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thinkahol *

Debt Political Theater Diverts Attention While Americans' Wealth Is Stolen | Common Dreams - 0 views

www.commondreams.org/...15

Debt Political Theater Diverts Attention While Americans' Wealth Is Stolen | Common Dreams

shared by thinkahol * on 16 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 16 Jul 11
     
    The rancorous debate over the debt belies a fundamental truth of our economy -- that it is run for the few at the expense of the many, that our entire government has been turned into a machine which takes the wealth of a mass of Americans and accelerates it into the hands of the few. Let me give you some examples.
thinkahol *

The (very) secret history of Area 51 - Americas, World - The Independent - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...istory-of-area-51-2306942.html

The (very) secret history of Area 51 - Americas World Independent

shared by thinkahol * on 10 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 10 Jul 11
     
    No one on the ground or in Pakistan's air defence spotted Area 51's latest toy as it kept watch on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on the night of the US raid that killed the Taliban leader. Rather than one of the UFOs that the wilder fringes of the internet believe the military has stashed away at America's top-secret military site in Nevada, this "toy" was actually the latest Star Wars-type drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), developed at the base whose existence Uncle Sam only barely admits. Named the "Beast of Kandahar" after it was snapped at Kandahar air base in Afghanistan back in 2009, this stealthy grey batwing-shaped long-distance reconnaissance drone, officially known as the RQ-170 Sentinel, was a throwback to Area 51's golden age before the advent of the spy satellite put the spy plane out of business.
thinkahol *

The Quiet Coup - Magazine - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...7364

The Quiet Coup - Magazine Atlantic

shared by thinkahol * on 18 Oct 11 - Cached
  • thinkahol * on 18 Oct 11
     
    The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government-a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF's staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we're running out of time.
thinkahol *

World | David Graeber: The Shock of Victory - 0 views

www.indymedia.org.uk/...383687.html

World | David Graeber: The Shock of Victory

shared by thinkahol * on 21 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 21 Oct 11
     
    The biggest problem facing direct action movements is that we don't know how to handle victory. This might seem an odd thing to say because of a lot of us haven't been feeling particularly victorious of late. Most anarchists today feel the global justice movement was kind of a blip: inspiring, certainly, while it lasted, but not a movement that succeeded either in putting down lasting organizational roots or transforming the contours of power in the world. The anti-war movement was even more frustrating, since anarchists and anarchist tactics were largely marginalized. The war will end, of course, but that's just because wars always do. No one is feeling they contributed much to it.
thinkahol *

KBR: Kickbacks, Bribes, Ripoffs & War Racketeering - 0 views

paper.li/1310338183

KBR: Kickbacks Bribes Ripoffs & War Racketeering

shared by thinkahol * on 29 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 29 Oct 11
     
    Why KBR continues to be awarded huge open-ended, cost-plus, no-compete contracts from the Pentagon is a question worthy of a criminal investigation, because their track record as a military contractor suggests that "KBR" is actually short for "Kickbacks, Bribes & Ripoffs".  According to the POGO Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, since 1995 the company has been involved in not less than 23 documented cases of misconduct including but not limited to Overcharging the Government, Violation of Anti-Kickback Act, Excessive Subcontract Costs, Fraud and Accepting Kickbacks, Exposing Troops to Hazardous Water Conditions, Bribery to Win International Government Contracts, Overpricing Fuel, Breach of Contract, Hurricane Relief Contract Overcharges, Sexual Assault, Freight Forwarding Kickbacks, Procurement Irregularities, and Conspiracy to Defraud the Government.  For this KBR has paid millions in fines, which it surely considers a small price to pay for the billions it continues to receive in new federal contracts every year:
thinkahol *

The killing of Awlaki's 16-year-old son - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...singleton

The killing of Awlaki's 16-year-old son - Salon.com

shared by thinkahol * on 24 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 24 Oct 11
     
    Two weeks after the U.S. killed American citizen Anwar Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen - far from any battlefield and with no due process - it did the same to his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, ending the teenager's life on Friday along with his 17-year-old cousin and seven other people. News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki's son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: "anyone killed by the U.S."), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver. As The New Yorker's Amy Davidson wrote: "Looking at his birth certificate, one wonders what those assertions say either about the the quality of the government's evidence - or the honesty of its claims - and about our own capacity for self-deception." The boy's grandfather said that he and his cousin were at a barbecue and preparing to eat when the U.S. attacked them by air and ended their lives. There are two points worth making about this:
thinkahol *

The roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...singleton

roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying - Salon.com

shared by thinkahol * on 21 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist.
  • thinkahol * on 21 Nov 11
     
    The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist.
Johann Höchtl

Enterprise IT Portfolio Governance and Management Model - 0 views

michigan.gov/..._Management_Model_326133_7.pdf

portfolio management architecture framework government governance

shared by Johann Höchtl on 16 May 14 - No Cached
  • Johann Höchtl on 16 May 14
     
    "Enterprise IT Portfolio Governance and Management Model "
Johann Höchtl

U.S. unveils plan to make online transactions safer - Technology & science - Security - msnbc.com - 0 views

www.msnbc.msn.com/...echnology_and_science-security

identification USA web sites online security ID

shared by Johann Höchtl on 27 Jun 10 - Cached
  • In a draft plan released Friday, the White House laid out an argument for a yet-undeveloped, voluntary identification system and set up a website to gather input from experts and everyday Internet users on how it should be structured.
  • In a draft plan released Friday, the White House laid out an argument for a yet-undeveloped, voluntary identification system and set up a website to gather input from experts and everyday Internet users on how it should be structured.
  • Ari Schwartz, vice president at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the unfettered openness of the Internet is what allowed it to grow and prosper but also created security gaps that need to be addressed.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the opportunity is there to make things more interoperable and more uniform
  • The draft plan is part of an administration effort to promote cyber security both within the government and among society as a whole.
Johann Höchtl

How do we get government to share data? - O'Reilly Radar - 1 views

radar.oreilly.com/...toppers-in-local-governme.html

opendata crime value force

shared by Johann Höchtl on 19 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • How, then, does the public get access to data, and ideally, to raw data streams?
  • Using force, by changing the laws or creating new regulations
  • Using intimidation, by enlisting the news media to pressure the agency
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • By creating value for agencies to entice them to share the data.
  • So what, exactly, is public data? Is crime data actually public data, and do agencies have to provide it? If so, why don’t they provide it as a raw data feed? The answer is this: while crime data concerns the general public, it is not exactly public data per se
  • Johann Höchtl on 19 Nov 10
     
    Drivers for open data
Johann Höchtl

Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Rethinking Open Data: Lessons learned from the Open Data front lines - 0 views

blog.okfn.org/...from-the-open-data-front-lines

knowledge OKNF opendata types groupie

shared by Johann Höchtl on 19 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • You can build it but they won’t come. All successful open source projects build communities of supportive engaged developers who identify with the project and keep it productive and useful.
  • Ongoing maintenance and distribution of the data hasn’t been budgeted for almost all the data sets we have today. This attitude has to change, and new projects give us the chance to get it right, but most existing datasets are unfunded for maintenance and release.
  • there are at least five different types of Open Data groupie: low-polling governments who want to see a PR win from opening their data, transparency advocates who want a more efficient and honest government, citizen advocates who want services and information to make their lives better, open advocates who believe that governments act for the people therefore government data should be available for free to the people, and wonks who are hoping that releasing datasets of public toilets will deliver the same economic benefits to the country as did opening the TIGER geo/census dataset.
Johann Höchtl

