Policies – Page 562 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/06/01

Worth a Look: Digital (Interactive) Citizens Project

Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Open Government, Policies, Real Time, Technologies

The Digital Citizen Project builds upon the new digital capabilities of television broadcasting and the Internet’s advances in social engagement, to bring an unprecedented degree of citizen participation to news programming for the 2012 election period. The project is premised on the belief that, when offered the chance to appear in media as “informed citizens,” a large number of people will rise to the challenge.

How it Works: Digital Citizen 2012 is a cross-platform and converged media series that seamlessly connects people using social and mobile applications, to television programming of the 2012 campaign. Using well-established online engagement tools, public participants contribute video, audio, text and still images of themselves to the station’s website, stating their opinions and posing questions. Initially, the online community will vet contributions. Producers will join in, to assure the inclusion of representative groups in this process and to track contributors whose posts are popular among the community. Utilizing the digital capabilities of modern studio production equipment, a significant number of the pre-recorded contributor questions and comments will appear on the live programs.

A much smaller number of contributors, whose articulate positions prove popular with the community, will be offered the opportunity to appear live via webcam on the TV program. These participants will be required to take part in a carefully designed online facilitation process that bolsters their arguments with facts, and introduces them to others with different opinions. These “informed citizens” will then be able to speak directly with journalists, experts and candidates during the programs.

Learn more….

2011/06/01

Mother Jones: 2011 Hurricane Forecast vs Past

03 Environmental Degradation, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Policies

la nina heat — Click on Image to Enlarge

The Illustrated 2011 Hurricane Forecast

— By Julia Whitty

Mother Jones, Wed Jun. 1, 2011

Specifically, for 2011, they're forecasting the likelihood of:

16 named storms (60% more)
9 hurricanes (50% more)
5 intense hurricanes (75% more)

Compare that to the average during the 50 years between 1950 and 2000:

10 named storms
6 hurricanes
2 intense hurricanes

LIBYA: Cynthia McKinney & Independent Journalists

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence

McKinney Leads DIGNITY Delegation of Independent Journalists to Libya on Fact-Finding Mission

1 June 2011

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – Today, independent journalists from across the United States departed on a truth-telling, fact-finding mission to Libya. This coincides with what was supposed to have been a debate in Congress on U.S. involvement in the war against Libya, but the debate got sidelined due to the fact that the legislation requiring a pullout by the U.S. could actually have passed. Both Democratic and Republican leadership are responsible for pulling the bill at the last minute.

Al Jazeera film footage shows that Western soldiers have their “boots on the ground” in Libya overstepping authority granted by the United Nations Security Council for action in Libya. Every day that President Obama contributes to the military action against Libya, he tests the United States Congress and defies the United States Constitution and the War Powers Act which limit Presidential acts of war, subject to authorization by the U.S. Congress.

Incredibly, in what yet may prove to be another act beyond the mandate of the United Nations Security Council Resolution, NATO extended its operations in Libya for another 90 days.

Because the public has become increasingly unable to rely on embedded media to tell the American people the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” the DIGNITY Delegation will shed rare light on NATO's actions inside that country.

According to some estimates, the American people and the global community were lied to 935 times by Administration officials and the media in the lead-up to the Iraq War. As Aeschylus said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” The DIGNITY Delegation is expected to make daily reports while on the ground of the ongoing NATO actions in the country.

For more information please contact: dondebar@optonline.net

2011/06/012011/06/01

TED: John Perry Barlow on Collective Consciousness

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Officers Call, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies, TED Videos

TEDxMarin – John Perry Barlow – The Right to Know

16:56

Phi Beta Iota: This is classic Barlow, totally new fresh look, a moving and deeply engaging personal monologue on where we are, where we are going.

“Thought is not a noun to be owned, it is a verb, an action.”

“Copyright is the wrong model for monetizing thinking.”

