Sunday, December 18, 2016

Are we at the table? No. 2017: The Second Era of Bitcoin Begins

Current BITCOIN PRICING:    USD: 792.29 / bitcoin

Has the African Diaspora taken advantage of this technology to sustain its' organizations from local to national nonprofits?

Too many questions regarding how does it work, what does it entail?

How many average individuals understand how the cell phone, text messaging, or even the basic principles of WIFI works or functions, or even the pricing.  We just use it as a tool for our personal or business purposes.

At BEMA we shall continue to press on using bitcoin mining as a means to fulfill our administrative and operations financial obligations, and use 100% of donations for the purpose intended.

Only as a collective moving away from our individual 'silos' as a community can we take advantage of and use electronic currency and bitcoin mining for our communities worldwide.

So many forums, summits, symposium on the mention of coming together as a collective, as a Pan-African collective to address our issues.  Electronic currency with bitcoin mining is the means that we have been searching for to bring us together to address issues in our communities, but creating OUR CURRENCY.

Simplistically, if you have a cell phone you are at step one.  Do your due diligence.  Join BEMA International for the next phase of our development as a collective.

Charles D. Sharp.  CEO  Black Emergency Managers International


http://www.coindesk.com/2017-second-era-bitcoin-begins/


Akin Fernandez, also known as Beautyon, is the owner of London-based bitcoin voucher service Azteco. He is also a writer who has extensively covered bitcoin and related services, and a software developer with 15 years of experience.
In this CoinDesk 2016 in Review special feature, Fernandez gives a passionate and personal overview of the cryptocurrency industry's year – 12 months that he says prove "there can be only one bitcoin".
2016 has been a fascinating year, where cellular mitosis has been bitcoin's guiding model.
The different camps previously in one group or cell have split. There are those who understand bitcoin and remain in its cell, and those that do not, and who are now in their own offshoot cells, “experimenting” on branches that are essentially non-viable.
The market participants who know how everything works, those in bitcoin, understand that there can only be one bitcoin.
There has been some excellent analysis making this crystal clear, and the fundamentally transformative work being done to extend bitcoin is categorical proof that this is true.
Bitcoin is the market winner because it is the first mover and definitive transaction layer. It is immutable not only in terms of the software rules, but the single minded, rational ethos of its protectors, who will not allow any corruption, hysteria or short-term thinking to spoil or endanger the project.

Radical change

Segregated Witness solves the transaction malleability problem, but more important than that, it makes all arguments about bitcoin’s transaction capacity limits a thing of the past. When SegWit activates, transactions using it will show up as spendable instantly – and there will be vastly more of them per second – killing another frequent and frankly, silly objection to bitcoin’s utility.
You can get a glimpse of what this will look and feel like with this beautiful colored coins demonstration of Lighting.
How bitcoin is used is about to change radically, and for the better. The final perceived limitations to it have been destroyed with SegWit. Now all that is left is building the software and businesses that will take advantage of this new, high-capacity bitcoin.
Spectators learned again this year that bitcoin is the only solution, and the roll out of SegWit is further proof of this, and it will cement bitcoin’s premier position. A small group of malcontents will always be attached to any software project, and if the history of software is anything to go by, these miscreants will eventually fade away because they have no software or solutions to offer.
If they don’t fade away and manage to scupper progress, then bitcoin was always doomed, and they deserve to win.

The resolution of the R3 experiment

All of the companies working from versions of the bitcoin software that is now two years old have forked off onto a path that doesn't have the incredible genius of Bitcoin Core underpinning their software. This year, they've struggled to find a use case for their software forks, have failed to attract developers to their GitHub repos and are still trumpeting secret “trials” with corporate sponsors which are nothing more than PR fluff.
These sponsors will eventually tire of funding insurgents who don’t have the skill to add fundamental game changing features to the bitcoin software they downloaded, and the first market participant working with SegWit-enabled bitcoin, clearly demonstrating what it does, will cause the hapless sponsor firms to pivot away from these worthless trials and the Snake Oil companies in them.
After claiming that bitcoin was "dead", R3 has managed to produce literally nothing. Incredibly, they asked their members what they want to see in a new platform, rather than innovating to provide one.
Part of their plan (which is now under way with their Corda repo) is to tap the mystical “Open Source Energy” where software magically comes from. None of these people, the bitcoin forkers or R3CEV, understand what they are dealing with both in terms of what bitcoin is and what it is for; why regulation can’t be built in to any software project whose aim is to replace bitcoin; or software development in general and how that process works. They have all been “Trumped”.
During the writing of this round up, there have been several interesting announcements. Goldman Sachs has left the R3 Blockchain Consortium, indicating once again that they have literally nothing of value to offer. I have no doubt that they are the first of many to abandon that ship without an engine, and you can be sure that this Emperor’s New Clothes affair is doomed to end up in Davy Jones’ repository.
Circle has dropped support for bitcoin payments. The grown ups are tired of bitcoin. But wait, the ex-CEO of Barclays has joined the board of Blockchain! One wallet maker drops bitcoin, and the ex-head of one of the world’s biggest banks joins the biggest bitcoin wallet.
Is bitcoin dying, or is it the next big thing? These people can’t decide!

