Author Archives: mark

Bribing preachers in order to sell bonds

George Peabody sold bonds in London. The bonds were issued by states to fund infrastructure projects. I’m sure these projects were done with complete transparency and accountability with zero corruption. Sure.

Eventually, the states learned that they had to raise taxes to pay on the bonds. Taxpayers didn’t like being forced into higher taxes due to past decisions in which they had no say. States eventually caved to taxpayers and repudiated debts. George Peabody, who was the beginning of what became the House of Morgan, had not yet invented the IMF to deal with these states.

So…

A hallmark of merchant bankers was that they vouched for the securities they sponsored. At first, Peabody merely sent letters to Baltimore friends, scolding them about the need for Maryland to resume interest payments. Then he tired of persuasion and rewarded reporters with small gratuities for favorable articles about he state. At last, in 1845 he conspired with Barings to push Maryland into resuming payment. They set up a political slush fund to spread propaganda for debt resumption and to elect sympathetic legislators, they even drafted the clergy into giving sermons on the sanctity of contracts. By means of a secret account, the two firms transferred 1000 pounds to Baltimore, 90 percent from Barings and 10 percent from Peabody–a strategy Barings duplicated in Pennsylvania. Most shocking of all, Barings bribed Daniel Webster, the orator and statesman, to make speeches for debt repayment.

Does this sound like oil is a rare substance or a plentiful but controllable resource that is kept cartellized?

By the end of World War I the central place of petroleum in world strategy had become obvious, and the dramatic thirst of military operations had led to fears that there would be a global oil shortage, and to quick appreciation of the profits to be made in such circumstances. American companies, who had been unwilling to explore abroad when vast oilfields were being discovered at home in Texas and California, began to look overseas, and the American government began to use considerable political and economic pressure to try to force American companies into the European-dominated consortia in the Middle East. However, new fields came on line in the 1920s, and the big companies were soon worrying instead about an oil glut. By 1928 there were negotiations between BP, Shell, and Exxon* in a Scottish castle, and the so-called Achnacarry Agreement set out working principles to avoid competition at the marketing end of the oil industry. The agreement specifically excluded the US market because of its powerful anti-trust legislation, but there is no question that the companies had no intention of serious competition there if they could hammer out an agreement for the rest of the world.

The Economist of London praised the Achnacarry Agreement as “an example of the effectiveness of international cooperation in oil marketing.” The Economist was pleased with the “stability” of the prices of oil and gasoline, but it’s not clear whether the articles was written with the seller or the consumer in mind. Mobil, Gulf, and Texaco had joined the three founder companies by 1932, to make six. The results for producers were very rewarding: stable (but higher) prices gouged the consumer for decades, and “pirates” were dealt with summarily whenever possible.

With the Achnacarry Agreement in hand, each large company could feel that it would be able to negotiate a market share for its oil without seeing petroleum prices crash. The stage was now set for serious prospecting, and for staking out major oilfields, even though every company could see that it would not be in a position to pump all the oil that it found. After 1928, therefore, the era of the great Middle East oil strikes began, though Middle East production remained low.

In 1928 the six-year negotiations over Iraq were completed, and the Iraq Petroleum Company was re-divided. 5% went to the formidable Mr. Gulbenkian, and the other 95% was shared equally between the British (BP), the Dutch (Shell), the French (CFP, the Compagnie Française Pétrole), and a Rockefeller-controlled American group (Exxon + Mobil). The Iraq company was essentially set up as an accounting company, to share the production costs and the crude oil between the partners.

On June 1, 1932, Socal (now Chevron) struck oil in Bahrain, the first strike in the Arabian peninsula. In 1933 BP extended its Iranian lease for another 60 years. Gulf joined with BP to explore a Kuwaiti concession in 1934. But 1938 marked the major turning point in Middle East oil history: Gulf and BP struck the Burgan field in Kuwait, and Chevron struck oil in Saudi Arabia.

*I have used the modern names of oil companies in the discussion that follows to save confusion: thus, “Exxon” rather than “Esso”; I call the largest oil companies “the majors”.

Read the rest at OPEC and Crude Oil.

So what exactly qualified a person or persons as “pirates”?

See here and here for why I post this.

I don’t even know what country I live in, anymore

WXIX 19 (CIN) Ben Swann on Anwar Al-Awlaki and the Constitution – YouTube.

