Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria: Pope Francis Warns Against War Based Economy

On Monday June 16, 2014 Pope Francis warned of the risk of “Economic Collapse” due to a world economy reliant on endless war.  According to news.goldseek.com:

Pope Francis Warns Risk Of “Economic Collapse”

Pope Francis warned over the weekend about the possible collapse of the world economy, saying that “our world economic system can’t take it anymore.”

The Pope based his warning on the belief that the world economy has fallen into the sin of idolatry, not of a golden calf, but for dollars, euros and pounds. He explained in an interview to La Vanguardia magazine, that the center of the economy needs to be about man, woman and the family.

Pope Francis warned that the economy was now dependent on war, that great powers have been using war as a means of sustaining the current system.

“We discard a whole generation to maintain an economic system that no longer endures, a system that to survive has to make war, as the big empires have always done,” he said.

“But as a Third World War can’t be done, they make zonal wars. What does this mean? 

That they produce and sell weapons, and with this the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies, the great world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money, obviously they are sorted.”

                                                                                                                                                                                 

Pope Francis’ observation that the “new” world economy is dependent upon war is spot on.  Since the repeal of Glass Steagall and the passing of Gramm Leach Bliley we have had continuous war to maintain the Federal Reserve System.  With the repeal of Glass Steagall and the resulting Gramm Leach Bliley Act came the end of a government for, by and of the people.  Never again would the people of the United States elect their leaders, the leaders now would select their voters.

The 2000 election was rigged by the United States Senate, the most corrupt body in the world.  Democrats Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Joe Lieberman, et al conspired with like-minded Republicans sabotaged the 2000 election spinning our country into a constitutional crises.  That crisis ultimately resulted in the loser of the 2000 election, George W. Bush being installed as President against the will of the American people.  

Three days later on December 15^th Schumer, Biden, Gramm and the most corrupt members of the U.S. Senate passed the Gramm, Leach Bliley (GLB) act that deregulated collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s) and derivatives.  According to LaRouche PAC:

The "explosive" part of GLB was that it legalized new forms of monopoly. GLB also contained a provision which permitted commercial banks to go into any activity that is "complementary to a financial activity and does not pose a substantial risk to the safety or soundness of depository institutions or the financial system generally," Taibbi says, and quotes University of North Carolina Law Prof. Saule Omarova, who says that from the standpoint of the banks, "pretty much everything is considered complementary to a financial activity..."

Banks that own chains of business interests have been caught rigging prices in those industries; e.g., JPMorgan Chase and Barclays have been fined $400 million for allegedly manipulating the delivery of electricity in California and elsewhere.

Another time bomb GLB introduced was a "grandfather clause" which said that any company that became a bank holding company after the passage of GLB in 1999 could engage in, or control shares of a company engaged in, commodities trading. No one is clear on what this "grandfather" clause means; e.g., in 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — the most powerful branch of the Fed, and primary regulator of these matters, wrote, "The legal scope of the exemption is widely seen as ambiguous."

Taibbi notes that Marc Rich, whose pardon Bill Clinton was slammed for as his Presidency was under siege, was a commodities trader engaged in such deals made possible by the repeal of Glass-Steagall. And who recommended his pardon? "Eric Holder recommended Rich be pardoned," says Taibbi…

    

Bank of America owns 17% of all home mortgages in the U.S., and 12% of all U.S. bank deposits, $50 trillion in derivatives; if it goes under, American taxpayers are "on the hook for $55 trillion in potential losses," according to Matt Taibbi.

Goldman Sachs assets went from $46 billion in 2007 to a post-bailout $113 billion today.

JPMorgan Chase received $25 billion from the government's TARP program in 2008, now has $2.4 trillion in assets, and boasts that its value is 12% of the value of the England's economy.

Wells Fargo had $669 billion in assets before 2008, and today has $1.4 trillion.

