Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices – Page 39

2011/03/09

Crowd-Sourcing Comes of Age on Libya

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Government, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Mobile, Real Time

yoda — May the Crowd be with you, always.

Volunteers Behind Libya Crisis Map: A True Story

Patrick Meier, iRevolutiion, 8 March 2011

My colleague Clay Shirky called it “Cognitive Surplus” in his recent book. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams refer to it as “MacroWikinomics” in theirs.

What is cognitive surplus? The trillion hours of free time enjoyed by the world's educated population every year. Don and Tony describe MacroWikinomics as mass distributed collaboration on scales we've never seen before thanks to technology.

We're familiar with deficits and shortages, writes, Clay, but when it comes to surplus social capital, things quickly become unpredictable—especially when this capital scales thanks to the use of social networking platforms and Web 2.0 technologies. But then again, says Clay, “Many of the unexpected uses of communication tools are surprising because our old beliefs about human nature were so lousy.”

Rest of story, maps, photos….

Phi Beta Iota: Over bagels and lox yesterday, Doug Rushkoff summarized his intention for ContactCon: “to take us back to 1992, but this time with 2012 technology and human understanding.” Here is what the US Government was told in 1992 about crowd-sourcing. 20 years and 1 trillion dollars later (20 years, average of 50 billion a year), we still have the world's most expensive ineffective wasteland pretending to “do” intelligence. The lunacy continues.

1992 AIJ OSS Steele’s Original Vision

1992 AIJ Fall ‘New Paradigm” and Avoiding Future Failures

Reference: 1992 USMC C4I Campaign Plan

1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (An Alternative Paradigm)

2011/03/082011/03/08

Reference: The Global Democratic Revolution Anew

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, Reform

The global democratic revolution: a new stage

The great events in tthe Arab world are part of a wider hidtorical process of worldwide democrativ advance.But the distrous events of the post-9/11 decade have made it far slower and more conflictual than needed, says Martin Shaw*

EXTRACT: “…everywhere, the unifying thread is opposition to authoritarianism and aspiration to democratic rule; and the sense of a psychological break with the dictatorial past is unmistakable.”

* Martin Shaw is professorial fellow in international relations and human rights at Roehampton University, London, and an honorary research professor of international relations at the University of Sussex. His books include War and Genocide: Organised Killing in Modern Society (Polity, 2003); The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq (Polity, 2005); and What is Genocide? (Polity, 2007).

Read complete analytic offering….

Phi Beta Iota: One of the most concise, thoughtful, and inspiring summaries of both the present prospects and the recent failed past, all in the context of the past half century.

2011/03/08

Freedom Box: The Short Pitch as of March 2011

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), microfinancing, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Privacy, Real Time, Reform, Technologies

FreedomBox right now as I see it

by James Vasile as posted to HackerVisions, a blog at the intersection of Freedom, Technology, & Community

People have been asking me for a short description of the FreedomBox that doesn’t get too technical but also gets into some details. So here’s my capsule pitch, a short form version of how I see the FreedomBox right now:

The FreedomBox just raised $80K in donations via Kickstarter (the campaign is still going on, if you want to donate) on the strength of positive press in the NYTimes, WSJ, Wired and CBS Evening News. We’re at the very beginning of putting together a team to build this thing. This week we will announce our tech lead, an A+ name with the experience and contacts to lead our architecture design.

Continue reading “Freedom Box: The Short Pitch as of March 2011”

2011/03/062011/10/22

Four Time Bombs Centered on Wall Street

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Paul B. Farrell

March 1, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EST

Four time bombs that will blow up Wall Street

Commentary: Too late to jail bank CEOs; only revolution will succeed

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

Phi Beta Iota: Highlights include extimate that US is 44 trillion in debt; that nothing and Administration does will stop Wall Street–this is now so bad the author believes a revolution (as in swarming homes and offices and demanding the return of ill-gotten wealth) will do. We do not agree. Yes, it is bad. No, recovering the stolen money will not do. The silver lining in all this is the obvious decrepitude of governments and corporations; the now obvious toxic nature of information asymmetries and data pathologies; and the less obvious but emergent need for a) restoring the integrity of the US Electoral process through Electoral Reform 2.2 ; and b) creating the Autonomous Internet so as to achieve Panarchy and create a prosperous world at peace in which transparency eliminates corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse, starting in the USA.

