July 16 (EIRNS) The rumor trumpeted by the British-controlled press, that gold is being phased out as a significant force in the financial system, is a giant hoax, intended to hoodwink the suckers in America and elsewhere into getting out of gold and other hard commodities, and into bloated financial paper.
The precious metals section of the British Commonwealth raw materials cartel has developed this hoax. The cartel has organized, in a controlled fashion, a dumping of gold which has sharply reduced its price from $365 per troy ounce on Jan. 1, 1997 to $320 per ounce at the close of trading yesterday (see graph). The controlled price fall is bankrupting weaker gold-producing companies, and the kingpins of the British Commonwealth cartel--like Sir George Bush's Barrick Gold and Anglo American Corporation --are snapping them up. The cartel anticipates a seismic collapse of all stock, bond, and other paper values in the months ahead, most likely the period of September-October, concurring with the forecast of economist Lyndon LaRouche, who has demonstrated that the speculative world financial bubble has outstripped the loot it can extract from the underlying economy, and will now implode. The world's press now assertains reports daily from political insiders and financiers warning of such a crash. Following that crash, the oligarchy intends to reverse the fall of the price of gold, and to place the world on a British Commonwealth controlled, deflationary gold standard. Gold will be pegged to as much as $800 per troy ounce. Such an arrangement is meant to shrink the world economy and genocidally slash population. This will repeat--but on a global scale--the experience following the U.S. Specie Resumption Act, a piece of treason enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1875 and implemented in 1879, which virtually bankrupted the U.S. during 1879-1907.
The tempo of this process is fed by the disintegration of the financial system.
Aiding the Commonwealth cartel plan is the central bank of Australia, which announced last week that it had sold 5.37 million troy ounces of gold, 60% of its official gold holdings. This depressed gold's price and fed the lie that gold is being phased out.
Positioning itself to take advantage of that gold trap is Peter Munk, chairman of the Canadian-based Barrick Gold, the world's second largest gold producing company. Crack cocaine kingpin George Bush is head of Barrick's international advisory board. In return for gold concessions in Congo-Zaire last year, Barrick helped clear the way for Laurent Kabila's Nazi dictatorship in that country.
Barrick chairman Munk told the New York Times July 10 that the benefit of the gold price drop is that it "would breed a Darwinian consolidation in the industry, much like an earlier shakeout in the steel industry." He added, "There is going to be a period of rapid consolidation. And it will end with a couple of really good (sic) producers," at the top. Munk also boasted to the Wall Street Journal July 9, that he "wouldn't be surprised if gold dropped another $40 an ounce," that is, to $280 per troy ounce.
But Munk says this knowing that Barrick has shielded itself against the price drop. Through futures contracts, Munk has hedged future production of Barrick gold production, for sale at $420 an ounce. Thus, regardless of whether gold is trading at $320 per ounce or $50, someone is obligated, at the other end of the future contract, to pay him $420 an ounce.
Another company that had hedged its future sales of gold is Anglo American Corporation of the Oppenheimer family, the world's largest gold and raw materials producer, and a key cog in the British Commonwealth raw materialscartel. In addition, Anglo American has been buying into the huge Ashanti Gold Company of Ghana, which has two advantages: It has a low cost of production for mining gold, and it has also hedged on future sales.
But many gold-producing companies report that they didn't hedge their forward sales, because they figured that once the price hit about $340 an ounce, it wouldn't go lower; they are being crushed. Leon Esterhuizen, a gold stock analyst with Societe Generale Frankel Pollak in Johannesburg, said that at $320 per troy ounce, more than half of South Africa's top gold mines are unprofitable, and at $305 per ounce, only five could stay open. Russia, the world's fifth largest producer, with the world's third largest reserves, would have to shut down most of its mines at the current gold price. British Commonwealth mining firms are poised to buy these companies at bargain basement prices, setting the basis for its new gold system.
September-October Crash
The ignorant sucker buys deeper into the U.S. stock market, with the llusion that he will get rich quick. But those in the know warn of financial breakdown, reinforcing the fundamental forecast of economist Lyndon LaRouche.
July 11, a European banking insider told EIRNS of an impending "financial earthquake." At present the question is whether "the earthquake will precipitate an implosion of systemic dimension during the September-October period," or whether there will be an intermezzo of "feverish volatility, which will last into early 1998. Others concur.
This past week, the Group of 30, a private bankers' group, issued a memorandum worked out by Lord Alexander of Weedon from London's National Westminster Bank, and John Heimann of Merrill Lynch, the world's largest stock brokerage. The memo concentrates on the problem of 60 "core" banks and global investment firms, whose failure could trigger a systemic crisis. It states, "The objective must be to eliminate systemic risk ... to devise an international financial system that can withstand shocks without failures cascading through the system." This warning was echoed by the July 15 lead editorial of the British oligarchy's mouthpiece, the Financial Times, titled "Global Risks in Banking." That states that steps must be taken immediately to handle burgeoning risks in the international banking system, and that if goverments delay needed action, "taxpayers of the world are heavily at risk." The senior European banker cited above, reported that a big problem is that the Japanese and other central banks are lending money at cheap interest rates; that money is sloshing into stock markets around the world, pushing them upward. However, were the U.S. Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates this week, and other central banks to follow, that would be finished.
A major intersection point of the crisis is the U.S. stock market. The capitalization of the stocks treaded on all U.S. stock exchanges now exceeds $10 trillion--almost half the capitalization of all stocks in the world, and greater than the nominal U.S. Gross Domestic Product, at nearly $8 trillion.
The price-to earnings ratio of all U.S. stock averages almost 20:1, and for some stocks it is 30-40:1. That can't be sustained by earnings produced by a collapsed physical economy.
The British oligarchy readies its deflationary gold standard for the blowout. While the man on the street flees gold, going into bloated stocks, the oligarchy deliberately moves in the opposite direction.
"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." This shocking pronouncement was made in the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, produced by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. The report warned that "the educational foundations of our society are being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people." The entrenched educrat bureaucracy reacted to the widely publicized report in a predictable fashion -- it demanded more money. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, total spending on public elementary and secondary schools has amounted to over $3.5 trillion since 1983. Additionally, in the almost 15 years since the release of A Nation at Risk Americans have been treated to outcome-based education, school-to-work programs, Goals 2000, federal and state school vouchers, character education, and national standards -- all of which have served only to exacerbate the problem while empowering the federal government and wasting taxpayer money. As the following examples demonstrate, after 15 years of government imposed "remedies," America remains a nation at risk. In his 1991 study Smart Schools, Smart Kids: Why Some Schools Work, author Edward Fiske noted the following: Only one in three young Americans can put the Civil War in the right century.
One out of four adults do not know if the sun goes around the earth or vice versa.
Only 20 percent of adults between the ages of 21 and 25 can read a bus timetable.
American companies spend $20 billion to $40 billion a year on remedial education for their employees.
The Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is "the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the United States and other nations," confirms the dismal trend: A March 1997 NCES report noted, "Forty percent or more of the adult labor force perform at the two lowest levels on each of the literacy scales, suggesting that many workers lack the skills needed to interpret, integrate, and compare or contrast information...." The United States spent $260 billion on education in the 1993-1994 school year alone with an average of $5,325 spent on each student. On the average, a mere 61 cents of every public education dollar is actually used for instruction.
A high school diploma does not necessarily certify that a person is ready for college. An NCES "Survey on Remedial Education in Higher Education Institutions in Fall 1995" showed that 78 percent of all higher education institutions offered remedial courses for enrolled freshmen. Similarly, 47 percent of the institutions reported enrollment in remedial courses staying the same over the past five years while 39 percent reported enrollments in remedial courses increasing over the past five years.
There has been measurable academic progress in one area: homeschooling. According to a study by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), home- schooled students out-perform their public school counterparts. The report Home Education Across the United States was released in early 1997 and demonstrates that homeschooled students consistently score better than public school students on core subjects. Among the study's findings: On average, homeschoolers out-perform their public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects..
Dispelling the myth that only parents with teaching credentials can effectively homeschool, the study found that homeschool students' test scores segmented by whether their parents have ever held a teaching certificate reveal a differential of only three percentile points. The study also found that a parent's level of education has little effect on homeschooled students while it has a major effect on public school students. According to the study, "test scores remain between the 80th and 90th percentiles, whether their mothers have a college degree or did not complete high school." While public school students whose parents are college graduates score in the 63rd percentile compared with the 28th percentile for public school students whose parents did not finish high school.
How can parents save their children from being overwhelmed by the "rising tide of mediocrity?" The solution, according to the federal educrats, is to spend ever-increasing sums on federal "reforms" -- more money for more of the same. Yet, giving more money to America's public schools is unlikely to save them any more than one can save a drowning man by giving him a drink of water.
The trends and statistics examined above illustrate why increasing numbers of Americans are taking back from the government the direction of their Children's education by enrolling them in private schools or schooling them at home. There is a growing awareness that only by breaking up the centralized public-education monopoly can we cease to be a "Nation at Risk."
Amid the swirling storm of the education-reform debate, the question constantly surfaces about what the role of the National Education Association, or NEA, and other teachers' unions should be. That's a lot like asking what role a mugger should play in the medical treatment of his victims. Union officials, in fact, should have no role at all in "reforming" the institution they nearly have destroyed.
