Public Intelligence Blog

300 Million Talons...

Is The Food We Eat Killing Us?

Are we digging our own graves with our teeth?  Is the food that we eat every day slowly killing us?  When I was growing up, I just assumed that everything in the grocery store was perfectly safe and perfectly healthy.  I just assumed that the government and the big corporations were watching out for us and that they would never allow something harmful to be sold in the stores.  Boy, was I wrong!  Today, the average American diet is extremely unhealthy.  Most of the foods that we all love to eat are absolutely packed with things that will damage our health.  Many of the ingredients that make our foods “taste good” such as fat, salt and sugar can be extremely damaging in large amounts.  On top of that, most processed foods are absolutely loaded with chemicals and preservatives.  The next time you go to the grocery store, just start turning over packages and read the “ingredients” that are being put into our food.  If you have never done this before, you will be absolutely amazed.  In many of our most common foods there are “ingredients” that I cannot even pronounce.  Sadly, most Americans have no idea that eating a steady diet of these processed foods will likely leave them massively overweight, very sick and much closer to death.

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Eating healthy takes more time, more effort and more money than eating poorly does. Unfortunately, most Americans are content to chow down on foods that are quick to make and that taste good. In particular, Americans are absolutely addicted to foods that are loaded with sugar and high fructose corn syrup. When you start looking at food product labels, you will find that either sugar or high fructose corn syrup is in almost everything. For example, I was absolutely amazed when I learned that most bread sold in our grocery stores contains high fructose corn syrup. Why in the world would they need to put that into our bread? Today, Americans are consuming far more sugar and high fructose corn syrup than ever before, and this has many health professionals very alarmed.

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David Stockman

The Emperor is Naked: David Stockman

Testosterone Pit, May 9, 2012

Contributed by Karen Roche and JT Long of The Gold Report. A “paralyzed” Federal Reserve Bank, in its “final days,” held hostage by Wall Street “robots” trading in markets that are “artificially medicated” are just a few of the bleak observations shared by David Stockman, former Republican U.S. Congressman and director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is also a founding partner of Heartland Industrial Partners and the author of The Triumph of Politics: Why Reagan’s Revolution Failed and the soon-to-be released The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy. The Gold Report caught up with Stockman for this exclusive interview at the recent Recovery Reality Check conference (5/4/12).

The Gold Report: David, you have talked and written about the effect of government-funded, debt-fueled spending on the stock market. What will be the real impact of quantitative easing?

David Stockman: We are in the last innings of a very bad ball game. We are coping with the crash of a 30-year–long debt super-cycle and the aftermath of an unsustainable bubble.

Quantitative easing is making it worse by facilitating more public-sector borrowing and preventing debt liquidation in the private sector—both erroneous steps in my view. The federal government is not getting its financial house in order. We are on the edge of a crisis in the bond markets. It has already happened in Europe and will be coming to our neighborhood soon.

TGR: What should the role of the Federal Reserve be?

DS: To get out of the way and not act like it is the central monetary planner of a $15 trillion economy. It cannot and should not be done.

The Fed is destroying the capital market by pegging and manipulating the price of money and debt capital. Interest rates signal nothing anymore because they are zero. The yield curve signals nothing anymore because it is totally manipulated by the Fed. The very idea of “Operation Twist” is an abomination.

Capital markets are at the heart of capitalism and they are not working. Savers are being crushed when we desperately need savings. The federal government is borrowing when it is broke. Wall Street is arbitraging the Fed’s monetary policy by borrowing overnight money at 10 basis points and investing it in 10-year treasuries at a yield of 200 basis points, capturing the profit and laughing all the way to the bank. The Fed has become a captive of the traders and robots on Wall Street.

TGR: If we are in the final innings of a debt super-cycle, what is the catalyst that will end the game?

DS: I think the likely catalyst is a breakdown of the U.S. government bond market. It is the heart of the fixed income market and, therefore, the world’s financial market.

Because of Fed management and interest-rate pegging, the market is artificially medicated. All of the rates and spreads are unreal. The yield curve is not market driven. Supply and demand for savings and investment, future inflation risk discounts by investors—none of these free market forces matter. The price of money is dictated by the Fed, and Wall Street merely attempts to front-run its next move.

As long as the hedge fund traders and fast-money boys believe the Fed can keep everything pegged, we may limp along. The minute they lose confidence, they will unwind their trades.

On the margin, nobody owns the Treasury bond; you rent it. Trillions of treasury paper is funded on repo: You buy $100 million (M) in Treasuries and immediately put them up as collateral for overnight borrowings of $98M. Traders can capture the spread as long as the price of the bond is stable or rising, as it has been for the last year or two. If the bond drops 2%, the spread has been wiped out.

