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Skeptical Debunker

Prudential-AIG Deal Another Case of Corporate Empire Building - 0 views

moneymorning.com/...prudential-aig

AIG Prudential deal analysis

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • In spite of its new whizz-bang CEO, Prudential is a slow-moving but very reliable organization with a level of integrity that is trusted by policyholders. Frankly, that's what you want in an insurance company. I have had a modest U.K. pension with one of its competitors since 1980, and I am constantly worried that some leveraged buyout (LBO) artist will step in, take it over, change the computer system so that information gets lost, outsource customer service, and drive the company into bankruptcy. If you're buying life insurance or pension services, you want a company that's not going to disappear in the next 30 years, and doesn't change its address or computer system too often. Avoid a company like the plague if it is run by whiz kids. However, that's what AIG was like. We know how AIG operated; a guy who thought betting the ranch on the credit default swap market was a good idea ran it. Its Asian operation is no doubt full of similarly clever ideas. Even in the unlikely event that everything there is on the level, the cultural clash with an old-fashioned British insurance company is huge. And why would you pay a PREMIUM for an AIG operation? Like the Kraft/Cadbury deal, Prudential's takeover of AIA is value-destroying. Also like Kraft/Cadbury, it looks likely to destroy a valuable part of the British economy that millions of people have relied upon for generations - only this time the destruction will be caused by the buyer rather than the target. As shareholders we need a new form of corporate governance. Those in management are hired hands. In the old days, large shareholders used to treat management as they would have treated their butler - and management was equally deferential to the owners of substantial percentages of the company's capital. That's how capitalism is supposed to work - with resources deployed in the interests of the owners of capital. We know that system works; economics shows us why it works. The alternative, with resources deployed to satisfy the egos and fill the pockets of the hired hands, has no theoretical justification and little practicality - just as a big country house run in the interests of the butler would be a mess. As capitalists, we must work together to restore capitalism!
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    To inattentive observers, the recent announcement that the British insurance company Prudential PLC (NYSE ADR: PUK) would pay $35.5 billion for American International Group Inc.'s (NYSE: AIG) Asian insurance operation, AIA, might seem like just another belated expansion of the old British Empire - a strange contrast to the sale of the premier British chocolate company Cadbury PLC (NYSE ADR: CBY) to Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) last month. Yet in reality both deals are examples of Empire-building that for shareholders is much more dangerous than the benign British variety - Empire-building by corporate management that runs contrary to capitalist ideals.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    Monopolies - BAD (Adam Smith even said so!) Companies controlled and run by management (as if it were their own personal fiefdom and with their hands always in the "cookie jar"), rather than shareholders - BAD. BOTH ANTI-CAPITALISTIC. Both the "norm" for "the titans" of "modern [anti] capitalism". We no longer have capitalism (if that, like communism, ever existed in a more or less "pure" form!). We have a kleptocracy of the rich and corporate aristocracy (as incestuously intertwined as the European nobles ever were!).
thinkahol *

America's Secret Empire of Drone Bases - 0 views

www.readersupportednews.org/...s-secret-empire-of-drone-bases

America's Secret Empire of Drone Bases

shared by thinkahol * on 19 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 19 Oct 11
     
    They increasingly dot the planet.  There's a facility outside Las Vegas where "pilots" work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about. And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide.  Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America's ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous - until now. Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and their proxies, these bases - some little more than desolate airstrips, others sophisticated command and control centers filled with computer screens and high-tech electronic equipment - are the backbone of a new American robotic way of war.  They are also the latest development in a long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad - in this case, remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign "footprint" and little accountability.Using military documents, press accounts, and other open source information, an in-depth analysis by TomDispatch has identified at least 60 bases integral to U.S. military and CIA drone operations.  There may, however, be more, since a cloak of secrecy about drone warfare leaves the full size and scope of these bases distinctly in the shadows.
thinkahol *

Armed Chinese Troops in Texas! - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

Armed Chinese Troops in Texas! - YouTube

shared by thinkahol * on 05 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 05 Jan 12
     
    NOTE: It is important to separate hunting down terrorists who attack our country and deserve justice (which Ron Paul is 100% for), and not confuse justice with occupying entire countries for a decade under the guise of the "War on Terror" or "Spreading Democracy". Terrorists are individuals and small groups, so why are we picking fights with entire nations? BILLIONS for Defense, NOT A PENNY for Empire. This speech is called "Imagine" and it was given by Ron Paul on March 11, 2009. The original text of the talk is below: Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of "keeping us safe" or "promoting democracy" or "protecting their strategic interests." Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence. Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers' attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but inst
thinkahol *

