Benazir Bhutto And The Accidental Death Of Ron Brown

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Jack Cashill on the death of former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and its connection to a BCCI official and extraordinary corruption at the highest levels of the Pakistani and the US government.

“The story begins in 1987, when Benzahir Bhutto, the eldest daughter of a former Pakistani prime minister, married a polo-playing idler by the name of Asif Ali Zardari.

Educated at Harvard and Oxford, the pretend populist Bhutto denounced the greed she saw around her, especially the “avaricious politicians” who were destroying her country.

Among the greediest was the nation’s strongman ruler, Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who was not about to share what he had so brutally acquired.

Eight months after Bhutto’s marriage to Zardari, however, Zia died in what The New York Times called “a mysterious plane crash.” This unexpected tragedy, added the Times, “opened the way for Bhutto to win a narrow election victory.”

Although there were no subsequent arrests, few in Pakistan believe this crash to have been an accident.

Bhutto’s new husband, Zardari, quickly proved to be more avaricious a politician than Zia. His conspicuous gift for extortion as Bhutto’s Minister for Investment earned him the honorific “Mr. Ten Percent.”

In 1990, Zardari allegedly attached a bomb to a Pakistani businessman and forced him to withdraw money from his bank account. He was arrested for blackmail and convicted.

Largely because of Zardari, the President of Pakistan dismissed Bhutto in August 1990 for corruption and inability to maintain law and order. In 1993, however, Bhutto was elected Prime Minister once again, and Zardari’s conviction was overturned.

Brown likely met Bhutto and Zardari for the first time in South Africa in May 1994, where all three had gone to witness the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the country’s first black president.

At about this same time, back in Washington, according to Dresch, Brown made the acquaintance of a Bhutto protegee, Pakistani’s new ambassador, the glamorous Maleeha Lodhi.

With a Ph.D. in politics from the London School of Economics and her movie star looks, Lodhi, a single mom, took Brown and Washington by storm.

In November 1994, although Pakistan already had an official lobbyist, Lodhi chose to give some of her business to Patton Boggs, Brown’s former employer.

Signing the contract for Patton Boggs was none other than Lanny Davis, a partner who would soon earn his fifteen minutes of fame by flakking on nightly cable shows for Clinton during the Monica fiasco.

Lodhi and her lobbyists had one overriding mission: to kill or suppress the so-called Pressler amendment and close the books on a deal for American F-16 fighter bombers that had been initiated years before.

In brief, the amendment declared that no American military or technology aid could go to Pakistan unless it would “reduce significantly the risk that Pakistan will possess a nuclear explosive device.”

Pakistan was understandably miffed that George Bush applied the amendment in 1990 after Pakistan had already paid General Dynamics $658 million for 28 F-16s.

Amer Lodhi, Maleeha’s brother, saw an opportunity in the F-16 imbroglio. A former executive with the infamously corrupt Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), Amer got to know Brown through his sister. When in D.C., Zardari joined the party.

Inevitably, Amer Lodhi and Zardari came up with a scheme. Not surprisingly, it involved the always pliable Brown. Brown was to use his influence not to secure the F-16s, but to get Pakistan its money back.

Incredibly, Zardari and Amer Lohdi planned to pocket at least $400 million of the returned money minus an 8%, or $32 million, cut for Brown. For Brown, this was to be the mother of all insider deals.

Although Brown’s pull was scarcely worth $32 million, the Pakistani investment in Brown had an insidious intelligence about it. By involving Brown the Pakistanis were by extension implicating the White House in their scheme.

With the 1996 election at stake, exposure could damage the Clinton administration almost as much it would Bhutto’s. The best way to avoid exposure would be to keep Bhutto in power. If push came to shove, everyone would have an interest in doing just that..”

Read the entire article at the website of Jack Cashill.

Edward Bernays On Self Interest And Propaganda

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It’s a mistake to think propaganda is solely something “they” (the power elites) do to us (passive viewers). It’s just not so.

