Will The Banking Meltdown In Cyprus Be A “Lehman Brothers Moment” For All Of Europe?

By Michael, on March 19th, 2013

 

Cyprus lawmakers may have rejected the bank account tax, but the truth is that the financial crisis in Cyprus is just getting started.  Right now, the two largest banks in Cyprus are dangerously close to a meltdown.  If they fail, depositors could end up losing virtually all of their money.  You see, the banking system of Cyprus absolutely dwarfs the GDP of that small island nation.  Cyprus is known all over the world as a major offshore tax haven, and wealthy Russians and wealthy Europeans have been pouring massive amounts of money into the banking system over the last several decades.  Yes, those bank deposits are supposed to be insured, but the truth is that there is no way that the government of Cyprus could ever come up with enough money to cover the massive losses that we are potentially looking at.  This is a case where the banking system of a nation has gotten so large that the national government is absolutely powerless to stop a collapse from happening.  If those banks fail, depositors may end up getting 50 percent of their money or they may end up getting nothing.  We just don't know how bad the damage is yet.  And considering the fact that many of the largest corporations and many of the wealthiest individuals in Europe have huge mountains of cash stashed in Cyprus, the fallout from a banking collapse could potentially be absolutely catastrophic.
So Cyprus needs to come up with some money from somewhere in order to keep that from happening.
Basically, there are three options at this point...
1) Even though the bank account confiscation tax was voted down today, there is talk that it could come back in another form.  This is really the only place inside of Cyprus where enough money can be raised to bail out the banks.
2) Cyprus could go back and beg the IMF and the EU for money, but the IMF and the EU have already said that they want depositors to share in the pain.
3) Cyprus could get the money that they need from the Russians.  This will be discussed in more detail later.
A lot of people will see the headlines proclaiming that Cyprus has voted against the wealth tax and think that everything is going to be okay now, but that is very far from the truth.
The reality is that this is only the first move in a very complicated chess game.  The problems for Cyprus are only just the beginning...

"This is not the end of the process, but instead kicks off a further round of negotiation with Moscow and Berlin," JPMorgan economist Alex White wrote in a research note. "The Cypriot authorities wanted to conduct the vote so that they could reaffirm the extent of their difficulties to the Europeans."

When the banks of Cyprus reopen in a few days, there is going to be a stampede of people trying to pull their money out of the banks.
In fact, this was starting to happen even before the "bank holiday" was declared.  According to The Sun, bank insiders were tipping people off about what was going to happen in the days leading up to the crisis...

But Russian oligarchs and big investors emptied accounts in the days beforehand, prompting claims they were tipped off by bank insiders. A source told The Sun: “It leaked out. Bankers warned their best clients. Government officials warned their friends and relatives.
“Billions disappeared from accounts in days, most from accounts held by Russians.”

And according to David Zervos, we could see billions more euros withdrawn from banks in Cyprus once they reopen.  There will be mass panic as depositors scramble to reclaim their money before it can be taxed...

The die is cast. There is no going back for the Cypriots or the Eurozone leaders. As soon as the banks open in Cyprus there will be billions in withdrawals. The question of course is - "where will the money come from?". Well, if the parliament votes YES, then the Euros will have to come from the Eurosystem. But there is a glitch. The Cypriots have already borrowed 10b euro via the ELA and Target2. How can Mario just wire over 20 billion more (less the 10 to 15 percent haircut) for the Russians, and another 20 to 30 billion for the wealthy Greeks. What collateral will an economy with 20b in GDP post to get this cash? Unless Mario violates every collateral rule at the ECB, the Cypriot financial system will collapse even with a YES vote. Its a wonderful life - Cyprus style.

It may not even matter what Cyprus eventually decides to do about a "wealth tax".  The bank run that is about to happen may be enough to bring down the banks of Cyprus all by itself.
And of course people all over southern Europe are watching developments in Cyprus very closely.  As former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling recently noted, if depositors in southern Europe start getting nervous that their bank accounts will be targeted too, they will be likely to start pulling money out of the banks very rapidly...

"They have actually now said to people ‘We will come after your deposits, no matter how small your savings are’ and that seems to me to make it more likely that, if you are a saver in Spain or in Italy, for example, and you have just the sniff of the EU or the IMF coming your way, you will take your money out and you will get a run on the bank"

Cyprus could actually get out of this mess by turning to Russia, but the United States and Europe really do not want to see Russia gain so much control over that very strategic island nation.
So why would Russia get involved?  Well, it has been estimated that Russians have approximately $31 billion stashed in banks in Cyprus.  It is the favorite offshore banking destination for the Russian oligarchs.  Dennis Gartman recently detailed why the tiny island nation is so appealing to the Russians...

Cyprus has been their own private Switzerland for many years. Legal and non-legal Russian cash has swamped the banking system in Cyprus since the early 90’s. The beauty of the island; the ease of admission too and exit from the island via boat or plane; the secrecy of the banking laws; the warm Mediterranean climate and the ease of which Cypriot authorities could be bribed and bought all worked to make Cyprus the center of Russian capital flight.

And right now the Russians are not happy at all that their money is being threatened.
In particular, the Russian mafia launders a lot of money in Cyprus.  The Russian mafia is not about to let anyone steal their money, and they have an international reputation for being absolutely brutal.  In the end, pressure from the mafia may have been one of the primary reasons why many Cyprus lawmakers voted against the bank account tax.  As Dennis Gartman astutely noted, by voting against the wealth tax they may have literally been saving their own lives...

"One could only laugh as such a comment; of course Cyprus was complacent about laundering. To think otherwise was and is naïve. Ah, but now you’ve stolen Russia money... or soon shall depending upon the vote in the Cypriot parliament... and that is dangerous... very. One does not steal Russian mafia money and get away with it. There are fewer statements of fact that are more certain, more factual, more unyielding than this statement. Russian Mafia figures do not take well to being stolen from, and they take even less well to be made fools of. We see no reason to mince words at this point: People will be hurt over this decision; some shall be killed."

And the Russians definitely do not want to see the banking system of Cyprus collapse.  In fact, proposals have been made that would provide the money necessary to keep it afloat.  But of course that money would not come cheaply.
Some of the proposals that Russia has put forward were summarized by the Daily Mail...

But in a move that has raised eyebrows, the Russian energy giant Gazprom offered Cyprus a plan in which the company will undertake the restructuring of the country’s banks in exchange for exploration rights for natural gas on the island.
Representatives of the Russian company submitted the proposal to the office of Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades on Sunday evening.
It is also rumoured that the Kremlin is privately offering to help bail out Cyprus in exchange for the right to use a naval base in the Greek part of the island.

