A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
Now think about the size of the notional value of the mountain of all derivative of which 95% are unregulated OTC Derivatives: One Quadrillion, one thousand one hundred and forty four trillion. (Source: The Bank for International settlements).
Some are resting assured that all financial problems can be handled by the use of public funds to sustain the usurious financial elite that created these problems. If one can sleep soundly believing there are no CONSEQUENCES, then one must be taking some heavy duty sleep medication.
In the United States, speculators debate whether it's 3,000 or 5,000 banks which are bankrupt.
Meanwhile, the U.S. economy—or what's left of it, after years of "outsourcing" is sinking ever more deeply into depression: the auto sector, the airline industry, the construction sector... More and more states and municipalities are being forcing citizens into austere sacrifice, such as in California, where 22,000 state employees have been laid off, and another 200,000 are threatened with having their pay reduced to the minimum wage!
This is hardly the first time in history that the international financial oligarchy has attempted to keep a financial and economic crisis under control by fanning the flames of war.
As just one example, in February, when the European Union supported Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence, it was already perfectly clear that this destabilization was also giving the green light to every separatist movement and minority throughout the world.
The aim of which, is drawing the great world powers into conflict, and/or preventing peaceful economic cooperation and development on the Eurasian continent. Now we have a war between Georgia and Russia.
With George Soros’s Open Society Institute’s so-called "Rose Revolution," and its desire to join NATO, Georgia has turned out to be a willing instrument of the Anglo-American strategy for encirclement of Russia. This war in the Caucasus is part of a global destabilization effort, along with the destabilizations, by means of terrorist attacks or sanctions, of Turkey, Pakistan, Sudan, and Zimbabwe,—and these are but a few of the most prominent of many other similar crises.
And, as the oligarchy once again foments wars, the people must first be brought into line... create an "enemy" image.
That is precisely the intention behind the China-baiting being emitted by the cartel media and politicians on the occasion of the Olympic Games. Without any regard for the truth, and without a shred of knowledge of China's history and culture, the wildest assertions have been floated—-assertions which are intended to poison relations with China, and to help prepare for coming conflicts with China (and with Russia).
Not only were the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing wonderfully beautiful and poetically conceived, but they were also a magnificently staged demonstration of the 5,000-year history of China, which, historically has contributed so much to world civilization.
Even though China certainly has its fair share of problems — for example, the poverty of the great majority of its rural population, and also the degree of Western materialism which has infected part of its population, what counts is the vector of physical-economic development.
The Chinese government has blocked Internet access to anti-Chinese propaganda emanating from international and British organizations in connection with Tibet and the Uighurs—and it has every right to do so.
The fact that in Europe, a politician who voted for the ratification of the fascist Lisbon Treaty, or a representative of the media which, even after the Irish "No" in their referendum, did not run a single pertinent article on that EU treaty which would abolish parliamentary democracy , but would establish an oligarchical dictatorship, would now dare to decry a lack of democracy and human rights in China—that is truly the height of Goebbels propaganda!
The West is increasingly dominated by an extremely dangerous cultural pessimism, as expressed in the famous retort, "There's nothing we can do about it, anyway." Those politicians and scribblers who raise a fuss about democracy in China, ought to get out among we the people and listen to what we think about the politicians and the cartel media.
If we are to make use of the fast-closing window of opportunity, which will hopefully remain open long enough for us to prevent the great catastrophe, then we will have to embark on a radically different path.
One very promising impulse in that direction, is an article that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote for the current issue of the journal Russia in Global Politics, under the title "Russia and the World in the 21st Century," which directly reflects the positions of President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Lavrov affirms the obvious fact that the epoch of the past 400-500 years, during which European civilization has dominated the world, is now closing, and that a new vision is therefore required. He rejects not only the idea that the world will gradually adopt Western values, and the theory of "the end of history"—the idea of a global Anglo-American empire—but he also rejects the idea of a "post-American" world without the United States.
The Russian Foreign Minister emphasizes that he absolutely disagrees with the idea that current developments must end in chaos and anarchy. Rather, he believes that a new international political, financial, and economic architecture can be created, one in which Russia must play a major role as an equal partner.
The Anglo-Saxon (i.e., free-trade) model is tottering, Lavrov writes, just as it was in the 1920s, and therefore today, just as then, the model of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal is called for. China, India, Russia, and Brazil must be integrated into this new reform of our international institutions. On this basis, plans can be made for a common future for the entire Euro-Atlantic region and for the world as a whole, a future in which security and prosperity become truly inseparable, he states.
Two Options
The Western nations today have essentially two options: Either they follow the oligarchy's "free-trade" line, treating Russia, China, and India as antagonists; which means, for example, using Georgia for anti-Russian operations, fostering separatist tendencies inside China, setting financial locusts against India. . . in which case, a great catastrophe is sure to come.
Or, they can heed the proposal that a new international financial and economic order, in the tradition of Roosevelt and his New Deal, and Bretton Woods (as conceived by FDR—to end colonialist looting, not as it was corrupted after his death) be put onto the agenda.
In such an arrangement, the United States, Russia, China, and India must collaborate as a core grouping, around which other sovereign nations can congregate. That is essentially what Foreign Minister Lavrov says in his article.
For Europe's nations, this means that they must extricate themselves from the European Union straitjacket which, has become a new Versailles Treaty. Europe's nations can, and certainly should, cooperate as a Europe of sovereign republics.
For the United States of America, this means the people must sober up and free--as sovereign individual human beings--their minds from the forces of "popular opinion" and "groupthink."
Let us hope and act that the coincidence of what Sir Alan Greenspan himself has described as the financial system's crisis of the century, with the realization of how quickly war can break out, will be sufficient to shock responsible people back to reason.