Category: Collaboration Zones

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Worth a Look: Optimism 2.0

Cultural Intelligence
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How an optimistic outlook can help improve your state of health, not just your state of mind.

Mary Desmond Pinkowish | September 2010 issue

Admit it. Secretly you think optimistic people are just a little annoying—their constant, insufferable smiling; the way they’re always looking on the “bright side” and reciting cheerful aphorisms. When you encounter an optimist, uncharitable words like “sap” and “chump” may pop into your head. And when optimists veer off into wishful thinking, and the ridiculous state called “blind optimism,” you suspect they are downright delusional, even dangerous. Is optimism really a characteristic we want to instill in ourselves and our kids?

Actually, yes. Optimism can protect against depression and anxiety disorders and promote emotional resilience. Optimists are physically healthier than pessimists, and they recover faster from conditions like heart disease. Optimism can help us cope more effectively with stress, and affects the immune system in ways that are largely beneficial. Plus, most people prefer the company of optimists. Compared to pessimists, they have more friends and are more likely to have wide social networks, which confer additional health benefits.

Tip of the Hat to Sterling Seagrave at Facebook.

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Journal: Henry Seigman on Israel’s Freeze Scam

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Peace Intelligence
Full Article Online

Chuck Spinney Recommends

Netanyahu's Freeze Scam

by Henry Siegman 30 Sep 2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks at the formal White House launching of the resumed Middle East peace talks on September 2 were the clearest indication yet of his lack of seriousness. But neither the host, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, nor any of the distinguished guests seemed aware of it. Indeed, they applauded his remarks. What they applauded was Netanyahu's dramatic declaration, as he faced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, that the success of the resumed negotiations will depend on his own and Abbas' readiness to make “painful concessions” for the sake of peace.

If these words have any significance, they must mean that Netanyahu is prepared to make Israeli concessions that match Palestinian concessions: i.e., if Palestinians concede to Israel part of their territory east of the 1967 border, Israel would concede to the Palestinians comparable territory on its side of that border.

But everyone present at this festive White House event knew this to be completely untrue. Netanyahu has never offered to concede even one inch of Israeli territory to the Palestinians — not even from Palestinian territories Israel acquired in 1948 during its War of Independence, which the 1947 UN Partition Plan had assigned to Palestine's Arab population. In fact, no one has ever asked Israel to make any concession to the Palestinians — whether territory, water resources, Jerusalem or sovereignty. In respect to these and the other permanent-status issues, the concessions have all been demanded of the Palestinians. None were asked of Israel. So Netanyahu's offer of parallel Israeli concessions is a lie. Unless, of course, Netanyahu meant to apply the term “painful concessions” to his willingness to return to Palestinians a part of their own territory, all of which — up to the 1967 border — is universally recognized as being under Israeli occupation, and therefore subject to the Fourth Geneva Convention's strictures that absolutely forbid the transfer of the occupying power's population to those territories. If that is what he meant, what Netanyahu was telling Abbas is that Israel expects to be rewarded for returning some of the territory it unlawfully confiscated from the Palestinians by having Palestinians concede their right to the balance of that territory.

By getting the distinguished guests at this event to applaud this offer, Netanyahu can fairly be said to have done for international peace diplomacy what Bernard Madoff did for financial markets.

Read full article online…

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Siegman is the Ambassador to Israel designate in the Huffington Post Virtual Cabinet.  Here he presents FACTS that neither the White House nor the Department of State nor the US Intelligence Community appear capable of acknowledging.  The US is an enabler of the atrocities perpetuated by Israel against the Palestinians.

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Journal: Bin Laden, Dead or Alive, Makes Sense

01 Poverty, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Huffington Post Story

Bin Laden Tape: Terror Leader Criticizes Muslim Governments For Military Spending

CAIRO — Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden called for the creation of a new relief body to help Muslims in an audiotape released Friday, seeking to exploit discontent following this summer's devastating floods in Pakistan by depicting the region's governments as uncaring.

It was the third message in recent weeks from al-Qaida figures concerning the massive floods that affected around 20 million people in Pakistan, signaling a concentrated campaign by the terror group to tap into anger over the flooding to rally support.

But while the earlier messages by subordinates were angry, urging followers to rise up, bin Laden took a softer, even humanitarian tone – apparently trying to broaden al-Qaida's appeal by presenting his group as a problem-solving protector of the poor.

“What governments spend on relief work is secondary to what they spend on armies,” bin Laden says on the 11-minute tape titled “Reflections on the Method of Relief Work.”

“If governments spent (on relief) only one percent of what is spent on armies, they would change the face of the world for poor people,” he said

Read rest of story online…

Phi Beta Iota: We believe Bin Laden to be dead or comatose, but it merits comment that some people do take on a life of their own after death, as with many prophets whose messages are refined or corrupted, but carried on.  What should shock and awe here is that this message makes a great deal more sense than the current US strategy of spending trillions on elective occupations and Wall Street bail-outs, and nothing at all on eight of the ten high-level threats to humanity, with stark poverty in the USA and elsewhere being #1.

