Friday, May 24, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
Vừa mãn tù, nhà vận động Môi trường Tim DeChristopher nói về quyền Bất Tuân Dân Sự và Xây dựng Phong Trào.
Released from Prison, Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher on Civil Disobedience & Building Movements
Lý lẽ của Kẻ Bạo Ngược
Do Thái tuyên bố sẽ tiếp tục tấn công Syria và cảnh cáo nếu Syria chống trả Do Thái sẽ tiêu diệt Syria!!!
Nói một cách bình dân kiểu não trạng Việt nam ta (Ngụy ngục và bọn thổ phỉ Việt cộng) rằng" Tao đánh mày, mày phải ngồi yên, nếu mày chống trả, tao sẽ giết mày để TỰ VỆ vì MÀY dám hành hung tấn công trả đũa tao!!!
Lính Mỹ càn quét hiếp dâm tàn sát người dân vô tội hàng ngày- Máy bay không người lái giết hàng chục, hàng trăm đàn bà trẻ em, gia đình lương dân tại các nơi trên thế giới, lính Do thái bạo ngược hành hung đàn bà trẻ em Palestines hơn 60 năm nay... tất cả là chính đáng vì "tự do dân chủ và nhân quyền". Nhưng bất cứ ai dám nổi lên tự vệ -chống lại những hành vi bạo ngược này của Mỹ và Do Thái sẽ trở thành khủng bố và phải bị tiêu diệt.. vì dám HÀNH XỬ QUYỀN TỰ VỆ của MÌNH !!! Đây mới chỉ là bạo ngược bên ngoài "tổ quốc".
Bên trong "tổ cò", công an, cảnh sát, quân đội, được quyền bắt bớ, hành hung bắn giết "lầm" người dân vô tội... nhưng nếu bất cứ ai dám tự vệ lên tiếng PHẢN ĐỐI hoặc phản kháng chống trả.. sẽ bị kết tội phiến loạn, phá hoại trật tự công cộng, đe dọa an ninh quốc gia, phản động, phản quốc!!!
Cùng hành động, cùng mục tiêu, chỉ cần đổi tên gọi.
Quả thật, chúng ta đang trở lại sống ở một thời điểm của bạo chúa phong kiến, với đảo điên của chữ nghĩa và ý niệm của con người chính trị và nhà nước chính trị! Sự đảo điên này sinh ra và được nuôi dưỡng bởi chính sự NGU HÈN của một quần chúng không có hoặc đánh mất sự hiểu biết và tinh thần trách nhiệm con người công dân của chính họ. Etienne De La Boetie, 11- năm 1530– 18 tháng 8- năm 1563- nhà tưởng phi chính phủ (anarchist) cách đây hơn 500 năm, gọi hiện tượng này là SỰ TỰ NGUYỆN NÔ LỆ.. hay Nền Chính Trị Vâng Phục- (The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude )
Cuộc "Cách Mạng Thượng Tầng" của nhóm 1% đã coi như thành công trong việc nthành lập nền ĐẠI BẢN TÂN PHONG KIẾN
Thu, 10/04/2012 - 00:48 | dongson
Cuộc Cách Mạng Thượng Tầng của nhóm 1% đã coi như thành công trong việc thành lập nền ĐẠI BẢN TÂN PHONG KIẾN.
NHÀ NƯỚC đã chứng tỏ chỉ là phương tiện quyền lực của nhóm 1% quyền lực đại bản tập quyền. Bạo Lực quân đội và cảnh sát đã trở lại thay thế nền dân chủ -dân quyền và chủ quyền cá nhân. Chiến Tranh đã trở thành giải pháp thường trực của bang giao quốc tế và kinh tế quốc gia..
Giới 1% quyền lực đại bản đang thành công nhờ bọn chúng đã tẩy não được quần chúng bằng SỰ TỰ NGUYỆN NÔ LỆ - qua nỗi sợ hãi và lòng ích kỷ thể hiện qua chủ nghĩa tôn giáo và chủ nghĩa quyền lực quốc gia .
Tiếng trống của Etienne De La Boetie coi như đã lắng đọng, và lời vận động cảnh tỉnh của Henry D Thoreau đang bị tẩy rửa khỏi tâm thức loài người... Bọn 1% đã thắng, và đang thắng...
Nhưng vấn đề vẫn là: Bọn chúng sẽ giữ vững được bao lâu? Điều này vẫn luôn tùy thuộc vào nỗ lực của nhũng người như Paul Craig Roberts, Chris Hedge, Justin Raimondo, James Corbett và rất nhiều những nhóm người độc lập như trang Nhân Chủ này, đang vận động bằng nhiều phương tiện khác nhau như nhóm Alex Jone , Lew Rockwell v.v Chắc chắn một cuộc cách mạng thật sự từ quần chúng phi tôn giáo, phi quyền chính sẽ nổ ra sau khi kết quả băng hoại của những cuộc nổi dậy bị chủ nghĩa quốc gia và tôn giáo lạm dụng đang xảy ra và suy sụp như chúng ta đang chứng kiến...
Một mô thức mới sẽ được thành lập, chưa biết sẽ ra sao, nhưng chắc chắn sẽ có nền tảng dân chủ trực tiếp để tước bỏ hẳn quyền lực chính chính trị độc tôn của định chế nhà nước.
Thu, 10/04/2012 - 00:48 | dongson
Cuộc Cách Mạng Thượng Tầng của nhóm 1% đã coi như thành công trong việc thành lập nền ĐẠI BẢN TÂN PHONG KIẾN.
NHÀ NƯỚC đã chứng tỏ chỉ là phương tiện quyền lực của nhóm 1% quyền lực đại bản tập quyền. Bạo Lực quân đội và cảnh sát đã trở lại thay thế nền dân chủ -dân quyền và chủ quyền cá nhân. Chiến Tranh đã trở thành giải pháp thường trực của bang giao quốc tế và kinh tế quốc gia..
Giới 1% quyền lực đại bản đang thành công nhờ bọn chúng đã tẩy não được quần chúng bằng SỰ TỰ NGUYỆN NÔ LỆ - qua nỗi sợ hãi và lòng ích kỷ thể hiện qua chủ nghĩa tôn giáo và chủ nghĩa quyền lực quốc gia .
Tiếng trống của Etienne De La Boetie coi như đã lắng đọng, và lời vận động cảnh tỉnh của Henry D Thoreau đang bị tẩy rửa khỏi tâm thức loài người... Bọn 1% đã thắng, và đang thắng...
Nhưng vấn đề vẫn là: Bọn chúng sẽ giữ vững được bao lâu? Điều này vẫn luôn tùy thuộc vào nỗ lực của nhũng người như Paul Craig Roberts, Chris Hedge, Justin Raimondo, James Corbett và rất nhiều những nhóm người độc lập như trang Nhân Chủ này, đang vận động bằng nhiều phương tiện khác nhau như nhóm Alex Jone , Lew Rockwell v.v Chắc chắn một cuộc cách mạng thật sự từ quần chúng phi tôn giáo, phi quyền chính sẽ nổ ra sau khi kết quả băng hoại của những cuộc nổi dậy bị chủ nghĩa quốc gia và tôn giáo lạm dụng đang xảy ra và suy sụp như chúng ta đang chứng kiến...
Một mô thức mới sẽ được thành lập, chưa biết sẽ ra sao, nhưng chắc chắn sẽ có nền tảng dân chủ trực tiếp để tước bỏ hẳn quyền lực chính chính trị độc tôn của định chế nhà nước.
Tham khảo: (SỰ TỰ NGUYỆN LÀM NÔ LỆ CỦA LOÀI NGƯỜI (ÉTIENNE DE LA BOëTIE) http://nhanchu.org/node/525
---------------------------
Israel Hints at New Strikes, Warning Syria Not to Hit Back
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — In a clear warning to Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants in the region, a senior Israeli official signaled on Wednesday that Israel was considering additional military strikes to prevent that from happening and that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, would face crippling consequences if he retaliated.
“Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah,” the Israeli official said. “The transfer of such weapons to Hezbollah will destabilize and endanger the entire region.”
“If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies,” the official said, “he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.”
The Israeli official, who had been briefed by high-level officials on Israel’s assessment of the situation in Syria, declined to be identified, citing the need to protect internal Israeli government deliberations. He contacted The New York Times on Wednesday.
The precise motives for Israel’s warning were uncertain: Israel could be seeking to restrain Syria’s behavior to avoid taking further military action, or alerting other countries to another military strike. That would increase the tension in an already fraught situation in Syria, where a civil war has been raging for more than two years.
There could be a secondary audience for the warning, analysts said, in Hezbollah and its primary supporter, Iran. Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon, has said in recent days it could use weapons supplied by Iran to retaliate for recent Israeli strikes on Syria.
Nearly two weeks ago, Israeli warplanes carried out two strikes in Syria, the first hitting bases of Syria’s elite Republican Guard and storehouses of long-range missiles, in addition to a military research center that American officials have called the country’s main chemical weapons site.
A more limited strike on May 3 at Damascus International Airport was also meant to destroy weapons being sent from Iran to Hezbollah. The Israeli government did not confirm either of the attacks, which followed another earlier this year.
The Syrian government publicly condemned Israel for the assaults, saying it “opened the door to all possibilities.” The Syrian deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, declared, “We will respond immediately and harshly to any additional attack by Israel.”
Mr. Assad and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, have each said in recent days that the Israeli-Syrian border, which has been relatively quiet despite the more than two years of civil war inside Syria, could become a “resistance front,” in response to Israeli attacks.
On Wednesday, mortar shells, fired from across the Syrian border, landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The shells landed on Mount Hermon, a popular tourist site, and were the latest in a series of what Israel has generally considered errant fire from internal Syrian fighting.
Israel did not fire back, as it had on several previous occasions, but it closed Mount Hermon to the public for several hours during a Jewish holiday on which hiking in the Golan is popular.
In his comments, the Israeli official said that “Israel has so far refrained from intervening in Syria’s civil war and will maintain this policy as long as Assad refrains from attacking Israel directly or indirectly.”
