Commerce – Page 186 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/05/08

SchwartzReport: War

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

The War on Drugs has always been a charade, a flashy story to get the rubes riled up, whose real purpose was to justify increased law enforcement budgets, prison budgets, judiciary budgets, and inflated corporate profits for all the technology this bogus war involves. It has been a disaster at every level of social policy, albeit ever so profitable.

Group of Nobel Prize Winners Warns: The ‘War on Drugs’ has Failed
Agence France-Presse (France)/The Raw Story

The global ‘war on drugs” has been a catastrophic failure and world leaders must rethink their approach, a group including five Nobel Prize-winning economists, Britain’s deputy prime minister and a former U.S. secretary of state said Tuesday.

An academic report published by the London School of Economics (LSE) called ‘Ending the Drug Wars” pointed to violence in Afghanistan, Latin America and other regions as evidence of the need for a new approach.

2014/05/072014/05/07

Yoda: Food Start-Ups Go After True Cost Reductions — Huge, Huge, Huge…

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 11 Society, Commerce, Ethics

Right thing, doing finally.

The Next Startup Craze: Food 2.0

Silicon Valley investors and startups are trying to improve our food. Do they bring anything to the table?

By Ted Greenwald
MIT Technology Review
May 7, 2014

EXTRACT:

Hampton Creek Foods and other startups have big dreams of restructuring the food supply so that it uses less land, water, energy, and other resources. In doing so, they are taking on corporate giants such as ConAgra, General Mills, and Kraft that spend billions on research and technology development.

Such ambitions have run up against considerable challenges in industries such as clean tech. But those involved in the new food binge might prefer a different example. Hampton Creek’s CEO, Josh Tetrick, wants to do to the $60 billion egg industry what Apple did to the CD business. “If we were starting from scratch, would we get eggs from birds crammed into cages so small they can’t flap their wings, shitting all over each other, eating antibiotic-laden soy and corn to get them to lay 283 eggs per year?” asks the strapping former West Virginia University linebacker. While an egg farm uses large amounts of water and burns 39 calories of energy for every calorie of food produced, Tetrick says he can make plant-based versions on a fraction of the water and only two calories of energy per calorie of food — free of cholesterol, saturated fat, allergens, avian flu, and cruelty to animals. For half the price of an egg.

Read full article.

2014/05/072014/05/07

Jean Lievens: Indigenous Economy & Ethical Work in Ecuador

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Indigenous Economy & Ethical Work in Ecuador – Dissertation Reviews

From dissertationreviews.org – May 6, 10:43 AM

Drawing on a range of personal experiences and ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a number of years, Kristine Latta’s Merchant Moralities is a detailed and sympathetic account of the moral predicaments faced by Otavalo’s indigenous comerciantes/merchants. Working with Otavaleño communities, indigenous leaders, family members and friends, Latta explores life as it unfolds in and around the town itself, in family homes in the community of Peguche, and also on travels within the United States. Through careful descriptions, we learn of the particular transformations and vulnerabilities that these entrepreneurs face, as they engage in the decidedly transnational textile and tourism industries. These transformations coincide with actions elsewhere associated with a revalorization of indigeneity – both in localised spaces and particular cultural practices, and also more broadly on the national political stage. What can the distinct moral experiences of Otavalo’s merchants tell us more broadly about the dynamics of cultural change, the recalibration of tradition, and the complexities of contemporary indigenous experience? Focusing on people’s responses to shifts in priorities and contested commitments, we see how merchants articulate their own entrepreneurial values as personalised expressions of indigeneity, and do so amidst the novel opportunities and conspicuous disparities that their livelihoods create.

2014/05/072014/05/07

Berto Jongman: New Movement “Reset the Net” Fights NSA’s Mass Surveillance — Google and Twitter NOT Joining the Movement

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics

New Movement Aims to ‘Reset the Net’ Against Mass Surveillance

By Kim Zetter
WIRED
05.06.14

A coalition of nearly two-dozen tech companies and civil liberties groups is launching a new fight against mass internet surveillance, hoping to battle the NSA in much the same way online campaigners pushed back on bad piracy legislation in 2012.

The new coalition, organized by Fight for the Future, is planning a Reset the Net day of action on June 5, the anniversary of the date the first Edward Snowden story broke detailing the government’s PRISM program, based on documents leaked by the former NSA contractor.

“Government spies have a weakness: they can hack anybody, but they can’t hack everybody,” the organizers behind the Reset the Net movement say in their video (above). “Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fiber. They depend on our mistakes, mistakes we can fix.”

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: New Movement “Reset the Net” Fights NSA's Mass Surveillance — Google and Twitter NOT Joining the Movement”

2014/05/072014/05/07

Berto Jongman: Rise in Global Political Violence Challenges Supply Chains — True Cost of Predatory Capitalism Becomes Visible

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence

Example of true cost: corruption plus public abuse = political violence = cost to predatory capitalism.

Rise in global political violence challenges supply chains

Supply Management, 7 May 2014 | Will Green

Levels of conflict and political violence have increased in 48 countries over the past six months and created “significant challenges to supply chains”, according to a report.

Maplecroft’s biannual Conflict and Political Violence Index showed Ukraine moved 52 places to become the 35^th most at risk country following its uprising and the threat of Russian intervention, while 16 countries are rated as “extreme risk”.

These include the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Libya, while Syria remains the country with the highest levels of conflict and political violence.

Many key growth markets feature in the “high” and “extreme” risk categories, including Colombia (11), Nigeria (15), Philippines (17), India (18), Bangladesh (21), Thailand (23), China (25), Indonesia (29) and Turkey (31).

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Rise in Global Political Violence Challenges Supply Chains — True Cost of Predatory Capitalism Becomes Visible”

2014/05/062014/05/06

Lee Camp: FCC Sells Out Internet & Public – Net Neutrality? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Net Neutrality

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Impotency, Offbeat Fun, Officers Call

In an FCC ruling last week, they completely decimated the idea of internet freedom or net neutrality. They basically said that the corporations that can pay more can get faster internet service – this opens the floodgates for corporate rule online.

2014/05/062014/05/07

Mini-Me: US Army DCGS-A Failures — and Palantir Keeps Trying to Over-Sell Its Shallow Pit

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military

Huh?

Internal Army Report’s Damning Conclusion on a System Meant to Protect Our Troops

Editor’s Note: This is the third part in an investigative series by TheBlaze into how top Army officials failed to provide necessary technology to troops on the battlefield, choosing to promote their own flawed software instead. Read part one and part two here.

In January, members of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team trained to track enemy combatants and bombs were inputing data into a $4 billion software system developed by the Army.

ADVANCE EXTRACT: A total of 60 companies were involved in the Army’s DCGS-A program. The four largest were defense weapons developers, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamic, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. “They have no play in the global commercial IT market, no standing at all,” said an IT specialist who works with both the government and private sector and is familiar with Defense programs. The specialist spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. “The cost to the taxpayer is extraordinary for products that already exist.”

The software was intended to give military analysts the life-saving tools they needed to be one step ahead of the enemy.

Instead, it shut down, losing all of the valuable data the unit members had uploaded, according to an after-action report obtained exclusively by TheBlaze.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: US Army DCGS-A Failures — and Palantir Keeps Trying to Over-Sell Its Shallow Pit”