China using students as spies

The 350,000 Chinese students in the U.S. “are here legitimately and doing great research and helping the global economy,” said Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, but others are used as tools to facilitate nefarious activity. (Associated Press/File)

 

A senior U.S. counterintelligence official recently said publicly what many officials and experts have been warning privately for years: China is using its large student population in the United States to spy.

Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, a DNI agency, said recently that China poses a broad-ranging foreign intelligence threat that includes the use of academics, students, cyberespionage and human agents to steal secrets from the government and private sectors.

“I look at the China threat from a counterintelligence perspective as a whole-of-government threat by China against us,” Mr. Evanina told a conference last week at The Aspen Institute.

“We allow 350,000 or so Chinese students here every year,” he said. “That’s a lot. We have a very liberal visa policy for them. Ninety-nine point nine percent of those students are here legitimately and doing great research and helping the global economy. But it is a tool that is used by the Chinese government to facilitate nefarious activity here in the U.S.”

Aussie ‘War On Cash’ Tsar: “Consumers Are Part Of The Problem”

 

Australia’s Black Economy Taskforce has come up with a list of 35 “consumer-focused” proposals to crack down on cash. The taskforce blames consumers for holding cash and for not getting receipts.

Michael Andrew, the head of the taskforce, proposes nanochips in $50 and $100 notes so the government knows where the cash is, and suggests that cash should expire after a designated period of time.

Andrew believes “consumers are part of the problem”. He wants to punish people who pay in cash and don’t get a receipt.

The Next Four Years After 2015.75

 

QUESTION: What will happen after 2015.75? Can you share anything?

Thanks from those who cannot attend your conference

PD

This Time It Is Different

What’s crucial to also understand here is that the United States is not a democracy anymore. America had left democracy and capitalism decades ago through a slow transition that has converted itself into a socialist state. Most people never noticed because they were too busy watching Sunday NFL games or following the Kardashians.

In effect, when people claim democracy and capitalism has failed, they are dead wrong. If America is not a democratic country anymore, then democracy could not have been what failed.

What has failed is socialism — and America is paying the ultimate price for transitioning to it. This ultimate price is usually what erases empires.

 

 

For years, I have warned that we will face our worst nightmare – the collapse of socialism. In the death throes of this abomination that even the Ten Commandments listed as a serious sin, equal to “thou shalt not kill”, government will become the ugly beast that will devour society to retain power. Of course, they will never see themselves that way, but they will justify in their minds that stripping us of our freedom, rights, privileges, and immunities, is necessary to maintain socialism for the good of the people.

We are running out of other peoples’ money, as Margaret Thatcher warned. Karl Marx, who sought to change society by sheer force, set all this in motion. What has taken place is really scary, for indeed they have altered society far more than anyone dares to ponder.

Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US

An eerie and well-laid out article from 2006 that warrants attention. What this article doesn’t take into account is that the USSR underwent a controlled and planned strategic collapse to dupe the West into thinking that it was going to become democratic and full of freedom, no longer a threat. As explained by Anatoliy Golitsyn, America has been sold New Lies for Old the entire time and fell for the Perestroika Deception. Slide 23 hints at it, but misses the mark. Over 92% of Golitsyn’s predictions came true, yet alarmingly received very little attention.

While the undertones of the article may seem pro-Soviet or Communist to some in an ‘America vs Russia’ framework, it remains objective in illustrating the final point(s) in principal of how the USSR panned out and how America might pan out. It doesn’t take into account

Most of the article will be posted here for documentation purposes, the remaining portions can be found on the source link.

 

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.

My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the “Collapse Gap” – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.

Wall Street adviser: Actual unemployment is 37.2%, ‘misery index’ worst in 40 years

Don’t believe the happy talk coming out of the White House, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department when it comes to the real unemployment rate and the true “Misery Index.” Because, according to an influential Wall Street advisor, the figures are a fraud.

In a memo to clients provided to Secrets, David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government.

Detroit’s Default May Spark U.S. Death Spiral of Debt

Debt is deadly, and it’s made even worse with rising interest rates that can prevent you from eliminating the load. What happens with rising interest rates is that more of the payments go toward the interest and less to the principal. In fact, it’s what I call a death spiral of debt that worsens as rates move higher.

When individuals face excessive debt, often the solution is to reduce spending and adhere to a strict repayment program.

