Saturday Links of the Week: September 13, 2008

Maybe it’s the time of year, but I’m afraid this week’s list is decidedly heavy on political items, most of them bad news:

Is Bob Woodward Helping the CIA in Iraq?: Most intriguing story of the week is the report that Bob Woodward knows about a ‘secret lethal special operations program’ that is having extraordinary success in Iraq. Woodward is not talking specifics, just saying enough to sell his new book. And of course that means that everyone who hears about this is speculating what the ‘secret’ might be. The most interesting guess (from the Wired Magazine blog) is a new DARPA ‘tagging, tracking and locating’ technology that allows individual thermal ‘fingerprints’ to be created for identified opponents, which satellites can then use to track their whereabouts (and presumably bomb them) anywhere on Earth. But the comments to this article suggest an even more intriguing possibility: That there is no new ‘secret’ weapon, and Woodward has been chosen (voluntarily or not) to virally propagate that such a ‘secret’ weapon exists, through his book tour, to frighten opponents of the US occupation force into retreat.

Creating Resilient Societies: John Robb shares my pessimism about the future of our civilization and our capacity to make the changes needed to salvage it before it collapses. P2P Foundation has summarized some of his recent thoughts, that peer-to-peer connectivity might enable large-scale relocalization of economies by creating self-sufficient communities. Below the article, Jeff Vail and I chime in with our thoughts.

A Business Model Model: Alex Osterwalder explains how a good business model (outlined in the graphic above) describes the key sustainable strategies and differentiators of any business, and is probably the best ‘picture’ that a potential investor or partner could have when deciding whether to invest or join it. Thanks to sustainability author Steve Hinton for the link.

Lehman Brothers Collapses, CitiBank next?: Lehman has collapsed as I predicted in July. My prediction is that CitiBank will be the next big one to fall, and just watch the markets plummet when that happens. Why CitiBank? Wisdom of crowds — the employees know what’s going on.

A Short Story You Won’t Forget: Alex Leslie’s short story Preservation deservedly wins a CBC Literary Award.

Bush-Style Right-Wing Attack Ads Work in Canada Too: Canada is going to the polls next month, and the extreme right-wing Conservatives, their coffers full of money from the US corporatists ruining our environment, have borrowed the Bush/Rove campaign playbook to launch a barrage of extremely offensive and totally dishonest attack ads (example above) on the Liberal opposition. Unfortunately, the tactic is working: Since the ads started, Conservative popularity has risen from 32% to 41%, enough for a majority in Canada’s absurd first-past-the-post electoral system. The Conservatives should be ashamed; the voters falling for this tripe even more so.

Galveston Prisoners Abandoned as Ike Hits: 1000 inmates at Galveston prison were abandoned as flood waters rose when Hurricane Ike hit today. What is it about the people who run Texas, anyway?

Kevin Carson’s Home Raided, Writings Seized: A book by fellow blogger Kevin Carson on labour struggle was seized last week by Minneapolis police working with Homeland Security. So much for the last vestiges of freedom of speech in America. Maybe someone should send a dictionary to the DHS brownshirts so they can look up the meaning of the term “anarchist”.

Democrats Capitulate on Offshore Drilling: The Obama Democrats are now supporting offshore drilling, to suck up to ignorant public opinion and Big Oil interests. Any wonder young people are cynical about the political process? When things get rough and change is needed…well, let’s just have more of the same instead! I’m in the process of reading archaeologist David Stuart’s Anasazi America, a speculation about how the inability and unwillingness of the Anasazi to rein in their population explosion and unsustainable economy spelled the end of a 700-year-long civilization when it encountered abrupt climate change, in a way eerily similar to what we’re doing on a global scale today. And people wonder why I’m a pessimist.

Life After People: An online History Channel program portrays what the world will look like a millennium after we’re gone. Thanks to Craig De Ruisseau for the link.

Hmmm…: Has anyone else (old enough to remember) noticed how much the current US election campaign mirrors that of Kennedy-Nixon in 1960?

Locate a Locally-Owned Cafe, Bookstore or Theatre: An interesting first step towards a directory of locally-owned enterprises everyone can use to help restore the vitality of their local community economy. Thanks to Graham Clark in NZ for the link.

Clay Shirky on the Participative Nature of the Web: The always-brilliant Clay Shirky says that we ain’t seen nothing yet: wait until the 80% on the other side of the digital divide start to participate fully, knowledgeably and enthusiastically in the interactive facets of the Web. Bye bye one-way, time-fixed ‘broadcast’ media. Thanks to Rod Lucier for the link.

Just for Fun:

• Craig Ferguson explains, humorously and movingly, why Americans need to vote (as if that needed to be explained). Thanks to Valdis Krebs for the link. 
• And, for a spooky experience, Play with Spider. Thanks to Craig De Ruisseau for the link — and for the one that follows.
• And finally, from the one sentence story archive, my favourite story (#110): “When asked to name the one person absent from her life that she missed the most, she responded, ‘The person I hoped I’d be by this point in my life.’ “

Thought for the Week: From Robert Koehler: