Owl: China Swamps US Across the Board – Made in China Computer Chips Have Back Doors, 45 Other “Ways & Means” Sucking Blood from US

02 China, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military
Who? Who?

Two Ways the Chinese May Take Over the World and the US:

1) Chinese Stuxnet for the Rest of the World

If what this analyst says is true, it paints a truly astonishing in implication and very, very ugly picture of the national security situation in store for most governments – especially in the US:

Hardware Assurance and its importance to National Security

Current issues. UK officials are fearful that China has the capability to shut down businesses, military and critical infrastructure through cyber attacks and spy equipment embedded in computer and telecommunications equipment. The Stuxnet worm is the most famous and best case example of a cyber attack on a network which wreaked devastation having easily compromised conventional software defensive systems. There have been many cases of computer hardware having backdoors, Trojans or other programs to allow an attacker to gain access or transmit confidential data to a third party. Considerable focus and expense has been invested in software computer networks and system defences to detect and eradicate such threats. However, similar technology with antivirus or anti Trojan capability for hardware (silicon chips) is not available. The computer or network hardware underpins and runs all the software defence systems. If the hardware has a vulnerability then all the energy in defending at the software level is redundant. An effort must be made to defend and detect at the hardware level for a more comprehensive strategy.

Our findings. Claims were made by the intelligence agencies around the world, from MI5, NSA and IARPA, that silicon chips could be infected. We developed breakthrough silicon chip scanning technology to investigate these claims.

We chose an American military chip that is highly secure with sophisticated encryption standard, manufactured in China. Our aim was to perform advanced code breaking and to see if there were any unexpected features on the chip.

We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key. This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure.

Read full article.

2) 45 Signs That China Is Colonizing America

Continue reading “Owl: China Swamps US Across the Board – Made in China Computer Chips Have Back Doors, 45 Other “Ways & Means” Sucking Blood from US”

Koko: Canadian Tar Sands Up Close and Personal

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government
Koko

Koko sad.

The Canadian Oil Sand Mines Refused Us Access, So We Rented This Plane To See What They Were Up To

Robert Johnson

Business Insider, 18 May 2012

When reaching out to Alberta oil sands companies before a trip to Canada last month, I thought all of them mined oil the same way — they don't.The open mining most people think of when they picture the oil sands is just one way of extracting crude from the ground, but it is without a doubt the most dramatic. And we had to see it.

Check out the pictures >

After being refused a mine tour and any type of access to a mining site or equipment, Business Insider rented a plane that I used to see everything I could of the mines on my own.

Restricted to flying no lower than 1,000 feet above the ground, I spent nearly two hours leaning out the window of a small Cessna 172 with a long lens, snapping pictures and trying to keep warm.

The oil sands hold up to two trillion barrels of oil spread over more than 54,000 square miles, making it the second largest oil deposit in the world after Saudi Arabia.

The amount of energy spent recovering that oil and the pollution created in refining it is immense and the impact on the environment profound.

Check out the pictures >

Chuck Spinney: Gar Alperovitz on Rise of the New Economy Movement

Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Knowledge
By Gar Alperovitz, AlterNet, 23 May 12

rsn-A.jpgs our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly sweeping away outmoded economic models. In ‘New Economic Visions', a special five-part AlterNet series edited by Economics Editor Lynn Parramore in partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting ideas and projects that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of the movement that could take our economy back.em>

Just beneath the surface of traditional media attention, something vital has been gathering force and is about to explode into public consciousness. The “New Economy Movement” is a far-ranging coming together of organizations, projects, activists, theorists and ordinary citizens committed to rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.

The broad goal is democratized ownership of the economy for the “99 percent” in an ecologically sustainable and participatory community-building fashion. The name of the game is practical work in the here and now-and a hands-on process that is also informed by big picture theory and in-depth knowledge.

Thousands of real world projects — from solar-powered businesses to worker-owned cooperatives and state-owned banks — are underway across the country. Many are self-consciously understood as attempts to develop working prototypes in state and local “laboratories of democracy” that may be applied at regional and national scale when the right political moment occurs.

The movement includes young and old, “Occupy” people, student activists, and what one older participant describes as thousands of “people in their 60s from the '60s” rolling up their sleeves to apply some of the lessons of an earlier movement.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Gar Alperovitz on Rise of the New Economy Movement”

Eagle: 100 Million Americans Without Jobs

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, General Accountability Office, Government, Office of Management and Budget
300 Million Talons...

100 Million Americans Without Jobs

by Gekko

The national unemployment rate gets lots of attention, and lately more attention has been paid to the workforce participation rate since more Americans have given up looking for a job, but we can also see that an astounding 100 million Americans don’t have jobs.

Specifically, these are people who are part of the civilian over-16 non-institutional population who are either unemployed or not part of the workforce. According to the April jobs report, the number of jobless American stood at 100.9 million.

That’s an all-time record and it’s an increase of 26.2 million over the last 12 years. It’s as if we absorbed the entire adult population of Canada and not a single person had a job.

The numbers are staggering. The jobs-to-population ratio peaked 12 years ago. If we were to have the same ratio today, we would need 15.3 million more jobs, or 23.7 million fewer people.

(Note: The chart above is the Civilian Over-16 Non-Institutional Population minus the seasonally adjusted Civilian Workforce.)

Source

Phi Beta Iota:  As a number, that is almost precisely half the eligible voters in the USA.

Josh Kilbourn: Unemployed College Graduates – Trending Ugly

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, General Accountability Office, Government, Office of Management and Budget
Josh Kilbourn

The Benefits Of A College Education

Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge, 05/21/2012

… Are what again? As the following graphic from IBD demonstrates, for the first time in history, a majority of jobless workers over 25 have attended some college, and now outnumber those without a job who simply have a high school diploma or less. But at least those in the fomer category have tens of thousands of non-dischargeable debt to show for it.

Click on Image to Enlarge

.. Are what again? As the following graphic from IBD demonstrates, for the first time in history, a majority of jobless workers over 25 have attended some college, and now outnumber those without a job who simply have a high school diploma or less. But at least those in the fomer category have tens of thousands of non-dischargeable debt to show for it.

Read full article.

Reference: Warren Pollock and Reinhardt of Enterprise Corruption

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

Newsletter writer “Reinhardt” joins me for his first public appearance anywhere. Concerned with the Enron debacle, Reinhardt discovered a repeated pattern of industrial and political corruption over history that applies to critical issues of today.

Starting in 1993, Reinhardt began a person business journal. Its was a journal of things that just did not seem right in the world of high finance. In the process of keeping a journal he learned what to pay attention to and why to pay attention to it. He looked at media, political, and business propaganda from a different perspective. He noticed which events got the most airtime were never the most important. It was always the under-reported events which were most important.” Reinhard thew away his history books as he studied booms and busts going as far back as 4000 BC. Reinhardt has applied that knowledge and critical thinking approach to his ongoing analysis of current events.

Enterprise Corruption  http://www.enterprisecorruption.com/

Important points covered.

Enron  .  Tyco  .  2008 Market Crash  .  Military movement provide cheap labor for trade routes  .  Dutch Settlement Scheme  .  Emmegration  .  Special Interest  .  Long View  .  Critical Thinking  .  Overview  .   modern silk road  .  northern distribution network  .  world trade  .  military use of trade routes  .  military industrial complex  .  corporate imperative  .  Afghanistan  .  US military  .  war  .  The fallacy of Adam Smith  .  the fallacy of ideology  .  the fallacy of free markets  .  government involvement in industry  .  trends in labor value  .  dutch east india company  .  socialism communism  .  divide and conquer  .  totalitarianism in our fascist regime  .  think tanks  .  loss of control

Phi Beta Iota:  An extraordinary contribution by Warren Pollock and his guest “Reinhardt” of Newsweek.  Tip of the Hat to Josh Kilbourn for the pointer.

See Also:

George Soros Nails It: Intelligence with Integrity

John C. Bogle, Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

W. Cleon Skoussen,  The Naked Capitalist

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

Paul Craig Roberts: Recovery or Collapse? I’m Betting Collapse

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Paul Craig Roberts

Recovery or Collapse? Bet on Collapse

May 20, 2012

The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.

In the US the police have proven themselves to be a greater threat to public safety than private sector criminals. I just googled “police brutality” and up came 183,000,000 results. (Here are two recent brutal assaults, one deadly, by police on hapless individuals: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/kelly-thomas-video-dad-they-are-killing-me-.html and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31364.htm )

The cost to society of the private financial system is even higher. Writing in CounterPunch (May 18), Rob Urie reports that two years ago Andrew Haldane, executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England (the UK’s version of the Federal Reserve) said that the financial crisis, now four years old, will in the end cost the world economy between $60 trillion and $200 trillion in lost GDP. If Urie’s report is correct, this is an astonishing admission from a member of the ruling elite. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/18/the-true-costs-of-bank-crises/print

Try to get your mind around these figures. The US GDP, the largest in the world, is about 15 trillion. What Haldane is telling us is that the financial crisis will end up costing the world lost real income between 4 and 13 times the size of the current Gross Domestic Product of the United States. This could turn out to be an optimistic forecast.

In the end, the financial crisis could destroy Western civilization.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: Recovery or Collapse? I'm Betting Collapse”

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