If that happens, the massive repo structures—that is, debt owned by still more debt—will start to unwind and create a panic in the Treasury market. People will realize the emperor is naked.

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David Swanson

Bank of America Prepares for Shareholders Meeting as if Under Assault

Bank of America has hired G4S for its shareholder meeting.  According to Wikipedia:

“G4S plc (formerly Group 4 Securicor) (LSE: GFS, OMX: G4S) is a global security services company headquartered in Crawley, United Kingdom. It is the world’s largest security company measured by revenues and has operations in more than 125 countries.^[2][3] With over 630,000 employees, it is the world’s second-largest private sector employer (after Wal-Mart Stores).^[2][4]“

G4S and its subsidiary Wackenhut have a lengthy criminal record:

“In March of 2006, whistle-blowers employed at Wackenhut released information to the press revealing that the company cheated on an anti-terrorism drill at a US nuclear site.

“… In 2009, an Aboriginal man from Western Australia died of heat stroke after being transported in a G4S (then GSL) van without air conditioning or water.^[26]

“… On June 13, 2010, a video posted on YouTube by documentary filmmaker James Fox showed Wackenhut guards preventing reporters from covering the BP oil spill.^[30]

“… In October 2010, three G4S-guards heavily restrained and held down 46-year old Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga on departing British Airways flight 77, at Heathrow Airport. Security guards kept him restrained in his seat as he began shouting and seeking to resist his deportation. Police and paramedics were called when Mubenga lost consciousness. The aircraft, which had been due to lift off, then returned to the terminal.^[31] Mubenga was pronounced dead later that evening at Hillingdon hospital.^[32]“

The kind souls from G4S, being housed in two downtown hotels by B of A, will be joined by off-duty police hired by B of A, wearing their police uniforms, and empowered to arrest on B of A’s behalf and at the order of B of A security.

What is this militarized, privatized emergency preparation for?

Are foreign armies descending upon the shareholders meeting of the Bank of America?

Nope.

Actually citizens of the Country of America.  Newspaper headlines explain:

Bank of America braces for protesters onslaught

“In Charlotte, protesters are expected to demand a complete halt to foreclosures, forgiveness of student loan debt, a stop to financing coal projects, an end to political spending and an end to seven-figure compensation packages.”

Uh oh. More cops! More guns! Quick! What would Bloomberg do?

The protesters’ plans, of course, are for a nonviolent march and rally.

B of A billionaires aren’t afraid for their physical safety.  They’re afraid their shareholders may side with their victims.

Tom Atlee

Wholesome capitalism?

What would wholesome capitalism look like?

“Wholesome” means healthy, in the sense of something that promotes physical and moral well-being. Wholesome capitalism would take into account the wholeness of people and the social and natural world we live in, and it would enhance that wholeness.

Some people think capitalism already does this. They note how good it has been at generating wealth. The word wealth, meaning abundance, derives from roots meaning well-being and wholeness. Many of capitalism’s advocates feel it should be freed from constraints so it can generate more wealth.

Others note that capitalism – while generating wealth for some – many or few, depending on its form in a particular time and place – nevertheless generates much suffering and destruction in the process. It reduces everything to money and maximizes financial return even if it has to degrade and destroy human and natural life to do it. Many of capitalism’s critics feel it should be undermined or overthrown.

Still others note both the blessings and problems with capitalism. They think we can have the wealth without so much suffering and destruction. Most of these people promote freeing capitalism’s creativity and productivity while restraining its rapaciousness in various ways – using everything from laws, regulations and taxes to moral suasion and consumer-shareholder activism.

In this article I advocate all three positions – odd as that may sound – but only after reframing “capital” and “wealth” to better reflect wholeness.

THE PRIMARY DYNAMIC OF CAPITALISM

The special gift of capitalism is its ability to create MORE – more products and services, more self-organized economic activity, more wealth. In systems science, this tendency to create more-ness is called a positive or reinforcing feedback dynamic.

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Howard Rheingold

I’m glad to see Google providing more material about how to use search effectively — Howard

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GOOGLE SEZ:

Help your students become better searchers

Web search can be a remarkable tool for students, and a bit of instruction in how to search for academic sources will help your students become critical thinkers and independent learners.

With the materials on this site, you can help your students become skilled searchers- whether they’re just starting out with search, or ready for more advanced training.

