Communities of Practice – Page 736 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/11/142013/11/14

Neal Rauhauser: US Aircraft Carriers — Way Too Many, Irresponsibly Drawing Resources Away from a Long-Haul Air Force and an Air-Mobile Army

Some weeks ago I wrote Carriers Of The Pacific, a comparison of the U.S. fleet vs. other countries, prompted by the U.S. “pivot to the east”.

One Chart Shows The Magnitude Of U.S. Naval Dominance provides an infographic that makes things crystal clear. Two thirds of all carriers belong to the U.S. Seven of the other twelve belong to our NATO allies, three of the others belong to nations with whom we have good diplomatic relations.

Thirty one carriers in good working order belong to NATO, three are in the hands of nations that have good relations with NATO, leaving just two in the hands of others. Russia’s Admiral Kuznetsov is functional, China has not fully commissioned its sister ship, which they’ve named Liaoning.

Japan, also a U.S. ally, is currently building two ships they refer to as “helicopter destroyers”, vessels the U.S. navy would call assault ships. We have twelve of them in the 40,000 ton displacement range, Japan’s ships will be half that size.

During World War II the U.S. built 24 Essex class carriers, all of which survived the conflict, and two of our three Yorktown class ships were lost, leaving only our most decorated ship, U.S.S. Enterprise CV-6 to finish the war. We had 120 lesser ships, most numerous were the fifty Casablanca class escort carriers.

The Cold War has been over for twenty years. We have two thirds of the world’s aircraft carriers, three times more than all of our allies combined. Our only plausible geopolitical rivals have one operational carrier and one that is being slowly commissioned. Our finances, our environment, and our energy supplies can not support maintaining a fleet ready for two wars when we have no plausible geopolitical rival that could start a conflict where they would be required.

The United States has global commitments which we can and should honor, but continuing to maintain a massive fleet when there is no foreseeable purpose for it does not enhance our security, it takes resources away from preventative measures best executed by the State Department and USAID.

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: US Aircraft Carriers — Way Too Many, Irresponsibly Drawing Resources Away from a Long-Haul Air Force and an Air-Mobile Army”

2013/11/14

Penguin: Wikileaks Exposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership for What It Is — Secret Predatory Corporate Corruption Enabled by Secret Government Complicty in Looting the Public Purse

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

WikiLeaks releases major trade agreement draft chapter

The TPP, based on the draft chapter, seems set to be yet another boon for corporate interests

Natasha Lennard

Salon, Wednesday, Nov 13, 2013

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement — an international trade agreement some years in the making between major world powers including the U.S., Canada and Japan — has seemed in some minor jeopardy over revelations that the NSA has secretly been spying on ally world leaders. Secretary of State John Kerry has been in damage control mode to keep the deal afloat and on schedule.

On Tuesday, WikiLeaks offered a peak into the trade agreement, publishing a leaked draft chapter. Predictably, the TPP promises to be a deal in the interest of major corporations above consumers. Having received an exclusive early view of the draft from WikiLeaks, the Sydney Morning Herald called it a “bitter medicine.”

Via the Sydney Morning Herald:

Read full article.

2013/11/13

SmartPlanet: Staggering Costs of Fukushima Clean Up (Never Mind Toxicity Blowing East) + Fukushima RECAP

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

The staggering costs to clean up Fukushima

More than two years since the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, the Fukushima power plant meltdown is still a major, global environmental problem. And the staggering price tag for cleaning it up continues to rise.

The Japanese government just announced that it’s borrowing about $30 billion more to cover costs related to Fukushima, bringing the total amount the Japanese government has borrowed to clean up the mess to around $80 billion, more than three times the amount BP spent to clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. That money will go into cleanup, along with compensation for the people who may never go back to their homes near the contaminated area, and the decommissioning of the nuclear reactors. But it’s not money that the government is on the hook for, Reuters reports:

Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, the owner of the Fukushima plant, remains responsible for covering the costs of compensation and paying to clean up the surrounding areas under a framework set by the previous government.

But the government has issued bonds to pay the related costs up front. The embattled utility remains on the hook for paying back the money spent to the government over a period of decades under current arrangements.

But it should hardly come as a surprise that the cleanup is proving so costly. Independent estimates put the total economic cost of the disaster at $250-$500 billion. Tepco has said it will need $137 billion to cover costs related to Fukushima. And if Chernobyl is any indication, the costs will likely continue for decades to come. And the real issue might not even be the cleanup costs or health concerns, but the fact that a large, productive area of land (of which Japan doesn’t have much to begin with) is now essentially useless and will be for many years, decades, or possibly centuries to come.

Fortunately, in the shadow of Fukushima, there is some good news. Just about 12 miles off the coast of the Fukushima prefecture, a symbolic floating wind turbine switched on for the first time on Monday. The turbine alone will send 2,000 kilowatts to Tohoku Electric Power Co. It’s a small step in the country’s push toward more renewable power, but the wind farm is expected to eventually have 143 turbines with a generating capacity of one gigawatt. But it’s just one of the ways Japan looking to make up for the lost energy production from its nuclear reactors, which accounted for about 30 percent Japan’s electricity capacity.

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: Staggering Costs of Fukushima Clean Up (Never Mind Toxicity Blowing East) + Fukushima RECAP”

2013/11/13

Chuck Spinney: Wanna Start a Revolution? Watch Fed Feed Wall Street While Looting Main Street…

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

…. Read this obscene description of the “let them eat cake” policies of the Fed (and by extension, the President and Congress) that feed Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

Andrew Huszar: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer

We went on a bond-buying spree that was supposed to help Main Street. Instead, it was a feast for Wall Street.

By ANDREW HUSZAR

I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.

