Zeitgeist: Addendum

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Zeitgeist: Addendum

Duration: 2 hours, 3 minutes and 6 seconds

Year: 2008

Country: United States

Language: English

License: CC - Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike

Genre: Documentary

Producer: Peter Joseph

Director: Peter Joseph

Views: 208,092 (194,166 embedded)

Posted by: chab on Oct 22, 2008

www.zeitgeistmovie.com
www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

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Video Transcription

"The old appeals to racial, sexual or religious chauvinism,
to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work."
"The business of who I am and whether I'm good or bad, or achieving or not,
all that's learned along the way."
"It's just a ride
and we can change it anytime we want.
It's only the choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money."
"I realised I had the game wrong.
The game was to find out what I already was."
"We were seeing
how very important it is
to bring about, in the human mind,
the radical revolution.
The crisis is a crisis in consciousness.
A crisis that cannot, anymore,
accept the old norms,
the old patterns,
the ancient traditions.
And, considering what the world is now,
with all the misery,
conflict,
destructive brutality,
aggression,
and so on...
Man
is still as he was.
Is still brutal,
violent,
aggressive,
acquisitive,
competitive.
And, he's built a society
along these lines."
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. J. Krishnamurti
Society today,
is composed of a series of institutions.
From political institutions,
legal institutions,
religious institutions.
To institutions of social class,
familiar values,
and occupational specialization.
It is obvious, the profound influence these traditionalized structures have
in shaping our understandings and perspectives.
Yet, of all the social institutions, we are born into,
directed by and conditioned upon,
there seems to be no system as taken for granted,
and misunderstood,
as the monetary system.
Taking on nearly religious proportions,
the established monetary institution exists as one of the most unquestioned forms of faith there is.
How money is created,
the policies by which it is governed,
and how it truly affects society,
are unregistered interests of the great majority of the population.
In a world where 1% of the population owns 40% of the planets wealth.
In a world where 34.000 children die every single day
from poverty and preventable diseases,
and, where 50% of the world's population lives on less than 2 dollars a day...
One thing is clear.
Something is very wrong.
And, whether we are aware of it or not, the lifeblood of all of our established institutions,
and thus society itself,
is money.
Therefore, understanding this institution of monetary policy
is critical to understanding why our lives are the way they are.
Unfortunately, economics is often viewed with confusion and boredom.
Endless streams of financial jargon, coupled with intimidating mathematics,
quickly deters people from attempts at understanding it.
However, the fact is:
The complexity associated with the financial system is a mere mask.
Designed to conceal one of the most socially paralyzing structures,
humanity has ever endured.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1749-1832
A number of years ago, the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve,
produced a document entitled "Modern Money Mechanics".
This publication detailed the institutionalized practice of money creation
as utilized by the Federal Reserve and the web of global commercial banks it supports.
On the opening page the document states its objective.
"The purpose of this booklet is to describe the basic process of money creation
in a 'fractional reserve' banking system."
It then precedes to describe this fractional reserve process
through various banking terminology.
A translation of which goes something like this:
The United States government decides it needs some money.
So it calls up the Federal Reserve and requests, say, 10 billion dollars.
The FED replies saying: "sure, we'll buy ten billion in government bonds from you".
So the government takes some pieces of paper,
paints some official looking designs on them and calls them treasury bonds.
Then it puts a value on these bonds to the sum of 10 billion dollars
and sends them over to the FED.
In turn the people of the FED drop a bunch of impressive pieces of papers themselves.
Only this time, calling them Federal Reserve notes.
Also designating a value of ten billion dollars to the set.
The FED than takes these notes and trades them for the bonds.
Once this exchange is complete,
the government then takes the ten billion in federal reserve notes,
and deposits it into an bank account.
And, upon this deposit the paper notes officially become legal tender money.
Adding ten billion to the US money supply.
And there it is, ten billion in new money has been created.
Of course, this example is a generalization.
For, in reality, this transaction would occur electronically. With no paper used at all.
In fact, only three percent of US money supply exists in physical currency.
The other 97 percent essentially exists in computers alone.
Now, government bonds are by design instruments of debt.
And when the FED purchases these bonds
with money it essentially created out of thin air,
the government is actually promising to pay back
that money to the FED. In other words, the money was created out of debt.
This mind numbing paradox, of how money or value
can be created out of debt,
or liability, will become more clear as we further this exercise.
So, the exchange has been made. And now, ten billion dollars sits in a commercial bank account.
Here is where it gets really interesting. For, as based on the fractional reserve practice,
that ten billion dollar deposit
instantly becomes part of the bank's reserves.
Just as all deposits do.
And, regarding reserve requirements as stated in "Modern Money Mechanics":
"A bank must maintain legally required reserves
equal to a prescribed percentage of its deposits".
It then quantifies this by stating:
"Under current regulations,
the reserve requirement against most transaction accounts is 10 percent".
This means that with a ten billion dollar deposit,
ten percent, or one billion,
is held as the required reserve,
while the other nine billion is considered an excessive reserve,
and can be used as the basis
for new loans.
Now, it is logical to assume, that this nine billion
is literally coming out of the existing ten billion dollar deposit.
However, this is actually not the case. What really happens, is that the nine billion
is simply created out of thin air
on top of the existing 10 billion dollar deposit.
This is how the money supply is expanded.
As stated in "Modern Money Mechanics":
"Of course they" - the banks - "do not really pay out loans for the money, they receive as deposits.
If they did this, no additional money would be created.
What they do when they make loans
is to accept promissory notes"
- loan contracts -
"in exchange for credits" - money - "to the borrowers' transaction accounts."
In other words, the nine billion can be created out of nothing.
