Category: Collaboration Zones

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Journal: End Poverty to End Population Growth

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Earth Intelligence
Berto Jongman Recommends...

Visualizing Global Population Growth

Hans Rosling

Posted: Sep 4, 2010

The world’s population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years — and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth.

This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you’ll see).

Watch the 10 Minute Video from TED:  Hans Rosling on global population growth

Phi Beta Iota: This is consistent with the report of the UN High-Level Threat Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, which identified POVERTY as the top threat to humanity, in part because it spawns everything else including Infectious Disease (#2), Environmental Degradation (#3, the poor doing more damage than all the corporations on the planet), and so on. See also:

Review: A More Secure World–Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
Review: Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail
Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests
Review: Building Social Business–The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs
Review: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid–Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Hardcover)
Review: Revolutionary Wealth (Hardcover)
Review: State of the World 2010–Transforming Cultures–From Consumerism to Sustainability
Review: Corruption and Anti-Corruption–An Applied Philosophical Approach
Reference: World Brain Institute & Global Game
Search: Strategic Analytic Model

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Journal: CIA Loves Blackwater; Arizona Ungovernable in South; Coast Guard Learns and Morphs from Katrina; Israeli Black Propaganda?

Cultural Intelligence

Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Blackwater Won Contracts Through A Web Of Companies. CIA mafia, illegal arms, 31 companies to deceive US Government, owner moves family to Abu Dhabi.

Signs in Arizona warn of smuggler dangers. Feds post 15, south Arizona now “ungovernable zone.”

For Coast Guard, Katrina's lessons are carried on. Overview in human interest context of how Katrina changed Coast Guard, relevant to BP Gulf disaster.

Israeli Black Propaganda?

Child Stealing Bread in Iran Gets Arm Crushed.

Phi Beta Iota: photo part of a collage, not properly sourced and possibly Israeli black propaganda. Normally the hand is cut off, no padding is needed, and we're not sure a child would receive this kind of punishment under these circumstances. Provided as indicator of what is being circulated across US military emails.  There is probably a half-pipe cradling the arm and hidden by the towel.  Cars do not mangle or even completely crush.  The absence of the after photo showing real damage is significant to us.

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Journal: Australian Muslim cleric calls for beheading of Dutch politician

Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online

Muslim cleric calls for beheading of Dutch politician

(Reuters) – A well-known Australian Muslim cleric has called for the beheading of Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders, a newspaper said on Friday.

Wilders told Reuters it was “really terrible news” and that he was taking it seriously.

“I will ask for clarification from the Dutch minister of interior/justice why the secret service and anti-terrorism unit NCTb have not informed me before and what the consequences will be for me,” he said in an email.

. . . . . . .

Wilders is currently on trial in the Netherlands for inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims.

Tip of the Hat to G. B. at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: The Netherlands is close to the Nordics in its reasoned governance, but even this great country can make mistakes.  As Howard Bloom discusses so well in Global Brain–The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, what children learn by the age of five to seven is life-defining.  If the government fails to educate the multi-cultural respect it aspires to, then it has to respect the concerns of its citizens who fear unassimilated resident as well as transient Muslims. This is one reason why Phi Beta Iota believes that education, intelligence, and research should be under a single Secretary-General who is co-equal to two others, one for Commonwealth and one for External Relations and Security.

See Also:

Review: While Europe Slept–How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within (Hardcover)

Journal: Muslim Tide Arousing US Heartland Anger But Loss of Moral Legitimacy Via Israel and Loss of National Intelligence Shackles America

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Religion

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Journal: General Petraeus–Human Terrain Team NOT

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence
"Is that HTT crawling across the rug over there?"

Did Gen. David Petraeus just call the Human Terrain System worthless? With a few choice sentences to the Wall Street Journal, the top commander in Afghanistan highlighted the disconnect between what the Army’s social science program is supposed to be doing — and what’s actually happening in the field.

“We have never had the granular understanding of local circumstances in Afghanistan that we achieved over time in Iraq,” Petraeus told the Journal. “One of the key elements in our ability to be agile in our activities in Iraq during the surge was a pretty good understanding who the power brokers were in local areas, how the systems were supposed to work, how they really worked.”

Phi Beta Iota: The General fails to recollect that under the Cheney-Bremer regime, all were told to ignore the imams and tribal leaders.  It was only much later, after five years of failure, more or less, than some bright general decided to get back to basics.  As Winston Churchill liked to say, “The Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first.”  HTT has been a known failure since its inception.  For one view of how it should fit in with the other fourteen slices of Human Intelligence (HUMINT), see the new monograph from the Strategic Studies Institute,  Human Intelligence: All Humans, All Minds, All the Time (June 2010).    See also John Stanton on HTT Failures.

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Seed Money for Ideas Addressing Global Health Challenges–and the Fly in the Milk Bowl

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 07 Health, 12 Water, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Unorthodox thinking is essential to overcoming the most persistent challenges in global health. Vaccines were first developed over 200 years ago because revolutionary thinkers took an entirely new approach to preventing disease. Grand Challenges Explorations fosters innovation in global health research.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $100 million to encourage scientists worldwide to expand the pipeline of ideas to fight our greatest health challenges.Launched in 2008, Grand Challenge Explorations grants have already been awarded to 340 researchers from 34 countries.

Open to All Disciplines: Anyone Can Apply
The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline, from student to tenured professor, and from any organization – colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies.

Agile, Accelerated Grant-Making
The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page applications and no preliminary data required.

Applications are submitted online, and winning grants are chosen approximately 4 months from the submission deadline.Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.

Example: Water Sanitation Challenge that earns $100,000

De-compartmentalizing science through Grandchallenges.org

Phi Beta Iota: The problem with this well-intentioned initiative is that it throws money as items in isolation.  All well and good.  It would be much more impressive if it had a strategic analytic model that emphasized healthy lifestyle, healthy environment, and natural/alternative cures; and if it demanded some form of intelligence coordination in relation to all the other policies that impact on health far more negatively that we can solve–the bottom line is that we are killing our species faster than any amount of innovation can help it survive.  In our humble opinion.

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Journal: German Military on Peak Oil

05 Energy, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Key Players
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

09/01/2010

‘Peak Oil' and the German Government

Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis

By Stefan Schultz

The relationship with Russia, in particular, is of fundamental importance for German access to oil and gas, the study says.   …  Peak oil would also have profound consequences for Berlin's posture toward the Middle East, according to the study.

Oil will determine power:
Increasing importance of oil exporters:
Politics in place of the market:
Market failures:
Relapse into planned economy:
Global chain reaction:
Crisis of political legitimacy:

The study appears to be deep and honest.  What does surprise us, however, are three things:

1.  Der Spiegel does not make reference to all of the same studies done in the 1970's that were ignored by policymakers and politicians.

2.  Der Spiegel and the study appear to confuse existing governments with legitimacy, rather than honest effective governance with legitimacy.  If there is a revolution in any of these countries, it will be to throw the corrupt rascals out and re-set democracy.  Revolutions are NOT expected in the Nordic countries or BENELUX.

3.  No one seems to understand that the time has come for a global Manhattan Project to simultaneously address the ten high level threats to humanity by harmonizing spending and policies by all players across the twelve core policies and in consonance with a futures council led by the future powers: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela as well as Wild Cards such as Malaysia and Turkey.

See Also:

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Journal: Mathematicians Get it Wrong…Again

04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Health, 11 Society, Academia, Cultural Intelligence, Officers Call
Full Article Online

Monday, August 30, 2010

Mathematicians Create Objective Quality of Life Index

The US comes second in a new quality of life index designed to be mathematically objective

Phi Beta Iota: The explanation of this is wrong.  There is nothing “objective” about it, and nothing “subjective” about the other indexes.  What is useful here is “elastic mapping”.  A linear model makes things seem clear, but it introduces distortions. A non-linear modeling technique, while confusing in one sense because you don't know exactly how it works, it still sensible if you use an image, as they do here, of relaxing springs among all the nodes.  And the result is less distortion, less to criticize, and more opportunity to consider the meaning, as they do here.  GDP gets you something, but health gets you something else, and it would be nice to have a mathematical rule that doesn't make it completely arbitrary how you balance the two, or the many contrastive factors that you choose.

See Also:
Review: The Hidden Wealth of Nations
Review: The Politics of Happiness–What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being
Review: IDENTITY ECONOMICS–How our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being
Review: Building Social Business–The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs
Review: Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth