Katherine Watt

Orientation for new readers

As I read and write more about pre- and post-1959 Catholic teaching as they relate to current geopolitical events, I want to emphasize that I’m on a learning curve, and my views are developing as my knowledge base deepens.

Prior to Covid, my foundation for this work included my upbringing in a mixed family (traditional Catholic, American father and Protestant, European mother) in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by a basic education in philosophy and natural sciences at Penn State University, followed by work in journalism, civic activism (community organizing) and as a paralegal doing legal research and writing for attorneys practicing constitutional, civil rights and environmental law.

My interest in the relationship between pre- and post-1959 Catholic teaching and current geopolitical events began around 2003, when I read Malachi Martin’s The Keys of This Blood for the first time.

My interest intensified in early 2020 once I realized that 1) the intrinsically-evil Covid-predicated global crime spree was built on the corruption of civil law during the preceding decades, and 2) the corruption of civil law, especially in the Western world, was enabled by the dis-integration of Catholic teaching and erosion of Catholic faith during and since the Second Vatican Council.

Those realizations prompted me to read Fr. Martin’s book a second time in 2021, and then led me to papal encyclicals by Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius IX, Pope Pius X, Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII and the writings of Josef Pieper, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, among many other Catholic works. — The point being: the accuracy and clarity of my work will develop as I continue to learn and better grasp and apply definitions and concepts.

James Howard Kunstler
kunstler.com

“Let’s put you in the dunking chair and we’ll figure out what nature says about your status in the next world, and then we’ll make a decision about what to do with your still-living body.” — Matt Taibbi

I’m sure you’re asking yourself: what’s up with the company CEOs like Anheuser-Busch’s Brendan Whitworth, Target’s Brian Cornell, and North Face’s Todd Spaletto? Did they green-light the disastrous Pride Month marketing campaigns based on transgender activism that are suddenly wrecking their businesses? Or do these things just happen down the chain-of-command while the top dogs are otherwise occupied, knocking golf balls around or reviewing their stock options’ strike prices?

I’ll tell you what you’re not seeing and hearing: the red-faced shrieking in the board rooms as boycotts kill sales and directors face the wrath of the share-holders. It was one thing when Bud Light hitched trans “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney to the beer wagon in place of the traditional Clydesdale horses. After all, every state has a drinking age, though it’s pretty astounding that anyone at Anheuser-Busch thought “Ms.” Mulvaney’s cringy Instagram antics would sell beer to grown men moving appliances and fixing pot-holes.

It’s another thing, in the case of Target, to aim sexually-loaded gear to little children, for instance a line of T-shirts that proclaim “Satan Respects Pronouns” made by one Erik Carnell’s Abprellen company out of London. “Mr.” Carnell expounded on that idea on his company’s website (now taken down):

💬 Satanists don’t actually believe in Satan, he is merely used as a symbol of passion, pride, and liberty. He means to you what you need him to mean. So, for me, Satan is hope, compassion, equality, and love. So, naturally, Satan respects pronouns. He loves all LGBT+ people. I went with a variation of Baphomet for this design, a deity who themself is a mixture of genders, beings, ideas, and existences.”

Would it surprise you to learn that children well beneath the age of puberty are not inclined to think about sex at all? In a well-ordered society that recognizes children as different from adults, they don’t. And if something sexual comes to their attention, they are generally perplexed by it. Unless they’re born into an era when adults are busy erasing boundaries, guard-rails, and cultural inhibitions, in which case I must imagine that young children exposed to, say, pornography in a chaotic household find it traumatically sinister. So, why the gleeful celebration about sexualizing children now?

Sean Stinson

“There probably hasn't been a period of sustained oligarchic piss-taking at this level since the time of the pharaohs. I fully expect them to declare themselves gods next.” - Ian Jenkins

‘Corporate Capture’ or ‘Client Politics’ is a term which really should not require any elaboration, but just for the hell of it, let’s take the first definition that Google throws up.

‘Corporate capture’ is a phenomenon where private industry uses its political influence to take control of the decision-making apparatus of the state, such as regulatory agencies, law enforcement entities, and legislatures.

That should suffice us, although I would prefer to describe it as an historical process rather than an isolated phenomena; something intrinsically tied to the dynamic of capital accumulation which has taken from the poor and given to the rich, it seems, from time immemorial. One might also define it as the cancerous influence of private ownership over a tenuous system of so-called representative democracy which for a short time conceded a few modest comforts to its subjugated labouring classes, typically packaged as ‘rights’, ‘freedoms’, and ‘liberties’.

Ellen Brown

“[W]ith Cyprus . . . the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.” — Sprott & Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor”

The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not a one-off emergency measure limited to Cyprus. Similar “bail-in” policies are now appearing in multiple countries. (See my earlier articles here.) What triggered the new rules may have been a series of game-changing events including the refusal of Iceland to bail out its banks and their depositors; Bank of America’s commingling of its ominously risky derivatives arm with its depository arm over the objections of the FDIC; and the fact that most EU banks are now insolvent. A crisis in a major nation such as Spain or Italy could lead to a chain of defaults beyond anyone’s control, and beyond the ability of federal deposit insurance schemes to reimburse depositors.

The new rules for keeping the too-big-to-fail banks alive: use creditor funds, including uninsured deposits, to recapitalize failing banks. - But isn’t that theft?

Perhaps, but it’s legal theft. By law, when you put your money into a deposit account, your money becomes the property of the bank. You become an unsecured creditor with a claim against the bank. Before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was instituted in 1934, U.S. depositors routinely lost their money when banks went bankrupt. Your deposits are protected only up to the $250,000 insurance limit, and only to the extent that the FDIC has the money to cover deposit claims or can come up with it. - The question then is, how secure is the FDIC?

Ellen Brown

Cyprus-style confiscation of depositor funds has been called the “new normal.” Bail-in policies are appearing in multiple countries directing failing TBTF banks to convert the funds of “unsecured creditors” into capital; and those creditors, it turns out, include ordinary depositors. Even “secured” creditors, including state and local governments, may be at risk. Derivatives have “super-priority” status in bankruptcy, and Dodd Frank precludes further taxpayer bailouts. In a big derivatives bust, there may be no collateral left for the creditors who are next in line.

Shock waves went around the world when the IMF, the EU, and the ECB not only approved but mandated the confiscation of depositor funds to “bail in” two bankrupt banks in Cyprus. A “bail in” is a quantum leap beyond a “bail out.” When governments are no longer willing to use taxpayer money to bail out banks that have gambled away their capital, the banks are now being instructed to “recapitalize” themselves by confiscating the funds of their creditors, turning debt into equity, or stock; and the “creditors” include the depositors who put their money in the bank thinking it was a secure place to store their savings.

The Cyprus bail-in was not a one-off emergency measure but was consistent with similar policies already in the works for the US, UK, EU, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, as detailed in my earlier articles here and here. “Too big to fail” now trumps all. Rather than banks being put into bankruptcy to salvage the deposits of their customers, the customers will be put into bankruptcy to save the banks.

Andrew Gavin Marshall
The Andrew Gavin Marshall Blog

This essay is the product of research undertaken for the first volume of The People’s Book Project. Please donate to help the first volume come to completion: a study of the institutions, ideas, and individuals of power and resistance in a snap-shot of the world today, looking at the global economic crisis, war and empire, repression and the global spread of anti-austerity and resistance movements.

The lesson is clear: if you are a thief, steal by the billions or trillions, and then no one can do anything about it. If you are in the drug trade: handle only billions (or hundreds of billions) in drug money, and then you will get away with it. If you don’t want to pay taxes, be a member of the top o.oo1% of the world’s super-rich and hide your billions in offshore tax-free accounts. If you want more, create a global economic crisis, demand to be saved by the state to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars, and then, tell the state to punish their populations into poverty in order to pay for your mistakes.

I would like to introduce you, the reader, to some realities of our global banking system, resting on the rhetoric of free markets, but functioning, in actuality, as a global cartel, a “super-entity” in which the world’s major banks all own each other and own the controlling shares in the world’s largest multinational corporations, influence governments and policy with politicians in their back pockets, routinely engaging in fraud and bribery, and launder hundreds of billions of dollars in drug money, not to mention arms dealing and terrorist financing. These are the “too big to fail” and “too big to jail” banks, the centre of our global economy, what we call a “free market,” implying that the global banks – and corporations – have “free reign” to do anything they please, engage in blatantly criminal activities, steal trillions in wealth which is hidden offshore, and never get more than a slap on the wrist. This is the real “free market,” a highly profitable global banking cartel, functioning as a worldwide financial Mafia.

Ellen Brown

When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal. “Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks?” asked CNBC editor John Carney. “Was he . . . subtly hinting that he’s really the guy in charge?”

The groveling of the Senators was so obvious that Jon Stewart did a spoof news clip on it, featured in a Huffington Post piece titled “Jon Stewart Blasts Senate’s Coddling Of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon,” and Matt Taibbi wrote an op-ed called “Senators Grovel, Embarrass Themselves at Dimon Hearing.” He said the whole thing was painful to watch.

“What is going on with this panel of senators?” asked Stewart. “They’re sucking up to Jamie Dimon like they’re on JPMorgan’s payroll.” The explanation in a news clip that followed was that JPMorgan Chase is the biggest campaign donor to many of the members of the Banking Committee.

That is one obvious answer, but financial analysts Jim Willie and Rob Kirby think it may be something far larger, deeper, and more ominous. They contend that the $3 billion-plus losses in London hedging transactions that were the subject of the hearing can be traced, not to European sovereign debt (as alleged), but to the record-low interest rates maintained on U.S. government bonds.

