Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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NIGHTWATCH: Tunesian Emergency, Attack on US Facilities in Tunisia Next?

07 Other Atrocities, IO Deeds of War

Tunisia: Reacting to wave of violent protests by Islamic fundamentalists, President Moncef Marzouki on Wednesday extended a state of emergency, which grants police special powers of intervention, until 1 February 2013, the official TAP news agency reported.

Comment: The security situation is deteriorating again in Tunisia. President Marzouki is using the same tactics that Ben Ali did to suppress and kill the Islamist opposition. US support of the overthrow of Ben Ali only achieved a delay in the continuing violent internal instability, interrupted by an election that brought the Islamist Ennahda party to power. Ben Ali got out alive, but Marzouki might not.

US diplomatic facilities in Tunisia need more protection.

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Berto Jongman: 28-30 November 2012 Berlin Security & Defence Learning

04 Education
Berto Jongman

INNOVATION AND LEARNING FOR CHANGE

8th International Forum on Technology Assisted Larning and Training for Defence, Security, and Emergency Services

Berlin, 28-30 November 2012

Innovation and learning in rapidly changing security environments will be two of the most significant, underlying themes in discussions at this year's Security and Defence Learning, according to conference hosts, the New Security Foundation.

Learn more.

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Patrick Meier: Social Media and Hurricane Sandy – Creative Mash-Ups, Twitter Peer-Review in Real Time to Sort Fake from Real

Advanced Cyber/IO
Patrick Meier

What Was Novel About Social Media Use During Hurricane Sandy?

We saw the usual spikes in Twitter activity and the typical (reactive) launch of crowdsourced crisis maps. We also saw map mashups combining user-generated content with scientific weather data. Facebook was once again used to inform our social networks: “We are ok” became the most common status update on the site. In addition, thousands of pictures where shared on Instagram (600/minute), documenting both the impending danger & resulting impact of Hurricane Sandy. But was there anything really novel about the use of social media during this latest disaster?

I’m asking not because I claim to know the answer but because I’m genuinely interested and curious. One possible “novelty” that caught my eye was this FrankenFlow experiment to “algorithmically curate” pictures shared on social media. Perhaps another “novelty” was the embedding of webcams within a number of crisis maps, such as those below launched by #HurricaneHacker and Team Rubicon respectively.

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Search: global warming [as of 30 Oct 2012]

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Global warming is normal, not an imminent threat.  Global warming, also known as climate change, is a tiny part of Environmental Degradation, top level threat #3 out of ten according to the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change of the United Nations.  Global warming is a direct result of common ignorance, corporate greed, and government corruption.  Roughly equivalent to global warming in the sense that they are also occurring over the next hundred years, are global flooding, substantially impacting on all urban areas at sea level, and the shift of the magnetic pole.  Earthquakes are a part of Environmental Degradation not included in the global warming threat arena — like global warming, earthquakes have both natural historical causes, and human causes such as fracking.

Global warming and climate change are associated with geo-engineering, which should frighten everyone given the fragmentation and ignorance of our varied “experts.”    High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program  (HAARP) is suspected by some of being used to create weather events.  Conclusive evidence is not available, but neither is transparency on the part of the government.

Anyone discussing global warming without having a strategic analytic model and a good knowledge of the ten threats, twelve core policies, and eight demographic challengers, is either ignorant or a hypocrite.

Global Warming at Phi Beta Iota:

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John Steiner: IMF Working Paper The Chicago Plan Revisited (Eliminate Debt to Banks, End Credit Leverage, Governments Control Money)

03 Economy, Economics/True Cost
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John Steiner

Abstract: At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.

Working Paper at IMF Web Site

Safety Copy: IMF Chicago Plan Revisited

Phi Beta Iota:  The radical sensibility of this paper, which essentially ends the reign of financial terrorism by Goldman Sachs et al, certainly suggests that in 2011, when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was set up by a maid later found to have been paid, there was already a major schism between Wall Street and the IMF–or among the IMF member states.  The paper is breathtakingly brilliant, with all due credit to its antecedents, and we can only hope that the current head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, will make this the centerpiece of her administration.  The other half is the Automated Payment Transaction Tax (APT), which not only doubles or triples government revenue, but also eliminates tax codes and other regulatory means by which legislatures and executives extort money

See Also:

IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers

Balanced Budget And Comprehensive Tax Reform Made Simple ? The Automated Payment Transaction Tax (Forbes.com, 28 October 2012)

Hotel releases CCTV of DSK chamber maid reporting ‘rape' to colleagues and their high-five at centre of ‘set-up' scandal

The Global Banking ‘Super-Entity’ Drug Cartel: The “Free Market” of Finance Capital

Goldman, Wall Street and Financial Terrorism

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Search: open education / digital learning [as of 30 Oct 2012]

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Open education has at least three components:  free access to learning resources; digital access to formerly analog learning resoources (e.g. instructors in classrooms); and learning accomplishment validation (becoming common) or credentialing (rare at this time).  More broadly defined, open education is “root” for any society desiring to be both democratic and prosperous.  Open education has not made the transition to Open Source Everything, but needs to do so — open education along with open books (businesses with public charters), open data, open government, open repositories and open science, all need the other opens in order to be agile, inter-operable, and scalable in an affordable and sustainable manner.  The stakeholders within the legacy education domain are largely afraid, ignorant, and in opposition to change.  They must be embraced, informed, and led.  “Open” is a meme, a mind-set, and a method.  It is a seed crystal for a local to global holistic approach to education, intelligence, and research — three domains that must be integrated — and the foundation for open civil society, open commerce, open government, open law enforcement, open media, open military, and open non-government/non-profit.

NOTE:  This search response does not include Open Access, Open Knowledge and all the other opens that enable and are themselves empowered by Open Education.

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