What the 2007 Financial Crisis Taught Us About Corrupt Bankers

 

What the 2007 Financial Crisis Taught Us About Corrupt Bankers

By Rod Driver
Global Research, April 30, 2021
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“Of all the ways we have to run a banking system, the one we have today is the worst” (Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England)

Prior to 2007, financial companies had come to dominate the economies of many countries. For example, in the US 40% of corporate profits were in banking.(1) In 2007 many countries experienced what has come to be known as the Global Financial Crisis. This was caused by a complex range of connected factors, some of which will be discussed in this post.(2)

Setting the Scene 

From the 1980s onwards, governments and their corporate lobbyists had gradually re-structured the economies of advanced nations towards the extreme form of capitalism known as neoliberalism. This system is dominated by a belief in de-regulation or ‘light touch’ regulation, which effectively means that the role of financial regulators is to enable banks to carry out their activities, rather than to police them. This enabled banks to carry out a range of activities that were profitable for them, but caused serious problems for everyone else.

A Series of Interconnected Frauds 

Banks are always trying to come up with schemes to make bigger profits. This led to them lending money to people who could not repay it, mostly as mortgages. The banks used contracts that customers did not understand, with interest rates that started low and rose sharply. These were called liar’s loans(3) or sub-prime mortgages. Salesmen were paid commissions to persuade customers to take out these loans.

The banks then sold these loans to other investors in a process known as securitisation, without explaining that the loans were unlikely to be paid back. Some of these securities became so complex and opaque that hardly anyone could understand exactly what each one was. One of the world’s leading experts on the subject, Bill Black, has explained that the only way to make money from these securities was to deceive the people who were buying them.(4)

The risk of the mortgages not being repaid had been passed on to someone else, so banks had no reason to ensure that they made sensible loans. The more bad loans they could make, the more profit they could make, but the more risk was created for everyone else.(5) Organisations known as Credit Ratings Agencies are supposed to tell investors how safe or risky an investment is, but they failed to rate these securities correctly, suggesting that they were safer than was actually the case.(6)

Some banks, such as Goldman Sachs, then created ways to make even more money, by betting that these loans would not be repaid.(7) The banks made money three times over, by creating mortgages, then advising the investors, then betting against their own investors. Many senior executives claimed that they did not know what was actually going on, but this was part of a deliberate strategy to make their operations as opaque as possible.

The fraudulent mortgages led to a spiral of ever-upward house prices, which enabled borrowers to borrow even more, pushing up house prices. This is known as a house-price bubble. Eventually the bubble bursts, when people are no longer able to pay for such expensive homes. House prices in many places dropped rapidly, so many people had mortgages that were greater than the value of their properties (negative equity). Some banks suffered losses so great that they were effectively bankrupt. Banks stopped lending, even to each other. Many people were removed from their homes, and others were unable to move house. Businesses could not borrow to finance their activities. Many businesses went bust, and many jobs were lost.(8)

Former bank employees have admitted that what they did before the crisis was to steal other people’s money. A former Goldman Sachs trader, Greg Smith, admitted that his bosses described clients as “muppets” to be “ripped off”.(9) Bill Black has explained that all regulatory agencies were complicit in failing to properly regulate the banks.(10) They knew about the different frauds and how to stop them, but chose not to do so.

The frauds described above are just the tip of the iceberg. Since the crisis, the banks have been involved in a wide array of criminal and unethical behaviour. They repeatedly commit fraud on an industry-wide scale.(11) They have sold numerous products that were unsuitable for their clients, and they regularly try to manipulate markets, using all manner of complex schemes, such as placing fake orders. In 2014 British and US banks were fined £2.6 billion for rigging money-markets.(12) US banks have been fined billions of dollars for breaking rules related to terrorism, tax evasion and accounting fraud.(13) These fines sound large, but they are not sufficient to deter criminal behaviour. In 2020, the total amount of fines related to money-laundering was $10 billion.(14) The individuals who run these institutions are hardly ever prosecuted.

Complexity, Contagion and Systemic Risk 

The banks employ armies of lawyers and accountants to re-structure their businesses and their accounts.(15) This is sometimes called legal and financial engineering. The scale and complexity of their operations is so great that no individual has any idea of the overall situation, and no one understands how precarious their financial position is. During the crisis, it turned out that the whole financial system was so complex and interconnected that it created a form of contagion. When some banks went bust, others were technically bankrupt too. What had started as a problem with sub-prime mortgages rippled around the world, de-stabilising the economies of many countries.

Too Big To Fail: Profits for the few, losses for the many 

Many of the biggest financial companies in Britain and the US, such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Northern Rock, were involved in these activities. These banks are considered to be so important to the economy, or ‘too big to fail’, that governments believe they have to rescue them when things go wrong. This is known as a bailout. The bailout was much larger than most people realize. In November 2011, secret information became available showing that the total size of the US bailout was at least $7.7trillion.(16) The banks and the regulators repeatedly lied to cover up how unstable the situation had become. The bailout money has not been used to reduce the debts of ordinary people or to finance activity in the real economy. It was given to the banks, and it has ended up increasing the wealth of the super-rich.

