WIKILEAKS

Wikileaks

Freedom of Speech or Too much to handle?

Wikileaks has definitely been the most important event of 2010. The importance of the revelations made public by Wikileaks can easily be measured by the thousands of passionate comments and opinions all around the world, only matched by the efforts of the leaders (powerful) to minimize the facts.

I would even suggest this has been the greatest “wake up call” in a modern global world led by a super power that seems to know no boundaries in achieving its goals, whatever they might be. The arrogance of the “Empire of Good” does not seem to raise any critical questions or resistance in the leaders of western “supposed” sovereign countries. The famous “Axis of Evil” prophecy seems to have brainwashed all the western world leaders and give them a wild card to justify illegal, immoral and unethical acts in the name of this “cleanup crusade”.

And while our fear mongering leaders seem to gain more and more power and control over our lives, many citizens do not really know what to do with this leaked information.
The “good citizens” continue listening to orporate news and hear Wikileaks is a criminal organization or even worse a terrorist organization that is putting the Free World at risk and what is now public was already known, just not officially, but everybody knew it or should have known it.

Well, to the commentators and journalists that try to sell us this crap: Where were you when citizens needed you to question the official version? In Germany they have a name for these people: “Klugscheisser” (“wiseass”). My problem however is that these opinion makers are again trying to deceive the public, worried that the hand that feeds them might pull the flow of money. The truth is that while there was no hard evidence, these opinion makers now minimizing the information leaked, rushed to discredit the ones that were calling for justice before the information was made public by Wikileaks.

The problem of Wikileaks is not only freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is at risk anyway, with a justice system increasingly depending on political ideologies. The real problem is that a vast majority of the population is not able or willing to think by themselves, looking for the usual suspects in the corporate media to help them create their opinion. I am not so much worried about freedom of speech as long as we have free thinking people. I am much more worried about the capacity of society to give the adequate response to all the deception that is opening up in front of our eyes.

I am glad that the 5 newspapers chosen by Wikileaks had the guts to publish the information made available to them. In a way this has also been a great opportunity for the “true journalists” to go back to basics and do real journalism without corporate intromission. Evidence was too big to hide and under the pressure that competition would publish it if they would not, the chosen newspapers had no other choice than embrace this opportunity. Would they have done it if they would have had more control over the information?  Probably not. The Wikileaks people played their hand right.

I wonder about our capacity to handle the information, not only the supposed free press but also the citizens. The press needs to grab this opportunity to gain some of its lost credibility back but citizens need to grab this opportunity to take back control of their lives and future by exposing their leaders and if needed bringing them to justice.
Freedom of speech is a right, but rights come with obligations. We need to take the responsibility as a people freedom of speech brings with it. We need to take the consequent actions this new and genuine information gives us.

Rise to the occasion, do not let anyone tell you that you have no opinion, you do and it’s time you use it.

James Tector
Critical Citizen

CURRENCY WARS

It is November of 2010 and the central bank leaders of the whole world are getting ready for a tough fight. Many of these central bank presidents never imagined they would be caught in a worldwide currency war, actually, they never imagined it to be possible. How could it be? Countries willingly depreciating the value of their currency to such an extend it could jeopardize the very existence of currencies. Well, guess what, the war is looming and the consequences can be tremendous for the Capitalist Religion and especially the Capitalist God, ”MONEY”.

But how did this happen? Who started this and what should we do?

Well, to find a reason for this war we have to go to the “Mecca” of “Money”, the United States.  The US has happily been printing money since Nixon abolished the GOLD STANDARD in 1971. The US, however, is not the only one to blame, since it has been doing this with the knowledge and blessing of the rest of the world.  It did not really matter how much money was created, the rest of the world was willing to absorb it, mainly to secure their savings. Actually, some countries even got rid of their currencies and adopted the US Dollar as their local currency like Panama and Ecuador for example. The US Dollar seemed to be the safest placement and the most robust currency.

So, what happened, why is the US all of a sudden "secretly" engaging a currency war?

Well, I guess it could be explained with what has been known as the “Dutch disease”. When The Netherlands became a natural gas and oil producer, the income generated by these natural resources made the country lazy. Oil and Gas were sufficient to generate wealth for the population, why bother invest in other industries?

I guess the same thing happened with the US. The “financial engineering industry” was an even smarter idea since it is much easier to print money than to extract oil and gas. However, reality eventually caught up and the US Debt owners started to understand the magnitude of the problem. Actually, the more they owned the bigger the problem because there is no way the US can pay them back. The magnitude of the US Debt is unbearable unless …….., exactly INFLATION.

The smartest heads of the US “financial engineering industry” came together and decided that it was time for the US Dollar to depreciate. How? Well by flooding the market with Dollars.

INFLATION is SALVATION seems to be the new slogan at the FED.

The Chinese foresaw this and started buying gold, silver and dumping their Dollars in Africa, where they are buying all the natural resources they can. Africa once again might be the biggest loser, together with the American citizens.

So, what is the war and what should we do?

The problem the Central Banks are confronted with is not easy. On one hand they maintain positions and savings in US Dollars and see the value of their savings evaporate and on the other hand there will be an increased pressure to lower the value of their currency to be competitive on the global market, thus they will be under pressure to generate inflation too.

The problem is that if the FED wants the destruction of the US Dollar there is nothing the Central Banks can do to stop the FED and if they engage in a devaluation race with the US Dollar it can cause the disappearance of currencies.

