Category: 03 Economy

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Marcus Aurelius: Spy of the Month – Made in USA, Bought in China

02 China, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Law Enforcement
Marcus Aurelius

Counterintelligence Briefing Center

Spy of the Month: March 2012

Glenn Duffie Shriver

Naïve, young college student or disloyal American ready to spy for the People’s Republic of China (PRC)?  Glenn Duffie Shriver, aka Du Fei, was a student at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in 2001 when he decided to attend a study abroad program known as “China Summer School” in Shanghai, China.  He enjoyed his time in this country so much, he spent his junior year studying at East China Normal University in Shanghai, where he developed a strong interest in Chinese culture and became proficient speaking Mandarin Chinese.  After graduating from GVSU in 2004 with a degree in International Relations, Shriver returned to Shanghai to continue his language studies and to seek employment.  Desperate for money, he responded to an advertisement to write a political paper on U.S.-China relations regarding North Korea and Taiwan.  He met with his contact, Amanda, several times and was paid $120 for his paper.  Amanda praised Shriver for his work, offered to introduce him to friends of hers by the name of Mr. Wu and Mr. Tang, and encouraged him to build a close relationship with them.

Shriver has admitted that he realized his new “friends” were PRC intelligence officers, and that he understood when they asked him to apply for positions in the U.S. government or law enforcement that they were expressly interested in classified material. 

So in April 2005, Shriver applied for a job as a foreign service officer for the U.S. State Department as suggested by his “friends.” He took the Foreign Service Exam in Shanghai, and although he did not pass, PRC intelligence officers paid him $10,000 for his efforts and his “friendship.”  One year later, Shriver made a second attempt at passing the Foreign Service Exam, but again failed.  However, this attempt earned him a shocking $20,000.

Read rest of article.

Phi Beta Iota:  One wonders why he was not doubled back, since US clandestine efforts in China are virtually non-existent.  This is interesting at multiple levels.  With 22.4% unemployment in the USA (not the false statistic the government offers of under 9%) and with both young graduates and senior professionals at closer to 40% unemployment, the question has to be asked: what part of our failure to provide for the general welfare, as called for in the preamble to the US Constitution, combined with the complete lack of civic duty instruction and practice across 24 years of study, can be blamed for this young man's vulnerability?

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Eagle: Overwhelming PublicDemand for Weapons Stresses Production

03 Economy, 06 Family, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence
300 Million Talons...

Overwhelming Demand: Ruger Suspends All New Firearms Orders: “Incoming Order Rate Exceeds Our Capacity to Rapidly Fulfill These Orders”

Rob Richards

SHTFplan.com, 22 March 2012

Editor’s Note: Amid a host of concerns that include, but are not limited to, rising crime, a lack of law enforcement during a crisis such as an economic collapse and, most notably, the potential re-election of President Barack Obama for another four years, Americans are stocking up on firearms and ammunition like never before. Last year alone we saw sales of guns in the United States exceed 10,000,000, and according to a recent report some three million Americans are among those preparing for worst case scenarios.

They are purchasing supplies that include self defense armaments, long-term food storage, and off-grid survival tools. Demand is so high for these essential “post-collapse” survival commodities that in December of 2010 it prompted Mountain House, the largest freeze dried food manufacturer in the world, to delay orders for months at a time. Now, similar to the ammunition shortages leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, Americans are increasingly worried about what may happen to their Second Amendment rights under another Obama term.  This has, once again, led to unprecedented demand. Ammunition shortages in popular calibers, for example, have been reported by numerous sources. Likewise, overwhelming demand for firearms has forced one of the world’s largest gun manufacturers to suspend all new firearms production orders because they simply cannot keep up.

Effective Immediately Ruger has stopped accepting Firearms Orders. The Company says that they have had to temporarily suspend the acceptance of new orders after receiving requests for more than one million units.

Here is the Official Statement form Ruger:

SOUTHPORT, CT –Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. (NYSE-RGR), announced today that for the first quarter 2012, the Company has received orders for more than one million units. Therefore, the Company has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.

Chief Executive Officer Michael O. Fifer made the following comments:

  • The Company’s Retailer Programs that were offered from January 1, 2012 through February 29, 2012 were very successful and generated significant orders from retailers to independent wholesale distributors for Ruger firearms.
  • Year-to-date, the independent wholesale distributors placed orders with the Company for more than one million Ruger firearms.
  • Despite the Company’s continuing successful efforts to increase production rates, the incoming order rate exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders. Consequently, the Company has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.
  • The Company expects to resume the normal acceptance of orders by the end of May 2012.

