12 October 2014

Greenwald: Why Privacy Matters, and the Endowment of Individual Rights and the State

 
Privacy is the space that defines the will of the individual, which sets the area that says, 'this is mine, because this is me.'
 
Privacy is the 'outer skin' of the self.

I may wish to share my space to varying degrees with family, friends, and acquaintances. If I have the good sense I may even wish to open my heart and live in a continuing act of worship and companionship with my Creator.
 
But that choice to conform myself to His will and open my thoughts and heart to Him, is mine. This is a gift that is hard to comprehend, but which grants us the intimacy of His love, rather than objectification as a possession, or a thing to be owned.

It is His most supreme condescension that He grants us the power to resist, to say no, to be other and apart from Him if we so choose. He makes us the sovereigns of a portion of His being, and says, you are free. And in His caring for another grants us a soul of our own. This is the essence of our being, and the wellspring of our existence.

What kind of love is in thrall to the beloved, which has no choice, no self identity that it may give to another, freely? What are we to an all-powerful God, except that which He has granted to us, forever, as ours alone and ours to give?

A tyrannical State, which has no virtuous restraint, by its very definition wishes to insert itself into this private space, not as a gracious God who grants us the will to either open or close the most private recesses of our heart to Him, but rather to take by force that which marks our individuality. It would be as a god, but on its own perverse and darker terms. It seeks to possess, uncaring, which is the opposite of love.
 
Privacy and the primacy of the individual is no gift from the State, but a recognition of what has been defined as 'an inalienable right' precisely because it is not granted by the State, but something higher, superior to an earthly power.

Surveillance, on an indiscriminate and massive scale by an increasingly intrusive State, is not a benign act in the cause of homeland protection.  It is not an excess of zeal among well meaning bureaucrats.  It is the very definition of statism.

It is an act of the will to power of the State over the individual, to claim that last bastion of privacy that marks the least amount of space that a person may occupy as their own. And it is relentless in its jealousy, expediency and ownership.  It asserts the supremacy of power, and takes all power to itself.  
 
The violation of the individual is not incidental to the establishment of a tyranny.  It is essential. 
"If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective and eternal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity.  

From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable. ”

Benito Mussolini, Diuturna

It is the State's way of asserting that all that we have, all that we are, all that we may do or think, belongs to them at their unquestioned discretion and expediency.

 It is the will to power, and the way of earthly death. And we who belong to the Lord can have no part of it, for He is ours and we are His. He calls us by name, and we hear His voice.



 
Statists of both the left and right seek to elevate the State to an unnatural priority over all things free and individual, since individual choice is inseparable from any notion of freedom. Therefore they must subordinate the individual to the expediency of the State not only in so called 'emergencies' but over time as a matter of their continuing policy.
 
One sees this theme of the primacy of state sanctioned organizations over people today. This is the basis of the 'corporatism' that seems so bizarre, but that we are already seeing creep into our legal judgements.
 
Therefore Corporations will have the rights of people and beyond.  They are relatively free of the most important civic obligations, and are granted privileges and perquisites beyond the individual.   Under a statism that claims the definition of all value as its prerogative, some are more equal than others, and justice is by definition at the discretion of the State.

Not to belabor the point, but as an aside this is why Alan Greenspan said that all Statists react to gold with an almost hysterical antagonism. Gold, having no counterparty risk, has been historically regarded as a natural and independent measure of economic value and store of wealth.   




11 October 2014

China Acquired 2000 Tonnes of Gold In 2013, Almost Double World Gold Council Estimates


Dornbusch's Law:   The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.

Dr. Rudi Dornbusch

The lack of intelligent coverage by the media for this sea change in global asset allocations is remarkable.

Koos Jansen has been doing some terrific work in this area.

I have some suspicions about where the gold bullion that is leaving the Western funds and ETFs is going.

Gold is moving steadily from West to East. When the reckoning comes, it may be terrific.


SGE Chairman: 2013 Chinese Gold Demand Was 2000 tonnes

By Koos Jansen
Published: 10-10-2014 18:23

SGE Chairman: 2013 Chinese Gold Demand Was 2000t This is the final blow for the ones who still couldn’t comprehend, after all evidence presented, the amount of Chinese non-government gold demand in 2013.   At the LBMA forum in Singapore June 25, 2014, one of the keynote speakers was chairman of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) Xu Luode. In his speech he made a few very candid statements about Chinese consumer gold demandthat according to Xu reached 2,000 tonnes in 2013. In contrast to the Word Gold Council (WGC) that states Chinese gold demand was 1,066 tonnes in 2013. Xu's speech has now finally been translated and published in the LBMA magazine The Alchemist #75.
Xu's statements once again confirm what I have been writing for months. SGE withdrawals equal Chinese wholesale demand:
import + mine + scrap = total supply = SGE withdrawals = wholesale demand
Let's go through a couple of quotes from Xu:
Data on China’s gold imports has not previously been made available to the public. However, gold has historically been imported through Hong Kong, and Hong Kong is highly transparent, disclosing details such as the number of tonnes of gold imported on a monthly basis. Last year, China imported 1,540 tonnes of gold. Such imports, together with the 430 tonnes of gold we produced ourselves, means that we have, in effect, supplied approximately 2,000 tonnes of gold last year. 
The 2,000 tonnes of gold were consumed by consumers in China. Of course, we all know that the Chinese ‘dama’ [middle-aged women] accounts for a significant proportion in purchasing gold. So last year, our gold exchange’s inventory reduced by nearly 2,200 tonnes, of which 200 tonnes was recycled gold. 
Again, we can read the simplified equation (for 2013):
import (1540t) + mine (428t) + scrap (229t) = SGE withdrawals (2197t)

I recommend that you read the entire article here.


An Index of Global Stock Indices Is Starting To Roll Over


Here is an 'index of global indices' that is tracked as a stock sentiment indicator by Nick Laird at Sharelynx.com.
 
The red line is the 200 DMA.

The index includes the Dow Jones Industrials/Transports/Utilities, NYSE, SP500, Nasdaq, Russell 2000, Hong Kong HSI, Nikkei 225, Singapore STI, Australian AORD, Toronto 300, Mexico IPC, FTSE 100, France CAC, Germany DAX, and Swiss SMI.

Each of the index's 17 components is arithmetically averaged giving them an equal weighting

You will notice that we have had some false breakdowns before this latest break in trend.
 


10 October 2014

Harvey Organ's Gold and Silver Blog Has Been Completely 'Deleted by Court Order'


Several patrons have asked me if I know what has happened to Harvey Organ's precious metals blog.

I have been given to understand by an email that his site on Google blogger has been 'deleted by court order' and in accordance with Google's terms of service and content policy.
 
The specific terms of the court order or the originator have not been revealed to me.  It is not clear to me that Harvey himself knows this yet.
 
I had thought Harvey's Precious Metals blog was fairly benign, and Google has been easy to work with based on my own experience.  
 
Things like this generally involve either alleged copyright infringement or some sort of defamation.  Harvey was based in Canada, and I do not know if Canadian laws on this are different than US laws, or even which jurisdiction issued the court order. 
 
I do not care to speculate.   This is all that I know. If I find out more, which I hope will be the case, I will pass that along.
 
You may find some 'back issues' of Harvey's blog on the Internet Archive here.
 
Here's looking at you, kid.