11 Society – Page 171 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/03/192013/03/26

Yoda: Singapore’s Lessons for the USA

03 Economy, 04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Health, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Singapore’s Lessons for an Unequal America

New York Times, 18 March 2013

Inequality has been rising in most countries around the world, but it has played out in different ways across countries and regions. The United States, it is increasingly recognized, has the sad distinction of being the most unequal advanced country, though the income gap has also widened to a lesser extent, in Britain, Japan, Canada and Germany. Of course, the situation is even worse in Russia, and some developing countries in Latin America and Africa. But this is a club of which we should not be proud to be a member.

Some big countries — Brazil, Indonesia and Argentina — have become more equal in recent years, and other countries, like Spain, were on that trajectory until the economic crisis of 2007-8.

EXTRACTS

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2013/03/172013/03/26

Berto Jongman: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and the Frog in Boiling Water — An Anthropological Perspective on the Deceived, the Forgotten, & the Dying

03 Economy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Earth Intelligence, Government

Fukushima isn’t Chernobyl? Don't Be So Sure

by SARAH D. PHILLIPS

CounterPunch, Weekend Edition March 15-17, 2013

The March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused the deaths of approximately 16,000 persons, left more than 6,000 injured and 2,713 missing, destroyed or partially damaged nearly one million buildings, and produced at least $14.5 billion in damages. The earthquake also caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s eastern coast. After reading the first news reports about what the Japanese call “3.11,” I immediately drew associations between the accident in Fukushima and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 in what was then the Soviet Union. This was only natural, since studying the cultural fallout of Chernobyl has been part of my life’s work as an anthropologist for the past 17 years. Knowing rather little about Japan at the time, I relied on some fuzzy stereotypes about Japanese technological expertise and penchant for tight organization and waited expectantly for rectification efforts to unfold as a model of best practices. I positioned the problem-riddled Chernobyl clean-up, evacuation, and reparation efforts as a foil, assuming that Japan would, in contrast, unroll a state-of-the-art nuclear disaster response for the modern age. After all, surely a country like Japan that relies so heavily on nuclear-generated power has developed thorough, well-rehearsed, and tested responses to any potential nuclear emergency? Thus, I expected the inevitable comparisons between the world’s two worst nuclear accidents to yield more contrasts than parallels.

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2013/03/152013/03/26

Paul Craig Roberts: When Truth is Suppressed Countries Die

03 Economy, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

Over a decade during which the US economy was decimated by jobs offshoring, economists and other PR shills for offshoring corporations said that the US did not need the millions of lost manufacturing jobs and should be glad that the “dirty fingernail” jobs were gone.

America, we were told, was moving upscale. Our new role in the world economy was to innovate and develop the new products that the dirty fingernail economies would produce. The money was in the innovation, they said, not in the simple task of production.

As I consistently warned, the “high-wage service economy based on imagination and ingenuity” that Harvard professor and offshoring advocate Michael Porter promised us as our reward for giving up dirty fingernail jobs was a figment of Porter’s imagination.

Over the decade I repeated myself many times: “Innovation takes place where things are made. Innovation will move abroad with the manufacturing.”

This is not what corporations or their shills such as Porter wanted to hear. Corporations were boosting their profits by getting rid of their American employees and replacing them with lowly paid foreigners. Porter’s job was to reassure the sheeple so that no outcry would materialize against the greed that was hollowing out the US economy.

Now comes a study conducted by 20 MIT professors and their graduate students that concludes on the basis of the facts that “the loss of companies that can make things will end up in the loss of research than can invent them.”

Read full article.

2013/03/152013/03/26

John Maguire: Alternative Currencies Centered on Hours

03 Economy, 11 Society, YouTube

Wayne Walton explains a new complementary currency that is popping up around the US. Mountain Hours, Mile High Hours, and Island Hours are just a few examples of this voluntary co-operative currency, which allows for more transactions than were previously available connecting more unmet needs with unused resources.

Completely sustainable, shifts power of the monetary system from banks to people. Voting is ineffective. Opt out of the monetary system, create your own benevolent local monetary system.

YouTube (17:59).

2013/03/142013/03/26

Eagle: America’s Retirement Crisis

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

America's Retirement Crisis

Decades of class war leaves most Americans nearing retirement woefully unprepared.

Since the mid-1970s, real wages haven’t kept pace with inflation. Benefits steadily eroded. High-paying jobs disappeared. Improved technology forces wage earners to work harder for less.

So-called “free” markets work only for those who control them. A handful of winners benefit at the expense of most others. Conditions get progressively worse.

Wealth disparity extremes are unprecedented. Neoliberal harshness force-feeds austerity when stimulus is needed. Public needs go begging.

American inequality is institutionalized. Bipartisan complicity assures it. Class war rages. America’s social contract is targeted for destruction.

Both sides agree. They support giving bankers, war profiteers, other corporate favorites, and super-rich elites greater wealth at the expense of most others.

A May 2012 Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) study highlighted America’s retirement crisis. American workers face trouble.

Read full article.

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2013/03/082013/03/26

John Maguire: Cornel West: NDAA, MLKII, Fascism, and Culture of Fear

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call, YouTube

Via Youtube: “Dr. West gives a passionate speech about government love of power and the fact of government oppression. MLK could have been jailed without due process under the NDAA or killed without due process under the present administration.”

Dr. West hits the nail on the head in many respects. But the question remains: Why is no one discussing the fact the U.S. Government was indicted in MLK's murder over 13 years ago?

Phi Beta Iota: Below the embedded YouTube we provide some additional links. We as a collective hold Dr. Cornell West in high regard. This six minute articulation is passionate, informed, and a call to Jesus for the American public.

See Also:

Douglass, James W. (2010). JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. Touchstone.

Pepper, William F. (2008). An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. Verso.

West, Cornel (2005). Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. Penguin Books.

2013/03/082013/03/26

DefDog: Killing America — One View

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Officers Call

More coherent than many such diatribes. Appears to represent a growing segment of the public. When combined with local elected sheriffs siding with the public, and high likelihood that most National Guard units will go local and refuse federal orders to fire on or arrest US citizens, the balance of power at the grassroots level appears to be totally in favor of the public not the elite.

Killing America

Preston James, PhD.

Veterans Today, 7 March 2013

THERE IS A SECRET WAR BEING WAGED AGAINST AMERICA THE REPUBLIC BY THE LONDON BANKSTERS

Its Purpose is to destroy America and Fold its remains into a NWO Globalist One-World Government System.

But it’s not over yet and things are not going so well for the Banksters. They are about 13 years behind schedule.

And until recently most Americans knew nothing about it.

America’s Monetary & Production System has been hijacked and used by London Banksters to entrap most the world in a Global Web of Debt.

This has enabled the Banksters to issue all the money they needed to buy up and control almost every American politician and Government official, many of whom serve unknowingly as CUTOUTS.

They have used their Babylonian “money magic” debt-based usury system of fiat “money” to asset strip most Americans of a great deal of the fruits of their labor and accrued assets, and now they are coming for their guns.

Read full article.

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