My advice, don’t engage in this rat race or currency war.  It might be tough to stand the pressure but the FED is on a US Dollar destruction path and seems to be unstoppable in its quest.  I think the US is working on a new world currency under the control of the IMF and of course "controlled by the FED" and if Central Banks all around the world enter into the currency wars they will end up losing.

THERE ARE NO WINNERS IN A WAR

There are no winners in a war, only losers, so why should this war be different. The global financial system is rotten like global governance and the supposedly democratic systems. The capital owners, FED, big banks and corporations just went too far this time and they seem to be unstoppable in their downfall. If you ask me, I say, BRING IT. Let it happen because it will bring an end to this corrupt system that is shooting its last amunitions. It is going to be tough wake up call for civilized humanity but let's hope the people will learn from this and start to respect the laws of nature.

There is of course another solution, get rid of “MONEY” but I guess this is too much asked for this phase of human evolution.

James Tector
Critical Citizen

The money fraud!

Money, money, money is so funny in the rich man's world. 

Sounds familiar?

Well, although most of the world loves ABBA for their refreshing music, who would have told that ABBA would be so “right on” with this song.

Money has been the greatest "MAGICAL TRICK" (read DECEPTION) of modern history making Houdini look like a schoolboy. Money has been and continues to be the greatest illusion used by what now is considered the developed world to acquire and maintain a dominant power position and rule the world.

I guess many of you that have read this far are either thinking that I am crazy or curious for me to further develop this statement.

For those that want to bear with me a little bit more I will try to explain why money has been the means used by the "rich, developed" countries to gain their status in the world.

Ever tried to discuss religion with a religious person? It's impossible since faith is a fact to them and you cannot reason about faith. Well, money has reached the same proportion with the difference that it is even stronger since money does not know any religion, race or age. 

Just try to imagine a world without money. Try to make a case for a world without money or at least money the way we know it. You will hear laughs and will be ridiculed. People just cannot imagine a world without money. Money is like religion, it seems like people are born predisposed to accept it as a given.

I will not talk about the history of money: goldsmiths, “independent” central banks, fractional banking system etc., you can look it up on the internet but want to explain in a very easy and short way how society got fooled into believing in money as a valid exchange tool and the consequences this brought to society. Some also call it the “capitalist” system or the system based on capital/money.

Economy and finance experts we see in the mass media: television, radio, newspapers or even in our universities try to make us think that they are masters to a complex science. A science so difficult for the common man, we need to listen to them to have a better and rich future. We need professional people to take care of these issues so that we can forget about them. 

Unfortunately for these masters, economy is much easier than they even know.

Human beings need to satisfy physical needs in order to survive and these needs can be found in nature. Nothing has changed in modern society, we still need to eat and drink. Although we also have, let’s say, emotional needs since we are a social animal, primary needs remain the most important for survival.

So we can say that the human being looks to satisfy needs. Economy is like a natural science that evolved with the creation of society and humanity and concentrated on satisfying these primary and secondary or emotional needs. 

We satisfy these needs by using products and services, products by far being the most important solution to our needs because without products there would be no service and we cannot eat and drink services.

To make a product we need natural resources. Natural resources are the basis of any product. It is impossible to have a product if we do not use natural resources. We also need to transport and transform these products but for this again we need natural resources like oil for example. 

I think it is pretty safe to come up with the following equation:

NATURAL RESOURCES + ENERGY + LABOR = PRODUCT

We could even go further and say that in some cases, depending in the stage of value creation chain, we can have:

NATURAL RESOURCES + ENERGY = PRODUCT

Or maybe:

NATURAL RESOURCES + LABOR = PRODUCT

But there is no such thing like:

ENERGY + LABOR = PRODUCT

So we can say that NATURAL RESOURCES is the fundament to have a product, without NATURAL RESOURCES it is impossible to have a product. Thus we could say that the equilibrium in economy, where supply meets demand is the satisfaction of needs by the scarce resources.

We could argue that resources, is the most important part of the equation, since without natural resources there would be no products. ENERGY of course is also an important aspect and LABOR is the least important since there is plenty of LABOR available.

So if my logic is right NATURAL RESOURCES + ENERGY should be the most valuable items on the left side of the equation.

Let’s take the world map:

What countries are supplying NATURAL RESOURCES and ENERGY?

For more personal finance images visit Mint.com's Financial Blog

Is it safe to say that what we consider “poor” countries, are the countries supplying the most important items of the economy?

If this is right, how is it possible that the consuming countries are the “rich” countries and the supplying countries the “poor” countries?

Well, the answer is easy:

MONEY

Money is the scheme that made this possible. Money has become a world wide religion making it possible to reach “heaven on earth”.

Money has made it possible for developed countries to control the supply of natural resources and energy by bribing corrupt dictators, give fraudulent credits and other practices.

MONEY = THE GREATEST SCHEME OF MODERN HISTORY

Money made it possible to shift the importance of economy from a natural science to an artificial economy based on money where the financial world could become the power house. In their quest for more power the money masters created a Fiat money system that increased the artificiality of the economy making them even more powerful and therefore making the rich countries even richer.

Unfortunately for them and fortunately for humanity “nature” is catching up and the ultimate of all bubbles is about to burst:

“The Money Bubble”

James Tector
Critical Citizen