Search Education / Education on Search

Chuck Spinney

One of core component’s of the neoliberal agenda is privatization of state assets.  Attached is one countries reaction to the inequalities and economic distortions privatization introduces. CS Afloat in the Mediterranean

Piracy as good policy

by Serge Halimi

Le Monde Diplomatique, 1 May, 2012

The head of state, confident after electoral victory, tells the governor of the central bank what to do, introduces forex controls and announces that a key sector of the economy, sold off to private investors 13 years ago, is to be nationalised. Two members of the government are appointed to head this enterprise, now in public hands again, and its private owners are told to go. The European Commission, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are furious about this “shabby act of economic piracy”. The Economist suggests that the “pirate state” should be excluded from the G20, and that its citizens (who voted in the head of state) must get visas to travel abroad.

This is not Europe. It is Argentina. As President Cristina Kirchner explained on 16 April when most of the assets of the Spanish multinational Repsol, majority shareholder in the Argentinian oil company YPF, were about to be nationalised: “We are the only country in Latin America, and I would say in the world, that doesn’t control its natural resources.” Public ownership is not as prevalent as she suggests — Total, BP, ExxonMobil and others are private companies — but she is thinking of earlier battles to recover common sources of wealth: Mossadeq’s nationalisation of British Petroleum in Iran in 1951, Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal for Egypt in 1956, Boumedienne’s acquisition of Elf and Total assets for Algeria in 1971, Putin’s seizure of the Yukos company in Russia in 2003 and Hugo Chávez’s takeover of PDVSA (Petroleum of Venezuela).

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300 Million Talons...

Romney: Why It’s OK to Stick It to Him for Being a Mormon

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Cryptocomb has reviewed many of the documents uploaded by AntiSec from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

One document in particular is most interesting as it confirms Google’s diligence at responding to LE(Law Enforcement)requests for information of it’s users. Cryptocomb will not post the document, as it appears to involve an active criminal investigation.

Google Provides Local LE/Federal LE with the following data of its users.

Users Email Address
Email Address Status (If it’s in use or not)
Date/Time and IP Address used to create user account
User NickName
Real Name
Physical Address
Phone Numbers
Dates/Time/IP Address of User Logins

What Google services the member uses: Adsense Clicks, Bookmarks, Calendar, Checkout, Co-op, Docs, Gmail, Lso provider,
Mobile, Notebook, Personalized Homepage, Reader, Safe search, Search history, Sms auth, Spreadsheets, Strongauth, Talk, Toolbar,
Transliteration, Web history promo, Youtube.

If a member uses Googles Checkout, Google stores the users CC data, which includes all users personal information, Who the user pays, who pays them, how much money is involved in transaction, date/time of transactions.

It also appears that Google provides data on ALL of it’s services to local/federal LE. LE has the ability to ask what youtube videos
a user posts and watches, what documents/URL’s a user has translated, Document titles stored in a users GoogleDoc storage area (its
unknown if LE can request copies of a users documents, but we assume that they can), a users calender data, the list goes on and on.

Phi Beta Iota: Evidently all of this is done without a warrant being required, provided, or asked for.

Source: http://cryptocomb.org/

Paul Craig Roberts

Disinformation On Every Front

Some readers have come to the erroneous conclusion that the Matrix consists of Republican Party disinformation as if there is no disinformation from the left. Others think that propaganda is the business of Obama and the Democrats. In fact, propaganda from the right, the left and the middle are all part of the disinformation fed to americans.

If I may give some examples: The other day Chuck Colson, one of the Nixon officials imprisoned for Watergate crimes, died. This gave NPR the opportunity to relive the Nixon horror.

What precisely was the Nixon horror? Essentially, there was no such thing. Watergate was about President Nixon lying about when he learned about the Watergate burglary.
When Nixon learned about the burglary, he did not act on it prior to his reelection, because he reasoned, rightly, that the Washington Post would blame him for the burglary, although he had nothing to do with it, in the hopes of preventing his reelection.

By going along with a cover-up, Nixon enabled the Washington Post to make an issue of the precise date on which Nixon learned of the burglary. White House tapes indicated that Nixon had learned of the burglary before he said he learned of it. So Nixon had permitted a cover-up and had to go, but what was the real reason?

What was the Watergate burglary? We don’t really know. A group of men including former CIA operatives were hired by the Committee to Re-elect the President to break into a Democratic campaign office in the Watergate complex. We don’t know the purpose of the burglary. Some claim it was to wire-tap the telephones in the belief that the Democratic Party was getting re-election money from communists in Cuba or elsewhere. Others claim that the burglars were looking for a list of call girls, that compromised a White House official, as his fiancee was allegedly one of the call girls.

Looking back from our time during which Bush and Obama have deep-sixed the US Constitution, violated numerous US and international laws, and behaved as if they were caesars unconstrained by any law or any morality, Nixon’s “crimes” appear so trivial as to be unremarkable. Yet, Nixon was driven from office and is regarded as a criminal.

What was Watergate really about?

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