From Bicyclemark’s CitizenReporter.org.
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2007.
It seems like this reported phenomenon has been building for a a number of years now.
I’m not at all sure as to any specifics re: causation, but I believe there’s some reason to suspect that is is semi-conscious cultural canary-in-the-mine-shaft behaviour.
I first noticed this item in today’s Guardian, and was prepared to say that I did not have any ready sources to extrapolate from this report from the UK to North America.
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Four times as many children prescribed antidepressants
July 23, 2007The number of prescriptions for antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs given to children under 16 has more than quadrupled in the last decade, according to official figures released today.
There were more than 631,000 such prescriptions recorded in the last financial year, according to government figures, compared to 146,000 in 1996-97.The prescriptions, for drugs including antidepressants and treatments for mental health problems as well as for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were dispensed outside hospitals in England. Figures from 2000 include prescriptions made out by dispensing GPs.
The new figures are revealed amid growing concern about rising levels of childhood depression and pressures faced by young people.
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Then, whilst browsing through the Toronto Globe and Mail, I ran across this item about what may be a growing trend amongst North American teens.
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Cuts, bites, burns: Teen self-injury on the rise?
DAVID ANDREATTA
July 20, 2007Latoya had no intention of harming her boyfriend when she reached for the kitchen knife while in the throes of an argument with him four days ago.
Instead, she calmly dragged the serrated edge across the fleshy underside of her left forearm, as she has done for years when the stress of the moment becomes too much for her to bear.
Then she did it again, and again, until the skin broke and blood bubbled to the surface.
"Whenever I’m upset or in pain, instead of taking it out on other people I take it out on myself," said the 23-year-old from Toronto, whose scarred and bruised arm betrayed a decade of self-abuse.
Deliberate self-injury without suicidal intent is not a new trend. But new research suggests the practice may be more common among young people than previously believed.
According to a study published in the August issue of the journal Psychological Medicine, 46 per cent of U.S. high school students surveyed had practised some form of self-mutilation in the past year, ranging from cutting and burning to pulling out hair and hitting themselves.
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Whatever the reasons may be, I don’t
You gotta love it.
There’s been a regular stream of cartoons and video clips over the last half-decade taking the piss from the key autocrats running the USA, making fun of their ideas, their competence, their values and their ideology.
At some point in time it would seem logical that there will be a point at which virtually no one takes them seriously any longer.
Thanks to the Scotsman On A Horse for pointing to this recent information from Forrester Research, and its brief interpretation.
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Forrester: Blogs in the Enterprise? Good, not Great.
There are a lot of info nuggets in this article about Forrester’s update on the value of corporate blogging. Its being adopted slowly and there is a business case to be made for corporate blogging.
Paradoxically, they assert that it doesn’t seem to live up to the incredible hype of the Enterprise 2.0 fanboys and then go on to say that the investment required is practically nil. To me that says that the ROI should be nearly infinite
Firms mull over blogs, but doubt business value
Forrester Research Inc. surveyed 275 IT decision makers at U.S. companies with 500 or more employees and found that while 54% of those polled said they are blogging at some level — or at least considering an investment — 46% have no plans to invest in blogs.
…Forrester asked adopters of blog technology to list the business reasons for using it. Sixty-three percent said they use blogs for internal communications, and 50% use them for internal knowledge and content management. Forty-seven percent said they use blogs for external thought leadership and 46% said they use them for marketing to customers and prospects.
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If you’re an acolyte in the school of "you can’t manage what you can’t measure (I am not), then I’d argue that a measurement to be invented and refined is ROII … Return On Investment in Interaction (or ROHI - Return on Human Interaction), as I suggested a couple of years ago) … or some such, and that the most useful and important reason for using blogs and social software inside the enterprise is the cultural change they may occasion.
Many organizations pay many consultants much money to address culture change, towards greater responsiveness, flexibility and innovation, often in ways that more-or-less ensure that most of the expressed desire for change does not happen much.
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Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Forrester Research, ROI of Corporate Blogging
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A quote from Chateaubriand’s Posthumous Memoirs concluding That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, by Frederic Bastiat
Jon Pareles of the New York Times has penned (keyboarded ?) a comprehensive and interesting piece on the ways more musicians will (I believe) control their artistic and economic destinies in this new era for the music business.
