Government bad, , volunteers good?
By Will Englund and Kathy Lally, Published: February 2
Yoda: Volunteerism in Russia
Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, GovernmentDefDog: (Retired) Military Leaders Oppose Hagel
Civil Society, Corruption, Idiocy, Military
Dishonest slime.
(Retired) Military leaders oppose Hagel nomination
Center for Security Policy | Jan 29, 2013
January 29, 2013 (Washington, D.C.): A distinguished group of fourteen retired generals and admirals, representing all branches of the United States Armed Forces, has signed a letter opposing the nomination of Sen. Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense.
The letter – addressed to Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), respectively, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee – raises several concerns about the nomination of Sen. Hagel, including:
- Sen. Hagel’s support for further cuts to the defense budget. Sen. Hagel stated in late August 2011 that the Pentagon is “bloated” and needs to be “pared down”, contrary to Sec. Panetta’s and Chairman Dempsey’s views that sequestration – the additional hundreds of billions in across-the-board cuts to defense that go well beyond the $787 billion in cuts already sustained by the Department since Sec. Gates’ tenure – would be “disastrous for the defense budget” and “very high risk” to national security;
- Sen. Hagel’s support for the global elimination of nuclear weapons. Sen. Hagel is a public supporter of the “Global Zero” Initiative, the goal of which is the “elimination of all nuclear weapons.” This stance is ill-advised for any Secretary of Defense, as Russia and China continue to modernize their nuclear capabilities while North Korea and Iran move closer to obtaining them.
- Sen. Hagel’s hostility towards Israel. Sen. Hagel has demonstrated an abiding hostility towards Israel, a view that would be detrimental to our national defense and perhaps perilous to our only stable, reliable ally in the Middle East were he to become Secretary.
- Sen. Hagel’s outlook towards Iran. Sen. Hagel repeatedly opposed sanctions against Iran while serving in the Senate, and in 2006 stated that “a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option” – an ill-advised statement that undercuts the effectiveness of both diplomatic and military policies to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capabilities.
The signers of the letter are:
Continue reading “DefDog: (Retired) Military Leaders Oppose Hagel”
Patrick Meier: Social Media as Pulse of the Planet?
Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, IO Impotency
Social Media: Pulse of the Planet?
In 2010, Hillary Clinton described social media as a new nervous system for our planet (1). So can the pulse of the planet be captured with social media? There are many who are skeptical not least because of the digital divide. “You mean the pulse of the Data Have’s? The pulse of the affluent?” These rhetorical questions are perfectly justified, which is why social media alone should not be the sole source of information that feeds into decision-making for policy purposes. But millions are joining the social media ecosystem everyday. So the selection bias is not increasing but decreasing. We may not be able to capture the pulse of the planet comprehensively and at a very high resolution yet, but the pulse of the majority world is certainly growing louder by the day.
Read full article with seven graphics.
Phi Beta Iota: As Dr. Meier's notes, right now only the “haves” can be thinking about this. However, we remain certain that a project such as The Virgin Truth, or a concerted effort by the Secretary General of the United Nations to inspire a global United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN), or an initiative by Secretary of State John Kerry to create the Open Source Agency (OSA), can change the information dynamics and information ethics of the Earth virtually overnight.
Owl: Pedophilia as “Privilege” and “Pure” — Single Source Page for Glimpse of Chasm Into Hell — Coast to Shining Satanic Coast – FBI Complicit? 1.5
07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Games Serious / Change, GigaNet, Government, Hacking, IO Deeds of Peace, IO Deeds of War, IO Gaming, IO Multinational, Knowledge, Law Enforcement, Security
A big problem in sharing even excellent, well-sourced information on the theme of pedophiles occupying the highest ranks of organizations, whether they be corporate, governmental or even religious, is not the sense of incredulity such information usually provokes in typically asleep middle-class readers who have lived relatively protected, cocooned existences oblivious to the innumerable black undersides of what some call reality. That's to be expected from those who live in middle-class cocoons. The real difficulty is in examining and sharing information on practices that are unarguably loathsome, depraved, vile, degenerate and in essence evil, and done by people we look upon as our highest and most respectable leaders. It's easy to accuse someone of evil, and it is insufficient by itself to do so. One has to provide evidence, and providing evidence entails describing something ineffably malign and almost unutterable in its horror – that's hard to do, by comparison, because except for those with a strong appetite or attraction to very, very dark things, a minority, no one else, understandably, wants to look at such things. People flee from what repels them, and what is more repellent than pederasts, especially those who have great power and privilege?
