of genocide in his or her own country, yet another precedent in establishing the international rule of law regarding human rights and war crimes: first, that a crime against humanity can be prosecuted anywhere, regardless of national sovereignty or executive prerogative; second, that it is the degree of political responsibility for the crime which determines guilt, beyond the question of an individual’s proximity to, or actual participation in, its execution.

Rios Montt’s conviction builds upon the indictment of General Augusto Pinochet by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon in 1998, and prosecutions at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of Rwandan and Bosnian leaders, as well as the launch and increasing strength of the International Criminal Court. Even if endless appeals keep Rios Montt out of jail, his being forced to face his accusers as they described the extermination of entire villages is a new fact which no leader considering “scorched earth” tactics against a domestic insurgency, or even that leader’s foreign backers, can ignore. Indeed, putting the Pinochet and Rios Montt cases together as precedents suggests the potential for indictments not just in small countries like Guatemala or Chile, but perhaps Moscow, Paris, Beijing, or Washington, D.C.

Rios Montt’s conviction therefore has significant implications for the rest of the world including, most assuredly, us Americans. He was not convicted of personally rounding up Mayan children to be killed, or firing a weapon. His signature was not found on any document authorizing the extermination of the Ixil, the particular indigenous people whose genocide was charged. Rather, he was the intellectual author, the head of state approving military plans naming the Ixil as the internal enemy to be eliminated, in the same way that high-ranking German generals were found responsible for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg, although they personally avoided the killing fields in Byelorussia, and never signed orders specifying that three million Soviet POWs be starved to death. Like Rios Montt, they had authority and were therefore responsible.

Given the verdict in Guatemala, and the findings of the ICJ in a range of cases, why should the legal responsibility for mass murder stop at the water’s edge? That is the question we should be asking, as a people committed to human rights. If we don’t question ourselves, most assuredly others will, and an ill-timed event right on our own Hudson River puts this question front-and-center. On May 23, the Intrepid Museum here in New York City will give former secretary of state Henry Kissinger its annual Freedom Award “for his distinguished career defending the values of freedom and democracy.” Yet, if significant political responsibility for the mass murder of civilians is a crime under international law, Mr. Kissinger should face trial. Consider the following short list of countries in which he might be indicted, like General Pinochet, and perhaps convicted, like General Rios Montt:

In Laos and Cambodia, Mr. Kissinger, as national security adviser to President Nixon, was personally responsible for the systematic, high-altitude bombing of both those countries in 1969-1973, illegal under both U.S. and international law, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

In Vietnam, he oversaw the “Christmas bombing” of Hanoi and Haiphong in December 1972, aimed explicitly at the destruction of civilian facilities, with massive loss of life.

In Chile, he supervised the CIA in trying to block Salvador Allende’s election as president in 1970, and then undermining his government, employing assassination, terrorism, and sabotage, followed by all-out support for General Pinochet’s junta after the U.S.-backed coup on September 11, 1973, as it engaged in large-scale torture and extrajudicial murders of its opponents.

In East Timor, he and President Gerald Ford met with the Indonesian president, General Suharto, in December 1975 and sanctioned an invasion of the island, a former Portuguese colony, which resulted in the killing of an estimated 200,000 East Timorese, a third of the population;

Finally, in 1976, Secretary Kissinger met with the foreign minister for Argentina’s military junta six months after it began its “dirty war,” which led to the disappearance of an estimated 30,000 people, and told him “Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better. If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly." He also censured the U.S. ambassador, Robert Hill, for chiding the generals about their human rights abuses.

None of these allegations, or the evidence for them, largely from official U.S. records, is new. What is new is how the international community holds national leaders accountable for what was done under their watch. Given the United States’ overwhelming authority in international affairs, our support or the lack thereof has had decisive political weight, and it would be exceedingly naïve to pretend otherwise. No one has ever suggested that Secretary Kissinger, the famous practitioner of realpolitik, was in any way unworldly; he knew exactly what he was doing in the above instances. But history and the law have caught up with him (and with us); the moral or legal claim for leaders as being somehow above the law is in tatters. At the very least, it’s high time that we stop honoring Henry Kissinger.
http://www.hnn.us/articles/151994.html

[marektysis]

Richard Haas: Build Coalitions Where We Can (Audio)
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Highlights from Forum's interview with Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass. You can listen to the complete interview here: www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201305160900.

https://soundcloud.com/kqed/richard-haas-build-coalitions


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for educational purposes for limited groups
Marek Tysis

[marektysis]

Never tried not to pay taxes in Italy: Fiat Chairman
Reuters May 24, 2013, 05.02PM IST

BAGNIA: Fiat Chairman John Elkann, at the centre of a political controversy in Italy over plans by truck and tractor maker Fiat Industrial to move its fiscal residence to Britain, said his group had never tried not to pay taxes in Italy.

