http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/22/us-tunisia-election-idUSKBN0JZ04F20141222
"(Reuters) -
Veteran politician Beji Caid Essebsi has won Tunisia's first free
presidential election, official results showed on Monday, the final
step in a transition to democracy after an uprising that ousted autocrat
Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
But rioting broke out
in one southern city, with police firing teargas to disperse hundreds of
youths who burned tyres and blocked streets to demonstrate against the
victory of an official from Ben Ali's old guard.
Essebsi beat rival and incumbent Moncef Marzouki with 55.68 percent of the vote against 44.32 percent, the results showed."
A successful democratic election is a good sign for the country where the Arab Spring started. I hope this turns out well for all.
Internet Collective Action is people organizing in a nonhierarchical manner to accomplish a particular goal. The reward is in the doing, and how much or how little anyone participates is completely voluntary, depending on their abilities and commitment to the goal. By this process amazing things can be accomplished. ICA will grow so long as the Internet is free. http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm is an example of ICA.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Saturday, December 20, 2014
London housing saved
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/19/new-era-housing.html
"Having faced the grim prospect of eviction just before the holidays, residents of a housing block in east London are instead toasting an unlikely victory over U.S. property investors.
Multi-billion dollar asset management firm Westbrook Partners said Friday that it would abandon its plan to raise rents to market values — a move that would have tripled the cost to some residents — and instead sell the New Era estate to an affordable housing charity.
In ditching the plan, Westbrook appeared to bow to public and government pressure following a well-orchestrated campaign. New Era residents organized a change.org petition with nearly 350,000 signatures and attracted major media attention to their cause, thanks in large part to the efforts of British actor Russell Brand. On several occasions, the outspoken comedian turned social activist marched in the streets alongside New Era residents and supporters, and demonstrated outside Westbrook’s office holding signs that read, "Social housing, not social cleansing.'”
I would like to know more about how this protest was organized. It appears it was mostly run from the renters themselves.
"Having faced the grim prospect of eviction just before the holidays, residents of a housing block in east London are instead toasting an unlikely victory over U.S. property investors.
Multi-billion dollar asset management firm Westbrook Partners said Friday that it would abandon its plan to raise rents to market values — a move that would have tripled the cost to some residents — and instead sell the New Era estate to an affordable housing charity.
In ditching the plan, Westbrook appeared to bow to public and government pressure following a well-orchestrated campaign. New Era residents organized a change.org petition with nearly 350,000 signatures and attracted major media attention to their cause, thanks in large part to the efforts of British actor Russell Brand. On several occasions, the outspoken comedian turned social activist marched in the streets alongside New Era residents and supporters, and demonstrated outside Westbrook’s office holding signs that read, "Social housing, not social cleansing.'”
I would like to know more about how this protest was organized. It appears it was mostly run from the renters themselves.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Hong Kong activists unclear what to do next
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/10/27/hong-kong-protestorscancelvote.html
"Protest leaders in Hong Kong have cancelled a vote on what the next step should be in their month-long street occupation, saying they hadn't properly consulted with the demonstrators before calling the referendum.
The two-day vote, which had been scheduled for Sunday and Monday, was supposed to have gauged support among protesters for counter proposals to offers made by Hong Kong's government following talks last week between student protest leaders and authorities.
'We admit that we did not have enough discussion with the people before deciding to go ahead with the vote and we apologize to the people,' the protest leaders said in a statement.
They also cited 'differing opinions regarding the format, motions and effectiveness' of the referendum."
I watched how the Denver Occupy movement worked and thought it was a definite time waster as they hashed out for hours items of minute concern, it seemed to me. When you have to come to a consensus before you do anything, just expect to be jawboning for a long time, maybe even longer than your eventual actions.
"Protest leaders in Hong Kong have cancelled a vote on what the next step should be in their month-long street occupation, saying they hadn't properly consulted with the demonstrators before calling the referendum.
The two-day vote, which had been scheduled for Sunday and Monday, was supposed to have gauged support among protesters for counter proposals to offers made by Hong Kong's government following talks last week between student protest leaders and authorities.
'We admit that we did not have enough discussion with the people before deciding to go ahead with the vote and we apologize to the people,' the protest leaders said in a statement.
They also cited 'differing opinions regarding the format, motions and effectiveness' of the referendum."
I watched how the Denver Occupy movement worked and thought it was a definite time waster as they hashed out for hours items of minute concern, it seemed to me. When you have to come to a consensus before you do anything, just expect to be jawboning for a long time, maybe even longer than your eventual actions.
crowdsourcing can be sabatoged
http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/how-crowdsourcing-turned-on-me
"However, the crowd was hopeless against a determined attacker. Before the first attack, our progress on the fourth puzzle had combined 39,299 moves by 342 users over more than 38 hours. Destroying all this progress required just 416 moves by one attacker in about an hour. In other words, creation took 100 times as many moves and about 40 times longer than destruction."
"While we take for granted the way in which social media scales-up our ability to mobilize crowds in unprecedented ways, we must confront the challenge of ensuring those mobilized crowds do not fall prey to mobs."
Life in general is like this. You can raise a child, send him to school and college, relish the outcome, and then some idiot shoots him in a robbery. It sucks, but destruction is much easier than construction.
"However, the crowd was hopeless against a determined attacker. Before the first attack, our progress on the fourth puzzle had combined 39,299 moves by 342 users over more than 38 hours. Destroying all this progress required just 416 moves by one attacker in about an hour. In other words, creation took 100 times as many moves and about 40 times longer than destruction."
"While we take for granted the way in which social media scales-up our ability to mobilize crowds in unprecedented ways, we must confront the challenge of ensuring those mobilized crowds do not fall prey to mobs."
Life in general is like this. You can raise a child, send him to school and college, relish the outcome, and then some idiot shoots him in a robbery. It sucks, but destruction is much easier than construction.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Crowdsourcing helps find missing boat
http://blog.tomnod.com/tunante-concludes/
"On August 26th 2014, the Tunante II, a 12.5 meter-long yacht with four crew on board, declared emergency during a storm off the coast of Brazil. Within hours, the Argentinian and Brazilian governments pulled together a search & rescue force.
A Tomnod campaign request was submitted and approved, and a satellite tasking order was placed. As planes were forced to suspend their search due to bad weather, Tomnod loaded satellite images online so thousands of people around the world could scan each pixel of the South Atlantic Ocean looking for clues of the missing boat.
Renewed Hope
During the course of the search, both governments halted and resumed their active participation for various reasons. However on October 8th, an image was tagged on Tomnod which matched the description and projected location of the Tunante II."
Here's an example in which a mass of volunteers do a simple task to help someone in need.
"On August 26th 2014, the Tunante II, a 12.5 meter-long yacht with four crew on board, declared emergency during a storm off the coast of Brazil. Within hours, the Argentinian and Brazilian governments pulled together a search & rescue force.
A Tomnod campaign request was submitted and approved, and a satellite tasking order was placed. As planes were forced to suspend their search due to bad weather, Tomnod loaded satellite images online so thousands of people around the world could scan each pixel of the South Atlantic Ocean looking for clues of the missing boat.
Renewed Hope
During the course of the search, both governments halted and resumed their active participation for various reasons. However on October 8th, an image was tagged on Tomnod which matched the description and projected location of the Tunante II."
Here's an example in which a mass of volunteers do a simple task to help someone in need.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
so how about that crowd-sourced Icelandic Constitution?
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/five_lessons_from_iceland_s_failed_crowdsourced_constitution_experiment.single.html
"Iceland’s recent experiment in redrafting its constitution has challenged the assumptions that a constitutional process needs to be exclusive and opaque. In 2013 the country came close to passing into law the world’s most inclusively and transparently written constitutional text. This experiment—sometimes dubbed the 'crowdsourced constitution'—should prove inspirational for people around the globe intent on writing, or re-writing, their own social contract.
"Iceland’s recent experiment in redrafting its constitution has challenged the assumptions that a constitutional process needs to be exclusive and opaque. In 2013 the country came close to passing into law the world’s most inclusively and transparently written constitutional text. This experiment—sometimes dubbed the 'crowdsourced constitution'—should prove inspirational for people around the globe intent on writing, or re-writing, their own social contract.
The Icelandic constitutional process included three original
features. The first one was a so-called National Forum—an upstream
consultation of a demographically representative minipublic of 950
quasi-randomly sampled citizens. These citizens were gathered in a
one-day meeting and asked to list the principles and values they would
like to see embedded in the Icelandic constitution. They listed, among
others, human rights, democracy, transparency, equal access to health
care and education, a more strongly regulated financial sector, and
public ownership of Icelandic natural resources."
Well, it almost worked. And here's some ideas for the next country to try it.
Well, it almost worked. And here's some ideas for the next country to try it.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
did the Arab Spring end in failure?
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-failures-of-the-arab-spring-2014-7
"Most academics have been wary of fingering Islam as a fundamental impediment to modernisation, yet some, and not only Western ones, suspect it plays a role. Timur Kuran, a Turkish-American economist, argues that Islam’s rigidly egalitarian inheritance rules have hindered the accumulation and mobilization of capital in a way that hampered industrialization. The unresolved issue of proper relations between Islam and the state represents a chronic conundrum.
For most of the time since the first caliphate governments have outwardly endorsed the notion that temporal laws must be subservient to religious rulings while doing as they wish and ensuring that jurists toe the line. In the 19th century the governments of Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia all moved to trim the influence of sharia judges, not under European pressure but because their unpredictable rulings were an obstacle to commerce as well as to government power.
