Journal: Theater, Circus, or Politics?

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online

Tea Partiers Bring Cause to Washington

KATE ZERNIKE September 12, 2010

Republicans in Tea Party Costumes

A crowd gathered around as a man dressed as George Washington read a passage from the Bible during the Tea Party Tax Payer March on Washington on Sunday.

. . . . . . .

“I believe we’ve got the Republican Party’s attention — we’ve been beating the establishment all over the country,” said Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader and the chairman of FreedomWorks, to a burst of cheering. “It’s time we give the same lesson to the other party.”

Mr. Pence taunted the Democratic leadership: “A recession is when you your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. A recovery is when Nancy Pelosi loses her job.”

Phi Beta Iota: The Tea Party appears to have been captured by the Republicans.  This is one of the reasons we are taking an interest in the Coffee Party, which appears to be genuinely committed to non-partisan deliberative dialog and fact-based consensus.  We are still dismayed that Ralph Nader, Jackie Salit, Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul, and Bob Barr, among others, cannot come together to lead a demand for Electoral Reform in two phases, half in 2010, half in 2012.  That would appear to be the single issue where most can agree, and the single reform that would restore the connection between the public, public revenue, and public spending.

Y Combinator Hacker News Community’s Model for Info-Sharing & Potential for Collective Intelligence

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hacking, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Hacker News” has a welcome page and guidelines page offering an overview of what the organizers expect from those planning on posting comments and why it's good overall for the community.  I (Jason Liszkiewicz) was impressed with this. Hacker News has a solid number of participants and provides a simple and mature format for exploring and contributing thoughtful feedback, insight and resources.

It has a jobs link (mainly for engineers and programmers) and the “Ask Hacker News” link which enables the community to share information and reply to what is shared. Such a model (deemed an “experiment”) that provides mature and thoughtful information-sharing is something we need more of. Communities inter-linking with communities (or at least over-lapping) to spill over each others insights can be invaluable and potentially priceless.

Example: Ask HN: What do you perceive as worth spending money on?

This simple and useful model is something I hoped would emerge + converge from the SMS/text messaging developers at ChaCha.com (humans online responding to text messaged questions) or somewhere else. Converging multi-community info-sharing online, offline, and through the mobile world on a global scale is an exciting possibility.

The next level to all of this exists in the form of ideas or fragmented applications but it seems not beyond that, yet.

Email earthintelnet|at|gmail.com or post something at this new forum to discuss these ideas. Or, provide some mature and thoughtful feedback at the Hacker News community.

Journal: CIA Links to NYC Mosque Controversy

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call

Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque

By Mark Ames

September 10, 2010 | 2:36 p.m

EXTRACT 1: Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as “business consultant” for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three “strategic advisers.” These include retired four-star General Bryan “Doug” Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed “all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism,” and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he “managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget” and “served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.”

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 2:  So, to recap: From 2006 to 2008, R. Leslie Deak worked as a “business consultant” to this super-secretive security contractor with ties to the CIA and counterterrorism forces, and in those same three years he also donated nearly $100,000 in seed money to the foundation now advocating the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 3:  Goldline is to Glenn Beck what General Electric was to Ronald Reagan: The company sponsors Beck's TV and radio shows as well as his touring act, and Beck is its public face. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, along with the Santa Monica City Attorney's office, are currently investigating Goldline for defrauding customers by railroading gullible customers into buying their most debased products.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, it has been reported that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company Fox News, which airs Beck's program, is also a major funder of Imam Rauf's projects, as Jon Stewart viewers heard all about last week.

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 4: But add to this array of unexpected connections the work of Imam Rauf on behalf of the U.S. government—which includes serving as an FBI “consultant” and being recruited as a spokesperson by longtime George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes, who headed up the administration's propaganda efforts in the Muslim world—and a compelling picture begins to emerge. Bush's favorite Imam, with backing from a funder with connections to the CIA, the Pentagon and the currency trading company that now sponsors rightwing firebrand Glenn Beck, proposes to build a mosque around the corner from the site of the most devastating terrorist attack ever visited on America. In the name of “[cultivating] understanding among all religions and cultures,” he puts forth a project that offends a majority of Americans and deals a significant setback to the broader acceptance of Muslim-Americans. It's a little like Billy “White Shoes” Johnson claiming the only reason he moonwalks after scoring a touchdown is to lower tensions on the football field and raise the other team's spirits.

Prison Planet Alternate View of Entire Piece

Tip of the Hat to Niels Groeneveld at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: It would appear that as the public is becoming more informed and more outraged, the military-intelligence complex on behalf of its global banking sponsors is becoming more brazen.  As it has with the Martin Luther King and JFK assassinations, the Tonkin Gulf and Iraq lies, and most recently with the 9-11 cover-up, the truth cannot be held back.  It has a way of reconnecting that is profoundly moving.

Journal: 21st Century Data Convergence

11 Society, Augmented Reality, Collective Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process

Jon Lebkowsky

21st century data convergence: surf or swim

by jonl on August 30, 2010

A Times UK piece, 10 ways data is changing how we live, says that “the availability of new sets of data” is changing the way we live.