"This is just argument for argument's sake, it is not the reality. No one ever tried not to pay taxes in Italy," Elkann told reporters.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-05-24/news/39502174_1_fiat-industrial-italy-cnh

[marektysis]

BRITS BRACE FOR BILDERBERG
MAY 25, 2013 AFP

In Hertfordshire, England, in the town of Watford, the mayor and the local press are not giving the silent treatment to the upcoming Bilderberg Group meeting at the luxurious Grove Hotel, June 6-9. This advance, prominent publicity on Bilderberg is welcome news, considering that for decades the globalist cabal has been able to operate behind a veil of near-total secrecy.

Mayor Dorothy Thornhill is already speaking to the press about her concerns that Bilderberg protesters, intent on crashing the internationalists’ elite party, will soon be descending on her quiet town.

“I have my concerns about it, because it does attract people who can and do cause violence and disturbance,” Ms. Thornhill quavered to the Watford Observer.



It seems Ms. Thornhill got her knickers in a knot regarding the basic concept of who the purveyors of violence really are. Is it really the protesters, or could it be the power players who conduct these Bilderberg meetings to secretively and undemocratically lay out broad objectives, such as sustaining existing wars and planning new ones?

A UK blogger adroitly noted: “It is not the protesters that should be the main concern—it is the fact that the world’s political, financial and military elite meet in absolute secrecy, including their own [UK] elected officials.”

If the mayor seems a tad dim in her estimation of who the real troublemakers are, she still is noticeably uncomfortable that local taxpayers, to the extent that local resources are used to handle the Bilderberg group’s security needs, must pick up the tab. While the 140 or so major bankers, corporate captains, media moguls, policy wonks, royalty and other manicured mavens who come to these meetings do spend their own funds for private security, the locals are milked to pay for a heightened police presence over the weekend.

A trusted AMERICAN FREE PRESS source in the UK said police are mounting a sizable security operation, utilizing a nearby rugby club as their base of operations. This source added that there are persistent rumors of a “drill” being planned in that same area during the Bilderberg meeting, with several observers wondering just what the drill may include.

Meanwhile, the Hertfordshire Constabulary, while confirming the Bilderberg meeting will take place, has been hesitant to comment on operational details, nor has their financial cost to the public been divulged.

http://americanfreepress.net/?p=10558

[marektysis]

Belgium still calls the shots in Congo
BY DAVID CRONIN | MAY 26, 2013 - 10:50AM

Having lived in Belgium for 18 years, I figured it was time to start learning about the country’s colonial past. Or should I say present?

My research is at an early stage but it has led to an unavoidable conclusion: the Belgian elite still behaves as if it calls the shots in Congo.

The French-language magazine Marianne recently published the names of 10 men implicated in the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first Congolese prime minister after its independence. The list -- compiled by Lumumba’s family for a legal investigation opened in Brussels two years ago -- include Etienne Davignon, a former member of the European Commission and chairman of that “gentlemen’s club” for global capitalism, the Bilderberg Group. Davignon worked for the Belgian foreign ministry at the time of Lumumba’s murder and reportedly drew up a telegram recommending the prime minister’s “removal”.

Now in his 80s, Davignon remains a high-flying corporate lobbyist. His appearance on the Lumumba list prompted me to check if his commercial activities are in any way connected with Congo. The short answer is “yes, they are”.



Davignon’s profile on BusinessWeek states that he has held the posts of director and vice-president with Umicore. This mining company was previously known as Union Minière du Haut Katanga and began extracting Congo’s rich mineral resources in the early twentieth century. It has good political connections. Jean-Luc Dehaene, a long-serving Belgian prime minister, has served on Umicore’s board too.

Patrice Lumumba had the audacity to advocate that “the soil of our country should really benefit its children”. That was in June 1960. Fifty-three years after he made that pledge, the soil of Katanga province is being used for the benefit of Umicore.

There is a strong likelihood that my smartphone - or yours, if you have one - contains material from Congo. Umicore regularly buys cobalt from mines and suppliers in Katanga for batteries, computers, chemicals and cars. Umicore brags that it shares 50% of the global market in materials for lithium-ion batteries (a key power source for electronic equipment) with just one other firm.

Corporate Knights - an inset with The Washington Post that promotes “clean capitalism” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) - has put Umicore in its “100 most sustainable companies” table for 2013.

Only someone with a warped sense of humour could praise firms active in Congo’s mines for being “sustainable”. The International Monetary Fund - not a friend of the downtrodden - has calculated that the value of Congo’s mineral and oil exports come to $4.2 billion in 2009. Yet the Kinshasa government collected just $155 million in tax that year - 4% of the value of those sales.

This is in a country where - as the “Africa progress report” published by Kofi Annan recently notes - some of the world’s worst malnutrition can be found and seven million children are out of school. Congo is at the bottom of the United Nations “human development index”; it has also been plagued by a war, in which the question of who should control Katanga’s mines has played a significant part.

Far from having its reputation damaged by its involvement in Congo, Umicore’s advice is much in demand. The European Commission has appointed Umicore representative Christian Hagelüken to an “expert group” on ensuring access to raw materials for entrepreneurs. A 2010 paper drawn up by that group identified cobalt and tantalum from Congo as being among 14 “critical” minerals, underscoring their importance for the electronic industry. The paper urged that action be taken against “trade distortions” - code for measures designed to use resources for the benefit of a nation’s children (as Lumumba envisaged), rather than for MP3 players.

