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Welcome to #OpSWN!
This project was conceived to help us all collaboratively map the relationships and finance/behavior patterns between the corporate and government players determining the quality of our environment, and of our lives. As @GeorgieBC points out so eloquently in this http://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/good-bye-wikipedia-hello-something-else/ article, we have grown past the need to have our data interpreted and spoon fed to us by the very corporations and politicians who have a vested interest in manipulating our perception of reality. From the article above link above:
"To be a stigmergical project instead of a cooperative one, each contributor must be free to work according to their own ideas and the power of the user group must be limited to acceptance or rejection of the final project for their own use only. This is simple in a structure like pearltrees where everyone creates their own pearls or pearltrees and others link to them or not as they see fit. It is simple in an RSS or Twitter feed where anyone can create their own list of voices to follow. It is impossible in Wikipedia."
It's time to own our knowledge and ability to share what is important to US with one another. We've found Pearltrees to be a wonderful collaboration tool, and are hoping you will like working with it as well. At the end of this outline you will find some FAQ's from the Pearltrees website. First we'll just review why and how Pearls were used to map relationships in support of the Elsipogtog Sovereignty call and fracking resistance.
Canada is as transparent as it's tar sands discharge
We have begun to map the corporate players in New Brunswick, but hit a wall on the politicians as there is no public data available for campaign financing, or political financing, in New Brunswick. Their election reporting site says:
"The Political Process Financing Act requires each registered political party to file semi-annually with the Supervisor a financial return disclosing the sources of political contributions, other revenues, and details as to how those funds were expended. Each registered district association and each registered independent candidate are required to file a similar return annually."
but there is NO DATA there! Furthermore:
"Over the course of 2013, Elections New Brunswick will provide the public with the ability to search on-line for the financial returns submitted by the political parties, district associations, candidates and third parties." http://www1.gnb.ca/elections/finance/financereturns-e.asp
Well, it's late October of 2013, and the only data posted there is an Excel spreadsheet with a picture of a graph in it showing that 100% of the required 2012 disclosure forms have been received. Okay...then why aren't they PUBLISHED? It appears that we will have to do that ourselves. We will post a link to the site that tells you who all your "representatives" are, and hope that a local citizen answers our request to obtain and post disclosure documents so we can see (and Pearl) their direct financial relationship to the corporations. For instance, Steven L Mueller, SWN President, Chief Executive Officer, Director has a total annual compensation for 2011 of $6,118,755 http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-u=1_1284199&N-p=92826247&N-s=1_9552981&N-f=1_9552981&N-fa=9552976. Who did he buy in the US election? (http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-s=1_9552981&N-u=1_1284199&N-p=93146817&N-f=1_9552981&N-play=2&N-fa=9552976)
Reality TV stars are not more interesting than the Ruling Elite
In addition to this factual, financial information about those who rule, we need gossip! That's right...I said it...good old-fashioned gossip! Because it is a bit interesting when André Desmarais, son of Paul Desmarais (worth 4.5 billion or so), marries former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's daughter, France. Where did all their new furniture come from - a tax write off? What Board of Directors do they and their friends sit on? What charities do they run and contribute to? These people are the new Ruling Elite, and we should know more about them than we do Justin Beiber, who is irrelevant.
Our goal is to map the relationships among all these people and their business interests - to follow the money. Any intersections found between the corporations, or between them and the politicians, are relevant information if we are to understand whose interests are really being served in our communities. Pearltrees offer us a simple way to document and visualize these relationships.
Most of the relationships among business people will be found in their alliance organizations and councils. We focused on The Atlantica Centre for Energy to map the first level of relationships influencing the #Elsipogtog action. Why? Because it clearly tells us who is making money off this project. At some point we can add examples of the tactics each of these corporations use when doing business - which would tell us which tactics they're likely to use against an opponent. There is much that can be mapped - your imagination is the only limit. http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-u=1_1284199&N-p=92972708&N-s=1_9566369&N-f=1_9566121&N-fa=9558533
Pearltrees can accept 3 basic forms of data: URL links to published content, image uploads, and brief notes. It is not a venue to publish new information in, but you can link to your own content. The free version has a limit for how many pearls can be added to any one branch (read the FAQs for more information on the process), so we mapped out the relationships in a collaborative virtual notepad first using Riseup.net - because they are awesome! Support them if you can https://help.riseup.net/en/donate . You can use this as your starting point if you'd like - it shows the information we'd like to see added for the People involved in these organizations, and who needs completion.https://pad.riseup.net/p/OpSWN_People You can use Hack Pad if you'd like to keep your research pad confidential https://hackpad.com/
We utilized URL links to existing data that was vetted to insure quality. Notes for explanations are good only where they can be pasted somewhere to link to, or their content is limited in lengths accepted by Pearl notes. "You can’t put more than 16 pearls in the first ring of a pearltree, you can’t put more than 32 pearls or pearltrees in the second ring or more than 48 pearls or pearltrees in the third ring." To get started with pearls, see the FAQ'shttp://www.pearltrees.com/s/faq/en Mapping out your data before starting to pearl may seem like a waste of time, but will save frustration in the long term. We gave you a copy of our garbled conversation while getting started with Pearling so you could understand how the information flows. See this pad for unpearled research and background. https://pad.riseup.net/p/OpSWN_ResearchNotPearled
Have FUN! :D Look for us on twitter in the #OpSWN hashtag, and contact @Kaymee and/or @GeorgieBC when you have pearls you'd like added to the original research, or research you'd like US to add to ours. Trick or Treat...Happy Hunting :)
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