5 Star – Page 33 – Public Intelligence Blog

Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall

5.0 out of 5 stars Why did revenge dominate the 9-11 discussion in the US? February 4, 2002

Why did revenge and vengeance dominate the 9-11 discussion by public officials and the media? Why do our public discourse and media images seem virtually bereft of the common sense that informs many other areas of life?

This outstanding book could help fill the void. It consists of a dozen very well-written and well-documented case studies of the power of nonviolence in dealing with injustice on a national or international scale. And I mean the power of nonviolence like King and Gandhi lived it, not the stereotype of nonviolence as passivity or cowardice.

Good parents know revenge doesn't work with their children, good teachers know it doesn't work in the classroom, good citizens know it doesn't work in their community, and a growing proportion of the criminal justice world is embracing the vision of “restorative justice” as a much more functional grounding for most of their work.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): A Force More Powerful”

2014/01/062014/01/06

Berto Jongman: Howard Clark (RIP) Memorial Post of Key Works on Non-Violent Conflict

5 Star, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

In Commemoration of Howard Clark's Work with ICNC

On November 29, 2013 colleagues from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) learnt about Howard Clark’s passing.

He left us much too early and too suddenly. And we lost not only a close, dear friend that could cheer and energize people around him but also an effective collaborator and a scholar-practitioner with a deep knowledge about and a sophisticated understanding of the field of nonviolent conflict.

. . . . . . .

He worked unwaveringly and patiently with me and other authors to bring to fruition the work that people can now enjoy reading: Recovering Nonviolent History. Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles published this year.

Learn more — many videos and links.

2014/01/062014/01/06

Worth a Look: Muslims and ICT

5 Star, Civil Society, Information Society, Worth A Look

Berto Jongman recommends….

Forthcoming (2014) According to some global estimates, one in ten internet users is a Muslim. This volume offers an ethnography of ICT in Muslim communities. The contributors to this volume also demonstrate a new kind of moderation with regard to more sweeping and avant-gardistic claims, which have characterized the study of ICT previously. This moderation has been combined with a keen attention to the empirical material but also deliberations on new quantitative and qualitative approaches to ICT, Muslims and Islam, for instance the digital challenges and changes wrought on the Qur’an, Islam’s sacred scripture. As such this volume will also be relevant for people interested in the study of ICT and the blooming field of digital humanities.

Available now (2011). “Muslims and the New Medias” explores how the introduction of the latest information and communication technologies are mirroring changes and developments within society, as well as the Middle East's relationship to the West. Examining how reformist and conservative Muslim ‘ulama' have discussed the printing press, photography, the broadcasting media (radio and television), the cinema, the telephone and the Internet, case studies provide a contextual background to the historical, social and cultural situations that have influenced theological discussions; focusing on how the ‘ulama' have debated the ‘usefulness' or ‘dangers' of the information and communication media. By including both historical and contemporary examples, this book exposes historical trajectories as well as different (and often contested) positions in the Islamic debate about the new media.

2014/01/052014/01/05

Review: Occupy: Reflections on Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Noam Chomsky

5.0 out of 5 stars Explosive Opening, Less Satisfying Conclusion, January 5, 2014

The book explodes on page one: no bankers arrested — none, zip, nada, rein — 7,762 Occupiers arrested from the first 80 in NYC on 24 September 2001 to the two arrested in SF on 15 June 2013. Talk about GRIFTOPIA — the police work for the thieves and arrest the owners!

There are a number of key insights within this book, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wishes to pulse the state of the union — Chomsky, who eulogizes Howard Zinn throughout, brackets our current situation with two trenchant observations early on:

Continue reading “Review: Occupy: Reflections on Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity”

2013/12/222013/12/22

Review (Guest): Algorithms of the Intelligence Web

5 Star, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

Haralamlos Marmanis and Dmitry Babenko

5.0 out of 5 stars A soon to be classic Algo book for improving intelligent web applications June 19, 2009

By Michael Mimo I have always had an interest in AI, machine learning, and data mining but I found the introductory books too mathematical and focused mostly on solving academic problems rather than real-world industrial problems. So, I was curious to see what this book was about.

I have read the book front-to-back (twice!) before I write this report. I started reading the electronic version a couple of months ago and read the paper print again over the weekend. This is the best practical book in machine learning that you can buy today — period. All the examples are written in Java and all algorithms are explained in plain English. The writing style is superb!

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Algorithms of the Intelligence Web”

2013/12/15

Mini-Me: The Future of Democracy

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Civil Society, Democracy

Huh?

The future of democracy

By Mark Mazower

Financial Times, 25 October 2013

The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present, by David Runciman, Princeton, RRP£19.95/$29.95, 408 pages

Nation of Devils: Democratic Leadership and the Problem of Obedience, by Stein Ringen, Yale, RRP£20/$35, 264 pages

The Last Vote: The Threats to Western Democracy, by Philip Coggan, Allen Lane, RRP£20, 320 pages

EXTRACT:

The worry that emerges from these three lively and thoughtful books is not that democracy faces extinction but that the kind of democracy that now envelops us – with its billionaires and its unemployed millions, its surveillance state and its unelected technocrats, its individual gratification and its ever-narrowing visions of the collective good – is one that previous generations would have regarded as a nightmare. Coggan wants to rouse us, and in different ways so do his fellow authors. But, as de Tocqueville warned, this is the kind of nightmare from which democracy may never awake.

Mark Mazower is professor of history at Columbia University and author of ‘Governing the World: The History of an Idea’ (Penguin)

Read full review of all three books.

2013/12/012014/03/25

Review (Guest): Who Really Killed Kennedy? 50 Years Later – Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination

5 Star, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Jerome R. Corsi

The New Bush/Dulles Free Trade World Order and the Assassination of JFK, December 1, 2013

Herbert L. Calhoun

Introduction

On page 317, of this book, “Who Really Killed Kennedy 50 years later: Stunning new revelations about the JFK assassination,” the author, Jerome R. Corsi, summarizes the consequences of a nation willing to sit idly by and accept as a permanent fait accompli, having their elected leader shot down in cold blood, as follows:

“After fifty years of US government disinformation and deliberate stonewalling, researchers are just at the edge of discovering the truth about how and why JFK was assassinated in one of the greatest crimes in US history — a coup d'etat in which rogue groups, including the highest intelligence services in the land, conspired to remove JFK from the presidency and to place LBJ in the White House. The consequence of this conspiracy are immeasurable, if only because a group of traitors successfully flouted the constitution and got away with it.”

Corsi goes on to say that: ” … History will need to be rewritten to condemn those responsible as traitorous criminals. While prosecutions may no longer be possible simply because so many of the involved parties have already died, justice can be served by setting the historical record straight. At this late date, any attempt by the US government to withhold from the public documents pertaining to the JFK assassination should be deemed by Congress to be a continuation of the traitorous act that killed JFK.”

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Who Really Killed Kennedy? 50 Years Later – Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination”