Category: Uncategorized

Keynote: Next Generation Humanitarian Technology

I’m excited to be giving the Keynote address at the Social Media and Response Management Interface Event (SMARMIE 2013) in New York this morning. A big thank you to the principal driver behind this important event, Chuck Frank, for kindly inviting me to speak. This is my first major keynote since joining QCRI, so I’m thrilled to share what I’ve learned during this time and to my vision for the future of humanitarian technology. But I’m even more excited by the selection of speakers and caliber of participants. I eager to learn about their latest projects, gain new insights and hopefully create pro-active partnerships moving forward.

You can follow this event via live stream and @smarmieNYC & #smarmie). I  plan to live tweeting the event at @patrickmeier. My slides are available for download here (125MB). Each slide include speaking notes, which may be of interest to folks who are unable to follow via live stream. Feel free to use my slides but strictly for non-commercial purposes and only with direct attribution. I’ll be sure to post the video of my talk on iRevolution when it becomes available. In the meantime, these videos and publications may be of interest. Also, I’ve curated the table of contents below with 60+ links to every project and/or concept referred to in my keynote and slides (in chronological order) so participants and others can revisit these after the conference—and more importantly keep our conver-sations going via Twitter and the comments section of the blog posts. I plan to hire a Research Assistant in the near future to turn these (and other posts) into a series of up-to-date e-books in which I’ll cite and fully credit the most interesting and insightful comments posted on iRevolution.

Directory of and Links to Foundation Posts:

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Next Generation Humanitarian Technology”

Open Source Everything: Working with the jQuery Foundation

EXTRACT

Over the past few months, I’ve been able to spend a great deal of time working on the jQuery Foundation’s initiative to open source the content and design of all its sites. A major reason for this effort is to dramatically lower the barrier for community involvement and therefore open up entirely new avenues for people who’d like to begin helping out, but haven’t been sure how.

. . . . . . . . . .

To learn more about the technologies involved and find out how it all works, take a look at the jQuery Foundation’s web site contribution guide. The new jQuery Learning Center is especially ripe territory for anyone who likes helping other people out and has good ideas to share!

Read full post.

This report, grounded entirely in facts, is going to upset you. It is a saga of how a nation commits suicide, and if it doesn't leave you concerned, it might be wise to make sure you have a pulse.

9 Economic Facts That Will Make Your Head Spin
LYNN STUART PARRAMORE – AlterNet (U.S.)

Half the population of the U.S. has slipped into poverty or is barely making enough to get by.

Sub-Titles Only:

1. Recovery for the rich, recession for the rest.
2. Half of us are poor or barely scraping by.
3. Unhappy meal (47 million on food stamps)
4. Old age and poverty.
5. Incarceration nation.
6. The cost of gender inequality.
7.  College degrees still pay off, big-time.
8. A retired couple needs a quarter million for retirement – just for healthcare.
9. The looting of America.

Read full article.

According to a recent radio show hosted by Michael Ruppert, Dorner has worked with Navy Seals (perhaps implied in the wiki bio below) – he’s a well-trained warrior, an operator. Ruppert mentioned much else about Dorner that will strike students of John Robb’s writings on the “global guerilla” as having many affinities to this type of warrior. Here’s the link to the show well worth hearing:

Lifeboat Hour – 02/10/13

The $1,000,000 bounty put on Dorner’s head implies he has a potential destructive value not only to high-up police but to political elites, a value which has yet to be spelled out to us regular people. How much do they think his revelations, if he has any, can destabilize their authority and grasp on the levers of power? My guess is: a lot.  If they read Robb on how one or very few men could cause major damage to large systems, they have cause to be afraid. The passing of time will soon reveal if a global guerrilla-type scenario is being played out by Dorner and his state adversaries.

Christopher Jordan Dorner, Global Guerrilla?

Dorner’s wikipedia biography  states he “ was commissioned in 2002, commanded a security unit at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, and served with a Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare Unit from June 23, 2004, to February 28, 2006. He was deployed to Bahrain with Coastal Riverine Group Two from November 3, 2006, to April 23, 2007.^[6] Dorner was honorably discharged from the Navy Reserve on February 1, 2013.”

INFOWAR vs. CORPORATIONS

Robb’s 2009 essay gives an example of a typical special ops tool: kill lists. In the essay, he refers to guerrilla war against corporations:

“Highly accurate lists of targets from hacking “black” marketplaces.  These lists include all corporate employee e-mail addresses and phone numbers — both at work and at home.  ~<$0.25 a dossier (for accurate lists).”

Substitute “corporation” for “LAPD,” and we readily recognize Dorner uses a kill list, which he has already acted upon.

Continue reading “Owl: Mike Ruppert on WHY $1 Million is Offered for the Rogue Cop – Catalyst for West Coast Uprising?”

Secreacy and National Security Whistleblowing

Daniel Ellsberg

Huffington Post repritned from Social Research, 13 January 2013

I) Reflections on Secret-keeping and Identity

In the “national security” area of the government — the White House, the departments of state and defense, the armed services and the “intelligence community,” along with their contractors — there is less whistleblowing than in other departments of the executive branch or in private corporations. This despite the frequency of misguided practices and policies within these particular agencies that are both more well-concealed and more catastrophic than elsewhere, and thus even more needful of unauthorized exposure.

The mystique of secrecy in the universe of national security, even beyond the formal apparatus of classification and clearances, is a compelling deterrent to whistleblowing and thus to effective resistance to gravely wrongful or dangerous policies. In this realm, telling secrets appears unpatriotic, even traitorous. That reflects the general presumption — even though it is very commonly false — that the secrecy is aimed not at domestic, bureaucratic or political rivals or the American public but at foreign, powerful enemies, and that breaching it exposes the country, its people and its troops to danger.

Even those insiders who have come to understand that the presumption is frequently false and that particular facts are being wrongly and dangerously kept secret not so much from foreigners but from Congress, courts or the public are strongly inhibited from speaking out by an internalized commitment to keep official secrets from outsiders, which they have promised to do as a condition of employment or access.

Full article below the line.

Continue reading “Daniel Ellsberg: Secrecy vs. Whistleblowing in a Democracy”