Category: 11 Society

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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

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Journal: Banks Own Obama, His Mind, His Time

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

The author is a former chief economist of the IMF and is now a professor at MIT.  Chuck

The Bill Daley Problem

By Simon Johnson, co-author of 13 Bankers (out in paperback on Monday)

Baseline Scenario, 9 January 2011

Highlighted extracts:

The Bill Daley Problem is completely bipartisan – it shows us the White House fails to understand that, at the heart of our economy, we have a huge time bomb.

…largest U.S. banks – have far too little equity and far too much debt relative to that thin level of equity…

Today’s most dangerous government sponsored enterprises are the largest six bank holding companies: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.

No one can show significant social benefits from the increase in bank size, leverage, and overall riskiness over the past 15 years.  The social costs of these banks – and their complete capture of the regulatory apparatus – are apparent in the worst recession and slowest recovery since the 1930s.

Paul Volcker gets it; no wonder he has resigned.  Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, gets it.  Tom Hoenig, president of the Kansas City Fed, gets it.  Elizabeth Warren, the tireless champion of consumer rights, gets it.   Gene Fama, father of the efficient financial markets view, gets it better than anyone.

This is not a left-right issue – again, look at the list of people who co-signed Professor Admati’s recent letter to the Financial Times.  This is a question of technical competence.  Do the people running the country – including both the executive branch and the legislature – understand economics and finance or not?

Top bankers, including Bill Daley, have pulled off a complete snow job – including since the crisis broke in fall 2008.  They have put forward their special interests while claiming to represent the general interest.

Bill Daley now controls how information is presented to and decisions are made by the president. Daley’s former boss, Jamie Dimon, is the most dangerous banker in America – presumably he now gets even greater access to the Oval Office.  Daley is on the record as opposing strong consumer protection for financial products;… [Emphasis added.]

Read the full posting….

Phi Beta Iota: Our generous and well-intentioned philanthropists appear to be unaware that the Federal Reserve, Morgan Chase, and Citi-Bank have pulled a Bernie Maddoff on them–they think they are being “taken care of” at the very moment when everything they have worked so hard for is most vulnerable to a massive melt-down.  The control of the President's mind and time is the ultimate victory for anyone seeking to control the White House.  It is “checkmate” against We the People.  None of the bureaucracies in the Executive–and certainly not the so-called “intelligence community”– are capable of rescuing the President–he is a happy captive.

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Strong Signals: Truth or Tyrannicide + RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence
Amazon Page

Phi Beta Iota: The shooting of an elected official, a judge, and multiple others in Arizona is a strong signal.  It was anticipated by the book TYRANNICIDE The Story of the Second American Revolution, a work of fiction that anticipated a nation-wide spree of attacks on elected politicians now known not to represent the public interest–but we never anticipated the book being other than a cultural icon, a rhetorical call to arms.  Now it is real.

Col Dr. Max Manwaring, USA (Ret), one of the most authentic scholar-warriors we have, nailed it in his edited work, The Search for Security–A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century.  Security comes from LEGITIMACY, and the hard truth Washington and Wall Street must face is that they both lack legitimacy in the eyes of the majority (roughly, 70%, assuming a 15% extremist band on either end of the two-party tyranny).

This is not about “tone.”  This is about substance.  You can screw all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you cannot screw all of the people all of the time.  America is at an internal fork in the road.  9/11 was the rest of the world being pissed.  Arizona is about the heartland being pissed.  FOCUS!

Below is a RECAP of just a few of the many signals justifying public rage at the betrayal of the Republic by elected politicians selling out to Wall Street and special interests.  The Nation is so out of balance that it is on the verge of imploding.  Lies kill us all.  Now here is the GOOD NEWS:  a restoration of integrity, with transparency leading to truth and truth leading to trust, would push back the anger.  The super-rich evidently do not realize this, but they are on the brink of a violent push-back when they can avoid all push-back simply by stepping back and letting the legitimacy of government be restored–one simple elegant solution: Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points).

See Also:

Continue reading “Strong Signals: Truth or Tyrannicide + RECAP”

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Reference: Harvard Discovers “Shared Value”

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Strategy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,
then they fight you, then it appears in the Harvard Business Review,
and then you win while Harvard claims it was their idea…

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (apocryphal)

The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value


How to reinvent capitalism—and unleash a wave of innovation and growth.

The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community.

Even worse, the more business has begun to embrace corporate responsibility, the more it has been blamed for society’s failures. The legitimacy of business has fallen to levels not seen in recent history. This diminished trust in business leads political leaders to set policies that undermine competitiveness and sap economic growth. Business is caught in a vicious circle. [Emphasis added.]

