The authors, experts in public health, are listed with all their academic credentials: William H. Wiist, DHSc, MPH, MS, Kathy Barker, PhD, Neil Arya, MD, Jon Rohde, MD, Martin Donohoe, MD, Shelley White, PhD, MPH, Pauline Lubens, MPH, Geraldine Gorman, RN, PhD, and Amy Hagopian, PhD.
“Since the end of World War II, there have been 248 armed conflicts in 153 locations around the world. The United States launched 201 overseas military operations between the end of World War II and 2001, and since then, others, including Afghanistan and Iraq. During the 20th century, 190 million deaths could be directly and indirectly related to war — more than in the previous 4 centuries.” Continue reading “Public Health Experts Identify Militarism As Threat”
Democratic movements can flourish online, but just as easily get censored. A group of researchers is developing solutions to the vulnerabilities and privacy problems with using big social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan disrupted communications between his opponents when he shut down Twitter during the run-up to the country's recent election. But in doing so, he provided yet more proof of how flawed social web activism can be. Whether the lessons in Turkey are heeded could have serious consequences for democracy.
Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have enabled unprecedented levels of communication and have even received credit for at least one major democratic revolution. There's just one problem: because of their monolithic nature, these centralized networks expose users to snooping and interference of the kind Erdogan caused, says Sonja Buchegger, Associate Professor of Computer Science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
A single, large-scale platform provides an easier target for anyone who wants to interfere with online political activity, says Buchegger. “But, if Twitter were decentralized, and you had users cooperating and communicating directly, that wouldn't have been possible to disrupt.
“Decentralization allows for greater freedom of expression.
The good news is that there could be a computer science answer to the problem. Buchegger is leading a group of scientists at KTH who are creating building blocks that developers could use to launch decentralized, distributed networks, which would not only be difficult to interfere with, but would also protect people from government snooping.
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's long time principal assistant and Chief of Staff when he was Secretary of State, continuing a relationship dating back several decades, is a man whose observations should be taken seriously. These are amazing comments. Click through to see the video.
Americans are starting to understand that the U.S. is an oligarchy, rather than a democracy or a republic. (Even the chair of the Federal Reserve can’t really disagree.)
That’s true of war-making and foreign policy, as well.
Consummate insider Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – former chief of staff to Colin Powell, the guy who wrote Powell’s famous speech on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and now distinguished adjunct professor of Government and Public Policy at William & Mary – notes:
Who’s behind the White House, and who’s therefore behind U.S. foreign policy, more or less?
I think the answer today is the oligarchs. Which would be the same answer, – incidentally, ironically, if you will – for Putin in Russia.
In recent months I’ve discovered that random selection offers unexpected gifts to our efforts to create more fair, functional, and intelligent politics and governance. I share a key dynamic that defines random selection and show how it has been applied historically and might be used more in specific institutions and instances today.
Until a few years ago I thought that random selection was just a great way to pick people who were a cross-section of the population, for a survey or a citizen deliberation. Random selection guarantees diversity and safeguards against manipulation, two very important factors in such exercises. I didn’t think to explore it further.
Then while researching my 2012 book Empowering Public Wisdom, I discovered that ancient Athenians staffed 90% of their government posts by drawing lots from the general citizenry. THAT was certainly a different way to govern!! Then this year, while helping on a few on-the-ground projects involving random selection, I had to learn about the unexpectedly diverse nitty-gritty issues of how people actually do such selections.
I began to realize that random selection is much more nuanced and filled with possibilities than I’d previously thought. I dug further into the subject, reading three books and a number of articles on what is also called lot, lottery, and sortition. I am starting – just starting – to get a handle on its counter-intuitive logic and its novel promise of remarkable power and potential….
You’ll hear more from me about all this over the coming months. Right now I want to share the main reason I think random selection is really important for us social change agents to understand:
Random selection is a perfect tool to address our most dangerous political problem – special interest manipulation.
Its potency includes and goes beyond the problem of “money in politics”. It potentially deals with manipulation of politicians and public officials (which generates corruption) … manipulation of information and social narratives (which generates ignorance and folly) … manipulation of public policy and budgets (which generates injustice and concentration of wealth and power) … and manipulation of elections and districts (which generates political malignancy and polarization). Collectively these forms of manipulation generate apathy, cynicism, low voter turnout, powerlessness, and suffering among the population at large while degrading prospects for future generations.
If you are reading this, the chances are you already know how toxic such dynamics are to democracy. Imagine what a gift it would be to be able to address them all in one powerful way.
There is lots of confirming evidence, with or without the Wayback Machine’s indirect proof–that if there was no internet activity on specific days, probably there was none during the interval within which they fall–that confirms it had been closed.
In addition to not being compliant with the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), video footage shows that it was being used as a storage facility, where even The Newtown Bee reported that it was laden with asbestos and other bio-hazards. No student should have been there.
VICE Magazine “Saving South Sudan” (The entire 50,000 word article is available free online. The first time VICE has dedicated an entire magazine to one article)
At the other end of the reading spectrum. Another article I did on the hunt for Kony was published today along with a profile of my company DPx Gear went live today
The ongoing disinformation campaign financed by carbon interests such as the Koch brothers, combined with the corruption of every branch of our government, has left us in this condition.
In the age of the Iraq war and Obamacare, the government is hardly a trustworthy body.
The 841-page National Climate Assessment released by the US government this week has been described as ‘sobering”, but Americans do not appear sobered. The report goes into astonishing detail about what severe climate change would mean – and what it means already to specific villages, mountains and beaches.
