Public Intelligence Blog

David Isenberg

Iran well prepared for the worst

David Isenberg

31 January 2012

Most discussions of possible United States military operations in the Persian Gulf, should Iran try to prevent maritime traffic from going through the Strait of Hormuz, generally say that while it would not be a cakewalk, it would not be an enormously difficult task either.

But that conventional wisdom is wrong, according to a recent report issued by an independent, non-profit public policy research institute in Washington DC. The report found that the traditional post-Cold War US military ability to project power overseas with few serious challenges to its freedom of action may be rapidly drawing to a close.

. . . . . . .

It stressed that “a Strait of Hormuz closure could trigger a much larger price spike, including by limiting offsetting supplies from other producers in the region”.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Two themes are emerging in the open source world.  First, the depth and breadth of Israel’s clandestine agreements with its Arab neighbors is not clearly understood–a National Intelligence Estimate is required, but the collection, processing, and analysis capabilities are simply not there, and the management will to do this as a multinational task is not there either.  Second, as the US loses its ability to actually project force, the finance of war is being replaced by the theater of war, such that oil prices can still be manipulated, but at a fraction of the blood, sweat, and tears previously mobilized – financial fraud on the cheap, as it were.

European Intelligence & Security Informatics Conference (EISIC 2012)
The Premier European Conference on Counterterrorism and Criminology
Odense, Denmark August 22-24, 2012
http://www.eisic.org, http://www.eisic.eu
Co-sponsored by IEEE Computer Society

———————
Call for Papers  DUE 22 APRIL 2012
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Angelo Codevilla

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

Angelo M. Codevilla

American Spectator, July-August 2010

The only serious opposition to this arrogant Ruling Party is coming not from feckless Republicans but from what might be called the Country Party — and its vision is revolutionary. Our special Summer Issue cover story.

Read full article.

Integral to the above piece:

Printable Paginated Safety Copies:

Europe:  Updates. In an interview with a French daily on 25 December, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde stressed that Europe’s financial crisis is turning into “a crisis of confidence in public debt and the solidity of the financial system.

Greece: According to an IMF source involved in discussions with Greece, the situation in Athens is “deteriorating” and “a further 10-15 billion euros ($13.1-19.6 billion) still needs to be found.” Banks may be asked to agree to write off 65 % instead of 50% of Greece’s debt.

France: The French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) said on 26 December that there were 29,000 new job seekers “without any occupation” in November, up 1.1% over October. The year-on-year increase reached 5.2%. In total, 2,844,800 people did not have any occupation, the highest such figure since November 1999.

An economist at the French Observatory of Economic Conditions speculated that France’s unemployment rate — which currently stands at 9.3% — will reach 10.7% by the end of 2012, and predicted that Paris will not succeed in bringing the deficit down to 3% of GDP by 2013.

Spain: At a news conference on 26 December, Spanish Economy Minister Luis De Guindos said that the Spanish economy had suffered a “relapse” and would record negative growth in the fourth quarter of 2011. De Guindos warned that “the next two months are not going to be easy, neither from a growth nor a jobs point of view.”

Comment: According to the Financial Times and multiple economists the fate of the euro depends on what happens in Italy. This week Italy intends to auction bonds worth Euros 20 billion. The market reaction to the auction will be an important indicator of whether the central bankers have found a way to stabilize the financial crisis, or have just made it worse.

All analysts of European economics predict a recession in 2012. They differ only about how severe it will be. In an integrated global economy, the ripple effects from Europe will drag the US and the Chinese economies, among all others.

Phi Beta Iota:  Christine Lagarde, perhaps because she is a woman with a smaller ego and larger intuition than most men, appears to be the first Epoch A leader to “get” that we are all calling into question the very existence of the Western financial system that is rooted in fraud, waste, and abuse.  When she begins to point to Iceland as an example, and to demand that Western countries arrest and try Goldman Sachs, Morgan, Citi-Bank, Bank of America, and other officials for high crimes against the public, the healing can begin.  Until then, the West is avoiding the fundamentals.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

See Also:

Mini-Me: Iceland Breaks the Back of Western Banking

Chuck Spinney: Financial Coups Destroying Europe

Michel Bauwens: Human Evolution – Who Are We Becoming?

Mini-Me: European-US Banking–Tangled Web — Tell Me Again, Why Shouldn’t We Default and Let the Banks Fry? + Financial Terrorism RECAP

John Bogle

Bogle: Time for speculators to pay fair tax share

MARK JEWELL

Associated Press, 22 December 2011

EXTRACTS:

Bogle says he’s paying close attention to tax policies he considers unfair, including one that’s favorable to the fund industry and investors with taxable accounts. The top rate for dividends and long-term capital gains is historically low at 15 percent, as a result of the extension of Bush era tax cuts that Congress and President Barack Obama agreed to a year ago. In contrast, top earners pay 35 percent on regular income. He doesn’t like that disparity.

. . . . . . .

As for capital gains, there ought to be some distinction between capital made by people who start businesses, and contribute value to society, and capital made by gamblers on Wall Street, some of whom win. Earned capital income should carry the regular dividend rate, but capital income gains by trading, and particularly short-term trading, should pay a higher tax, even than the present ordinary income rate.

. . . . . . .

Q: What’s your take on the Occupy movement?

A: I’m happy to say that my current income puts me in the 99 percent group. So maybe I’m not so happy, I don’t know.

This movement has brought to the surface some very serious problems in our country about disparities in opportunity and income. So many young people are having a terrible time getting a job.

Young people have great idealism, and the Occupy movement has been a bit unrealistic at times. So what? I can’t imagine a worse America if our younger generation didn’t have great idealism. I salute them for their enthusiasm, and their mission.

The negative side is that they just pushed too hard for too long. It’s very difficult for any movement without any seeming leadership — other than a good idea — to have any sense of taste or judgment. Who’s to say, ‘This is going too far’? In some places, it’s just gone on too long, and it’s been too disruptive. So I think it’s good that we’ve been cleaning up the plazas where the Occupy movement set up.

Read full interview.

See Also (Steele Reviews in Each Case):

John Bogle, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History

Michael Ostrolenk

Corporations are artificial creations of the state and receive special protections from the state. Thus, claims attorney and author Jeff Clements, corporations should not have the same Constitutional rights as individuals even though some argue that they are simply organized associations of individuals.

In this interview with Michael Ostrolenk, Mr. Clements outlines his belief that many of the abuses of crony capitalism are allowed by corporations exploiting these illegitimate “rights.”

He also exposes how tobacco industry attorney turned Supreme Court Justice, Lewis Powell, helped to spearhead the creation of a constitutional right to corporate “speech” which was recently strengthened by theCitizens United decision.  Read more about this issue (and buy his new book Corporations Are Not People) at Mr. Clement’s website.

Listen to Interview

Who? Mini-Me?

Sometimes lunatics see stuff the rest of us miss. The trick is knowing when to listen and which pieces to pull out for closer examination.  This is from Benjamin Fulford, reprinted in full at Spiritual Truth Blog, and circulating in Gold Warrior / Gold Lily / Black Eagle Trust circles.  Phi Beta Iota comments and more links below the full piece.

- – - – - – -

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il was murdered Saturday as part of a major power struggle in East Asia, according to Asian secret society sources and Japanese military intelligence.

The murder of Kim was followed by a series of arrests of senior police officials in Japan linked to North Korea as well as the ouster of six CIA agents, the Japanese sources say.

The death has left Yasuhiro Nakasone, the top North Korean and Rothschild agent in Japan, without a power base, Japanese underworld sources say. In North Korea, meanwhile, there is now a succession battle taking place between the Rothschild faction, who want to place their trained stooge Kim Jong Un in power and set up a Rothschild central bank versus a military clique that wants independence from Rothschild control, Rothschild and Japanese underworld sources say. The action is Asia is linked to a worldwide takedown of the satanic cabal that has been trying to create a global dictatorship.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chuck Spinney

Will Germany Kill the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg?

Berto Jongman

This is a first empirical study on maritime terrorism based on a German piracy databank.

Schneider on Maritime Terrorism

Phi Beta Iota:  Abstract is provided in English.

Lynn Wheeler

Financial Cryptography

Where the crypto rubber meets the Road of Finance…

December 11, 2011

Why (my, all) financial systems fail — information complexity

I spent over a decade building the snappiest financial system around. In that time I pursued one goal of efficiency: reduction of complexity. This wasn’t only goodness in an angelic sense, it was a pragmatic goal to reduce my own costs in building systems.

The result was pretty spectacular: we were settling trades in seconds and doing so with every leg firmly fastened to the ground. That is, the whole thing was running with direct concrete ties to assets.

But, the big players weren’t interested. Indeed they were more than uninterested, they were highly interested in making sure this would never ever happen. Time after time, the message was delivered: Never. Other companies received the same message, so after a few years, I started to take it seriously.

At the time I hypothesised that the reason for this was insider fraud, or at least profits capture. The complexities were endemic and there were very few people who could see the whole picture. So, I theorised that those who could understand the complexities were cashing in on their advantage; from the inside. And some very few who cashed in were also driving the information agenda, as their success made them both wealthy and influential:  more complexity.

Of course such a hypothesis is unlikely to find proof. By its very nature, how do you prove such a tendency towards chaos? Here comes an alternate perspective from ZeroHedge, citing two papers (1, 2):

And the punchline: “Liquidity requires symmetric information, which is easiest to achieve when everyone is ignorant. This determines the design of many securities, including the design of debt and securitization.” Reread the last statement as it explains perhaps better than anything, the true functioning of modern capital markets and why they are terminally broken: in order to preserve the system, the banking cartel need to make everything of virtually infinite complexity so that no one has a clear understanding of what is going on!

Read full posting.

Phi Beta Iota:  In brief, finance is fraud.  As William Greider documents in his book, The Soul of Capitalism, financial instruments (incomprehensible to their own vendors) appreciated seventeen times while real assets appreciated five times.  Twelve is the fraud-complexity-corruption delta.

See Also:

Mini-Me: European-US Banking–Tangled Web — Tell Me Again, Why Shouldn’t We Default and Let the Banks Fry? + Financial Terrorism RECAP