In early January the BBC reported that Mohammad Bouazazi, a Tunisian college graduate who illegally sold fruits and vegetables in Sidi Bouzid, had died from his self-inflicted burns. He had set himself on fire by dousing his body with petrol when police confiscated his produce. He didn’t have the proper permits. Public protest had been rare in Tunisia before. When he died, the BBC reported that “a crowd estimated at 5,000 took part in his funeral.” The crowd chanted the same message together, out loud: “Farewell, Mohammad, we will avenge you. We weep for you today, we will make those who caused your death weep.”
Safety copy below the line–note ending on Bush-Obama “crowd control” plans.
Hi All: This is well worth paying attention to, checking out and even sampling. Do see the great endorsements below. Learn more about my old friend and colleague, Jeff Golden, the creator of this remarkable new program. Immense Possibilities is also interactive. As you'll see from the website, Jeff is looking for our input and collaboration. Congratulations to Jeff for creating a new public forum for what's working and for those making a true difference in these challenging times and are offering solutions of great benefit, who so often don¹t make it into mainstream news. May this show become part of the “:new main stream”.
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD.
Cheers, John
From: Jeff Golden
Dear Friends:
Suppose you found a public television program that brought you stunningly creative people who
¨ Craft brilliant projects that strengthen their communities for hard times to come
¨ Unite people across political and philosophical divides
¨ Connect Millenials, Gen X- and Y-ers, Baby Boomers and Elders in compelling ways
And suppose it was right there on your computer or television every Tuesday evening. Would that be worth your time?
Tuesday evening, May 24, 7:30 pm: Frances Moore Lappé
In the right-hand corner you'll see a box to enter your email address.
If you do that, you¹ll get a message about once a week on what IP is doing. We will not, repeat not, pass your address onto anyone else for any reason. Every message we send to you will have an easy option to unsubscribe.
Hope you'll give IP a try.
IMMENSE POSSIBILITIES is a weekly public television program, followed by an interactive webcast, that pull together the work of Jeff Golden and other social inventors who share a clear set of beliefs, values and goals. If these align with your own, and you share our passion for boosting possibilities that can forge a healthier future than the one that seems likely if we don¹t change and innovate, let's work together.
As someone who spent the better part of 2008 and 2009 in Turkey, I find the attached analysis a very useful summary of Turkish developments. To be sure, I am biased. Turkey is one of my very favorite countries, I love the people, the culture, and food, and I have been fascinated by its ongoing political evolution.
Mr. Heydarian's cogent comparison of Turkey's evolution to the so-called Arab Spring* provides much food for thought, and I find it eyeopening.
* I prefer the term Arab Revolt to Arab Spring, because the forces of counterrevolution seem to be taking over, and like its predecessor in WWI, it might not lead anywhere.
Turkey is emerging as an attractive model for the new generation of democrats in the Middle East and North Africa. Turkey, as a bastion of Islamic moderation, economic dynamism, military might, and foreign policy creativity, has inspired many who envision a prosperous and free Arab world.
Phi Beta Iota: The USA is part of the autocratic corrupt system against which the Arabs are revolting. It is neither a leader nor a model–it is an obstacle for the simple reason that the US Government lacks intelligence and integrity, and therefore has nothing to offer in the way of non-zero strategic analytics acceptable to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and everyone else. The US Government is morally and intellectually bankrupt.
STOCKHOLM — The notorious Cold War terrorist Carlos the Jackal says in an interview to be aired Thursday that Osama bin Laden is a martyr who earned himself a place in history through terrorism.
In the interview with Swedish national television, the Venezuelan terrorist said the former al-Qaida leader will still be remembered in 100 years' time because “of what he has done, the example he gave.”
Click on Image to Enlarge
He said “nobody” will remember President Barack Obama.
Carlos, or Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, is serving a life sentence in France for killing two French secret agents and an alleged informer in 1975.
He is also accused of having a role in two 1982 bombings – on a Paris-Toulouse train and outside the Paris office of Arab-language newspaper al-Watan – and is suspected of two other train bombings on Dec. 31, 1983.
Swedish television providedThe Associated Press with the unedited version of the telephone interview, parts will be aired in Sweden Thursday evening.
Phi Beta Iota: From the beginning we have emphasized the financial asymmetries achieved by those who seek to engage the US with asymmetric tactics–for every dollar they spent, initially the US spent $500,000 and now the US spends closer to $5 million. It costs $50 million PER BODY in Afghanistan, and the cost in national blood, treasure, and spirit has both finished the destruction of the US economy AND revealed the lack of integrity and intelligence at the top in Washington DC. Bin Laden's greatest gift may be to have finally inspired a “Day of Rage” in the USA at some point in the near-term future.
Networked tribes, systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. Resilient Communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures.
The most likely scenario for the next decade starts with the resumption of global economic depression (D2). Economies shrink. Wealth evaporates as former “assets” become worthless. Commodities fall (even energy) due to declines in economic activity. Currencies gyrate, explode, and/or evaporate.
In this environment, sovereigns will begin to default as the industrial nation-state model runs out of gas. Developed nation-states will find themselves crushed between bailouts of their cronies and excess spending (i.e. social spending (EU), national security spending (US), or mercantilist over-investment (China). Developing nations will just implode.
Things will continue on this track until one of two things happen:
things really begin to fail (complete system breakdown) or
new, better economic and social systems become viable as replacements to our broken one.
I'm betting on new economic and social systems. Part of that bet, and something many people now get, is accomplished through the establishment of self-reliant resilient communities. However, resilient communities aren't a sufficient replacement, in and of themselves (unless you want to turn back the clock to the 1800s). By themselves, they don't represent a superior alternative to a failing and flailing global system. Something else is needed, but what?
It's simple. What's needed are (note the plural here), virtual global economic systems built on a sound footing (i.e. better and more sensible rules than we currently have), prosperous participants, and a hard currency. Systems that people can flee to when currencies become scarce (deflation) or worthless (inflation) or nation-state political systems fail (corruption/crime) or flail (repression).
My advice to you: when you see a system that looks like the one outlined above, start to diversify your economic activity into it as soon as is practicable.
Most social networking services are for sharing what you’ve done in the past or what you’re doing right now. A new one, WhereBerry, is for sharing what you want to do in the future.
On WhereBerry, which opens to the public Tuesday, people post activities they want to do someday, like restaurants they want to try, movies they hope to see or events they plan to attend. Their friends can comment and make plans.
“We’re giving people a single place for all these ideas that float around for people to do,” said Nick Baum, who founded WhereBerry with Bill Ferrell. They are former Google engineers. “If you put them here, you won’t forget about them and the combination of things will make you do a lot more stuff.”
Phi Beta Iota: WhatBerry should be along right behind this. As a collective aggregator this appears to have vastly more potential than its current narrow focus.
