Category Archives: Geopolitics

Upcoming webinar: Money, Power, Democracy, and War

I will be appearing in a free webinar on Humanity Rising this Tuesday, July 16, at 8 AM Pacific time (11 AM Eastern time). You can get details and register to participate via Zoom by clicking here: Money, Power, Democracy, and War. You will receive the Zoom link a few hours prior to the event. I will be answering such questions as:

  • Why are nations continually at war when people want peace?
  • What do wars produce, and what do they destroy?
  • Who gains and who loses in war?
  • Where do governments get the money they need to finance war?
  • Is there a link between the monetary system and the political system?

If you choose not to register, you can watch the live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD7JpJetKtA.

Newsletter 2024-06 —The Evolution of Money, and more

In this issue

  • Chapter 9—The Evolution of Money
  • Recorded Interview on TNT Radio
  • Bank of Dave, the movie
  • Tim Berners-Lee’s Internet lament
  • 2024 A pivotal year

Chapter 9—The Evolution of Money

The latest chapter in my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, has now been published. Here is an excerpt:
The entirety of money, banking, and finance is comprised of claims and obligations. — Thomas H. Greco, Jr.

It was in a dusty old bookshop close to the British Museum in London that I discovered a slim volume that was to complete for me the picture of how money has evolved over time. I had been traveling in Europe and the United Kingdom in the summer of 2001 with my then partner, Donna, attending conferences, meeting with friends and cohorts, and enjoying the sights, sounds, and cultures of the Old World. It was actually Donna who discovered the book in the basement stacks and brought it to me, saying, “What about this one?” The book was The Meaning of Money by Hartley Withers. Although I had already been engaged in intensive research into the subjects of money and banking for more than twenty years and had written three books of my own on the subject, I had not previously heard of Withers, but it was evident that he must have been, in his day, a recognized authority on the subject, and that his book must have served for a long time as a leading text; I surmised that from the fact that the volume I held in my hands was the seventh edition, published in 1947, of a work first published in 1909, and that Withers had been the editor of The Economist magazine from 1916 to 1921. Reading Withers crystallized my understanding of the double transformation that money had undergone during the previous three hundred years, an understanding that afforded a clearer comprehension of the nature and significance of the changes that have taken place, an understanding that prepares the ground from which to launch the next great improvement in the exchange process.

For now, you can read or listen to the entire chapter at Future Brightly: Chapter 9—The Evolution of Money—From Commodity Money to Credit Money and Beyond-Text
Chapter 9—The Evolution of Money—From Commodity Money to Credit Money and Beyond-Audio narration
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Recorded Interview on TNT Radio

My interview on the Pelle Neroth Taylor show on May 30, 2024 was recorded and is now available. My portion of the show can be heard here, and a transcript can be seen here. This was a wide-ranging conversation about the problems with the present political system of money and exchange, and the decentralized exchange mechanisms that have been developing in parallel with it, including both commercial and grassroots currencies and credit clearing exchanges.
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Bank of Dave

I recently viewed the movie Bank of Dave. It was both entertaining and thought provoking and based on a true story. Here is a description from Imdb: Based on the true-life experiences of Dave Fishwick; ‘Bank of Dave’ tells the story of how a working class Burnley man and self-made millionaire fought to set up a community bank. While the movie is highly fictionalized to add entertainment value, the important elements are factual. Seeking to satisfy my curiosity about that, I found this news report from the Manchester Evening News: How much of Netflix’s Bank of Dave is based on a true story?___________________________
Tim Berners-Lee’s Internet lament

Tim Berners-Lee is widely credited with being the inventor of the world wide web. In his article, Original Hope, he laments the fact that what he hoped would develop into an infrastructure that would “allow for collaboration, foster compassion, and generate creativity,” has come to be “dominated by the self-interest of several corporations that have eroded the web’s values and led to breakdown and harm.” He has issued a call for action that will “reform the current system and create a new one that genuinely serves the best interests of humanity… [and] encourage collaboration, to create market conditions in which a diversity of options thrive to fuel creativity and shift away from polarising content to an environment shaped by a diversity of voices and perspectives that nurture empathy and understanding.” He concludes by citing a few emerging innovations that are beginning to do just that. You can read about it on Medium.
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2024 A pivotal year.