“Israel,” he said, “will continue its policy of interdicting attempts to strengthen Hezbollah, but will not intercede in the Syrian civil war as long as Assad desists from direct or indirect attacks against Israel.”
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, declined to discuss the meaning of the Israeli official’s statement. “We’re not going to comment on the story,” he said.
American and Israeli political analysts agree that Israel has little motive to intervene in Syria’s civil war, but that it is deeply concerned about the transfer of advanced weapons, as well as the danger that Mr. Assad’s stockpiles of chemical weapons could be used against it.
Amos Yadlin, Israel’s former military intelligence chief who now directs the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said that the timing of the warning could have been linked to intelligence Israel had received about something it wanted to prevent.
That, he said, could be a Syrian intention to react, albeit belatedly, to the recent airstrikes on its soil, an imminent shipment of weapons to Hezbollah, or signs of action by Syrian proxies in the Golan Heights.
Mr. Yadlin said that, aside from Mr. Assad, Russia could be another intended recipient for the Israeli official’s message. Two of the weapons systems that Israel has identified as game-changing “red line weapons” — SA-17 antiaircraft weapons and Yakhont shore-to-sea missiles — were supplied by the Russians, he added. The convoy that Israeli warplanes struck in January was carrying SA-17 antiaircraft weapons.
A Western diplomatic official who works in the region said that after the recent airstrikes, Israel had sent a similar message to Mr. Assad through back channels — probably Russia — saying it was not attacking his government but would do so if he retaliated. Perhaps, this official said, Jerusalem now wanted to broadcast the message publicly because the real audience is Iran and Hezbollah, whose leaders have been among the loudest threatening responses.
“It’s probably doubling down on the message to make sure it’s known to him and the others,” he said, also on the condition he not be named because of the delicacy of the situation. “Maybe some of the others who are calling on him to respond but also have an interest in him surviving would hear it better from this channel than other channels. Maybe it’s more directed at Iran and Hezbollah than it is at Syria.”
As for whether the timing of the statement indicated an imminent strike, this official said, “I wouldn’t think they would telegraph a punch like that so publicly.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 15, 2013
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Hassan Nasrallah.
Con đường đến sự giàu có: Hành trình theo dõi giới siêu đại gia
Road to the Riches: Tracking the Journey of the Superwealthy
How Rich is Rich?
Growth of the Global Billionaire Population
While nearly 1 in 2 people on this planet have a net worth of less than $10,000, a select few are worth more than a million dollars.
And an even more select group is worth a billion or more.
And an even more select group is worth a billion or more.
How Rich is Rich?
While nearly 1 in 2 people on this planet have a net worth of less than $10,000, a select few are worth more than a million dollars. And an even more select group is worth a billion or more.
Composition of net worth around the world
- >$1 million – 29,000,000
- $100,000-$1 million – 344,000,000
- $10,000-$100,000 – 1,035,000,000
- <$10,000 – 3,184,000,000
- $100,000-$1 million – 344,000,000
- $10,000-$100,000 – 1,035,000,000
- <$10,000 – 3,184,000,000
Snapshot of Superwealth
Here is a look at the number of billionaires by region, including projections
- Country – 2011 – 2012 – 2022
- Africa – 25 – 35 – 75
- Asia – 496 – 543 – 1191
- Europe – 672 – 708 – 1115
- Latin America – 123 – 145 – 301
- Middle East – 128 – 140 – 203
- North America – 487 – 586 – 1146
- Australasia – 36 – 41 – 45
- Country – 2011 – 2012 – 2022
- Africa – 25 – 35 – 75
- Asia – 496 – 543 – 1191
- Europe – 672 – 708 – 1115
- Latin America – 123 – 145 – 301
- Middle East – 128 – 140 – 203
- North America – 487 – 586 – 1146
- Australasia – 36 – 41 – 45
Growth of global billionaire population
- 2011 – 2012 – 2022
- 1967 – 2198 – 4076
- 1967 – 2198 – 4076
Top 30 global cities by high net worth population ($30 million+), 2012
- New York – 7,580
- London – 6,015
- Tokyo – 5,440
- San Francisco – 4,590
- Los Angeles – 4,520
- Beijing – 2,285
- Mumbai – 2,105
- Hong Kong – 3,205
- Sao Paulo – 1,880
- Rio de Janeiro – 1,740
- Delhi – 1,945
- Mexico City – 2,585
- Osaka – 2,970
- Shanghai – 1,415
- Chicago – 2,615
- Paris – 2,860
- Houston – 2,295
- Washington DC – 2,395
- Dallas – 2,020
- Toronto – 1,765
- Zurich – 1,805
- Munich – 1,670
- Singapore – 1,345
- Sydney – 1,405
- Dusseldorf – 1,420
- Hamburg – 1,370
- Geneva – 1,360
- Melbourne – 1,150
- Frankfurt – 1,220
- Rome – 1,130
- London – 6,015
- Tokyo – 5,440
- San Francisco – 4,590
- Los Angeles – 4,520
- Beijing – 2,285
- Mumbai – 2,105
- Hong Kong – 3,205
- Sao Paulo – 1,880
- Rio de Janeiro – 1,740
- Delhi – 1,945
- Mexico City – 2,585
- Osaka – 2,970
- Shanghai – 1,415
- Chicago – 2,615
- Paris – 2,860
- Houston – 2,295
- Washington DC – 2,395
- Dallas – 2,020
- Toronto – 1,765
- Zurich – 1,805
- Munich – 1,670
- Singapore – 1,345
- Sydney – 1,405
- Dusseldorf – 1,420
- Hamburg – 1,370
- Geneva – 1,360
- Melbourne – 1,150
- Frankfurt – 1,220
- Rome – 1,130
Luxury Locations
How many square feet does $1 million buy?
- In Monaco – 14
- In London – 19
- In Paris – 32
- In Moscow – 36
- In New York – 37
- In Sydney – 37
- In Beijing – 49
- In Miami – 57
- In Tokyo – 60
- In Mumbai – 75
- In Istanbul – 85
- In Sao Paolo – 114
- In Monaco – 14
- In London – 19
- In Paris – 32
- In Moscow – 36
- In New York – 37
- In Sydney – 37
- In Beijing – 49
- In Miami – 57
- In Tokyo – 60
- In Mumbai – 75
- In Istanbul – 85
- In Sao Paolo – 114
Most expensive neighborhoods in the world
- Seventh Arrondissement, Paris, France
- Average home price: $1.2 million
- Average home price: $1.2 million
- La Jolla, San Diego, California
- Average home price: $1.7 million
- Average home price: $1.7 million
- TriBeCa, New York City
- Average home price: $1.76 million
- Average home price: $1.76 million
- Shibuya Neighborhood, Tokyo, Japan
- Average home price: $1.8 million
- Average home price: $1.8 million
- Sea Island, Georgia
- Average home price: $2.23 million
- Average home price: $2.23 million
- Victoria Peak, Hong Kong
- Average home price: $3.5 million
- Average home price: $3.5 million
- Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California
- Average home price: $4.5 million
- Average home price: $4.5 million
- Belle Haven, Greenwich, Connecticut
- Average home price: $5 million
- Average home price: $5 million
- Jupiter Island, Florida
- Average home price: $5.6 million
- Average home price: $5.6 million
- Kensington Palace Gardens, London, England
- Average home price: $85 million
- Average home price: $85 million
Most expensive residential buildings in the world
- One Hyde Park, London – $220 million
- One57, New York – $90 million
- Opus, Hong Kong – $56 million
- Absolute Tower, Mississauga, Canada – $3.1 million
- Aqua, Chicago – $1.1 million
- One57, New York – $90 million
- Opus, Hong Kong – $56 million
- Absolute Tower, Mississauga, Canada – $3.1 million
- Aqua, Chicago – $1.1 million
SOURCES
- Knight Frank
- http://www.askmen.com/top_10/travel_top_ten_60/98b_travel_top_ten.html
- http://worth.com/index.php?option=com_listings&view=slideshow&id=12
- http://www.propertyobserver.com.au/overseas/gehry-s-opus-secures-second-record-hong-kong-apartment-price-in-three-months/2012111357824
- http://realestate.yourmoney.ca/2011/12/905-condo-on-the-market-for-32-million.html
- http://www.highrises.com/chicago/aqua-condos/
- http://www.askmen.com/top_10/travel_top_ten_60/98b_travel_top_ten.html
- http://worth.com/index.php?option=com_listings&view=slideshow&id=12
- http://www.propertyobserver.com.au/overseas/gehry-s-opus-secures-second-record-hong-kong-apartment-price-in-three-months/2012111357824
- http://realestate.yourmoney.ca/2011/12/905-condo-on-the-market-for-32-million.html
- http://www.highrises.com/chicago/aqua-condos/
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
KHẲNG ĐỊNH NỀN TẢNG DÂN TRÍ GIÁ TRỊ TỰ THÂN
"Nền Độc Tài không thể cai trị nếu quần chúng của một đất nước hiểu biết đầy đủ tinh thần trách nhiệm của họ". Aung San Suu Kyi lãnh đạo cao trào dân chủ Miến điện khẳng định nhu cầu nền tảng của Dân Trí trong tiến trình dân chủ hóa xã hội Miến Điện trong đại hội vinh danh những nhà giáo thiện nguyện trong mạng lưới cung cấp giáo dục công chúng miễn phí. Mạng lưới thiện nguyện này tổ chức những lớp huấn luyện và hội thảo với dân chúng về tinh thần chủ động học hỏi và tư duy hữu lý. Bà Aung San Suu Kyi đặt một câu hỏi nền tẳng rằng "Làm sao chúng ta có thể bị nền độc tài cai trị nếu như đa số dân chúng (chưa muốn nói là tất cả dân chúng) hiểu biết tinh thần trách nhiệm của họ? Con số của những kẻ muốn làm độc tài sẽ trở thành thiểu số bé nhỏ trong xã hội (How can we be put under authoritarian rule if the majority, (let alone all the people), knows their sense of responsibility? The number of those who want to be authoritarians will become small.)
Quả thật sự khẳng định này đi từ bằng chứng kinh nghiệm lịch sử chính trị của xã hội nhân loại rằng dân chủ cũng như nền tự do chỉ được xây dựng và bảo vệ từ gốc rễ hiểu biết của dân chúng, DÂN TRÍ. Xã hội chỉ có dân chủ thật sự khi người dân hiểu biết ý nghĩa của tự do và tinh thần trách nhiệm làm chủ của họ, rồi mong muốn và can đảm tranh đấu thực hiện bảo vệ nó. Cũng như dân chủ tự do sẽ biến mất khi dân trí, hay sự hiểu biết tự do , dân chủ và tinh thần trách nhiệm sa sút.
Vì vậy, Nhân Chủ đã từng khẳng định, tiến trình dân chủ tự do là tiến trình nhận thức, hay vận động liên tục miên tục và miên viễn từ dân chúng. John Adam, tổng thống Mỹ, nhà lập quốc này cũng từng cảnh cáo "Tự do không thể tồn tại nếu không có dân trí" (liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people"). Vì những nhà tư tưởng và chính trị đều hiểu rõ rằng BẢN CHẤT của NHÀ NƯỚC là BẠO LỰC và BẠO NGƯỢC không ngưng nghỉ; điều này cũng được một tổng tống, nhà lập quốc Mỹ khác, Thomas Jefferson khẳng định "Nếu một khi người dân không còn quan tâm đến những việc chính trị công chúng xã hội, thì các ông và Tôi, và quốc hội lập pháp, các chánh án công lý và các thống đốc, tất cả sẽ trở thành chó sói. Điều này dường như là bản chất tổng quát của chúng ta, cho dù có vài cá nhân ngoại lệ" (If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”
Bà Aung San Suu Kyi đã học hỏi nhận thức ra từ những kinh nghiệm hiểu biết của những người đi trước và ngay cả những hiện trạng băng hoại dân chủ và tự do đang xảy ra ở Mỹ. Xã hội và chính trị Mỹ đang xảy ra đúng như Jefferson đã cảnh cáo: Bọn nhà nước chính phủ đang là những con chó sói vì thế hệ người dân Mỹ hiện tại đang sa sút tinh thần trách nhiệm và mức độ quan tâm đến hành xử chính trị xã hội suy giảm.
NLD's chairperson Aung San Suu Kyi and its patron Tin Oo at the ceremony (Photo - EMG)
Dictatorial rule cannot reign if the people of a country fully understand their sense of responsibility, Myanmar's opposition leader said.
Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), made the comment in her address at a ceremony in Yangon on Saturday to honour teachers who volunteered for the free educative services of the NLD education network.
The event took place in conjunction with the opening of training course No.2 for active learning and rational thought.
"How can we be put under authoritarian rule if the majority, (let alone all the people), knows their sense of responsibility? The number of those who want to be authoritarians will become small," Suu Kyi said.
Accordingly, the country will be politically and religiously safe and develop economically, she added.
Real courage means doing everything with conviction and a sense of responsibility despite knowing the risk, the opposition leader explained.
The course conducted by the NLD education network trains its teachers to adopt a learning-centered approach. The course No.2 is being taken by more than 80 teachers.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Vĩnh biệt Dubai? Thả bom nguyên tử vào Iran sẽ biến toàn bộ khu vực vùng Vịnh trở thành nơi vô cư trú cho con người.
Ở trong mỗi cá nhân, tính điên loạn rất hiếm; nhưng nơi các nhóm, đảng phái, quốc gia và giai đoạn lịch sử, tính điên loạn là nguyên tắc
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”― Friedrich Nietzsche
Good-bye Dubai? Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Facilities would leave the Entire Gulf States Region virtually Uninhabitable
Global Research, May 11, 2013
Region: Middle East & North Africa
Theme: Environment, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: IRAN: THE NEXT WAR?, Nuclear War
Every Spring and Summer, during a period of low pressure over the Persian Gulf, powerful winds known as the “shamals and sharqi,” sweep down from the north and north east into Saudi Arabia, whipping up ever more grains of sand as they head south and south west across the Arabian Desert. Frequently, these sandstorms become gargantuan in size – hundreds of meters high and kilometers wide and in length of dense roiling particulate, choking the lungs of those exposed, blocking out the sun completely and, by the time they are over, burying whole towns, sometimes even large cities like Riyadh, in a meter deep or more of sand.
Sandstorm hitting Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2012
The wind speeds range from 30 to 300 kilometers per hour, and they generally take a semi-circular route, heading back out to the southern gulf and the remaining Gulf States. Indeed, on an annual basis all of the Gulf States combined – UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, suffer through literally hundreds of such sand and dust storms. And most often the winds driving those sandstorms originate from the north and north east (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and sometimes even Turkey).
NASA satellite image of typical shamal wind directions
Below is a map showing the location of Iran’s nuclear facilities and uranium mines. Now look again at the previous NASA satellite image and note the primary shamal wind direction.
Fukushima is, without question, the world’s worst nuclear disaster to date. In fact, many scientists believe, and with good reason, that the Fukushima incident, which is far from over, is the world’s worst environmental catastrophe.
“While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes – Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer” Global Research, September 10, 2010. For a full account of Fukushima, see “Global Research Online Interactive Reader Series, Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War, The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation (Michel Chossudovsky, editor).
Now imagine several large nuclear reactors (Iran’s Bushehr reactor output, for example, is 1000 megawatts, compared to Fukushima Daiichi’s largest reactor which had an output of 784 megawatts), along with several uranium enrichment plants, and certainly military storage sites and quite likely even uranium mines, all bombed to dust within a matter of days. Moreover, unlike the Fukushima Daiichi reactors which suffered only partial meltdowns with much of the fuel rods and spent fuel storages remaining mostly intact, “all” of Iran’s nuclear fuel would be exploded into the atmosphere. And let us not forget that the US-Israeli military ordinances employed to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities would certainly be tipped with depleted uranium, and very likely would include some mini-nukes.
Indeed, in regards nuclear disasters and environmental catastrophes, Fukushima would absolutely pale in comparison to that caused by the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. The nuclear fallout from such an event would be extreme, to put it mildly. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians would likely die within the first year of such a strike, while millions more would die within a decade or two of some form of radiation-induced cancer. And since a significant portion of that nuclear fallout would end up either immediately, or over the course of the next weeks and months in the Arabian Desert, where the winds, year after year, would gather it up along with the particles of sand and dust into gigantic roiling irradiated storms (remember, “hundreds” of such sand and dust storms annually), not a person living anywhere in the Gulf State region would be safe from exposure. The Persian Gulf, too, would soon be so irradiated and toxic and lifeless that it might as well be renamed the New Dead Sea.
Some statistics worth recalling: The half-life of cesium-137 is just over 31 years, while that of strontium-90 is approximately 29 years. Plutonium-239, the most dangerous of the above-mentioned radioactive substances, has a half-life of 24,110 years. And uranium, which is the primary target and which will make up the largest percentage of the fallout, has a half-life ranging between 700 million to nearly 4.5 billion years, depending on the type of uranium used—U-235 or U-238. It’s also worth noting that it takes an estimated 20 x the half-life years listed for the radiation from such contamination to dissipate entirely.
Of course, a lot of that radiation would also enter the jet stream, which would then carry it around the globe, depositing it as nuclear fallout everywhere. No nation, no body of water, would be spared. It takes but “one” inhaled or ingested “hot” particle to produce a life-threatening cancer.
Calling for, even so much as contemplating, such a genocidal event is madness; actually carrying it out would be insanity beyond description.
We must conclude, therefore, that the US-NATO-Israeli alliance is bluffing. Shortly before each and every scheduled P5+1 negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the corporate/government controlled mainstream media in the West ratchets up the threats, with Israel insisting that they will soon bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if their nuclear program isn’t shut down. We’ve been hearing these same threats for more than a decade now. The very fact that the other Gulf States in the region are in support of the US-NATO-Israeli alliance also suggests that such threats are all smoke-and-mirrors, attempts to scare Iran into accepting whatever demands US-NATO and Israel want.
Surely, the Gulf State monarchs especially are aware enough to realize that, even if Iran is planning to develop a nuclear weapon (for which no evidence whatsoever exists), a nuclear-armed Iran would be far less of a danger to them than a bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would positively guarantee their demise. Even Israel, which is only 1100 kilometers away from Iran, and also experiences regular severe sand and dust storms, would likely suffer dire consequences as a result of the radiation fallout from such an attack.
Has such absolute insanity infected the minds of the Western powers to such a degree that they actually would attack Iran, and in so doing destroy the entire Gulf State region, further irradiate the entire planet and themselves, and quite possibly set off World War III? Or is it all just smoke-and-mirrors, scare tactics and rhetoric, and saner minds will in fact prevail?
Let us all hope and pray for the latter.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Vô nhân tính, Chính trị và Trật tự thế giới
Global Research, May 09, 2013
When attempting to analyse what is happening in the world, it is important to appreciate past economic, social and political processes that led us to where we are today. Understanding the tectonic plates of history that led certain countries towards fascism, communism or capitalist liberal democracy, for example, is essential (1) (2).
At the same time, however, it can become easy for us to push aside the individual as we focus on theoretical perspectives that refer to the ‘underlying logic of capitalism’ or some other notion that draws heavily on theory. It can get to the point where individual motive or intent (agency) is airbrushed from the narrative because human action is deemed to have been shaped by the dead weight of history or forces beyond our control.
While not wishing to understate the role that such constraints have on human action, I wish to draw attention to researcher Stefan Verstappen who provides valuable insight into how individual agency has shaped and continues to shape society (3).
