statism watch

To say that it’s the ‘free market’ that creates the business cycle – the endless sequential cycles of boom and bust which we call bubbles (the tech bubble, the real estate bubble, the derivatives bubble, etc.) – is breathtakingly misinformed and highly deceptive. There are no free markets in the world, only markets under varying degrees of state control. Now, more than ever, the financial system needs to be placed on a sound footing, which means – real money and minimal interference in trade while stringently enforcing laws against fraud, including the derivatives fraud that brought down this house of cards. That would go a long way towards curing the ills introduced by Keynesian macroeconomics and the inflationary bubbles that result from money that is not priced to market. Instead, as a cure for these distortions introduced in the fabric of the market we’re given only one choice – bigger government, the nauseating spectacle of the Fed posing as America’s saviour, and rampant corruption as the banking industry seizes control of the economy in one of the most dangerous experiments in social engineering to be undertaken in many years.

Flashback: 10 U.S. banks to repay U.S. bailout money | Federal Reserve To Be Given Sweeping New Powers | 10 U.S. banks fail stress test, but regulators confident | Fed says U.S. banks breezed through stress tests | US to put conditions on bank bailout repayments | Barclays, Lloyd’s, RBS join Goldman-Sachs in the black | Goldman-Sachs to repay TARP loan, resume private operations, bonuses, at “earliest time” possible | Which Banks Will Rule? | Wall Street’s Big Takeover | Obama appoints architects of economic collapse, financial globalism to economic team | Behind the panic: Financial warfare over the future of global bank power | Goldman-Sachs Alumni Hold Reins of Financial System | What Really Killed Bear Stearns? | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

CBC News
June 17, 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday unveiled a series of changes to the oversight of the American financial system, in a move meant to avoid a repeat of the collapse that helped drag the economy into recession.

“While this crisis has had many causes, it is clear now that the government could have done more to prevent these problems from growing out of control and threatening our overall economy,” Obama said

Obama called his proposed changes a transformation that has not been seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression, but he said it would be a mistake to scrap the financial system entirely and start again.

The president said the reforms would give more power to the U.S. Federal Reserve to oversee bank holding companies and other large firms that could pose a risk to the entire economy in the event they collapse.

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This dovetails very nicely with Obama’s recent announcement that the Federal Reserve is to be given substantial new powers to exercise oversight of the American financial system. Readers of this journal will recall that the Federal Reserve is largely populated by alumnus of Goldman Sachs – a very cozy arrangement.

Flashback: Federal Reserve To Be Given Sweeping New Powers | 10 U.S. banks fail stress test, but regulators confident | Fed says U.S. banks breezed through stress tests | US to put conditions on bank bailout repayments | Barclays, Lloyd’s, RBS join Goldman-Sachs in the black | Goldman-Sachs to repay TARP loan, resume private operations, bonuses, at “earliest time” possible | Which Banks Will Rule? | Wall Street’s Big Takeover | Obama appoints architects of economic collapse, financial globalism to economic team | Behind the panic: Financial warfare over the future of global bank power | Goldman-Sachs Alumni Hold Reins of Financial System | What Really Killed Bear Stearns? | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

CBC News
June 17, 2009

Ten of the largest banks in the United States on Wednesday plan to repay about $68 billion US they received in bailout money.

Two U.S. banking industry officials confirmed the move to The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as not all the banks had made official announcements.

The banks repaying their Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) loans include JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs, American Express and Morgan Stanley.

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Wings over the World! Disclaimer: The notion of chemtrails, and the (readily debunked) assertion that persistent jet contrails are a recent phenomenon, has been located for some time at the very fringe of the fringe (and propagated, in this journal’s analysis, largely by true believers or those who can’t see outside their own confirmation bias). But, like many such distortions, there is a germ of truth at the heart of it. An increasing number of mainstream reports is making it clear that high altitude aerosol dispersion is an idea that is being taken very seriously by the scientific community. Any past and present military testing of aerosolized substances should not, however, be conflated with the delusion that every exhaust plume seen overhead is evidence of some form of spraying. Just saying.

Flashback: China wages war on Olympic weather | Technology Exists to Redirect Hurricanes, Naval Physicist Says | Weather War? | NASA Funds Sci-Fi Weather Control Technology | Much of Britain sprayed in secret germ warfare tests

Paul Joseph Watson, PrisonPlanet.com
June 17, 2009

National Academy of Sciences debates spraying aerosols into upper stratosphere to combat global warming

Debate surrounding the possibility of geoengineering the earth’s climate by lining the atmosphere with aerosol particles has moved from idle speculation to serious consideration, and was a core topic of discussion at a recent National Academy of Sciences workshop.

However, a top Rutgers University professor warned at the meeting that tampering with the planet’s delicate ecosystem could create famines and droughts, threatening the lives of no less than a third of the world’s population.

