The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Following is self explanatory. About all I can add is:
– “The West wasn't won with a registered gun.”
– As Charlton Heston said, “… from my cold, dead hand …”
– “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
– “Don't dry fire in a gunfight.”
– “I am the NRA — and I vote!”
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Eleven Other Images Below the Line
POLICE have served an intervention order via social networking site Facebook banning an accused cyber-stalker from bullying, threatening and harassing another user.
Tip of the Hat to Philip Golan at LinkedIn
Deliberately uninformed, relentlessly so [a rant]
Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year.
Many of those people have seen every single episode of American Idol. There is clearly a correlation here.
Access to knowledge, for the first time in history, is largely unimpeded for the middle class. Without effort or expense, it's possible to become informed if you choose. For less than your cable TV bill, you can buy and read an important book every week. Share the buying with six friends and it costs far less than coffee.
Or you can watch TV.
The thing is, watching TV has its benefits. It excuses you from the responsibility of having an informed opinion about things that matter. It gives you shallow opinions or false ‘facts' that you can easily parrot to others that watch what you watch. It rarely unsettles our carefully self-induced calm and isolation from the world.
I got a note from someone the other day, in which she made it clear that she doesn't read non-fiction books or blogs related to her industry. And she seemed proud of this.
I was roped into an argument with someone who was sure that ear candling was a useful treatment. Had he read any medical articles on the topic? No. But he knew. Or said he did.
You see a lot of ostensibly smart people in airports, and it always surprises me how few of them use this downtime to actually become more informed. It's clearly a deliberate act–in our infoculture, it takes work not to expose yourself to interesting ideas, facts, news and points of view. Hal Varian at Google reports that the average person online spends seventy seconds a day reading online news. Ouch.
Not all books are correct or useful. Not all accepted science is correct. The conventional wisdom might just be wrong. But ignoring all of it because the truth is now fashionably situational and in the eye of the beholder is a lame alternative.
I know this rant is nothing new. In fact, people have been complaining about widespread willful ignorance since Brutus or Caesar or whoever invented the salad… the difference now is this: more people than ever are creators. More people than ever go to work to use their minds, not just their hands. And more people than ever have a platform to share their point of view. I think that raises the bar for our understanding of how the world works.
Let's assert for the moment that you get paid to create, manipulate or spread ideas. That you don't get paid to lift bricks or hammer steel. If you're in the idea business, what's going to improve your career, get you a better job, more respect or a happier day? Forgive me for suggesting (to those not curious enough to read this blog and others) that it might be reading blogs, books or even watching TED talks.
As for the deliberately uninformed, we can ignore them or we can reach out to them and hopefully start a pattern of people thinking for themselves…
Phi Beta Iota: One of the reasons we published 1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information was our early emerging sense that US “intelligence” did not know what the Nation needed to know, and neither did the Nation (in the Stephen Colbert sense of word: “Nation, you are stupid!”). America is at a turning point in which most of the foundation jobs have been exported and the menial jobs given over, deliberately, to illegal aliens; the schools have hit bottom, the government is out of control, and Wall Street, while in charge, has looted the Treasury and imploded the economy. The federal government mutters darkly about “federalizing” state and local police and “disarming” the public. What we really need–Thomas Jefferson understood this–is a fully armed, fully educated public that is attentive to its civic duty and will not tolerate corruption among its officials. This is going to be a long struggle. The good news: Obama activated the Davies J-Curve. America expected him to make positive change, he did not, now the myth is exposed. States (we are the United STATES of America) are finally starting to exercise their Constitutional authority to see to their own defenses, and a MAJORITY of the voting public now sees the two-party tyranny for what it is: a corrupt cesspool….one bird, two wings, same shit.
Undocumented immigrant, veteran and student
Posted: October 19, 2010 02:46 PM
What Part of Human Being Don't You Understand?
I wonder if people who insist upon using the i-word ever think about the impact it has on human lives. “What part of ‘illegal' don't you understand?!” they say. Well, as an undocumented immigrant, I need people to understand the traumatic effect this racist language has on us and our families. Many people who don't experience this reality don't seem to realize the inescapable feelings of inferiority it creates. Or that we can get to a transparent, thorough dialogue on human rights and humane immigration solutions only when we remove the i-word as a central piece of the conversation.
