“Net Neutrality”: The Citizens of the Internet Can Defeat the Telecom Mafia

Unbelievable: Telecoms Claim They’re Worried About Your Bill!                         ~ hehehe yea ,right !

By Kevin Zeese

Global Research, December 14, 2014

Popular Resistance

Region: USA

Theme: Law and Justice, Media Disinformation

The ‘false-on-its-face’ telecom claim of increased costs to consumers is designed to protect their unregulated monopolies that charge too much and provide terrible  service. The Citizens of the Internet Can Defeat the Telecom Mafia
In a claim that must have people laughing out loud, the telecom and broadband providers are fighting net neutrality by claiming that they will raise the rates of consumers! It is hard to believe that even telecom lobbyists, well-paid to mislead Congress and regulators, could make this claim without smirking as cable bills have been rising at four times the rate of inflation without net neutrality.
Now they claim to be concerned about consumer costs. Why? Because they want to protect their monopolies that currently allow them to gouge consumers and provide sub-par service.
The telecoms remind us of the mafia: “If you reclassify the Internet as a public utility, it’s gonna cost you.” It is time to stand up to these bullies. The Internet community is strong enough to defeat them in any arena. The truth is that the FCC will be able to control telecom costs if they reclassify the Internet because Title II gives the FCC the power to control the fees they charge, and the telecoms know and fear this. (Share this meme below.)

The falseness of the telecom claim is obvious on its face, but because some in Congress are well paid to believe the lies of the industry, we need to debunk them. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) spends $19.8 million annually on lobbying making it the fifth largest spender in Washington, DC (Comcast, AT&T and Verizon combined spent an addition $48 billion). As far as political donations, during the 2013-2014 election cycle Comcast gave $3.4 million, AT&T $3.1 million, Verizon $2.6 million and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association $1.8 million. So, Congress hears a lot of lies from people who pay them well to listen.
But there is strong evidence that the politics have changed and the people of the Internet can defeat the dollars of the telecoms in Congress. The Internet community can also debunk their lies, no matter how much they spend to tell them.

Image Source: Viacom/Comedy Central/SouthPark Studios.

No amount of money will turn telecom lies into truths
First, anyone with basic common sense knows that the real problem regarding cost of cable and Internet access is unregulated monopolies. When consumers have no choice, monopolies can charge whatever price they want and not worry about the quality of their service or how they treat consumers.
Every American has experienced the dramatic rate increases in fees from telecoms but the numbers are still shocking. Last year cable rates increased at 6.5% while inflation was 1.7%.  The average annual rate increase since 1995 has been 6.1%, consistently higher than inflation.
As to their dismal service, Informit reports that the US ranks 31^st in the world in download speeds; our connection speed is worse than Estonia, Slovakia and Uruguay among many others; and we rank 48^th in upload speeds making us worse than countries like Zimbabwe and Armenia.
The US pays too much for Internet services that deliver less than other countries because during the Clinton era the Telecommunications Act of 1996 became law which allowed major providers to split up markets for the purpose of regional monopolization. Then in 2002, Michael Powell’s FCC reclassified the Internet as an information service removing the Title II powers needed to regulate these monopolies. The result: unregulated monopolies that gouge consumers and provide lousy service.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index of 2014, which reviews 43 household consumer industries, finds that customer satisfaction from cable and broadband providers is the lowest among all the industries surveyed. The average for all industries was 75.6 in satisfaction out of 100, while the cable companies had a score of 63. Customer satisfaction from these companies continues to decline with drops in satisfaction across the board.  Comcast and Time Warner Cable plunged 8% and 14%, respectively, to very low ACSI scores in the 50s. Comcast and Time Warner Cable both score lower for Internet service compared to their pay TV ratings.  In fact Comcast earned Consumerist’s ‘Worst Company in America’ title twice, first in 2010 and again this year, 2014, beating out Monsanto, a company most associated with the word “evil.”
Because the telecom and broadband providers are so unpopular and have no credibility when it comes to keeping consumer costs down, they had to find a front group to do their dirty work. They found a perfect front group in the misnamed “Progressive” Policy Institute. PPI is the think tank for the big business Democratic corporatists, the Democratic Leadership Conference. The DLC was successful in getting big business money, especially from Wall Street and the telecoms into the Democratic Party. PPI was organized to support the DLC and advocates Wall Street friendly policies that favor de-regulation and corporatization. PPI justifies big business friendly policies with phony progressive rhetoric.  AT&T has been funding PPI since its founding in 2000. As Phillip Dampier wrote “PPI would likely not exist without its corporate sponsors — among them AT&T, hardly a disinterested player in the telecommunications policy debate.”
PPI gave the telecom industry the “research” they wanted for a false propaganda campaign in a last ditch effort to stop reclassifying the Internet as a common carrier under Title II so that net neutrality could once again become the law of the land. The study makes the false claim that Title II net neutrality regulations will result in $15 billion in various new Federal and State taxes and fees. These are totally made up numbers from a completely false fantasy thesis that Title II will mean less investment and slower innovation that would result from reclassification.
Indeed, Edward Wyatt of the New York Times reports that a Verizon executive debunked the myth of less investment under Title II at the annual UBS media and communications investment conference.  He reports that Francis J. Shammo, Verizon’s chief financial officer, said “the company planned to continue to invest in its FiOS fiber-optic network and its wireless systems regardless of the outcome of the broadband debate.” Shammo specifically said that the broadband debate “does not influence the way we invest.”
As John Eggerton reported in MediaChannel, FCC Chair, Tom Wheeler is now saying Title II will not threaten investment: “When Verizon makes that kind of statement, I think it is logical. I think it is reflected in what various Wall Street analysts have said in terms of Title II being less of a bugaboo if it is done correctly.” Matt Wood of Free Press provides more details telling us Wheeler said “that broadband investment in Title II services remains high, that auction revenues are booming despite him telling CTIA that mobile Net Neutrality would be stronger, and even noted that wireless voice has been subject to Sections 201/202 for twenty years.”
This is consistent with the history of Internet investment as the evidence showsinvestment was greater when the Internet was classified as a common carrier under Title II. The telecoms build on this false claim with more false claims telling consumers through their allies in the corporate media that there would be a $19 per month increase in fees to the consumer for Internet access. They are now running advertisements with a scary graphic wherever there is an article about Title II and net neutrality in places like The Hill.

Popular Resistance protest at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association
on November 13, 2014. Photo by Elias Weston-Farber of Popular Resistance.

Does a Lie Repeated Become the Truth?
But it is all false. It is just a lie repeated with a megaphone of big money spending and corporate media allies. This will be an excellent test of the “Big Lie” theory, that a lie repeated becomes the truth.
Congress has, as predicted by almost everyone, extended the tax exemption for the Internet. Prior to the extension, Tech Dirt explained the false basis for the claim because it was based on the slim potential of increased taxes, with had nothing to do with Title II but was based on the tax exemption:
“On the state level, Internet access has long received a Congressional exemption that’s set to expire December 11 — an issue totally unrelated to the Title II push. Congress can make sure the exemption is extended, keeping state sales taxes far away from broadband access. If they don’t, again, it has nothing to do with Title II. Realize this, and nearly all of the PPI’s estimate of $15 billion in new taxes as a direct result of Title II goes up in smoke right out of the gate.”
Tim Karr of Free Press points out in a tweet the irony of the advertisement appearing on the same page in the Washington Post where the ad is debunked.
Free Press explains the falsehood, a “mistake” that is really an attempt to mislead, as coming “from ignoring the difference between services that cross state lines and those that exist entirely within one state.” They explain: If Congress extends and updates the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the FCC declines to include broadband in the [universal service] revenue base at this time, the increase would be exactly zero. Congress has now extended the Tax Freedom Act, so another false foundation of the PPI study is removed.
In fact, the FCC could take various actions to prevent unreasonable fee increases under Title II.  Free Press points out that the FCC could waive the requirement for providers to contribute a portion of their retail broadband revenues to the federal Universal Service Fund. PPI chooses to ignore the basic truth about Title II regulation; it gives the FCC flexibility in regulating the industry, including keeping costs down.
Free Press sums up the facts and concludes there would be no increase in taxes or fees as a result of reclassification under Title II and net neutrality regulations, explaining:

The bottom line is this: If the FCC does nothing more than stick with precedent and designate broadband as an interstate telecom service, the average potential increase in taxes and fees per household would be far less than PPI estimates. If Congress extends and updates the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the FCC declines to include broadband in the revenue base at this time, the increase would be exactly zero.