United States v. Dougherty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...United_States_v._Dougherty

United States v. Dougherty - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

shared by thinkahol * on 24 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 24 Jun 11
     
    United States v. Dougherty was a 1972 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in which the court ruled that members of the D.C. Nine, who had broken into Dow Chemical Company, vandalized office furniture and equipment, and spilled about a bloodlike substance, were not entitled to a new trial on the basis of the judge's failing to allow a jury nullification jury instruction. The Appeals Court ruled, by a 2-1 vote: " The fact that there is widespread existence of the jury's prerogative, and approval of its existence as a "necessary counter to casehardened judges and arbitrary prosecutors," does not establish as an imperative that the jury must be informed by the judge of that power. On the contrary, it is pragmatically useful to structure instructions in such wise that the jury must feel strongly about the values involved in the case, so strongly that it must itself identify the case as establishing a call of high conscience, and must independently initiate and undertake an act in contravention of the established instructions. This requirement of independent jury conception confines the happening of the lawless jury to the occasional instance that does not violate, and viewed as an exception may even enhance, the over-all normative effect of the rule of law. An explicit instruction to a jury conveys an implied approval that runs the risk of degrading the legal structure requisite for true freedom, for an ordered liberty that protects against anarchy as well as tyranny. " Nonetheless, the defendants were given a new trial on the grounds that they had been denied their right of self-representation.[1] The Circuit Judges' assumption that jurors know about their nullification prerogative has since been brought into question by other empirical evidence.[2] According to Irwin Horowitz, "Beyond the empirical issue, lack of nullification instructions maintains a deceit. After all, juries can nullify, but they know this fact only on a so
thinkahol *

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Bruce Fein, American Empire Before the Fall | Book Salon - 0 views

fdlbooksalon.com/...mes-bruce-fein-american-empire

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Bruce Fein American Empire Before the Fall |

shared by thinkahol * on 18 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 18 Sep 10
     
    There's no doubting the conservative bona fides of Bruce Fein. A high-level Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration in the 1980s and previously a resident scholar with the Heritage Foundation, he is a long-time advocate for uncompromising right-wing political principles. Yet paradoxically, Fein has been, and remains, one of the most eloquent and incisive political voices over the last decade. He was one of the earliest and most emphatic critics of Bush and Cheney's radical abuses of executive power. Two weeks after The New York Times revealed in December, 2005, that Bush had ordered the NSA to illegally eavesdrop on Americans without the warrants required by law, Fein used his column in the right-wing Washington Times to warn that "Mr. Bush has adamantly refused to acknowledge any constitutional limitations on his power to wage war indefinitely"; to scorn as "war powers nonsense" the theories assembled "to defend Mr.
thinkahol *

A "Pledge of Resistance" to Defend Social Security (and Defund the Empire) - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/ecurity-and-defund-empire66591

A Pledge of Resistance to Defend Social Security (and Defund the Empire)

shared by thinkahol * on 07 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 07 Jan 11
     
    For the third time in the last 20 years, establishment voices with high-profile slots in traditional media are trying to convince the public to accept cuts to Social Security by endlessly claiming such cuts are necessary, without giving coherent evidence to justify the claim. Twice, under former presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, these voices were defeated - but they didn't give up. And now they are in striking distance of their goal: the fact that Republicans have taken over the House, combined with the fact that the president appointed a deficit reduction commission which nearly recommended a cut in Social Security benefits - and might well have done so if Representative Schakowsky hadn't worked to undermine the co-chairs' plan - means that one can't be complacent; some reports have suggested that the president may indicate support for cuts to Social Security in his State of the Union speech. Of the two principal Washington political actors who will shape the outcome - the Republican leadership and the president's team - one is a determined adversary of the public interest, the other a very uncertain ally. The most successful anti-poverty program in US history is again in grave danger.
thinkahol *

Oliver Stone: Don't Betray Us, Barack -- End the Empire | News & Politics | AlterNet - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...s%2C_barack_--_end_the_empire_

Oliver Stone: Don't Betray Us Barack -- End the Empire | News & Politics AlterNet

shared by thinkahol * on 20 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 20 Apr 11
     
    Let's face facts: The US can no longer dictate to the rest of the world.
thinkahol *

Sounds of Resistance are Growing Join Americans Fed Up With Big Finance Americans Acr... - 0 views

itsoureconomy.us

Sounds of Resistance Growing Join Americans Fed Up With Big Finance Across the Country Joining Culture - You Are Needed!

shared by thinkahol * on 05 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 05 Apr 11
     
    Are you tired of big banks making record profits, paying giant executive salaries and bonuses and then cooking the books so they avoid paying taxes?  We are.  And, we are responding.  Join us.On April 15 in Union Square Park in New York City at 11:00 AM we are holding a "Sounds of Resistance Concert" and protest against the big corporate banks that have undermined the U.S. economy and displaced families from their homes. Big Finance has taken more than a trillion from the Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve to pay for their casino gambling on Wall Street but they are still forcing people out of their homes, not lending to small businesses and choking the economy.The concert will feature political hip-hop/rock powerhouse Junkyard Empire with special guests Broadcast Live and Sketch the Cataclysm. Chris Hedges will speak about the growing culture of resistance. Other performers and speakers are invited.The protest will include a picket of the Union Square Bank of America - a major culprit in the great rip off of the American taxpayer.This concert and protest are part of the effort to build the urgently needed movement to shift power to the people and away from concentrated capital interests.                                        
thinkahol *

YouTube - THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY 1/10 - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

YouTube - THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY 1_10 john pilger

shared by thinkahol * on 27 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 27 Oct 10
     
    John Pilger's documentary explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger claims that the film "...tells a universal story... analyzing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the films message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow". Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries and who he claims are profiting from the war in Iraq. He investigates the School of the Americas in the U.S. state of Georgia, where General Pinochets torture squads were reportedly trained along with tyrants and death-squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina.
thinkahol *

Chris Hedges: This Time We're Taking the Whole Planet With Us - Chris Hedges' Columns -... - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/..._whole_planet_with_us_20110307

Chris Hedges: This Time We're Taking the Whole Planet With Us - Hedges' Columns Truthdig

shared by thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11
     
    Civilizations rise, decay and die. Time, as the ancient Greeks argued, for individuals and for states is cyclical. As societies become more complex they become inevitably more precarious. They become increasingly vulnerable. And as they begin to break down there is a strange retreat by a terrified and confused population from reality, an inability to acknowledge the self-evident fragility and impending collapse. The elites at the end speak in phrases and jargon that do not correlate to reality. They retreat into isolated compounds, whether at the court at Versailles, the Forbidden City or modern palatial estates. The elites indulge in unchecked hedonism, the accumulation of vaster wealth and extravagant consumption. They are deaf to the suffering of the masses who are repressed with greater and greater ferocity. Resources are more ruthlessly depleted until they are exhausted. And then the hollowed-out edifice collapses. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elites, after clearing their forests and polluting their streams with silt and acids, retreated backward into primitivism. As food and water shortages expand across the globe, as mounting poverty and misery trigger street protests in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the elites do what all elites do. They launch more wars, build grander monuments to themselves, plunge their nations deeper into debt, and as it all unravels they take it out on the backs of workers and the poor. The collapse of the global economy, which wiped out a staggering $40 trillion in wealth, was caused when our elites, after destroying our manufacturing base, sold massive quantities of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities to pension funds, small investors, banks, universities, state and foreign governments and shareholders. The elites, to cover the losses, then looted the public treasury to begin the speculation over again. They also, in the name of austerity, began dismantling basic social services, set out to break th
thinkahol *

GRITtv » Blog Archive » Chris Hedges: The World As it Is - 0 views

grittv.org/...hris-hedges-the-world-as-it-is

GRITtv » Blog Archive Chris Hedges: The World As it Is

shared by thinkahol * on 16 May 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 16 May 11
     
    "You can't sustain a democracy in an oligarchic state. The writers on Athenian democracy understood that 2000 years ago," says Chris Hedges, whose new book The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress explores the problems of a crumbling empire, inside and out. Chris joins Laura in studio for a conversation about the death of Bin Laden and the continuing concern over terrorism, the end of empathy in the U.S., and what avenues are left for progressives to fight back.  "The elites are not going to help us," he warns, "We're going to have to help ourselves."
alex thorn

