China is seizing on Europe's debt problems to expand its influence on the
continent with large-scale investments and purchases of government bonds
issued by highly-indebted states. The strategy could push Europe into the
same financial dependency on China that is posing a dilemma for the US.
Phi Beta Iota: Half of strategy is being smart at home–little things like assuring liberty and nurturing innovation, planning for resilience, being self-sustaining where it matters. The contrast between the US shrinking balloon and the expanding Chinese dominance of the world through measured export of males, measures investments, and presidential-level delegations that the US cannot fathom, all bode well for China and ill for the US. The Republic is no longer–whether it can be brought back in a Second American Revolution is the question that we older folk must address–but now we can do so confident that the younger generation–the 12-18 generation specifically, has woken up to both the crisis facing them and the ineptitude of their respective governments. Their informed anger is heartening.
Open Minds (formerly known as March Madness for the Mind) is the acclaimed annual exhibition of cutting-edge innovation from NCIIA's (National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance) best student teams. The exhibition takes place each year during NCIIA's annual conference, and is an opportunity for student teams to demonstrate their products and companies, and receive local and national media coverage. 10-15 teams are selected to participate in this high profile event, which involves an evening exhibition for NCIIA conference attendees as well as an exhibition open to the general public and an exciting video competition.
The state of civil liberties and national security in the United States is alarming.
In the American Empire, the former are routinely crippled or lacerated in the false name of the latter. Trust in government plunges. Dangers are magnified manifold to wound constitutionally venerated freedoms. International terrorist suspects who have never attempted to kill an American are treated as existential threats to U.S sovereignty. Predator drones employed off the battlefield in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen are spawning more enemies than are killed. Habeas corpus is suspended. Military commissions denuded of due process and which combine judge, jury, and prosecutor in a single branch of government are substituted for independent civilian courts. Time-honored privacy rights are trampled. Torture or first cousin enhanced interrogation techniques are endorsed. Congressman Peter King (R. N.Y.), slated for the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, insists that prosecutions of alleged international terrorists in civilian courts are intolerable because guilty verdicts are not guaranteed. The worst violations are dared by few, willed by more, but tolerated by virtually all.
The nation needs a new birth of freedom dedicated to the proposition that the life of a vassal or serf — even in absolute safety — is not worth living.
At present, procedural safeguards against injustice are jettisoned for the counter-constitutional dogma, “Better that many innocents suffer than that one culprit eludes punishment.” A craving for a risk-free and comfortable existence fuels the nation's war on individual freedom. Acceptance of risk, however, is the lifeblood of a free society. Every human sports DNA capable of anti-social behavior — even the saintly. The United States is headed for the same ruination as Athens for the same reasons penned by historian Edward Gibbon: “In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all — security, comfort, and freedom. When…the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.”
Contrary to longstanding orthodoxies, civil liberties and national security are more aligned than opposed. Scrupulous respect for freedom works hand-in-glove with national security by evoking unbegrudging loyalty among citizens eager to risk that last full measure of devotion to foil opponents and to maintain government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Patriotic soldiers are superior to mercenaries. Hessians were no match for the Minutemen in the American Revolutionary War. A military that fights more for love of country than fear or money will triumph. And love of country is elicited by the government's securing unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
President Barack Obama's Afghanistan war plans took two major hits this week: First, his longtime adviser and chief diplomat in the region, Richard Holbrooke, passed away unexpectedly. Now, two classified intelligence reports, one each on Afghanistan and Pakistan and intended for congressional committees, had their contents leaked to The New York Times and their findings are not good.
In the first treatise written on the art of war, sometime around 450 BC [1], Sun Tzu explained why “the wise general sees to it that his troops feed on the enemy,”
EXTRACT: The militarization of development aid is a central pillar of General Petaeus's counterinsurgency strategy to buy the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, ninety per cent of whom are spread out in remote rural areas. So it should not be surprising that the military is controlling the bulk of the billions of dollars in aid money flowing into (and being smuggled out of) Afghanistan.
In the very important CounterPunch report on 13 December, Patrick Cockburn, certainly one of the most informed observers of insurgencies in the Middle East and Central Asia, described how the militarization of development aid in Afghanistan is riven with corruption.
Let the word go out, indeed. “Those are OUR streets, and we will always be there to demonstrate… people learned a lot… we are no longer that post ideological generation, we are no longer that generation that doesn’t care… we are now the generation that will stand with everyone who’s fighting back…” They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.
15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
Coalition of Resistence National Conference 27 November 2010 Camden UK
Not many know that GroupOn, Andrew Mason‘s initiative funded by Eric Lefkofsky, started as Policy Tree “Taking People Out of Politics”. Citizens were not interested in Policy Tree back then for two reasons: the outrage at mortgage fraud, Wall Street derivatives fraud, and Federal Reserve fraud had not peaked yet, and the power of GroupOn to move markets and nations had not been demonstrated. Now that GroupOn has turned down Google's offer of six billion, there is no doubt.
Put simply, GroupOn now has more power than George Soros, to take one example. GroupOn can:
1) Publish true costs for any product or service that is seriously harmful to all of us, and kill it.
2) Publicize a product or service that is good for the community, and make it a standard.
4) Organize citizens to do participatory legislation and participatory policy and participatory budgeting and participatory regulatory and propriety oversight in relation to specific issue areas, zip codes, countries, or states, and empower them as a group that cannot be ignored.
GroupOn has done what all others have failed to do: harnessed citizens in the aggregate. They have just begun. When combined with the emergence of digital natives as a political force whose outrage is now maturing (see Jon Lebkowsky's “The Kids Are All Right“), GroupOn is the game changer–not MoveOn.org, not No Labels, not Americans Elect, not IndependentVoting.org–all “old” models dominated by apparatchicks and not at all open to the collective. GroupOn. As in Group ON, dude!
Phi Beta Iota: Half of strategy is being smart at home–little things like assuring liberty and nurturing innovation, planning for resilience, being self-sustaining where it matters. The contrast between the US shrinking balloon and the expanding Chinese dominance of the world through measured export of males, measures investments, and presidential-level delegations that the US cannot fathom, all bode well for China and ill for the US. The Republic is no longer–whether it can be brought back in a Second American Revolution is the question that we older folk must address–but now we can do so confident that the younger generation–the 12-18 generation specifically, has woken up to both the crisis facing them and the ineptitude of their respective governments. Their informed anger is heartening.
Bruce Fein