While propaganda can often be so subtle that the viewer cannot recognize he’s being manipulated, it isn’t true that the viewer is completely helpless to resist it.

The reason for this is that contemporary propaganda is rarely a direct command. Instead, it’s couched in language that appeals to viewers’ self-interests. So, anything that flatters our self-perception or claims to fulfill our desires should alert us to the fact that manipulation might be going on.

The father of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, described this process at length:

“The leaders who lend their authority to any propaganda campaign will do so only if it can be made to touch their own interests. There must be a disinterested aspect of the propagandist’s activities. In other words, it is one of the functions of the public relations counsel to discover at what points his client’s interests coincide with those of other individuals or groups.
In the case of the soap sculpture competition, the distinguished artists and educators who sponsored the idea were glad to lend their services and their names because the competitions really promoted an interest which they had at heart—the cultivation of the esthetic impulse among the younger generation.
Such coincidence and overlapping of interests is as infinite as the interlacing of group formations themselves. For example, a railway wishes to develop its business. The counsel on public relations makes a survey to discover at what points its interests coincide with those of its prospective customers. The company then establishes relations with chambers of commerce along its right of way and assists them in developing their communities. It helps them to secure new plants and industries for the town. It facilitates business through the dissemination of technical information. It is not merely a case of bestowing favors in the hope of receiving favors; these activities of the railroad, besides creating good will, actually promote growth on its right of way. The interests of the railroad and the communities through which it passes mutually interact and feed one another.
In the same way, a bank institutes an investment service for the benefit of its customers in order that the latter may have more money to deposit with the bank. Or a jewelry concern develops an insurance department to insure the jewels it sells, in order to make the purchaser feel greater security in buying jewels. Or a baking company establishes an information service suggesting recipes for bread to encourage new uses for bread in the home. The ideas of the new propaganda are predicated on sound psychology based on enlightened selfinterest.”

—    Edward Bernays in Propaganda (1928)

Bottoms Up! Not Your Usual Nature Cure…

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I’m always on the look out for folk-remedies, but I think I might have a few qualms about this new…er…pee-ple’s drink in North India:

“If you pick up a labeled “health drink” in India you might find some unusual ingredients. The Indian reverence for cows, which gives religious significance to the bovine, has produced a good-for-you beverage made from cow urine.

The cow is considered by Hindus as symbolic of life-giving deities. The fundamentalist Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) launched Gauloka Peya, or “drink from the land of cow,” earlier this year.

Purushottam Toshniwal, a member of the cow protection unit of the RSS and the man who concocted the drink, says the group has already sold around 700 bottles to distributors.

RSS already sells soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, and skin-care creams made from cow urine and dung.

“Many were hesitant to try it in the beginning,” Mr. Toshniwal says. “However, once they tasted it, they liked it. You cannot taste the cow urine as it is mixed with other ingredients.” He also believes the drink will cure diseases.

The cow urine is distilled before it is mixed with traditional Indian herbs and medicinal plants such as Brahmi and basil and water in a 1-to-7 ratio. Gauloka Peya comes in four flavors – orange, khus(a fragrant Asian grass), rose, and lemon. A bottle costs about $3.

“It is like any regular sweet drink, without the harmful side effects,” Toshniwal says.”

Can’t be any worse than snails, crete d’ coque (cockscomb), bishop’s nose (chicken’s behind), prairie oysters (bulls’ testicles), Norman cheeses aged under cow-dung, chocolate-covered grasshoppers, slugs, and all the other less-than-savory savories that garnish the global plate.

The Indian cow is a one-critter industrial plant – providing its milk for drink, its hide for leather, its horn for vessels, its dung for fuel and medicinal products, and now its urine for medicinal drinks, shampoos, and soaps. (Still, I’m happy the ratio is 1 in 7 parts, not the other way round).