This year, 2024, is shaping up to be both frightening and climactic. Several of the geopolitical developments of the past year have been causing serious upheavals in the economic and political relationships among nations, and simmering conflicts have boiled over and are threatening to erupt into another catastrophic world war. These issues and concerns were discussed in the podcast, 2023 Geopolitical Marathon, which featured the views and opinions of respected experts including, Pepe Escobar, Jeffrey Sachs, Jackson Hinkle, Alastair Crooke and Alexander Dugin. If you want to better understand the facts of these matters and what may happen next, please give it your attention.
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While I remain optimistic about our prospects, I’m also convinced that we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to inform ourselves and listen to all points of view while remembering that we are all one human family responsible for our own future and our common home we call Earth. We sink or swim together.

Thomas 

Chapter Eight—The Separation of Money and State

Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state’… is absolutely essential in a free society.
     — Thomas Jefferson

The established beliefs about money in today’s world have become a sort of religion in which a fundamental tenet holds that government must, either directly or indirectly, have power over the system of money creation and circulation. This erroneous belief has taken the world to the brink of disaster which will surely ensue unless we take steps to depoliticize money by achieving the separation of money and state.
It should be obvious by now that there will never be peace in the world so long as those who control our national governments are able to conjure up out of thin air the seemingly endless amounts of pseudo-money they need to pay for wars and whatever else might bolster their political and economic interests.

Read all about it in Chapter8—The Separation of Money and State, the latest chapter to be published in my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization.

You can find it right now on Future Brightly, and it will be published soon here and on my own Substack channel.

Further chapters will continue to be posted as they are completed. Watch for Chapter Nine to be posted soon.
As always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed,
Thomas

Chapter Five, The New World Order

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
       
—Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister under Queen Victoria  

Chapter Five, the latest chapter in The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, new 2024 edition, is now available. It is being published first on Ken Richings; Substack channel, Future Brightly. Ken has greatly assisted my work in many ways, including editorial assistance and narration of each chapter. He has now posted all previous chapters, and starting now with Chapter 5, each new chapter will appear on his channel two weeks before being posted here on my website or elsewhere. I do not wish to place paywalls between me and my readers so all content will continue to remain freely available to read and download, either from Ken’s site or my own sites but I encourage you to reward Ken for his good work by opting to take a paid subscription to https://futurebrightly.substack.com/.

Further chapters will continue to be posted as they are completed on Future Brightly, and then on the other sites two weeks later. Watch for Chapter Six, Usury, the Engine of Destruction to be posted in about three weeks.
As always, your comments and suggestions will be welcomed.
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Chapter Five, The New World Order-Text
Chapter Five, The New World Order-Audio narration

Chapter 4, Central Banking and the Rise of the Money Power is now available.

Chapter 4, Central Banking and the Rise of the Money Power is now available here on this website, complete with end notes, along with previously published chapters 1, 2, and 3. Click on the links below to access the text and the audio narration directly. Additional chapters will be posted as they are completed here. Watch for Chapter 5 to be posted in about two weeks.

As always, your comments and suggestions will be welcomed.
Thomas

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Chapter 4—Central Banking and the Rise of the Money Power

Chapter 4—Audio Narration

Chapter 3, The Contest for Rulership—Two Opposing Philosophies

Chapter 3, The Contest for Rulership—Two Opposing Philosophies. is now available. You can find it on my website, complete with end notes, along with previously published chapters 1 and 2. Click on the links below to access the text and the audio narration. Additional chapters will be posted as they are completed here. I expect to complete Chapter 4 and post it around the end of this year.

As always, your comments and suggestions will be welcomed,
Thomas
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Chapter 3—The Contest for Rulership—Two Opposing Philosophies
Chapter 3Audio narration

The betrayal of the Ukrainian people; you’re next!

I feel sorry for the Ukrainian people, not only have they been conscripted to fight a proxy war for the US against the Russians, a war in which despite massive financial and military support they are being slaughtered; they have now been selected to be a demonstration project for a US-created information system that gives the Kiev government all the information it needs to control every aspect of their people’s lives. Little by little, place by place, Big Brother is enslaving the masses.   

I asked Bing Chat to give me a summary of the history, development and capabilities of the Diia phone app which is the heart of the system now being deployed. Here is what it gave me:

Generated by Bing Chat, Monday, October 2, 2023

The Diia app is a mobile application, web portal, and brand of e-governance in Ukraine that was launched in 2020 by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine . The app allows Ukrainian citizens to use digital documents on their smartphones instead of physical ones for identification and sharing purposes. The Diia portal allows access to over 50 government services, and the government plans to make all kinds of state-person interactions available through Diia.

The name “Diia” is an acronym for “State and Me” in Ukrainian. The app was built in partnership with the USA and is poised to be shared with other countries. In fact, at the 2023 World Economic Forum in Davos, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said that the US hopes to replicate the success of Diia in other countries.

Diia was first presented on September 27, 2019, by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine as a brand of the State in a Smartphone project. Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov announced the creation of a mobile app and a web portal that would unite in a single place all the services provided by the state to citizens and businesses. On February 6, 2020, the mobile app Diia was officially launched.

In April 2020, the Ukrainian government approved a resolution for experimental usage of digital ID-cards and passports which would be issued to all Ukrainians via Diia. On October 5, 2020, during the Diia Summit, the government presented a first major update of the app and web portal branded “Diia 2.0”. By the end of 2020, the app had more than 6 million users, while the portal had 50 available services.

Please note that while I have tried my best to provide accurate information based on my sources, some details may be outdated or incomplete.

According to an article in 9to5mac.com,

Ukraine has been at the forefront of government digitalization. The country became the first one in the world to allow a digital ID on a smartphone to be universally accepted as an alternative to a paper one. The Diia app can serve as a legally-recognized document for:

  • ID card
  • Foreign passport
  • Student card
  • Driving licence
  • Vehicle registration document
  • Vehicle insurance certificate
  • Tax identity
  • Birth certificate
  • IdP certificate (identity-management system)

The Diia app also provides access to over 70 government services, allowing citizens to do things like register as self-employed within the app in just 15 minutes.

Image from Behance.net

Further, according to one source, the government has already announced that the payment of benefits will be conditional on the presence of a Covid-19 vaccination certificate. While the use of the app is for the moment voluntary, do not for one moment think that it will remain so, or that similar systems won’t be imposed in other countries around the world as US officials have already stated their intention to do so. It’s a giant step forward in the agenda toward greater centralization of power and wealth and the elimination of democratic government. Any astute observer can see that right and left politics have been integrated into a global despotic “uniparty” under elite control. As Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum has clearly stated, they have trained and placed in positions of power in countries around the world, people, like Justin Trudeau (PM of Canada) and Emmanuel Macron (President of France) who will promote their agenda.  He has also told us, “You will own nothing…” Neither will you be allowed to do anything without the permission of Big Brother.

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2023 August Newsletter — Monetary Tyranny, the End of Dollar Dominance, and a World in Crisis

In this issue:

  • The Tyranny that is the Global Money System
  • The Final Chapter for Dollar Dominance
  • From Wall Street to Main Street
  • Col. Douglas Mac Gregor
  • In case you missed it…

The Tyranny that is the Global Money System
My new video has emerged out of the power point slide presentations I gave earlier this summer. It is a greatly improved description of the tyrannical nature of the global political money regime, how it has evolved, how it operates, and how we can free ourselves from its grip. Based on my more than 40 years of research, experience, and innovation in the realm of value exchange and finance, it succinctly reveals the truth about the money power, and more importantly, outlines tried-and-true exchange mechanisms by which people, businesses, and communities everywhere can transcend their dependence upon political money and bank borrowing by taking control of their own credit and using it in ways that can bring about a world of peace, justice, and freedom in which everyone can thrive.  

Read the entire newsletter  here or here, and you can Subscribe to receive my future occasional newsletters.

A most evil weapon; a most heinous crime

Bomblets from a cluster bomb
Bomblets from a cluster bomb

A heinous war crime is about to be committed by a country that purports to be the champion of democracy and human rights. Yes, the United States is preparing to send cluster bombs to the Ukraine for use in the war against Russia. Do you know the kinds of injuries these weapons cause, that they often fail to explode until much later when innocent civilians happen to accidentally set them off, and that these weapons have been banned by the Geneva Convention signed by 123 countries, but NOT by the United States.

Reading the story below from my friend and long-time correspondent Mike Boddington made me weep. It is a graphic description of the many tragedies that civilians suffer from unexploded weapons like the cluster bombs that President Biden now wants to send to Ukraine. Mike, who is British, made it his mission many years ago to go to Southeast Asia to do what he could to help people who have been maimed by unexploded ordinance (UXOs) that was scattered throughout that region by the US and during the Vietnam War.

Mike Boddingtin and Thomas Greco In Vientiane Laos
Mike Boddingtin and Thomas Greco In Vientiane, Laos

I was introduced to Mike by a mutual friend, and in 2009 I visited him at his home in Vientiane, Laos where, in 1995, Mike had set up the office of COPE (Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise), the NGO that he founded to warn people of the danger and to provide aid to the estimated 50,000 victims of encounters with UXOs, particularly those who have lost limbs. One of COPEs primary programs is providing prosthetic arms and legs.   

Prosthetics provided by COPE to Laotian victims of UXOs

Mike has given me permission to publish his story here; we, in turn, invite and encourage you to distribute it widely in hopes of averting many more such tragedies. –THG

Laos Leaves June-July 2023: Issue 6.5 by Mike Boddington

This is an interim edition:  a bonus, if you will.  It is brought about as a result of hearing the news that the USA is to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, in order to continue the support of NATO and the west for that country in its battle against Russia.  If this happens it will be the most evil and heinous crime.  It will be the act of people who have no care or concern for the lives and welfare of others.  By way of response, I am reproducing here and article that I wrote in 2021 entitled ‘An Experience in Your Life’ and which has had limited circulation, but has not aired in this medium.  It offers a scenario of a regular, everyday person in SE Asia encountering an unexploded device – here referred to as a cluster sub-munition or bombie. 

I came to Laos by way of Cambodia. Getting involved in the rehabilitation of unexploded ordnance (UXO) survivors in that country was harrowing – as it has proved in any country where I have met with the victims of those devices personally. What follows is from my experience in post-conflict countries – not in countries that are involved in active warfare.  There has been war.  It is over.  Now we are in conflict-recovery mode.  But the wounding and killing goes on – not amongst the combatants, the armed forces, but almost entirely amongst the civilian population.  Not just the civilian population but very often the civilian population that was not even born at the time that the conflict was active.  Those people had lost their limbs as a result of an encounter with an unexploded device of some sort.  Here is a scenario for you, dear reader.  This is about you – your experience.

The Final Chapter for Dollar Dominance and the Unipolar World Order

The US dollar is rapidly losing its status as the global “reserve currency.” One after another, nations outside of the western coalition are waking up to the fact that dollars are needed only to pay for imports that come from the United States. In trades with other countries they are choosing to begin paying one another by using their own currencies, as reported in videos like this. They are recognizing that the real resources that they own are much more valuable than the empty promises that are embodied in inflated US dollars or other political currencies. The exploitation of weaker nations by the western powers that has been ongoing for centuries is coming to an end and the emergence of a multi-polar world order is now unstoppable.

The Bretton Woods agreement that established the post-war world financial order in 1944 was based on the promise that US dollars would be redeemed for gold at $35 an ounce. But the continuous debasement of the dollar over the years made that completely unrealistic, and ultimately its impossibility was formally recognized when President Nixon in 1971 “closed the gold window” and announced that the US government was reneging on that commitment. It would no longer give gold for dollars except at the prevailing market price. From that point on the fate of the dollar was sealed; it was just a matter of time. Despite the imposition of a series of extreme financial, economic, political, and military measures by the US and its western allies, time has run out on dollar dominance and the unipolar world order.

The main questions now are, 1) to what further extremes will the western empire resort in its desperate effort to forestall the inevitable political reordering, and 2) what sorts of new monetary and financial arrangements will be established to supplant the old Bretton Woods arrangement?

Regarding the first of these, the past several decades have seen a succession of both covert and overt interferences designed to weaken or neutralize monetary dissidents and potential political and economic rivals. Notable among the former have been Saddam Hussein, who in 2000 began selling Iraqi oil for Euros instead of dollars, and Muammar Gaddafi the Libyan leader who had plans to launch a pan-African currency called the Gold Dinar to free Africa from American domination. As a consequence, both men were murdered and their countries destroyed. Following the NATO invasion of Libya, and the murder of Gaddafi, then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, disgustingly and arrogantly boasted, “We came, we saw, he died!”  

