Xeden is launching this year and building out over the next year the Peace Cloud which will host to many of the NGOs, non-profits from around the world that address needs on the ground. This year the Peace Day event is a 5 day celebration of the United Nations Millennium…
The official website for the International Day of Peace Broadcast, September 17-21.
Phi Beta Iota: In our view all the big companies: IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Google (in a nose dive now) are missing the boat. Here are the three C's of the future: Cellular (free), Cloud (free access, for fee decision-support), Communities (free).
Recently, my dad proposed in his back-page column in the May/June Utne Reader, titled “An Open Letter to MoveOn,” that the nation’s premier progressive organization should go beyond issue-driven campaigns and “lead a community organizing movement across America.” (Yes, in case you’re wondering, my dad founded Utne Reader, and I worked there as a writer and editor for eight years.)
I couldn’t agree more. I especially like his suggestion that MoveOn stage a series of large revival-style cultural events designed to introduce members to each other:
MoveOn could kick off the movement by hosting stadium-sized events, harking back to 19th-century chautauquas and tent shows. Attendees would sit together according to particular affinities: parents of young children, schoolteachers, health care workers, clergy, small-business owners, elders. Like-minded participants could share their ideas about particular issues, like clean, green energy and single-payer health care. Or, if seating were assigned based on zip code and postal route, people would meet their neighbors in a positively charged environment.
Phi Beta Iota: We are hugely impressed by the combined convergence and emergence we see all around us. The Internet is moving into phase 3, where it optimizes human collaboration including face to face encounters. We will begin to follow Leif Utne.
Do you live in Oregon? Do you have friends, associations, networks in Oregon? If you do, I'm urging you to spread the word on one of the most important developments toward a wiser democracy in the US.
Although most Oregonians don't know it — and you and I are going to change that — Oregon just held the first citizen deliberative councils ever to be officially authorized by a government in the US. Oregonians live in the first state to officially bring the “voice of the whole” — a legitimate, deliberative voice of We the People, above and beyond partisan debate — into public discourse, into the homes of voters, and into the official business of government.
Here's what happened: Two “Citizen Initiative Reviews” — panels of randomly selected ordinary Oregonian voters — have passed “informed public judgment” on two ballot initiatives Oregonians will be voting on this November. Authorized by the state legislature and the governor, their thorough study, expert interviews, and deliberations have clarified the issues and facts so Oregon's voters can more intelligently decide how to vote, to reflect their highest values. These ordinary citizens have cut right through the partisan noise and TV ads that muddy up the initiative process.
More Photos of Oregon
This innovation could revolutionize elections. The initiative form of direct democracy could once again become a tool of the popular will. Broader use of the Citizen Initiative Review process could overcome special interests bent on turning popular will against the common good.
The only thing needed now to turn this budding breakthrough into a full-fledged transformation is for Oregonians to read, think about, and talk about the Citizen Initiative Review statements in Oregon's Voter Information Booklets (see the links below). So we need to tell all our friends and associates in Oregon to do that. If enough people see these statements — and realize how incredibly valuable they are compared to the repetitive, manipulative partisan spin and mudslinging that usually fill the airwaves and Voter Information Booklets — they will demand more of this kind of We the People voice in more aspects of our political life and governance.
I want to stress how important this is: This initiative goes beyond surveys, because it is deliberative and it reveals common understandings, not just individual opinions. If this spreads, we'll find ourselves on a really different political playing field, with new rules of play. This is a potential game changer. We have a chance to make a difference with it RIGHT NOW, during this one month before elections.
Please do what you can.
Below is a message I received from Healthy Democracy Oregon who spearheaded this remarkable innovation:
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Despite earning a ballot line in the 2010 U.S. Senate Race in Connecticut, Dr. John Mertens is not invited to participate in the first post-primary U.S. Senate debate, in New Haven, Conn., Monday, October 04, 2010 from 6:30 – 9:00 p.m., but Mertens has found a way around this roadblock.
Using multimedia technologies to show the televised debate and candidates Blumenthal and McMahon’s answers (live), Mertens and his team will pause to allow candidate Mertens to answer each question before resuming the televised broadcast, giving equal voice to all three candidates. Olwen Logan, publisher of three online local news publications, writer and PR consultant, will be moderating the event.
“John Mertens’ broadcast is a brilliantly creative way of using technology to push back against the duopoly which continues to exclude him and other alternative voices from being heard,” said Christina Tobin, founder and chair of The Free and Equal Elections Foundation. “Voters everywhere deserve to hear from all candidates for public office so they can make educated decisions at the polls.”
“We’re inviting the audience to be citizen journalists during the debate through twitter, and to stay after to connect and discuss issues,” Mertens said.
The Republican grab for Congress is being funded by a pack of wolves masquerading as a herd of sheep.
How sweet and innocent they seem, these mysterious organizations with names like Americans for Job Security. Who could argue with that? Who wants job insecurity?
It turns out, according to The Washington Post, that an entity called Americans for Job Security has made nearly $7.5 million in “independent” campaign expenditures this year, with 88 percent of that total going to support Republican candidates. Who’s putting up all that money? You’ll never know, because Americans for Job Security—which calls itself a “business association”—doesn’t have to disclose the source of its funding.
Phi Beta Iota: The Supreme Court is no longer the arbiter of the Constitution or of Justice–the decision to ratify corporate personality, the most anti-democratic concept after slavery–and to allow organizations to spend freely on manipulating elections, is the nail in the coffin of the Republic. The original Republic is dead–Benjamin Franklin was correct, we could not keep it. Whether a Second American Republic arises from these ashes remains to be seen.
Such deep-pocketed mystery benefactors — not O’Donnell, whose reported income for this year and last is $5,800 — are the real indicators of what’s going on under the broad Tea Party rubric. Big money rains down on the “bottom up” Tea Party insurgency through phantom front organizations (Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Job Security) that exploit legal loopholes to keep their sugar daddies’ names secret. Reporters at The Times and The Washington Post, among others, have lately made real strides in explaining how the game works. But we still don’t know the identities of most of those anonymous donors.
From what we do know, it’s clear that some Tea Party groups and candidates like Sharron Angle, Paul and O’Donnell are being financed directly or indirectly not just by the Kochs (who share the No. 5 spot on the new Forbes 400) but by a remarkable coterie of fellow billionaires, led by oil barons like Robert Rowling (Forbes No. 69) and Trevor Rees-Jones (No. 110). Even their largess may be dwarfed by Rupert Murdoch (No. 38) and his News Corporation, whose known cash contributions ($2 million to Republican and Republican-tilting campaign groups) are dwarfed by the avalanche of free promotion they provide Tea Party causes and personalities daily at Fox and The Wall Street Journal.
Phi Beta Iota: The author provides a long and compelling description of how the Tea Party is a front for big money; most Tea Party candidates are not what they claim to be, and the public–the ignorant, angry, naive public–is falling for the shell game.