Needless to say, the “experts” have made all the right noises about “sustainability” and protecting the environment. If we ignore this spin, however, we will see that the determination of Europeans to control Congo has not changed.

When Belgium conceded in the 1950s that it would have to grant independence to Congo, it resolved to retain a grip on Katanga’s mines. It did so by supporting Lumumba’s rival, Moise Tshombe, as the province’s chief. Belgium tried to encourage Katanga’s secession from the rest of Congo.

Davignon’s reported call for the removal of Lumumba bears a chilling similarity to a message conveyed by Dwight D Eisenhower, the American president, to Allen Dulles, head of the CIA. In it, Eisenhower pleaded for Lumumba to be “eliminated”.

In 1884, America was the first country to recognise Belgium’s claim to the Congo. This set in train a process which wiped out at least half of the Congolese population by 1920, according to Jan Vansina, an anthropologist who specialises in Central Africa. This could mean that 10 million lives were destroyed during the reign of Leopold II - the Belgian king who colonised the Congo - and the 10 years after his death.

David Van Reybrouck’s recently published history of Congo traces how the agri-food giant Unilever had its origins in the exploitation of Congolese palm oil. Vast fortunes have been amassed for wily businessmen at the expense of the Congolese people. Despite apologising for its role in Lumumba’s murder a decade ago, Belgium has never atoned for the suffering it inflicted on the Congolese. One explanation for why it has never atoned is that some affluent Belgians could be seen as doing nicely from the ongoing pillage of Congo’s resources.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/belgium-still-calls-shots-congo

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for education purposes for limited groups

[marektysis]

This year’s annual Bilderberg conference is rapidly approaching – where the world’s political and business elite meet in private to discuss their agenda which will determine future policies that govern global affairs.

Some aspects of this year’s Bilderberg agenda are gradually coming into view, and have the potential for directly affecting not only big multinationals like Google, but every business on the planet.

The secret gathering has been gradually forced into public view in recent years, and the run-up to Bilderberg 2013 has been one of great anticipation and not without its share of news. First came the false start from the alternative media regarding the meeting’s actual location, with many claiming it would be held again at the Westfield Marriot in Chantilly, Virginia.

Two months after, the announcement arrived that the meeting would take place 30 minutes north of London, at the Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire, England, and small media circus is expected the year following the announcement that a ‘Bilderberg Fringe’ festival is being organized adjacent to the venue – an event certain to attract hundreds, if not thousands of revelers, press and alternative media personalities. Add to this the news that long time Bilderberg sleuth and American Free Press correspondent, Jim Tucker had passed away on April 24th. Few people would even know the Bilderberg meetings ever took place if not for 30 years of digging and reporting by veteran journalist Tucker.

Beyond all the fanfare, however, the central question still remains: what items will be on the agenda at this year’s ultra-secret transatlantic steering committee? The answer to this question may be hidden in plain site.

Google is currently engaged in a battle over unpaid taxes in the UK, and which has led political commentators to now call for a new system of global taxation. Not surprisingly, this has become the chief topic of discussion at a series of global summits taking place during May and June.

Here’s how this major issue rose out of the Google debate, and how it will be folded into Bilderberg’s 2013 agenda, and later to the G8 Summit shortly thereafter…

Google’s Big Tent: ‘A Digital-Davos’

This past week witnessed another major global conference held at the very same Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire. The parallels to Bilderberg are striking – they share the same guests, the same venue, observe similar codes on conduct, and no doubt have similar items on their agenda. Google’s ‘Zeitgeist’ Global Summit, or “Big Tent” event, is effectively the internet’s version of a ‘Digital Davos’, where ‘the best and the brightest’ are invited to hear the latest ‘big ideas’, with debates and keynote speeches from the likes of Bill Clinton (Bilderberg member), UK Chancellor George Osborne, UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and other celebrities including Stephen Hawking.

It’s worth pointing out here that both Osborne and Miliband have played the role of Google’s adversary in public during their corporation tax row, yet they are the corporation’s VIP guests in private.

Beyond the high profile talks and entertainment, there were of course, some serious discussion about ‘big ideas’ taking place under the big tent. This year’s event also required participants to observe ‘Chatham House Rules’, meaning key conversations should be held in the strictest of confidence and not be leaked to the outside world. As with Bilderberg, Google’s Big Tent discusses serious global changes that affect present and future generations – all behind closed doors.

Other persons of note at this year’s Google retreat were former US attorney general and Bush legal brain, Alberto Gonzales, alongside former Secretary of State Hillary ‘innovation’ adviser, Alec Ross, key Putin advisor Arkady Dvorkovich, and Swedish foreign affairs minister, Carl Bildt (Bilderberg attendee 2006-2012). The profile of Google and Bilderberg guests has seen an incredible overlap in recent years, which is a testament to the corporation’s own stated ambition to achieve a global dominion, not only over its marketplace, but over cultural and political life as well. The reality in 2013 is that Google is poised to manage nearly every aspect of our lives – our communications, our work, our social life and even our history.