And from Reuters:

Secret panel can put Americans on “kill list’

Wed, Oct 5 2011

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.

The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama’s toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki’s killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.

In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush’s expansive use of executive power in his “war on terrorism,” is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.

Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder.

Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki. They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.

Some details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing.

The process involves “going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we make sure that we follow international law,” Ruppersberger said.

LAWYERS CONSULTED

Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described.

They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

They confirmed that lawyers, including those in the Justice Department, were consulted before Awlaki’s name was added to the target list.

Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.

Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals’ decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.

A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to “protect” the president.

Officials confirmed that a second American, Samir Khan, was killed in the drone attack that killed Awlaki. Khan had served as editor of Inspire, a glossy English-language magazine used by AQAP as a propaganda and recruitment vehicle.

But rather than being specifically targeted by drone operators, Khan was in the wrong place at the wrong time, officials said. Ruppersberger appeared to confirm that, saying Khan’s death was “collateral,” meaning he was not an intentional target of the drone strike.

When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC officials.

‘FROM INSPIRATIONAL TO OPERATIONAL’

Officials said Awlaki, whose fierce sermons were widely circulated on English-language militant websites, was targeted because Washington accumulated information his role in AQAP had gone “from inspirational to operational.” That meant that instead of just propagandizing in favor of al Qaeda objectives, Awlaki allegedly began to participate directly in plots against American targets.

“Let me underscore, Awlaki is no mere messenger but someone integrally involved in lethal terrorist activities,” Daniel Benjamin, top counterterrorism official at the State Department, warned last spring.

The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning terrorist attacks.

But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki’s hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.

For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.

There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki, since he admitted that to U.S. investigators. When he appeared in a Detroit courtroom earlier this week for the start of his trial on bomb-plot charges, he proclaimed, “Anwar is alive.”

But at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the U.S. target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.

Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-mails retrieved by authorities from the employee’s computer showed what an investigator described as ” operational contact” between Britain and Yemen.

Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based suspect and his brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was at the brother’s side when the messages were dispatched. British media reported that in one message, the person on the Yemeni end supposedly said, “Our highest priority is the US … With the people you have, is it possible to get a package or a person with a package on board a flight heading to the US?”

U.S. officials contrast intelligence suggesting Awlaki’s involvement in specific plots with the activities of Adam Gadahn, an American citizen who became a principal English-language propagandist for the core al Qaeda network formerly led by Osama bin Laden.

While Gadahn appeared in angry videos calling for attacks on the United States, officials said he had not been specifically targeted for capture or killing by U.S. forces because he was regarded as a loudmouth not directly involved in plotting attacks.

 

At issue are the reported murders of 23 local farmers who tried to recover land, which they say was illegally sold to big palm oil plantations, such as Grupo Dinant, in a country scarred by widespread human rights abuses.

In July, a report by an International Fact Finding Mission was presented to the European Parliament’s Human Rights Sub-committee, alleging that 23 peasants, one journalist and his partner, had all been murdered in the Bajo Aguán region, between January 2010 and March 2011.

The deaths were facilitated by the “direct involvement of private security guards from some of the local companies who are complicit with police and military officials,” the report said.

In some cases it cited “feigned accidents” in which peasants were run over by security guards working for two named palm oil businessmen. In other cases, the farmers were simply shot, or “disappeared”.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will be holding a hearing into the report on 24 October, and a delegation of MEPs will be visiting the region between 31 October and 4 November.

But because of a three-year gap between the stakeholder consultation process and the biogas project approvals, the CDM board recently ruled that the project had met the criteria of its mandate.

“We are not investigators of crimes,” a board member told EurActiv. “We had to take judgements within our rules – however regretful that may be – and there was not much scope for us to refuse the project. All the consultation procedures precisely had been obeyed.”

via Carbon credits tarnished by human rights ‘disgrace’ | EurActiv.

A glimpse of the dysgenictopia

Here is the current modern liberal progressive official website of the Nobel Prize and its biography of one of its winners. I know it is long, but I’m reproducing the entire thing.

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet was born at Traralgon, Victoria, Australia, on September 3rd, 1899. He is the son of the Manager of the branch of the Colonial Bank in that town. He was educated at the Victoria State Schools and at Geelong College, completing his medical course at the University of Melbourne, where he graduated M.B., B.S., in 1922, and M.D., in 1923.

In 1923, Burnet went to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of the University of Melbourne to do research work on the agglutinin reactions in typhoid fever. He was from 1923-1924 Resident Pathologist at the Melbourne Hospital.

In 1926 he was awarded a Beit Fellowship for Medical Research and worked for a year at the Lister Institute, London.

In 1932 he spent a year at the National Institute for Medical Research, Hampstead, London. Otherwise, apart from many visits to various countries to give lectures or for other purposes, he has worked continuously at the Hall Institute in Melbourne.

In 1944 he became Director of this Institute and Professor of Experimental Medicine in the University of Melbourne.

It is impossible to give, in a brief space, an adequate idea of the range and fundamental importance of Burnet’s work. His work on the agglutinins of typhoid fever mentioned above was followed by the work on viruses for which he is nowadays justly famous. In 1935 he isolated a strain of influenza A virus in Australia, and subsequently did much work on serological variations of the influenza virus and on Australian strains of the swine influenza. He also published papers on variations in the virulence of influenza virus and on the mutation rates in it, which he calculated.

In 1946, in collaboration with W. I. B. Beveridge, Burnet devised a technique for cultivating viruses on the chorioallantoic membrane of chicken embryos and a method for determining the relative concentration of the material inoculated into these membranes by counting and statistically analysing the number of lesions that then appear on the membranes.

In 1947 he discovered, in collaboration with Stone, the receptor-destroying enzyme present in Vibrio cholerae, a discovery which led to the synthesis of neuraminic acid and to the demonstration, by Gottschalk and Cornforth, that purified influenza virus will quantitatively split the acetylgalactosamine neuraminic acid compound. Later it was shown that this enzyme derived from Vibrio cholerae can prevent infection by the influenza to a significant degree.

Burnet did much other important work on certain aspects of the prevention of virus infections and on important biological aspects of virus growth inside the cells in which they can live. He found that the filamentous forms of some viruses (e.g. those of myxoviruses such as those which cause influenza, mumps, fowl plague, and Newcastle disease) can be ruptured by suspending them in water, and suggested that their infectivity is limited to their tips, so that these filamentous forms can, as later work showed, be regarded as having an infective «warhead» composed of nucleic acid and a long tail composed of non-infective viral haemagglutinin.

Other aspects of Burnet’s work are his work on the surface properties of these filamentous forms, which are, he found, similar to those of cell surfaces, and his work with the haemagglutinin found in extracts of tissue infected with vaccinia, which can, he found, be precipitated by a saturated solution of ammonium sulphate and by cobra venom. He has also added much to our knowledge of the haemagglutination of red blood cells by various animal viruses, and has made contributions of fundamental importance to our knowledge of the genetic complexity of virus particles, and to the genetic interactions between related viruses which simultaneously infect the same cell and their relations to the transfer of neuropathogenicity. In addition, he has increased our knowledge of the inhibition of viruses by various substances, and of the complex details of immunological methods of studying viruses and of the immunology of viral infections.

Burnet has embodied his experience and experimental results, not only in numerous scientific papers, but in several books which show that he is a master, not only of a clear and attractive literary style, but also of lucid exposition of complex ideas and scientific facts.

Burnet received many honours and distinctions, among which the Fellowship of the Royal Society of London (1942), where he was awarded the Royal Medal in 1947 and the Copley Medal in 1959, and where he delivered the Croonian Lecture in 1950. He holds an honorary doctorate of the University of Cambridge, and was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1953. He was knighted in 1951, and in 1958 he received the Order of Merit.

Burnet married Edith Linda Druce in 1928. They have one son, Ian, and two daughters, Elizabeth (Mrs. Paul M. Dexter) and Deborah (Mrs. John Giddy).

Burnet was a co-winner of the prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1960. He died on August 31, 1985.

He was survived by millions of Asians that he tried to kill.

Missing from the description of this winner of the Order of Merit, was his attempt to get the Australian government to finance and implement biological pre-emptive warfare to cause genocide among all the brown people he felt would threaten Australia’s white citizens. Here are his own words, as reported in The Age:

Specifically to the Australian situation, the most effective counter-offensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical but not under Australian conditions

While, Burnet was invited to write a report in response to the perceived threat of other countries developing biological weapons, the report in the age, “Burnet’s solution: The plan to poison S-E Asia,” makes it clear that he considered the weapons development to be necessary because of the menace of Asiatic population growth.

I’m getting the idea of preemption from the phrase “threatened invasion.” However, in 1998 he wrote something slightly different, according to the Age.

If anything, it is even more chilling that Burnet discouraged the idea that a biological attack would be a means of actually winning in a conflict. Rather, he encouraged the development of such a weapon in order to exterminate the defeated enemy and take all his land and resources:

The main strategic use of biological warfare may well be to administer the coup de grace to a virtually defeated enemy and compel surrender in the same way that the atomic bomb served in 1945. Its use has the tremendous advantage of not destroying the enemy’s industrial potential which can then be taken over intact. Overt biological warfare might be used to enforce surrender by psychological rather than direct destructive measures.

Perhaps someone can try to exonerate Burnet for claiming that introducing fatal diseases into Southeast Asia and destroying their food crops is merely a “psychological” form of warfare. But I don’t see it. You defeat them in battle, then you unloose fatal diseases (or food-destroying ones) and then take over the unmanned industry. I guess that would be a psychological problem for the survivors, but this proposal can hardly be reduced to psychological warfare.

Does this sound merely like psychological devastation to you?

After visiting the UK in 1950 and examining the British chemical and biological warfare research effort, Sir Macfarlane told the committee that the initiation of epidemics among enemy populations had usually been discarded as a means of waging war because it was likely to rebound on the user.

In a country of low sanitation the introduction of an exotic intestinal pathogen, e.g. by water contamination, might initiate widespread dissemination… Introduction of yellow fever into a country with appropriate mosquito vectors might build up into a disabling epidemic before control measures were established.

So what is my point?

The start date for these secret reports is 1947. We have just won a war against the Nazis and have treated them as some sort of unique eugenicist evil. Was it? Burnet grew up with the century and saw a tide of eugenicist literature. Did that all suddenly vanish into smoke with the embarrassment of Hitler?

Or did it morph?

One excerpt among many of this study performed under the direction of Henry Kissinger:

Bilateral population assistance is the largest and most invisible “instrument” for carrying out U.S. policy in this area. Other instruments include: support for and coordination with population programs of multilateral organizations and voluntary agencies; encouragement of multilateral country consortia and consultative groups to emphasize family planning in reviews of overall recipient progress and aid requests; and formal and informal presentation of views at international gatherings, such as food and population conferences. Specific country strategies must be worked out for each of the highest priority countries, and for the lower priority ones. These strategies will take account of such factors as: national attitudes and sensitivities on family planning; which “instruments” will be most acceptable, opportunities for effective use of assistance; and need of external capital or operating assistance.

For example, in Mexico our strategy would focus on working primarily through private agencies and multilateral organizations to encourage more government attention to the need for control of population growth; in Bangladesh we might provide large-scale technical and financial assistance, depending on the soundness of specific program requests; in Indonesia we would respond to assistance requests but would seek to have Indonesia meet as much of program costs from its own resources (i.e. surplus oil earnings) as possible. In general we would not provide large-scale bilateral assistance in the more developed LDCs, such as Brazil or Mexico. Although these countries are in the top priority list our approach must take account of the fact that their problems relate often to government policies and decisions and not to larger scale need for concessional assistance.

Within the overall array of U.S. foreign assistance programs, preferential treatment in allocation of funds and manpower should be given to cost-effective programs to reduce population growth; including both family planning activities and supportive activities in other sectors.

While some have argued for use of explicit “leverage” to “force” better population programs on LDC governments, there are several practical constraints on our efforts to achieve program improvements. Attempts to use “leverage” for far less sensitive issues have generally caused political frictions and often backfired. Successful family planning requires strong local dedication and commitment that cannot over the long run be enforced from the outside. There is also the danger that some LDC leaders will see developed country pressures for family planning as a form of economic or racial imperialism; this could well create a serious backlash.

Short of “leverage”, there are many opportunities, bilaterally and multilaterally, for U.S. representations to discuss and urge the need for stronger family planning programs. There is also some established precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relationships, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the thirteen countries targeted in the report aren’t as white as the US or Australia’s majorities. But I doubt it. (Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria; India, Pakistan, Bangladesh; ndonesia, Thailand, the Philippines; Turkey; Mexico, Brazil and Colombia).

So lets jump ahead a bit. Consider this report from the Globe and Mail:

A few weeks after giving birth to a baby boy by Caesarian section, Hilma Nendongo went back to hospital to have the stitches removed. A nurse glanced at her medical record and casually asked her a horrifying question.

“Oh,” the nurse said, “did they tell you that you had been sterilized.

Ms. Nendongo, a 30-year-old villager from northern Namibia who barely spoke English, tore through her personal health card, looking for a clue to what had been done to her in the state hospital.

She couldn’t read any of the doctor’s scrawled handwriting, except for the word “stop” and the word “closed.” She later discovered the sickening truth: this was a common code for a tubal ligation, the most frequent form of sterilization in Namibia.

She suddenly remembered that the hospital staff had told her to sign some papers as she entered the operating room for her C-section. Nobody had explained the papers.

Oh, did they tell you that they sterilized you? We are such heroes to ourselves, aren’t we? We go help the half-humans so it is only right that we determine their fertility without bothering to even inform them, let alone ask.

[Note to the the outraged, ignorant: the above reference to “half-humans” was sarcasm. That is how we are treating them when we do this.]

By the way, what happens when the UN and other “multilaterals” promote “voluntary” birth control in countries without Western-style freedoms? Nothing good:

“The police said to my husband ‘if she doesn’t get sterilised, the police will arrest you right now and you will be sterilised instead… they threw me on the trolley and tied me up” Rudesinda Quillawamang.

When Fujimori launched a massive family planning campaign in the mid-nineties it was widely hailed and supported by the United Nations and international aid agencies alike. His aim, he said, was to liberate men and women from the burden of poverty and large families. Now, he’s facing genocide charges. During the Fujimori regime, the current government says, over 300,000 men and women were sterilised against their will.

Insight News Television investigates forced sterilisations in Peru. We talk to victims, health workers and others involved, and uncover a dark military plan of social engineering called ‘Plan Verde.’

In the Andes we meet Rudesinda, a young Quetchua Indian woman. She says she was dragged to the operating theatre and forcibly sterilised. And it wasn’t just the countryside where poor people were targeted.

Mary Elena says she was 17 when she went into a Lima hospital for a caesarean. After the birth of her son she found out that doctors had sterilised her. When her husband discovered that she was now infertile, he left her. ‘In this hospital they ruined my life, she says. ‘I think the government wanted to get rid of poor people like me.’

We obtain a full, unpublished, government report about the scandal. The report exposes a sinister military plan, called Plan Verde, to exterminate entire social groups such as the poor and criminals. The military and intelligence sources in the report are all anonymous, but we track down one source. This former military officer details how the military was indeed deployed to sterilise people.

Finally, we question one of the doctors responsible for the sterilisations. Dr Washington is now running for mayor in Anta. Despite the evidence against him, he’s in comfortable denial. ‘Many women are very happy for what was done to them. They have less children, definitely, but they are happy.

Yes, if they aren’t threatening us with their breeding then they must be happy. We were being totally altruistic by sterilizing them against their will. Here is another article on the same subject.

Supposedly, in any internet debate, the first person to to call the other a Nazi is a loser. But I’ve just sampled a few things out of many. We live in a Nazi world, in denial for the moment.

Of course, unlike the crude racism of the Nazis, I think the class warfare of US eugenics is not so blunt. I’m sure there is a top one percent of almost every population that might be found worthy of US intellectuals. Maybe more. But it is still anti-human, anti-Christian, and a “hidden” evil that is all too obvious.

For further reading.

Writes, Greg Palast:

Each nation’s economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step program.

Step One is Privatization – which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, ‘Briberization.’ Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders – using the World Bank’s demands to silence local critics – happily flogged their electricity and water companies. “You could see their eyes widen” at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets.”

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest ‘briberization’ of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. “The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We don’t care if it’s a corrupt election. We want the money to go to Yeltzin” via kick-backs for his campaign.

Stiglitz is no conspiracy nutter ranting about Black Helicopters. The man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet as Chairman of the President’s council of economic advisors.

Most ill-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia’s industrial assets, with the effect that the corruption scheme cut national output nearly in half causing depression and starvation.

