statism watch

Lee Rogers, www.roguegovernment.com
June 9, 2008

Fresh off of the 2008 Bilderberg Meeting, it looks as if New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner is set to push a new agenda in the world of central banking that was likely decided upon at Bilderberg. Geithner yesterday, wrote an article in the Financial Times calling for a global regulatory banking framework. In addition, Geithner called for the Federal Reserve to have an instrumental role in this new framework.

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In his Financial Times article, Geithner wrote the following:

The institutions that play a central role in money and funding markets – including the main globally active banks and investment banks – need to operate under a unified framework that provides a stronger form of consolidated supervision, with appropriate requirements for capital and liquidity. To complement this, we need to put in place a stronger framework of oversight authority over the critical parts of the payments system – not just the established payments, clearing and settlements systems, but the infrastructure that underpins the decentralised over-the-counter markets.

Because of its primary responsibility for the stability of the overall financial system, the Federal Reserve should play a central role in such a framework, working closely with supervisors in the US and in other countries. At present the Fed has broad responsibility for financial stability not matched by direct authority and the consequences of the actions we have taken in this crisis make it more important that we close that gap.

Finally, we need a stronger capacity to respond to crises. The Fed has put in place a number of innovative new facilities that have helped ease liquidity strains. We plan to leave these in place until conditions in money and credit markets have improved substantially.

What Geithner is proposing is entirely insane but this is the same tactic that the financial elites used to establish the Federal Reserve back in 1913. They created a crisis and said that the crisis happened because they didn’t have enough power to prevent it. The Panic of 1907 which was used to justify the passage of the Federal Reserve Act was actually caused by JP Morgan and assorted elite financial interests. They did this so they could use the crisis as an excuse to centralize their control and power over the banking system. Through the Federal Reserve, banks were finally consolidated under its umbrella through the Great Depression which was deliberately caused by the tight monetary policies implemented by the central bank. Throughout the 1920s money was made plentiful, but following the stock market crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve tightened the money supply which put hundreds of community banks out of business and allowed the central bankers to consolidate control over the nation’s banking system.

Full Story | See Also: Secretive Bilderberg Group Reverses Policy, Releases Press Release and Attendance List | Spooks Infest Marriott Hotel As Bilderberg Begins | They Rule the World | Fed eyes Nordic-style nationalisation of US banks | Treasury’s Plan Would Give Fed Wide New Power | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

Michael Geist, The Toronto Star
Jun 09, 2008

Last week, Canadian negotiators huddled with representatives from the United States, Europe and Japan at the U.S. Mission in Geneva to negotiate the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

The ACTA, shrouded in secrecy until a leaked summary of the agreement appeared on the Internet last month, has sparked widespread opposition as Canadians worry about the prospect of a trade deal that could lead to invasive searches of personal computers and increased surveillance of online activities.

While documents obtained under the Access to Information Act reveal internal ACTA discussions as early as 2006, the trade negotiations only came to the Canadian public’s attention last fall when International Trade Minister David Emerson revealed the government’s intention to participate in the negotiations.

Since the announcement, the Canadian government has been among the most secretive of all ACTA negotiating partners. The Department of Foreign Affairs conducted a public consultation on the treaty in April; however, the government revealed little about either the timing or substance of the agreement. By comparison, Australia launched a public consultation on the treaty before committing to participate in the ACTA talks.

Fears about the ACTA have spilled into the political arena as NDP MP Charlie Angus last week voiced concerns about its effects during Question Period in the House of Commons and Toronto-area Liberal MP Bob Rae blogged that it “augurs a ridiculously intrusive national and international apparatus to police practices that are as common as eating and breathing.”

With another round of talks set for next month in Japan, the government should use the opportunity to pressure its trading partners to lift the veil of ACTA secrecy. Trade negotiators may prefer to remain outside of the spotlight, yet greater transparency is desperately needed.

Public disclosure of the draft documents might put an end to fears about iPod-searching border guards by clarifying the true intent of the treaty. Moreover, it could focus attention on other key concerns, including greater Internet service provider filtering of content, heightened liability for websites that link to allegedly infringing content and diminished privacy for Internet users.

Full Story | See Also: Revamped copyright law targets electronic devices

Lorne Gunter, National Post
June 09, 2008

Last Monday, the National Post reported on a fascinating paper being delivered to the 9,000-delegate Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Vancouver.

Apparently, the political happiness of we who live in Western liberal democracies is flat-lining — or even declining — despite all the choice and affluence we enjoy.

William Gorton, author of the paper Too Much of a Good Thing: Freedom, Individualism, Autonomy and the Decline of Happiness in Liberal Democracies postulated that “the causes of this stagnation or decline may be attributable, directly or indirectly, to core values of liberalism — namely freedom of choice, autonomy and individualism.”

“There’s the assumption that human beings make the best choices for how to lead a happy life,” noted the professor from Alma College in Michigan. And yet “we haven’t seen increases in happiness that you would expect to see. There’s been a big spike in depression in all the Western liberal democracies over the last 50 years — and this is while gross domestic product per capita has been increasing.

“An abundance of choice may actually make people unhappy.”

No doubt, there will be those on the right and the left who agree with Prof. Gorton, and who will pounce on his conclusions to advance their own anti-freedom agendas.

Social conservatives, for instance, have argued for years that too much personal choice leads to social deterioration. Family values break down when the traditional family model — mom, dad, kids — is devalued by governments sanctioning alternative choices such as common-law and same-sex families. Individualism undermines the sense of community, and so on.

Meanwhile, those on the left have long seen affluence as the enemy. Permit people to have too much money, too much consumer choice, and it undermines a sense of equality needed to advance civil society. Better to tax away great gobs of personal wealth and use the proceeds for the common good.

Both groups (and Prof. Gorton, too) make a common mistake, though: They equate choice with freedom. The two are not one and the same.

It’s entirely likely that as the range of our choices has expanded in the past five decades, along with our ability to afford those choices, we have become less politically happy because our core freedoms have been undermined by a growing, rapacious state.

Consider: The day after the Post reported on the Vancouver conference, its front page featured a report from Brian Hutchinson on the obscene spectacle of columnist Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine being hauled before a so-called “human rights tribunal” to justify their publication of facts and opinions that a special-interest group found offensive.

We may be free to buy big-screen HDTVs until we are blue in the face — and be presented with an awe-inspiring array of models — but we are no longer free to speak our minds without fear that crusading government agents will seek to punish and silence us.

We are no longer free to use our property as we see fit without environmentalists or municipal planners interceding. We hold title to our homes and land at the pleasure of governments and courts, which feel little compunction in taking them away for allegedly higher public purposes.

We may not buy added health care for our families. We are prevented from selling our crops to anyone but the government grain merchant. Agents of the state listen in on our telephone calls and scan our e-mails. Our deposits at the bank are reported to authorities. Surveillance cameras monitor our movements through the train station and public square.

Our right to defend ourselves is circumscribed by regulation. We must wear seat belts and helmets when out in our cars or on our bikes and motorcycles. We may not drink or smoke in public (or, in the case of smoking, increasingly even in private). Public health officials remove swings and slides from playgrounds. Schools enforce zero-tolerance policies that cannot distinguish between violence and natural childish roughhousing.

And on, and on, and on.

Some of these may be good ideas on their own, but it is the added element of state compulsion that makes doing the sensible thing a freedom-robbing affront.

Benjamin Disraeli once said an Englishman did not need a lot of laws because he was prepared to do the proper thing of his own accord. Now our statutes fill scores of volumes. Every aspect of our personal, family, professional and social lives, regardless of how minute, is subject to government oversight.

And experts are puzzled about why there is a growing dissatisfaction with government?

Freedom isn’t failing us. We are unhappy because we are no longer free.

We are being offered bread and circuses to satisfy and amuse us, while nearly all of the freedoms that truly matter are being taken away.

Too much of a good thing? We have nowhere near enough.

Source

Stewart Bell, National Post
Monday, June 09, 2008

A newly declassified Canadian intelligence report is warning about the emerging threat posed by “lone wolf” Islamist terrorists who operate completely on their own.

Terrorists inspired by al-Qaeda have, in the past, tended to work in cells, but the report says they are beginning to use the solo strategy once associated with the militant far right.

“Lone wolves motivated by Islamist extremism are a recent development,” it says. “Islamist terrorist strategists are now advocating that Muslims take action at a grassroots level, without waiting for instructions.”

It adds that lone wolf Islamist extremist attacks and conspiracies “seem to be on the increase” and that “several such cases have been recorded since 9/11″ although the list of examples appears to have been censored from the report.

The report, “Lone-Wolf Attacks: A Developing Islamist Extremist Strategy?” was written by the Canadian government’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre. A copy of the intelligence assessment was obtained by the National Post under the Access to Information Act, but parts of it were cut out by government officials.

A lone wolf is inspired by a terrorist cause but takes action independently. Lone wolves are difficult to identify because they do not join terrorist groups or associate with other known extremists.

The phenomenon is being linked to the Internet. “The Internet has become an important catalyst for homegrown extremists, including lone wolves, by providing ideological motivation, encouragement, justification, target information and instruction on techniques, all in an anonymous environment,” the report says.

Full Story | See Also: US Experts Can’t Agree on Whether ‘Al-Qaeda’ Poses a Threat, Look to ‘Leaderless Jihad’ in America | CIA chief claims big gains against al-Qaeda | Is global terror threat falling? | Afghan attacks rise as al-Qaeda gains strength: U.S. report | Demise Of Al-Qaeda Leader Championed For Second Time | U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos