The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom

February 21, 2012 Leave a Comment

by Robert McDowell
WSJ
February 20, 2012

On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.

If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet’s flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and quickly became the greatest deregulatory success story of all time.

Since the Net’s inception, engineers, academics, user groups and others have convened in bottom-up nongovernmental organizations to keep it operating and thriving through what is known as a “multi-stakeholder” governance model. This consensus-driven private-sector approach has been the key to the Net’s phenomenal success.

In 1995, shortly after it was privatized, only 16 million people used the Internet world-wide. By 2011, more than two billion were online—and that number is growing by as much as half a million every day. This explosive growth is the direct result of governments generally keeping their hands off the Internet sphere.

Net access, especially through mobile devices, is improving the human condition more quickly—and more fundamentally—than any other technology in history. Nowhere is this more true than in the developing world, where unfettered Internet technologies are expanding economies and raising living standards.

Farmers who live far from markets are now able to find buyers for their crops through their Internet-connected mobile devices without assuming the risks and expenses of traveling with their goods. Worried parents are able to go online to locate medicine for their sick children. And proponents of political freedom are better able to share information and organize support to break down the walls of tyranny.

The Internet has also been a net job creator. A recent McKinsey study found that for every job disrupted by Internet connectivity, 2.6 new jobs are created. It is no coincidence that these wonderful developments blossomed as the Internet migrated further away from government control.

Today, however, Russia, China and their allies within the 193 member states of the ITU want to renegotiate the 1988 treaty to expand its reach into previously unregulated areas. Reading even a partial list of proposals that could be codified into international law next December at a conference in Dubai is chilling:

• Subject cyber security and data privacy to international control;

• Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for “international” Internet traffic, perhaps even on a “per-click” basis for certain Web destinations, with the goal of generating revenue for state-owned phone companies and government treasuries;

• Impose unprecedented economic regulations such as mandates for rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping agreements known as “peering.”

• Establish for the first time ITU dominion over important functions of multi-stakeholder Internet governance entities such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit entity that coordinates the .com and .org Web addresses of the world;

• Subsume under intergovernmental control many functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society and other multi-stakeholder groups that establish the engineering and technical standards that allow the Internet to work;

• Regulate international mobile roaming rates and practices.

Many countries in the developing world, including India and Brazil, are particularly intrigued by these ideas. Even though Internet-based technologies are improving billions of lives everywhere, some governments feel excluded and want more control.

And let’s face it, strong-arm regimes are threatened by popular outcries for political freedom that are empowered by unfettered Internet connectivity. They have formed impressive coalitions, and their efforts have progressed significantly.

Merely saying “no” to any changes to the current structure of Internet governance is likely to be a losing proposition. A more successful strategy would be for proponents of Internet freedom and prosperity within every nation to encourage a dialogue among all interested parties, including governments and the ITU, to broaden the multi-stakeholder umbrella with the goal of reaching consensus to address reasonable concerns. As part of this conversation, we should underscore the tremendous benefits that the Internet has yielded for the developing world through the multi-stakeholder model.

Upending this model with a new regulatory treaty is likely to partition the Internet as some countries would inevitably choose to opt out. A balkanized Internet would be devastating to global free trade and national sovereignty. It would impair Internet growth most severely in the developing world but also globally as technologists are forced to seek bureaucratic permission to innovate and invest. This would also undermine the proliferation of new cross-border technologies, such as cloud computing.

A top-down, centralized, international regulatory overlay is antithetical to the architecture of the Net, which is a global network of networks without borders. No government, let alone an intergovernmental body, can make engineering and economic decisions in lightning-fast Internet time. Productivity, rising living standards and the spread of freedom everywhere, but especially in the developing world, would grind to a halt as engineering and business decisions become politically paralyzed within a global regulatory body.

Any attempts to expand intergovernmental powers over the Internet—no matter how incremental or seemingly innocuous—should be turned back. Modernization and reform can be constructive, but not if the end result is a new global bureaucracy that departs from the multi-stakeholder model. Enlightened nations should draw a line in the sand against new regulations while welcoming reform that could include a nonregulatory role for the ITU.

Pro-regulation forces are, thus far, much more energized and organized than those who favor the multi-stakeholder approach. Regulation proponents only need to secure a simple majority of the 193 member states to codify their radical and counterproductive agenda. Unlike the U.N. Security Council, no country can wield a veto in ITU proceedings. With this in mind, some estimate that approximately 90 countries could be supporting intergovernmental Net regulation—a mere seven short of a majority.

While precious time ticks away, the U.S. has not named a leader for the treaty negotiation. We must awake from our slumber and engage before it is too late. Not only do these developments have the potential to affect the daily lives of all Americans, they also threaten freedom and prosperity across the globe.

Mr. McDowell is a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.

