Christmas Sadness, Christmas Hope

Blog Wisdom, Cultural Intelligence
Jon Lebkowsky Bio

So this is Christmas…

Empathy slaps me silly sometimes, and the “joy of Christmas” can be elusive when you see any fraction of the real pain and suffering in the world. In Buddhism, “suffering” is a technical term that has meanings so deep that words don’t suffice, but the fact is that many people are disrupted and disappointed in ways that scale from trivial to tragic. In this solstice celebration with its Christian religious and spiritual resonance, we try to be festive, to celebrate the life of someone who would have been bemused if not horrified by the material orgy produced in his name, now so vital a part of our economic life that we couldn’t lose it, even if we wanted to.

My paternal grandmother died on Christmas Eve when my father was ten years old. He revealed this to me when I was around the same age, and I realized from then on that Christmas had a far different sense for him than it had for me. Each year at Christmas he was reminded of death, loss, sadness.

I’m aware of many trails of sadness through this year’s holiday season, disconnections and deaths, as well as ordinary frailties and broken promises. In fact the whole world seems to be trembling at the moment, and our future is a blur. Celebration, like nirvana, seems almost selfish at the moment; the bodhisattva path makes more sense. I will celebrate this year as ever, and appreciate those close to me, but I will also find time to mourn the many losses and disappointments, and the divisions that have emerged in my life and others.

I do hope you have a Merry Christmas, forget for a moment the difficult realities that confront us and surround us, take the day to focus on love and fellowship. Subvert the darkness.

O you, happy roots,
with whom works of miracles
and not works of crime,
for burning predestined you were planted.

And to you, thoughtful fiery voice,
becoming the whetstone,
subverting the darkness.
Rejoice in that which is on top.

Rejoice in him,
who the many did not see on earth,
although they ardently cried for.
Rejoice in that which is on top.

~ Hildegarde von Bingen, translation by Rupert Chappelle

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

~ John Lennon

Journal: Globalization and the Middle Class

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence
Who Am I?

Phi Beta Iota: Penguin is a new Contributing Editor who is still learning the system and also undecided about having a bio, even a relatively anonymous one.

This Week on The Globalist
December 18-24, 2010

Middle Class and Globalization: A Big Power Comparison (Part I)

In this time of economic strife, which nation stands to lose the most compared to its own expectations, projected path and historic experiences? The Richter Scale takes a closer look.

Middle Class and Globalization: A Historical Perspective (Part II)

The Richter Scale explores whether the United States is finally getting serious about reinvigorating its middle class.

The Globalist's Top Ten Books of 2010

In this 2010 year-end special, we look back at the best new books featured on The Globalist Bookshelf this year.

The Globalist's Top Ten Features of 2010

As 2010 draws to a close, we present our selection of the most thought-provoking features published on The Globalist this year.

The Top Headlines of 2010

From the economic recession to the World Cup, how did 2010's major events look to the world's headline writers?


Journal: USA Economic Decline by Elite Choice

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Published on Thursday, December 23, 2010 by In These Times

The ‘Repo-Demo’ Party’s Three Phase Austerity Plan for America

Get ready for more of the same failed “job creation” policies, enacted by an increasingly unified political eilte

by Jack Rasmus

The Bush tax cuts are now extended. What cost $3.4 trillion over the past decade, 80% of which accrued to the wealthiest households and U.S. corporations, will now cost another $802 billion over the next two years and a projected $4 trillion over the coming decade.

But the Bush tax cut extension just passed by a political elite increasingly united on economic policy—a ‘Repo-Demo’ Party dominated by corporate interests—is only the first of three phases in a new policy offensive designed to protect the incomes of the wealthy and corporate America for another decade, to be paid for directly by middle- and working-class America. Together, the three phases represent the emerging U.S. variant of a general austerity strategy, similar in objective but different in content to other austerity programs now emerging as well in the Eurozone, Japan and elsewhere.

Phase two: draconian spending cuts

Phase three: revising tax code to help the wealthy

Same wine in same bottles, with new label

The key question: Will any jobs be created?

Obama’s 2011 ‘Stimulus 2’ will thus prove no more effective than his 2009 ‘Stimulus 1.’ The past decade has produced repeated tax-cut heavy policies targeting the rich and corporations: Bush II and a Republican Congress 2001-06. Bush II and a Democratic Congress 2006-08. Obama and a Democratic Congress 2008-10. And now Obama and a de facto Republican Congress.

The recent Bush tax cut extensions show the corporate-dominated political elite of both parties are now closing ranks as the economic crisis continues with no resolution for all but the wealthy and corporations. The ‘Repo-Demo’ Party, newly aligned around the same old failed policies, has just begun to do its work. Get ready for more of the same.

Jack Rasmus is the author of Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression, published in May 2010 by Pluto Press, Palgrave-Macmillan.

Read entire article….

Phi Beta Iota: In the 1990's Tim Hendrickson, at the time one of the best and the brightest at the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) conceptualized GRAND VIEW, a program to look at each couintry in holistic terms to determine a) what direction their science & technology was going in; and b) what their economy could afford in the way of military spending.  This was before NGIC was caught fabricating the threat to justify the purchase of weapons and mobility systems that were unaffordable and not needed.  We wonder what GRAND VIEW would say about the USA's future, and we wonder if the restoration of integrity within US intelligence might not have an immediate positive effect on personnel, training, concepts & doctrine, and acquisition.

See Also:

Journal: Can the US Economy Recover?

Search: US fraud tri-fecta

Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Strategy, Threats
Open Everything

PART I: The Only Way to Fix the Deficit–Multiply Jobs (William Drayton)

PART II: Nice Ideas But So Is Icing Cover Feces (Robert Steele)

PART III:  Create Jobs?  As an End In Themselves?  To Do What?  Why? (Alexander Carpenter)

PART IV:  Related Recommended Reading (Robert Steele)

The core take-away (from PART III)

Beyond its inherent merit and explicit substance, William Drayton: The Only Way to Fix the Deficit: Multiply Jobs is a great example of unconscious status-seeking righteousness – well-meaning ineptitude and irrelevance, trapped in the old paradigm of debt-money, growth, and social conditioning. This kind of thinking is exemplary of people who are focused on the superficial “economic crisis,” not going deeper to see that we have a political (and even a social) crisis with, of course, an economic manifestation. This represents the success of the pseudo-science of “economics,” originally created with the intention to get most people to believe that objective “natural” forces are running their lives, not other people, classes, and institutions (Thurmond Arnold, 1937). Good problem-solvers always begin with as much accurate information about the overall problem as possible. It's incompetent – or unconscious self-deception – to assume human nature isn't the core and essence of the problem, and Bill Drayton isn't necessarily incompetent…

Perspective (from PART III Reference):

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

Phi Beta Iota: In Advanced Information Operations (IO) terms, we cannot fix the military until we fix government, we cannot fix government until we fix Wall Street and Main Street,  we cannot fix the economy until we fix the society, and all of that requires a firm focus on human nature and the relations among humans.  We live is a “whole system” and are mis-managing it by being ignorant and delusional about root causes and actual relationships.  Until we get the truth on the table, we cannot deal with it.  Good news:  all it takes is ONE node able to blend intelligence & integrity, that “spike” will proliferate.  The bottom line is that DEMAND creates jobs, and EDUCATION creates the demand for the RIGHT jobs.  Taking one example, the US Army, it could apply Advanced Information Operations to create a 180 degree maturation of the mind-set of its personnel, and use that to “eat the old” and create the new.  The US Army is going to suffer a nose dive in financial resources (as will the other services); the US Army is the ONLY service that must might be capable of “beating the dive” by re-inventing itself from inside out–starting with Advanced IO being about minds, not technology.  Similarly, a single multinational could “get a grip” and re-invent itself overnight–the example will proliferate.

Continue reading “Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation”

Journal: Covert War in Pakistan–Lessons Not Learned

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Military
Thomas Leo Briggs

Something caught my eye while reading a Slate item written by Tom Scocca and posted on December 20, 2010, “Two Ways of Looking at Our Covert War in Pakistan.”

Mr. Scocca wrote:

“There are diplomatic tensions because we are fighting a full-on undeclared war on the territory of a country with which we are an ally, using covert agents as the commanding officers”.

So what’s new?  Didn’t we fight a full-on undeclared war on the territory of Laos from about 1961 to 1973?  Wasn’t Laos an ally while trying to maintain the fig-leaf of neutrality?  Wasn’t the United States government using ‘covert agents as commanding officers’?

Moreover the New York Times published an article by Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins the same day titled “U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan”.

In particular I noticed the following that Mazzetti and Filkins attributed to senior military commanders in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “Journal: Covert War in Pakistan–Lessons Not Learned”

Journal: From WikiLeaks to OpenLeaks–and Local News

07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, InfoOps (IO), Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Open Government, Real Time, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Tools

Micah L. Sifry | December 17, 2010 – 4:01pm

Back in 2009, Daniel Domscheit-Berg applied to the Knight News Challenge in the name of Wikileaks for $532,000 to fund a project to “improve the reach, use and impact of a platform that allows whistle-blowers and journalists to anonymously post source material.” At the time Domscheit-Berg was known to the world by the pseudonym “Daniel Schmitt” and made frequent appearances on behalf of Wikileaks alongside its editor-in-chief Julian Assange (including at the October 2009 Personal Democracy Forum Europe conference in Barcelona). Now, as is widely known, he and Assange have parted ways and Domscheit-Berg is part of a group organizing the launch of OpenLeaks.org, which is being described as more of a technological service provider to media organizations than as a central hub for leaks, and which is promising to roll out a detailed description of its organization and plans in January 2011.

It's illuminating to compare the 2009 Wikileaks News Challenge proposal–which made it to the final round of the prestigious program but was ultimately rejected by the Knight News Challenge judges–to Domscheit-Berg & Co's current plans for OpenLeaks. Obviously, until OpenLeaks starts functioning, we are comparing two different versions of “vaporware,” but in the same way that Wikileaks itself has evolved over the last year, I think you can see a parallel evolution how Domscheit-Berg and the others in his group are thinking about how best to expand the open information model as well.

Read fascinating article and entirety of the original WikiLeaks proposal….

Journal: Dennis Kucinich Introduces Monetary Reform

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy
Dennis Kucinich

Dear Friends of the American Monetary Institute,

IMPORTANT MONETARY NEWS ALERT:   MAJOR, HISTORIC PROGRESS BEING MADE

On Friday December 17th Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D,Ohio, 10th District) took a crucial and heroic step to resolve our growing financial crisis and achieve a just and sustainable money system for our nation by introducing the National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010, abbreviated NEED. The bill number is  HR6550.

While the bill focuses on our unemployment crisis, the remedy proposed contains all the essential monetary measures being proposed by the American Monetary Institute in the American Monetary Act. These are what decades of research and centuries of experience have shown to be necessary to end the economic crisis in a just and sustainable way, and place the U.S. money system under our constitutional checks and balances. Yes it can be done!

We expect this bill will also be re-introduced next year in the 112th Congress. By putting it in now Congressman Kucinich accomplishes these important things:

* First, the seriousness of intent is underscored;

* Second, it gives our nation the opportunity to view, discuss and understand the necessary provisions, giving the chance to make improvements for re-introduction;

* Third it serves as a beacon to our beleaguered people, cutting through the error, vested interest and disinformation that has blocked monetary reform understanding and action in the past.

The American Monetary Institute has activated its blog to discuss and review any questions about this act. Just click on the blog link at our homepage.

To participate in this process, please sign up at the bottom of our home page at . Then, after reading the proposed legislation feel free to make comments or put questions on the blog, including thoughtful suggestions on how it might be improved.

You can read a copy of the legislation here.

Warm regards to all,
Stephen Zarlenga
AMI

See Also:

Dennis Kucinich on the Proposed Monetary Reform

New Economy Network

Dennis Kucinich, Vice President for the Commonwealth–and Some Details