In addition, as I wrote about yesterday, some Russian investors have stepped forward and have offered to buy majority stakes in the two largest banks in Cyprus.
So why hasn't Cyprus accepted help from Russia yet?  Well, it is a geopolitical thing.  Cyprus is a part of the EU, and European officials do not want Russia to become the dominant influence in Cyprus.
But if the IMF and the EU are not going to step up and help Cyprus, the Russian offers will become more tempting with each passing day.
Meanwhile, the attempted attack on bank accounts in Cyprus is making people nervous all over Europe.  For example, the following is what German economist Peter Bofinger had to say about what the situation in Cyprus is doing to confidence in the European financial system...

Making small-scale savers pay is extremely dangerous. It will shake the trust of depositors across the Continent. Europe's citizens now have to fear for their money.

And if you don't think that this could ever happen anywhere else, you are just being delusional.
In fact, it is already happening.  In fact, the Finance Minister of New Zealand is now proposing that depositors in his nation should be required to "take a haircut" if any banks in his nation fail...

The National Government are pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.
Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.
“Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand – a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.
“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.

“Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat."

But surely there will never be any major banking problems in the United States, right?
Well, large numbers of Chase customers that logged into their accounts on Monday discovered that a "computer glitch" had reset all of their account balances to zero...

Chase bank experienced a problem Monday that had customers scrambling to figure out where their money went.
JP Morgan Chase said it hadn’t been hacked but was having a problem “related to an internal issue” as customers found their accounts showing zero balances.
Some customers shared their frustration on Twitter and showed screen shots of zero balances.

How would you feel if you suddenly discovered that you had no money in the bank?
Most Americans just assume that their money will always be there because their bank accounts are "guaranteed" by deposit insurance and by the full faith and credit of the federal government.
But that is exactly what the people of Cyprus thought too, and look how that turned out.
It would be hard to overstate how dangerous the situation in Cyprus is.  Yes, their nation is very small but their banking system is absolutely huge.
If the banking system of Cyprus fails, it could be a "Lehman Brothers moment" for all of Europe.  At this point, the entire European banking system is leveraged 26 to 1, and once European banks start to fail they could start falling like dominoes.
There is also a very strong possibility that Cyprus could be forced to leave the euro, and if that happens everyone will be wondering who will be next to leave the common currency.
So don't think for a second that the crisis in Cyprus is over.  The banking meltdown is just getting started, and the consequences could end up being far more dramatic than any of us could possibly imagine.

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Jahbulon יהּ בּעל און: No Other Gods Before Him

• Posted on March 19, 2013
• by Clyde Lewis
• in Articles

JAHBULON יהּ בּעל און:
NO OTHER GODS BEFORE HIM

It has been reported that there is a special name that is uttered by master magicians that calls upon the name of the divine incarnate or the second incarnation that is the representation of a deity that has manifested among man. This word is also been spoken of in the secret societies as the name of the man who was the stranger who stood in the ruins of Solomon’s Temple.
Jahbulon is a composite name for God which includes the secret. The secret is in the utterance of God the Divine, God the Adversary and God as the One Divine Adversary. This also indicates the secret that God has duality like his human creation. That we must find balance in our duality. But as humans we become marked and beastly. More profane than divine. Jahbulon has also been described as an ancient Chaldean demon. Others point to the name as an ancient word meaning the antichrist.
In any case it s a name of a supreme being that has many faces and attitudes. There are many secret societies that claim that Jahbulon is the real name of God. When the name is used in secret ceremonies, the magician gains knowledge of all things past, present and future. In higher orders the name Jahbulon is used with the name Jesus Christ. The way it is used still remains a secret. The combination keys are also mixed with numeric significance and are declared by the initiate. The number is six cubed or 216. This is the number of the oracle or the seeing eye of the future.
These numeric combinations are significant. The combination number equation numbers are 216 and 666. One is divine, the other is profane and both dual numeric codes are spoken of in the writings of the prophets. This magical numeric sequence has no doubt been used in high ritual magic.
There is a mysticism that has its hold on the world at the moment and it is evident that deep down in the collective unconscious the spirit of this so called second incarnation of a divine being, a vicar of Christ or Anti-Christ is no accident. It is so overwhelming that people are seeing the devil peeking behind every corner and prophecy is approximating the time of the arrival of this incarnation of Baal in this modern epoch.
One theme that is constantly running throughout the modern propaganda is the maxim of the Jesuit Order “Ad Majorem Gloriam Dei“; A slogan which rationalizes the idea of allowing the demise of a few to warrant the survival of the many. It is also been called the charge of “some things must pass away for the greater glory,” The greater glory of god or perhaps the greater glory of mankind.
Either way, in the future someone has to die in order to allow others to live.
The way of sacrifice and the option to follow the left hand path has always been part of the long suffering of mankind and the image parameters of what is evil and what we perceive as messianic is warped now. Many of us are watchful and some are secretly frightened that before us is the incarnation of the very demons we have been warned about in the apocalyptic writings of the soothsayers.
This is powerful programming that has been with us for thousands of years.
Propaganda, programming and media spin cannot avert the brutally hard choices that must be made over the next 10 to fifteen years. We are now hearing from all sides in the alternative media that the existing system is unsustainable. We see and hear of rumored system failures from economies to governments. But like the hydra, the head can be removed from the body and several hideous facsimiles will grow in its place and each one controls a tentacle that manipulates every aspect of your life.
This existing system took years to sabotage and was an inside job. It was quite simply the premeditated crisis, a controlled demolition that had an ongoing ripple effect. It is being done because the replacement is one of those heads with many tentacles that will grasp what is in its way, and try to strangle it before it has an opportunity to fight back.
There have been many Americans dodging the various bullets. However, no American is completely bulletproof and no one is iron clad and capable of withstanding the emotional upheaval involved with the witnessing of a cessation of what can be determined to be the American “norm.”
Chaos is the new normal, reluctance is the new safe decision, silence has been acceptance and ennui is a word we can blow the dust off of and use again, that is if we are motivated enough to try and understand what the word means. The movements of government are now moving like the tentacles of the octopus.
When all things fall apart religions will not help you, money will not help you, community groups will not help you, and family will not help you. You are told that you cannot even help yourself. It becomes evident, that government and science combines to convince you that they the savior of all mankind.

