Commerce – Page 313 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/05/302011/05/30

Why the U.S. Should ‘Give’ Af-Pak to China

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

Worth a look — even if only the first paragraph.

The New Rules: Why the U.S. Should ‘Give' Af-Pak to China

Thomas P.M. Barnett | Bio | 30 May 2011
Column

Nuclear Pakistan, we are often told, is the Islamic-state equivalent of a Wall Street firm: In geostrategic terms, it is too big to fail. That explains why, even as the Obama administration begins preparing for modest troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this July, it dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad last week to smooth over bilateral relations with Pakistan's paranoid regime, which were strained even before the killing of Osama bin Laden. But Clinton's trip and the Obama administration's instinctive embrace of Islamabad is a fool's errand, doomed by history, geography and globalization itself.

In fact, the U.S. should drop the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan mess in China's lap now, while the getting is good, and here are the reasons why: …

Phi Beta Iota: World Politics Review has not figured out the new world of information quite yet, and we have no desire to copy their entire article. Suffice to say that Barnett, who has gotten much more coherent since his first book, is on target here, but add to that that the US Government's foreign policy is both ideological and idiotic — apart from the huge error by Zbigniew Brzezinski giving Pakistan the nuclear bomb in the first place, the US has no business in Central Asia that is of benefit to the American people, only to the American carpet-baggers that feed at the public treasury (now much depleted and greatly in debt) while looting foreign countries.

2011/05/302011/05/30

Robyn O’Brien’s Tedx Talk: Food’s Erin Brockovich — Allergy Kids/health care costs/global competitiveness

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, 12 Water, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence

Robyn O¹Brien lives in the Boulder area. She is a fresh, inspiring and credible voice for the information/patterns she has assembled/synthesized about how our food ³industry² makes us sick (allergies, cancer, etc., etc.), raises our health care costs, weakens our global competitiveness, also etc. etc. and what we can do about it. And, she brings a deep level of compassion and wisdom to the task of transformation at hand. Kudos to Robyn….JS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA

Robyn O¹Brien shares her personal story and how it inspired her current path as a “Real Food” evangelist. Grounded in a successful Wall Street career that was more interested in food as good business than good-for-you, this mother of four was shaken awake by the dangerous allergic reaction of one of her children to a “typical” breakfast. Her mission to unearth the cause revealed more about the food industry than she could stomach, and impelled her to share her findings with others. Informative and inspiring.

Robyn authored The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It. A former Wall Street food industry analyst, Robyn brings insight, compassion and detailed analysis to her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of our children. She founded allergykidsfoundation.org and was named by Forbes as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter.” The New York Times has passionately described her as “Food's Erin Brockovich.”

Robyn O'Brien
www.allergykidsfoundation.org
http://www.robynobrien.com/

Phi Beta Iota: The industrialization of agriculture, and the corruption of government, have led to a complete ignorance of the “true cost” of bad food, not only in making children ill, but in consuming fuel, water, sweatshop labor, and enabling tax avoidance and the externalization of pollution costs to the public present and future. It bears mention that US Government regulation has totally trashed the emergent organic food movement in the USA, and there are only two sustainable agricultural models on the planet: the Amish in the USA, and the Cubans. The truth at any cost now lowers all other costs forever.

2011/05/27

American Sex Trade–Girls Next Door in Connecticut

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Law Enforcement

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door

Amy Fine Collins, Photo by Larry Fink

Vanity Fair, 24 May 2011

EXTRACT:

Natalie, the gems girl, says, “Prostitution and pimping—it’s never going to stop. Tricks—they should start from there. If no one’s buying girls, then the pimps can’t make money.” That, in fact, is exactly the theory behind the Sex Purchase Law in Sweden. As of 1999, johns are punished by up to six months’ imprisonment, traffickers are locked up for 2-to-10-year hits, and prostitutes are offered medical care, education, and housing. As a result, prostitution has been reduced by 50 percent in Sweden, and the purchase of sex, which is understood to be a human-rights abuse, has decreased by 75 percent. In contrast, Europol studies show, nations such as Holland and Australia, where prostitution has been legalized, have become lucrative, low-risk magnets for international sex-slave drivers and organized crime.

Superb detailed eight-screen story….

2011/05/272011/05/27

Looting Libya: Insider View of Reasons for War….

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence

The Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System

by Prof. Peter Dale Scott

Centre for Research on Globalization, 29 April 2011

EXTRACT:

As Ellen Brown has pointed out, first Iraq and then Libya decided to challenge the petrodollar system and stop selling all their oil for dollars, shortly before each country was attacked.

Continue reading “Looting Libya: Insider View of Reasons for War….”

2011/05/262011/05/26

QUESTION Wells Fargo–John G. Stumpf Especially

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

Just got fired from Wells Fargo. RE: the following email

So…here's what I wrote. It's missing a handy chart where it depicts the average Wells employee's hourly salary vs. the CEO's salary, but you get the gist.

Full disclosure, I had been working here for a few months and this was to be my last week. I wouldn't recommend anyone else do this, but I gotta admit, it felt damn good and maybe someone will step up and do something about it.