Since the crisis, the biggest banks have become even bigger. Numerous commentators have pointed out that the current global banks are not only too big to fail, they are now too big and too complex to regulate or to manage. Matt Taibbi summarised the bailout as follows:

“what we actually ended up doing was…committing American taxpayers to permanent blind support of an ungovernable, unregulated, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash…America’s six largest banks now have a total of 14,420 subsidiaries, making them so big as to be effectively beyond regulation. A recent study found that it would take 70,000 examiners to inspect such trillion-dollar banks with the same level of attention normally given to a community bank.”(17)

The banking system is structured in a way that is guaranteed to cause problems. Banks advise clients, but they are also allowed to trade for themselves. This creates what is known as a conflict of interest, where Goldman Sachs can bet against its own clients, or engage in other forms of corrupt trading. Without fundamental reform, these problems are likely to continue. There will be another financial crisis in the future, and no one knows how bad it will be.(18)

This Has All Happened Before 

The fraudulent nature of bankers has been recognized for many years. A former Governor of the Bank of England once said:

“If we closed down a bank every time we found an incidence of fraud, we would have rather fewer banks than we do at the moment”.

The 2007 crisis is not the first catastrophic failure of the financial system. In 1929, the world experienced the great depression, and thousands of US banks failed. There are strong parallels between recent events and those that led up to the 1929 crisis. In both cases, banks had been given more and more freedom to manipulate the system for their own benefit.

After the problems in 1929, the remedies included the complete separation of different types of banks in the US.(19) Banks that do basic lending to homeowners and small businesses were separated from those that focus on gambling on stockmarkets. This worked well and provided a stable financial system for decades afterwards. However, lobbyists persuaded policymakers to gradually reverse these safeguards. Separation is no longer required, and financial crises have become much more commonplace around the world.

The evidence that emerged about the criminality of the banks in the run-up to the 2007 crisis shocked most people, and there were great expectations that new regulations would be introduced. Discussions about the banks became a regular feature of mainstream conversation. A number of solutions were put forward, but in the end, none of the really big problems were fixed, and some have been made even worse.

Executive Pay 

I have talked in previous posts about rentiers – companies and people who receive huge amounts of unearned income, or increases in wealth, because the economy is rigged. The financial system is probably the most extreme example of this. During and after the crisis, executives at the biggest banks kept taking huge salaries despite the chaos they caused. For example, two US firms, known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

“paid out more than $200 million in bonuses­ between 2008 and 2010, even though they lost more than $100 billion in 2008 alone, and required nearly $400 billion in federal assistance during the bailout period.”

Similarly, the giant insurance company, AIG:

“paid more than $1 million each to 73 employees of AIG Financial Products, the tiny unit widely blamed for having destroyed the insurance giant (and perhaps even triggered the whole crisis)”(20)

Self-evidently, executive pay has become a means for powerful people with government connections to extract almost unlimited wealth from the system, with no justification.

Propaganda About Banking Permeates Our Societies

The media presentation of finance gives the impression that it is about rich people investing to make a better economy and a better society, but this is not currently true. Banks are no longer doing what most people believe banks do. Many of their loans are actually for unproductive purposes.(21) They devote vast resources to finding ever more complex ways to extract more wealth from everyone else. The US Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker, suggested that the ATM was the only financial innovation that has benefitted society in recent years.(22)

The media celebrate the big profits of banks. However, if the financial system is working properly, profits should be small. Big profits, and great wealth for a few people, are signs of a system that is not working properly.

The Future 

The financial crisis triggered serious recessions in many countries. Governments have implemented ‘austerity measures’, which means decreasing government spending, so healthcare, education and social services are under-funded. At the same time, the wealth of the richest 1,000 people in Britain doubled in the five years after the crisis.(23)We have a system where the banks take all the profits when things go well, but taxpayers take the losses when things go wrong. This puts banks in a situation where they know they cannot lose, which encourages them to take even more risks.

Suggesting fundamental changes to the financial system might sound like the impossible dreams of an idealist, but the financial system has often been changed. In 1999, parts of Europe replaced their national currencies with a European currency called the Euro. In 1986, Britain carried out the ‘Big Bang’ where the system was changed dramatically.(24) Before 1971, the US dollar could be converted into gold, but the rules were changed in 1971 so that was no longer possible. In 1944, at a conference that created the World Bank and the IMF, there were in-depth discussions about how the financial system should be structured in the future.

Re-structuring banking, using rules similar to the ones that were introduced after the great depression, is not difficult. The different aspects of banking can be separated, so that gambling does not de-stabilise the rest of the system. Big banks can be broken up so that they can be regulated properly. The biggest obstacle is lack of political will.

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Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda, and explaining war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media. This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Notes

1) Noam Chomsky, ‘Can human civilization survive really existing capitalism’, University College Dublin talk, 3 April 2013, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uuYjUxf6Uk 

2) Other failings that are not discussed here include shareholder-focused governance mechanisms, narrative closure, inadequate mathematical models, capital and liquidity constraints, pro-cyclicality, accounting standards, and structural issues such as international financial imbalances

3) Robert Peston, ‘Liar’s Loans’, BBC, 20 Aug 2007, at https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2007/08/liars_loans.html

4) ‘Banksters – William Black tells the real truth’, House Financial Services Committee, 17 July 2011, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8CqaHTygSc 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black

5) James Crotty, ‘Structural Causes of the Global Financial Crisis: A Critical Assessment of the New Financial Architecture’, University of Massachussetts Amherst Working Paper, 2008, at https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=econ_workingpaper

6) Mike Collins, ‘The big bank bailout’, Forbes, 14 July 2015, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/07/14/the-big-bank-bailout/#2f7522122d83

7) Terry Macalister, ‘Revealed: Goldman Sachs made fortune betting against clients’, The Guardian, 25 April 2010, at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/25/goldman-sachs-senator-carl-levin 

8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007-2008

9) Joris Luyendijk, ‘Who are the muppets in Greg Smith’s Goldman Sachs letter?’, Guardian, 29 March 2012, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/joris-luyendijk-banking-blog/2012/mar/29/muppets-greg-smith-goldman-sachs

10) ‘Banksters – William Black tells the real truth’, House Financial Services Committee, 17 July 2011, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8CqaHTygSc 

11) Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, The Gods that failed: How blind faith in markets has cost us our future, 2008

12 Jill Treanor, ‘Foreign exchange fines: Banks handed £2.6 billion in penalties for market rigging’, The Guardian, 12 Nov 2014, at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/12/foreign-exchange-fines-ubs-hsbc-citibank-jp-morgan-rbs-penalties-market-rigging 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal

13) James Booth, ‘From tax evasion to terrorism: these are the 10 biggest bank fines of 2020’, Financial News, 30 Dec 2020, at https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/from-tax-evasion-to-terrorism-these-are-the-10-biggest-bank-fines-of-2020-20201230 

14) Hannah McGrath, ‘Regulators issued $10 bn in AML fines in 2020, FStech, 12 Oct 2020, at https://www.fstech.co.uk/fst/Regulators_Issue_10bn_AML_Fines_2020_Fenergo.php 

15) Doreen McBarnett, ‘Financial Engineering or Legal Enginering? Legal work, legal integrity and the banking crisis’, in Iain MacNeil and Justin O’Brien (eds) The Future of Financial Regulation, 2010

16) Matt Taibbi, ‘Secrets and Lies of the Bailout’, Rolling Stone, 4 Jan 2013, at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/secrets-and-lies-of-the-bailout-113270/

17) Matt Taibbi, ‘Secrets and Lies of the Bailout’, Rolling Stone, 4 Jan 2013, at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/secrets-and-lies-of-the-bailout-113270/

18) David Felix, cited in Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects, 2010

19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_legislation

20) Matt Taibbi, ‘Secrets and Lies of the Bailout’, Rolling Stone, 4 Jan 2013, at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/secrets-and-lies-of-the-bailout-113270/

21) Michael Hudson, ‘Democratizing money – a discussion’, 14 Jan 2020, at https://michael-hudson.com/2020/01/democratizing-money-a-discussion/

22) WSJ, ‘Paul Volcker: Think More Broadly’, Wall Street Journal, 14 Dec 2009, at https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704825504574586330960597134 

23) Juliette Garside, ‘Recession Rich: Britain’s wealthiest double net worth since crisis’, 26 April 2015, The Guardian, at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/26/recession-rich-britains-wealthiest-double-net-worth-since-crisis 

24) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_(financial_markets)

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Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’Etat that Is Destroying Life as We Know It

 

Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’Etat that Is Destroying Life as We Know It

By Robert J. Burrowes
Global Research, May 02, 2021
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Politically savvy individuals know that democracy has rarely existed and probably never outside small groups of humans who deliberately organize themselves to share power or grant it temporarily to one or a small number of people for a particular purpose. In most contexts, ‘democracy’ is simply a label used to deceive the unwary into believing that ordinary people have a say in how we are governed. But this has never been the case in any political framework on a larger scale.

Whatever victories have apparently been achieved in the long struggle to achieve political representation, human rights, dignity, economic justice, cultural and gender identity, ecological sustainability and other causes dear to the hearts of those who have struggled, the elite (local, national or global) has always retained control and merely surrendered the minimum necessary to keep the bulk of the human population submissive.

Consequently, as outlined in ‘Why Activists Fail’, while elite control over human societies started to gather pace with the Neolithic revolution 12,000 years ago, it has simply been progressively consolidated since that time. Real power over anything that matters, including fundamental decision-making and the vast bulk of the world’s wealth, remains firmly in the hands of the elite.

More importantly, as one result of the elite’s long reign and the grotesquely distorted priorities it has advanced within the delusional versions of democracy we have experienced, human society is now characterized by staggering levels of psychological, social, economic, military and geopolitical dysfunctionality and Earth is on the brink of ecological collapse with Homo sapiens threatened by four distinct paths to extinction. See ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Report on the State of Planet Earth at Year’s End 2020’.

But what is interesting about the elite coup that is being implemented now, under cover of the non-existent virus SARS-CoV-2 – see, for example, ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’ – and the supposed Covid-19 pandemic, is that the final facade of our ‘democracy’ is being dismantled in plain site with most of the human population begging for it to be done provided that they are kept ‘safe’. It is pitiful to observe and brings to mind one of Benjamin Franklin’s most famous lines: ‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’

How is this final destruction of even the delusion of democracy being executed? Well, the simple answer is this: ‘It is being done in a variety of ways, depending on the context.’ Here are some examples in each of three categories.