The metaphysical blowback is the idea that what we are seeing is a divine satanic incarnation unfolding and soon things around us become suspicious and movements of government appear to be underhanded and the brotherhood of shadows rule from behind the various puppets that appear to be competent leadership.
Religion and science as a resource has lost its effectiveness for some people.
It doesn’t satisfy people who have the ability to think outside the box. People have slowly become “urban agnostics” even “urban atheists” where publicly they are not religious but privately they pray or practice magic or some other ritualistic endeavor. Many are quick to believe in whatever confirms their suspicions making objective information difficult to obtain.
The internal voice seems to be sending some very interesting messages to people and I begin to wonder if the mass consciousness will provide an image or warning that will be concrete evidence that the beast or the second incarnation of the divine adversary has arrived.
I have been thinking of this because of the so-called image of Satan that was seen in the television series “The Bible” on the History Channel. The series has now been hailed as a major success story for the network. The portrayal of characters in the bible has been introduced in a modern tableau for all to watch. It most certainly is a compelling series, especially at a time in history where biblical eschatology and the preparation for the Easter season is upon us.
The only drawback it seems is when Satan was introduced as a character in the series. The hooded figure confronts Jesus Christ in the wilderness and when we gaze upon the face of the actor that portrayed Satan, many people saw a resemblance that reminded them of United States President Barack Obama.

While the likeness is uncanny, it has prompted producers of the show to dismiss it as nonsense and news departments to try and convince the American people that “historically”, or more like hysterically, Obama looks nothing like the devil.

This to me sends a message loud and clear that there is a psychological meltdown in the United States and that we have a deep psychological connection with Obama and a messiah or antichrist.


The psychological blurring of the reality is valid especially as Obama plans his trip to Jerusalem. US President Barack Obama is expected to arrive in Jerusalem on March 20 for a three-day trip which will also take him to the West Bank city of Ramallah. This has alerted prophecy watchdogs who say that the Democratic President, whose symbol is the donkey, is riding into the holy city five days before Passover which many say mimics the same path of Jesus. He is also doing so ritualistically on the day of the spring equinox a time equated with the promise of resurrection and rebirth. All associated with the Easter death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
All the while the money changers are carrying out their destructive bottoming out of governments across the globe. Obama is bringing with him the “unbreakable alliance” a peace agreement that some say indicate that Obama is establishing the so-called “peace treaty” that can be seen as fulfillment of a prophecy affiliated with the antichrist.
It is also a very synchronistic move for the President after many people are reeling from the announcement of one Pope renouncing his papacy to make way for a Jesuit Pope. Pope Francis I chose his name to represent peace however the new pope or “the black pope” represents a more militant move towards a battle with the so-called evil that is plaguing the Catholic Church.
The Roman-Vatican-Masonic oppression culture has its origins in the much older secret societies. “Mystery Religions“, “Mystery Schools“, “Priesthood cults”, or “Schools for the divine science of governing” are just part of the processes that the Church uses to gain control and wage war. President Obama was given a blessing by Pope Benedict XVI. This is the first time a Pope has blessed a Presidency so openly. Church and state are now combined in order to raise the divine bar of apotheosis or personality messianic worship of one man that now people are seeing as an incarnate devil.
Many true believers in the Bible call Obama “the king of fierce continence”, as explained in the eighth chapter of Daniel. Before you dismiss this idea, you must understand that this is not the first time someone has decided that Obama’s visit to another country is comparable to the visit of a living messiah.
Obama’s first job before he president was with a company involved with so-called ‘business intelligence’. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, Barack Obama went to work for a firm called Business International Corporation, a firm that was linked to economic intelligence gathering for the Central Intelligence Agency. For one year, Obama worked as a researcher in BIC’s financial services division where he wrote for two BIC publications, ‘Financing Foreign Operations‘ and ‘Business International Money Report‘, a weekly newsletter.
In 1988, Obama visited his cousin Raila Odinga in Kenya to launch his political career. Obama, of course, has a background in “operations” that bring people together using “intelligence” regarding core beliefs.

At the same time as Obama’s visit to Kenya, it was reported that during a Christian gathering of 6,000 Kenyans, a man claiming to be Jesus Christ appeared in the crowd and proceeded to heal and teach.
Some called the character “Maitreya” and there are some who believe that this messianic figure was somehow connected with Barack Obama claiming that it was an anthropological psy-op to cause a culture rift. Some are actually saying that the so-called “messiah” was Obama in disguise.

The frightening part is that prior to the visit of Obama and this messianic figure, German evangelist and third world missionary Reinhard Bonnke had predicted that Jesus would appear in Nairobi on Saturday, June 11th, 1988. There was also a “prediction made by televangelist Benny Hinn that Jesus would also appear in Kenya and administer amongst his followers. This again shows “predictive programming.”
It was declared on the Christian network TBN that a Christ-like figure had been appearing in Muslim nations as a tall bearded man in white robes performing miracles.

This all was happening at the same time Obama was meeting with his cousin a leader in Nairobi.
TBN and Benny Hinn were criticized for their affiliations with secret societies and the Knights Templar. The TBN logo featured the upside down dove. A representation of Columbia, the illuminist symbol of death.
Meanwhile, in “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” Jerome Corsi argues that Odinga’s protests following his loss to U.S.-backed Mwai Kibaki in Kenya’s 2007 presidential election led to a wave of tribal and religious violence aimed against Kibaki’s majority Kikuyu tribe. Many Christians are now being murdered in Kenya.
An online article in the London Times called “Kenyans hail election of Savior Barack Obama” cited that Kenyans see Obama as Jesus Christ. Is this a coincidence?
In 2008, there was an article written by Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle called “Is Obama An Enlightened Being?” and it compared Obama to JFK/MLK and brings up the appearance of Jesus Christ in Kenya. Basically putting both Obama and the “Maitreya“ in Kenya at the same time. The Chronicle asks “Is Obama The Enlightened One?”
When Barack Obama went to Cairo, Egypt to speak there were some very interesting things that transpired. Egyptians compared Obama to King Tutankhamen. King Tut, along with other Egyptian Kings like Akhenaten, were offspring of the “sun” disc, or offspring of the Aten. Aten was also known as the great “alien” sun god, a
reptilian god of the new dawn or sunrise.
The Egyptians heralded Obama as royalty and the President did not miss an opportunity to give them reason to believe he had some divinity and method to his appearance there. While in Cairo, Obama called himself Barack Hussein Obama. This was one of the rare times his three names were used in an official capacity. In Cairo he used all three names because of the power they possess and because of what might be a bit of prophetic projection to Muslims.
According to a 17th century Hadith from the Bihar al-Anwar, Imam Ali Ibn Abi-Talib prophesied that at the ‘end of times’ and just before the return of the Mahdi, the ultimate savior, a “tall black man will assume the reins of government in the West.”
Commanding “the strongest army on earth,” the new ruler in the West will carry “a clear sign” from the third Imam, whose name was Hussien Ibn Ali. The tradition concludes: “Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us.” The prophecy is code: a tall, dark man sent from Hussein is with us.
In a curious coincidence Obama’s first and second names – Barack Hussein – mean “the blessing” or “light shine” of “Hussein” or “sent from Hussein” in Arabic and Persian.
His family name, Obama, written in the Persian alphabet, reads O Ba Ma, which means “he is with us,” these names spoken and declared before Muslims carry powerful magic foretold in the Hadith’s tradition.
Coincidentally, Barack is the name of the white horse which carried Mohammed into heaven from the Dome of the Rock.
Now Barack Obama is being prepared to once again to perhaps be at the Temple Mount. Is this some sort of prophetic fulfillment or a well produced psy-op?
The social engineers are now using whatever means necessary to convince you that it is useless to resist central, establishment control. For the moment it has posited a counter-cultural alternative to such control which is actually a counterfeit, covertly emanating from the establishment itself. Central establishment control will be the eventual outcome from this psy-op experiment.
Obama appears as a savior to the world in most places and appears as the devil on all of our television screens while watching a TV show about the Bible.
This seems to be a fore structuring concept and evidence of the mental global meltdown meant to divide people into various camps all responding to core belief programming that resides somewhere in the wiring of those awaiting the return of a messiah or the incarnation of an antichrist.

Texas Crime Lab Caught Falsifying Drug Tests

• http://intellihub.com/2013/03/19/texas-crime-lab-caught-falsifying-drug-tests/

  
  

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By JG Vibes
Intellihub.com
March 19, 2013
Last year there was a crime lab specialist in Massachusetts who admitted to tampering with tens of thousands of drug tests, creating false positives and putting countless human beings in cages.
Now a similar situation has been exposed in Texas, and this time thousands of cases can be overturned because of another drug lab specialist falsifying reports.
If this finding becomes official it could save a large number of nonviolent offenders from more than 10,000 years in prison.
A local law blog reported that:
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals yesterday approved nine new habeas corpus petitions from defendants convicted of drug crimes after a Department of Public Safety crime lab worker in Houston was found last year to have falsified test results. That brings the total number of defendants with overturned convictions so far to 11, with many more to come. Those 11 people had been sentenced collectively to 90 years, including one 32-year sentence.
Though there may yet be more instances discovered where ex-lab employee Jonathon Salvador allegedly fabricated results, the habeas petitions granted so far have been in cases where the drug evidence had been destroyed post-conviction and so retesting is impossible. The general counsel at the Texas Forensic Science Commission has estimated evidence has been destroyed in 25-50% of the nearly 5,000 cases from 36 different counties that Mr. Salvador worked on during his time at DPS.
All the habeas writs granted so far have come from Galveston County but that’s only because District Attorney Jack Roady’s office has been especially diligent about identifying cases where no evidence exists and processing them as promptly as possible. But expect hundreds more people released based on successful writs from other Southeast Texas counties. From what Grits knows of the incident, if I were a betting man I’d put the over-under for how many cases will eventually be overturned at around 1,500. Indeed, that’s arguably a conservative estimate.
Extrapolating, the average sentence of the first 11 defendants freed based on this fiasco was just over 8 years. Granted, 11 is a small sample, but if that average holds up and Grits’ guesstimate of 1,500 affected defendants comes to fruition, that’d be 12,000 years worth of prison sentences overturned as a result of one, shoddy lab worker!”
None of these people belong in jail to begin with, at least not for drug crimes anyway.  With so many of these cases popping up over the years it seems that this is a systematic problem that reaches far beyond “a few bad apples”.
******
Read more articles by this author HERE.
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter-culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer, reporter for Intellihub.com and Executive Producer of the Bob Tuskin Radio Show. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com

One Day Soon, We’ll All Be “Homegrown Terrorists”

