Topics (All Other) – Page 117 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/04/152011/04/15

Serious (Honest) Thinking About US Budget

03 Economy, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military

Dear friends,

The three articles below describe major approaches to addressing the deficit — for health care, taxes and the military — that would have a greater impact on America's budget woes than ANYTHING being currently negotiated by Congress and the Obama Administration. Even better, these three things would, if implemented, actually improve the quality of life in the U.S., instead of degrading it, as so many of the current proposals would do. They give a taste of some excellent thinking emerging from the fringes of this “budget crisis” debate.

[After I wrote this I was alerted to another very interesting “People's Budget” recently released with little coverage in the mainstream media, which I recommend to those interested in alternatives.]

When I imagine a Citizens Jury, a Citizens Assembly, or any other randomly selected body of citizens convened to deliberate about the “budget crisis”, this is the kind of information I believe they should be exposed to. We don't need to undermine public health to create affordable health care. We don't need to undermine the wealth of the nation to have a reasonable tax system. We don't need to endanger American security to have a strong, affordable military.

We just need to think a bit outside of the boxes that most mainstream media, pundits, politicians and partisan activists (intentionally) put our minds in, and ask ourselves “What's the REAL problem here — and what would ACTUALLY solve it?”

How to Save a Trillion Dollars

Taxes on the Wealthy: New Top Brackets Needed for the Have Mores

Want to improve US national security? Cut the defense budget.

Continue reading “Serious (Honest) Thinking About US Budget”

2011/04/152011/04/15

US Government Bails Out and Pardons Wall Street, Sends Barry Bonds to Jail–What’s the Difference?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Barry Bonds Faces Jail Time While Wall Street Execs Sit Pretty

What’s the difference between Barry Bonds and Goldman Sachs executives? The later was fortunate enough to be questioned by incompetent lawmakers while Bonds ended up in a courthouse with an actual jury and prosecutors.

. . . . . .

“The Goldman guys may have worse batting average than Barry Bonds but they were better educated by their lawyers about they should shouldn’t say. They also had the benefit of being questioned by incompetent people who had no idea about the financial nomenclature at the heart of their allegations,” Singer says.

For more on why and how Wall Street has avoided criminal charges and jail time check out today’s story in the New York Times about how regulators have, in some cases, willingly protected banks and their executives.

Of course, Matt Taibbi’s Why Isn’t Wall Street In Jail? is also a must-read.

2011/04/15

Harvard “Boys” Crash, Burn, No Apology

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Academia, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Impotency

economicprincipals.com

March 27, 2011, David Warsh, Proprietor

A Recent Exercise in Nation-Building by Some Harvard Boys

It was worth a smile at breakfast that morning in February 2006, a scrap of social currency to take out into the world. Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School management guru, had grown famous offering competitive strategies to firms, regions, whole nations. Earlier he had taken on the problems of inner cities, health care and climate change. Now he was about to tackle perhaps the hardest problem of all (that is, after the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq).

He had become adviser to Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya.

Phi Beta Iota: Harvard is now the poster child for all that is wrong with education–no intelligence, no ethics, and grotesquely expensive. Yale can now claim the mantle in the East.

Read full original….

Safety copy below the line.

Continue reading “Harvard “Boys” Crash, Burn, No Apology”

2011/04/14

USA Has Become Deaf, Dumb, and Blind

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Published on Monday, April 11, 2011 by TruthDig.com

Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

by Chris Hedges

Note: Truthdig server overwhelmed. This is the Common Dreams reprint.

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Finish reading at CommonDreams

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective

1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information

1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (An Alternative Paradigm)

Complete Safety Copy Below the Line

Continue reading “USA Has Become Deaf, Dumb, and Blind”

2011/04/142011/04/14

From BRIC to BRICS–Sanya Declaration

01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, Reform, Strategy

Full text of Sanya Declaration of the BRICS Leaders Meeting

Xinhuanet.com English.news.cn 2011-04-14 21:58:57

SANYA, Hainan, April 14 (Xinhua) — Leaders of five BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, released on Thursday a joint document, Sanya Declaration, at the BRICS Leaders Meeting in south China's resort city of Sanya.

The following is the full text of the document.

Sanya Declaration

(BRICS Leaders Meeting, Sanya, Hainan, China, 14 April 2011)

Read full text (nine screens)–videos and photos in sidebar.

Continue reading “From BRIC to BRICS–Sanya Declaration”

2011/04/142011/04/14

US Intelligence: Militarized to Lowest Common Denominator

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

Phi Beta Iota: Posted with permission. We strongly recommend the Intelligence Online offerings. We have received a number of commentaries around this topic, and they boil down to the situation being much, much worse than depicted here:

1. Budget weenies without substantive experience running entire agencies (e.g. NRO)

2. Nose-dive to the lowest common denominator, completely destroying regional and country expertise and having no linguistic capabilities or grasp of history and culture (CIA, DIA)

3. Completely out of control procurement, rotten requirements definition, no full life-cycle planning (e.g. buy collection, do not buy processing), and generally disconnected from reality (NSA/Cyber-Command)

4. We are reminded that there are 1,200 distinct “organizations” wasting money and going through the motions on counter-terrorism–meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security gropes little girls, confiscates aftershave, and is generally on the underside of institutionalized tyrannical idiocy.

2011/04/14

Reference: Emergent Democracy

11 Society, About the Idea, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process

EXTRACT from Google Group Next Net:

That made me think of the Emergent Democracy paper that Joi Ito authored collaboratively (2001-2003) with several other folks (including Ross Mayfield and I) a few years ago. Digging into my files I found the attached marked up version… it aligns pretty well with some of the discussions here.

There's been a lot of interesting thought about the Internet and the web as platform for enhanced social activity. That idea of “finding our tribes and ourselves” was a core aspect of FringeWare, the company/community that Paco Nathan and I started in 1991. We realized that like-minded fringe thinkers and doers were scattered everywhere, and the Internet gave us a platform where they could find each other and form community. All it took was an email list and a compelling concept (“fringeware”) to catalyze that community.

“Declaration of Interdependence” sounded familiar… I did some searching…

https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html – Barlow wrote this, and I think he referred to it (earlier or later, not sure which) as a declaration of interdependence).

http://notanmba.com/blog/2008/03/a-declaration-of-interdependence – This notes that the Whole Foods mission statement is called “declaration of interdependence” – http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/declaration.php. This also refers to the Barlow document and our 2008 EFF-Austin party.

Interestingly, Will Durant made a “declaration of interdependence” in 1945. http://www.willdurant.com/interdependence.htm

Review: Evolutionary Activism by Tom Atlee

Review: Philosophy and the Social Problem–The Annotated Edition