Bilderberg’s Digital Tycoons

As Google’s global summit runs smoothly into Bilderberg this year, so have the two meeting agendas. Recent years have seen an increase in the influx of digital tycoons present at Bilderberg. Alongside software moguls like Craig Mundie, Head of Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft (Bilderberg attendee 2006-2012), and Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Bilderberg attendee 2007-2011), the social media kingpins have also moved in to occupy key positions in Bilderberg’s top steering committees.

A key player in amongst them is Peter Thiel (left), head of Clarium Capital, the digital investment house that provided the financial clout which allowed for online ventures like Paypal, Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster to dominate their digital marketplaces. Thiel was promoted to Bilderberg committee head in 20ll and has emerged as a key player not only in the online industries, but also as an influencer in US political spheres, gaining attention recently as a prominent backer of Kentucky’s Republican junior Senator Rand Paul.

New global ‘Google Tax’ already in the works

The convergence of the Google Summit, its tax battle, and Bilderberg 2013 may seem innocent enough on its surface, but the timing is no mere coincidence. UK leadership have whipped up a frenzy in the media over Google’s alleged tax sins, leaving the public clamouring for a solution. The words “never let a good crisis go to waste” certainly chime in well here.

Two weeks ago, a major UK clash erupted between No. 10 Downing Street and Google over the issue of corporate tax evasion. Google’s Matt Brittin was grilled by the UK’s Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and its chair Margaret Hodge, who accused Google “doing evil” by using an elaborate array of offshore entities in a “smoke and mirrors” financial maze designed to avoid paying any significant tax into UK coffers. Both PM David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne also came out loudly in public accusing Google of being ‘immoral’. Google is said to have only chipped in 6 million GBP in 2011 out of its 3 billion GBP turnover in that same year. Google’s Peter Baron claims its in full compliance with UK law, issuing the public statement last week that, “None of the allegations put to us change the fact that Google pays the corporate tax due on its UK activities and complies fully with UK law.”

Will Google throw in the towel and submit to a British tax resolution?

The fact of matter is Google is powerful and with a net worth that trumps some countries. These days much of the world’s commerce runs through Google in some way, and their brand recognition and money buys influence in Britain, and everywhere else it seems. So it’s doubtful that any British politico could strong-arm Google. Behind the scenes both Google and Britain’s political elite share a place at central planning’s top round table – as members of the Bilderberg Group and that’s where the really ‘big ideas’ are not just discussed, but actually transmitted into policy.

As the public feud between Google and Downing Street takes centre stage, backstage both UK Chancellor George Osborne and Google CEO Eric Schmidt – both committed fellow Bilderberg members, are said to have met in private at the Google event, and are poised to do so again at Bilderberg 2013. Both have attended the annual meeting almost continuously since 2006.


George Osborne: Attacks Google in public, but VIP guest and fellow Bilderberger to Google CEO Schmidt in private.

So this apparent Punch ‘n Judy match between Google and Downing Street appears just three weeks before this year’s Bilderberg summit, and four weeks before the G8, and suddenly the UK government and media outlets have become infested with a the new talking point: “we need for a new ‘global profit tax’.

While addressing the Google tax loophole, the UK’s Independent newspaper led by its liberal-leaning economics editor Ben Chu, goes on to essentially lay-out what is likely to be at the top of the agenda at Bilderberg 2013:

“The cascade of revelations in recent months showing multinational companies doing a huge amount of business here and yet paying virtually no corporation tax has provoked widespread public demands for something to be done.

National governments could and should try to put a stop to this egregious “profit shifting” on their own. But a unilateral approach is plainly second best.

The natural solution is to secure an agreement by all the world’s governments to tax the profits of multinational firms collectively and to divide up the revenues fairly between them. This division could be based on the amount of business done by the multinational in their various territories as revealed by their turnover and number of employees.”

Global tax means global government

So is Google supplying the Trojan horse needed to implement a global taxation system that many have been warning about for so many years? Maybe.

Will Bilderberg’s global elite use this perfect crisis moment as a pretext to build the framework for global taxation? Most likely.

If the idea passes through Bilderberg in June, will it then be rubber stamped later at the G8? Highly likely.

Although happy to float such a revolutionary idea in the media in advance of back-to-back Google and Bilderberg summits at the Grove Hotel, and later at the G8, one thing which global taxation advocates fail to mention here is that if you institute a global taxation system then you would then need a global government to administrate it. Yes, you heard that right: global taxation = global government.

It would be naive to think that any tax could be levied without a government standing behind it. That is, after all, part of the definition of a tax. Campaigners will deny it exists, but the reality is that global governing bodies have already been put into place long ago.

UK Column Editor Mike Robinson explains, “I think that the embryonic global institutions are already in place, and we’re going to see them being given more and more real ‘jobs’ to do as time goes on, and collecting corporation tax is clearly going to be one of those”.

History can certainly prove one thing: that the world’s wealthiest individuals corporations have consistently exploited all international tax loopholes for years now. Whatever commentators like Ben Chu and others are proposing will obviously be much easier to enforce on small to medium size businesses, as well as individual traders – all of whom have significantly less political leverage (and no invitations to Bilderberg) than the Googles and Facebooks of the world.

