Reference: Domestic Roots of Perpetual War
03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Officers CallNIGHTWATCH Extract: China Moves In on North Korea
02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, StrategyNorth Korea-China: North Korea will develop the islet of Hwanggumpyong on the Yalu River Delta linking Sinuiju with the Chinese city of Dandong as a special economic zone in cooperation with Chinese businessmen, Chosun Ilbo reported 18 January. North Korean Cabinet already approved a law on the development that will be announced in March or April.
Comment: This is another example of Chinese business tutelage for North Korea. All other special economic zones have either failed for lack of investors or been troubled by North Korean government meddling. In the last category are the Mount Kumgang resort on the east coast and the Kaesong joint industrial park, north of Panmunjom.
One would surmise that a joint venture with the Chinese would be relieved of the unpredictability of North Korean leadership whims, which have undermined the profitability of the joint ventures with the South Koreans. More importantly, every Chinese economic lifeline tossed into the North Korean economic morass is a burden on China and a restraint on North Korea.
The Chinese are moving slowly, but steadily based on their understanding of the magnitude of North Korean economic mismanagement. Thus far, they appear to be helping North Korean enterprises that have prospects of profitability, such as textiles, and Chinese enterprises that benefit from North Korean geography, such as ports and infrastructure on the Sea of Japan.
North Korea never has been self-reliant and its condition of dependency on the global economy has steadily deepened under Kim Chong-il. The Chinese appear determined to salvage what they can and rebuild the rest of North Korea in a different, more sustainable direction, slowly, by converting some North Korean activities into extensions of China's economy.
Phi Beta Iota: The Chinese are out-thinking and out-maneuvering the USA on all fronts, and in a fascinating twist, may be egging the USA on to the same military-industrial death march that led to the end of the Soviet Union. The above development should be studied in relation to WASHINGTON RULES: US-Korea-China-NK NAFTA. In both instances, leaders are making strategic moves for reasons they consider valid, but that have nothing to do with the well-being of their respective publics.
WASHINGTON RULES: US-Korea-China-NK NAFTA
01 Agriculture, 02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process
A project of Americans for Free and Fair Trade
Dear Citizen:
Barack Obama is pushing a NAFTA-Style Korea Free Trade agreement that would undermine America's sovereignty, laws and economy. This deal would:
- Allow foreign corporations to drag the U.S. before U.N. and World Bank tribunals to enforce special trade privileges and to demand compensations from the U.S. Treasury.
- Undermine states rights with hundreds of state laws and regulations subject to review and alteration.
- Kill almost 160,000 jobs in the U.S.
Six things you can do right now:
1. Add your organization's name to our coalition letter (attached)
2. Ask your members to sign our petition
3. Add this widget to your homepage and e-communications
4. “Like” on Facebook
5. Twitter
6. Learn more. FAQ's
Thank you for your commitment to authentic free trade!
Joseph McCormick
Americans for Free and Fair Trade
Project Site: StopUSKoreaNAFTA.org
Phone: 541.531.0530
Email: jmccormick@freeandfairtrade.org
Frequently Asked Questions (Link)
Below the Line: Top Ten Reasons KORUS is Not Free or Fair Trade
Continue reading “WASHINGTON RULES: US-Korea-China-NK NAFTA”
Review (Guest): Winner-Take-All Politics–How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned its Back on the Middle Class
03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Paul Pierson and Jacob S. Hacker
5.0 out of 5 stars Political Economy
January 17, 2011
Retired Reader (New Mexico) – See all my reviews
This book is an effort by two political scientist to explain how in the last thirty years or so wealth in the U.S. has become concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of people. The fact that this has occurred is indisputable. So is the fact that the gap between the richest Americans and everybody else has grown exponentially just as the U.S. middle class is gradually disappearing. The explanation of why this has occurred offered by Hacker and Pierson is rather more controversial.
They begin by noting that over the last thirty years not only have the already rich gotten much richer, but that the U.S. National Economy has been transformed into a system that no longer serves the interests of the once broad and thriving American Middle Class that once was the backbone of that economy. In their view the system now serves the interests of a small minority of the rich and very rich (one to five per cent of the population). So their book begins by asking how and why did this occur and why over the last thirty years?
Since Hacker and Pierson are political scientists not economists, they argue that this transformation was due to political, not economic factors. Using what appears to be accurate statistical data they cite three `clues' or factors that point to what happened to the U.S. economy: 1) hyper-concentration of wealth; 2) sustained hyper-concentration; and 3) during the thirty years under study, while wealth concentrated at the very top of the income scale, the economy essentially stopped working for the middle and working classes who continually lost ground during this period.