More here on the curious practice of curing your body with the fluids from your body:

“Through the ages there have been literally thousands of champions of this curious practice: In the early 1800s, a book titled One Thousand Notable Things describes the use of urine to cure scurvy, relieve skin itching, cleanse wounds, and many other treatments. An 18th century French dentist praised urine as a valuable mouthwash. In England during the 1860-70s, the drinking of one’s own urine was a common cure for jaundice. In more modern times, the Alaskan Eskimos have used urine as an antiseptic to treat wounds……..

…While many people are aware that Gandhi drank his urine, few know that leather-clad rocker Jim Morrison (who, like Gandhi, had an unwatchable movie made of his life) began the practice of drinking his urine while on an LSD-induced spiritual quest in the Mojave Desert. And like Gandhi, Morrison is now dead. As is John Lennon, another reputed fan of urine therapy. In fact, an entire legion of herion-addicted, long-haired rock and rollers are said to have tried Urine Therapy in the early 1970s following Keith Richards (unsuccessful) experimentations with the cure. One of the more famous modern day cases involves movie star Steve McQueen, who, it is said, in the last stages of cancer, survived solely on a diet of urine and boiled alligator skin prescribed by his Mexican doctors.”

And big pharma is not about to be left out of things:

“This summer, Enzymes of America plans to market its first major urine product called urokinase, an enzyme that dissolves blood clots and is used to treat victims of heart attacks. The company has contracts to supply the urine enzyme to Sandoz, Merrell Dow and other major pharmaceutical companies. Ironically, this enterprise evolved from Porta-John’s attempt to get rid of urine proteins-a major source of odour in portable toilets.”

Cyber Wars: Robot Traders Spoof High Frequency Trades

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Alexis Madrigal writes at The Atlantic about robot traders that spoof market orders and introduce potentially dangerous “noise” into high-frequency trading that could end up in a flash crash. The spoof trades can be used to coordinate what is effectively a denial service attack on certain nodes in the financial network. Essentially this is the same as what happens in the other DNS attacks in infrastructure critical to national security. It amounts to clogging the system with data so that it slows down and eventually seizes up.

“High-frequency traders have become a target for all kinds of people, but most of them appear to make their money being a little faster and little smarter than their competitors. And if they are playing by the rules, they improve the quality of markets by minuscule amounts trade after trade after trade.

But the algorithms we see at work here are different. They don’t serve any function in the market. University of Pennsylvania finance professor, Michael Kearns, a specialist in algorithmic trading, called the patterns “curious,” and noted that it wasn’t immediately apparent what such order placement strategies might do.

Donovan thinks that the odd algorithms are just a way of introducing noise into the works. Other firms have to deal with that noise, but the originating entity can easily filter it out because they know what they did. Perhaps that gives them an advantage of some milliseconds. In the highly competitive and fast HFT world, where even one’s physical proximity to a stock exchange matters, market players could be looking for any advantage.

“They are moving the high-frequency services as close to the exchanges as possible because even the speed of light matters,” in such a competitive market, said Stanford finance professor Peter Hansen.

Given Nanex’s data, let’s say that these algorithms are being run each and every day, just about every minute. Are they really a big deal? Donovan said that quote stuffing or market spoofing played a role in the Flash Crash, but that event appears to have had so many causes and failures that it’s nearly impossible to apportion blame. (It is worth noting that European markets are largely protected from a similar event by volatility interruption auctions.)

But already since the May event, Nanex’s monitoring turned up another potentially disastrous situation. On July 16 in a quiet hour before the market opened, suddenly they saw a huge spike in bandwidth. When they looked at the data, they found that 84,000 quotes for each of 300 stocks had been made in under 20 seconds.

“This all happened pre-market when volume is low, but if this kind of burst had come in at a time when we were getting hit hardest, I guarantee it would have caused delays in the [central quotation system],” Donovan said. That, in turn, could have become one of those dominoes that always seem to present themselves whenever there is a catastrophic failure of a complex system.

There are ways to prevent quote stuffing, of course, and at least one of the members of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Committee thinks it should be outlawed.

