Amid Stock Market Panic, Dozens of Chinese Billionaires Are Mysteriously Disappearing

Posted by George Freund on January 10, 2016

January 10, 2016

By John Vibes

Amid stock market panic in China, many of the country’s most prominent billionaires are disappearing without a trace. This week, Zhou Chengjian, the chairman of the clothing company Metersbonwe became the most recent wealthy Chinese businessperson to go missing. Metersbonwe said in a statement on Thursday that it would be suspending its shares on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and that they were unaware of Chengjian’s whereabouts.

According to Bloomberg, as many as 36 companies reported executives missing from January to September.

Just a few weeks ago, Chang Xiaobing, the CEO of the state-owned telecoms giant China Telecom, resigned and then went missing. There were rumors that Xiaobing was taken by police or government agents in a widening corruption investigation that is touching every corner of the Chinese economy.

Back in November, Yim Fung, chairman and CEO of Guotai Junan International Holdings went missing, sending the company’s stock down 12%. Also in November, Chen Jun and Yan Jianlin, two senior executives of Citic Securities vanished without a trace.

In October, Zhang Yun, the president of the Agricultural Bank of China, also disappeared, however, it was reported that he was detained as a part of a corruption investigation.

Earlier this year, in June, Poon Ho Man, the CEO of China Aircraft Leasing Group went on vacation and never came back. He resigned while he was gone and has not been contacted since. Xu Jun, chairman of the department-store operator Ningbo Zhongbai is another Chinese executive who disappeared this year. It was confirmed by Xinhua news agency was being investigated for corruption at the time of his disappearance.

Dozens of other wealthy executives throughout China have disappeared in the past year, many of them under different circumstances. It is apparent that there is a growing corruption investigation in which many of these executives are implicated. However, only a small number of them have been officially announced as being in government custody. With that being the case, it is likely that some of the executives have fled and are in hiding expecting that they will soon be jailed. It is also possible that the government is sweeping them up in the middle of the night, as secret police in dictatorships have been known to do throughout history.

Also, it is unclear whether these corruption investigations are witch hunts, designed to place blame for the declining economy, or if it is a legitimate effort to keep bankers and executives accountable for their actions. There is no doubt that the government was involved in whatever corruption may have been taking place, but as always they are in charge of the investigation so it is unlikely that any government agents or employees will be implicated.

John Vibes is an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. He also has a publishing company where he offers a censorship free platform for both fiction and non-fiction writers. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can purchase his books, or get your own book published at his website www.JohnVibes.com.

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“I'll stop the motor of the world.”



CONSPIRACY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: Atlas Shrugged Part 1

CONSPIRACY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: Atlas Shrugged Part 2

CONSPIRACY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: Atlas Shrugged Part 3

The Lottery and Social Despair in America

By Andre Damon

Global Research, January 11, 2016

World Socialist Web Site 9 January 2016

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy, Poverty & Social Inequality

This mania, so generally condemned, has never been properly studied. No one has realized that it is the opium of the poor. Did not the lottery, the mightiest fairy in the world, work up magical hopes? The roll of the roulette wheel that made the gamblers glimpse masses of gold and delights did not last longer than a lightning flash; whereas the lottery spread the magnificent blaze of lightning over five whole days. Where is the social force today that, for forty sous, can make you happy for five days and bestow on you—at least in fancy—all the delights that civilization holds?
-Balzac, La Rabouilleuse, 1842
The jackpot in the US Powerball lottery has hit $800 million, since there were no winners in Wednesday’s drawing. In the current round, which began on December 2, over 431 million tickets have been sold, a figure substantially larger than America’s population.
Go into any corner store in America and you will see workers of every age and race waiting in line to buy lottery tickets. With the current round, the lines are longer than ever. Americans spend over $70 billion on lottery tickets each year. In West Virginia, America’s second-poorest state, the average person spent $658.46 on lottery tickets last year.
Powerball players pick six random numbers when they purchase their tickets, with a certain percentage of sales going to the jackpot. If no winning ticket is sold, the jackpot rolls over to the next round.
The totals for the Mega Millions and Powerball national lotteries have been growing every year. This year’s jackpot has eclipsed 2012’s record of $656.5 million, the $390 million payout in 2007 and the $363 million prize in 2000. The jackpots have grown in direct proportion to ticket sales.
State-run gambling programs such as Powerball have been promoted by Democrats and Republicans alike as a solution to state budget shortfalls, even as the politicians slash taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals and gut social programs. From the standpoint of government revenue, lotteries and casinos are nothing more than a back-door regressive tax, soaking up money from the poor in proportion to the growth of social misery.
The boom in lotteries is global. Lottery sales grew 9.9 percent worldwide in 2014, after growing 4.9 percent in 2013.
Psychology Professor Kate Sweeny has noted that lottery sales grow when people feel a lack of control over their lives, particularly over their economic condition. “That feeling of self-control is very important to psychological well-being,” Sweeny says.
There is ample reason for American workers to feel they have no control over their lives. According a recent survey by Bankrate.com, more than half of Americans do not have enough cash to cover an unexpected expense of $500 or more—roughly the price of four name-brand tires.
Some 62 percent of Americans have savings of less than $1,000, and 21 percent do not have any savings at all. Most Americans are one medical emergency or one spell of unemployment from financial ruin.
For all the talk about “economic recovery” by the White House, the real financial state of most American households is far worse than before the 2008 financial crisis and recession. As of 2013, Americans were almost 40 percent poorer than they were in 2007, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. While a large portion of the decline in household wealth is attributable to the collapse of the housing bubble, falling wages and chronic mass unemployment have played major roles.
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of consumer finances. A large share of this decline has taken place during the so-called recovery presided over by the Obama administration.
In addition to becoming poorer, America has become much more economically polarized. According to a separate Pew survey, for the first time in more than four decades “middle-income households” no longer constitute the majority of American society. Instead, the majority of households are either low- or high-income. Pew called its findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.
“Is the lottery the new American dream?” asked USA Today, commenting on this month’s Powerball jackpot. The observation is truer than the authors intended. For American workers, achieving the “American Dream” of a stable job and one’s own home is becoming increasingly unrealizable.
Following more than 10 million foreclosures during the financial crisis, America’s home ownership rate has hit the lowest level in two decades, and for young households, the rate of home ownership is the lowest it has been since the 1960s.
For the tens of millions of America’s poor, and the more than 100 million on the threshold of poverty, the dream of winning the lottery has replaced the “American Dream” of living a decent life. A lottery ticket is a chance to escape to a fantasy world where money is not a constant, nagging worry, where one is not insulted and bullied at a low-wage job by bosses whose pay is matched only by their incompetence. The lottery is, as Balzac aptly described it, the “opium of the poor.”
Using the same phrase to describe religion, Marx noted that the “illusory happiness of the people” provided by the solace of religion is, in fact, a silent protest and distorted “demand for their real happiness.” It is the intolerable social conditions that compel masses of people to seek consolation in a lottery ticket that will propel them into revolutionary struggles.

The original source of this article is World Socialist Web Site

Copyright © Andre Damon, World Socialist Web Site, 2016

SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER: NASA ESTABLISHES PLANETARY DEFENSE OFFICE

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Joseph P. Farrell •http://gizadeathstar.com/2016/01/space-the-final-frontier-nasa-establishes-planetary-defense-office/

2016 looks like this will be a year of some major, though quiet, space-related developments, and some of these developments appear to be kicking off the year, though regular readers here will recall some of them we've been expecting for some time. This article was shared by many readers here, and it does indeed contain some bombshells and a great deal of grist for the mill of high octane speculation:
NASA Opens Planetary Defense Office to Protect Earth from Asteroids
In this article, we note the usual steps in the creation of an entirely new federal agency:
First, establish an office:

NASA has announced the creation of a Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). Lindley Johnson, NASA's current near-Earth object (NEO) program executive will lead the newly established office. The PDCO will reside within NASA's Planetary Science Division, in the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

Second, make it a "coordination" office liaising with other agencies that actually have functional overlap, until in the capacity as a mere "liaison office" it can no longer be functional, and has to be elevated to the status of an agency. When that happens, the fun will begin, for will it be part of the military establishment, or not? Chances are, the latter, for as many researchers - including NASA follower Richard Hoagland - have pointed out, the original law creating NASA makes it clear that it is a close functionary of the defense department, since national security issues can override its "civilian" and "open" status.
The real grist for the high octane speculation mill comes here, for the Planetary Defense Coordination Office will be responsible for:

• Supervision of all NASA-funded projects to find and characterize asteroids and comets that pass near Earth's orbit around the sun;
• Lead the coordination of interagency and intergovernmental efforts to plan response to any potential impact threats.
• Improve and expand on past efforts with other U.S. federal agencies and departments, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
• Continue to assist with the coordination across the U.S. government, including planning for response to an actual impact threat and working in conjunction with FEMA, the Department of Defense, other U.S. agencies, and international counterparts.
• Issue notices of close passes and warnings of any detected potential NEO impacts, based on credible science data.

Now, as many of you pointed out, this is foursquare in alignment with the Rosin Affidavit. For those of you who don't know what the Rosin affidavit is, these were statements made by Dr. Carol Rosin, a professional colleague of the late Dr. von Braun, who disclosed to her that the "plan" for putting weapons in space was first to emphasize the Communist threat, then terrorism, then nations of concern, then asteroids, and then, finally, aliens or, to be more accurate, extra- or non-terrerstrials, the "UFO threat."  Notably, the creation  of an "inter-governmental" as well as an internal "inter-agency" office, especially one coordinating with FEMA, does indeed invite and suggest some high octane speculations.
Why?
For one thing, such coordination for "planetary defense" against asteroids can easily also be "flipped" into a coordination for planetary defense against "other things." To put it "country simple," the above-quoted list  of the new office's mission brief would require little expansion to include planning for planetary emergencies of a rather different sort, like armed invasions, blockades, interference with interplanetary commerce, and so on. And indeed, this is, I strongly suspect, already in view and the real long range goal of the creation of this office.
But again, why do I suspect this?
The emphasis of the article on the presence of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is the clue that much more is going on here than simply asteroids, for FEMA is the agency deeply connected to continuity of government operations and planning. In other words, I suspect that what we're really seeing being created here is less an office of NASA, and more of an office of FEMA, a department within it that plans deeply for "continuity of government problems and operations" having to deal with external planetary threats, be they asteroids or ET's. Ponder the implications of that for a moment. Contintuity of government on the scale of planetary threats, defense against said planetary threats (of any sort)... The implications, financial, geopolitical, and cultural, are deep and profound, and perhaps the best way to highlight the profound and sweeping nature of this story is to consider the first of these, the financial implications, for it means that whatever such infrastructure and financial mechanism as currently exists to deal with these issues, now has to be expanded, and in the expansion, taken public to a certain degree. In other words, all those trillions of dollars since World War Two that I have argued have gone into black research projects and the build-up of a huge and hidden infrastructure (underground definitely, elsewhere perhaps) has reached the point that it is no longer adequate to the emerging needs of public society and "planetary defense" Let that one, too, sink in for a moment. It has to be expanded over the next decades, and this will mean an inevitable public "disclosure" of the existence of that now hidden infrastructure.
Or, to put all this country simply once again, you're watching the creation of an office, one component, of a build up and build out of infrastructure for space activity.