Citigroup received a $45 billion bailout in 2008; today its assets are $1.3 trillion. It has $58 trillion in derivatives exposure. While 1,400 banks have disappeared since 2008, Citibank and other TBTF banks have grown larger.

Morgan Stanley was created because of Glass-Steagall, as the Morgan investment bank. In 2013, its assets totaled $832 billion. Morgan Stanley's exposure to derivatives is $1.7 trillion.

Every one of those entities owns members of congress with their family members on the payroll and while there are at least three bills in congress to reinstate GlassSteagall, it is unlikely that would happen with the current makeup of the congress.  

One of the biggest, most underreported effects of the repeal of Glass Steagall and the GLB law was the uber-corrupt Federal Reserve Bank, stealing the gold reserves of countries around the world necessitating a war based economy.  For instance, the coup that took place in Ukraine in March 2014 installed a central banker as interim President and allowed the Federal Reserve Bank of NY to remove 33 tons of gold reserves to beflown into the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s coffers. 

The theft of Ukraine’s gold is paying for the war being waged against the people of Ukraine by the Federal Reserve’s private army, Blackwater.  The sham election that has installed Poroshenko as “elected” president has enabled war crimes against the people of Ukraine by Kiev’s corrupt government and attempts to have the United Nations investigate war crimes of Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko has been vetoed by the U.S.  Russia’s embassy in Ukraine has been attacked by the corrupt Kiev government and reporters in Ukraine covering the massive human rights violations have been killed.  According to Workers World:

U.S., EU cover up Ukraine junta’s war crimes

The downing of a Ukrainian military airplane in the Lugansk People’s Republic sent shockwaves around the world June 14. The plane carried troops destined to fight in the Kiev junta’s war against the people in the country’s rebellious Donbass region. All 49 people aboard were killed, including the 9-person crew.

Within hours, far-right supporters of the government attacked the Russian Embassy in Kiev, overturning vehicles, spray painting swastikas and hurling gas bombs, while high-ranking government officials cheered them on.

The plane was a legitimate military target and its destruction an important accomplishment for the volunteer people’s militia of Lugansk, which along with neighboring Donetsk declared independence on May 11 and has mounted a heroic anti-fascist resistance to Kiev’s U.S.-backed war.

Valery Boltov, leader of the people’s government in Lugansk, confirmed June 15 that the militia had downed the plane, LifeNews reported.

The continued survival of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics — and their ability to hold their own against repeaItted, well-financed military offensives by Kiev — is testament to the determination of people of all nationalities in the heavily working-class Donbass region to resist the illegal junta of oligarchs, neoliberal politicians and fascists.

One has to wonder how long the people of the world will allow their leaders to remain hostages to the Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank, the Vatican Bank and the Central Bank of London.  But wait.  What’s this?

Significantly, a movement in solidarity with Ukraine’s anti-fascist resistance is beginning to take root across Europe. Committees in Solidarity with Ukrainian Anti-Fascists have been established in Britain and Greece. People in Brussels; Dublin; the Basque Country in the Spanish state; Belgrade, Serbia; and Berlin and other German cities have demonstrated against Kiev’s war. Left Part members of the German Parliament have also spoken out against Kiev.

In Moscow a thousands-strong demonstration was held June 11. Protesters there called on the government of President Vladimir Putin to provide military assistance to the embattled Donbass resistance.

So what has Washington’s response been to the people of the world?

Washington’s deadly silence

The U.S. government condemned Lugansk’s defensive actions and threatened new sanctions against Russia, perpetuating the myth that the Donbass resistance is nothing but “Russian agents.” The European Union, meanwhile, expressed “shock” at the warplane’s downing — in the midst of a war declared by Kiev against its own people.

But there wasn’t a peep from Washington or its European allies about Kiev’s ongoing war crimes in Donbass. These include targeting hospitals, schools, orphanages and housing projects. Hundreds have been killed in airstrikes, shelling and sniper attacks since the pre-ordained selection of new Ukrainian President Peter Poroshenko on May 25. According to Boltov, over 100 Lugansk civilians and militia members were killed on the weekend of June 14-15.

While the people of the world are starting to demand their leaders stop killing innocent people for the Federal Reserve Bank and their subsidiaries’ profits their leaders have thus far turned a deaf ear to the people.  The war crimes perpetrated by Kiev have become horrendous.

Washington also had nothing to say about the crisis gripping tens of thousands of refugees from embattled towns like Slavyansk in Donetsk, which are beginning to look like the bombed-out remains of the World War II Nazi occupation. Some 13,000 refugees arrived in Russia’s Rostov region in one 24-hour period June 14, ITAR-TASS reported…

Most damning, perhaps, was Washington’s silence about an incident near Slavyansk on the night of June 11-12.

Video captured images of burning, slow-falling bombs striking the village of Semyonovka. They closely resemble the horrific scenes of the bombing of Falluja, Iraq, during that city’s rebellion against U.S. occupation in 1994.

Journalists on the scene, the local people’s militia and the people’s government of Donetsk charged Ukraine’s National Guard with using white phosphorus incendiary bombs in Semyonovka. (RIA-Novosti, June 12) These weapons are banned under international law.

Water can’t extinguish white phosphorus. Skin contact with a pea-sized speck means almost certain death. The Pentagon’s use of terror weapons like white phosphorus and depleted uranium shells is still felt in Iraq today, with high incidences of cancer and birth defects.

A Russian draft resolution in the U.N. Security Council asking for a U.N. investigation of the incident was vetoed by the United States.

This war based economy has been taking place since the repeal of Glass Steagall and the GLB Law.  From Humans are Free.com:

On March 10, kingworldnews, a prominent online financial blog site published an incisive interview with William Kaye, a Hong Kong based hedge fund manager at Pacific Group Ltd. who had previously worked for Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions.  ‎ The Spoils of War and Regime Change Of significance in this interview with William Kaye is the analogy between Ukraine, Iraq and Libya.

Lest we forget, both Iraq and Libya had their gold reserves confiscated by the US. According to Kaye, the destination was the New York Fed. The National Bank of Ukraine (Central Bank) estimated Ukraine’s gold reserves in February to be worth 1.8 billion dollars. According to William Kaye.

So how do the politicians in Washington get away with a war based economy?  Simple.  From July of 2013 McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reportedly gave its approval last week to an Obama administration plan to provide weapons to moderate rebels in Syria, but how individual members of the committee stood on the subject remains unknown.

There was no public debate and no public vote when one of the most contentious topics in American foreign policy was decided – outside of the view of constituents, who oppose the president’s plan to aid the rebels by 54 percent to 37 percent, according to a Gallup Poll last month.

In fact, ask individual members of the committee, who represent 117 million people in 14 states, how they stood on the plan to use the CIA to funnel weapons to the rebels and they are likely to respond with the current equivalent of “none of your business:” It’s classified.

Those were, in fact, the words Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the committee, used when asked a few days before the approval was granted to clarify her position for her constituents. She declined. It’s a difficult situation, she said. And, “It’s classified.”

In the words of Pope Francis:  “the economy was now dependent on war, that great powers have been using war as a means of sustaining the current system.”  “We discard a whole generation to maintain an economic system that no longer endures, a system that to survive has to make war, as the big empires have always done,” he said.

So it’s time to drain the oligarch’s hot tub.  The hot tub has been infected with the most vile, dangerous, life threatening soup of filth, germs and pus known to man and must go.  Pope Francis has been speaking directly to the people of the world and it’s time for the people of the world to unite and rid ourselves of this vermin.

An economy built on perpetual war cannot survive and neither can the people 0f the world.  It’s time to heed the warnings of Pope Francis.  It’s time for a universal people’s court to bring the leaders of the world to justice.

By Patricia Baeten