“In a world where more than half of the population – that is, more than 3 billion people – live along river courses shared by two states or more, and where many of the big world players – such as the USA, China, India, Germany, France, Brasil, Turkey and Canada – are either upstream or downstream states in large international rivers… water as a geopolitical factor can hardly be exaggerated.”
-Roar Hagen, Graham Chapman & Terje Tvedt, Water, Geopolitics and Collective Power in the New World Order
By Catherine Austin Fitts
This week on The Solari Report I will be speaking to Terje Tvedt. I could not be more delighted that Tvedt has agreed to join us.
The power and importance of water to the question of how we govern our resources – whether in a community or globally – and how we achieve cooperation and peace, as Tvedt says, “can hardly be exaggerated.” Tvedt should know – he has spent a lifetime studying the social and political dynamics of water.
Terje Tvedt is presently professor at the Department of Geography, University of Bergen, and Professor in Global History, University of Oslo, Norway, as well as a professor in political science and development studies. He is the author of a wide range of books about water and water bodies, has written/co-directed documentary films and been the leader of a number of national and international research networks and research projects on these topics. His newest book, A Journey in the Future of Water, is expected this year.
In Let’s Go to the Movies, I will review Even the Rain, a Spanish film directed by Icíar Bollaín about a director and producer who travel to Bolivia to make a film about Christopher Columbus and instead are swept away by the 2000 Cochabamba protests. The protests reversed the privatization of the local water company with foreign investors and produced the Cochabamba Declaration. The experience of Cochabamba is a counterpoint to privatization supporters who believe that optimizing water investment and allocation requires corporate ownership and management. These strategic issues are critical to the efforts to centralize seed and agriculture that we discuss on The Solari Report.
I will start with Money & Markets and Ask Catherine, including the extraordinary shifts we are experiencing in G-7 policies re-engineering capital flows. We will record our interview with Tvedt on Wednesday – so post your questions on the blog for the interview by Tuesday pm.
Talk to you Thursday!
Related Reading:
The Water Channel
Terje Tvedt’s Website
Terje Tvedt’s Books
Related Documentaries:
Transcript of Coming Clean: My Water is Wonderful with Dan Hillard is now available to Subscribers!
From the transcript:
Dan Hillard: Yes, I am.
Catherine Austin Fitts: Well, thank you very much for joining us on The Solari Report. For years, we have gotten many questions on this and so we are delighted to finally have you to answer. Why don’t we start with you explaining what you do, what the company does, and why you do it?
By Wikipedia
Battle at Kruger is an eight-minute amateur wildlife video that depicts an unfolding confrontation between a herd of Cape buffalo, a small pride of lions, and one or two crocodiles. The video was shot in September 2004 at the Transport Dam watering hole in Kruger National Park, South Africa, during a safari guided by Frank Watts. It was filmed by videographer David Budzinski and photographer Jason Schlosberg.
By Heather Callaghan
No, this is not a tabloid – it’s real. According to the latest video, which has now been posted below, robotic insects have made their first controlled flight. According to the creators of Robobee:
The demonstration of the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot is the culmination of more than a decade’s work… Half the size of a paperclip, weighing less than a tenth of a gram, the robot was inspired by the biology of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap almost invisibly, 120 times per second.
By Catherine Austin Fitts
There are no scandals in Washington. There is simply a turnover. We are preparing for an escalation of the global financial war. The old team are simply being told to step aside. Make way for the killers.
When G-7 concluded their emergency meeting in London last weekend, they announced that they were going to target tax havens. What does this mean? After months of G-7 central banks buying mortgage bonds and equities, the hunt for capital is on. Off course, we knew the tax havens were in the crosshairs all ready – only intelligence agencies can dump out the kind of leaks we have been seeing over the last month leading up to the G-7 meeting.
However, the seriousness of the capital moves underway were underscored by the swiftness with which a “scandal” was trumped up and ready to go at the IRS with headlines on Monday morning, the leadership was out on Wednesday, and a new acting from OMB in at the IRS on Thursday. Wonder who the new Commissioner will be? That is being sorted out now. It will be someone masterful at legal warfare – “lawfare.”
A serious attack on the offshore havens, sufficient to direct $20-30 trillion in the direction that the G-7 wish it to go will also require the right kind of leadership at DOJ. Yes, Holder is certainly willing to play ball – he has done a perfectly adequate job supplying guns to the Mexican drug cartels and beating up on the Swiss. However, someone with international experience who is a lot meaner and trusted in certain Congressional quarters is preferred. After all, asserting jurisdiction over $32 trillion is one amazing squabble.
Remember, whatever equity markets get that capital will have their P/E’s head up, which means they can go buy up everyone whose stock is trading in the markets that don’t get the capital. Backed by the capital accessed through the financial coup d’etat, think of the acquisition binge that is coming.
And of course, there will be more taxes to keep government operations and corporate profits rolling. And the central banks will get some relief. The ballooning of their balance sheets has become more than uncomfortable.
So expect the drums to pound on about AP Reporters and various trumped up malfeasance until Holder is out. Holder has targeted others in this way for Mr. Global. Now it is his turn to head into the dog house.
We could see the seriousness of the new capital drive – both in what rolled out this week in Washington and the speed at which it rolled out. There is far more underway than just the targeting of tax havens.
Time Magazine published a trial balloon saying that the federal government will require mandatory retirement accounts. If true, this is surely good for billions more into the securities markets over the next decade (More Here). I would say trillions, but the middle class and small businesses that will fund it are already going to be squeezed trying to fund Obamacare.
Then the House passed a bill requiring the SEC to promulgate the regulations for the JOBs Act by October 31st. Mark my word, crowdfunding envisioned by the JOBs Act will be designed to kickstart a new bull in the US equity markets, just like first time homebuyers kickstart the housing market. No doubt, lots of entreprenuers funded with crowdfunding may pay off their student loans and buy their first home as well (More Here).
Then Google announced we could all e-mail money from your Google wallet by simply clicking the dollar sign in our gmail. (More Here) Imagine what this functionality could do for crowdfunding portals. Add entrainment technology, and the estimate of $3 billion in crowdfunding flows in the first year (More Here) will be way too conservative.
If a serious attack on the tax havens is in the works, the moves of capital will be unprecedented. The question of global uninsured deposits could be an ongoing drama – perhaps explaining the enormous shifts of precious metals out of the ETFs and the improvement in the real estate markets. Someone is looking to get out of insecure bank deposits and into tangibles. However, imagine what could happen if numerous jurisdictions are forced to sell their precious metals the way that Cyprus was. We are now in a world where all asset classes can take turns in the dog house – and they can do so at lightening speed with little warning.
The G-7 is extending and tightening up their jurisdiction. They are planning very significant shifts. This is BIG.
Let’s see what unfolds this coming week. As I did last week, I will focus on these events in Money & Markets on Thursday’s Solari Report.
Related Reading:
Might Obama Fire Attorney General Eric Holder?
Senate Investigators: Apple Sheltered $44 Billion From Taxes
By Dark Journalist
Join Dark Journalist for a penetrating interview with financial and political expert Catherine Austin Fitts. Listen to interesting topics like the financial coup, black budget, corporate media manipulation and the ‘Breakaway Civilization.’
By Will Shanklin
Gmail lets you send all kinds of files as attachments. And Google Wallet lets you pay for just about anything. Why not combine the two? That could have been the thinking by someone at Google, as the search giant is set to launch a payment system that’s the love child of Gmail and Google Wallet.
Solari Stories – Losers Make the Pie Bigger