The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia | Politics News. Capitalist crisis, corporate power, subverted democracy. Does business occupy a privileged position in capitalism? Why do indebted countries not default more often? And do we really live in a democracy? Over the past year, in addition to setting up, editing and writing for ROAR, I have kept busy with research for a PhD thesis at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. My project, which investigates the structural power of the financial sector in sovereign debt crises, takes a comparative-historical perspective and looks at the evolution of debtor-creditor relations in contemporary capitalism — from the 15th century until today — and with a particular focus on three major debt crises in the neoliberal era: Mexico in the 1980s, Argentina in 1999-’02 and Greece in 2009-’12. While I haven’t started the research itself (I’m off to Mexico for the first round of fieldwork later this summer), I have written two papers that deal with the broad thematics of my topic.
Download the full paper here. Download the full paper here. "Inside Job" Director Charles Ferguson: Where Are the Criminal Prosecutions for Financial Crisis? The Labor Department has just announced the United States economy gained only 69,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent. We air part two of our interview with Academy Award-winning director Charles Ferguson, who first examined the network of academic, financial and political players who contributed to the nation's financial crisis in his documentary, "Inside Job. " In his new book, "Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America," Ferguson draws on newly released court filings to continue his investigation.
Ferguson notes the Clinton administration oversaw the most important financial deregulation, and since then, "We've seen in the Obama administration very little reform and no criminal prosecutions, and the appointment of a very large number of Wall Street executives to senior positions in the government, including some people who were directly responsible for causing significant portions of the crisis.
" Defend Innovation. Social Search: What is It? 25 Shares Google+ 3 Twitter 16 Facebook 2 LinkedIn 4 inShare4 Reddit 0 Pin It Share 0 Buffer 0 25 Shares × You may have seen the announcement recently that Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, made some major updates. I’ve had a bit of time with it, and I want to show you what it can do and why it’s an important improvement. Disclosure: Bing has sponsored Geek Beat. Let me ask you a question. But we also use the Internet. Now, let’s combine those two concepts. 1) Asking your friends for advice. 2) Getting help from the Internet.
When you search for something, the page is broken up into three columns. Normal search resultsAdditional information (like Maps or Open Table reservations) based on your searchSocial Sidebar The Social Sidebar The Social Sidebar is where it gets really interesting. You can post to your wall and ask questions about your search directly from the Bing interface. What do you think? Our email robots can be trusted. Trusted. Polis Questions DEA on Marijuana Policy. Opening Up About the Open Data Institute. As I've noted before, open data is one area where the UK government shines - unlike open source, where it has yet to deliver the goods.
One of its bright ideas was the creation of an Open Data Institute (ODI), which I wrote about at the end of last year. It still doesn't exist yet, but it does have a Web site with some interesting further information about its intentions. The most detailed document is entitled "The ODI business plan" [.pdf]. Here are some of the highlights of the ODI "vision": The vision is to establish the Open Data Institute (ODI) as a world-leading centre to innovate, exploit and research the opportunities for the UK created by the Government’s Open Data policy. The ODI will become an exemplar and we expect to see similar initiatives established around the world. The ODI will demonstrate the commercial value of Open Government Data (OGD) and the impact of Open Data policies on the realisation of this value. Not only that, but also this: Prometheans vs. Soterians. Since the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the language of science and environmental diplomacy has subtly changed in ways that emphasize technocratic and corporate thinking dangerously changing our relation to the Earth.
Twenty years ago, the environment was understood as the domain that surrounds us, the place from which we draw resources and dump wastes, or just leave alone. The economists told us environmental damage is an “externality,” an unfortunate side effect from market activity, something that could be fixed by “internalising the cost,” that is, putting a price on it. The environment was seen as important but separate from us and the language of the summit reflected this division: “environmental issues,” “the problem of environmental degradation,” “development that can be made sustainable,” all these ideas place the environment “over there.”
Yet we must now begin to ask ourselves a very serious question: Are we capable of managing the Earth? In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration. In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration. Collaboration happens around some kind of plan or structure, while cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate. Cooperation is a driver of creativity. Stephen Downes commented here on the differences: collaboration means ‘working together’. That’s why you see it in market economies. markets are based on quantity and mass.cooperation means ’sharing’. That’s why you see it in networks. In networks, the nature of the connection is important; it is not simply about quantity and mass …You and I are in a network – but we do not collaborate (we do not align ourselves to the same goal, subscribe to the same vision statement, etc), we *cooperate* We are only beginning to realize how we can use networks as our primary form of living and working.
Wirearchy: a dynamic multi-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology. Network effect. Diagram showing the network effect in a few simple phone networks. The lines represent potential calls between phones. The classic example is the telephone. The more people who own telephones, the more valuable the telephone is to each owner. This creates a positive externality because a user may purchase a telephone without intending to create value for other users, but does so in any case. Online social networks work in the same way, with sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ becoming more useful as more users join.
The expression "network effect" is applied most commonly to positive network externalities as in the case of the telephone. Over time, positive network effects can create a bandwagon effect as the network becomes more valuable and more people join, in a positive feedback loop. Origins[edit] Network effects were a central theme in the arguments of Theodore Vail, the first post patent president of Bell Telephone, in gaining a monopoly on US telephone services. Lock-in[edit] A Big Bang. Progressive Strategy Blog. The Spread of Sacrifice Zones. Chris Hedges' and Joe Sacco's new book, "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt," is a treasure. Hedges wrote the plain text.
Sacco produced the text-heavy cartoon sections and other illustrations, which even I -- not a big fan of cartoon books -- found to enrich this book enormously. Hedges and Sacco visit Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to examine the misery of the Native Americans who remain there. It's nice to think that we've corrected our crimes through political correctness, and yet they continue uninterrupted -- unconscionably, intolerably, tragically. Here the human stories are told, and told by those affected and by those resisting and struggling to set things right. Hedges and Sacco go to Camden, New Jersey, to examine the world of impoverished and ghettoized African Americans, whose lives have worsened by many measures over the past generation, despite the successes of the civil rights movement.
"You hear people my age get up and say, 'We were poor. "You heard about them? Nothing is Solid: Understanding The Large Sea of Energy Around Us. Nobel Prize winning physicists have proven beyond doubt that the physical world is one large sea of energy that flashes into and out of being in milliseconds, over and over again. Nothing is solid. This is the world of Quantum Physics. They have proven that thoughts are what put together and hold together this ever-changing energy field into the ‘objects’ that we see. So why do we see a person instead of a flashing cluster of energy? Think of a movie reel. A movie is a collection of about 24 frames a second. Each frame is separated by a gap. Think of television. A TV tube is simply a tube with heaps of electrons hitting the screen in a certain way, creating the illusion of form and motion.
This is what all objects are anyway. Each of these senses has a specific spectrum (for example, a dog hears a different range of sound than you do; a snake sees a different spectrum of light than you do; and so on). Our thoughts are linked to this invisible energy and they determine what the energy forms. Do It Like a Librarian: Ranganathan for Content Strategists. Before becoming a content strategist, I worked as an academic librarian for five years. Although academia and consulting can sometimes seem like different planets, content strategists and librarians have a lot in common—after all, we all love content.
Selecting it. Categorizing it. Making it findable and relevant for users. S.R. Like content strategists, librarians enjoy a good credo. With a few simple adaptations, Ranganathan’s laws serve as good reminders for content strategists, too. Content is for useLibrarians love a hard-luck case. Image courtesy of University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee LibrariesEvery content its user ANDSave the time of the userThe third law, every content its user, encourages us to act as modern day matchmakers between information and users. So go on. Logistique : le maillon faible ? « Je passe, je livre » — « Les néolithiques amérindiens se sont adaptés sans problème aux armes à répétition ; mais l’Occident triomphe toujours parce qu’il a, derrière lui, la logistique ; et encore derrière, la production industrielle : du coup, les Indiens n’ont jamais pu remporter qu’un ou deux Little Big Horn… ».
Ou encore : « Si je libère Paris, je vais être obligé de nourrir plusieurs millions de Parisiens. Donc, je contourne Paris… ».— Un ancien commandant de détachement logistique français, en Afghanistan : « A la différence de l’infanterie, quand un convoi est attaqué, je ne traite pas le problème : je passe et je livre ».— Pour acheminer le matériel d’urgence sur les « opex » (opérations extérieures) lointaines (type Afghanistan), l’heure de vol sur gros porteur (par exemple, les AN124 de la compagnie Volga-Dniepr) coûte 25 000 euros ; une rotation complète (20 heures, dont 15 en vol), 450 000 euros. Et on ne dit rien de la pollution ! « Entrée en premier » La guerre qui ne dit pas son nom. « La légitimité des interventions occidentales diminue aux yeux d’une grande partie de l’opinion internationale », reconnaissent les organisateurs de ce colloque.
Un rejet qui « vient en partie de la perception accrue d’un grand écart politique entre une moralisation affichée des motivations à intervenir, et la réalité d’une défense plus prosaïque des intérêts économiques et politiques occidentaux et/ou nationaux ». La guerre faisait figure jadis de matrice de l’histoire. Elle était glorifiée à l’occasion par des philosophes (Hegel) ou des hommes politiques (Churchill). Longtemps, la perception de la guerre comme affrontement codifié d’armées comparables avait fait l’objet d’un large consensus au sein des puissances comme des opinions.
Qualification pudique Ce n’est plus le cas aujourd’hui. Super nounou En outre, un courant antimilitariste persiste, ancré dans les tréfonds de la société (et puisant dans les anciennes traditions de la gauche, mais pas seulement). Monde tragique Hors de vue. Stratégies innovantes: le blog de François Cazals. The Guilty Conscience of the Aged Is the Secret Physics of the World. The science of civil war: What makes heroic strife. FOR the past decade or so, generals commanding the world's most advanced armies have been able to rely on accurate forecasts of the outcomes of conventional battles.
Given data on weather and terrain, and the combatants' numbers, weaponry, positions, training and level of morale, computer programs such as the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model, designed by the Dupuy Institute in Washington, DC, can predict who will win, how quickly and with how many casualties. Guerrilla warfare, however, is harder to model than open battle of this sort, and the civil insurrection that often precedes it is harder still. Which, from the generals' point of view, is a pity, because such conflict is the dominant form of strife these days.
The reason for the difficulty is that the fuel of popular uprisings is not hardware, but social factors of a type that computer programmers find it difficult to capture in their algorithms. Harder, but not impossible. SCARE tactics Hostile sentiments. CNBC reporter apologizes after falling for teenager’s hoax. CNBC reporter Darren Rovell has apologized after discovering that a story he wrote back in November included hoax material given to him by a source.
Cautionary lesson: Rovell only spoke to the source by email and never made any other attempts to confirm his story. In the end, he quoted a collection of made-up facts and figures provided to him by what Deadspin describes as a “bored” 18-year-old high school senior. After Deadspin broke the story, CNBC removed the offending section from Rovell’s report, and added a correction which links to an apology from Rovell. The story started with an attempt by Rovell to use social media to gather stories from people who had been affected by the NBA lockout: If you are losing a paycheck/business because of the NBA, I want to tell your story. Email me at lockoutstories@gmail.com.— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) November 17, 2011 One response came from a person who went by the name Henry James and used the email address “hankinthebank1@gmail.com.” Qualité en mouvement n°322 - Stratégie océan bleu by ISC Executive Education | SlideShare.
Greece: Crises As Opportunity? - Analysis. By James Petras Greece faces the unenviable choice between accepting the terms of “the Troika” and facing the continuation and deepening of a socio-economic crises, which includes five years of negative growth, over 23% unemployment, an astronomical rise in poverty (from less than 15% to over 40%) and mounting suicides, or a rejection of the “memorandum”, and a likely cut-off of Eurozone funding and capital markets with virtually few reserves to cover salaries, pensions or public services. While the immediate cost of a break with catastrophic conditions imposed by Eurozone bankers may be high, it opens up the possibility of transforming the internal and external relations and structures which led Greece to ground zero.
Crises as Opportunity? Greece The profound crises demonstrates the need for basic changes in the organization of the economy, the urgency for new political leadership and the desire for a new political system responsive to the vast majority. The Difficult Road Out of Crises. Video - 'Guerra abierta' en Ciñera España. Joe Kraus Blog. Hidden Human History Movie - All for Consideration Purpose Only! [Recommended by Joe Rogan]
More Icelandic bankers arrested. Lucifer: Forbidden Knowledge. What is an articulation between science and theology? - An interview with Dominique Lambert. It's Time for CHANGE and SIMPLIFYING!! *Microcosmic & Macrocosmic Connectedness* Jordan Maxwell - The Dawn of a New Day (2009) The Occult Reality. Encourager, soutenir, manipuler les révoltes. Truthout | Fearless, Independent News and Opinion.
13 Ways Companies Kill Creativity. Tom Atlee: The Design Economy – How to Meet the Challenges of the Next Economic Era. Freedom, Openness and Creativity in the Digital Economy. IRFAM. Strategie. Flash Encampments.