In the Rise of the Prepper article, we warned that with Guns, Gold and Emergency Food all setting record sales numbers we will likely see major shortages hit the marketplace. As people begin to stock up on preparedness related items in response to the coming election cycle, we will likely see nationwide shortages similar to what happened during the elections in 2008. I fear this is only the beginning.

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Sepp Hasslberger: Biplane to break sound barrier

03 Economy, Commerce
Sepp Hasslberger

Biplane to Break the Sound Barrier: Cheaper, Quieter and Fuel-Efficient Biplanes Could Put Supersonic Travel On the Horizon

ScienceDaily (Mar. 19, 2012) — Cheaper, quieter and fuel-efficient biplanes could put supersonic travel on the horizon.

For 27 years, the Concorde provided its passengers with a rare luxury: time saved. For a pricey fare, the sleek supersonic jet ferried its ticketholders from New York to Paris in a mere three-and-a-half hours — just enough time for a nap and an aperitif. Over the years, expensive tickets, high fuel costs, limited seating and noise disruption from the jet's sonic boom slowed interest and ticket sales. On Nov. 26, 2003, the Concorde — and commercial supersonic travel — retired from service.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Since then, a number of groups have been working on designs for the next generation of supersonic jets. Now an MIT researcher has come up with a concept that may solve many of the problems that grounded the Concorde. Qiqi Wang, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics, says the solution, in principle, is simple: Instead of flying with one wing to a side, why not two?

Wang and his colleagues Rui Hu, a postdoc in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Antony Jameson, a professor of engineering at Stanford University, have shown through a computer model that a modified biplane can, in fact, produce significantly less drag than a conventional single-wing aircraft at supersonic cruise speeds. The group will publish their results in the Journal of Aircraft.

This decreased drag, according to Wang, means the plane would require less fuel to fly. It also means the plane would produce less of a sonic boom.

Read full article.

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Michel Bauwens: The New Rules of Innovation – Bottom-Up Solutions to Top-Down Problems

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, microfinancing
Michel Bauwens

The New Rules Of Innovation: Bottom-Up Solutions To Top-Down Problems

In his new book, Vijay Vaitheeswaran argues that we’re thinking about worldchanging innovation all wrong: It’s not going to come from where we expect it.

Arnie Cooper

www.fastcoexist.com, 19 March 2012

The world is currently standing “on the cusp of a post-industrial revolution.” So writes Vijay Vaitheeswaran in his new book, Need, Speed and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness and Tame the World’s Most Wicked Problems, out March 13. Vaitheeswaran, a 20-year veteran correspondent for The Economist and adviser to the World Economic Forum, wrote the book, he says, as a way to inspire bottom-up solutions to top-down problems like resource depletion, climate change, and growing income inequality. We spoke with Vaitheeswaran about the importance of disruptive technologies, social entrepreneurship, and embracing China’s rise.

Co.Exist: As you point out in your book, modern humanity has arrived at the first phase of an unprecedented “innovation revolution,” yet many are being left behind. Why is that and what are we gonna do about it?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: First, I think it’s a wonderful time to be alive. Shockingly, this might be the best time to be in the bottom billion because of transformations like mobile telephony and micro-credit. But it’s getting much harder to be in the middle class in places like America. The principal reason for this, I think, is that educational systems are increasingly out of touch with the needs of the ideas economy. The current education system that our and other countries developed was suited to the industrial revolution, a one-size-fits-all model for education that treats people as commodities. But we’re in an innovation age where creativity, individual initiative, willingness to think out of the box and disrupt established business or even lifestyle patterns is much more important than simple manual tasks that produce the next widget. So I think the great challenge for developed economies like the U.S. is to reinvent education. The challenge for each one of us is to keep relearning how to learn.