Post-Bilderberg: G8 Summit

Following the ratification of Bilderberg’s 2013 agenda in Watford on June 6–9th, the next step is normally to disseminate this same agenda on to the G8 heads of state. Conveniently, this year’s G8 summit will held June 17-18 at the Lough Erne golf resort in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. David Cameron and George Osborne’s new plan for Google is already expected to be very high on the agenda at the G8 meeting, where world leaders including Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin will be in attendance. Henceforth, ahead of the G8, the UK government is expected to play their key role in promoting the new global tax system, by publically advocating, “new strong international standards to make sure that global companies pay the tax they owe.”

Coincidentally, this year’s G8 in Northern Ireland will be the biggest police operation in country’s history (and that’s saying a lot), with an estimated 8,000 officers from the surrounding counties, and from as far as England and Wales, all drafted in to secure the area for what many now believe has essentially become a global government operations meeting in all but name.

Other recent attempts at a global tax

The financial component of this global tax and government equation is actually already in place, and that is the World Bank. The first administrative working model for a global taxation structure was originally unveiled in 2009 at the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Delegates at that event floated their plan for a global carbon tax that would be collected and then deposited into a slush fund which was to be administered by the World Bank. There plan also entailed the poorer, developing nations footing most of the bill for this operation, while the wealthier nations would receive a free pass. The secret plan was thwarted at the last minute thanks to the infamous Danish Text Leak, which were serialized in the Guardian newspaper at the time.

Although popular in socialist circles, few have dared reveal the true picture of a global tax regime for fear of triggering a public backlash. Another such tax proposals have been pushed into the public sphere through the Occupy Movement in 2011, with called for a global tax on financial transactions, or a global “Robin Hood Tax”. As was the case in Copenhagen two years earlier, proponents called for a tax structure without borders, yet few dared mention who would be in charge of administering and distributing the revenues. Such plans pose the very real danger of further centralizing power into the international banking community who would be asked to handle and perhaps hypothecate on these enormous slush funds.

Which brings us back to this latest global ‘google tax’ proposal, which ultimately begs the question: when will their global government structure be unveiled?

Serving the global collective

Plans for erecting an entirely new global tax system should worry anyone who values the concept of national sovereignty because any solution that entails the collection of tax by way of elite international “collective” of nations, and where “revenues are to divided up fairly between them” is suggesting a form of global collectivism, or communism. This is also the fundamental problem with EU plans to levy new taxes on member nations – for any citizen it’s simply another master to serve.

Shocking as that may be, these issues are exactly what is being discussed behind closed doors at each of these global summits taking place in May and June of 2013.

What’s worse, is that this entire construct could be ushered in without any vote being cast by an citizen in the individual countries – which is about as undemocratic as it gets. This remains one of the fundamental flaws at the heart of the ultra-liberal utopian ideal which is global government.

More on :
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bilderberg-google-and-the-g8-new-global-tax-regime-already-in-the-works/5336719

[marektysis]

Global Elite Fears: Currency Wars and Deflation



Find­ings & Fore­casts 05/29/2013
Sys­temic eco­nomic decline begets credit con­trac­tion, leading to defla­tion, cur­rency wars and finally, phys­ical war.

In 2002, one noted econ­o­mist wrote “Ignore the ghost of defla­tion.” Another stated that “Defla­tion is an overblown worry.”

On November 21, 2002, then-Fed Gov­ernor Ben Bernanke spoke to the National Econ­o­mists Club in Wash­ington, D.C. about “Defla­tion: Making Sure ‘It’ Doesn’t Happen Here. He started with this premise: “With infla­tion rates now quite low in the United States, how­ever, some have expressed con­cern that we may soon face a new problem – the danger of defla­tion, or falling prices.”

Now, of all people, Bernanke knew full well that the mea­sure of defla­tion is not falling prices, but rather the con­trac­tion of overall credit which may or may not prompt falling prices. The rest of his speech argued against falling prices but did little to address credit contraction.

Nev­er­the­less, he gave two prin­cipal rea­sons on why the U.S. would not expe­ri­ence defla­tion in coming years:

The first was the “resilience and struc­tural sta­bility” of the U.S. economy itself.
The second was the Fed­eral Reserve System itself.
With an apparent atti­tude of over­con­fi­dence, Bernanke then stated,

“I am con­fi­dent that the Fed would take what­ever means nec­es­sary to pre­vent sig­nif­i­cant defla­tion in the United States and, more­over, that the U.S. cen­tral bank, in coop­er­a­tion with other parts of the gov­ern­ment as needed, has suf­fi­cient policy instru­ments to ensure that any defla­tion that might occur would be both mild and brief.

