Marcus Aurelius: Broader Role for Special Operations Forces in Peace and War — Reading Between the Lines — And White SOF/NATO Future?

Military Sees Broader Role For Special Operations Forces, In Peace And War By Thom Shanker New York Times, 3 April 2013 EXTRACT When assigned to their home bases, regional experts within Army Special Operations force would continue to support overseas operations by assisting in mission planning, organizing information campaigns and sifting through intelligence — but …

Tom Atlee: State Banks, Debt Renunciation, Other Populist Cures

Dear friends, Below is an excellent summary of a very high leverage economic system change opportunity – state banks.  A single example already exists in the U.S:  the little-known but revolutionary state-owned Bank of North Dakota. State banks simultaneously address the problems of unemployment, lack of financial resources for state and local governments (including rising …

Patrick Meier: Automatically Extracting Disaster-Relevant Information from Social Media

Automatically Extracting Disaster-Relevant Information from Social Media My team and I at QCRI have just had this paper (PDF) accepted at the World Wide Web (WWW 2013) conference in Rio next month. The paper relates directly to our Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response (AIDR) project. One of our main missions at QCRI is to develop open source …

Mongoose: Papa Bush, CIA, Oil, LBJ, and the Assassination of JFK — Best Summary with Links

I don’t read much but this has a very strong feeling of authenticity — certainly enough to warrant a Truth & Reconciation Commission before Papa Bush dies.    The photos and graphics in this account, two included below, are best I have seen. Did George H.W. Bush Coordinate a JFK Hit Team? by Richard Hooke (with …

Marcus Aurelius: Special Forces Autonomous, Morphing Into White SOF Going Global

Washingtonpost.com, March 29, 2013 Drawing Down, But Still Projecting Power By David Ignatius TAMPA–The emblem of the U.S. Special Operations Command pointedly illustrates its mission: It shows the tip of a spear. Now SOCOM is expanding this arsenal to create a global network that can project power even as America’s armies withdraw from the battlefields …

Jean Lievens: Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation

Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation During the past five years design has been recognised as a powerful innovation driver. Design methods and tools have also been applied in new fields. One of them is social innovation, which is aimed at developing new ideas and solutions in response to social needs. While different …