I’d argue that we are beginning to see clear signs of this wherever what people produce … stories, articles, video, music, photographs and so on … are published.
While it’s not a direct analogy, the "he’s multiplatform" point reminds me of various examples of changes we are witnessing all around us … how fruit juice has become an industry of many different blends, how fusion cuisine keeps innovating and expanding culinary repertoires, how salsa, ketchups and chutneys now offer a wide range of blended ingredients and can be found in grocery stores, delicatessens, restaurants and other places where people buy things to put into their bodies, how coffee shops and sandwich vendors hawk their wares in department stores, gas stations, airports and public-purpose buildings … etc.
With the crucial difference that this one producer … Prince … seems to be making the decisions about where what he produces is sold and how it is sold.
The proliferation of social music sites online, notably those allowing independent artists to showcase their work and encourage social networks of people interested in music discovery and sharing what they find, will I think accelerate more musicians to follow Prince’s lead.
That’s how I interpret the title of Jon’s article.
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JON PARELES
July 22, 2007I’VE got lots of money!” Prince exults in “The One U Wanna C,” a come-on from his new album, “Planet Earth” (Columbia). There’s no reason to disbelieve him. With a sponsorship deal here and an exclusive show there, worldwide television appearances and music given away, Prince has remade himself as a 21st-century pop star. As recording companies bemoan a crumbling market, Prince is demonstrating that charisma and the willingness to go out and perform are still bankable. He doesn’t have to go multiplatinum — he’s multiplatform.
Although Prince declined to be interviewed about “Planet Earth,” he has been highly visible lately. His career is heading into its third decade, and he could have long since become a nostalgia act. Instead he figured out early how to do what he wants in a 21st-century music business, and clearly what he wants is to make more music. Despite his flamboyant wardrobe and his fixation on the color purple, his career choices have been savvy ones, especially for someone so compulsively prolific.
[ Snip ... ]
Prince’s priorities are obvious. The main one is getting his music to an audience, whether it’s purchased or not. “Prince’s only aim is to get music direct to those that want to hear it,” his spokesman said when announcing that The Mail would include the CD. (After the newspaper giveaway was announced, Columbia Records’ corporate parent, Sony Music, chose not to release “Planet Earth” for retail sale in Britain.) Other musicians may think that their best chance at a livelihood is locking away their music — impossible as that is in the digital era — and demanding that fans buy everything they want to hear. But Prince is confident that his listeners will support him, if not through CD sales then at shows or through other deals.
This is how most pop stars operate now: as brand-name corporations taking in revenue streams from publishing, touring, merchandising, advertising, ringtones, fashion, satellite radio gigs or whatever else their advisers can come up with.
[Snip ... ]
But Prince is different. His way of working has nothing to do with scarcity. In the studio — he has his own recording complex, Paisley Park near Minneapolis — he is a torrent of new songs, while older, unreleased ones fill the archive he calls the Vault. Prince apparently has to hold himself back to release only one album a year.
[Snip ... ]
Prince gravitated early to the Internet. Even in the days of dial-up he sought to make his music available online, first as a way of ordering albums and then through digital distribution. (He was also ahead of his time with another form of communication: text messaging abbreviations, having long ago traded “you” for “U.”) Where the Internet truism is that information wants to be free, Prince’s corollary is that music wants to be heard.
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Tags: Prince, Jon Pareles, new media economics, online music, fusion cuisine, IP control
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Via the Guardian Online’s The Observer …
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In an American courtroom this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will stand accused of stealing the idea for the site from three fellow Harvard students.
David Smith
July 22, 2007It could be described as a poke, but not a friendly one. For those who have not yet succumbed to Facebook, the latest craze on the internet, a ‘poke’ is an electronic greeting sent, for example, to an old friend from university. In the case of Mark Zuckerberg, who stands to make a fortune from the website if and when he sells it, the contact made by three of his former student colleagues represented an aggressive jab to the ribs.
Facebook has been described as the most sophisticated and powerful socialising device on the internet, growing so rapidly - with 150,000 new members every day - that Rupert Murdoch, owner of the rival MySpace, is said to be worried. The fact that its millions of British users include not only David Miliband, Orlando Bloom and Tracey Emin but senior members of the media - such as Jonathan Dimbleby, Andrew Neil, Spectator editor Matthew d’Ancona, and even Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth - has helped guarantee its high profile.
MySpace was bought by News Corporation in 2005 for $580m, now regarded as a bargain. Facebook is expected to sell for more than double that, turning Zuckerberg, its 23-year-old creator, into the latest dotcom millionaire and darling of Silicon Valley. But there is a glitch. This week, at a federal court in Boston, Zuckerberg will be accused of snatching the idea for Facebook from under the noses of three fellow students who believe its wealth and influence should be theirs.Cameron Winklevoss, his twin brother Tyler and their colleague, Divya Narendra, recruited Zuckerberg to their social networking site when they were all students at Harvard University. They now claim that he deliberately stalled its progress, stole the source code, design and business plan, then set up his own rival. Facebook sped away while their site, now called ConnectU, was still in the traps. ‘It’s sort of a land grab,’ Tyler Winklevoss has said. ‘You feel robbed. The kids down the hall are using it, and you’re thinking, "That’s supposed to be us." We’re not there because one greedy kid cut us out.’
At the first court hearing on Wednesday they will ask a judge to shut down Facebook and transfer all its assets to them, plus damages. At stake is a large slice of pride, one of the most coveted prizes of the Web 2.0 goldrush and potentially millions, or even billions, of dollars. Last week Facebook signalled its ambitions by making its first acquisition, reportedly beating even Google to buy a web-based operating system called Parakey and fuelling bloggers’ suspicions that Facebook could threaten the web’s diversity by sucking the best of it into one place.
[ Snip ... ]
Both ConnectU and Facebook declined to comment on the case last week. Zuckerberg is thought to be taking it seriously but has said: ‘I don’t really spend much time worrying about this. There is a lawsuit going on, but, like, we know that we didn’t take anything from them. There is really good documentation of this: our code base versus theirs. At some point, that will come out in court, and they’ll compare the two.’
Tags: Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, ConnectU, FaceOff, plagiarism, IP
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This, from that deliciously mad cow who reads, is so much better a rebuttal than my earnest attempt, because it is smarter, more real and uses examples.
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He brings up Max Weber a number of times and refers to his treatise on Authority. Yeah, good old Max Weber who argued in favour of inserting Article 48 into the Weimar Constitution. This article was later used by Adolf Hitler to institute rule by decree, thereby allowing his government to suppress opposition and obtain dictatorial powers. Authority indeed. We So Need The Experts to tell us what to think.
He used the word tripartite at least three times. Old skool Tony Robbins.
Reminds me of something Burroughs used to say. "The fucking English, if they ever managed to land on the moon the first thing they would do upon leaving the spaceship would be to start looking around for inferiors."
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I’d like to think and write like that, but am constitutionally incapable because I am so earnest.
Maybe I should change my name to Earnest, but it’s likely that would be problematic given my last name.
Tags: La vache qui lit, Andrew Keen, David Weinberger, The Cult of the Amateur
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… your boss and her or his boss won’t be happy.
Evidently GW Bush is going into the hospital this weekend for a colonoscopy.
I guess things are slipping enough all around that the administration has actually decided to go looking for his brain … though I’m not really sure why.
However, the really big news is that VP Rich Cheney will officially be President for a day or two.
Some concerned citizens have not been taking this news in a nonchalant manner.
.. or Why Canadian Television News Is So Much Better Than American Television News
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Aw, go on .. it’s satire, doncha know.
Thank goodness it’s on every night, or we might go mad.
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I think I may very well head back to Europe in late September for what looks like a delightful 4 or 5 day "conference".
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Uncork your brain at PICNIC’07
It’s PICNIC time again. Time to feel inspired. Time to make connections. And time to play with everything that’s out there. PICNIC ‘07 takes you outside the average, feeds you fresh innovations and lets your creative mind off the leash.