Banner drop across the street from the FCC November 20, 2014. Photo by Elias Weston-Farber of Popular Resistance.

What It All Means: People of the Internet Will Defeat The Telecom Mafia
The telecom and broadband providers are desperate to keep their unregulated monopolies that can raise prices and provide lousy service without any retribution from the consumers or government. They pay big money to elected officials to serve as a shield to regulation. They keep the FCC in fear of Congress and the courts. It is our job – the millions of people who are demanding net neutrality to be organized and mobilized to defend the FCC when it reclassifies.
When it comes to the courts, in Verizon, when the court threw out the net neutrality rules, it made it clear that only Title II reclassification would give the FCC the authority to regulate the Internet and prevent fast lanes and slow lanes. Court decisions make it evident that theeasiest to defend net neutrality rules will be if the Internet is reclassified under Title II. There is no other legal path that gives the FCC a strong legal foundation that is defendable in court.
When it comes to Congress, recent experience shows the people are the dominant power on Internet issues. The politics of the Internet has changed: the people of the Internet can defeat the dollars of the telecoms. This has been seen in repeated battles over SOPA and PIPA and will be seen in net neutrality as well.  Larry Downes wrote in Forbes analyzing the new political power of the Internet: “A new and profoundly different political force has emerged … a constituency that identifies itself not by local interests but as citizens of the Internet.”
This new political power has shown itself over reclassification and net neutrality, where it produced nearly 4 million comments to the FCC, far eclipsing any previous rulemaking; overwhelmingly, literally 99% of the comments, supported net neutrality. The Internet can generate emails, petitions and phone calls and it has been a key factor in mobilizing people to take action.
The FCC does not have to fear the telecom and broadband providers. Their old school ‘pay to play’ politics will fail with the reality of people power that can be organized rapidly and coordinated on the Internet. Indeed, the Internet can make sure that their massive political spending will create a boomerang against elected officials who take donations from the telecoms. Politicians will find telecom dollars will cost them votes.
And, the politics is on the side of the Internet community. Both political parties want the funding of Silicon Valley and the votes of Internet citizens. Polls show people across the political spectrum – Republicans, Democrats and independents – support net neutrality. Republicans are quickly learning they must be on the side of the Internet. People want an open Internet with equal access for all.
The politics comes down to this: side with the most hated corporations in America or side with millions of people and the funders of the future, the Internet corporations made up of entrepreneurs, start-ups and innovators. The Internet has already shown its current political power, but more importantly, it is obvious which side is the political power of the future.
The FCC should go forward in confidence that Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner and AT&T are political powers of the past that should be taken on and not feared. The Internet will be on the FCC’s side if they do the right thing.

THE CIPHER OF THE GOLDEN DAWN

• Posted on December 10, 2014
• by Clyde Lewis
• in Articles

THE CIPHER OF THE GOLDEN DAWN

When the Orion Spacecraft blasted off of its launch pad the morning of December 5, 2014, from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the announcer said something very curious. After the countdown and the successful lift off, the announcer said “Lift off: the dawn of Orion and a new era of American space exploration.”
I found the choice of words interesting when you consider that the world is preparing for the new Aquarian age and the new dawn. Orion was called “the hunter” and was the lover of the goddess of dawn, Aurora.
Orion is a constellation where the alleged star masters and angelic hosts reside.
The secret chiefs and the star masters are those that linked to Sirius B. Sirius B is a “portal star” which some believe is the “stairway to heaven” or star gate that takes us to other realms and dimensions.
Sirius, the star of Isis, takes us full circle to other connections. Isis was the primary goddess of the isles of Philae which is the name that was given to the probe released by the Rosetta mother ship to explore the comet that greeted us with an extraterrestrial hello, last November.
NASA’s code names for their space craft seem peculiar only because most of them are taken from the times of the mythological “Golden Age” (the primordial beginning). The next probe that NASA will attempt to launch is the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer. Narrowed down to a mere acronym the aircraft will be called OSIRIS REX.
Its destination is the asteroid Bennu. Born in a violent collision millions of years ago, Bennu can tell us more about the story of the solar system, perhaps even the story of our origin.
Bennu is the Egyptian deity associated with the Phoenix. The Bennu was a self-created being said to have played a role in the creation of the world. It was said to be the ba (that is, the spirit) of Ra and enabled the creative actions of the sun god Atum. It was said to have flown over the Egyptian waters of “Nu” that existed before creation, landing on a rock and issuing a call that determined the nature of creation. It was also a symbol of rebirth and was therefore associated with Osiris the father and Isis the mother goddess. The Bennu was a heron bird that would die and then would be reborn on the “Benben stone” as the first rays of the new dawn would arrive.
There have been many times on this program that we have questioned the very nature and structure of reality on this program. There have been many writers, both fictional and non fictional that have shown us that at times it is not always wise to count on reality. At times reality cannot be trusted.
Conventional wisdom says that you should bank on your normalcy bias because odds are things will loll back into their stage of normal and the skeptics will once again use that space to inform you that all of the spiritual and paranormal things you have experienced are the result of some psychotic break.
Truth be known that there are far more causal engineers in this world that have written about the human experience that goes far beyond the imaginary matrix we have constructed for ourselves.
The supernatural feelings that are always buried deep in our core beliefs can provide us with a cultural model that can be used to accept and other wise provide empathy for those who have experienced a spiritual breakdown. Many times this year we have heard of botched exorcisms, brutal murders, Satanic ritualism and various hauntings where people from all walks of life have experienced the area of the esoteric known as the “dark side.”
However it is unwise to say that all paranormal activity is being brought into this world by a darker power when there are various types of spiritual experiences that can be compared to the various dispositions of people on this planet.
For the longest time, it has been the opinion of many science fiction writers and those who investigate our relationship with possible extra-terrestrials that the overseers have hands-off mentality when it comes to human affairs.
However, that opinion seems to be slowly going away as more and more believers in extra-terrestrials are hoping that the beings that exist outside our existence are intercessory.
In the Zohar, a book in the Kabala there is a passage that sounds more like the Hermetic dictum “As above, so below.” It speaks of something called “hebel.”
The word means many things; however, the “hebel” – or breath when made on Earth – travels to the heavens and is heard above. Whenever the “hebel” is sent with intent, even when it is sent in silence, has a voice when it reaches heaven.
Secret alphabets, codes, geometric shapes, even songs are actually very powerful ways of communicating with what are known as intercessory angels.
The basic cultural model for relating to spirits differs in very few respects from the way that people deal with each other. We know that some people are kind and helpful. Some are neutral, while some are troublesome, ornery, dishonest and blasphemous. Other people are mean and spiteful and vindictive.
The spirit world is full of many different personalities and the more we explore this area in a scientific manner the more we find a dimensional link between the living and the dead and a finer yet distinctive birder between that which we call demonic and that which is considered angelic.
From heaven the word comes from on high and the heavenly hosts are just as easily summoned or conjured. We have seen this type of conjuring or priestcraft in the Bible.
In biblical times, when leaving Gentile cities, pious Jews often shook the dust from their feet to show their separation from Gentile practices. If the disciples shook the dust of a Jewish town from their feet, it would show their separation from Jews who rejected their Messiah. The gesture was to show the people that they were making a wrong choice. It often resulted in horrific consequences.
In most cases the cities were left to plague, drought and in some cases cataclysmic destruction. It is the occult version of tough love, unleashing the power of darkness and the whirlwind of death to convert the nonbeliever. It was a shocking way to bring about change.
These rituals opened up portals and literally bent space and time for the purpose of illumination. They were known as “workings” of the epoch. These workings were passed down through the ages. The secrets of these rituals and spell were held by the wizened ones or wizards. The wizards and shaman were the men of intelligence and they were summoned by the king in times of war or in times of rebellion to bind the enemies of the empire.
This has been demonstrated in the Victorian and Edwardian era by various magicians like John Dee and his companion Edward Kelly.
John Dee was a well known magician who performed spells as a form of espionage. His spells were used to bring down the enemies of the British crown. He was known as a great mathematician and astrologer. He was well versed in ancient magic and Babylonian mystery school ritual. He was in essence a special agent.
John Dee was the original “007.” Dee signed his letters with two circles symbolizing his own two eyes and indicating that he was the secret eyes of the Queen. The two circles are guarded by what may be considered a square root sign or an elongated seven. For Dee, seven was a sacred cabalistic and lucky number.
So traditionally the magicians, the intelligence czars were the Illuminati “agents” that were aware of all of the rituals, spells, and psychology of the people. As Donald Tyson wrote in the article, “The Enochian Apocalypse”:

“Between the years 1582 and 1589 the English scholar John Dee (1527-1608) conducted a series of ritual communications with a set of discarnate entities who eventually came to be known as the Enochian angels. It was Dee’s plan to use the complex system of magic communicated by the angels to advance the expansionist policies of his sovereign, Queen Elizabeth I.”

With the aid of fellow occult researcher Edward Kelley, he planned to open a portal to the other side by using the lower keys of Enoch, a magical alphabet that was sung. There were certain symbols and shapes the represented different tones and phonetics that had to be sung a certain way in order to communicate with these beings. A combination of phonetic tones and shapes were used to open what was called a “gate” to the stars.
Now the same type of communication is being used today by various practitioners.
The “Golden Dawn Cipher” is actually a complex list of ciphers that were published in the 1860s and the 1870s. It was into this system that well known magician Aleister Crowley became an initiate. Cowley of course was known as the wickedest man in the world. Mainly because he was a drug addict and a sex magick practitioner. Many people believe that what Crowley did in his time were what beatniks and Bohemians did in their time. However is reputation gets more evil as time grows ever farther from his time in the world and his well known conjuring of what he called angels and not demons. His life consisted of hermetic theurgy and the channeling of the holy book Liber Al Vel Legis or The Book of the Law.
You need to remember that it was in this time where there were at least two other men that claimed to speaking with angles as well.
Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith, claims to have been visited by ethereal beings from on numerous occasions from age 14 onward. Smith told stories of encounters with angels, as well as God and Jesus. His first vision was in a grove of trees where a bright light beamed down from the sky and he was told to organize a new religion. Joseph Smith’s encounters sound like typical alien abduction experiences you hear about today.
Smith was visited by an entity that said he was an angel (or according to some versions of the telling, a “white salamander”). He supposedly told Smith to dig up a set of “golden plates” inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs that happened to be buried nearby. This translation eventually became The Book of Mormon, the foundation for the Mormon church’s beliefs.
In the 1880s an American dentist named John Ballou Newbrough claimed to have been visited by the ambassadors of the angel hosts of heaven. The ambassadors told Newbrough to change his diet and write a book through automatic writing called the OASPE.
This book reveals that these ambassadors come from the presence of the Most High in Heaven and come to earth in 3000 year cycles to teach mankind.
Later there would be another type of Bible-like work written by celestial beings called The Urantia Book. However, this book allegedly was revealed to a group of mediums in 1911.
From stories of The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer Lytton and the meetings of the Vril and the Thule Society it became more evident that perhaps the angles that were conjured or asked to come were something more.
It seemed that these angels were responsible for giving knowledge on how we on Earth could come and meet with them in their worlds.
This knowledge was sought after by many occult groups, elite scholars and scientists. At the turn of the 20th century secret occult groups contacted various heavenly or celestial beings that some people claim are responsible for the modern space program.
Many of these groups were involved with occult activity. Much like the Nazis before them, there were master magicians and psychic intuitives that believed that they were in contact with a grand council that were known as “the Nine.”
The man who was the chief reason for contact Andrija Puharich, an Indian medium also involved in the early career of famed Israeli psychic Uri Geller. Puharich was also involved with the CIA’s notorious MK-ULTRA mind-control program as well.
At precisely 9:00 PM on New Year’s Eve of 1952 in a house deep in the woods of Augusta Maine the séance began. Among the participants was Dr. D.G. Vinod, a Hindu scholar and sage who was well known for channeling all sorts of entities. Others in attendance were Bell helicopter inventor Arthur Young who abandoned his aviation career to focus on the paranormal and his wife Ruth who had ties to the Forbes dynasty and was learning Russian from the wife of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oswald had commented before the assassination of Kennedy that “new revelations” had impressed him about the aerospace industry and that he was planning on working at NASA.
Mary Bancroft of the Bancroft dynasty was also the mistress of Allen Dulles, the CIA Chief whom JFK fired after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Also in attendance was Marcella Du Pont of the Du Pont family and Alice Bouverie who was born into the Astor dynasty.
