I am very grateful to have been able to take part in organizing the Contact Conference, an event that pitched itself as a working festival of innovation, a social technologies exhibitor space, and a celebration of the potential of a network culture.
And it was definitely all those things, so mission accomplished there. The energy in the room was great, the recipients of the three $1oK Innovation Awards worthy, and the four projects conceived and launched at the event exciting. (more details on those things below in Douglas Rushkoff’s letter to participants)
But that’s really only a part of the story.
The bigger picture here is that if we start from the premise that “the system is broken” or “we’re at a critical turning point’ or that “we’re in a global transition,” or any such broad sweeping statements about the functionality of our social/economic/political/environmental/technological/scientific systems, and the majority of the world’s population is either deeply dissatisfied or at the least has an itching feeling that there is something that is just not right… then the only sane choice left is to act.
Below are two eye opening reports/analyses by two of the best counterpunchers in Alexander Cockburn's and Jeffrey St Clair's stable of bomb throwers. The subject is Greece: its political/economic crisis and the myths surrounding average Greeks being the cause of its crisis.
In the first, Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People: The Myth of Greek Profligacy, my friend Marshall Auerback, argues that the masses of the Greek people (the bottom 80% of a highly unequal income distribution) are being set up as scapegoats to pay for a neo-liberal austerity plan that aimed producing income deflation (instead of a currency devaluation) to improve export competitiveness. Auerback explains why this is really a plan of collective punishment that is guaranteed to fail while shredding what is left of Greece's social contract.
In the second, Naxos Hangs On By Its Fingernails: How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land, Patrick Cockburn presents the reader with a micro-case study of what is happening to average Greeks (i.e. part of the lower 80%) on the island of Naxos, the largest and my favorite island in the windy Cyclades.
Chuck Spinney
Barcelona
Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People The Myth of Greek Profligacy
by MARSHALL AUERBACK, Counterpunch, OCTOBER 24, 2011
Phi Beta Iota: One reason why the Electoral Reform and BigBatUSA endeavors are so important NOW, is because if they succeed in the USA, where Internet connectivity, cognitive surplus, and Occupy awaking have converged, the model can be scaled globally very quickly. At root this is about secular corruption. Pope Benedict XVI had a chance to use Assisi creatively but chose the low road.
Are you still a fringe candidate when you pull in more than half of all votes? Just ask Ron Paul.
Even with the establishment cringing at his libertarian leanings and his ideas otherwise radical for a Republican candidate, Congressman Paul received nearly 54 percent of the votes in an Ohio straw poll over the weekend.
The Ohio Republican straw poll was held in the Buckeye State on Saturday, and the majority of the votes cast went to the Texas congressman who continues to show both success and support in his race for the GOP nomination, despite little attention from the mainstream media.
While news outlets have largely focused in recent weeks on the surging popularity of Herman Cain, the pizzaman only raked in nearly half of what Paul got in the straw poll. Following Paul’s first place victory, Cain came in second with around 26 percent of the votes. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney received around 9 percent, giving him a third place standing. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, came in fourth.
Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, both considered top tier candidates earlier in the race, each received less than 5 percent of the vote. In recent weeks their popularity among Republican voters has shown extreme signs of decline.
Paul’s success continues to soar, although he has still not received the same media coverage favored for other Republican hopefuls. In an interview with Alex Jones’ Inforwars last month, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura offered his support for the candidate. “Ron Paul can win. It’s out there. All you got to do is activate and get the silent voters out to vote,” said Ventura. “You have to give them a reason to see their vote.”
FAIRFAX, Virginia (AP) — Maybe you've got a hunch Kim Jong Il's regime in North Korea has seen its final days, or that the Ebola virus will re-emerge somewhere in the world in the next year.
Your educated guess may be just as good as an expert's opinion. Statistics have long shown that large crowds of average people frequently make better predictions about unknown events, when their disparate guesses are averaged out, than any individual scholar — a phenomenon known as the wisdom of crowds.
Now the U.S. intelligence community, with the help of university researchers and regular folks around the country, is studying ways to harness and improve the wisdom of crowds. The research could one day arm policymakers with information gathered by some of the same methods that power Wikipedia and social media.
Phi Beta Iota: The idea is actually from George Mason University. IARPA is a mess, as is DARPA. If the DNI were serious about growing up, he would have distributed national intelligence councils for each of the ten high-level threats to humanity, each of the core policy domains, and state and local sub-councils, as well as a means of integrating humans, data, and assumptions in an EarthGame such as Medard Gabel is ready to build at a cost of no more than $3 million a year. US Intelligence lacks intelligence and integrity, and is not going to grow up under its current “leadership.”
The triumphalism in the US surrounding the liquidation of Qadaffi may be short lived. That is because most Americans do not appreciate how the legacy of anti-colonialism shapes the contemporary cultural DNA in North Africa or how influential that legacy has been in shaping the revolts of what is now called the Arab Spring. There is more going on in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya than Jefferson's vision of revolution fertilizing the natural rights of man.
The coming elections in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya may well result in victories or strong showings for the Islamic parties in each nation’s politics. The U.S., U.K., France, and Italy will not like such results, should they occur, and may will be tempted to intervene to contain or reverse them by influencing the elections either before the fact or overturning them after the fact. Further intervention would be certain to produce yet more unpleasant blowback.
As Peter Osborne argues below, before doing anything, we would do well to remember what happened to Algeria after the 1991-2 election and leave well enough alone. In what is widely regarded to have been a free and fair election, the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut or FIS) won a stunning victory in Dec 1991 on the first ballot, just short of an outright majority. It was clear that the FIS would win a majority on the second ballot scheduled for Jan 1992, and perhaps even enough votes to amend the Algerian constitution. The Algerian army, aided (incited?) by France and the CIA, intervened to cancel the second ballot. The cancellation triggered a chain of events leading to a nightmarish civil war that ultimately killed over 100,000 people and left a state that is still ripe for revolution.
We may not like the consequences of elections in North Africa – but we must not repeat the mistakes of the past.
By Peter Oborne, Telegraph, 22 Oct 2011
The extra-judicial execution of Colonel Gaddafi has been greeted with international elation, and understandably so. There was very little to be said in favour of that gnarled torturer and war criminal. Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, who masterminded the campaign against him, have some excuse to take the view that with the killing of Gaddafi, and today’s elections in Tunisia, the Arab Spring appears to be entering a hopeful stage.
A veteran U.S. State Department foreign service officer lost his security clearance and diplomatic passport this week while the department investigates him over linking to a WikiLeaks document on his blog and publishing a book critical of the government.
Peter Van Buren, who is 51 and has worked for the department for 23 years, had his Top Secret security clearance suspended indefinitely for what the department calls his unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations regarding “writing and speaking on matters of official concern.” This is according to a memo the State Department sent Van Buren.
The move is purely vindictive, according to Van Buren.
Phi Beta Iota: The class action idea is interesting. Robert Steele is pursuing discovery to acquire all emails to and from Jim Clapper, Ron Burgess, and Tish Long about his varied efforts to secure employment within DoD, as well as discovery of all emails and documents surrounding his application for both the DISL jobs across DoD and the lesser DIA jobs [Steele kept book] that were manipulated to exclude Steele from consideration. There is no question but that DIA and DOHA are in violation while DNI (and before that USDI) were complicit, the only question is how much trouble it will be to document this, and how much can be demanded in damages above and beyond loss of $1 million in lost income–including a “by name” request for Steele to be Chief Instructor for Information Operations and Intelligence at COINSOC in Iraq a few years ago where a legal contract was received from Raytheon for $276K a year, and then withdrawn after DOHA told Raytheon no to a simple SECRET clearance without a Statement of Reasons or due process–the exchanges between Raytheon and DOHA will be the starting point for the lawsuit by Robert Steele against the US Government. It will take time, but the absence of integrity in this specific series will become a matter of legal record. If $10 million can be won–half for the legal team–that will be money earned by Steele for having persistent integrity. Integrity is now back in style–DNI, DOHA, and DIA are the last to know this–and of course the Department of State E Veritate Potens.