PICNIC is a seductive, exciting, intangible, unpredictable, cosmopolitan and cheerful annual event for and by the creative industry. PICNIC’07 is the year’s leading European event devoted to creativity and innovation.
Amsterdam’s Westergasfabriek hosts PICNIC’07 from 25 to 29 September 2007.
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Written by Aaron Barlow, here (below in block-quotes) is the lead review on Amazon.com by Reference and Research Book News …
Whether you agree that blogs and other forms of voice on the Web are posing challenge to the established (and by now certainly the default setting) forms and structures of authority or are poised to be eaten by the Wurlitzer and the Spectacle, a lot has happened in a short time.
Much has been said already about the cacophony of the blog world, and many critics have lamented or lambasted what they believe is the flaming, the heaving of one-dimensional ideas back and forth. Beyond that real phenomenon, I spend a lot of time reading a wide variety of blogs, and I believe I have watched and seen quite a large number and wide range of people grow in awareness.
I recently read a post by my friend Dave Pollard titled Technophilia, Virtual Communities and the World of Ends, in which he has sadly come to the conclusion that there’s little point in the to-and-fro found in the interconnected online world. He has concluded that the only way real change, the types of change capable of possibly responding to the formidably daunting challenges facing humankind and the inexorable algebra of human growth on the planet proceeds, will happen is in the trenches of face-to-face local community building and the development of local economic infrastructure, presumably stemming from his concept(s) of the Natural Enterprise.
I differ in my opinion. I understand and agree with his point that the systems we live in will wind themselves tighter and tighter and that the problems will get more complex, chaotic, unpredictable and probably unmanageable within the frames of thinking and action we now employ. However, I think he focused too much on the technological capability for disintermediation outlined in the World of Ends premise, which I believe is mainly aimed at the business world and the impact of the Web on traditional business models.
That said, with respect to major societal and socio-economic change, I think it is fundamental that people are able to come to new perspectives, which I submit they can only grow into with new information and awakened awareness. I believe that the web and the people that activate it every day will play a substantial and critical role in growing the awareness of new possibilities and new ways of doing things .. and that these are necessary precursor to constructive action.
Anyway, I have not yet read the book, but it looks promising .. and there is, I believe, no denying that the serious, purposeful blogs and blog communities active in the political and citizen journal arenas are having major impact, and will have more.
The Rise of the Blogosphere, by Aaron Barlow
“The growing importance of online political weblogs, collectively known as the "blogosphere," has been characterized by many as a fundamentally new development in the American journalistic landscape. But for Barlow, the blogosphere is in many ways a regression back to the early American popular press, which allowed a multiplicity of voices and opinions and helped stimulate democratic debate.
Over the years, the commercialization, consolidation, and professionalization of American public journalism provided fewer and fewer venues for popular opinion and for discussion of issues the professional media considered unimportant. It is the promise of blogs to renew the abandoned practice of citizen journalism, and not some magic technological newness, that have led to the rapid explosion of the blogosphere.”
– Reference & Research Book News
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And just for the heck of it … name that principle 
A dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on trust, knowledge, credibility and
a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.
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V for Vendetta, the movie …
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Given the developments of the last 18 months or so since this movie was released, it’s interesting to watch it again and consider carefully some of the activities and dynamics (mainly on the part of the government in power) to which it alludes.
Below, from the Wikipedia’s V For Vendetta entry’s section on anarchism and fascism …
As an aside, I interpret "fuhrerprinzip" as not so very different than the continuing claiming by CheneyBush of unitary executive power
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The two conflicting political viewpoints of anarchism and fascism permeate the story. The Norsefire regime shares every facet of fascist ideology: it rules by fear and authority and worships strong leadership (i.e. the
I take this recent development to mean that the coup d’etat begun in 2000 is essentially complete.
If I interpret this correctly, Cheney and Bush can now say to the American people "Bring it on" and "Go fuck yourselves" in the same sentence, and not bat an eyelash.
Via the Washington Post
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Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings
White House Says Hill Can’t Pursue Contempt Cases
Dan Eggen and Amy GoldsteinFriday, July 20, 2007
Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.