After briberization, Step Two of the IMF/World Bank one-size-fits-all rescue-your-economy plan is ‘Capital Market Liberalization.’ In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. Stiglitz calls this the “Hot Money” cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation’s reserves can drain in days, hours. And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation’s own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

“The result was predictable,” said Stiglitz of the Hot Money tidal waves in Asia and Latin America. Higher interest rates demolished property values, savaged industrial production and drained national treasuries.

At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls, “The IMF riot.”

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, “down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,” as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots, but there are other examples – the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You’d almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that, while in the States, BBC and The Observer obtained several documents from inside the World Bank, stamped over with those pesky warnings, “confidential,” “restricted,” “not to be disclosed.” Let’s get back to one: the “Interim Country Assistance Strategy” for Ecuador, in it the Bank several times states – with cold accuracy – that they expected their plans to spark, “social unrest,” to use their bureaucratic term for a nation in flames.

That’s not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador’s currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line. The World Bank “Assistance” plan simply calls for facing down civil strife and suffering with, “political resolve” – and still higher prices.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas) cause new panicked flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has it’s bright side – for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices.

Stiglitz notes that the IMF and World Bank are not heartless adherents to market economics. At the same time the IMF stopped Indonesia ‘subsidizing’ food purchases, “when the banks need a bail-out, intervention (in the market) is welcome.” The IMF scrounged up tens of billions of dollars to save Indonesia’s financiers and, by extension, the US and European banks from which they had borrowed.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers in this system but one clear winner: the Western banks and US Treasury, making the big bucks off this crazy new international capital churn. Stiglitz told me about his unhappy meeting, early in his World Bank tenure, with Ethopia’s new president in the nation’s first democratic election. The World Bank and IMF had ordered Ethiopia to divert aid money to its reserve account at the US Treasury, which pays a pitiful 4% return, while the nation borrowed US dollars at 12% to feed its population. The new president begged Stiglitz to let him use the aid money to rebuild the nation. But no, the loot went straight off to the US Treasury’s vault in Washington.

Now we arrive at Step Four of what the IMF and World Bank call their “poverty reduction strategy”: Free Trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organization and World Bank, Stiglitz the insider likens free trade WTO-style to the Opium Wars. “That too was about opening markets,” he said. As in the 19th century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down the barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa, while barricading our own markets against Third World agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades to force open markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade just as effective – and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz is particularly emotional over the WTO’s intellectual property rights treaty (it goes by the acronym TRIPS, more on that in the next chapters). It is here, says the economist, that the new global order has “condemned people to death” by imposing impossible tariffs and tributes to pay to pharmaceutical companies for branded medicines. “They don’t care,” said the professor of the corporations and bank loans he worked with, “if people live or die.”

Read the whole piece: The Globalizer who came out of the cold.

Why suborn perjury rather than give it yourself?

You ever notice that, while the Gospels and Acts mentions some of the enemies of Jesus by name (Caiaphas, Annas, Saul of Tarsus) we never hear that these people, or anyone in particular, speaks as a false witness when Jesus or the disciples are on trial? It seems to me that the powerful would much rather suborn perjury rather than give it themselves.

And even when they suborn perjury they seem to do it in a half-hearted way. More than once we are told that the false accusers couldn’t bring their testimony in agreement with each other. This points to a lack of orchestration. It indicates Jesus’ prosecutors knew he had to be guilty and simply trusted that the volunteer witnesses who came forward to back up their expectation were trustworthy. In a real way the powers actually were following these unnamed accusers, just as these accusers were rising up to meet the needs of these powerful people.

This all struck me anew as I was reading Girard’s comparison of the miracle of Apollonius in healing the Ephesian plague to the story in John’s Gospel of the woman caught in adultery. Apollonius was a reputed pagan miracle-worker of the second century who inspired a book recording all his great works. This book records that a plague had struck Ephesus and Apollonius claimed he knew how to end it. He basically led the majority of the city to stone to death a blind beggar–whom he assured them was actually a demon in disguise. At first the crowd was reluctant, but after Apollonius persuaded and cajoled and preached eventually someone threw that first stone. According to the biography, when the first stones struck the crowd began to see that the blind stranger really was a demon and more stones followed until he was killed. Thus the plague was ended.

