Earth Intelligence – Page 190 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/05/302013/05/30

Paul Craig Roberts: The Social Cost of (Predatory) Capitalism — What Prostituted Economists Will Not Address

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government

The Social Cost of (Predatory) Capitalism

When I was a graduate student in economics, the social cost of capitalism was a big issue in economic theory. Since those decades ago, the social costs of capitalism have exploded, but the issue seems no longer to trouble the economics profession.

Social costs are costs of production that are not born by the producer or included in the price of the product. There are many classic examples: the pollution of air, water, and land from mining, fracking, oil drilling and pipeline spills, chemical fertilizer farming, GMOs, pesticides, radioactivity released from nuclear accidents, and the the pollution of food by antibiotics and artificial hormones.

Some economists believe that these traditional social costs can be dealt with by well defined property rights. Others think that benevolent government will control social costs in the interests of society.

Today there are new social costs brought by globalism. For developed countries, these are unemployment, lost consumer income, tax base, and GDP growth, and rising trade and current account deficits from the offshoring of manufacturing and tradable professional service jobs. The trade and current account deficits can result in a falling exchange value of the currency and rising inflation from import prices. For underdeveloped countries, the costs are the loss of self-sufficiency and the transformation of agriculture into monocultures to feed the needs of international corporations.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: The Social Cost of (Predatory) Capitalism — What Prostituted Economists Will Not Address”

2013/05/30

Josh Kilbourn: YouTube (1:19:38) Seeds of Death – Monsanto GMO Destroys Human Organs, Causes Infertility

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Officers Call, YouTube

Published on May 24, 2013

In preparation of the global March Against Monsanto, you are invited to watch our award-winning documentary Seeds of Death free.

http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/

The leaders of Big Agriculture–Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta–are determined that world's populations remain ignorant about the serious health and environmental risks of genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture. Deep layers of deception and corruption underlie both the science favoring GMOs and the corporations and governments supporting them.

This award-winning documentary, Seeds of Death, exposes the lies about GMOs and pulls back the curtains to witness our planet's future if Big Agriculture's new green revolution becomes our dominant food supply.

A Question and Answer fact sheet deconstructing Monsanto's GM claims and Big Agriculture's propaganda to accompany the film is available online:

http://prn.fm/2013/05/24/gary-null-an…

2013/05/30

SchwartzReport: Corporate Cabal Taking Over World Food and Water Supplies — Until the Riots — Will Vigilantes Begin Hunting Down and Killing Monsanto Executives?

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, 12 Water, Civil Society, Commerce, Earth Intelligence, Government

I have decided to focus today's SR on GMOs and the transgenic sector because it represents such a clear example of the geopolitical shift we are living through: the Ascendence of the Non-geographical corporate states.

NGCSs are not just corporations, in a business sense, that we mean when we say, corporatocracy. These transnational entities are so big and so powerful that they are essentially states, literally countries without geography. They have their own foreign policies; their own goals that may have little to do with the policies of the country where they happen to be based. They control the political structure and write the laws that govern them, and judge them. They are the emerging world powers.

This transfer, is not a continuation of the chain of family, to tribe, to village, to duchies and the like, to nations. The NGCS springs from the business world. Its priority is profit. In its most extreme manifestation nothing else really is a factor.

Nowhere is the transfer of national power over to the NGCSs clearer than in what is happening in food and water. Parts of this trend are known, but the overarching strategy the NGCSs are following, and the tactics they are using are rarely seen as the coherent whole they are.

Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont and Syngenta. They are usually described as chemical pesticide companies but, I think, a better way to see them is as a corporate cohort making an aggressive attempt to gain domination over the world's food and water supplies.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Corporate Cabal Taking Over World Food and Water Supplies — Until the Riots — Will Vigilantes Begin Hunting Down and Killing Monsanto Executives?”

2013/05/292013/05/29

John Maquire: One Year Away from Global Food Riots + US Food Fraud RECAP

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government

We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say

What’s the number one reason we riot? The plausible, justifiable motivations of trampled-upon humanfolk to fight back are many—poverty, oppression, disenfranchisement, etc—but the big one is more primal than any of the above. It’s hunger, plain and simple. If there’s a single factor that reliably sparks social unrest, it’s food becoming too scarce or too expensive. So argues a group of complex systems theorists in Cambridge, and it makes sense.

In a 2011 paper, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute unveiled a model that accurately explained why the waves of unrest that swept the world in 2008 and 2011 crashed when they did. The number one determinant was soaring food prices. Their model identified a precise threshold for global food prices that, if breached, would lead to worldwide unrest.

