Ethics – Page 294 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/02/012011/02/01

Americans Admire Military Personnel While Being Unaware & Uninterested in What They Do “In Our Name”

02 Diplomacy, 04 Education, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Media, Military, Policy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Troops Die Because of Their Country, Not For It

US admiration for its soldiers may be deep and widespread, but interest in what they are doing is shallow and fleeting

by Gary Younge
Published on Monday, January 31, 2011 by The Guardian

Most of the stories told about Benjamin Moore, 23, at his funeral started in a bar and ended in a laugh. Invited to testify about his life from the pews, friend, relative, colleague and neighbour alike described a boisterous, gregarious, energetic young man they'd known in the small New Jersey town of Bordentown since he was born. “I'll love him 'til I go,” his granny said. “If I could go today and bring him back, I would.”

Grown men choked on their memories, under the gaze of swollen, reddened eyes, as they remembered a “snot-nosed kid” and a fidget who'd become a volunteer firefighter before enlisting in the military. Shortly before Benjamin left for Afghanistan, he sent a message to his cousin that began: “I'm about to go into another country where they hate me for everything I stand for.” Now he was back in a flag-draped box, killed by roadside bomb with two other soldiers in Ghazni province.

Continue reading “Americans Admire Military Personnel While Being Unaware & Uninterested in What They Do “In Our Name””

2011/02/012011/02/01

Highlights on the Democracy Front

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Officers Call

Dear friends,

There is need for bright news on the democracy front — and, luckily, there is some. (I'm also working to create some in the background, but I've got nothing to announce yet. Cross your fingers.) So I thought I'd share a bit of it the good stuff I've seen.

The first article is an announcement that the Vermont legislature is planning to become the first state to ban corporate personhood statewide. This is a move in the right direction to balance social power — a topic specifically addressed by the most popular article on the Co-Intelligence Institute website, “Democracy: A Social Power Analysis“, written by my father, John Atlee. (Perhaps you'll get a sense of how my upbringing influenced my choice of career when you read it.)

Vermont Is Gearing Up to Strike a Major Blow to Corporate Personhood, Ban It Statewide

AlterNet by Christopher KetchamJanuary 22, 2011

The second article below is an interview with Frances Moore Lappé, one of my early mentors (see “Living Democracy“) exploring themes in her new book GET A GRIP 2. She invites us to both work wholeheartedly on the issues that concern us AND to work on changing the systems (such as money's influence in politics) that create the problems we are trying to solve.

Continue reading “Highlights on the Democracy Front”

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
Continue reading “Video: Jesse Ventura Rips Wall St & Goldman Sachs”

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.

Continue reading “Food speculation: ‘People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food'”

2011/01/312011/01/31

End of Hegemony, Deceit, & Despots

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Analysis: The US moral conundrum in Egypt

(AP) – 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — As with Iran 30 years ago, American leaders again are wrestling with the moral conflict between Washington's demands for democracy among its friends and strategic coziness with dictatorial regimes seen as key to stability in an increasingly complex world, particularly the Middle East.

The turmoil in Egypt — and its potential for grave consequences for U.S. policy throughout the region — was inevitable. The recent WikiLeaks release of U.S. diplomatic reports showed that Washington knew what problems it increasingly faced with the regime of President Hosni Mubarak and his three decades of iron-fisted rule.

Read article and view five photos….

Phi Beta Iota: For decades we have been citing Will and Ariel Durant, who state in Lessons of History that morality is a priceless strategic asset. Max Manwaring et al nailed it in The Search for Security, identifying legitimacy as the sole basis for stable effective governance. Ambassador Max Palmer nailed it in Breaking the Real Axis of Evil, addressing the fact that the US Government has consistently chosen to support 42 of 44 dictators over the public interest. To the best of our knowledge this is the only website that has consistently stated that morality, legitimacy, and integrity are the essential foundation for a prosperous world at peace.

1. The US Government has no strategy and no standing. Obama and Clinton are puffery without a clue. What has been done in this region and “in our name” has been a Web of Deceit and a Legacy of Ashes. Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.

2. Israel has lost all credibility as well as all practical power–Turkey and the publics will do to Israel what Gandhi did to the British. Israeli genocide (and Arab dictator neglect) of the Palestinians will stand as the modern Holocaust.

3. Saudi Arabia, not Jordan, should be the next regime to fall and fall hard. There are 60,000 “royal” perverts and thieves there that need to be exorcised, exiled or executed. Jordan is on the edge of the razor–our Queen Noor's Leap of Faith is central to the possibilities.

This is going to take a quarter century to play out. A fine beginning.

Marginalization Not Al Quada the Real Atrocity

Women of Washingtonian–The Lunacy Continues

Below the line: one paragraph from selected reviews, other book review links.

Continue reading “End of Hegemony, Deceit, & Despots”

2011/01/302011/10/22

Assisi, Egypt, US Hypocrisy, Global Revolution

About the Idea, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Autonomous Internet, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Key Players, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Mobile, Officers Call, Open Government, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Threats, Waste (materials, food, etc)

This is the one link to share if you wish to have a consolidated view on these topics. The Tiny URL for this consolidated posting is http://www.tinyurl.com/Assisi-Egypt-USA.

Phi Beta Iota: Egypt is a lever for the Assisi Peace Summit.

1) Against dictators and corruption, inter-faith dialog and coordinated action is HAPPENING.

2) The connected young are the antidote to radical violent Islamic fundamentalism.

3) Muslim demographics must be understood by all Catholics and Protestants

4) The Church can be a central force for Open Spectrum, Open Source Software, Open Source Intelligence, and Open Society–imagine, in a revolution, all churches and mosques as sources of wireless solar and wind-powered information that cannot be shut down, that collaborate to avoid inter-faith violence and promote non-violent “presence” in the streets to overturn the 44 dictators and demand the withdrawal of all foreign military forces….

5) Revolutions are no longer national–the diasphoras matter–the global presence of the Church matters from local to national.

6) The hypocrisy of the USA is now fully revealed–Barack Obama made 500 promises to the American people he has not fulfilled, and he dares to suggest to anyone that they honor their promises? It is time for the Church to recognize that the people are the sovereign power, not governments, and that the Church can profit much more from a free people creating wealth than from absolving corruption by governments and corporations and crime families.

7) Liberation Theology is back–it must be elevated by the Most Holy Father NOW.

2012 is not the year of apocalypse, it is the year of awakening when the meek inherit the earth. The time between now and Assisi and from Assisi on is strategically priceless, in our collective view.

Below the line:

On Assisi Peace Summit and Inter-Faith Intelligence (7 Links)

On Egypt as Awakening (14 Links)

On Revolution in & Hypocrisy of USA (10 Links)

Direct to the Core Revolution References (8 Links)

Continue reading “Assisi, Egypt, US Hypocrisy, Global Revolution”

2011/01/302011/01/30

EGYPT: China Concerned, USA Clueless

08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Mobile, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Real Time, Threats

CHINA has blocked the word “Egypt” from the country's wildly popular
Twitter-like service, while coverage of the political turmoil has been
tightly restricted in state media.

China's ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any potential source of
social unrest.

A search for “Egypt” on the Sina microblogging service brings up a
message saying, “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the
search results are not shown.”

Read full article….

Throughout the week, as the crisis gathered storm in Egypt, the
administration had otherwise been slow to react, seemingly always one step
behind events. This was partly because neither the U.S. intelligence
community nor diplomats on the ground foresaw how swiftly the protests in
Egypt would gather momentum—even if everyone realized that virtually the
entire Arab world is a tinder box of pent-up frustration, with despotic
regimes unable to meet the needs of, especially, their youth.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: Advanced Cyber/Information Operations are primarily about being in close touch with reality inclusive of history and culture as well as a full range of future holistic projections firmly grounded in a mature concept of intelligence that fully integrates “true cost” information for every service, product, and policy, and clearly appreciate the value of the human factor. Cyber-security is largly a scam (think back to the Y2K scare), and to the extent that cyber-security vaporware reduces the commander's attention to substance (intelligence), it is a cancer.