Advanced Cyber/IO – Page 197 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/06/25

Van Jones Ascendant: Rebuild the Dream

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Policies, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

VAN JONES:

We are not broke.

Taxing the super-rich will not kill the economy.

Most patriotic thing we can do is NOT taking down the US Government.

All three of those are big lies.

Let's rebuild the dream.

In the coming weeks, people all across the country will come together for American Dream house meetings. Let's talk about what a new American Dream looks like and commit to stand together to make it happen.

Find an American Dream house meeting near you. We want YOU to be part of this movement, from the very beginning.

Rebuild the Dream

2011/06/24

Digital Currency for Environmental Sustainability

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

Ven: A Digital Currency Designed for Environmental Sustainability

Hub Culture is a global collaboration network with over 25,000+ members distributed across 110 countries. Their stated mission to expand collective consciousness is driven by the blend of online workspaces for knowledge sharing with offline Pavilions for meeting and connecting – all powered by their digital currency, Ven. Below is an interview with Hub Culture’s Founding Director, Stan Stalnaker.

What compelled you to create Ven?

For us it was a matter of practicality – with a global, diverse community, we found that no single currency could offer a single pricing structure for global inventory in Hub Culture. Our members needed a global wallet – as simple to use in Rio as Shanghai. As a social network, we thought linking this system to the social profile of our users would help them share and create value. We needed a simple, transparent way for our members to exchange value and favors, and the answer was Ven. It has been a learning experience for us. The currency has evolved and grown since its debut in the summer of 2007, and we have discovered ways to make it more useful for our members and the planet at large.

You’ve said Ven can be thought of as ‘green money’? Why?

Today Ven is the only digital currency to be priced from a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures. These components give the Ven advantages of other currencies: the basket encourages price stability on a forward basis, and the link to commodities grounds value in hard assets. The introduction of carbon to the basket is helping us think about how money can serve better social purposes – in this case to support and stimulate demand for carbon credits and social impact development, driving offsets for every transaction used with Ven. This is how the idea of ‘green money’ developed with Ven – because its carbon linkages are able to play a role in this area. I really like the idea that Ven is green, social and efficient, with a mission to improve the lives of its users and the communities that use it.

Read full interview….

2011/06/242011/06/24

Congress Cuts Front End of Information Operations

Advanced Cyber/IO

Lawmakers slash budget for Defense Department’s information ops

By Walter Pincus

Congress is slowly but surely trying to get the Pentagon to cut back on its overseas information operations, most of which end up being done by contractors.

The latest hint has come from the House Appropriations Committee, which has sliced about $125 million from the $300 million that was being sought in the fiscal 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill for what is now known as Military Information Support Operations (MISO).

Several years ago, when Congress first paid attention to this subject, it was called Strategic Communications and it was said to have been costing around $900 million. That figure then dropped to above $600 million. The programs were then designated as Information Operations and then, last year, MISO.

Read full article…..

Phi Beta Iota: This is a cosmetic cut in relation to all the money being wasted on failed acquisition programs, elective and unconstitutional wars and covert actions, and of course “intelligence” and “Cyber-War.”

Campaign for Liberty: Steele on IC and DoD

2011 Cyber-Command or IO 21 + IO Roots

2011/06/23

Jon Lebkowsky: The Tree of Life

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics

The Tree of Life may be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (or not); in his film called “The Tree of Life,” Terence Malick plays with the universals – grace and nature parallel good and evil. Nature is will, ego; grace is nurturing. The film’s narrative plays out in Waco, Texas and in the vast cosmos, infinite space and time, surrounding it; it places one very human story in a vast transhuman context. In one primeval scene, one dinosaur, a predator, chooses not to kill and consume another… this establishes grace as something that precedes the human; I think the point is that nature and grace always coexisted, and always will, and grace seeps into nature. “Good” and “evil” are complex and intertwingled.

I thought the film was magnificent; in it I saw scenes familiar from my own life growing up in a Texas town in the 50s and 60s, though I wasn’t in that family, and I was far more innocent. And Malick’s family has no television set in the living room… imagine what a difference that would make.

The vision of the “tree of life” represents a sense that all life on earth is related… and there’s a tree of life web project that shows that connectedness. The planet is teeming with life, but all species are endangered by the actions and operations of one – is this nature acting without grace? Last night Oliver Markley spoke to the Central Texas World Future Society on the subject of risk and resilience – is civilization at a tipping point toward collapse?

Continue reading “Jon Lebkowsky: The Tree of Life”

2011/06/232011/06/23

NIGHTWATCH: The Facts on Afghanistan Fighting

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Afghanistan: Special Comment. Longtime Readers know that NightWatch has had a continuing project to monitor the security situation in Afghanistan since mid-2006, using a consistent sample of unclassified reporting. In 2006, when the Taliban resurgence was just beginning, NightWatch began publishing monthly summaries of the security situation.

In the past three years, the number of incidents per month has increased so that compiling and analyzing monthly reports threatened to become a full time job.

NightWatch has continued to track data in detail for all 400 districts of Afghanistan every other month and spot checked fighting reports in between. Preliminary analysis of the data for May 2011 was completed today. The table below shows the data from three tracking measures since last November.

DATA AT SOURCE (24 HOUR Lag)

What do these data signify?

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: The Facts on Afghanistan Fighting”

2011/06/222011/06/22

Venessa Miemis: People-Powered Markets– 60 Resources

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence

People-Powered Markets — 60 Resources

There is a growing movement towards peer-to-peer value exchange and production, prompted by a variety of things, like economic conditions, shifting cultural values, exploration into collective intelligence, and further enabled by social technologies.

I've been tracking the online marketplaces that have been cropping up for sharing, swapping, gifting and renting, as well as sites that give people different kinds of opportunity to share skills and knowledge, innovate, and work collaboratively both on and offline. Below are a few sites I've come across, please add any I've missed.

Below the line: Sharing Cars, Rides, Bikes, Space, Land; Gifting, P2P Rentals; Swap Trading, Goods and Money Sharing/Borrowing/Lending; Co-Working, Co-Production, Distributed Work, Skill Sharing, Barter Networks, Idea/Innovation Marketplace.

Continue reading “Venessa Miemis: People-Powered Markets– 60 Resources”

2011/06/22

Twitter Volunteers Helping NATO Bomb Libya…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Military

Believe it or not….NATO appears to be attentive to and leveraging the “intellectual capital” outside the confines of its Member state intelligence services.

How social media users are helping NATO fight Gadhafi in Libya

GRAEME SMITH

Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jun. 14, 2011

EXTRACT:

Robert Rowley, 48, supervisor of a Dairy Queen in Arizona, said he has already seen results from his Twitter activism. He was among the first to notice fuel tankers slipping past NATO warships and docking at ports controlled by Col. Gadhafi, which led to NATO interdictions.

He also wonders whether his tweets might be connected to the bombing of a Gadhafi communications centre in Tripoli. Combing through satellite images, he noticed that a property listed as a commercial warehouse had a yard containing what appeared to be military vehicles. He published his observations; 10 hours later, the spot was hit by a NATO air strike.

“I’m 5,000 miles away,” he said, in an interview before his shift at the ice-cream parlour. “It’s a very weird feeling.”

Read full article….