Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Jean Lievens: P2P on Cooperativa Integral Catalana

03 Economy, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Liberation Technology
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Enric Duran of the Catalan Integrated Cooperative has taken the time to comment on Michel Bauwens’ recent article on Open Coops, contrasting Bauwens’ proposals with the practical realities already under way in the CIC’s own forward thinking cooperativist environment.

Bauwens’ summary of these proposals include four key proposals which Duran addresses below. To give some context, the four proposals are:

  1. That coops need to be statutorily (internally) oriented towards the common good 
  2. That coops need to have governance models including all stakeholders
  3. That coops need to actively co-produce the creation of immaterial and material commons
  4. That coops need to be organized socially and politically on a global basis, even as they produce locally.

Here are Duran’s comments to each proposal.

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Stephen E. Arnold: IBM Buzz Equals Revenue?

IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

IBM Buzz Equals Revenues: The Breakthrough Assumption

I am no wizard of finance. I have kept track of money for my Cub Scout troop. I do understand this chart from Google Finance:

The blue column shows that revenue is going nowhere, maybe even trending down. The red line shows IBM’s profit margin which is flat. And the gold bar presents IBM’s operating income. Notice that it is flat. The flat lines are achieved by cost cutting, selling off dead end businesses, and introducing innovations like offices an employee has to sign up to use.

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Yoda: Are Islamic Finance and Ethical Economics the Same?

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Think, we do.

How Islamic finance and a more ethical capitalism go hand-in-hand

In first place, the most-read article on the Guardian Social Enterprise Network for 2013, was Sheeza Ahmad's thoughts on how Islamic finance and a more ethical capitalism go hand-in-hand. As the founder of social enterprise HelpingB, he argued that the Qur'an's teachings of business reflect objectives of the worldwide social enterprise movement.

See Also:

Welby 'embarrassed' by Wonga link

EXTRACT

Linking financing to real assets, as opposed to ‘virtual' money, is what distinguishes Islamic banking from conventional finance. So what would the current financial landscape look like if the attitude towards money lending and interest shifted towards the Islamic model?

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Berto Jongman: Ukrainian Military Jet Shot Down MH17 – First an Air to Air Missile, then Machine Gun Fire

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, IO Deeds of War
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Malaysian press charges Ukraine government shot down MH 17

A Thursday article in the New Straits Times, Malaysia’s flagship English-language newspaper, charged the US- and European-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev with shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 in east Ukraine last month. Given the tightly controlled character of the Malaysian media, it appears that the accusation that Kiev shot down MH17 has the imprimatur of the Malaysian state.

The US and European media have buried this remarkable report, which refutes the wave of allegations planted by the CIA in international media claiming that Russian president Vladimir Putin was responsible for the destruction of MH17, without presenting any evidence to back up this charge.

The New Straits Times article, titled “US analysts conclude MH17 downed by aircraft,” lays out evidence that Ukrainian fighter aircraft attacked the jetliner with first a missile, then with bursts of 30-millimeter machine gun fire from both sides of MH17. The Russian army has already presented detailed radar and satellite data showing a Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 fighter jet tailing MH17 shortly before the jetliner crashed. The Kiev regime denied that its fighters were airborne in the area, however.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Ukrainian Military Jet Shot Down MH17 – First an Air to Air Missile, then Machine Gun Fire”

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Tom Atlee: Flawed Wisdom of the Crowds — Neglects Conversation & Role of Interaction

Collective Intelligence
Tom Atlee
Tom Atlee

Research has just shown that “The Wisdom of Crowds” phenomena can be biased – a bias that can be avoided by focusing on the responses of “confident” responders and ignoring everyone else. While this is interesting, it neglects a number of important points, such as (a) how the whole process is limited to questions that have a single right answer (which, it turns out, the researchers failed to do); (b) problems with “confidence” as a source of accurate information; and (c) the fact that making guesses about facts or predictions about the future is but a tiny part of the full reality and potential of collective wisdom – and focusing on that tiny part is distracting us from our urgent need to develop more comprehensive and powerful forms of collective wisdom and to apply them to our current global predicament.

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Berto Jongman: Melanie Swan on Machine Ethics

Ethics
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Machine Ethics Interfaces

Melanie Swan

Machine ethics is a term used in different ways. The basic use is in the sense of people attempting to instill some sort of human-centric ethics or morality in the machines we build like robots, self-driving vehicles, and artificial intelligence (Wallach 2010) so that machines do not harm humans either maliciously or unintentionally.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Melanie Swan on Machine Ethics”

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