Circle of 13: 23 August 2011

Ellen Brown writes in Web of Debt:

In an illuminating expose posted on Firedoglake on August 5, Jane Hamsher concluded:

It’s becoming more and more obvious that Standard and Poor’s has a political agenda riding on the notion that the US is at risk of default on its debt based on some arbitrary limit to the debt-to-GDP ratio. There is no sound basis for that limit, or for S&P’s insistence on at least a $4 trillion down payment on debt reduction, any more than there is for the crackpot notion that a non-crazy US can be forced to default on its debt. . . .

It’s time the media and Congress started asking Standard and Poors what their political agenda is and whom it serves.

Who Drove the S&P Agenda?

Jason Schwarz shed light on this question in an article on Seeking Alpha titled “The Rise of Financial Terrorism”. He wrote:

[A]fter the market close on Friday August 5th, we received word that S&P CEO Deven Sharma had taken control of the ratings agency and personally led the push for a U.S. downgrade. There is a lot of evidence that he has deliberately tried to trash the U.S. economy. Even after discovering that the S&P debt calculations were off by $2 trillion, Sharma made the decision to go ahead with the unethical downgrade. This is a guy who was a key contributor at the 2009 Bilderberg Summit that organized 120 of the world's richest men and women to push for an end to the dollar as the global reserve currency.

[T]hrough his writings on “competitive strategy” S&P CEO Sharma considers the United States the PROBLEM in today’s world, operating with what he implies is an unfair and reckless advantage. The brutal reality is that for "globalization" to succeed the United States must be torn asunder . . .

Also named by Schwarz as a suspect in the market manipulations was Michel Barnier, head of European Regulation. Barnier triggered an alarming 513-point drop in the Dow on August 4, when he blocked the plan of Hans Hoogervorst, newly appointed Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, to save Europe by adopting a new rule called IFRS 9. The rule would have eliminated mark-to-market accounting of sovereign debt from European bank balance sheets. Schwarz writes:

We all should be experts on the dangers of mark-to-market accounting after observing the U.S. banking crisis of 2008/2009 and the Great Depression in the 1930s. Mark-to-market was repealed at 8:45 a.m on April 2, 2009, which finally put a stop to the short term liquidity crisis and at the same time ushered in a stock market recovery. Banks no longer had to raise capital as long term stability was brought back to the system. The exact same scenario would have happened in 2011 Europe under Hoogervorst's plan. Without the threat of failure by those banks who hold high amounts of euro sovereign debt, investors would be free to move on from the European crisis and the stock market could resume its fundamental course.

Schwarz notes that Barnier, like Sharma, was a confirmed attendee at past Bilderberger conferences. What, then, is the agenda of the Bilderbergers?

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Knowledge and belief: the immorality of capitalism -- Professor Bob Brecher Part 1

It's important in everyday life to be able to tell the difference between what we merely believe, or what we think we know, and what we really know. Otherwise we might, for instance, miss the train, be late for an appointment or get a terrible shock after we die.

The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Capitalism Stole My Virginity

'Libyan gold was globalist game all along'

NATO Loots Libyan Gold As Tripoli Falls
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com: Precisely as we predicted last month, NATO forces and their Al-Qaeda backed rebels launched a massive assault on Tripoli in order to wrap up the looting and conquest of Libya in time for crucial talks at the UN on Palestinian statehood set to begin in less than two weeks.

Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds
Thousands of bullet-riddled bodies are buried in dozens of unmarked graves across Kashmir, a state human rights commission inquiry has concluded, many of them likely to be those of civilians who disappeared more than a decade ago in a brutal insurgency.

Anarchist/Antifascist Prisoner Thomas Blak Writes From Wormwood Scrubs
"From Athens, our inspiration, to London, it’s time to stand up and stand united, with passion and determination."

Passive revolution: are the rich starting to get scared?
It was a week of opposites. As stock markets around the world continued tonosedive into financial meltdown, the world’s third wealthiest man told US Congress to stop coddling the super-rich; Forbes, the ultimate magazine of the rich and famous, warned about the “coming global class war“; and Nouriel Roubini, one of the world’s leading economists, told the Wall Street Journal that Karl Marx was actually right in saying that capitalism is doomed.

The Pain In Spain – Analysis
As the sun rose on August 2, Spanish authorities destroyed the tent-village that had come to symbolize what some participants have called the Spanish Revolution.

House Committee Approves Bill Mandating That Internet Companies Spy on Their Users
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/house-committee-approves-bill-mandating-internet
Despite serious privacy concerns being voiced by both Democratic and Republican leaders and by thousands of digital rights activists using EFF's Action Center, this afternoon the House Judiciary Committee voted 19 to 10 to recommend passage of H.R. 1981.

Native Ohlone of San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area Resist the Destruction of Sacred Site
Who were the inhabitants of what we now call San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Monterey, and of the little open land left around these cities? They are the Ohlone.

Save the cows by making meat out of women
PETA CONFIRMS PORN SITE PLANS - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has confirmed, to HuffPo, that the animal advocacy organization will launch a porn site at peta.XXX.

RetroBites: Hunter S. Thompson & Hell's Angels (1967)

Hunter S.Thompson defends his book against an irate Hell's Angels biker.

13-Year-Old Makes A Solar Breakthrough With Fibonacci Sequence
One would be excused for suspecting that Aidan Dwyer, said to be 13, is in fact a small, very young-looking, 37-year-old college-educated con-man of the highest order. Such is not the case though for what the young Long Island lad has accomplished in a feat typically associated with much older individuals.

Circle of 13

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

'CIA, MI6 'journos' in Tripoli Rixos hotel, outside NATO loses ground'

S&P And The BilderBergers: All Part of The Plan?

Banned Books: Slaughterhouse 5