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The Matrix

Journal Jeremiah Cornelius's Journal: Mysteries in the Snowden Revelations 28

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

+5 Insightful, over at Naked Capitalism.

"There are some other mysteries in the Snowden revelations. With the massive surveillance, it should have been easy to unravel the drug trade. This suggests a large involvement by the government. The other obvious target is the financial system. Transactions may be encrypted, but any M&A activity will leave a huge footprint of phone calls, travels to company headquarters, involvement of law and accounting firms."

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Mysteries in the Snowden Revelations More

Mysteries in the Snowden Revelations

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  • The DEA et al. are a Simple Matter Of Bureaucracy. I don't think it's particularly insightful to note that Progress means "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy".

    • Not to mention "collected" is not equal to "we have enough manpower to analyze correctly"

      • Are you denying that the government is in the business of running contraband, be it weapons, drugs, humans, what have you? I hope not. The true function of prohibition is to control the market, not abolish it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rk ( 6314 )

          I'm trying to come to grips with how the Fed could lend out 16 Trillion dollars over 24 months without having rampant price increases. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but could it be we witnessed the largest money laundering operation in the history of civilization?

          • You raise a good point. With all the new money in the system, why have not prices increased?

            People and businesses are scared shitless of this guy Obama and what he's going to do next. They are holding on to their money. They are not willing to invest it or spend it the way they would be if there were not someone with the policies and leanings of an Obama in charge.

            There is a concept in economic called "the velocity of money". The velocity of money is a factor in inflation. Basically, the faster money t

            • The money is not being hoarded out of fear. It is being stolen. It is literally a bank heist, with guns, masks, the works. It is the transference of control to big business, the heads of which are part of the president's cabinet (note who is running the fed, and who the next guy will be) and lobbying (bribing) congress. The politicians people vote for are helpless to stop this. They know better than to bite the hand that feeds. They do have a gun to their heads, and know what will happen if they try to devi

              • They do have a gun to their heads, and know what will happen if they try to deviate from the planned course.

                And? If you start to pull on one of the threads that - when unraveled - expose how big this is?

                Gary Webb.
                Michael Hastings.

                You see now, why they brought the force of the Federal enforcement agencies against mosquitoes like the Occupy protests... Why they misdirect people into allowed "alternative" political dissent, that narrowly mis-diagnose these ills - so that "Ethos" and "Small Change" are almos

            • Hey! Where have you been, by-the-way?

          • "I'm trying to come to grips with how the Fed could lend out 16 Trillion dollars over 24 months without having rampant price increases. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but could it be we witnessed the largest money laundering operation in the history of civilization?"

            BINGO! Give the man a cigar!

          • Inflation is generated as a product of primarily two components: quantity and velocity ( Velocity of money [wikipedia.org]).

            There are also other factors, like aggregate demand, commodities constraints, demographics, etc. At the same time, there is a level of indirection between Feds actions and prices of goods -- the printed money are not directly acquiring goods but buying bonds.

            Money have different manifestations: from money in your pocket, to deposits, and assets in general. What was most confusing to me and the hard

        • No, I'm denying that even if the government wanted to abolish it, 40 years of libertarian tax policy has reduced the enforcement arm of the government to being inadequate to the task.

          The Snowden revelation is that the government is *recording* the data. This is not equal to *analyzing the data*.

          • They get all the money they need from arms deals, drugs extortion, and insider trading.

            Stop thinking that what you read in the papers is even based on the rules by which this game is really played.

            Taxes are just a way to keep the population beholden and powerless, not for meaningful revenues to conduct the true business of the state.

          • If the government wanted to abolish it, they would find the money. However, everything is going according to plan. This is the way the government does business. It is not necessary to analyze very bit of data to get a good picture of what's going down.

    • The DEA et al. are a Simple Matter Of Bureaucracy.

      Yes, that's what the internal Hitz Report said of the Reagan Administration's bringing crack to South Central L.A. "It's not a conspiracy, it's ineptitude".

      This from the CIA's inspector general.

      Funny how that "ineptitude" included Reagan's favorite Contras. Killing two birds with one stone, apparently. Ineptly.

      • Ineptitude is a part of my point--you've got a standard normal distribution of competence across a bureaucracy--but my broader point is that that this is organizational behavior.

    • How can you completely miss the point, of anything relevant to the posting?

      I'm not bitching about agreeing or disagreeing on merits, bias or values. Just wondering where the most important thing to say is a tangent about Bureaucracy.

      This is about spying/rigging every financial transaction on earth. Public. Private. It's about having complete, transparent visibility into "illegal" drugs trade, and using it for profit, not prosecution.

      The drugs trade is central - not just to the Afghan, Mexican or Lebanes

      • He is not 'missing' the point. He is deliberately avoiding it. Considering the influence he is under, I can easily understand his reasoning for it.

        • I was making a slightly milder variation of the point you made up the page [slashdot.org], in reply. You know I love you, man.

          • Well, the message received is that you are dismissing the atrocities of the DEA and prohibition in general as nothing more than a bureaucratic fuck up. I don't see any relation to any point I made anywhere in that.

            • No, I'm saying that atrocities are the inevitable product of bureaucracy. If you want to minimize atrocities, then operating close to the minimal bureaucracy may improve the situation. Bureaucracy can always look past a dead chick in a car, four dead in Benghazi, however many casualties you want to attribute to Bush for the Iraq "adventure".
              Bureaucracy gonna bureau. But hey: let's roll out a new entitlement!

              • Inevitable because of Finance Capitalism and Federalism.

                Inevitable because of human greed and evil.

                Inevitable.

                • Pretty much. I could offer a theological explanation for why the world doesn't 'splode outright, but I sense in advance that would be rejected.

                  • I could offer a theological explanation for why the world doesn't 'splode outright, but I sense in advance that would be rejected.

                    Calling it an 'act of god', or 'the devil made me do it' would hardly be sufficient. An anthropological/biological/psychological explanation would be much more educational.

                    Now, on a related note, I am amazed that automobile filling stations don't 'splode by the thousands every day, especially up north, during the winter, with all that static electricity.

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