Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.

“Down the road, this data will be used against you,” warned one speaker at a recent Roanoke County, Va., Board of Supervisors meeting who turned out with dozens of people opposed to the county’s paying $1,200 in dues to a nonprofit that consults on sustainability issues.

Local officials say they would dismiss such notions except that the growing and often heated protests are having an effect.

In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot. Similar opposition helped doom a high-speed train line in Florida. And more than a dozen cities, towns and counties, under new pressure, have cut off financing for a program that offers expertise on how to measure and cut carbon emissions…

[continues in the New York Times]

The Georgia Guidestones are a collection of standing stones near Elberton, Georgia. Built in 1980, they are primarily composed of six slabs of granite: one central pillar, four “major” stones that fan out from the center, and a capstone. The capstone has engravings on all four of its sides in four different ancient languages, all of which read, “Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason,” when translated. The major stones are each engraved on both sides, and each side contains text in one of eight modern languages asserting ten guidelines.

These guidelines have proven extremely controversial, causing speculation and rumors of conspiracy that go far beyond northeast Georgia.

The Georgia Guidestones are at once a Rosetta Stone, an astronomical observatory, and a road map for rebuilding civilization. Theories of conspiracy, occultism, and apocalypse surround this monument, and it has been called a “prism of meaning” by many who have studied it. At the heart of this confusion is the missing piece of the puzzle: who was the mystery man that designed and funded the project?

Conspiracy theorists surmise a global plot on the part of shadowy group of men to reduce and subjugate the world’s population and create a “New World Order.” Others believe that the man behind the monument was a Rosicrucian, and that the stones are representative of that group’s occult manifestos. Are the stones proof of a Satanic conspiracy or a testament to a Cold War psychology of nuclear annihilation?

Local historian and Georgia native Raymond Wiley was interviewed for The History Channel’s Brad Meltzer’s Decoded about the Guidestones and is a principal expert for a feature-length documentary currently in production. With local writer K.T. Prime he has written the definitive account of America’s most famous megalithic monument.

On one side of the Atlantic, the eurozone debt crisis has spread to the countries that may be too big to save – Spain and Italy – though RBS thinks a €3.5 trillion rescue fund would ensure survival of Europe’s currency union.

On the other side, the recovery has sputtered out and the printing presses are being oiled again. Brinkmanship between the Congress and the White House over the US debt ceiling has compelled Moody’s to warn of a “very small but rising risk” that the world’s paramount power may default within two weeks. “The unthinkable is now thinkable,” said Ross Norman, director of thebulliondesk.com…

Step by step, the world is edging towards a revived Gold Standard as it becomes clearer that Japan and the West have reached debt saturation. World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said it was time to “consider employing gold as an international reference point.” The Swiss parliament is to hold hearings on a parallel “Gold Franc”. Utah has recognised gold as legal tender for tax payments.

A new Gold Standard would probably be based on a variant of the ‘Bancor’ proposed by Keynes in the late 1940s. This was a basket of 30 commodities intended to be less deflationary than pure gold, which had compounded in the Great Depression. The idea was revived by China’s central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan two years ago as a way of curbing the “credit-based” excess.

Mr Bernanke himself was grilled by Congress this week on the role of gold. Why do people by gold? “As protection against of what we call tail risks: really, really bad outcomes,” he replied.

Henry Baum: In your book, you frequently raise the specter of Alex Jones and his ideas on eugenics, the New World Order, and so on. Personally, I take some issue with Alex Jones for a few reasons, and I wonder if you could address them. The main thing that leaps out about Alex Jones is that he never raises the UFO issue — you actually interview someone at Infowars who seems pretty disinterested in the whole subject. This seems like a fairly impossible assertion to make — it’s pretty clear that there is something going on with the UFO issue, if only because the government explanation for many sightings is so suspiciously stupid. If that’s the case, and there is also a conspiracy to bring about a New World Order, then the two cannot be separated. When you look through at the NWO through the lens of the UFO issue then the NWO makes more sense – not just a way to aimlessly enslave us, but perhaps to make the population more controllable in the event of first contact. Do you think that’s a possibility?

Richard Thomas: I’ve been following Alex Jones off and on since about 2000 when I saw him in an episode of Jon Ronson’s “Secret Rulers of the World” series for Channel Four. He’s had a big impact on the way I see the world and interpret world events. However, I do agree that he is missing a huge piece of the puzzle by not looking at the UFO topic in more depth. That said, trying to get the average person to accept that the Bilderberg Group really does exist is hard enough … so I can understand why Alex Jones doesn’t cover the topic as much as UFO researchers would like him to.

More recently, however, I have noticed that Alex is talking about UFOs a lot more on his radio show. Here you can listen to him and David Icke talk about Project Blue Beam.

I myself believe that the globalists will use any crisis be it real or manufactured to further their goal of a one world government, be it global warming, terrorism, Colonel Gaddafi, or yes, UFOs.

A lot of UFO researchers tend to romanticize what they call “Disclosure”, the day when the world is finally told the truth (whatever that is) about what the US government and others really know about UFOs. I’m more cautious. I think if Disclosure ever really does occur (and that’s a big if) we have to be careful that the existence of extraterrestrials or whatever isn’t used as a justification to turn the world into a giant police state. Rahm Emanuel said “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” and his words sum up the mentality of the globalists perfectly.

HB: I guess another way of saying this is that what he sees as nefarious might actually have a purpose. Granted, the way they’re going about globalization is a total nightmare. I just can’t shed the feeling that they have a grander plan than just profit or enslavement. I mean if you have a billion dollars, what’s 2 billion? Maybe they’re just addicts, I don’t know. But I also think all that profit might be going to black projects – sort of like the arks in the otherwise-terrible “2012″ movie. That’s not a way of excusing them, but just saying that there’s more purpose to this than enslavement for the hell of it. Of course, Hitler had a “purpose” too, so there’s a lot to be wary of. In sum: do you think it’s possible that a one world government could — in the very long term — potentially be positive?

RT: No, I don’t. Lets say just for the sake of argument that the globalists have a higher purpose of some kind for what they’re doing. Maybe they know about a fleet of marauding alien spaceships heading for Earth like in the film Independence Day or something like that, and the reason they want a world government and world army is so that the Earth will be able to defend itself against the alien invaders. That doesn’t change the fact that we’ll still be living inside a giant dictatorship created in stealth … maybe we would be better off under the aliens, lol.

But seriously even if the globalists were honest and open about what they were doing, and openly said they wanted to create a world government but it’s okay because it’s going to be a democratic one, I would still be very against the idea. I don’t believe something the size of a world government could function as a democracy and it wouldn’t be long before it became a dictatorship. Which is why I believe a world government and even the European Union are bad ideas to begin with.

HB: I’m playing devil’s advocate here a bit because the globalists have really tipped their hand about the kind of world they want and it’s a bad one. But for the sake of argument – say there was disclosure of an alien that was totally benign. Given the state of the world, releasing this info could be apocalyptic. If people get this upset about sharia law and illegal immigrants, what will the American public – let alone Middle Eastern terrorists – do with a literal alien? Seen through the lens of disclosure, the Patriot Act makes more sense. Not just to stop terrorism in 2011, but to keep an eye on the total global freakout that could be coming. I’m not longing for a police state or anything, but supposing 1% of what we know about the UFO is true — that amounts to a massive amount of world-changing information. Everything that’s happened — 9-11, the war in Iraq, and so on — takes on a new meaning. So I wonder if those romantics about disclosure would trade some of their liberty for the big reveal if it meant finally getting some answers to the UFO enigma.

What’s always troubled me is that people like Bush Sr. or Dick Cheney are the ones who are more likely to know the story behind UFO secrecy. There’s a strange alignment between UFO secrecy and right wing ideology. Do you think it’s possible to have disclosure without the world turning into a police state — given the impact it would have on religious ideology and technology?

RT: Well it depends what we’re told. Not everyone is convinced we’re dealing with aliens from outer space. But if we are I suppose if they were “totally benign” and no threat it is possible to have Disclosure without the world turning into a police state. But if they‘re not, no I don’t think it looks good. After 9/11 many people were willing to give up their civil liberties to fight a couple Islamic terrorists, imagine what they would be willing to do to combat a threat from outer space. But this is all just speculation.

HB: I also wonder about Jones’ ideas on Christianity. In his Bohemian Grove video, he points out that the men are sinister because they worship “the occult.” He’s even targeted Peter Joseph of “Zeitgeist” for being part of the New Age conspiracy, as if Christianity is the one true faith. If you watch “Zeitgeist” or “The God Who Wasn’t There” it’s pretty clear that the story of Christianity is fabricated. So Alex Jones believes in many conspiracies except one of the biggest: the fabrication of the Jesus story. Personally, I’d rather there be a universal religion than saying this one book (which advocates stoning heretics, among other things) is the be all end all of religious principles. What’s your view of spirituality as it pertains to the NWO, or even to UFOs?

RT: There’s no question that early Christianity was hijacked by the Roman Empire. Christmas is as about as Christian as Halloween, December 25 was an important day to pagans. But I still celebrate it and I believe everyone has the right to believe, think, say, or do as they please as long as they don’t knowingly lie or physically try to hurt anybody else.

HB: Finally, I wonder about things like population control. Studying population growth is not the same thing as advocating genocide, nor is advocating birth control. Planned Parenthood isn’t evil — as he says in “Endgame” (which you reference). The Bilderberg conference might be totally sinister, but on the surface a bunch of powerful people all getting together to discuss the state of the world makes sense — why wouldn’t they do that? I’m not even going to get into Global Warming science, as that’s so loaded. I guess I never see in him any possible solutions — just a lot of paranoia about people who are looking for solutions. Certainly, some of these people are evil, but not all. Plainly our world is disordered, so people looking for a (lowercase) new world order might not all be dangerous.

I’m beginning to sound like a fat-cat apologist. It absolutely pisses me off that Obama and Bush are so identical and the wealthy elite are profiting off the backs of everyone else and raping the planet. They really seem to be sowing the seeds of disorder, rather than sustainability. If you’re not paranoid, you’re not paying attention. Jones’ answer is to support Ron and Rand Paul — which I don’t see as feasible. Giving corporations even more power via deregulation isn’t the solution — i.e. Big Business isn’t any better than Big Government. So I’m wondering what your ideal system would be, politically or economically.

RT: Well my main problem with the Bilderberg Group is that most people have never even heard about them. I don’t think that many powerful people should be allowed to meet in secret once a year and nothing be said about it in the media. Thankfully because of the hard work of dedicated researchers and activists around the world that is starting to change.

I get what you’re saying about birth control etc, but there’s no question that population reduction seems to be a big part of the globalist agenda. You just have to look at the comments of people like Prince Philip or Ted Turner and others.

“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 Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, in the foreword to If I Were an Animal

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

“And I actually think the world will be much better when there’s only 10 or 20 percent of us left.” — Dr. Eric Pianka, University of Texas biologist

What kind of system would I like?

First I think its important to stress I don’t believe in Utopia. There’s no such thing, you’ll never have a perfect world and every attempt at creating one has always led to mass slaughter and tyranny. I think we need to recognize that first.

I think the founders of the United States had some good ideas. Things like a written constitution that protected the freedom of speech and other rights of the people, and an educated, informed public who could understand what that constitution said. Now, of course, even the early United States had its problems, slavery being a big one. But I think that’s a good place to start. But if readers want to disagree with me … great … it’s called freedom. Hopefully we can all agree on that.

See also: RichardThomas.Eu

The American Book of the Dead.com

Document sharing site Public Intelligence has posted the 2008 and 2009 tax returns of the American Friends of Bilderberg, the U.S. fundraising arm of The Bilderberg Group.

According to the returns, the group received $775,500 in contributions from U.S. sources during 2008 and 2009 to help cover the expenses of the organization’s once-per-year meeting for 150 invitees. Donors included Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, the Washington Post Company, PayPal founder Peter Thiel and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Hotel de Bilderberg (2007), name-giving location of the first conference in 1954

The shadowy group known as Bilderberg will be gathering this year for its annual meeting at the resort city of St. Moritz, in southeastern Switzerland, June 9-12, but they will have a lot of company. St. Moritz is a short distance from Davos, the site of the regular high-priced meeting of thousands of bankers, political leaders and other notables called the World Economic Forum. But unlike at Davos, where the press is always welcome, Bilderberg still tries to maintain absolute secrecy.