The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke | AlterNet - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...83555

economy empire imperialism iraq militarism us empire

shared by alex thorn on 26 Apr 08 - Cached
  • alex thorn on 26 Apr 08
     
    Chalmers Johnson explains how militarism and debt don't mix well.
Levy Rivers

Tom Watson MP » Blog Archive » Power of Information: New taskforce and speech - 0 views

tom-watson.co.uk/index.php

data leadership phones coverage prime minister taskforce

shared by Levy Rivers on 02 Apr 08 - Cached
  • We commissioned Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg to write the Power of Information report because we knew that information, presented in the right way, was a potent driver for improving public services and government.
  • Today I am going to offer two arguments that I think compliment the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on public service reform
  • Firstly, that freeing up data will allow us to unlock the talent British entrepreneurs. And secondly, engaging people - using the simple tools that bring them together - will allow the talents of all our people to be applied to the provision of public services.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • The difference of course is that today we contend with what Richard Saul Wurman describes as a ‘tsunami of data’
  • My job is to make sure that government can benefit from this new thinking too. When we were first elected in 1997 people had a recipient relationship with data, they got what they were given when they were given it. It was static.
  • In scale, the spread of social media is comparable to the spread of telephones in the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Yet it’s happened in two years not 20.
  • As Clay Shirky would say, we’ve reached a point where technology is simple and boring enough to be socially useful and interesting.
  • Over 7 million electronic signatures have been sent, electronically, to the Downing Street petition website. 1 in 10 citizens have emailed the Prime Minister about an issue. The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off Government webspace.
  • Only last week, the Prime Minister became the first head of Government in Europe to launch his own channel on Twitter, which I can tell you from experience, is extremely useful to his ministers at least
  • Richard is here tonight and I hope that after the formal proceedings you might like to share some of your own ideas with him. Richard is also joined by a number of other taskforce members. They’re all people with remarkable track records in this field. We’re lucky. The UK has some of the world’s leading talent.
  • And today the PM announced an initiative that would allow you to find your community Bobbies using your postcode.
  • The taskforce will bring its expertise to bare on existing initiatives to see if we can what we already do better
  • I want the taskforce to ensure that the COI and Cabinet Office produce a set of guidelines that adheres to the letter of the law when it comes to the civil service code but also lives within the spirit of the age. I’ll be putting some very draft proposals to the taskforce to consider later this week.
  • By bringing people onto the taskforce with the skills and experiences of people like Sally Russell we can move further and faster in this area.
  • Two weeks ago the Prime Minister signalled that we were moving public services to the next stage of reform. He said that we were not only going to, further enhance choice but also empower both the users of services and all the professionals who deliver them - to drive up standards for all.
  • Transformational government is about wrapping services around the citizen, not citizens around the services.
  • Last month DirectGov had over 7 million visitors. Peter is seeing the aggregate desires of millions of UK public service using citizens. I had half an hour with him a fortnight ago and came away with a dozen ideas as to how we can improve our public services.
  • I’m the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East and I didn’t know about an important recycling initiative going on in my own patch. This information now means that a bag load of clothing for a small child and a habitat sofa are about given a second chance to give pleasure.
  • And much of that information has the potential to be reused in data mashups. Some of it already is, like Hansard on theyworkforyou, or Google Maps using Ordnance Survey data.
  • The Power of Information Report recognised that, and made recommendations to the Treasury. The Treasury, with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, published an independent economic study in the Budget and announced its intention to look at these issues during this spending review cycle.
  • It was this early open source approach that arguably fostered 500 years of Islamic scholarship in important fields like medicine, astronomy, lexicography, literature and science. In contrast, European data was stored in monasteries and did not foster easy knowledge transfer. As Gibbon wrote in the ‘Decline and fall of the Roman empire’ the ‘age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years’ and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals?
  • I believe in the power of mass collaboration. I believe that as James Surowiecki says the many are smarter than the few. I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made are going to change for ever. I said that I don’t believe the post-bureaucratic age argument. It’s just old thinking, laissez faire ideas with a new badge. The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.
  • The irony that laying claim to the ownership of a policy on open source was lost to the poor researcher who had spent a day dissecting the speech. He’d been able to do so easily because it was freely available on my blog, a simple tool used for communicating information quickly and at nearly zero cost without the requirement to charge for access. The point is, who cares? It doesn’t matter who has the ideas. It’s what you do with them and how you improve on them that counts.
alex thorn

Rick Falkvinge: Why the US is collapsing - 0 views

falkvinge.com/...why-us-is-collapsing.html

empire fascism militarism military neoconservatism

shared by alex thorn on 17 Apr 08 - Cached
  • alex thorn on 17 Apr 08
     
    This essay is awesome. About US fascism and the end of our economic and, subsequently, military empipre.
Arne Løining

Bush is a Psychopath - What Does that Tell Us About Us - 0 views

www.thisisby.us/...bush_is_a_psychopath

empire pathocracy

shared by Arne Løining on 10 Jul 08 - Cached
  • So most importantly for the world we need to get working on our own consciousness to bring about a better world.
  • Arne Løining on 10 Jul 08
     
    So most importantly for the world we need to get working on our own consciousness to bring about a better world.
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