Mini-Me: The Screwed Election: Wall Street Can’t Lose, America Can’t Win

Civil Society, Corruption, Government
0Shares
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

The Screwed Election: Wall Street Can’t Lose, and America Can’t Win

Joel Kotkin

The Daily Beast, 10 August 2012

Everyone hates the big banks—except the two candidates running for president. Joel Kotkin on the bipartisan triumph of crony capitalism.

About two in three Americans do not think what’s good for Wall Street is good for America, according to the 2012 Harris poll, but do think people who work there are less “honest and moral than other people,” and don’t “deserve to make the kind of money they earn.” Confidence in banks is at a record low, according to Gallup, as they’ve suffered the steepest fall in esteem of any American institution over the past decade. And people have put their money where their mouth is, with $171 billion leaving the stock market last year alone, and 80 percent of Wall Street communications executives conceded that public perception of their firms was not good.

Americans are angry at the big-time bankers and brokers, and yet, far from a populist attack on crony capitalism, Wall Street is sitting pretty, looking ahead to a presidential election that it can’t possibly lose. They have bankrolled a nifty choice between President Obama, the largest beneficiary of financial-industry backing in history and Mitt Romney, one of their very own.

One is to the manner born, the other a crafty servant; neither will take on the power.

Read full article with photos.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: The Screwed Election: Wall Street Can’t Lose, America Can’t Win”

Chuck Spinney: Romney-Ryan Travesty, Obama the Enabler Carries On

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
0Shares
Chuck Spinney

A Retired Defense Reformer's Take on the Ramifications of Romney's Choice of Paul Ryan

Get Ready for the Slaughter

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY. Counterpunch

WEEKEND EDITION AUGUST 12-14, 2012

Gaeta, Italy.

Romney’s choice of the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan, as his running mate mirrors John McCain’s disastrous choice of Sarah Palin four years ago, although Ryan is probably a more able politician.  Being smarter than Palin, Ryan’s plutocracy-enriching budget proposals suggest he is also a more hypocritical politician, although such a distinction in Versailles on the Potomac during the summer of 2012 may be a case of splitting hairs.

It is a well known fact that like his predecessor candidate for President, John McCain, Romney will never be trusted by hard-right populists energizing the looney base of the Republican Party.  So, like McCain, Romney has picked a superficially attractive hard-right nutcase as a running mate in a forlorn attempt to energize his party’s crazy base.  Once again the mainstream media is going gah gah over the brilliance of the choice.  If you doubt this, google the choice of Palin and compare that gushing to today’s gushing.  In so doing, Romney, like McCain, is setting himself up for a slaughter by Mr. Obama, whose historical role is rapidly becoming one of being the Great Enabler of the oligarchy that is taking over the United States.

Obama, if nothing else, has proven himself to be a brilliant exploiter of his opponent’s political weaknesses.  Barring some unforeseen exogenous disaster, like a terrorist attack or another Wall Street collapse, Mr. Obama’s looming slaughter of Romney is almost a certainty.

I am not saying that Obama deserves to be elected, only that he will be elected. Why do I say this?  Consider please the following:

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Romney-Ryan Travesty, Obama the Enabler Carries On”

Marcus Aurelius: CIA on the Margins of Syria, Choking the Chicken

Corruption, Government
0Shares
Marcus Aurelius

Deja vu on Angola, Afghanistan, etcetera.

CIA Chokes Rebels' Weapon Supply Amid Islamist Fears

By John Follain

London Sunday Times August 12, 2012 Pg. 26

DESPITE mounting calls in Washington for a more aggressive US military role in Syria, the CIA has been quietly working along its northern border with Turkey to limit the supplies of weapons and ammunition reaching rebel forces, according to Syrian opposition officials.

“Not one bullet enters Syria without US approval,” one official claimed in Istanbul. “The Americans want the [rebellion] to continue, but they are not allowing enough supplies in to make the Damascus regime fall.”

Details of the CIA's policing activities offer a rare insight into the complex struggle for regional advantage that is rapidly developing at the margins of the Syrian civil war.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: CIA on the Margins of Syria, Choking the Chicken”

Michel Bauwens: Elinor Ostrom discusses commons, climate change and green politics with Derek Wall 2012

Access, Economics/True Cost, P2P / Panarchy, Politics
0Shares
Michel Bauwens

Interview with the late Professor Elinor Ostrom, to date the only woman to win the Nobel for economics, on environmental issues, commons and her time at Beverley Hills High. The interview took place in the Excel centre, London. March 2012. Sadly Professor Ostrom died in June 2012, she was a visionary who put her ideas into practice dedicated to creating a sustainable future for all based on human creativity. She discussed some of her key ideas with humour and clarity with Derek Wall.

20120811 Open Source Everything Highlights

Highlights
0Shares
Click on Image to Enlarge

Open Source Everything

TWITTER HASH: #openall

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS: http://tinyurl.com/OSE-ALL

THE LIST:  http://tinyurl.com/OSE-LIST

THE AGENCY:  http://tinyurl.com/OSA2011

THE BOOK: http://tinyurl.com/OSE-PAPER

THE AUTHOR: http://tinyurl.com/Steele2012

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS:  All Opens Below Line  Includes Autonomous Internet, Crowd-Funding/Sensing/Sourcing, DIY, and Transparency, Truth, Trust, & True Cost

Continue reading “20120811 Open Source Everything Highlights”

Michel Bauwens: RSA Animate – The Power of Networks

P2P / Panarchy
0Shares
Michel Bauwens

RSA Animate – The Power of Networks

In this new RSA Animate, Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, explores the power of network visualisation to help navigate our complex modern world. Taken from a lecture given by Manuel Lima as part of the RSA's free public events programme. Listen to the full talk: http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2011/the-power-of-networks…

 

Koko: Serial Entrepreneur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities”

Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy
0Shares
Koko

Koko:  A smart human.

Serial Entrepreneur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities”

Damon Horowitz, a philosophy professor and “serial entrepreneur,” recently joined Google as an In-House Philosopher/Director of Engineering. Prior to his work at Google, Horowitz co-founded Aardvark, Perspecta, and a number of other tech companies. In this talk at Stanford University’s 2011 BiblioTech conference on “Human Experience,”  Horowitz explains why he left a highly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to artificial intelligence, to pursue a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Stanford (the text of the talk is available here).

Horowitz offers fellow techies a formidable challenge, but a worthwhile one. In saying so, I must confess a bias: As a student and teacher of the humanities, I have watched with some dismay as the culture becomes increasingly dominated by technicians who often ignore or dismiss pressing philosophical and ethical problems in their quest to build a better world. It is gratifying to hear from someone who recognized this issue by (temporarily) giving up what he admits was a great deal of power and societal privilege and headed back to the classroom.

Horowitz describes his intellectual journey from “technologist” to philosopher with passion and candor, and concludes that as a result of his academic inquiry, he “no longer looks for machines to solve all of our problems for us,” and no longer assumes that he knows what’s best for his users. This kind of humility and intellectual flexibility is, ideally, the outcome of a higher degree in the humanities, and Horowitz uses his own trials to make a case for better critical thinking, for a “humanistic perspective,” in the tech sector and elsewhere. For examples, see Horowitz’s TED talks on a “moral operating system” and “philosophy in prison.” Complicating Google’s well-known, unofficial slogan “don’t be evil,” Horowitz, drawing on Hannah Arendt, believes that most of the evil in the world comes not from bad intentions but from “not thinking.”

Serial Entrepreneur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities”

in Education, Google, Philosophy, Technology | August 7th, 2012 14 Comments

Continue reading “Koko: Serial Entrepreneur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities””