Cost to transfer 2560 songs:
From my ISP: $1
Via SMS messaging: $15,339,212.80
Continue reading “Journal: True Cost of SMS = 0 But Wait….!”
Journal: The U.S. electoral system is in danger, once again.
11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Real Time, Reform
Random Communications from an Evolutionary Edge
According to several recent articles – “Senate Panel to Examine Sale of Diebold Voting Machine Division” http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/diebold-antitrust-2/ and “Your electronic vote in the 2010 election has just been bought” http://www.truthout.org/092509I – the largest voting machine company in the country, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), has just bought out its most infamous competitor – Diebold's e-voting division, Premier Election Solutions. This leaves ES&S in control of a significant majority of the voting machines (68%) and potential votes (about 80%) in the United States. This is an extraordinary concentration of power.
This is not, by far, the only problem with the U.S. electoral system, but it is one of the most dangerous and most readily addressed. It is dangerous because it increases the possibilities for direct and untraceable manipulation of the votes in the vast majority of states. Such election fraud is accomplished by electronically changing a voter's vote, adding imaginary voters, or tweaking the total tally, real possibilities demonstrated by, among others, scientists at Princeton and Stanford ( http://bit.ly/m4uXo ) . And in recent U.S. elections, there were some non-random, inexplicable and unprecedented divergences between exit polls and election results. (Exit polls are often used by international observers to monitor fair elections.)
Phi Beta Iota: If democracy is to survive, local control of paper ballots with strong public oversight is a non-negotiable first step. The two-party tyranny is corrupt to the core; benefit of the doubt must be given to public concerns over validity rather than political claims of efficiency. Click on title above for complete discourse and all links.
Review: Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect
5 Star, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Justice (Failure, Reform), Power (Pathologies & Utilization)
Erudition Demanding Concentration–Need Lay Chapter or PamphletOctober 12, 2009
Paul A. Rahe
This is an extraordinary book offering a very detailed and superbly integrated examination of the consistencies and differences among Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville, both to illuminate precisely what was in the Founding Father's minds when they sought to create a Republic of, by, and for We the People; and how distant we have migrated from that ideal.
As other reviewers have noted, this is not for the lay person or even the average Libertarian, for whom I would like to see (and would benefit myself) a pamphlet or article version. This is erudition in its highest form, offering a painstakingly devised integration and application of the works of three author's to the question: “what is the ideal state of unfettered democracy, and where does the USA stand in that regard?”
The book begins with an utterly devastating full page quote from Tocqueville in which I underline the words “petty and vulgar pleasures,” “elevated an immense, tutelary power,” “a network of petty regulations,” and “it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born.”
Published in 2009 this book is totally current with our recent financial collapse based on Congressional failures of integrity combined with Wall Street moral hazard and bad judgment, and the author notes that as of 2008 25% or more of US citizens were not happy with the state of America or its government. I believe a more telling statistic is the migration of over 44% of the population away from the two-party tyranny and toward declared Independent status. See also:
Journal: Nobel Prize for Economics for Work on Collective Governance of Common Resources
11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics
STOCKHOLM – Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson won the Nobel economics prize on Monday for their work in economic governance.
Ostrom was the first woman to win the prize since it was founded in 1968, and the fifth woman to win a Nobel award this year — a Nobel record.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited Ostrom “for her analysis of economic governance,” saying her work had demonstrated how common property can be successfully managed by groups using it.
Williamson, the academy said, developed a theory where business firms serve as structures for conflict resolution.
“Over the last three decades, these seminal contributions have advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention,” the academy said.
The economics prize was the last Nobel award to be announced this year. It's not one of the original Nobel Prizes, but was created by the Swedish central bank in Alfred Nobel's memory.
Phi Beta Iota: The Nobel gang got this one right. What the media is not stating with enough emphasis is that she is a pioneer in collective governance of common resources. Below are direct links to some of her notable works.
AFRICOM Week in Review Ending 12 Oct 09
UncategorizedHot Topics
AA: Agriculture needs billions of dollars by 2050: UN agency, 10/08/2009
AA: EAC militaries, US command set to stage joint war games, 10/10/2009
AA: Mideast oil exporters' foreign reserves to rise: IMF, 10/11/2009
AA: Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth, 09/11/2009
AA: Scientists join forces to explain HIV spread in central and east Africa, 10/08/2009
DZ: Physicist exchanged e-mails with al-Qaida contact, 10/11/2009
KE: Why Kenya matters to the west, 10/13/2009
Below the fold: Instability, Special Operations, Security Forces, Foreign Affairs, Crime Continue reading “AFRICOM Week in Review Ending 12 Oct 09”
Journal: Integrity 101 for Presidential Aides
03 Environmental Degradation, 10 Security, Ethics, Government
October 12, 2009
Climate Myths and National Security
By Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
The President of the United States recently told the United Nations that “global warming” poses a threat to national security and may engender conflicts as populations are displaced by rising sea levels, droughts, floods, storms etc. etc. etc. However, it is now clear that there is no basis for the notion that the barely-detectable human influence on the climate is likely to prove a threat to climate, still less to national security.
The first principle to which any national security advisor must adhere is that of objective truth. Though he must have an understanding of politics, he is not a politician: he is a truth-bearer. Therefore, he begins by narrowing down the issue to a single, central question whose answer determines whether the suggested threat is real. He then tries to find the truthful answer to that question, and draws his conclusion from that. [Emphasis added.]
Continue reading “Journal: Integrity 101 for Presidential Aides”
Journal: Chuck Spinney Flags Moral Clarity Israeli Style
09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Ethics, Government
Rattling the Cage: Our exclusive right to self-defense
Oct 7, 2009
Virtually all of Israel is now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report, against any attempt to blame us over the war in Gaza. We've honed our message to a sharp point and, inspired by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's performance at the UN, we're delivering it with just the right tone of outrage:
How dare anyone deny us the right to self-defense! How dare anyone deny us the right to fight back against terrorism!
Very nice. Puts everyone else on the defensive. The right to self-defense is up there with motherhood and apple pie – who's going to come out against it, especially for us, for Israel, for the Jews, for the people of the Holocaust?
The right to self-defense – perfect.
But I'd like to ask: Do the Palestinians also have the right to self-defense?
We probably wouldn't admit it out loud, but in our heads we would say – again, in one voice – “No!”
This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We're entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism.
Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney Flags Moral Clarity Israeli Style”