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The World Bank’s 28 year-old Depopulation Plan

February 14, 2012 1 Comment

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
February 14, 2012

Plans to drastically reduce the world’s population aren’t new. Many organizations and members of the oligarchy have manifested their intention to promote and carry out plans to dramatically reduce — between 80% and 90% — the number of humans that inhabit the Earth. Last week, we presented proof of now the United Nations and well-known philanthropists divest and invest billions of dollars to support campaigns that threaten the lives of millions of people every year. According to the cited sources and documentation in our article UN Pushes for a Global Tax to Finance its Global Socialist System, the UN alone, and in many cases its alliances with rich corporatists or partner organizations spend their budgets implementing programs in third world nations to avoid human reproduction and the development of those nations. In many cases, the application of eugenics or population control programs are a condition to receiving financial aid.

But the UN is not the only corporate-controlled organization that pushes for population reduction. Together with the UN are the World Health Organization, the IMF, and the World Bank, among others. In the case of the World Bank, the record reveals that some of the most recent initiatives date to 1984, when a report was written and presented to the controllers of the Bank. Among other things, it suggests the immediate start of population reduction policies in order to maintain economic growth; mainly for the developed nations. The document titled “World Development Report 1984″, also includes analysis and commentary about issues such as the Recovery or Relapse in the World Economy, Population Change and Development, Population Data Supplement and World Development Indicators. Notice how three of the 4 most important topics have to do directly with population.

The 300-page report from 1984 was the seventh of its kind, meaning that the World Bank’s elite’s thoughts on how to reduce or manage the world’s population was at least that old. We know today that the actual plan to reduce the population to around 500 million people is much older than that, and that this plan has been channeled through several other organizations whose work is to create policies that support the move to get rid off billions of people. Along with these organizations, the elites have partnered with their own corporations to implement policies in fields such as education, resource management, war (civil and otherwise), peace, financial aid, development, commerce, trade and so on, to enforce those policies. In essence, the corporate oligarchy has always controlled all sides.

The report is very clear from the beginning as to how important depopulation is in their plans to control the masses. “What governments and their people do today to influence our demographic future, will set the terms for the development strategy well into the next century. Failure to act now to slow growth is likely to mean a lower quality of life for millions of people.” Note that the World Banks’ strategy is one for the long term. Depopulation policies are being applied and will continue to be applied progressively, not at once. That is exactly what the elites have been doing for decades. They have been using slow-kill weapons such as chemical products in the food supply and other products we consume on a daily basis, but whose effects are only seen years later (fluoride, GMO’s, pesticides, herbicides, BPA, vaccines and others).

The report continues trying to reinforce a fallacy: That poverty and hunger are a consequence of overpopulation. As we have reported in numerous occasions, poverty and hunger have little to do with overpopulation, but have everything to do with monopolistic practices, price speculation, war and political corruption. “The experience of the past decade shows that education, health, and other development measures that raise parents’ hopes for their children, along with widespread access to family planning services, create a powerful combination in reducing fertility.” This last two words describe the main goal of the World Bank. But let’s review the complete quote and re-format it to reflect what the Bank really means. Indoctrination through the current educational system, eugenics through the use of highly toxic medicines along with the promotion of abortion results in reduced fertility.

The humanity hating statements start on page 50 of the report. “Lower GDP growth makes it more difficult for countries to finance programs in education and family planning, for example –that reduce population growth.” This statement is very important, because education or indoctrination through the public education system in developed and not developed countries together with the so-called family planning practices are two of the most effective tools to carry out eugenics today. In many countries, children are taught to hate humanity and that the most important thing is the well-being of animals, insects and mother nature or GAIA. Some NGO’s have even published articles or produced PSA’s that promote the salvation of insects and animals above humans and that humans and animals are equal. Legislation being worked out in Congresses around the world intend to officially consider humans as equals to animals and to have the United Nations as official spokesperson of the voiceless animals. All of this, of course, to save the planet. But in reality the sought outcome is to equal humans to animals in order to rip our humanity from us. If people are like animals, then people are not people, but animals. With this, the elites can legally argue that it is time to end with all the inherent rights we have as people, because we are not longer people. No more right to life, no right to freedom and the pursuit of happiness, etc.

Neither does poverty or hunger have anything to do with overpopulation, nor there is an overpopulation problem, as the World Bank says in its report. The report goes on to ask whether governments should promote and apply campaigns to reduce fertility and therefore reduce their population. The answer, the text reads, requires an understanding of high fertility and population growth. ” It is the poor with little education and poor health and family planning services who have many children, yet it is also the poor who lose out as rapid population growth hampers development.” This statement is very revealing, as many of the policies for sterilization and population control implemented for the past 50 years are pointed to the poor in both wealthy and developing countries.

The World Bank’s then goes to say that one of the main reasons why poor people choose to have many children is because they want to secure help when they become old; someone to take care of them. The report also cites other reasons such as income, infant mortality, family encouragement of high fertility and limited information about contraceptives, which the report says “are safe”. Of course, this last claim is not true. But that is a discussion for another article.

What the report fails to say is that the real cause of high fertility in poor countries is the welfare-state. Although in many countries some of the reasons cited by the 1984 report may be applicable, the reason why most people have several children in poor and rich countries is because there are socialist programs in place that promote free care and services for those who cannot pay for it. The reason why those people cannot pay for care and health services is because they don’t have jobs to earn a living and depend on their governments to provide care for themselves and their children.

