Civil Society – Page 174 – Public Intelligence Blog

Syria- Arab Red Crescent: Over the past few days, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent has distributed aid provided by the ICRC to the Bab Amr district of Homs, to Hama, Idlib, Deraa, rural Damascus and the eastern city of Raqqa, a spokesman said. “The situation as we see it today is that unrest is still taking place mainly in Hama, Deraa, Rural Damascus, Homs and Idlib,” Hassan said.

Opposition spokespeople said fighting was continuing in Homs, but a Red Crescent spokesman said that it was not. The Red Crescent teams found that the population had evacuated the Baba Amr district of Homs and the rest of the city was quiet.

Comment: The arrival of Red Crescent teams has provided some much needed ground truth reporting. The fighting in Homs has been concentrated in the Baba Amr district, which the government seized, but the residents apparently had already left along with the fighters. It remains difficult to develop a relatively unbiased view of the struggle. The Red Crescent statements suggest actual confrontations are occuring in neighborhoods of five towns and cities. That is far more limited than international media suggest.

Syria-UK: British Prime Minister David Cameron told a hearing at the House of Commons Liaison Committee on 6 March that his government provided cash and equipment to foreign-backed rebels in Syria under such names as “aid agencies” operating on the ground to help deliver food and emergency medical supplies, Press TV reported.

Comment: Cameron's admission in conjunction with the capture of the 13 French officers tends to confirm the Syrian government's consistent contention that the opposition is made up of outside troublemakers. The Syrian situation in no way resembles Libya and accurate information is just not available, except one fact. There are no significant and sustained operations in Damascus. Until they occur, the regime will survive.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

See Also:

NIGHTWATCH on Syria at Phi Beta Iota

Search: map of sunni and shiite muslim groups

2012/03/022012/03/02

Mini-Me: If You Can Find It, Can You Handle the Truth?

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Ethics, Government

Americans Will Need “Black Markets” To Survive

Brandon Smith

SHTFplan.com, 2 March 2012

EXTRACT

If the events in EU nations such as Greece, Spain, and Italy are any indication, the U.S., with its massive debt to GDP ratio (real debt includes entitlement programs), is looking at one of two possible scenarios: default, austerity measures, and high taxes, or, hyperinflation, and then default, austerity measures, and high taxes.

. . . . . .

Black markets give the citizenry a means to protest the taxation of a government that no longer represents them. In a country stricken with austerity, these networks allow the public to thrive without having to pay for the mistakes or misdeeds of political officials and corporate swindlers.

Read full article.

2012/02/28

Venessa Miemis: Reinventing Finance – Digital Reformation

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics

venessa black & white new — Venessa Miemis

Re-Inventing Finance: An Emerging (Digital) Reformation

Several months ago, I was invited by Sean Park to be a Venture Partner with Anthemis Group, a new financial services group with an aim to totally reinvent finance from the ground up.

(Sean was a generous backer for the Future of Money Project I co-created for a SIBOS conference, and we’ve met up several times in the past few years for animated conversations about the changing nature of money, value and wealth.)

I was delighted to accept the offer, and be a part of this exciting initiative by bringing attention to financial startups that just might help change the world for the better. If this is you, let me know!

Check out the video above to hear more about the goals of Anthemis and an overview of our emerging global financial landscape – presented last week at the Lift12 conference. Below is a brief post Sean wrote up about his presentation, and a great prezi as well!

—

Last Thursday I had the great privilege of having been invited by the remarkable Laurent Haug to present a snapshot of our vision of the new emerging universe of “digitally native finance” at the wonderful Lift12 conference in Geneva. Twenty minutes is not a long time (and thank goodness Laurent indulged me with a couple minutes more) to convey both the context and the substance of what we believe to be a fundamental shift in the paradigm of the financial services industry, but I hope I was able to give at least a good high-level overview. Most importantly, I hope I was able to convey the excitement we feel at the vastness of the opportunity and the win/win/win (for the customers/companies/economies) available to those who embrace the opportunity for technology-enabled disruption in financial services by introducing them – however superficially I’ll admit – to just a handful of companies who are at the vanguard of this wave of change.

For those that are interested, my presentation is below:

Read original post with inserted videos and briefing.

2012/02/242012/02/24

Jon Lebkowsky: Six Big Science Stories Going Forward

03 Economy, 04 Education, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (AC Clarke)

My pal David Pescovitz at the Institute for the Future blogged recently about the IFTF “Multiverse of Exploration Map,” an overview of the six big stories of science that will play out over the next decade:

Decrypting the Brain,
Hacking Space,
Massively Multiplayer Data,
Sea the Future
Strange Matter, and
Engineered Evolution.

“Those stories are emerging from a new ecology of science shifting toward openness, collaboration, reuse, and increased citizen engagement in scientific research.” A followup post includes a video of Luigi Anzivino from The Exploratorium talking about the relationship of magic and neuroscience.

Paul Fernhout: Open Letter to the Intelligence Advanced Programs Research Agency (IARPA)

2012/02/17

Gordon Duff: Poverty in America – BBC versus Reality

Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Media

American Poverty, What the Brits Don’t Understand

Panorama Special on American Poverty A Delusional Tale

by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Last week, the BBC news show, Panorama, supposedly told the story of America’s poor.

Moments of the story were right, they certainly picked one or two of those responsible for America’s economic collapse out, although not a single cogent idea was expressed on the show.

Panorama simply doesn’t get it.

They aren’t slow witted, they are simply more of the same, controlled news, taking the focus from the magician and putting it on the pigeon.

Read full article with various media clips and links.

2012/02/17

Patrick Buchanan: Blacklisted, Censored, Silenced, Shunned

Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Media, Non-Governmental

The New Blacklist

Patrick J. Buchanan

EXTRACT:

Documented in the 488 pages and 1,500 footnotes of Suicide of a Superpower is my thesis that America is Balkanizing, breaking down along the lines of religion, race, ethnicity, culture and ideology, and that Western peoples are facing demographic death by century's end.

. . . . . .

Let error be tolerated, said Thomas Jefferson, “so long as reason is left free to combat it.” What Foxman and ADL are about in demanding that my voice be silenced is, in the Jeffersonian sense, intrinsically un-American.

Phi Beta Iota: Below the line is the complete essay by Buchanan with points that we find compelling. He is articulate, and however much some may dislike delivery, he represents a point of view — and a demographic — whose silence spells death to the Republic as we know it. What is really at issue here is the legitimacy of the two-party bi-opoly and the various levels of government — they have substituted ideology for intelligence, corruption for integrity. Under such a system, the Constitution has been trashed and the Republic dismembered.

– – – – – – –

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.

After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.

The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

Continue reading “Patrick Buchanan: Blacklisted, Censored, Silenced, Shunned”

2012/02/142012/02/14

Tom Atlee: Big Breakthrough in Group Process

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

A big breakthrough for all group process folks…

For almost 5 years I've been involved with envisioning and creating a “pattern language” for group process. (A pattern language is a set of design factors to guide people in creating things that are wholesome and life-giving – vibrant communities, effective curricula, engaging software… and great conversations.) That process has now come to fruition.

In 2008 Peggy Holman and I did an all day workshop on “A Pattern Language for Conversations that Matter” to introduce the idea of pattern languages to professionals in the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD). That winter, Tree Bressen invited me to a multi-day gathering at her home to actually construct a pattern language on group process. That session began what proved to be a profoundly complex and challenging task facilitated by Tree and her tiny core team of volunteers – all pieced together on a gigantic wiki and Google docs and dozens of meetings. I participated in a few more of their multi-day work sessions over the years, but about a dozen other volunteers did far more work than I did. Last year I wrote a blog post on the project for NCDD – http://ncdd.org/4535 – and a couple of weeks ago wrote a personal blog post – http://post.ly/534Wr – on the transformational potential of pattern languages of all kinds – and why I consider them profoundly important. But the big news now is that the pattern language so many of us labored for so many hours to produce has now been released as a gorgeous card deck.

I can't recommend this resource highly enough for anyone seeking to create high quality conversations of any kind for any purpose. This card deck is THE premier navigational tool for powerful conversations. It goes deeper than methodology and is more practical than theory. It is designed to help us understand what is going on and how to make it better. It offers greater flexibility and power to our practices of dialogue, deliberation, mediation, choice creating, and conversation of all types. It is available electronically FREE for the taking – and only costs $25 if you want a physical printed boxed deck.

And to top it all off – it is beautiful.

So I hereby invite you into a new world of conversational adventure and insight, available to you right now.

Coheartedly,
Tom

GROUP WORKS PATTERN LANGUAGE CARD DECK RELEASED!

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Big Breakthrough in Group Process”

Category: Civil Society

NIGHTWATCH: Syria Ground Truth Tars West