Europe’s Unemployed: An Army Waiting for a Leader

As Europe edges toward mass anarchy and chaos, the Catholic Church is emerging as the key mediator between Europeans and their leaders.

Europe’s unemployment crisis is one everyone knows about, but no one is thinking seriously about.

François Hollande wants 75% company tax on salaries over 1m euros

French president François Hollande may have finally found a way to tax the really rich: by making their companies pay.

In a televised interview on Thursday night, he said he wants companies that pay their employees more than €1m (£840,000) to pay 75% tax on those salaries.

Senators in Immigration Talks Mull Federal IDs for All Workers

Key senators are exploring an immigration bill that would force every U.S. worker—citizen or not—to carry a high-tech identity card that could use fingerprints or other personal markers to prove a person’s legal eligibility to work.

Money for Nothin’ Writing Checks for Free

When coming from PIMCO, alarm bells should be going off.

Mr. Bernanke never provided additional clarity as to what he meant by “no cost.” Perhaps he was referring to zero-bound interest rates, although at the time in 2002, 10-year Treasuries were at 4%. Or perhaps he knew something that American citizens, their political representatives, and almost all investors still don’t know: that quantitative easing – the purchase of Treasury and Agency mortgage obligations from the private sector – IS essentially costless in a number of ways. That might strike almost all of us as rather incredible – writing checks for free – but that in effect is what a central bank does. Yet if ordinary citizens and corporations can’t overdraft their accounts without criminal liability, how can the Fed or the European Central Bank or any central bank get away with printing “electronic money” and distributing it via helicopter flyovers in the trillions and trillions of dollars?

Well, the answer is sort of complicated but then it’s sort of simple: They just make it up. When the Fed now writes $85 billion of checks to buy Treasuries and mortgages every month, they really have nothing in the “bank” to back them. Supposedly they own a few billion dollars of “gold certificates” that represent a fairy-tale claim on Ft. Knox’s secret stash, but there’s essentially nothing there but trust. When a primary dealer such as J.P. Morgan or Bank of America sells its Treasuries to the Fed, it gets a “credit” in its account with the Fed, known as “reserves.” It can spend those reserves for something else, but then another bank gets a credit for its reserves and so on and so on. The Fed has told its member banks “Trust me, we will always honor your reserves,” and so the banks do, and corporations and ordinary citizens trust the banks, and “the beat goes on,” as Sonny and Cher sang. $54 trillion of credit in the U.S. financial system based upon trusting a central bank with nothing in the vault to back it up. Amazing!

Enter At Your Own Risk: Police Union Says ‘War-Like’ Detroit Is Unsafe For Visitors

How far has the nation gone downhill? This far:

DETROIT (WWJ) – The men and women of the Detroit Police Department believe the city is too dangerous to enter, and they want citizens to know it.

Germany Says ‘Great Uncertainty’ About US Debt

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble questioned on Tuesday how the United States could deal with its high levels of government debt after November’s presidential election.

In a speech to the Bundestag lower house of parliament to open a debate on the 2013 German budget, Schaeuble said worries about U.S. debt were a burden for the global economy, hitting back at Washington which has criticized Europe for failing to get a grip on its own debt crisis.

In private, German officials often express concern about U.S. debt levels and the inability of politicians there to reach a consensus on how to reduce it, but Schaeuble’s public remarks underscore the extent of the worries in Germany.

Full article: Germany Says ‘Great Uncertainty’ About US Debt (CNBC)

Coal Industry Under Attack

A map has been generated at FreeMarketAmerica.org which tracks jobs lost on account of the Sierra Club’s war on coal. The data for the map comes from the National Mining Association, which says that over 1.2 million jobs have been lost in the coal industry. If mining stocks haven’t been doing well – whether we are talking coal or even gold – consider the environmental hits taken by the mining industry. Like the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest, coal mining has been specially targeted for reduction.

It’s true, of course. Last June Bloomberg ran a piece, “Displaced coal miners face slim job prospects.” All around the country, coal jobs are being lost. Coal is one of America’s key energy resources. It is an energy resource we don’t have to import. But the Obama Administration appears determined to crush the coal industry in order to save the planet from global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believes global warming is caused by greenhouse gases produced by coal as well as oil. Therefore, a radical effort is underway to curtail the use of coal.

Only a few years ago more than half our electricity was generated from coal. In the first quarter of 2012 the generation of electricity from coal dropped 21 percent from 2011 levels. The immediate culprit is the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAP). You can read about it at the Web Site of the EPA where it states: “On July 6, 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule that protects the health of millions of Americans by helping states reduce air pollution and attain clean air standards. This rule, known as the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, requires states to significantly improve air quality by reducing power plant emissions that contribute to ozone and/or fine particle pollution in other states.” (In other words, coal is out.)

In the middle of the worst economic times since the Great Depression, when as many as 86 million are unemployed, how can the federal government purposely push for over 1.2 million in additional job losses? And yes, the job situation may be worse than official figures suggest. Readers should review CNN Money’s May 4 piece titled “The 86 million invisible unemployed” which stated that our work force has the “lowest force participation rate since 1981.”

As CNN Money explained, “Only people looking for work are considered officially unemployed.” So the situation is worse than the government represents. Yet the government would add to the number of those out of work by strangling the coal industry. When the price of oil remains high and a war in the Middle East could drive oil prices higher, wouldn’t it be wise to leave the coal industry alone? But then, we have to save the planet from global warming – or do we?

Full article: Coal Industry Under Attack (JR Nyquist | Financial Sense Online)

Entitlement Spending Creates a ‘Nation of Takers’

As the economic crisis worsens, people are increasingly becoming dependent on the hand-outs and work ethic consequently goes downhill in exchange for the enticement of easy money. As a result, the quality of life in families is being eroded as the traditional role of both males and females in the household is increasingly undermined.

What’s more, is that one generation influences the next and at the moment we’re mislead to believe that a cut in crucial military spending will solve a problem it never created. Lets also not forget, as the study points out, how the unborn will shoulder the burden with an insurmountable debt that just cannot be paid back for generations.

Whether by some sort of cynical design or pure ignorance, the family unit — the core of America’s pride and social fabric, is being ripped apart. History shows that once a nation’s pride is destroyed, so goes the nation.

America’s entitlement spending is destroying the economy. But political economist Nicholas Eberstadt isn’t worried about that. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal August 31, Eberstadt argued that the effect entitlement spending is having on the nation’s character is far more dangerous.

He outlines a shocking increase in entitlement spending: 727 percent in the last 50 years. And that’s after adjusting for inflation and the increase in population.

“Within living memory, the federal government has become an entitlements machine,” he wrote. “As a day-to-day operation, it devotes more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending more than for all other ends combined.”

In a longer version of his Journal essay, published by Templeton Press and available here, Eberstadt meticulously backs up his claims with a wealth of data that even his critics do not dispute.

The shocking facts run against the popular historical narrative. For example, Eberstadt points out that America’s defense spending places a smaller burden on America’s economy now than almost any point in the Cold War. America spends 4.8 percent of its economy on defense. In 1961, when President Dwight Eisenhower warned of a “military-industrial complex,” 9.4 percent of America’s gdp was spent on the military.

In fact, since September 11, it hasn’t been out-of-control military spending inflating America’s debt bomb, but escalating entitlement spending.

…

Manhood was also directly attacked. “Before the age of entitlements, self-reliance and the work ethic were integral and indispensable elements of the ideal of manliness in America,” he wrote.

“Put simply the arrival of the entitlement society in America has coincided with a historically unprecedented exit from gainful work by adult men,” he continued. And once again, Eberstadt commands a battery of statistics. Most surprisingly, more able-bodied American men shirk work than in almost all of Europe, despite the Continent’s infamy for entitlement spending.

Eberstadt’s numbers also show that America is tolerating widespread cheating. In 1960, 455,000 people received government payments for disability. In 2011, it’s 8.6 million. Nearly half of all these payments go to people suffering “mood disorders” or sicknesses affecting “musculoskeletal system and the connective tissue,” like back pain. These two are almost impossible for doctors to diagnose.

The entitlement system draws millions of people into a lifestyle of lying and cheating. And Eberstadt doesn’t just blame the claimants of the disability pay. The doctors and health care workers that allow this are “collaborators,” as is the U.S. judicial system. American voters and politicians are “willing and often knowing enablers.”

Finally, Eberstadt shows that the system drafts society into the robbery of “a pool of citizens who can offer not resistance to such schemes: the unborn descendants of today’s entitlement-seeking population.”

Full article: Entitlement Spending Creates a ‘Nation of Takers’ (The Trumpet)