Men without conviction

Coinbase, the company desperately trying to find out what it wants to be, adopted ethereum just before it was mortally wounded by the DAO disaster.
More on that below, but more importantly, they have just been served by the US government with a “John Doe” request for their users' information. This is an absolute disaster for them. Defending this attack will cost them millions of dollars in legal fees and may take years to resolve.
During this time of uncertainty, no one in bitcoin will trust them, drying up their already slow user adoption. The one good thing to come out of this is that the case against giving your details over to companies like Coinbase and Circle is now set in stone. Handing over your identity to a bitcoin company is not only worthless to you as a consumer, but it's very dangerous, and should always be avoided without exception.
Here’s why: even if their users have done nothing wrong, Coinbase is now set to be compelled to reveal their names, addresses, bank details and their bitcoin addresses and transaction records, and you can be sure these users will be brutally audited by the IRS.
So, regardless of whether they have done anything wrong and have paid all “their taxes”, they will now – at their own cost – have to prove their innocence (guilty before proven innocent; a complete violation of the US Constitution and Anglo-Saxon legal principles).
This attack on Coinbase demonstrates why ethical bitcoin companies have railed against KYC/AML.
It also shows by inference that bitcoin is anonymous enough to thwart the State, and they can only go after users if those users voluntarily attach their identities to bitcoin addresses controlled by companies in toxic jurisdictions. They can’t be easily identified in absentia of that voluntary self incrimination.
If this were not the case, the IRS would go directly to the users without referring to Coinbase at all. The fact that they can’t shows bitcoin is anonymous enough.
I expect more consumers and businesses will realize this in 2017. Perhaps President-elect Trump can stop all of this with his new America-centric administration. It’s abundantly clear to any capitalist that this John Doe action is 100% pure anti-American, and exponentially increases the risk of pushing bitcoin businesses to foreign jurisdictions.
I wrote about this before, in a consultation response to the British Government on how bitcoin should be handled.

Out of the ether

One of the most interesting events in 2016 was the “Ethereum Event”, where everything Bitcoin Core and others have been saying about the inherent difficulty and risk involved in writing complex cryptographic software came true, thanks to a single bearded man on a laptop running FreeBSD.
Since it was launched in Switzerland, cryptocurrency and bitcoin competitor ethereum has sought to radically extend bitcoin’s capabilities to a new separate database, one that was seen for a short time as the inevitable market winner over bitcoin. This is why Coinbase recklessly took the risk of offering ethereum's native token, "Ethers", to their customers.
One of the capabilities ethereum enables is the ability to create smart contracts, or agreements based entirely in software that execute rules – loosely speaking it's clauses – entirely in code. Smart contracts are an extra-legal way of parties agreeing on how business is conducted and matters settled.
It’s radical, extremely exiting, and the biggest smart contract ever, The DAO, the first “Decentralized Autonomous Organization”, attracted over $140m in investment from people around the globe – and then it was hacked.
But it wasn’t really hacked. An attacker found a fundamental flaw in The DAO’s software contract clauses, and contractually drained $59m worth of ether from it, into another contract beneath it. “Ethers” are the equivalent of bitcoin in the ethereum public database and software ecosystem.
In response to this attack, ethereum, which is the skeleton that the DAO was built on, had its permanent record reversed by the developers who control it, to reimburse investors who lost ether in the DAO.
This is anathema to people in the cryptocurrency space, and caused a group to “fork” ethereum at the point in the transaction record at which the DAO contract hack took place. Forking means the new developers made a complete copy of the ethereum transaction record, and started recording their own, separate record of transactions on to the end of it.
There are now two diverging ethereae – one called “ethereum” and the other, “ethereum classic”.
Both of the database records of these systems are identical up to the DAO event, their native tokens float freely on exchanges, and as of this writing, the prices of both have essentially collapsed.
By any metric, it is a fiasco, and it is an object lesson of why there can only be one bitcoin, and why bitcoin should not fork lightly.

