Civil Society – Page 147 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/03/172013/03/26

Berto Jongman: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and the Frog in Boiling Water — An Anthropological Perspective on the Deceived, the Forgotten, & the Dying

03 Economy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Earth Intelligence, Government

Fukushima isn’t Chernobyl? Don't Be So Sure

by SARAH D. PHILLIPS

CounterPunch, Weekend Edition March 15-17, 2013

The March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused the deaths of approximately 16,000 persons, left more than 6,000 injured and 2,713 missing, destroyed or partially damaged nearly one million buildings, and produced at least $14.5 billion in damages. The earthquake also caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s eastern coast. After reading the first news reports about what the Japanese call “3.11,” I immediately drew associations between the accident in Fukushima and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 in what was then the Soviet Union. This was only natural, since studying the cultural fallout of Chernobyl has been part of my life’s work as an anthropologist for the past 17 years. Knowing rather little about Japan at the time, I relied on some fuzzy stereotypes about Japanese technological expertise and penchant for tight organization and waited expectantly for rectification efforts to unfold as a model of best practices. I positioned the problem-riddled Chernobyl clean-up, evacuation, and reparation efforts as a foil, assuming that Japan would, in contrast, unroll a state-of-the-art nuclear disaster response for the modern age. After all, surely a country like Japan that relies so heavily on nuclear-generated power has developed thorough, well-rehearsed, and tested responses to any potential nuclear emergency? Thus, I expected the inevitable comparisons between the world’s two worst nuclear accidents to yield more contrasts than parallels.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and the Frog in Boiling Water — An Anthropological Perspective on the Deceived, the Forgotten, & the Dying”

2013/03/162013/03/26

Theophillis Goodyear: The GOP Digs America a Deeper Grave

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

I agree the two parties have become virtually indistinguishable in many respects. But the Republican Party is far more dangerous, in my opinion. And I think Democrats kowtow to big business interests and the Military Industrial Complex mainly because they are more or less forced to if they want to be able to consistently challenge Republican Party dominance. That's no excuse, of course. But I think it's very misleading to portray both parties are essentially opposites sides of the same coin. Anyway, this article points out some important differences between the two parties.

The GOP's Real Agenda

Since last fall, Republicans have pretended to be more moderate – but their politics are harsher and more destructive than ever

After watching voters punish the GOP in the 2012 elections, Republican elites have been talking a brave game about reforms that would make the party less repulsive to Latinos, women and gay-friendly millennials. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the GOP's hip-hop-quoting young standard-bearer, is pressing conservatives to back an amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Dozens of party stalwarts, headlined by former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, renounced their opposition to gay marriage in a Supreme Court brief. GOP bigwigs have even launched New Republican – a group modeled after Bill Clinton's centrist Democratic Leadership Council – which seeks to rebrand the party as “colorblind,” “not anti-government” and dedicated to “ending corporate welfare.”

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

Don't be fooled. On the ground, a very different reality is unfolding: In the Republican-led Congress, GOP-dominated statehouses and even before the nation's highest court, the reactionary impulses of the Republican Party appear unbowed. Across the nation, the GOP's severely conservative agenda – which seeks to impose job-killing austerity, to roll back voting and reproductive rights, to deprive the working poor of health care, and to destroy agencies that protect the environment from industry and consumers from predatory banks – is moving forward under full steam.

Read rest of article.

Continue reading “Theophillis Goodyear: The GOP Digs America a Deeper Grave”

2013/03/162013/03/26

Michel Bauwens: Abandoning Checks & Balances

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Impotency

Question authority!

‘We are abandoning all the checks and balances’

WASHINGTON – Evgeny Morozov is a Belarus-born technology writer who has held positions at Stanford and Georgetown universities in the United States. His first book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, argued that “Western do-gooders may have missed how [the Internet] … entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder — not easier — to promote democracy.” The New York Times described it as “brilliant and courageous.”

In his second book, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Follow of Technological Solutionism, Click Here, Morozov critiques what he calls “solutionism” — the idea that given the right code, algorithms and robots, technology can solve all of mankind’s problems, effectively making life “frictionless” and problem-free.

Morozov argues that this drive to eradicate imperfection and make everything “efficient” shuts down other avenues of progress and leads ultimately to an algorithm-driven world where Silicon Valley, rather than elected governments, determines the shape of the future.

. . . . . . . . . .

All solutions come with cost. Shifting a lot of the responsibility to the individual is a very conservative approach that seeks to preserve the current system instead of reforming it. With self-tracking we end up optimizing our behavior within the existing constraints rather than changing the constraints to begin with. It places us as consumers rather than citizens. My fear is policymakers will increasingly find that it is much easier, cheaper and sexier to invite the likes of Google to engage in some of this problem-solving rather than do something that is much more ambitious and radical.

. . . . . . . . . .

I have a lot of respect for these people as engineers, but they are being asked to take on tasks that go far beyond engineering — tasks that have to do with human and social engineering rather than technical engineering. Those are the kind of tasks I would prefer were taken on by human beings who are more well rounded, who know about philosophy and ethics, and know something about things other than efficiency, because it will not end well.

. . . . . . . . . .

The newspaper offers something very different from Google’s aggregators. It offers a value system, an idea of what matters in the world. Newspapers need to start articulating that value.

. . . . . . . . . .