The national debt is growing at $1.5 trillion per year. Ultra-low interest rates MUST be maintained to prevent the debt from overwhelming the government budget. Near-zero rates also need to be maintained because even a moderate rise would cause multi-trillion dollar derivative losses for the banks, and would remove the banks’ chief income stream, the arbitrage afforded by borrowing at 0% and investing at higher rates.

Stephen Lendman

Though a long shot at best, her doggedness during hard times makes anything possible. However, the notion of President Bachmann should chill everyone to fight it at a time America already is no fit place to live in. Imagine it under her, making Washington Christian fascist occupied territory. Don't rule her out.

Frances Fitzgerald titled her 2000 book on Reagan's Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative, "Way Out There in the Blue," leaving [it] unsaid but letting readers conclude that America during his tenure was run by right wing extremists.

He and most others around him were ideologically hard right, their legacy including:

● disdain for working Americans;
● contempt for the rule of law, civil liberties, human rights, and democratic freedoms; and
● support for concentrated wealth, power and budget-busting militarism.

They backed:

● sweeping deregulation;
● destructive "free trade;"
● offshoring high-paying manufacturing, service, and other jobs;
● the war on drugs - in fact, a war on poor minorities, escalating America's prison population to the highest by far in the world, two-thirds in it Blacks and Latinos, most for nonviolent offenses;
● tax cuts for the rich;
● draconian social program cuts;
● support for global despots, apartheid South Africa, star wars, death squads, proxy wars in Central America, Africa, Afghanistan, and Middle East by helping Iran and Iraq wage war; and
● contempt for gays, lesbians, people of color, the poor and disadvantaged, and more.

Age 24 in 1980, Bachmann voted for Reagan and worked for his campaign. In Congress and as a Tea Party presidential candidate, her extremism may be unrivaled.

Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research

The following is a sample from an forthcoming book by Andrew Gavin Marshall on 'Global Government', Global Research Publishers, Montreal. For more by this author on the issue of the economic crisis and global governance, see the recently-released book by Global Research "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century," Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, (Editors), in which the author contributed three chapters on the history of central banking, the rise of a global currency and global central bank, and the political economy of global government.

Problem, Reaction, Solution: “Crisis is an Opportunity”

In May of 2010, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF, stated that, “crisis is an opportunity,” and called for “a new global currency issued by a global central bank, with robust governance and institutional features,” and that the “global central bank could also serve as a lender of last resort.” However, he stated, “I fear we are still very far from that level of global collaboration.”[1] Well, perhaps not so far as it might seem.

The notion of global governance has taken an evolutionary path to the present day, with the principle global political and economic actors and institutions incrementally constructing the apparatus of a global government. In the modern world, global governance is an inter-lapping, intersecting, and intertwined web of international organizations, think tanks, multinational corporations, nations, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, military alliances, intelligence agencies, banks and interest groups. Globalization – a term which was popularized in the late 1980s to refer to the global spread of multinational corporations – has laid the principle ideological and institutional foundations for this process. Global social, economic and political integration do not occur at an equal pace; rather, economic integration and governance on a global level has and will continue to be ahead of the other sectors of human social interaction, in both the pace and degree of integration. In short, global economic governance will set the pace for social and political global governance to follow.

Matt Taibbi

It's early May in Washington, and something very weird is in the air. As Chris Dodd, Harry Reid and the rest of the compulsive dealmakers in the Senate barrel toward the finish line of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act – the massive, year-in-the-making effort to clean up the Wall Street crime swamp – word starts to spread on Capitol Hill that somebody forgot to kill the important reforms in the bill. As of the first week in May, the legislation still contains aggressive measures that could cost once-indomitable behemoths like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase tens of billions of dollars. Somehow, the bill has escaped the usual Senate-whorehouse orgy of mutual back-scratching, fine-print compromises and freeway-wide loopholes that screw any chance of meaningful change.

The real shocker is a thing known among Senate insiders as "716." This section of an amendment would force America's banking giants to either forgo their access to the public teat they receive through the Federal Reserve's discount window, or give up the insanely risky, casino-style bets they've been making on derivatives. That means no more pawning off predatory interest-rate swaps on suckers in Greece, no more gathering balls of subprime shit into incomprehensible debt deals, no more getting idiot bookies like AIG to wrap the crappy mortgages in phony insurance. In short, 716 would take a chain saw to one of Wall Street's most lucrative profit centers: Five of America's biggest banks (Goldman, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup) raked in some $30 billion in over-the-counter derivatives last year. By some estimates, more than half of JP Morgan's trading revenue between 2006 and 2008 came from such derivatives. If 716 goes through, it would be a veritable Hiroshima to the era of greed.