Journal: Weak Signals–Triple Crash?

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players

George Green's Home Page
George Green's Home Page

Phi Beta Iota: Reprinted in full to allow emphasis and easier reading.  Original source at logo, “as is.”  Recommended by our physical gold colleagues.

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Several financial events this week indicate something big is about to happen, something that may make the 2008 credit crisis seem rather benign.  First, the IMF announced that it is liquidating its gold holdings, the world's 3rd largest stash after the US and Germany.  Buyers included the governments of India, Sri Lanka and Mauritius.  Do you think the IMF would be selling gold at a market bottom?  Bubble #1 about to burst- Gold.

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Journal: Why they hate us (II): How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Academia, Civil Society, Ethics, Government, Military
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday's New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is “the Narrative” — his patronizing term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region.

Steve Walt
Steve Walt

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I heard a different take on this subject at a recent conference on U.S. relations with the Islamic world. In addition to hearing a diverse set of views from different Islamic countries, one of the other participants (a prominent English journalist) put it quite simply. “If the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world,” he said, “it should stop killing Muslims.”

Phi Beta Iota: The chart is below the fold, or at the Full Story Online

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Journal: ClimateGate Ideology, Theology, Science

03 Environmental Degradation, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, Key Players, Methods & Process

Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Chuck Spinney Sends: Viewed at the level of epistemology, the distinction be the search for truth in science and religion is stark:
In science the structure of the world view — i.e., the brain's interior model of reality — is evolved to match observations taken from the external world, whereas in religion, observations are evolved to match a fixed world view inserted into the brain by some kind of deity.
Miracles (anomalies that defy the model's definition of reality) might be explained by or at least rationalized within an unquestionable dogma of a religious model, whereas such anomalies in science trigger a search for tests that falsify the model.   In terms of this typology, the recent scandal involving hacked emails of the UK's Climate Research Center at the University of East Anglia raises a basic question of whether global warming theory is being shaped by a predominantly scientific or religious mindset.

Journal: Vermont Commons, Secession, & Collapse

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Reform
Vermont Commons Home Page
Vermont Commons Home Page

Secession is Constitutional, Abraham Lincoln's unconstitutional pillaging and looting of the South not-with-standing.   Few are sufficiently educated to actually know that Lincoln did not free the slaves of the north and west and did not have the Constitutional authority to suspend habeas corpus, conscript men of the north, borrow money to wage war on peacefully seceeeding members of the Union of STATES that voluntarily entered a compact, or to occupy the south by force of arms for twelve years.  In Canada the Supreme Court has found for Quebec on the matter of secession, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories are both acutely aware of the options they have.  Further North Greenland has declared independence from Denmark.  Alaska remains a wild card–Sarah Palin could have been President of the North, but got sucked into the ideological maelstrom of an imploding Republican Party.  All that by way to introduction to the Vermont Commons.  Maine and Vermont are two of the states most likely to actually seceed from the Union if the US Government does not heal itself fairly soon.  The only way to preserve the Union going into the next decade is to rapidly restore the legitimacy and efficacy of governance–this can only be done by getting a grip on reality and devising policies, programs, and budgets in harmony with reality.

Below are some Reviews that bear on the above subject.

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Journal: Whaling Intercept Boat

03 Environmental Degradation, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Real Time
Whaling Intercept Boat
Whaling Intercept Boat

Los Angeles, CA- At a fundraising event in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 17th, 2009, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society unveiled their newest ocean defense vessel: the Ady Gil. The vessel, previously known as the Earthrace, is a fast, futuristic looking trimaran that recently set the world record for global circumnavigation. The vessel renaming reflects the ship’s benefactor, Ady Gil, who helped acquire the vessel.

Sea Shepherd is currently preparing for it’s 6th Whale Defense Campaign Operation Waltzing Matilda. The campaign will launch from Australia in early December with Sea Shepherd’s flagship Steve Irwin, which will be accompanied to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary by the new Ady Gil. Together, the ships and the volunteer crew will intervene in illegal Japanese whaling in Antarctica.

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Journal: Climate battle bill to top $300 billion–Guyana

Analysis, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Policies, Threats
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

PORT OF SPAIN — The true cost of fighting climate change will top 300 billion dollars and developed countries may balk at footing the bill, Guyana's Prime Minister Bharrat Jagdeo said Saturday.

Leading economists have calculated that “the cost of action and mitigation would be about one percent of the global economy,” he told journalists. “This is one percent of the GDP of a 30-trillion-dollar global economy,” he estimated.

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Reference: Are Hackers Pioneers with the Right Stuff or Criminal Pathological Scum? Mitch Kabay Reprises

03 Economy, 04 Education, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, ICT-IT, InfoOps (IO), Law Enforcement, Media Reports, Methods & Process, Mobile, Real Time, Technologies

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Why Criminal Hackers Must Not Be Rewarded
Part 1: The Fruit of the Poisoned Tree

By M. E. Kabay, 11/30/2009

In 1995, I participated in a debate with distinguished security expert Robert D. Steele, a vigorous proponent of open-source intelligence. We discussed the advisability of hiring criminal hackers. Perhaps readers will find the polemic I published back then of interest today. I’m sure it will provoke vitriolic comments from the criminal hacker community.

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