The plan to shoot aerosols – dust particles – into the earth’s upper stratosphere in an attempt to cool the planet and offset the purported effects of global warming, should be considered as an “emergency response” to a climate crisis, according to Harvard University’s Dan Schrag, who told the workshop that such a crisis was already underway.

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As illustrated in John LeCarre’s The Constant Gardener (and scores of non-fictional reports), controls on pharmaceutical company’s operations in Africa are largely non-existent. The people are right to be wary.

Flashback: HIV positive women in Africa sterilized, stigmatized | France Considers Mandatory Flu Vaccinations | Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests | Lessons of 1976: swine flu, fear, mass vaccinations, wasted millions | ‘Accidental’ Contamination Of Vaccine With Live Avian Flu Virus Virtually Impossible | Officials investigate how bird flu contaminated vaccines in Europe | Vaccine Court: Autism Debate Continues | Revealed: The serious health concerns about the cervical cancer jab | Vaccines Found to Cause Diabetes in Children | Pfizer to be called on carpet in Nigeria for experimenting on children | Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland | Vaccine-linked polio hits Nigeria | Polio Warning Issued for Travel to Nigeria

Zoe Alsop, Globe and Mail
June 17, 2009

Failure to inform some participants of vaccine’s experimental status leads to ‘bitterness’

The chiefs in the Kenyan coastal district of Kilifi called people to meetings recently and asked them to co-operate with the researchers who would be arriving along the pocked road to launch a malaria-vaccine trial. The mothers told their chiefs that they would participate, if asked. But, among themselves, they worried.

For one thing, there was that snake in the logo painted on the sides of the sleek, white SUVs the researchers drove. A ubiquitous sign of healing in the West, to these women the snake was a demonic symbol. Then there was the problem of the blood samples.

“When they come, they take a lot of blood,” said Agnes Ndoro, a farmer and mother who is unsure of her age. “We fear where this blood is going. We have a belief that demons feed on blood.”

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Flashback: Twitter emerges as news source during Iran media crackdown | Gunfire breaks out at massive Tehran protest | Iranian protesters trash Tehran | Blast at Iranian mosque raises tensions in run-up to presidential election | Netanyahu: We may be forced to attack Iran | Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack | US scales up covert destabilization efforts in Iran, continues funding ‘al-Qaeda’ | Israelis ‘rehearse Iran attack’ | Bush ‘plans Iran air strike by August’ | U.S. Navy starts exercises in Gulf waters | U.S. National Intelligence Estimate: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003 | Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran | Former CIA Officer – US Plans Nuclear Attack On Iran | U.S. sending third aircraft carrier to the Middle East | US aircraft carriers in Persian Gulf | Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran

Robert Tait, Ian Black, Mark Tran, The Guardian
June 17, 2009

Estimated 500,000 in Tir square and surrounding streets, Mousavi calls on supporters to mourn ‘martyred’ protesters

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran in a fifth day of protests as the government intensified its crackdown on opposition figures with the arrest of hundreds of leading critics.

Mainly dressed in black and wearing green wristbands and headbands to show their support for the defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, crowds gathered in Tir square and streets around it. Most of the protesters were silent and made victory signs, according to Reuters news agency.

Witnesses estimated that as many as half a million people joined the march, with one street leading to the square packed for several kilometres. A young woman held a picture of one of those killed during the recent violence.

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Perhaps if Donald Rumsfeld (!) hadn’t been lobbying on behalf of Swiss firm ABB to get nuclear technology into the North Korean’s hands, we wouldn’t have this problem today. (See here also.) This is, of course, the same guy that helped Saddam Hussein obtain the chemical weapons during the Iran/Iraq war that he subsequently used on Iraq’s minority Kurds. And then there’s the whole CIA/Pakistan nuclear connection through Khan Labs. There may be a pattern developing here…

Flashback: State Of War Between Two Koreas After Armistice Ended | Swiss nuclear-smuggling suspect says CIA made him do it | How the USA Gave North Korea The Bomb|

Justin McCurry, The Guardian
June 17, 2009

Pyongyang sends defiant message after Obama condemns its nuclear programme

North Korea today warned that it would launch a “merciless” attack if provoked by the US and its allies, hours after President Barack Obama described the state’s nuclear and missile programmes as a “grave threat” to the world.

“If the US and its followers infringe upon our republic’s sovereignty even a bit, our military and people will launch a one hundred or one thousandfold retaliation with [a] merciless military strike,” the state-controlled Minju Joson newspaper said.

The newspaper described Obama as a hypocrite for supporting a nuclear-free world while making what it claimed were “frantic efforts” to develop new nuclear weapons at home. “The nuclear programme is not the monopoly of the US,” it said.

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