If there is a strong reason why poor people decide to have more than 2 children, which is near the optimum average of 2.1 per family, is because there is an incentive to keep having more. But this is just an unintended consequence of public policies. The real issue is that governments use welfare to keep people dependent, as supposed to help them be self-sufficient and independent. So the Bank not only lies about the real cause of high fertility, but it also supports government intervention to maintain the welfare-state.

Further down on the report, it says that collectivism should be the model to follow, because government control of population fertility has ”longer time horizons than its individual constituents, and the government can weigh better the interests of the future generations against of those of current citizens.” This couldn’t be further from the truth, as most countries where governments intervene heavily in all aspects of life are places where — due to people’s dependence of government — its citizens don’t get to enjoy their lives freely. The report blames the family as a unit, for the government’s lack of action. Governments must, says the report, invest more on the poor.” With this, the World Bank reinforces public perception that it does support socialist policies and the welfare-state as models to govern a dumbed-down, poor and dependent population. “Health and education costs of children are heavily subsidized by the public sector as are roads, communications and other public services that boost jobs and income.” This could not be further from the truth. No socialist program could ever spur economic growth and higher incomes better and more effectively than entrepreneurship in the private sector. What government-sponsored programs do, besides keeping people dependent, is to limit the people’s opportunities as it doesn’t offer incentives to detach themselves from the ever existent government nipple. Also, it is important to remember where government funds come from. In most countries, money is taken from the middle class to give it to the poor in exchange for nothing. The middle class effectively subsidizes poverty. Unfortunately, most of the income stolen from the middle class does not even make it to the poor. It stays inside the government corruptocrazy to finance the its out-of-control spending.

Although the report does not recognize it explicitly, it is visible in many of the claims made in it, that history shows how population growth and decline has always been (except under situations like war or major natural disasters) “automatically” controlled by human progress and how it never needed government intervention. It is not a coincidence that war is one of tools of choice the globalists use to keep the poor countries from developing. That is what is stated on the White House Memorandum 200 prepared by Mr. henry Kissinger.

How does the World Bank implement population control

On page 160, the report states clearly how governments and private institutions can coerce their populations into becoming infertile. “ensuring that people have only the children they want, might not be enough to bring private and socially desired fertility into balance. Economic and social policies are indispensable. Eliminating subsidies to large families, offering financial incentives for smaller families, imposing disincentives for larger families…” The report praises the quota system imposed to the chinese by its government and the fact that China “gives permission” to its citizens to have or not to have children.  ”The system quotas and the accompanying pressure to have an abortion when a woman becomes pregnant without permission, are an additional policy step over and above the system of incentives and disincentives.” In other words, governments should implement any and all measures available to prevent people from having children and cause them to become infertile, including poverty and starvation, bribery, violently killing babies right out of the mothers’ wombs and imposing penalties on people who do not attend to government population control policies.

In addition to imposing sterilization policies and methods as well as bribing people so they don’t have children, the World Bank’s report also suggests that offering low interest rate loans to communities and schools can be a good incentive to keep population growth down and to reduce fertility. “Incentives that offer schools, low interest loans, or a tubewell to communities where contraceptive use is high, also directly link lower fertility to increased welfare.

But all of these suggestions seem mild when it comes to enforcing sterilization policies. The 1984 report also adds that “Male and female sterilization and IUDs can be made more readily available through mobile facilities (such as sterilization vans in Thailand) or periodic “camps” (such as vasectomy and tubectomy-camps in India and IUD “safaris” in Indonesia).”

“Population policy has a long lead time; other development policies must adapt in the meantime. Inaction today forecloses options tomorrow, in overall development strategy and in future population policy. Worst of all, inaction today could mean that more drastic steps, less compatible with individual choice and freedom, will seem necessary tomorrow to slow population growth.”

The authors also promote the creation of concentration camps where people can be taken to be sterilized.

As we have informed before, the World Bank’s policies and suggestions to reduce population are in complete accordance with those of other organizations, philanthropists, NGO’s and well-known personalities who donate their monies to reduce the human population. Those include the UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, World Health Organization and IMF. So the next time your country receives aid from a foreign foundation, an NGO, the World Bank or the IMF, remember: this aid comes at the cost of human lives.

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The Causes of Cancer are well-known and so are the Cures

February 7, 2012 Leave a Comment

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
February 7, 2012

It is not uncommon to see essays from so called cancer experts or doctors who privately or through foundations promote the old know-how when talking about cancer, cancer prevention and treatment. But articles that talk about cancer rates and the best methods to prevent and treat this disease are usually filled with half truths and often with plain bold lies. A recent commentary article posted on the New York Times, and written by doctor Susan Love, is a clear example of what the establishment medical industry does in order to keep patients ignorant and to continue the unnecessary search for a cure.