Giordano Bruno
Neithercorp Press
April 9, 2010
The word “terrorist” has assumed numerous presumptive connotations over the decades, and this trend of “redefining” the vicious label to suit certain governmental needs has only intensified in recent years, especially since 9/11. Its graduation as widely used political terminology gives it an almost archetypal quality, because it has the ability to trigger abundant and subconscious emotional reactions in the populace. However, these reactions are usually based on mass delusions: false ideas of what terrorism is, what it is not, and who is actually guilty of these loosely classified crimes. It is a weighted word, filled with projections, biases, and faulty perceptions.
Governments across the world, and organizations such as the UN, have considered “officially” categorizing what a terrorist actually is, but claim that they have been unable to reach an accord that satisfies everyone. I feel it is much more likely that ruling bodies, most especially the UN, would like nothing better than to keep the specifics of the term as hazy as possible for as long as possible. The more elusive it is, the more powerful it becomes to those elite minorities who wish to retain and centralize political control. While we tend to associate terrorism with Muslim extremism, because this is the image we have been force-fed for the past ten years, that association can just as easily be swayed or redirected to someone else depending on which person or people become most obstructive to the government’s immediate desires. At bottom, under the current cultural climate, anyone can be labeled a terrorist for any reason, even American Citizens liable for nothing more than exercising their Constitutional rights.
As our country spirals towards certain monetary derailment, scathing discontentment with the establishment is sure to arise. When trusted leadership betrays, when criminality becomes a political guideline, when the corrupt loot the world, burning the people alive in their ever expanding grip, invariably, defiance is born. The Globalists know this well. They have seen it time and again, and have learned from past mistakes. Instead of immediately attempting to crush this opposition of individualists, the Elites now preempt violence with “false cultural identification”; the public demonization of those who would inevitably rebel BEFORE they even do so, much like a murderer who admonishes his future victims for wanting to defend themselves. The wise man would find this tactic absurd, or insane, but wisdom is in short supply these days.
In this article, we will explore the steps that the Elites are taking to prime the masses for the label we will soon be hearing daily; “Homegrown Terrorist”. We will also take a look at the organizations and think tanks that manufacture this propaganda and mold it for public consumption…
Hutaree, And Pavlov’s Dog
Though the “Hutaree Militia” and their arrest have been widely publicized in the media, and the MSM has all but sentenced them as guilty in the eyes of the nation before a trial has even begun, I will retain judgment until all the facts are in. The incident has all the characteristics of a “Trojan Horse” disinformation maneuver, in which groups who oppose the government are infiltrated by men posing as members. A common occurrence in the 60’s and 70’s during the anti-Vietnam War movement, these federal moles would then purposely lure groups into illegal acts, or frame them outright. The main goal of this tactic is to topple the moral high ground that the challenging movement stands on, making them appear as corrupt as the governments they defend against. However, the manipulation goes much further.
Whether or not the Hutaree are actually guilty of the crimes they have been accused is really not the most relevant issue. What is relevant, are the false associations and connections made by the MSM in an attempt to not only demonize the Hutaree, but the entire Liberty Movement along with them.
While it is not uncommon for the globalist-controlled media to attack the Liberty Movement, the widespread anger over the recent passing of Obama’s unconstitutional health care bill and the Hutaree incident have opened certain doors for exploitation. The news is now awash in anti-patriot misinformation. Here are a few of the most prominent falsehoods being presented:
1) The Liberty Movement Is An Extremist Right Wing Element?: It may be a bit cliché to say, but people really do fear what they don’t understand. Half of the American populace have absolutely no clue what the “Right Wing” is, let alone what a “Right Wing Extremist” is. During the presidency of George W. Bush, the Liberty Movement railed against the Republican Party for tripling the size of federal government, for going to war in Iraq on false pretenses, for refusing to allow a truly independent investigation of 9/11 despite numerous inconsistencies and scientifically erroneous evidence in the official reports, and for illegal expansion of domestic wire tapping and spy programs against American citizens, including FISA, not to mention the Patriot Act and PDD 51, which give the executive branch legal authority to assume full control over the functions of government without checks and balances under any circumstance they see fit. In response, the MSM and others called us “liberal fanatics” and “communists”. Only a few years later, they now have the audacity to label us “right wing extremists”, as we call out the Obama Administration for supporting the exact same policies as Bush. The Time Magazine article below illustrates this well:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1976308,00.html?xid=rss-fullnation-yahoo
Many Americans do not comprehend the position of the Liberty Movement because they are still trapped in the fabricated world of the false “left / right” paradigm. The leadership of both parties, Democrat and Republican, are under the influence of the same corporate globalist interests, and this is evident in the fact they support nearly identical executive legislative actions that erode civil liberties and U.S. sovereignty. The illusion of the Left and Right is not substantiated by fact, but by the theater of media. Barack Obama’s rhetoric, for instance, has never matched his actions, and few if any of his campaign promises to end Bush-era injustices have been fulfilled.
As a country, we must stop living in the fantasy world of celebrity politics, a world in which what people say is more important than what they really do. This is where the Liberty Movement exists; in the plane between the phony realities of Left and Right, where “taking sides” is meaningless, where the only thing that is important is what is TRUE, and what is dishonest.
The attempt by the media today to brand us as “Right Wing” is merely a ruse to associate us with the much hated Neo-Con ideology (which is really socialist), and to continue perpetuating the lie of the current two party apparatus. In this way, they can marginalize us as a fringe element of a fake party, an element that people can be made to dread, instead of the birth of a new third party, which is what we really are.
2) The Liberty Movement’s Anger Over The Health Care Debate Makes Us “Dangerous”?: Last year, Neithercorp reported on the developments surrounding Obamacare and our personal belief that not only was the bill not practical, but that it was not meant to work at all:
http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=92
‘ObamaCare’ will not come to fruition, for many reasons, but most of all because the U.S. is beyond indebted. The costs involved in nationalizing health care are enormous. The sales of U.S. treasury debt to foreign banks have plummeted over the past year, and they will continue to do so. Like Greece to the tenth power, America is on the verge of sovereign debt default. The government and the private Federal Reserve’s only recourse has been to create massive amounts of currency out of thin air to cover the mushrooming expense of keeping the economy afloat. Without the constant injections of liquidity into treasuries, our government would no longer be able to operate. Very soon, these injections will inflate the money supply to levels which will destroy our currency, throwing the financial system into chaos. And, in the midst of all this, the Obama administration decides to increase our budget deficit to record levels and introduce socialized health care? Of course people are angry! It is my suspicion, however, that this was the goal all along.
ObamaCare can be used to create intense divisions in the citizenry, as well as distract us from the economy. It can also be used to redirect the debate over expansion of government power. By introducing ObamaCare, the elites change the dynamic of the argument. Before, the contention was that the government’s size was unsustainable and would bankrupt the nation. Now, the argument is over the ethics of leaving people without healthcare, and the “necessity” of large government in supplying that care. The debate morphed from a clean cut examination of what we could afford, into a foggy morality play in which those who oppose government expansion are “uncaring”, “greedy”, or perhaps “evil”. The article below alludes to such accusations:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2010/04/01/americas-season-of-rage-and-fear/
The message here is that proponents of private healthcare are “overreacting” to the legislation. Arguments that Obamacare is no more insidious than Medicare are highly disingenuous. Medicare is government ASSISTED health care, not government CONTROLLED health care. There is a very big difference, one which we refuse to ignore.
The Liberty Movement’s position on any issue has always been; do we have the money, and does the Constitution allow it? While it is unfortunate that the poor (I have been one of them) cannot afford health insurance, the cold hard reality is that we do not have the savings to fund collectivist healthcare, nor does the Constitution allow for government to dominate the healthcare industry, or force people to buy insurance they don’t want. This is not about little orphan Annie who needs a kidney transplant. Obama couldn’t care less. This is about putting those who call for smaller government in the position of being the “bad guy”, as well as making Federal influence over our private lives that much easier. The goal is to paint the movement as unfeeling, and without compassion, thus making it easier for the average American to see us as “terrorists” in the near future.
3) The Liberty Movement Is Driven By Racism?: This has to be my favorite disinfo talking point, mainly because of its blatancy. There was a time when all propaganda was so straight forward, simple, and shameless. Below is a Time Magazine article which is obviously trying to connect Constitutionalists and militias with racism and white power organizations:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1198895,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar
This tactic does not need much explaining. First, I’ve been going to the Tea Parties for years, long before they were co-opted by Fox News, and I can say from firsthand experience that the Liberty Movement is composed of people from all racial, religious and political backgrounds. Many militias are also organized the same way.
The fact that the movement is fully opposed to illegal immigration is often used by the establishment to draw more false associations. The connection to which they allude is that since we are against illegal immigration, we are against all immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants. This is nonsensical. We are against illegal immigration, for one, because it is ILLEGAL. I am not sure what is so complicated about this concept, but for some people, especially those who place themselves on the left end of our fake political spectrum, it is difficult to comprehend.
There are in fact legal channels one can take to immigrate to the U.S., as there are for any other country. If an American wishes to immigrate to Canada, he does not simply skip across the border and declare it so. He must follow legal guidelines, or be deported. This does not make Canadians biased against Americans, it makes them rational. If millions of us decided to lumber into Quebec and begin collecting on government programs that we never paid into, it would throw their entire economy into disarray. If we all offered our services to employers there at discount prices under the table, it would destroy their jobs market. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with what makes sense.
This is why polls show that a large percentage of minorities in the U.S. are also against illegal immigration, not just whites:
http://www.examiner.com/x-35821-Immigration-Reform-Examiner~y2010m3d2-New-poll-shows-that-minorities-want-tougher-enforcement-against-illegal-aliens
The purpose behind the racist label is evident. No one likes a racist, especially not a militant racist. The tactic is designed to plant assumptions in the minds of those unaware of the facts, especially Democrats, so that when a Liberty Movement representative engages them in discussion, they will automatically refuse to listen, regardless of how reasonable that representative may be. The blunt nature of the method reveals how desperate globalists are to keep as many Democrats as possible from joining the movement.
4) People Who Spread Liberty Movement Information Are As Threatening As Those In Militias?: The sudden push on the part of the current administration for the institution of the Fairness Doctrine is no fluke. It is also even less of a fluke that they are attempting to apply the Fairness Doctrine to the internet.
The Fairness Doctrine accomplishes two things for the establishment: First, it forces all media to define themselves as either Left, or Right, and then balances them accordingly, meaning all media would be strong armed into playing out the false paradigm forever, neither side ever changing or gaining an advantage. Second, it allows government to dictate what acceptable political discussion is and shut down those that stray from their guidelines. If the Fairness Doctrine were to be applied, it would not affect those gatekeeper news outlets that play the paradigm game; Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc. In reality, the only news sources that would be dealt a drastic blow would be those that straddle the line between left and right, or that deny the paradigm altogether; Liberty Movement sources.
I have noticed that this development has occurred in tandem with another more subtle strategy. While government moves to gain more influence over what news providers are allowed to operate, the MSM has moved to infer that Liberty Movement news sources are “instigating” violence, simply because they exist. While most of us are aware of the attempts to connect Alex Jones and his Infowars radio show with any violent gunman that happens to stumble out of the woodwork, there has also been an endeavor to link all Constitutionally based websites and radio with “extremist behavior”, as the below article shows:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,982895,00.html
All societies that are advancing towards fascism begin by singling out certain ideas as “dangerous” to the greater good. The very fabric of American life is centered on the protection of ideas, regardless of their origin. We do not prosecute people for their beliefs, no matter how much we might disagree. This is beginning to change though, and one can feel it in the air. The MSM is now producing a low droning hum of propaganda aimed at accusing liberty based news as accomplices in “extremist crime”. As if the general disenchantment and opposition to collectivist government would somehow disappear if we were not here to write our views and report on the facts.
The above list of establishment talking points demonstrates a discernable pattern. This pattern is engineered around the concept of “conditioning”. Like Pavlov’s dog, Americans are being prepared mentally to react to certain bells and whistles in a way that serves Elitist interests. In this case, instead of salivating every time they hear the words “militia”, “truth movement”, “patriot”, “Liberty Movement”, “Constitutionalism”, etc, they are meant to think “Hutaree”, they are meant to think “homegrown terrorist”. Of course, unlike Pavlov’s dog, human beings cannot be conditioned if they are aware, and they can even break their own conditioning if given the opportunity. This is why we are pummeled daily with a constant barrage of misinformation, so that we never get a chance to open our eyes and see who is hitting us. So, who is hitting us…?
The ADL And SPLC: Propaganda Machines Extraordinaire
Whenever you see a news story on almost any mainstream news channel, or read one in almost any newspaper dealing with the Liberty Movement and parallel movements, the chances are very high that the ADL (Anti Defamation League) or the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) had a hand in it.
The ADL was founded in 1913 (coincidentally, the same year as the private Federal Reserve), and poses as a sort of civil rights group and non-profit corporation. In truth, it is a multifaceted propaganda arm for globalists, much like the Council on Foreign Relations, which has been involved in, and implicated in, domestic spying as well as other illegal activities.
In 1993, the ADL was caught red handed employing spies like Roy Bullock, who infiltrated organizations ranging from the White Aryan Resistance, to the NAACP and Greenpeace. Interestingly, they were also caught spying on other anti-discrimination groups, such as the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-04-09/news/1993099283_1_anti-defamation-league-adl-san-francisco
These spies compiled dossiers on thousands of American citizens and hundreds of non-violent groups. In the mid-80’s, they also terrorized certain peaceful assemblies for nothing more than free-speech. A method they are now applying to us.
Because the ADL is organized around the Jewish fraternal order of B’nai B’rith, some people make the mistake of assuming that they are a purely Israeli construct, however, they are actually a tool for Elitist activities, not just Israeli, and alphabet agencies such as the FBI and the CIA collude with them constantly. In fact, the government has only supported the ADL more since they were exposed in 1993, and the MSM reports their skewed statistics and baseless opinions as undeniable fact.
http://www.adl.org/learn/adl_law_enforcement/default.htm