The Nine claimed to be the creators of mankind, and had informed the intuitive that they would be returning to Earth soon. It was odd that in 1952, after the meeting and the channeling of the Nine, there was a turning point in the American mythos of UFOs and alien mythologies. It was the era of the infamous swarm of UFOs over the United States Capital in Washington, DC.
It is also interesting to note that JPL, the “Jet Propulsion Laboratory” in Pasadena, California, is secretly referred to as “the Jack Parsons Laboratory.” Parsons, who also was involved with the occult and a well-known sex magic ritual known as “the Babylon Working,” was killed in a lab accident six months after the contact with the Nine.
There is also a strange account of how a young and broke science fiction author was hired by a group called “Lab 9″ to write a television script about the return of these nine beings to planet earth. In 1975, Gene Roddenberry, known for his “Star Trek” series, was actually asked by former race car driver Sir John Whitmore — who had ties to these channelers — to write a screenplay based on the Council of Nine’s return to planet earth. Lab 9 flew Roddenberry out to their headquarters in Ossining, NY. There, Roddenberry met and interviewed several psychics, which helped inspire the script. Roddenberry did not satisfy Lab-9 and so he was ordered to do several rewrites about the Council of Nine.
Whitmore introduced Roddenberry to several key figures at the BBC and realized that employer was literally the medium Andrija Puharich! It is also ironic that while Roddenberry was meeting with the executives of the BBC — there was a knock off series in the works called “Space 1999.”
If you remember, “Star Trek” aired in 1968 and later was cancelled. It was then brought back as a major motion picture franchise and several spin offs, including ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation‘which featured nine main characters and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Is this a coincidence?
Is it so odd to consider that perhaps there has been a secret society of intuitive and scholars of the secret meetings that have been setting the agenda of what is to be believed when it comes to things like the UFO enigma and the real facts concerning the invoking of such beings?
This bring ups questions of angles or what are called “UFOnauts” participating in the grooming process through science fiction and collusion with space agencies like NASA to introduce these space beings during what can be called the Golden Dawn.
Ever since the revelation of Project Paperclip, Americanized Nazis brought with them the knowledge of a hidden order of priests and priestesses who perfected the use of mesmerism and mind control thousands of years before the CIA brought us MK-ULTRA and other forms of mental manipulation.
This hidden order gave us the concepts shared in the mystery religions, codified the rites of sacrifice, centralized access to extra-dimensional entities and were responsible in creating the concepts that are given to us in the Bible and other so-called sacred texts.
We have heard of them from sages and shaman as the secret chiefs that literally watch over the planet. If we are to believe in the power of these séances then we must understand that these nine “Secret Chiefs” were able to transmit their wishes to the elite, use cataclysmic cycles as a means to push evolutionary growth and to establish an empire using the intelligence community that act without any notions of morality. The crusade for a global structure is necessary in order to eliminate any or all competing systems. If the promise of the secret chiefs is to be revealed, the covenant sealed in blood is at hand for the crusade of New World Order.
There are so many things that are in place right now that indicate that the next phase of our religious beliefs will be the inclusion of politics, religion and science. The stage is being set for the greatest politico-religious revolution that has ever been seen in history.
The new dawn of the Age of Aquarius is the next phase in our evolutionary process, a Luciferian enlightenment guided by what can be called “divine beings” that are more like aliens than angels.
The hierarchy in the age of reason will adopt the “Pactum De Singularis Caelum.” This is Latin for “the Covenant Under One Heaven.” It is the attempt to solidify a nationalist dictum providing a solid ecumenical backdrop for a religion that is all encompassing and strong. Their agenda is to bring about a “global spirituality.” It will be one that appears to be Christian, but mingles Luciferian concepts.
The new spiritual model of unity and diversity holds that Jesus is only one of many religious ways. The themes of the new global spirituality include the idea that “all things are One,” and “As above, so below”: terms that are associated with Hermeticism and ritual magick.
Basically this means a belief that there is no external God. God is man, God is Earth, and God is nature. All is God. It will be the uniting of the pantheons and the revelation of the true beings that are the secret chiefs of the world.

The Global Bankers’ Coup: “Bail-In” and the Shadowy Financial Stability Board (FSB)

By Ellen Brown

Global Research, December 13, 2014

The Web of Debt Blog

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy

 

On December 11, 2014, the US House passed a bill repealing the Dodd-Frank requirement that risky derivatives be pushed into big-bank subsidiaries, leaving our deposits and pensions exposed to massive derivatives losses. The bill was vigorously challenged by Senator Elizabeth Warren; but the tide turned when Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, stepped into the ring. Perhaps what prompted his intervention was the unanticipated $40 drop in the price of oil. As financial blogger Michael Snyder points out, that drop could trigger a derivatives payout that could bankrupt the biggest banks. And if the G20’s new “bail-in” rules are formalized, depositors and pensioners could be on the hook.
The new bail-in rules were discussed in my last post here. They are edicts of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an unelected body of central bankers and finance ministers headquartered in the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland (image right). Where did the FSB get these sweeping powers, and is its mandate legally enforceable?
Those questions were addressed in an article I wrote in June 2009, two months after the FSB was formed, titled “Big Brother in Basel: BIS Financial Stability Board Undermines National Sovereignty.” It linked the strange boot shape of the BIS to a line from Orwell’s 1984: “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” The concerns raised there seem to be materializing, so I’m republishing the bulk of that article here. We need to be paying attention, lest the bail-in juggernaut steamroll over us unchallenged.
The Shadowy Financial Stability Board
Alarm bells went off in April 2009, when the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was linked to the new Financial Stability Board (FSB) signed onto by the G20 leaders in London. The FSB was an expansion of the older Financial Stability Forum (FSF) set up in 1999 to serve in a merely advisory capacity by the G7 (a group of finance ministers formed from the seven major industrialized nations). The chair of the FSF was the General Manager of the BIS. The new FSB was expanded to include all G20members (19 nations plus the EU).
Formally called the “Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors,” the G20 was, like the G7, originally set up as a forum merely for cooperation and consultation on matters pertaining to the international financial system. What set off alarms was that the new Financial Stability Board had real teeth, imposing “obligations” and “commitments” on its members; and this feat was pulled off without legislative formalities, skirting the usual exacting requirements for treaties. It was all done in hasty response to an “emergency.” Problem-reaction-solution was the slippery slope of coups.
Buried on page 83 of an 89-page Report on Financial Regulatory Reform issued by the US Obama administration was a recommendation that the FSB strengthen and institutionalize its mandate to promote global financial stability. It sounded like a worthy goal, but there was a disturbing lack of detail. What was the FSB’s mandate, what were its expanded powers, and who was in charge? An article in The London Guardian addressed those issues in question and answer format:

Who runs the regulator? The Financial Stability Forum is chaired by Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy. The secretariat is based at the Bank for International Settlements’ headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.

Draghi was director general of the Italian treasury from 1991 to 2001, where he was responsible for widespread privatization (sell-off of government holdings to private investors). From 2002 to 2006, he was a partner at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. He was succeeded in 2011 by Mark Carney, who also got his start at Goldman Sachs, working there for 13 years before going on to become Governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008 and Governor of the Bank of England in 2012. In 2011 and 2012, Carney attended the annual meetings of the controversial Bilderberg Group.

What will the new regulator do? The regulator will monitor potential risks to the economy . . . It will cooperate with the IMF, the Washington-based body that monitors countries’ financial health, lending funds if needed.

The IMF is an international banking organization that is also controversial. Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist for the World Bank, charged it with ensnaring Third World countries in a debt trap from which they could not escape. Debtors unable to pay were bound by “conditionalities” that included a forced sell-off of national assets to private investors in order to service their loans.

What will the regulator oversee? All ‘systemically important’ financial institutions, instruments and markets.

The term “systemically important” was not defined. Would it include such systemically important institutions as national treasuries, and such systemically important markets as gold, oil and food?

How will it work? The body will establish a supervisory college to monitor each of the largest international financial services firms. . . . It will act as a clearing house for information-sharing and contingency planning for the benefit of its members. 

“Information-sharing” can mean illegal collusion. Would the information-sharing here include such things as secret agreements among central banks to buy or sell particular currencies, with the concomitant power to support or collapse targeted local economies?

What will the new regulator do about debt and loans? To prevent another debt bubble, the new body will recommend financial companies maintain provisions against credit losses and may impose constraints on borrowing.

