Category: Cultural Intelligence

Posted on

Jean Lievens: Peer Production Based on Commons & Possession Vice Property

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Christian Siefkes: Peer Production is based on Possession, not Property

“Peer production is based on commons and possession (not on property). Benkler talks about “commons-based peer production” to emphasize the important role of the commons (goods and resources without owners who can control how they can be used). Generally, commons such as free software and open knowledge play an important role as input or output (or both) of peer projects.

. . . . . . .

The key is that “possession” is rooted in the concept of “use rights” or “usufruct” while “private property” is rooted in a divorce between the users and ownership. For example, a house that one lives in is a possession, whereas if one rents it to someone else at a profit it becomes property. Similarly, if one uses a saw to make a living as a self-employed carpenter, the saw is a possession; whereas if one employs others at wages to use the saw for one's own profit, it is property. Needless to say, a capitalist workplace, where the workers are ordered about by a boss, is an example of “property” while a co-operative, where the workers manage their own work, is an example of “possession.”

Read full discussion.

Posted on

Johnny Punish: Israel is an Apartheid State — And Has the Power to Smash the US Secretary of State for Speaking Truth

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Johnny Punish
Johnny Punish

INVESTIGATION: Who Politically Punched John Kerry in the Jimmy Carter Face?

Join Author Johnny Punish on an Irreverent Adventure as He Searches for the Perp-Pe-Traitor of the Political Rear Naked Choke Hold on Secretary of State John Kerry’s Campaign for World Peace

by Johnny Punish

This week we bore witness to another smack down of a major U.S. leader by the global force that is “it”

This time, like so many before him, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was the target du jour; publicly tarred and feathered by this ominous dark sided menace.

At a closed meeting of the Trilateral Commission, the group that secretly runs the shadow government, Kerry said Israel could become an “apartheid” nation if it does not reach a peace deal to create a separate Palestinian state. And just before his warm viperian breath vapor ran cold, “it” had their attack squads scrambled into action like U.S. Taxpayer funded F-15s paid for as part of the billions upon billions of misappropriated monies and strong arm defense contracts that continue to fund the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people in favor of whatever “it” wants.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Johnny Punish: Israel is an Apartheid State — And Has the Power to Smash the US Secretary of State for Speaking Truth”

Posted on

SchwartzReport: Grass-Roots Anti-Fracking

03 Economy, 05 Energy, Civil Society, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

Here is a wonderful story of how a single couple has been able to take on a destructive industry and win.

The Real Secret to Beating the Koch Brothers: How Our Broken Political System Can Still be Won
LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor – Salon

You probably haven’t heard of Helen Slottje, or, for that matter, of her husband, David. But in the past few years, the former corporate lawyers have become arguably two of the most powerful opponents of fracking in New York – not to mention the most successful. As the (sort of) public face of the duo’s efforts, Helen Slottje on Monday was honored with the Goldman Prize, the world’s largest environmental prize.

Like most fracktivists, the Slottjes became embroiled in the issue when they moved to an area targeted by drilling companies – in their case, upstate New York, which sits atop the gas-rich Marcellus Shale, and where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly put off making a decision about whether to lift the state’s five-year moratorium on hydraulic hydrofracking. Lacking confidence in the power of the picket sign or citizen engagement on oil-funded big government, they instead decided to approach the program at the most basic level. Their weapon of choice is a principle known as home rule: If individual communities decide that these industries pose a significant risk to common resources like air and water, then those communities can decide to keep those industries out, regardless of what state and federal laws say.

One by one, the Slottjes have helped small towns in New York enact such bans, to the point at which, even if New York’s moratorium were to be lifted tomorrow, the oil and gas industry would find itself effectively barred from drilling in 172 communities. After being decided in the towns’ favors at all of the state’s lower courts, two of those cases, in Dryden and Middlefield, are now up before the Court of Appeals. A decision, which will determine whether towns have the right to override state law, is expected this fall, and its anticipated impact can’t be overstated. As Thomas West, a lawyer for the energy company seeking to have the ban overturned, told the New York Times last year, ‘It’s going to decide the future of the oil and gas industry in the state of New York.” (The Slottjes, it should be noted, weren’t even mentioned in the piece.)

Read full article.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Grass-Roots Anti-Fracking”

Posted on

Mini-Me: An Alternative Favorable View of Putin – A Citizen Challenges US Government and US Media on Simple Truth

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Who? Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are first class intellects who researched and wrote a truly important book on Afghanistan's modern political history (Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story), which includes a detailed, inside account of the Carter/Brzezinski administration's disinformation campaign—prosecuted by our news media—regarding the Afghan government's invitation of the Soviet military into the country. Characterized as an “invasion”, it soon became our excuse for funding the Mujahideen—the Islamic fundamentalists who are now our sworn enemy and who have wreaked havoc on a very promising democracy. Elizabeth just sent me the below report about Vladimir Putin written by a friend she consider svery reliable. I have no way to way evaluate what Ms. Tennison says in her report but she presents a very stark counter to the demonization campaign  towards Putin currently underway in the New York Times and other Western media.

Dear Ones,

We’d like to introduce you to Sharon Tennison who has written an analysis of Vladimir Putin that every American needs to know. Sharon, who lives in California, has been in a unique position for over three decades to grasp a ground truth about Russia and Putin. She created the Center for Citizen Initiative, that brought her to the Soviet Union in 1983 as a “citizen diplomat.

” She recently wrote a book about her experience titled, The Power of Impossible Ideas: ordinary citizens' extraordinary efforts to avert international crisis. It is “the history of Russia’s last three turbulent decades as observed by naive American citizens who traveled there in 1983 searching for keys to end the nuclear arms race… their skirmishes with the CIA, FBI, KGB and FSB, beingarrested, put in jail, in addition to creating unique programs to help Russian citizens survive the dissolution of the USSR and to begin recreating themselves after the fall of Communism…finding themselves inside the Kremlin, the White House, and the U.S. Congress.”

Once you’ve had a chance to read RUSSIA REPORT: PUTIN included below, we hope you will comment on Sharon’s observations in your next posting, blog or op-ed. Sharon can be reached for comments or interviews at sharon@ccisf.org.

Thanks much for your time.

Kindest regards,

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

RUSSIA REPORT: PUTIN

By Sharon Tennison

Posted Sunday April 20, 2014

Friends and colleagues,

As the Ukraine situation has worsened, unconscionable misinformation and hype is being poured on Russia and Vladimir Putin. Journalists and pundits must scour Internet and thesauruses to come up with fiendish new epithets to describe both. Wherever I make presentations across America, the first ominous question during Q&A is always,  “What about Putin?”

It's time to share my thoughts which follow:

Putin obviously has his faults and makes mistakes.  Based on my earlier experience with him, and the experiences of trusted people, including U.S. officials who have worked closely with him over a period of years, Putin most likely is a straight, reliable and exceptionally inventive man––a leader who quietly labors under mounds of accusations and myths that have been steadily leveled at and about him since he became Russia's second president.

I've stood by silently watching the demonization of Putin grow since it began in the early 2000s –– I pondered on computer my thoughts and concerns, hoping eventually to include them in a book (which was published in 2011). The book explains my observations more thoroughly than this article. Like others who have had direct experience with this formerly unknown man, I've tried to avoid being labeled as a “Putin apologist”––but to no avail.  If one is even neutral about this Russian leader, they are considered “soft on Putin” by pundits, news hounds and average citizens who get their news from CNN, Fox and MSNBC.

I don't pretend to be an expert, just a program developer in the USSR and Russia for the past 30 years.  But during this time, I've have had far more direct, on ground contact with Russians of all stripes across 11 time zones than any of the Western reporters or for that matter any of Washington's officials.  I've been in country long enough to ponder Russian history and culture deeply, to study their psychology and conditioning, and to understand the marked differences between American and Russian mentalities which so complicate our political relations with their leaders.  As with personalities in a family or a civic club or in a city hall, it takes understanding and compromise to be able to create workable relationships when basic conditionings are different.  Washington has been notoriously disinterested in understanding these differences and attempting to meet Russia halfway.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: An Alternative Favorable View of Putin – A Citizen Challenges US Government and US Media on Simple Truth”

Posted on

Jon Rappoport: Water Time — Surf Travel Diary of a Madman

Cultural Intelligence
Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport

Hollywood writer goes on the road with JFK assassination evidence

This is about a relentless film. A film that doesn’t care what happens when false reality is ripped away. A film that actually does what every person who knows the truth wants to do.

This is a film you should see. It’s called Water Time, and if you go to banditobooks.com, you can watch it for free, by signing up on Allan Weisbecker’s email list.

Allan is the director and the star of Water Time. He made a good living writing for Hollywood into the mid-90s (Miami Vice, Crime Story), when he quit the scene to live a different kind of life.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

A much, much different kind of life….that culminated in going on the road to see what had happened to America. Driving his truck, with his dog Honey, with his surfboard, with his laptop, on which he’d stashed compelling evidence that key events in modern American history had resulted in a shadow takeover of the country. A coup d’etat.

That’s one of the subjects of the film.

It’s about a man who knows the truth and wants to talk about it with average Americans on camera, before your eyes. It’s about a man who makes his own frontier, who mourns the loss of his childhood friend who died in Vietnam, a war made into a horror through the assassination of JFK.

This film forgets all about the smooth kind of Hollywood that, when all is said and done, ruffles no feathers. Water Time barrels into the present American malaise and explodes the barriers and the veils and membranes between vital information, life-changing information, and American people who are just “living their lives.”

Weisbecker sits down with them, opens his laptop, and shows them evidence that the JFK hit was a conspiracy. He shows them a few of the very strange things that happened on 9/11. He doesn’t back down. He pushes forward with uncompromising logic.

Continue reading “Jon Rappoport: Water Time — Surf Travel Diary of a Madman”

Posted on

Chris Hedges: The Crime of Peaceful Protest

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement
Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges

The Crime of Peaceful Protest

Truthdig.com, 27 April 2014

NEW YORK—Cecily McMillan, wearing a red dress and high heels, her dark, shoulder-length hair stylishly curled, sat behind a table with her two lawyers Friday morning facing Judge Ronald A. Zweibel in Room 1116 at the Manhattan Criminal Court. The judge seems to have alternated between boredom and rage throughout the trial, now three weeks old. He has repeatedly thrown caustic barbs at her lawyers and arbitrarily shut down many of the avenues of defense. Friday was no exception.

The silver-haired Zweibel curtly dismissed a request by defense lawyers Martin Stolar and Rebecca Heinegg for a motion to dismiss the case. The lawyers had attempted to argue that testimony from the officer who arrested McMillan violated Fifth Amendment restrictions against the use of comments made by a defendant at the time of arrest. But the judge, who has issued an unusual gag order that bars McMillan’s lawyers from speaking to the press, was visibly impatient, snapping, “This debate is going to end.” He then went on to uphold his earlier decision to heavily censor videos taken during the arrest, a decision Stolar said “is cutting the heart out of my ability to refute” the prosecution’s charge that McMillan faked a medical seizure in an attempt to avoid being arrested. “I’m totally handicapped,” Stolar lamented to Zweibel.

The trial of McMillan, 25, is one of the last criminal cases originating from the Occupy protest movement. It is also one of the most emblematic. The state, after the coordinated nationwide eradication of Occupy encampments, has relentlessly used the courts to harass and neutralize Occupy activists, often handing out long probation terms that come with activists’ forced acceptance of felony charges. A felony charge makes it harder to find employment and bars those with such convictions from serving on juries or working for law enforcement. Most important, the long probation terms effectively prohibit further activism.

Read full article (3 screens)

noble gold