Phi Beta Iota: A most interesting melange with a strong focus and organized sections on policy reform, activism, the 2012 election, electoral reform, open primaries, the economy, energy and water, and the Independent Report.
Eagle: People’s Tri-Fecta: SOPA, Keystone, Wisconsin
Uncategorized
Occupy Wall Street looms over wins vs. SOPA bill, oil pipeline and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
Juan Gonzalez
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, January 19 2012
This nation’s fast-growing populist movement against unbridled corporate power scored an astonishing trifecta this week.
In the span of just a few hours on Wednesday, three vastly different protest movements all achieved startling success the same way: by mobilizing the fury of tens of thousands of ordinary citizens.
. . . . . .
By the end of the day, several stunned senators and congressmen who had originally supported the legislation — including both Democrats and Republicans — had jumped ship, and the bills in their current forms now seem dead.
Phi Beta Iota: What is NOT happening is a coalescence of Tea Party, Occupy, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich supporters, and independents. This should all be a dry run for first demanding Electoral Reform Act of 2012, and then electing We the People Reform Coalition.
Mini-Me: Kissinger to China on to Russia: Jeb Bush Will Be Next President, Out of Deadlocked Convention
Uncategorized
Kissinger vows to China: “Jeb Bush Will Be Next President”
Sorcha Faal
WhatDoesThisMean.com, 18 January 2012
A shocking report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Prime Minister Putin on the just completed meeting between China’s Vice Premier Li Keqiang and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger states that the Chinese were told that former Florida Governor John Ellis “Jeb” Bush, brother to the former US President and son of another, will be elected as the next American leader despite his currently not even being on the ballot.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping met with Jeb Bush yesterday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing where both pledged to advance cooperation between their two countries and, this report says, agreed that once Bush had taken office a ‘new era’ would begin in US-China relations.
According to this report, Kissinger told Keqiang that the Republican Party election process to select their nominee to run against President Obama was “completely manipulated” to ensure that their 2012 Convention would be “deadlocked” thus allowing for Jeb Bush to be nominated as a “consensus candidate” and thus his parties leader.
Marcus Aurelius: Britain Admits Moscow Spy Rock
Advanced Cyber/IO, Government
Britain Admits Moscow Spy Rock
MOSCOW, January 19 (RIA Novosti)
Britain has for the first time admitted it was spying when Russia’s state security service, the FSB, accused British diplomats of using a transceiver hidden inside a rock on a Moscow street.
Footage showing the alleged spies using the device was aired on Russian TV in January 2006. The FSB described it as “absolutely new spy technology.”
The UK Foreign Office then denied the claims.
But in a BBC documentary due to be broadcast later today, Jonathan Powell, then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff, admitted the footage was genuine.
“The spy rock was embarrassing,” Powell said, adding that the Russians “had us bang to rights.”
Phi Beta Iota: Spy rocks are not new–indeed one must give credit to the US for being the best at developing this technology in times past. What is most interesting about the report is the suggestion that the British are using non-governmental organizations for “deep cover.”
Jon Lebkowsky: The Meaning of the Internet Blackout
Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics
At “JOHO the Blog,” David Weinberger has a simple and very cool summary of the meaning of yesterday’s SOPA-induced blackout. “This is our Internet. We built it. We built it for us, not for you. We get to turn off the lights, not you.” Yes, indeed. It took a long time for the the Internet to smell like money to those folks who like that smell more than they like the smell of creativity, innovation, fellowship, commons, etc. Now it’s a platform for all media in digital formats that are easily replicated, therefore distribution is hard to control. Much of what flows across the Internet is freely shared by its creators, and there’s also channels for media that people pay for (like Netflix). A system that facilitates all that sharing, along with a high degree of interactivity, also makes it easy to do the natural sort of sharing that peopel will inherently do. Content providers could spend less time figuring out how to stop sharing, and more time figuring out how to build a business model that works in a social/sharing environment. People who invest time and money in media creation and production have a right to charge for it, but we need to rethink how that works in the 21st century networked world.
Posted on:: January 19th, 2012
The black that covered so many sites yesterday spoke well. I think there were four messages.
First, This is our Internet. We built it. We built it for us, not for you. We get to turn off the lights, not you.
Second, we are better custodians of culture than are culture’s merchants because we understand that culture is what we have in common. We feel pain every time something is held back from this Commons.
Third, just as we can make someone famous rather than having to passively accept the celebrities you foist upon us, we can make an idea politically potent. Going dark was the self-assertion with which political engagement begins.
Fourth, there’s a growing “we” on the Internet. It is not as inclusive as we think, it’s far more diverse than we imagine, and it’s far less egalitarian than we should demand. But so was the “we” in “We the People.” The individual acts of darkness are the start of the We we need to nurture.
Graphic: Mike Bloomberg Modern Napoleon NYPD Army 7th Largest Army in World
Political
Mini-Me: Black America Paralyzed, Powerless, Irrelevant – Year 4 of the Obama Era
UncategorizedHuh?
Black America Paralyzed, Powerless, Irrelevant: Year 4 of the Obama Era
Bruce A. Dixon
Black Agenda Report, 18 January 2012
Next week will mark the third anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration, and the unveiling of his fourth budget. Already White House spokespeople admit that it will be bad news for black and poor Americans. In three years this president has investigated and prosecuted not a single Wall Street banker or institution, not held up the wave of foreclosures a single week, not addressed the issues of black unemployment or black mass incarceration. But black America has silenced itself to protect the career of the First Black President.
Three years ago this week, more than 2 million souls, at least half of them African American, converged upon the nation's capital. They came, in what my colleague Glen Ford called the Great Black Hajj of 2008, to witness and celebrate the swearing in of the nation's first African American president. They wept and danced and sang and prophesied. They marveled at how far they had come. It was, their leaders assured them, the beginning of a new day.
Three years later, it's clear that this is indeed a new day, a new era. But for most of black America, it's not the one they hoped for. Nobody expected urban poverty would begin to vanish overnight, or that millions of acres of lost black farmland would be restored. But promises were made, and expectations were justifiably high, not because Barack Obama had promised to investigate Wall Street, prosecute banksters, or stop the imperial wars and illegal foreclosures, but because humans do have the right to expect justice at home and peace abroad, whether their leaders deliver these things or not.
