Fears of counterfeit $50 and $100 bills have disrupted foreign-exchange trade at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, the nation’s largest currency trading gray market.

According to the state-run Anadolu Agency, some bureaus at the bazaar, a hub for currency trading, stopped purchasing the bills, saying the counting machines they use can’t identify the fake notes.

“The number of counterfeit dollars isn’t clear,” Anadolu cited Resat Yilmaz, a tradesman at the Bazaar, as saying. “These bills have to be collected, which can take two weeks.” Money-counting machines also have to be updated, he added.

A representative for currency traders said the disruption has no basis and “there’s no fake currency” in circulation. He blamed banks for what he said was a “clogging” of trading.

“Banks should accept old dollar bills. Currently, no bank is doing that,” Mehti Seren, head of the Association of All Authorized Institutions and Foreign Exchange Offices, said in a press conference. “Clients are then returning the dollars to us. That’s what’s clogging the system.”

The central bank said it’s sent warnings and expert opinions about the fake bills to banking associations.

“The necessary guidance on precautions to be taken regarding the technological infrastructure has been made,” the bank said in a statement. Bill counters, bill checkers and teller machines are being controlled and updated, the Turkish Banks Association said in a separate statement.

The prosecutor’s office in Istanbul launched an investigation, Anadolu said. The counterfeit bills entered Turkey from abroad, Haberturk reported, citing sources it didn’t identify.

Authored by Lawrence Reed From the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE),

Editor’s note: Marianna Davidovich, head of external relations at FEE, recently published a booklet titled “The Buried Stories of Communism & Socialism.” The following essay by FEE’s president emeritus, Lawrence W. Reed, appears in it as the Afterword.

In this volume, Marianna Davidovich vividly recounts the world’s horrific experiences with the evil of communism. It’s a ghastly record, littered with the bodies of a hundred million victims and the lost liberties of hundreds of millions more. No one should have ever expected otherwise; even the founder of modern communist ideology, Karl Marx, advocated extreme violence as a necessary ingredient in the communist formula.

What the world refers to as “communist” countries—such as the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba, and others Marianna discusses—would not be labeled as such by Karl Marx himself. He postulated that communism would be the end game of all history and would be characterized by government “withering away” after a period of socialism and its brutal “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

So, what we widely refer to as communist countries are, according to both Marx and the governments of those very countries themselves, socialist. None of them called themselves communist; all of them proudly adopted the socialist label. The full name of the old Soviet Union, for example, was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Marx’s prediction that socialist dictatorships would eventually dissolve into government-less, communist utopias was embraced by pseudo-intellectuals as some sort of messianic prophecy. But how could Marx know the future of his own country, let alone that of others? Was he a palm reader? Did he use tarot cards, a crystal ball, or a Ouija board? Or did God (in whom he didn’t believe) generously gift him with visionary powers that no one else has?

Of course, none of those things apply here. Marx was no fortune-teller. He was a charlatan, an angry and nasty scribbler with vile, racist, and anti-Semitic tendencies. He mooched off others all his life. As British historian Paul Johnson explained in his book, “Intellectuals,” Marx was cruel to his own family. He yearned for the violence his predicted socialist dictatorships would produce. Hardly anyone showed up for his funeral.

Marx’s notion that under communism, government would “wither away” was always a nonsensical non-starter. He never explained how or why that would occur. What would possibly prompt dictators with absolute power to one day just walk away from it? That’s more like a dumb fairy tale than a prophecy.

Now that Marianna has provided the awful details of death and destruction in the countries influenced by Marx’s teaching, the big remaining question is WHY? Why does socialism so naturally produce mayhem on an industrial scale?

Wait a minute, you ask.

What about the peaceful “democratic socialism” of Scandinavia

Scandinavian countries are not socialist. They have no minimum wage laws, almost no interference with prices and the market forces of supply and demand. They have lower taxes on business and more school choice than the United States. They boast trade-based, globalized economies, and few if any nationalized industries.

The prime minister of Denmark recently declared, “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.” The Index of Economic Freedom ranks Denmark, Norway, and Sweden as among the freest (most capitalist) in the world.

It’s true that after World War II, Scandinavian countries stumbled into generous welfare states, but being no more than a welfare state is not by itself dictionary socialism. More to the point, those nations eventually turned away from even that—cutting taxes and spending and reviving private sector entrepreneurship. Margaret Thatcher forced the same changes in Britain when, by the late 1970s, her country’s welfare state turned Britain into “the sick man of Europe.”

When countries adopt a blend of socialism and capitalism—a formula once termed “the middle way”—socialists claim credit for progress real or imagined. But repeatedly, such situations reveal that most if not all the “progress” such places achieve is not because of the socialism they’ve adopted, but because of the capitalism they haven’t yet destroyed. Capitalism produces wealth (even Marx admitted to that), whereas socialism and socialists simply confiscate and redistribute it.

Back to the central question: Why does socialism so naturally produce mayhem on an industrial scale?

One very big reason is its accumulation and centralization of power, the most toxic motivation in human history. The desire to dominate and control, to plan other people’s lives, to push others around and take their stuff, to monopolize one corner of society after another—all these elements of a “power trip” are part and parcel of the socialist vision.

But socialism promises to help the poor and the needy, you say! Well, of course, it promises such things. How far would it get if its advocates told the truth? Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, etc. all proclaimed “solidarity with the people,” especially the poor. They never honestly declared, “Give us power, and we will crush dissent and throw you to the dogs for opposing our plans!”

Socialism is rightly and widely perceived as diametrically opposed to capitalism. So, it can’t possibly be defined as acts of caring, sharing, giving, and being compassionate toward the needy. There is demonstrably more caring, sharing, giving, and compassion toward the needy under capitalism!

Even when it comes to most foreign aid, capitalist countries are the donors and socialist countries are the recipients. You can’t give it away or share it with anybody if you don’t create it in the first place, and socialism offers utterly no theory of wealth creation, only wealth confiscation and consumption.

Note that socialists do not propose to accomplish their objectives by mutual consent. They do not advocate raising the money for their plans by way of bake sales or charitable solicitations. Your participation is not voluntary. From start to finish, socialism’s defining characteristic is not so much the promises meant to beguile but rather, the method by which it implements its agenda—FORCE. If it’s voluntary, it’s not socialism. It’s that simple.

In theory, practice, and outcome, socialism is profoundly anti-social. Here’s why:

1. The plans of socialists are more important than yours. Why? Because they say so. Isn’t that reason enough? “The more the State plans,” wrote Austrian economist F. A. Hayek, “the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” But socialists don’t care about that because what they have in mind is surely more noble than anything us peasants are thinking. Socialism is profoundly anti-individual because it seeks to homogenize people in a giant, collectivist blender.

2. Socialists are know-it-alls and know-nothings, simultaneously. This is a remarkable achievement, perhaps socialism’s singular contribution to sociology. Even if a socialist’s own life is a mess, he still knows how to run everybody else’s. Even if he doesn’t believe there’s a God, he thinks the State can be one. F. A. Hayek nailed it when he wrote, “The curious task of economics is to convince men of how little they know about what they imagine they can design.”

3. Socialism rejects biological science. No climate-change denier denies that climate exists. But socialists claim that if there’s such a thing as human nature, they can abolish and reinvent it. Humans are individuals, with no two alike in every way, but socialists believe they can homogenize and collectivize us into an obedient blob. It doesn’t bother them to punish individual success and achievement even if the result is equal impoverishment. They believe that human beings will work harder and smarter for the State than they will for themselves or their families. This is much closer to witchcraft than science.

4. Socialists call the cops for everything. Have you ever noticed that the socialist agenda is not a page of helpful suggestions, or a list of tips for better living? When they’re in charge, you don’t get to say, “No, thanks.” Freedom of choice? No, sir! Socialist ideas are so good, the old saying goes, that they must be mandatory and opposing views must be censored. Deep inside every socialist, even the naïve but well-meaning ones, a totalitarian demon is struggling to get out. This is what socialists eventually do with such monotonous regularity that you can absolutely count on it.

5. Socialism is more than anti-capitalism. It’s anti-capital. In his remarkable book, “Intellectuals,” British historian Paul Johnson penned a blistering chapter about Karl Marx. Johnson quotes Marx’s own mother as famously remarking that she wished her son Karl “would accumulate some capital instead of just writing about it.” Mrs. Marx was on to something. Karl and his acolytes, to one degree or another, make war on the single most powerful generator of the material wealth that improves the lives of people—namely, private property and its accumulation by private, profit-seeking individuals who invest and create and employ. Wherever such lunacy gains power, it marches its subjects backward towards the Stone Age.

6. Conflict is their God. From Marx to socialists of the present day, conflict is everything.If it’s not present, they will invent it. After all, everyone is either a victim or a villain, an oppressor or part of the oppressed. Conflict is the way history unfolds, so they tell us. And like palm readers and tarot card practitioners, they declare the future to be on their side. This always-angry perspective rules out a spirit of gratitude, especially toward capitalists. Socialists never show up at a business of any size with signs exclaiming “Thank you for taking risks, providing products and employing people.”

One of the greatest economists ever, Ludwig von Mises, wrote this eloquent summation:

A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

Communism as envisioned by its intellectual father Karl Marx is an unachievable and undesirable fantasy. In the real world, efforts to realize Marx’s delusions are simply full-blown, unadulterated socialism. And that’s the cyanide that both Mises and Marianna are warning us about.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must–at that moment–become the center of the universe.”

– Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Speech

Once again we find ourselves approaching that time of year when, as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, we’re supposed to give thanks as a nation and as individuals for our safety and our freedoms.

But how do you give thanks for freedoms that are constantly being eroded?

How do you express gratitude for one’s safety when the perils posed by the American police state grow more treacherous by the day?