But nuclear armed Russia and China are not so easy to push around and brought to heel. When their Russian puppet Boris Yeltsin chose Vladimir Putin to succeed him as prime minister, the globalist western oligarchs thought they could continue to rape Russia and exploit its vast resources for their own purposes. But Putin surprised them with his loyalty to “Mother Russia” and his unwillingness to betray the Russian people to the globalists. Whatever we in the west might think about the man, his stance has clearly endeared him to the Russian people.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the western powers promised not to move NATO farther to the east, but they have reneged on that promise, and one by one have brought the former Soviet republics into the western fold. [Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has elaborated on this point in his recent speech and highlighted the importance of respect for Russia’s legitimate security concerns if ever there is to be peace]. Then, in 2014 the CIA engineered the overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine and replaced it with their own puppet government to further pressure the Russian government to play ball. The perceived existential threat of NATO weapons, even nuclear ones, on their very doorstep, was too much for Russia’s leadership to bear. It should have come as no surprise to anyone that the Russians reacted as they did to counter that threat by launching their “special military operation.” Putin had stated repeatedly that he hoped to negotiate a deal that would respect Russia’s national security interests but the US government has chosen to perpetuate the war in order to weaken Russia and force it to submit. Former nuclear weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, with his military experience and vast knowledge of the region provides a much more nuanced picture of that siltation than the biased sound bites one typically gets from the mainstream media.

Farther to the east, China a major economic, political and military power, has also balked at submitting to a New World Order in which the Western Empire calls all the shots. So now the globalist oligarchs who control the US government see China as a major obstacle to their plan for establishing a trans-human, technocratic utopia under the control of the elite Super Class. Hence, we see continual saber rattling, military and political provocations, and endless prating about the “Chinese threat.”

Regarding a new system of exchange and finance, I expect that we may soon see the emergence of a multilateral system for clearing credits among nations, one that will be more along the lines of the Bancor plan that John Maynard Keynes proposed at Bretton Woods in 1944. Not that Keynes should be the last word on the matter, but he at least proposed a way of preventing trade deficits from becoming perpetual as they are now, by imposing a levy (interest) on positive balances, as well as negative balances, that would seem to eliminate the debt trap. Professor Perry Mehrling provides a brief description of the Bancor plan in this video

I expect eventually to see the complete depoliticisation of money and the broader application of credit clearing directly among buyers and sellers at the level of individual traders, as they have been doing for decades through the scores of commercial trade exchanges that have been operating around the world. Money is, after all, merely an information system about credits and debits that enables goods and services that are sold to pay for other goods and services that are bought. Further, the settlement of accounts will be done not only through reciprocal exchange, but also through cooperative support and forgiveness of debts, which will bring with it greater fairness and finally a peaceful world. Indeed, there may someday be a world government, but it will not be imposed by force, nor will it be the product of greed and materialistic human minds.

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Addendum: In this excellent article, America Has Just Destroyed a Great Empire, Prof. Michael Hudson offers a history lesson that underlines the points I’ve made in my article.  

Here is a small excerpt:

Having endowed the region’s cosmopolitan Temple of Delphi with substantial silver and gold, Croesus asked its Oracle whether he would be successful in the conquest that he had planned. The Pythia priestess answered: “If you go to war against Persia, you will destroy a great empire.”

Croesus therefore set out to attack Persia c. 547 BC. Marching eastward, he attacked Persia’s vassal-state Phrygia. Cyrus mounted a Special Military Operation to drive Croesus back, defeating Croesus’s army, capturing him and taking the opportunity to seize Lydia’s gold to introduce his own Persian gold coinage. So Croesus did indeed destroy a great empire, but it was his own.

Fast-forward to today’s drive by the Biden administration to extend American military power against Russia and, behind it, China. The president asked for advice from today’s analogue to antiquity’s Delphi oracle: the CIA and its allied think tanks. Instead of warning against hubris, they encouraged the neocon dream that attacking Russia and China would consolidate U.S. control of the world economy, achieving the End of History.

But that’s not the way it’s working out. Please read the full article.