Category: Commercial Intelligence

Posted on

Journal: ClimateGate, Israel & Greenwashing Terror

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government, Media
ClimateGate Rolling Update
Chuck Spinney

An excellent summary of the ongoing dispute over Global Warming.  Chuck.

Climate Catastrophe:A Superstorm for Global Warming Research

By Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter

Der Spiegel 1 April 2010

Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? And would it really be the end of the world if temperatures rose by more than the much-quoted limit of two degrees Celsius?

… are they ready for the Rubber Room or Both? My guess is the answer is “both.”  But read the attached article by Jonathan Cook and judge for yourself.  One thing that is becoming clear, however:  Global Warming can be used as a canonical fear to justify just about anything — from Obama's plan to resurrect the nuclear power industry (while at the same time, he punts on the nuc waste issue by caving into political pressure to close the Yucca Mountain waste depository, after spending $17 billion since the 1980s) to Israel's crackpot plan to win the so-called war on terror by impoverishing the petro-states via the weaning the industrial world off hydrocarbons (see below).  If you want to get a realistic idea of the size of the energy numbers as well as the socio-economic implications of the policy transformations implied by displacing the West's reliance on hydrocarbons, I urge you read my good friend Robert Bryce's important new book, Power Hungry: The Myths of Green Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, Public Affairs Press, April 2010.  You do not have to agree with his specific recommendations to accept the value of his important work.

Chuck Spinney
Marmaris, Turkey

[archive under construction at http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/ ]

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 30 March 2010
Posted on

Journal: Audit the Fed & Cost of Wall Street Charity

03 Economy, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Federal Reserve Transparency Working Group and Supporters:

We have 32 cosponsors for S.604 ” Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009″ and 319 cosponsors for H.R. 1207 ” Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009″

See also:

Total Wall Street Bailout Cost (Thanks Nicole, U.S. PIRG)

The Federal Reserve as a Confidence Game: What They Were Saying in 2007

Salon: The Federal Reserve has come clean about its covert actions
“Thomas Jefferson put a stop to Alexander Hamilton’s idea of a powerful central bank out of fear it would be unaccountable to the public. The Fed has just proven Jefferson’s point.”

Posted on

Journal: Tobin Tax (Tax the Moving Money Not Earned Income) Coming Forward

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Webster Griffin Tarpley

The Tobin tax or Wall Street sales tax is rapidly gathering momentum thanks to a bid by British Labour Party MPs to save themselves from looming defeat at the hands of the Tories by playing this great economic populist card. If the Labour Party succeeds with this gambit, it will tend to transform the situation in the US as well, with desperate Democrats embracing the Tobin tax as a means of getting some populist credibility. The Republicans, by contrast, will be forced to line up in defense of their Wall Street backers, stripping away all their Tea Party camouflage.  Obama-Summers-Geithner will also be put into a bind. I have been campaigning for the Tobin tax for a number of years, and it is an idea whose time has come.

If a sales tax on financial transactions (Tobin tax, trading tax, securities transfer tax, Robin Hood tax) can bring the British Labour Party back from the dead, it can defeat Geithner, Summers, Bernanke, Wall Street, and the reactionary Republicans here in the US. It is time to make this a world-wide campaign to force the bankers to pay for the world economic depression they have created.

Webster Tarpley

Home Page

A tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad.

This tax on banks – not you or I – has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year. It could give a vital boost to the NHS, our schools, and the fight against child poverty in the UK – as well as tackling  poverty and climate change around the world.

Not complicated. Just brilliant.

Phi Beta Iota: We support the elimination of the Federal income tax as being unconstitutional in the Unted STATES of America.  Individuals should pay taxes to localities; businesses should pay taxes to all states where they do business; and federal operations should be based on the Tobin tax and strictly limited to the narrow administrative services of common concern that are consistently authorized and approved by Congress acting on behalf of the STATES.

Posted on

Journal: Junior Military Leaders Embraced by Industry

Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence
Marcus Aurelius

Phi Beta Iota: This is the month's good news story–the silver lining in the cloud over America resulting from the loss of political integrity within both political parties.  We continue to support both universal service (to bond the public and keep Congress honest), and military service as the finest possible coming of age experience.  The crucible of Iraq and Afghanistan have hurt America as an international political and economic entity, but they have also raised a new generation of young leaders–not just officers, but non-commissioned officers down to the “strategic corporal,” that could be the Greatest Generation of our era.

Battle-tested: From soldier to business leader

“The thinking was that we could bring in world-class leadership talent that was already trained and ready to go,” says Jennifer Seidner, a senior recruiting manager at Wal- Mart. “And then we could teach them retail, because we know that pretty well.”

Full Story Online
Posted on

Journal: “Dumb” Government versus Smart Humans

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
Full Story Online

Op-Ed Columnist

Dreaming the Possible Dream

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

March 6, 2010

EXTRACT (1 of 2 Innovations): If you combine CO2 with seawater, or any kind of briny water, you produce CaCO3, calcium carbonate. That is not only the stuff of corals. It is also the same white, pasty goop that appears on your shower head from hard (calcium-rich) water. At its demonstration plant near Santa Cruz, Calif., Calera has developed a process that takes CO2 emissions from a coal- or gas-fired power plant and sprays seawater into it and naturally converts most of the CO2 into calcium carbonate, which is then spray-dried into cement or shaped into little pellets that can be used as concrete aggregates for building walls or highways — instead of letting the CO2 emissions go into the atmosphere and produce climate change.

If this can scale, it would eliminate the need for expensive carbon-sequestration facilities planned to be built alongside coal-fired power plants — and it might actually make the heretofore specious notion of “clean coal” a possibility.

Continue reading “Journal: “Dumb” Government versus Smart Humans”

Posted on

Journal: Hedge Funds Attack European Economies

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Non-Governmental
Webster Griffin Tarpley

Webster G. Tarpley

March 3, 2010

It has been evident for some time that the ongoing speculative attack on Greece, along with such other countries as Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy, was not primarily a reflection of their economic fundamentals, nor yet a spontaneous movement of “the market,” but rather an orchestrated action of economic warfare.

Full Story Online , , ,    TV Clip (Russia TV)

Phi Beta Iota: There is no question but that Dr. Tarpley is correct at the moment, the hedge funds are waging economic war on Europe, are out of control, and need to be stomped down.  HOWEVER, what is not evident in his longer report is the fact that Europe welcomed help from Goldman Sachs and others in concealing its long-term debt, and it is for this reason that the hedge funds now have an “information advantage” that gives them a “sure bet” against the Euro generally and Greece specifically.  Until the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the African Union (AU), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)–to name just a few–get a grip on  the totality of the information relevant to their safety, security, and efficiency, predatory capitalism, virtual colonialism, and unilateral militarism will continue to rule.  Our new book, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability, provides a game plan for creating a prosperous world at peace by arming the UN, EU, AU, UNASUR, and SCO with the means to do multicultural, multifunctional information-sharing and sense-making.  Our favorite line from the book: a woman with a cell phone is vastly more powerful than a man with a gun.

Posted on

Journal: President Lacks Intelligence on Nuclear Option–Actually, He Lacks Intelligence (Decision-Support) on EVERYTHING

05 Energy, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
Full Story Online

Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory
DOCUMENT ID: 2009-09
YEAR: 2009
DOCUMENT TYPE: Journal or Magazine Article
PUBLISHER: RMI

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic:

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little or no reliable electricity because they are not ³baseload² the time;

2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more than nuclear power does, that they¹re environmentally unacceptable;

3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and

4. nuclear power¹s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to protect the climate.

Continue reading “Journal: President Lacks Intelligence on Nuclear Option–Actually, He Lacks Intelligence (Decision-Support) on EVERYTHING”