1. Demonstrates the non-sense a President can spout when his speeches are written based on the lack of coherent (holistic) open source intelligence within the US Government; and
2. Raises the rather fascinating idea that those regions that refuse to permit alternative energy (e.g. windmills) or refineries or other elements of a national energy infrastructure in their backyards should be limited in their access to domestic energy from others.
I am cheerfully optimistic that truth and trust will be the common currency of the 21st Century. This effort out of Hungary offers useful reflections on the degree to which privacy and anonymnity are necessary to “out” the old sovereignty and achieve a new sovereignty of the whole.
Wikileaks represents a new type of (h)activism, which shifts the source of potential threat from a few, dangerous hackers and a larger group of mostly harmless activists — both outsiders to an organization — to those who are on the inside. For insiders trying to smuggle information out, anonymity is a necessary condition for participation. Wikileaks has demonstrated that the access to anonymity can be democratized, made simple and user friendly.
Being Anonymous in the context of Wikileaks has a double promise: it promises to liberate the subject from the existing power structures, and in the same time it allows the exposure of these structures by opening up a space to confront them.
. . . . . .
The true potential of the cyberspace is not that it enables anonymous observation of the state power, but that it offers its citizens the chance to hide from observation. In other words the identity-protecting side of technology has more emancipatory power than its capability to obtain and expose secrets. Maybe less, and not more transparency is the path that leads to the aims of Wikileaks.
The other night I heard Keith Jarrett stop a concert mid-note. While the hall had been surprisingly silent during the performance, the song he was playing was quiet and downbeat and we (and especially he) could hear an increasing chorus of coughs.
“Coughs?,” you might wonder… “No one coughs on purpose. Anyway, there are thousands of people in the hall, of course there are going to be coughs.”
But how come no one was coughing during the introductions or the upbeat songs or during the awkward moments when Keith stopped playing?
No, a cough is not as overt or aggressive as shouting down the performer. Nevertheless, it's heckling.
Just like it's heckling when someone is tweeting during a meeting you're running, or refusing to make eye contact during a sales call. Your work is an act of co-creation, and if the other party isn't egging you on, engaging wth you and doing their part, then it's as if they're actively tearing you down.
Yes, you're a professional. So is Jarrett. A professional at Carnegie Hall has no business stopping a concert over some coughing. But in many ways, I'm glad he did. He made it clear that for him, it's personal. It's a useful message for all of us, a message about understanding that our responsibility goes beyond buying a ticket for the concert or warming a chair in the meeting. If we're going to demand that our partners push to new levels, we have to go for the ride, all the way, or not at all.
Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added. 80% of government is going through the motions and wasting money for lack of public intelligence and a universal commitment to co-creation in the public interest.
EXTRACT: Ironically, those in the so –called anti- globalization movement are all for the globalization of information. Mobile phone and the Internet are most critical tools, forming an underground media that people globally must now turn to in order to understand what is really happening.
In the mainstream, multinational corporate media realm, actual events are edited, watered down a misconstrued. Newsreaders and commentators who sing the praises of globalization dismiss what is becoming a global, people’s free democratic movement with the crude label “anti-globalization”.
While debate on climate change often strikes a caustic tone, the real impediment to meaningful dialogue is that the two sides often talk past each other in what amounts to a “logic schism,” says a University of Michigan researcher.
GM Suspends Shreveport Truck Output on Japan Parts Shortage
Bloomberg March 17, 2011, 4:13 PM EDT
By Craig Trudell
March 17 (Bloomberg) — General Motors Co., the largest U.S. automaker, will suspend production at its Shreveport Assembly in Louisiana for the week of March 21 because of a parts shortage resulting from the crisis in Japan.
Phi Beta Iota: Chernobyl and Bho Pal did not have the same cascade effect as today's nuclear events (five of them) in Japan. The global supply chain vulnerability has grown to the point of severe dysfunctionality in the face of a major disruption. Rising oil prices may also change the affordability of out-sourced parts, one reason we are so interested in the Open Farm Technology initiative. Despite over a decade of recommendations to be more thoughtful about this, entire industries continue to ignore both “true cost” information and supply chain choke point information.
OCHA, UNOSAT and NetHope have been collaborating with the Volunteer Technical Community (VTC) specifically CrisisMappers, Crisis Commons, Open Street Map, and the Google Crisis Response Team over the past week.
The CrisisMappers Standby Task Force has been undertaking a mapping of social media, news reports and official situation reports from within Libya and along the borders at the request of OCHA. The Task Force is also aiding in the collection and mapping of 3W information for the response. UNOSAT is kindly hosting the Common Operational Datasets to be used during the emergency. Interaction with these groups is being coordinated by OCHA’s Information Services Section.
The public version of this map does not include personal identifiers and does not include descriptions for the reports mapped. This restriction is for security reasons. All information included on this map is derived from information that is already publicly available online (see Sources tab).
Click for Live Map with Substance Links
In the midst of this transition in Libya, one of the most devastating earthquakes in centuries hit northern Japan, causing one of the most destructive tsunamis in recent memory. Just hours after the earthquake, a member of Japan's OpenStreetMap community launched a dedicated Crisis Map for the mega-disaster. A few hours later, Japanese students at The Fletcher School (which is where the Ushahidi-Haiti Crisis Map was launched) got in touch with the Tokyo-based OpenStreetMap team to provide round-the-clock crisis mapping support.
Over 4,000 reports have been mapped in just 6 days. That's an astounding figure. Put differently, that's over 600 reports per day, or one report almost every two minutes for 24 hours straight over 6 days. What's important about the Japan Crisis Map is that the core operations are being run directly from Tokyo and the team there is continuing to scale it's operations. It's very telling that the Tokyo team did not require any support from the Standby Volunteer Task Force. They're doing an excellent job in the midst of the biggest disaster they've ever faced. I'm just amazed.
Tip of the Hat to Patrick Meier and Team at iRevolution.