According to the recently leaked Kamber report commissioned by the NEA to evaluate its disastrous public perception, Americans view the NEA as a "heavy-handed, selfish Washington special-interest group that is the primary obstacle to needed education reform." But this secret report, which has found its way to my desk, misses the critical point: The reason the NEA is viewed as a threat to reform -- apart from its decades-long opposition to change -- is that it has caused the damage in the first place.
One of the smoking guns is plummeting Scholastic Assessment Tests, or SAT, scores. During the last three decades the scores steadily have declined from the upper 900s to barely above 900 today. That's without adjusting for the recent rigging of scores to conceal the scandal of falling achievement. This trend closely conforms to the rise in power of teachers' union officials. Originally, union officials didn't enjoy the special privilege under state laws to force their "representation" on teachers. Union membership was low. Today, 34 states coerce teachers to recognize a union as their exclusive representative, and the NEA -- with aggregate yearly revenues of nearly $1 billion -- is the largest in the nation.
University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman, who has studied the impact of teachers' unions on education, finds that "where the unions get a toehold, performance ultimately deteriorates." In other words, the synchronous rise of NEA power and decline of education standards is no coincidence. That's because their goal is political power, not education. The main means to that end is the funneling of forced union dues to politicians who support their agenda. And the best weapon against this kind of racket is the federal court system, where teachers' constitutional rights hold sway. Right now, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is providing free legal aid to thousands of teachers in more than 100 cases nationwide. Today, more and more teachers have access to the kind of legal clout it takes to challenge the illegal designs of union officials. The foundation has won Supreme Court precedent after precedent upholding the right of teachers to refuse to pay for union politics. In fact, foundation litigators have established most of the case law protecting teachers' and workers' rights, including the right to a prompt hearing before an impartial decisionmaker when challenging a union's typically bogus estimate of its political spending.
But because such challenges require access to union books, union lawyers have created a clever smoke screen to shade their clients from sunlight. They call it "arbitration," but it's nothing more than an internal union Kangaroo court. Most often, a union-paid "neutral arbitrator" presides over the case and allows union lawyers to orchestrate the inevitable outcome in the union's favor. That's why recent courts of appeals rulings that quashed union efforts to force employees into union "arbitration" are so important. Contesting such shams in federal court aims a dagger at the heart of the power of teachers' union bosses.
On other legal fronts, foundation attorneys -- using their landmark Supreme Court decisions in Abood, Hudson, Beck and Lehnert which establish employees' rights to refrain from union membership and political activity -- are examining the NEA's books and records in states such as Washington, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Massachusetts in several lawsuits on behalf of scores of teachers. The NEA's top dogs are so frightened about what this investigation may reveal that they have taken the unheard-of step of assigning their top lawyer, Robert Chanin, to defend cases at the trial level. They're trying desperately to stop the teachers' lawsuits before the NEA is exposed as nothing more than a forced-dues-fed political machine.
In 34 states, it is the ominous power of monopoly bargaining handed to teachers' union officials by school boards, state legislatures and some courts that has burdened teachers and students with antireform, self-serving, monopolistic school systems. When the courts completely knock out the supporting pillars of coercion -- monopoly bargaining and compulsory dues -- the whole structure of union officials' corrupt political power, the main bulwark against reform, will collapse.
Gov. William F. Weld yesterday signed into law a historic bill to abolish county government in Massachusetts, adding his own measure to ensure its elimination by 1999.
"Over the last three centuries, counties have become obsolete, inward- looking bureaucracies, with dozens of departments and department heads that serve themselves, and not the taxpayer," Weld said. "The legislation that we are signing today is a good first step in eliminating a vestige of Massachusetts colonial government."
Weld's action means bankrupt Middlesex County will be immediately eliminated and the state will assume all its debts. Earlier this year Middlesex County defaulted on $4.5 million in bonds. Worcester and Hampden counties would be eliminated within one year under the bill, or sooner if they default on payments.
However, Weld vetoed sections approved by the Legislature which would have allowed 10 other counties to establish local commissions to rewrite their charters or face elimination.
Weld said that provision only preserved the "bloated" status quo and would allow counties to continue to unnecessarily soak up taxpayer funds.
Weld said the current inefficiency of the county government system, laden with patronage and poor fiscal management, has accumulated approximately $45 million in debt statewide.
"County government has been around Massachusetts as long as the Weld family, but while great-great-grandfather Weld's hunting jacket has not yet lost its usefulness, counties , I'm sorry to say have," he said.
A Japanese proposal calling for international gun control has been adopted by the United Nations. This is not the stuff of "black helicopters," but an official act of the U.N., and as such it should greatly concern every gun owner.
The proposal, adopted by an U.N. commission, meeting in Vienna, Austria, calls for a "Universal Declaration of Principles on Firearms Regulation." Such a declaration has the potential to shape firearms policies in every part of the world by its inherent "credibility" as a U. N. pronouncement. The "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" is an extremely well-known and influential document, although few people have actually read it.