READ ORIGINAL POST WITH FOUR TIME BOMBS DEFINED

Safety Copy of Entire Story Below the Line

Continue reading “Four Time Bombs Centered on Wall Street”

2011/03/05

Regime Alternation: US Response to Arab Revolt + RECAP

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

The Obama administration could end up in a very dicey situation if/when the Arab Revolt spreads to Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud is likely to crack down on demonstrators with a very heavy hand. Oil prices could explode, and Israel would go bonkers. The Wall Street Journal just issued a detailed report describing how the Obama Administration is wavering in its support for democracy demonstrators, urging patience, and hoping the protesters work will with existing monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, etc.) as well as Yemen for gradual reforms (Libya excepted, of course) … the curious euphemism for the emerging desperation to stiffen the three pillars* of our crumbling Middle East policy is “regime alteration.”

The attached essay by veteran middle east correspondent Robert Fisk puts the theory of regime alteration into a moral and economic perspective.

Chuck Spinney<
The Blaster

————

* The three pillars of our ME foreign policy are –

Uncritical support for and protection of Israel.
Protection of Saudi Arabia (and the Persian Gulf Arab states) in return for Saudi assurance of stable oil flows.
Recycling of petrodollars via weapons sales (to countries at peace with Israel, like Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.) and banking/investment houses.

(Note: Over these years, these pillars have been supported also by efforts to limit Soviet and Iranian influence in the Middle East and N. Africa.)

Saudis mobilise thousands of troops to quell growing revolt

By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent
Independent, Saturday, 5 March 2011

Saudi Arabia was yesterday drafting up to 10,000 security personnel into its north-eastern Shia Muslim provinces, clogging the highways into Dammam and other cities with busloads of troops in fear of next week's “day of rage” by what is now called the “Hunayn Revolution”.

Saudi Arabia's worst nightmare – the arrival of the new Arab awakening of rebellion and insurrection in the kingdom – is now casting its long shadow over the House of Saud. Provoked by the Shia majority uprising in the neighbouring Sunni-dominated island of Bahrain, where protesters are calling for the overthrow of the ruling al-Khalifa family, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is widely reported to have told the Bahraini authorities that if they do not crush their Shia revolt, his own forces will. Read more….

Phi Beta Iota: The Obama Administration means well, but it operates in a moral & intellectual vacuum. In combination, its bailing out of Wall Street and destitution of the middle class (while poverty doubled), its loss of integrity in not ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, its continued tolerance of out-of-control security and intelligence bureaucracies, and now its clear intent to join the UK in putting still more forces in the middle of what is rightfully a legitimate revolt of, by, and for the Arab people, represent the last death rattle of Empire.

2011/03/042011/03/04

Libya Internet Flatlines–Spurs Autonomous Internet

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Libya Internet is down again, according to Google tool

March 4, 2011 | 10:22 am Los Angeles Times

Libya has shut off the Internet again, according to a Google monitoring tool.

As of about 8 a.m. PST Thursday (or 6 p.m. in Tripoli, Libya's capital), the nation's Internet traffic began to flatline, and has been at zero since, says Google's Transparency Report.

Phi Beta Iota: While the world watches Libya, the USA is in the process of making the Internet a monopoly that can charge by the application instead of by the packet. In brief, Internet “neutrality” is a fraud in the USA, and the FCC is a front for the very large ISP's just as the Federal Reserve is a front for the private banks. Autonomous Internet is something that matters everywhere, including especially the USA.

See Also:

Autonomous Internet (55)

2011/03/032011/03/03