Category: Collaboration Zones

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Tom Atlee: Moving Multi-Media of, by, from Occupy

Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence
Tom Atlee

A Collection of Moving #Occupy Videos

Most of the Occupy videos circulating lately are of massive demonstrations, police abuse of protesters, and various Occupy encampments being removed or resisting removal. For this remarkable visibility we can thank cell phones, powerful cheap video cameras, and the Web – from YouTube to live feeds.

There have been earlier periods of video visibility in the US – for example, TV coverage of the Vietnam War helped stimulate rising public resistance and a bystander's video of Rodney King being beaten by LA police in 1991 had a profound impact on the country. But for the last decade or so, images of our wars have been more thoroughly controlled by the government and mass media have often ignored major demonstrations, so today's renewed video visibility is refreshing. The effort to prevent video and other press coverage of the recent trashing of the Zuccotti Park encampment was so unusual and broadly offensive that it incited widespread comment.

One of the videos of this type that most impressed me recently showed the silent vigil that met University of California Davis chancellor Linda Katehi as she walked to her car. I don't know who thought of it, but I see this response by UC Davis students to the brutal pepper-spraying of peaceful student demonstrators on the ground as a profoundly important development in the Occupy movement's evolution. A small group of Great Peace Marchers in 1986 passed out tiny cards to their fellow marchers saying “We are walking in silence on behalf of the silent dead of Hiroshima and the silent unborn future” and silence spread through the crowd of over 1000 as we entered Washington DC, with comparable powerful effect. I hope the use of moral silence as a tactic spreads in Occupy. Here's the video:

However, I want to mainly use this message to highlight another type of OWS videos showing up in my emails – the ones made to inspire us.

Consider the moving videos below – and enjoy them.

Coheartedly,
Tom

See original post, links, descriptions of all links.

See Also:

David Graeber, the Anti-Leader of Occupy Wall Street

Meet the anthropologist, activist, and anarchist who helped transform a hapless rally into a global protest movement

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Theophilis Goodyear: China Credit Crashing

02 China, 03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, IO Impotency
Think?
Remember the footage in the “Inside Job” documentary of a single Chinese worker working in an otherwise empty giant factory? That factory could be productive, but the international currency system is preventing it.

That's the irony. If all the world's currencies collapse in one day, productive potential will be exactly the same as it was the day before, but production will fall idle all over the world because currency is the medium of exchange that facilitates production.

This is the main problem. If it's not fixed it will become an even bigger problem; but it will still be the same problem. Fix the currency problem and production will be up and running again. Don't fix it, and it will be The Day the Earth Stood Still (original version). And that day could drag into years if something isn't done about it.
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DefDog: Law Schools Not Teaching How to Lawyer

04 Education, Academia, Cultural Intelligence
DefDog

This just doesn't apply to lawyers, but most college grads are ill
prepared to enter the work force….

What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering

New York Times,  November 19, 2011

EXTRACT:

What they did not get, for all that time and money, was much practical training. Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful, with classes that are often overstuffed with antiquated distinctions, like the variety of property law in post-feudal England. Professors are rewarded for chin-stroking scholarship, like law review articles with titles like “A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise of Postmodern Legal Theory.”

So, for decades, clients have essentially underwritten the training of new lawyers, paying as much as $300 an hour for the time of associates learning on the job. But the downturn in the economy, and long-running efforts to rethink legal fees, have prompted more and more of those clients to send a simple message to law firms: Teach new hires on your own dime.

“The fundamental issue is that law schools are producing people who are not capable of being counselors,” says Jeffrey W. Carr, the general counsel of FMC Technologies, a Houston company that makes oil drilling equipment. “They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren’t ready to be a provider of services.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  The entire US educational system is hosed.  From college students who graduate with no more capability than high school graduates to half century ago, to “professional” degrees that do not teach how to “do” only how to take tests, the disconnect from reality is huge.   While some intelligence studies have emerged, after the pioneering effort of Mercyhurst under Bob Heibel, they do not actually teach the craft of intelligence or how to do holistic analytics or create workable open source information technology support packages — they simply prepare rounded cogs for the secret intelligence world.

See Also:

Education (General) (128)

Education (Universities) (58)

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John Steiner: Re-embracing Abraham’s Path

Cultural Intelligence, Geospatial, Peace Intelligence
John Steiner

In the footsteps and spirit of Abraham

William Ury is on a campaign to mark the path, which will run through several countries of the Middle East, an whose route will follow in the footsteps of the patriarch Abraham.

By Moshe Gilad

HAARETZ.com, 16 November 2011

EXTRACT:

The Abraham Path, which is now being marked, begins in Haran and meanders its way to the city Gaziantep. From there, it continues southward, crosses the border into Syria and wends its way to Aleppo. The path then moves south, passing through Damascus before crossing the border into the kingdom of Jordan and the city Amman. At that point it crosses over to Jericho in the Palestinian Authority, and then to Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron, where Abraham was buried. Additional offshoots of the path follow Abraham's journeys through Iraq and Israel.

. . . . .

Click on Image to Enlarge

The route is approximately 1,200 kilometers long. The Harvard team is aware that very few people will ever hike its entire length, but in a telephone interview with Haaretz, Ury clarifies that the intent is to create among visitors to the Middle East a profound cultural experience and a familiarization with the local culture, the residents, the landscapes and the regional tradition. “Hospitality is one of the greatest legacies that our culture received from Abraham,” he says, “and when you hike or drive along the path, you feel it every day, in the best possible way.”

A tool for conflict resolution

Ury himself has twice travelled the entire route, from Haran to Hebron, and his travels have left in him a deep impression, he says. His great expertise is conflict and crisis resolution. Development of the Abraham Path is, in his opinion, a tool for resolution of the prolonged crisis in the Middle East.

Read full article.

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NIGHTWATCH on European Union, Banks, and PIIGS

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

European Union: Reuters and other news services reported on 18 November that the European Commission will present a study that proposes three options for debt issuance for the Eurozone. The study indicates the European Union intends to exploit the debt crisis to undermine sovereignty in debtor countries, such as the PIIGS – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

• The first law would link the acquisition of emergency loans from current and future bailout funds to the acceptance of economic monitoring by the Commission, which would be more extensive than that for Portugal, Ireland or Greece. If a eurozone member accepts this enhanced surveillance, it could mean the Commission would have an almost permanent presence in the nation.

• The second law would allow the Commission to evaluate draft budgets, suggest changes or draft a new budget. The Commission could also debate the budgets in a national parliament. These changes would not require a change to the EU treaty, which already states that economic policy is a common concern.

• The third law stipulates that budgets must be drafted based on forecasts from independent institutions, such as the Commission or the European Central Bank, rather than government agencies. The Commission will also propose that fiscal rules be written into national laws, preferably a country's constitution.

Comment: If the PIIGS accept these terms, they surrender national sovereignty. It is unlikely that the laws will be approved, but they make clear the intentions of the unelected Eurocrats to govern. Budgetary authority is government authority. The Eurocrats think they know better than the people of the PIIGS.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota:  The only thing worse than democracy is everything else, and that everything else assuredly includes European technocrats who have deep conflicts of interest, deep gaps in their knowledge, deep gaps in their integrity, and zero appreciation for the realities that have led to this situation including deep corruption in both government and finance.  In a democracy, if politics and intelligence keep their integrity, there is no conflict and good policy results from good intelligence.  When either or both abandon their integrity, the people get screwed.  The LAST thing any of the weaker countries should do is listen to dictats from external “authorities.”  The re-nationalization of privatized public assets, and the criminal prosecution of all Goldman Sachs and other banking figures that lied to governments over the past decade, are two of the FIRST things each government should do.

See Also:

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

noble gold