Read entire article…

Phi Beta Iota: Legitimacy is the foundation of good order and commerce.  That Harvard is beginning to get this is a very good sign.  The authors also skirt the most interesting point, which is that “who does what” is changing, and we (this they do not address) are moving toward HYBRID networks that accomplish things together, on the basis of SHARED INFORMATION and consensus sense-making.  When Alvin Toffler introduced in detail the concept of PowerShift, the most powerful concept he brought forward was that of information being a substitute for time, space, capital, and labor–and violence over the same–he was setting the stage for moving beyond the age of date or information, and into the age of cyber-collaboration to create shared value–what one author calls Non-Zero.  NOW we are finally starting to get somewhere…toward what Tom Altee calls Evolutionary Activism driven by advanced cyber-information operations: creating shared value begins with creating shared information.

See Also:

Continue reading “Reference: Harvard Discovers “Shared Value””

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Journal: Get America Working-A Conversation Part IV Enter usfruct (husbandry of the planet) and Spiritual Ecology

02 Diplomacy, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Peace Intelligence, Threats

Harrison Owen:

Well said. And I rather suspect that the core of the matter is deeper than Culture – and that would be an extended conversation. But it is certainly not about rule change and redesign, I think.

Alexander Carpenter:

Right on, as your imminent study of evolutionary psychology will confirm. I reckon we don't have time for evolutions in our Pleistocene genome to catch up to (and get ahead of) our impact on the planet, so we're just gonna hafta run what we brung. That means cultural engineering and we already have been shown how to do it by the Oligarchy. What's it gonna take to shift the values-balance from hegemonistic concentration at any cost to something closer to sustainability? But then, that's a whole ‘nother conversation barely touched-on in the message below…

Continue reading “Journal: Get America Working-A Conversation Part IV Enter usfruct (husbandry of the planet) and Spiritual Ecology”

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Journal: Will Pakistan Implode Because of US in AF?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Military, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off

Pakistan will implode if the US does not leave Afghanistan

The continuing US presence in Afghanistan fuels extremism in neighbouring Pakistan

Imran Khan The Observer, Sunday 9 January 2011

The assassination of Salmaan Taseer has shown only too clearly the growing extremism in Pakistan, the radicalisation of its society and the polarisation that is taking hold. This is not just between the religious and the secular, but also the polarisation that the “war on terror” has caused between the various religious sects.

Read rest of article Chuck Spinney is commenting on…

Is the Global War in Terror Creating More Problems than it is Solving?

Chuck Spinney

The late historian Chalmers JOHNSON popularized the term “blowback” to describe the unintended grand-strategic consequences resulting from interventionist foreign policies and military actions.  The term blowback dates to the CIA's internal history of the US’s 1953 Iranian coup that threw out the Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (a progressive social reformer who wanted to nationalize the oil industry among other things) and replaced him with the tyrannical American puppet Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi.  No one can doubt that contemporary problems with Iran today are rooted in resentments dating back to the 1953 coup.

Continue reading “Journal: Will Pakistan Implode Because of US in AF?”

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Journal: Amazing Combat Medical Statistics Portend Unknowable Long Term Costs

07 Health, 11 Society, Military
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

The Pentagon likes to refer to combat euphemistically as “kinetic” activity.  This very important report documents the truly impressive advances in battlefield medicine in Afghanistan to cope with the kinetic activity that hurts our troops.  The bottom line:  the ratio of killed to wounded has decreased at an amazing rate, because many troop suffering from heretofore fatal wounds involving the destruction of multiple limbs, severe groin, traumatic brain injuries, massive losses of blood, and battlefield shock are now surviving, albeit many in a severely handicapped state.  The need to provide quality care and rehabilitation to the severely wounded (as well as the lessor wounded–particularly those with the sharply rising cases of the milder forms of brain trauma) is an as yet unaccounted for cost of the Afghan war that will haunt the American medical system and the larger society for generations.

We can only imagine what is happening to the Afghan civilians on the receiving end of our kinetics.

Chuck

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January 7, 2011

In Wider War in Afghanistan, Survival Rate of Wounded Rises

By C. J. CHIVERS

KHAKREZ DISTRICT, Afghanistan — Intensified fighting and a larger troop presence in Afghanistan in 2010 led to the highest American combat casualties yet in the war, as the number of troops wounded by bullets, shrapnel and bombs approached that of the bloodiest periods of the war in Iraq.

But the available data points to advances in the treatment of the fallen, as the rate at which wounded soldiers who died reached a wartime low.

More than 430 American service members died from hostile action in Afghanistan last year through Dec. 21, according to official data released by the Pentagon last week at the request of The New York Times.

This was a small fraction of those struck. Nearly 5,500 American troops were wounded in action — more than double the total of 2,415 in 2009, and almost six times the number wounded in 2008.

In all, fewer than 7.9 percent of the Americans wounded in 2010 died, down from more than 11 percent the previous year and 14.3 percent in 2008.

Full Story Online….

Continue reading “Journal: Amazing Combat Medical Statistics Portend Unknowable Long Term Costs”

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