Civil Society – Page 161 – Public Intelligence Blog

Printing Weapons at Home for Fun and Mayhem

It's now possible to print functional weapons at home. This is going to progress rapidly now.

Think: global file sharing of designs for servicable weapons, from pistols on up to ?, that can be printed at home. What you can print — from the materials to the size/quality of the object to the completeness (snap together construction) — is already moving forward quickly. The weapons effort will just be along for the ride.

“HaveBlue” has tested the first “printed” firearm and it works. Here's his site, but it's VERY slow. It didn't blow up in his face.

Granted, he used an older professional grade Stratys 3D printer to do it. Printeres are much better now and handle many new materials.

Haveblue has been testing the “market” for distributing CAD/CAM weapons designs. His post of an earlier design to Thingverse (a site for 3D printing design patterns) led to a change in their policy (although it hasn't been enforced).

Haveblue's work is based on the Solidworks files available for download from the CNCguns site. Here's his earlier project:

Phi Beta Iota: Violence should be a last resort — publics today are far from fully exploiting the use of public intelligence in the public interest. However, it bears mention that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King were quite clear: non-violence is preferable to violence, but violence is preferable to continued oppression. Most governments, including the European governments still favoring banks over people and refusing to honor the Iceland model, no longer represent their publics and have lost all legitimacy in the eyes of many. We pray they will awaken to the reality that those governments that do not empower, protect, and respect the public, will ultimately be abolished. In the meantime, they are merely ignored.

2012/07/262012/07/26

Tom Atlee: Expanding our capacity for “unitary democracy”

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Expanding our capacity for “unitary democracy”

Below are highlights from Jane Mansbridge's IN CONTEXT article “Unitary & Adversary: The Two Forms of Democracy”, which was itself an excerpt from her book BEYOND ADVERSARY DEMOCRACY (1983) which has had a significant impact on my thinking.

I often use Mansbridge's distinction between (1) “unitary democracy” based on consensus arising from conversations about common interests shared by people who know each other and (2) “adversary democracy” based on majority votes among competing interest groups who may think they have little reason to take each other seriously.

Mansbridge clearly believes that adversary democracy must necessarily predominate in large complex societies where people don't know each other. However, she also believes its toxic effects should be ameliorated by the practice of unitary democracy at local levels and in official governing bodies, as well as through more cooperative forms of economics.

I think the landscape of democratic possibilities she was observing in the 1960s and 70s has been transformed by modern social technologies – conflict resolution, group process, organizational development, networked communications, journalism, multi-media storytelling and, especially, social microcosm design. These technologies are making it possible to bring unitary democracy to more issues and greater scales than ever before.

When I say “social microcosm design”, I'm referring to our ability to select groups of 10-1000 people whose diversity accurately reflects the diversity of a whole population or community. We are increasingly able to convene such “fair cross-section minipublics” in face-to-face conversation. Once we do that, we can apply powerful group processes – advanced forms of dialogue, deliberation, choice creating, etc. – to this smaller group in ways that evoke, reflect and activate the highest collective intelligence and wisdom of the population from which they were drawn.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Expanding our capacity for “unitary democracy””

2012/07/252012/07/25

Michel Bauwens: Collective Presencing: A New Human Capacity

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, P2P / Panarchy

220px-Michel_Bauwens_crop — Michel Bauwens

Collective Presencing: A New Human Capacity

This is the first in a series of articles introducing the phenomenon and practice of Collective Presencing, a new capacity evolving in humanity at this time. Great thinkers have foreseen its coming—we recognise it in Aurobindo’s descent of the supramental and Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere. But what exactly do those terms mean? Where these gifted individuals intuited and envisioned the birth of this new collective capacity at the dawn of the last century, we are now starting to be able to describe it from experience.

While many might recognise the phenomenon from transpersonal group work and other such practices, so far as we are aware, this is the first attempt to articulate it as a path and a set of capacities that can be intentionally developed…

this is one of the best and finest descriptions I have read in a long time. Thanks Helen…AC

Via Anne Caspari

Read full posting.

2012/07/252012/07/25

Patrick Meier: Become a (Social Media) Data Donor and Save a Life

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Geospatial

Become a (Social Media) Data Donor and Save a Life

I was recently in New York where I met up with my colleague Fernando Diaz from Microsoft Research. We were discussing the uses of social media in humanitarian crises and the various constraints of social media platforms like Twitter vis-a-vis their Terms of Service. And then this occurred to me: we have organ donation initiatives and organ donor cards that many of us carry around in our wallets. So why not become a “Data Donor” as well in the event of an emergency? After all, it has long been recognized that access to information during a crisis is as important as access to food, water, shelter and medical aid.

Read full post.

Phi Beta Iota: This has very provocative and inspiring implications for redefining (or restoring) what it means to be human — the art of sharing information to help the community, the collective, survive and prosper. We are honoring Dr. Meiers original idea by including Data Donor as a permanent search term for the Open Source Everything Highlights.

2012/07/242012/07/24

Chuck Spinney: Syria Lessons Learned and Current SitRep

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Attached is a very thoughtful report on what is happening to Syria, written by a long-time observer of the Middle East.

Chuck Spinney
La Spezia, Italia

The Destruction of Syria

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global, 24 Jul 200012

Once one of the most solid states in the Middle East and a key pivot of the regional power structure, Syria is now facing wholesale destruction. The consequences of the unfolding drama are likely to be disastrous for Syria’s territorial integrity, for the well-being of its population, for regional peace, and for the interests of external powers deeply involved in the crisis.

EXTRACT:

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2012/07/242012/07/24

Worth a Look: The People’s Congress (USA)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Ethics, Government, Worth A Look

The People’s Congress

United to exercise the self-evident sovereignty of the American people over our government

Peoplescongress.org is calling for a week long event in which We the People pass specific amendments and legislation which, if enacted by Congress, would put an immediate end to the corporate take-over of our government, revitalize and re-democratize elections, allow for a more responsible and open media, and end the secrecy in policy making. Until we reform these institutions and the laws governing them, our goals for a just and sustainable world will remain elusive at best. An earnest national dialog about our future cannot happen until we re-balance the wheels of democracy. It is the intention of the People’s Congress to secure that change directly in accordance with the will of the People and the principles established by our Constitution.

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2012/07/112012/07/12

NO LABELS Tries Again — Still Corrupt, Still Clueless

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Politics

no-labels-art — Two Parties, One Idiot Idea

Phi Beta Iota: they have been scorned out of existing twice now, but evidently Mike Bloomberg and his friends have not given up kludging together three failures to try to make lemonade, all three corrupt to the bone:

Independent Voters / Jackie Salit, well-funded stalking horse for Bloomberg, does not play well with others and specifically ignores both grass-root Independents and the six small parties.

Americans Elect, despite a great deal of money, could not overcome the abject obviousness of its internal corruption and the abysmal even shocking ineptitude of its web design and content management teams.

No Labels — the cartoon says it all. These people really do not “get” the travesty of their dismissal of the six small parties that have been blocked from ballot access, or the shallowness of their general intellect. No Labels, No Brains, No Balls.

Below the line is the email that went out across the land today. What is shocking is the number of progressives angry at Obama who really think No Labels might be on to something. For an example of what an honest viable alternative to the two-party tyranny might look like, see We the People Reform Coalition. We can still save 2012, but it will require organized people, not organized false flag money.

ON A CONSTRUCTIVE NOTE: If NO LABELS and Americans Elect would come together to sponsor an Electoral Reform Summit in early September 2012, they could restore the integrity of America. They are probably not capable of making that ethical and intellectual leap, but if they did, they would in one instant achieve their alleged goals dishonored behind closed doors, and open the way for the Second Republic. Add the six small parties, Occupy and the Tea Party and the Independents without Jackie Salit playing games, and it is “game over.” There is NOTHING stopping the election of a coalition cabinet and a reform ticket in November 2012 except a lack of FOCUS by all those who share the same desire: to create a prosperous America at peace, to restore America the Beautiful. We are the passive silent majority at this time. We need to be the active vocal majority for the next 90 days. 90 days.

Steele at Hackers on Two-Party Tyranny & Battle for the Soul of the Republic

Continue reading “NO LABELS Tries Again — Still Corrupt, Still Clueless”

Category: Civil Society

John Robb: 3D Printing of Weapons – Public Power by Printer