Cancer is not only a completely curable disease, in many cases even in advanced stages, but also an absolutely preventable one. In her essay Ms. Love begins by assessing the decision made by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure group to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, which the organization later retracted given the pressure exercised by the eugenics-driven organization -Planned Parenthood- as well as the pharmaceutical industrial complex. The establishment medical industry co-opted organizations and foundations to protest Susan G. Komen’s decision and raised public awareness about the issue as if the defunding move would heavily impact Planned Parenthood’s ability to continue to carry out its eugenics programs. Planned Parenthood makes $164 million per year from abortions. That of course, was not pointed out by Ms. Love.

She actually went straight into the lies and half truths usually megaphoned by the establishment medical industry and the dying main stream media. She started by saying “we still don’t know what causes breast cancer, therefore we don’t know how to prevent it”. To Ms. Love’s surprise, doctors who treat and attempt to cure cancer through traditional and alternative methods have discovered that all cancers do have a common cause. Cancer is, as the latest study published by the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, has shown, a metabolic malfunction, not a consequence of cellular mutation or bad genetics, as many in the medical establishment tell us. It can be prevented and treated with diet and exercise, (also read this) enzyme therapy as well as with ingestion of dichloroacetate, as the Canadian study shows. What there isn’t right now is a treatment or cure that is equally successful for everyone, which is what the medical establishment wants us to believe. What doesn’t work is the traditional set of treatments -chemotherapy and radiation- which in most cases causes remission for a few years, but causes the cancer to spread and return. Cancer drugs make tumors more aggressive and deadly within 5 to 10 years after the patient is irradiated and poisoned. So, not all cancers are equal, true, but it is absolutely false that we don’t know its origin or how to treat it.

Ms. Love then talks about cancer screening as a tool to control cancer. Although she mentions that screening by itself is not an effective way to prevent cancers, she goes on to say it is the best way there is, therefore implicitly suggesting that women should continue to irradiate their bodies as often as their doctors recommend. She probably has not heard about the monumental number of false positives that causes doctors and patients to even consider surgery in cases when cysts found through the mammograms aren’t even malign tumors. So no Ms. Love, mammograms are not the best thing out there to diagnose or prevent breast cancer.

Ms. Love goes on to tell another lie that was manufactured within the medical establishment: That the HPV vaccine is an awesome way to prevent cancer of the cervix. She doesn’t say it, but perhaps she also believes that boys should be vaccinated against HPV, too. Again, Ms. Love probably is not aware of the fact that HPV does not cause cancer of the cervix, and that healthy women are able to prevent any disease caused by the HPV virus, with few cases of women who experience mild infections, and only a minority -less than 3000 a year- who actually develop cancer of the cervix, but not due to HPV. In fact, neither does Cervarix not Gardasil help prevent cancer of the cervix. In their own studies, pharmaceutical corporations reveal that both vaccines are barely effective in treating 4 of the more than 100 strains of human papillomavirus that exist. Even the Food and Drug Administration’s own papers reject the idea that these two vaccines help to prevent cancer of the cervix. The FDA says the HPV vaccine in women who have human papillomavirus increases the risk of cervical cancer by 44.6%, because this vaccines promote the development of precancerous lesions in the uterus, which eventually leads to cervical cancer. The American Medical Association (AMA) says: “There is significant evidence to indicate that there is no benefit from the vaccine. The disappearance of the virus during periods of 12 months is not related to the use of the vaccine. It is unlikely that vaccination has any significant benefit.” Ms. Love definitely ignores that the current global vaccination policies have been found to be fraudulent at best. Both Cervarix and Gardasil are well recognized for causing 3500 serious side effects which are not acknowledged by the medical establishment despite their proven serious consequences.

At the end of her essay, Ms. Love reinforces her views about the need to “find the causes” instead of “finding the cure”. Of course, the cures for cancer have already been found, and so have the causes. Except that the causes are not a common set of signs or symptoms that are the same on every patient. Each cancer patient has a set of causes that promoted and allowed cancer to appear and grow in him or her. I don’t think she understands that yet despite her college degree. Dear Ms. Love, neither Planned Parenthood nor any other medical organization that swears by the traditional, outdated and inefficient methods to treat and cure cancer actually offer medical care; they offer death care. They don’t treat the symptoms or the disease; they don’t cure. They kill. The only thing that has stopped millions of women and men from finding the cure for cancer is not the lack of that cure, but the ignorance, arrogance and economic interests of the pharmaceutical industrial complex to which you belong, voluntarily or not.

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UN Pushes for a Global Tax to Finance its Global Socialist System

February 6, 2012 1 Comment

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
February 6, 2012

All attempts to officially create a world government have failed so far, but the United Nations and its accomplice founders and funders do not stop on their efforts to institute such a monstrosity. After the so-called environmental movement -a group led by powerful oligarchs- failed to impose a global environmental authority, which would get financing from a global tax on carbon emissions, the UN has now changed its discourse to  ’solving poverty’  instead of  ’saving the planet’  from a doomsday scenario of generalized anthropogenic warming.

A new initiative presented by the UN’s President of the Economic and Social Council, Milos Koterec, calls for the imposition of a global tax to finance the living standards of those who find themselves in precarious conditions. The attempt to globally institutionalize socialism as a way to solve every single problem there is, was presented at a forum whose main focus was the non-existent right of people to have ”universal access to basic social protection and social services.”