The modern spread of Islamism as an explicitly political expression of Islamic thought has created another set of problems. Groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a wellspring of Islamism since its founding in 1928, claim that the founding texts of Islam provide a template for every aspect of life, including government. The trouble is that these texts are open to widely varying interpretations. As the proliferation of Islamist political parties proves, it is hard to balance the notion of a fixed, immutable source with the changing whims of democratic politics. Instead, one dominant party is liable to try to silence rivals, a process which often involves outbidding them in a contest for greater 'authenticity'."
I must admit that I'm depressed thinking of what could have come from the Arab Spring. But I'm not throwing in the towel just yet. Many people learned that they could voice their opinion, and work collectively with others to push their views. People are still learning this, and more and more will. I'm convinced that the people understand better what they want from their government, and know there are methods for gaining that. But the elite are well-entrenched. It will take time to make changes. Same in the U.S.
"Most academics have been wary of fingering Islam as a fundamental impediment to modernisation, yet some, and not only Western ones, suspect it plays a role. Timur Kuran, a Turkish-American economist, argues that Islam’s rigidly egalitarian inheritance rules have hindered the accumulation and mobilization of capital in a way that hampered industrialization. The unresolved issue of proper relations between Islam and the state represents a chronic conundrum.
For most of the time since the first caliphate governments have outwardly endorsed the notion that temporal laws must be subservient to religious rulings while doing as they wish and ensuring that jurists toe the line. In the 19th century the governments of Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia all moved to trim the influence of sharia judges, not under European pressure but because their unpredictable rulings were an obstacle to commerce as well as to government power.
The modern spread of Islamism as an explicitly political expression of Islamic thought has created another set of problems. Groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a wellspring of Islamism since its founding in 1928, claim that the founding texts of Islam provide a template for every aspect of life, including government. The trouble is that these texts are open to widely varying interpretations. As the proliferation of Islamist political parties proves, it is hard to balance the notion of a fixed, immutable source with the changing whims of democratic politics. Instead, one dominant party is liable to try to silence rivals, a process which often involves outbidding them in a contest for greater 'authenticity'."
I must admit that I'm depressed thinking of what could have come from the Arab Spring. But I'm not throwing in the towel just yet. Many people learned that they could voice their opinion, and work collectively with others to push their views. People are still learning this, and more and more will. I'm convinced that the people understand better what they want from their government, and know there are methods for gaining that. But the elite are well-entrenched. It will take time to make changes. Same in the U.S.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Brazilians has a strong digital culture
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jruv/why-brazil-is-actually-winning-the-internet
"'We don’t make a difference by sitting behind our computers,' said Marcelo Tas, a Brazilian journalist with more than 5 million Twitter followers, during a newscast with BandnewsTV the first week of the protests last June. 'We’re meeting up in the streets. And it’s not just happening in Rio and São Paulo. Small towns in the interior are protesting. We have a whole country protesting.'
'It’s a really important moment we’re living right now,' says Bia Granja, of the YouPix festival, which gathers hundreds of thousands together at festivals across the country, and millions together online, to organize around digital issues they care about. Last year’s festival in Rio hosted debates about Brazil’s internet legislation, the persecution of the Rio funk movement, and Globo’s factually inaccurate reporting of last June’s protests, interspersed with food contests, MC battles, a well-attended workshop for YouTube content producers (and Havaianas giveaways).
'We’re seeing big changes,' Granja says. 'Social networks are tools of empowerment we didn’t have before.'”
I had to read down pretty far in this article to start to notice anything very exciting. Maybe the first part was just history building up to the good stuff.
To summarize, Brazil uses the social media aspects of the Internet to give citizens a voice in their government.
"'We don’t make a difference by sitting behind our computers,' said Marcelo Tas, a Brazilian journalist with more than 5 million Twitter followers, during a newscast with BandnewsTV the first week of the protests last June. 'We’re meeting up in the streets. And it’s not just happening in Rio and São Paulo. Small towns in the interior are protesting. We have a whole country protesting.'
'It’s a really important moment we’re living right now,' says Bia Granja, of the YouPix festival, which gathers hundreds of thousands together at festivals across the country, and millions together online, to organize around digital issues they care about. Last year’s festival in Rio hosted debates about Brazil’s internet legislation, the persecution of the Rio funk movement, and Globo’s factually inaccurate reporting of last June’s protests, interspersed with food contests, MC battles, a well-attended workshop for YouTube content producers (and Havaianas giveaways).
'We’re seeing big changes,' Granja says. 'Social networks are tools of empowerment we didn’t have before.'”
