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Stephen E. Arnold: Open Source at Oracle and with SharePoint

Software
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Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Oracle and Open Source

I will be giving my last public talk in 2013 at the upcoming Search Summit. I am revealing some data about the trajectory of commercial search versus free and open source search. My focus is not just on costs. I will address the elephant in the room that few of the sleek search poobahs elect to ignore—management.

As part  of my preparation, I read an interesting public relations and positioning white paper from Oracle. The essay is “The Department of Defense (DoD) and Open Source Software.” You should be able to locate a copy at the Oracle Middleware Web page. But maybe not. Well, take that up with Oracle, Google, and whoever indexes public Web pages.

The argument in the white paper is that open source is useful within the context of commercial software. The premise is that a commercial company develops robust products like Oracle’s database and then rigorously engineers that product to meet the tough standards imposed by the US government. Then, canny engineers will integrate some open source software into that commercial solution. The client—in this case the Microsoft loving Department of Defense—will be able to get the support it needs to handle the demands of global war fighting.

There are three fascinating rhetorical flourishes in the white paper. These are directly germane to the direction some of the discussions of commercial and proprietary versus free and open source software have been moving. I will give a couple of case examples in my talk in early November 2013, and I assume that the slide deck for my talk will find its way into one or more indexing services. I won’t plow that ground again. Below are some new thoughts.

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Rickard Falkvinge: Acknowledging The Important Value Of Hate Speech

Cultural Intelligence
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Rickard Falkvinge
Rickard Falkvinge

Acknowledging The Important Value Of Hate Speech

Freedom of Speech:  Banning so-called “hate speech” is a grave, irresponsible, and serious mistake for at least three reasons. Such restrictions of free speech, while looking like an easy way out from an inconvenient situation, are horribly counterproductive even from a pragmatic standpoint. Besides, there is no such thing as “restrictions of free speech” – there is free speech, or there is not.

Several countries – even those who consider themselves first-world, free-world – have restrictions on what political opinions you may utter in public. This is the textbook case of not having free speech, and despite this, those countries tend to keep pretending they have freedom of speech – even to the point where it is written into the Constitution under ceremonious proceedings, then promptly ignored under a number of exception clauses.

One of the easiest such targets for irresponsible populist politicians is so-called hate speech, where somebody expresses rage, hatred, or other forms of prejudice toward a group of people. In such countries, irresponsible politicians have tended to ban this “hate speech”, harshly punishing such expressions of political opinion with jail sentences up to five years in the so-called free world.

This is counterproductive populism for three reasons.

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4th Media: Looting the Pension Funds: Wall Street is Grabbing Money Meant for Public Workers + Pensions Lost RECAP

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption
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4th media croppedLooting the Pension Funds: Wall Street is Grabbing Money Meant for Public Workers

Oct 21st, 2013 @ 10:13 pm › Kiyul Chung

In the final months of 2011, almost two years before the city of Detroit would shock America by declaring bankruptcy in the face of what it claimed were insurmountable pension costs, the state of Rhode Island took bold action to avert what it called its own looming pension crisis. Led by its newly elected treasurer, Gina Raimondo – an ostentatiously ambitious 42-year-old Rhodes scholar and former venture capitalist – the state declared war on public pensions, ramming through an ingenious new law slashing benefits of state employees with a speed and ferocity seldom before seen by any local government.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Detroit’s Debt Crisis: Everything Must Go

Called the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act of 2011, her plan would later be hailed as the most comprehensive pension reform ever implemented. The rap was so convincing at first that the overwhelmed local burghers of her little petri-dish state didn’t even know how to react. “She’s Yale, Harvard, Oxford – she worked on Wall Street,” says Paul Doughty, the current president of the Providence firefighters union. “Nobody wanted to be the first to raise his hand and admit he didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about.”

Soon she was being talked about as a probable candidate for Rhode Island’s 2014 gubernatorial race. By 2013, Raimondo had raised more than $2 million, a staggering sum for a still-undeclared candidate in a thimble-size state. Donors from Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase showered her with money, with more than $247,000 coming from New York contributors alone. A shadowy organization called EngageRI, a public-advocacy group of the 501(c)4 type whose donors were shielded from public scrutiny by the infamous Citizens United decision, spent $740,000 promoting Raimondo’s ideas. Within Rhode Island, there began to be whispers that Raimondo had her sights on the presidency. Even former Obama right hand and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed to Rhode Island as an example to be followed in curing pension woes.

What few people knew at the time was that Raimondo’s “tool kit” wasn’t just meant for local consumption. The dynamic young Rhodes scholar was allowing her state to be used as a test case for the rest of the country, at the behest of powerful out-of-state financiers with dreams of pushing pension reform down the throats of taxpayers and public workers from coast to coast. One of her key supporters was billionaire former Enron executive John Arnold – a dickishly ubiquitous young right-wing kingmaker with clear designs on becoming the next generation’s Koch brothers, and who for years had been funding a nationwide campaign to slash benefits for public workers.

Read rest of article.

