#OSE Open Source Everything – Page 254 – Public Intelligence Blog

220px-Michel_Bauwens_crop — Michel Bauwens

Brilliant and funny video on the Tobin Tax Via Willy De Backer

Video “Difficult Labour” for the financial transaction tax of Oxfam Germany with Heike Makatsch, Mark Waschke, Stephan Grossman & Rike Eckermann.

YouTube (2:08)

More info at: http://www.oxfam.de/schweregeburt

Music: The Communards – Don't Leave Me This Way

2012/09/252012/09/25

Jon Lebkowsky: Bad Pharma – Lacking Intelligence AND Integrity

Commerce, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Government, IO Impotency, Knowledge

According to Cory Doctorow at bOING bOING, physicians often prescribe drugs that are ineffective or harmful because pharmaceutical companies provide misleading data, according to an article by Ben Goldacre in the Guardian, “The drugs don’t work: a modern medical scandal.” Goldacre is the author of the forthcoming book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. Summary from the caption on the photo above Goldacre’s article: “Drugs are tested by their manufacturers, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques that exaggerate the benefits.”

It’s a tough problem: you depend on your physician’s authority, and the authority of the healthcare establishment, to guide your decisions about health. Even if you trust your physician, can you trust the voices persistently whispering in his ear, especially if those voices are motivated by profit as a priority. Do pharma companies place their profit above your health? Don’t assume an easy answer – it’s complicated, though Goldacre’s book blurb suggests a belief that pharma uses the complexity as a cloak (“All these problems have been protected from public scrutiny because they’re too complex to capture in a sound bite.”)

Continue reading “Jon Lebkowsky: Bad Pharma – Lacking Intelligence AND Integrity”

2012/09/252012/09/25

Jon Lebkowsky: MONDO 2000 Bridge to the Future

Culture, Knowledge

Mondo 2000 in the Late 20th Century Cyberculture

Former Mondo 2000 editor RU Sirius has been working many moons on a history of the magazine and its predecessors (High Frontiers, Reality Hackers). I was privileged to help a bit with infrastructure for gathering stories as well as contributions on the Texas and WELL perspectives on Mondo.

RU’s published the preface at Acceler8tor…

Called MONDO 2000 — the magazine took the just-then-emerging future of digital culture, dangerous hacking and new medias; tossed them in the blender along with overdoses of hallucinogenic drugs, hypersex and the more outrageous edges of rock and roll; added irreverent attitudes stolen from 20th Century countercultures from the beats to the punks, the literary and art avant gardes, anarchism, surrealism, and the new electronic dance culture— and then, it deceptively spilled that crazy Frappe all out across really slick, vaguely commercial looking multicolored printed pages with content that was Gonzo meets Glam meets Cyberpunk meets something else that has never been seen before or since… but which those of us who were there simply called MONDO — as in, “Yes, the article you submitted is definitely MONDO.” Or, “No. This isn’t MONDO. Why don’t you try Atlantic Monthly?”

Continue reading “Jon Lebkowsky: MONDO 2000 Bridge to the Future”

2012/09/24

Gold Transformer: Federal Reserve Transparency Ploy, End of the Middle Period in Predatory Central Banking — Fed Cannot Account for $9 Trillion + Meta-RECAP

Commerce, Corruption, Economics/True Cost

Ben Bernanke's Fed Transparency … Transparent Ploy?

Monday, September 24, 2012 – by Staff Report

Under Ben Bernanke, a more open and forceful Federal Reserve … In what might be his final years as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke is transforming the U.S. central bank, seeking to shed its reclusive habits and make it a constant presence in bolstering the economy. The new approach would make the Fed's policies more responsive to the needs of the economy — and likely more forceful, because what the Fed is planning to do would be much clearer. A key feature of the strategy would be producing a detailed set of scenarios for when and how the Fed would intervene, which would mark a dramatic shift for an organization that throughout its history has been famously opaque. – Washington Post

Dominant Social Theme: The Federal Reserve is maturing with the times.

Free Market Analysis: More Fed promotions; it never ceases, of course. Control money and you control society. And those “in charge” have a vested interest in ensuring the social solvency of the Fed.

We were on record years ago with the idea that the Fed had lost its moral authority in this Internet era. And we see no reason to revise our view. The Fed and its leader, Ben Bernanke, are flagellated every day by both the mainstream and the alternative media, deservedly so. And yet in the 20th century this was not the case.

Of course, there was no outlet in the 20th century. The mainstream press controlled pretty much all the information when it came to central banking and thus there wasn't much launched that was critical of the current system.

That all changed in the 21st century with what we call the Internet Reformation and now information on the real role of central banking in the world's larger economy is fairly well disseminated.

Beginning of the End? Fed Cannot Account for $9 Trillion

Continue reading “Gold Transformer: Federal Reserve Transparency Ploy, End of the Middle Period in Predatory Central Banking — Fed Cannot Account for $9 Trillion + Meta-RECAP”

2012/09/24

Theophillis Goodyear: How American Democracy Became the Property of a Commercial Oligarchy

Civil Society, Corruption, Government, Politics

Feast of Fools: How American Democracy Became the Property of a Commercial Oligarchy

Huffington Post, 20 August 2012

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

[A longer version of this essay appears in “Politics,” the Fall 2012 issue of Lapham's Quarterly; this slightly shortened version is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.]

All power corrupts but some must govern. — John le Carré

The ritual performance of the legend of democracy in the autumn of 2012 promises the conspicuous consumption of $5.8 billion, enough money, thank God, to prove that our flag is still there. Forbidden the use of words apt to depress a Q Score or disturb a Gallup poll, the candidates stand as product placements meant to be seen instead of heard, their quality to be inferred from the cost of their manufacture. The sponsors of the event, generous to a fault but careful to remain anonymous, dress it up with the bursting in air of star-spangled photo ops, abundant assortments of multiflavored sound bites, and the candidates so well-contrived that they can be played for jokes, presented as game-show contestants, or posed as noble knights-at-arms setting forth on vision quests, enduring the trials by klieg light, until on election night they come to judgment before the throne of cameras by whom and for whom they were produced.

Best of all, at least from the point of view of the commercial oligarchy paying for both the politicians and the press coverage, the issue is never about the why of who owes what to whom, only about the how much and when, or if, the check is in the mail. No loose talk about what is meant by the word democracy or in what ways it refers to the cherished hope of liberty embodied in the history of a courageous people.

Read full article.

2012/09/24