Communities of Practice – Page 832 – Public Intelligence Blog

“The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects offered the nation a window into the stunning military-style capabilities of our local law enforcement agencies. For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefitted from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “War on Drugs.” For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to discern between fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military.

The lines blurred even further Monday as a new dynamic was introduced to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries…Eric Freedman, a constitutional law professor from Hofstra University, also calls the ruling “an unauthorized power grab.” According to Freedman, “The Department of Defense does not have the authority to grant itself by regulation any more authority than Congress has granted it by statute.” Yet that’s precisely what it did.””

More:

Pentagon Unilaterally Grants Itself Authority Over ‘Civil Disturbances

2013/05/172013/05/17

Rickard Falkvinge: Prosecutor Hints That Root Domain Registry Is Criminally Liable For Copyright Monopoly Infringements On The Pirate Bay

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement

Prosecutor Hints That Root Domain Registry Is Criminally Liable For Copyright Monopoly Infringements On The Pirate Bay

Copyright Monopoly: Prosecutors in Sweden have sued the root domain registry of .SE domains to kill the domain name of The Pirate Bay. The root registry fights back heavily. This case is important to watch, as it can have thoroughly chilling results for the Internet’s domain name system if criminal secondary liability is established at the DNS level.

Nobody can say that the prosecutors are after justice – they are after results. In the initial lawsuit against IIS, the foundation that manages the root .SE domains, they insisted on an ex parte decision – meaning that they demanded the court to issue a domain seizure order, a final decision in this case, without allowing the accused to speak in their defense. That is not any normal kind of justice.

Just so we’re clear – this is not your average domain registrar, like GoDaddy, EuroDNS, or DomainDiscover. This is the domain registry, the root database of .SE domains, managed by the Swedish Internet Foundation (the IIS), which is the technical back-end to all those domain registrars you see. This makes the prosecutor’s actions even more jaw-dropping.

Read full article.

2013/05/162013/05/16

Michel Bauwens: Civilized Discourse Construction Kit

Advanced Cyber/IO, Architecture, Civil Society, Data, Design, Governance, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Software, Worth A Look

People are raving about this as a possible alternative command and control system for the public to use.

Civilized Discourse Construction Kit

Jeff Atwood

Coding Horror, February 5, 2013

EXTRACT:

After spending four solid years thinking of discussion as the established corrupt empire, and Stack Exchange as the scrappy rebel alliance, I began to wonder – what would it feel like to change sides? What if I became a champion of random, arbitrary discussion, of the very kind that I'd spent four years designing against and constantly lecturing users on the evil of?

I already built an X-Wing; could I build a better Tie Fighter?

Today we announce the launch of Discourse, a next-generation, 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

The goal of the company we formed, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., is exactly that – to raise the standard of civilized discourse on the Internet through seeding it with better discussion software:

100% open source and free to the world, now and forever.
Feels great to use. It's fun.
Designed for hi-resolution tablets and advanced web browsers.
Built in moderation and governance systems that let discussion communities protect themselves from trolls, spammers, and bad actors – even without official moderators.

Our amazingly talented team has been working on Discourse for almost a year now, and although like any open source software it's never entirely done, we believe it is already a generation ahead of any other forum software we've used.

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: Civilized Discourse Construction Kit”

2013/05/16

Chuck Spinney: Austerity Economics is Fraud — Primer for Citizens

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Office of Management and Budget, Strategy

Austerity Economics

Why Snake Oil is the Drug of Choice for Ayn Rand Wannabees

Attached are two important papers, one by Stephanie Kelton and the other by Paul Krugman, arguing that it is time to consign austerity economics to the dustbin of history. Both are variations on a theme and are spot on, IMO.

The fundamental problem tamping down the American recovery is excessive debt in the private sector, NOT the government sector. Yet austerity economics ignores this reality and argues speciously for reductions in government spending. The sequester has taken this nonsense to the level of policy lunacy by legislating an abdication of government's primary responsibility –i.e., to make policy decisions, in to law. As Krugman points out there is method to the austerity madness, however.

But madness it is. The attached chart, which I have distributed before, uses Federal Reserve Data to place the real debt problem into a long term perspective. Note the vertical scales are IDENTICAL! Bear in mind, the chart is about 1.5 years out of date and it does not reflect the recent, pre-sequester reductions in Federal Debt discussed below.

2013/05/16

Eagle: USAF Dumps 976 Pieces of 274 Veteran Bodies in Landfill [2003-2008 Reported in 2011]

07 Other Atrocities, Military

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Number of dead U.S. soldiers' remains dumped in landfill sites is revealed by Army… and it's much higher than expected

274 soldiers' remains were thrown in Virginia dump site
Total comprised 976 ‘body fragments', says mortuary records

Gavin Allen

MailOnline, 8 December 2011

EXTRACT:

The scandal at Dover Air Force base began after complaints by three whistleblowers – civilians who worked as embalmers or technicians – who sparked an 18-month investigation by the Air Force Inspector General.

A separate probe was carried out by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency which looks into claims by whistleblowers.

Read full article.

2013/05/16

SchwartzReport: New Solution on Water Purification — and Three Corporate Evil Stories — Media, Patents, Monsanto

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Corruption, Government

Although those of us in the developed nations take potable water for granted the fact is for several billion people it is a major matter of urgent stress. Here is a new technology that may help relieve this problem. Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Biopolymer-reinforced synthetic granular nanocomposites for affordable point-of-use water purification, PNAS, Published online before print May 6, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1220222110

Nano-scientists Develop New Kind of Portable Water Purification System
BOB YIRKA – Phys.org

I have written extensively about the bias of the media and, particularly, the use of false equivalencies. (For a discussion of this see my esssay: False Equivalencies and the Mediocrity of Nonlocal Consciousness Research Criticism: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2813%2900059-1/fulltext)! . Here is proof of my argument. Click through to see the charts which accompany this piece. They will appall you when you see how incredibly compromised American corporate media has become.

How New York Times, NPR And Wall Street Journal Print Fossil Fuel Talking Points Without Full Disclosure
REBECCA LEBER – Climate Progress

Here in a very clear exegetic essay Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz spells out the whole sordid story of the attempt by corporations to patent and own life forms.

Lives versus Profits
JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, PHD, Nobel Laureate Economist – Project Syndicate

Here in one essay the true dimensions of the corruption of The U.S. Department of Agriculture by Monsanto is made clear.

Monsanto Has Taken Over the USDA
DAVID SWANSON – Nation of Change

2013/05/152016/03/26

Reflections on Alternative Command & Control and Four Transformation Forcing Concepts

#OSE Open Source Everything, Advanced Cyber/IO, All Reflections & Story Boards, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Key Players, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Strategy, Threats

I have been reflecting on the past twenty years, and the remarkable resistence of the US Intelligence Community, seemingly impervious to all manner of reform recommendations, be they presidential, congressional, or public. Reform is not transformation. This from Dr. Russell Ackoff, a pioneer in systems thinking and reflexive practice:

Reformations and transformations are not the same thing. Reformations are concerned with changing the means systems employ to pursue their objectives. Transformations involve changes in the objectives they pursue.

And now this from Ada Bozeman:

(There is a need) to recognize that just as the essence of knowledge is not as split up into academic disciplines as it is in our academic universe, so can intelligence not be set apart from statecraft and society, or subdivided into elements…such as analysis and estimates, counterintelligence, clandestine collection, covert action, and so forth. Rather … intelligence is a scheme of things entire. (Bozeman 1998: 177):[1]

The recent NATO Innovation Hub initiative in leveraging social media is a tiny but potentially potent transformation starting point. It reflects clarity, diversity, and integrity. After an open brainstorming session that identified 32 opportunity areas, enablers, and concerns, the team nurturing the NATO Innovation Hub settled on three areas for focus where concept papers will be developed:

-‐ Education and Training through New Media
-‐ Alternative Command and Control
-‐ Social Media Users Training

As one of the early invited participants contributing to the process, I offered the below comments toward the first draft of the concept paper for Alternative Command and Control, and am now adding to that a section on four forcing concepts or functions for transforming strategy, policy, acquisition, and operations via the alternative command and control concept.

Continue reading “Reflections on Alternative Command & Control and Four Transformation Forcing Concepts”

Category: Communities of Practice

Owl: Pentagon Unilaterally Grants Itself Authority Over ‘Civil Disturbances’

Rickard Falkvinge: Prosecutor Hints That Root Domain Registry Is Criminally Liable For Copyright Monopoly Infringements On The Pirate Bay

Michel Bauwens: Civilized Discourse Construction Kit

Chuck Spinney: Austerity Economics is Fraud — Primer for Citizens

Eagle: USAF Dumps 976 Pieces of 274 Veteran Bodies in Landfill [2003-2008 Reported in 2011]

SchwartzReport: New Solution on Water Purification — and Three Corporate Evil Stories — Media, Patents, Monsanto

Reflections on Alternative Command & Control and Four Transformation Forcing Concepts