Cultural Intelligence – Page 996 – Public Intelligence Blog

Chuck Spinney sends….

Obama's policies are making Democrats the party of Bloated Plutocracy.

November 8, 2009 OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down

Frank Rich

The Obama administration does not seem to understand that this rage, left unaddressed, could consume it.

The system is going back to the way it was with a vengeance, against a backdrop of despair. As the unemployment rate crossed the 10 percent threshold at week’s end, we learned that bankers were helping themselves not just to bonuses as large as those at the bubble’s peak but to early allotments of H1N1 vaccine. No wonder 62 percent of those polled by Hart Associates in late September felt that “large banks” had been helped “a lot” or “a fair amount” by “government economic policies,” but only 13 percent felt the “average working person” had been. Unemployment ranked ahead of the deficit and health care as the No. 1 pocketbook issue in the survey, with 81 percent saying the Obama administration must take more action.

Continue reading “Journal: Empire as Usual–and Then Collapse”

2009/11/052009/11/06

Journal: Independents Rising

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online

INDEPENDENCE PARTY BREAKS RECORDS;

142,817 VOTES FOR BLOOMBERG ON COLUMN C

DELIVERS MARGIN TO CITY'S FIRST INDEPENDENT MAYOR

Unofficial returns released by the Board of Elections put the IP total on Column “C” at 142,817 votes, nearly 26% of Bloomberg’s total and 13% of all votes cast. This means that 1 in 4 Bloomberg voters chose to vote on the Independence Party line.

The vote for the mayor on the Independence Party line was an increase of 91% over its total four years ago, when it drew nearly 75,000 votes on its crucial Column

Continue reading “Journal: Independents Rising”

2009/11/052009/11/05

Journal: Out of Touch with Reality II

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Immigration, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process

Full Story Online

The Elephant in the Room: A war of ideas within Islam

Backward views hold sway in much of the Muslim world. And yet there is hope.

By Rick Santorum Thu, Nov. 5, 2009

The students, one man and two women, wore Western-style clothes and spoke English with little or no accent. They disputed my description of Islam as it's practiced in the Middle East, maintaining that al-Qaeda's version of Islam in no way reflects the Islam that is practiced around the world.

So I asked them a question: Should apostates – Muslims who convert to another religion – be subject to execution?

One of the women quickly said no. She insisted that she was free to leave Islam if she wanted to, and that she knew other people who had done so without a problem – in the United States.

I said I wasn't talking about her and others' freedom of religion in this country. What if they lived in a Muslim-majority country?

Silence. Eventually, the young man blurted out, “That's different.”

Continue reading “Journal: Out of Touch with Reality II”

2009/11/02

Journal: Political-Corporate Corruption in USA

Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Full Story Online — Online Ordering (All Sources)

WASHINGTON — A new book detailing the political contributions and practices of nearly 5,000 companies goes on sale today, providing consumers with a powerful tool in helping them vote with their wallets.

New to The Blue Pages, Second Edition is the reporting of federal lobbying expenditures, which in 2008 totaled $3.3 billion. Additionally, the new edition expands listings with environmental policies and practices of the companies tracked. Each sector overview opens with commentary from an expert in the field.

Examples:

• AT&T — Total contributions to Republican Party: $2,875,123; Total contributions to Democratic Party: $2,531,482; Lobby Spending: $32,214,784;

• ExxonMobil — Total contributions to Republican Party: $1,085,223; Total contributions to Democratic Party: $333,799; Lobby Spending: $45,940,000;

2009/10/31

Journal: Economic Fantasy and Economic Reality

03 Economy, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

‘Jobs Created or Saved’ Is White House Fantasy: Caroline Baum

Commentary by Caroline Baum Oct. 28 (Bloomberg)

Heresy, thy name is Christina Romer.

Last week, the chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers — a position that carried the title “chief economist” until Larry Summers took up residence in the White House — testified to the Joint Economic Committee on the economic crisis and the efficacy of the policy response.

Here’s the executive summary in case you missed it:

Continue reading “Journal: Economic Fantasy and Economic Reality”

2009/10/302009/10/30

Search: World-Wide Linguist Supply

Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Methods & Process, Mobile, Real Time, Threats, Tools

Great search, thank you.

The OSS-EIN solution for this problem is as follows:

1. All World Language human linguist-interpreters

2. Telelanguage (an open source software) registration for in-house and for-fee linguists

3. Via InfoSphere AB in Sweden, European graduate students fluent in the target language and competent in English, French, or German also

It was the latter that allowd us to find, evaluate, and report on 396 terrorist, insurgent, and opposition web sites in 29 languages over the the course of 60 days for under $60,000 in 1997. We still do this today, using cover support plans as needed.

The solution requires that the client not be an idiot and demand US citizenship and any kind of US clearance for translations that can be handled in near real time. For example, captured Dari documents inthe field should be digitized within minutes and translated within hours. Anyone that cannot do this for our troops fighting in the field should be fired.

2009/10/092009/10/09

Journal: State of the Ummah (Muslims)

01 Poverty, 03 India, 04 Indonesia, 05 Iran, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence

The State of the Ummah is both a re-mixed Internet film for which a non-US citizen has been held at Guantanamo for years, and a concept of community that explicitly includes Jews and pagans.

The main graphic shows relative distribution. This smaller graphic to the right shows the “divide” between East and West in starker terms.

Text reports are available–an Executive Summary and a Full Report. What they do not properly address are three facts:

1. Sunnis everywhere, Shi'ites in the minority and severely persecuted to the point of genocide. Note: the rough estimate of Shi'ites is 10-13% of the total, the bulk of them in Iran and southern Iraq.

2. Vulernability of Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar) to encroachment.

3. The lack of religious counterintelligence and security campaign plans in any country, not just in relation to Muslims, but also dual Israeli citizens, Opus Dei, Mormons, etcetera. As states fail, so do loyalties. In our view, the terrorist-criminal nexus will be followed by the religious-criminal nexus. This makes poverty in predominantly Muslim areas the number one flash point for the future of global stability, in our view.