The MIT Technology Review explains how CSI’s model works: “The evidence comes from two sources. The first is data gathered by the United Nations that plots the price of food against time, the so-called food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. The second is the date of riots around the world, whatever their cause.” Plot the data, and it looks like this:

Pretty simple. Black dots are the food prices, red lines are the riots. In other words, whenever the UN’s food price index, which measures the monthly change in the price of a basket of food commodities, climbs above 210, the conditions ripen for social unrest around the world. CSI doesn’t claim that any breach of 210 immediately leads to riots, obviously; just that the probability that riots will erupt grows much greater. For billions of people around the world, food comprises up to 80% of routine expenses (for rich-world people like you and I, it’s like 15%). When prices jump, people can’t afford anything else; or even food itself. And if you can’t eat—or worse, your family can’t eat—you fight.

Continue reading “John Maquire: One Year Away from Global Food Riots + US Food Fraud RECAP”

2013/05/29

SchwartzReport: GOOD Supergreen Hydrogen, 400 Year Old Moss Revived BAD Citi-Bank, Monsanto

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

GOOD

Here potentially is some very good news. An alternative energy source, a technology for reversing ocean acidification, and a CO2 sequestration remediation.

Scientists Develop CO2 Sequestration Technique That Produces ‘Supergreen' Hydrogen Fuel, Offsets Ocean Acidifica
ANNE M STARK – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

This may seem very esoteric but I am publishing it because it is telling us something about how consciousness enters matter at the cellular level. I think what we call life is actually membership in the interconnected, interdependent network of consciousness, from cells to high order mammals. Clearly it is of a different order from physical structures that are expressions of! consciousness, but lack consciousness of the same order as living organisms. In rough terms it is the difference between the log and the tree. What made this story stand out for me was what, after 400 years, made the chemicals that made up the detritus that had once been moss, turn on those chemicals so that consciousness created life.

400-year-old Frozen Moss Brought Back to Life in Scientist’s lab
SHEILA PRATT – The Edmonton Journal (Canada)

BAD

More on the corruption of Congress trend in favor of a Non-geographical Corporate State. The corruption has become so blatant that they hardly bother to hide it any more. There is only one solution to this: Completely replacing the current Congress with ethical people who genuinely care about the nation's wellbeing. Then overturning Citizens' United, and establishing some kind of public funding of elections so that outright bribery is no longer business-as-usual. I confess I am not very sanguine any of this will happen. So far it seems to me that large portions of the country are committed to a kind of societal suicide.

See How Citigroup Wrote a Bill So It Could Get a Bailout
ERIKA EICHELBERGER – Mother Jones

In Europe, at least, Monsanto is beginning to be held accountable. I wonder how many Americans will die before it happens here?

Monsanto Found Guilty of Chemical Poisoning in Landmark Case
The Conucopia Institute

2013/05/282013/05/28

Anthony Judge: Potential of Feynman Diagrams for Challenging Psychosocial Relationships?

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Potential of Feynman Diagrams for Challenging Psychosocial Relationships?

Comprehending the neglect of an unexplored possibility

Introduction
Questionable appreciation of quantum electrodynamics
Characterisation of Feynman diagrams
Credibility of psychosocial analogues of Feynman diagrams
Urgent need for subtle representation of positive-negative relationships through a pattern language
Relevance to much-valued psychosocial processes
Exploratory psychosocial reframing of Feynman diagrams
Unacknowledged preferences for partial clarity and partial transparency
Conclusion
References

EXTRACTS:

Continue reading “Anthony Judge: Potential of Feynman Diagrams for Challenging Psychosocial Relationships?”

2013/05/272013/05/27

Michelle Monk: Monsanto Protest in Las Vegas Attracts 2,000 — Meanwhile, China, Haiti, Hungary Incinerate Monsanto Corn, Millions March Against Monsanto

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 02 China, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, 12 Water, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics

Monsanto protest attracts 2,000 in Las Vegas

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Protesters rallied in Nevada as part of a global protest against seed giant Monsanto and the genetically modified food it produces.

“March Against Monsanto” protests Saturday drew some 2,000 protesters in Las Vegas and about 150 in Reno.

Las Vegas protesters marched about one mile down Las Vegas Boulevard to the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, while Reno protesters chanted and waved placards as they marched through downtown Reno.

Genetically modified plants are grown from seeds that are engineered to resist insecticides and herbicides, and to improve crop yields.

Most corn, soybean and cotton crops grown in the U.S. today have been genetically modified. But critics say genetically modified organisms can lead to serious health conditions and harm the environment.

Monsanto Co. says it respects people’s rights to express their opinion on the topic, but maintains that its seeds improve agriculture.

Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds

Hungary Burns All Monsanto GMO Corn Fields

Millions March Against GM Crops

Continue reading “Michelle Monk: Monsanto Protest in Las Vegas Attracts 2,000 — Meanwhile, China, Haiti, Hungary Incinerate Monsanto Corn, Millions March Against Monsanto”