Wiki:Government 2.0 | Social Media CoLab - 0 views

socialmediaclassroom.com/...government-20

gov2.0 datasf open government

shared by Johann Höchtl on 08 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Internal (intra or inter-government) collaboration. Institutional presence on external social networks Open government data Employees on external social networks 
  • Increased government efficiency Increased government accountability Increased citizen engagement and participation Increased innovation
  • Potential loss of privacy Invalid data
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • 1) what data should the government share and 2) how does data influence the public sphere
  • The optimists decry the modern instantiations of bureaucracy and policy in which democratic governments operate as the source of democratic ills and support the normative idea of an informed and engaged public.  Pessimists counter that the normative model of democracy most accepted in the literature is a novel construction that is not grounded in the natural behavior of citizens.
  • The innocence of Americans is either explained as a rational choice under the principle of rational ignorance (Downs, 1957) or explained as something inherent in the lack of mental sophistication in humans.
  • Government 2.0 attempts to correct the problems of information diffusion by assuming that people are simply unable or unwilling to find information in the offline world.  If the barriers to information acquisition are lowered then, the theory goes, people will be more likely to find, synthesize and use information in decision-making processes.
  • Feedback loops: Who will be active in these loops? How will the public respond? 
  • People usually think about explicit citizen participation, but some of the most pwrful Web 2.0 tools aren't about that: it's about ppl who are participating w/o knowing they are participating. Google is actually one of the great engines of harnessing participation, anyone who clicks on a link is participating, a link is a vote, meaning hidden in something they're doing already. Wikipedia isn't the only place where people are contributing.
  • The amount of data being shared/collected about people is growing exponentially, old notions of privacy need to be replaed by ideas of visibility and control: give more control over who gets to see it. We are better off with more visibility and control than stopping people from collecting data. The data is incredibly useful, applicaitons depend on data, people willingly giving up that privacy about where they are all the time.
  • many programs go wrong, generically, (what worries me) government is still very much an insider's game, we have not yet really built a system that allows real participation
  • Another gov 2.0 observation: it's very hard for a government agency to start over, it's not like private sector, where companies with bad ideas go out of business. Government agencies don't go out of business. (consumers benefit from newspapers going out of business) We don't have creative destruction in gov't, the basic machinery of it just gets bigger and more entrenched. Need to figure out how to start over: what not to do
  • The toughest part about Web 2.0, Gov 2.0, etc, might be the role of management. It used to be about defining the outcome and monItoring the progress towards that outcome. In Web 2.0 you don't know what that outcome is, It's a huge leap of faIth, and takes a tremendous amount of adjusting to that approach. Do we need a different set of metrics? Yes. Media is intersecting wIth technology, technology is a new channel for media, even Hollywood is changing: oh my goodness, we have to create entirely new financial models!
  • "The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed." it's a cultural issue here, people are stuck in the past and we need a new wave of innovators or we should just expect slow results.
Parycek

Crowd-sourcing is not empowering enough - 0 views

www.deliberations.com.au/...-is-not-empowering-enough.html

deliberation Crowd-sourcing edem

shared by Parycek on 08 Mar 10 - Cached
    • Parycek
      Parycek on 20 Mar 10
       
      It invItes individuals to foist and endorse (or not) ideas wIth no pressure to consider the full public consequences of them, including whether they can be sustained across ideological or partisan lines, or how practical they are, or how insulting of public officers. There is the published intention to attract a full range of public perspectives, but instead It tends to attract enclaves of people wIth commItted strategies (eg. embarrass public officials) or perspectives (eg. technology is the answer). While national inItiatives attract noise, in more local applications of such ideation, participation is often too thin to be meaningful. This all comes down the question of representativeness. If a governing body is going to legItimately use these ideas, and be compelled to do so, then there has to be good evidence that the contributors do actually form a descriptive representation of the public being governed. I think if you have a technical problem that requires particular expertise, then such ideation processes can find the needle in the haystack. Those of us who subscribe to technical forums know how well that works. I think some people feel that public policy ideation works the same way, but It doesn't because in a contested polItical environment, what "should be done" is claimed on normative rather than technical grounds. Another metaphor for the ranking in ideation is consumer selection, which many in polItical science would model as rational choice, privileging private over public interests. Should that be the motor for the selection of public policy? I wrIte all this knowing full well that I risk throwing the baby out wIth the bathwater. I just think we can do better. Some ideation processes should invIte people randomly, to ensure full demographic spread on relevant dimensions (eg. age, education, polItical leaning). Let's have multi-stage processes, where contributors do more than just introduce and rank ideas--to their credIt, thi
  • Parycek on 20 Mar 10
     
    I fear that ultimately crowd-sourcing is damaging the enterprise of dialogue and deliberation (D&D).
Parycek

Twitter, SXSW, and Building a 21st Century Business - 0 views

blogs.hbr.org/...er_sxsw_and_building_a_21.html

twitter hbr future

shared by Parycek on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Principles, not product.
  • Be a force for good. That's Twitter's new foundational principle — and it's interesting because it takes Google's foundational principle and does it one better.
  • Openness as a survival strategy. I
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Twitter's been focused on openness, and his response was that it's a "survival strategy." New ideas, new concepts, new applications — all flow to open organizations. That's a great way to express the point that for next-gen organizations, openness is now table stakes: fail at it, and you're not even in the game.
  • That's what 21st century organizations look like: networks, not pyramids.
  • Doors versus windows
  • That's pretty radical. Wall St, Detroit, Big Food, Big Software and HMOs are just a few for whom win/wins have mattered little, if at all. it's a simple, powerful way to frame next-gen strategy in a nutshell.
  • , Ev said: better connections, better information — better choices
  • Just as the fundamental challenge of the 21st century is making authentically, meaningfully better stuff, for the 21st century media it's communicating in better ways — not simply bombarding the reader-"consumer" with more, bigger, louder ads.
  • Erasing information asymmetries is where the future of advertising lies. But you can't get there unless you can build a 21st century business first.
  • Parycek on 18 Mar 10
     
    Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review
Johann Höchtl

EUROPA - Press Releases - Neelie Kroes Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda My vision for eGovernment, and how to make it real "Lift-Off towards Open Government" conference Brussels, 15 December 2010 - 0 views

europa.eu/...pressReleasesAction.do

Neelie Kroes opendata europe comission brussels conference

shared by Johann Höchtl on 17 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • I have said it before, and I say it again: yes to open data!
  • By involving third parties we can both improve services and be more transparent. That would be the definition of weGov.
  • Johann Höchtl on 17 Jan 11
     
    Neelie Kroes on Open Government Data for Europe
thinkahol *

It's Official: Tunisia Now Freer than the U.S. | Informed Comment - 0 views

www.juancole.com/...ia-now-freer-than-the-u-s.html

It's Official: Tunisia Now Freer than the U.S. | Informed Comment

shared by thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11
     
    An Arab country with neither secret police nor censorship is unprecedented in recent decades. Tunisia is inspiring similar demands in Egypt and Jordan. When skeptics wonder if the Revolutions of 2011 would really change anything essential in the region, they would be wise to keep an eye on these two developments in Tunisia, which, if consolidated, would represent an epochal transformation of culture and politics. Arguably, Tunisians are now freer than Americans. The US government thinks our private emails are actually public. The FBI and NSA routinely read our email and they and other branches of the US government issue security letters in the place of warrants allowing them to tap phones and monitor whom we call, and even to call up our library records and conduct searches of our homes without telling us about it. Millions of telephone records were turned over to George W. Bush by our weaselly telecom companies. Courts allow government agents to sneak onto our property and put GPS tracking devices under our automobiles without so much as a warrant or even probable cause. Mr. Obama thinks this way of proceeding is a dandy idea.
thinkahol *

Guest Post: Take This Job And Shove It | zero hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...est-post-take-job-and-shove-it

Guest Post: Take This Job And Shove It | zero hedge

shared by thinkahol * on 06 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 06 Apr 11
     
    The true picture of the American economy is that in 2007 there were 146 million Americans employed, or 63% of the working age population. Today, there are 139.9 million Americans employed, or 58.5% of the working age population. Over this time frame, an additional 7.1 million Americans entered the working age population. In 2007 there were 26.3 million Americans on food stamps, or 8.6% of the US population. Today there are 44.2 million Americans on food stamps, or 14.3% of the US population. To call the current economic disaster a recovery is to practice the art of the Big Lie.
thinkahol *

Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone - 0 views

www.rollingstone.com/...n-still-doesnt-get-it-20111021

Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It | Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone

shared by thinkahol * on 23 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 23 Oct 11
     
    I'll have more coming out about this in a few days, but there have been two disgusting developments in the realm of plutocratic intervention on behalf of Wall Street that everyone protesting should take note of. The fact that both of the following things took place in the middle of the full fever of OWS, when everyone is supposedly trying to placate anti-banker sentiment and Obama and the DCCC are supposedly pledging support of the protesters, shows how completely bankrupt this system is and how necessary street-level protests have become. Popular uprising is probably the only move left to stop developments like the following:
Johann Höchtl

Big Data Reaches The Hill: A Guide To Making It More Actionable - 0 views

gov.aol.com/...e-to-making-it-more-actionable

big data administration

shared by Johann Höchtl on 14 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • What Congress should do to help big data Allow access to confidential data such as the Census data centers Allow sharing between statistical agencies Have a chief data dfficer that promotes a federal data science community of data scientists and statisticians
  • Hadoop projects are costing 50 times more than expected DHS failed fast with a big data in the cloud project, but quickly and at less cost
  • The federal government should foster real innovation with government data
  • Johann Höchtl on 14 Oct 12
     
    Big Data Projekte der Verwaltung in den USA waren bisher noch nicht so erfolgreich. Eine kurze Analyse
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