The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.
Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."
But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.
"A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn’t be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."
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Update:
Via a bi-monthly newsletter from futurist Watts Wacker …
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The future of the recording industry?
Disc Jockeys in Belem, Brazil blast what is known as "technobrega". Singers record their songs on home computers and send their music directly to bootleggers who burn hundreds of copies and sell them at sidewalk stands. Musicians make money only by their elaborate live shows where they give away their records.
An emerging star, Amaraantos, said, "Here we don’t have record companies. Really, we don’t have anything but jungle and piracy. We musicians had to get creative."
Tags: Watts Wacker, The Deviant’s Advantage
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I’m just watching Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig’sList, being interviewed by Charlie Rose.
Good interview .. he’s thoughtful, unassuming to point of awkward humility, and very positive on the wisdom of crowds, the fact-check-your-asses aspect of serious / purposeful blogs and their communities, and very very high on the growth in the sophistication of collaborative filtering.
I believe that you can buy the recorded interviews of Charlie Rose interviews on PBS’ website.
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This time, of course, you might be right…especially since you and I seem to agree that the Web isn’t yet another medium. Something important and different is going on.
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The above quote is taken from the Wall Street Journal’s complete version of a debate between David Weinberger and Andrew Keen on the premises and conclusion of Keen’s new-ish book The Cult of the Amateur - How today’s Internet is killing our culture.
I am not an expert, so not really qualified to enter into the definitive debate about whether or not the Web is a medium or not. However, I am entitled to voice my opinion since this is my blog. I think today I would say the Web is an infrastructure for creating, retrieving and sharing information and opinion of which traditional media and emergent derivative forms of those media are essential, core components. I think it is likely to become a medium, and perhaps the dominant medium at some point in the future.
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Yes, Andrew, we are amateurs on the Web, although there’s plenty of room for professionals as well. But we are not replicating the mainstream media. We’re building something new. We’re doing it together. Its fundamental elements are not bricks of content but the mortar of links, and links are connections of meaning and involvement. We’re creating an infrastructure of meaning, miscellaneous but dripping with potential for finding and understanding what matters to us. We’re building this for one another. We’re doing it by and large for free, for the love of it, and for the joy of creating with others. That makes us amateurs. And that’s also what makes the Web our culture’s hope.
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David makes an important distinction here, in my opinion. The Web, which may be on its way to becoming a bona fide medium, is the first infrastructure for the mass distribution of information and opinion for which "us" is also an essential core component.
I am a hairless monkey, and an amateur one at that. In keeping with that status, I feel entitled to share with you a piece I wrote a couple of years ago which I think mirrors David’s "We’re creating an infrastructure of meaning, miscellaneous but dripping with potential for finding and understanding what matters to us. We’re building this for one another."
Riffing off a definitive expert, I titled it The Medium Is The Meaning We Consume and Create.
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With new technologies such as Skype which make it simple and affordable to communicate presence over the Internet, we are rediscovering the power of real conversation and engagement. Many people are beginning to publish these as podcasts, where roundtables convene to discuss emerging issues, engage in conversation and solicit engagement and participation. In the new re-tribalised world, the fire at the centre of our conversation is the monitor, and we gather in front of it to use the new tools of connectivity and the ancient tools of conversation to bring ourselves to a new level of engagement with our media.
I believe that with this new increasingly interactive medium, we are individually and collectively learning and conceiving how to create and shape meaning together. We are now in the early stages of much more choice and control over which medium we use for which type of meaning we want to create, distribute and share.
With the addition of the Internet and blogging to the spectra of available media, I hope we individually and collectively are moving towards producing and consuming deeper, more inclusive, more participative, more comprehensive and more full-of-meaning whole … communities, societies and world.
Tags: David Weinberger, Andrew Keen, Marshall McLuhan, The Cult of the Amateur, Everything Is Miscellaneous
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Many of the discussions and articles about Enterprise 2.0 hint at, or speak directly to, the cultural challenges that will present themselves as new ways of working are proposed or implemented.
Is it time to short Microsoft shares ?
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Will Vista cause a switch to Macs, Linux?
