This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I've observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the recent turmoil in the stock market.
In gaining a better understanding of the future nature of conflict, it is therefore of the utmost importance to go beyond the traditional Western (English) language domain experts, and include views from regions across the world. The main purpose of the Future Nature of Conflict project is therefore to map and analyze global perspectives about the future nature of conflict published over the last two decades across four language domains – Arabic, Chinese, English and Slavic.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Phi Beta Iota: Finally! For years we have talked about the need to do multi-lingual perspectives and statements (e.g. charting Chinese, Vietnamese, Philippine, and Australian statements on the Spratley Islands going back 200 years). The protocol developed by this team must be –along with M4IS2–the future of strategic dialog, policy, acquisition, and operations. Any intelligence community that is unable to do this for any issue, any question, may as well go out of business.
Reading through the report is a real pleasure, with all sources being spelled out in footnotes that are actively linked to the original sources. This is a marvelous gift to scholars and practitioners at multiple levels.
Status check on Brazil's specialized police units trying to supplant illicit drug governance in the favelas. Per an upcoming law, these units will be in place for 25 years. “Many communities previously relied on the drug gangs for services from water to wireless internet, and critics have pointed out that the state has been slow to replace them.”
Phi Beta Iota: The program has been successful in applying ruthless pervasive special violence to displace the drug gangs and insert permanent police presence. The program has FAILED in two respects: it has not been accompanied by the rapid provision of normal services from water to wireless; and it has not provided for the education of the people, something that requires call centers and free cell access to the Internet (they don't have the time to sit in a classroom for N years).
In their own words:
“People in the favela don't believe in themselves. What is really needed in the long term is more education.”
The memorandum “Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001” has been circulating for years on the Internet, studiously ignored by most. It was previously posted as a journal item on this website. Since then, the public has learned a great deal more about both gold and greed, and the memorandum is once again circulating.
This is by no means the complete story, and there are some leaps of imagination and speculation that must be deeply investigated or discounted. Central to appreciating the magnitude of the government cover-up is the FACT that MONTHS before 9/11 Dick Cheney set in motion the national counter-terrorism exercise that gave him complete control on “the day” of 9/11.
What is clear is that there is a great deal more investigation to be done, and that a truth and reconciliation commission should be created in time to put Dick Cheney and the others on the stand before they either die a natural death or are assassinated by foreign governments righteously angry over what has been done to them by American children playing with fire.
Here are a few extracts that today have a greater likelihood of being appreciated for their substance.
Yes, we are watching something melt down. But I'd argue the thing that's dying is not business itself, but a financial parasite — a speculative marketplace that no longer funds business but instead seeks to extract value from healthy commerce. More a funds vampire than an infuser of needed capital, the investment industry has been exposed as a drag on business. The future of commerce looks bright to me because it may be unencumbered by the weight of this non-productive capital.
. . . . . . .
Once we accept the fact that the money and banks we have grown accustomed to using are not the only ways to generate capital, we liberate ourselves and our businesses from a finance industry that has enjoyed a monopoly over our commerce for much too long. They have not only abused our trust through corrupt self-dealing, but abused their privilege through systemic usury. Businesses are only obligated to support their employees, owners, and customers — not an entire finance industry.
Core Concept: “That a generalized, technology-enhanced capacity for manifold cooperation has become the main productive force means that there is no longer any contradiction between ethics and economics. On the contrary, the ethical ability to open up to and share with others has become the most fundamental quality of a successful economic agent.”
Socio-Political Implications: This also means that the old models for institutionalizing ethics and economics, representative democracy and private property are becoming obsolete. Politics is no longer a separate practice, best handled by expert politicians. On the contrary the basic political practice of constructing a common social world, an ethical surplus has become a fundamental aspect of economic production. A brand community is like a social movement, open source is a political program, and a self-managed slum or a cooperative micro-credit system is also a project for a different political order.
Wow. Henry Blodget has discovered and pulled out incredible stuff from a document filed with the SEC by a former senior employee at Moody's, one of the big-3 securities ratings agencies.
Moody's is partly owned by a company in which I've owned stock for many years: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett has consistently defended Moody's (and the sleazy Goldman Sachs, another big BRK investment) with feel-good non-answers to serious questions. I'm increasingly disenchanted with Buffett, and that's one of the main reasons why.
A former senior analyst at Moody's has gone public with his story of how one of the country's most important rating agencies is corrupted to the core.
The analyst, William J. Harrington, worked for Moody's for 11 years, from 1999 until his resignation last year.
From 2006 to 2010, Harrington was a Senior Vice President in the derivative products group, which was responsible for producing many of the disastrous ratings Moody's issued during the housing bubble.
Harrington has made his story public in the form of a 78-page “comment” to the SEC's proposed rules about rating agency reform, which he submitted to the agency on August 8th. The comment is a scathing indictment of Moody's processes, conflicts of interests, and management, and it will likely make Harrington a star witness at any future litigation or hearings on this topic.
