The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
3 examples:
IBM is working with DARPA
IBM Testing Biometric Technology for Retail Advertising
How IBM Tech Helped Jump Start the Holocaust
Comment: I would be cautious+keen of the “smart planet” vision of those running IBM, they have made the brand popular for spreading to all cities. Keep an eye on them (biometric pun, sorry) and be friendly.
Now that the labor unions have joined the General Assembly (an amorphous ever changing coalition of the concerned across the Republic), the way is open to begin focusing on what is to be done in the next six months.
My view of the Core Message:
CORRUPTION is the common enemy, both in government and in the private sector.
ELECTORAL REFORM is the singular demand.
SUNSHINE CABINET is the method.
INTEGRITY is the core value.
COMMONWEALTH RESTORED is the outcome.
My view of the Core Method:
Merit. Be right. Non-violence and moral conduct at all times is vital UNLESS attacked illegally, at that point you “rush and crush.” Offer Truth & Reconciliation, not revenge and certainly not confiscation of assets outside the rule of law. The point here is to achieve a “cease and desist” on government corruption and financial terrorism.
Message. Electoral Reform
Money. Big Bat for the Republic. 25 million times $10 is $250 million. 50 million times $20 is 1 billion. 100 million times $40 is 4 billion. Wall Street cannot match a public combination of money and mass.
Means. Use mass power on individual Senators and Representatives. Any Senator, any Representative, and any Governor that fails to introduce Electoral Reform Act for national and state passage should be toast–run out of office. Create coalition cabinets and balanced budgets at every level from zip code and municipality to county, state, bio-region, and national.
Amitai Etizioni Et Al (33 pages)
Amitai Etzioni: Reflections of a Sometime-Public Intellectual
Jacob S. Hacker, You Might Be A Public Intellectual If…A Checklist for Political Scientists, a Challenge for Political Science
Gary Orfield, A Life in Civil Rights
Lorenzo Morris, Rules for Public Intellectuals
Theodore J. Lowi, Public Intellectuals and the Public Interest–Toward a Politics of Political Science as a Calling
See Also by Amitai Etzioni:
1990 Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics
1994 Spirit Of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda
1995 New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions, and Communities
1998 The New Golden Rule: Community And Morality In A Democratic Society
2004 From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations
2003 My Brother's Keeper: A Memoire and a Message
2004 The Common Good
2009 New Common Ground: A New America, New World
Tip of the Hat to Contributing Editor Berto Jongman for the find.
This is an updated version of the 2002 original, “Citizen in Search of a Leader.” We are now in Epoch B. Instead of leaders, we need facilitators, and the leadership comes from within the larger collective as it achieves ethical transparent consensus.
Summary of Qualifications
America needs a facilitator that is balanced, thoughtful, integrative, supportive of dissent and debate, and above all, educated enough to craft a national strategy for security and prosperity that will stand the test of time. I want a facilitator who is at least as committed to the future of my children as to the passing security and prosperity of the moment. Individuals obsessing on being elected or re-elected need not apply.
In my view as a citizen, there are four areas where the right individual, as a team builder rather than a personal icon, could help America restore its balance. These four areas are: 1) electoral reform, 2) intelligence reform, 3) global issues & national security reform, and 4) governance reform inclusive of corporate ethics and accountability.
I would sum up the objective of all four reform initiatives with the phrase: “Creating a Smart Nation, Of, By, and For the People.”
Random Communications from an Evolutionary Edge
Occupation Catalytic Butterfly
Along with a lot of other people, I've been wondering what's going on with Occupy Wall Street. Although it obviously shares energy with the Wisconsin occupation and Arab Spring, its mix of persistence and lack of demands makes it a puzzle, dragging it right out of the usual boxes we think with. It gets under the skin like a disturbingly peaceful ongoing Stonewall riot or something…
I've been trying to sort it out because Occupy Wall Street's sibling, the October2011DC occupation, is imminent. Should I go there? Will it be a watershed “trigger event” I shouldn't miss if I want to weave my ideas, visions, and life energy into its impact on the world?
About a week ago I decided not to go. I'm trying to focus on writing a book on empowered public wisdom. But every day I feel more ironic. I mean, isn't that what I'm seeing?! How old fashioned is it to focus on a book when exuberant Transformational Aliveness is exploding before my very eyes! Nevertheless, I'm sticking to my decision. At least I think I am.
I've read a few brilliant articles about Occupy Wall Street that dig deeper than the usual commentaries from the Left, Right, Center and Alpha Centauri. Two this morning – here and here – stimulated the bloggy response you are currently reading. But I don't know whether any of these analyses – including my own – are correct. But then again, is “correct” what's going on here?
My own tentative take is that Occupy Wall Street – and perhaps each of its offsprings and siblings – is a catalytic butterfly. “Catalytic” because a catalyst makes big things possible, easier, and faster without, itself, seeming to do or change much. “Butterfly” because the “butterfly effect” arises in complex, chaotic systems like 21st century global civilization – and any given small flap may (unpredictably, depending on circumstances) generate hurricane-stimulating power. My own suspicion is that important things will happen because Occupy Wall Street is happening. But they probably won't be anything that Occupy Wall Street is trying to make happen.
Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Occupation Catalytic Butterfly”
On Sunday November 6 the Tar Sands Action will return to Washington DC to send an unmistakable message to the President.
Exactly one year before the election, we want to encircle the whole White House to ask President Obama to reject Keystone XL and live up to his promise to free us from the tyranny of oil. In doing so, we want to remind him of the power of the movement that he rode to the White House in 2008. This is bigger than any one person – President or no – and we will carry on, with or without him.
Phi Beta Iota: November 6th is also a useful target date for demanding that Congress and the White House accept for action the public demand for Electoral Reform.
CORRUPTION is the common enemy, both in government and in the private sector.
ELECTORAL REFORM is the singular demand.
SUNSHINE CABINET is the method.
INTEGRITY is the core value.
COMMONWEALTH RESTORED is the outcome.
Phi Beta Iota: This brilliant analysis cuts deeply to two core points: that a tiny handful of banks have been controlling 90% of the debt and manipulating the destruction of economies — shorting the Euro as well as the US dollar — and that governments have not been acting together. He neglects two fundamentals: the lack of integrity in these same government, most in collusion with the banks against the public; and the lack of integrity — the blatant persistent transnational criminal activities of the banks — of the handful of banks that have brought the world to the brink. Electoral reform is needed to cleanse the governments, and the governments should be taking legal action to destroy the banks and recover the criminally-rooted losses. We totally agree that Europe should default in unison, but we also feel that global criminal action against the specified banks and all of their owners, partners, and senior managers should be taken toward the aim of de-privatizing public goods and confiscating assets back toward the public commonwealths. Put bluntly, it is time we melt Goldman Sachs down and deprive the individual financial criminals of 95% of their wealth that is rooted in deliberate criminal activity against people and nations.
260911 1103
Alessandro Politi
Euro crisis and common sense 1
What does this crisis mean?
In times of emergency clarity of analysis and purpose is of paramount importance, especially when public leadership is so mediocre. In this first piece we will look first at the analysis framework at global level.
Forget about the markets. This is just a misleading shorthand expression that obscures a simple fact. The OECD has observed that, after decades of M&A, during this year 9 major economic actors control beyond 90% of the derivatives market (i.e. CDS, CDO, exchange rate swaps). They are:
This is an oligopolistic market where small stakeholders are just cannon fodder and governments have generally no sufficient financial muscle. These are the entities that make the market and break national financial reputations, economic fundamentals notwithstanding.