See Also:

Graphic: Medard Gabel’s Cost of Peace versus War

Review: Collapse–How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

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Worth a Look: Citizens, Banks, and Coal Mining

05 Energy, Civil Society, Commerce, Earth Intelligence

Phi Beta Iota: We decided to post a long email about helping a major international bank decide not to fund mountaintop removal coal projects for the following reasons:

1)  It illustrates the emergent power of focused citizen advocacy.

2)  It documents the modified behavior of select major banks.

3)  It highlights the complete fragmentation of citizen advocacy–all over the lot with no strategic analytic model, no information-sharing network, no ability to co-evolve and achieve multiplication effects.

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Citizens, Banks, and Coal Mining”

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Journal: Kow-Towing to Israel for No Good Reason

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Chuck Spinney On the Record

Sacrificing Substance for Process

Peace Process to Nowhere

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reports that President Obama begged Prime Minister Netanyahu to extend his settlement freeze in order to save the so-called peace talks.

As a quid pro quo, Obama is reported to have promised Netanyahu that (1) Israel could resume settlement construction if the peace negotiations failed to produce results and (2) that the United States would give Israel written assurances of its commitment to Israel’s security (suggesting a formal peace treaty perhaps?).  Despite Obama’s desperation,  Netanyahu blew Obama off and allowed the so-called freeze to expire.

If, as is likely, this report is true, Israel has humiliated the United States once again — a fact that will no doubt be deemed irrelevant by Israel’s shills on both sides of the aisle in Congress, not to mention the mainstream media.

The last president to stand up to Israel was Dwight Eisenhower, when he pulled the plug on the second Arab-Israeli war in 1956 and forced Israel to retreat from the east bank of the Suez Canal and to give up its conquest of the Sinai.

But eleven years later, Israel learned US condemnation was no longer a problem.

In fact, Israel learned it could get away with murder and could treat the United States with utter contempt when (1) its air and naval  forces not only attacked the USS Liberty — a high priority US Navy signals intelligence ship — on 8 June 1967 during the Six-Day War, killing 34 and wounding 171 US sailors, but (2) was able to secure a cover up of its perfidy by the highest levels of the US government, including President Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and  most of the senior military officers in the Pentagon, despite the misgivings of Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State and Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (neither of whom chose to resign in protest, however).

Read rest of article…

Phi Beta Iota: As has been reported on more than one occasion, even when Israel “promises” to stop settlements, they continue apace.  The Israeli government cannot be trusted on any detail.

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Journal: Children in Poverty in USA–More…And MORE

01 Poverty, Civil Society, Gift Intelligence, Government

mark-kennedy-shriverA Drumbeat That Must Be Heard

Mark Shriver , 2010.09.29

According to the Census Bureau's new report, 46 states and the District of Columbia experienced increased childhood poverty rates over the last year, with an alarming national rate of 1 in 5 kids affected.

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Phi Beta Iota: While the Bush and Obama Administrations bailed out Wall Street and enabled the continuation of $10 million dollar bonuses using taxpayer funds, poverty in America sky-rocketed–poverty of adults, and poverty of chidlren.  This is a crime against humanity that goes unnoticed because no one is doing the job that the media is supposed to be doing: rendering the public service of public intelligence in the public interest.

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Journal: 1.6 Million Homeless Children in USA

06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence
Rich German

Rich German

Creator, ‘Generation Why?‘

Posted: September 30, 2010 03:09 PM

Why Are There Over 1.6 Million Homeless Children Here in the United States of America?

EXTRACT:  Here are some more sobering numbers:

  • Over 50% of youth in shelters and on the streets report that their parents told them to leave or knew they were leaving and did not care.
  • One IN four homeless youth come from the foster care system
  • 33% of heterosexual homeless youth have been sexually abused
  • Less than one in four homeless children will graduate from high school
  • Every day 12 kids die on the streets of America

Why are there more than 1,600,000 homeless youth right here in our own backyard?

As I continued to study the issue I have found there are basically two camps out there. The main camp are the people, myself included at first, who simply have NO CLUE that this is such a huge problem. Most people I talk to have no idea that this is such a major epidemic.

The second camp is the people who feel the statistics are made up. There are a lot of people who don't want to believe this could be happening on the streets of our country. Sure there are homeless kids in Africa, India, Pakistan and a host of other third world countries, but not here!

We can no longer allow this epidemic to continue. The future of our great country is in the hands of our children. How can we comfortably sleep at night when so many of our children are alone, scared and living homeless on the streets?

For more info go to GenWhyMovie.com

Rich German is an author, speaker, business & life coach. He is also the creator of the film Generation Why? His website is www.richgerman.com.