While Machiavellianism has long been associated with politics and public conduct, Verstappen shifts focus somewhat by arguing that people with psychopathic personalities have for thousands of years tended to grasp power and impose their views and deeds on the rest of us. In order to get power, he concludes that people cheat, kill or lie their way to the top. Whether it has been due to the butchery or lies of royalty, religious leaders, politicians or corporate oligarchs, nice guys have tended to finish last.
What leads him to conclude this?
Psychopathy is a personality disorder identified by characteristics such as a lack of empathy and remorse, criminality, anti-social behaviour, egocentricity, superficial charm, manipulativeness, irresponsibility, impulsivity and a parasitic lifestyle (4).
With that definition in mind, look around: the criminal, parasitic activities by bankers that have plunged millions into poverty; the destruction, war and death brought to countries in order that corporations profit by stealing resources; the dropping of atom bombs on innocent civilians in 1945 or the use of depleted uranium which again impacts innocent civilians; and the many other acts, from the use of death squads to false flag terror, that have brought untold misery to countless others just because powerholders wanted to hold onto power or to gain more power, or the wealthy wanted to hold onto their wealth or gain even more.
Based on these terrible deeds, it becomes easy to argue that the people ultimately responsible for them do not adhere to the same values as ordinary people. It may be even easier to conclude that it’s not the cream that rises to the top, but, in many cases, the scum.
Now such a scenario might seem awful enough, but the people who tend to control the world, the ones responsible for these acts, try to impose their warped world view and twisted values on everyone else. Hollywood films, commercials and political ideology are all engaged in forwarding the belief that it’s a dog eat dog world, war and violence abroad is necessary, competition and not cooperative is what counts, aggression and not passivity is the key to ‘success’ and that success equates with amassing huge amounts of personal wealth and lavish displays of conspicuous consumption.
“A person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.” - definition of a psychopath from Dictionary.com
Again, bearing this definition in mind too, the acts mentioned above are not those of properly functioning social beings that contribute to a sense of communality, altruism, love or morality; quite the opposite in fact.
Yet this is the type of stuff that is rammed down our throats as constituting normality every day. Whether it’s the ‘Big Brother’ TV show or ‘The Apprentice’ show, these values are promoted day and night. The ‘Big Brother’ winner is the one who can survive and outdo the competition in terms of the duplicity and backstabbing involved along the way. The winner of ‘The Apprentice’ must be more aggressive, more duplicitous, more devious and cunning and more willing to trample over everyone else. And the winner is judged as such by a multi-millionaire who himself was cunning and ruthless enough to have made it to the top of the pile and has amassed millions for his own personal benefit. These are the role models to be admired and emulated!
These are the measures of success, of sanity, of normality.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
Apprentice competitors are highly driven individuals: not driven by a need to help humanity, but by egocentricity and greed. And, ultimately, these are the values that many mainstream opinion leaders, senior politicians and their corporate masters hold dear.
These values of egocentricity, aggression, competitiveness, duplicity and greed are not confined to some TV show. There are part of a much more sinister process. They are inextricably linked to and underpin the actions that resulted in the killing of half a million children in Iraq for geo-political gain (5) and the sending in of military forces into the jungles of India to beat, rape and dispose of a nation’s poorest people because they stand in the way of profit and greed (6). From Congo and Libya to Syria and beyond, we witness the outcome of a terrifying mindset that is nurtured and encouraged throughout society.
Too many people have become “well adjusted to the values of a profoundly sick society,” whether residing in middle England, middle America or the gated communities of south Delhi or Mumbai. Humanity is being beaten down to be neurotic, vicious and to regard these traits as constituting normal, acceptable behaviour. Thanks to the media, this becomes engrained from an early age as comprising ‘common sense’, and those who question it are merely sneered at or ridiculed by a system that promotes a mass mindset immune to its own lies.
Whether this is all due to psychopathy, narcissism or ‘Machiavellian personalities’ is open to debate. Moreover, as implied at the outset, historical and sociological factors often compel usually decent people to act in terrible ways. The debate within academic sociology between structure and human agency is after all a very long one (7). Whatever the underlying reason, however, as a global community we are being force fed a diet of perverse values and destructive actions, all spuriously justified on the basis that ‘there is no alternative’ and ‘needs must’.
Corporate capitalism, consumerism, the new world order, a war on terror (or drugs or poverty, take your pick), neo-liberalism – call it what you will, but it’s all based on the filthy lie that those in control have wider humanity’s interests at heart. They don’t. By any means possible – war, murder, torture or propaganda, they seek to convince people otherwise. What price human life? None whatsoever for such people.
Notes
1) Robert Brenner (1976), “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe”.Past and Present 70
2) Barrington Moore (1993) [First published 1966]. Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world (with a new foreword by Edward Friedman and James C. Scott ed.). Boston: Beacon Press.
3) Defense Against the Psychopath (2013): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQkDvO3hz1w
4) Polaschek, D. L. L., Patrick, C. J., Lilienfeld, S. O. (15 December 2011). “Psychopathic Personality: Bridging the Gap Between Scientific Evidence and Public Policy”. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 12 (3): 95–162.
5) Reuters report (2000), UN Says Sanctions Have Killed Some 500,000 Iraqi Children: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072100-03.htm
6) BBC Newsnight interview with Arundhati Roy (2011): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrYQmRBdMPQ
7) Colin Hay (2001), What Place for Ideas in the Structure-Agency Debate? Globalisation as a ‘Process Without a Subject’: http://www.criticalrealism.com/archive/cshay_wpisad.html
17 sĩ quan Không Quân Mỹ trách nhiệm về hệ thống tên lửa hạt nhân bị truất phế
AP Exclusive: Air Force sidelines 17 nuclear missile officers; commander cites ‘rot’ in system
Robert Burns
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel demanded more information Wednesday after the Air Force removed 17 launch officers from duty at a nuclear missile base in North Dakota over what a commander called “rot” in the force. The Air Force struggled to explain, acknowledging concern about an “attitude problem” but telling Congress the weapons were secure.
Hagel reacted strongly after The Associated Press reported the unprecedented sidelining of the officers at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., where one of their commanders complained of “such rot” that even the willful violation of safety rules — including a possible compromise of launch codes — was tolerated.
The AP quoted from an internal email written by Lt. Col. Jay Folds, deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, which is responsible for all Minuteman 3 missile launch crews at Minot. He lamented the remarkably poor reviews they received in a March inspection. Their missile launch skills were rated “marginal,” which the Air Force told the AP was the equivalent of a “D’’ grade.
“We are, in fact, in a crisis right now,” Folds wrote in the email to his subordinates.
In response, the Air Force said the problem does not suggest a lack of proper control over the nuclear missiles but rather was a symptom of turmoil in the ranks.
“The idea that we have people not performing to the standard we expect will never be good and we won’t tolerate it,” Gen. Mark Welsh, the service’s top general, said when questioned about the problem at a congressional hearing on budget issues.
Underlying the Minot situation is a sense among some that the Air Force’s nuclear mission is a dying field, as the government considers further reducing the size of the U.S. arsenal.
Welsh noted that because there are a limited number of command positions to which missile launch officers can aspire within the nuclear force, those officers tend to believe they have no future.
“That’s actually not the case, but that’s the view when you’re in the operational force,” Welsh said. “We have to deal with that.”
Hagel himself, before he was defense secretary, signed a plan put forward a year ago by the private group Global Zero to eliminate the Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missiles and to eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons. At his Senate confirmation hearing he said he supports President Barack Obama’s goal of zero nuclear weapons but only through negotiations.
Hagel’s spokesman, George Little, said the defense secretary was briefed on the Minot situation as reported by the AP on Wednesday and demanded that he be provided more details.
Welsh’s civilian boss, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, suggested a silver lining to the trouble at Minot. The fact that Minot commanders identified 17 underperformers was evidence that the Air Force has strengthened its monitoring of the nuclear force, he said. And he stressed that launch crew members typically are relatively junior officers — lieutenants and captains — with limited service experience.
It is the duty of commanders, Donley said, to “ride herd” on those young officers with “this awesome responsibility” of controlling missiles capable of destroying entire countries.
Donley noted that he is particularly sensitive to any indication of weakness in the nuclear force because he took over as Air Force secretary in October 2008 after his predecessor, Michael Wynne, was fired by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates for a series of nuclear embarrassments. Donley was charged with cleaning up the problem.
It appeared the Minot force, which is one of three responsible for controlling — and, if necessary, launching — the Air Force’s 450 strategic nuclear missiles, is an outlier.
The Air Force told the AP on Wednesday that the two other missile wings — at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., and at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo. — earned scores of “excellent” in the most recent inspection of their ICBM launch skills. That is two notches above the “marginal” rating at Minot and one notch below the highest rating of “outstanding.” Each of the three wings operates 150 Minuteman 3 missiles.
The Malmstrom unit was inspected in December 2012, the F.E. Warren unit in May 2012.
Michael Corgan, a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy in the 1960s, said the Air Force cannot afford to let its launch control crews lose focus on their mission.
“The kinds of things that caused those Air Force officers to be rated ‘marginal’ could well be what seem like trivial errors,” Corgan said. “But in the nuke business you are not supposed to get anything wrong — anything.” Corgan is a professor of international relations at Boston University.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, expressed outrage, telling Welsh and Donley that the AP report revealed a problem that “could not be more troubling.”
The tip-off to trouble was the March inspection that earned the equivalent of a “D’’ grade when the unit was tested on its mastery of Minuteman 3 missile launch operations. In other areas, the officers tested much better, but the group’s overall fitness was deemed so tenuous that senior officers at Minot decided, after probing further, on an immediate crackdown.
In April the Air Force quietly removed the 17 officers.
“You will be a bench warmer for at least 60 days,” Folds told them in his email.
The 17 cases mark the Air Force’s most extensive sidelining ever of launch crew members, according to Lt. Col. Angie Blair, a spokeswoman for Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the missile units as well as nuclear-capable bombers. The 91st Missile Wing has 150 officers assigned to launch control duty.
In his congressional testimony, Welsh said Folds and other senior commanders determined that the problematic launch officers had “more of an attitude problem than a proficiency problem.”
He said he wished Folds had “used different language” in his email.
“The word ‘rot’ didn’t excite me, but it got my attention,” Welsh said, adding that he does not believe “rot” is the problem. “I don’t believe we have a nuclear surety risk at Minot Air Force Base,” referring to the danger of an accident or unauthorized launch.
The email obtained by the AP describes a culture of indifference at Minot, with at least one intentional violation of missile safety rules and an apparent unwillingness among some to challenge or report those who violate rules.
In response to AP inquiries, the Air Force said the lapses never put the security of the nuclear force at risk. It said the officers who lost their certification to operate ICBMs are now getting more training with the expectation that they will return to normal duty within about two months. The missiles remain on their normal war footing, officials said.
In addition to the 17, possible disciplinary action is pending against one other officer at Minot who investigators found had intentionally broken a safety rule in an unspecified act that could have compromised the secret codes that enable the launching of missiles that stand on high alert in underground silos in the nation’s midsection. Officials said there was no compromise of missile safety or security.
Advising his troops on April 12 that they had “fallen,” Folds wrote that drastic corrective action was required because “we didn’t wake up” after the March inspection that he said amounted to a failure, even though the unit’s overall performance technically was rated “satisfactory.”
“And now we’re discovering such rot in the crew force that your behavior while on alert is accepting of” weapons safety rule violations, possible code compromises and other failings, “all in the name of not inconveniencing yourselves,” Folds wrote.
Folds also complained about unwarranted questioning of orders from superior officers by launch crews and failure to address superiors with the proper respect.
“It takes real leaders to lead through a crisis and we are, in fact, in a crisis right now,” he wrote.
When the AP inquired about the Folds email, the Air Force arranged a telephone interview with one of Folds’ superiors, Col. Robert Vercher, commander of the 91st Missile Wing.
“We are frustrated anytime we’re performing less than we expect of ourselves,” Vercher said, adding that he and other senior officers are implementing an aggressive and innovative plan to restore a record of high performance.
“There was a problem,” Vercher said. “And we will fix it.”
___
Follow Robert Burns on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP
Robert Burns
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel demanded more information Wednesday after the Air Force removed 17 launch officers from duty at a nuclear missile base in North Dakota over what a commander called “rot” in the force. The Air Force struggled to explain, acknowledging concern about an “attitude problem” but telling Congress the weapons were secure.
Hagel reacted strongly after The Associated Press reported the unprecedented sidelining of the officers at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., where one of their commanders complained of “such rot” that even the willful violation of safety rules — including a possible compromise of launch codes — was tolerated.
The AP quoted from an internal email written by Lt. Col. Jay Folds, deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, which is responsible for all Minuteman 3 missile launch crews at Minot. He lamented the remarkably poor reviews they received in a March inspection. Their missile launch skills were rated “marginal,” which the Air Force told the AP was the equivalent of a “D’’ grade.
“We are, in fact, in a crisis right now,” Folds wrote in the email to his subordinates.
In response, the Air Force said the problem does not suggest a lack of proper control over the nuclear missiles but rather was a symptom of turmoil in the ranks.
“The idea that we have people not performing to the standard we expect will never be good and we won’t tolerate it,” Gen. Mark Welsh, the service’s top general, said when questioned about the problem at a congressional hearing on budget issues.
Underlying the Minot situation is a sense among some that the Air Force’s nuclear mission is a dying field, as the government considers further reducing the size of the U.S. arsenal.
Welsh noted that because there are a limited number of command positions to which missile launch officers can aspire within the nuclear force, those officers tend to believe they have no future.
“That’s actually not the case, but that’s the view when you’re in the operational force,” Welsh said. “We have to deal with that.”
Hagel himself, before he was defense secretary, signed a plan put forward a year ago by the private group Global Zero to eliminate the Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missiles and to eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons. At his Senate confirmation hearing he said he supports President Barack Obama’s goal of zero nuclear weapons but only through negotiations.
Hagel’s spokesman, George Little, said the defense secretary was briefed on the Minot situation as reported by the AP on Wednesday and demanded that he be provided more details.
Welsh’s civilian boss, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, suggested a silver lining to the trouble at Minot. The fact that Minot commanders identified 17 underperformers was evidence that the Air Force has strengthened its monitoring of the nuclear force, he said. And he stressed that launch crew members typically are relatively junior officers — lieutenants and captains — with limited service experience.
It is the duty of commanders, Donley said, to “ride herd” on those young officers with “this awesome responsibility” of controlling missiles capable of destroying entire countries.
Donley noted that he is particularly sensitive to any indication of weakness in the nuclear force because he took over as Air Force secretary in October 2008 after his predecessor, Michael Wynne, was fired by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates for a series of nuclear embarrassments. Donley was charged with cleaning up the problem.
It appeared the Minot force, which is one of three responsible for controlling — and, if necessary, launching — the Air Force’s 450 strategic nuclear missiles, is an outlier.
The Air Force told the AP on Wednesday that the two other missile wings — at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., and at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo. — earned scores of “excellent” in the most recent inspection of their ICBM launch skills. That is two notches above the “marginal” rating at Minot and one notch below the highest rating of “outstanding.” Each of the three wings operates 150 Minuteman 3 missiles.
The Malmstrom unit was inspected in December 2012, the F.E. Warren unit in May 2012.
Michael Corgan, a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy in the 1960s, said the Air Force cannot afford to let its launch control crews lose focus on their mission.
“The kinds of things that caused those Air Force officers to be rated ‘marginal’ could well be what seem like trivial errors,” Corgan said. “But in the nuke business you are not supposed to get anything wrong — anything.” Corgan is a professor of international relations at Boston University.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, expressed outrage, telling Welsh and Donley that the AP report revealed a problem that “could not be more troubling.”
The tip-off to trouble was the March inspection that earned the equivalent of a “D’’ grade when the unit was tested on its mastery of Minuteman 3 missile launch operations. In other areas, the officers tested much better, but the group’s overall fitness was deemed so tenuous that senior officers at Minot decided, after probing further, on an immediate crackdown.
In April the Air Force quietly removed the 17 officers.
“You will be a bench warmer for at least 60 days,” Folds told them in his email.
The 17 cases mark the Air Force’s most extensive sidelining ever of launch crew members, according to Lt. Col. Angie Blair, a spokeswoman for Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the missile units as well as nuclear-capable bombers. The 91st Missile Wing has 150 officers assigned to launch control duty.
In his congressional testimony, Welsh said Folds and other senior commanders determined that the problematic launch officers had “more of an attitude problem than a proficiency problem.”
He said he wished Folds had “used different language” in his email.
“The word ‘rot’ didn’t excite me, but it got my attention,” Welsh said, adding that he does not believe “rot” is the problem. “I don’t believe we have a nuclear surety risk at Minot Air Force Base,” referring to the danger of an accident or unauthorized launch.
The email obtained by the AP describes a culture of indifference at Minot, with at least one intentional violation of missile safety rules and an apparent unwillingness among some to challenge or report those who violate rules.
In response to AP inquiries, the Air Force said the lapses never put the security of the nuclear force at risk. It said the officers who lost their certification to operate ICBMs are now getting more training with the expectation that they will return to normal duty within about two months. The missiles remain on their normal war footing, officials said.
In addition to the 17, possible disciplinary action is pending against one other officer at Minot who investigators found had intentionally broken a safety rule in an unspecified act that could have compromised the secret codes that enable the launching of missiles that stand on high alert in underground silos in the nation’s midsection. Officials said there was no compromise of missile safety or security.
Advising his troops on April 12 that they had “fallen,” Folds wrote that drastic corrective action was required because “we didn’t wake up” after the March inspection that he said amounted to a failure, even though the unit’s overall performance technically was rated “satisfactory.”
“And now we’re discovering such rot in the crew force that your behavior while on alert is accepting of” weapons safety rule violations, possible code compromises and other failings, “all in the name of not inconveniencing yourselves,” Folds wrote.
Folds also complained about unwarranted questioning of orders from superior officers by launch crews and failure to address superiors with the proper respect.
“It takes real leaders to lead through a crisis and we are, in fact, in a crisis right now,” he wrote.
When the AP inquired about the Folds email, the Air Force arranged a telephone interview with one of Folds’ superiors, Col. Robert Vercher, commander of the 91st Missile Wing.
“We are frustrated anytime we’re performing less than we expect of ourselves,” Vercher said, adding that he and other senior officers are implementing an aggressive and innovative plan to restore a record of high performance.
“There was a problem,” Vercher said. “And we will fix it.”
___
Follow Robert Burns on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP
Tại sao chúng ta không nên tin tưởng Chính phủ
Why We Should Mistrust the Government
by Andrew P. Napolitano, May 09, 2013
It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule” has been so successful that trusting the government is the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the government is the same as challenging ourselves. And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government tyranny.
Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s and 1780s was actually won in the minds of colonists in the mid-1760s when the British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The Stamp Act required all persons in the colonies to have government-sold stamps on all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps.
These two pieces of legislation were so unpopular here that Parliament actually rescinded the Stamp Act, and the king’s ministers reduced the use of soldier-written search warrants. But the searches for the stamps turned the tide of colonial opinion irreversibly against the king.
The same king also prosecuted his political adversaries in Great Britain and here for what he called “seditious libel” — basically, criticizing the government. Often that criticism spread and led to civil disobedience, so the British sought to punish it at its source. The prosecutions were so unpopular here, and so contrary to the spirit of what would become the Declaration of Independence, that when the British went home and the Framers wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was added, the First Amendment assured that the new government could not punish speech.
Yet barely 10 years into “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule,” in the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, Congress at the instigation of President John Adams criminalized free speech that was critical of the new government.
How did it come about that members of the same generation — in some cases the very same human beings — that declared in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” in fact enacted laws that did just that?
As morally wrong, as violative of the natural law, as unconstitutional as these laws were, they were not historical incongruities. Thomas Jefferson — who opposed and condemned the acts (he was Adams’ vice president at the time) — warned that it is the nature of government over time to increase and of liberty to decrease. And that’s why we should not trust government. In the same era, James Madison himself agreed when he wrote, “All men having power should be distrusted to a certain degree.”