Simply because there is a demand for such a loan,
and that there is a 10 billion dollar deposit to satisfy the reserve requirements.
Now let's assume that somebody walks into this bank and
borrows the newly available nine billion dollars.
They will then most likely take that money and deposit it
into their own bank account.
The process then repeats.
For that deposit becomes part of the bank's reserves.
Ten percent is isolated and in turn 90 percent of the nine billion,
or 8.1 billion is now availlable as newly created money for more loans.
And, of course, that 8.1 can be loaned out and redeposited creating an additional 7.2 billion
to 6.5 billion... to 5.9 billion... etc...
This deposit money creation loan cycle can technically go on to infinity.
The average mathematical result is that about 90 billion dollars can be created on top of the original 10 billion.
In other words, for every deposit that ever occurs in the banking system, about nine times that amount can be created out of thin air.
Money-Jitters. Ask the obliging Bank of America for a jar of
soothing instant money.
M-O-N-E-Y in the form of a convenient personal loan.
So, now that we understand how money is created by this fractional reserve banking system.
A logical yet illusive question might come to mind:
what is actually giving this newly created money value?
The answer: the money that already exists.
The new money essentially steals value from the existing money supply.
For the total pool of money is being increased irrespective to demand for goods and services.
And, as supply and demand defines equilibrium,
prices rise, diminishing the purchasing power of each individual dollar.
This is generally referred to as inflation.
And inflation is essentially a hidden tax on the public.
What is the advice that you generally get? And that is, inflate the currency.
They don't say: debase the currency. They don't say: devalue the currency.
They don't say: cheat the people who are safe. They say: lower the interest rates.
The real deception is when we distort the value of money.
When we create money out of thin air, we have no savings. Yet there is so called "capital".
So, my question boils down to this: how in the world can we expect to solve the problems of inflation?
That is: increase in the supply of money, with more inflation."
Of course, it can't.
The fractional reserve system of monetary expansion is inherently inflationary.
For the act of expanding the money supply, without there being a
proportional expansion of goods and services in the economy,
will always debase a currency.
In fact, the quick glance of the historical values of the US dollar, versus the money supply,
reflects this point definitively
for inverse relationship is obvious.
One dollar in 1913 required $21.60 in 2007 to match value.
That is a 96% devaluation since the Federal Reserve came into existence.
Now, if this reality of inherent and perpetual inflation seems absurd and economically self defeating.
Hold that thought, for absurdity is an understatement in regard to how our financial system really operates.
For in our financial system money is debt,
and debt is money.
Here is a chart of the US money supply from 1950 to 2006.
Here is a chart to the US national debt for the same period.
How interesting it is, that the trends, are virtually the same.
For the more money there is the more debt there is.
The more debt there is the more money there is.
To put it a different way, every single dollar in your wallet is owed to somebody by somebody.
For remember : the only way the money can come in to existence is from loans.
Therefore, if everyone in the country were able to pay off all debts including the government,
there would not be one dollar in circulation.
"If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money."
- Marriner Eccles - Governor of the Federal Reserve September 30th, 1941
In fact, the last time in American history the national debt was completely paid off
was in 1835 after president Andrew Jackson shut down the central bank that preceded the Federal Reserve.
In fact, Jackson's entire political platform essentially revolved
around his commitment to shut down the central bank.
Stating that one point: "The bold efforts the present bank has made to control the government... are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people
should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution
or, the establishment of another like it." Unfortunately this message was short lived.
And the international bankers succeeded to install another central bank in 1913,
the Federal Reserve. And as long as this institution exists
perpetual debt is guaranteed.
Now, so far we have discussed the reality that money is created out of debt through loans.
These loans are based on a banks reserves,
and reserves are derived from deposits. And through this fractional reserve system,
any one deposit can create 9 times its original value.
In turn, debasing the existing money supply raising prices in society.
And, since all this money is created out of debt,
and circulated randomly through commerce,
people become detached from their original debt.
And a disequilibrium exists where people are forced to compete for labor
in order to pull enough money out of the money supply
to cover their costs of living.
As dysfunctional and backwards as all of this might seem,
there is still one thing we have omitted from this equation.
And it is this element of the structure
which reveals the truly fraudulent nature of the system itself.
The application of interest.
When the government borrows money from the FED, or when a person borrows money from a bank,
it almost always has to be payed back with a crude interest.
In other words, almost every single dollar that exists
must be eventually returned to a bank with interest payed as well.
But,
if all money is borrowed from the Central Bank and is expanded by commercial banks through loans,
only what would be refered to as the "principal"
is been created in the money supply.
So then, where is the money to cover all of the interest that is charged?
Nowhere.
It doesn't exist.
The ramifications of this are staggering,
for the amount of money owed back to the banks will always exceed the amount of money that is available in circulation.
This is why inflation is a constant in the economy,
for new money is always needed to help cover the perpetual deficit build into the system,
caused by the need to pay the interest.
What this also means, is that mathematically defaults and bankruptcy
are literally built into the system.
And there will always be poor pockets of society that get the short end of the stick.
An analogy would be a game of musical chairs,
for the once music stops, somebody is left out to dry.
And that is the point.
It invariably transfers true wealth for the individual to the banks.
For, if you are unable to pay for your mortgage, they will take your property.
This is particularly enraging when you realize, that not only is such a default inevitable
due to the fractional reserve practice. But, also because of the fact
that the money that the bank loaned to you
didn't even legally exist in the first place.
