The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

Today’s sampler column is about both numbers and theory. Don’t be frightened. It’s only arithmetic and simple (unregulated) capitalism.

First off: the government is obliged to pay senior citizens a small retirement stipend out of the Trust Fund they paid into with their FICA payroll deductions all their working years. Inflation is figured in by adding a few dollars for the increase in cost of living as determined by the Consumer Price Index. Over the past couple of years Social Security monthly checks have remained pretty much unchanged, based on the government’s claim that inflation is negligible. Big Banking is a beneficiary as the Federal Reserve keeps its discount rate close to O%. O% is free money! But only for the big banks. The government would lessen its chances of a people’s revolution if it would balance the free money for the banks with free beer for the people.

In reality, the rate of inflation is not so low as the stated rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the government agency that reports the Consumer Price index (CPI), uses a weighted average of a basket of goods and services in their calculations. Since 1980, the CPI has been “improved” 20 times. If last year’s rate of inflation were measured by an unimproved CPI, it would be 10.7%. Your local supermarket provides a reality check.

In the private sphere, money runs the show more directly in the oil and and gas industries. Both are moving full steam ahead, with deep water drilling for oil and shale rock drilling for gas. The latter involves the technology of high-pressure hydraulic fracturing developed by Halliburton back in the 90s. Here in the East, the issue has split families apart — some want the money for leasing their land to the gas companies, and others want to ban drilling, having learned about fires, explosions, pollution of aquifers, and earthquakes.

Money runs the circus in other ways. In the NY Times of June 23, GE placed a full page ad promoting “natural” gas (and GE gas turbines). In that same issue, a one-paragraph piece appeared under “National Briefing” at the very bottom of page 14. It seems that central Arkansas just experienced ”a swarm of more than 1220 earthquakes, one at 4.7 in intensity,” after gas drilling activity was started. The gas companies issued a statement that there was no proof that they had caused the quakes. Of course, there were no double-blind, controlled trials, and the precautionary principle is certainly not rigorous science. It didn’t seem quite right that GE should spend thousands of dollars for the full back page of Section One and then have a major article appear prominently in the same issue casting doubts on the safety of gas drilling. So, it was the bottom of p. 14 for the earthquakes report. Coincidence or collusion?

The following week, an online news magazine reported that France has banned fracking for gas drilling … in the entire country. Now why would a nation be willing to give up all that money? The Gadfly Revelry & Research team investigated. They found out that the French were scared crazy that injecting 1,000,000 gallons of frack fluids laced with 20,000 gallons of toxic chemicals in the earth at every gas well site would poison the aquifers of Burgundy and Bordeaux. Horreurs! It is the same reason that New York City is so passionately opposed to gas drilling. New York’s watershed and reservoirs are under threat of pollution from fracking. Poisoning the drinking water of New York City is bad enough, but everyone in the City knows that the extraordinary taste of New York’s bagels is dependent on the quality of New York water. Poison New York water, and there goes the bagel business.

The less than whole truth about the Consumer Price Index and the financial highlights of gas drilling are but grains of sand compared to a continent of dollars that NATO is trying to protect by attacking Libya. Britain, France, and the US have taken sides with the rebels in Benghazi, the only demonstrators who are using arms in an attempt to depose their ruler. In Tunisia and Egypt the demonstrators were non-violent. The same is true of the ongoing protests in Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. Only the Libyan demonstrators are trying to defeat the government by force of arms. Only in Libya are the CIA and MI6 on the ground to “advise and vet the rebels.” Only in Libya is the US leading NATO air strikes against the government forces, occasionally including Qaddafi’s own compound in their targeting. [He was out making speeches at the time.]

UN Security Council Resolution 1973 specifically limits intervention to “protecting civilians and civilian populated areas … but excludes a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” Russia, China, India, Brazil, and Germany abstained from signing on to the resolution.

So, why is the West upset with Muammar Qaddafi? Until recently, Libya was a valued friend. Qaddafi’s son met with Hillary Clinton at the State Department where she said “I am very pleased to welcome Minister Qaddafi here to the State Department. We deeply value the relationship between the United States and Libya.” In 2009, Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Graham met with Colonel Qaddafi, himself in Tripoli and publicly praised him as an important ally in the war on terror. Our present disfavor of the dictator can’t be over oil — Libya produces only 2% of the world’s output of oil. It can’t be that Libya has free health care — England has free medical care, too. No one believes it’s on humanitarian grounds — we’re not bombing Burma, Tibet, North Korea, or Texas. It turns out that Libya is trying to establish a money system for the Continent of Africa based on a new currency called the gold dinar. Libya would sell its oil not for dollars but gold dinars. Perhaps Nigeria, South Africa, and Sierra Leone would insist on gold dinars for their oil, gold, and diamonds. And, what about Ivory Coast with all its high quality chocolate?

In addition, the Central Bank of Libya is totally state owned, no private banks involved. Libya can finance any national project without credit from the IMF or World Bank. It has a constant stream of oil revenues and holds well over 100 tons of gold in it vaults as backup. It has paid cash for the world’s longest water pipeline and irrigation system, bringing water from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer in the South to 70% of the population in the cities and farms of the North. Libya is independent of the international banking system and is not a member of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). No wonder Nicholas Sarkozy has issued a J’accuse that “Libya is the greatest threat to the financial security of mankind.” Oh yes, the Benghazi rebels, even as their revolution barely started, set up the Central Bank of Benghazi. What were their MI6 advisors advising?

Qaddafi is pretty heavy handed and, despite his protestations to the contrary, is not kind hearted and lovable. But, the assault on Libya is not about human rights. It’s about money and a financial system as defined by the West.