“Algorithms that might be spoofing the market are something that should be made illegal,” said John Bates, a former Cambridge professor and the CTO of Progress Software. But he didn’t want this presumably negative practice to color the more mundane competitive practices of high-frequency traders.”

Obama: Dining On Whatever The Pentagon Feeds Him

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Andrew Bacevich reports that in his latest opus, Bob Woodward, the McDonald’s of court-historians, is better at recording the trivia of Washington in-fighting that make it to the Sunday headlines than understanding the constitutional significance of a shift in decision-making at the highest level:

“Obama’s Wars also affirms what we already suspected about the decision-making process that led up to the president’s announcement at West Point in December 2009 to prolong and escalate the war.  Bluntly put, the Pentagon gamed the process to exclude any possibility of Obama rendering a decision not to its liking.

Pick your surge: 20,000 troops? Or 30,000 troops?  Or 40,000 troops?  Only the most powerful man in the world — or Goldilocks contemplating three bowls of porridge — could handle a decision like that.  Even as Obama opted for the middle course, the real decision had already been made elsewhere by others: the war in Afghanistan would expand and continue.

And then there’s this from the estimable General David Petraeus: ”I don’t think you win this war,” Woodward quotes the field commander as saying. “I think you keep fighting… This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

Here we confront a series of questions to which Woodward (not to mention the rest of Washington) remains steadfastly oblivious.  Why fight a war that even the general in charge says can’t be won?  What will the perpetuation of this conflict cost?  Who will it benefit?  Does the ostensibly most powerful nation in the world have no choice but to wage permanent war?  Are there no alternatives?  Can Obama shut down an unwinnable war now about to enter its tenth year?  Or is he — along with the rest of us — a prisoner of war?”

A Columnist Asks What’s Wrong With India

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Chetan Bhagat at The Times of India:

“Countless articles, books, thesis, papers and research reports have tried to answer the question, ‘what is wrong with India ?’ Global experts are startled that a country of massive potential has one of the largest populations of poor people in the world. Isn’t it baffling that despite almost everyone agreeing that things should change, they don’t? Intellectuals give intelligent suggestions – from investing in infrastructure to improving the judicial system. Yet, nothing moves. Issues dating back thirty years ago, continue to plague India today. The young are often perplexed. They ask will things ever change? How? Whose fault is it that they haven’t?

Today, i will attempt to answer these tricky questions, although from a different perspective . I will not put the blame on everyone’s favorite punching bag– inept politicians. That is too easy an argument and not entirely correct. After all, we elect the politicians. So, for every MP out there, there are a few lakh people who wanted him or her there. I won’t give ‘policy’ solutions either – make power plants, improve the roads, open up the economy . It isn’t the lack of such ideas that is stalling progress. No, blocking progress is part of the unique psyche of Indians. There are three traits of our psyche, in particular, that are not good for us and our country. Each comes from three distinct sources – our school, our environment and our home.

The first trait is servility. At school, our education system hammers out our individual voices and kills our natural creativity, turning us into servile, coursematerial slaves. Indian kids are not encouraged to raise their voices in class, particularly when they disagree with the teacher. And of course, no subject teaches us imagination, creativity or innovation. Course materials are designed for no-debate kind of teaching. For example, we ask: how many states are there in India ? 28. Correct. Next question -how is a country divided into states? What criteria should be used? Since these are never discussed , children never develop their own viewpoint or the faculty to think.

The second trait is our numbness to injustice. It comes from our environment. We see corruption from our childhood. Almost all of us have been asked to lie about our age to the train TC, claiming to be less than 5 years old to get a free ride. It creates a value system in the child’s brain that ‘anything goes’, so long as you can get away with it. A bit of lying here, a bit of cheating there is seen as acceptable. Hence, we all grow up slightly numb to corruption. Not even one high profile person in India is behind bars for corruption right now. This could be because, to a certain extent, we don’t really care.

