Communities of Practice – Page 1070 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/11/05

John Robb: Greece, MF Global, & Crony Capitalism

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

JOURNAL: Greece, MF Global and Crony Capitalism

The slow motion bankruptcy of MF global and Greece should prove we're still on the brink of an economic meltdown that will likely result in a global depression. Why? These events demonstate how the global economy, like the Communist system before it, is run by a small group of central planners (that allocate the world's collective capital). These planners:

Make lots of VERY bad decisions. Wall Street and EU planners routinely attempt to sink the entire economic and financial system with excessive leverage and risk. These systemic threats have become so commonplace now, it's nearly inevitable that one will cause a major collapse.
Become morally and ethically depraved. They operate on a continuous stream of fraud and lies. Too many instances to count. These planners are unencumbered by ethical or cultural norms. They actually believe these rules are below them. In reality, by doing so, these planners are eviscerating their own decision making (i.e. in terms of an OODA loop, they aren't orienting themselves to the deep/rich cultural experience these rules represent).
Completely arrogant and unapologetic. They are never wrong. Nobody could have foreseen it. It's a one in 10,000 year event.

Of course, this situation will persist until it doesn't. At that point, we'll be in for a long rebuilding process.

2011/11/05

Chuck Spinney: William Pfaff on USA Gone Awry

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Good summary of the American sickness.

One Nation, Gone Awry

William Pfaff – truthdig – 02/11/11

The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think. This concerns two matters at the core of the present American political crisis.

The first is that control over the government has passed all but completely into the hands of business corporations. The country has become a plutocracy. This has occurred because corporations are the principal supplier of funds essential to the election of federal officials—the president and the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and through them, the members of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, all of whom are nominated and confirmed by the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches of the government.

. . . . . . .

I spoke of a second source of American crisis to which there is a simple solution, an intellectual solution, which to impose would require conversion of the hard hearts and biased minds of a sizable part of the international economic community (at least that part of it educated at the University of Chicago since the Second World War), as well as a near-revolutionary change in how the American government presently functions (see above). The crisis is easily described as the 1 percent problem. One percent of the American population receives income equivalent to the other 99 percent put together.

This is caused by the consensus decision of the economists and business schools to define profit as the sole criterion of corporation efficiency and public (and civic) worth. The automatic consequence of this has been the de-industrialization of the United States, the export of its manufacturing capacity, unemployment in the U.S. comparable to that of the Great Depression, poverty levels with no modern American precedent, and the moral corruption of American politics.

Read full article.

2011/11/04

Matt Taibbi: Bloomberg’s Marie Antoinette Moment

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

Mike Bloomberg's Marie Antoinette Moment

Rolling Stone, November 3, 11:00 AM ET

Last year I had a chance to see New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg up close at the Huffington Post’s “Game Changers” even t. I was standing right behind the guy when he was introduced by Nora Ephron, and watched as the would-be third party powerhouse wowed the liberal crowd with one zinger after another.

Includes short video.

EXTRACT:

The whole game was based on one new innovation: the derivative instruments like CDOs that allowed them to take junk-rated home loans and turn them into AAA-rated instruments. It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money.

Read full skewering of Mike Bloomberg.

Matt Taibbi: The Real Housewives Of Wall Street–How Morgan Stanley Wives Christy Mack & Susan Karches Ripped Off Taxpayers In Geithner-Bernanke Bailout Scheme

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? + US Fraud RECAP

2011/11/042011/11/04

Mini-Me: Doug Naquin Lies to Associated Press + RECAP

Corruption, Government

Open Source Center created at suggestion of the 9/11 Commission? Really?

AP Exclusive: Who’s following you on Twitter or Facebook? Maybe CIA’s ‘vengeful librarians’

By Associated Press, Friday, November 4

Phi Beta Iota: Evidently AP does not do its homework and takes Doug Naquin's crap at face value. The Open Source Center was not created at the suggestion of the 9/11 Commission, which called for a new agency completely independent of CIA, and is in fact being considered by one Senator and OMB as this is written, but under diplomatic auspices. The Open Source Center (OSC) is a bastardized down-graded mis-directed and under-funded morphing of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), a once great service (in WWII) that was destroyed by nit-wits sent into exile from more productive parts of the CIA. Naquin cannot do citation analysis, manage multinational information-sharing, or even find gray literature in more than eleven languages. He is, in a word, incompetent. But then so is Associated Press, in this instance, so they deserve one another. Neither is making a difference.

2011/11/04

Chuck Spinney: Matt Ridley on Why Heresy is Important

Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Politics of Science & Science of Politics

The below link goes to Matt Ridley's excellent lecture analyzing the importance of heresy in science; and by extension, the danger to science posed by an Authority that dictates what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. The oppression of authority is a subject Galileo learned to his chagrin, and a central theme of Jacob Bronoski's brilliant Ascent of Man, in my opinion, the finest television series ever produced. (Bronoski's subject was the growth of knowledge and its central role in the cultural evolution of mankind. To appreciate the squandered potential of television and the mass media, one need only to watch Bronoski's series of programs.)

Ridley gave the Angus Millar Lecture of the Royal Society of the Arts in Edinburgh a few days ago 31 October 2011. Ridley is trained in evolutionary biology — he has a PhD in Zoology from Oxford. His libertarian philosophy makes him controversial in some quarters, but he one of the best science writers out there, particularly on the subject of evolution. Like Darwin, he thinks and writes from the point view of the bottom-up empiricist (which is my favorite point of view).

Ridley's specific subject is pseudo-science: its temptations, its fallacies, and its dangers: his case study is the theory of anthropogenic global warming–a theme about which he says: “When a study was published recently saying that 98% of scientists ‘believe’ in global warming, I looked at the questions they had been asked and realized I was in the 98%, too, by that definition, though I never use the word ‘believe’ about myself.”

Chuck Spinney
Alexandria, Virginia

Below the Line: PDF Link and Also Full Text Online

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Matt Ridley on Why Heresy is Important”

2011/11/04

NIGHTWATCH: Asian Naval Developments

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy

Japan-India: Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony and Japanese Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa agreed to hold their first bilateral naval exercises in 2012, according to Japanese Defense Ministry officials.

Ichikawa said deepening bilateral defense ties between Tokyo and New Delhi will lead to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Antony said India's relations with Japan remain a priority and New Delhi seeks to strengthen those ties. Both ministers discussed the importance of the international community in protecting sea lanes, specifically discussing the South China Sea.

Comment: For India, this is the next step in its “Look East” policy. Similar ties and exercises with the South Korean Navy also are likely. Eventually, the combined fleets of India, South Korea and Japan, supported by Taiwan and the US, will be arrayed against China in future conflicts. The Asian states do not perceive containment of China as primarily a US leadership task. That is an important lesson and manifests the success of a half century of US policy.

The Chinese, on the other hand, are reaping what they have sowed in the past twenty years by their aggressive assertiveness in northeast Asia, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Chinese actions have nurtured an extraordinary and unprecedented regional reaction that is moving towards a new regional military cooperative structure, linking the fleets of the Asian democracies.

The most important features of this interlocking set of bilateral ties are that the Asian members are equals and the Asians are taking responsibility for Asian security affairs, without relying on the US Navy. US Navy connections with all the parties constitute a second tier of linkage that resides in background and gives the Asians depth and strength.

A third feature is that for the first time in a millennium and a half, the Asian navies are defying China and are actually much more capable than the Chinese navy, without relying on the forces of nature.

The worst thing that could happen is for the US to try to take charge or steer the development or do anything except enable it, behind the scenes. US estimates of Asian security threats that do not factor Asian capabilities that the US has nurtured are incomplete.

The NightWatch bias is that Asian nations know best how to solve Asian problems, with some US support as requested. The Asians will find a way.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: The above good sense is in sharp contrast to the on-going US Navy attempt, aided by a defense policy mafia that blends ignorance and corruption to an astonishing degree, to invest dollars and capabilities we do not have in making the Pacific the “main front” for the future. There is nothing intelligent about how the US Navy is planning for the future, in large part because the US Navy, like the US Government generally, lacks integrity at the leadership / gerbil maximus levels.

2011/11/03

Mini-Me: OccupyParty.org Bloomberg Act III?

Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency

NO LABELS was laughed out of existence.

America Elects was scorned into oblivion.

Is this false flag “Tea Party of the Left” a Trojan Horse, a blatant dishonorable attempt to misdirect the energy of the Occupy movement?

Note the absence of contact information, a sure sign that this is funded by friends of Wall Street.

OccupyParty.org

Phi Beta Iota: This is lame, phoney, and the photo is so obviously Madison Avenue stupid that we expect this web site to self-destruct within weeks. Tea Party of the Left? The level of idiocy within the “Save the Two-Party Tyranny” gang is higher than ever.