In 1969 there was a Minnesota court case involving a man named Jerome Daly
who was challenging the foreclosure of his home by the bank, which provided the loan to purchase it.
His argument was that the mortgage contract required both parties,
being he and the bank, each put up a legitimate form of property for the exchange.
In legal language this is called
consideration [a contract's basis. a contract is founded on an exchange of one form of consideration for another.]
Mr. Daly explained that the money was, in fact, not the property of the bank.
For it was created out of nothing as soon as the loan agreement was signed.
Remember what "Modern Money Mechanics" stated about loans?
"What they do, when they make loans, is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits".
"Reserves are unchanged by the loan transactions.
But, deposit credits constitute new additions to the total deposits of the banking system."
In other words, the money doesn't come out of their existing assets. The bank is simply inventing it, putting up nothing of it's own,
except for a theoratical liability on paper.
As the court case progressed, the bank's president Mr. Morgan took the stand.
And in the judge's personal memorandum, he recalled that the Plaintiff - bank's president - admitted that, in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank did create the money
and credits upon its books by bookkeeping entry.
The money and credit first came into existence when they created it. Mr. Morgan admitted that
no United States Law or Statute existed which gave him the right to do this.
A lawful consideration must exist and be tendered to support the Note.
The Jury found that there was no lawful consideration and I agree.
He also poetically added, "Only God can create something of value out of nothing".
And, upon this revelation the court rejected the bank's claim for foreclosure and Daly kept his home.
The implications of this court decision are immense.
For every time you borrow money from a bank, whether it is a mortgage loan or a credit card charge,
the money given to you is not only counterfeit, it is a illegitimate form of consideration.
And hence, voids the contract to repay. For the bank never had the money as property to begin with.
Unfortunately such legal realizations are suppressed and ignored.
And the game of perpetual wealth transfer and perpetual debt continues.
And this brings us to the ultimate question:
Why?
During the American Civil War President Lincoln bypassed the high interest loans
offered by the European banks and decided to do what the founding fathers advocated.
Which was to create an independent and inherently debt-free currency.
It was called "The Greenback".
Shortly after this measure was taken, an internal document
circulated between private British and American banking interests, stated:
"...slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers,
while the European plan... is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages.
This can be done by controlling the money.
It will not do to allow the Greenback... as we cannot control that."
The fractional reserve policy,
perpetrated by the Federal Reserve
which has spread in practice to the great majority of banks in the world,
is, in fact, a system of modern slavery.
Think about it, money is created out of debt.
And what the people do when they are in debt?
They submit to employment to pay it off.
But if money only can only be created out of loans,
how can society ever be debt free?
It can't and that's the point.
And it is the fear of loosing assets, coupled with the struggle to keep up
with the perpetual debt and inflation inherent in the system,
compounded by the inescapable scarcity within in the money supply itself,
created by the interest that can never be re-payed,
that keeps the wage-slave in line,
running on a hamster wheel, with millions of others,
in effect powering an empire
that truly benefits only the elite at the top of the pyramid.
For, at the end of the day,
who are you really working for?
The banks.
Money is created in the bank and invariably ends up in a bank.
They are the true masters, along with the corporations and governments they support.
Physical slavery requires people to be housed and fed.
Economic slavery requires people to feed and house themselves.
It is one of the most ingenious scams for social manipulation ever created.
And at its core,
it is an invisible war against the population.
Debt is the weapon used to conquer and enslave societies,
and interest is its prime ammunition.
And, as the majority walks around oblivious to this reality,
the banks in collusion with governments and corporations
continue to perfect and expand their tactics of economic warfare,
spawning new bases, such as the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund [IMF],
while also inventing a new type of soldier.
The birth of the economic hitman.
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt.
- John Adams - 1735-1826
We, economic hit men, really have been the ones responsible for creating this first truly global empire
and we work many different ways.
But perhaps the most common is that we will identify a country that has resources our corporations covet, like oil,
and then, arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of it's sister organizations.
But the money never actually goes to the country.
Instead it goes to our big corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country.
Power plants, industrial parks, ports...
Things that benefit a few rich people in that country.
In addition to our corporations.
But really don't help a majority of the people at all. However, those people,
the whole country is left holding the huge debt.
It's such a big debt they can't repay and that's part of the plan...
They can't repay it.
And so, in some point, we economic hit men, go back to them and say, "Listen,
you owe us a lot of money. You can't pay your debt. So, sell your oil
real cheap to our oil companies",
"allow us to build a military base in your country",
or "send troops in support of ours to someplace in the world like Iraq", or "vote with us in the next UN vote",
to have their electric utility company privatized
and their water and sewage system privatized and sold to US corporations or other
multinational corporations."
So there is a whole mushrooming thing and it's so typical the way the IMF and the World Bank work.
They put a country in debt and it's such a big debt it can't pay it,
And then you offer to refinance that debt and pay even more interest.
And you demand
this quid pro quo what you call a "conditionality" or "good governance"
which means basically that they got to sell off their resources,
including many of their social services, their utility companies, their school systems sometimes,
their penal systems,
their insurance systems, to foreign corporations.
So it's a double - triple - quadruple whammy!
The precedent for economic hit men really began back in the early 50's
when the democratically elected Mossadegh
who was elected in Iran... He was considered to be the hope for democracy
in the middle east and around the world. He was in Time-Magazine's "Man of the year".
But... one of the things that he brought on and began to implement was the idea that