This economic transformation in favor of the rich they argue is not the result of impersonal economic forces but of deliberate government actions or at times inaction (drift). Their central thesis is that mostly incremental government policies over the last thirty years have had the cumulative effect of changing the U.S. economic system into a `winner take all' system heavily biased in favor of the rich and very rich. At the same time federal government policies undermined the traditionally strong labor unions that served as a counter weight to corporations' power and systematically deregulated financial markets and executive compensation.
Continue reading “Review (Guest): Winner-Take-All Politics–How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned its Back on the Middle Class”
HAARP: Electromagnetic Atmospheric War Games
07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Earth Intelligence, Military, Peace Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, Technologies
Jesus. Now I understand a remark made twenty some years ago by an angry senior Mexican scientist who essentially accused the US of provoking a horrific hurricane that caused terrible damage in Mexico. He added: “And you [the US] know exactly what I mean.” You can tell the men from the boys by the cost of their toys, but this is like a tree full of monkeys masturbating. The quotes from Brzezinski below are confirmation enough of the US psychotic craving for high-tech global dictatorship, risking everything for total control. And we think Hitler was nuts?
U.S. global climate change weapon called HAARP
World news Friday, December 31st, 2010
The United States Navy and Air Force have joined with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and built a ground based “Star Wars” weapon system located in the remote bush country of Alaska. Scientific evidence reveals that it is now active.
The US has developed a new type of weapon called the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). HAARP zaps the upper atmosphere with a focused and steerable electromagnetic beam. It is an advanced model of an “ionospheric heater.” (The ionosphere is the electrically-charged sphere surrounding Earth’s upper atmosphere. It ranges between 40 to 60 miles above the surface of the Earth.) HAARP is a super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything — living and dead.
Phi Beta Iota: This is not new. Conspiracy theorists have been all over this for decades, and the lack of transparency has enabled the Soviets, among others, to leverage this against the US within normal propaganda channels. What is new is the combination Brzezinski quotes and current context in which the “elite” are now known to have exploded the global economy, contrived food, water, and energy shortages, and generally sacrificed a prosperous world at peace in favor of obscene wealth for the few. Apart from this we know two things: first, that Acts of God are actually acts of man, but more associated with the catastrophic effects of paving over wetlands, producing toxic goods, and generally ignoring the Precautionary Principle; and second, that governments and corporations cannot be trusted to be transparent, tell the truth, or be worthy of the public trust. Transparency is the new app, Truth is the new wealth, the times they are a-changing. The article is worth a full read.
Reference: Infinite Wealth for All
Review: Water Wars–Privatization, Pollution, and Profit
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Environmental Degradation (Other than Emissions)
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE: All Eyes No Brain
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies
Interesting, but also fails to mention we do not train our analysts on the
basics, know your enemy……we are so focused on technology we forget
that the basics are still the best way to view the situation…..
When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters
last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the
operator of a Predator drone had failed to pass along crucial information
about the makeup of a gathering crowd of villagers.
In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly
By THOM SHANKER and MATT RICHTEL
New York Times, Published: January 16, 2011
When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the operator of a Predator drone had failed to pass along crucial information about the makeup of a gathering crowd of villagers.
But Air Force and Army officials now say there was also an underlying cause for that mistake: information overload.
1961-2011: 50 Years of The Military-Industrial Complex
03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Officers Call, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
It's a good think Ike is dead… else he would realize his nightmare survived. Chuck
Newsday January 13, 2011 Pg. 34
The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
Eisenhower warned against the influence of arms production, but did we listen?
By Bob Keeler
EXTRACT: Now, the deficit has caused some unexpected voices to say, ever so softly, that everything is on the table – including defense cuts. Last week, Gates talked about plans to slow the defense budget's growth by $78 billion over five years. That dainty nibble is a start, but we need big bites. A group called the Sustainable Defense Task Force has laid out ways to cut $1 trillion in 10 years. That's better.
Full story below the line…
And…
Obama Ignores Eisenhower at Country's, World's Peril (Melvin Goodman)
Military-Industrial Complex, Fifty Years On (Leslie Gelb, Council on Foreign Relations)
Continue reading “1961-2011: 50 Years of The Military-Industrial Complex”
