Journal: The End of Old Money

03 Economy, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Mobile
WIRED Home Page

We stopped subscribing to WIRED when advertising crossed the 60% mark, but this issue came to us and has a useful article on the end of old money, which is to say, the end of money where banks and credit cards take an undeserved cut from every transaction while taking huge risks with your money as collateral.

The Open Money movement is proceeding apace, with community-oriented credit cards like Interra, new forms of home rule stripping corporations of their illegitimate “personality” status, and moving money from Wall Street to the local bank.

Meanwhile, Twitter is changing the world again by becoming a trusted point to point money transfer agent.  here are five new ways to pay that cut out the banks and credit card organized legalized crime lords:

Twitpay. Type a friend's Twitter handle, a dollar amount, and twitpay to transfer funds to their PayPal account.

Zong. Instead of entering credit card information anew for every online purchase, users fill in their phone number and the charge shows up on their monthly bill.

Square. The latest from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, this 3/4 inch cube turns any iPhone into a credit card reader.

GetGiving. This mobile app uses PayPal to enable charities to accept small donations without the usual exorbitant credit card transactions fees.

Hub Culture. Travelers can avoid the hassle and fees of swapping dollars for euros by transacting in vritual currency in this international network of workstations.

To our surprise, PayPal itself, central to most alternative schemes, was not highlighted other than being mentioned above.

Journal: Glenn Beck–What Would the Founders Do?

Cultural Intelligence

Glenn Beck has gone public with a pox on both parties.  We consider this significant.

He is also spinning up the Constitution and the words of the Founding Fathers while calling on Congress to exercise its Article 1 powers.

America appears to be making a decisive turn away from the two-party system and toward a demand for a restoration of electoral reform and integrity in all aspects of governance and politics.

Journal: Haiti Update of 10 February 2010

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Majnolita Louisome holds her brother Iverson outside their damaged home in Port-au-Prince. 2010 Getty Images

Good intentions gone wrong

Too many aid organizations and an inept government have created a chaotic relief effort in Haiti

“The aid machinery currently at work in Haiti keeps too much for overhead for its operations, and still relies overmuch on NGOs or contractors who do not observe the ground rules we would need to follow to build Haiti back better.”

Phi Beta Iota: This is the single best over-all description of how the USA–despite its massive presence–has failed  to provide the two things we have plenty of and everyone in Haiti needs:  mobility into all six air and sea points (12 entry points instead of two now being used) and the kind of multinational decision-support that STRONG ANGEL pioneered so able.  Haiti appears to be chaotic–out of control–and the problem will be made vastly worse if we allow US contractors to take the place over much as Naomi Klein anticipates in The Shock Doctrine–The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.  Haiti appears to be a disaster converted into a catastrophe now well on its way to pillaging and looting by American contractors who will make Haiti's own gangs look like “the little rascals.”

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Journal: Human Terrain Team (HTT)–Drama Part III

02 Diplomacy, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence

John Stanton Blog

New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case:  High Drama in HTS

by John Stanton

Observers indicate that two individuals in HTS leadership positions on the ground in Iraq—Lieutenant Colonel Byrd (Program Management Office – FWD)  and Michael Goains, GG-15 (Theater Coordination Element) had direct knowledge of Issa Salomi's prior forays outside Camp Liberty/Victory Base Complex in Iraq unaccompanied by his teammates (team designation IZ-02,) or US military personnel. Salomi was apparently taken by an Iraqi insurgent group in January 2010 and a video of him recently appeared in global media outlets in February 2010.

Observers have also pointed out that Salomi is not, in fact, a contractor but is instead a temporary US Army Civilian employee. In 2009, HTS reverted to a government program and contractors were forced to choose between leaving or converting to US government civilian status.

“There is so much drama within the HTS program right now that it is unbelievable. Many, many people are being fired, rearranged and moved around due to management incompetence and personality problems,” said observers. “The amount of money being squandered is ridiculous.”

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Journal: Collective Counter-Crime Counter-Intelligence

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Full Story Online

The Countertraffickers

Rescuing the victims of the global sex trade

by William Finnegan

May 5, 2008

Her allies and colleagues in this work are widely scattered. An ebullient Dubai prison officer named Omer, who calls Rotaru “sister,” has been a help. So have Russian policemen, an Israeli lawyer, a Ukrainian psychologist, an Irish social worker, a Turkish women’s shelter, Interpol, and various consulates and embassies, as well as travel agents, priests, and partner organizations, including an anti-trafficking group called La Strada, which has offices downstairs from Rotaru’s and a dedicated victims’ hot line.

Journal: NIGHTWATCH Extract France & Citizenship

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence

NIGHTWATCH HOME.  France: For the record. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on 3 February he would sign a decree barring a Moroccan man from receiving French citizenship because of his insistence that his French wife conform to the strictest Islamic practices. Fillon said that the man “has no place in our country.”

The French authorities describe the case as being about a religious radical who requires his wife to wear the burqa (the head to toe covering with eye slots); he insists the separation of men and women in his own home, and he refuses to shake the hands of women,” Fillon said.

On 2 February, Immigration Minister Eric Besson said that during checks into the man's application for citizenship, he explicitly stated that he would never allow his wife to leave the house without wearing a full veil and that he believed a woman is “an inferior being.”

Earlier this week a parliamentary panel called for a law to ban the wearing of full Islamic veils in public institutions such as schools, hospitals and transport. “It's French law,” Fillon told Europe 1 radio. “The Code Civile has for a very long time provided that naturalization could be refused to someone who does not respect the values of the French Republic.

A Reader could conclude that political correctness in France favors the Republic’s interests over the individual’s right of self expression and even personal religious observance. In this case, the Republic places respect for women and women’s rights over male dominance prescribed in religious texts. This is a study in democracy.

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Journal: Whither Twitter?

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Geospatial, Mobile, Real Time, Technologies

Twitter not all that popular among teenagers, report finds

“I don't know a single person who uses Twitter,” says Samara Fantie, 17, of Gaithersburg, who added that with so many of her friends on Facebook, Twitter seems beside the point.

Fantie listed its drawbacks, saying it appears to be less secure, more public and too condensed. “Teenagers like to talk, and 140 characters is just not enough,” she said. Facebook “does everything Twitter offers, only it's better. It would be like going backwards.”

Blogs Just Aren't Cool Any More, Teens Say

Blogging is slowly becoming the domain of adults, as a recent Pew study shows more teens abandoning the medium for social networks.

The study, conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, showed a decline in the number of teens who say they blog, from 28 percent in 2006 to 18 percent in 2009, when the study was conducted. Just 52 percent comment on their friends' blogs, versus 76 percent three years ago.

By contrast, the survey found that about 10 percent of adults maintain a blog, a figure that has remained unchanged.

Phi Beta Iota: We appear to be in an interregnum, with some very serious perople such as Pierre Levy and Jeff Jarvis seeing the enormous potential of Twitter, while the run of the mill “crowd” may be bored.  Our view: Twitter is a game changer in part because geospatial location and identity are embedded, it is both mobile and real-time, and back office trends and aggregation and clustering can be attached.  Something really cool is happening, and Pew missed it.

See also:

Continue reading “Journal: Whither Twitter?”