#OSE Open Source Everything – Page 219 – Public Intelligence Blog

A starting point for the new Secretaries of State and Defense.

Gareth Evans, Australia’s foreign minister for eight years and President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group, is currently Chancellor of the Australian National University and co-chair of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. As Foreign Minister, he was at the forefront of recasting Australia’s relationship with China, India, and Indonesia, while deepening its alliance with the US, and helped found the APEC and ASEAN security forums. He also played a leading role in bringing peace to Cambodia and negotiating the International Convention on Chemical Weapons, and is the principal framer of the United Nations’ “responsibility to protect” doctrine.

Project Syndicate, 27 December 2012

CANBERRA – If we were hoping for peace in our time, 2012 did not deliver it. Conflict grew ever bloodier in Syria, continued to grind on in Afghanistan, and flared up periodically in West, Central, and East Africa. There were multiple episodes of ethnic, sectarian, and politically motivated violence in Myanmar (Burma), South Asia, and around the Middle East. Tensions between China and its neighbors have escalated in the South China Sea, and between China and Japan in the East China Sea. Concerns about North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs remain unresolved.

Continue reading “John Steiner: THE GLOBAL MARCH TOWARD PEACE by Gareth Evans*”

2013/01/052013/01/05

Graphic: Two Economic Models — One Amoral, One Moral

Balance, Budgets & Funding, Citizen-Centered, Graphics, Reform, Resilience, Strategy-Holistic Coherence, True Cost

Source

2013/01/05

Michel Bauwens: Brazilian Alternative Economic Models Going Global

Economics/True Cost

Community-Based Co-op Economy vs. the “A-Moral Capital Economy”

Dave Pollard explains the difference between the two models:

Most people have been brought up to believe that the competitive, grow-or-die, absentee-shareholder-owned, “free”-trade “market” economy is the only one that works, the only alternative to a socialist, government-run economy. This myth is perpetrated in business and other schools, by the media, by accountants and lawyers and bankers and, of course, in the business world. This amoral-capitalist economic model has “succeeded” in the same hostile way our species has “succeeded” — by brutally suppressing, starving for resources, using power to steal from, and, when all else fails, killing off anything deemed a “competitor” or threat to its monopoly on power and resources. It relies on massive subsidies and near-zero interest rates thanks to well-rewarded political cronies, on political graft and corruption worldwide, on oligopoly and restraint of competition, on wage slavery and worker ignorance, on phony money and unrepayable debt, and on advertising, human insecurity, ego and greed to create an artificial demand for its shoddy, overpriced crap. And, on top of all that, it’s utterly unsustainable.

For an alternative, natural economy to work, we either have to wait for this amoral-capitalist economy to collapse (which it will, but probably not for a few decades), or we have to plant the seeds for this alternative economy in the cracks where the current one is already failing most badly — at the community level where the economy is most obviously failing to produce meaningful work, sucking resources, wealth and opportunity out, and dumping mass-produced and imported crap that ends up in the landfill, and pollutants in our air, water, soil and food that make us sick and contribute to climate change. But before we can plant these seeds we need to unlearn the nonsense we’re taught and told about economics, and learn how a healthy economy actually works.

Read full article.

Michel Bauwens,3rd January 2013

Fora do Eixo is becoming a huge and growing Brazilian network of musicians and cultural producers that is based on explicit p2p-oriented business models. In my modest opinion, they will likely expand on a global scale. We have documented their activities here.

But below is a well readable essay that describes their origin, history, governance and business and financing models:

The Brazilian System for the Solidarity Culture – Fora Do Eixo Card

2013/01/042013/01/04

SmartPlanet: Supermarket Gets Grip on True Cost of Refrigeration with and without Doors

SmartPlanet

The simple plan that saved a supermarket chain millions

By Tyler Falk | January 3, 2013

Imagine if your refrigerator didn’t come with a door. The unnecessary energy use would be costly and your kitchen would always be cold.

Despite the obvious benefits of having a door on a refrigerator, supermarkets around the world have aisles upon aisles of refrigerated food displays without a door — aka, the aisle we rush through to stay warm.

But one supermarket chain in the United Kingdom made the switch to replace its open refrigerators to refrigerators with doors. The Co-operative put fridge doors in 100 stores and is seeing major cost benefits. According to The Guardian, the chain is saving more than $80 million a year. The chain has 2,800 stores across the U.K. and plans to put fridge doors in all new stores and each of the 500 stores it retrofits each year.

Energy is the second largest cost for the company, behind staffing. And, as The Guardian points out, if all supermarkets in the U.K. used fridge doors it would save as much energy as twice the annual electricity output of Europe’s second largest coal plant. Supermarkets in the U.K. use 5 percent of all electricity.

It’s not a move that I would necessarily call innovative, just smart business. So the question is, what’s holding back other supermarkets? Basically stores see this as a barrier for customers and they’re afraid that sales will drop. But Dave Roberts, director of The Co-operative, says that’s a myth, at least in his stores: ”That was a big concern for us. But we found that because we put LED lights around the doors, customers said it brought the product to life. In no places where we have put doors on fridges have sales gone down.”

Co-op supermarkets extend fridge door scheme [The Guardian]

2013/01/04

SchwartzReport: Fractose = Overeating = Obesity = Government Lacking in Intelligence and Integrity

Corruption, Government, Knowledge

Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE and MIKE STOBBE
AP Medical Writers

This is your brain on sugar – for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

Read full article.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Fractose = Overeating = Obesity = Government Lacking in Intelligence and Integrity”

2013/01/03

Graphic: Whole of Government Management Concept Driven by Open Source Information-Sharing and Sense-Making

Analysis, Balance, Budgets & Funding, Capabilities-Force Structure, Citizen-Centered, Graphics, ICT-IT, Leadership-Integrity, Multinational Plus, Policies-Harmonization, Political, Processing, Reform, Resilience, Strategy-Holistic Coherence, True Cost

Citation: Robert David Steele, “Graphic: Whole of Government Management Concept Driven by Open Source Information-Sharing and Sense-Making,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 3 January 2013.

2013/01/032013/01/03

Yoda: Demystifying Change – Thesis, Anti-Thesis, Synthesis

Advanced Cyber/IO, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience

May the force be with you….

Demystifying the Pattern(s) of Change: A Common Archetype

April 17, 2012

EXTRACT

Complex Adaptive Systems Adaptation at the Edge of Chaos

Without going too deep into the theories, complexity science and the theory of complex adaptive systems teach us that complex adaptive systems (CAS) and living systems (LS) adapt to changes occurring in their environment in a state away from dynamic equilibrium, at the edge of chaos—a paradoxical transition phase of simultaneous stability and instability. At the edge of chaos, when the conditions are right, the components of CAS and LS are able to spontaneously self-organize, without any blueprint. The result is the emergence of new structures of higher-level order and new patterns of organization better adapted to the environment. This creative process, taking a system from dynamic equilibrium to the edge of chaos, and, then, to a higher state of order, coherence and wholeness is depicted on Figure 2. It is important to note that emergence is never a guarantee. When the system does not have the required learning capacity to creatively self-organize and transform, it may go through an immergence—a process of disintegration and complete breakdown.

Read full article, additional graphics.

Continue reading “Yoda: Demystifying Change – Thesis, Anti-Thesis, Synthesis”