Category: Corruption

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Gary North: Have the IRA Accounts All Been Hijacked?

Corruption, Government
Gary North

Uncle Gary's Bedtime Story: ‘Why Congress Invented Tax-Deferred IRA Accounts'

I hope you're tucked in. Get used to the feeling of being tucked in. Don't you feel safer now? Settle down. I'll tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there were two United States Senators. One was a Democrat. The other was a Republican.

They were very concerned. The government's deficit was up again this year. Of course, it was always up again, every year. But this was becoming a problem. It was making it harder to borrow money. Creditors wanted evidence that the government could pay its bills without facing the nasty trolls called bond vigilantes.

They had to find ways to bring in more revenues.

B. We've got to get more money out of them. Any ideas?

A. We can give them a tax deduction each year to invest money for their old age.

B. Why would that get more money out of them?

A. We'll tell them they can defer paying any income tax on the profits until age 70.

B. But then we can't get their money.

A. Sure we can. We'll borrow against it. We'll use their future tax payments as collateral.

Continue reading “Gary North: Have the IRA Accounts All Been Hijacked?”

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Reference: Stratfor Emails

Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Officers Call

Global Intelligence Files: Stratfor Emails

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

View all emails sorted by year 2004-2011.

See Also:

Stratfor as Mentioned within Phi Beta Iota

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DefDog: NYT Labels Karzai “Volatile” Instead of USA ???

Corruption, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence
DefDog

Interesting headline…..why is it that we place the blame on others (Karzai more volatile) when we (the US) completely ignores him and runs roughshod over his country? That would make anyone “volatile”. This is how the world sees us, it is all about integrity….something the government lacks in spades.

Gulf Widens Between U.S. and a More Volatile Karzai

By , and

New York Times, 17 March 2012

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Americans in Afghanistan are “demons.”

They claim they burned Korans by mistake, but really those were “Satanic acts that will never be forgiven by apologies.”

The massacre of 16 Afghan children, women and men by an American soldier “was not the first incident, indeed it was the 100th, the 200th and 500th incident.”

Such harsh talk may sound as if it comes from the Taliban, but those are all remarks either made personally by the United States’ increasingly hostile ally here, President Hamid Karzai, or issued by his office in recent days and weeks.

The strongest such outburst came Friday. “Let’s pray for God to rescue us from these two demons,” Mr. Karzai said, apparently holding back tears at a meeting with relatives of the massacre victims, and clearly referring to the United States and the Taliban in the same breath. “There are two demons in our country now.”

Ever since the Koran-burning episode on Feb. 20 and its violent aftermath, the relationship between the two governments has lurched from one crisis to another. American officials have scrambled to run damage control, with President Obama expressing a personal apology for the Koran burning, as well as regrets about the massacre, while calling Mr. Karzai twice in the past week.

Read rest of article.

Phi Beta Iota:  There are two Special Forces in the USA today — the old hands that stayed on, resisting the lure of higher wages from private military contractors, and the mass produced newbies that have no clue.  The true Special Forces — the old hands — agree with Karzai.  The USA is out of control, lacks legitimacy, and has no idea  what to do other than bluster and do more harm.

See Also:

Who’s Who in Peace Intelligence: Dr. Col Max Manwaring, US Army Strategic Studies Institute

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Tom Atlee: An Executive Order of Grave Concern

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Tom Atlee

An executive order with ample reason for concern

The executive order signed by Obama March 16, 2012, authorizes widespread federal (and often military) control and manipulation of the national economy and resources “under both emergency and non-emergency conditions” as well as the right to install “government owned equipment” in private industrial facilities.

It is understandable that reasonable precautions and preparations should be taken for defense and emergency conditions. The question here is what is “reasonable” and democratic – and to what extent does THIS kind of preparation actually make sense when compared, for example, to developing decentralized energy and industrial capacity which is less susceptible to attack. (We won't even mention here the development of nonviolent “civilian based defense” as advocated by Harvard historian Gene Sharp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian-based_defense to make a country ungovernable by a domestic dictatorship or foreign power.)