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: The New Rules of Innovation – Bottom-Up Solutions to Top-Down Problems”

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Michel Bauwens: Occupy as a Business Model

03 Economy, Blog Wisdom
Michel Bauwens
Aljazeera – Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:24 GST
Chiang Mai, Thailand – Last week I discussed the value crisis of contemporary capitalism: the broken feedback loop between the productive publics who create exponentially increasing use value, and those who capture this value through social media – but do not return these income streams to the value “produsers”..
In other words, the current so-called “knowledge economy” is a sham and a pipe dream – because abundant goods do not fare well in a market economy. For the sake of the world's workers, who live in an increasingly precariousness situation, is there a way out of this conundrum? Can we restore the broken feedback loop?.Strangely enough, the answer may be found in the recent political movement that is Occupy, because along with ” peer producing their political commons “, they also exemplified new business and value practices. These practices were, in fact, remarkably similar to the institutional ecology that is already practiced in producing free software and open hardware communities. This is not a coincidence..
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Steven Aftergood: NSA Has Failed, Since 1976, to Protect US Commercial Communications

03 Economy, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military
Steven Aftergood

IN 1976, NSA WAS TASKED TO HELP SECURE PRIVATE COMMS

As long ago as the Gerald Ford Administration, the National Security Agency was directed to help secure non-governmental communications networks against intrusion and interception by foreign — or domestic — entities, according to a recently declassified presidential directive.

“The President is concerned about possible damage to the national security and the economy from continuing Soviet intercept of critical non-government communications, including government defense contractors and certain other key institutions in the private sector,” wrote National Security Advisor Gen. Brent Scowcroft in National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 338 of September 1, 1976.

“The President further recognizes that U.S. citizens and institutions should have a reasonable expectation of privacy from foreign or domestic intercept when using the public telephone system. The President has therefore decided that communication security should be extended to government defense contractors dealing in classified or sensitive information at the earliest possible time. He has also directed that planning be undertaken to meet the longer-term need to protect other key institutions in the private sector, and, ultimately, to provide a reasonable expectation of privacy for all users of public telecommunications.”

The directive ordered that “in confirmed threat areas,” existing communications networks involving classified information should be transitioned from microwave circuits to secure cable “as soon as possible.”  A broader plan to protect non-governmental communications was also to be prepared.

“The President further directs the Director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, with the participation and assistance of DOD and NSA, to prepare a detailed Action Plan setting forth the actions and schedule milestones necessary to achieve a wide degree of protection for private sector microwave communications. The Plan should identify needed policy and regulatory decisions, describe in detail the roles of industry and government, including management and funding considerations, and integrate the schedule for these actions with the technical development milestones.”

“The Action Plan should be based on the fundamental objective of protecting the privacy of all users of public telecommunications, as well as satisfying specific needs of the government,” the directive stated.

The 1976 directive was originally marked TOP SECRET / SENSITIVE (XGDS), where XGDS stood for “exempt from general declassification schedule.”  It was declassified on September 13, 2011.  The document had been requested through the mandatory declassification review process by Dr. John Laprise of Northwestern University.

The directive prefigures an ongoing controversy over the proper role, and the actual extent, of National Security Agency involvement in securing public communications.

In response to a FOIA lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the NSA said (and a court affirmed) that it could “neither confirm or deny” a relationship between the Agency and Google.  NSA has also refused to release the 2008 National Security Presidential Directive 54, which reportedly tasks the Agency with certain cybersecurity functions.

Phi Beta Iota:  This would be an excellent case study for the retrospective court martial, conviction, and demotion by two grades in retirement (affects pension) of every NSA director since then, with special attention to those serving after the alarm was sounded again in 1994.  NSA today does not have the public interest in mind and could care less about presidential directives.  It exists to create millionaires among NSA senior executives jumping to sweetheart “soft landings.”  NSA and the Cyber-Command are an ideal candidate for the first joint GSA-OMB deep audit of secret spending since 2001.

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Mini-Me: PriceWaterHouseCoopers to Go Down?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth
Who? Mini-Me?

Robert Steele has for some time been saying that “The truth at any cost lowers all others costs.”  He has also been focusing on the importance of intelligence with integrity.  Among all governments, only Iceland appears to be serious about dealing with the financial crisis as it should be dealt with: as a criminal conspiracy enabled by all of the parties in both public and private sectors who sacrificed their integrity and betrayed the public trust.

Corporations operate under public charters.  It is difficult to police the corporations when the governments have themselves become criminalized, but the tide is turning — the public is beginning to recognize that governments  lack integrity and intelligence and cannot be trusted — in their present form — to manage the public interest.

When Goldman Sachs goes out of business the healing can begin.  Slamming PWC is a good start.

Old Landsbanki to sue PriceWaterhouseCoopers for ‘deliberate’ auditing errors

The resolution committee of the failed Icelandic bank Old Landsbanki has subpoenaed the international auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, accusing the company of creating wrong annual accounts which misled the markets. The committee’s damages claim runs to hundreds of millions of krónur.