Destruction of Democratic Processes, Human Rights and the Rule of Law

While so-called democratic processes have long been a sham and the rule of law (as it is meant to mean in a conventional sense) does not exist  – see ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’ – even the sham elements of democracies – rule by Parliament (rather than executive fiat or unelected bureaucrats), respect for human rights (including freedom of speech), obedience of laws and adherence to legal process – have been ignored by virtually all governments (national, provincial and local) around the world as measures decided by the elite and promulgated through its international organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization have simply been implemented by governments without so much as a public (or even a parliamentary) debate. In fact, any attempt to present an alternative view in any mainstream forum leads to one of a range of outcomes such as dismissal from office, censorship – with corporate and major social media leading the way – or howls of accusation such as ‘conspiracy theorist’ to discredit the dissenting voice.

This has happened, of course, because politicians are not beholden to voters, which is why lobbying politicians is a waste of time, unless the issue is of little significance politically, militarily, economically and environmentally. As implied above, the elite controls the political fate of politicians who well know that their political survival has nothing to do with pleasing ordinary voters. Politicians are beholden to the elite that manipulates levers of power such as the corporate media and education systems, employs an army of lobbyists to ensure that elite preference is clearly understood (while using bribes where necessary), and has ready access to removal options such as, at its most benign, withdrawal of pre-selection endorsement.

Moreover, those supposedly basic human rights – such as freedom of speech, assembly and movement – have been eviscerated under the various lockdown, curfew and martial law measures with many people attempting to exercise these rights quickly discovering that they no longer exist except, perhaps, in the very narrowest of circles or in particular contexts (even if those with the courage to do so often find that these ‘rights’ do exist but only if one is courageous enough to exercise them).

As early as March 2020, governments around the world were introducing draconian laws supposedly in response to the ‘pandemic’. For example, Denmark’s parliament ‘unanimously passed an emergency coronavirus law which [gave] health authorities powers to force testing, treatment and quarantine with the backing of the police.’ As noted by Copenhagen University law professor Jens Elo Rytter, the measures were unlike anything passed in the last 75 years: ‘It is certainly the most extreme since the Second World War. There have been some powerful encroachments in various terror packages. But this goes further.’ See ‘Denmark rushes through emergency coronavirus law’.

But with the passing of a full year since the coup began, the progressive destruction of any semblance of democracy is now rapidly in train.

As noted about Switzerland by Peter Koenig, for example, the Swiss Federal Council is considering denying those who refuse vaccination access to restaurants, theatres, cinemas and other venues. See ‘Is Switzerland Sliding into Dictatorship? Social Coercion, Privileges to Those Who Accept the Covid Vaccine’.

Of course, Switzerland is far from alone in considering such measures and there is plenty of evidence that virtually all countries will deny airline travel to those not vaccinated. See, for example, ‘Guidance for global travel’.

And Dr. Rudolf Hänsel in Germany reports that on 13 April 2021, the government of Germany tightened the ‘Infection Protection Act’, with the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) confirming that this so-called ‘Emergency Brakes Act’ abrogates the fundamental rights of inviolability of home and body. As noted by the renowned legal scholar Volker Boehme-Neßler: The planned coercive measures such as the curfews are ‘unconstitutional, dictatorial and against human nature’. See ‘Germany: The “Dictatorship of Democracy” Secretly Transformed into an “Open Dictatorship”’.

For a wider look at the bigger picture, Dr. Joseph Mercola interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The interview touched on elements of Mercola’s new book The Truth About Covid-19 explaining how ‘The technocrats’ plan, as laid out in various papers and reports, is to use bioterrorism to take control of the world’s resources, wealth and people’. See ‘The Truth About Covid-19’.

But perhaps constitutional lawyer John W. Whitehead, in collaboration with Nisha Whitehead, captures the true depth of what has transpired in these two paragraphs about the United States but equally applicable to other countries:

Not only have the federal and state governments unraveled the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that sent the economy into a tailspin and wrought havoc with our liberties, but they have almost persuaded the citizenry to depend on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.

This past year under lockdown was a lesson in many things, but most of all, it was a lesson in how to indoctrinate a populace to love and obey Big Brother. See ‘After a Year Under Lockdown, Will Our Freedoms Survive the Tyranny of COVID-19?’

And you can read more of the Whiteheads’ sobering analysis in this appropriately-titled article too: ‘The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought to You by COVID-19’.

Of course, a common response of many people is to fearfully deny that this is actually happening or to deny that it is really as bad as it seems. But reality has a nasty habit of biting, sooner or later, although it won’t be either in this case. It is already happening.

The Great Reset: Rule by Elite Agents including International Organizations

By now many people have heard of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ – see ‘The Great Reset’ and Covid-19 – The Great Reset – which is designed to restructure human society through implementation of the measures of the fourth industrial revolution and the transhumanist agenda while substantially reducing the human population. See ‘Corrupt Science and Elite Power: Your Techno-Slavery is Now Imminent’.

And most people are probably aware of the World Health Organization (WHO) providing the endless ‘technical guidance’ for governments to follow in dealing with the supposed virus. See ‘Country & Technical Guidance – Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)’.

But I wonder if you remember voting for the WHO or the World Economic Forum to tell your government to tell you what you to do. In fact, I wonder if you remember having a say in the composition, and hence decision-making, of these international organizations. Do you even know their elite masters?

And yet ‘suddenly’, or so it seems, ‘our’ national, provincial and local governments are doing what these elite agents are telling them to do, which is to tell us what to do in response to this ‘virus’. How did that happen? Do you remember it happening, at least this obviously, previously?

So do you think that voting for some other party at the next election in your country is going to precipitate change?

Of course, it will suit the elite nicely to have you preoccupied over which party will govern your country in future. Because it won’t matter. Just as it never has.

So while you might pin your hopes on some political party (and perhaps, even, a new one) most of what has been familiar about your life in the past will vanish. The changes being wrought by the elite’s corporations as you read this article are profound. For example, vastly more satellites are being shot into Space – see ‘SpaceX launches 60 new Starlink internet satellites, nails latest rocket landing at sea’ – and a staggering array of new infrastructure is being installed on the ground so that 5G (and 6G) can be used to make elite control of our lives total.

This will enable comprehensive surveillance of our daily activities, digital ID (possibly implanted in your brain) linked to your bank account and health records, a social credit ID that will end up dictating every facet of your life, the digitization of money, the robotization of the workforce and military, and the biological and electronic connectivity (through embedded sensors, software and other technologies) of humans and machines through the Internet of Things. And that is just part of what the fourth industrial revolution and the transhumanist agenda will mean for you and me. For a little more, see ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

The ‘good’ news is that the above will only apply to those humans still alive because the agenda of the eugenicists is a substantial depopulation – see Bill Gates talk about this in his 2010 TED Talk: ‘Innovating to zero!’ – but you will get a much fuller explanation, including about ‘Death Panels’ from Peter Koenig in ‘COVID – Bioethics, Eugenics and “Death Panels”: “A Warning”’ and James Corbett in ‘Bioethics and the New Eugenics’.

And if you want further evidence that the global elite is now exercising control over you in ways that were not done so explicitly previously, consider the following: ‘European Plans for “Vaccine Passports” Were in Place 20 Months Prior to the Pandemic. Coincidence?’

More fundamentally, this interview by Dr Reiner Füllmich of WHO insider Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger carefully explains why WHO is a corrupt dictatorship with signatory nations legally required to obey the Director General’s directives and Bill Gates given equivalent status to a member nation-state. See ‘WHO Insider Blows Whistle on Gates and GAVI’.

For more evidence of the ever-tightening centralization of power in elite hands to which this is all leading, see ‘Covid-19 shows why united action is needed for more robust international health architecture’ and ‘WHO Pushes International Pandemic Treaty – Another Stepping Stone to World Government’.

And for further insight into the role of Bill Gates in all this, watch Dr. Vandana Shiva’s thoughtful explanation: ‘Bill Gates and His Empires. “Ushering In the Great Reset”’.

Coups

But the most comprehensive demonstration that any semblance of democracy is being destroyed is perhaps the removal from political office of those presidents who dared to challenge the elite-driven narrative that our world is seriously threatened by a virus.

As recorded in progressive media, at least two presidents openly resisting the elite-driven narrative have been removed in coups, with both presidents killed outright.

President Pierre Nkurunzia of Burundi dismissed Covid-19 as ‘nonsense’. He was then vilified in the western media before expelling the World Health Organization from Burundi. Soon after he died of a ‘heart attack’ and his successor immediately reversed his Covid-19 policies. See ‘President Nkurunzia Says #COVID-19 Is A Hoax’ and ‘Coronavirus and Regime Change: Burundi’s Covid Coup’.

Similarly, President John Magufuli of Tanzania not only rejected the Covid-19 narrative but openly ridiculed it in a televised address, in which he exposed the fraudulent nature of the testing ‘when he covertly had non-human samples – from fruits, goats, sheep, and car oil – tested for Covid on the PCR test, returning positive results from a paw-paw, a quail, and a goat’ thus openly irritating the global elite. See ‘John Magufuli: Death of an African Freedom Fighter’ (which includes the video of President Magufuli exposing the Covid-19 lie).

As always, this led to his vilification by corporate media – see ‘Western Liberal Media Attacks Tanzania’s President John Magufuli for Exposing COVID-19 Tests and Population Control in Africa’ – and their failure to mention the fact that President Magufuli had a PhD in chemistry so was rather more qualified than most to question the elite-driven Covid-19 narrative. See ‘Tanzania – The second Covid coup?’ and ‘Tanzania’s Late President Magufuli: “Science Denier” or Threat to Empire?’

Where is this All Heading?

What is touched on above is, in many respects, just the tip of the iceberg. The profound transformations under way do not bode well for any semblance of a human future worth living.

Apart from the measures already mentioned, you will be fed laboratory-produced synthetic foods. See ‘The “Great Reset”: Will There be Food on the Table? “Who Controls the Food Supply Controls the People”’ and ‘Gates Unhinged: Dystopian Vision for Agrifood Must Not Succeed’.

You will have whatever financial security you think you had taken away. See ‘From “Event 201” to “Cyber Polygon”: The WEF’s Simulation of a Coming “Cyber Pandemic”’ and ‘WEF Warns of Cyber Attack Leading to Systemic Collapse of the Global Financial System’.