The United Nations has tried the same trick on other issues such as Human Rights, Global Warming, Climate Change, Peace, War and so on. This time, however, the organization created by globalists in 1945 is using a rather humane hook to attract more supporters in its quest for the global socialization of everything. ”Everyone should be able to access at least basic health services, primary education, housing, water, sanitation and other essential services.” If you think about it carefully, no one could possibly oppose helping people who are in a dire situation due to the lack of anything cited by Mr. Koterec. That is why it is remarkably strange that the governments of those nations where people live in deplorable conditions do not work hard to provide the services and opportunities mentioned by the President of the UN’s Council on Economic and Social affairs.

The idea to tax some people to help others is not significant if one considers the amount being proposed -.005 percent. What should alarm us is the fact that once a global taxing system is officially accepted by a group of nations, the precedent will exist, and every new problem will be seen as an opportunity to tax someone else to solve such a problem. ”We will need a modest but long-term way to finance this transformation,” said the Deputy Director of the UN’s Development Program, Jens Wandel. A .005 percent tax would give the United Nations a total of $40 billion to fund anything the organization deems to be within the realm of  ’helping the poor’. Of course, the UN is known for financing eugenics programs all over the world with the monies it already receives from developed nations from across the planet as well as fake philanthropists of the likes of John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Edward Harriman, Andrew Carnegie, William Gates, George Soros, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Prince Charles and many others. Most of these globalists have publicly expressed their wish to cut the world’s population for the sake of saving …  well … themselves and their traditionally inbred families.

“First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion  people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on  new vaccines, health care, reproductive health  services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15  percent.”  - Bill Gates at California TED2010 Conference.

“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”  – Ted Turner

Mr. Turner has made sure his wishes find a place to start as he has heavily invested in eugenics programs in third world countries, contributing billions to population reduction, mainly through United Nations programs.

“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”  – Prince Philipe quote from Deutsche Press Agentur (DPA), August, 1988.

Philip also helped start the World Wildlife Fund in 1961 with former Nazi SS Officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who is closely affiliated with the founders of the Bilderberg international power group, and Sir Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley’s brother, who was also the President of the British Eugenics Society, reports PrisonPlanet.com

“Investigations by EIR have uncovered a planning apparatus operating outside the control of the White House whose sole purpose is to cut the world’s population by 2 billion people through war, famine, disease and any other means necessary. This apparatus, which includes various levels of the government is determining U.S. foreign policy. In every political hotspot — El Salvador, the so-called arc of crisis in the Persian Gulf, Latin America, Southeast Asia and in Africa- the goal of U.S. foreign policy is population reduction. The targeting agency for the operation is the National Security Council’s Ad Hoc Group on Population Policy. Its policy-planning group is in the U.S.State Department’s Office of Population Affairs, established in 1975 by Henry Kissinger. This group drafted the Carter administration’s Global 2000 document, which calls for global population reduction, and the same apparatus is conducting the civil war in El Salvador as a conscious depopulation project,” explains Lonnie Wolfe in his article The Haig-Kissinger depopulation policy.

“There is a single theme behind all our work-we must reduce population levels.”  – Thomas Ferguson, the Latin American case officer for the State Department’s Office of Population Affairs (OPA).

To the previous quotes we can add the well-known White House memorandum 200, where the United States government laid out a clear strategy to aggressively promote population control in developing nations so it would be easier to get a hold of their natural resources. According to Human Life International, the memorandum named 13 countries that ”would be primary targets of U.S.-funded population control efforts.” Some of the policies implemented include the legalization of abortion, financial incentives for countries to increase their abortion, sterilization and contraception-use rates, indoctrination of children and mandatory population control, and coercion of other forms, such as withholding disaster and food aid unless nations implemented population control programs.

“One idea which we could consider is a minimal financial transaction tax”. This is not the first time a global transaction tax is suggested. The very same bankers who caused the current financial crisis suggested a fee on international transactions to help rescue their risky bets. As it turns out that money was not needed, because countries like the United States and Germany decided to put the burden of illegally acquired debts on the shoulders of the tax payers in their respective nations. Financial bailouts abounded in 2011 to supposedly pay off the debts that were sinking countries like Greece, Italy, Spain and the very same United States of America. American tax payers alone swallowed some $29 trillion that the private Federal Reserve wired to banks in Europe and others on American soil.

