Article below appears in today's WaPo. Certainly a controversial issue, but one that should not be dismissed out of hand without a deliberate consideration of issues such as following:

What would be the official purpose of conscription?
What would we ((DO)) with all those people if we had them? Do we have a bunch of simple, shovel-ready projects standing by, awaiting manpower? Do we have enough unpopulated areas in the Nation to support another Civilian Conservation Corps?
Generally speaking, military professionals don't want to deal with conscripts.
What would be the associated financial costs in each of the major force programs?
Where would the money come from? What money would be reprogrammed? Would tax increases be required?
Would draftee pay and benefits be same as volunteers?
Do we want to put DoD in a domestic societal reclamation role?
Do we waive military entry standards to facilitate conscription? Currently, only about 25% of military-age cohort can qualify due to intelligence, derogatory personal information, obesity, physical unfitness, attention deficit disorder, and other causes.
Do we have adequate remaining base structure to accommodate draftees?
What would be the positive and negative impacts on readiness of the Joint Force to conduct global full spectrum operations?
How would we accommodate acquisition of essential professionals such as physicians, lawyers, etc? Temporary deferments followed by conscription into commissioned ranks?
Are we prepared to socially and legally stigmatize a significant fraction on the population with adverse discharges, particularly in the early years, since many of today's military cohort would likely prove unable or unwilling to meet military standards of performance and conduct?

If, after coming to terms with considerations such as those I list above, the Nation were to decide we want to try grand experiment, I propose tasking the Marine Corps to provide the “common core general military subjects” portion of all Services' Initial Entry Training programs. No rose gardens, just making men and women of Johnnie and Janie, fixing what Mommy, Daddy and the American education system failed to accomplish in 18 or so years.

Save America: Restore the draft

By Dana Milbank, Published: November 29

At this time of Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for the U.S. military — not just for the usual reason that it protects us from our foes but also because it has the potential to save us from ourselves.

As I make my rounds each day in the capital, chronicling our leaders’ plentiful foibles, failings, screw-ups, inanities, outrages and overall dysfunction, I’m often asked if there’s anything that could clean up the mess.

My usual answer is a shrug and an admission that there’s no silver bullet. There are many possibilities — campaign spending limits, term limits, nonpartisan primaries, nonpartisan redistricting, a third party — but most aren’t politically or legally feasible, might not make much of a difference or, as with Harry Reid’s rewriting of Senate rules, have the potential to make things even worse.

But one change, over time, could reverse the problems that have built up over the past few decades: We should mandate military service for all Americans, men and women alike, when they turn 18. The idea is radical, unlikely and impractical — but it just might work.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Restore the Draft to Save America”

2013/12/01

SchwartzReport: Truths That Matter

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

J. Edgar Hoover, a semi-closeted gay man, with a penchant for dressing in drag, used recordings he surreptitiously made of Martin Luther King arranging for and engaging in extra-marital sex with the explicit goal of discrediting him. It's what authoritarian surveillance regimes always do. That's why all the cackle about Constitutional safeguards is nothin! g but blather. The power of compromising an enemy through his weaknesses is just too overpowering to resist, when bureaucrats have no oversight and unlimited power. That's why the NSA needs to be cut back severely and subjected to strict public oversight. Only the cleansing unguent of embarrassment keeps peeping toms in line.

The NSA's Porn-Surveillance Program: Not Safe for Democracy
CONOR FRIEDERSDORF – Reader Supported News/The Atlantic

Here is a very ingenious project that represents the possibility of very good news.

Wastewater Cleaning From Pilus Energy ‘Bactobots,” Followed By Electricity Production!
HEATHER CARR – Clean Technica

2013/11/30

Owl: Corporate Dirty Tricks Against Non-Profits – Hiring Portions of National Security Enterprise Against Activists

07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

New Report Supplying Details on Corporate Espionage – Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofit Organizations

From this report's contents, we find it evident that no type of nonprofit, no matter how benign or noble in its aims against injustice and wrong – even nursing home activists! – is exempt from spying by aggressive, malign predator corporations and their spies. Where spies go first, soldiers follow, so we wonder when the next stage will arrive, when corporations decide to execute and assassinate the leaders and members – and their families – in nonprofits and bomb or burn their headquarters and meeting places. Will Obama draw a line in the dirt then, or ignore it, and will this then all get much dirtier than even Ralph Nader below says?

According to Nader (my emphasis below):

“It’s not just the NSA that has been caught spying on Americans. Some of our nation’s largest corporations have been conducting espionage as well, against civic groups. For these big companies with pliable ethics, if they don’t win political conflicts with campaign donations or lobbying power, then they play dirty. Very dirty. That’s the lesson of a new report on corporate espionage against nonprofit organizations, by my colleagues at Essential Information. The title of the report is Spooky Business, and it is apt. Spooky Business is like a Canterbury Tales of corporate snoopery. The spy narratives in the report are lurid and gripping. Hiring investigators to pose as volunteers and journalists. Hacking. Wiretapping. Information warfare. Physical intrusion. Investigating the private lives of nonprofit leaders. Dumpster diving using an active duty police officer to gain access to trash receptacles. Electronic surveillance. On and on. What won’t corporations do in service of profit and power?

Many different types of nonprofit civic organizations have been targeted by corporate spies: environmental, public interest, consumer, food safety, animal rights, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control and social justice. A diverse constellation of corporations has planned or executed corporate espionage against these nonprofit civic organizations. Food companies like Kraft, Coca-Cola, Burger King, McDonald’s and Monsanto. Oil companies like Shell, BP and Chevron. Chemical companies like Dow and Sasol. Also involved are the retailers (Wal-Mart), banks (Bank of America), and, of course, the nation’s most powerful trade association: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Plenty of mercenary spooks have joined up to abet them, including former officials at the FBI, CIA, NSA, Secret Service and U.S. military. Sometimes even government contractors are part of the snooping.

In effect, big corporations have been able to hire portions of the national security apparatus, and train their tools of spycraft on the citizens groups of our nation. This does not bode well for our democracy.”

More:

Corporate espionage undermines democracy

PDF (54 Pages): Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofit Organizations

Countermeasures:

Security Culture for Activists

2013/11/302013/11/30

Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

CYBER: Archiving Next Generation Social Media

CYBER: China Claims Victory in Internet Scrub

CYBER: Cyber-Intelligence Complex & Dirty Tricks

CYBER: Internet Kill Switch Fact or Fiction?

CYBER: NSA Has Landed Us All in a Mess (Guardian)

CYBER: Tempest Security Intelligence (Company) Selected by The Economist

ETHICS: Japan Secrecy Bill Diverges from Postwar Pacifism

THREAT: 3 Deaths per Hour from Prescription Drugs

THREAT: Al Qaeda at 25 – Totally Dead But Idea Lives On?

THREAT: American “Freedom Fighters” in Syria

THREAT: Banking Crime Against the Poor

THREAT: Missile Warheads Seized in Jamaica

2013/11/30

4th Media: We Do Not Make This Stuff Up!

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

9/11 – Investigating The Role of the Saudi Government

Paul Jay asks Senator Graham if a culture of “not wanting to know” was created to prevent the conspiracy from being uncovered and to protect the role of the Saudi government.

China Announces That It’s Going to Stop Stockpiling US Dollars (Part I)

We quote: «China just dropped an absolute bombshell, but it was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media. The central bank of China has decided that it is ‘no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves’». Michael Snyder’s article predicts that China’s decision will have serious consequences for the United States. According to Snyder, even if this bombshell does not destroy America, it will still cause the country enormous damage.

Monsanto, TPP, Global Food Dominance

According to an Acres USA interview of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, two modified traits account for practically all of the genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals).

2013/11/302013/11/30

Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

CYBER: Botnets Elicit Mercenary Government Approach

CYBER: Dutch Hack Internet Forums

CYBER: Dutch Rules for Mass Interceptions

CYBER: Encryption Arms Race (Techies vs. NSA)

CYBER: Trojan-Banker.Win32/64.Neverquest

CYBER: True Cost of Cybercrime

EDUCATION: Virtual Reality to Reduce Racism?

ETHICS: UK Destroyed Files on Its Colonial Atrocities

THREAT: CAR Crisis – “Human Catastrophe of Epic Proportions”

THREAT: Civilian Impact of Drones

THREAT: Exponential Technology, Moral Glaciers (P.W. Singer)

THREAT: HIV Super-Strain

THREAT: Joseph Kony in Central Africa

THREAT: Radial Islam in Spain

THREAT: Syrian Jihaddist Blow-Back Inside Europe

2013/11/30

SchwartzReport: Truths That Matter

Cultural Intelligence

You can see it with the Pope, you will see it in the next story, as well as this account. There is something very important happening in Christianity. In response to the Theocratic Right, and its psychoses, the greater Christian community is producing from within itself a compassionate life-affirming response.

Church Members Mistreat Homeless Man in Church Unaware It Is Their Pastor in Disguise
Reporters TV

This is an essay expressing something that needs to be said about Gratitude.

Gratitude Is More Than Simple Sentiment; it Is the Motivation That Can Save the World
MILES KIMBALL – Quartz

Here is a second example of the trend. We have clearly suffered a deep psychic wound as a culture. These two stories tell us both that a compassionate life-affirming response is emerging in Christianity and, at the same time, they give us a measure of how deeply we have bought into the Randian Theocratic Rightist view of every person for himself.

LDS Bishop Dresses as Homeless Man to Teach Lesson
MyFOX dc.com/The Associated Press

We need to understand that being poor extracts a much greater toll than someone who hasn't been poor can understand. That's why a strong safety net is the responsibility of a democracy.

Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions
DEREK THOMPSON – The Atlantic