The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
13 Books on the Future of Money & New Economy
I tapped the twittersphere the other day for the best books on the ‘future of money’ and the new/emerging economy & infrastructures. Here’s what you came up with. Attribution below each book. Other suggestions welcome! I’m getting ready for a deep dive into this content area this fall, and appreciate all the guidance you can provide!
That's a good question. Here's a partial answer that challenges conventional wisdom: most crowds that stampede, crushing people, do so when entering a venue. Why? One reason is that people are more likely to surge forward when they think they are about to be excluded from something. The other more important reason is that most venues aren't designed for rapid entry. Venue owners erect artificial barriers to entry for commercial reasons. In contrast, most venues are designed to enable fast exits and offer multiple ways to leave (per the fire code, etc.).
The lesson here is that people charged with controlling the crowd (for commercial or “security reasons”) are actually the reason most people die during crowd “stampedes.”
Do People Panic/Riot/Rampage During Disasters?
The conventional wisdom is that people panic during disasters. Worse, it's assumed that many people immediately become feral looters when disasters hit. Widespread panic has become the government's worst nightmare. The boogey man that is trotted out to explain why governments need to lie (in order to keep people from panicking) or why military intervention/curfews are necessary.
However, as with stampeding crowds, the conventional wisdom on this is wrong. Rebecca shows in her book, A Paradise Built in Hell, that people don't typically panic when they find themselves at the ground zero of a disaster (after the immediate danger is over). Through the use of detailed research on a number of extreme disasters, she shows that in most cases people are very practical when confronting disaster. Better yet, they are often more courteous and much more likely to help each other when things fall apart than they are normally. They come together to survive.
In contrast to the people on the ground, she shows that the only people that actually do panic during disasters are the elites — from those with wealth to those running the government's response (I'm not talking about the first responders actually on the ground doing good work). They panic over the loss of control a disaster brings. This often results in extreme actions that only serve to make things worse: from martial law authorized to use deadly force against looters (often just people trying to survive the situation) to arbitrarily hearding people into locations that aren't able to support large groups of people.
What This Means
The lesson here is that during an extreme disaster, the people you may most need to fear are those in charge, particularly if their motives are focused on protecting elite interests put at risk by the disaster. Rebecca has a caution for governments that don't align their actions with those of the people: history shows that disasters can serve as the trigger for revolutions if handled with bad intent.
Phi Beta Iota: On the last remark, that is called a precipitant of revolution, as opposed to the preconditions that already exist, as we have been saying for some time, across the USA.
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I got hold of a few truths, and could not help remembering the Phi Beta Iota quote:
Fedor Dostoevsky: A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.
Here are some facts:
1) Saydabad is one of the worst districts in Wardak
2) Chinook loss should be attributed to American hubris.
3) July reporting shows US patrols increasingly timid.
4) Current rate for Afghan Army defectors is 30,000 rupees, around US$650, which appears to include their bringing over their weapon and other gear.
5) Crash killed 38, including 22 members of the elite SEAL Team 6 and their support element. Seven were Afghans so we are at 29, there was a crew of three. So, did we send in 22 SEALS and a crew of three, plus the Afghans to rescue six Rangers? The numbers on the Chinook do not add up. There is something seriously fishy about the government story.
6) Sure feels like Viet-Nam deja vu, where the public could not trust the government or the media to report accurately on anything having to do with our presence therer.
From Margaret Flowers, M.D. and activist with the Physicians for a National Health Planto friends of the Tikkun Community and Network of Spiritual Progressives:
Beginning on October 6, 2011, we (thousands of individuals) will gather together to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C.We will hold a rally that day starting at noon with music and speakers, including Rabbi Michael Lerner. Then those of us who are able will participate in a nonviolent resistance action. At the end of the day, we will stay in the Plaza. We are determined to stay until we see action being taken to end corporatism and militarism and move towards a peaceful, just and sustainable society.
Continue reading “Event: 6 Oct Freedom Plaza DC Occupation & Resistance”
Phi Beta Iota: This report, while responsible (unlike the current food fight a year later), does not go far enough. It allows the borrowing of one trillion a year to continue, while observing that interest on the debt could reach one trillion a year by 2020. The principle recommendations, all sound but insufficient, are listed in the Overview section.
By Winslow T. Wheeler
Military.com, 9 August 2011
The rhetoric of people rushing to rescue Pentagon spending from “completely unacceptable” cuts is quite hysterical. Leading the chorus has been Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. He termed the possible defense budget cuts (about $850 billion over 10 years according to most) a “doomsday mechanism,” if the automatic sequestration trigger of Obama’s debt deal with the Republicans in Congress is pulled. Some think tank types, opining in the Washington Post and the New York Times, have deemed these reductions “indiscriminately hacking away” at the Pentagon’s budget and something that could “imperil America’s national security.” Their defense spending allies, including multiple generals and admirals sitting atop various Pentagon bureaucracies, confirm it all with descriptions like “very high risk” and “draconian.”
It should be pointed out that these people are underestimating the size of the potential cuts the new debt deal could theoretically cause. The $850 billion supposition measures the reductions against an artificial “baseline” from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that does not include the actual budget growth the Pentagon had scheduled for itself. Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments tells us in a useful analysis (“Defense Funding in the Budget Control Act of 2011”) that the debt deal’s automatic sequesters, if implemented, would mean $968 billion in cuts over ten years from the DOD budgets heretofore planned – over $100 billion more in cuts.
August 9, 2011
The Whack-a-Mole Endgame Begins in Afghanistan
Americans Have the Clock, But the Taliban Have the Time
By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch
Cap Ferrat, France
Obama’s surge and de-surge has, therefore, created a reinforcing dynamic that is playing into the hands of the insurgents by seducing the United States into increasing its reliance on a pointless, reactive, “whack-a-mole” strategy. Like a judo specialist, the insurgents will use the expenditure of American energies to exhaust American forces and paralyze American political willpower by inducing our military to over and under react to an unfolding welter widely dispersed insurgent attacks
Phi Beta Iota: At home, the teen riots have started in Philadelphia. More riots are certain to follow, and more “random” shootings of anyone representing the US Government are likely west of the Mississippi. This is almost the perfect storm–all that is missing is a water failure in New York City followed by a firestorm, and massive epidemic across California.
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