How do you come together as a nation in thanksgiving when the powers-that-be continue to polarize and divide us into warring factions?

You can see this struggle—to reconcile the hope for a better, freer, more just world with the soul-sucking reality of a world in which greed, meanness and war continue to triumph—in John Lennon’s two songs, “Imagine” (which exhorted us to “Imagine all the people livin’ life in peace”) and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” (which was part of a major anti-war campaign, which were released within months of each other in 1971.

Lennon—a musical genius, anti-war activist, and a high-profile example of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority—made clear that the only way to achieve an end to hunger, violence, war, and tyranny is to want it badly enough and work towards it.

All these years later, we still don’t seem to want those things badly enough.

Peace remains out of reach. Activists and whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives.

For those of us who joined with Lennon to imagine a world of peace, it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the reality of the American police state.

Those who do dare to speak up about government corruption are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and tagged for surveillance, censorship or involuntary detention.

And then there are those who remain silent while the world falls apart.

By doing nothing, the onlookers become as guilty as the perpetrator.

It works the same whether you’re talking about kids watching bullies torment a fellow student on a playground, passersby watching someone dying on a sidewalk, or citizens remaining silent in the face of government atrocities.

There’s a term for this phenomenon where people stand by, watch and do nothing—even when there is no risk to their safety—while some horrific act takes place: it’s called the bystander effect.

Historically, this bystander syndrome in which people remain silent and disengaged—mere onlookers—in the face of abject horrors and injustice has resulted in whole populations being conditioned to tolerate unspoken cruelty toward their fellow human beings: the crucifixion and slaughter of innocents by the Romans, the torture of the Inquisition, the atrocities of the Nazis, the butchery of the Fascists, the bloodshed by the Communists, and the cold-blooded war machines run by the military industrial complex.

Psychological researchers John Darley and Bibb Latane mounted a series of experiments to discover why people respond with apathy or indifference instead of intervening.

According to Darley and Latane, there are two critical factors that contribute to this moral lassitude. First, there’s the problem of pluralistic ignorance in which individuals in a group look to others to determine how to respond. Second, there’s the problem of “diffusion of responsibility,” which is compounded by pluralistic ignorance. Basically, this means that no one acts to intervene or help because each person is waiting for someone else to do so.

Their findings underscore the fact that evil prevails when good people do nothing.

We see it all the time: when people are vocal about politics but silent in the face of human suffering and injustice, tyranny triumphs.

For instance, psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment studied the impact of perceived power and authority on middleclass students who were assigned to act as prisoners and prison guards. The experiment revealed that power does indeed corrupt (the appointed guards became increasingly abusive), and those who were relegated to being prisoners acted increasingly “submissive and depersonalized, taking the abuse and saying little in protest.”

This is how imperial presidents preside over police states.

So, what can we do? Be modern-day Good Samaritans and do your part to push back against the darkness. Recognize injustice. Don’t turn away from suffering. Refuse to remain silent. Take a stand. Speak up. Speak out.

“If you think there is even a possibility that someone needs help, act on it,” advises Zimbardo.  “You may save a life. You are the modern version of the Good Samaritan that makes the world a better place for all of us.”

This is what Zimbardo refers to as “the power of one.” All it takes is one person breaking away from the fold to change the dynamics of a situation.

Here’s what I suggest: this holiday season, do yourselves a favor and turn off the talking heads, shut down the screen devices, tune out the politicians, take a deep breath, then do something to pay your blessings forward.

Find something to be thankful for about the things and people in your community for which you might have the least tolerance or appreciation. Instead of just rattling off a list of things you’re thankful for that sound good, dig a little deeper and acknowledge the good in those you may have underappreciated or feared.

When it comes time to giving thanks for your good fortune, put your gratitude into action: pay your blessings forward with deeds that spread a little kindness, lighten someone’s burden, and brighten some dark corner.

Engage in acts of kindness. Smile more. Fight less. Build bridges. Refuse to let toxic politics define your relationships. Focus on the things that unite instead of that which divides.

Do your part to push back against the meanness of our culture with conscious compassion and humanity. Moods are contagious, the good and the bad. They can be passed from person to person. So can the actions associated with those moods, the good and the bad.

Acts of benevolence, no matter how inconsequential they might seem, can spark a movement.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all it takes is one person to start a chain reaction.

For instance, a few years ago in Florida, a family of six—four adults and two young boys—were swept out to sea by a powerful rip current in Panama City Beach. There was no lifeguard on duty. The police were standing by, waiting for a rescue boat. And the few people who had tried to help ended up stranded, as well.

Those on shore grouped together and formed a human chain. What started with five volunteers grew to 15, then 80 people, some of whom couldn’t swim.

One by one, they linked hands and stretched as far as their chain would go. The strongest of the volunteers swam out beyond the chain and began passing the stranded victims of the rip current down the chain.

One by one, they rescued those in trouble and pulled each other in.

There’s a moral here for what needs to happen in this country if we only can band together and prevail against the riptides that threaten to overwhelm us.