Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Reference (2009): Integrity–Without it Nothing Works

Articles & Chapters, Ethics, True Cost
Download (Top) Six Pages
Download (Top) Six Pages

Michael C. Jensen; Harvard Business School; Social Science Electronic Publishing (SSEP), Inc.  November 29, 2009; Rotman Magazine: The Magazine of the Rotman School of Management, pp. 16-20, Fall 2009  Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 10-042; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 09-04

Abstract: This paper is an interview of Michael Jensen by Karen Christensen on the topic of integrity.  There is confusion between integrity, morality and ethics. In our much longer paper on the topic (see “Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality” (available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=920625)) my co-authors, Werner Erhard and Steve Zaffron, distinguish integrity, from morality and ethics in the following way. Integrity in our model is honoring your word. As such integrity is a purely positive phenomenon. It has nothing to do with good vs. bad, right vs. wrong behavior. Like the law of gravity the law of integrity just is, and if you violate the law of integrity as we define it you get hurt just as if you try to violate the law of gravity with no safety device. The personal and organizational benefits of honoring one's word are huge — both for individuals and for organizations — and generally unappreciated.

Keywords: Values, Integrity, Morality, Ethics

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Phi Beta Iota: INTEGRITY is our core word.

See Especially:

Reference: Integrity–Without it Nothing Works II

Reference: Integrity–Without It Nothing Works III

See Also:

2014: Year One for Intelligence with Integrity

Integrity @ Phi Beta Iota

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Journal: Anthropology 101–Not Being Listened To

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Policies, Threats
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

To Beat Al Qaeda, Look to the East

By SCOTT ATRAN   December 13, 2009

Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, John Jay College and the University of Michigan, is the author of the forthcoming ‘Listen to the Devil.'

Confidence is important, but we also have to recognize that the decision to commit 30,000 more troops to a counterinsurgency effort against a good segment of the Afghan population, with the focus on converting a deeply unpopular and corrupt regime into a unified, centralized state for the first time in that country's history, is far from a slam dunk. In the worst case, the surge may push General McChrystal's ”core goal of defeating Al Qaeda” further away.

What binds these groups together? First is friendship forged through fighting: the Indonesian volunteers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan styled themselves the Afghan Alumni, and many kept in contact when they returned home after the war. The second is school ties and discipleship: many leading operatives in Southeast Asia come from a handful of religious schools affiliated with Jemaah Islamiyah. Out of some 30,000 religious schools in Indonesia, only about 50 have a deadly legacy of producing violent extremists. Third is family ties; as anyone who has watched the opening scene from ”The Godfather” knows, weddings can be terrific opportunities for networking and plotting.

Understanding these three aspects of terrorist networking has given law enforcement a leg up on the jihadists.

. . . . . . .

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Journal: Legalizing Insurance Theft–Health Care Scam

07 Health
Chuck Spinney

I got this from a friend who works on budget issues in Congress, and he/she assured me the reasons are accurate — that is all I know, but if true, this list would explain why insurance stock just rose to all time highs.

Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill

  1. 1.  Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations — whether you want to or not.
  2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you'll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.
  3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can't afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums.
  4. Massive restriction on a woman's right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.
  5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays.
  6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won't see any benefits — like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions — until 2014 when the program begins.
  7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.
  8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
  9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years.
  10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year — meaning in 10 years, your family's insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

Background information on each point:

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Journal: TSA Clears Illegal Immigrants To Work At NY Airport–Accepts False ID’s, Grants “Trusted Agent” Full Access

10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Full Story Online

In the latest of many shameful lapses, the federal agency in charge of securing the nation’s transportation system approved background checks for a dozen illegal immigrants working in sensitive areas of a busy U.S. airport.

The illegal aliens, from Central America and Mexico, worked in operational areas of Stewart International Airport, a 2,400-acre facility located about 60 miles north of New York City. Stewart is a major passenger airport for the state’s mid-Hudson region that also handles large quantities of cargo and serves as a military field.

The illegal aliens all had security badges approved by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the agency created after the 2001 terrorist attacks mainly to protect airlines. The TSA’s national background check failed to detect the fake Social Security numbers and other bogus documents provided by the illegal immigrants to obtain clearance.

So the embattled 43,000-member Homeland Security agency, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars from Congress to fulfill its mission, granted the undocumented aliens “trusted agent” security badges.
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Journal: ClimateGate 22 December 2009 Evening

Earth Intelligence
ClimateGate Rolling Update

Carbon Trading Scam In Big Trouble After Copenhagen Failure

Green billionaires take a hit as markets nosedive

Green Scam Rocked Slightly

Global warming con men hoping to bag windfall profits from the climate change scam are wincing today after carbon trading markets nose dived following the failure at Copenhagen to secure legally binding targets on restricting CO2 emissions.

Green energy scheme ‘a fraud'

As criticism of the emissions trading scheme grows bolder after the fractured Copenhagen summit, AGL has labelled the administration of the the renewable energy target a fraud.

Climate change conference collapses

Mired in a struggle for money and power, the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference collapsed under the weight of its own greed without a substantive agreement. The multi nation participants left the gathering generally unfulfilled and lacking the commitments for additional revenue that had been sought by the poorer countries.

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Journal: Tora Bora Revisited by Peter Bergen

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Collective Intelligence

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

The Battle for Tora Bora

How Osama bin Laden slipped from our grasp: The definitive account.

PeterBergen

I am convinced that Tora Bora constitutes one of the greatest military blunders in recent U.S. history. It is worth revisiting now not just in the interest of historical accuracy, but also because the story contains valuable lessons as we renew our push against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Journal: Al Qaeda Has a Regional Strategy, Does US?

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Military, Peace Intelligence

Berto Jongman Recommends...

BOSTON REVIEW

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010

‘The real danger is that al Qaeda and the Neo-Taliban will drag the United States into regional war’

Syed Saleem Shahzad

The Obama administration’s troop surge fails to address the real threat in Afghanistan: the insurgents’ efforts to develop a regional strategy in South Asia. Washington’s focus—members of al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the traditional Afghan Taliban—misses the mark. Nir Rosen does, too, when he asks whether “a few hundred angry, unsophisticated Muslim extremists really pose such grave dangers to a vigilant superpower, now alert to potential threats.”

The November 2008 Mumbai attacks and the recent FBI arrests in Chicago for conspiracy to launch attacks in New Delhi suggest that containing the threat from Afghanistan is extremely complicated, and solutions must go beyond troop surges in Afghanistan, training Afghan police and soldiers, or even political dialogue with Taliban commanders inside the country. Intelligence agencies are now realizing that both the Mumbai events and the Delhi plans—plotted directly by al Qaeda affiliated groups, which I call the Neo-Taliban—were directly linked to Afghanistan, but also incorporated wider aims. The goal was to expand the theater of war to India so that Washington would lose track of its objectives and get caught in a quagmire.

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