The world is in a state of chaos, and our civilization has ceased to be a secure fortress guaranteeing our freedom. It is not difficult to demonstrate that the causes of this systemic crisis lie in manipulative interventions by forces striving for money and unchecked power.
But we ourselves, the citizens of the West, are to blame for this development. For decades, we have contributed to the transformation of democracy into a spectator sport; we have passively watched as this same democracy was unsuccessfully defended militarily in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria at insane cost. This complete disaster, accompanied by the media's understanding, culminating in the humiliating withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, was predictable. For freedom and democracy, consistently practiced, prevail non-violently, following the principle of setting an example.
We, the citizens of a free civilization, are the ones who have allowed ourselves to be pitted against one another for more than a century: non-Jews against Jews, one nation against another, left against right, and now, in supposed European solidarity—everyone against the Russians.
But we are also the ones who can free ourselves from the clutches of a profoundly dishonest system—a system that feigns goodness and sells us evil in false packaging, that presents friends as enemies and actual rivals as friends.
Throughout the millennia of civilization, freedom has never been given to nations; it has always had to be hard-won. But today we live in a large community of nations that freed itself generations ago from the rule of an aristocratic class. On this foundation, we can STILL build and finally develop liberal democracy into a truly secure bulwark, which it is not at present.
The initiative for the necessary, thorough reforms must come from the democratic citizens of Western nations. According to the first sentence of the US Constitution, THEY are the sole legitimate sovereign of their territories. This idea must be deeply internalized: The democratic citizens are the sovereign in the country, not the politicians; they are merely elected representatives for a limited term. Liberation from undemocratic financial domination, from distortion of truth, and from militarism must be non-violent. The only acceptable weapons among civilized people are of a mental nature—the truth, the honest word, and rational argument. In contrast, incitement, intrigue, emotional manipulation, and violence must be rejected as counterproductive.
The great chaos in which humanity currently finds itself was foreseeable, and so too was the even greater chaos of which the present situation is only the modest beginning if the course is not corrected very soon. I have been writing on this topic since August 2009. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, I have published all my writings here on this website: https://www.frieden-freiheit-fairness.com
The impending changes require enlightened, idealistic citizens and politicians; therefore, one of the first warnings must address certain psychological traps that have torpedoed objective education and rational politics for decades.
One of the fatal human tendencies is to ignore long-term, destructive developments while overreacting to sensational individual events. The mainstream media are very good at amplifying such sensationalism and using it for one-sided propaganda. A second dangerous psychological phenomenon is the sad result of many millennia of autocratic rule. This result of long oppression is that today's Western citizens behave like obedient subjects toward their elected politicians, when as the legitimate sovereign of their country, they should be vigilantly scrutinizing these individuals.
The uncritical willingness to submit unconditionally to state authorities weakens democracy. This subservience becomes particularly dangerous when sensational events occur. In such emotionally charged situations, politicians sometimes make highly questionable impulsive decisions—and citizens who obey authority accept them without question.
One example was the Fukushima nuclear disaster on the east coast of Japan in 2011. The cause there was a gigantic tsunami, an event not applicable to Germany. Yet the Merkel government used it as a pretext to unilaterally phase out nuclear technology in Germany. Predictably, this predetermined a long-term dependence on energy imports. Abandoning technically safe German nuclear power now requires importing far less safe Czech and French nuclear electricity. Yet nothing has deterred the proponents of nuclear phase-out from implementing their destructive decision—not even the argument of nuclear energy's climate neutrality.
In an interview, Angela Merkel was once asked what politics meant to her. Her remarkable answer was, "Waiting for the right moment." It wasn't just with the nuclear phase-out that her policies, at such "right moments," generated fundamentally flawed decisions with devastating long-term consequences.
A broader review of Western politics since around 1900 reveals numerous misguided policy decisions. The vast majority of these were never subsequently corrected. The chaotic state the world currently finds itself in is nothing more than the result of an accumulation of never-corrected errors. Among the most consequential historical misjudgments was the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, shortly before World War I. It was the single most significant step that paved the way for the central banking system established worldwide today; however, this system forms the backbone of a de facto monetary domination that distorts and now threatens to stifle the liberal rule of law, the fair market economy, and democracy.
Despite legitimate concerns, the controversial Federal Reserve Act of 1913 received sufficient political support—primarily for two reasons.
One of these reasons was an incentive: the introduction of the dollar. This first single currency for the entire United States ended the confusion of many small currencies and significantly simplified payments for citizens.
The second reason for the passage of the ultimately destructive Federal Reserve Act was the complexity of its monetary policy rules.
Most citizens and politicians have not grasped the core process of money creation behind the complicated rules of the law. Only now is it becoming clear to a larger segment of the population that new money is primarily created through lending. Commercial banks credit borrowers' accounts with amounts of money that did not previously exist. As is well known, this newly created credit balance also creates a debt for the borrower, who must repay this amount in installments with interest. However, this is not a genuine repayment, but rather a unilateral payment of the loan amount created out of thin air with money that has actually been earned.
Thus, the metaphor that banks, with these balances created out of thin air, are gradually transforming money into casino money, as it increasingly falls into the hands of those who did not earn it, is also apt. Lobby-influenced, pseudo-liberal legislation facilitates this process, paving the way for speculative games by investors, hedge funds, and risk-seeking banks, while the purchasing power of money for citizens dwindles.
While a bank's double-entry bookkeeping neatly records customer debt repayments, the bank never repays the democratic society the amount it generated out of thin air and received back through earned money with interest.
Money creation by commercial banks has existed for centuries, but the Federal Reserve Act drastically streamlined and centralized this process, concealing it behind a central bank that, while printing money spectacularly, merely converts account balances into banknotes. 90 to 95% of actual money creation occurs at private commercial banks.
Thus, in 1913, the course of monetary policy, and consequently the long-term balance of power on Earth, was set in a disastrously wrong direction, to the gigantic long-term advantage of the large banking institutions. This birth of the dollar would have been the perfect opportunity to belatedly realize an ancient principle of sovereignty. According to this principle, only the sovereign state has the right to create new money. In ancient times and the Middle Ages, this was the autocratic ruler, i.e., the king or prince. In the modern liberal constitutional state, this sovereign, according to Article 1 of the US Constitution, is the democratic nation. Therefore, only the nation has the right to create money. This also applies morally, because unlike banks, the nation also creates the goods and services and thus the equivalent value for money.
Thomas Jefferson, one of the leading founders of the democratic United States, had repeatedly and emphatically warned of the growing power of banking institutions well over 100 years before the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Such insights should have led to legislative initiatives during the early decades of American history, enshrining the nation's sovereign right to create money.
Failure to do so was arguably the most consequential historical omission of all time. Since then, a developmental imbalance in civilization has emerged. On the one hand, democratic states governed by the rule of law are increasingly falling into debt, stagnation, social inequality, and dependence on the banking system. On the other hand, a globally networked financial empire is prospering with increasing influence on political decisions that rightly fall within the purview of democratic nations. Alarmingly, this is especially true for military policy.
Banks have profited from loans for arms deals for centuries. Their understandable interest in war was initially harmless. However, since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, they have been increasingly empowered to proactively pursue military deals.
The first opportunity arose as early as 1914 with arms deliveries during World War I. Banks not only financed large-scale American arms shipments, but also brokered and organized the business contacts for a commission of 1 to 8%.
One of the main motives for the US entry into the war in 1917 was the fear of losing the loans if Great Britain and France were to lose.
Because no lessons were learned from this gigantic historical mistake, it is now being repeated before our eyes in the war in Ukraine. After almost four years of arms deliveries, repayment of the loans can only be extracted from a defeated Russia. Rational negotiated solutions, such as those Trump is pursuing, are being hampered or prevented by European politicians like Starmer, Macron, and Merz. The most effective obstacle to peace is increased arms deliveries, which threatens to perpetuate a psychological environment in which the Ukrainian side has been allowed to refuse negotiations since May 17, 2022.
We are now facing one of the most significant turning points in history. The current course confirms the merciless law that societies incapable of learning from their historical mistakes perish.
For this law is linked to a second one. According to this second law, the forces that profit from such mistakes continue to grow if they are not recognized and stopped in time.
On the long road of development to the present day, both core errors—the creation of money by banks and the pervasive influence of a network of the financial sector, the arms industry, and politics—have spawned a far-reaching chain of subsequent errors.
On the long road of development to the present day, both errors—the core flaw of money creation by banks and the consequential problem of the pervasive influence of an alliance of members of the financial sector, the arms industry, and politics—have spawned a far-reaching network of ever-new consequential errors.
These include, besides an expanding militarism, biased media covering, decline in the quality of politics and the educational system, drug abuse, NSA and CIA surveillance, unmatched terrorism, disadvantage to creative small businesses, growing social disparities, a sick health system, the global migration chaos, land grabbing by big investors, crime and corruption. In all cases, the underlying cause is either a lack of money among those who earn it or a surplus among those who acquire it through the privilege of money creation and/or speculative games.
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