And you will watch as your children lose whatever remaining capacity they had for independent thought further broken down by the propaganda directed at them. See ‘Brainwashing our children’.

But this list could go on.

Resisting the Death of Democracy

If you want to strategically resist the elite coup currently in train – that is, to undermine the power of the global elite to take complete control of our lives – there is a comprehensive nonviolent strategy for doing so outlined in ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ with detailed supportive information available in Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

And it will be invaluable if you make yourself increasingly self-reliant as the mechanisms that you have been seduced into becoming dependent upon are progressively and rapidly being taken away. See ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

If you wish to campaign to avert one or more of the four most immediate paths to human extinction – deployment of 5G, nuclear war, the collapse of biodiversity and the climate catastrophe – you can see a list of strategic goals for doing so here: Campaign Strategic Aims.

Conclusion

Human life as you experienced it until the beginning of 2020 has now ended. It will not return. The long-standing elite plan to take complete control of our lives is now being progressively implemented. Act 1 – the ‘Covid-19 pandemic’ – successfully distracted most people so comprehensively that the measures implemented by the global elite to depopulate humanity and take full control of those still living proceeded rapidly. Act 2 is but a short time away.

If you want any chance of restoring a semblance of the lives we have lost, you are invited to join those strategically resisting the elite coup. If your resistance is not strategic, it will have zero impact.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Appendix

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
  8. I will not buy rainforest timber
  9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Robert J. Burrowes, Global Research, 2021
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Two-year-old Baby Dies During Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Experiments on Children

 

Two-year-old Baby Dies During Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Experiments on Children

By Ethan Huff
Global Research, May 03, 2021
Natural News 30 April 2021
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Within six days of receiving a second injection of Pfizer’s experimental Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine, a two-year-old baby enrolled in the company’s clinical trials for children passed away, new reports indicate.

The ongoing trials include more than 10,000 children aging in range from five to 11 in one of the groups, and another 10,000 children as young as six months old in the other. These trials have been taking place since mid-March with the soon expectation that the jab will be “authorized” for use in children and babies.

Moderna is also running a similar series of clinical trials on children that it is calling “KidCOVE.” Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and AstraZeneca are also both running their own respective clinical trials on children to get them jabbed at “warp speed.”

As reported in the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the two-year-old girl received her second dose of Pfizer’s DNA-modifying mRNA injection on February 25. On March 1, she suffered some kind of serious adverse reaction. On March 3, she died. No further details were provided.

The VAERS report does indicate that the child had been hospitalized since February 14, which suggests she may have gotten sick from the first shot. Despite this, someone administered a second shot to the already sick and suffering child, which caused her to die.

To learn more about the wave of sickness and death affecting those who were jabbed for Chinese germs, be sure to check out ChemicalViolence.com.

Parents who inject their children with vaccine poisons should be ashamed of themselves

Early in the week, it was also reported that Pfizer’s experimental gene therapy injection can cause brain damage and neurodegenerative disease.

A paper published in the journal Microbiology & Infectious Diseases explains the process by which these injections alter human DNA and cause the body to basically go haywire over time.

Despite all this, hordes of not-so-bright Americans are lining right up to get injected, believing that the vaccine will protect them against “catching” the Wuhan flu. They are also subjecting their children to it based on lies from Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and others who are aggressively pushing the jabs.

Michell Lynam, an anesthesiologist who calls herself “Dr. United States of America,” has been bragging all over Facebook about how she subjected her own children to the experimental shots. She enrolled her two teenage daughters in Pfizer’s clinical trial, and her six-year-old daughter in Moderna’s clinical trial.

Should anything happen to these poor kids, Lynam probably will not tell her Facebook followers about it. Lynam will probably also not report any potential injuries or deaths to VAERS.

The only reason the death of the two-year-old in the Pfizer trial is known about is because independent sleuths dug it out of VAERS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is certainly not going to report on it, and neither will the mainstream media.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also complicit, having recently lifted its recommended pause on J&J’s experimental injection, which causes deadly blood clots. Rather than ban the jab, the FDA is instead affixing a tiny warning label on the package that says the J&J injection comes with blood clot risks.

“I read this and wept,” wrote one commenter at Great Game India. “Children that age should NEVER be given any vaccines. Shame on the parents who allowed such a thing to happen.”

“Now, they are paying with broken hearts. How sad is that? These vaccines contain aluminum, mercury, and formaldehyde. Why on earth would anyone allow themselves to be injected with these poisons?”

Others offered similar sentiments of sadness and disgust that this mass genocide of humans under the guise of “public health” is even happening at all.

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The original source of this article is Natural News
Copyright © Ethan Huff, Natural News, 2021
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US’ New “Foreign Malign Influence” Center Is Just Official Cover for American Intelligence Interference in Domestic Politics

 

US’ New “Foreign Malign Influence” Center Is Just Official Cover for American Intelligence Interference in Domestic Politics

By Scott Ritter
Global Research, May 03, 2021
RT Op-Ed 28 April 2021
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The Director of National Intelligence has ostensibly created a new “center” for the sharing and analysis of information and intelligence about foreign interference in US elections. Its real focus is much more nefarious.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) announced in a statement on Monday that it was creating a new intelligence “center” focused on tracking so-called “foreign malign influence,” reported Politico.  This new entity, known as the Foreign Malign Influence Center, was mandated in the recent intelligence and defense budget authorization acts, representing the reality that the impetus for its creation came from Congress, and not the intelligence community.