So, what does the United Nations have to show for to suddenly request billions of dollars in aid to help the poor? As many may already know, none of the issues the UN intervened in changed for the better or were solved once and for all. Not once in over half a century has the United Nations come close to alleviating a country’s despair. After being created under the premise that a new organization was needed to bring countries together, the UN has either failed to act, or by its actions caused real harm to populations around the planet. The UN has stood by while dictators murdered their own citizens for the past 50 years, just as it stood by while corporate-controlled governments invaded and destroyed countries “for the sake of peace”. According to author Theresa Bell, the UN’s agenda is as deceptive as the names it uses to commit more people to its causes. “The body of evidence in print and action emanating from the U.N. system lately suggests a global agenda to eliminate the poor themselves through population control programs. This deceptive agenda is confused further by the use of other innocuous and seemingly harmless U.N. terms such as “sustainable development” or “environmental sustainability”—and here’s a bold one: “environmentally sustainable economic development.” It’s important to understand what “sustainability” means in the heart and soul of the U.N. and its agencies. Where does the term sustainable development come from? As I have previously written, sustainability has its roots in the environmental movement that arose previous to the Nazi domination of Europe and that Hitler would later adopt as a tool for eugenics.

Today, the UN has an operating budget of about $5 billion, which according to management is not enough to carry out its goals. That happens in any good old bureaucracy, doesn’t it? Instead of actually dedicating its efforts to ending poverty and bringing health and services to the neediest, the UN has used its budget to push for a socialist agenda which includes taking possession of government-owned lands as well as privately kept properties all around the world. Through its proposed Agenda 21 initiative, the UN intends to socialize land ownership, but not to give it to the poorest. The UN is also a promoter of government-controlled access to health and medicine, pushing a global set of rules to manage what people eat and don’t eat. This initiative is known as Codex Alimentarius, a set of policies that let’s the UN govern over nutrition and access to traditional or alternative medical treatments and food. Codex Alimentarius has been quietly adopted by many countries without previous consultation or review in Congresses or a simple popular referendum.

No one could expect, however, that the plan to tax international transactions was really about helping the poor. Anything that comes out of the United Nations is another push for controlling how people live and spend their money. The UN has even proposed itself as the governing body on how the internet should be used. ”It is absolutely essential to establish controls on capital movements and financial speculation,” said Jorge Valero. Mr. Valero is the current United Nations Chairman of the Commission on Social Development. And then he confirmed the suspicions raised by many alternative media outlets that the call to help end poverty and misery is nothing more than another attempt to control the global financial system. He added that there was a need for “progressive policies of taxation”  that required “those who earn more to pay more taxes.” That is an old and worn out example of figurative speech which really means tightening the strings on any transaction that the average Joe performs, while the richest of the rich are allowed to use the current banking system to launder drug money, as HSBC, Wachovia, Wells Fargo and other banks have been caught doing. This is all about using a noble cause – just as they tried to do with the global warming issue – to push for tighter controls on what you and I decide to do with the fruit of our labor while the real criminals are left alone.

When looking for reasons why the UN has failed to achieve the goals it originally proposed, Capitalism was the first in line. There is undoubtedly a concerted effort by corporate leaders, – many of whom fund the UN – to blame Capitalism for all evils. Ironically, the UN is one of the largest beneficiaries of Capitalism, since all the money it receives to fund its programs comes mainly from openly Capitalist nations. Expect the United Nations to change its role as a prominent carbon tax pusher to “save us all”, especially after the Met Office and the University of East Anglia confirmed that global warming ceased to exist at least 15 years ago. It will now try to solve the next greatest problem, the same one it has tried to solve for over half a century, the same one it has miserably failed at solving.

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IMF driving Poverty and Resource Monopoly in Nigeria

February 2, 2012 Leave a Comment

Nigeria and the US have one thing in common. Despite the vast natural riches that exists under their lands, the two countries “prefer” to spend billion to import the oil needed to keep the economic activity going.

by F. William Engdahl
February 2, 2012

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its largest oil producer, is from all evidence being systematically thrown into chaos and a state of civil war. The recent surprise decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to abruptly lift subsidies on imported gasoline and other fuel has a far more sinister background than mere corruption, and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is playing a key role. China appears to be the likely loser along with Nigeria’s population.

The recent strikes protesting the government’s abrupt elimination of gasoline and other fuel subsidies, that brought Nigeria briefly to a standstill, came as a surprise to most in the country. Months earlier, President Jonathan had promised the major trade union organizations that he would conduct a gradual four-stage lifting of the subsidy to ease the economic burden. Instead, without warning he announced an immediate full removal of subsidies effective January 1, 2012. It was “shock therapy” to put it mildly.

Nigeria today is one of the world’s most important producers of light, sweet crude oil—the same high-quality crude oil that Libya and the British North Sea produce. The country is showing every indication of spiraling downward into deep disorder. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States and twelfth largest oil producer in the world on a par with Kuwait and just behind Venezuela with production exceeding two million barrels a day.

The curious timing of IMF subsidy demand

Despite its oil riches, Nigeria remains one of Africa’s poorest countries. The known oilfields are concentrated around the vast Niger Delta roughly between Port Harcourt and extending in the direction of Lagos, with large new finds being developed all along the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.Nigeria’s oil is exploited and largely exported by the Anglo-American giants—Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco. Italy’s Agip also has a presence and most recently, to no one’s surprise, the Chinese state oil companies began seeking major exploration and oil infrastructure agreements with the Abuja government.

Ironically, despite the fact that Nigeria has abundant oil to earn dollar export revenue to build its domestic infrastructure, government policy has deliberately let its domestic oil refining capacity fall into ruin. The consequence has been that most of the gasoline and other refined petroleum products used to drive transportation and industry, has to be imported, despite the country’s abundant oil. In order to shield the population from the high import costs of gasoline and other refined fuels, the central government has subsidized prices.

Until January 1, 2012, that is. That was the day when, without advance warning President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan announced immediate removal of all fuel subsidies. Prices for gasoline shot up almost threefold in hours from 65 naira (35 cents of a dollar) a liter to 150 naira (93 cents). The impact rippled across the economy to everything including prices of grains and vegetables.

In justifying the move, Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi insisted that “The monies will be used in provision of social amenities and infrastructural development that will benefit Nigerians more and save the country from economic rift.”President Goodluck Jonathan says he is phasing out the subsidy as a part of a move to “clean up the Nigerian government.” If so, how he plans to proceed is anything but apparent.

The huge unexpected price hike for domestic fuel triggered nationwide protests that threatened to bring the economy to a halt by mid-January. The president deftly took the wind out of protester sails by announcing a partial rollback in prices, still leaving prices effectively double that of December. The trade union federation immediately called off the protests. Then, revealingly, Goodluck Jonathan’s government ordered the military to take to the streets to “keep order”and de facto prevent new protests. All that took place during one of the bloodiest waves of bombings and murder rampages by the terrorist Boko Haram sect creating a climate of extreme chaos.

The smoking gun of the IMF

What has been buried from international accounts of the unrest is the explicit role the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) played in the situation. With suspicious timing IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde was in Nigeria days before the abrupt subsidy decision of President Jonathan. By all accounts, the IMF and the Nigerian government have been careful this time not to be blatant about openly announcing demands to end subsidies as they were in Tunisia before food protests became the trigger for that country’s Twitter putsch in 2011.

During her visit to Nigeria Lagarde said President Jonathan’s ‘Transformation Agenda’ for deregulation “is an agenda for Nigeria, driven by Nigerians. The IMF is here to support you and be a better partner for you.” Few Nigerians were convinced.On December 29 Reuters wrote, “The IMF has urged countries across West and Central Africa to cut fuel subsidies, which they say are not effective in directly aiding the poor, but do promote corruption and smuggling. The past months have seen governments in Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon and Chad moving to cut state subsidies on fuel.”

Further confirming the role US and IMF pressure on the Nigerian government played, Jeffery Sachs, Special Adviser to the United Nations (UN) Secretary General, during a meeting with President Jonathan in Nigeria in early January days after the subsidy decision, declared Jonathan’s decision to withdraw petroleum subsidy “a bold and correct policy.”

Sachs, a former Harvard economics professor, became notorious during the early 1990s for prescribing IMF “shock therapy” for Poland, Russia, Ukraine and other former communist states, which opened invaluable state assets for de facto plundering by dollar-rich western multinationals.

Even more suspicious is the manner in which Washington and the IMF are putting pressure on only select countries to end subsidies. Nigeria, whose oil today sells for the equivalent of $1 a liter or roughly $3.78 a US gallon, is far from cheap. Brunei, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia all offer their petrol very cheap to their people. The Saudis sell their oil at 17 cents, Kuwait at 22 cents. In the US gasoline averages 89 cents a liter.

That means the IMF and Washington have forced one of the poorest economies in Africa to impose a huge tax on its citizens on the implausible argument it will help eliminate corruption in the state petroleum sector. The IMF knows well that the elimination of subsidies will do nothing about corruption in high places.

Were the IMF and World Bank genuinely concerned with the health of the domestic Nigerian economy, they would have provided support for rebuilding and expanding a domestic oil refinery industry that has been allowed to rot, so that the country need no longer import refined fuels using precious state budget resources.The easiest way to do that would be to expedite a two-year-old deal between China and the Nigerian government to invest some $28 billion in massive expansion of the oil refinery sector, to eliminate need for importing foreign gasoline and other refined products.

Quite the opposite—the criminal cabal inside the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and the Government making huge profits on the old subsidy system are suddenly making double and potentially triple more to maintain the old corrupt import system, and, of course, to sabotage Chinese refinery construction that could put an end to their gravy train.

Cutting their nose to spite the face…

Rather than benefit ordinary Nigerians as the IMF proclaims to want, the elimination of the subsidies has further pauperized the 90 per cent living on less than $2 a day, according to Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Nigerian Central Bank governor. An estimated 40 million Nigerians are unemployed in the country of 148 million.

Because transport costs are a significant factor in delivery of food to the cities, food price inflation has soared along with costs of public transportation for the majority of poorer Nigerians. According to the Nigerian Leadership Sunday,“prices of commodities which shot up as a fallout of the fuel pump price increase have refused to come down.”Everything from street vegetable sellers to carwashes to roadside photographers are feeling the shock of the rise in fuel prices. Unemployment is rising as small businesses fold.

The argument of the IMF and the Jonathan administration is that by freeing fuel prices, funds would be available to more social services and rebuilding Nigeria’s “infrastructure.” Both the IMF and the government know it would have been far more economically viable to replace the current corrupt system of importing refined gasoline and fuels with investing in rebuilding Nigeria’s domestic refining capacity.

Son Gyoh of the Nigerian Awareness for Development organization asks, “Would it not be more expedient to pressure government to service the refineries to full production capacity, given the implications on overhead and competitiveness for local industries?”

Gyoh pointed to the source of the problem: “Why have successive governments left the refineries in a state of disrepair while spending huge on subsidy? Is there any chance that the savings from subsidy withdrawal will go directly into rehabilitating the refineries? Does deregulation imply NNPC will no longer operate a monopoly in importation of refined petroleum product, or is this lobby a self-serving lifeline to continue its monopoly? ” He concludes, “In any case, there is good reason to doubt subsidy removal will solve the fuel scarcity problem as the cabal will only regroup to change tactics, a fact Nigerians are only too aware of.”

After Nigeria partly nationalized its oil sector in the late 1970s, it also took control of Shell Oil’s Port Harcourt I refinery. In 1989, Port Harcourt II refinery was built. Both refineries fell into serious disrepair after 1994, when the Abacha military dictatorship cut the “take” of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company NNPC from domestic sale of refined oil products such as gasoline from 84% to 22%. That caused a cash crisis for NNPC and a halt to refinery maintenance. Today only one of four refineries operates at all.

What developed since was a system of NNPC importing foreign gasoline and other refined products for Nigeria’s domestic needs, naturally at a far more expensive cost. The price subsidies were to relieve that higher import cost, hardly a sensible solution but a very lucrative one for those corrupt elements in the state and private sector making a killing, literally, off the import process.

NNPC criminal enterprise

The IMF is well aware of the real cause of Nigeria’s fuel industry problems. A Nigerian legislative committee examining the sources of the industry’s problems recently released a report documenting that at least $4 billion annually is taken from taxpayers in fuel industry corruption with the state Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) at the center. According to the commission, “every day, fuel importers drop off 59 million liters of fuel. The country consumes 35 million liters daily. That leaves 24 million liters of oil available for smugglers to export, paid for by government fuel subsidies. This costs the Nigerian people roughly $4 billion yearly, according to Reuters.”

The Nigerian government has said that the 7.5 billion dollars spent yearly on fuel subsidies could be used to provide desperately needed infrastructure. But they omit any mention of the rampant siphoning off of $4 billion of oil by black market smugglers, reportedly with connivance of high NNPC government officials, to sell to neighboring countries at a hefty profit. The refined imported fuel is reportedly smuggled into neighboring countries like Cameroon, Chad and Niger where petrol prices are far higher, according to Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, Deputy Governor of Kano State.

China as IMF target?

One major geopolitical factor that is generally ignored in recent discussion of Nigerian oil politics is the growing role of China in the country. In May 2010, only days after President Jonathan was sworn in, China signed an impressive $28.5 billion deal with his government to build three new refineries, something that in no way fits into the plans of either the IMF, or of Washington, or of the Anglo-American oil majors.

China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited (CSCEC) signed the deal to build three oil refineries with Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), in the biggest deal China has made with Africa. Shehu Ladan, head of NNPC, said at the signing ceremony that the added refineries would reduce the $10 billion spent annually on imported refined products. As of January 2012, the three Chinese refinery projects were still in the planning stage, reportedly blocked by the powerful vested interests gaining from the existing corrupt import system.

A report in China Daily last November quoted Nigeria’s Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga, the minister of trade and investment, that Nigeria was seeking added Chinese investors for its energy, mining and agribusiness industries. Last September on a visit to Beijing, Nigeria central bank governor Lamido Sanusiannounced his country planned to invest 5 per cent to 10 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves in China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB) or yuan, noting that he sees the yuan becoming reserve currency. In 2010 China’s loans and exports to Nigeria exceeded $7 billion, while Nigeria exported $1 billion of crude oil, Sanusi stated.

Until now Nigeria has held some 79% of her foreign currency reserves in dollars, the rest in Euro or Sterling, all of which look dicey given their financial and debt problems. The move of a major oil producer away from dollars, added to similar moves recently by India, Japan, Russia, Iran and others, augurs bad news for the continued role of the dollar as dominant world reserve currency. Clearly some in Washington would not be happy with that.

The Chinese are also bidding to get a direct stake in Nigeria’s rich oil reserves, until now an Anglo-American domain. In July 2010, China’s CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) won four prospective oil blocks – two in the Niger Delta and two in the frontier Chad Basin, with plans to become core investor in the Kaduna refinery, and construction of a double track Lagos-Kano railway. China’s oil company, CNOOC Ltd also has a major offshore production area in Nigeria.

The IMF and Washington pressure to lift subsidies on imported fuels is at this point in question, as is the future of China in Nigeria’s energy industry. Clear is that lifting subsidies in no way will benefit Nigerians. More alarming in this context is the orchestration of a major new wave of terror killings and bombings by the mysterious and suspiciously well-armed Boko Haram. This we will look at next in the context of Nigeria’s recent transformation into a major narcotics hub.

F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

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