Category: Civil Society

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Journal: Cyber-Heist 2nd Generation

03 Economy, 04 Education, 10 Security, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Computer/online security, Cultural Intelligence, Cyberscams, malware, spam, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, Law Enforcement, Mobile, Standards
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

The Great Cyber-Heist

New York Times

By JAMES VERINI

November 10, 2010

Full Story Online

Mid-1990s: Gonzalez, 14, is visited by F.B.I. agents at his high school for hacking into NASA.

Gonzalez,  law-enforcement officials would discover, was more than just a casher. He was a moderator and rising star on Shadowcrew.com, an archetypal criminal cyberbazaar that sprang up during the Internet-commerce boom in the early 2000s. Its users trafficked in databases of stolen card accounts and devices like magnetic strip-encoders and card-embossers; they posted tips on vulnerable banks and stores and effective e-mail scams. Created by a part-time student in Arizona and a former mortgage broker in New Jersey, Shadowcrew had hundreds of members across the United States, Europe and Asia. It was, as one federal prosecutor put it to me, “an eBay, Monster.com and MySpace for cybercrime.”

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: We opened Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in 1994, making the observation that when the Israeli's captured a hacker they gave him a job, while the US simply kicked them in the teeth and sent them to jail.  We tried to keep Phiber Optic out of jail, and we have for decades been on record comparing hackers to astronauts–full of the right stuff and pushing the edge of the envelope.  No one, including Marty Harris then in charge of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) wanted to listen.  Today the US Government is again ignoring the warnings on the urgency of getting a grip on all information in all languages all the time, and roughly 20 years behind in creating “root” cyber-security.  This article by James Verini is a phenomenal update on what we all knew in the mid-1990's that the US Government is still oblivious to–this is not a problem technology or wanton spending can solve–this is a problem that demands discipline, integrity, intelligence, and sharing.  It is neither possible nor desireable to secure government or military computers in isolation–this is an “all in” smart safe nation challenge.

See Also:

1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security

Search: smart nation intelligence reform electoral reform national security reform

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Journal: Obama to Leave Democratic Party?

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

White House: Obama Conducting Reign of Terror

Posted on 06. Nov, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in US

Suspected White House leakers are on the run

By Wayne Madsen

President Obama was urged by the few White House insiders from whom he still takes advice to leave the country on his ten-day Asian trip, his longest trip abroad since becoming president, in order to not inflict any more damage to the Democratic Party in the wake of one of the worst electoral defeats for the party of an incumbent president in recent history. According to sources close to the White House, who put themselves in great danger by even talking to members of the media, the plans to have Obama leave for a visit to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan are an attempt to get Obama out of the country while top Democrats can sort through the political disaster created for the party by Obama's increasingly detached-from-reality presidency.

Virtual political guerrilla warfare has broken out between Obama's inner circle on one hand and senior Democratic officials, including outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party strategist James Carville, former Demcratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, and, behind-the-scenes, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton, on the other.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a remarkable “hit job” that will need much more corroboration.  We see two underlying stories that merit exploration.  First Story: Obama is scaring his own party.  It took a lot to piece together all the little bits that have been hyped together here.  Second Story: Obama is beginning to see that he can only win a second term as an Independent, without Biden and without Clinton II.  What we do know is that Obama's advisors to date have been a mix of pogomists, pollsters, and political groupies.  If he ever gets a grip on strategic reality and commits to restoring the Republic with Electoral Reform, he could still be the George Washington of the 21st Century.  On this article, at this time, we stand with Barack Obama and not his detractors.

Complete Madsen reprint below the line so our military colleagues do not have to visit the other site.

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Journal: Sacred Music from a Time of Peace Among Religions

11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process
Jon Lebkowsky Home

From Jerusalem to Cordoba

Here’s a press release for a performance I’m co-producing with Scoop Sweeney:

AUSTIN – Catherine Braslavsky and Joseph Rowe will bring their musical performance, “From Jerusalem to Cordoba,” from Paris to Austin on December 3, 7pm at St. David’s Episcopal Church, Bethell Hall, 301 E. 8th St., Austin, 78701-3280. The performance is a celebration of the musical and mystical traditions in and around the Mediterranean, from ancient Judaism and Paganism, to medieval Christianity and Islam. It features ancient and original music sung in Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Greek, Medieval Spanish, Occitan, and Arabic. Instrumental accompaniment includes Middle Eastern percussion, oud, dulcimer, Tibetan bowls, Indian tampura, and African mbira.

The performance is built on short poetic and narrative texts that include both original material and quotations from Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Ibn ‘Arabi, Yehuda Halevi, etc. The narrative thread woven through the performance evokes a rarely-perceived common ground, and an alternative view of sacred traditions which have so often been in conflict. Braslavsky and Rowe have presented this performance at venues throughout Europe.

The Italian newspaper La Republicca describes the performance as “fascinating… with great spiritual power.” Author Jacques Attali describes it as “A remarkably successful voyage in sound, depicting those rare times when Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived together in peace and dialogue.” Rev. Lauren Artress, Canon at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, calls it “uplifting and inspiring,” and notes that “Catherine and Joseph are truly gifted musicians. Allow them to enrich your life.” Jon Lebkowsky in Wired Magazine described the music as “…at once new, traditional, and transcendent. … chants and chant-like original compositions powerfully realized as invocations of the human essence — whether it be the soul, spirit, or consciousness — in its ascent.

