Month: March 2012

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Michel Bauwens: Occupy as a Business Model

03 Economy, Blog Wisdom
Michel Bauwens
Aljazeera – Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:24 GST
Chiang Mai, Thailand – Last week I discussed the value crisis of contemporary capitalism: the broken feedback loop between the productive publics who create exponentially increasing use value, and those who capture this value through social media – but do not return these income streams to the value “produsers”..
In other words, the current so-called “knowledge economy” is a sham and a pipe dream – because abundant goods do not fare well in a market economy. For the sake of the world's workers, who live in an increasingly precariousness situation, is there a way out of this conundrum? Can we restore the broken feedback loop?.Strangely enough, the answer may be found in the recent political movement that is Occupy, because along with ” peer producing their political commons “, they also exemplified new business and value practices. These practices were, in fact, remarkably similar to the institutional ecology that is already practiced in producing free software and open hardware communities. This is not a coincidence..
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NIGHTWATCH: SWIFT Banking Attack on Iran

05 Iran, Blog Wisdom

Iran – European Union – Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift): Swift, the communications provider for secure financial transactions for more than 10,000 financial institutions and corporations around the world announced it will disconnect Iran's banks from the system.

On its home page, SWIFT published the following news item:

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: SWIFT Banking Attack on Iran”

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NIGHTWATCH: China Trends

02 China, Blog Wisdom

China: Special Comment: A day after Premier Wen Jiabao delivered his valedictory address to the National People's Congress, the Communist Party's Organizational Department announced that Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai had been replaced by Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang.

Chongqing (previously Chungking) is one of five national core cities – with Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou — and a major inland industrial center, in southwestern China. The city is a modern metropolis and the municipality has more than 28 million people.

International analysts of Chinese leadership trends, such as those writing for the Financial Times, have provided excellent insight into the misdeeds of Bo that brought him down. All cite his flamboyant, charismatic personal leadership style as out of step with the sober men in dark suits who are the members of the standing committee of the Communist Party Politburo that rules China.

Bo was something of contradiction in modern China. He behaved like a western style grip-and-grin politician, but used authoritarian Maoist, or even imperial, tactics, including torture, to root out organized crime. He is quoted as having said, “If only a few people are rich, then we are capitalists. We've failed.”

Bo seems to have been a true believer. He instituted in Chongqing songfests featuring the revolutionary songs his father, Bo Xilai who was a colleague of Mao Zedong, taught him as a child. As a son of a revolutionary hero, he was on a fast track to higher positions, until a recent scandal gave his factional opponents, including Premier Wen, an excuse to demote him.

For six years, NightWatch has maintained a theory of contradictions that limit China's advancement. The contradictions are longstanding, unresolved issues that work against each other to limit China's potential.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: China Trends”

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Mini-Me: US Government Witch Hunting Continues…

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Intelligence (government), Law Enforcement, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

My friends and colleagues,

Forgive the interruption. I reach out to you on a matter of some urgency, about my dear friend, a former CIA officer, dedicated, stoic, talented … and now in deep and terrifying trouble. What's happening to him is so stunningly crappy, and so unjustifiable, that his defense and support has become a personal priority. Though triggered — I believe — by a personal and political agenda, I see his cause as strikingly apolitical: this is about a man falsely persecuted, and the survival of his family.

Please, please take a minute to look at the below. Any questions, reach out to me, and/or check out the sites at the bottom of this email.

Thanks so much,
Peter Landesman

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

We write to ask you to join us in supporting, protecting and materially helping our friend and colleague, John Kiriakou, a long-time former C.I.A. official and case officer. Incredibly, John has been accused by the Department of Justice of crimes under the 1917 Espionage Act, a charge historically reserved for persons who betrayed their country to foreign governments for money.

Why? The prosecutors have not claimed that John talked to any foreign government, passed any government documents or accepted funds from anyone hostile to the United States. Instead, according to the facts asserted in the indictment, he committed the “crime” of responding honestly to a query from the New York Times related to the agency's interrogation program under the Bush Administration, which included waterboarding.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: US Government Witch Hunting Continues…”

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Marcus Aurelius: State Department Moves to Fire Peter Van Buren Author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government
Marcus Aurelius

For those of you with experience or interest in such things, State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS, long ago SY), has developed for itself a very negative reputation in personnel security arena.

Through AFSA, American Foreign Service Association (I am not a member having never been a FSO), I have read numerous accounts of horror show DS cases.

Overall, DS comes across as an internal State Dept Gestapo, much different from the RSOs I dealt with in embassies in LATAM and Africa.

Amazon Page

State Dept. moves to fire Peter Van Buren, author of book critical of Iraq reconstruction effort

Lisa Rein

Washington Post, 14 March 2012

Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer who wrote anunflattering bookabout his year leading two reconstruction teams in Iraq, was stripped of his security clearance, banned from State Department headquarters for a time and transferred to a telework job that consists of copying Internet addresses into a file.

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota:  Most Departmental “security” services turn into little Gestapos, but they do so on command from the top.  Peter van Buren's book was APPROVED by  the proper Department of State publication review process, which has integrity.  Evidently now someone at the top, probably not the Secretary of State but one of the top six mandarins, is abusing their authority and perhaps giving Peter van Buren a $10 million lawsuit on a platter.  When governments stop telling the truth they lose legitimacy.  When they begin persecuting people who tell the truth they lose authority.  We're there.

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Robert Steele: True Cost Economics Combined with Monitoring Outputs and Outcomes

04 Education, Academia, Ethics, Government, Non-Governmental
Robert David STEELE Vivas

True Cost Economics has been around for a while–Dr. Herman Daly of the University of Maryland merits much of the credit–but it now seems to be catching on.

Not quite catching on, but being discussed by individuals who already appreciate the urgency of teaching and researching true cost economics, is the need to switch from measuring inputs to measuring outputs and outcomes.

Although the US Intelligence Community has long been in need of this approach, to my great surprise I now find that some of the best minds in the university world are thinking along these lines.

In the university world this is called “assessment of learning.”  That is, rather than focusing on inputs (number of hours in classes), universities are working to measure outputs — whether students are acquiring the capabilities that professors intend. Instead of learning to memorize and regurgitate, students are being asked to perform — to be a student of practice, applying knowledge in context.

In development agencies there is a gestating effort to shift from building schools to producing literate people — that means less focus on rote learning and credentialing, and more focus on memorable communication including education delivered one cell call at a time.

Note:  Assessment of learning is an Epoch A approach, but a very positive development.  Child-driven education is  the Epoch B approach.

See Also:

2011 Introduction to Student-Involved Assessment FOR Learning, An (6th Edition)

2009 25 Quick Formative Assessments for a Differentiated Classroom: Easy, Low-Prep Assessments That Help You Pinpoint Students' Needs and Reach All Learners

2009 Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning

2007 Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom

2003 Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice