Monthly Archives: August 2013

Obama administration hints it could act alone on Syria

"The United States hinted Thursday it could act alone to punish Syria for a chemical weapons attack. The Obama administration also denied that public skepticism dating to an Iraq war intelligence debacle was complicating its effort to justify possible military action against Syria. Obama, who came to power criticizing his predecessor George W. Bush’s go-it-alone approach on foreign policy, was confronted Thursday with a choice over whether to wait for allies or launch unilateral US action. Obama aides stress they envisage only 'limited' punitive action in Syria and dismiss comparisons with the US invasion of Iraq, which the president built his political career on opposing." Continue reading →

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U.S. spying still under shadow of Iraq intelligence failures

"In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq 10 years ago, the CIA and other intelligence services confidently asserted that Saddam Hussein’s regime had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But it turned out the intelligence community was 'dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,' according to an official inquiry, the Silberman-Robb report. The spy services failed to collect solid information, botched their analysis and reached conclusions based on flawed assumptions instead of evidence, making it 'one of the most public — and most damaging — intelligence failures in recent American history,' the 2005 report said." Continue reading →

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Leaked documents show massive expansion of CIA budget

"The CIA has mushroomed into the largest US spy agency with a nearly $15 billion budget as it expands intelligence, cyber sabotage and overseas covert operations, secret leaked documents showed Thursday. It shows a dramatic resurgence of the Central Intelligence Agency, once thought to be on the decline after it acknowledged intelligence failures prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It now is the dominant colossus within the national intelligence community, expanding its workforce by more than 25 percent from a decade ago, to 21,575 this year." Continue reading →

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Washington Post: U.S. $53 billion ‘Black budget’ details leaked by Snowden

"U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government’s top-secret budget. The $52.6 billion 'black budget' for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. The Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods." Continue reading →

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NSA’s Prism Could Cost Global IT Service Market $180 Billion

"James Staten, a Forrester analyst who follows IT services, argued in a blog post Wednesday that financial losses could prove substantially higher when other market segments are considered. In calculating his higher estimate, Mr. Staten said that in addition to the $35 billion estimated by the ITIF, vendors of hosting and outsourcing services – which offer many of the same services as cloud companies, but use different processes and revenue models — could suffer an additional $100 billion in lost business. Moreover, non-U.S. cloud service providers could lose $35 billion worth of business from international customers, as awareness grows of the surveillance activities of other governments." Continue reading →

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The Trick to Suppressing Revolution: Keeping Debt/Tax Serfdom Bearable

"In a way, a belief in the value, transparency, trust and reciprocity of the System is like a religious belief. The converts, the true believers, are the ones who work like crazy for the company or the service. And when the veil of illusion is tugged from their eyes, then the Believer does a reversal, and becomes a devout non-believer in the System. He or she drops out, moves to a lower position, or 'retires' to some lower level of employment. At what point do people choose to opt out of debt/tax-serfdom? What triggers their decision to renounce debt, go off the financial grid, and escape serfdom by fashioning a low-cost lifestyle in the cash economy?" Continue reading →

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Global Cities of the Super-Rich

"The report also ranks the global cities that matter the most to these high-net-worth individuals, based on four categories: economic activity, political power, quality of life, and knowledge and influence. Overall, New York and London top this list as well, followed by Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Washington, D.C., Toronto, and Zurich. This list is similar to my own ranking of the world's most economically powerful cities. The cities are also ranked on each category individually, and the table below (from the report) charts the leaders in each of the four categories." Continue reading →

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Luxembourg says No to new EU tax law

"Luxembourg, one of the EU's smallest but richest countries, has said No to a new law against tax evasion. The European Commission has been trying to update its anti-tax-fraud legislation for the past eight years. Its 2005 law forces member states to automatically exchange information on EU nationals' deposits in other European Union countries. But it contains gaps on income received via investment funds, pensions, trusts and foundations. It also contains a big hole on Austria and Luxembourg. The two financial centres are exempt from automatic exchange until such time as five non-EU tax havens - Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and Switzerland - agree to it as well." Continue reading →

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Total U.S. Public Debt Now Eclipses GDP

"We previously warned of what can transpire when desperate governments are no longer able to shoulder unbearable debts. As one can see in the chart above, total public debt in the United States recently crossed the proverbial Rubicon and now equals 104.95% of GDP. As if this weren't alarming enough, the Fed's official figures – which were used to create the chart above – do not include the nation's swelling, yet politically untouchable unfunded liabilities, namely Medicare and Social Security. When these figures are plugged in to the equation, the US's public debt level skyrockets to astronomical heights." Continue reading →

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