Andy McCue, Silicon.com
The cost of upgrading to Windows Vista is forcing more organizations to evaluate alternatives including Apple Macs and Linux for the desktop.Half of silicon.com’s 12-strong CIO Jury IT user panel said the Vista factor is likely to lead to an increase in Macs on the desktop in the corporate computing environment.
That echoes the comments of Capital & Regional CIO Richard Snooks who said in an interview with silicon.com this week that given the cost of being "railroaded" by Microsoft onto Vista, Macs are now "smarter money".
Nicholas Bellenberg, IT director at publisher Hachette Filipacchi UK, said his company runs lots of Macs with good cross-platform compatibility with Microsoft applications–though he added Entourage on the Mac doesn’t match Outlook on the PC for functionality.
Bellenberg said open source is another serious alternative on the desktop. He said: "What I would also expect is that there will also be more people trying out Ubuntu Linux and the like. If fellow CIOs haven’t checked this out, they should do. Perhaps it’s obvious but the quality of open source desktop software has come on no-end since I last reviewed it."
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This is probably little-known.
Back when bloggers wrote more often about the phenomenon of blogging, I remember a number of blog posts that used the metaphor of conversations around the campfire.
Well, straight from the imagination to a campsite near you …
For those who might say "Gack, we can’t escape .. anywhere", please remember … you don’t HAVE to bring your computer, nor connect if you happen to have brought it with you
Via the Toronto Globe and Mail:
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A tent, a campfire and YouTube
When Brad Rome goes camping, he makes sure to bring the essentials: bug spray, floppy hat, lawn chair - and his laptop.
As soon as Mr. Rome arrived at Ratter Lake Campground near Sudbury, Ont., at the beginning of the summer, his first order of business wasn’t setting up the campfire or heading down to the beach. Instead, he powered up his computer and logged on to the campground’s wireless Internet hot spot.
"It’s really a home away from home here, but I can’t really live without e-mail," said Mr. Rome, a Bell World retail store manager. "I find it incredibly difficult when I can’t connect."
Although lifelong campers like Mr. Rome may embrace the sights and sounds of the great outdoors, many now insist on staying connected.
Wireless access to the Internet is quickly becoming a standard feature at Canadian campgrounds.
At least 80 Canadian campgrounds and RV parks - including about 30 in British Columbia - now offer wireless Internet for their guests.
Kampgrounds of America has fully outfitted more than two-thirds of its 33 Canadian campgrounds with free WiFi. According to Jef Sutherland, the company’s vice-president of information services, 324 of the 379 North American campsites that KOA operates now have WiFi access - twice as many as last year.
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… of how online behaviour can mimic - and make easier - the kinds of malevolent dirty tricks often played out in boardrooms and in the competitive arena of of business.
.. on the Web.
Via VentureBeat.com
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Warner streams entire catalog of music for free on imeem
By Matt Marshall 07.12.07
Warner Music Group is offering its entire music and video catalog for free streaming on imeem, a Web site focused on letting users share music playlists.The music is currently live on the San Francisco startup’s Web site, the company told VentureBeat Wednesday evening.
Now imeem users can make playlists with Warner music. Warner, in return, will get a piece of imeem’s ad revenue.
So music from Depeche Mode, a Warner artist, can be played freely, for example. Press the play button on the widget below, for example, which we’ve just pulled from imeem.
This partnership is significant because it is the first time a major label has offered free ad-supported access to it entire catalog of music and video to such an online sharing site. It is also remarkable because Warner (along with other labels) had sued imeem less than two months ago for copyright infringement.
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Found on TalkingPointsMemo blog …
A footnote to the excerpt published below .. I am not crazy about the increasingly persistent whine that "the Iraqi people must take responsibility".
Well yes, of course … d’oh … but let’s please remember who swung the wrecking ball, illegally, and consider that possibly a reasonable number of the people US forces are trying to kill may be people trying to take responsibility - for getting the foreign invaders out of their country, or for keeping themselves and their families alive in unimaginable-to-us conditions .. etc.
And yes, the USA will be inextricably bound up with Iraqi’s affairs for a long time to come.
