Tip of the Hat to Public Intelligence.Net at Twitter. In our view this represents the beginning of global push-back against crimes against humanity by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acting “in our name” and at our expense. Similar push-back against the Joint Special Operations Group (JSOG) can be expected.
As I was reading through the projects coming to our upcoming Contact Summit in NYC next month, I was inspired by a few people who are reimagining what a library could be.
Library Turns Hackerspace
Perhaps you’ve heard the term hackerspace, or something along a similar vein, like makerspace, makerlab, or fab lab. Wikipedia defines it as
Phi Beta Iota: Note the Weberian centralized Dewey system on the left, and the chaordic vivaciousness on the right. This is what digital freedom and cultural freedom make possible.
Ten years after 9/11, top cops in the nation's biggest cities feel there
are still significant gaps in the intelligence and analysis they receive
about terrorism, even as the homegrown terror threat looms larger.
A survey of intelligence commanders from America's 56 biggest cities conducted by the Homeland Security Policy Institute found the police chiefs believe the nation's intelligence enterprise is less robust than it could be, and that 62 percent of the chiefs felt this lack left them “unable to develop a complete understanding of their local threat.”
Phi Beta Iota: The “top cops” are great people, they just do not understand that the terror threat is fradulent and that the homeland security industrial complex is working precisely as intended, wasting hundreds of billions on fraudulent dysfunctional white and white-collar employment while channeling hundreds of billions in unearned profits to the homeland security industrial complex.
Had fun with this post. Working on getting the thinking on this right. Tough to do.
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Hollow, bankrupt states and crisis of capitalism is not a “dystopian future” if it is actually happening now. With almost hourly updates.
I coined the term, “hollow state” back in 2007. The idea derived from what I was seeing develop due to open source warfare and primary loyalties. Here's a run down on what it means:
The modern nation-state is in a secular decline, made inevitable by the rise of a global market system. Even developed nations, like the US, are not immune to this process. The decline is at first gradual and then accelerates until it reaches a final end-point: a hollow state. The hollow state has the trappings of a modern nation-state (“leaders”, membership in international organizations, regulations, laws, and a bureaucracy) but it lacks any of the legitimacy, services, and control of its historical counter-part. It is merely a shell that has some influence over the spoils of the economy. The real power rests in the hands of corporations and criminal/guerrilla groups that vie with each other for control of sectors of wealth production. For the individual living within this state, life goes on, but it is debased in a myriad of ways. The shift from a marginally functional nation-state in manageable decline to a hollow state often comes suddenly, through a financial crisis.
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s (HOT) response to Haiti remains one of the most remarkable examples of what’s possible when volunteers, open source software and open data intersect. When the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck on January 12th, 2010, the Google Map of downtown Port-au-Prince was simply too incomplete to be used for humanitarian response. Within days, however, several hundred volunteers from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) commu-nity used satellite imagery to trace roads, shelters, and other features to create the most detailed map of Haiti ever created.
The shift in the CIA mission's has been reflected in the spectacular growth of its Counter-terrorism Center (CTC) from 300 employees in September 2001 to about 2,000 people today – 10 percent of the agency's entire workforce, according to the Post report.
The agency's analytical branch, which had been previously devoted entirely to providing intelligence assessments for policymakers, has been profoundly affected.
More than one-third of the personnel in the agency's analytical branch are now engaged wholly or primarily in providing support to CIA operations, according to senior agency officials cited by the Post. And nearly two-thirds of those are analysing data used by the CTC drone war staff to make decisions on targeting.
Koko Signs: Secrecy–when it is pervasive–cannot be micro-managed. As governments decline in legitimacy, and personal technologies become more pervasive than the instruments of secrecy, a tipping point is reached. We're there.
A remarkable YouTube video shows how hard it is to maintain control in a wired world.
By David WiseLos Angeles Times, September 6, 2011
Maj. Gen. Jin Yinan of the People's Liberation Army, in what he apparently thought was an internal briefing, revealed half a dozen cases of Chinese officials who had spied for Britain, the United States and other countries. Somehow, the video of his sensational disclosures leaked out. Clips of his hours-long talk appeared on at least two Chinese websites, Youku.com and Tudou.com, but were quickly removed by government censors.
Phi Beta Iota: Colin Gray teaches us in Modern Strategy that time is the one thing that cannot be purchased nor replaced. The USA has blown a quarter century in its continuing corrupt quest for secrecy and its exploitation of secrecy and other information pathologies to further programs that are neither needed nor affordable. America, like China, is at a tipping point. The ability of the few to impose secrecy against the interests of the many is now done–expanding the Open Source revolution must be our highest priority, to include a year of paid retraining for every person now unemployed and every contractor about to become unemployed.