Bilderberg has met in Switzerland four times over the years but never in the same city. Normally, when their sibling in crime, the Trilateral Commission (TC), meets in North America, Bilderberg does, too. This year, the TC will meet in Washington on April 8 to 10, but the Bilderbergers are avoiding the United States, in what may be an effort to fool the press…

[continues at at American Free Press] ]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2011/03/2011-bilderberg-group-meeting-set/feed/ 11 http://www.disinfo.com/2011/02/henry-kissinger-says-obama-must-create-new-world-order/ http://www.disinfo.com/2011/02/henry-kissinger-says-obama-must-create-new-world-order/#comments Mon, 21 Feb 2011 13:54:14 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=46922 Cynthia McKinney tipped us off to this statement by Henry Kissinger, asking "Why is he still calling the shots on U.S. foreign policy?": "The President-elect is coming into office at a moment when there are upheavals in many parts of the world simultaneously. . . . He can give a new impetus to American foreign policy, partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. I think his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when really a New World Order can be created. It's a great opportunity..." ]]> Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney tipped us off to this statement by Henry Kissinger, asking “Why is he still calling the shots on U.S. foreign policy?”:

“The President-elect is coming into office at a moment when there are upheavals in many parts of the world simultaneously. . . . He can give a new impetus to American foreign policy, partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. I think his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when really a New World Order can be created. It’s a great opportunity…”

A most modern and insane revolt

The following description, I believe, sums up what Egypt faces today as well as, if not better, than most:

“It is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us — but more specifically on them, these … workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.

One can understand the difficulties facing the politicians. They outline solutions, which are easier to find than people say … All of them are based on the elimination of the [president]. What is it that the people want? Do they really want nothing more? Everybody is quite aware that they want something completely different. This is why the politicians hesitate to offer them simply that, which is why the situation is at an impasse. Indeed, what place can be given, within the calculations of politics, to such a movement, to a movement through which blows the breath of a religion that speaks less of the hereafter than of the transfiguration of this world?”

The thing is, it was offered not by some astute commentator of the current moment, but rather by the legendary French philosopher Michel Foucault, after his return from Iran, where he witnessed firsthand the intensity of the revolution which, in late 1978, before Khomeini’s return, really did seem to herald the dawn of a new era.

Foucault was roundly criticised by many people after Khomeini hijacked the revolution for not seeing the writing on the wall. But the reality was that, in those heady days where the shackles of oppression were literally being shattered, the writing was not on the wall. Foucault understood that it was precisely a form of “insanity” that was necessary to risk everything for freedom, not just against one’s government, but against the global system that has nuzzled him in its bosom for so long.

What was clear, however, was that the powers that most supported the Shah, including the US, dawdled on throwing their support behind the masses who were toppling him. While this is by no means the principal reason for Khomeini’s successful hijacking of the revolution, it certainly played an important role in the rise of a militantly anti-American government social force, with disastrous results.

Read more here.

Episode 10 — Apocalypse in Georgia:

Best-selling author Brad Meltzer and the team search for the true meaning of the mysterious Georgia Guidestones. Often called America’s Stonehenge, this granite monument is located on a remote hilltop outside Atlanta. Brad and the team examine the multilingual messages carved into the stones for any clues to the monument’s anonymous creator, who’s known only by the pseudonym — R.C. Christian. The Decoded team checks out rumors that the Guidestones are really the work of a secretive religious sect called the Rosicrucians, who’ve been accused of practicing alchemy and mind control.

Pastor Lindsey Williams provides details on the ongoing plan by the global elite to destroy America, consolidate financial power, usher in world government, and reduce humanity to a slave class.

Lindsey Williams told Alex Jones his source — described only as a CEO in the Big Three Oil industry who traveled in Bilderberger circles – is suffering from terminal cancer and “spilled his guts” to him on particular details of the globalist agenda now unfolding.

At the New World Order Report, Jonathan Elinoff provides a much more extensive presentation of how I introduce 9/11 in my lectures and essays. (He barely mentions 9/11 as it turns out — but he doesn’t really need to because of all the other Truth he presents that paves the way!)

My own approach to 9/11 has been not only about the reality of the dark side of human nature, but all about context — amply demonstrating that 9/11 is just one more monstrous manipulation of world events — and that OF COURSE “our leaders” would do it, because just look at how many times they’ve done it before!

But of course that means newbies coping with the SHOCK that almost all of the U.S. and World History we’ve been taught is JUST ONE BIG FAIRY-TALE. I’m convinced, though, that all that truth is about to “bust out all over.” And this compendium of facts from J. Elinoff just may be one of the Internet catalysts to help it happen.

Only problem is — no matter how much he has condensed the reports and even video clips of news broadcasts that prove it all — this thing is almost as long as a book! And it’s infested with some typos and code glitches that make it look a little bit of a mess. I would LOVE to edit it down and clean it up (especially to send to every newspaper editor I know), but that’s WAY too much time and effort.

So here it is, AS it is. Be aware: even with only a quick skim through it is still OF GREAT VALUE!

After reading the article released by Cracked.com, I decided to update and revise their work. The article gave me a chuckle because it lacked many famous and much larger conspiracy theories that became known. Their article had only listed seven. I can name 33 and I am about to release a revised list soon with 75. The article I read at Cracked can be viewed here, but don’t waste your time, all of that is in this article and more.

Most people can’t resist getting the details on the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-fetched they may seem.  At the same time, many people quickly denounce any conspiracy theory as untrue … and sometimes as unpatriotic or just plain ridiculous. Let’s not forget all of the thousands of conspiracies out of Wall Street like Bernie Madoff and many others to commit fraud and extortion, among many crimes of conspiracy. USA Today reports that over 75% of personal ads in the paper and on Craigslist are married couples posing as single for a one night affair. When someone knocks on your door to sell you a set of knives or phone cards, anything for that matter, do they have a profit motive?  What is conspiracy other than just a scary way of saying “alternative agenda”?  When 2 friends go to a bar and begin to plan their wingman approach on 2 girls they see at the bar, how often are they planning on lying to those girls?“  I own a small business and am in town for a short while. Oh yeah, you look beautiful.”

Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy.  However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning. To conspire means “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end. ”The term “conspiracy theory” is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom, from “the people”.

To many, conspiracy theories are just human nature. Not all people in this world are honest, hard working and forthcoming about their intentions.Certainly we can all agree on this.So how did the term “conspiracy theory” get grouped in with fiction, fantasy and folklore?  Maybe that’s a conspiracy, just kidding.  Or am I? …

[continues at New World Order Report]

Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five

“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.“— Bertrand Russell, 20th Century Philosopher & Nobel Prize Winner

The most widespread form of slavery today is of the mind. Individuals are controlled and managed by the Establishment on a level that can be hard to recognize. Disinformation is continuously spread by the mass media. Children are schooled by the State yet never receive education. The traditional family is in danger of extinction. Our food and water is full of toxins. We have adapted to incremental changes that amount to significant threats to our personal freedoms, independent thoughts, and quality of life. Largely, the public has become sick and dumb. Our country is in a state of crisis.

The Establishment has colluded to sabotage education in America, producing a population that is unable to think critically and logically. Children are indoctrinated through schooling, trained not to question authority, and rewarded for competing with their peers and doing exactly as they are told. With the prevalence of after and before school programs, many children are now spending up to 12 hours a day at school. Children are taught disrespect for family, and the mind and character of the child is overwhelmingly influenced by the State. The Establishment is controlling tomorrow by schooling the youth of today.

Sexual education classes are often taught before children have even reached puberty. We live in a culture that is ever increasingly encouraging children to have pre-pubertal sex. Children over stimulated sexually before puberty are likely to become hyper-sexualized adults unable to deeply bond with another person. The ‘entertainment’ industry is constantly sending the message of promiscuity through movies and television that capture an audience of young viewers. According to Nielsen television statistics, ‘Desperate Housewives’ was the most popular television show with girls aged 9–12 in 2005. Even the United Nations pushes the agenda, advocating masturbation for children as young as 5 years old in a 2009 report titled “International Guidelines for Sexuality Education.”

Culture is being used as a weapon against the traditional family. The media continuously portrays fathers as pathetic fools celebrated for their stupidity rather than for moral strength and integrity. Women have been portrayed as independent career focused self-obsessed individuals who are sexually aggressive and promiscuous. An atmosphere has been created where breast-feeding is seen as obscene but women are expected and encouraged to expose their breasts in a sexual nature. Clearly excluded from this image are family values and the raising of children. Instead of surrounding the family dinner table for meals and discussions, we surround the television each evening, absorbing the views and ideas it promotes.

Continue Reading at Pupaganda.com

Activist are welcome to print out this PDF: Download File

The New World Order is a catch-all phrase that is used by fear mongering propagandists to captivate people with dread. Too many people for too long have been put under a spell with feelings of hopelessness and despair by this fairy tale concept that there is a secret society or race of reptiles out there to get them and their children, and that they are succeeding at doing it. Please show this video to anyone you can to help break the spell of fear placed over those who wish to make this world a better place.

So whether it is the result of being wishy-washy or seeing the limitations of various political ideologies, I can say I have been on both sides of the fence.  The mainstream Republican and Democratic federal legislators have become totally corrupted by corporate lobbyists who finance them and get them reelected.  I have found that various libertarian, socialist, and anarchist websites (outside of the mainstream) provide accurate assessments of today’s political problems, though their proposed solutions are very different from one another.

Capitalists want to remove corruption in government in order to have a true, free market society.  Socialists want to remove corporate corruption to have a society based on democratic socialism.  Anarchists say all forms of government are corrupt and should be eliminated.   Some anarchists favor a free market society without a government; others might favor decentralized, egalitarian communes.

As I see it, the only solution is to create a society in which Libertarians, Socialists, Anarchists, Republicans, and Democrats can all live as they choose in their local communities.  If there are 3,140 counties, and even more cities, in the United States–why not allow each one to become capitalistic, socialistic, or some mixture of the two, through the majority rule of each locality?  This proposed live-and-let-live society can only exist after establishing a new constitution.

Our founding fathers feared direct or pure democracy.  The word “democracy” is not even found in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.  They said our government is a Constitutional Republic that guarantees our inherent individual rights (rights that a mob democracy cannot take away).   Some citizens advocate a strict interpretation of the original Constitution in order to reverse any further onslaughts of collectivism (what they call “socialism”).  Others, more liberal and who like the word “democracy,” believe our Constitution is a “living document” that should change with the times.

It is very difficult to get a single amendment to the Constitution passed, and all previous attempts to have a constitutional convention have failed.  But I believe that vast numbers of people, who are totally alienated by government and civics, might endorse my Third Constitution of the United States after they read and understand it. [2]   The only solution is to create a decentralized society that maximizes both diversity and cooperation.   Neighbors could live with neighbors just like themselves, and each precinct could be like a tribe.  It is for this reason I have written the Third Constitution of the United States (the first constitution was the Articles of Confederation, the second is the one we have now).

I recommend that we maximize local community self-determination, and have a system in which decision-making power moves (from the bottom-up, not from the top-down) from the precinct to the township, from the township to the county, and from the county to the state level, while having the smallest possible federal government.  Each local community could be empowered to decide for itself whether it wants laissez-faire capitalism, socialism, anarchism, communitarianism, or some combination of these.

Independent of government, intentional communities (they are not all hippie communes) can show the world, by example, how people with shared values and a common vision, can live simply in ecologically, self-sufficient, sustainable ways, using consensus decision-making, permaculture landscaping, organic fertilizers, composting, vegetarianism, geodesic domes, and alternative energies (that make it possible to get off the electrical grid).  [3]

Neighborhood block clubs and intentional communities can restore the sense of togetherness that has been lost in our society.   I think there is a deep need in all of us to be tribal, which we could be, in today’s pluralistic, Internet society, without being ethnocentric.

Moreover, the needs of common people, the poor, and minority groups are not being met in our society.  We need more participatory, direct, pure, face-to-face, fully inclusive, and ideally, consensus democracy.  Then when we choose representatives to represent us, we can easily recall or remove them when they stop representing us.

Workplace democracy allows both workers and management to participate in the important decision-making.  Moreover, cities and counties should be able to revoke corporate charters.  Workplace democracy could be guaranteed in private companies when they reach a certain size.

Legislative procedures such as the initiative, referendum, and the recall provide direct democracy to the people.  The Fully Informed Jury Act (or jury nullification) also empowers citizens.  It means that the jury has the right to judge the law as well as the facts in a case.

I do not care for corruption and top-down hierarchy in government (especially the hierarchy I found in the public schools).   But I also do not want to work in a tyrannical and hierarchical private corporation, which may be my only choice in a free market (based on competition, scarcity, and profit) as the rich get richer, and the poor, poorer.

We can easily feed and house all the people on the planet in sustainable ways, and it is unconscionable that we don’t.  The Venus Project attempts to create a world without government, laws, lawyers, politicians, advertisers, insurance agents, or the need for prisons.   It claims it would not have any elitist control, social stratification, or even a monetary system.  The Venus Project seems naive and utopian, but if we have a global catastrophe, people might consider it more seriously.  If people are educated and trained properly, we can create a society that is not based primarily on profit, competition, and scarcity.   The American addiction to war, for example, has not resulted from a fixed human nature.

Some anarchists and libertarians even advocate a stateless, free market society, as advocated by some writers at the Lew Rockwell website.  [5] But even if we eliminate a corrupt government altogether, wouldn’t it still be possible for 1% of the population to own 40% of the world’s resources, as it does now?   Such economic disparity creates animosity between the haves and the have-nots of the world, the primary cause of all the world’s problems.

Even if all the third parties united to elect either Ron Paul or Ralph Nader as president in 2012, it would not be a long term solution.  A new constitution for the United States, as I have delineated, is viable, considering the many conflicting values and ideals in our modern society.  The Venus Project would require the cooperation of every nation, and therefore, it is a far-fetched idea right now.

There must be more dialogue among the various third parties and fringe groups. Libertarian Socialists could share the lessons that have been learned from the Spanish Revolution of 1936.  Ron Paul libertarians could tell about the dangers of fractional reserve banking. [6]   And let us not forget that during the 2008 presidential race, third party candidates–Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Chuck Baldwin–agreed to Four Points of Unity. [7]   Both libertarians and socialists oppose an interventionist foreign policy.  If all the third parties agreed on a new constitution, the two party monopoly of Republicans and Democrats could be abolished forever.

Thomas Jefferson said every new generation should create its own constitution. [8]   I agree.  Vastly different third parties could endorse my constitution merely as a way to subvert the current system.  And since my constitution totally levels the playing field, time will prove which type of community government (or lack of government) proves to be most successful in the future, once the elements of corruption are drastically reduced.

Our mainstream television media is owned by about six big corporations.  Think of the mainstream media as an arm of the government and the industrial-military complex, and maybe the pharmaceutical industry as well.  It is all about “perception management.”   When you see animated political debates on Fox News, CNN, or others, do not expect to hear any radical opinions from Noam Chomsky or from Michael Parenti, a thought-provoking socialist.  In the eyes of our corporate media masters, these people have dangerous ideas not fit for public consumption.

Professor and Theologian David Ray Griffin has done incredible research into 9/11.  Don’t expect the major media to allow him to talk about Building 7, which was not even hit by an airplane, and yet it collapsed into its footprints at the speed of gravity!  I dare you to read Internet articles or watch Youtube video lectures by David Ray Griffin, the foremost authority on 9/11. [9]

Did you know when the Republican and Democratic National Parties had their televised presidential debates in 2008 that they agreed to not include independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader once again?  That is “democracy” at work in our “free” country.  If corporate-owned politicians become successful in restricting Internet websites (the ones they consider dangerous), we are in big trouble.

The wealthiest people (many of them are international bankers) and the most powerful organizations (such as military defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies) finance both of the major two parties and incumbent federal legislators.  The bailouts, which started with Bush, were for the very companies who profited from us and hurt us the most.  Under Obama, Homeland Security and foreign policy are still pretty much the same.  I say, keep the so-called “change.”  Why is no one in government concerned or doing anything about our enormous national debt?

Murray Rothbard has shown how the national debt could be repudiated by giving away government assets. [10]   If the Federal Reserve keeps printing money out of thin air, we eventually will be paying just for the interest on the debt, not for government programs.

We truly need real change soon, but it is a change the Democrats and Republicans, the two factions of essentially just one party, are not capable of providing.  For now on if I vote, it will be for a third party candidate.  Voting for the lesser of two evils is not a wise approach.  When we vote for a third party, we publicly register our dissent, which lawmakers and other citizens need to see.  Of course, all of this is true as long as the electronic ballots are not tampered.

Many people believe our country was actually hijacked starting with the Kennedy assassination.  The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has long been involved in the drug trade, which is how it gets money to do illegal operations that it does not want the American people or lawmakers to know about (it is like a government within a government).  Essentially it is all about controlling the Middle East and the whole world for that matter to increase the profits of transnational (or mega-) corporations, many of which are more powerful than entire countries.

It is unethical that our CIA covertly interferes in the affairs of democratically elected, sovereign countries by financing corrupt opponents, providing disinformation and smear campaigns, arming paramilitary counter-forces, and sometimes overtly sending in American troops, when the above measures do not work.   We are told that various terrorists hate us because of our democratic freedoms.  The truth is they hate us because of our policies, our actions toward them, actions about which the American people, living inside a matrix, are utterly clueless.

The hemp plant, which marijuana comes from, just happens to be the most versatile plant on the Earth, the very best source for rope and paper and over 50,000 other household uses such as nylons and plastics.  Marijuana is the best treatment for glaucoma.  When the hemp plant is grown for food, its seeds have the highest number of amino-acid proteins, higher than any other plant.  Birds will always choose hemp seeds over any other type of seed.  Hemp could also be an excellent source of biomass energy.  Unlike the growth of corn and cotton, hemp does not need toxic chemicals or a lot of fertilizers to make it grow.  It would truly be a Green alternative.

