Jean Lievens: Consumers – We Don’t Need Our Stuff
Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics
Consumers: ‘We don't need our stuff'
By Bruce Horovitz
USA Today, May 12, 2014
Consumers across the globe say they want less stuff.
Half of them say they’d happily live without most of the items they own in a global survey of 10,574 adults ages 16 and up in 29 nations. The survey, titled “The New Consumer and the Sharing Economy,” was done by the communication giant Havas Worldwide and will be released Tuesday.
Seventy percent of those surveyed said that overconsumption puts the planet at risk.
“Every step of the way, they are practicing less is more — and savoring the less,” says Andrew Benett, global CEO of Havas Worldwide.
Sixty-five percent of those surveyed said society would be better off if people shared more and owned less.
Tom Atlee: “Dark Google,” privacy and power
Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Impotency
As the information age and big data colonize everything in life – expanding now into reality itself – we face an erosion not only of privacy but of choice. Even as we think we have greater choice and power, really important choices and power are being subtly stolen from us by folks who don't want us to know or do anything about it. We need to take back our lives while we still can.
“Dark Google”, privacy and power
Dear friends,
Sir Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes told us that “Knowledge is power.” We need to integrate their insight with Sir John Acton's observation that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
In this runaway Information Age we need to realize that one-way concentrations of knowledge power are dangerous when they are not answerable, not responsive to oversight and feedback. The article below, “Dark Google”, makes this point powerfully regarding Google and the NSA. The author, Harvard's Shoshana Zuboff, is eminently qualified to issue this warning.
Continue reading “Tom Atlee: “Dark Google,” privacy and power”
Jean Lievens: Indigenous Economy & Ethical Work in Ecuador
Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics
Indigenous Economy & Ethical Work in Ecuador – Dissertation Reviews
From dissertationrevie
Drawing on a range of personal experiences and ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a number of years, Kristine Latta’s Merchant Moralities is a detailed and sympathetic account of the moral predicaments faced by Otavalo’s indigenous comerciantes/merchants. Working with Otavaleño communities, indigenous leaders, family members and friends, Latta explores life as it unfolds in and around the town itself, in family homes in the community of Peguche, and also on travels within the United States. Through careful descriptions, we learn of the particular transformations and vulnerabilities that these entrepreneurs face, as they engage in the decidedly transnational textile and tourism industries. These transformations coincide with actions elsewhere associated with a revalorization of indigeneity – both in localised spaces and particular cultural practices, and also more broadly on the national political stage. What can the distinct moral experiences of Otavalo’s merchants tell us more broadly about the dynamics of cultural change, the recalibration of tradition, and the complexities of contemporary indigenous experience? Focusing on people’s responses to shifts in priorities and contested commitments, we see how merchants articulate their own entrepreneurial values as personalised expressions of indigeneity, and do so amidst the novel opportunities and conspicuous disparities that their livelihoods create.
Berto Jongman: New Movement “Reset the Net” Fights NSA’s Mass Surveillance — Google and Twitter NOT Joining the Movement
Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, EthicsNew Movement Aims to ‘Reset the Net’ Against Mass Surveillance
A coalition of nearly two-dozen tech companies and civil liberties groups is launching a new fight against mass internet surveillance, hoping to battle the NSA in much the same way online campaigners pushed back on bad piracy legislation in 2012.
The new coalition, organized by Fight for the Future, is planning a Reset the Net day of action on June 5, the anniversary of the date the first Edward Snowden story broke detailing the government’s PRISM program, based on documents leaked by the former NSA contractor.
“Government spies have a weakness: they can hack anybody, but they can’t hack everybody,” the organizers behind the Reset the Net movement say in their video (above). “Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fiber. They depend on our mistakes, mistakes we can fix.”
Berto Jongman: Rise in Global Political Violence Challenges Supply Chains — True Cost of Predatory Capitalism Becomes Visible
Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Peace IntelligenceExample of true cost: corruption plus public abuse = political violence = cost to predatory capitalism.
Rise in global political violence challenges supply chains
Supply Management, 7 May 2014 | Will Green
Levels of conflict and political violence have increased in 48 countries over the past six months and created “significant challenges to supply chains”, according to a report.
Maplecroft’s biannual Conflict and Political Violence Index showed Ukraine moved 52 places to become the 35th most at risk country following its uprising and the threat of Russian intervention, while 16 countries are rated as “extreme risk”.
These include the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Libya, while Syria remains the country with the highest levels of conflict and political violence.
Many key growth markets feature in the “high” and “extreme” risk categories, including Colombia (11), Nigeria (15), Philippines (17), India (18), Bangladesh (21), Thailand (23), China (25), Indonesia (29) and Turkey (31).
David Swanson: Localities Reining in Federal Government – Sixth City Passes Anti-Drone Resolution
Civil Society, Drones & UAVs, Ethics, Peace Intelligence
Leverett Becomes Sixth City to Pass Anti-Drone Resolution
Here are the other five.
Leverett and Amherst, Mass., both were expected to consider resolutions. I haven't heard any news from Amherst.
The Leverett news is courtesy of Beth Adams.
I haven't seen official text, but here's some idea of what was passed, or at least what was considered for passage, in Leverett:
Town meeting in Leverett will consider a resolution calling on the federal government to end the use of drones for assassinations on foreign soil and to enact regulations on the use of the unmanned aircraft in the United States.
It would ask U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey and U.S. Rep. James McGovern to bring forward legislation “to end the practice of extrajudicial killing by armed drone aircraft” by withholding money for that purpose and “to make restitution for injuries, fatalities and environmental damage resulting from the actions of the United States government, the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, allied nations and/or its private contractors.”

