Commerce – Page 324 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/02/082011/02/08

Why Boeing is Imploding–Spinney, Sprey, & Reality vs Political Engineering & Government Spec Cost Plus

10 Security, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

Below are three separate contributions: Spinney on Sprey; Sprey on Boeing; and Seattle Times on Boeing.

CHUCK SPINNEY SOUNDS OFF

President Obama says that restoring America’s competitiveness is one of his top priorities. Yet under his watch, deindustrialization, financialization, and globalization continue without interruption. Many advocates of defense spending argue that spinoffs from the Pentagon's R&D and high tech engineering practices are keys to reinvigorating America’s manufacturing economy. For whatever reasons, Mr. Obama shows no intention of reining in defense spending by anything more than a cosmetic amount, even though the defense budget is higher now that at any time since the end of WWII (after removing the cumulative effect of 60 years of inflation), and despite the fact that the United States is spending about as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.

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2011/02/062011/02/06

From Egypt to Connecticut–Burning Mansions

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Egypt’s Ire Turns to Confidant of Mubarak’s Son

CAIRO — As Egyptians turned their anger on symbols of the state late last month, torching police stations along with the headquarters of President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party, they reserved a special hatred for a garish building with black tinted windows in an upscale neighborhood, setting fire to it three times.

Tom Atlee on Congress 2.0: Empower the Public

About the Idea, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Open Government

YOU, TOO, CAN BE A CONGRESSPERSON

by Tom Atlee

Why would you want to become one? Here are four very enticing reasons:

Read full posting….

The alternative approach:

* You might have to advocate policies that would be hard on yourself, your constituents or your supporters — even temporarily. You might become unpopular. You might get assassinated or your plane might develop unexplained engine trouble and crash. You might even not get re-elected!

* You would actually have to face reality, get the facts, learn about complicated stuff like how complex systems work. (It's really unfortunate, but most of our thorny problems are all tangled up with complex systems that are tangled up with other problems, too. Yuck!!)

* You would have to listen to and work with people who see things differently from you. After all, they may know something that's important to take into consideration. That could be really unpleasant and take you far afield from your party line, out in the political boonies where the real danger lies.

* You just wouldn't get the same adrenaline rush you get when you stick with oversimplifications, grandstanding, being loved by your supporters, and launching juicy attacks on your enemies. There just aren't as many ego-strokes or perks available for working with others to deeply understand things and come up with what makes sense for the long haul.

Co-Intelligence Institute's Pledge for Politicians

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2011/02/03

Underground world hints at China’s coming crisis

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 11 Society, 12 Water, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government, Key Players, Peace Intelligence

Underground world hints at China's coming crisis

To understand how far ordinary Chinese have been priced out of their country's property market, you need to look not upwards at the Beijing's shimmering high-rise skyline, but down, far below the bustling streets where nearly 20m people live and work.

There, in the city's vast network of unused air defence bunkers, as many as a million people live in small, windowless rooms that rent for £30 to £50 a month, which is as much as many of the city's army of migrant labourers can afford.

. . . . . .

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2011/01/312011/02/01

Video: Jesse Ventura Rips Wall St & Goldman Sachs

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
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2011/01/31

Food speculation: ‘People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food’

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Health, Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, True Cost

It's not just bad harvests and climate change – it's also speculators that are behind record prices. And it's the planet's poorest who pay
John Vidal Sunday 23 January 2011

article

Just under three years ago, people in the village of Gumbi in western Malawi went unexpectedly hungry. Not like Europeans do if they miss a meal or two, but that deep, gnawing hunger that prevents sleep and dulls the senses when there has been no food for weeks.

Oddly, there had been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise staples heavily.

The explanation offered by the UN and food experts was that a “perfect storm” of natural and human factors had combined to hyper-inflate prices. US farmers, UN agencies said, had taken millions of acres of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertiliser prices had risen steeply, the Chinese were shifting to meat-eating from a vegetarian diet, and climate-change linked droughts were affecting major crop-growing areas. The UN said that an extra 75m people became malnourished because of the price rises.

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2011/01/302011/01/30

Two U.S. Companies Helping Egypt Restrict Its People

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Law Enforcement, True Cost

Although snuffing out dissent and cutting citizens off from the world aren't actions generally associated with the American ideal, two U.S. companies are helping the Egyptian government do just that as populist protests continue shaking the African nation.

The tear gas and smoke grenade manufacturer Combined Systems, Inc. is based out of Jamestown, Pennsylvania. But its wares have been showing up all over the Middle East as of late. On January 20, a photographer with the Eurpean PressPhoto agency was killed when a CSI tear gas canister struck him in the head at a protest in Tunisia. And throughout yesterday and today, CSI smoke bombs and tear gas have clogged the air and lungs in Cairo.

A less visible but possibly more important American-Egyptian partnership is that between the tech company Narus and the Mubarak autocracy. A subsidiary of Boeing, Narus sells hyper-complex, slightly creepy mass surveillance equipment. Its most famous creation is Narus Insight, “a supercomputer system which is allegedly used by the National Security Agency and other entities to perform mass surveillance and monitoring of public and corporate Internet communications in real time.”

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