Archive - Jun 1, 2014

Dispassionae look at the several events in the week ahead.  

Behind the public-relations facade of "advocacy" and "justice," much of the American legal system is unproductive regulatory friction and the pursuit of extortionist rentier skims. What else could we have done with the billions of dollars squandered on regulatory friction and the pursuit of questionable claims of damage?

With the NSA already reigning supreme when it comes to the capture of virtually every form of instantaneous electronic communication and interchange, aka the "flow" of data, there is one final threshold that the US superspy agency needed to cross before the biggest brother of all would have full control over not only the flow of information, but its stock too: a photographic database of virtually everyone. And courtesy of not only programs like Facebook, but also its access to government photographic data, the NSA is focusing on just that. As the NYT reports, the agency is "harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents... The agency intercepts “millions of images per day” — including about 55,000 “facial recognition quality images” — which translate into “tremendous untapped potential,”

June is seasonally a poor month for gold and technical damage means gold could be manipulated lower again before half year end ... As one astute commentator said on Twitter this week, being able to acquire cheaper gold given the state of the world today is "like being given discounts on life-rafts on the Titanic ... "

On Friday, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said China has taken "destabilizing, unilateral actions asserting its claims in the South China Sea" (which incidentally is not called the South American Sea). Hagel added that the U.S. will continue to raise cyber issues with China, and by raising he likely meant accusing PLA members of hacking, resulting in China dropping more US tech firms as critical suppliers.Following the Us Defense Secretary, it was the turn of Japan's PM, Abe who said Japan would give more support to southeast Asian nations that are facing Chinese pressure. He concluded that the U.S. takes no position on competing territorial claims, however the damage was already done: according the FT, a top Chinese general on Sunday accused the US and Japan of teaming up to stage “provocative actions” against China, as escalating maritime tensions spilled into an Asian regional defense forum.