For example, the most recent defense expenditure authorization required that the ODNI establish a “social media data analysis center” to coordinate and track foreign social media influence operations by analyzing data voluntarily shared by US social media companies. Based upon this analysis, the ODNI would report to Congress on a quarterly basis on trends in foreign influence and disinformation operations to the public. As envisioned by Congress, the intelligence community would determine jointly with US social media companies which data and metadata will be made available for analysis.

In short, the intelligence community, using data obtained from the social media accounts of American citizens, will report to Congress how this data influences the political decision making of these same American citizens.

If this does not make the most ardent defender of the US Constitution ill, nothing will.

It is not as if the US intelligence community wasn’t trending in this direction on its own volition. The straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, was the publication in March 2021 of an intelligence community assessment entitled ‘Foreign Threats to the US 2020 Presidential Election’. In this document, the US intelligence community assessed that “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.”

But the most damning portion of this assessment came when it delved into the specific methodology employed by Russia to achieve these nefarious aims.

“Throughout the election cycle”, the assessment declared, “Russia’s online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow’s long standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people. During the presidential primaries and dating back to 2019, these actors backed candidates from both major US political parties that Moscow viewed as outsiders, while later claiming that election fraud helped what they called ‘establishment’ candidates. Throughout the election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud.”

As an American citizen who is politically engaged, I read the intelligence community assessment with a combination of interest, concern, and outrage. The notion of “Russian online influence actors” affecting “US public perceptions of the candidates” is as intellectually vacuous as it is factually unsustainable. The stupidity encapsulated by such analysis can only be excused by the fact that the intelligence community assessment is a document produced more for the benefit of domestic political consumption than a genuine effort at identifying and quantifying legitimate threats to the US.

The assessment itself is short on hard data. However, the House Intelligence Committee has documented some 3,000 social media ads bought by Russian “troll farms” between 2015-2017, at a cost of some $100,000. These ads were in addition to so-called “organic posts,” some 80,000 of which were published on US social media, free of charge, by alleged Russian “bots” resulting in 126 million “views” by Americans. These ads were crude, unfocused, and simply inane in terms of their content.

To put the alleged Russian influence campaign into perspective, one need only reflect on the fact that during his short bid for the Democratic nomination, Michael Bloomberg spent nearly $1 billion underwriting the single most sophisticated public relations campaign, including hundreds of millions of targeted social media ads put together by the most brilliant political minds money could buy. All this money, time and effort, however, could not change the reality that, to the American public, Michael Bloomberg was an unattractive candidate – in the end his $1 billion bought him exactly two delegates.

The fact is, the political opinions of most American citizens are formed based upon a lifetime of exposure to issues that matter for them the most, whether it be education, right-to-life, gun control, social justice, agriculture, energy, environment, law enforcement, or any other of the multitude of sources of causation that impact the day-to-day existence of the American electorate.

Some of these beliefs are inherited, such as the working-class attachment to unions. Some are driven by current affairs, such as the growing awareness of climate change. But all are derived from the life experience of each American, and the thought that these deeply held beliefs could be bought, changed, or otherwise manipulated by social media posts published by foreign actors, malign or otherwise, is deeply insulting to me, and should be to every other American as well.

The irony is that by creating an intelligence organization whose task it is to help prevent the political Balkanization of America by analyzing the social media accounts of Americans who hold differing political beliefs than “the establishment” the newly minted Foreign Malign Influence Center ostensibly serves, the resulting process will only cause the further political division of the United States.

Some 74 million Americans voted for a candidate, Donald Trump, who has promulgated the very issues that the Democratic-controlled Congress seeks to denigrate and suppress through the work of this new intelligence center. These ideas will not simply disappear because the Democrats in Congress have empowered a “center” within the intelligence community whose sole function is to demonize any political thought that does not conform with the powers that be.

As it is currently focused, the Foreign Malign Influence Center is the living, breathing embodiment of politicized intelligence, two words which, when put together, represent the death knell for any intelligence organization. Worse, the work it will be doing, when turned over to a Democratically controlled Congress desperate to undermine the political viability of those 74 million American citizens, will only further fracture an already divided nation.

The Foreign Malign Influence Center was specifically mandated to examine the social media influence campaigns operated by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. It is particularly telling that they were not directed to investigate the two largest foreign sources of political influence in America today, namely the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and the Murdoch media empire. President Putin could only dream about being able to buy congressional seats the way AIPAC does, or control what information becomes magnified (and, by extension, suppressed) by the newspapers, television and radio enterprises owned by Rupert Murdoch.

These are the true villains when it comes to foreign corruption of American politics. These foreigners, however, have a seat at the establishment table. Their malign influence will never be labeled as such, and they will never have to withstand the ignominy of having their work scrutinized under the politicized microscope of an intelligence community that has allowed itself to be corrupted by domestic American politics to the point that it no longer serves the American people as a whole, but only a select class of American persons.

