Showing posts with label Looting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Looting. Show all posts
Saturday, July 30, 2011
For A Damn Good Reason Too! (Part 2) - Why the Rich Fear Violence in the Streets
Sarah Jaffe at AlterNet continues on where Robert Frank @ the Wall Street Journal leaves off (Part One)
Caption: An auto lays on its side
and crowds gather after a bomb exploded
on Wall Street on Sept. 16, 1920. (Getty)
$230,000 For a Guard Dog: Why the Wealthy Are Afraid Of Violence From BelowAs inequality in the US grows, the ultra-rich are pouring their spare cash not just into private jets, but into private security. Think there's a connection?
July 29, 2011
[ooo] John Johnson, the owner of the $230,000 (Attack) dog featured in the New York Times, is a former debt collector. (You can't make this stuff up.) He sold his debt collection company three years ago, but still has not just one, but six highly—and expensively—trained “executive protection dogs.” Harrison K-9 services, the trainers behind Johnson's pricey protection dogs, used to train dogs for elite military units like the Navy Seal team that raided Osama bin Laden's compound. The article doesn't say exactly how many dogs Harrison K-9 has provided for the world's rich and famous, but it does feature a quote from their head trainer saying she's trained “a thousand” dogs.
In addition to security systems, dogs and armed yachts, the security-conscious oligarch can hire a private spy company—Jellyfish, a spinoff of the notorious private security company Blackwater. Or what about their own personal drone? “Smaller, private versions of the infamous Predator” may be coming to well-heeled private citizens near you, according to the UK's Daily Mail. So far the private drones appear to only be for spying, but former Navy fighter pilot Missy Cummings told the Daily Mail, “It doesn't take a rocket scientist from MIT to tell you if we can do it for a soldier in the field, we can do it for anybody.”
So why are the rich getting paranoid? After all, here in the U.S. it looks like they don't even have to worry about their taxes returning to Clinton-era levels, let alone cope with a truly significant change to their lifestyles.
Still, as the rich get richer, it seems, they get more and more worried about the rest of us coming for their wealth—and they're out to protect it by any means necessary.
David Sirota has noted that “we're fast becoming a 'let them eat cake' economy,” where ostentatious displays of wealth and arrogance seem to be an everyday occurrence as the rest of the country suffers.
A private jet traffic jam was big news in the New York Times last week, because the children of the uber-rich have to get to a Maine summer camp, and driving just won't do. Maine's Tea Party governor, Paul LePage, took some time off from limiting access to the vote and picking fights with organized labor to gloat over the jet traffic:“Love it, love it, love it,” Mr. LePage said of the private-plane traffic generated by summer camps. “I wish they’d stay a week while they’re here. This is a big business.” [More on jet jammin' at Crooks and Liars]
While the private jet crowd is “big business,” the rest of Maine—and the country—is still suffering.
And maybe that's where the fear comes in...
We've seen revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, attempts in Libya, Syria, Yemen, unrest in Greece and Spain, student protests in England, and here at home the occupation of the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. While nothing yet in the U.S. has approached the level of organized attacks on the wealthy by the have-nots, since the financial crash even the hint that perhaps private jet owners could pay a few more dollars in taxes has been decried as class war.
A few protests that actually dare approach the doorsteps of the bankers appear to be all it takes to stoke paranoia among the super-rich...
More @ Alternet via Wayback Machine
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
For A Damn Good Reason Too! Why the Rich Fear Violence in the Streets - WSJ
Hmmm... Public 'resentment' against the rich could turn violent... I support that, and we should get together and do it as soon as possible before these people, who control not just the money, but the media as well, figure out how to get the middle class to turn against the poor... Fascists LUV that kind of action, and the middle class of the US, which has been shown repeatedly to blindly work against it's own self interest, is quite used to scapegoating OTHER people.
Why the Rich Fear Violence in the Streets
July 6 2011
By Robert Frank
Caption: An auto lays on its side
and crowds gather after a bomb exploded
on Wall Street on Sept. 16, 1920. (Getty)
Last year, I was at a billionaire’s home in California and I asked him to describe his biggest worry. He pointed to a 19th century painting on the wall, which depicted a female beggar receiving alms from a wealthy gentleman and giving her patron a flower in return.
“That’s what I worry about,” he said. “But instead of flowers, she’s got guns.
Violence in the streets, aimed at the wealthy. That’s what I worry about.”
It turns out he wasn’t alone. A new survey from Insite Security and IBOPE Zogby International of those with liquid assets of $1 million or more found that 94% of respondents are concerned about the global unrest around the world today.
Fully 90% of respondents have a negative view of the current global economic climate and 41% say they have little or no faith that the U.S. will be able to right itself in this fiscal climate.
More than a third said security concerns have negatively affected business or investment plans.
“The survey found a seismic shift in the attitudes of the wealthy and how they are living their lives, the way they travel and how they are running their businesses,” said Christopher Falkenberg, President of Insite Security.
Of course, Insite has an interest in getting the paranoid rich to beef up their security. Still, the numbers are backed up by other trends..
Read It @ The Wall Street Journal via Archive.Today
They only call it "Class War" when you fight back:
Sunday, February 28, 2010
"All this money magically appears from nowhere," - The Looting Of Afghanistan's Wealth By It's U.S. Installed Kleptocracy Begins In Earnest
It appears Afghanistan's financial wealth is being systematically looted by the U.S. backed/empowered kleptocracy and U.S. funds are alleged to have been diverted from aid programs.
Much of it seems to be flowing to (or should I say 'through') Dubai.
It was also recently discovered that the Karzai family and an extended circle of 'friends' had received large loans from Kabul Bank (Afghanistan's national bank) for the purchase of suites in some of Dubai's finest accommodations.
The US has bankrolled Kabul Bank to the tune of $40 BILLION dollar in US investments. How much of that money has been paid out as highest-of-high-risk loans to the Expat-if-things-go-haywire US backed power elite of Afghanistan for fine dining and housing in Dubai and elsewhere?
No one seems to know.
But the founder and chairman of Kabul Bank knows ONE thing!
"What I'm doing is not proper, not exactly what I should do. But this is Afghanistan," Kabul Bank's founder and chairman, Sherkhan Farnood [source]While the US is obviously attempting to stop money from flowing into Afghanistan and Pakistan, money believed to be supporting al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Treasury Department officials visited the Afghan capital this month to talk about cash flowing OUT of the country among other... Ahem... financial issues in Afghanistan's "...infant, often chaotic financial sector.".
"All this money magically appears from nowhere," --U.S. official
Officials puzzle over millions of dollars leaving Afghanistan by plane for Dubai
By Andrew Higgins
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 25, 2010; A10
KABUL -- A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan -- often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport -- as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money's origin.
The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal.
But at a time when the United States and its allies are spending billions of dollars to prop up the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai, the volume of the outflow has stirred concerns that funds have been diverted from aid.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for its part, is trying to figure out whether some of the money comes from Afghanistan's thriving opium trade (ed. which, in socio-economically locked down Dubai, would undoubtedly be connected to Hamid Karzai's CIA-payrolled, Opium smuggling brother // Auntie I). And officials in neighboring Pakistan think that at least some of the cash leaving Kabul has been smuggled overland from Pakistan.
"All this money magically appears from nowhere," said a U.S. official who monitors Afghanistan's growing role as a hub for cash transfers to Dubai, which has six flights a day to and from Kabul.
In Full at the Washington Post
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