Corruption – Page 635 – Public Intelligence Blog

You will not agree with everything, but you will find this alternative economic analysis interesting and thought provoking

All I Want for Christmas Is the Truth

James Quinn

Financial Sense, 3 December 2012

“Eyes blinded by the fog of things
cannot see truth.
Ears deafened by the din of things
cannot hear truth.
Brains bewildered by the whirl of things
cannot think truth.
Hearts deadened by the weight of things
cannot feel truth.
Throats choked by the dust of things
cannot speak truth.”
― Harald Bell Wright – The Uncrowned King

I consider myself a seeker of truth. It isn’t easy finding it in todays’ world. In an alternate version of the famous scene from A Few Good Men, I picture myself telling Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner that I want the truth and his angry truthful response:

“Son, we live in a world that has Wall Street banks, and those banks have to be guarded by puppet politicians in Washington D.C. with lobbyist written laws and Madison Avenue PR maggots with media propaganda. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Representative Paul? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the average middle class American family, and you curse the ruling oligarchs. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the death of the American middle class, while tragic, probably saved the bonuses of thousands of Wall Street bankers. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, increases the wealth of these same bankers who destroyed the worldwide economic system in 2008. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about in the food bank line, you want me on Wall Street, you need me on Wall Street. We use words like derivative, fiscal stimulus, quantitative easing. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent siphoning off the wealth of the nation. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very debt that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up 1000 shares of Apple, and hope our high frequency trading supercomputers can ramp the market for a while longer. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”

I find myself more amazed than ever at the ability of those in power to lie, misinform and obfuscate the truth, while millions of Americans willfully choose to be ignorant of the truth and yearn to be misled. It’s a match made in heaven. Acknowledging the truth of our society’s descent from a country of hard working, self-reliant, charitable, civic minded citizens into the abyss of entitled, dependent, greedy, materialistic consumers is unacceptable to the slave owners and the slaves. We can’t handle the truth because that would require critical thought, hard choices, sacrifice, and dealing with the reality of an unsustainable economic and societal model. It’s much easier to believe the big lies that allow us to sleep at night. The concept of lying to the masses and using propaganda techniques to manipulate and form public opinion really took hold in the 1920s and have been perfected by the powerful ruling elite that control the reins of finance, government and mass media.

Continue reading “Gold Transformer: All I Want for Christmas Is the Truth”

2012/12/042012/12/04

SchwartzReport: The Drugging of America Via Food — Enabled by the Loss of Intelligence and Integrity Across Whole of Government

07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Corruption, Government

We're Eating What? The Drugstore in U.S. Meat.

Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet, 2 December 2012

Food consumers seldom hear about the drugs oestradiol-17, zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate and the names are certainly not on meat labels. But those synthetic growth hormones are central to U.S. meat production, especially beef, and the reason Europe has banned a lot of U.S. meat since 1989.

Zeranol, widely used as a growth promoter in the U.S. beef industry, is a “powerful estrogenic chemical, as demonstrated by its ability to stimulate growth and proliferation of human breast tumor cells” similar to the “known carcinogen diethylstilbestrol (DES),”

Read full article.

Public Governance for the 21st Century — Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota: The ten high-level threats to humanity, eight of which are being ignored by most governments, include “Other Atrocities.” Normally defined as a mix of trafficking in women and children as well as body parts (with kidnapping and murder), we now include in “Other Atrocities” the willful corruption of governments that leads to the poisoning of entire populations; to the proliferation of genetic mutations in crops, animals, and humans; and to the wholesale increase of prevalent persistent disease such as asthma in poor kids living near highways.

2012/12/022012/12/02

Winsdlow Wheeler: Post-Downturn Pentagon to be UGLY…

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Two things seem clear to me: the Pentagon budget is going down, and pretty much no one in Washington wants to impose the three fundamental reforms needed to enable DOD to prosper in an era of lower budgets. I explain my point of view in a new article in Foreign Policy and below.

EXTRACT:

They are laying the groundwork for the same Pentagon as the one we have now, just at somewhat lower spending levels with several fewer programs — and more of the remaining ones funded at unrealistically lower levels than usual.

Quagmire on the Potomac

BY WINSLOW WHEELER | NOVEMBER 30, 2012

Amidst the many uncertainties and machinations in the negotiations in Washington on the “fiscal cliff,” a few things are beginning to emerge as certain. Among them: the defense budget will be going down. Another is that none of the parties to the negotiations is seeking the kind of change that the Pentagon must undergo to survive effectively, even prosper, under significantly reduced budgets.

The new, post-election reality of a declining Department of Defense (DOD) budget was signaled by a conglomeration of mainstream think tank pundits, Capitol Hill staffers from both political parties, industry and executive branch defense specialists, and retired military officers put together by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments: They opined on not whether the defense budget was about to decline significantly but on how to do it. (Some of them had some pretty horrible ideas; more on that later.) The new reality of less money for DOD was also made clear in a provocative summary of five different think tanks reports at Foreign Policy by Gordon Adams.

Continue reading “Winsdlow Wheeler: Post-Downturn Pentagon to be UGLY…”

2012/12/02

John Steiner: Julian Assange Strikes Back

Corruption, Government

In this hard-hitting piece, Assange offers a taste of Wikileaks-released documents that will curl your hair.

Two Years of Cablegate as Bradley Manning Testifies for the First Time

Julian Assange

Huffington Post, 29 November 2012

Thursday, November 29th, Bradley Manning testified for the first time since his arrest two and a half years ago in Baghdad. Today also marks the two-year anniversary of the first front pages around the world from Cablegate, an archive of 251,287 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables — messages sent between the State Department and its embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions around the world. In collaboration with a network of more than 100 press outlets we revealed the full spectrum of techniques used by the United States to exert itself around the world. The young intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was detained as an alleged source.

Phi Beta Iota: Headings are below, and the full article with all links is below the line.

A War on Terror
WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring
A Global Death Squad Consulting Firm?
Foreign Service Spies
Lobbying for Unaccountability — Manipulation of Judicial Process in Other Countries
Secret Agreements — Circumvention of the Democratic Process
The Realpolitik of Commercial Lobbying
Strategic Duplicity on Human Rights and Press Freedom
Thailand's Monarchy Exposed
US Aims to Reshare Global Views and Law on Intellectual Property and Copyright
Breaking the Monopoly on Influence

Continue reading “John Steiner: Julian Assange Strikes Back”

2012/12/012012/12/01

DefDog: Just In, List of Countries Voting Against Palestine

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Peace Intelligence

Abstained:

Albania, Andorra, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Colombia, Croatia, Dem. Rep. of Congo, Estonia, Fiji, Germany, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malawi, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Poland, Korea, Moldova, Romania, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Togo, Tonga, United Kingdom, and Vanuatu.

Voted against the resolution:

Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Panama, and the United States.

2012/12/012012/12/03

Eagle: The Truth Shall Set You Free

09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

German man locked up over HVB bank allegations may have been telling truth

Gustl Mollath was put in a psychiatric unit for claiming his wife was involved in money-laundering at the Bavarian bank. But seven years on evidence has emerged that could set him free

Kate Connolly in Berlin

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 November 2012

A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence has emerged proving the validity of his claims.

In a plot worthy of a crime blockbuster, Gustl Mollath, 56, was submitted to the secure unit of a psychiatric hospital seven years ago after court experts diagnosed him with paranoid personality disorder following his claims that staff at the Hypo Vereinsbank (HVB) – including his wife, then an assets consultant at HVB – had been illegally smuggling large sums of money into Switzerland.

Mollath was tried in 2006 after his ex-wife accused him of causing her physical harm. He denied the charges, claiming she was trying to sully his name in the light of the evidence he allegedly had against her. He was admitted to the clinic, where he has remained against his will ever since.

But recent evidence brought to the attention of state prosecutors shows that money-laundering activities were indeed practiced over several years by members of staff at the Munich-based bank, the sixth-largest private financial institute in Germany, as detailed in an internal audit report carried out by the bank in 2003. The report, which has now been posted online, detailed illegal activities including money-laundering and aiding tax evasion. A number of employees, including Mollath's wife, were subsequently sacked following the bank's investigation.

The “Mollath affair”, as it has been dubbed by the German media, has taken on such political dimensions that it now threatens to bring down the government of Bavaria. Under the weight of public and political pressure Horst Seehofer, the prime minister of the rich southern state and a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) – the sister party to Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats – has now called for the case to be reopened, amid charges that Mollath was possibly the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Eagle: The Truth Shall Set You Free”

2012/11/292012/11/29

Penguin: Hurray for Walter Pincus, Blowing Up the $100 Million DoD Underground Multi-Story Bunker for Tel Aviv — Public Interest Be Damned….

Corruption, Government, Military

Phi Beta Iota: We learn that the Army Corps of Engineers, which should be focusing on the Mississippi right now, has not one but three offices in Israel; and that it is acting as an agent of the Israeli government in obligating US taxpayer dollars for what is clearly a deeply religious construction, to which DoD is allegedly (and probably) not privy to the details. We do not make this stuff up. Penguin insists that we all acknowledge Brother Pincus' righteous contribution. So ordered! All hail Walter Pincus. Seriously.

Why Is The US Building A Secret $100 Million Underground Facility Outside Tel Aviv?

Robert Johnson

Business Insider, 29 November 2012

Leave it to legendary Walter Pincus from the Washington Post to flesh out a Request for Proposalconstruction project planned for Israel called Site 911.The oddly named project will cost up to $100 million, take more than two years to complete, and can only be built by workers from specific countries with proper security clearances. Palestinians need not apply.When complete the well-guarded compound will have five levels buried underground and six additional outbuildings on the above grounds, within the perimeter. At about 127,000 square feet, the first three floors will house classrooms, an auditorium, and a laboratory — all wedged behind shock resistant doors — with radiation protection and massive security.Only one gate will allow workers entrance and exit during the project and that will be guarded by only Israelis.The bottom two floors are smaller, according to the full line of schematics uploaded to the Army's Acquisition Business Web Site, and possibly used for equipment and storage.As impressive as the American design features already are, Ada Karmi-Melamede Architects will decorate the entire site with rocks it chooses, but are paid for by the contractor, and provide three outdoor picnic tables.Pincus also found this detailed description of the mezuzahs that will adorn every door in the facility:

These mezuzas, notes the [US Army] Corps, “shall be written in inerasable ink, on . . . uncoated leather parchment” and be handwritten by a scribe “holding a written authorization according to Jewish law.” The writing may be “Ashkenazik or Sepharadik” but “not a mixture” and “must be uniform.”

Continue reading “Penguin: Hurray for Walter Pincus, Blowing Up the $100 Million DoD Underground Multi-Story Bunker for Tel Aviv — Public Interest Be Damned….”