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
The original source of this article is RT Op-Ed
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Children Are Far More Likely to Die from Diarrhea than COVID-19

 

Children Are Far More Likely to Die from Diarrhea than COVID-19

By Simon Black
Global Research, May 07, 2021
Sovereign Man 4 May 2021
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In the winter of 1837, Charles Dickens published the first two chapters of what would become one of his most popular works– the story of an orphan called Oliver Twist.

If you’ve never read it, the book is one of Dickens’ most damning condemnations of the poverty, crime, and child labor that dominated 19th century Britain.

It was personal for Dickens; as a boy, he was forced to work long hours in a shoe polish factory for pitiful wages after his father had been hauled off to debtors’ prison.

And Oliver Twist was so shocking it began a global conversation about child labor and contributed to the worldwide Children’s Rights Movement.

By the early 20th century, children were starting to be viewed as more than just cheap, easily exploitable workers. Instead, western nations began to prioritize children’s well-being.

It’s been that way for generations. Then along came COVID-1984… and all the dictatorial public health measures that have accompanied it.

Entire economies were locked down, borders closed, business shuttered, and basic human interactions forbidden.

These restrictions have been especially damaging for children.

Even to this day, more than a YEAR later, schools are still closed in many parts of the world.

Millions of children simply stopped learning at the age when their minds develop more rapidly than at any other time in life.

Sheepish bureaucrats hid behind Zoom classes as an adequate substitute for real learning and human interaction, though hardly a thought was given to the cost versus benefit.

It’s hard to fault anyone for the decisions they made back in March or April of 2020. There was no data. And plenty of people took the most conservative approach.

But by summer 2020, there were mountains of data to support an informed decision.

Consider, for example, precisely 54 children in the Land of the Free have died from COVID (according to CDC data through April 28).

Given that there have been roughly 4 million confirmed COVID cases among children, this implies a survival rate of 99.999%.

For kids, even the Chicken Pox is more fatal, not to mention a variety of other common illnesses ranging from the flu to strep throat.

Yet the world never closed schools due to the chicken pox.

Curiously, his grace, Lord Protector Anthony Fauci, noted back in 2009 during the Swine Flu epidemic that “we have already 76 children dying from the 2009 H1N1 virus, and it’s only the beginning of October.”

Yet his eminence did not demand schools close. And the CDC specifically recommended NOT closing schools.

(Fauci also stated then, “you can’t isolate yourself from the rest of the world for the whole flu season. . .”)

Then there’s the Holy See of the World Health Organization, of whom no one is worthy to question. Yet the WHO says that “diarrhea kills around 525,000 children under five” every year.

Yet did anyone ever close the schools to prevent the spread of the diarrhea-causing rotavirus?

(And as long as we’re all wearing masks, should we be forced to wear diapers too?)

Point is, public health bureaucrats and school officials clearly didn’t conduct a basic cost/benefit analysis before closing the schools.

They didn’t consider how many kids would fall behind. Or the mental health consequences of social isolation, like the higher rates of self-harm and skyrocketing calls to suicide hotlines.

The only thing that mattered was a disease with a 99.999% survivability rate. Not their learning, their future, or their mental health.

And for schools that did open, students were subjected to ridiculous protocols, including even literally being placed inside of plastic bubbles.

But this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the real damage.

It’s bad enough that the COVID hysteria has caused generational academic regression. But on top of this, teachers and school administrators are now prioritizing a new, woke curriculum.

Rather than focus on helping students become more intellectually and professionally competitive, children are instead being taught to view themselves and others as either victims or oppressors, and to define themselves and everyone around them by skin color, gender, or sexual orientation.

The content of one’s character is now irrelevant.

Kids who are too young to know anything about sexual intercourse are being forced to learn about sexuality in an effort to break free of ‘heteronormative thinking.’

Biology is now a social science that has become completely subjective. History is being rewritten on the fly in front of the children’s very eyes.

Even mathematics is now full of white supremacy. Several state education departments, including Oregon and California, are promoting new training for their teachers aimed at “Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.”

I’ve read the full 82-page document. It’s bizarre. They lament, for example, that “White Supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when teachers are teachers and students are learners.”

Come again? Unless Doogie Howser is sitting in the front row ready to teach Calculus, aren’t the teachers supposed to do the teaching?

But apparently this “reinforces the ideas of paternalism and powerhoarding” which somehow relates to White Supremacy.

It’s truly astonishing what they’re doing to young minds.

Children have been indoctrinated to believe that other human beings are disease-infested filth.

They’re taught to subordinate themselves to idiotic bureaucrats and to never question authorities, no matter how illogical their edicts may be.

They’re taught that thinking outside the box results in being ridiculed and censored.

They’re taught that science is subject to the whims of the Twitter mob, and that mathematics is racist.

Honestly I don’t think any of this is on purpose. The people who control the education system probably feel like they’re doing the right thing.

But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And they’re on course to completely ruin an entire generation.

Frankly I can’t think of any job that’s more important right now than being a parent… and teaching proper values and independent thinking to a child.

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James (aka Simon Black) is an international investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Sovereign Man. His free daily e-letter Notes from the Field is about using the experiences from his life and travels to help you achieve more freedom, make more money, keep more of it, and protect it all from bankrupt governments.

Featured image is from Xavier Donat

The original source of this article is Sovereign Man
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