[A covert-sterilisation programme using vaccines such as tetanus, rubella and what looks to be Gardasil (1), also the use of mercury in third world country vaccines (even after they have removed most of it it from Western countries) is suspected of being a birth control ploy (1). They have form with 60,000 Americans coercively sterilized , and between 1963 and 1965 more than 400,000 Colombian women were sterilized in a program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation which also helped found and fund the German eugenics program; and even funded the program that ultimately sent Josef Mengele into Auschwitz (1, 2, 3).]
How do you build resilient infrastructure in the 21st Century?
One good answer: make it opt-in. It's already happening.
Farmers are doing it with CSA programs. Businesses and artists are doing it with Kickstarter.
We're finding that once you cut out the middleman (Wall Street and Big Box Retail) and connect with customers directly, we end up with much more choice, innovation, quality, and success (the people doing the innovating/making actually get paid, an event that is actually quite rare in this economic system).
Here's a smart spin on this concept that may work.
This little fashion company called Gustin got its start on Kickstarter. Gustin is now using this customer/community supported approach to sell everything.
Here's how it works.
They design something.
They ask the community if they want to fund it.
If a sufficient number of people buy into it, they make it.
Utterly pervasive and deep police and political corruption always leads to rebellion, and it's happening in Mexico now, according to Raimondo:
“The people of Tierra Colorada, in Mexico’s Guerrero province, have had enough. On March 28, 1,500 armed citizens took to the streets, set up roadblocks, and arrested local officials. Tierra Colorada sits on a major road which runs from the popular tourist city of Acapulco, less than 40 miles away, to Mexico City. Armed citizens have set up checkpoints along the road, stopping cars, taxis, and other vehicles, as well as searching homes for known criminals. They have also arrested the former mayor, the chief of police, and 12 officers. The charges: murder, and collusion with criminals. The force’s spokesman, Bruno Placido Valerio, said: “We have besieged the municipality, because here criminals operate with impunity in broad daylight, in view of municipal authorities.”
An iRevolution reader very kindly pointed me to this excellent conceptual study: “The Theory of Crowd Capital”. The authors’ observations and insights resonate with me deeply given my experience in crowdsourcing digital humanitarian response. Over two years ago, I published this blog post in which I wrote that, “The value of Crisis Mapping may at times have less to do with the actual map and more with the conversations and new collaborative networks catalyzed by launching a Crisis Mapping project. Indeed, this in part explains why the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) exists in the first place.” I was not very familiar with the concept of social capital at the time, but that’s precisely what I was describing. I’ve since written extensively about the very important role that social capital plays in disaster resilience and digital humanitarian response. But I hadn’t taken the obvious next step: “Crowd Capital.”
The S(e)oul of Asia aims to become a ‘Sharing City’. Forbes Magazine refers to it as an ‘unstoppable force’, replications of AirBnB or TaskRabbit pop ups as mushrooms and 2013 is named as the year of the Sharing Economy – Seoul bandwagons the trend and sets out the be the ‘Sharing City’.
South Korea is a key country when observing the rising trends in social innovation and social entrepreneurship in East- and South East Asia. The passing of the Social Enterprise Act in 2007 and the election of Park Won-Soon for Seoul mayor in 2011 are only two amongst other milestones that have indicated the embracement of social entrepreneurship as guideline in addressing the societal issues arisen in the wake of the financial crisis in 1997.
Park Won-Soon is the founder of South Korea’s first social enterprise The Beautiful Store and a think-tank known as The Hope Institute (the South Korean SIX Asia partner) and now a strong supporter of the initiative to establish Seoul as a ‘Sharing City’