Category: 01 Poverty

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Yoda: Muslim Rebels and Philippine Government Agree on Peace

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
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Good news this is.

Philippines, Muslim rebels agree on peace pact

EILEEN NG, Associated Press, JIM GOMEZ, Associated Press | Sunday, October 7, 2012 | Updated: Sunday, October 7, 2012 8:44pm

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine government and the country's largest Muslim rebel group have reached a preliminary peace deal that is a major breakthrough toward ending a decades-long insurgency that killed tens of thousands and held back development in the south.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said the “framework agreement” calling for an autonomous region for minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation was an assurance the Moro Islamic Liberation Front insurgents will no longer aim to secede.

The agreement, announced Sunday and to be signed Oct. 15 in Manila, spells out principles on major issues, including the extent of power, revenues and territory of the Muslim region. If all goes well, a final peace deal could be reached by 2016, when Aquino's six-year term ends, officials said.

“This framework agreement paves the way for final and enduring peace in Mindanao,” Aquino said, referring to the southern Philippine region and homeland of the country's Muslims. “This means that the hands that once held rifles will be put to use tilling land, selling produce, manning work stations and opening doorways of opportunity.”

He cautioned that “the work does not end here” and that details of the accord still need to be worked out. Those talks are expected to be tough but doable, officials and rebels said.

Rebel vice chairman Ghadzali Jaafar said the agreement provides a huge relief to people who have long suffered from war and are “now hoping the day would come when there will be no need to bear arms.”

Continue reading “Yoda: Muslim Rebels and Philippine Government Agree on Peace”

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Chuck Spinney: US Economy Still Hollow, Election Will Not Change That Fact

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency
Chuck Spinney

Who Will Create More Jobs: Romney or Obama?

Why It's a Distinction Without a Difference

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

CounterPunch, 24 September 2012

My prediction: The eventual answer will turn out to be a distinction without a difference.  Here’s why.

Both political parties and their candidates for President now accept neoliberal ideology as being the incontrovertible truth.  This belief is more theological than scientific, because neoliberalism has a thirty year track record of not producing the high-paying jobs for the middle class its promisers say it will produce.  Quite the reverse would be a more accurate description.

According to neoliberal dogma, the only way to stimulate the growth of high-paying jobs for Americans is to unleash the private sector by getting government off the back of business.  Therefore, given this truism, the government’s economic purpose is simply to make it easier for the private sector to invest in productive capacity at home — or to use a popular but vacuous buzzword: to invest in the ‘supply side’ of the economy.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: US Economy Still Hollow, Election Will Not Change That Fact”

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Steven Aftergood: CRS on Poverty and on Intelligence

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 11 Society, Congressional Research Service, IO Impotency
Steven Aftergood

POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES, AND MORE FROM CRS

“In 2011, 46.2 million people were counted as poor in the United States, the same number as in 2010 and the largest number of persons counted as poor in the measure's 53-year recorded history,” according to a timely new report from the Congressional Research Service.  See Poverty in the United States: 2011, September 13, 2012.

Other new and newly updated CRS reports that have not been made publicly available include the following.

Intelligence Authorization Legislation: Status and Challenges, updated September 18, 2012

Latin America and the Caribbean: Fact Sheet on Leaders and Elections, updated September 17, 2012

Phi Beta Iota:  The juxtaposition of a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on poverty in America – a hot issue being kept under wraps at this time – with a report on the intelligence authorization bill by two experienced analysts new to the account (Richard Best finally retired and Al Cumin is on assigment elsewhere), is encouraging.  In the latter instance, Richard F. Grimmett (CRS International Security analyst) and Rebecca S. Lange (an Air Force Fellow) demonstrate intelligence with integrity in tackling the militarization of intelligence and the excessive focus of intelligence on defense targets to the exclusion of all others (Whole of Government).

See Also:

Graphic: Intelligence Requirements Definition for the 21st Century

2008 Rebalancing the Instruments of National Power–Army Strategy Conference of 2008 Notes, Summary, & Article

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Michel Bauwens: A Pre-Fab Sustainable Village To Create Smart Growth

01 Poverty, Culture, Knowledge
Michel Bauwens

A Pre-Fab Sustainable Village To Create Smart Growth

EXTRACT:

The community, Rimbunan Kaseh, is in the Malaysian state of Pahang and it runs off energy supplies that are largely solar-generated, supplemented by biomass and hydropower. Its agriculture system grows both animals and crops: A four-level aquaculture system nurtures farmed tilapia–a high-protein fish–and then the wastewater is filtered and put to use to irrigate grain fields, trees, and other crops. The system has proven robust enough to create food to feed the residents and then some, providing villagers with an additional $400 to $650 of income each month.

Read full article with photographs.

 

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SmartPlanet: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

01 Poverty, 03 Economy

 

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Q&A: Paul Polak, author of Out of Poverty

Multinational companies are — at their own peril — ignoring a major market, according to Paul Polak. They're missing out on more than two billion customers who wouldn't just increase their profits, but could ensure their long-term survival.

By Christina Hernandez Sherwood

See Also:

C. K. Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition (Philadelphia, PA: Wharton School Publishing, 2009)

 

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Penguin: DEAR AMERICA You Should Be Mad As Hell About This [CHARTS]

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Who, Me?

DEAR AMERICA: You Should Be Mad As Hell About This [CHARTS]

In November, Americans will have a chance to speak their minds.

And there's one thing everyone should agree on:

America just isn't working right now.

It's not just Americans who aren't working. It's America itself, a country whose economy once worked for almost everyone, not just the rich.

In the old America, if you worked hard, you had a good chance of moving up.

In the old America, the fruits of people's labors accrued to the whole country, not just the top.

In the old America, there was a strong middle class, and their immense collective purchasing power drove the economy for decades.

Click on Image to Enlarge

No longer.

Over the past couple of decades, the disparity between “the 1%” and everyone else has hit a level not seen since the 1920s. And there is a widespread and growing sense that life here is not fair or right.

If America cannot figure out a way to fix these problems, the country will likely become increasingly polarized and de-stabilized. And if that happens, the recent “Occupy” protests will likely be only the beginning.

The problem in a nutshell is this:

In the never-ending tug-of-war between “labor” and “capital,” there has rarely—if ever—been a time when “capital” was so clearly winning.

And that's not just unfair.

It's un-American.

In fact, income inequality has gotten so extreme here that the US now ranks 93rd in the world in “income equality.” China's ahead of us. So is India. So is Iran.

Phi Beta Iota:  The actual unemployment rate in the USA is 22.4%.  Anyone that does not know this is part of the problem.  Anyone that knows this and conceals it from the public is part of the corruption that has created the problem.

See Also:

Shadow Statistic Website

Josh Kilbourn: US Disability & Food Stamp Welfare Skyrocketing

Mini-Me: Economists Scoff at Obama, Romney Job-Creation Myths

Paul Craig Roberts: December Net Jobs a 12,000 LOSS – Actual Unemployment 2.6 Times Official Rate or 22.4%

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Owl: US Government Criminality from Local to National

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government
Who? Who?

Government larceny and criminality just never ends, it seems to be increasing, especially against those who can least to afford to defend themselves against it:

Another Way to Kill Small U.S. Farmers: Seize Their Bank Accounts on Phony Charges

The farmers, Randy Sowers and his wife Karen, made deposits totaling more than $295,000 from May 2011 to February 2012, but each transaction was less than $10,000. Now they are being accused of “structuring,” a violation of federal currency reporting requirements, as the feds are accusing them of deliberately depositing money in increments of less than $10,000 in an attempt to evade Currency Transaction Reporting requirements. The dairy farmer's “crime” stems from his weekly sales at local farmers' markets. The sales averaged about the same amount each week and, dutifully, the Sowers deposited them. They'd reportedly never even heard of the Bank Secrecy Act or “structuring,” but that was of no interest to the feds—the consistency of the amount the Sowers deposited, always less than $10,000, raised red flags to the feds, who claimed that this was indicative of a crime. The government promptly seized about $70,000 from the bank account, then issued a warrant for the seizures. The raid on the Sowers was conducted by an agency created in 2009 to go after money-laundering criminals. The agency started out with a bang by seizing $1.2 billion from a real money launderer, but it appears that what it's interested in now is making criminals out of small business persons, including small farmers.

But small business people are not the only targets of government and corporate predators. Poor people are too, as evidenced in this Mother Jones article:

How Corporations and Local Governments Use the Poor As Piggy Banks

Continue reading “Owl: US Government Criminality from Local to National”