Girard analyzes what happened in comparison to Jesus who concentrates his efforts on making sure that first stone is never thrown. The first stone is the key for both Apollonius and Jesus

To make the violence possible, he [Apollonius] must demonize the individual he has selected as victim. And finally the guru succeeds. He obtains what he desires: the first stone. Once it is thrown, Apollonius can take a nap or whatever, for now violence and deceit are bound to triumph. The same Ephesians who had pity on the beggar a moment earlier now demonstrate a violent emulation of one another that is so relentless, so contrary to their initial attitude, that our surprise can only equal our sadness. Not purely rhetorical, the first stone is decisive because it is the most difficult to throw. Why is it the most difficult to throw? Because it is the only one without a model.

One other thing about Girard’s book before I return to the question of the nameless false witnesses: while Girard writes a great deal about the dark side of emulation in rivalry, he also makes it clear that our desire to copy one another also has a positive and civilizing effect. Someone immune to all desire to be in any way like anyone else would probably be extremely anti-social and end up an outcast.

In other words, in all probability, the first one of the Ephesian mob or any mob to innovate in violence would be someone who was never that constrained from violence. This “innovative” type of person would be nameless in a mob, but in “civilized society” he would usually known as someone on the fringe. Girard hasn’t actually said this yet in my reading, but I’m pretty sure it makes a lot of sense.

My point here is that the false witnesses were probably from the margins of Jerusalem society. Caiaphas and Annas and others, for all their self-righteousness and hatred, could not be the innovative leaders here. They used others who were at some distance from them, not even checking beforehand to make sure their stories lined up with each other.

All of this points to the way in which a society’s leadership can either maintain or degrade the civilization in which they have power. It isn’t so much in the actions they initiate, but how they respond to the actions of those who normally aren’t considered leadership material at all. Pilate looks to the mob to see who he should crucify. False gossip spreads not because everyone is making up lies about a victim but because everyone is emulating everyone else–only one liar needs to gain the ear of one leader. Or rather only one leader needs to be known to be aware of the gossip and do nothing about it for the gossip to be sanctioned for everyone.

And false hysterical accusations start on the internet bulletin boards and then in the tinier more radicalized “denominations”–whom normally no one would trust for any theological discernment–and are tolerated until a relatively marginal seminary gets into the act. And then the witchhunt moves up into the more established powers.

Who are mimicking the first stone.

The war against Augustinianism–or anything that could be remotely imagined to resemble Augustinianism

We ourselves think that this doctrine is contrary to Holy Scripture, but whether it is expedient to condemn it in these our canons needs great deliberation. On the contrary, it would appear

1. That Augustine, Prosper and the other Fathers who propounded the doctrine of absolute predestination and who opposed the Pelagians, seem to have conceded that certain of those who are not predestined can attain the state of regeneration and justification. Indeed, they use this very argument as an illustration of the deep mystery of predestination; which cannot be unknown to those who have even a modest acquaintance with their writings.

2. That we ought not without grave cause to give offence to the Lutheran churches, who in this matter, it is clear, think differently.

3. That (which is of greater significance) in the Reformed churches themselves, any learned and saintly men who are at one with us in defending absolute predestination, nevertheless think that certain of those who are truly regenerated and justified, are able to fall from that state and to perish and that this happens eventually to all those, whom God has not ordained in the decree of election infallibly to eternal life.

Finally we cannot deny that there are some places in Scripture which apparently support this opinion, and which have persuaded learned and pious men, not without a great probability.

This quotation (SOURCE) is making the rounds among what some people will surely regard as “the usual suspects.” I want to comment on this in relationship to the so-called “Federal Vision” which is being trumpeted abroad as a PCA-version of heffelumps and woozles.

What is significant here is that many will (I prophesy) claim that this is the “Federal Vision.” This is the great error from which we must save the PCA. But it is clearly exactly what all the “Federal Visionists” in the PCA and elsewhere have precisely denied. For instance, here is Rich Lusk from when he was a PCA minister and an assistant at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church:

Are you saying there is NO difference at all between the covenant member who will persevere to the end and the covenant member who will apostatize?