The big lesson for 2017

Rather than seeing the DAO event as a perfect example of why what are now called cryptocurrencies require regulation, the DAO is in fact a vivid illustration of why bitcoin and software should not be regulated.
This DAO event cost a statistically insignificant amount of money to teach a powerful lesson to all market participants, including companies like Coinbase. Without an expensive lesson like this, markets would be less efficient in finding the best models and, as a result, more vulnerable due to the speed of iteration being slower.
Those advocating for regulation should bear in mind that these experiments would be taking place in free jurisdictions, and some of them are guaranteed to succeed, like the SegWit extension to bitcoin. If the additions like Segregated Witness were subject to regulation, the pace of bitcoin improvement would slow to a crawl.
An example of this innovation stifling in the medical industry are the over 4,000 medicines awaiting FDA approval in the US. This backlog is directly analogous to new bitcoin business models – software – being blocked from release to the public.
This is exactly why no bitcoin regulation or legislation must be passed, or even considered openly, as it will signal to entrepreneurs that they are better off in another jurisdiction, just as people travel to free countries to try experimental drug treatments when all FDA approved medicines have failed to cure their disease.
The risk of bitcoin is spread evenly to the people who voluntarily choose to work with it. Trying to control bitcoin pushes a far greater risk of a generational national loss on all citizens, one that can never be recovered from once the centre of bitcoin is captured and rooted in another place.
In order to foster innovation and to allay any fears of a possible explosion of legislation that will make turning a profit in bitcoin impossible, the jurisdiction that wants to win the battle for bitcoin businesses should enact a single law – a 150-year moratorium on any legislation that touches bitcoin.

Up for grabs

2017 is going to be very interesting, and the most welcome change on many fronts is the coming Trump administration, that will hopefully eschew computer illiteracy and embrace The American Constitution and bitcoin, which is synonymous with the frontier mentality of risk taking and American entrepreneurialism.
America can still win the bitcoin prize, just as it won with Silicon Valley. The title of “World Center of Bitcoin” is still up for grabs in 2017.
And in this piece, I haven't mentioned the looming prospect of the inevitable Venezuelan hyperinflation event, or the appalling fallout of the first shots in the war on cash in India, which triggered a 30% premium on bitcoin in that extraordinary country.
If there ever was a time for a service like Azteco, 2017 is it – a frictionless means of buying bitcoin, that reduces complexity to almost nothing and is perfect for the consumer. Combined with the welcome international expansion of Purse.io, the sublime and revolutionary OpenDime and the other products and services that are sure to follow, 2017 is going to exhilarate, entertain, enrich and enrage like never before!
Follow the author on Twitter and check out his Medium blog here.
Have an opinion on blockchain in 2016? A prediction for the year ahead? Emaileditors@coindesk.com to learn how you can contribute to our series.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, CoinDesk.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

2017 Africa Business Conference. Washington, D.C.

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FEMA EMI News Update - Training Bulletin - 1294 - CCA IEMC Recruitment and Training Opportunity - 1295 - E0968 AHPS LSC TtT Feb. 27 - March 3, 2017

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Haiti. Hurricane Matthew in Haiti as of 14 December 2016. Funding Overview

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Please find here an overview of the funding status of the emergency response to Hurricane Matthew in Haiti as of 14 December 2016. 

Funding Overview


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Community Engagement. Law Enforcement Funding Program. Body-Warn Camera.


$$  Follow the money.  Greater impacts by our communities nationwide should involve restrictions, disapproval, refusal of funding for law enforcement programs that do not benefit or enhance community engagement.  DOJ Body-Worn Camera policies and funding are just one program.  Investigate, use FOI act to review program funding of DOJ, DHS, and FEMA to local law enforcement agencies.

CDS.  CEO BEMA.


Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program
FY 2017 Competitive Grant Announcement
Applications Due: February 16, 2017

Overview
Law enforcement agencies across the country and worldwide are using body-worn cameras (BWC) as a promising tool to improve law enforcement interactions with the public. BWCs can provide a visual and audio record of interactions. Some preliminary evidence indicates that the presence of BWCs helps strengthen accountability and transparency, and can assist in de- escalating conflicts, resulting in more constructive encounters between the police and members of the community. This competitive solicitation is for law enforcement agencies seeking to establish or enhance BWC Policy and Implementation Programs (PIP). Successful applicants will be responsible for a mandatory 50 percent in-kind or cash match.