Five years ago this month, on Black Friday, the Fed launched an unprecedented shopping spree. By that point in the financial crisis, Congress had already passed legislation, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to halt the U.S. banking system's free fall. Beyond Wall Street, though, the economic pain was still soaring. In the last three months of 2008 alone, almost two million Americans would lose their jobs.

The Fed said it wanted to help—through a new program of massive bond purchases. There were secondary goals, but Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear that the Fed's central motivation was to “affect credit conditions for households and businesses”: to drive down the cost of credit so that more Americans hurting from the tanking economy could use it to weather the downturn. For this reason, he originally called the initiative “credit easing.”

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Wanna Start a Revolution? Watch Fed Feed Wall Street While Looting Main Street…”

2013/11/132013/11/13

Marcus Aurelius: Pentagon Fiscal Chief “Nervous” + DoD Transformation RECAP

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

Pentagon fiscal chief Robert Hale: ‘I am nervous'

“Frankly, I am nervous,” says Robert Hale, the Pentagon’s comptroller. And with reason.

A month and half into the new fiscal year, Congress can’t seem to decide between what are three, wildly different scenarios for Hale’s world in 2014. The House endorsed most of President Barack Obama’s $527 billion request for the Defense Department in July. Last month’s stopgap CR went back to $496 billion. And DOD will drop by another $21 billion in mid-January if lawmakers do nothing to stop sequestration.

“We still don’t know what fiscal ’14 is, which is an extraordinary situation,” Hale told POLITICO. Making it worse, perhaps, is a growing acceptance—even callousness— in the Capitol toward the level of disorder sequestration brings.

The first round of cuts that began on March 1 already forced DOD to implement $37 billion in reductions in the space of six months. Why should another $21 billion –spread over more than eight months—be any harder?

Indeed, this equation is now fundamental to the politics of the House-Senate budget talks which resume Wednesday. A significant faction of Republicans have come to embrace the lower post-sequestration caps set under the Budget Control Act in 2011. And the real-life math for the military has become submerged in the tit-for-tat politics over Obama’s healthcare reforms.

The next two weeks running up to Thanksgiving are pivotal if Congress is to have any chance of restoring some order for the Pentagon and a broken appropriations process. But what’s most remarkable is how lawmakers seem to be backing into decisions without first having a full debate over what level of defense the U.S. needs going forward.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Pentagon Fiscal Chief “Nervous” + DoD Transformation RECAP”

2013/11/13

4th Media: Israeli Babylon Network Dishonest to the Core — a Global Thief Shocks Even Google Evil Into Banning Them

Commerce, Corruption

Google Bans Israeli Babylon

Internet giant Yahoo! announced on November 10, 2013, that it won’t end its revenue sharing contract with Israeli Babylon, despite Google terminating its similar contract on November 30.

Google provided above 40% of Babylon’s revenues during the second quarter of 2013; Yahoo! provided over 30%, which amounts to almost $20 million.

Shiksa's Don't Count.... — Shiksa's Don't Count….

Mystery Babylon – When Jerusalem Embraces The Antichrist

Babylon is the largest company in what is mockingly known as the Israeli Download Valley,* or in a more serious term the field of directing users. Israel has conquered several internet and information-technology niche markets. This is true to the extent that most American citizens are unwillingly sharing their secrets with the State of Israel.

I reviewed Babylon a few months ago in Microsoft Strikes Israeli Software after the American giant limited the activity of Babylon and similar companies on its browsers. Google decision was the result of pressure coming from users of its browser Chrome that correctly understood they were being robbed by Babylon.

“But, they are just nice kids translating stuff!”

On paper, Babylon looks like an inoffensive provider of online dictionaries. In the screenshot reproduced below, one can see the home page featured in many Bolivian internet kiosks. It is a Babylon search page, designed to look like a Google search page; note the odd code appearing in its address line (a long string of nonsense numbers and letters serving as directives to the company’s server, in contrast look at the address of this page), that’s the first sign something is wrong.

The second sign appears while using it; the computer reacts slowly since it is busy sending data to its Babylonian masters. This happens despite Bolivians being unable to spend money on the web; Bolivian money is not a free floating currency and thus it is banned by the international financial system. This search page is defined as a default in the user’s browser while installing Babylon’s dictionary.

Since the page looks like Google’s, few users realize that their home page has been replaced, or that they had clicked on a button asking for this change while installing the dictionary. “Same, same” they say to themselves and begin telling Babylon everything about themselves. The following week, they buy a book named “French Cooking;” a few days later—so that they won’t suspect the link between the events—they get a pamphlet advertising a French restaurant near their home. In thanks for the blunt violation of privacy, the Babylonian masters in Israel get a few silver coins.

Read full article with graphics and links.

2013/11/12

Jon Rappoport: Why GMO Labeling Failed in Washington State

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

Why GMO labeling really failed in Washington State: stop whining

by Jon Rappoport

November 12, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

Here's a question for you. During the campaign for prop 37 in California, and the campaign for Prop 522 in the state of Washington, the ballot measures to label GMO food, did you see political ads like this:

“Hello. My name is… I'm a researcher with a long track record. I study what's in your food. I know that Monsanto, the company that puts genes in your food and sells a toxic herbicide called Roundup, which is also in your food, wants Prop 522 to fail. They don't want you to know what's in your food. I'm willing to debate Monsanto anytime, anywhere. Their GMOs and their Roundup are toxic, unhealthy. Vote Yes on 522, so you don't have to eat Monsanto.”

No, you didn't see an ad like that.

So why did Prop 522 go down to defeat?

Continue reading “Jon Rappoport: Why GMO Labeling Failed in Washington State”