No. God certainly knows (and decreed) the difference, and systematic theologians should make this difference a part of their theology. But from our creaturely, covenantal point of view (which we should not apologize for!), there is no perceptible difference (e.g., Saul and David look alike in the early phases of their careers; Judas looked like the other disciples for a time). No appeal to the decree can be allowed to soften or undercut this covenantal perspective on our salvation. It is only as history is lived, as God’s plan unfolds, that we come to know who will persevere and who won’t. In the meantime, we are to do what was described in the handout above and demonstrated throughout Paul’s epistles – treat all covenant members as elect, but also warn them of the dangers of apostasy.The language of the Bible forces us to acknowledge a great deal of mystery here. For example, the same terminology that describes the Spirit coming (literally, “rushing”) upon Saul in 1 Sam. 10:6 is used when the Spirit comes upon David (1 Sam. 16:13), Gideon (Jdg. 6:34), Jephthah (Jdg. 11:29), and Samson (Jdg. 14:6, 9; 15:14). But in four of these five cases (David, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson), the man in question was clearly regenerated and saved by the Spirit’s work (cf. Heb. 11:32). This means that at the outset of Saul’s career, the biblical narrative itself draws no distinction between his initial experience of the Spirit and the experience of those who would enter into final salvation. Saul’s apostasy was not due to any lack in God’s grace given to him, but was his own fault. While God no doubt predestined Saul’s apostasy (since he foreordains all that comes to pass), God was not the Author of Saul’s apostasy (cf. WCF 3.1). Saul received the same initial covenantal grace that David, Gideon, and other saved men received, though God withheld from him continuance in that grace. At the same time, his failure to persevere was due to his own rebellion. Herein lies the great mystery of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility (cf. WCF 3.1, 8).

While we as Calvinists like to make a sharp distinction between genuine regeneration and the common operations of the Spirit, we should be willing to recognize that this distinction does not enter into many biblical passages. Instead, we need to be willing to speak of the undifferentiated grace of God (or the generic, unspecified grace of God). For example, in Heb. 6:4-5, some Reformed theologians try to draw subtle distinctions, showing highly refined psychological differences between the blessings listed, which do not secure eternal salvation, and true regeneration, which does issue forth in final salvation. But it is highly unlikely the writer had such distinctions in view, for at least two reasons. For one thing, it is by no means certain that those who have received the blessings listed in 6:4-5 will fall away. The writer merely holds it out as a possibility, a danger they must beware of. In fact, he expects these people to persevere (6:9).

But if the blessings catalogued are less than regeneration, and these people might persevere after all, we are put in the awkward position of saying that non-regenerate persons persevered to the end (cf. 2 Cor. 6:1)! Second, the illustration immediately following the warning, in 6:7-8, indicates these people have received some kind of new life. Otherwise the plant metaphor makes no sense. The question raised does not concern the nature of grace received in the past (real regeneration vs. merely common operations of the Spirit), but whether or not the one who has received grace will persevere into the future. Thus, the solution to Heb. 6 is not developing two different psychologies of conversion, one for the truly regenerate and one for the future apostate, and then introspecting to see which kind of grace one has received. Rather, the solution is to turn away from ourselves, and keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith (Heb. 12:1ff). This is the ‘secret’ to persevering (and to assurance).

Despite the fact that I have been promoting this for over four years, and it directly contradicts the “catholic” position advocated by the British Calvinists, this position will be ascribe to Rich Lusk, me, Steve Wilkins, Doug Wilson, and others.

And it is a rather revealing phenomenon. It is not enough, now, to simply affirm special grace only for those chosen by God for eternal life, in contrast with Augustine. Rather, one must not even appear to have anything pastoral in common with Augustine. Isn’t that Guy Waters’ repeated accusation? Not that anyone has denied a tenet of Calvinist orthodoxy, but that they have “practically” denied the doctrine by allowing that Paul addresses his Christians as brothers and warns them against falling into unbelief. Anyone who thinks there is a better way of pastoral encouragement than this is now heterodox by the new Church of EP&EPO (Experiential Pietism and Experiential Pietists Only).

This entire brutal crusade is such an obvious attempt to take a tiny sect of experientialism–a late bloomer even within the Westminster tradition–and drive out anyone who dares point to another way. And it is being done openly.

The problem is cascading incompetence

Given recent discussing of what make the best seminary students as well as the quality (or lack thereof) of pastoral blogging and the stupid reasoning used to brand people as heretical, I’m prone to think that this was rather prophetic. It was originally written on September 9, 2004–though one could argue that even then it was already happening, rather than a prediction about the future.