Civil Society – Page 114 – Public Intelligence Blog

We are delighted to announce the launch of Center for Planetary Culture, a new not-for-profit think tank, with upcoming events in New York on June 11, and Los Angeles on June 24.

Center for Planetary Culture advances new ideas and solutions to today’s most pressing ecological, social, and political issues. The mission of the Center is to change global beliefs and practices, supporting the transition to a regenerative society. The Center was founded by Executive Director Daniel Pinchbeck, author and thought leader, with his wife, Creative Director Jana Astanov. Supported by Peter and Jennifer Buffett and the Novo Foundation, the Center will produce issue papers, research projects, and educational media.

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Center for Planetary Culture”

2014/06/012014/05/31

Matt Taibi: The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap — Legal Immunity for the 1%, Criminalization of Everything for the 99%

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis

Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:

Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.

Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.

In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

Continue reading “Matt Taibi: The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap — Legal Immunity for the 1%, Criminalization of Everything for the 99%”

2014/06/012014/05/31

Jean Lievens: Bank of England Governor – Capitalism Doomed Without Ethics

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Resilience, True Cost

Bank of England governor: capitalism doomed if ethics vanish

Mark Carney issues strong critique of City behaviour and warns of growing sense that basic social contract is breaking down

Angela Monaghan

The Guardian, Tuesday 27 May 2014

Capitalism is at risk of destroying itself unless bankers realise they have an obligation to create a fairer society, the Bank of England governor has warned.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Bank of England Governor – Capitalism Doomed Without Ethics”

2014/05/182014/05/18

Eagle: CDC Declares “Hood Disease” — Growing Up Colored, Poor, in the Inner City Form of Trauma and Stress Disorder

06 Family, 07 Health, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Living in the ‘hood now a disease, says CDC: ‘Hood Disease' caused by urban stress

(NaturalNews) Is it real or is it another politically correct attempt by a federal government entity to provide an excuse for poor choices, poor performances or poor government education practices and standards?

It's hard to say at this stage, but nevertheless, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared that life in the inner city can create a health problem which then makes it tougher for young people there to learn.

The health problem? “Post-traumatic stress disorder,” the same condition that a number of soldiers returning from battle and victims of physical harm from crime have developed.

The CDC says that many of these children live in virtual war zones in the inner city. As such, according to doctors at Harvard University — which is well-known for its left-wing bias in research and the sciences — kids in the inner city are suffering from an even more complex form of PTSD that some of them have labeled “hood disease.”

You just can't make this stuff up.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Eagle: CDC Declares “Hood Disease” — Growing Up Colored, Poor, in the Inner City Form of Trauma and Stress Disorder”

2014/05/182015/05/10

Berto Jongman: US Child Labor Common in Tobacco Industry – Growing Marijuana Instead Would Be Good for Children

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce

US tobacco child labour criticised in report

By Aleem Maqbool BBC News, Kinston, North Carolina

Children have been farming US tobacco fields for generations. But a new report from Human Rights Watch says the practice is dangerous and in need of reform.

It may be later than usual because of the harsh winter, but just as they have done for generations, people are planting tobacco across the vast coastal plains of North Carolina.

The crop put this state on the economic map, but methods used to farm tobacco here have now drawn the gaze of an international human rights group.

“Usually we would wake up around four or five in the morning and get to the farm around six,” says Fernando Rodriguez.

“I would spend the whole day going up and down the rows of tobacco, topping the plants, cutting the flowers, collecting the leaf and all.”

Fernando is 13 years old.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: When — not if — marijuana replaces tobacco as the priimary cash crop of the South, this will bode well for children as well as human health.

See Also:

Marijuana @ Phi Beta Iota

Video (26min) of tobacco leaf child labor in Malawi – towards the end is mention of fair trade farms working to replace the tobacco crop with tea leaves.

2014/05/172014/05/17

Berto Jongman: NSA Lies, NSA Crushing Dissent

07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military

Two stories, two sides of how NSA is seen by many.

Everyone should know just how much the government lied to defend the NSA

A web of deception has finally been untangled: the Justice Department got the US supreme court to dismiss a case that could have curtailed the NSA's dragnet. Why?

[NSA] Spying Is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, Not Catch Terrorists

EXTRACT

In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald writes:

The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalised and deserving group of those “doing wrong” – the bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals drive all institutions of authority. “Doing something wrong” in the eyes of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behaviour and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.

The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all “doing something wrong”: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.

2014/05/172014/05/17

Jean Lievens: Interview with Ricardo Semler Pioneer of Organizations of Free People

03 Economy, 04 Education, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

A full interview with Ricardo Semler by the Dutch TV-show Backlight. In our episode ‘The capital power of hapiness' we made a portrait of this Brasilian business man. Here you can watch the full interview of one hour and a half. Mostly unedited, but divided in chapters.

This man is Semco's business guru, and known for his development of leadership by omission.

Offers major insights into education as well as business — structures that focus on “managing” large groups of people, especially children, are not focusing on their core mission — creating value or teaching. A society's “constraints” and blinders begin embedding at the age of two — that is the starting point for creating a Smart Nation of free spirits instead of sheep.