Phi Beta Iota: This is the month's good news story–the silver lining in the cloud over America resulting from the loss of political integrity within both political parties. We continue to support both universal service (to bond the public and keep Congress honest), and military service as the finest possible coming of age experience. The crucible of Iraq and Afghanistan have hurt America as an international political and economic entity, but they have also raised a new generation of young leaders–not just officers, but non-commissioned officers down to the “strategic corporal,” that could be the Greatest Generation of our era.
Battle-tested: From soldier to business leader
“The thinking was that we could bring in world-class leadership talent that was already trained and ready to go,” says Jennifer Seidner, a senior recruiting manager at Wal- Mart. “And then we could teach them retail, because we know that pretty well.”
Meme 1: Separate Agency Budget Intelligence (SABI). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) may be within a year of a huge management advance, understanding, with decision-support, the relative return on investment (ROI) of its investments in relation to the ten high-level threats, many of which it is uniquely positioned to address. Understanding that clean water and sanitation is the most important medical advancement since 1840, UNESCO is poised to call into question its excessive investments in vaccinations that yield little return and often create broader health issues, as opposed to focusing on micro-education (see meme 3) and micro-financiing of clean water initiatives.
Meme 2: integrated missions’ assessment and planning. This is the United Nations (UN) equivalent of Whole of Government planning, programming. and budgeting. While non-existent within most governments, the UN appears to be realizing that with its back to the fall and the fate of over 175 “failed states” on the table, it might be time to add intelligence (decision-support) to how it does business. This means understanding that all threats and all policies have to be evaluated together and in relation (the Eastern way), and that all budgets and behaviors must be planned–harmonized–so as to achieve integrated outcomes, not outcomes in isolation that undermine “rest of system” stability.
Meme 3: micro-education. This is a brand new meme but it defines practices that already exist and could be brought together. With the vast majority of subsistence farmers still using ancient methods such as furrow irrigation, and many not recognizing the value of rain harvesting, there is a route opening for UNESCO by which it can leverage Alvin Toffler's insight and substitute information for capital, labor, time, and space. Put bluntly, some micro-education is vastly more important than a complete (albeit mediocre) elementary education. Micro-education on water and health appears to be the center of gravity for jump-starting the entrepreneurial possibilities among the extreme poor. What no one has done is create a stacked list of “Essential Elements of Information” (EEI) that should be taught to the poor in priority order as part of “any and all” encounters.
There is a new nation-wide movement striving to innoculate the National Guard as well as state and local police forces against illegal orders from the Pentagon and the White House. The basic loyalty to the Republic Oath elements are below. This comes in reaction to three distinct tangibles and one unverified but provocative intangible that are circulating with increasing urgency among those who fear the two-party tyranny and a blindly-obedient Pentagon:
1) Haliburton prison camps on US soil
2) FEMA discussions with various state and local law enforcement agencies about “federalizing” state and local police in case of a “national” emergency
3) Document said to be circulating within Washington on the prospects of an armed rebellion within the USA (we think secession and nullification much more likely, with armed resistance only if the federal government stupidly tries to use force against state and local resistance.
4) Unverified but from a Special Forces source with eyes on and unblemished integrity: multiple US military camps, one in Washington State and one in Alabama, among other locations, at which battalion size units of foreign troops (men without a country) have been kept in isolation, armed and trained, for contingency use within the USA. The same source says there is a long running PSYOP profiling program to identify for contingency need those US military personnel who would be willing to disarm US citizens if ordered to do so.
Never thought we'd get to this point. Visit the site above for a closer look. This is a movement Of, By, and For We the People, and it has very strong West Point, retired USMC, and National Guard support. In our view, the US military itself is beginning to realize the topsy-turvy nature of the morphing of the Global War on Terror (which is a tactic, not a target) into a War on Liberty right here in America. As we have long maintained, it is vital that our military personnel remember that Integrity is about loyalty to the Constitution, not to the chain of command.
OATH KEEPERS: ORDERS WE WILL NOT OBEY
1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies. 10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
The attached opinion piece by Juan Cole is an excellent summary of how the self destructive nexus of Israeli and US foreign policies has pushed both countries into the grand-strategic equivalent of a psycho ward.
Chuck SPinney
Full Commentary Online
The Decline of the Israeli Right and the Increasing Desperation of the ‘Anti-Semitism' Charge
The great divide between liberal Jewish Americans and the Israeli Right has lurked as an issue since the Likud Party first challenged Labor dominance in the late 1970s. It is now coming to a boiling point, even as Israel's reputation in the world is sinking. As rightwing policies more visibly fail, the Likudniks are flailing around making fools of themselves by smearing critics of those policies as racists. (Anyone who knows how Likud supporters talk among themselves about Arabs and other outsiders can only be amused at their impudent hypocrisy in playing the race card.)
The mess that Mossad's mercenaries (some of them possibly from the Fateh Palestinian faction also opposed to Hamas) made of a routine political assassination in Dubai of a Hamas agent funneling arms from Iran is a blow against Ithe image of daring, stone-cold competence cultivated by the Israeli security establishment. The killing went smoothly, but it transpires that the assassins had not only stolen the passport identities of British and Irish citizens, but those of several Israeli dual citizens originally from the UK, as well. Mossad thus made potential problems for those passport holders for the rest of their lives, since Interpol will be interested every time the numbers pop up at an airport check-in.
My good friend Werther has been beavering away again in the US manure pile and this time has resurrected Engels' theory of False Consciousness to help explain the mismatch between ideology and reality that has become enshrined in contemporary American political psychology.
Full Story Online
False Consciousness
By Werther*
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.”
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
EXTRACTS:
Or so the conventional wisdom.
Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation has written an interesting refutation of that widely held notion. [1] He asserts that the last 30 years' of so-called free market doctrine have not aided, but rather retarded the cause of small business. Intriguingly, he cites, but does not expand upon, the following finding: “One recent study, based on data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, placed the United States second to last out of 22 rich nations in the percentage of workers who run their own businesses. Only Luxembourg ranked lower.” . . .
Lynn argues that a key inflection point in government policy towards small business came in 1981, when the Reagan administration essentially stopped enforcing anti-monopoly and small business-protection statutes.
Phi Beta Iota: Reagan, whom we generally admired, also busted labor with his unconstitutional use of the military to break the air-traffic controller strike. We ureg one an all to read the entire Op Ed and the three linked references. American anti-intellectualism and American delusion are cresting at precisely the time we need ground-truth, truth at any cost.
We stopped subscribing to WIRED when advertising crossed the 60% mark, but this issue came to us and has a useful article on the end of old money, which is to say, the end of money where banks and credit cards take an undeserved cut from every transaction while taking huge risks with your money as collateral.
The Open Money movement is proceeding apace, with community-oriented credit cards like Interra, new forms of home rule stripping corporations of their illegitimate “personality” status, and moving money from Wall Street to the local bank.
Meanwhile, Twitter is changing the world again by becoming a trusted point to point money transfer agent. here are five new ways to pay that cut out the banks and credit card organized legalized crime lords:
Twitpay. Type a friend's Twitter handle, a dollar amount, and twitpay to transfer funds to their PayPal account.
Zong. Instead of entering credit card information anew for every online purchase, users fill in their phone number and the charge shows up on their monthly bill.
Square. The latest from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, this 3/4 inch cube turns any iPhone into a credit card reader.
GetGiving. This mobile app uses PayPal to enable charities to accept small donations without the usual exorbitant credit card transactions fees.
Hub Culture. Travelers can avoid the hassle and fees of swapping dollars for euros by transacting in vritual currency in this international network of workstations.
To our surprise, PayPalitself, central to most alternative schemes, was not highlighted other than being mentioned above.
A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by.
The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130 pilot came back on and said, “What did you think of that?”