The FY 2017 BWC PIP will support the implementation of body-worn camera programs in law enforcement agencies across the country. The intent of the program is to help agencies develop, implement, and evaluate a BWC program as one tool in a law enforcement agency’s comprehensive problem-solving approach to enhance officer interactions with the public and build community trust.

Successful applicants will develop and implement policies and practices required for effective program adoption, and will address program factors including the purchase, deployment, and maintenance of camera systems and equipment; data storage and access; and privacy considerations. BJA expects the BWC programs to make a positive impact on the quality of policing in these jurisdictions and to inform national efforts to improve the use of BWCs more broadly. While BWC equipment may be purchased under this program, successful applicants must demonstrate a commitment and adherence to a strong BWC policy framework, including comprehensive policy adoption and requisite training.

Eligibility
Eligible applicants are limited to public agencies of state government, units of local government, and federally recognized Indian tribal governments that perform law enforcement functions (as determined by the Secretary of the Interior); or any department, agency, or instrumentality of the foregoing that performs criminal justice functions (including combinations of the preceding, one of which is designated as the primary applicant).

BJA welcomes applications under which two or more entities would carry out the federal award; however, only one entity may be the applicant. Any others must be proposed as subrecipients (“subgrantees").  The applicant must be the entity that would have primary responsibility for carrying out the award, including administering the funding and managing the entire Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program. Under this solicitation, only one application by any particular applicant entity will be considered. An entity may, however, be proposed as a subrecipient (“subgrantee”) in more than one application.

BJA may elect to fund applications submitted under this FY 2017 solicitation in future fiscal years, dependent on, among other considerations, the merit of the applications and on the availability of appropriations.

If clarification as to an entity’s eligibility is needed, applicants are encouraged to contact BJA to confirm their eligibility before developing a full application. BJA will consider supporting documentation relevant to a determination of eligibility.

Deadline
Applicants must register with Grants.gov prior to submitting an application. All applications are due to be submitted and in receipt of a successful validation message in Grants.gov by 11:59p.m. eastern time on February 16, 2017.


Technology Innovation for Public Safety (TIPS)
Addressing Precipitous Increases in Crime
FY 2017 Competitive Grant Announcement
Applications Due: February 7, 2017

Overview
While many jurisdictions are making significant progress implementing justice information sharing solutions to address critical gaps in coordinating crime prevention across organizations and jurisdictions, there remains significant challenges inhibiting the ability of the criminal justice system to respond to threats to public safety, especially when it comes to addressing significant increases in crime(s). For this solicitation, justice information-sharing technology refers to any technology (hardware and/or software, hosted residentially or remotely) that plays a role in the collection, storage, sharing, and analysis of criminal justice data. Funding under this program is
provided to assist state, local, territorial, and tribal jurisdictions in enhancing their justice information-sharing capacity through the use of innovative technological solutions in order to allow them to more effectively address disproportional and precipitous increases in crime(s).
This is not an equipment purchasing solicitation. Applications limited to equipment purchases will be ineligible and eliminated from funding consideration.

Eligibility
Under this solicitation BJA is looking for innovative technology implementation and applicant projects that specifically address precipitous increases in crime(s) on a local, county, or regional basis. Eligible applicants are public agencies of state governments, units
of local government, federally recognized Indian tribal governments that perform law enforcement functions (as determined by the Secretary of the Interior), or government agencies acting as fiscal agents for one of the previously listed eligible applicants.

BJA welcomes applications under which two or more entities would carry out the federal award; however, only one entity may be the applicant. Any others must be proposed subrecipients (“subgrantees"). The applicant must be the entity that would have primary
responsibility for carrying out the award, including administering the funding and managing the entire project. A subrecipient can represent nonprofit or for-profit organizations (including tribal nonprofit or for-profit organizations), faith-based and community organizations, or
institutions of higher education (including tribal institutions of higher education) that support initiatives to improve the functioning of the criminal justice system as well as the same type of agency as the primary applicant. It is important to note that for-profit organizations (as well as other recipients) must agree to forgo any profit or management fee and this must be stated in the application. Applications establishing these types of partnerships will receive priority consideration.