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David Swanson: A New Kind of War Is Being Legalized

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
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David Swanson
David Swanson

A New Kind of War Is Being Legalized

There's a dark side to the flurry of reports and testimony on drones, helpful as they are in many ways.  When we read that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch oppose drone strikes that violate international law, some of us may be inclined to interpret that as a declaration that, in fact, drone strikes violate international law.  On the contrary, what these human rights groups mean is that some drone strikes violate the law and some do not, and they want to oppose the ones that do.

Which are which? Even their best researchers can't tell you.  Human Rights Watch looked into six drone murders in Yemen and concluded that two were illegal and four might be illegal.  The group wants President Obama to explain what the law is (since nobody else can), wants him to comply with it (whatever it is), wants civilians compensated (if anyone can agree who the civilians are and if people can really be compensated for the murder of their loved ones), and wants the U.S. government to investigate itself.  Somehow the notion of prosecuting crimes doesn't come up.

Amnesty International looks into nine drone strikes in Pakistan, and can't tell whether any of the nine were legal or illegal.  Amnesty wants the U.S. government to investigate itself, make facts public, compensate victims, explain what the law is, explain who a civilian is, and — remarkably — recommends this: “Where there is sufficient admissible evidence, bring those responsible to justice in public and fair trials without recourse to the death penalty.”  However, this will be a very tough nut to crack, as those responsible for the crimes are being asked to define what is and is not legal.  Amnesty proposes “judicial review of drone strikes,” but a rubber-stamp FISA court for drone murders wouldn't reduce them, and an independent judiciary assigned to approve of certain drone strikes and not others would certainly approve of some, while inevitably leaving the world less than clear as to why.

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Jim Fetzer: Suppressing and Manipulating 9/11 Truth using the internet [Disappearing Facts, Not Just People]

Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence
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Jim Fetzer
Jim Fetzer

“I am overwhelmed by the elegance and simplicity of the techniques that are being deployed to defeat the dissemination of 9/11 Truth to the American public”–Jim Fetzer

The massive NSA surveillance program appears to have benefits for those who are in control beyond what has been generally acknowledged, which, evidence suggests, includes manipulating search engines to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to access programs about 9/11, even if they are broadcast by as important a source as “Russia Today”.

In addition, even as prominent and respected a source as NPR has begun to run a series of animated features about those who died on 9/11, which appears to be a brilliant stroke from the point of view of public relations. Emotions almost always outweigh reason and rationality in dealing with traumatic events, such as 9/11, where they may have found a way to control the public effortlessly.

Manipulating the Internet

In an article published on 3 October 2013, “Search Engine Manipulation. Google and YouTube Suppress Controversial 9/11 Truth?”, Elizabeth Woolworth reports about a recent broadcast by RT (“Russia Today”), which illustrates the technique that we can expect is going to be utilized on a large scale by the NSA and the CIA, not only in relation to 9/11 but JFK and other issues:

On September 8, 2013, the popular Russia Today “Truthseeker” program, with over a million subscribers on YouTube,[1] published a 13-minute newscast entitled “The Truthseeker: 9/11 and Operation Gladio (E23)”:

Below the video frame ran the caption:

Bigger than Watergate’: US ‘regular’ meetings with Al-Qaeda’s leader; documented White House ‘false flag terrorism’ moving people ‘like sheep’; the father of Twin Towers victim tell us why he backs this month’s 9/11 campaign on Times Square and around the world; & the protests calendar for September.

YouTube – Veterans Today –

This paragraph was followed by a list of interviewees, including four people representing three scholarly research organizations:  Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,[2] the 9/11 Consensus Panel,[3] and The Journal of 9/11 Studies.[4]

The “Truthseeker” video immediately started to gain popularity on YouTube, reaching 131,000 views in the first three days.[5](The history of the viewing statistics may be seen by clicking on the little graphic symbol under the video frame, and to the right)

Truthseeker posted its program to YouTube on Sept. 8.  Russia Today tweeted the YouTube link to its 546,000 followers and to the interviewer, Daniel Bushell, that day:

The Truthseeker: 9/11 and operation Gladio (E23) http://youtu.be/vka7Da6e9LY @DanielBushellRT

A MOXNEWS copy of the same newscast was also posted September 8 under the title “Russia Today News Declares 9/11 An Inside Job False Flag Attack!” which in turn started to escalate, with over 80,000 views in the first few days.[6]

Other uploads of the program also appeared, with less traffic, bringing the early viewing total to over a quarter of a million people.

What Happened Next?

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Paul Craig Roberts: Is the USA a “Failed State?”

Cultural Intelligence
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Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts

A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a “Failed State”

Interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary US Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Professor of Political Economy Center for Strategic and International Studies Georgetown University Washington DC.

Question:  Dr. Roberts,  the United States is regarded as the most successful state in the world today. What is responsible for American success?

Dr. Roberts:  Propaganda. If truth be known, the US is a failed state. More about that later. The US owes its image of success to: (1) the vast lands and mineral resources that the US “liberated” with violence from the native inhabitants, (2) Europe’s, especially Great Britain’s, self-destruction in World War I and World War II, and (3) the economic destruction of Russia and most of Asia by communism or socialism.

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