foreign oil companies needed to pay the Iranian people a lot more for the oil that they were taking out of Iran
and the Iranian people should benefit from their own oil. Strange policy.
We didn't like that of course. But we were afraid to do what we normally were doing, which was to send in the military.
Instead we sent in one CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's relative.
And Kermit went in with a few million dollars and was very very effective and efficient and in a short amount of time,
he managed to get Mossadeg overthrown
and brought in the shah of Iran to replace him, who always was favorable to oil. And it was extremely effective.
"Mobs over through Tehran.
Army officers shout that Mossadeg has surrendered and his regime as virtual dictator of Iran is ended.
Pictures of the shah are paraded through the streets as sentiment reverses.
The shah is welcome home."
So back here in the United States, in Washington, people looked around and said: "wow, that was easy and cheap".
So this established a whole new way of manipulating countries, of creating empire.
The only problem with Roosevelt was that he was a card carrying CIA agent
and if he'd been caught, the ramifications could have been pretty serious.
So very quickly, at that point, the decision was made to use private consultants
to channel the money through the world bank or the IMF or one of the other such agencies,
to bring in people like me, who work for private companies.
So that if we got caught, there would be no governmental ramifications.
When Árbenz became president of Guatemala, the country was very much under the thumbs of United Fruit company,
the big international corporation. And Árbenz ran on this ticket that said: "you know, we want to give the land back to the people".
And once he took power, he was implementing policies that would do exactly that,
give the land rights back to the people. "United Fruit" didn't like that very much.
And so, they hired a public relations firm, launched a huge campaign in the United States,
to convince the United States people, the citizens of the United States,
the press of the United States and the congress of the United States,
that Árbenz was a soviet puppet
and that if we allowed him to stay in power, the Soviets would have a foothold in this hemisphere.
And at that point in time there was a huge fear on everybody's mind, of the red terror, the communist terror.
And so, to make a long story short, out of this public relations campaign
came a commitment on the part of the CIA and the military to take this man out.
And in fact, we did. We sent in planes, we sent in soldiers, we sent in jackals,
we sent everything in to take him out. And did take him out.
And as soon as he was removed from office,
the new guy that took over after him basically reinstated everything to the big international corporations,
including United Fruit.
Ecuador, for many many years had been ruled by pro-US dictators, often relatively brutal.
Then it was decided they will have a truely democratic election.
Jaime Roldos ran for office and his main goal, he said, as president would be
to make sure that Ecuador's resources were used to help the people.
And he won. Overwhelming.
By more votes than anybody had ever won anything in Ecuador.
And he began to implement these policies.
To make sure that the profits from oil went to help the people.
Well... We didn't like that in the United States.
I was send down as one of several Economic Hitman to change Roldos.
To corrupt him. To bring 'em around... To let him know... You know.
"Ok, you know, you can get very rich, you and your family, if you play our game."
"But if you continue to try to keep this policy you've promised, you're gonna go."
He woudn't listen...
He was assassinated...
As soon as the plane crashed the whole area was cordoned off.
The only people allowed there were US military from a nearby base
and some of the Ecuadorian military.
When an investigation was launched,
two of the key witnesses died in a car accidents
before they have a chance to testify.
A lot of very-very strange things that went on around
the assassination of Jaime Roldos.
I, like most of people who've really looked at this case,
have absolutely no doubt that it was an assassination.
And, of course, in my position as an economic hitman,
i was always expecting something to happen to Jaime,
whether it'd be a coup or assassination, i wasn't sure, but that he would be taken down, because
he was not beeing corrupted, he would not allow himself to be corrupted the way we wanted to corrupt him.
Omar Torrijos, the president of Panama,
was, you know, one of my favorite people. I really really liked him.
He was very charasmatic. He was a guy who really wanted to help his country.
And when I tried to bribe him or corrupt him, he said: "Look, John"
- he called me Juanito -
He said: "Look Juanito, I don't need the money. What I really need is for my country
to be treated fairly.
I need for the US to repay the depts that you owe my people for all the destruction you've done here.
I need to be in a position where I can help other latin american countries
win their independence and be free of this,
of this terrible presence from the north.
You people are exploiting us so badly.
I need to have the Panama Canal back in the hands of the Panamian people.
That's what I want.
And so, leave me alone, you known, don't try to bribe me".
It was 1981 and, in May, Jaime Roldos was assassinated.
And Omar was very aware of this.
Torrijos got his family together and he said:
"I'm probably next, but that's OK,
because I've done what I came here to do
I renegotiated the Canal.
The Canal will now be in our hands, we just finished negotiating the treaty with Jimmy Carter.
In June of that same year, just a couple of month later,
he also went down in an airplane crash,
which, there's no question, was executed by CIA sponsored jackals.
A tremendous amount of evidence that
one of Torijjos' security guards handed him, at the last moment,
as he was getting on the plane, a tape recorder.
A small tape recorder that contained a bomb.
It is intersting to me how this
system has continued pretty much the same way
for years, and years, and years, except the economic hit men have gotten better and better and better.
Then we coped with, very recently, what happened in Venezuela.
In 1998, Hugo Chavez gets elected president,
following a long line of presidents
who'd been very corrupt and basically destroyed the economy of the country.
And Chavez was elected amidst all that.
Chavez stood up to the United States
and he's done it primarily demanding that Venezuelian oil
be used to help Venezuelian people.
Well... we didn't like that in United States.
So, in 2002,
a coup was staged, which was no question in my mind, in most
other peoples minds, that the CIA was behind that coup.
The way, that that coup was fomented
was very reflective of what Kermit Roosevelt had done in Iran.
Of paying people to go out onto the streets,
to riot, to protest, to say that Chavez was very unpopular.
You know, if you can get a few thousand people
to do that, Television can make it look like
it's the whole country and things start to mushroom.
Except in the case of Chavez, he was
smart enough and the people were so strongly behind him,
that they overcame it.
Which was a phenomenal moment in the history of Latin America.
Iraq, actually, is a perfect example of the way
the whole system works. So, we, economic hit men, are the first line defense.
We go in, we try to corrupt the governments
and get them to accept this huge loans,
which we then use as leverage to basically own them.
If we fail, as I failed in Panama with Omar Torrijos and Ecuador with Jaime Roldos,
men who refuse to be corrupted,
then the second line of defense is we send in the Jackals.
And the jackals either overthrow governments or they assassinate.
And, once that happens and a new goverment comes in it,
boy it's gonna toe the line
because that new president knows what will happen if he doesn't.
In the case of Iraq, both of those things failed.
The economic hit men were not able to get through to Saddam Hussein.
We tried very hard, we tried to get him to accept a deal very similar to what the House of Saud had accepted in
Saudi Arabia, but he wouldn't accept it.
And so the jackals went in to take him out.
They couldn't do it. His security was very good.
After all, he, at one time, had worked for CIA.
He'd been hired to assassinate a former president of Iraq and failed,
but he knew the system.
So, in '91, we send in the troops
and we take out the Iraqi military.
So, we assumed at that point that
Saddam Hussein is gonna come around.
We could have take him out of course at that time,
but we didn't want it. He's the kind of strong man we like.
He controls his people. We thought he could control Kurds,
and keep the Iranians in their border and keep pumping oil for us. And that once we took this military,
now he's gonna come around.
So, the economic hit men go back in in the 90's
without success.
If they'd had success
he'd still be running the country. We'd be selling him all the jet fighters he wants,
and everything he wants, but they couldn't, they didn't have success.
The jackals couldn't take him out again, so we sent the military
in once again and this time we did the complete job
and took him out. And in the process, created for ourselves some
very-very lucrative construction
deals to reconstruct the country that we'd
essentially destroyed. Which is a pretty good deal if you own
consturction companies, big ones.
So, Iraq showes the three stages.
The economic hit men failed there.
The Jackals failed there. And as final mesure the military goes in.
And in that way we've really created an empire,
but we've done it very very subtly. It's clandestine.
All empires of the past were built on the military,
and everybody knew they were building them.
The British knew they were building them, the French, the Germans, the Romans, the Greeks,
and they were proud of it. They always had some excuse like
spreading civilization, spreading some religion, something like that,
but they knew they were doing it.
We don't.
The majority of the people, in the United States,
have no idea that we're living off the benefits of the clandestine empire.
That today there is more slavery in the world than ever before.
Then you have to ask yourself, well, if it's an empire, then who is the emperor?
Obviously our presidents of the United States are not emperors.
An emperor is someone who is not elected, doesn't serve a limited term,
and doesn't report to anyone, essentially.
So you can't classify our presidents that way.
But we do have what I consider to be the equivalent of the emperor and it's what I call the corporatocracy.
The corporatocracy is this group of individuals
who run our biggest corporations.
And they really act as the emperor of this empire.
They control our media,
either through direct ownership or advertising.
They control most of our politicians
because the finance their campaigns,
either through the corporations
or through personal contributions
that come out of the the corporations.
They're not elected,
then don't serve a limited term,
they don't report to anybody,
and at the very top of the corporatocracy you really can't tell
whether the person is working for a private corporation
or the government because their always moving back and forth.
So you've got a guy who is one moment is the president of
a big construction company like Haliburton,
and the next moment he's Vice President of the United States.
Or the President who was in the oil business.
And this is true whether you get Democrats or Republicans in the office.
You have this moving back and forth through a revolving door.
And in a way, our government is invisible a lot of the time,
and his policies are carried out by our corporations
on one level or another. And then again,
the policies of the government are basically
forged by the corporatocracy,
and then presented to the government
and they become government policy.
So, there's an incredibly cozy relationship.
This isn't a conspiracy theory type of thing.
These people don't have to get together
an plot to do things. They all
basically work under one primary assumption,
and that is that they must maximize profits
regardless of the social and environmental costs.
This process of manipulation by the corporatocracy
through the use of debt, bribery and political overthrow is called :
Globalisation
Just as the Federal Reserve keeps the american public in a postion
of indentured servetude, though perpetual debt, inflation and interest,
the Worldbank and IMF serve this role on a global scale.
The basic scam is simple.
Put a country in debt you divide is own in disgression,
or through corrupting the leader of that country,
then impose "conditionalities" or "structual adjustment policies"
often consisting of the following.
Currency devaluation.
When the value of a currency drops, so does everything valued in it.
This makes indigenes resources available to predator countries
at a fraction of their worth.
Large funding cuts for social programs,
these usually include education and healthcare,
compromising the well-being and integrity of the society leaving the public vulnerable
to exploitation.
Privatization of state-owned enterprises.
This means that socially important systems can be purchased and regulated
by foreign corporations for profit.
For example, in 1999, the Worldbank insisted that the bolivian government sell
the public watersystem of it's third-largest city to a subsidy of the US-corporation "Bechtel".
As soon as this occured waterbills for the allready impoverished local residents
skyrocketed.
It wasn't until after full-blown revolt by the people that the Bechtel-contract was nullified.
Then there is trade liberalization
or the opening up of the economy through removing any restrictions on foreign trade.
This allows for a number of abusive economic manifestations,
such as transnational corporations bringing in their own mass-produced products
undercutting the indigenes production and ruining local economies.
An example is Jamaica,
which after accepting loans and conditionalities from the Worldbank
lost it's largest cash crop markets due to competition with western imports.
Today countless farmers are out of work for they're unable to compete
with the large corporations.
