Thousands of people from across the country are planning to converge on Wall Street this Saturday to protest America’s “corrupt democratic process” and the use of corporate moneyin American elections.
The day has already seen support from hactivist group Anti Sec, which wrote on Twitter Thursday: “Americans it is now our time. The Tunisians did it, then the Egyptians. It is OUR time. It is OUR America.” Anti-consumerist magazine AdBusters asked on its site: “Is American ripe for a Tahrir moment?”
Phi Beta Iota: There isn't a single politician out there that “gets” this, with one possible exception we will identify if and when he makes reference to the connection between the USA Day of Rage, his campaign, and the need for Electoral Reform–there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed relatively quickly and simply via the restoration of the integrity of our electoral process and our government.
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson isn’t going to be the next president of the United States … but the fact that he’s polling in the low single digits among the 2012 GOP field doesn’t mean his candidacy should be ignored.
That’s exactly what’s happening, though … despite the fact that Johnson is out-performing several of his better-known rivals.
In a CNN/ORC poll released in late August, Johnson out-polled former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – and was tied with former Godfathers’ Pizza CEO Herman Cain. Nonetheless, Johnson was not allowed to participate in a CNN debate held earlier this week that featured … you guessed it … Santorum, Huntsman and Cain.
Adding insult to injury, the most recent CNN/ORC survey – released earlier this week – didn’t even list Johnson’s name among the candidates being polled.
Phi Beta Iota: We disagree with the view that Gary Johnson cannot be President. Right now he is the only Republican who is a) telling the truth and nothing but the truth; b) open to legalizing marijuana, the #1 demand of the young left; c) electable. Keep an eye on New Hampshire. We are.
9-11: Incestuous Amplification Highjacks the American OODA Loop
Mark Danner has written a brilliant exegesis (also attached below) of how the collective leadership of the United States dragged an entire nation off its moral rails in its reaction to 9-11. It is long but well worth the reading investment.
While Danner does not use the term, he has provided a detailed case study of how the phenomenon of a dysfunctional Orientation folds back on itself to disconnect a decision maker (or any collective of decision makers up to and including a nation) from reality, thereby increasing confusion and disorder, and in so doing, destroying what passes for a moral compass. A key to understanding how this evolves ineluctably (and correcting it) from an epistemological perspective is to understand the Colonel Boyd’s theory of the Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action or OODA loop [1] and how the phenomenon of Incestuous Amplification (IA) corrupts the Orientation, which then folds back on itself to disconnect the entire loop from reality. Once IA is set into motion and is left uncorrected, it always tears any decision cycle to pieces form within. Boyd showed why there are very fundamental epistemological reasons for this unfolding evolution. New readers will find an introduction to incestuous amplification in my essay: Incestuous Amplification and the Madness of King George (Counterpunch, 10 Sep 2008). In fact, when reading this essay, all one needs to do is substitute Danner’s analysis for Andrew Bacevich’s analysis, take the two-question quiz at the end of the 2008 essay and marvel at the contemporary relevance of the answers.
Caveat: Trying to understand Boyd’s ideas might help guard against IA, but it is by no means a guarantee. What I find truly horrifying is that the only national leader who made an effort to understand Boyd’s ideas — Richard Cheney when he was a congressman and Secretary of Defense — has just written a self-righteous memoir that proves his decision cycle is still corrupted by an extreme case of incestuous amplification.
Chuck Spinney
From the Sea
EXTRACT
One of the most damaging failures of the early War on Terror was the willingness of the Bush administration to act in a way that seemed to embody the caricature that bin Laden and al-Qaeda had made of the United States: a muscle-bound, arrogant, crusading, hegemonic superpower intent on repressing and abusing and humiliating Muslims. The naked obscenities from Abu Ghraib, the images of shackled, hooded Muslims in their orange jumpsuits at Guantánamo, were immense victories for al-Qaeda in a war whose foremost strategic goal was the recruitment of young Muslims to the cause of extremist, anti-American Islamic fundamentalism. It is this “battle of the story” that Dick Cheney, for example, still fails utterly to grasp. “I don’t have much sympathy for the view that we should find an alternative to Guantánamo…,” he tells us in his memoir, “simply because we are worried about how we are perceived abroad.”
Phi Beta Iota: When idiocy and ideology become the coin of the realm, everyone who remains silent is a collaborator in the high crimes and misdemeanors that occur. This is why the Oath to the Constitution explicitly calls for loyalty to the Constitution, not the chain of command, and for attention to domestic enemies, not just foreign enemies. We have met the enemy, and he is us. Everything else is a traffic accident.
For the past week, a secret meeting of 57 finance ministers aimed at setting up a new international financial system took place in a large ship on international waters near Europe, according to White Dragon Society representatives who were there.
The meeting, hosted by Switzerland, deliberately excluded representatives from the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and its Washington D.C. subsidiary, France, Italy, the UK, Germany and Japan.
Countries like Russia, China and the Netherlands were among the 57 represented.
Representatives from the Pentagon and the U.S. agencies at the meeting promised to bypass the Federal Reserve board and use their access to codes for the international collateral accounts to finance the U.S. military industrial complex in conjunction with the new system.
The Swiss used their financial intelligence to refuse would-be participants who were in any way associated with either,
the Bilderberg Group
the Council on Foreign Relations
or the Trilateral Commission
Among those refused entry were Naoto Kan (still Prime Minister of Japan as of last week), IMF head Christine Lagarde and U.S. Senator J. Rockefeller.
Rockefeller was actually physically prevented from boarding the ship, according to two eye-witnesses.
And here are a film and a book that expand and deepen the view that economics can and should be about generating good lives in a good society in a good world – in ways that speak to the cultures, realities and daily lives that most of us live in.
The film is the upcoming movie “Money and Life” – see especially the “extended trailer”, clip #2 at the bottom of the page
Phi Beta Iota: Tom Atlee and the Co-Intelligence Institute are the ONLY cause we endorse on a recurring basis. Tom Atlee himself is a national asset of the most precious sort–the people, the knowledge, and the spirit that are embodied in the Co-Intelligence Institute represent the ideals of America–and of the great religions and philosophies–in active practice.
CrowdConf is the first and leading conference on crowdsourcing and the future of distributed work. CrowdConf brings together an international audience of scholars, executives, policy makers, artists, and technologists for a day of learning, conversation, and networking.
Discussions will include the latest research findings and real-world applications of crowdsourcing, from policy and government to the arts to crisis relief to task design and worker incentives. For those looking to learn more, be sure to join us one day prior to the main event by attending one of these two workshops. CrowdConf2011 will be held in downtown San Francisco. Be sure to book hotel accommodations early and take advantage of all that this charming city has to offer.
Key Topics
Human computing
Distributed labor
Quality assurance and metrics
Task design
Worker motivation and incentives
Labor and the law
Computer vision
Social and economic impacts
and implications of crowdsourcing
Editor’s Note: The following report includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.”
Release Date: 9.28.11
Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report
EXTRACTS
The following report is a statistical analysis of the systemic economic attacks against the American people.
Currently, at least 62 million Americans, 20% of US households, have zero or negative net worth.
Recently, the National Academy of Science released their latest findings, backing up my claim by revealing that 52,765,000 Americans, 17.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009.
…counting the total number people in need of employment, you get a current unemployment rate of 22.5%, which is an all-time record total of 34 million people currently in need of work.