The Alien and Sedition Acts were but the beginning of a long train of government abuses visited upon people in America as a consequence of the “experiment in self-rule.” I am not quoting Obama’s Ohio State speech to nitpick, but rather to establish a base line for my argument that he rejects core principles and historical lessons and, most troubling, the natural law itself when he opines that government should be trusted because it has gained power via self-rule.
Self-rule alone is hardly a basis for governmental legitimacy, unless it is accompanied by fidelity to the natural law and to the rule of law. The rule of law here means fidelity to the Constitution, that all laws are just and apply to everyone, so no one is excused from obeying the laws and no one is excluded from their protections. Yet, self-rule here has been unjust and has brought us the tyranny of the majority. And that tyranny has brought us slavery, unjust wars, Jim Crow laws, domestic concentration camps in wartime, slaughter of babies in the womb, domestic spying without search warrants, torture and death by drones — just to name a few.
The reason Obama likes government and the reason it is “a dangerous fire,” as George Washington warned, and the reason I have been warning against government tyranny in my public work is all the same: The government rejects the natural law because it is an obstacle to its control over us. The natural law is divinely embedded in our souls. It is manifested by the universal yearning for freedom and justice. It consists of areas of human behavior — thought, expression, religion, self-defense, travel, acquisition and use of property, privacy, for example — in which our behavior is subject only to the exercise of our free will and not the permission of our neighbors or regulation by the government. The natural law, properly understood, is a restraint on the government.
Yet, government in America — whether it consists of Congress protecting the slave trade, or John Adams or Abraham Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson prosecuting political speech, or FDR incarcerating Japanese-Americans, or George W. Bush promising immunity for torturers and domestic warrantless spies, or Obama killing whomever he chooses with drones — has never hesitated to reject the natural law. All of these violations of the natural law were approved by the majority when undertaken. The government’s persistent and systematic rejection of the natural law is alone sufficient to mistrust government and reject Obama’s Ohio State advice.
The government that has come about by self-rule derives its powers from the consent of the governed. Because the tyranny of the majority can be as dangerous to freedom as the tyranny of a madman, all use of governmental power should be challenged and questioned. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. If we fail to challenge government at every turn, there will be no liberty remaining for us to defend when the government tries to negate it.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is “Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom.” To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
by Andrew P. Napolitano, May 09, 2013
It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule” has been so successful that trusting the government is the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the government is the same as challenging ourselves. And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government tyranny.
Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s and 1780s was actually won in the minds of colonists in the mid-1760s when the British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The Stamp Act required all persons in the colonies to have government-sold stamps on all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps.
These two pieces of legislation were so unpopular here that Parliament actually rescinded the Stamp Act, and the king’s ministers reduced the use of soldier-written search warrants. But the searches for the stamps turned the tide of colonial opinion irreversibly against the king.
The same king also prosecuted his political adversaries in Great Britain and here for what he called “seditious libel” — basically, criticizing the government. Often that criticism spread and led to civil disobedience, so the British sought to punish it at its source. The prosecutions were so unpopular here, and so contrary to the spirit of what would become the Declaration of Independence, that when the British went home and the Framers wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was added, the First Amendment assured that the new government could not punish speech.
Yet barely 10 years into “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule,” in the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, Congress at the instigation of President John Adams criminalized free speech that was critical of the new government.
How did it come about that members of the same generation — in some cases the very same human beings — that declared in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” in fact enacted laws that did just that?
As morally wrong, as violative of the natural law, as unconstitutional as these laws were, they were not historical incongruities. Thomas Jefferson — who opposed and condemned the acts (he was Adams’ vice president at the time) — warned that it is the nature of government over time to increase and of liberty to decrease. And that’s why we should not trust government. In the same era, James Madison himself agreed when he wrote, “All men having power should be distrusted to a certain degree.”
The Alien and Sedition Acts were but the beginning of a long train of government abuses visited upon people in America as a consequence of the “experiment in self-rule.” I am not quoting Obama’s Ohio State speech to nitpick, but rather to establish a base line for my argument that he rejects core principles and historical lessons and, most troubling, the natural law itself when he opines that government should be trusted because it has gained power via self-rule.
Self-rule alone is hardly a basis for governmental legitimacy, unless it is accompanied by fidelity to the natural law and to the rule of law. The rule of law here means fidelity to the Constitution, that all laws are just and apply to everyone, so no one is excused from obeying the laws and no one is excluded from their protections. Yet, self-rule here has been unjust and has brought us the tyranny of the majority. And that tyranny has brought us slavery, unjust wars, Jim Crow laws, domestic concentration camps in wartime, slaughter of babies in the womb, domestic spying without search warrants, torture and death by drones — just to name a few.
The reason Obama likes government and the reason it is “a dangerous fire,” as George Washington warned, and the reason I have been warning against government tyranny in my public work is all the same: The government rejects the natural law because it is an obstacle to its control over us. The natural law is divinely embedded in our souls. It is manifested by the universal yearning for freedom and justice. It consists of areas of human behavior — thought, expression, religion, self-defense, travel, acquisition and use of property, privacy, for example — in which our behavior is subject only to the exercise of our free will and not the permission of our neighbors or regulation by the government. The natural law, properly understood, is a restraint on the government.
Yet, government in America — whether it consists of Congress protecting the slave trade, or John Adams or Abraham Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson prosecuting political speech, or FDR incarcerating Japanese-Americans, or George W. Bush promising immunity for torturers and domestic warrantless spies, or Obama killing whomever he chooses with drones — has never hesitated to reject the natural law. All of these violations of the natural law were approved by the majority when undertaken. The government’s persistent and systematic rejection of the natural law is alone sufficient to mistrust government and reject Obama’s Ohio State advice.
The government that has come about by self-rule derives its powers from the consent of the governed. Because the tyranny of the majority can be as dangerous to freedom as the tyranny of a madman, all use of governmental power should be challenged and questioned. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. If we fail to challenge government at every turn, there will be no liberty remaining for us to defend when the government tries to negate it.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is “Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom.” To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Vàng, nhìn từ góc độ THỰC TẾ KHỐI LƯỢNG và ỨNG DỤNG - I
Gold - Visualized in Bullion Bars
There's surprisingly little Gold in the world & this infographic shows all the Gold ever mined.
In this Gold infographic everything is calculated with Gold price at $2000/oz.
When Gold reaches $3110/oz, 1 oz of Gold & a $100 bill will have equal value in weight and it won't matter if you have 1oz of $100 bills or 1oz of Gold.
Gold is usually measured in Troy Ounces. A Troy Ounce is about 1.09 regular Ounces.
Gold - Size Chart
This is a chart of standard Gold bullion size comparison.
The cubes are measured by volume & Gold weight of 19.30 g/cm−3. The plates are typical Gold bar dimensions of same Gold weight.
1 Gram of Gold 5 Grams of Gold 10 Grams of Gold 20 Grams of Gold 1oz of Gold( 1 Troy Oz = 31.103 grams)
Image of a hand Holding 1 Gram of gold.
Image of woman Holding 10 Grams of gold
50 Grams of Gold 100 Grams of Gold 250 Grams of Gold 500 Grams of Gold 1KG of Gold
999.9 Fine Bullion Bar
The Gold bar to the right is worth the $800,000 displayed on the left at $2000/oz.
The Gold bar weighs 12.44 kg, 27.42lbs or more than
3x 1-gallon milk jugs - quite heavy.
As an investment, Gold has out performed Dow Jones for last 8 years straight.
For centuries people have tried to re-produce Gold. So far everyone has failed. Its also quite tough to re-produce digitallyl. That said if you see a shade of Tungsten color- please excuse us.
A Chevrolet Silverado 2500 Truck full of Gold
This is how much Gold the average man could haul in his truck without braking the suspension.
Max carrying weight of the truck is 3670 lbs = 1664.68kg, which is the weight of the Gold you see in the truck bed - 133x 400oz bullion bars of Gold.
The value of the 1.66 tonnes of Gold at $2000/oz is displayed to the left at $106.4 Million dollars.
10 Tonnes of Gold vs 100 Tonnes
The Central Banks of western countries usually handle their nations' large Gold Reserves. Couple generations ago the US dollar was backed by Gold, so the Fed had to hold Gold. Today, the dollar is backed by the confidence in United States' repayment of its debt (bonds). The US Central Bank's- The Federal Reserve's Chairman Ben Bernanke, says that Gold is only held as a tradition and that Gold is not money.
Xin xem tiếp bài II
There's surprisingly little Gold in the world & this infographic shows all the Gold ever mined.
In this Gold infographic everything is calculated with Gold price at $2000/oz.
When Gold reaches $3110/oz, 1 oz of Gold & a $100 bill will have equal value in weight and it won't matter if you have 1oz of $100 bills or 1oz of Gold.
Gold is usually measured in Troy Ounces. A Troy Ounce is about 1.09 regular Ounces.
Gold - Size Chart
This is a chart of standard Gold bullion size comparison.
The cubes are measured by volume & Gold weight of 19.30 g/cm−3. The plates are typical Gold bar dimensions of same Gold weight.
1 Gram of Gold 5 Grams of Gold 10 Grams of Gold 20 Grams of Gold 1oz of Gold( 1 Troy Oz = 31.103 grams)
Image of a hand Holding 1 Gram of gold.
Image of woman Holding 10 Grams of gold
50 Grams of Gold 100 Grams of Gold 250 Grams of Gold 500 Grams of Gold 1KG of Gold
999.9 Fine Bullion Bar
The Gold bar to the right is worth the $800,000 displayed on the left at $2000/oz.
The Gold bar weighs 12.44 kg, 27.42lbs or more than
3x 1-gallon milk jugs - quite heavy.
As an investment, Gold has out performed Dow Jones for last 8 years straight.
For centuries people have tried to re-produce Gold. So far everyone has failed. Its also quite tough to re-produce digitallyl. That said if you see a shade of Tungsten color- please excuse us.
A Chevrolet Silverado 2500 Truck full of Gold
This is how much Gold the average man could haul in his truck without braking the suspension.
Max carrying weight of the truck is 3670 lbs = 1664.68kg, which is the weight of the Gold you see in the truck bed - 133x 400oz bullion bars of Gold.
The value of the 1.66 tonnes of Gold at $2000/oz is displayed to the left at $106.4 Million dollars.
10 Tonnes of Gold vs 100 Tonnes
The Central Banks of western countries usually handle their nations' large Gold Reserves. Couple generations ago the US dollar was backed by Gold, so the Fed had to hold Gold. Today, the dollar is backed by the confidence in United States' repayment of its debt (bonds). The US Central Bank's- The Federal Reserve's Chairman Ben Bernanke, says that Gold is only held as a tradition and that Gold is not money.
Xin xem tiếp bài II
Vàng, nhìn từ góc độ THỰC TẾ KHỐI LƯỢNG và ỨNG DỤNG - II
Xem tiếp từ bài I
Semi Truck 'full' of Gold - 24.88 Tonnes
The legal carry weight of a semi-truck is between 22-25 tonnes.
The truck is carrying 24.88 tonnes of Gold worth $1.6 Billion dollars @ $2000/oz (on the 2nd truck).
$2,130,952,380 = B2 Bomber = 33.14 Tonnes of Gold @ $2000 / oz
Couple years back when Gold was less valuable, a B2 Bomber was literally worth more than its weight in pure Gold. With the price of Gold going up,
finally Gold is more valuable in weight than a B2 Bomber.
The Northrop Grumman B2 Spirit Bomber program cost $44.75 Billion for a total of 21 units built, that averages to $2,130,952,380 per unit and the same value in Gold @ $2000/oz can be seen on the semi-trucks on the right. To the left you see a Semi truck with $2.13 Billion dollars.
Doesn't matter how you choose economically between the semi truck of cash, the Gold trucks or the B2 Bomber, they're all worth the same.
US Gold Reserves - 8,133.5 Tonnes
The 8,133.5 Tonnes of Gold Reserves have an official book value worth $11,041,059,958
($11 Billion) as of 1/11/2013 and are shown below.
Year 1933, in the Pillar of Human Civilization & Capitalism-- The United States of America,
Gold possession was criminalized. Shortly after confiscating the Gold, the US devalued
Gold from $20.67/oz to $35/oz, by so devaluing the US dollar by 70% overnight. The US Dollar 'Federal Reserve Note' still said "Redeemable in Gold", while doing so got you arrested.
USA was on the Gold Standard until 1971. Gold possession remained illegal until 1975.
The arguably real intention of criminalizing Gold was because the Federal Reserve printed too many dollars, backed by a limited amount of Gold. People knew Gold was worth more than the $20.67/oz that US Government was 'redeeming' (selling) Gold at.
This Gold values shown are official numbers from Wikipedia.
There is a strong chance the numbers are inaccurate since western world's Central Banks have purportedly leased out the Gold reserves while using accounting tricks to hide the facts, in order to push the Gold price down. Gold price is an indirect indicator of economic stability, the lower the price, the more stable the global economy appears.
Developing countries have been buying significant amounts of Gold in recent years, with India being #1 and China #2. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds 540,000 Gold bars. Germany stores 45% of their Gold with Federal Reserve, while according to official memo from Bank of England to Federal Reserve it is acknowledged that Gold delivered back to Germany has been 'bad delivery' bars, instead of 'good delivery'. Germany is concerned and interested in getting back home the Gold it stores with the Federal Reserve. A German court has recently demanded audit of Germany's Gold holdings, while the Central Bank of Germany has begun shipping 50 tonnes of Gold / year back home. Many other governments are engaging in Gold hoarding, including China, who imported more Gold in 2012 than all of ECB's holdings
Level 4:
Other Use
22,300 Tonnes (13.4%). Where the man is standing.
Level 3:
World Governments
29,000 Tonnes (17.4%). Where the pallet of money at.
Level 2:
Private Investment
31,000 Tonnes (18.7%). Where the woman is sitting.
Level 1:
Jewellery
84,200 Tonnes (50.5%). Where the semi-truck is at.
World Government Gold Reserves
All the Gold in the World
- Mined in History
- 166,500 Tonnes
- Stacked in 400oz Gold Bars
All the Gold in the world, displayed in 400oz bullion bars.
Keep in mind the Gold bars have a lot of wasted space between them,
making the stacks of gold appear larger than they really are.
All the Gold in the World
- In a Solid Gold Cube If all the gold ever mined was melted into a solid cube,
the cube with sides of 20.5m would fit in an Olympic Swimming Pool.
The small gold sphere, in front of the cash couch, weighs 1 metric ton exactly, with a value
over $50 Million dollars.
Semi Truck 'full' of Gold - 24.88 Tonnes
The legal carry weight of a semi-truck is between 22-25 tonnes.
The truck is carrying 24.88 tonnes of Gold worth $1.6 Billion dollars @ $2000/oz (on the 2nd truck).
$2,130,952,380 = B2 Bomber = 33.14 Tonnes of Gold @ $2000 / oz
Couple years back when Gold was less valuable, a B2 Bomber was literally worth more than its weight in pure Gold. With the price of Gold going up,
finally Gold is more valuable in weight than a B2 Bomber.
The Northrop Grumman B2 Spirit Bomber program cost $44.75 Billion for a total of 21 units built, that averages to $2,130,952,380 per unit and the same value in Gold @ $2000/oz can be seen on the semi-trucks on the right. To the left you see a Semi truck with $2.13 Billion dollars.
Doesn't matter how you choose economically between the semi truck of cash, the Gold trucks or the B2 Bomber, they're all worth the same.
US Gold Reserves - 8,133.5 Tonnes
The 8,133.5 Tonnes of Gold Reserves have an official book value worth $11,041,059,958
($11 Billion) as of 1/11/2013 and are shown below.
Year 1933, in the Pillar of Human Civilization & Capitalism-- The United States of America,
Gold possession was criminalized. Shortly after confiscating the Gold, the US devalued
Gold from $20.67/oz to $35/oz, by so devaluing the US dollar by 70% overnight. The US Dollar 'Federal Reserve Note' still said "Redeemable in Gold", while doing so got you arrested.
USA was on the Gold Standard until 1971. Gold possession remained illegal until 1975.
The arguably real intention of criminalizing Gold was because the Federal Reserve printed too many dollars, backed by a limited amount of Gold. People knew Gold was worth more than the $20.67/oz that US Government was 'redeeming' (selling) Gold at.
This Gold values shown are official numbers from Wikipedia.
There is a strong chance the numbers are inaccurate since western world's Central Banks have purportedly leased out the Gold reserves while using accounting tricks to hide the facts, in order to push the Gold price down. Gold price is an indirect indicator of economic stability, the lower the price, the more stable the global economy appears.
Developing countries have been buying significant amounts of Gold in recent years, with India being #1 and China #2. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds 540,000 Gold bars. Germany stores 45% of their Gold with Federal Reserve, while according to official memo from Bank of England to Federal Reserve it is acknowledged that Gold delivered back to Germany has been 'bad delivery' bars, instead of 'good delivery'. Germany is concerned and interested in getting back home the Gold it stores with the Federal Reserve. A German court has recently demanded audit of Germany's Gold holdings, while the Central Bank of Germany has begun shipping 50 tonnes of Gold / year back home. Many other governments are engaging in Gold hoarding, including China, who imported more Gold in 2012 than all of ECB's holdings
Level 4:
Other Use
22,300 Tonnes (13.4%). Where the man is standing.
Level 3:
World Governments
29,000 Tonnes (17.4%). Where the pallet of money at.
Level 2:
Private Investment
31,000 Tonnes (18.7%). Where the woman is sitting.
Level 1:
Jewellery
84,200 Tonnes (50.5%). Where the semi-truck is at.
World Government Gold Reserves
All the Gold in the World
- Mined in History
- 166,500 Tonnes
- Stacked in 400oz Gold Bars
All the Gold in the world, displayed in 400oz bullion bars.
Keep in mind the Gold bars have a lot of wasted space between them,
making the stacks of gold appear larger than they really are.
All the Gold in the World
- In a Solid Gold Cube If all the gold ever mined was melted into a solid cube,
the cube with sides of 20.5m would fit in an Olympic Swimming Pool.
The small gold sphere, in front of the cash couch, weighs 1 metric ton exactly, with a value
over $50 Million dollars.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Tiền: Một cái nhìn từ góc độ thực tế và điển hình bằng HÌNH ẢNH-I
Derivatives: The Unregulated Global Casino for Banks
SHORT STORY: Pick something of value, make bets on the future value of "something", add contract & you have a derivative.
Banks make massive profits on derivatives, and when the bubble bursts chances are the tax payer will end up with the bill.
This visualizes the total coverage for derivatives (notional). Similar to insurance company's total coverage for all cars.
LONG STORY: A derivative is a legal bet (contract) that derives its value from another asset, such as the future or current value of oil, government bonds or anything else. Ex- A derivative buys you the option (but not obligation) to buy oil in 6 months for today's price/any agreed price, hoping that oil will cost more in future. (I'll bet you it'll cost more in 6 months). Derivative can also be used as insurance, betting that a loan will or won't default before a given date. So its a big betting system, like a Casino, but instead of betting on cards and roulette, you bet on future values and performance of practically anything that holds value. The system is not regulated what-so-ever, and you can buy a derivative on an existing derivative.
