Infinite Unknown

Ex-CIA operative wants to remain in Hong Kong

Edward Snowden has spoken exclusively to the South China Morning Post

- Whistle-blower Edward Snowden tells SCMP: ‘Let Hong Kong people decide my fate’ (South China Morning Post, June 12, 2013):

Edward Snowden says he wants to ask the people of Hong Kong to decide his fate after choosing the city because of his faith in its rule of law.

The 29-year-old former CIA employee behind what might be the biggest intelligence leak in US history revealed his identity to the world in Hong Kong on Sunday. His decision to use a city under Chinese sovereignty as his haven has been widely questioned – including by some rights activists in Hong Kong.

Snowden said last night that he had no doubts about his choice of Hong Kong.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” Snowden said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post.

“I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law,” he added.

Snowden says he has committed no crimes in Hong Kong and has “been given no reason to doubt [Hong Kong’s legal] system”.

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” he said.

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Tags: Barack Obama, China, CIA, Edward Snowden, Global News, Government, Hong Kong, NSA, Obama administration, Politics, Society, U.S., Whistleblowers

- In Hong Kong, ex-CIA man may not escape U.S. reach (Reuters, June 10, 2013):

Edward Snowden’s decision to flee to Hong Kong as he prepared to expose the U.S. government’s secret surveillance programs may not save him from prosecution due to an extradition treaty in force since 1998.

A 29-year-old former CIA employee, Snowden has identified himself as the person who gave the Guardian and the Washington Post classified documents about how the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) obtained data from U.S. telecom and Internet companies.

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Tags: Barack Obama, China, Edward Snowden, Global News, Hong Kong, Law, Obama administration, Politics, U.S.

Full article here:

- It’s A “0.6%” World: Who Owns What Of The $223 Trillion In Global Wealth (ZeroHedge, June 2, 2013):

Back in 2010 we started an annual series looking at the (re)distribution in the wealth of nations and social classes. What we found then (and what the media keeps rediscovering year after year to its great surprise) is that as a result of global central bank policy, the rich got richer, and the poor kept on getting poorer, even though as we predicted the global political powers would, at least superficially, seek to enforce policies that aimed to reverse this wealth redistribution from the poor to the rich (a doomed policy as the world’s legislative powers are largely in the lobby pocket of the world’s wealthiest who needless to say are less then willing to enact laws that reduce their wealth and leverage). Now that the topic of wealth distribution (or rather concentration) is once again in vogue, below we present the latest such update looking at a global portrait of household wealth. The bottom line: 29 million, or 0.6% of those with any actual assets under their name, own $87.4 trillion, or 39.3% of all global assets.

Here are the key highlights via Credit Suisse:

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Tags: Australia, Belgium, Ben Bernanke, Brazil, China, Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve, France, Germany, Global News, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Society, U.K., U.S.

- Mystery Surrounding Collapse Of Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange Deepens; Four Arrested (ZeroHedge, May 26, 2013)

Tags: China, copper, Hong Kong, precious metals

- Radioactive tea leaves are exported from Japan to Hongkong (Fukushima Diary, Jan 27, 2013)

Tags: Fukushima, Global News, Green tea, Health, Hong Kong, Japan, Radiation

- Asian Buyers Snap Up Half of New London Homes (Wall Street Journal, Jan 22, 2013):

If you’ve just moved into a newly built apartment in central London, don’t be perplexed if your neighbors speak mostly Chinese.

Market-cooling measures in Asia have helped fuel interest in London’s real estate market—long a popular destination for property buyers on the prowl, says property consultancy Knight Frank. Last year, overseas buyers spent $3.5 billion on apartments undergoing construction in central London, up 22% from the year earlier.

Together, buyers from Singapore and Hong Kong snapped up nearly 40% of all such apartments in central London. Adding in buyers from Malaysia and mainland China, Asian buyers accounted for roughly half of all purchases. By comparison, U.K. buyers made up just 27% of all purchases of apartments under construction, according to Knight Frank’s latest figures. Such figures were generally consistent with those seen in 2011.

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Tags: China, Economy, Global News, Hong Kong, London, Malaysia, Real Estate, Singapore, U.K.

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
- Alan Greenspan

“By a continuing process of inflation , governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
- John Maynard Keynes

Quantitative easing = printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft!

- First Hong Kong, Now Aussie Central Bank Gets Ugly Case Of Truthiness (ZeroHedge, Dec 12, 2012):

It seems the AsiaPac central bankers did not get the ‘shut up and print’ memo as today during another speech, an Australian central banker followed Hong Kong’s lead and pronounced quantitative easing as potentially harmful and the volatility-dampening effects of excess monetary policy as “ultimately inimical to financial stability and hence macroeconomic stability.” In the speech below Glenn Stevens (RBA Governor) provides some much-needed doses of sanity to the grossly addicted world desirous of moar money printing.

“Central banks can provide liquidity to shore up financial stability and they can buy time for borrowers to adjust, but they cannot, in the end, put government finances on a sustainable course… They can’t shield people from the implications of having mis-assessed their own lifetime budget constraints and therefore having consumed too much.“

Why are these AsiaPac bankers breaking ranks with the status quo? Perhaps they see a looming threat and prefer to front-run their governments’ demands to “get to work”.

Must Read:

Challenges Of Central Banking – Glenn Stevens (RBA Governor)

Monday marked the 70th anniversary of the commencement of operations of the Bank of Thailand, on 10 December 1942. Conceived under war-time occupation, the Bank has grown to be a key institution in Thailand. It is a pleasure and an honour to come to Bangkok to take part in one of a series of events to mark the anniversary, and I want to thank Governor Prasarn for the invitation. Continue reading »

Tags: Australia, Bonds, Collapse, Debt, ECB, Economy, Global News, Government, Hong Kong, Hyperinflation, IMF, Inflation, Japan, New Zealand, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Society

FYI.

According to former British intelligence agent John Coleman’s book, The Committee of 300, the Rothschilds exert political control through the secretive Business Roundtable, which they created in 1909 with the help of Lord Alfred Milner and South African industrialist Cecil Rhodes.  The Rhodes Scholarship is granted by Oxford University, while oil industry propagandist Cambridge Energy Research Associates operates out of the Rhodes-supported Cambridge University.

Rhodes founded De Beers and Standard Chartered Bank.  According to Gary Allen’s expose, The Rockefeller Files, Milner financed the Russian Bolsheviks on Rothschild’s behalf, with help from Jacob Schiff and Max Warburg.

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Tags: Adolf Hitler, Aldous Huxley, Aleister Crowley, Allen Dulles, Annunaki, Assassination, Bank of England, Banking, Benjamin Disraeli, Bertrand Russell, Bible, BP, Bundesbank, Cecil Rhodes, CFR, China, CIA, Council on Foreign Relations, David Icke, developing countries, Dictatorship, Drugs, Economy, Egypt, EU, Europe, Fascism, Fed, Federal Reserve, France, Freemasonry, Global News, Golden Dawn, Government, Guiseppe Mazzini, H. G. Wells, Hapsburgs, Helena Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Henry Kissinger, Hong Kong, IG Farben, Illuminati, Israel, Italy, James Paul Warburg, Jaques deMolay, Jerusalem, Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, King David, King Solomon, Knights of Malta, Knights of St. John, Knights Templar, Mary Magdalene, Merovingians, Middle East, MKULTRA, Muslim Brotherhood, Mystery Schools, Nazi Germany, Nazis, New World Order, Nomura, Palestine, Palestinians, Paul Volcker, Pierre Plantard, Politics, Priory of Sion, Rockefeller, Rosicrucians, Shroud of Turin, Skull & Bones, Spear of Destiny, Sumer, Theosophical Society, Thule Society, Trilateral Commission, U.K., U.S., Zbigniew Brzezinski

- The Latest Bubble: Hong Kong Parking Space Sells For Double Average US Home Price (ZeroHedge, Nov 29, 2012):

After recently selling the most expensive per-square-foot residential property in the world recently, the liquidity slooshing around the world has been modestly stymied by Hong Kong’s curbs on home-buying in the world’s most expensive market. But there is always a greater fool to sell to, right? So, that Fed-sponsored liquidity has found a new yield-grabbing spot – parking spaces! Average HK parking space prices have started to surge (up 6.7% in Q3) to its second highest on record and as Bloomberg Businessweek notes, a parking space in the exclusive Repulse Bay are sold for $387,000 (yes, that’s a place to park your car; and no, it doesn’t come with a happy ending) – double the average US home price! “There’s just too much liquidity in the market,” said Simon Lo, Hong Kong-based executive director of research and advisory at property broker Colliers International. “The government has set up a firewall for residential properties, but all this money still needs to find a place.” Once again we are reminded of the Fed mantra – repeat in monotone: ‘there is no inflation and money-printing has no adverse effect’. Continue reading »

Tags: Bubble, China, Economy, Global News, Hong Kong, Real Estate

- “Hot Money” At Boiling Point: Hong Kong Apartment Sells For Record $8773 Per Square Foot, New Asian Record (ZeroHedge, Nov 13, 2012):

Over the past year, one of the more confounding developments has been the relentless surge higher in the Chinese currency, whose unpegged version has soared to multi-decade highs against the USD, even as the economy has been mired in a downward secular shift with various indicators showing an ongoing decline. The reason for this “hot money” phenomenon is the easy money policy adopted by all the world’s central banks (except for the PBOC of course, which is forced to stick with reverse repo-based ultra short-term money injections), coupled with the anti-foreign capital stance adopted by Switzerland, making China, Hong Kong and Singapore as the go to targets for “excess global cash.” And as long as the hot money continues to flow and keep the inflation threat “on the sidelines”, all attempts to cool its notwithstanding, the PBOC will be unable to ease, and allow US tech companies’ stock prices to finally rise, as their profitability is and has always been a reflection of Chinese end-market demand. By the looks of things, the PBOC will be stuck in a holding pattern for a long time, as just confirmed by the sale of a luxury Hong-Kong 6,683 sq. foot apartment in the Gehry-designed Opus Hong Kong in Mid-Levels East, at a price of HK$455 million, which translates to HK$68,000 per square foot, or just under $8,800: a new all time record for Asia. So much for cooling the hot money.

From South China Morning Post:

A buyer has paid HK$68,083 per square foot for a luxury flat at Opus Hong Kong, the new Frank Gehry-designed residential building in Mid-Levels East, a record for an apartment in Hong Kong and Asia in terms of price per square foot.

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Tags: China, Economy, Global News, Hong Kong, Society