Read the Full Blog at Huffington Post….
COMMENT by Robert David Steele Vivas as Posted at Huffington Post
I like this, a great deal. Am cross-posting it to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
I strongly agree that allowing corporations to abuse the environment, communities, and their employees with the added protection of “personality” is a travesty, and one that my Virtual Cabinet has already addressed here at Huffington Post.
The URL for the Virtual Cabinet is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-david-steele
With respect to how the USA has treated immigrants over the centuries, I am now ready to say that this abusive exploitation, of Chinese, of Irish, of others, combined with our genociding of the Native Americans and our enslavement of Black Africans, needs to be defined and treated as “Other Atrocities,” one of the high-level threats to humanity identified by the United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenge, and Change.
My review of their report is here: http://phibetaiota.net/2008/05/a-more-secure-world-our-shared-responsibility-report-of-the-secretary-generals-high-level-panel-on-threats-challenges-and-change-a-more-secure-world-our-shared-responsibility-report-of-the-s/
However, what really touches me about this note [disclosure: I am a white Hispanic] is the author's clear angst over the racism that he has felt, and his very articulate call for a dialog and understanding. This is where I think we need to go, and I will address this with the Virtual Cabinet in the weeks to come.
El Pueblo Avanza! EPA
WATCH: Can Three Days Make A Difference For Homeless Veterans?
On Sunday, 60 Minutes reported on a visit to San Diego, where a yearly “Stand Down” event for homeless veterans is designed to change lives in just three days.
A skeptical Scott Pelley found that while the event's clean, safe and empathetic environment can't fix the problems homeless veterans face, the event serves as a “ceasefire” to show vets that they aren't alone.
Phi Beta Iota: There are two threads here, the first being that attention is healing and nurturing, whether it is new-borne babies or hardened vets. The second is that this is a complete break from treating homeless vets or homeless anyone as “the other” that is not “noticed” as if they did not exist. San Diego has done a good thing with this annual event, it ought to take place all across America.
What makes a celebrity special? She was just an ordinary person a month or a year ago, but now, suddenly, your heart goes flitter-flutter when you meet her, or you want an autograph.
One way to consider fame is that it increases the options for the person at the same time the number of demands go up. In other words, celebrity makes the celebrity's attention more valuable.
It's exciting to shake hands or get an autograph from a famous person, then, because the celebrity has something others want, you're getting a slice of attention from someone who has other options. But she didn't exercise those options–she chose you.
By this definition, you're famous. Compared to just a few years ago, more people know you, you have more options and your attention is far more precious than it ever was.
Not just you, of course. Your customers too. They're famous now.
Time to start treating them that way.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a play on both diversity and co-creation as well as business ecologies. We are One.
The rapidly emerging/evolving new field medical doctrine is usually termed Tactical Combat Casualty Care. Not sure how fast it will migrate to civilian sector due to litigation risks.
By David Brown, at Forward Operating Base Wilson
EXTRACT GOOD: Gone from their repertoire are difficult or time-consuming maneuvers, such as routinely hanging bags of intravenous fluids. On the ground, medics no longer carry stethoscopes or blood pressure cuffs. They are trained instead to evaluate a patient's status by observation and pulse, to tolerate abnormal vital signs such as low blood pressure, to let the patient position himself if he's having trouble breathing – and above all to have a heightened awareness that too much medicine can endanger the mission and still not save the patient.
EXTRACT BAD: But something has happened in the usually smooth communication between dispatch center, aircraft and hospital. No ambulance pulls up to the helicopter. Reece and Helfrich wait. They wait. The pilots radio the dispatcher that they've arrived with a critically injured soldier. Reece and Helfrich, helmeted and inaudible, gesture wildly to people outside the emergency room door to come over. Two other patients have also recently arrived. But that's not the problem. There's an available ambulance 100 yards away. But it doesn't move.
Phi Beta Iota: What has been done in TACTICAL combat medicine in the ten years of constant war has been nothing short of sensational and inspiring. NOTE that it is not just technology, but HUMAN enhancement. This has NOT characterized the rest of the US military nor the rest of the US Government which has the added disadvantage of not having the funding nor the education-intelligence-research mindset needed to enter the 21st Century.
