Phi Beta Iota: From the First Earth Battalion. Totally righteous.
Global Revolution Has Begun…21 Sustainment Principles
Cultural Intelligence, YouTubeWorth a Look: Jesse Ventura on US Government
07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, 5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Cultural Intelligence, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Government, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)
Former Minnesota governor, navy SEAL, and pro rassler Ventura has a new truTVshow investigating but not necessarily debunking conspiracy theories. This companion to the program, a sort of teaser, dissects such famed objects of unending speculation as the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations. Ventura concludes that none of those were twisted-loner crimes but rather resulted from conspiracies of varying vastness. Anent the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ventura asserts that “our government engaged in a massive cover-up” and had “ties to the hijackers.” He ventures that “unanswered questions remain about how the towers were brought down and whether a plane really struck the Pentagon” and that the “Bush Administration either knew about the plan” or “had a hand in it.” Heady, paranoiac stuff, to be sure, but there are even more forthright charges regarding the assassination of Malcolm X, the Jonestown massacre, and the “stolen” elections of 2000, 2004, 2008, and, for that matter, 1980. Believable? Some of it. An action-packed read? You bet. –Mike Tribby
Continue reading “Worth a Look: Jesse Ventura on US Government”
Secrecy News: P. J. Crowley & SecState Integrity?
Cultural IntelligenceP.J. CROWLEY AND THE LIMITS OF OPENNESS
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley resigned yesterday facing an Obama Administration backlash against his remarks declaring the treatment of suspected leaker Pfc. Bradley E. Manning “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”
The conditions of Private Manning's detention became the subject of controversy when his lawyer complained that Manning was being involuntarily forced to surrender his clothing to his Quantico military guards each night, supposedly in order to protect him from self-injury. Neither Manning, his attorney, nor any competent medical authority had requested any such “protection.” Instead, the compulsory nudity was widely perceived as a punitive measure, prompting protests from Amnesty International, among others. (We urged the DoD Inspector General to investigate the matter, to no known effect.)
Mr. Crowley, an uncompromising critic of leaks of classified information, is no friend of Private Manning who, he said, “is in the right place” (i.e., in jail). It was the gratuitous abuse of the prisoner that he deemed “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”
He was right. In America, the pre-trial detention of any person who has not been convicted of a crime should be beyond reproach. In the Manning case (and in too many others), it hasn't been.
Though in criticizing Defense Department detention policy Mr. Crowley was clearly outside of his bureaucratic “lane,” he deserves credit for speaking out on a matter of principle. In an intelligent system of government, such views would be freely aired and honestly attended to. But it seems that there is not much place for such speech in the current Administration.
Continue reading “Secrecy News: P. J. Crowley & SecState Integrity?”
Al Jazeera: Obama Does Not Get It…
07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making
If independent, democratic, governments are formed in the Middle East, they won't follow Washington's orders.
Lamis Andoni
09 Mar 2011 11:45 GMT
Al Jazeera
Barack Obama, the US president, has still not fully grasped the essence of the revolutions underway in the Arab world. He genuinely seems to believe that the people rallying for democracy in the region are making a pro-Western, if not pro-Israeli, statement.
See Also (all but two best pals of the Obama Administration):
Review: Breaking the Real Axis of Evil–How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025
End operations in Afghanistan, Karzai tells NATO
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace IntelligenceASADABAD, Afghanistan: Emotional Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday urged international troops to “stop their operations in our land”, his strongest salvo yet in a row over mistaken civilian killings.
Karzai's comments came after a week in which a relative of his was killed in a raid by foreign forces and he rejected an apology by the US commander of troops General David Petraeus for the deaths of nine children in a NATO strike.
“I would like to ask NATO and the US with honour and humbleness and not with arrogance to stop their operations in our land,” Karzai said, visiting the dead children's relatives in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan.
Texas Rally to Vote on Secession from US
07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural IntelligenceCommentary: Texas secessionists want a revolution and members
Bud Kennedy
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
It's almost mid-March.
Do you know where your Texas lawmakers stand?
If you're from Tyler, your state Rep. Leo Berman gave the OK for a rally last Saturday at the Capitol to promote a November vote on whether Texas should secede from the United States.
Read rest of short article….
Phi Beta Iota: Texas is not alone. The most likely states to secede are Vermont and Hawaii, followed by Texas and Alaska. If the US Government continues on its present course, we speculate that at least ten to fifteen states will evaluate, if not execute, secession options that include the recovery of federal lands, the exclusion of federal forces, and complete tax moratoriums.
See Also:
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Self-Determination & Secession
New Defense Paradigm: Ignorance is NOT Bliss…
Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, MilitaryThe Hill
The defense budget: Ignorance is not bliss
By Winslow T. Wheeler – 03/09/11 11:56 AM ET
Polling from Pew and Gallup reveals major public misconceptions about the defense budget. Fifty-eight percent of Americans know that Pentagon spending is larger than any other nation, but almost none know it is up to seven times that of China. Most had no idea the defense budget is larger than federal spending for education, Medicare or interest on the debt.
The scurrilous in Washington promote the misimpression of an under-funded Pentagon. They imply it is smaller than during the Cold War by saying it was at 8 percent of gross domestic product in the late 1960s, but only 4 percent of GDP now. Therefore, it's gone down and is now low, right?
Some use hyperventilated rhetoric to pressure for more defense dollars. Sadly, this category now must include Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who termed “catastrophic” the recommendations of the Obama deficit commission to merely maintain defense spending at its post-WWII high, and who deemed a “crisis” the idea of a 1 percent – $5 billion – reduction in the 2011 defense budget compared to 2010.
Phi Beta Iota: Lying is not patriotic. Screwing most of the people most of the time is neither patriotic nor sensible. The irresponsibility of the US Government today, across all domains, is breathtakingly insane. It's not stupid–this is the last phrase of legalized looting of the Republic–but it is insane in relation to the Constitution and the values that are supposed to be the foundation of the Republic.