A similar U.N. declaration on gun control would be used by every anti-gun group on the planet to influence governmental bodies from parliaments and congresses to city councils. The declaration would also be almost impossible to repeal or amend.
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action recently became an accredited U.N. "Non-Governmental Organization," and as such has been monitoring several gun control efforts at the world body. The most serious of these is the "International Study of Firearms Regulation" being conducted by the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention. The project started in 1995, with passage of "Resolution 9" at the 9th U.N. Congress on the Prevention of Crime in Cairo, Egypt. Japan sponsored the original resolution and began financing the study. It has supplied approximately a quarter of a million dollars to date and has promised the same amount to help write and publicize the "Declaration."
Resolution 19 outlines what a U.N. "Universal Declaration of Principles on Firearms Regulation" might contain.
Among other things, it would have all nations legislate mandatory training, establish gun turn-in programs, license all gun owners and require registration of all firearms at all times, that is from date of manufacture throughout the life of the firearm. Nowhere in Resolution 19 is there any mention or acknowledgment of hunting, sport shooting or the legitimate and traditional role of civilian firearms ownership.
A draft of the study, done by an 11-member "experts" group, was presented to the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention this April in Vienna. It revealed not an objective investigation, but a shallow attempt to justify the whole effort and support U.N. gun control proposals. An American expert on the panel walked out of the process, objecting to how "political it had become." We were told by another expert that the way the study was being done was "driven by Japanese money." The expert, who wishes to remain unidentified, also said the study ignored any research showing a legitimate defensive use for firearms. It was only concern about possible American protest, including resistance by NRA, that "kept the Japanese from moving even faster." The study itself, while 137 pages long, is noticeably incomplete and inconclusive.
In spite of problems with the study and the experts, the Commission on Crime Prevention met in Vienna, Austria, on April 28-May 9, 1997, and passed Resolution 19, "Firearms regulation for the purpose of crime prevention and public health and safety." Among other things, the resolution asks the U.N. Secretary-General to begin developing a "U.N. Declaration of Principles on Firearms."
The U.N. agenda on firearms is being set by Japan, which is on the extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to gun ownership. Japanese experts estimate that ony 0.57% of Japanese homes contain a firearm. Following the Japanese lead, and the Japanese money, the whole U.N. effort is premised upon the assumption that civilian possession of firearms should be discouraged per se.
Unquestionably, gun control is in fashion in the international arena. Approximately 20 countries spoke in favor of Resolution 19 at the commission meeting and several, including the United Kingdom, India and Australia, openly advocated reducing the number of civilian firearms. India took the position that no civilian should ever be allowed to possess more than one firearm and that self-defense was never a justification for civilian possession. NRA's representative at the commission was the lone voice in opposition.
This is just the start. U.N. efforts may very well produce something even more onerous than what has been proposed.
Anti-firearms and anti-hunting groups are becoming more involved in the international arena. You can be sure they will try to take advantage of what is happening.
Universal Declarations are almost always followed by a "convention" or treaty. A treaty becomes domestic law in America, not by a vote of the whole Congress, but by vote of the Senate only. Sometime in the future we may have an anti-gun Senate that would adopt such a treaty. Japanese officials have been very candid with NRA about what their intentions are.
While they are in this for the long haul, they don't think the Americans have the patience or the wherewithal to resist such a strong international movement. They want a declaration, a convention and eventually a U.N. agency for gun control. Japan is now in the process of obtaining a seat on the U.N. Security Council, and it has no reservations about using its wealth to influence the almost bankrupt organization.
Four regional "workshops" will be convened in 1997 to work on th eproposed declaration. An "experts" group will meet in early 1998, and a draft will be considered by the next session of the Commission on Crime Prevention in the Spring of 1998. From there the Universal Declaration would be sent to the General Assembly.
In the original Resolution, the workshops were closed to anyone other than government representatives. NRA was in Vienna and was able to get an amendment adopted allowing non- governmental organizations to attend the workshops. Had NRA not been at the commisssion meeting, there would have been no way to either monitor the meetings or have any input into the process. The firearms community, not just in the United States but worldwide, would have been blind, if not totally defenseless.
The regional workshops are scheduled to be held in Slovenia in September, Tanzania in October, Brazil in November and India in December. We will be at those meetings and any other meeting where firearms rights are at stake.
The potential impact on the shooting community of the Universal Declaration, let alone a convention, is tremendous. If such a declaration were to be adopted it would become a weapon for every anti-gun and anti-hunting group in the world.
I'm proud of what we have been able to accomplish in this new venue in a limited amount of time and with limited resources.
The battle is just beginning, but NRA is in it for the "long haul," and we won't let you down.
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