There are many problems I have with TED. It has created this infrastructure where it very easy to be interesting without being very deep. If TED exercised their curatorial powers responsibly, they would be able to separate the good interesting from the bad interesting. But my fear is they don’t care as long as it drives eyeballs to the website. They don’t align themselves with the thinkers, they align themselves with marketing, advertising, futurists who are interested in ideas for the sake of ideas. They don’t care how these ideas relate to each other and they don’t much care for what those ideas actually mean. TED has come to exercise lots of power but they don’t exercise it wisely.

Read full article.

2013/03/152013/03/26

Yoda: New Pope — Argentine, Trained in Philosophy & Psychology

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

May the force be with him.

The new Pope is the oldest of the seven cardinals identified by Phi Beta Iota as being of interest in relation to the educational table prepared by Anthony Judge. Argentine, trained in philosophy and psychology as well as theology, he is, as with the others selected by Phi Beta Iota, NOT DOGMATIC.

Latinos have always been the heart of the Catholic Church, and one of the greatest misteps of prior Popes was the rejection — the condemnation — of liberation theology. The Most Holy Father is the first Latino and the first Jesuit to be appointed leader of the Catholic Church.

It will be most interesting to see if the new Most Holy Father elevates the other six cardinals Phi Beta Iota studied, particularly Cardinals Fernando Filoni of Italy, now Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples; Cardinal George Alencherry of India; and Cardinal John Njue of Kenya.

Anthony Judge: Scrutinizing the Cardinals by Educational Disciplines

About the New Pope:

Cardinals Pick Bergoglio, Who Will Be Pope Francis

Pope Francis takes Vatican trappings to a new plain

Pope Francis, a new era: Editorial

Pope Francis: Argentina's Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is new Catholic leader

Why the election of Pope Francis matters to developing countries

Catholic Church Getting Serious About “Truth”

Egypt & Jordan: Muslim & Christian Side by Side

Event: 26 Oct 2011 Assisi Italy Pope, Peace, & Prayer — 5th Inter-Faith Event Since 1986 — Terms of Reference…

2013/03/152013/03/26

Owl: Oregon Company Selling Drone Defense Technology to Public

09 Justice, Civil Society, Military

John Robb has referred to drones as the automation of repression and control over a populace, and such technology requiring far fewer players and much less money to implement and manage than regular police and armed forces. UAVs must be very appealing for the psychopathic policy elites of the 1%, but they forget that any repressive initiative is going to stimulate a counter-initiative, and, in this new story, we note a new counter-initiative to drones directed on behalf of, in this case, ordinary people, the intended targets of the psychopathic control freak elite:

Oregon Company to Sell Drone Defense Technology to Public

The company says it won't knock drones down, but will stop them from ‘completing their mission'

By Jason Koebler

US News, March 15, 2013

Do you want to keep drones out of your backyard?

An Oregon company says that it has developed and will soon start selling technology that disables unmanned aircraft.

The company, called Domestic Drone Countermeasures, was founded in late February because some of its engineers see unmanned aerial vehicles—which are already being flown by law enforcement in some areas and could see wider commercial integration into American airspace by 2015—as unwanted eyes in the sky.

“I was personally concerned and I think there's a lot of other people worried about this,” says Timothy Faucett, a lead engineer on the project. “We've already had many inquiries, a lot of people saying ‘Hey, I don't want these drones looking at me.'”

Domestic Drones Countermeasures was formed as a spin-off company from Aplus Mobile, which sells rugged computer processors to defense contractors—though the company won't discuss its specific technology because it is still applying for several patents. Faucett says that work has helped inform its anti-drone technology.

The company will sell land-based boxes that are “non-offensive, non-combative and not destructive.” According to the company, “drones will not fall from the sky, but they will be unable to complete their missions.”

Though Faucett wouldn't discuss specifics, he says the boxes do not interfere with a drone's navigation system and that it doesn't involve “jamming of any kind.” He says their technology is “an adaptation of something that could be used for military application” with the “combat element replaced with a nondestructive element.”

Read full article.

2013/03/122013/03/12

Worth a Look: Public Call for Wall Street Sales Tax

Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics, Government

There is now a petition for a Wall Street Sales Tax online at: http://wh.gov/ARGi

The petition was initiated by the United Front Against Austerity. It has started off strong, and we want to keep the momentum building, so the more it's shared, the better. Thank you!

We've got until April 10 to get 100,000 signatures. Twitter people, can you put this in front of people like Robert Reich, Dean Baker and others to ask them to mobilize their networks?

Getting an official White House response would be huge, but this is also a way to push the concept in front of more people.

CHARGE!!!!!!

Phi Beta Iota: Wall Street transactions (both stock and currency) are among the most numerous in the economy, and they are tax free. The Tobin Tax and the Automated Payment Transaction Tax both call for the widening of the economic revenue “pie” beyond income taxes — indeed, an honest Congress and an honest Executive could eliminate all income taxes by applying either of these taxes (a fraction of a penny) across the economy starting with the financial transactions — including the shadow banks (hedge funds) — that are now completely outside the revenue stream. The FACT that the US Government has been BORROWING $1 trillion a year since 1980 in order to fund BOTH a grossly over-extended entitlements program and a grossly under-performing national security corporate welfare program, should be — but is not — a major public grievance.

See Also:

DuckDuckGo / Tobin Tax

DuckDuckGo / APT Tax

2013/03/112013/03/26