Five years ago at IC2 Institute in Austin, we were talking about digital convergence, and those talks spun off an organization called the Digital Convergence Initiative, the idea being to build a local business cluster of convergent companies. We were ahead of our time, and it was hard for many to get their heads around how such a “horizontal” cluster would work. We were onto an effect of convergence that could be pretty interesting: the edges of verticals will blur, and companies that before convergence had nothing in common will find affinities and synergies that create new forms of business.

READ THE REST OF THE POST

Phi Beta Iota: We have been beneficiaries of Jon Lebkowsky's good-hearted genius and will start following his blog, which is being added to Righteous Sites today.  The ten areas covered by the cited article include Shopping, Relationships, Business Deliveries, Maps, Education, Politics, Society, War, Advertising.  The bottom line for the public is that accountability and transparency is virtually inevitable, and we will eventually eradicate corruption including fraud, waste, and abuse.  The only question is how soon and will it be soon enough.  We think it will.  Like Jon, we are optimists.

Here are the last two paragraphs with the links recommended:

Linked data and the future

The examples of data mentioned in this article are innovative, exciting and life changing, but the best is yet to come. The majority of the information that we use in our daily lives is “dumb”, or unconnected. The next step is “linked data”, or data that talks to each other. In the UK, Tim Berners-Lee and the team behind Data.gov.uk are aiming to create a linked database of Government information. By providing all data the Government produces in a linked format, individuals will be able to pull in different sets of data to produce new and innovative ways of understanding how our Government and the world works.

FluidDB, a start-up company run by Terry Jones, and with backing from Tim O'Reilly and Esther Dyson and others, is tackling this field from a different angle. FluidDB wants to create a “writeable world”, where physical objects have virtual identities, which can be updated and called upon by any individual with access to the internet. That could mean tweets and status updates about everything from a brand of toothpaste to the Eiffel Tower could contribute to a collective database. The possibilities for collaboration are endless.

See Also:

Reference: Data Is the New Dirt–Visualization

Review: The World Is Open–How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education

Journal: CIA Veteran Rings Bell on Iraq–Way Too Late…

10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Intelligence (government), Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Iraq: Time to Ring the Bell

by Howard P. Hart

27 August 2010

Many years ago I attended a series of Headquarters briefings for out-going CIA Chiefs of Station. Our main speaker was Richard Helms, then the Agency’s Director and one of the lions of American foreign policy in the 1960’s and 70’s. A man who was subsequently crucified in the Nixon catastrophe. Dick was essentially giving us our instructions, and in my mind his most telling directive was the quiet statement: “Ring the Bell.” Telling us to sing out when we apprehended a major disaster in the offing.

It’s time to ring the bell on Iraq.

Briefly put, in a matter of months Iran will emerge the unchallenged military and economic power dominating the area from Lebanon to Pakistan. It will control Iraq, and be in a position to shut off all oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. It will be free to provide extensive assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan, thus ensuring a NATO defeat in that country. It will be in a position to provide crucial support to radical Islamic elements in Pakistan – which may well result in the collapse of that already shaky nuclear-armed government. It will be free to radically increase its support to a variety of terrorist organizations targeting the US. And, in conjunction with well-armed radical Palestinian forces that already exist on Israel's borders, it will pose the greatest threat ever faced by Israel. A threat that I do not believe Israel could survive without direct US military intervention.

READ THE BALANCE OF THE PIECE BY THIS CIA VETERAN

Continue reading “Journal: CIA Veteran Rings Bell on Iraq–Way Too Late…”

Journal: TIME (Joe Klein) on Collective Intelligence

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence
Tom Atlee Recommends
Illustration by Stephen Kroninger for TIME

How Can a Democracy Solve Tough Problems?

Joe Klein

Thursday, 2 September 2010

TIME Magazine

But what if there were a machine, a magical contraption that could take the process of making tough decisions in a democracy, shake it up, dramatize it and make it both credible and conclusive? As it happens, the ancient Athenians had one. It was called the kleroterion, and it worked something like a bingo-ball selector. Each citizen — free males only, of course — had an identity token; several hundred were picked randomly every day and delegated to make major decisions for the polis.

Actually, the Chinese coastal district of Zeguo (pop. 120,000) has its very own kleroterion, which makes all its budget decisions. The technology has been updated: the kleroterion is a team led by Stanford professor James Fishkin. Each year, 175 people are scientifically selected to reflect the general population.

Tom Atlee Comments:

I'm not yet up to diving in re this fascinating TIME article on participatory budgeting based on Deliberative Polling methodology  but some of you might want to.  Interesting that they don't cover Participatory Budgeting, which is becoming widespread in South America, or the experiments using Citizens Juries for budgeting in Canada… It is, of course, amazing that less-wise forms of deliberative democracy — like Fishkin's Deliberative Polls and AmericaSpeaks' 21st Century Town Meetings — are preferred by power-holders over more potent forms like Citizens Juries, Citizens Assemblies, Consensus Conferences, etc., to say nothing of Wisdom Councils (which aren't strictly deliberative).  On second thought, it is not surprising.. 🙂  But Fishkin and Lukensmeyer have the political savvy to clear the way for more advanced forms of wise democracy to emerge into public awareness and use.  It's up to us to use that space.

Coheartedly,
Tom

noble gold