Journal: Supreme Court May Smack Executive Down

09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Officers Call

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Smackdown of Obama by Supreme Court may be inevitable

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According to sources who watch the inner workings of the federal government, a smackdown of Barack Obama by the U.S. Supreme Court may be inevitable.

Ever since Obama assumed the office of President, critics have hammered him on a number of Constitutional issues. Critics have complained that much if not all of Obama's major initiatives run headlong into Constitutional roadblocks on the power of the federal government.

Phi Beta Iota: Our Contributing Editor received the entire story via email but without a date from a Colonel serving in Afghanistan.  This story is evidently circulating among military personnel and for that reason we take note.  However, we note that it was originally posted9 July 2010, and have linked to that original post rather than post the entire email.  We would observe that ever since Dick Cheney was Chief of Staff in the White House, Executive disrespect for the Constitution and Congress has been growing, and that Newt Gingrich was the one who led Congress to its practice of abdicating its Article 1 role in the Constitution, instead playing foot-soldier to a party president.  We reiterate, there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by Electoral Reform.

Journal: U.S. Army Partially Criminal & Drugged Up

03 Economy, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

I can't confirm all of what's in here because I don't currently work with those issues, but this reads like the Vietnam era…

McClatchy Newspapers (mcclatchydc.com)

September 17, 2010

As Iraq Winds Down, U.S. Army Confronts A Broken Force

By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — When Lt. Col. Dave Wilson took command of a battalion of the 4th Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, the unit had just returned to Texas from 14 months traveling some of Iraq's most dangerous roads as part of a logistics mission.

What he found, he said, was a unit far more damaged than the single death it had suffered in its two deployments to Iraq.

Nearly 70 soldiers in his 1,163-member battalion had tested positive for drugs: methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. Others were abusing prescription drugs. Troops were passing around a tape of a female lieutenant having sex with five soldiers from the unit. Seven soldiers in the brigade died from drug overdoses and traffic accidents when they returned to Fort Bliss, near El Paso, after their first deployment.

“The inmates were running the prison,” Wilson said.

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Journal: The Socialization of Products & Services

03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, IO Mapping

The Socialization of Products & Services

After writing a piece on The Memetic Web & The Internet of Products several weeks ago, I started to think more about the implications products and services would have on the Attention Economy and why the notion of “social” seems to be so often misconstrued in the larger context of the marketing and media worlds.

We talk a lot about social in terms of things like corporate communications, CRM, content development and to a greater extent, sharing behaviors – all of which are great, mind you – but I think what we don’t talk about enough or even build into our subsequent strategies and executions is the very thread of what social is in an empathic and evolutionary sense… Which is to do and propagate good.

Tip of the Hat to Pierre Levy at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a very–very–thoughtful and deep blog posting, and the fact that Pierre Levy, one of the twelve apostles of Collective Intelligence, recommends it, makes it doubly important.  Written by Guenther Sonnenfeld, it includes a short video of Alex Bogusky sharing important ideas.  It includes references to Ray Kurzweil, technology as an off-shoot of biology, and the emerging nature of socio-economic ecosystems in which trust is the blood.  All the kind of stuff our leaders–if we had any–should be embracing.

See Also:

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Journal: Theater, Circus, or Politics?

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online

Tea Partiers Bring Cause to Washington

KATE ZERNIKE September 12, 2010

Republicans in Tea Party Costumes

A crowd gathered around as a man dressed as George Washington read a passage from the Bible during the Tea Party Tax Payer March on Washington on Sunday.

. . . . . . .

“I believe we’ve got the Republican Party’s attention — we’ve been beating the establishment all over the country,” said Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader and the chairman of FreedomWorks, to a burst of cheering. “It’s time we give the same lesson to the other party.”

Mr. Pence taunted the Democratic leadership: “A recession is when you your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. A recovery is when Nancy Pelosi loses her job.”

Phi Beta Iota: The Tea Party appears to have been captured by the Republicans.  This is one of the reasons we are taking an interest in the Coffee Party, which appears to be genuinely committed to non-partisan deliberative dialog and fact-based consensus.  We are still dismayed that Ralph Nader, Jackie Salit, Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul, and Bob Barr, among others, cannot come together to lead a demand for Electoral Reform in two phases, half in 2010, half in 2012.  That would appear to be the single issue where most can agree, and the single reform that would restore the connection between the public, public revenue, and public spending.

Y Combinator Hacker News Community’s Model for Info-Sharing & Potential for Collective Intelligence

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hacking, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Hacker News” has a welcome page and guidelines page offering an overview of what the organizers expect from those planning on posting comments and why it's good overall for the community.  I (Jason Liszkiewicz) was impressed with this. Hacker News has a solid number of participants and provides a simple and mature format for exploring and contributing thoughtful feedback, insight and resources.

It has a jobs link (mainly for engineers and programmers) and the “Ask Hacker News” link which enables the community to share information and reply to what is shared. Such a model (deemed an “experiment”) that provides mature and thoughtful information-sharing is something we need more of. Communities inter-linking with communities (or at least over-lapping) to spill over each others insights can be invaluable and potentially priceless.

Example: Ask HN: What do you perceive as worth spending money on?

This simple and useful model is something I hoped would emerge + converge from the SMS/text messaging developers at ChaCha.com (humans online responding to text messaged questions) or somewhere else. Converging multi-community info-sharing online, offline, and through the mobile world on a global scale is an exciting possibility.

The next level to all of this exists in the form of ideas or fragmented applications but it seems not beyond that, yet.

Email earthintelnet|at|gmail.com or post something at this new forum to discuss these ideas. Or, provide some mature and thoughtful feedback at the Hacker News community.

Sick Systems on a Micro to Macro Level; Not All Vampires Suck Blood; Psychopaths Among Us

04 Education, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Academia, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Media

The following pieces are from June 2010 and 2001. They were found separately within the same day and provide inter-connected insights. Link to the full version..below is an extremely shortened version:

PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US

Dr. Robert Hare claims there are 300,000 psychopaths in Canada, but that only a tiny fraction are violent offenders like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olsen. Who are the rest? Take a look around.
By Robert Hercz (2001)

(three highlights from the article)

+ Hare has said that if he couldn't study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice (Forbes magazine called the Vancouver Stock Exchange the scam capital of the world). This brings a whole other meaning to “psycho-geography.”

+ Soon after he delivered a keynote speech at a conference for homicide detectives and prosecuting attorneys in Seattle three years ago, Hare got a letter thanking him for helping solve a series of homicides. The police had a suspect nailed for a couple of murders, but believed he was responsible for others. They were using the usual strategy to get a confession, telling him, ‘Think how much better you'll feel, think of the families left behind,' and so on. After they'd heard Hare speak they realized they were dealing with a psychopath, someone who could feel neither guilt nor sorrow. They changed their interrogation tactic to, “So you murdered a couple of prostitutes. That's minor-league compared to Bundy or Gacy.” The appeal to the psychopath's grandiosity worked. He didn't just confess to his other crimes, he bragged about them.

+ Know your own weaknesses, they advise, because the psychopath will find and use them. Learn to recognize the psychopath, they tell us, before adding that even experts are regularly taken in.

How to keep someone with you forever (common enslavement tactics)

Jun. 9th, 2010

Rule 1: Keep them too busy to think. Thinking is dangerous. If people can stop and think about their situation logically, they might realize how crazy things are.

Rule 2: Keep them tired. Exhaustion is the perfect defense against any good thinking that might slip through. Fixing the system requires change, and change requires effort, and effort requires energy that just isn't there. No energy, and your lover's dangerous epiphany is converted into nothing but a couple of boring fights.

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