Cultural Intelligence – Page 903 – Public Intelligence Blog

Rising food prices are galvanizing Jakarta's urban farming movement.

By Sara Schonhardt, Correspondent / April 22, 2011

Jakarta, Indonesia

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

Jakarta’s urban gardening scene got started with a simple tweet: “Who wants to start urban farming?” After that first Twitter message in November 2010, the group known as Jakarta Berkebun secured a plot in the city’s north and harvested a crop of morning glories (a common ingredient in many dishes here).

jakarta garden — Click on Image to Enlarge

Jakarta lacks green space, but unused land abounds. Jakarta Berkebun aims to transform empty lots that often fill with rubbish into training grounds for urban youths to learn about growing food. For Milly Ratudian, an architect who leads the group, urban farming is a a response to skyrocketing food prices despite the nation’s abundant fertile crop land.

Read full article….

2011/04/26

Ron Paul’s Moment?

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Open Government, Policies

face michael ostrolenk — Michael Ostrolenk

Politico The Arena, 26 April 2011

The Ron Paul Revolution in 2008 and the tea party movement that followed shows that the American conservative mainstream is starting to awaken to its own pre-neocon past and potential future. It is seeing itself as the bulwark needed to protect our Republic, the rule of law, individual liberty and our fiscal health against those in both parties whose policies have taken the United State to the precipice of disaster.

For those who think both constitutionally as Dr. Paul does and systemically, it's impossible to distinguish between our national debt and our foreign policy. Dr. Paul is one of the few candidates who offers an integrated and systemic way of understanding the difficulties we face as a country and the means to restore our Republic.

Continue reading “Ron Paul's Moment?”

2011/04/262011/04/26

De-Programming the “American Hologram”

07 Other Atrocities, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Impotency, Policies, Reform

It is not about politics. It is about the “American Hologram”, as Joe Bageant calls it:

“All Americans, regardless of caste, live in a culture woven of self-referential illusions. Like a holographic simulation, each part refers exclusively back to the whole, and the whole refers exclusively back to the parts. All else is excluded by this simulated reality.”

The Great American Media Mind Warp: A Feast of Bullshit and Spectacle

Of course Joe, who died recently, is pretty far out there. But his notion of the Hologram, which has become almost sacred in some parts of our culture, is pretty accurate. Compare and contrast, for example, main stream media with Rachel Maddow. She reports, I am told, on the negative receptions GOP members get at their so called town hall meetings. But the MSM? Or look at Wikileaks on Gitmo vs the MSM on Gitmo. Or look at the failure of the MSM to link the decline of the dollar to the price of gasoline.

So what we need is a counter-narrative that strips the current hologram of its power to delude and anesthetize. IE, until we see through the hologram and realize it is naked, as it were, we are not going to get much meaningful change. Change is not what the powers that be want, which of course is why they promote consumption, celebrity and entertainment over all. A nation of zombies, who don't even know they are being duped, is what they want.

This is not rocket science and is well known, but so far no one has been able to articulate a sufficiently compelling alternative narrative.

See Also:

Massimo Pigliucci on Ignorance Today

AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga

Journal: USA Theater of Politics Adds a Side Show

Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

2008 ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig

2011/04/252011/04/25

New Student Group Questions 9-11 “Findings”

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Academia, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

New RSO questions validity of 9/11 attacks, calls for explanations

By David Oltean || April 24, 2011

Central Michigan Life

Nearly a decade has passed since Sept. 11, 2001, and many still vividly remember the fateful day when about 3,000 Americans lost their lives.

However, some are demanding a new explanation for the disaster.

A new registered student organization, 9/11 Truth, has been formed at Central Michigan University in an attempt to raise awareness of the physically unique collapses of the World Trade Center towers. The group follows the views of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group of more than 1,400 architects and engineers who have signed a petition demanding a federal investigation to re-explore the nature of the collapses.

Waterford junior Jared Weston formed the group after spending years conducting his own research on the 9/11 skyscraper collapses. Weston believes one of the most peculiar happenings on Sept. 11, 2001 was the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, which was not struck by a plane.

“What motivated me was the failure of the 9/11 Commission report to adequately address the collapse of building seven,” Weston said. “No steel high rises have ever collapsed from fire in the history of steel high rises, yet we have three instances all on the same day.”

Read rest of story…

See Also:

wtc7 series — A four-image progression of photos showing World Trade Center Building 7 collapsing down into its footprint. (click image to enlarge)

Source of photo

Journal: 9-11 WTC 7 You Tube Videos

911Truth.org Resource List

9-11 Truth Books & DVDs (29 Reviews)

2011/04/252011/04/25

Reference (2003): Augmented Social Network

Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, Methods & Process, Policies, Reform, Serious Games, Standards, Threats, White Papers

NEW: Archived & Expanded at P2P Foundation/ASN

this paper covers a lot of the ground we've been discussing here [at Google Group Next Net] about what kind of intentions a ‘next net' would facilitate. worth a read.

Augmented Social Network: Building Identity and Trust into the Next-General Internet by Ken Jordan, Jan Hauser, Steven Foster

as presented at the Planetwork conference on “Networking a Sustainable Future” in San Francisco on June 6, 2003

as published First Monday, Volume 8, Number 8 – 4 August 2003

Phi Beta Iota: The current approaches to “identity” are vestiges of the industrial-era commoditization of humans and the fragmentation of the commons. In the 1990's the Hackers Conference (Silicon Valley) discussed trust and identity authentication in combination with anonymnity (or better, invisibility).

2011/04/252011/04/25

Massimo Pigliucci on Ignorance Today

04 Education, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making

Ignorance Today

Massimo Pigliucci

2011-04-22

NEW YORK – Ignorance is the root of all evil, according to Plato, who also famously gave us a still-current definition of its opposite: knowledge. For Plato, knowledge is “justified true belief.” That definition is worthy of consideration as we reflect on the perils of ignorance in the twenty-first century.

Plato thought that three conditions must be met in order for us to “know” something: the notion in question must actually be true; we must believe it (because if we do not believe something that is true, we can hardly claim that we know it); and, most subtly, it must be justifiable – there must be reasons why we believe the notion to be true.

Consider something that we all think we know: the earth is (approximately) round. This is as true as astronomical facts get, particularly because we have sent artificial satellites into orbit and seen that our planet is indeed roundish. Most of us (except for a lunatic fringe of flat-earthers) also believe this to be the case.