See Also:

Electronic Frontier Foundation

1992 Barlow (US) Information Wants to Be Free

Review: The Virtual Community–Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier

2011/06/012011/06/01

Louis D. Brandeis on Banks Against the People

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

In 1912, Woodrow Wilson campaigned for President using many Progressive ideas about strengthening the economy: banking reform, tariff reduction and the elimination of monopolies and trusts. The consolidation of these ideas became known as the New Freedom.

After Wilson's election, Louis Brandeis (who was responsible for many of Wilson's ideas in the first place) wrote a series of articles for Harper's Weekly which outlined why the New Freedom was necessary and how best to implement it. In 1914, the articles were collected in book form and published under the title Other People's Money–and How the Bankers Use It.

Brandeis' central thesis was that the large banking houses were colluding with businessmen to create trusts in America's major industries. Brandeis felt that not only did trusts stifle competition, but also they became so large that they became unable to operate efficiently.

Brandeis backed up his arguments with facts–copious facts gleaned from his battles against J. P. Morgan and Charles Mellen in the New Haven Railroad merger battle and from the Pujo Committee–a House committee report that investigated the abuses of the “Money Trust.”

Wilson was able to push through a number of laws regarding the regulation of business and trusts, but in many ways, due to mergers and stock manipulation, conditions in the business world today remain the same. Many of the details in Other People's Money may be dated, but its central ideas remain relevant–so much so that is still in print almost 90 years after it was first published. The chapters here are free online.

Chapter I: Our Financial Oligarchy

Chapter II: How The Combiners Combine

Chapter III: Interlocking Directorates

Chapter IV: Serve One Master Only!

Chapter V: What Publicity Can Do

Chapter VI: Where The Banker Is Superfluous

Chapter VII: Big Men And Little Business

Chapter VIII: A Curse Of Bigness

Chapter IX: The Failure Of Banker-Management

Chapter X: The Inefficiency Of The Oligarchy

Tip of the Hat to the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.

2011/06/01

General Hamid Gul, PK ISI Former Chief on the Record

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

General Hamid Gul, former chief of the Pakistani intelligence service–11:50 tour of the horizon from death of Bin Laden to future of Afghanistan to what World War III might look like if US military-industrial complex is allowed to open a Pakistani front.

YouTube Russian Television Interview Hamid Gul

Phi Beta Iota: Worth listening to every second. BBC (itself a virtual subsidiary of CIA under the US-UK “special relationship”) is rapidly being over-shadowed by Russian TV, Al-Jazeera, and Ha'aretz as sourced of useful open information in English.

2011/06/01

How IGNORING Warnings on Off-Shoring Killed USA

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Nobel Laureate: Globalism Has Been Ruinous for Americans

How Offshoring Has Destroyed the Economy

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, Counterpunch, 31 May 2011

These are discouraging times, but once in a blue moon a bit of hope appears. I am pleased to report on the bit of hope delivered in March of 2011 by Michael Spence, a Nobel prize-winning economist, assisted by Sandile Hlatshwayo, a researcher at New York University. The two economists have taken a careful empirical look at jobs offshoring and concluded that it has ruined the income and employment prospects for most Americans.

To add to the amazement, their research report, “The Evolving Structure of the American Economy and the Employment Challenge,” was published by the very establishment Council on Foreign Relations.

For a decade I have warned that US corporations, pressed by Wall Street and large retailers such as Wal-Mart, to move offshore their production for US consumer markets, were simultaneously moving offshore US GDP, US tax base, US consumer income, and irreplaceable career opportunities for American citizens.

Among the serious consequences of offshoring are

the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an “opportunity society,”
an extraordinary worsening of the income distribution, and
large trade and federal budget deficits that cannot be closed by normal means. These deficits now threaten the US dollar’s role as world reserve currency.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: Everything killing the USA today was properly briefed to the Senate and the White House in the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's. The missing ingredient was INTEGRITY on the part of the listeners. Intelligence without integrity is irrelevant; integrity without intelligence is dangerously uninformed.