This undoubtedly largely has to do with living in a dominantly secular age. The influence of those who don't believe in a Divine Order or God is pervasive enough to compel the masses to assume the flip side: to take for granted there is no Devil, no source of deep, abiding non-human evil. Anything conveyed about people and their practices that smacks of a quality or degree of evil that puts the smug assumptions of modernity into doubt, that makes the Satanic much more plausible despite the stubborn persistence of modernity's assumptions about good and evil, is an object of terror and revulsion to the degree that modernity's values has descended into people's hearts and minds. Not that religious “authorities” can be counted on to protect innocent children. Note the Catholic Church's endless calls to stop abortion, which victimizes innocent children, they say, which is all well and good, but its compulsive, monotonic repetition of this meme seems to be a sign of a compensatory spilling-out of a guilty conscience for having permitted and protected the many pederast priests in its midst. They seem to ignore the more concrete or real crime in exchange for protesting the more abstract one when it comes to their most repeated phrase: innocent children. This happens likely because the real crime is done by their very own, at the center of power and control in the Church, by priests and their bishops.
For these and other reasons, getting the message out about pedophiles who are very powerful is more challenging and daunting than getting out information on any other category of crimes performed by members of the Elite. Yet the task should be done, if only as a microscopic, belated effort to help get some chance of justice for the countless and truly innocent children victimized and even tortured and killed by pederasts, especially those in the highest places, plus to help prevent new such crimes by the high and mighty especially.
Rickard Falkvinge: “Terms of Service” Are Evil
Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement
Routine Dismissive Agreements To Terms Of Service Are A Real Problem (Poll Inside)
Infopolicy: The habit for companies to write terms of service to a length and complexity nobody can understand, coupled with the subsequent habit of everybody of agreeing to them without reading them, has become a real problem. It undermines the concept of contracts as such, and it enables corporations to undermine citizens’ rights without democratic oversight. Maybe regulation is needed.
People are agreeing to anything with a “yeah, whatever” shrug today. A particular website’s terms of service may well include signing away their entire inheritance and house, and it’s likely nobody would notice. This is a real problem, as our ancestors fought hard to give us the rights we have today – rights that are routinely signed away just to play the latest game.
Phi Beta Iota: The law is no longer the law. At the top, governments legalize crime and government agencies become partners in crime with cartels and other forms of organized predation. At the bottom, “terms of service” are so contrived as to waive all existing rights, e.g. to a jury trial, in favor of arbitration or worse, no standing at all. The law has become stupid and irresponsible. Under such circumstances, the law lacks legitimacy. This is a much bigger problem.
SchwartzReport: Catholic Leaders Morally Disengaged and Complicit in Sex Abuse Cover-Ups for Decades
06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption
Another Catholic Sex Abuse Cover-up
MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, Staff Writer – Salon
This story just never stops, and finally one is forced to conclude that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy (as distinct from the living community of believers) is simply degenerate and corrupt. So many thousands upon thousands of children have been molested worldwide by this organization's priesthood that I, for one, can no longer keep track of an accurate number, except that it is very large, and the damage very great. I don't understand! how a Catholic family can be comfortable leaving their child with a priest and, I guess, because Catholic families are leaving the church in droves, the families can't either.
. . . . . . . . .
What’s astonishing now, in light of a continuing deluge of new information, isn’t that the local Catholic Church administration would put protecting its own ahead of considering the nightmare it was perpetuating for the victims – that’s pretty much a given. It isn’t even the lack of reporting to authorities – after all, churches weren’t legally required to do so then as they are now. It’s the apparent total lack of empathy that had to exist to describe a relationship between a priest and a 12-year-old child in terms of ‘surrogate father but also sex partner.”
Phi Beta Iota: This is a triple information pathology. The Catholic Church is enabling, concealing, and perpetuating atrocities against children. The government at multiple levels is willfully refraining from law enforcement against the Church. And finally, the media is failing to do investigative journalism.
US Jewish Leaders Apologize for USS Liberty, Promise Not to Meddle in US Foreign Policy Anymore (UPDATED with New LBJ Cover Story That Exonerates Zionists?)
07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Offbeat Fun, Officers Call
UPDATED 30 Jan 2013: Mini-Me: LBJ Behind USS Liberty? Re-Evaluating What Can Be Known
Jewish Leaders Meet Obama, Apologize for USS Liberty
BNN Senior Producer Karl Reich, 23 January 2013
Washington (BNN) – Leaders of several major American Jewish organizations met today with President Barack Obama and his national security team, offering abject apologies for the Israeli covert attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 Killed in Action (KIA), and 171 Wounded in Action (WIA).
For over 30 years the US Government has been a co-conspirator with Israel and its Zionist supporters in the US, whose campaign contributions to US Senators and Representatives were always accompanied by a note, “Forget about the USS Liberty — it was just business.”
The participants refused to discuss the specifics of the meeting. The groups at the hour-long session included the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Jewish Committee.