Another variation is the creation of numerous, seemingly unnoticed, unregulated, inhuman
sweetshop-factorys, which take advantage of the imposed economic hardship.
Additionally, due to production-deregulation, environmental destruction is perpetual
as a country's resources are often exploited by the indifferent corporations
while outputting large amounts of deliberate pollution.
The largest environmental lawsuit in the history of the world, today is being brought on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorian and Amazonian people against
Texaco, which is now owned by Chevron so it's against Chevron, but for activities conducted by Texaco.
They're estimated to be more than 18 times what the Exxon Valdez dumped into the Coast of Alaska.
In the case of Ecuador it wasn't an accident. The oil companies did it intentionally; they knew they were doing it to save money rather than arranging for proper disposal.
Furthermore, a cursory glance at the performance record of the World Bank reveals that the institution, which publicly claims to
help poor countries develop and alleviate poverty, has done nothing but increase poverty and the wealth-gap,
while corporate profits soar.
In 1960 the income-gap between the fifth of the world's people and the richest countries, versus the fifth in the poorest countries was thirty to one.
By 1998, it was seventy-four to one.
While global GNP rose 40% between 1970 and 1985, those in poverty actually increased, by 17%.
While from 1985 to 2000, those living on less than one dollar a day increased by 18%.
Even the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress admitted that there is a mere 40% success rate of all World Bank projects.
In the late 1960's, the World Bank intervened in Ecuador with large loans. During the next 30 years, poverty grew from 50% to 70%.
Under or unemployment grew from 15% to 70%. Public debt increased from 240 million to 16 billion,
while the share of resources allocated to the poor went from 20% to 6%.
In fact, by the year 2000, 50% of Ecuador's national budget had to be allocated for paying its debts.
It is important to understand: the World Bank is, in fact, a U.S. bank, supporting U.S. interests.
For the United States holds veto-power over decisions, as it is the largest provider of capital.
And where did it get this money? You guessed it: it made it out of thin air through the fractional reserve banking system.
Of the world's top 100 economies, as based on annual GDP, 51 are corporations. And 47 of that 51 are U.S.-based.
Walmart, General Motors and Exxon, are more economically powerful than Saudi Arabia, Poland, Norway, South Africa, Finland, Indonesia and many others.
And, as protective trade-barriers are broken down, currencies tossed together and manipulated in floating markets and State economies overturned
in favor of open competition in global capitalism, the empire expands.
You get up on your little 21 inch screen and howl about America and democracy.
There is no America, there is no democracy.
There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon.
Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their counsels of state - Karl Marx?
They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories,
min and max solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale.
The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable
bylaws of business.
The world is a business, Mr. Beale.
Taken cummulatively, the integration of the world as a whole,
particularly in terms of economic globalization
and the mythic qualities of "free market" capitalism,
represents a veritable "empire" in its own right...
Few have been able to escape the "structural adjustment" and "conditionalities"
of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund,
or the World Trade Organization, those international financial institutions that,
however inadequate, still determine what economic globalization means...
Such is the power of globalization that within our lifetime we are likely to see the integration,
even if unevenly, of all national economies in the world into a single global, free market system.
The World is being taken over by a hand-full of business powers who dominate the natural resources we need to live,
while controlling the money we need to obtain these resources.
The end result will be world monopoly based not on human life but financial and corporate power.
And, as the inequality grows, naturally, more and more people are becoming desperate.
So the establishment was forced to come up with a new way to deal
with anyone who challenges the system. So they gave birth to the 'Terrorist'.
The term 'terrorist' is an empty distinction designed for any person or group who chooses to challenge the establishment.
This isn't to be confused with the fictional 'Al Qaida', which was actually the name of a computer database of the U.S.-supported Mujahideen
in the 1980's.
"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Quaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this.
But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity...
The country behind this propaganda is the US" - Pierre-Henri Bunel - Former French Military Intelligence
In 2007, the Department of Defense received 161.8 billion dollars for the so-called global war on terrorism.
According to the national counter-terrorism center, in 2004 roughly 2000 people were killed internationally due to supposed terrorist acts.
Of that number, 70 were American.
Using this number as a general average, which is extremely generous, it is interesting to note that twice as many
people die from peanut allergies a year than from terrorist acts.
Concurrently, the leading cause of death in America is coronary heart disease, killing roughly 450,000 each year.
And in 2007, the government's allocation of funds for research on this issue was about three billion dollars.
This means, that the US government, in 2007, spent 54 times the amount for preventing terrorism,
than it spent for preventing for the disease, which kills 6600 times more people annually, than terrorism does.
Yet, as the name terrorism and Al Qaida
are arbitrarilly stamped on every news report relating to any action taken against US interests
the myth grows wider.
In mid 2008 the "US Attorney General"
actually proposed, that the US congress
officially declare war against the fantasy.
Not to mention, as of July 2008, there are now over 1 million people
currently on the US terrorist watch list.
These so called "Counter-Terrorism Measures" of course had nothing to do with social protection
and everything to do with preserving the establishment
amongst the growing anti-American sentiment
both domestically and internationally
which is legitimately founded on the greed based corporate empire expansion
that is exploiting the world.
The true terrorists of our world, do not meet at the darks at midnight
or scream "Allah Akbar" before some violent action.
The true terrorists of our world, wear 5000 dollar suits
and work in the highest positions of finance, government and business.
So, what do we do?
How do we stop a system of greed and corruption, that has so much power and momentum.
How do we stop this aberrant group behavior, which feels no compassion