What sort of constraints? The Basel Accords, imposed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (also housed at the BIS) had not necessarily worked out well. The first Basel Accord, issued in 1998, had been blamed for inducing a recession in Japan from which that country had yet to recover; and the Second Basel Accord and its associated mark-to-market rule had been blamed for bringing on the 2008 crisis. (For more on this, see The Public Bank Solution.)
The Amorphous 12 International Standards and Codes
Most troubling, perhaps, was this vague parenthetical reference in a press release issued by the BIS, titled “Financial Stability Forum Re-established as the Financial Stability Board”:

As obligations of membership, member countries and territories commit to . . . implement international financial standards (including the 12 key International Standards and Codes) . . . .

This was not just friendly advice from an advisory board. It was a commitment to comply, so you would expect some detailed discussion concerning what those standards entailed. But a search of the major media revealed virtually nothing. The 12 key International Standards and Codes were left undefined and undiscussed. The FSB website listed them, but it was vague. The Standards and Codes covered broad areas that were apparently subject to modification as the overseeing committees saw fit. They included money and financial policy transparency, fiscal policy transparency, data dissemination, insolvency, corporate governance, accounting, auditing, payment and settlement, market integrity, banking supervision, securities regulation, and insurance supervision.
Take “fiscal policy transparency” as an example. The “Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency” was adopted by the IMF Interim Committee in 1998. The “synoptic description” said:
The code contains transparency requirements to provide assurances to the public and to capital markets that a sufficiently complete picture of the structure and finances of government is available so as to allow the soundness of fiscal policy to be reliably assessed.
Members were required to provide a “picture of the structure and finances of government” that was complete enough for an assessment of its “soundness” — but an assessment by whom, and what if a government failed the test? Was an unelected private committee based in the BIS allowed to evaluate the “structure and function” of particular national governments and, if they were determined to have fiscal policies that were not “sound,” to impose “conditionalities” and “austerity measures” of the sort that the IMF was notorious for imposing on Third World countries? Suspicious observers wondered if that was how once-mighty nations were to be brought under the heel of Big Brother at last.
For three centuries, private international banking interests have brought governments in line by blocking them from issuing their own currencies and requiring them to borrow banker-issued “banknotes” instead. Political colonialism is now a thing of the past, but under the new FSB guidelines, nations could still be held in feudalistic subservience to foreign masters.
Consider this scenario: the new FSB rules precipitate a massive global depression due to contraction of the money supply. XYZ country wakes up to the fact that all of this is unnecessary – that it could be creating its own money, freeing itself from the debt trap, rather than borrowing from bankers who create money on computer screens and charge interest for the privilege of borrowing it. But this realization comes too late: the boot descends and XYZ is crushed into line. National sovereignty has been abdicated to a private committee, with no say by the voters.
Marilyn Barnewall, dubbed by Forbes Magazine the “dean of American private banking,” wrote in an April 2009 article titled “What Happened to American Sovereignty at G-20?”:

It seems the world’s bankers have executed a bloodless coup and now represent all of the people in the world. . . . President Obama agreed at the G20 meeting in London to create an international board with authority to intervene in U.S. corporations by dictating executive compensation and approving or disapproving business management decisions.  Under the new Financial Stability Board, the United States has only one vote. In other words, the group will be largely controlled by European central bankers. My guess is, they will represent themselves, not you and not me and certainly not America.

The Commitments Mandated by the Financial Stability Board Constitute a Commercial Treaty Requiring a Two-thirds Vote of the Senate
Are these commitments legally binding? Adoption of the FSB was never voted on by the public, either individually or through their legislators. The G20 Summit has been called “a New Bretton Woods,” referring to agreements entered into in 1944 establishing new rules for international trade. But Bretton Woods was put in place by Congressional Executive Agreement, requiring a majority vote of the legislature; and it more properly should have been done by treaty, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate, since it was an international agreement binding on the nation.
“Bail-in” is not the law yet, but the G20 governments will be called upon to adopt the FSB’s resolution measures when the proposal is finalized after taking comments in 2015. The authority of the G20 has been challenged, but mainly over whether important countries were left out of the mix. The omitted countries may prove to be the lucky ones, having avoided the FSB’s net.