Taking Place in Austin, more details…..

Phi Beta Iota: This makes the cut for three reasons.  First, Jon is selective about what he sends out.  Second, holistic analysis and understanding must of necessity include music and art–the Western tradition has destroyed the role of the humanities and in so doing, committed sacrilige with science.  Finally, faith is also a part of conscious evolution, and absent its full integration into any intellectual traditional, you end up with fundamentalist idiots doing grave damage within and among communities.  Religion is at its most gifted when it is a vibrant part of the cultural tradition and used to transfer the lessons of civilization from one generation to the next–starting with the Golden Rule.

See Also:

Graphic: Information Operations (IO) Cube

Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Review: Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education

Review: Consilience–the Unity of Knowledge

Review: Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution

Review: Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution

Review: Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution

Review: Philosophy and the Social Problem–The Annotated Edition

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Reference: How Voters Can UNRIG the Two-Party Shell Game

11 Society, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Mobile, Open Government, Real Time, Reform, Strategy
Nancy Bordier

How Voters Can Unrig the 2012 Elections with Transpartisan Voting Blocs and Electoral Coalitions

Voters did not get what they said they wanted from the 2010 elections. In fact, they got the opposite because the two major parties rigged the elections.

The parties have been rigging elections for decades by gerrymandering election districts and passing campaign financing and election laws that prevent third party candidates from beating major party candidates.

These rigged elections give voters no choice but to vote for one of the two major parties. So voters do the only thing they can do, which is to routinely kick out the major party incumbents in the futile hope that the new major party candidates they elect will not flout their will to the same degree. But regardless of which party candidates they vote for, they get roughly the same policies. These typically sacrifice voters' interests to the special interests that fund lawmakers' electoral campaigns.

Unless voters are empowered to put an end to rigged elections before the 2012 elections, using mechanisms like the one proposed below, the middle class and working Americans will be ruined financially by the lawmakers and special interests that are enabling the business and financial sector to take more than their fair share of national income.

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Journal: Taliban Letter to Congress, Lobbying Starts Now

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Government, Military
DefDog Recommends...

Taliban Seek to Sway U.S. Congress With ‘Open Letter'

Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2010

Matthew Rosenberg

KABUL—Add another group to the list of people with a message for the newly elected U.S. Congress: the Taliban.

In a rambling “open letter” to Congress, the Taliban's spokesman said he wanted to present American lawmakers with “a true picture of the ground realities” of the war in Afghanistan, which he insisted the U.S. can't win.

The spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousaf Ahmadi, called on Congress to send a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, apparently ignorant of the fact that representatives and senators visit Afghanistan all the time. But American lawmakers rarely leave heavily guarded U.S. facilities, moving only in armored convoys,…

Balance of story demands log-in or subscription….

Phi Beta Iota: While this initiative demonstrates the Taliban's understanding of history–Viet-Nam redux, it also shows their lack of understanding of Washington.  We have absolutely no doubt that at least three lobbying firms have a team enroute to Pakistan to make contact and offer their services.  They will accept bricks of #4 heroin, no extra charge for laundering currency.  We are really surprised Halliburton did not think of this, Brown & Root seems to already have the smuggling channel for the drugs and money in place.  Next up: a slick video and some YouTube snippets that go viral, under the broad campaign slogan of “Ground Truth from Afghanistan.”

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Reference: The Secret Life (True Cost) of Beef

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 11 Society, 12 Water, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

“THE SECRET LIFE OF BEEF” REVEALS BEEF’S ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

INFORM launches third video in “The Secret Life” series

(New York City) INFORM, Inc., the educational and advocacy nonprofit that raises environmental consciousness through visual media, has just launched “The Secret Life of Beef,” an engaging and enlightening six-minute video. The video increases awareness about the environmental impacts of industrial beef production, illustrates how it contributes to global warming, and offers more sustainable alternatives.

Americans consume over twenty-eight billion pounds of beef a year, one of the highest per capita rates in the world, yet few beef eaters are aware of the connection between their dietary choices and the environmental damage caused by beef production.

  • Livestock production produces one-fifth of all global greenhouse gases, more than all transportation sources combined
  • It takes seven pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of hamburger
  • Seventy percent of all antibiotic use in the U.S. is used in livestock production

“The Secret Life of Beef” tells its story through academic experts, grass-fed beef farmers, chefs, sustainable butchers, educators, and restaurant owners. It also offers more eco-friendly alternatives to the heavy meat consuming habits of most Americans—from going meatless one day a week to purchasing grass-fed beef.

  • If every American went meatless one day a week, it would be equivalent to taking eight million cars off the road.
  • The best way to reduce your carbon footprint is to reduce your overall beef consumption.

For a preview viewing of “The Secret Life of Beef,” visit: http://www.informinc.org/pages/media/the-secret-life-series/secret-life-beef.html

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