for say, the millions slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan,
so the corporatocracy can control energy resources and opium production for Wall St. profit.
Before 1980, Afghanistan produced 0% of the world's opium.
After the US/CIA backed Mujahideen won the Soviet/Afghan war, by 1986 they were producing 40% of the world's heroin supply.
By 1988, they were producing 80% of the total market supply.
But then, something unexpected happened.
The Taliban rose to power and by 2000 they had destroyed most of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3.000+ tons to only 185 tons, a 94% reduction.
On Sept. 9th 2001, the full Afghanistan invasion plans were on President Bush's Desk
Two days later they had their excuse
Today, opium productions in US controlled Afghanistan,
which now provides more than 90% of the world's heroin, breakes new production records nearly every year.
How do we stop a system of greed and corruption
that condemns poor populations to "Sweatshop-Slavery" for the benefit of Madison Avenue?
Or that engineers false-flag terror attacks for the sake of manipulation?
Or that generates built-in modes of social operation, wich are inherently exploited?
Or that systematicly reduces several libertys and violates human rights,
in order to protect itself, from it's own shortcomings.
How do we deal with the numerous covert institutions,
such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group and the other undemocratically elected groups
which behind closed doors collude to control the political, financial, social and environmental elements of our lives?
In order to find the answer, we must first find, the true underlying cause.
For the fact is, the selfish, corrupt power and profit based groups are not the true source of the problem.
They are symptoms.
"Greed and Competition are not the result of immutable human temperament...
...greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being created and amplified...
the direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive.
- Bernard Liertaer - Founder of the EU Currency System
My name is Jacque Fresco.
I'm an industrial designer and a social engineer.
I'm very much interested in society and developing a system that might be sustainable, for all people.
First of all, the word "corruption" is a monetary invention, that aberrant behavior, behavior that's disruptive for the well-being of people.
Well you're dealing with human behavior. And human behavior appears to be environmentally determined.
Meaning, if you were raised by the Seminole indians as a baby, never saw anything else
you'd hold that value system.
And this goes for nations, for individuals, for families they try to indoctrinate their children
to their particular faith and their country and make them feel like their are part of that.
And they built a society, which they call established.
They established a workable point of view and tend to perpetuate that.
Whereas, all societies are really emergent, not established.
And so they fight new ideas, that would interfere with the establishment.
Goverments try to perpetuate that which keeps them in power. People are not elected to political office to change things.
They are put there, to keep things the way they are.
So you see, the bases of corruption is in our society.
Let me make it clear. All nations then are basically corrupt because they tend to uphold existing institutons.
I don't mean to uphold or downgrade all nations, but communism, socialism, fascism, the free enterprise-system and all other sub-cultures are the same.
They are all basically corrupt.
The most fundamental characteristic of our social institutions
is the necessity for self-preservation.
Whether dealing with a corporation, a religion or a government,
the foremost interest is to preserve the institution itself.
For instance, the last thing an oil company would ever want is the utilization of energy that was outside of it's control.
For it makes that company less relevant to society.
Likewise the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union was, in reality,
a way to preserve and perpetuate the established economic and global hegemony of the United States.
Similarly, religions condition people to feel guilty for natural inclination,
each claiming to offer the only path to forgiveness and salvation.
At the heart of this institutional self-preservation lies the monetary system.
For it is money that provides the means for power and survival.
Therefore, just as a poor person might be forced to steal in order to survive,
it is a natural inclination to do whatever is needed to continue an institution's profitability.
This makes it inherently difficult for profit-based institutions to change,
for it puts in jeopardy not only the survival of large groups of people,
but also the coveted materialistic lifestyle associated with affluence and power.
Therefore, the paralyzing necessity to preserve an institution
regardless of it's social relevance is largely rooted in the need for money or profit.
"What's in it for me?", is why people think.
And so if a man makes money selling a certain product,
that's where he's going to fight the existence of another product that may threaten his institution.
Therefore, people cannot be fair. And people do not trust each other.
A guy will come over to you and say "I've got just the house you're looking for",
he's a salesman.
When a doctor says, "I think your kidney has to come out",
I don't know if he's trying to pay off a yacht or that my kidney has to come out.
It's hard in a monetary system to trust people.
If you came into my store and I said
"this lamp that I've got is pretty good, but the lamp next door is much better",
I wouldn't be in business very long. It wouldn't work.
If I were ethical, it wouldn't work.
So when you say industry cares for people, that's not true.
They can't afford to be ethical.
So your system is not designed to serve the well-being of people.
If you still don't understand that there would be no outsourcing of jobs
if they cared about people.
Industry does not care.
They only hire people because it hasn't been automated yet.
So don't talk about decency and ethics, we cannot afford it and remain in business.
It is important to point out that regardless of the social system -
whether fascist, socialist, capitalist or communist -
the underlying mechanism is still money, labor and competition.
Communist China is no less capitalistic than the United States.
The only difference is the degree by which the state intervenes in enterprise.
The reality is that "Monetary-ism", so to speak, is the true mechanism,
that guides the interests of all the countries on the planet.
The most agressive and hence dominant variation of this monetary-ism
is the free enterprise system.
The fundamental perspective as put forth by early free market economists,
like Adam Smith,
is that self interest and competition leads to social prosperity,
as the act of competition creates incentive, which motivates people to persevere.
However, what isn't talked about, is how a competition based economy
invariably leads to strategic corruption, power and wealth consolidation,
social stratification, technological paralysis, labor abuse
