Sterling Seagrave: Reflections of an Old China Hand

02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Sterling Seagrave

Gold rising further except for profit taking bursts. China is buying all the gold it can get, and unloading all the paper dollars it can dump.. Other countries, including Russia are buying gold. I can see the Yuan or RMB playing a larger role as a global currency, but most people are too ignorant of China to accept the Yuan quickly or easily. The Swiss have a huge mass of gold well stashed, so I can see the Swiss franc playing a larger role. It's hard to make a forecast for the Euro, although it will almost certainly survive the US dollar. It's also possible that the Swiss might make a deal with the EU that would result in the Euro being backed by Swiss gold. Now that the head of the IMF has been burned at the stake, his very good brain is of no further use. The EU is scrambled eggs right now. Sarko can't survive without a miracle. India's potential will take a very long time to organize and get rolling; I went to school there and it's a seething cesspit.  It's time for the US to get out of foreign wars, but unlikely that it will because of the weapons market. Obama seems impotent. The Pentagon and its corporate backers and partners seems to be deciding policy. I'm not happy about Petraeus at the agency.  I think the USG and the US are totally hosed. Desperate for a new demon. Good time for Lee Kuan-yew to retire. Wise of him. The immediate future does not look good. War and more war. Civil war. Revolution. Take your pick. The cupboard is bare. It's all been looted. What a mess America has made since 1945. Moments of glory, decades of folly and stupidity….  Israel and the Palestinians are a parody of the world as a whole.

I think the last real ingots of gold in Manhattan were in the basement of the Twin Towers. The Fed and the Treasury don't dare be transparent or audited, because whatever real (solid) gold they ever had was moved to Malta and other offshore or mountain stashes long ago, replaced with Play-Dough. Christ, even the Bureau of Engraving and Printing stops now and then to change engraving plates and produce “Presidential dollars” to be used as bribes by the White House (ever since Truman); we have that from a guy who is now retired after running the shop  since 1945. The satellite imagery boys, where I have sources, dream of being about to electronically penetrate the earth to a depth of 100 feet or more from satellites but when I last checked 3 or 4 years ago they were still dreaming. They fiddle with HAARP trying to achieve earth-penetration, and only end up causing huge earthquakes and tsunamis; measurements already show the poles have begun to shift partly due to melting ice masses, but also due to fiddling with HAARP. The Fukushima quake and tsunami have been attributed to fiddling with HAARP, possibly the Sumatra disaster as well. Not all scientists are smart and prescient. We're damn lucky they haven't already blown us to smithereens, while scratching their backsides. Never forget that the Fed has always existed as a fraud by intent and design. President Wilson commented years after enabling the Fed in 1913: “I have destroyed my country.”

See Also:

INTERVIEW WITH STERLING AND PEGGY SEAGRAVEOSS.Net, Inc.

Review: Gold Warriors–America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold

Nuclear/Climate Change: CLOSED 17 May 2011

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, 12 Water, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Technologies

ROLLING UPDATE from Beginning of Crisis

SHORT URL: http://tinyurl.com/PBI-Japan-Update

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16 May 2011

ALL:  Study: Seaports unready for climate change

CANADA:  Climate change threatens arctic coastlines

CHINA:  China’s Nuclear Arsenal: Status and Evolution

EUROPE-SPAIN:  Spanish Quake Jolts European Nuclear Debate

GERMANY-JAPAN-USA:  Nuclear Nations Turn To Natural Gas And Renewables

INDIA:  Manmohan Singh takes stock of country's nuclear arsenal

INDIA-PAKISTAN:  Towards An Indo-Pak Nuclear Lexicon: Minimum Nuclear Deterrence – Analysis

INDONESIA:  Strong earthquake strikes off Indonesia’s Java island

JAPAN:  Japanese Officials Ignored or Concealed Dangers

JAPAN:  Japan Sticks to Timeline for Solving Nuclear Crisis

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. also acknowledged that one of the factors contributing to a rapid meltdown of reactor cores was the failure to keep emergency batteries safe from the tsunami, preventing a key emergency cooling system from performing its intended function.

Meanwhile, Tepco said one of the key causes of a rapid meltdown at Unit No. 1 was the failure of two emergency cooling mechanisms—the suppression pool and the isolation condenser—to perform their intended functions.

PAKISTAN:  Pakistan's nuclear surge exposed

Indian slam, satellite and video, 100% jump by 2021.

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SWEDEN:  Sweden's Holding Tank For Nuclear Waste

“We have here about 2,000 tons that you are looking (at), and you can stand here as long as you want to,” she tells me before quickly adding, “If we take one of these bundles out of the water I will give you 20 seconds to leave this room alive.”