“…Thus, as I have stressed already, pre­ven­tion of defla­tion remains prefer­able to having to cure it. If we do fall into defla­tion, how­ever, we can take com­fort that the logic of the printing press example must assert itself, and suf­fi­cient injec­tions of money will ulti­mately always reverse a defla­tion.” [emphasis added]

In 2013, we can look back over the last 11 years to see how accu­rate Bernanke’s analysis was. The Fed’s easy credit poli­cies cre­ated the biggest housing bubble and sub­se­quent bursting since the Great Depres­sion of the 1930′s. It pushed its internal interest rates to near-zero, pumped tril­lions of dol­lars of liq­uidity into the banking system. Even though some eco­nomic improve­ment has been seen in the last three years (in cer­tain sec­tors, at least), our overall economy has sta­tis­ti­cally made very little progress.

Where has all of the Fed’s new money gone?


In the above chart, Zero Hedge shows the dis­tri­b­u­tion of QE money landing in small banks (blue), large U.S. banks (red) and for­eign banks (yellow). (The chart can be enlarged for better viewing) The cor­re­la­tion here is 100 per­cent! For all those who are shaking their fist at domestic banks like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Cit­i­group, etc., they would be shocked to see that con­sid­er­able more didn’t ben­efit U.S. banks at all!

So, let me ask the ques­tion: Has Bernanke’s clan­des­tine bailout of (pri­marily) Euro­pean banks saved Europe? The answer, of course, is “No.” Europe is offi­cially in reces­sion again, with sev­eral coun­tries still on the verge of eco­nomic col­lapse and depression.

Thus, the tools that Bernanke thought the Fed had, were illu­sory. For all the bluster, jaw­boning and arm-twisting, the Fed has proven impo­tent on all levels of oper­a­tion. The defla­tion scare orig­i­nally pro­duced because of Japan during the 1990′s con­tinues unabated, and the global eco­nomic system is mea­sur­ably weaker and dys­func­tional today than in 2002.

Cur­rency Wars
Why would I bother to even bring this up? I believe these events are forcing the global elite to change tac­tics, if not strategy, to achieve their beloved “New World Order.” They are extremely wor­ried that market forces are stronger than their ability to manip­u­late, and that the end result could set them back by sev­eral decades.

What now con­cerns the elite the most is the expan­sion of cur­rency wars which have been enabled and exac­er­bated by dys­func­tional cap­ital flows as described above. His­tor­i­cally, cur­rency wars are the out­come of a shrinking economy where nation-states must com­pete for a dwin­dling share of the global economy. Fur­ther­more, cur­rency wars invari­ably pre­cede real wars, as was the case in both WWI and WWII. This is not lost on the global elite.

As the dollar has been ral­lying sharply higher in recent weeks, a host of arti­cles has appeared heralding the death of the dollar. One writer recently stated, “For years now, the col­lapse of the dollar has been in the cards.” He doesn’t say who owns the cards or who the dealer is. CNBC asks today, “Is the Dollar Dying? Why US Cur­rency is in Danger:” “The U.S dollar is shrinking as a per­centage of the world’s cur­rency supply, raising con­cerns that the green­back is about to see its long run as the world’s pre­mier denom­i­na­tion come to an end.“

Let me set the record straight. The dollar is not dying. How­ever, the reason it is rising in value has nothing to do with some inherent good­ness in the U.S. economy or the color green. Rather, it has to do with cur­rency wars where other nations are trying to devalue their own cur­ren­cies at the expense of the dollar. They go down, we go up. All of the Fed’s efforts to drive the dollar down (Yes, the Fed would be a cur­rency manip­u­lator too) have failed, pri­marily because the Fed is not greater than the com­bined dozens of nations who des­per­ately want to devalue.

This leads us to examine a recent lec­ture by C. Fred Berg­sten, senior fellow and director emer­itus of the Peterson Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics. Berg­sten was an orig­inal founding member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, and one of the prin­cipal early archi­tects of the “New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order” that it espoused. Bergsten’s major con­cern is revealed in his paper’s title – “Cur­rency Wars, The Economy of the United States And Reform Of The Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary System.” He con­cludes his lengthy talk by stating,

“I would like to close with a his­tor­ical foot­note from over 40 years ago that bears some resem­blance to where we stand today. Four days after the Nixon shocks of August 1971, their archi­tect John Con­nally asked four out­siders (I had left the gov­ern­ment a few months ear­lier) to spend most of a day with him and his top team, led by Paul Vol­cker, at the Trea­sury. He began by saying “you know what we have done, please tell us what we should do next” – at which point I really began to worry! He then per­son­ally led us through six hours of intense dis­cus­sion, during which I stressed the oppor­tu­ni­ties they had cre­ated for sys­temic reform – espe­cially moving to flex­ible exchange rates. It became increas­ingly clear that Con­nally did not have sys­temic goals in mind, how­ever, and he finally brought the ses­sion to a close with the fol­lowing state­ment: “I appre­ciate the advice from you gen­tlemen and want to share my own phi­los­ophy with you before we break up: the for­eigners are out to screw us and our job is to screw them first. Thank you and goodbye.”

