Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2070 – Public Intelligence Blog

Feedback dynamics in climate and society

In the debate over climate change, I find myself paying more attention to authorities who highlight important positive feedback loops through which a warming atmosphere triggers increased climate change. Their troubling scenarios come not from innate pessimism but from paying attention to system dynamics.

A feedback loop is a systemic dynamic through which outputs re-enter the system, magnifying (positive feedback) or balancing (negative feedback) the conditions in the system. For a positive feedback loop, consider a wealthy person who donates to a candidate and gets legislation favorable to his business, so that he can make more money to support candidates who pass favorable legislation, etc. His investments (output) generate returns (input) which he reinvests (output) ad infinitum, steadily increasing his stock of money as he repeats this feedback process.

Feedback dynamics have a powerful impact shaping what happens next in a system. To the extent we understand the feedback dynamics, we gain insight into what will happen next in a system and, perhaps most importantly, what we might do about it.

So here are four major positive feedback dynamics impacting the rate of climate change. They involve reflective ice, methane, oil reserves, and trees, and they cause the atmosphere to continue to warm faster than we would expect if we didn't take them into account.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Feedback Dynamics in Climate and Society”

2013/01/212013/01/21

Anthony Judge: Do We Lack Direction? Does This Matter?

Cultural Intelligence

Going Nowhere through Not-knowing Where to Go

Sustaining the process of autopoiesis through point-making

Introduction
Challenges to understanding of point and identity
Point identity and identification with a point
Cognitive epicycles — prefiguring more fundamental insight?
Psychodynamics of point-making as autopoiesis
Identification with a sustaining “heliocentric” locus?
Nothingness and not-knowing
Going “nowhere”
Not-knowing “where to go” ?
References

2013/01/21

David Isenberg: Recommended Book, Mel Goodman on National Insecurity, The Cost of American Militarism

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

Recommended! Coming out 12 February 2013.

“Mel Goodman has spent the last few decades telling us what's gone wrong with American intelligence and the American military, and now, in National Insecurity, he tells us what we must do to change the way the system works, and how to fix it. Goodman is not only telling us how to save wasted billions–he is also telling us how to save ourselves.” — Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker

Upon leaving the White House in 1961, President Eisenhower famously warned Americans about the dangers of a “military industrial complex,” and was clearly worried about the destabilizing effects of a national economy based on outsized investments in military spending. As more and more Americans fall into poverty and the global economy spirals downward, the United States is spending more on the military than ever before. What are the consequences and what can be done?

Melvin A. Goodman, a twenty-four-year veteran of the CIA, brings peerless authority to his argument that US military spending is indeed making Americans poorer and less secure while undermining our political standing in the world. Drawing from his firsthand experience with war planners and intelligence strategists, Goodman offers an insider's critique of the US military economy from President's Eisenhower's farewell warning to Barack Obama's expansion of the military's power. He outlines a much needed vision for how to alter our military policy, practices, and spending in order to better position the United States globally and enhance prosperity and security at home.

Melvin A. Goodman is the Director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy. A former professor of international security at the National War College and an intelligence adviser to strategic disarmament talks in the 1970s, he is the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed The Failure of Intelligence.

See Also:

Goodman, Mel (2008), Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA (Rowman & Littlefield)

Steele, Robert (2000), ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA 2000, OSS, 2001)

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Most)

2013/01/212013/01/21

Chuck Spinney: Obama is NOT a Liberal — Peggy Noonan’s Big Idea — Break Up the Banks

Commerce, Corruption, Ethics, Government

The Legacy of Timothy Geithner

By SIMON JOHNSON

New York Times, 17 January 2013

Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and co-author of White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You.

“Too big to fail is too big to continue. The megabanks have too much power in Washington and too much weight within the financial system.” Who said this and when?

The answer is Peggy Noonan, the prominent conservative commentator, writing recently in The Wall Street Journal.

. . . . . . . .

As Ms. Noonan puts it bluntly: “People think the G.O.P. is for the bankers. The G.O.P. should upend this assumption.”

This is a significant opportunity for anyone with clear thinking on the right – someone looking for a Teddy Roosevelt trustbusting or Nixon-goes-to-China moment. Again, Ms. Noonan gets it right: “In this case good policy is good politics. If you are a conservative you’re supposed to be for just treatment of the individual over the demands of concentrated elites.”

Recall that some grass roots conservatives are already there: House Republicans initially voted down TARP, the former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman’s plan to end too big to fail received widespread applause from many Republicans and a number of influential commentators, including George Will and Ms. Noonan, have advocated ending too big to fail.

This would play well in the Republican presidential primaries – and even better in the general election. Watch PBS “Frontline” on Jan. 22 for an articulate presentation of why serious potential financial crimes were not prosecuted during the first Obama administration, and think about how to turn these facts into political messages.

A smart candidate could even mobilize plenty of financial-sector support in favor of breaking up or otherwise restricting the too-big-to-fail financial entities. The megabanks have very few genuine friends.

The lasting legacy of Timothy Geithner is to create the perfect electoral issue for Republicans. Will they seize it?

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Obama is NOT a Liberal — Peggy Noonan's Big Idea — Break Up the Banks”

2013/01/212013/01/21

Eagle: Heal America, Tax Wall Street 1%

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Ethics, Government

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

1% Wall Street sales tax solution to stablize US federal budget: This would work!!

In the midst of the current haggling over the US federal budget, the main fact is being ignored: the fiscal shortfall of the US government over decades is largely due to Wall Street’s rigging of the tax code so that the main money center banks pay little or nothing in the way of taxes.

Like the haughty nobility in France before the Revolution of 1789, the Wall Street banks are practically exempt from taxation, and the burden of paying for the government is shifted to the middle class. Anybody who is serious about reducing the power of Wall Street bankers in US politics must now mobilize to educate public opinion about the situation and its main remedy – the 1% Wall Street Sales Tax.

Read full post.

United Front Against Austerity

Nationalize the Federal Reserve

1% Wall Stree Staff
0% Interest for Infrastructure and Production
Public Control of Money and Credit
Stop Predatory Financial Speculation

Webster Tarpley: Political Report to the United Front Against Austerity

See Also:

We the People Reform Coalition

2013/01/212013/01/21

Owl: Autonomous Internet with Pirate Box

Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Software

Set Up Your Own Mini-Internet for Free with Pirate Box

The PirateBox is software that can be used to turn your WiFi enabled computer into a local router. It can also be used to make actual “PirateBoxes,” which are stand-alone devices that likewise create a local network. The advantage of a local network, not connected to the Internet, is that you can file share and communicate your way around the draconian restrictions and regulations being increasingly put into place on the Internet.

Tutorial: The PirateBox and Internet Freedom

Other projects similar to PirateBox: Aram Bartholl’s fantastic Dead Drops. Also visit Jason Griffey’s PirateBox fork LibraryBox.

Pirate Box software download via torrent

2013/01/212013/01/21

Marcus Aurelius: Downsizing Congress

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Below is an email circulating among retired military officers:

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers must find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well.

Wall street and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of “tough decision”.

Our government should not be immune from similar risks.

Therefore:

Reduce the House of Representatives from the current435 members to 218members.
Reduce Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Then, reduce their remaining staff by 25%.

Accomplish this over the next 8 years (two steps/two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.

Some Yearly Monetary Gains Include:

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Downsizing Congress”