William Schambra is a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal at the Hudson Institute in Washington. D.C.
Given his role and profile, Catherine thinks he may have some insights into what might be considered a financial coup d’etat by the US Treasury, which might be established (or not) if only there were more information available.
What say you, Mr. Schambra ?
Mr. Schambra:
Thank you for taking time to be interviewed by our favorite morals tutor - and for your willingness to respond to questions.
My questions focus on the role of government money and credit in our society, including in philanthropy.
First, let me add some background. In the mid - 1990’s, laws went into effect that required "covered agencies" of the United States government to report audited annual financial statements. To date, numerous agencies, particularly the Department of Defense (DOD), and the government on a consolidated basis have failed to comply. In the process, DOD, NASA and HUD have reported undocumentable adjustments to balance their books of over $4 trillion. For more detail and documentation see The Missing Money.
What this means is that government finances are being managed in significant violation of constitutional requirements. Given the very significant amounts going missing, we are watching the equivalent of a financial coup d’etat. This is particularly disturbing given the likelihood of securities fraud by the US Treasury and housing agencies necessary to finance such extraordinary sums. See, for example, the Financial Times article regarding the differences in US and foreign reports on outstanding debt: Discrepancies in America’s accounts hide a black hole, by Daniel Gros (June ‘06))
At the same time, the most well funded media enterprises and think tanks have been silent on the disappearance of extraordinary sums of money.
My questions are as follows:
1. Where is all this money going?
2. What have you and the Hudson Institute done to illuminate this situation and the impact on our society?
3. To what extent are your board members and donors and their sources of income and capital gains dependent on keeping silent?
4. Is a discussion of constitutional principles relevant when constitutional finance is out the window?
5. Given the long-term refusal of the federal government to comply with the US Constitution and basic laws of spending and disclosure, has the time come to revisit the idea of consortium of private banks serving as the lead depository for the federal accounts and manager of the Exchange Stabilization Fund while they also control monetary creation and policy?Your thoughts on these matters are most appreciated. Again, thank you for your participation,
Tags: William Schambra, Bradley Center, Hudson Institute
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Earlier today in the NY Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg told us that the White House is having a very difficult time getting any press coverage and that the press corps is queasy about appearing too close to Bush because they fear being attacked by liberal bloggers.
Nod to Hullabaloo …
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Go open source …
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The Next Big Thing?
Jack KapicaIf, as the Apple iPhone has showed, one can be swept up in a mania by chic items, then you can put the iPhone behind you and jump to the Next Big Thing. Now.
In a few days, about 1,000 open-source software developers will get their mitts on the OpenMoko Neo1973 cellphone, the first cellphone to run on a modified Linux platform.
Backed by Taiwanese company called FIC, a small player in the handset market, the Neo1973 is doing what all open-source people are doing: asking the world code-cutting community to come up with applications for it. That’s the notion behind next week’s hardware preview unit, which will come with a developer’s kit.
OpenMoko expects many applications to be available when the Neo1973 becomes available later this year (target release date is November); the applications will use the open hardware features of the Neo, and will be available for download without a carrier standing in the middle demanding money.
Tags: iPhone, open source
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Have you ever heard of the "Rebel Sell" ?
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The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can’t be jammed is the name of a popular non-fiction book written by Canadian authors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in 2004. The claim of the book is that counter-cultural movements have failed, and that they all share a common fatal error in the way they understand society. Thus counter-culture is not a threat to "the system".
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Potter and Heath look to many counter-cultural perspectives such as ecological activists, culture-jammers, thugs, skateboarders, and anti-consumerists and draw similarities between all of them. They all perceive the rest of the world (the mainstream), as oppressed or brainwashed into conforming by a larger social force, and society’s rules (formal and otherwise) are thought to be suppressive of human nature for this reason. These parallels lead Potter and Heath to conclude that counter-cultural movements are not as unique as they appear. Hippies and Yuppies, Potter and Heath claim, are of the same origin; there is less irony in the oft-noted transition by many 1960s hippies to a yuppie lifestyle than many claim, because both lifestyles stand for similar core values, expressed in different ways: one deemed ‘alternative,’ the other deemed ‘mainstream’.