When interviewed by the MSM, ADL and SPLC representatives are rarely challenged by their interviewers on any issue, and an interviewee with an opposing viewpoint is almost never present. When they are present, the “journalist” and the SPLC/ADL representative attack them maliciously, using dishonest Alinsky Tactics, such as attempting to keep the person from speaking, or attacking the person’s character instead of addressing the information he presents. A good example is this interview on MSNBC with Chris Mathews and director of the SPLC, Mark Potok against Stewart Rhodes of Oath Keepers:
Oath Keepers is an organization of military and police members who are openly re-stating their support for the Constitution, over the shifting of government mandates, as all people in the armed forces are supposed to do. Yes, they must truly be a menace…
Notice that Potok and Matthews immediately generalize and dismiss every one of the Oath Keeper concerns on government as “dark conspiracy theory” without actually providing any tangible reasoning to support their claims, nor providing Rhodes any real opportunity to counter their accusations.The “conspiracy theory” redirection relies on an ignorant public, unaware of the numerous facts and evidence that support the Liberty Movement view. The ADL and SPLC hope that you and your family will take them at their word, instead of investigating the truth for yourself. That the term “conspiracy theory” will trigger a Pavlov’s dog reaction, a knee-jerk response that causes your mind to immediately close. They also commonly use terms like “white supremacist”, “Oklahoma City”, or names like “Timothy McVeigh” in the same breath as “Oath Keepers” and “Patriot Movement”. This is done deliberately, and if you watch a number of interviews involving the ADL/SPLC, you will notice that they do it as a rule. Again, the attempt is to link the unseemly actions of one man, or one small group, to the whole of the movement, and to the ideology of liberty.
When reason is applied, and research is undertaken, Mark Potok’s arguments appear juvenile and lazy. The government’s own legislation is what created the Liberty Movement’s concern over martial law and loss of Constitutional freedoms. This legislation includes those mentioned above, like the Patriot Act and PDD 51, along with the Civilian Inmate Labor Program, and new legislation drafted by Republican, John McCain, and Democrat, Joe Lieberman (another example of the fake left/right working together), called the “Enemy Belligerents Act”:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3081
This new act allows, among other things, for the treatment of U.S. citizens who dissent as enemy combatants, for the indefinite detention of these citizens without trial, and to be held under military jurisdiction. It also allows for “enhanced interrogation techniques”, i.e. torture.
Bills like this are introduced to Congress yearly, and yet I have to watch Mark Potok on MSNBC call my concerns and the Liberty Movement’s concerns “conspiracy theory”?
When We Are All Homegrown Terrorists…
Anyone who can’t see where all this is leading would have to be cognitively impaired. I, for example, am just a writer, but under the broad definitions laid out in government legislation, I could easily be considered a threat to national security. Could my articles not inspire resentment in someone? Could the facts I present not instill a need for “dissent”, or even self defense in the event that the establishment does institute martial law? What about people who aren’t writers, but regular Americans who happen to speak openly about their suspicions of where the country is heading? Are they “enemy belligerents” and combatants?
If the ADL and the SPLC had existed in the early days of the American Independence Movement, before a shot was ever fired, they would have called men like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson “terrorists”, good men, who only wanted to be free. There is little difference between our situation then, and our situation now, except that the terminology has changed, and indeed, we know even more about who we are fighting.
While being categorized as a homegrown terrorist may be a frightening prospect, what other people are led to believe about us is not so important. What is important is that we do not start to believe it ourselves. That we are not made to feel guilty for wanting to determine our own destinies, for wanting to keep government out of our lives and our children’s lives. We are not the instigators of this conflict, we are not the antagonists of this story. In the end, we are the deciders of this conflict. We are the authors of this story.
It is possible we will soon see an acceleration of our own malignment over the coming year. We will be ridiculed, condemned, and perhaps some of us even incarcerated. Violent attacks against innocent Americans will likely be carried out, some by real and misguided people, some engineered by government. We cannot allow these acts to be forced upon us as implied persona. We cannot allow others to speak for us, because others are unlikely to speak the truth. And most crucial of all, we cannot ever be afraid to speak for ourselves. The ultimate triumph for the Elites would be our silence.
Affirm your freedoms as an unbound man, cut the air, forceful and clear, let the world listen, and never stop.

This article was posted: Friday, April 9, 2010 at 4:45 pm

The SCO, China, Iran & Bullion

S ource: Resource Investor
I make no apology for returning to the subject of China, its role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and gold. Gold is now a strategic metal for present and future SCO governments, which between them have over 40% of the world’s population; and now that the price of gold is re-establishing its rising trend, understanding its future role as a replacement for the US dollar is increasingly urgent, because gold is wealth and this wealth is being transferred from west to east.
The SCO is an economic bloc consisting of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Between them they produce about 26% of the world’s gold, none of which leaves the SCO. Other nations accepted as future members are India, Iran, Pakistan, Mongolia and as soon as NATO leaves, Afghanistan. Belarus and Sri Lanka are on the waiting list. It is no less than the economic unification of most of Asia, with a combined population of three billion. All their central banks are buying gold, and the gold imported by the citizens of just two of them (India and China) accounts for all but 400-500 tonnes of the rest of the world’s mine production – and some of that (particularly in Africa) is now also controlled by China.
One of the SCO’s economic objectives is to do away with the dollar for cross-border trade between members. Any doubts we may have on the matter have now been dispelled as a result of the US government’s monetary sanctions on Iran.
Iran is important, because it supplies crude oil to China and India, and the Americans have banned all countries from buying Iranian oil on pain of sanctions. The consequence has been to force Iran to settle some of her trade in gold, giving SCO members both a de facto remonetization of gold, and a solid reason to want higher prices for it in US dollar terms, so that it buys more.
This creates a dilemma for the US. If she escalates her attacks on Iran, she threatens the interests of China, India and other SCO members. At this stage it is too early to judge the political reactions of the SCO members to this threat, but there are broadly two possibilities: either military or economic.
It is too early for China to fight a currency war. She is developing her internal market, and in time the SCO will provide her with the most powerful captive market since the British Empire. However, she still depends on declining markets in the West for much of her economic activity. However, the reason she has accumulated gold and encourages her citizens to do so as well is ultimately to transfer wealth from the West.
The Iranian situation is already undermining the position of the dollar as the international currency in the context of pan-Asian settlements, because oil is simply more important. Attempts over the years by western central banks to bluff us out of gold ownership have given China and its SCO affiliates a tremendous wealth-transfer windfall, as we may be about to discover. That’s what the geo-politics of gold is actually about, and it is a pity our leaders seem to be blind and deaf to it.

Bundesbank brings home German gold from US and France, yet doesn’t check the authenticity

Source: Bild(Rough Translation)
3400 Tons of gold (value: EUR 150 billion) will be kept by the Bundesbank due to the economic crisis, two-thirds of them are abroad, in London, Paris, New York.
Now, the Federal Reserve wants to store much of the gold reserves in Germany. A new storage concept foresees to revalue the local location Frankfurt am Main, so the “Handelsblatt”newspaper reported.
Accordingly should future store in New York City less German gold and none more are stockpiled in Paris at all. The new concept will be announced by the Bundesbank on Wednesday.
The reason for the gold move is a report of the Federal. IMAGE had already reported in October that the Federal Audit Office criticises the sloppy handling of the Bundesbank with the German gold treasure.
Criticism: German reserves stored in the vaults in the foreign country were never been checked on their “physical composition” and authenticity.
In the US Federal Reserve fed 45 percent the store therefore 3396 tons of gold in the Bank of England in London 13 percent, the Banque de France in Paris eleven per cent and at the headquarters in Frankfurt 31 percent. Originally, the Federal Republic at the time of the cold war and the Division of Germany for security reasons had distributed their gold on different partner countries.
Several times had reported image in the autumn about the scandal and hooked up, visited with the CDU foreign Philipp Mißfelder even the coffers of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York!

The Court of Auditors demanded a change of the previous test practice: instead of the bars only occasionally to take and to trust that the banks be stored the gold would have to be checked after a statistically safe procedures.

In Germany, the bars should be melted down. So, the quality of gold could be the best check, a Bundesbank spokesman said. Then, new bars are produced.

New Cold War: China-USA Economic Espionage War Escalates

Source: WC
Less than six months ago, U.S. Under Secretary of State Robert D. Hormats gave an exclusive interview to Caixin, in which he said that one of the most important tasks in US-China relations was to define differences on intellectual property rights protection and find common solutions within the next six months.
On Feb. 20, the White House released a strategy paper outlining an approach for protecting the trade secrets of U.S. companies. “Emerging trends indicate that the pace of economic espionage and trade secret theft against U.S. corporations is accelerating,” said the report, noting that “cyber intrusion activity” targeting trade secrets in particular posed a threat to American businesses.
According to the strategy paper, the U.S. will put in place five measures to protect its trade secrets: 1. Focusing diplomatic efforts to protect trade secrets overseas and applying diplomatic pressure. 2. Helping private industry to protect trade secrets by supporting and promoting best practices. 3. Enhancing domestic law enforcement operations. 4. Improving domestic legislation. 5. Promoting public awareness.
Although the White House has denied this strategy paper is aimed at China, its content and timing of release indicate otherwise. In the 141-page paper, China appears on 31 pages, sometimes as often as 14 times per page. An annex from the Department of Justice described 20 economic espionage and trade secret criminal cases between Jan. 2009 and Jan. 2013, 17 of which involved China.
Regarding timing, a week before the strategy paper was published, President Obama released an executive order on “Improving Critical Infrastructure Security.” The day before, U.S. cyber security firm Mandiant Corp had published a 74-page report tracing cyber attacks on U.S. companies to China. And recently, several mainstream newspapers including the New York Times and the Washington Post claimed to have been attacked by Chinese hackers.
Earlier, Douglas H. Paal, a former Director of Asian Affairs of the U.S. National Security Council and present vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Caixin that last year the U.S. House of Representatives had held hearings about the ongoing cyber attacks and had introduced draft legislation. In his February 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama said that “the rapidly growing threat from cyber-attacks” was a top priority.
Cold war mentality and ulterior motives?
The White House strategy paper suggested strengthening legislation by increasing the maximum statutory maximum for economic espionage from 15 years in prison to 20 years. The paper also recommended increasing sentencing guidelines for the theft of trade secrets, including “trade secrets transferred or attempted to be transferred abroad.”
It also said it would seek, through trade negotiations such as the arrangements via the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), new provisions on trade secret protection.
China and the U.S. have been fighting about industrial espionage and intellectual property for a long time now. So why is the U.S. making these high profile moves now? Tao Jingzhou, managing partner for the Asian practice of U.S. law firm Dechert, told Caixin: “The technological leadership of the United States ensures its position as a world leader. Its companies are the driving force behind its technological innovation. Protecting their industrial and technological secrets is protecting the U.S.’s most fundamental interests.”

There are striking similarities in the Department of Justice’s 17 economic espionage and trade secret cases involving China. The protagonists are Chinese nationals or ethnic Chinese engineers and researchers who completed their master or doctoral degrees in prestigious U.S. colleges. They joined large U.S. companies and worked for years to reach senior level positions. They then used these positions to steal trade secrets contained in drawings, designs, software code and chemical formulas to use as bargaining chips to obtain new jobs, create their own companies, or obtain teaching tenures at Chinese universities.
The one who spent the longest time working in a U.S. company is Dongfan Chung, a former Boeing engineer. He was convicted of charges of economic espionage and acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China, stealing technology and trade secrets including information related to the Space Shuttle program and the Delta IV rocket between 1979 and 2006. In 2010, at age 74, Chung was sentenced to 188 months – 15 years – in jail.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the industries with a high incidence of espionage are car manufacturing, chemical industry and electronics, as well as the IT sector. Companies targeted by economic espionage included the Ford Motor Company, General Motors, DuPont, Valspar, Motorola and the CME Group.
Every time an espionage case comes to light, it always triggers heated discussions in the U.S. media. China’s Foreign Ministry has on several occasions refuted accusations of Chinese participation in economic espionage saying the accusations were “fabricated and with ulterior motives.” China has asked the U.S. to abandon its Cold War mentality, respect objective facts, and stop these groundless accusations.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has openly stated that the problem of trade-secret theft in China was a factor in the decision by some U.S. companies to move operations back to the U.S. “You know it’s one thing to accept a certain level of copyright knock-offs, but if you’re going to take our core technology, then we’re better off being in our home country,” Kirk told Reuters.
A copying country?
At a more macro level, Robert D. Hormats says China’s accession to the WTO has been good for China and for the world – but just as China insists that others abide by WTO rules, doing so is also in Beijing’s interests. But one of its difficulties, he says, is for China to enforce the rules of the global economy. “If some of the measures China takes are deemed to be against the interests of foreign affiliates in China, this will have a negative impact on China and its open trade system.”
Douglas H. Paal says that the U.S. has always had intellectual property issues with emerging countries. In general as emerging countries develop, their own intellectual properties need protection and intellectual theft decreases, as was the case with Japan and South Korea. “However, there is a greater problem with China. There is a long way to go in intellectual property protection and incentives, as well as combating infringement,” he says.
So how to resolve the China-U.S. dispute on this issue? U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, Jose W. Fernandez, told Caixin that the U.S. would continue to put the emphasis on protection of trade secrets and intellectual property in its dealings with Asia-Pacific and Chinese authorities. “It is important that we engage in meaningful dialogue with China so that both sides can agree on common standards.”
Tao Jingzhou believes the Chinese government will probably have to enforce sanctions on the theft of trade secrets and most possibly link intellectual property protection to local officials’ political performance. “China-U.S frictions on the theft of intellectual property have only just begun unfolding. China will be forced to become a truly innovative country instead of a copying country.”