Loretta Napoleoni -- Rogue economics and terrorism

Loretta Napoleoni -- talking about BONO (stage name of Paul David Hewson born 10 May 1960 - main vocalist of the Irish rock band U2) who is a using dutch tax-havens to avoid paying his dues to our kindergartens and public-welfare.

Wikipedia writes: Bono and his bandmates were criticized in 2007 for moving part of their multi-million euro song catalogue from Ireland to Amsterdam six months before Ireland ended a tax exemption on musicians' royalties. Under Dutch tax law, bands are subject to low to non-existent tax rates. U2's manager, Paul McGuinness, stated that the arrangement is legal and customary and businesses often seek to minimize their tax burdens. The move prompted criticisms in the Oireachtas (Irish parliament).

Loretta Napoleoni .. QUOTE:

I dislike this attitude that, you go on TV, you are vary famous, and because you are famous people listen to you. And that you dodge taxation. And I live in Great Britain, I'm Italian and I pay my taxes. I think people have to be ethical, people have to be moral in every single second of their life.

...

London is the tax haven of the rich and famous... if he goes to the [United-] States he will pay taxes because you can't dodge the taxes in the US. The system is much much tougher.

...
ON THE (undemocratic) POWER OF CORPORATIONS :

Who is king today in the world is the consumer.... We the people have to put pressure upon the politicians. Nothing is going to come from the politicians. It is us, the consumer and the voters that have to do something.

....

Politicians are the great illusionists. ... the reason why they are illusionists is because politics has lost control of the economy. Politics should be a battle of ideas, it is not any more a battle of ideas. There is no left, there is no right. Politicians, what they do is, they create a basic economic condition for the individual and a corporation in order to grow economically, to become rich. But to hide this kind of transformation to hide the true nature of the state which has now become a market-state -- they project illusions. This is the key problem, that we, the people, are on the receiving-end of these illusions and often we don't know what is real and what is not.

...

The reality .. is like the film The Matrix. If you break through this web of illusion, the world that is outside, the real world, is actually fairly grim.

[for more on The Matrix see below ***]

...

Islamic finance offers a sort of shield to rogue economics.


AUDIO INTERVIEW mp3 download

RNZ SAT: Loretta Napoleoni : Rogue economics and terrorism

Italian author with a PhD in terrorism from the London School of Economics, who consults to governments on counter-terrorism.

File Size:8.2MB

Date: (Sat, 17 May 2008 08:35:00 +1200

backup download:

Download-Link:sat-20080517-0835-Loretta_Napoleoni_Rogue_economics_and_terrorism-048.mp3

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Loretta Napoleoni (born 1955) is an Italian economist, author, journalist and political analyst. She is an expert on the financing of terrorism and is well known internationally for having calculated the size of the terror economy.

Napoleoni was born and raised in Rome, Italy. An active member of the feminist movement in the mid 1970s, she was a a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics (LSE). She has an M.Phil. in Terrorism from LSE, a Master's in International Relations from SAIS, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Rome.

Napoleoni's writing appears regularly in many journals and publications, including several European newspapers. She has worked as a foreign correspondent and columnist for several Italian financial papers. She was among the few people to interview the Red Brigades in Italy after three decades of silence.

Napoleoni has written novels, guide books in Italian and translated and edited books on terrorism. Her best-selling book Terror Incorporated Seven Stories Press was translated into 12 languages. Dossier Baghdad is a financial thriller set during the Persian Gulf War. Another nonfiction book, Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zarqawi and the New Generation, was also published by Seven Stories Press. Her last book, Rogue Economics, has been published in April 2008 by Seven Stories Press in the US, and Turnaround in the UK.

As an economist Napoleoni has worked for several banks and international organizations in Europe and the United States. In the early 1980s she worked at the National Bank of HungaryHungarian forint that became the blue print for the convertibility of the ruble a decade later. on the convertibility of the

As well as lecturing regularly on the financing of terrorism, Napoleoni advises several governments on counter-terrorism. As Chairman of the countering terrorism financing group for the Club de Madrid, she brought heads of state from around the world together to create a new strategy for combating the financing of terror networks.

Napoleoni lives in London, England, and Whitefish, Montana, with her husband and children.
From 2007 she is Director of the first italian investigative journalism course.

References

1. Penguin Books Author Search Results [1]. Retrieved on 2007-11-12
2. Goodman, Amy Italian Writer Loretta Napoleoni on the Amman Triple Bombing, How the U.S. Helped Create Zarqawi and the Terror Financing Network - Interview [2]DemocracyNow!.org. Retrieved on 2007-11-12
3. The Senlis Council The Third International Symposium on Global Drug Policy: Paris 2004 - Guest Speaker [3] SenlisCouncil.net. Retrieved on 2007=11=12
4. Forum Barcelona 2004 - Universal Forum of Cultures Speaker Search - Guest Speaker [4] . Retrieved on 2007-11-12
5. Buchanan, Michael London bombs cost just hundreds BBC online news article - Interview [5] BBC.co.uk. Retrieved 2007-11-12
6. Cowell, Alan OFF THE SHELF; Terrorism's Cost in a Global Economy - Review [6]NewYorkTimes.com. Retrieved on 2007-11-12
7. The Guardian, Special Report Security and Terrorism Rapid rise of the economy of terror- Article [7] Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved on 2007-11-12
8. Dateline, Loretta Napoleoni Interview[8] SBS.com.au. Retrieved on 2007-11-15
9. Four Corners, Loretta Napoleoni Interview[9] ABC.net.au. Retrieved on 2007-11-15

External Links

• Loretta Napoleoni website
• Democracy Now! Loretta Napoleoni interview (03/2008)
• Democracy Now! Loretta Napoleoni interview (11/2005)

============================

THE MATRIX

MUST LISTEN:

http://http.dvlabs.com/radio4all/ug/ug87-hour1mix.mp3

http://http.dvlabs.com/radio4all/ug/ug87-hour2mix.mp3

Two downloads. Incredible. Highly recommend.

www.radio4all.net/index.php
Program Information
Unwelcome Guests: #87 - The Red Pill
Series: Unwelcome Guests
Subtitle: Consenus Illusion and World Domination
Program Type: Regular Show
Featured Speakers/Commentators: Richard K Moore, John McMurtry, John Stauber
Producer: Unwelcome Guests Collective
Broadcast Restictions: For non-profit use only.
Summary:
Credits: Producer: Unwelcome Guests Collective unwelcome@radio4all.net
Uploaded by: outfarpress@saber.net

Notes: A recent science fiction movie called the Matrix is set in a future world where humanity lies sleeping in a drug-induced collective illusion, connected to a monstrous machine that's sucking the life out of them while they dream that they are free people living out real lives. The hero of the film begins to wake and see through the illusion, and, he finds others who are also waking. He is told that he may return to his fairly pleasant dreams by taking a blue pill, or take a red pill and face the unvarnished truth. Tonights program will address our collective social illusions and make the case we are in fact already the sleeping subjects of a totalitarian one-world government that views our lives much the way that we view batteries in a flashlight - use them while they work, trash them when expended.


=============================================

The metaphor of the red pill, borrowed from the Warner Brother’s film, The Matrix, refers to waking up from illusion – suddenly realizing that everything is quite different than how you always thought it was.

Each chapter of this book offers its own red pill. Our civilization is based on a great many illusions, and each chapter attempts to dispel one of these, peeling one more layer from the onion of deception. Below is a brief description of each chapter’s red pill.

---

The Matrix

The consensus reality that we see portrayed on television and in school history books is a fabricated illusion. The lies of politicians are repeated in the media and then become the basis of histories, the fabric of the Matrix. The war in Iraq provides an excellent current example: in the Matrix we read about bringing democracy to the Iraqis while in reality the US is seizing control of petroleum resources and establishing a permanent military outpost in the Middle East.

A brief history of humanity

The history we are taught in school is not the story of humanity, but rather the story of hierarchical civilizations. Our species has been fully human for about 100,000 years, and only the last 10% of that – a brief episode for our species – has been characterized by hierarchy and centralized governance. We are presented with the Hobbesian myth that early humans lived a short and brutal life, and the Social Darwinist myth that our evolution has been driven by dog-eat-dog competition. In reality, early societies were highly cooperative and egalitarian. Civilization is not a reflection of human nature, but is rather a system of domination and exploitation by ruling elites. We are like animals in cages: our behavior under these stressful conditions is not representative of our nature, just as the pacing of a caged cheetah does not represent the natural behavior of that beautiful animal.

We the People and the Transformational Imperative

The source of our crisis is the dominator culture itself. Environmental collapse and capitalism are merely the terminal symptoms of a chronic cancer, a cancer that has plagued us for six thousand years. We need a culture based on mutual understanding and cooperation rather than on war and conquest, a culture based on common sense rather than dysfunctional doctrine, on respect for life rather than the pursuit of profit, and on democracy in place of elite rule. After six thousand years of domestication, we sheep must finally cast aside our illusions, recognize our condition, and reclaim our identity as free human beings. In reclaiming our identities we will also be redefining our cultures. There is no one out there, no actor on the stage of society, who can or will bring about the radical transformation required to save humanity and the world – no one that is except We the People. There is no one else who will do it for us, and it is a job that must be done. This is our Transformational Imperative.

Our Harmonization Imperative

Our societies and political systems are characterized by competition and struggle among cultural factions and political parties. When we try to change this system by forming adversarial political movements we are playing into this game – a game rigged so that elites always win. If we really want to change the system, we need to learn how to come together as humans, moving beyond the ideological structures that have been created to divide us from one another. We are all in this together, and a better world for one is a better world for all. It’s not about winning, nor really even about agreement: it’s about working together in pursuit of our common interests.

The dynamics of harmonization

Our usual models of discussion and deliberation reflect the adversarial nature of our society generally. We argue for our position over the other position: one side wins, the other loses, or we settle for a compromise – and the underlying conflicts remain unresolved. Harmonization is about a different kind of dialog, based on respectful listening, and aimed at developing solutions that take into account everyone’s concerns. This kind of dialog can be readily facilitated in any group of people, and it is an ancient human tradition, capable of transforming conflict into creative synergy. We the People are capable of working together wisely and harmoniously.

Jim Rough’s media page provides inspiring audio and video material that illustrate harmonization processes in action, in the form of Wisdom Councils.

Envisioning a transformational movement

Harmonization provides the means by which we can overcome our differences and find our common identity as We the People. If we pursue harmonization in our local communities, on an all-inclusive basis, we can create islands of grassroots empowerment – of direct democracy – within our existing societies. Harmonization can become the basis of a community empowerment movement, transforming our adversarial cultures into cooperative cultures. When We the People have woken up on a society-wide basis, we will be in a position to transform our societies, replacing elite rule with grassroots democracy, based on the principles of harmonization and mutual-benefit exchange.

Envisioning a liberated global society

The core principles of a democratic society are local sovereignty and harmonization. Only at the local level is it possible for everyone’s voice to be heard, and harmonization is the means by which those voices can develop a consensus agenda. The residents of a local community share a common interest in the local quality of life, and are in the best position to manage their resources and economies wisely. Large scale issues and operations can be worked out by delegations from local constituencies, meeting together to harmonize their various agendas and concerns. There is no need for centralized governments, corporations, or institutions, which inevitably become vehicles for the usurpation of power by would-be ruling cliques.

The transition process

Political sovereignty is meaningless unless it also includes dominion over resources and economic affairs. In our transition to a democratic society, one of the first steps will be for each community to repossess its commons – assuming ownership of all land, resources, buildings, and infrastructures that are currently controlled by absentee landlords, banks, corporations, and government agencies. Under the control of local communities and workers, conversion plans can be worked out, gradually repurposing existing facilities toward sensible and sustainable uses. We can expect considerable variety in local economic practices – ranging from communal operations to market economies – as determined by local cultural traditions and the democratic process.

Reflections on humanity’s future

Which comes first, personal transformation or social transformation? This question, often debated, turns out to be much like the question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” That is to say, the question cannot be answered in its own terms. Humans are above all a social species, and it should not be surprising to realize that personal transformation and social transformation can be most readily achieved together. To a considerable extent, existing paths of enlightenment must begin with a rehabilitation of the individual, helping them find their own center in the midst of an oppressive and stressful society. When we create societies that liberate our spirits and involve us in our own governance, the path to enlightenment will be a much easier one.

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