“Having spent most of the pre­vious three years as Henry Kissinger’s deputy for for­eign eco­nomic policy, I thought I was fairly sophis­ti­cated about the ways of both Wash­ington and the world – but even I was stunned by Connally’s xeno­phobia (which I imme­di­ately con­veyed to Kissinger, who had not been aware of it, but that is another story). The rel­e­vance to today is of course that some of the for­eigners have again been screwing the United States (and much of the world), to use Connally’s col­orful ter­mi­nology. The choice, now as then, is whether to respond nation­al­is­ti­cally and uni­lat­er­ally or sys­tem­i­cally and mul­ti­lat­er­ally – or, as is most likely, a com­bi­na­tion of the two, hope­fully with a clear strategic deci­sion to use national actions to achieve global reform. Our goal must be to start resolving these cru­cial prob­lems by reforming the global system deci­sively before the arrival of the next John Connally.

“Addressing another vital issue of US national interest in which China also plays a cen­tral role, cyber­se­cu­rity, Pres­i­dent Obama used these words in his State of the Union mes­sage in Feb­ruary: “We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing!” I would submit that we should adopt the same atti­tude toward wide­spread cur­rency manip­u­la­tion, which vio­lates the most basic pre­cepts of the inter­na­tional eco­nomic system while destroying growth and jobs in our own economy and in numerous other coun­tries. The time for action has clearly come. It is time to declare war on the cur­rency wars. [emphasis added] [Ed. Note: Kissinger and Vol­cker ware also mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission]

The inten­sity of Bergsten’s con­cern is easily detected throughout his paper, but the derailing of his glob­alist agenda is the major point. Bergsten’s orig­inal and naive design for “flex­ible exchange rates” is being scut­tled by greedy, selfish and self-centered for­eigners who have imple­mented cur­rency wars against each other and the United States.

It is ironic that orig­inal mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion had no problem pil­laging and plun­dering the world back in 1973, but when they get “screwed” (his word, not mine) by “some of the for­eigners” in 2013, it’s cause for national alarm. It is also ironic that while mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion eschewed the Con­sti­tu­tion, the nation-state and national sov­er­eignty back then, they look to the same nation-state today for relief.

A large part of the global elite’s para­noia stems from their fear of global and uncon­trolled war. Along the lines of Schumpeter’s theory of Cre­ative Destruc­tion, regional and local con­flicts are con­trol­lable – and thus prof­itable – but unre­strained war ends up destroying the means of production.

Few, if any, Amer­i­cans would wish for war, but we should realize that if cur­rency wars are not con­tained, phys­ical con­flict will follow. While it may appear that we are lined with the global elite on cur­rency wars, our motives could not be fur­ther apart. We seek freedom and lib­erty: They seek global domination.
http://www.augustforecast.com/2013/05/29/global-elite-fears-currency-wars-and-deflation/
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[marektysis]

29 May 2013

Which movers and shakers will attend next month’s Bilderberg Group annual conference in Britain? It’s taking place in Watford, hardly exotic but handy from London by train. Kenneth Clarke and Lord Mandelson are expected, although the organisers are always secretive.

As a rule the event is favoured by former stars or future ones, not current ones — they are always too busy. David Cameron was there in 2008 but he’s not expected this time and, given Bilderberg’s pro- European sympathies, it would perhaps be prudent for him to keep his distance. But what about Boris? “He’s on holiday with his family that week,” says a spokesman for City Hall. How about a holiday in Watford then, Mr Mayor?

Yesterday the Bilderberg Group purportedly sent out a press release. However, it turned out to be a stunt organised by Hannah Borno, an activist who works for Occupy London and is holding an alternative Bilderberg Fringe festival.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/stop-giggling-at-the-back-former-and-future-world-leaders-to-gather-in-watford-8635827.html

[marektysis]

Bilderberg Fringe organisers apply for Temporary Events Notice for Cassiobury Park event

11:20am Wednesday 29th May 2013 in News By Ben Endley, Senior reporter


The council confirmed a new application to host an event in Cassiobury Park was received on May 28.
The main protest against the Bilderberg group meeting next month is likely to be held in Cassiobury Park, the Watford Observer can reveal.

Organisers of the Bilderberg Fringe have applied for a Temporary Events Notice (TEN) to hold an event in the town-centre park from June 7 to June 9.

The TEN application is for a "Family-oriented festival featuring entertainment including bands, DJs, speakers, public debate, theatre and art. Music genres are folk, jazz, world music and reggae.”

The application also seeks permission to sell food, cider and ale (but no spirits) until 2am and play amplified music until 11pm.


A previous application to host a "family event" in a field off Hempstead Road was withdrawn the day before it was due to be considered by Watford Borough Council.

The council confirmed a new application to host an event in Cassiobury Park was received on May 28 and is being considered.

It is understood Cassiobury Park was chosen by organisers following a recommendation from Herts police.

Thousands of activists are expected to descend on Watford to protest the secretive and controversial meeting of politicians, billionaire business leaders, media moguls and royals at the The Grove hotel.

This is the first time in 15 years the annual meeting has been held in the UK and cabinet minister Ken Clarke, billionaire PayPal owner Peter Thiel and Henri de Castries, the Chairman and CEO of AXA, are expected to be among the attendees.

The Bilderberg Welcoming Committee, which is organising events around the meeting, says demonstrators will use the event to call for "transparency in politics; and those for corporations and banks responsible to be held properly accountable for tax avoidance, the LIBOR fraud and misselling".

Hannah Borno, spokesman for the group, said: "Cassiobury Park was chosen because of its proximity to The Grove and the fact it would cause the minimum disruption to nearby residents."

http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/10449158.Bilderberg_protestors_apply_to_hold_event_in_Cassiobury_Park/

[marektysis]

Police ask residents living near The Grove hotel to show photo ID during Bilderberg meeting

9:00am Thursday 30th May 2013 in News By Ben Endley, Senior reporter


Residents asked to show photo ID during Bilderberg meeting
Residents living close to the Grove Hotel will have to show their passport to police officers before they can get to their homes during the upcoming Bilderberg Group meeting.

The controversial meeting will see around 150 politicians, academics, business leaders and royals descend on the Watford hotel for a secret three-day conference from June 6 to June 9.

The event is expected to attract hundreds or even thousands of protestors to the area and has prompted what appears to be an unprecedented security operation by Hertfordshire Constabulary.



With less than two weeks to go until the start of the meeting, the Watford Observer can reveal details of the police ring of steel that will surround the hotel between 6am on Thursday, June 6 and 2pm on Sunday, June 9.

Police will operate round-the-clock checkpoints on roads around the hotel including Grove Mill Lane which will be closed to all non-residential traffic for the duration of the meeting, those living on the road will be required to provide a passport, drivers licence or other form of ID.

A leaflet handed to residents shows that all footpaths and public rights of way across the land will also be suspended for the duration of the security operation.

Additionally, there will be a "proportionate police presence at all times", no pedestrian access along Hempstead Road or Langleybury Lane from the M25 spur.

Access to the rear of the hotel from Langleybury Lane will also be restricted with diversions in place.

Unsurprisingly, the additional security has caused consternation amongst residents.

"I think it’s totally outrageous and it is infringing my civil liberties," said Kevin Butcher, a Grove Mill Lane resident.

"We have never previously been asked for photo ID during any event at The Grove. We have no idea what is happening with visitors and whether they will be allowed in.

"I think people should be protesting the Bilderberg group when they come here.

"They are coming here to have a meeting which is not going to be in any way documented. We as the public should be allowed to know what is being decided."

Another resident, who asked not to be named, said: "It is a bit of an imposition but on the other hand there are going to be politicians here from all around the world so there needs to be a level of security."

Other residents were more willing to accept the additional security. Mike Yule, a consultant assessor also from Grove Mill Lane added: "They are going to close the road just to residents around the whole loop.

"I don’t see it as a problem, it is very reassuring. The officers came around last week and said their job is to stop people getting into the site, if they hadn’t come round perhaps we would be more concerned."

Although residents have been left with the impression that providing identification will be mandatory during the meeting, a Hertfordshire Constabulary spokesman told the Watford Observer the force was only advising residents to take photo ID with them and those who do not present identification would not be prevented from entering their homes.

Police are arranging a meeting for residents living in old Hempstead Road to explain how the arrival of the Bilderberg group will affect them.


The protesters are wholly to blame for this inconvenience and any other that may occur whilst they are around, the police are doing what is right in the circumstances.

The protest is based on huge made up assumptions not actual facts and protests against similar things have been regularly hijacked in recent times by those who want to be violent. Putting it on the line, its pathetic that people are protesting without any facts and its pathetic that there are small numbers of people who are willing to turn up and drag others into causing large amounts of damage and mayhem.

At the very least the protest is going to cause inconvenience to many people in Watford, at worst it could take weeks for damage caused to be fixed and either way it isnt going to make a jot of difference to these attenind these meetings and its made all the worse that the reasons for the protest against them is wholly made up!

http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/10448734.Police_ask_residents_to_show_photo_ID_during_Bilderberg_meeting/

[marektysis]

Fri May 31, 2013 1:35PM GMT

British taxpayers could pay millions of pounds for security costs of next week's meeting of the secretive Bilderberg Group in Watford, Herfordshire, England.


The meeting of royalty, business chiefs, and prime ministers is planned to take place in Britain for the first time since 1998, The Telegraph reported.

The event has previously sparked anti-capitalist demonstrations in other locations around the world.

Hertfordshire Police are in talks with the UK’s Home Office about a grant for "unexpected or exceptional costs" to cover security for the event, which is expected to be held at the Grove Hotel in Watford on 6-9 June.

The total cost of providing security for the meeting, whose organizers include Tory Cabinet minister Ken Clarke, is estimated to reach more than one percent of the police force's overall spend or about £1.8 million.

The invitation-only Bilderberg meetings are attended by some 140 people of influence from North America and Europe.

In 1954, the most powerful men in the world met for the first time under the auspices of the Dutch royal crown and the Rockefeller family at the luxurious Hotel Bilderberg in the small Dutch town of Oosterbeek.


They decided to meet once every year to exchange ideas and analyze international affairs. Since then, they have gathered yearly in a luxurious hotel somewhere in the world to debate the future of the world
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/31/306441/bilderberg-policing-could-cost-millions/

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Have a look on the pretty comments under the article: people are not happy with 'ces gens là '.( this kind of people- french term used with disdain )