Category: Cultural Intelligence

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WikiLeaks VI: 2,000 Offshore Bank Account Names

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth
Rudolf Elmer Home Page

WikiLeaks to Publish Data From Ex-Julius Baer Banker

Bloomberg, 17 January 2010

WikiLeaks plans to release data on about 2,000 cross-border bank accounts provided by a former Julius Baer Group Ltd. employee, who says they may have been set up to evade taxes.

Rudolf Elmer, who was dismissed as chief operating officer by Julius Baer Bank & Trust Company Ltd. in the Cayman Islands in December 2002, handed over the information today, including data on 40 politicians, to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“There will be a full revelation,” Assange told reporters today in London, adding that the data will take at least two weeks to check and disseminate. Elmer “is a whistleblower and he has important things to say,” he said.

. . . . . . .

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Douglas+Johnson+faith+religion
Structured Web Hits

“I was an expert in the offshore business,” Elmer told reporters at the meeting. “I am against the system. I want to let society know what I do know, and how this system works, because it’s damaging society.”

Elmer will be tried on Jan. 19 in Zurich, charged with several counts of attempted duress, including threats to Julius Baer and its employees, as well as breaching Switzerland’s banking secrecy laws.

The former employee “embarked in 2004 on a personal intimidation campaign and vendetta against Julius Baer,” the Zurich-based bank said in a statement. “He also used falsified documents and made death threats against employees.”

Also of Note:

WikiLeaks Kills Off Tunisian Tyranny (With Facebook, Twitter, Blogger Help)

Earlier WikiLeaks Rolling Updates:

Wikileaks III-V Rolling Update CLOSED

Wikileaks Round II (Iraq) Rolling Update 20101105

Other Postings About Wikileaks Impact at Phi Beta Iota (about 45)

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BLOG WISDOM: Time Matters, Cash the Check

Cultural Intelligence, Strategy
Seth Godin Home

Cashing the check

A check in your wallet does you very little good. It represents opportunity, sure, but not action.

Most of us are carrying around a check, an opportunity to make an impact, to do the work we're capapble of, to ship the art that would make a difference.

No, the world isn't fair, and most people don't get all the chances they deserve. There are barriers due to income, to race, to social standing and to education, and they are inexcusable and must fall. But the check remains, now more than ever. The opportunity to step up and to fail (and then to fail again, and to fail again) and to continue failing until we succeed is greater now than it has ever been.

As Martin Luther King Junior spoke about a half a lifetime ago,

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.”

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Opposition to US-Korea [North Korea-China] NAFTA Rises

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends...

A broad cross-section of stake-holders appears to be coming together to oppose the elite proposal for a US-South Korea NAFTA.  Among early discoveries are that it includes China and North Korea; and that it gives foreign corporations the right to challenge US laws.  From Donald Trump to Lori Wallach and others, the public–as opposed to the sponsoring elites–has not been consulted and does not gain from this special interest arrangement.

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Democrat Base Discovers Both Parties are “Elites”

Cultural Intelligence
Full Story Online
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends...

Remove the Blinders, Dems; Both Congressional Parties Are Elites

Years ago Buffy Sainte Marie reminded us that “if the Bad guys don’t get you, the good guys will.” referring to Senator Bill Bradley’s initial attempts to help restore the Black Hills to the Sioux tribes, and his eventual withdrawal of his bill under minimal pressure.

It’s becoming more evident daily that there aren’t many Good Guys left working for us in Washington, and that the Democratic Big Tent brought in more neo-Liberal Money Junkies than most Dems would like to acknowledge.  Democrats Good, Republicans Bad themes are still far too ubiquitous across the ‘liberal’ blogosphere and other media.

. . . . . . .

A lot of people think that Obama is a bad poker player, but they miss the point. He’s not playing with his money, he’s playing with YOUR money. You are the weak hand at the table, he’s colluding with the other players.” [snip]  (bold mine)

GeorgeWashington’s blog yesterday repeated Bernanke’s statement that the Fed will not help failing states and cities with loans, while continuing to throw massive amounts of money at the Big Banks, both overtly and covertly.  The list and amounts add up to an obscenity.

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Worth a Look: The Age of American Unreason

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time
Amazon Page

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a culture at odds with America’s heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society. America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.

Finally, the author argues that anti-rational government is not the product of a Machiavellian plot by “Washington” but is the inevitable result of “an overarching crisis of memory and knowledge” that has left many ordinary citizens and their elected representatives without the intellectual tools needed for sound public decision-making. The real question is not why politicians have lied to the public but why the public was so receptive and so passive when it heard the lies. At this crucial political juncture, The Age of American Unreason challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what our descent into intellectual laziness and our flight from reason have cost us as individuals and as a nation.  [Emphasis added.]

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Tunesia–Angry Connected Young People

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Reform

People power goes techie, ousts Tunisian dictator

Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 01:25:00 01/16/2011

Seeds of protest

The antigovernment protests began a month ago when a college-educated street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi in the small town of Sidi Bouzid burned himself to death in despair at the frustration and joblessness confronting many educated young people here. But the protests he inspired quickly evolved from bread-and-butter issues to demands for an assault on the perceived corruption and self-enrichment of the ruling family.

The protesters, led at first by unemployed college graduates like Bouazizi and later joined by workers and young professionals, found grist for the complaints in leaked cables from the US Embassy in Tunisia, released by WikiLeaks, which detailed the self-dealing and excess of the president’s family. And the protesters relied heavily on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter to circulate videos of each demonstration and issue calls for the next one.

Read full article….

See Also:

TUNISIA: The First WikiLeaks Revolution?

Review: SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa

23 Worst Tyrants/Dictators (Yes, there’s more than 23) and Oops, there’s Saudi Arabia..

Review: Breaking the Real Axis of Evil–How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025