The third trait is divisiveness. This often comes from our home, particularly our family and relatives, where we learn about the differences amongst people. Our religion, culture and language are revered and celebrated in our families. Other people are different – and often implied to be not as good as us. We’ve all known an aunt or uncle who, though is a good person, holds rigid bias against Muslims, Dalits or people from different communities. Even today, most of India votes on one criterion – caste. Dalits vote for Dalits, Thakurs for Thakurs and Yadavs for Yadavs. In such a scenario, why would a politician do any real work? When we choose a mobile network, do we check if Airtel and Vodafone belong to a particular caste? No, we simply choose the provider based on the best value or service. Then, why do we vote for somebody simply because he has the same caste as ours?

We need mass self-psychotherapy for the three traits listed above. When we talk of change, you and I alone can’t replace a politician, or order a road to be built. However, we can change one thing – our mindset. And collectively, this alone has the power to make the biggest difference. We have to unlearn whatever is holding us back, and definitely break the cycle so we don’t pass on these traits to the next generation. Our children should think creatively, have opinions and speak up in class. They should learn what is wrong is wrong – no matter how big or small. And they shouldn’t hate other people on the basis of their background. Let us also resolve to start working on our own minds, right now. A change in mindset changes the way people vote, which in turn changes politicians.

And change does happen. In the 80s, we had movies like “Gunda” and “Khoon Pi Jaaonga”. Today, our movies have better content .They have changed. How? It is because our expectations from films have changed. Hence, the filmmakers had to change.

If we resolve today that we will vote on the basis of performance alone, we will encourage the voices against injustice and we will place an honest but less wealthy person on a higher pedestal than a corrupt but rich person. By doing so, we would contribute to India’s progress. If everyone who read this newspaper did this, it would be enough to change voting patterns in the next election. And then, maybe, we will start moving towards a better India. Are you on board? “

My Comment

This is an interesting and, within its limits, accurate piece about the character traits that contribute to the rampant socio-economic problems India faces. Those problems are in sharp focus right now, thanks to the ongoing bungling involved in the hosting of the Commonwealth Games at Delhi.

To many libertarians, these sorts of  generalizations are specious, collectivist, and possibly racist.

I disagree.

Granted, cultural generalizations are just that and shouldn’t be misapplied, it’s still possible for an acute observer to identify cultural problems with a degree of objectivity.

Chetan Bhagat manages this quite succinctly.

But if Bhagat had wanted to be even more succinct, he could have summarized his entire thesis in one word: dharma.

Dharma is often incorrectly defined as “duty,” in the Kantian sense.

While it can encompass that too, it’s more accurate to define it as “the way things should be” (social order)…or “the way we’re wired” (nature).

Dharma is perhaps a unique composite of duty, social and natural order, and individual destiny.

In its essence, then, it is a concept of the highest refinement and wisdom.

But even supernal ideas lose their value as civilizations lose touch with their sources.

Dharma, for many Indians, has ended up being “the way things are,” or, alternatively,  “que sera sera.”

It ends up inducing passivity. Which leads to the first two flaws identified in the article –  servility and apathy toward injustice.

That passivity also reinforces people in their instinctive tendency to prefer kith and kin over strangers.

If I had to pick just one character flaw that holds up India’s development, this would be it – dharma,, in its negative mode,  as slavish passivity.

However, the odd thing is that if I had to pick one thing that constituted a special strength in the Indian character, it would also be dharma.

But dharma in its positive mode – noble acceptance.

Albert Pike On The Hierarchies Of Truth

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“Truth is not for those who are unworthy or unable to receive it, or would pervert it. So God Himself incapacitates many men, by color-blindness, to distinguish colors, and leads the masses away from the highest Truth, giving them the power to attain only so much of it as it is profitable to them to know. Every age has had a religion suited to its capacity.”

— Albert Pike

ChiCom Billionaires To Buffet & Gates: Charity Begins At Home….

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AP reports that Chinese billionaires aren’t inclined to follow the power elite’s favorite piece of flim-flam – hyper-public philanthropy. Seems the canny Chi-Coms aren’t buying into the “good little rich boys” club:

“Some of China’s super rich are skeptical about Gates’ and Buffett’s approach. China’s wealthy don’t have to “copy the U.S. charity mode,” billionaire Guo Jinshu told Xinhua in a story Wednesday. “In China, an entrepreneur’s top responsibility is to keep his own business sound, to fulfill taxation payments, and create jobs. This is also out of a philanthropist heart.”

“Flash Crashes” Suggest Market Trouble?

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Update (Sept 29, 5:54 PM):

Just a thought. Could a DHS cyber security exercise scheduled for this week have had anything to do with these two market “accidents”?

According to this report, the following sectors (among others) were to have been targeted for several days this week:

“This year’s exercise will be the largest yet, including representatives from seven cabinet-level federal departments, intelligence agencies, 11 states, 12 international partners and 60 private sector companies in multiple critical infrastructure sectors like banking, defense, energy and transportation.”

The markets aren’t specifically mentioned, but then you’d expect that if they were the chosen target…

ORIGINAL POST

Peter Cooper at Arabian Money argues that an apparent Google “flash crash” last Friday signals a market correction in the offing:

“It also seems pretty clear that Wall Street insiders flicked the sell switch at the weekend. That would account for the ‘accidental’ Google flash crash last Friday (click here). You bet against this crowd at your peril.

On this reckoning the gold pit action is just a last burst of optimism from latecomers to the party. For the gold price will surely dip (if not to much more than $1,150) in a big sell-off in financial markets, and silver will also fall back below $20.”

Meanwhile, Rick Ackerman points to a mini flash crash that apparently took place on Tuesday night in the gold futures market…..and explains why Bob Prechter has been wrong for the last 18 months – he’s an expert in real markets, not completely rigged ones…

I’ll admit that I’m glad to see this because of my own market bias, which has left me a bit lonely waiting for some kind of correction in the gold price.

Years of making my very own patentable blunders have made me much more comfortable being wrong on my own rather than being right in a crowd…..

But there does seem to be some technical evidence that a correction might be due.

Bankster To Pensioners: Stop Whining, Grandma, Spend!

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Move over, Rowan Atkinson, the B of E has a clown that puts your routine to shame….AND.. he’s got your name.

Charles Bean, deputy-governor of the Bank of England thinks pensioners should shut up about interest rates and just spend their retirement capital.

“Older households could afford to suffer because they had benefited from previous property price rises,” he said.

Yep. Your house value is higher than it was ten years, so why on earth do you need any interest for lending us your money?

Keen thinking yet again from the bandit class that sold Britain’s gold at the bottom of a 20 year bear and then hocked it into debt bondage to the banking mafia.

Let’s see. Even if house prices have fallen 25-35% from their peaks, property taxes haven’t fallen with them, have they? And consumer prices haven’t gone back to where they were when pensioners were working, have they? In fact, in terms of gold price, savings are now worth about a fifth or sixth of what they were just ten years ago.

The typical UK savings rate has fallen nearly 3%, for a loss of 18 billion pounds a year, but that doesn’t matter says genius Bean, because housing values have gone up.

Bean:

“Savers shouldn’t necessarily expect to be able to live just off their income in times when interest rates are low. It may make sense for them to eat into their capital a bit.”

He added: “Very often older households have actually benefited from the fact that they’ve seen capital gains on their houses.”

Of course, what this financial huckster isn’t saying is that older people still have to pay upkeep and maintenance costs (that have risen), still have to pay inflated property taxes (which don’t match the deflation in prices), and now also have to deal with higher food and other consumer prices, higher medical costs, higher gas prices, and higher travel costs from their eroded savings.

And there’s no easy out from all this. They can’t sell their houses and downsize easily, because the housing market is in shambles and bank credit is tight.  Even if they do sell, they have to deal with the transaction costs and taxes involved for the house they’re selling and commissions and purchase costs for the one they’re buying.

Meanwhile, if pensioners do cut into their savings, their future income stream is going to be in trouble.

And what  do they do if there’s an emergency?