More Banking Scam Info

A very interesting - and much more developed article on the banking scam at
Vive Le Canada

SCAM - PART 2 THE BANKING FRAUD

When you go to a bank and borrow money you probably think the bank loans you the money out of its deposits. This may have been the situation originally, but this is certainly not the case today. Banks are allowed, by governments, to loan 15- 17 times the amount they hold as deposits. "Credit that can be accessed by credit card, overdraft cheque or bank loan represents nothing more than a bank's promise to pay. Credit money exists only as numbers in bank computers…When someone borrows from a bank, perhaps taking out a housing loan, the bank records in the borrower's account the debt that must be repaid with interest, and in return provides a bank cheque to the borrower or direct to whoever he is purchasing the house from. The bank cheque is bank created credit, not backed up by the bank's own money nor anyone else's” (1) Deposits consist not just of coins and bills, as you might think, but also the credit of previous loans. Thus “ banks are able to build a mountain of credit based on earlier credit until it amounts to 95% of all money” (2)

As bizarre as it may seem, banks thus “ increase the money supply by creating money out of nothing” (3)

Of course, we, both as individuals and tax-payers, are forced to pay interest to the banks for our personal loans and government debt. Aside from the costs of processing a loan, which would include some kind of insurance to cover the minority who cannot pay up, the banks receive high interest payments for essentially doing nothing. Governments, or mutual aid systems, could simply loan out the money at cost, and the extra payments to the banks could be completely avoided.

More than 150 years ago, Proudhon realized that workers and farmers had their own in-built collateral. For workers, it was the amount of labor over a given time period, for farmers, the crop or harvest. Hence, there was no need to have collateral in gold, bills or property, nor was there any reason, other than government preventing it from occurring, for farmers and workers to create money and loan it out to each other thru a mutual banking system. For the longest time banks ignored the workers and poor farmers, but with the rise of consumer society came a realization that a bundle could be made loaning money to these here-to-fore ignored customers. Our collateral is our labor, but the banks reap the benefit.

Government debt, and remember the right-wingers howling about it as you read on, need not occur at all. Remember, credit is created out of nothing. Governments go to the banks, borrow the money, then print the money that has been credited to them by the banks. The tower of debt grows thru interest payments to the banks. Governments could simply cut out the middleman-banks and loan themselves the money at cost, i.e., the cost of printing those dollar bills. “when the State found itself short of money raised from taxes then -- instead of printing Treasury Bonds, selling them to the banking and non-banking sector in order to raise money, and then having to pay them back when they become due, and with interest attached, and with money that has been raised from taxpayers and the sale of even more Bonds -- it could simply create the money required "out of nothing", in the way that banks create money today, and spend it into society as public revenue.” (4)

The fact that governments don’t do this and instead run up huge debts thru interest make me highly suspicious. I am drawn to the conclusion that government debt is a fraud, that it has been deliberately created by the financial institutions and corrupt politicians as a means of milking the public. Now recall those right-wingers yelling about the need to pay off the debt and cutting social services in the process. If they were sincere about the debt, they would try to get rid of the middleman, and since they don’t, they must be part of the racket.

1, 2. 3. From http://dkd.net/davekidd/politics/money.html
4. http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperity/articles/moneymake.html

THE SYSTEM IS A SCAM PART 1

This is a manufactured economy. No, not a manufacturing economy, but a manufactured economy. In the same way that Noam Chomsky talks of "manufacturing consent", much, if not most of the corporate economy, is artificial, serves no real human need and is simply created to feed itself.

THE WAR SCAM

About one trillion dollars is spent on war and the preparation for it, worldwide. (I refuse to use the Orwellian "defense spending") All of this is artificial, especially now that no superpower exists to militarily challenge the USA. Lets take, for the sake of argument, that Russia under Stalin was a threat for a few years after WW2. Governments genuinely concerned with world peace would have welcomed and supported the reformers who took power after him. But, on the contrary, the Cold War was advanced and everything done to undermine the possibility of reform in the USSR. (Even as late as 1990, sections of the US far right - presumably with military contracts in mind, claimed that the Gorbachov reforms were also a ploy.) Without question, the Cold War and its massive expense (and therefore massive corporate welfare) after the death of Stalin, if not before, was a fraud.

With no superpower to challenge the USA, a new threat had to be invented. Thus the "War on Terror", a "war" against an invisible foe, and one that can never be won, for nothing can stop a determined individual who is not afraid of dying. This new war is the ideal war for the scammers.

THE "ILLEGAL" DRUGS FRAUD

Then there is the so-called War On Drugs, or the War FOR Drugs as I prefer to call it. This is a complete and utter fraud. According to a former LA narcotics squad officer Mike Ruppert, who should know, at least HALF A TRILLION dollars of drug money washes in and out of the US financial apparatus. You can be assured that this money is not from the famed Colombian Drug Lords, Mafias, Hells Angels or ghetto gangs, but from the Big Boys who ultimately profit from these groups. (The criminal gangs are mere street corner juvenile delinquents along side the government officials and bankers who are really in charge.) As a pleasant offshoot of the War For Drugs, the police-prison-industrial complex, a happy $135 billion a year industry in the US, (all ripped off from taxes, natch.) not one half of which would exist without the criminalization of drugs. (1)

One other aspect of this crime are the links with the Nazis. Klaus Barbie, protected by the US government, was instrumental in setting up the massive cocaine trade in Bolivia, which then laid the basis for the Colombian coke barons and the importation of cocaine into the US ghettos as part of theIran-Contra scandal.


1. In 2001, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said the federal government was spending close to $500 million a year fighting the drug trade. Roughly 95 per cent of that goes to enforcement and policing, and two-thirds of the country's 50,000 annual drug arrests are for cannabis offenses. (Macleans 22-11-04) The hostility of the police and the political right to cannabis legalization has to be rooted in fear of a loss of tax money going to the police-prison-industrial complex. They also must fear that decrim of pot might next lead to demands that drug addiction be treated as a medical problem and not a criminal one, which would eventually kill the scam. See also
http://www.illuminati-news.com/marijuana-conspiracy.htm

ON THE SUPERIOR EFFICIENCY OF SMALL-SCALE ORGANIZATION

Excellent article on small scale organizations in Kevin Carson’s Blog Includes insights by Eugene Plawiuk, Jane Jacobs and Kirkpatrick Sale.

CAPITALISM DIDN'T INVENT ANYTHING

Apologists for capitalism like to lay claim for all the good things developed during the last 200 years. Wouldn't have happened without capitalist entrepreneurs, they say. And this is the reason that these entrepreneurs must be rewarded with colossal salaries and patent monopolies.

Trouble is, with this happy scenario, is inventors don't invent to become fabulously wealthy. There are legions of garage and basement-based inventors, and none of them are rich. Some like Edison and Ford do become rich, but in the beginning they weren't and yet they still invented. Inventing is their art, and like artists they will do so whether they are financially rewarded or not.

While financially successful inventors become capitalists as a matter of course, few inventors are themselves capitalists to begin with. The most common source of invention in the 19th and early 20th Century was the skilled worker. Edison and the Wright Brothers are the prime examples. Morse, Fulton, and Ericsson were artists. Watt an instrument maker. Edison a railway telegrapher. Kelvin, DeForest, (radio) Farnsworth, (TV) Bell, Faraday, Davie were scientists. Eastman (camera) an office clerk. Ford, and Howe (sewing machine) were machinists. Cyrus McCormack was a farmer.

Note that all great inventions are connected with a person's name. Inventions are made by individuals (Or two brothers as with the Wright Brothers and les freres Lumiere) and not by corporations. Corporate capitalism invents nothing. It might buy out someone's idea, or adapt an existing concept, but produces nothing new. Corporations develop ideas, but in a bureaucratic fashion. This explains the poor quality and impracticality of so much contemporary design. (1)The old inventors were practical people trying to find the simplest and most workable solution to a problem. The bureaucrats are merely looking for a marketing angle or a way of cheapening the cost, to which they will cheerfully sacrifice design.

Capitalism, and this is well known, suppresses inventions if they harm profits. Way back in the 1830's steam powered buses were running across England. The coaching industry and railways crushed the steam coaches by getting Parliament to enact the infamous "red flag law".(2.) Nicola Tesla found a way to transmit electricity without wires, his backer, J.P. Morgan, pulled the plug on him and a campaign of slander against Tesla was launched in the newspapers. A tacit agreement among the Big Three auto manufacturers in the US put the revolutionary Tucker car out of business.