USA:  US reactor outages 50 pct above late-spring average

USA:  U.S. Nuclear Output Falls as Entergy, Progress Shut Reactors

Twenty- five of the nation’s 104 reactors were offline.

USA:  75% of Americans Have Never Heard of Climate-Gate, Study Reveals

Prior Updates, Graphics, and Original Overviews Below the Line

Continue reading “Nuclear/Climate Change: CLOSED 17 May 2011”

Secrecy News: Executive Privilege–Thomas Drake, Whistleblower, as a Political Prisoner in the USA…

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
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A CLOSE LOOK AT THE THOMAS DRAKE CASE

An insightful account of the pending prosecution under the Espionage Act of former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake appears this week in The New Yorker.  Author Jane Mayer delves deeply into the origins of the case stemming from Drake's critical view of NSA management and surveillance practices. She explores the unfolding consequences of the case and its larger significance.

Among the article's many striking observations on the Drake case is the concluding quote from Mark Klein, a former AT&T employee who exposed warrantless surveillance activity by the Bush Administration. “I think it’s outrageous,” he says. “The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers.”

See “The Secret Sharer” by Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, May 23, 2011.

Photo Caption:  Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, faces some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

Worth a Look: Community Land Trusts — Coming Home with E. F. Schumacher & the Reinvention of the Local Economy (A Video Gift, 37 Minutes, from Christopher B. Bedford)

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policies, Strategy, True Cost, Videos/Movies/Documentaries
Home Page

Phi Beta Iota:  Kudos to Christopher B. Bedford for his many contributions, this one in particular is most timely now as a global movement for redirecting the manner in which land (and water) are “owned.”  As with our native forebearers, land can no longer be owned by individuals–community land trusts are the essential way forward.  This is the practice in many countries.  This 37 minute DVD is revolutionary.

Amazon Page

See Also:

E. F. Schumacher Society

Small Is Beautiful, 25th Anniversary Edition: Economics As If People Mattered: 25 Years Later . . . With Commentaries

Reference: US DOJ Tells Court It Has Authority to Lie UPDATED to include Amended Order of 27 April 2011

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Officers Call
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Source (2 Page PDF)

Tip of the Hat to Samurai Sam in  the Far East for this one.

Phi Beta Iota: We don't make this stuff up.

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

UPDATE: Here is the full back story.  What is revealed is a long-standing US Government practice of lying to Congress and the Judiciary, the other two “co-equal” branches of the federal government.  More and more each day we see the naked unethical Emperor for what he/she is: naked unethical tyranny replete with impeachable acts each day.

Amended Order 27 April 2011

Tip of the Hat to Penguin for the update.

 

USG on Oil: Doing the Wrong Thing Righter….

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, True Cost

Obama says ‘Drill, baby, drill.' Will new oil policy ease gas prices?

President Obama used his weekly address to announce steps to promote greater domestic oil production and reduce the burden of high gas prices. Republicans say it's not enough.

Big Oil's Political Ploy

Whatever else we might say about Big Oil in the United States, we have to give the industry credit for one thing: it has mastered the art of scamming us with a perfectly straight face.

Freshmen challenge energy subsidies

Pompeo and Labrador were joined by Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Mike Needham of Heritage Action Fund. The two organizations joined a coalition of conservative groups in March, including Americans for Prosoperity, in a letter calling for an end to energy subsidies.

 

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Phi Beta Iota: US politicians have substituted ideology for intelligence (decision-support) and borrowing for thinking.  There is nothing intelligent in US energy policy, because there is no policy–just a long string of subsidies and hand-outs and tax exemptions.  The oil drilling decisions are an example of doing the wrong thing righter, instead of the right thing (Russell Ackoff).  The “policy” decisions are also hypocritical because nothing being decided today will have substantive effect in less than ten years.  Here's what an intelligent government would use to think about energy futures…and everything else, all together.

Secrecy News: F-35 “True Costs” Disclosed

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

F-35 SELECTED ACQUISITION REPORT DISCLOSED

The latest annual report to Congress (pdf) on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program details the soaring costs and deferred production schedule associated with the program.  The report, which has not been publicly released, outlines total program costs from last year as well as per-aircraft costs and planned annual spending rates.

It's “a useful primer on the Pentagon's most expensive weapons program,” said one close observer of defense procurement.

A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.  See the 2010 Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) for the F-35, April 2011.

Phi Beta Iota: Congress has abdicated its Article 1 responsibilities across the board, but particularly with respect to war and the cost of war.  Coincident with the insanity of the US Intelligence Community claiming it can restrict the use of unclassified information in legal proceedings (See Drake Leak Case), what we have is a government that is “out of control” and incurring costs “in our name” that are unaffordable and often immoral as well as illegal.  Transparency of true costs is a major foundation for sane democratic policies.

noble gold