Good Morning All,

Last week a friend of mine was fired for sending an inappropriate email to pretty much the whole building. Despite the fact that it was harmless, accidental, and largely ignored message, she will now join the ranks of the unemployed. If she is your average unemployed Oregonian she will remain unemployed for at least 18 months and when/if she gets rehired somewhere it will be for less money than she was making here.

Now my friend was definitely in the wrong, and I’m not writing this email to argue her situation. However, in an attempt to hold our company to a similar standard consider the following:

We work for one of the largest financial institutions in the world, we are essential to its operations, yet economic security is completely at the mercy of its senior executives. They are squeezing our salaries, reducing our benefits, and lobbying our politicians to make it harder for us to improve our financial positions despite our contributions to Wells Fargo’s successes. It means more profits for them, but less choice, less freedom and more importantly, less money for us.

In 2010, our CEO, John G. Stumpf received $18,973,722 in total compensation. By comparison, the median worker made $33,190 in 2010. John G. Stumpf made 571 times the median worker's pay.

Tip of the Hat to George Donnelly at Facebook.

See Also:

Wells Fargo Standard Poverty Salaries

Forbes Profile

Phi Beta Iota: We note with interest that this executive is only 220th on the Forbes executive pay rankings. We hold the corporations blameless in one sense: they get to do this because the US Government has lost its integrity and has not been in the business of the public for decades, Grover Cleveland may have been the last truly honest holistic President. What that says about the American public is for reflection. At the same time, we point to William Greider's book Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country in which he discusses the documentations on how the financial industry (Mr. Stumpf's industry) inflated by 17 times base value while the “real” asset-based economy inflated by five times. This means that Mr. Stumpf and his colleagues cheated the US and global customers by 12 times….and for this, the government bails them out and nobody goes to jail. See also Matt Taibbi's Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.

2011/05/25

NIGHTWATCH: Pakistan-Chana & Gwadar Port

Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Military, Peace Intelligence

Pakistan-China: “We have asked our Chinese brothers to please build a naval base at Gwadar,” Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar, Pakistan's Defence Minister, told the Times.

However, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said that China is unaware of the proposal by Pakistan to build a naval port at the deep-water port of Gwadar. The issue was not discussed during Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani's visit to China last week, the spokesman said.

Comment: Defence Minister Mukhtar did not say when Pakistan asked the Chinese to build a base at Gwadar. In fact, construction of a naval facility has been part of the plans for Gwadar since the early 1990's.

Forty years ago, Gwadar, on the coast of Baluchistan Province and 47 miles east of the Iranian border, was a fishing village with a small port in a sheltered, deep water natural harbor with two bays. In the 1971 War, Pakistan Navy surface ships deployed from Karachi to Gwadar to avoid destruction by the Indian Navy.

Since 1993 Pakistani governments have worked to develop Gwadar as a planned, modern, deep water port and city, as well as a “sensitive defense zone.” The primary investors in the port, adjacent road and rail infrastructure and planned city of Gwadar have been China and the government of Pakistan. Construction on the highway link to Karachi and on the port began in 2002. The port was inaugurated officially in 2007 by General Musharraf. It received its first maritime ship, carrying a cargo of wheat from Canada, in 2008. The Port of Singapore Authority has the administration contract.

The 50-year master plan calls for Gwadar to develop into a major economic hub in the Arabian Sea for energy, oil tankers and deep-draft container shipping and ship building and to be the location of a main naval base for the Pakistan Navy. For China, Gwadar port will be one of three in the Indian Ocean that will have overland links to western or southwestern China that will enable it to avoid relying on the Straits of Malacca and Singapore for shipment of strategic raw materials. The other two are Chahbahar, Iran, and Kyauk Phyu, Burma.

In an interview broadcast on 24 May about the Karachi terrorist attack, Pakistan Chief of Naval Staff Admiral N. Bashir explained, “When the navy created the Karsaz Establishment in the Karsaz area, it was outside the city (Karachi). Now it has become a part of the city center. Similarly, when this base was established, the Faisal Town built up on the backside did not exist. I have been trying for the past three years to relocate from the area. The government has supported us on this. Our major naval base is under construction, far from Karachi…. We are aiming to minimize our presence in Karachi.”

The Admiral was referring to Gwadar. The Chinese are the primary builders of the port, so it is almost certain that they are building the naval base, though security considerations would prevent them from admitting it in public.

News reports over the weekend suggested that the Chinese were building a base for the Chinese navy. Those mischaracterized this long time project. Chinese naval ships will call at Gwadar when the base is complete, as they do at Karachi. However, the base will be a Pakistan Navy base.

Chinese involvement at Gwadar is not news, but it is part of a sophisticated, long term strategic plan.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: While the US Government antagonizes Pakistan and fails in Afghanistan, China in Pakistan (and Iran and Turkey elsewhere) are steadily making substantive gains by waging peace with construction. They are a study in 21st Century strategic sensibility grounded in reality–the USG (not to be confused with the US public) is a failure in this context–a dangerous expensive failure.

2011/05/242011/05/24