Congress shall work toward a Constitutional Amendment that places Election Integrity outside the power of the government. That amendment, whose terms shall be formulated via the National Initiative for Democracy (National Ballot Initiatives). It might include but not be limited to such initiatives as: 1. Elimination of personhood for any organization
2. Affirmation of universal voter registration
3. Abolishment of the Electoral College
4. Balanced Budget
5. Termination of the Federal Reserve
6. Constraint on size and budget of the US Government
7. Re-enfranchises convicts who complete their sentences
NOTE: DC Statehood does not require Constitutional Amendment.
As with all of the other elements (this makes eleven in all), this one is still subject to crowd-sourcing and perhaps a mix of Citizen Wisdom Councils and National Ballot Initiatives.
My bottom line is that the eleven element together are more than able to attract, unify, and mobilize 100 million voters who can “occupy” the home offices of their Senators and Representatives and DEMAND, as a condition for NOT beginning recall actions against each of them, that this bill be introduced, passed into law, and signed by the President before 4 July 2012.
Time is the one strategic variable that cannot be bought nor replaced. In my view 2012 has the potential to be a transformation year, but only if We the People mobilize, unify (Reform Coalition), and demand in unison–publish and read across the land a Statement of Demand, while insisting that each Member sign a Pledge as the price of being allowed to remain — on probation — as an incumbent.
Hydrogen is a fuel that has seemingly limitless potential, but scientists have only been able to produce it from fossil fuels, like natural gas. That is, until now. A doctoral student in mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware has designed a new type of reactorthat produces hydrogen using nothing more than concentrated sunlight, zinc oxide, and water. And best of all, the zinc oxide used by the reactor can be reused, meaning that once the reactor is up and running, it would be self-sustaining.
Doctoral candidate Erik Koepf designed a large cylindrical reactor that is made of heat-insulating ceramic materials. With some help from gravity, zinc oxide powder is fed into the system from 15 hoppers, and concentrated sunlight enters through a quartz window and the aperture ring.
Click on Image to Enlarge
This week, Koepf will bring his reactor to Switzerland, where it will be tested for the first time at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. In the testing phase, concentrated light equal to the energy of 10,000 suns will be focused on the reactor, bringing the temperature up to about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the zinc oxide will be added, creating a reaction that will convert the powder into zinc vapor. Finally, the zinc will be reacted with water, producing hydrogen.
“The idea is to create a small, well-insulated cavity and subject it to highly concentrated sunlight from above,” Koepf explained in a release. If successful, the reactor could represent a major breakthrough, providing a new source of emission-free, completely sustainable fuel. Koepf’s advisor professor Ajay Prasad says he can imagine huge arrays of these devices in the desert producing hydrogen on an industrial scale.
Dale R. Corson, a nuclear physicist who died last week, is best remembered as the Cornell University President who peacefully led his campus through the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam era. But he also played an influential role in deliberations over the role of secrecy in scientific research.
Dr. Corson chaired a 1982 committee of the National Academy of Sciences that produced a landmark study entitled “Scientific Communication and National Security,” which became known as the Corson Report.
In sober and measured tones, the Corson Report pushed back against calls for increased secrecy in government-funded science:
“Current proponents of stricter controls advocate a strategy of security through secrecy. In the view of the Panel security by accomplishment may have more to offer as a general national strategy. The long-term security of the United States depends in large part on its economic, technical, scientific, and intellectual vitality, which in turn depends on the vigorous research and development effort that openness helps to nurture… Controls on scientific communication could adversely affect U.S. research institutions and could be inconsistent with both the utilitarian and philosophical values of an open society.”
President Reagan cited Dr. Corson in National Security Decision Directive 189, “National Policy on the Transfer of Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information,” which seemed to affirm that fundamental research should remain unrestricted to the maximum extent possible. In fact, however, that directive imperfectly reflected the input of the Corson Report, noted Harold C. Relyea in his book “Silencing Science: National Security Controls and Scientific Communication.”
Still, many of the issues identified by Dr. Corson and his colleagues, and the concerns they expressed, remain current today and have not reached an unequivocal resolution, as evidenced most recently by the latest U.S. government policy on dual use biological research.
Manuela Picq has just completed her time as a visiting professor and research fellow at Amherst College.
Today's political ethics are surprisingly similar to the doctrine of discovery set by the Vatican back in 1452.
Al Jazeera, 04 Apr 2012
New York, NY – One does not think of archaic papal bulls when witnessing democratic states like Brazil or the United States building dams on Amazon rivers or drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean. Yet today's political ethics are surprisingly similar to the doctrine of discovery set by the Vatican back in 1452.
Fifteenth-century papal bulls that declared war against all non-Christian peoples also encouraged the conquest and exploitation of enemy territories throughout the world. European explorers like Columbus took possession of newly “discovered” non-Christian lands with the express authorisation of the Catholic Church.
