Category Archives: Fascism

SWIFT Iranian Eviction

Economy, Ethics, Fascism, Foreign Policy, Iran, Media, Propaganda

CNN’s inane wishy-washy Fareed Zakaria boasted the other day about the foreign-policy achievements of Barack Obama. Since the president’s reign of terror abroad began, the Iranian currency had lost 65 percent of its value. Like all fixtures of mainstream media, Zombie Zakaria has some appetite for destruction.

So how is Obama accomplishing this great feat against innocent Iranian economic actors? Via RT:

US wants Iran evicted from SWIFT [Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication], an independent financial clearinghouse that is crucial to the country’s oil sales. This could immediately cripple Tehran’s financial lifeline, but would come with its own costs for the world economy.
Iran’s eviction from SWIFT could drive forward the current slow pressure campaign of sanctions aimed at persuading Iran to drop its nuclear program. It might also buy time for the US to persuade Israel not to launch a pre-emptive military strike on Iran this spring.
The bitter truth is, the plan might actually backfire on western nations themselves as it could send oil prices soaring and undercut the reputation of Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT). The Brussels-based organization is a banking hub used by virtually every nation and corporation around the world. …
More than 40 Iranian banks and institutions use SWIFT to process financial transactions, and losing access to that flow of international funds could badly damage the Islamic republic’s economy. It would also probably hurt average Iranians more than the welter of existing banking sanctions already in place since prices for household goods would rise while the value of Iranian currency would drop.

Gingrich To Glenn: ‘I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican’

Elections, Fascism, Glenn Beck, Government, Republicans, Socialism, The State

I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican. In fact, if I were going to characterize my—on health where I come from, I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican and I believe government can lean in the regulatory leaning is okay.—Newt Gingrich (the gibberish too).

To some—perhaps many—Republicans, to be a Theodore Roosevelt Republican is quite respectable. Therein lies the rub. If you’re the type of (Robert) Taft Republican who values your life, liberty and property—then Teddy Roosevelt, “the guy who started the Progressive Party,” and was a proponent of “progressive ideals”—is bad news.

If you didn’t already know Newt was bad news; then Glenn Beck makes it abundantly clear. Especially politically poignant is Newt’s folksy retelling of Teddy’s food safety awakening.

About “‘TR’s drummed up a phony ‘food safety crisis,'” Thomas J. DiLorenzo observed the following:

… there were no epidemics related to commercial food processing” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Roosevelt’s “pure food laws” were aimed “at protecting producers,” not the general public. For example, as Powell recounts, some of these early laws set exceptionally high regulatory standards on imported foods as a form of veiled protectionism. Food inspection laws during the Roosevelt era were invariably favored by larger corporations who understood that the laws would disproportionately harm their smaller competitors. “The 1906 Pure Food And Drugs Act empowered the Agriculture Department’s notorious quack, Harvey Washington Wiley, to conduct crazy crusades against foods competing with the interest groups he served” (mostly larger corporate interests).

In Into the Cannibal’s Pot, I mention the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos whom TR killed.

In all, TR was happiest when he was killing. Like many a mass murderer, TR began his career by killing animals, one biographer alleging that “after an argument with his girlfriend a young Teddy Roosevelt went home and shot his neighbor’s dog.”

Glenn mocks the self-important Speaker: “… So you’re a minimum regulation guy on making sure the people don’t fall into the vats of sausage?”

Yes, Newt Gingrich got mince-up well in the Glenn grinder.

One Nation Under Inflation

Debt, EU, Europe, Fascism, Federal Reserve Bank, Federalism, Political Philosophy, Regulation, Socialism, States' Rights

“When it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service.” The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM:

“The EU Commission president, a chap called Jose Manuel Barroso, told PBS’s Jeffrey Brown, on November 28, that the European suprastate is not quite up to American statist standards.

Barroso lamented that the EU lacks America’s level of ‘convergence’: ‘We have a common currency, but not, for instance, a common treasury,’ said this slick operator. Fiscal discipline (one wonders what our commissar means by that) can only come about with more ‘pooling of sovereignty.’

The Commission’s president certainly sees the US as a model ‘fiscal union,’ with a high degree of ‘fiscal policy’ ‘integration’ throughout; and is almost envious of the fact that the US federal government possesses ‘the instruments’ that have allowed it to accumulate enormous liabilities: Evidently, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio is larger than the European Union’s.

In a nutshell: Barroso longs for Brussels to be able to do the necessary tinkering to keep the PIIGS of the Eurozone —Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain—living at the expense of their more industrious, austere neighbors to the north. (Presiding European bureaucrats like himself live-it-up no matter where they reside.) The EU, complained its Capo di tutti capi, needs to create those “instruments.”

When it comes to Newspeak, Barroso still beats Obama.

In any event, when it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service. So successfully has the Unites States government submerged the sovereignty of its states that a top European technocrat longs to be like us. We must be in worse shape than we imagined. …”

The complete column, The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM. Read it.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher. Inquire about an Xmas special on bulk buys.

UPDATE III: Floating on $7,770,000,000,000 Worth of Paper

Debt, Economy, Fascism, Federal Reserve Bank

$7.77 Trillion: That’s the amount of money the central bank, chaired by Ben S. Bernanke, “parceled out” during “the bailout to America’s “Big Six,” ostensibly, to rescue the financial system. This according to “Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act” by “Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.”

Inflating America’s fascistic banking system has cost “more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.” It “lasted from August 2007 through April 2010.” Officially.

Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane, [the Fed] created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system with cash or easily traded securities. By the end of 2008, the central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to banks, securities firms and corporations that couldn’t get short-term loans from their usual sources.

America’s economy is floating on fiat. (Did I get the number of zeroes right?)

UPDATE I (Nov. 29): Myron, about those who confine their analysis to the Obama years: Some posters on this site, no less (who have yet to read, much less review, The Cannibal), have contributed to the smart alec Mark Steyn’s best-seller status, even trying to promote Steyn’s Obama-centric, limited analysis on BAB.

Unlike our Steyn-supporting readers, one of the man’s reviewers is on to him. Writes
Marsha Dahleeng:

“At first I appreciated Mr. Steyn’s humor. I enjoyed the clever jabs and the way he mocked the left/progressives. After awhile I grew weary of that – I began to skimread past the seemingly endless smart-alecky points and search for text where the author got down to the meat of the subject. Sadly, there was precious little meat, and what little there was, was disappointingly thin.”

“Disappointingly thin,” but predictably so.

UPDATE II: Exactly right, Robert Glisson: this state of affairs has a starting point: government.

UPDATE III: (Nov. 30): George, you credit Steyn with coming out of the Republican closet with some half-decent insights, after some of us libertarains have been doing this, to the detriment of our careers, for a decade at least before warmonger Steyn awoke. To compare a man who goes with the flow to the great Hebrew prophet Jeremiah does injustice to a truly great prophet. Jeremiah spoke truth to power and to the rabble at his own peril. Jeremiah was forced to sleep in the fields, away from home, for fear of the wrath of the people and the powers that be.