Most large banks try to prevent smaller investors from gaining access to the derivative market on the basis of there being too much risk. Deriv. market has blown a galactic bubble, just like the real estate bubble or stock market bubble (that's going on right now). Since there is literally no economist in the world that knows exactly how the derivative money flows or how the system works, while derivatives are traded in microseconds by computers, we really don't know what will trigger the crash, or when it will happen, but considering the global financial crisis this system is in for tough times, that will be catastrophic for the world financial system since the 9 largest banks shown below hold a total of $228.72 trillion in Derivatives - Approximately 3 times the entire world economy. No government in world has money for this bailout. Lets take a look at what banks have the biggest Derivative Exposures and what scandals they've been lately involved in. Derivative Data Source: ZeroHedge.
One Hundred Dollars
$100 - Most counterfeited money denomination in the world.
Keeps the world moving.
Ten Thousand Dollars
$10,000 - Enough for a great vacation or to buy a used car.
Approximately one year of work for the average human on earth.
$100,000,000 - Plenty to go around for everyone. Fits nicely on an ISO / Military standard sized pallet. $1 Million is the cash square on the floor.
1 Billion Dollars
$1,000,000,000 - This is how a billion dollars looks like.
10 pallets of $100 bills.
1 Trillion Dollars
$1,000,000,000,000 - When they throw around the word "Trillion" like it is nothing, this is the reality of $1 trillion dollars. The square of pallets to the right is $10 billion dollars. 100x that and you have the tower of $1 trillion that is 465 feet tall (142m).
In front of the 3500 people is the $100 Million pallet that they all have to work for 1 year to earn.
Look carefully to see a stack of $1 Million and the 35 average Americans required to earn that $1 Million in 1 year.
Bank of New York Mellon
BNY has a derivative exposure of $1.375 Trillion dollars.
Considered a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It is currently facing (among others) lawsuits fraud and contract breach suits by a Los Angeles pension fund and New York pension funds, where BNY Mellon allegedly overcharged the funds on many millions of dollars and concealed it.
State Street Financial
State Street has a derivative exposure of $1.390 Trillion dollars.
Too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It has been charged by California Attorney General (among other) lawsuits for massive fraud on California's CalPERS and CalSTRS pension funds - similar to BNY (above).
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley has a derivative exposure of $1.722 Trilion dollars.
Its a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It recently settled a lawsuit for over-paying its employees while accepting the
tax payer funded bailout. Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley had a license plate that said "2BG2FAIL" on his Porsche Cayenne Turbo. All this while $250 million of bailout money ended up in the hands of Waterfall TALF Opportunity, run by the Morgan Stanley's owners' wives-- Marry a banker for a $250M tax-payer cash injection.
The bank also got a SECRET $2.041 Trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve during the crisis, beyond the tax payer bailout.
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo has a derivative exposure of $3.332 Trillion dollars.
Its a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. WF has been charged for its role in allegedly pursuing illegal foreclosures and deceptive loan servicing. Wells Fargo was just slapped with a $85 million fine by Federal Reserve for putting good credit borrowers into bad-credit rating (high rate) loans.
In March 2010, Wachovia (owned by Wells Fargo) paid $110 million fine for allowing transactions connected to drug smuggling and a $50 million fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine. It also failed to monitor $378.4 billion (that's $378400 millions dollars) worth of transactions to Mexican "casas de cambio" (think WesternUnion, anonymous cash transfer) usually linked to drug cartels. Beyond that, WF lets its' VIP employees live in foreclosed mansions. WF knows how to cash your legit check, then claim "fraud" and close your account. WF also re-orders your transactions to create more overdraft fees. Wells Fargo's Wachovia also got a SECRET $159 billion bailout from the Federal Reserve.
Wells Fargo paid NO taxes in 2008-2010 and had a tax rate of NEGATIVE 1.4% while making
$49 billion in profit during the same time.
HSBC
HSBC has a derivative exposure of $4.321 Trilion dollars.
HSBC is a Hong Kong based bank and its original name is
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited.
You will find HSBC working a lot with JP Morgan Chase.
Both HSBC and JP Morgan Chase have strong interest in gold & precious metals. HSBC and JP Morgan Chase are often involved together in financial scandals.
Lately HSBC has been sued for allegedly funneling more than $8.9 billion to the largest ponzi-scheme in history - Bernie Maddof's investment business.
HSBC (along w/ JP Morgan Chase) has been sued for alleged conspiracy suppressing the price of silver and gold, partially through precious metal DERIVATIVES and making billions of dollars on it. State of Hawaii is suing HSBC (and other banks) for deceptive credit card lending practices.
DZ Bank in Germany is suing HSBC (and JP Morgan) for deceptive (lying) practices when selling home-loan-backed securities.
HSBC is also under investigation for laundering billions of dollars.
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SHORT STORY: Pick something of value, make bets on the future value of "something", add contract & you have a derivative.
Banks make massive profits on derivatives, and when the bubble bursts chances are the tax payer will end up with the bill.
This visualizes the total coverage for derivatives (notional). Similar to insurance company's total coverage for all cars.
LONG STORY: A derivative is a legal bet (contract) that derives its value from another asset, such as the future or current value of oil, government bonds or anything else. Ex- A derivative buys you the option (but not obligation) to buy oil in 6 months for today's price/any agreed price, hoping that oil will cost more in future. (I'll bet you it'll cost more in 6 months). Derivative can also be used as insurance, betting that a loan will or won't default before a given date. So its a big betting system, like a Casino, but instead of betting on cards and roulette, you bet on future values and performance of practically anything that holds value. The system is not regulated what-so-ever, and you can buy a derivative on an existing derivative.
Most large banks try to prevent smaller investors from gaining access to the derivative market on the basis of there being too much risk. Deriv. market has blown a galactic bubble, just like the real estate bubble or stock market bubble (that's going on right now). Since there is literally no economist in the world that knows exactly how the derivative money flows or how the system works, while derivatives are traded in microseconds by computers, we really don't know what will trigger the crash, or when it will happen, but considering the global financial crisis this system is in for tough times, that will be catastrophic for the world financial system since the 9 largest banks shown below hold a total of $228.72 trillion in Derivatives - Approximately 3 times the entire world economy. No government in world has money for this bailout. Lets take a look at what banks have the biggest Derivative Exposures and what scandals they've been lately involved in. Derivative Data Source: ZeroHedge.
One Hundred Dollars
$100 - Most counterfeited money denomination in the world.
Keeps the world moving.
Ten Thousand Dollars
$10,000 - Enough for a great vacation or to buy a used car.
Approximately one year of work for the average human on earth.
$100,000,000 - Plenty to go around for everyone. Fits nicely on an ISO / Military standard sized pallet. $1 Million is the cash square on the floor.
1 Billion Dollars
$1,000,000,000 - This is how a billion dollars looks like.
10 pallets of $100 bills.
1 Trillion Dollars
$1,000,000,000,000 - When they throw around the word "Trillion" like it is nothing, this is the reality of $1 trillion dollars. The square of pallets to the right is $10 billion dollars. 100x that and you have the tower of $1 trillion that is 465 feet tall (142m).
In front of the 3500 people is the $100 Million pallet that they all have to work for 1 year to earn.
Look carefully to see a stack of $1 Million and the 35 average Americans required to earn that $1 Million in 1 year.
Bank of New York Mellon
BNY has a derivative exposure of $1.375 Trillion dollars.
Considered a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It is currently facing (among others) lawsuits fraud and contract breach suits by a Los Angeles pension fund and New York pension funds, where BNY Mellon allegedly overcharged the funds on many millions of dollars and concealed it.
State Street Financial
State Street has a derivative exposure of $1.390 Trillion dollars.
Too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It has been charged by California Attorney General (among other) lawsuits for massive fraud on California's CalPERS and CalSTRS pension funds - similar to BNY (above).
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley has a derivative exposure of $1.722 Trilion dollars.
Its a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It recently settled a lawsuit for over-paying its employees while accepting the
tax payer funded bailout. Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley had a license plate that said "2BG2FAIL" on his Porsche Cayenne Turbo. All this while $250 million of bailout money ended up in the hands of Waterfall TALF Opportunity, run by the Morgan Stanley's owners' wives-- Marry a banker for a $250M tax-payer cash injection.
The bank also got a SECRET $2.041 Trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve during the crisis, beyond the tax payer bailout.
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo has a derivative exposure of $3.332 Trillion dollars.
Its a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. WF has been charged for its role in allegedly pursuing illegal foreclosures and deceptive loan servicing. Wells Fargo was just slapped with a $85 million fine by Federal Reserve for putting good credit borrowers into bad-credit rating (high rate) loans.
In March 2010, Wachovia (owned by Wells Fargo) paid $110 million fine for allowing transactions connected to drug smuggling and a $50 million fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine. It also failed to monitor $378.4 billion (that's $378400 millions dollars) worth of transactions to Mexican "casas de cambio" (think WesternUnion, anonymous cash transfer) usually linked to drug cartels. Beyond that, WF lets its' VIP employees live in foreclosed mansions. WF knows how to cash your legit check, then claim "fraud" and close your account. WF also re-orders your transactions to create more overdraft fees. Wells Fargo's Wachovia also got a SECRET $159 billion bailout from the Federal Reserve.
Wells Fargo paid NO taxes in 2008-2010 and had a tax rate of NEGATIVE 1.4% while making
$49 billion in profit during the same time.
HSBC
HSBC has a derivative exposure of $4.321 Trilion dollars.
HSBC is a Hong Kong based bank and its original name is
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited.
You will find HSBC working a lot with JP Morgan Chase.
Both HSBC and JP Morgan Chase have strong interest in gold & precious metals. HSBC and JP Morgan Chase are often involved together in financial scandals.
Lately HSBC has been sued for allegedly funneling more than $8.9 billion to the largest ponzi-scheme in history - Bernie Maddof's investment business.
HSBC (along w/ JP Morgan Chase) has been sued for alleged conspiracy suppressing the price of silver and gold, partially through precious metal DERIVATIVES and making billions of dollars on it. State of Hawaii is suing HSBC (and other banks) for deceptive credit card lending practices.
DZ Bank in Germany is suing HSBC (and JP Morgan) for deceptive (lying) practices when selling home-loan-backed securities.
HSBC is also under investigation for laundering billions of dollars.
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