I recommend that you read over the whole executive order. However, for your convenience, I've excerpted particularly interesting parts of it below.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: An Executive Order of Grave Concern”

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Mini-Me: Doubling Down on 9/11

Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Doubling down on 9/11

A decade after the attacks, our national security regime continues to grow ever more punitive and secretive

Karen Greenberg

Salon.com, 19 March 2012

This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.

By now, you’d think we’d be entering the end of the 9/11 era. One war over in the Greater Middle East, another hurtling disastrously to its end, and the threat of al-Qaida so diminished that it should hardly move the needle on the national worry meter. You might think, in fact, that the moment had arrived to turn the American gaze back to first principles: the Constitution and its protections of rights and liberties.

Yet warning signs abound that 2012 will be another year in which, in the name of national security, those rights and liberties are only further Guantanamo-ized and abridged. Most notably, for example, despite the fact that genuinely dangerous enemies continue to exist abroad, there is now a new enemy in our sights: namely, American oppositional types and whistleblowers who are charged as little short of traitors for revealing the workings of our government to journalists and others.

Here and elsewhere, it looks like we can expect the Obama administration to continue to barrel down the path that has already taken us far from the country we used to be. And by next year, if a different president is in the Oval Office, expect him to lead us even further astray. With that in mind, here are five categories in the sphere of national security where 2012 is likely to prove even grimmer than 2011.

1. Ever More Punitive (Ever Less Fair-minded).

2. Ever More Legal Limbo (Ever Less Confidence in the Constitution).  

3. Ever More Secrecy (Ever Less Transparency)

4. Ever More Distrust (Ever Less Privacy)

5. Ever More Killing (Ever Less Peace)

Karen J. Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University Law School and author of “The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days.”More Karen Greenberg

Read full article  with much detail and additional links for each of the five points.

Phi Beta Iota:  An intelligent article replete with integrity.

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Mini-Me: The Future of Intelligence is Your Dishwasher?

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Marcus Aurelius:  The CIA wants to spy on you through your TV: Agency director says it will ‘transform' surveillance

  • Devices connected to internet leak information
  • CIA director says these gadgets will ‘transform clandestine tradecraft'
  • Spies could watch thousands via supercomputers
  • People ‘bug' their own homes with web-connected devices

DefDog:  CIA loves Internet of things… for spying on you

Petraeus says that the treasure trove of data connected appliances and devices will be able to gather on a “person of interest” will make it much easier to see what potential terrorists and others are doing inside home and to intercept communications. He also noted that connected household devices with the potential to be turned in the spy tools “change our notions of secrecy.” While the CIA has numerous regulations and laws preventing it from spying on American citizens, it’s apparently a much grayer area when it comes to collecting geolocation data that many devices
broadcast.

Dolphin: CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher

Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired devices — at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”

CIA director David Petraeus (seen here playing Wii golf) is really excited about the idea behind the Internet of things. The thing is most excited about isn’t his refrigerator being able to order milk, but the effect that connected appliances and devices will have on “clandestine tradecraft.” In other words, he’s excited about being able to use these devices to spy on people.

Phi Beta Iota:  Patraeus was “musing” at an In-Q-Tel conference, so he can reasonably be forgiven for being taken out of context.  However, this is just one more stronger signal that the $80 billion a year US Intelligence Community, within which CIA provides armed drones, foreign liaison hand-outs, and very little else, is money wasted.   Clandestine tradecraft is about humans.  All-source analysis is about integrating a strategic analytic model with history and forecasting to deliver decision-support.  It is not about technology except in so far as it supports human cognition.  It's a pity the Director of the CIA has not learned that.  Technology is not a substitute for thinking, and administration is not a substitute for leadership.

See Also:

2012 PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of Intelligence

Fixing WH and IC Steele 2009 1.5 PDF, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Spring 2010; As published; with corrected graphic (best).

2010 Human Intelligence (HUMINT): All Humans, All Minds, All the Time(US Army Strategic Studies Institute, June 2010

2009 Intelligence for the President–AND Everyone Else, as published in CounterPunch, Weekend Edition, February 27 – 1 March 2009

2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective

noble gold