This internationally recognised doctrine allowed claims to be made on “empty” invaded lands outlasted European absolute monarchies and has become enshrined in secular nation-states. In the US, for instance, Chief Justice John Marshall used the right of discovery in 1823 to invalidate native claims over their land and to assert the authority of the US government over land titles.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) recently disowned the doctrine of discovery, perhaps in light of its centrality at the 11th session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues this coming May in New York. Better late than never.
The discourse that rationalised the colonisation of the Americas in the sake of Christianity is the same that justifies protecting human rights in Iraq or privatising water supplies for the sake of development.
Every once in a while, there is a flash of intelligence at The Washington Post. This short blog illuminates both the true costs of various options around carbon emissions, and the importance of considering “360 degree” trade-offs.
Humanity is making dismal progress on curbing its greenhouse gas emissions. That’s led some scientists to dream up zany geoengineering schemes to avert drastic climate change. One promising idea involved sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. Alas, new research suggests, this isn’t very practical:
You can strip CO2 from the air with chemical filters or by boosting reactions occurring as rocks weather. Colin Axon of Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK, and Alex Lubansky at the University of Oxford estimated what it would take to remove the 30 gigatonnes of CO2 we emit every year.
That would mean processing 75,000 Gt of dry air. Scaling up proposals to filter air would use 180 Gt of clean water per year, depriving 53 million people of water, on top of the 66 per cent of the world’s population who will face water shortages by 2025.
To make matters worse, mopping up carbon dioxide with chemical filters would use an enormous amount of energy and be prohibitively expensive. A study last year in Nature pegged the cost of carbon dioxide removal at about $600 per ton, which is about seven times more pricey than even the high-end estimates of carbon taxes deemed necessary to curtail the world’s emissions.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a long and interesting presentation of two points of view. In short, the US political system, the upper reaches of the US government, and the US military “clerk-leaders” are an incestuous self-sustaining circle of corruption. We do not have an “Obama” problem. We have an Israel / Goldman Sachs / Fed / Wall Street / two-party political tyranny problem. If Mitt Romney is elected, that just puts the drug cartel side of Wall Street in charge, instead of the Israeli rope a dope side of Wall Street. There is nothing honorable or useful about the two-party political system in the USA. That we should even be having this discussion of coups etcetera is a sign of how far from a Republic we have fallen.
The non-violent alternative has been clearly presented at We the People Electoral Reform Coalition (and is still viable), but not a single presidential candidate now running has the integrity to see the logic of supporting the Constitution instead of running their own one-man show. We project that Obama will win again with the lowest voter turn-out in history (i.e. the Independents will not vote for Romney, or vote), and that the US economy will implode in 2013 with major social disruption in 2014.
Marcus Aurelius Sends:
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: I assess that the current crop of key military leaders will never revolt in any way against the President, the Commander in Chief. I see it as beyond the realm of the possible.
Here's why:
FIRST, you can take it to the bank that every key three or four star leader appointed since POTUS was inaugurated in 2009 has already pledged personal obedience to him. Count on it as being a part of the screening process for these “Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed” (PAS) positions.
All O-9 and O-10 (Lieutenant General/Vice Admiral and General/Admiral) positions are PAS. Count on it being done very slickly, with the candidate being asked to confirm something like that, if nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, he/she will be and perform as a full member of “the President's team.”
SECOND, if the firing of GEN McChrystal and the passover of GEN Petraeus for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn't trigger a coup, nothing is likely to.
THIRD, if you observe what the Chairman, the Service Chiefs, and other key leaders are saying in public and writing, it's pretty clear that they've pledged their full support to DoD as the principal bill payer for Federal deficit reduction, even though that imposes military and strategic risks on the Nation.
FOURTH, uniformed military leaders are moving expeditiously to execute POTUS' will in such strategically questionable areas as withdrawal from Afghanistan. They are doing what their training and centuries of developed ethos have conditioned them to do: subordinating themselves to civilian masters.
FIFTH, at least for the Army, our 237-year old Service culture is such that we never protest anything. Soldiers, enlisted and officer, are the ultimate obedient servants. GA MacArthur was a clear aberration and everyone knows his efforts didn't work out well for him personally or professionally. We Soldiers lead all other Services in “yes sir, yes sir, three bags full”. No matter how much a President or a Congress abuses American citizens, American Soldiers, or the Army as an institution, the Army will quietly suck it up and come back for more. Check out Carl Builder's Masks of War if you want to explore this dimension further.
So, to recap: I dispute Mr. Perry's assessments and assertions and counter-assert that POTUS is absolutely safe from a hard or soft coup attempt by any element of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Below the line: the original article quickly removed from the original site.
