Category: Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

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John Robb: Greece, MF Global, & Crony Capitalism

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
John Robb

JOURNAL: Greece, MF Global and Crony Capitalism

The slow motion bankruptcy of MF global and Greece should prove we're still on the brink of an economic meltdown that will likely result in a global depression.  Why?  These events demonstate how the global economy, like the Communist system before it, is run by a small group of central planners (that allocate the world's collective capital).  These planners:

  • Make lots of VERY bad decisions.  Wall Street and EU planners routinely attempt to sink the entire economic and financial system with excessive leverage and risk.  These systemic threats have become so commonplace now, it's nearly inevitable that one will cause a major collapse.
  • Become morally and ethically depraved.   They operate on a continuous stream of fraud and lies.  Too many instances to count.  These planners are unencumbered by ethical or cultural norms.  They actually believe these rules are below them.  In reality, by doing so, these planners are eviscerating their own decision making (i.e. in terms of an  OODA loop, they aren't orienting themselves to the deep/rich cultural experience these rules represent).
  • Completely arrogant and unapologetic.  They are never wrong.  Nobody could have foreseen it.  It's a one in 10,000 year event.

Of course, this situation will persist until it doesn't.  At that point, we'll be in for a long rebuilding process.

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Chuck Spinney: William Pfaff on USA Gone Awry

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney

Good summary of the American sickness.

One Nation, Gone Awry

William Pfaff – truthdig – 02/11/11

The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think. This concerns two matters at the core of the present American political crisis.

The first is that control over the government has passed all but completely into the hands of business corporations. The country has become a plutocracy. This has occurred because corporations are the principal supplier of funds essential to the election of federal officials—the president and the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and through them, the members of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, all of whom are nominated and confirmed by the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches of the government.

. . . . . . .

I spoke of a second source of American crisis to which there is a simple solution, an intellectual solution, which to impose would require conversion of the hard hearts and biased minds of a sizable part of the international economic community (at least that part of it educated at the University of Chicago since the Second World War), as well as a near-revolutionary change in how the American government presently functions (see above). The crisis is easily described as the 1 percent problem. One percent of the American population receives income equivalent to the other 99 percent put together.

This is caused by the consensus decision of the economists and business schools to define profit as the sole criterion of corporation efficiency and public (and civic) worth. The automatic consequence of this has been the de-industrialization of the United States, the export of its manufacturing capacity, unemployment in the U.S. comparable to that of the Great Depression, poverty levels with no modern American precedent, and the moral corruption of American politics.

Read full article.

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NIGHTWATCH: Asian Naval Developments

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy

Japan-India: Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony and Japanese Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa agreed to hold their first bilateral naval exercises in 2012, according to Japanese Defense Ministry officials.

Ichikawa said deepening bilateral defense ties between Tokyo and New Delhi will lead to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Antony said India's relations with Japan remain a priority and New Delhi seeks to strengthen those ties. Both ministers discussed the importance of the international community in protecting sea lanes, specifically discussing the South China Sea.

Comment: For India, this is the next step in its “Look East” policy. Similar ties and exercises with the South Korean Navy also are likely. Eventually, the combined fleets of India, South Korea and Japan, supported by Taiwan and the US, will be arrayed against China in future conflicts. The Asian states do not perceive containment of China as primarily a US leadership task. That is an important lesson and manifests the success of a half century of US policy.

The Chinese, on the other hand, are reaping what they have sowed in the past twenty years by their aggressive assertiveness in northeast Asia, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Chinese actions have nurtured an extraordinary and unprecedented regional reaction that is moving towards a new regional military cooperative structure, linking the fleets of the Asian democracies.

The most important features of this interlocking set of bilateral ties are that the Asian members are equals and the Asians are taking responsibility for Asian security affairs, without relying on the US Navy. US Navy connections with all the parties constitute a second tier of linkage that resides in background and gives the Asians depth and strength.

A third feature is that for the first time in a millennium and a half, the Asian navies are defying China and are actually much more capable than the Chinese navy, without relying on the forces of nature.

The worst thing that could happen is for the US to try to take charge or steer the development or do anything except enable it, behind the scenes. US estimates of Asian security threats that do not factor Asian capabilities that the US has nurtured are incomplete.

The NightWatch bias is that Asian nations know best how to solve Asian problems, with some US support as requested. The Asians will find a way.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota:  The above good sense is in sharp contrast to the on-going US Navy attempt, aided by a defense policy mafia that blends ignorance and corruption to an astonishing degree, to invest  dollars and capabilities we do not have in making the Pacific the “main front” for the future.  There is nothing intelligent about how the US Navy is planning for the future, in large part because the US Navy, like the US Government generally, lacks integrity at the leadership / gerbil maximus levels.

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Richard Wright: Bill Moyers on Politicians and Money Launderers in the Trafficking of Power and Policy

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Legislation, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Richard Wright

Moyers is a sanctimonious preacher who sometimes speaks the truth.

Bill Moyers: “Our Politicians Are Money Launderers in the Trafficking of Power and Policy”

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Public Citizen 40th Gala
Washington, DC
October 20, 2011

I am honored to share this occasion with you. No one beyond your collegial inner circle appreciates more than I do what you have stood for over these 40 years, or is more aware of the battles you have fought, the victories you have won, and the passion for democracy that still courses through your veins. The great progressive of a century ago, Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin – a Republican, by the way – believed that “Democracy is a life; and involves constant struggle.” Democracy has been your life for four decades now, and would have been even more imperiled today if you had not stayed the course.

VIDEO (21:15):  Bill Moyers keynote at Public Citizen's 40th Anniversary Gala

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NIGHTWATCH: Drums of War Israel Iran USA

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Iran-Israel:  Iran is on “full alert” and ready to retaliate for any strike against the Islamic Republic, Iranian military officials warned Wednesday amid Israeli media speculation of plans for an attack.

“We consider any threat — even those with low probability and distant — as a definite threat,” said General Hassan Firouzabadi, the armed forces' chief of staff. “We are ready to punish them.” The United States also “will suffer serious damages should there be a military attack by the Zionist regime against Iran,” the Iranian chief of staff warned.

Comment: The significance of this statement is that it represents feedback to the Israelis that their chest thumping and foot stomping is registering in Tehran. It also makes clear that if Israel ever attacks Iran, Iran will attack US installations in reach as well as Israel.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota:  We have learned not to underestimate the ideological idiocy of the neo-cons still entrenched across the US national security “regime,” nor the ineffectiveness of the White House is doing anything other than “going along.”  Israel is out of control; the US Government is out of control; this does not bode well for anyone.

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Chuck Spinney: No-Nothingism with Nukes

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Chuck Spinney

Below is a brilliant synopsis of America's defeat in Iraq.  The author Patrick Seale, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last summer, is one of the leading authorities on the Middle East.  Seale lays out the costs incurred and the unintended grand-strategic consequences of the US invasion of Iraq, and he reminds of us of its fraudulent origins.  Contrast Seale's analysis with the self-serving pap peddled by Fredrick Kagan et al. in Weekly Standard that caused Col. XXX to do his atomic puke (distributed in my previous blaster).

The most disturbing point made by Seale, at least to me, is his observation that the people and politics of the United States show no signs of wanting to determine who is responsible for the Iraq catastrophe or to hold them to account.  Without accountability and punitive as well as corrective action, the very idea of a representative republic becomes a sham, and the Constitution becomes a sick joke.  Given the escalating danger in the Middle East, not mention our dangerous economic times, the absence of any self-correcting mechanism in the political OODA loops of people or government in the United States is a scary thing indeed, not only to the United States but also for the entire world — think of US politics as no-nothingism with nukes.

Chuck Spinney
Barcelona, Catalunya

America’s Defeat in Iraq and Beyond

by Patrick Seale, Agence France Global

Released: 1 Nov 2011

EXTRACTS:

Can America chance course? Nothing is less likely. It is widely predicted that if the Republican Mitt Romney wins the White House, the pro-Israeli neocons will be back in power in Washington. Their target this time will be Iran.

Phi Beta Iota:  A superb article that names names.  It is very likely that Occupy Wall Street is going to blow its one chance to demand an Electoral Reform Act of 2012, and that the next “president” will again be a puppet to Israel, extremist influences, and Wall Street.  Romney is a suit – a corrupt suit.  Obama is the same.  The US Government no longer represents the US public, but Occupy Wall Street is so busy doing intense kum-ba-ya they are ignoring the one thing everyone can agree on: it's time to dump the two-party tyranny in the toilet and reset US democracy with open ballot access and the other nine elements of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012.

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Mini-Me: From Arab Spring to Death of the US Empire

02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Movies, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy
Who? Mini-Me?

‘Arab Spring is about controlling Eurasia'

Includes Video (12:04)

The ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia, thus taking the whole of Eurasia under control, author and historian William F. Engdahl reveals.

­The crisis with the US economy and the dollar system, the conduct of the US foreign policy is all a part of breakdown of the entire superpower structure that was built up after the end of WWII, claims Engdahl.

“Nobody in Washington wants to admit, just as nobody in Britain a hundred years ago wanted to admit that the British Empire was in terminal decline,” claims the author, noting that “All of this is related to the attempt to keep this sole superpower not only intact, but to spread its influence over the rest of the planet.”

William F. Engdahl believes the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is a plan first announced by George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in 2003 and it was called “The Greater Middle East Project”.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: From Arab Spring to Death of the US Empire”