Communities of Practice – Page 1316 – Public Intelligence Blog

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

My good friend Marshall Auerbach has one answer — can you “refudiate” it?

Which Party Poses the Real Risk to Social Security’s Future?

NewDeal2.0.org, Monday, 08/16/2010 – 5:02 pm by Marshall Auerback

Hint: it’s not Republicans.

Social Security remains one of the greatest achievements of the Democratic Party since its creation 75 years ago. Although Republicans have historically fulminated against the program (Ronald Reagan once likened it as something akin to “socialism”), they have actually made little headway in touching this sacred “third rail” in American politics. President Bush pushed for partial privatization of the program in 2005, but the proposal gained no policy traction (even within his own party) because Social Security continues to be hugely popular with American voters. It’s a universal program that benefits all Americans, not a government handout to a few privileged corporations.

Which is why it’s odd that Democrats seem almost embarrassed to continue to champion the legacy of FDR. The party frets about long-term deficits and the corresponding need to “save” Social Security from imminent bankruptcy and, in doing so, opens the gate to radical cuts in entitlements that will do nothing but further destroy incomes and perpetuate our current economic malaise.

FULL STORY ONLINE

Continue reading “Journal: Social Security Being Set Up for a Fall”

2010/08/162010/08/17

Worth a Look: Clay Shirky on Cognitive Surplus & Crisis Mapping

Augmented Reality, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Maps, Methods & Process, Policies, Tools, Worth A Look

About this talk

Clay Shirky looks at “cognitive surplus” — the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world. TED Video of Talk.

About Clay Sharpey

Clay Shirky believes that new technologies enabling loose collaboration — and taking advantage of “spare” brainpower — will change the way society works. Learn more.

Core Point: Over a trillion hours a year in cognitive surplus–Internet and media tools are shifting all of us from consumption to production. We like to create; we like to share. Now we can.

Recommended by Dr. Kent Myers. His additional commentary:

This talk gets at something that could go into the proposal for Virtual Systemic Inquiry (VSI). I need to emphasize that the VSI products have civic value. That motivates participation, but we also need to make it a little more obvious and easy how to participate, in order that generosity can flow more readily from more people. That's what I was trying to get at by making projects more standardized and quick. Software can let that flow, as Shirky says. The process and products should probably be pretty in some way too, like IDEO (also LOL cats).

2010/08/152010/08/17

Institutions of Higher Education Ineligible for Federal Funds (because they disallow military recruiters)

04 Education, Government, Military

+ Vermont Law School
+ South Royalton, Vermont
+ William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota.

12 August 2010

From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr12au10-41]                         

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Office of the Secretary
 
List of Institutions of Higher Education Ineligible for Federal 
Funds

AGENCY: Department of Defense (DoD).

ACTION: Notice.

 Continue reading "Institutions of Higher Education Ineligible for Federal  Funds (because they disallow military recruiters)"

2010/08/15

Journal: Incoherence of US Government Continues…

07 Health, Government, Military

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

(COMMENT: The drumbeat to screw retirees continues…)

Tacoma News Tribune
August 14, 2010
Pg. 14

Military Update

Higher Health Premiums On Gates' Cost-Cutting Agenda

By Tom Philpott

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signaled that the department’s fiscal 2012 budget request to be sent to Congress early next year will include recommendations to raise TRICARE premiums for some beneficiaries.

If past proposals are a reliable guide, the target of higher fees is likely to be military retirees rather than active duty families.

Continue reading “Journal: Incoherence of US Government Continues…”

2010/08/152010/08/17

Journal: Untrained Doctor Uses “Scalpel” with Abandon

Government, Military

August 14, 2010

Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents

By SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON — At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.

But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.

The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh’s decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according to American officials, at least the fourth such assault on Al Qaeda in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since December.

FULL STORY ONLINE

2010/08/122010/08/23

CIA Deceives Supreme Court + Former Guantanamo Detainee Running For Office in Afghanistan

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

CIA hid terrorism prisoners from US Supreme Court

August 12, 2010 by JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

The Central Intelligence Agency purposefully concealed at least four terrorism detainees from the US legal system, including the Supreme Court, according to an exclusive report by the Associated Press. The news agency has revealed that the CIA secretly transported the four to Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp on Cuba in 2003, two years before it publicly admitted their capture. It then secretly transferred them again to other sites in its black site prison network in various countries around the world, just three months before their prolonged stay at Guantánamo would entitle them to legal representation. While at Guantánamo, the four prisoners, Abd al-Nashiri, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah, were kept at a facility known as ‘Strawberry Fields’, which is detached from the main prison site at the bay. By hiding the four, the Bush Administration managed to keep them under CIA custody while denying them legal representation for two years longer than allowed by US law.

Former Guantanamo Detainee Running For Office in Afghanistan

Quil Lawrence, August 10, 2010 | wgbh.org |

Izatullah Nusrat, 42, was held at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo for nearly five years. Now he is back in Afghanistan and running for election to Parliament in the Sept. 18 election. Nusrat has harsh words for Americans, but he favors working with the current government over the Taliban and says he wants the fighting to stop.

2010/08/112010/08/11

“Lord’s Resistance Army” Attacks in Bas Uele, Northeastern Congo

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Military

(From EnoughProject.org)
The Lord’s Resistance Army has depopulated a remote corner of northeastern Congo, killing and abducting hundreds of civilians, and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes. In a new report, “‘This is our land now:’ Lord’s Resistance Army attacks in Bas Uele, northeastern Congo,” Enough Project Field Researcher Ledio Cakaj documents 51 attacks by the LRA in Bas Uele, Congo, resulting in at least 105 deaths and 570 abductions during the last 15 months.

“The LRA rampage in Bas Uele territory is brutal but strategic,” notes Cakaj, “LRA fighters have used this region as a base and transit point to the Central African Republic and beyond. The threat to civilians is increasing, since there is no meaningful military force to challenge the LRA in this area. The Congolese army remains a threat to its own population, and the United Nations is drawing down its peacekeepers in this region.”

After signing into U.S. law the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act on May 24, 2010, the Obama administration is developing a comprehensive strategy to deal with the LRA. The report argues that any viable strategy needs to take into account the importance of Bas Uele to the LRA, in order to better protect civilians and finally to end the LRA’s escalating threat across a vast region of central Africa.