Apologists for the corporate system claim that capital's promotion through advertising and large scale production brings new improved goods to the masses and as a result brings the price down. But people know a good thing when they see it and don't need to be propagandized into buying something. No mass advertising was necessary to switch from flint and steel to matches, or candles to coal oil lamps and then to electricity. Advertising is mostly a way of getting people to buy what they don't need or to get a larger share of the market for a product that is in no way different from that of the so-called competition. (Think of Coke vs. Pepsi)

While it is true that an economy of scale is needed to produce complex goods like aircraft, automobiles and large ships, it really doesn't apply to most items and services. (3) Does the world really need and benefit from multinational corporations frying hamburgers, brewing beer, baking bread, manufacturing cheese, bottling soft drinks, or providing janitorial services? I think not. The quality of these goods and services is usually much better when delivered by small or local firms. If you want good beer you buy from a microbrewery not Molsons or Coors. Good bread is only found at local bakeries, mass production bread is only fit for pigs. MacDo burgers are crap and Kraft cheese has no taste.

1. Things have gotten insanely and unnecessarily complex. Why should you need a manual to operate your car radio-CD player? Why did they abolish the on-off switch for cell phones and pagers? Why are "help menus" so unhelpful?
2. The law by which any "horseless carriage" had to be preceded by a man bearing a red flag. This law, which wasn't killed until 1896, effectively gave France and Germany a big head start in the auto industry.

GRAMSCI WAS RIGHT

Early in 1968 I became aware of Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony. That culture - in the sociological sense of the word - ought to be an area of contestation fitted right into my anarchist counter-culturalism. Simply put, Gramsci saw that the dominant culture tended to inoculate the population against liberatory practices and ideas. Revolutionaries had to struggle against this culture and create a new cultural hegemony. Essentially, the revolution required a change in consciousness before the political and economic changes could occur.

Little did I realize at the time how right Gramsci was and how important cultural change was to be in the coming years. "How so?" you ask. Look at the different outcome of the radicalism of the 1930's and the 1960's. The 1930's and 40's labor movement was followed by a period of reaction - the 1950's - and there was a break in continuity between the radicalisms of the two periods. When we 1960's radicals came on the scene, it was like having to invent the wheel all over again. (Which explains some of our - in retrospect - foolish errors)

The majority of the population in the 1930's - including those supporting the labor movement, accepted the dominant culture - one that was authoritarian, sexist, racist and sexually repressive. It was relatively easy for the rulers to force them back into conservative politics, since their daily lives were highly conservative. Many radicals were attracted to the authoritarian left and it took little effort to switch over to the authoritarian right when these parties failed to establish anything resembling socialism.

When we look at post-1960s radical movements there is no such break, only continuity. The radicalism may have changed form, but it was always there. From the student movement and hippies of the '60's to feminism and ecology of the 70's, to a re-born anti-war and environmental movement of the '80's, to the antiglobalist movements of the '90's and today, there is a continuity.

By challenging the core elements of the dominant culture, elements which reproduce and support authoritarian politics, like racism, sexism, homophobia, sexual repression, authoritarian child rearing and the cult of conformism - a large portion of the population became inoculated against the authoritarian right. (1)

This explains the violent "cultural war" waged by the right. They are essentially right-wing Gramscists without knowing it. They realize that a culture with liberatory aspects provides a matrix for a liberatory politics. The best way to break us is to destroy our cultural hegemony and replace it with an authoritarian hegemony. Then it will be easier to herd us back into slavery.

But this trick is not an easy one to pull off. The problem for the right is while political positions are often superficial and can be dropped without much adieu, deep cultural attitudes are not. The superiority of a life without many of the neurotic oppressions of the past (like sexual repression, child abuse, misogyny etc.) is so evident once you start living without them, you would rather die than return to the past. Daily life has been changed, the liberatory genie is out of the bottle, and other than exterminating us, it cannot be put back in again.

1. Child abuse and sexual oppression were the anvil and hammer that beat the authoritarian personality into existence. The authoritarian personality was the ultimate key to the preservation of the system.

Finally!

At last people are attempting to reverse the insanity of North American suburban existence. Rather than sprawl, a new community like a village. Includes minimizing auto traffic, setting up a land trust, affordable housing and no house more than 5 minutes walk from a school. This is to take place in Bamberton on Vancouver Island, Thanks to Marie Helene for sending this to me.

Zapatista Communique

Latest Zapatista Communique
HERE

Polynesians In California.

The old dogmas are dying. Social scientists are now seriously debating whether Polynesians managed to get to California more than 1000 years ago.