The application should also clearly identify the lead applicant and the subrecipient(s). The lead applicant must be the entity with primary responsibility for administering the funding and managing the entire project. Under this solicitation, only one application by any particular
applicant entity will be considered. An entity may, however, be proposed as a subrecipient (“subgrantee”) in more than one application.

To be eligible for funding under this solicitation applicants must propose solutions that will be deployed to jurisdictions that are currently experiencing precipitous or extraordinary increases in crime, in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 3756(b)(1) to assist them in addressing these increases. To assist with the application process and verify the applicant’s eligibility, a required maximum two-page document is required to be submitted with the application specifically identifying the increased crime(s) to be addressed and showing statistical data proving the increases over a two-year period.

BJA may elect to fund applications submitted under this FY 2017 solicitation in future fiscal years, dependent on, among other considerations, the merit of the applications and on the availability of appropriations.

Deadline
Applicants must register with Grants.gov prior to submitting an application. All applications are due by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on February 7, 2017.

Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program
FY 2017 Competitive Grant Announcement
Applications Due: February 2, 2017

Overview
Healthy, vibrant communities are places that provide the opportunities, resources, and environment that children and adults need to maximize their life outcomes, including high-quality schools and cradle-to-career educational programs; high-quality and affordable housing; thriving commercial establishments; access to quality health care and health services; art and cultural amenities; parks and other recreational spaces; and the safety to take advantage of these opportunities. Unfortunately, millions of Americans live in distressed communities where a combination of crime, poverty, unemployment, poor health, struggling schools, inadequate housing, and disinvestment keeps many residents from reaching their full potential. Further, research suggests that crime clustered in small areas, or crime “hot spots,” accounts for a disproportionate amount of crime and disorder in many communities. Research also reinforces that in some communities there are also a significant percentage of residents who are under criminal supervision or returning from correctional facilities, creating opportunities for community-based, proactive approaches for these residents that can prevent recidivism. The complexity of these issues has led to the emergence of comprehensive place-based and community-oriented initiatives that involve criminal justice and service providers from multiple sectors, as well as community representatives from all types of organizations, working together
to reduce and prevent crime and to revitalize communities. This kind of longer term, community driven approach is critical in communities where historic lack of resources and assistance can erode the confidence of residents in the ability of governments to solve these community challenges.

In many ways, community safety and crime prevention are prerequisites to the transformation of distressed communities, including the revitalization of civic engagement. Addressing community safety is the role of criminal justice agencies, the community, and its partners as a whole. To improve and revitalize communities, all relevant stakeholders should be included: law enforcement and criminal justice (such as prosecutors, defense, pretrial, corrections and reentry agencies), education, housing, city attorneys, health and human services, community and faith based nonprofits, local volunteers, residents, and businesses. Policymakers and their advisors are also critical partners in supporting these efforts to enhance relationships with residents to more effectively address local crime issues.

Eligibility
Eligible applicants are limited to states, institutions of higher education (including tribal institutions of higher education), units of local government, nonprofit organizations (including tribal nonprofit organizations), and federally recognized Indian tribal governments (as
determined by the Secretary of the Interior) as fiscal agent.

Category 1: Implementation Grant (NOTE: eligibility limited to previous BCJI Planning grantees)

Category 2: Planning and Implementation Grant (open to any eligible applicant)

For this solicitation, community is defined broadly as a geographic area that has social meaning to residents. In urban areas, the term community may be used interchangeably with neighborhood to describe a specific geographic area that is delineated by major streets or
physical topography. In urban areas, a community is typically less than two miles wide, while in rural and tribal areas it is often larger and part of an entire county.

The BCJI application requires a consortium of criminal justice, community, and/or human service partners (hereinafter referred to as “cross-sector partnership”) to plan and implement a targeted strategy addressing crime in a specific community. The cross-sector partnership must designate one eligible entity to serve as the fiscal agent. The fiscal agent must ensure that the cross-sector partnership is committed to and can successfully oversee key enforcement, prevention, intervention, and community engagement strategies and access and analyze key data (crime and other) with regular input from the research and law enforcement agency partners.

Jurisdictions are strongly encouraged to coordinate with and seek the support of their local U.S. Attorney and local policymakers and to connect with their other violent crime and community revitalization efforts.

Deadline
Applicants must register with Grants.gov prior to submitting an application. All applications are due by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on February 2, 2017

WHIHBCU Staff 

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