and ultimately a covert form of government dictatorship
by the rich elite.
The word "corruption" is often defined as moral perversion.
If a company dumps toxic waste into the ocean to save money,
most people recognize this as "corrupt behavior".
On a more subtle level,
when Walmart moves into a small town and forces small businesses to shut down for they are unable to compete,
a grey area emerges.
For what exactly is Walmart doing wrong?
Why should they care about the Mom and Pop organizations they destroy?
Yet even more subtly,
when a person get's fired from their job, because a new machine has been created,
which can do the work for less money,
people tend to just accept that as
"the way it is",
not seen the inherent corrupt inhumanity of such an action.
Because the fact is,
whether it is dumping toxic waste, having a monopoly enterprise or downsizing the workforce,
the motive is the same :
profit.
They are all different degrees of the same self-preserving mechanism,
which always put's the well-being of people second to monetary gain.
Therefore, corruption is not some byproduct of monetary-ism,
it is the very foundation.
And while most people acknowledge this tendency on one level or another,
majority remains naive as to the broad ramifications
of having such a selfish mechanism as the guiding mentality in society.
Internal documents show that after this company positively absolutely knew that
they had a medication that was infected with the AIDS virus,
they took the product off the market in the US,
and then they dumped it in France, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
The US government allowed it to happen.
The FDA allowed this to happen and now the government is completely looking the other way.
Thousands of innocent hemophiliacs have died from the AIDS virus.
This company knew absolutely that it was infected with AIDS,
they dumped it because they wanted to turn this disaster into a profit.
So you see, you have built-in corruption.
We're all chiseling off each other,
and you can't expect decency in that sort of thing.
...a feeling that they don't know who to elect.
They think in terms of a democracy,
which is not possible in a monetary based economy.
If you have more money to advertise your position,
the position you desire in government,
that isn't a democracy.
It serves those in positions of differential advantage.
So it's always a dictatorship of the elitist,
the financially wealthy.
"We can either have democracy in this country or
we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few,
but we can't have both." - Louis Brandeis - Supreme Court Justice
It is an interesting observation to note how seemingly unknown personalities
magically appear on the scene as presidential candidates.
Then before you know it,
somehow you are left to choose from a small group of extremely wealthy people
who suspiciously have the same broad social view.
Obviously it's a joke.
The people placed on the ballot are done so
because they have been pre-decided to be acceptable
by the established financial powers who actually run the show.
Yet many who understand this illusion of democracy, often think
"If only we could just get our honest, ethical politicians in power",
then we would be okay.
Well, while this idea of course seems reasonable
in our established oriented world view,
it is unfortunately another fallacy.
For when it really comes down to what is actually important,
the institution of politics and thus politicians themselves,
have absolutely no true relevance as to what makes our world and society function.
It's not politicians that can solve problems.
They have no technical capabilities.
They don't know how to solve problems.
Even if they were sincere, they don't know how to solve problems.
It's the technicians that produce the desalinization plants.
It's the technicians that give you electricity.
That give you motor vehicles.
That heat your house and cool it in the summer time.
It's technology that solves problems, not politics.
Politics cannot solve problems 'cause they are not trained to do so.
Very few people today stop and consider
what it is that actually improves their lives.
Is it money? Obviously not.
One cannot eat money or stuff money into their car to get it to run.
Is it politics?
All politicians can do is create laws,
establish budgets and declare war.
Is it religion?
Of course not, religion creates nothing except
intangible emotional solace for those who require it.
The true gift that we as human beings have,
which has been solely responsible for everything that has improved our lives,
is technology.
What is technology?
Technology is a pencil,
which allows one to solidify ideas on paper for communication.
Technology is an automobile, which allows one to travel faster than feet would allow.
Technology is a pair of eye glasses, which enables sight for those who need it.
Applied technology itself is merely and extension of human attributes,
which reduces human effort, freeing humans from a particular chore or problem.
Imagine what your life would be like today without a telephone,
or an oven,
or a computer,
or an airplane.
Everything in your home, which you take for granted, from a doorbell,
to a table,
to a dishwasher,
is technology, generated from the creative scientific ingenuity of human technicians.
Not money, politics or religion.
These are false institutions.
...and writing your congressman is fantastic.
They tell you, "write your congressman if you want something done".
The men in Washington should be at the forefront of technology.
The forefront of human study.
The forefront of crime.
All the factors that shape human behavior.
You don't have to write your congressman.
What kind of people are they that are appointed to do that job?
The future will have great difficulty...
and the question that's raised by politicians is:
How much will a project cost?
The question is not "how much will it cost".
Do we have the resources?
And we have the resources today to house everyone,
build hospitals all over the world,
build schools all over the world,
the finest equipment in labs for teaching and doing medical research.
So you see, we have all that, but we're in a monetary system,
and in a monetary system there's profit.
And what is the fundamental mechanism that drives the profit system
besides self-interest?
What is it exactly that maintains that competitive edge at it's core?
Is it high efficiency and sustainability?
No. That isn't part of their design.
Nothing produced in our profit based society is even remotely sustainable or efficient.
If it was, there wouldn't be a multi-million dollar a year service industry for automobiles.
Nor would the average lifespan for most electronics be less than three months
before they're obsolete.
Is it abundance?
Absolutely not.
Abundance, as based on the laws of supply and demand,
is actually a negative thing.
If a diamond company finds ten times the usual amount of diamonds during their mining,
it means the supply of diamonds has increased,
which means the cost and profit per diamond drops.
The fact is: efficiency, sustainability and abundance
are enemies of profit.
To put it into a word,

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