"The system" is not something that seeks conformity, but rather the opposite, it seeks individuality and the competition for distinction. To support this claim, Potter and Heath look at American Beauty, Fight Club, The Matrix, and Adbusters, all of which are supposedly counter-cultural, but popular in the mainstream. The capitalist system is not trying to stamp-out individuality, rather, a force of social distinction drives the market; individuals are in constant pursuit to "outcat" each other.
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While watching parts of the Live Earth concert on television, it’s hard to shake the sense of foreboding …
If we need a range of pop and rock stars to sell us the need to pay attention … if the only way we can get enough addled peoples’ attention is by teasing them with the sex and sizzle of rock concerts, are we doomed ?
We can’t trust the people in charge of all the decisions that affect he habits and patterns with which we live, they all (used to, until recently) say they can’t trust the people that have done all the research, watching. forecasting and protesting, and in a sense-surround media saturated life there are constant bombardments of commercial and political propaganda (increasingly similar or the same sources).
Musicians have always been heralders and instigators of social change, the accompaniment to movements.
This looks like a good and important book.
I’ve often been struck by thoughts about (which I am unable to put into clear words) how the commercial and organizational environments in which we live aim to force us into ways of thinking about things so as to enhance conformity.
Via the Editors Weblog …
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The information age: George Orwell’s worst fear
Paul Moreira is an investigative reporter who has worked extensively in the print press and was one of the founders of the defunct French, investigative, television show “90 minutes.”
In his latest book, Les nouvelles censures, Moreira describes the widespread practices of overt and covert manipulations of the news media.
“One of this era’s most powerful myths is that we live in the information age. In fact, we live in a media age, in which information is repetitive, “safe” and limited by invisible borders,” writes John Pilger, Hidden Agendas.
Are these theories ‘Big Brother’ paranoia, or are information flows much more controlled than the public would like to think? Is this only the case for television’s spectacular requirements, or also for trusted newspapers?
Moreira investigates, and answers.
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Essentially, the story of ‘disinformation versus truth’ is an age-old cleavage. This is not a new, tech-driven, Big Brother phenomenon. New censorships have emerged, as well as new channels for information delivery, but the dialectic remains.
So with this new set of tools and paradigms, are we heading toward an obscure Orwellian age, or toward a crystal clear world? Will blogs, Web 2.0, and citizen journalism see through the hazy filters, or will they just cause more confusion and inaccuracy? “It will always stay a dialectic struggle,” answers Moreira, prudently enough.
Granted, there will always be people seeking to inform and spread newsworthy information, just as there will always be people with interests to defend, who seek to control the impact of information. The only difference now is the institutionalization of a filtering system, accompanied by a switch from raw censorship to ‘suave communication.’ With this in mind, newspapers and news media must emphasize, financially and ethically, the need for accuracy, journalist integrity, and investigative reporting, to see past the filters’ fast-food recipes – full of taste and devoid of nutrition.
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Via The Editors Weblog, via the Guardian Unlimited
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India: Readers become writers for popular weekly supplement
During the Asian citizen journalism conference in Kuala Lumpur, The Guardian’s Kevin Anderson talked to Deendayal Vaidya about his work on an extremely popular supplement that featured only reader-submitted content.
Vaidya works for The Sakaal Group in Pune, India and since last year, has helped develop the reader-based supplement. Initially, the staff advertised the supplement in the print media and solicited reader submissions. Readers were asked to send in responses to 15 or so questions, such as “Who are you proud of?” or “How have you overcome difficulty in your life?” Nearly a thousand readers, the majority of whom were never published before, have since written for the supplement.
According to Vaidya, the supplement still features 100% reader-submitted content and has been a huge success; he reports that he sees people reading the supplement more often than the main newspaper.
Because readers eagerly responded to requests for their stories, Vaidya believes that they think of it as their supplement, something to which they have directly contributed. Through the weekly feature, the newspaper has built a stronger connection with its readers, who are been more than willing to not only consume, but also participate in the news.
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.David Weinberger’s suggestion for appropriate legislative action regarding net neutrality is here