I had to read down pretty far in this article to start to notice anything very exciting. Maybe the first part was just history building up to the good stuff.
To summarize, Brazil uses the social media aspects of the Internet to give citizens a voice in their government.
Monday, June 30, 2014
The Occupy Movement morphs and keeps going
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/occupy-movement-inequalitysystemicchange.html
"Many veterans of the 2011 movements nevertheless continue to believe that their electoral systems have become so broken that real change must come from outside. Rather than just making an end-run for government office, they believe they need to rebuild the economy and political structure, starting at the level of local communities and growing upward from there. That’s where some of the most interesting activism is happening.
Occupy alums have been especially busy promoting worker cooperatives, whose earnings tend to stay in local communities rather than being siphoned to big banks. One of the first enterprises to grow out of Occupy Wall Street was a worker-owned print shop, and in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Occupy activists helped affected communities set up their own cooperative businesses in order to be more resilient against the rich developers who arrived in the wake of the storm. Occupiers in Boston have been working with a non-profit called the New Economy Coalition to support new cooperative projects. People from around the country attended the Jackson Rising conference in Mississippi last month, which focused on using cooperatives to build lasting economic power in black communities hit hard by the last financial crisis. This so-called New Economy movement has been growing for years, but Occupy brought a new generation into it."
I admire the Occupy movement. They tried something. It worked to a degree, but they were basically squashed. So now they try other things and keep going.
"Many veterans of the 2011 movements nevertheless continue to believe that their electoral systems have become so broken that real change must come from outside. Rather than just making an end-run for government office, they believe they need to rebuild the economy and political structure, starting at the level of local communities and growing upward from there. That’s where some of the most interesting activism is happening.
Occupy alums have been especially busy promoting worker cooperatives, whose earnings tend to stay in local communities rather than being siphoned to big banks. One of the first enterprises to grow out of Occupy Wall Street was a worker-owned print shop, and in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Occupy activists helped affected communities set up their own cooperative businesses in order to be more resilient against the rich developers who arrived in the wake of the storm. Occupiers in Boston have been working with a non-profit called the New Economy Coalition to support new cooperative projects. People from around the country attended the Jackson Rising conference in Mississippi last month, which focused on using cooperatives to build lasting economic power in black communities hit hard by the last financial crisis. This so-called New Economy movement has been growing for years, but Occupy brought a new generation into it."
I admire the Occupy movement. They tried something. It worked to a degree, but they were basically squashed. So now they try other things and keep going.
Friday, June 6, 2014
What happens when low-wage earners suddenly get a raise
http://gothamist.com/2014/06/05/living_wage_casino_workers.php#.
"Before the contract I was at $11.68 an hour, and when the raise came in I started making $21.67. Before I was making less than $300/week and after, it was $575. It helped a lot.
Before the raise, a lot of times I fell behind on my rent payments. It was a dilemma: which was more important, food or bills? So I made the bills and I'd buy whatever food I could afford afterwards. Luckily, my aunt lives here, so any time I was hungry I could go by her place and she could give me dinner or lunch. I'm very lucky I have family.
I'm 50 years old, and I don't have too many other options for work, but I appreciate this job. I'm always on time. I got sick a few weeks ago, I had a fever of 102, and I called my boss and he said "OK, we understand." We have better health insurance, better protection for the employees.
It's a tremendous change, getting this contract. Right now there are so many people living in poverty each week, doing what I did, struggling. Do you pay rent or do you eat? This country is a very rich country, with a lot of rich people, but so many are in poverty. It's only right that people who work hard get what they deserve. The minimum wage has got to go up. If it goes up, it makes a huge difference! The minimum wage has gotta go up."
Employees are people too. Without them shareholders would be holding worthless paper.
"Before the contract I was at $11.68 an hour, and when the raise came in I started making $21.67. Before I was making less than $300/week and after, it was $575. It helped a lot.
Before the raise, a lot of times I fell behind on my rent payments. It was a dilemma: which was more important, food or bills? So I made the bills and I'd buy whatever food I could afford afterwards. Luckily, my aunt lives here, so any time I was hungry I could go by her place and she could give me dinner or lunch. I'm very lucky I have family.
I'm 50 years old, and I don't have too many other options for work, but I appreciate this job. I'm always on time. I got sick a few weeks ago, I had a fever of 102, and I called my boss and he said "OK, we understand." We have better health insurance, better protection for the employees.
It's a tremendous change, getting this contract. Right now there are so many people living in poverty each week, doing what I did, struggling. Do you pay rent or do you eat? This country is a very rich country, with a lot of rich people, but so many are in poverty. It's only right that people who work hard get what they deserve. The minimum wage has got to go up. If it goes up, it makes a huge difference! The minimum wage has gotta go up."
Employees are people too. Without them shareholders would be holding worthless paper.
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