Event: 24-26 January 2011, Paris, The Future of Urban Water: Solutions for Livable & Resilient Cities (UNESCO)

The aim of this conference is to share knowledge on recent advances in urban water management, and to catalyse change towards more livable and resilient cities – The “City of the Future”. Increasing global change pressures, escalating costs and other risks inherent to conventional urban water management are causing cities to face ever increasing difficulties …

Review (Guest): ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism

Yves Smith Product Description Why are we in such a financial mess today?  There are lots of proximate causes: over-leverage, global imbalances, bad financial technology that lead to widespread underestimation of risk. But these are all symptoms. Until we isolate and tackle fundamental causes, we will fail to extirpate the disease.  ECONned is the first …

Reference: On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy + RECAP on Secrecy as Fraud, Waste, & Abuse

People are more likely to lie, exaggerate and distort when they know they won’t be held accountable for what they said, and people like to say what their interlocutors want to hear, says Jordan Stancil. Jordan Stancil Jordan Stancil is a lecturer in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of …

Reference: Panetta Puts Lipstick on the Pig (Again)

Message from the Director: Lessons from Khowst Last December, our Agency family lost seven courageous and talented colleagues in a terrorist attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khowst, Afghanistan. These dedicated men and women were assigned to CIA’s top priority—disrupting and dismantling al-Qa’ida and its militant allies. That work carries, by its very nature, …

Journal: Five Myths Debunked–Treasury Run by Crooks

I asked my good friend Marshall Auerback, an investment advisor and lawyer by training and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, to evaluate Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s claim that TARP has been a stunning success.  Geithner made this claim in a 10 October op-ed in the Washington Post, entitled, “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tackles …

Review: The Monk and the Riddle–The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

Down to Earth, Absorbing, Perfectly Presented, “Must Read” October 10, 2010 Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback I’m putting this book into the 6 Star and Beyond category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, for two reasons: it has a proper definition of what business should be about–creativity and humanity; and it strives to …