Headlines, Comment, and Lists of Book Reviews Below the Line…
NATO Says AF Insurgency Weakened–Really?
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Peace Intelligence
It is amazing that nowhere in this article does it mention the media coup that the Taliban scored. I also am not sure that the information released by NATO is accurate. If so, it contradicts previously reported Taliban strength levels. Nor does NATO address the recent high profile security breaches…..
By PATRICK QUINN
The Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO said Monday that it has significantly weakened the Taliban insurgency, capturing or killing thousands of militants in Afghanistan during the past three months.
4 Trends Shaping the Emerging “Superfluid” Economy
Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, History, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Maps, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Serious Games, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, Waste (materials, food, etc)
4 Trends Shaping the Emerging “Superfluid” Economy
Venessa Miemis | May 9, 2011
This post originally appeared on CNN.com's Global Public Square.
Humanity and technology continue to co-evolve at an ever increasing pace, leaving traditional institutions (and mindsets) calcified and out of date. A new paradigm is emerging, where everything is increasingly connected and the nature of collaboration, business and work are all being reshaped. In turn, our ideas about society, culture, geographic boundaries and governance are being forced to adapt to a new reality.
While some fear the loss of control associated with these shifts, others are exhilarated by the new forms of connectivity and commerce that they imply. Transactions and interactions are growing faster and more frictionless, giving birth to what I call a “superfluid” economy.
Business will not return to usual. So let's discuss 4 key concepts to help us better understand the shifts that are underway:
1. Quantifying and mapping everything
2. Everyone has access to the internet
3. Self-organizing expands
4. Peer-to-peer exchange changes the future of money
4 Trends discussed below the line with links
Continue reading “4 Trends Shaping the Emerging “Superfluid” Economy”
Patrick Meier: Ushahadi Election Monitoring
11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, Government, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Open Government, Reform, Standards, Tools
Analyzing U-Shahid’s Election Monitoring Reports from Egypt
Posted on May 8, 2011 by Patrick Meier| Leave a comment
I’m excited to be nearing the completion of my dissertation research. As regular iRevolution readers will know, the second part of my dissertation is a qualitative and comparative analysis of the use of the Ushahidi platform in both Egypt and the Sudan. As part of this research, I am carrying out some content analysis of the reports mapped on U-Shahid and the SudanVoteMonitor. The purpose of this blog post is to share my preliminary analysis of the 2,700 election monitoring reports published on U-Shahid during Egypt’s Parliamentary Elections in November & December 2010.
Cynthia McKinney is NOT Happy with NATO
02 Diplomacy, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Immigration, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence
Sent to me by a Libyan who hates what his country is becoming due to the racists now supported by NATO and who are in control of part of his country.
Cynthia McKinney
Nato units left 61 African migrants to die of hunger and thirst
Jack Shenker, Guardian, 8 May 2011
Boat trying to reach Lampedusa was left to drift in Mediterranean for 16 days, despite alarm being raised
Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned.
A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.
All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. “Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard,” said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. “By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying.”
MondoNet: Global Democratized Network II
11 Society, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Earth Intelligence
Introducing MondoNet: The censor-proof, unsurveillable network
Aram Sinnreich
A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at TEDxUSC, in which I laid out the basic argument for MondoNet, a new project I'm working on with a few of my grad students at Rutgers. My basic point is that, despite the many amazing cultural, economic and political uses to which it's been put, the Internet has a fundamental flaw preventing it from being an effective tool for democratic political action and cultural innovation.
The flaw lies in its centralized architecture and hierarchical governance; no matter how much people resist against institutional power through innovative cultural forms, and no matter how much we lobby against oppressive and exploitative uses of the technology (e.g. the current battles over net neutrality), the network provides its operators with an excess of power that will necessary be exploited.
We propose to remedy this situation with an architectural intervention: namely, using ad-hoc, mesh networking technology to create a global network that is fundamentally resistant to censorship, surveillance and exploitation, because no single individual or institution can control the information flow on any significant scale.
Clearly, there is a lot to discuss here; we plan to publish a full-length academic article in The Information Society in July, and a pre-publication copy can be read at MondoNet.org. But we're still working on developing funding and fleshing out the engineering, so I welcome your feedback, criticisms and offers of help!
MondoNet: Global Democratized Network
Autonomous Internet (99 as of 8 May 2011)
The Age of De-Leveraging is Just Beginning
01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making
Phi Beta Iota: 10 more years of pain.
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While the political elite obsesses over the rise in public debt, the US is on the cusp of an era of deleveraging — or more bluntly, a massive liquidation of private debt — the ramifications of which, in the best of times would be colossal, but could well be disastrous the irrational obsessions of our political elites work their magic.
The real policy question that will determine the future well-being of the vast majority of Americans is how liquidation of their private debts unfold — rapidly via rising waves of bankruptcies, foreclosures, and repudiations, as happened in the 1930s, or more gradually, which will require some kind of active intervention by government, and for which there is no real precedent, and clearly no acumen among the elites in Versailles on the Potomac.
Either evolutionary pathway will be painful, because the liquidation of private debt will require cutbacks that reduce aggregate demand and investment, thereby slowing growth and pushing the economy into a period of sluggish growth over the long term or into a depression (some economist argue we are already in a depression).
Continue reading “The Age of De-Leveraging is Just Beginning”
