Category: Gift Intelligence

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How Charities Cheat Everyone: The Bono Example

Corruption, Gift Intelligence, Non-Governmental

Bono's ONE foundation under fire for giving little over 1% of funds to charity By Daily Mail Reporter Daily Mail UK, 23rd September 2010 Bono's anti-poverty foundation ONE is under pressure to explain its finances after it was revealed that only a small percentage of money it raises reaches the needy. The non-profit organisation set up by the U2 frontman received almost £9.6million in donations in 2008 but handed out only £118,000 to good causes (1.2 per cent). The figures published by the New York Post also show that £5.1million went towards paying salaries.

Read rest of story….

Tip of the Hat to Justice Seeker at Facebook.

Phi Beta Iota: This fraudulent attribute afflicts almost all “charities” and most especially the Clinton and Bush “foundations” as well as the Red Cross.  Katrina and Haiti are classic examples of the fraud that is common.

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Global Guerrillas: Thriving as Old Economy Dies

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, Methods & Process, Policies, Strategy, Threats
John Robb

Networked tribes, systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. Resilient Communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures.

By John Robb

HOW TO THRIVE (ECONOMICALLY) AS THINGS FALL APART

Posted: 20 May 2011 11:30 AM PDT

The most likely scenario for the next decade starts with the resumption of global economic depression (D2).  Economies shrink.  Wealth evaporates as former “assets” become worthless.  Commodities fall (even energy) due to declines in economic activity.  Currencies gyrate, explode, and/or evaporate.

In this environment, sovereigns will begin to default as the industrial nation-state model runs out of gas.  Developed nation-states will find themselves crushed between bailouts of their cronies and excess spending (i.e. social spending (EU), national security spending (US), or mercantilist over-investment (China).  Developing nations will just implode.

Things will continue on this track until one of two things happen:

  • things really begin to fail (complete system breakdown) or
  • new, better economic and social systems become viable as replacements to our broken one.

I'm betting on new economic and social systems.  Part of that bet, and something many people now get, is accomplished through the establishment of self-reliant resilient communities.  However, resilient communities aren't a sufficient replacement, in and of themselves (unless you want to turn back the clock to the 1800s).  By themselves, they don't represent a superior alternative to a failing and flailing global system.  Something else is needed, but what?

It's simple.  What's needed are (note the plural here), virtual global economic systems built on a sound footing (i.e. better and more sensible rules than we currently have), prosperous participants, and a hard currency.  Systems that people can flee to when currencies become scarce (deflation) or worthless (inflation) or nation-state political systems fail (corruption/crime) or flail (repression).

My advice to you: when you see a system that looks like the one outlined above, start to diversify your economic activity into it as soon as is practicable.

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Reference: Opening the World–Social networks and the formation of free [prosperous] communities

Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Strategy, Threats, Tools
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37-Slide Briefing

Openworld.com

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Ushandi Moves Forward with Crisis Mapping Check-In

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Real Time
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends...

Crisis Mapping Meets Check-in

New features could make a Web tool that has helped track events in Japan and the Middle East even more useful.

Monday, March 28, 2011, By David Talbot

MIT Technology Review

EXTRACT:  The new feature is known as “check-in,” also used by social sites like Foursquare—in that case as a way of alerting friends to your presence at a particular location.

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For Ushahidi, this is “a pretty powerful step forward,” says Ethan Zuckerman, a board member of the nonprofit, and a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. “Adding check-in to this equation allows me to pull my data apart from the whole. That makes maps usable for multiple purposes—group reporting as well as tracking of my own movements.”

Enabling such tracking simply requires a GPS-equipped phone to allow a quick log-in to record whereabouts

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10 Projects Toward a Superfluid Economy

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence
Venessa Miemis

emergent by design

10 Projects Moving Us Towards a Superfluid Economy

March 22, 2011

What is the future of money? And not just money, but currencies in general – from virtual currencies to timebanks to social currencies based around trust, identity, reputation, expertise and relationships. And not just currencies, a.k.a. tools that are supposed to represent a unit of measurement in order to transact, but also value exchange in general and the social behaviors that precede them.

So we’re really talking about The Superfluid Economy, the set of tools and behaviors that are developing to make economic exchange, transactions, payments, commerce, distributed collaboration, resource allocation, and social enterprise formation as frictionless and fluid as possible.

To kick off the conversation, I pulled up 10 projects that are innovating in this space which are either developing new products and services, or raising awareness through art and media. We’re excited to know that some of the initiatives below will be represented at Contact!

Read Blog that includes graphics, text, and twitter handles….

1. The Metacurrency Project ..  2. Community Forge ..  3. Bitcoin ..  4. Symbionomics ..  5. Payswarm ..  6. Ripple ..  7. OurGoods ..  8. WingCash ..  9. Open Bank Project ..  10. time/bank

Phi Beta Iota: Each generation marks their own path.  The above list does not include the real pioneers of Open Money and community credits.  Learn more at Open Money,  Openmoney, and  P2P Open Money Category.

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“I Am” A Documentary on What We Can Do…

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Worth A Look
John Steiner

Dear All:

A really uplifting new documentary, “I AM”, has just hit theaters featuring my dear friend, Marc Barasch. This film, based in significant part on Marc's insights into empathy, altruism and social healing from his seminal book, Field Notes on the Compassionate Life is taking off.  A previous DVD by Marc, The Compassionate Life: Walking the Path of Kindness, is available online.

It made the top ten list of indie films this week and last, after a successful launch on the coasts. It will also be shown at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder next month.

Tom Shadyac, Jim Carey director and the film¹s creator, has been touring with the film, as noted in indieWIREŒs profile of the film's strategy earlier this week. The film takes on Washington next weekend followed by Boston before expanding to other markets.

Along with Marc's truly inspiring segments, it features Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, David Suzuki, Lynn McTaggert, Ray Anderson and other luminaries. The “through-line” of this entertaining documentary is
Shadayac personal journey, following a serious accident, to discover “what's wrong with the world and what we can do about it” — a quest which he has said was triggered, in part, by Marc's own literary and life pilgrimage.

Here are some links that might be of interest:
* a review of the film in the Huffington Post
* YouTube film trailer about universal connection being “the emerging story.”
* a podcast (audio) of Tom and Marc on Terrence McNally's show on KPFK in L.A

Continue reading ““I Am” A Documentary on What We Can Do…”