Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2682 – Public Intelligence Blog

VIEWPOINT #1: Gabby Giffords, a tragic prophet
Washington Post, By E.J. Dionne Jr. Monday, January 10, 2011

There is one commentator whose words should enlighten us on the meaning of Saturday's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the savage murders that took the lives of, among others, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. The person is Giffords herself.

Read balance of Viewpoint #1…

VIEWPOINT #2: The charlatans' response to the Tucson tragedy
Washington Post, By George F. Will, Tuesday, January 11, 2011

It would be merciful if, when tragedies such as Tucson's occur, there were a moratorium on sociology. But respites from half-baked explanations, often serving political opportunism, are impossible because of a timeless human craving and a characteristic of many modern minds.

Read balance of Viewpoint #2…

Phi Beta Iota: Most may be missing an important point regarding on the Arizona shooting. We completely agree that the individual shooter in question was probably set off by the cross-hairs rhetoric, but what we think has been absent in the range of responses to the tragedy in Tucson is the divorce of the two-party system from reality and from the majority of the people. The bailing out of Wall Street with its ten million dollar bonuses, the tens of millions foreclosed and evicted, the 6-12 million long-term unemployed, the 22% current unemployment rate, NONE OF this, from our vantage, is being dealt with responsibly by the government.

The people are not stupid. Putting a banker in charge of Obama's time and what he sees at the White House is to some a last straw and makes clear what Robert Steele wrote in his quick book, ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, i.e. President Obama and Congress are far, far too dependent on money and lobbyists and many feel a pox on both their houses.

Sadly, many Americans on both sides of the aisle believe that this is no longer a Republic. The government is busy federalizing state and local police and preparing for the worst. What the government does not realize is that the worst is when our children start speaking of emigrating to Canada or Denmark because they have better governments. That breaks our collective heart. Our government, across the board, has lost a great deal of its integrity. Gandhi had it right on truth and non-violence, but we are coming off so many decades of really ignoring the people, especially the common people and those who are poor or now always struggling to make ends meet, that we should fear for the worst.

Continue reading “TRUTH: Another Way of Looking at the Shooting”

2011/01/112011/02/21

Reference: Network Neutrality…Why Not…+ RECAP

Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Autonomous Internet, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Earth Intelligence, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Mobile, Open Government, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Standards, Strategy, Threats

A note about “network neutrality”

by jonl on January 10, 2011

This is something I posted in the “state of the world” conversation with Bruce Sterling on the WELL…

I give talks on the history and future of media, and on the history, evolution, and history of the Internet. I gave the talk this week to a small group gathered for lunch in a coworking space here in Austin, and after hearing the talk a technologist I know, Gray Abbott, suggested that I say more about the coming balkanization of the network as the most likely scenario. The Internet is a network of networks that depends on cooperative peering agreements – I carry your traffic and you carry mine. The high speed Internet is increasingly dependent on the networks of big providers, the telcos or cable companies like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Time Warner, and Comcast. They all see the substantial value supported by their networks and want to extract more of it for themselves. They talk about the high cost of bandwidth as a rationale for charging more for services – or metering services – but I think the real issue is value. When you see Google and Facebook and Netflix making bundles of money using your pipes, you want a cut. And if you’ve also tried to get into the business of providing content, it’s bothersome to see your network carrying other competing content services, including guerilla media distribution via BitTorrent.

Continue reading “Reference: Network Neutrality…Why Not…+ RECAP”

2011/01/112011/01/11

US Loses Face & Standing with China & Pakistan

02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Policy, Strategy, Threats

NIGHTWATCH Extract China-US: Special comment. International news services broadcast video and translations of Chinese Minister of Defense Liang insulting and hectoring the US, represented by the Secretary of Defense. The Chinese tasked Secretary Gates to defend and to explain to the Chinese why the US sells weapons to Taiwan and conducts naval training in the Yellow Sea. China demanded they stop. Instead of rejecting the Chinese demands and leaving, Gates tried to defend what needs not defense in Asia – US national policy.

A couple of points are worth noting. The tongue lashing Gates endured at a Singapore conference last year by a Chinese general clearly was no accident. That insult focused on the same issues as the latest. Gates should have walked out of the Singapore meeting last year and should have walked out of today's session. It remains unclear what the US hoped to gain that merited humiliation.

China is not ready to be a cooperative partner in international security affairs as some analysts contend; resents and resists the tutelage or guidance that some analysts think the US must offer; and has no intention of becoming more open in response to US requests if only because the US wants it so badly.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: See our Memorandum on Chinese Irregular Warfare. The US Government has hit bottom in terms of lacking legitimacy at home and credibility abroad. Ideology is not a substitute for intelligence, and civility is not a substitute for cultural understanding.

US bends to Pakistan's wish

By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times Online

The unscheduled visit by United States Vice President Joe Biden to Islamabad this week underscores Washington's embarrassment and anxiety that it stands excluded from a regional initiative on Afghan peace process that could be about to take off. The rapid sequence of events over the past fortnight has taken Washington by surprise.

Read entire analysis of role played by Turkey, Russia, and Iran…

DefDog Comment: Most insurgencies last past 10 years it almost always requires a political settlement….thus we are seeing what could have been accomplished at the beginning by understanding the Pashtun and sitting down, Jirga style, and asking for UBL, who was granted sanctuary under the Pasthun Honor Code, Pasthunwali…..no cultural understanding has resulted in a 10 year waste…

Phi Beta Iota: The US Government is suffering from multiple disconnects–from its public, from reality, from strategic analytics, from cultural intelligence–from ANY intelligence relevant to all challenges at all levels–and finally, from integrity. Integrity is what allows well-intentioned people to cope with ambiguity. When they give up their integrity, they yield the field to those with political, ideological, and financial ambitions, and the public interest suffers–as does the welfare of our Armed Forces in harm's way.

2011/01/112011/01/11

Reference: Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2011(fed gov’s best-selling reference book)

04 Education, 11 Society, Civil Society, Fact Sheets, Geospatial, Government, References, Research resources

go directly to the publication

Did you know that Raleigh, N.C. had the highest rate of population growth in the last decade of any large metropolitan area?

Metropolitan population growth is just one of more than a thousand topics addressed in the U.S. Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2011. The Abstract is perennially the federal government's best-selling reference book. When it was first published in 1878, the nation had only 38 states, people usually got around using a horse and buggy, Miami and Las Vegas did not yet exist, and Franklin D. Roosevelt had yet to be born. The Abstract has been published nearly every year since then.

Contained in the 130th edition are 1,407 tables of social, political and economic facts that collectively describe the state of our nation and the world. Included this year are 65 new tables, covering topics such as insufficient rest or sleep, nursing home occupancy, homeschooling, earthquakes, U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions, organic farmland, honey bee colonies, crashes involving distracted drivers and cities with the highest transit savings.

The statistics come not only from the Census Bureau but also from other governmental agencies and private organizations. The data generally represent the most recent year or period available by summer 2010. Most are national-level data, but some tables present state- and even city- and metropolitan-level data as well.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

+ Thanks to those posting to the ResourceShelf Twitter feed

2011/01/102011/01/10

Event (web): 11 Jan – Google, CERN (Euro nuclear research org), LEGO, Nat Geographic & Sci American Holding a Global, Web-Based Science Fair

04 Education, Academia, Civil Society, Commerce

On January 11 at 9 a.m. EST, Google will host a live event on its brand new Science Fair YouTube Channel. More details about the fair will be announced then; we’re assuming the site will be fleshed out at that time, as well.

The global science competition is being hosted in partnership with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), LEGO, National Geographic and Scientific American. The goal is “to create a new kind of online science competition that is more global, open and inclusive than ever before.”

Teachers who want to receive classroom materials, including posters, stickers and bookmarks, as well as get registration information, can start signing up now.

Thanks to those posting to Mashable's Twitter feed (source article).

2011/01/102011/01/11

More Bank Equity Is Needed and Not Socially Costly

03 Economy, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policy

Much More Bank Equity Is Needed
and Is Not Socially Costly

Text of Letter Published in Financial Times

November 9, 2010

The Basel III bank-regulation proposals that G20 leaders will discuss fail to eliminate key structural flaws in the current system. Banks’ high leverage, and the resulting fragility and systemic risk, contributed to the near collapse of the financial system. Basel III is far from sufficient to protect the system from recurring crises. If a much larger fraction, at least 15%, of banks’ total, non-risk-weighted, assets were funded by equity, the social benefits would be substantial. And the social costs would be minimal, if any.

Some claim that requiring more equity lowers the banks’ return on equity and increases their overall funding costs. This claim reflects a basic fallacy. Using more equity changes how risk and reward are divided between equity holders and debt holders, but does not by itself affect funding costs.

Tax codes that provide advantages to debt financing over equity encourage banks to borrow too much. It is paradoxical to subsidize debt that generates systemic risk and then regulate to try to limit debt. Debt and equity should at least compete on even terms.

Proposals to impose a bank tax to pay for guarantees are problematic. High leverage encourages excessive risk taking and any guarantees exacerbate this problem. If banks use significantly more equity funding, there will be less risk taking at the expense of creditors or governments.

Debt that converts to equity, so-called “contingent capital,” is complex to design and tricky to implement. Increasing equity requirements is simpler and more effective.

Continue reading “More Bank Equity Is Needed and Not Socially Costly”

2011/01/102011/01/10

US$2 Trillion debt crisis threatens 100 US cities

01 Poverty, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Phi Beta Iota: The existence of double sets of books is now coming to light. As best we can tell from various public discussions, the operating budgets are deliberately in the red and used to borrow money, at the same time that out-sourced services and “asset rents” are in the black. We honestly do not know what the true situation is, but we do know that the amount of falsehood and fraud in the “system” is deep.

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Overdrawn American cities could face financial collapse in 2011, defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowings and derailing the US economic recovery. Nor are European cities safe – Florence, Barcelona, Madrid, Venice: all are in trouble

Elena Moya, guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 December 2010

More than 100 American cities could go bust next year as the debt crisis that has taken down banks and countries threatens next to spark a municipal meltdown, a leading analyst has warned.

Continue reading “US$2 Trillion debt crisis threatens 100 US cities”