The real reason it was made illegal in 1937 (through yellow journalism) was that it cut into the profits of the Dupont and Hurst Corporations.  No one has ever died exclusively from long-term marijuana smoking.  Can we say that about the use of alcohol, tobacco, aspirin, and many other legal drugs? The original Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were printed on hemp paper!   And several of our founding fathers grew it.  Much more could be said.  [11]

Don’t expect high school students in our public schools to read The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.  Public schools are government schools.  How honest and critical can teachers (and history and government textbook publishers) be when their livelihoods depend on only sharing innocuous, or noncontroversial, opinions?  I believe that studying the controversial aspects of subjects (like politics, religion, and human sexuality) is what makes them interesting and deeply understandable–anything less than that is indoctrination.

Now that I am retired from the public schools, I can be more honest.  All the teachers at my elementary school were seemingly in support of allowing cute and colorful wristbands to be sold to students during lunch in order to “support the troops.”  I am not proud of the fact that I did not utter a single word of protest.  I am not against giving gifts to soldiers, but I regret that I did not use the event as a teaching opportunity.

I recommend that we eliminate federal, state, and even township control of our public schools. [12]  Parents could use the money they spend on property taxes (which often goes toward public schools) to hire their own tutors. Let’s find ways to instill a love for learning in parents and teach them parenting skills.  Then more of them can become effective homeschoolers.

I have found that the best way to learn about a topic is to find the very best arguments for and against it.  I was an evangelical Christian, who unconditionally supported Zionism, for most of my life, believing that accepting Jesus was the only way.  But when I looked at agnostic and atheistic websites—some are run by former pastors, Bible scholars, and conservative theologians—it caused me to doubt my faith.  Then when I reread the amazing book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, which I had explored during my college days, I became interested again in Hinduism, Buddhism, and meditation.

Supposedly, when the spiritual aspirant attains a super-conscious state of awareness (through meditation and loving-kindness or unselfish love) he or she gains insight into previous lifetimes (which, if true, would prove that reincarnation really happens). In Eastern thought, you do not find salvation through accepting certain beliefs by faith.  You only have to believe what you have actually experienced.  But maybe those yogis and zen masters, who claim they have insight into previous lifetimes, have been deceived.   Nevertheless, meditation and hatha yoga postures do have proven health benefits.

I frequently told my son when he was growing up (he is now 24), that even more important than being smart and educated is to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself.  But if all religions are based on fictitious beliefs, sanctioned by governments merely to control the masses, then secular humanism is the most ethical approach.

If the purpose of government schools is to instill the dominant values of society, then students will not be taught to seriously ponder the ideas of some anarchists and communists who argue that all private land ownership is wrong.  Henry George believed there should be a single tax, a tax on the land a person owns.  Ralph Borsodi taught people how to be self-sufficient on a modern homestead.  Families sharing a community land trust could make self-sufficient homesteading part of the school curriculum for their children.

I love the idea of the Core Knowledge Schools (conservatives and fundamentalists like them too), based on the book Cultural Literacy by E.D. Hurst.  Perhaps you have seen their series of books for grades 1-8—for example, What Your Third Grader Needs to Know.  These books teach vitally important information about our culture and others.  They also publish two dictionaries of cultural literacy, one dictionary is for grade school students, the other is for high school.  Requiring students to remember the core knowledge facts for each grade level and the facts in both dictionaries could then be the starting point for more critical thinking and further research.  Some facts and dates are worth memorizing, contrary to popular thinking.

Recently the world was outraged at Israel’s  attack on the flotilla of ships, loaded with supplies, heading for Gaza.  I heard similar opinions when I went to favorite websites such as www.Dprogram.net , www.GlobalResearch.ca , www.infowars.com or www.BrasscheckTV.com.  But when I forced myself to go to www.JewishWorldReview.com, which also is in my computer’s Favorites List of websites, I got an entirely different perspective.  The current, ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf is a tragedy that has made many of us feel  helpless, hopeless, and angry .

I have vacillated on the issue of global warming.  I need to study more.  But exploring alternatives to fossil fuels is still important.  I have always thought that organic foods were best.  But now I am finding books and experts on TV who argue that there is no proof that they are better for you.  We should not let the complexity of issues discourage our relentless search for truth.

Many believe there is a New World Order that is emerging that is being influenced by the world’s wealthiest people, especially international bankers.   They are upper-echelon members of elitist groups like the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, who control the Federal Reserve and probably the CIA.  September 11, 2001 has been the justification to expand the stupid wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, warrantless spying on Americans, the Real ID, and imprisonment without due process.  Our rights are being taken away under the guise that we need more Homeland Security, more surveillance and monitoring, more presidential Executive Orders, and the proposed Enemy Combatant law.

The neo-conservative, shadow government elites who control our lawmakers, the President, and the corporate-owned, mainstream media, would love for all of us to have a microchip implanted under our skin.  Then if we exercise our Constitutional rights and share opinions that do not harmonize with their sinister designs, they can just label us “political dissidents” or “enemy combatants.”  Then all they have to do is turn off our chip, so that we cannot buy or sell.  We, the outspoken Americans, will be put in prisons like Guantanamo without a public trial when they classify us as the terrorists. This is how things gradually evolved in Hitler’s Germany.  We must always remember that to have “freedom of speech” means we have freedom to engage in unpopular speech.  We can stop the emerging fascist or totalitarian New World Order, but that does not mean we should stop thinking globally, and acting locally.  We have an ethical duty to think about how our private actions affect the whole.

No doubt there are terrorists in the world but the threat has been greatly exaggerated by the mainstream media in league with government officials.   Al-Qaida and Bin Laden were first created and empowered by the CIA back when our government was supporting the Afghanistan “freedom fighters” against the former Soviet Union.  I believe a new, independent investigation into 9/11 (not one done by government insiders) will shed much light on the powers that be.  Not even counting the money our CIA gets illegally, our government spends more on the military than all the governments of the world combined, using money printed out of thin air, which causes inflation ( a hidden tax on everyday people), not to mention annual deficits and a national debt that has skyrocketed out of control.

The real reason our government does not legalize marijuana and other drugs (for adults to consume in the privacy of their own homes)  is  the CIA would not get the enormous profits it gets by keeping such drugs illegal.  Legalizing drugs would make the prices go way down, and that would make drug cartels and the CIA very unhappy.  It was the criminal mobsters who were most upset when the prohibition on alcohol was uplifted.  [13]

Now to keep my argument consistent, you should also study the foreign policy viewpoints of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, which I am forcing myself to do.   But right now I say, let us reduce military spending by about 75 percent.  We have American troops and bases in about 130 countries.  Let us find a way to reunite the anti-war, nonviolent, Peace Movement.  It disappeared when the military draft was cancelled after the Vietnam War ended.  If we did these things we would truly feel safer, resting in our beds at night, than we do now.  Our country could have a new image in the world, and Peace on Earth would not be considered pie-in-the-sky.  Our motto can always be:  “Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.”  Inner peace is the foundation for world peace.

In the Introduction to my Third Constitution of the United States, I list 45 reasons why we need a new constitution.  The average US citizen would agree with most of my recommendations once they were fully understood.  But considering the vast corruption in our current federal government and the differences in beliefs that have emerged since our Constitution was implemented in 1789, the only solution is to create a new and modernized document.

Let us get libertarians on the right and collectivists from the left to agree on a new constitution.  Then it will be much easier to sell it to the mainstream in the middle.  At the polls, citizens can vote for candidates only if they support the new constitution.

If we sit back and do nothing, the emerging new world order will remake society for us.  We, the average, working citizens can remake it in our own way, if we choose.  But we better act now before it is too late.

Roger Copple retired this year (May 2010) from teaching third grade in a public school in Indianapolis.  He turned 60 on June 3.  Roger became a libertarian supporting Ron Paul after previously identifying with the Green movement.  Now he is trying to reconcile libertarian, socialist, and anarchist political theories.  He has a Master’s degree in Special Education, and a Bachelor’s in Elementary Education. He can be reached at rcopple@comcast.net.

Endnotes

[1]            The 6 day conference was held at Hampshire College, Massachusetts, from July 2-7, 1987.

[2]            To view my Third Constitution and other articles, go to my website:  www.NowSaveTheWorld.com .

[3]            For information about all types of intentional communities, go to www.ic.org or www.thefec.org.

[4]            Go to www.theVenusProject.com or www.theZeitgeistMovement.com and watch some of their videos or read some of their articles.

[5]            Go to www.LewRockwell.com (anti-state, anti-war, and pro-market) and read articles by Murray Rothbard and Stefan Molyneux.

[6]            For more information about the Federal Reserve, see “G. Edward Griffin”: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6507136891691870450#docid=-8484911570371055528   or  “The Money Masters”: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-money-masters/

[7]            Lew Rockwell,  The Ron Paul Unity Agreement. www.LewRockwell.com : September 10, 2008: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/022783.html

[8]                 September  28, 2008:  http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×4112936 and http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/07/0212constitution.html

[9]            David Ray Griffin.com:  http://davidraygriffin.com

[10]            Murray N. Rothbard, Repudiating the National Debt: January 16, 2008: http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1423

[11]            To learn more about hemp, you can go to www.norml.org.  Or see Jack Herer, the foremost  authority on hemp and author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes:   http://www.jackherer.com/chapters.html

[12]            For an article I wrote 17 years ago, go to Roger Copple, Neighborhood Control of Public Schools. Synthesis/Regeneration 5 (Winter 1993): http://www.greens.org/s-r/05/05-25.html

[13]            For information about the CIA, do searches on Ray McGovern, a high level retired CIA Officer; historian Chalmers Johnson; Michael C. Ruppert, a former LAPD narcotics investigator; author James Bamford; Terry Reed and John Cummings, authors of the book Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the CIA; Alfred W. McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia.

Trilateral Commission logo

Don’t ask me how Jim Tucker knows this stuff (put it down to the tricks of his trade, perhaps), but here is his report from Dublin, at American Free Press:

Trilateral Commission (TC) members, angry over their failure to establish a world government and the economic crisis they generated, called for war with Iran when they gathered behind closed doors here in Dublin, Ireland May 7-10.

War plans were revealed by Mikhail Slobodovsici, a chief adviser to the Russian leadership, when he strolled off the grounds of the Four Seasons resort, where TC had hunkered down behind armed guards and locked doors. He thought he was talking to a TC colleague when speaking with Alan Keenan, who operates the web site WeAreChange.org.

“We are deciding the future of the world,” Slobodovsici said. “We need a world government,” he said, but, referring to Iran, said “we need to get rid of them.”

Clearly, it was a TC war call. Many of the TC’s billionaires and millionaires are heavily invested in manufacturing, and wars produce huge profits.

Suddenly, Slobodovsici noticed that Keenan’s nametag was different from the TC label and said: “I can’t talk—we operate under Chatham House rules.”

Slobodovsici was ordered by the TC to order more apologies for the slaughter of an estimated 30 to 60 million inhabitants of the old Soviet Union by dictator Josef Stalin. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had abjectly apologized on the anniversary of the Katyn Forest execution of 20,000 Polish soldiers. Putin admitted that the massacre was conducted by the Soviets, not by Germans, which the Communists had claimed for half a century. Nevertheless, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev apologized again the next day (May 9), denouncing Soviet citizens for tolerating the slaughter, saying they were fully aware of the bloodletting.

Never have the illustrious members of the TC been so depressed.

“It gets worse every year, not better,” one said. “Why do we even bother to meet anymore?”

“We can’t simply give up and quit,” another responded. “Bilderberg expects us to have a plan outlined.”

Much of their distress is due to the failure to establish a world government. In the 1990s, both TC and Bilderberg confidently predicted they would obtain a world government by the year 2000. A decade later, their goal is even further away. This they blame on detested “nationalists,” who oppose surrendering sovereignty to international bodies…

[continues at American Free Press]

The Bilderberg group will conduct its annual meeting June 3-6 in Sitges, Spain (a small, exclusive resort town about 20 miles from Barcelona) behind a wall of armed guards who will seal off the resort in a futile attempt to keep the event secret.

Jim Tucker profiled in the Alex Jones film Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement.

Bilderberg’s meeting will follow that of its brother group, the Trilateral Commission, which will gather at the Four Seasons Resort in Dublin, Ireland May 6-10. Leaders of Bilderberg also attend the Trilateralists’ meeting to map their common agenda. About 300 attend Trilateral Commission meetings, which are conducted behind sealed-off, guarded floors of their hotel. About 100 will attend Bilderberg, which seals off the entire resort behind platoons of uniformed police and private security.

Bilderberg hopes to keep the global recession going for at least a year, according to an international financial consultant who deals personally with many of them. This is because, among several reasons, Bilderberg still hopes to create a global “treasury department” under the United Nations. Bilderberg first undertook this mission at its meeting last spring in Greece, but the effort was blocked by nationalists in Europe and the United States. “Nationalists” (a dirty word in Bilderberg) objected to surrendering sovereignty to the UN.

AFP’s source pointed to the words of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a March 29 speech at notoriously left-wing Columbia University, where he said, “We should invent a new global monetary order.”

He was clearly referring to the recently proposed world “treasury department.”

Bilderberg’s ultimate goal remains unchanged: Turn the UN into a world government with “nation-states” becoming merely geographic references…

[continues at at American Free Press]

Here’s Bermas announcing the April 15 release date:

What is the New World Order? Presidents, congressmen and high-level advisors have all spoken of it. Dictators and visionaries have helped its rise. It’s actions are secret, but no one is beyond its power and scope.

Alex Jones, Infowars.com and Jason Bermas announce the highly anticipated release of ‘Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined’, a powerful documentary that has been in the works for well over a year. It is the culmination of research deep into the actions of the New World Order over the past century, whose activists have been working in the shadows to bring world government to life.

The proof is beyond denial. From the shadow government program, their organizations, the UN takeover, the Climategate scandal, the occult connections of the elite, the targeting of American citizens and military veterans and even callboys inside the White House, filmmaker and researcher Jason Bermas exposes it all.

Researchers G. Edward Griffin, Peter Dale Scott and Mark Dice flesh out the little understood actions of the New World Order and expose its ultimate agenda in Jason Bermas’ most powerful work to date.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested Friday the organization might one day be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar.

“That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now,” he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization.

Strauss-Kahn said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF’s special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies.

He said having other alternatives to the dollar “would limit the extent to which the international monetary system as a whole depends on the policies and conditions of a single, albeit dominant, country.”

Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister of France, said that during the recent global financial crisis, the dollar “played its role as a safe haven” asset, and the current international monetary system demonstrated resilience…

[continues at ABC News/AP]

The big picture is the One World Order eventually wants to eliminate 80% of the population yet there’s an internal breakdown occurring in their ranks, with many of their family members becoming dysfunctional, Bell continued. He outlined a number of current mind control and surveillance techniques, like the “radar flashlight” which “checks electromagnetic activity of speech control in the vocal chords,” as a kind of intensive data mining. There’s also “keyhole satellites” that can beam “emotion signature clusters” at people to change their psychological state.

In the the 1980s and 90s, the CIA and its MK Ultra program developed a program to make people think they were having an alien abduction, and inserted implants in them to control them, Bell reported. But now, nanotechnology has enabled them to create implants the size of a grain of salt, and some of them have been placed in flu vaccines, he claimed.

The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.

Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system — apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout — deserves further congressional scrutiny.

The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others. That decision, critics say, amounted to a back-door bailout for the banks, which received 100 cents on the dollar for contracts that would have been worth far less had AIG been allowed to fail.

That move came a few weeks after the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department propped up AIG in the wake of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s own mid-September bankruptcy filing.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Fed at the time of the AIG moves. He maintained during Wednesday’s hearing that the New York bank had to buy the insurance contracts, known as credit default swaps, to keep AIG from failing, which would have threatened the financial system.

The hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also focused on what many in Congress believe was the New York Fed’s subsequent attempt to cover up buyout details and who benefited.

By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve…

A member of a World Health Organization (WHO) panel of experts that is pondering new global taxes on e-mails, alcohol, tobacco, airline travel and consumer bank transactions, has charged that she was given only selective information at group meetings, that deliberations were rushed and that group was “manipulated” by the international pharmaceuticals industry.

All of her charges were strongly denied by the head of WHO’s Expert Working Group on Research and Development Financing (EWG), a 25-member panel of medical experts, academics and health care bureaucrats which is due to present a 98-page report in Geneva on Monday, after 14 months of deliberations on “new and innovative sources of funding” to reshape the global medical industry.

A copy of the executive summary of the report was obtained by Fox News on January 15 — the same day, as it happens, that the EWG’s dissident member first aired her charges in a letter to members of WHO’s 34-member supervisory Executive Board.

The executive summary first revealed the possibility of a multibillion-dollar “indirect consumer tax” as one means of financing an epic shift of drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities to the developing world that is the central aim of WHO’s fund-raising strategy.

Fox News has obtained a copy of the full EWG report, Research and Development: Coordination and Financing, in advance of its publication Monday, which lays out in greater detail the working group’s proposals for fund-raising. These include not only indirect consumer taxes but also greater donations by wealthy governments as a percentage of gross domestic product, voluntary individual payments tied to such things as individual mobile phone use, health care lotteries, new commitments from charitable and philanthropic organizations, and the possible diversion of current philanthropic giving from developed-world causes into developing world health care…

[continues at FOX News]

Population and climate change are intertwined but the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC).

“Dealing with climate change is not simply an issue of CO2 emission reduction but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture,” said Zhao, who is a member of the Chinese government delegation.

Many studies link population growth with emissions and the effect of climate change.

“Calculations of the contribution of population growth to emissions growth globally produce a consistent finding that most of past population growth has been responsible for between 40 per cent and 60 percent of emissions growth,” so stated by the 2009 State of World Population, released earlier by the UN Population Fund.

Although China’s family planning policy has received criticism over the past three decades, Zhao said that China’s population program has made a great historic contribution to the well-being of society.

As a result of the family planning policy, China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year, Zhao said…