The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
WAR POWERS ACT
By GEORGE F. WILL
Miami Herald, 05.30.11
The U.S. intervention in Libya’s civil war, intervention that began with a surplus of confusion about capabilities and a shortage of candor about objectives, is now taking a toll on the rule of law. In a bipartisan cascade of hypocrisies, a liberal president, with the collaborative silence of most congressional conservatives, is traducing the War Powers Resolution.
Congress Returns to Town With Demand Obama Get OK on Libya
President Obama could be impeached for violating U.S. Constitution and law by going into Libya without congressional consent, but Rep. Dennis Kucinich says he doesn't want to cause that kind of havoc on the Republic, he just wants the United States to get out of Libya's civil war. While many lawmakers in general support the U.S. role in Libya, even if they want the final say on approving military action, Kucinich, D-Ohio, will introduce a joint resolution when Congress returns this week that he says “hopefully will lead us out of this mess that we've waded into in Libya.”
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Kucinich said the U.S. has no business intervening in Libya because it's a civil war. He added that the rebel forces the U.S. and NATO appear to be backing are demonstrating some disturbing behaviors, including “committing some of the same practices that they accused Colonel Qaddafi of.” Beyond that, he added, the whole operation stinks of a bid for the oil fields of Benghazi, where the rebels have set up their stronghold.
White House skips legal deadline on Libya
Salon, 21 May 2011
Military action passes 60-day threshold, but Obama won't seek congressional approval
The White House is skipping a legal deadline to seek congressional authorization of the military action in Libya — but few on the Hill are objecting.
Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 a president can only send troops into combat for 60 days without congressional mandate. That deadline fell Friday, but in absence of pressure from Congress, White House officials say they think they're on solid ground continuing U.S. involvement in the mission, now led by NATO, without formal congressional sign-off — as long as consultations with Congress continue.
In that spirit President Barack Obama sent a letter to congressional leaders Friday saying U.S. involvement remains critical and welcoming congressional input.
Phi Beta Iota: Unconstitutional, illegal, immoral — business as usual.
Worth a look — even if only the first paragraph.
The New Rules: Why the U.S. Should ‘Give' Af-Pak to China
Thomas P.M. Barnett | Bio | 30 May 2011
Column
Nuclear Pakistan, we are often told, is the Islamic-state equivalent of a Wall Street firm: In geostrategic terms, it is too big to fail. That explains why, even as the Obama administration begins preparing for modest troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this July, it dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad last week to smooth over bilateral relations with Pakistan's paranoid regime, which were strained even before the killing of Osama bin Laden. But Clinton's trip and the Obama administration's instinctive embrace of Islamabad is a fool's errand, doomed by history, geography and globalization itself.
In fact, the U.S. should drop the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan mess in China's lap now, while the getting is good, and here are the reasons why: …
Phi Beta Iota: World Politics Review has not figured out the new world of information quite yet, and we have no desire to copy their entire article. Suffice to say that Barnett, who has gotten much more coherent since his first book, is on target here, but add to that that the US Government's foreign policy is both ideological and idiotic — apart from the huge error by Zbigniew Brzezinski giving Pakistan the nuclear bomb in the first place, the US has no business in Central Asia that is of benefit to the American people, only to the American carpet-baggers that feed at the public treasury (now much depleted and greatly in debt) while looting foreign countries.
Robyn O¹Brien lives in the Boulder area. She is a fresh, inspiring and credible voice for the information/patterns she has assembled/synthesized about how our food ³industry² makes us sick (allergies, cancer, etc., etc.), raises our health care costs, weakens our global competitiveness, also etc. etc. and what we can do about it. And, she brings a deep level of compassion and wisdom to the task of transformation at hand. Kudos to Robyn….JS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA
Robyn O¹Brien shares her personal story and how it inspired her current path as a “Real Food” evangelist. Grounded in a successful Wall Street career that was more interested in food as good business than good-for-you, this mother of four was shaken awake by the dangerous allergic reaction of one of her children to a “typical” breakfast. Her mission to unearth the cause revealed more about the food industry than she could stomach, and impelled her to share her findings with others. Informative and inspiring.
Robyn authored The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It. A former Wall Street food industry analyst, Robyn brings insight, compassion and detailed analysis to her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of our children. She founded allergykidsfoundation.org and was named by Forbes as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter.” The New York Times has passionately described her as “Food's Erin Brockovich.”
Robyn O'Brien
www.allergykidsfoundation.org
http://www.robynobrien.com/
Phi Beta Iota: The industrialization of agriculture, and the corruption of government, have led to a complete ignorance of the “true cost” of bad food, not only in making children ill, but in consuming fuel, water, sweatshop labor, and enabling tax avoidance and the externalization of pollution costs to the public present and future. It bears mention that US Government regulation has totally trashed the emergent organic food movement in the USA, and there are only two sustainable agricultural models on the planet: the Amish in the USA, and the Cubans. The truth at any cost now lowers all other costs forever.
At I.M.F., a Strict Ethics Code Doesn’t Apply to Top Officials
New York Times, May 29, 2011
At the International Monetary Fund, there is one set of ethics guidelines for the rank-and-file staff and another for the 24 elite executive directors who oversee the powerful organization.
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“There are a lot of controls in place when it comes to the staff, but not for the leadership,” said Katrina Campbell, a compliance and ethics expert at Global Compliance.
May 29, 2011
David Warsh, Proprietor
The Economist was founded in 1843 by James Wilson, a hat manufacturer temporarily brought low by one of global capitalism’s first identifiable business cycles. By a series of courageous re-inventions over 168 years, it has managed to become, and then remain, one of the most influential editorial voices in the world.
It is time for another of those periodic reinventions.
Wilson’s original prospectus announced his determination to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.”
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The shift required – one that already has begun under editor John Micklethwait, but one which still has far to go – involves the recognition that the social sciences have begun to integrate concepts of governance, organization and cooperation into the center of their conception of the world, rather than confining them (as they were in The Wealth of Nations) as something of an afterthought to the last section of Smith’s great book.
Phi Beta Iota: Brother Penguin has brought forth a very articulate statement on the role of humanity in changing–the the point of catastrophic implosion–the Earth. While lamenting the lack of responsibility of governments and corporations, the article stops short of recognizing that the challenge is not about governance, which is a process, but rather about information, which is a foundation. Multinational information-sharing and sense-making among the eight tribes of intelligence is the non-negotiable first step toward illuminating and then eradicating the corruption and waste that is now characteristic of all organizations and individuals that lack integrity. Everyone has intelligence. Virtually no one has integrity. That is where we start. Integrity in information-sharing and sense-making.
