EDIT of 21 January 2013: I have gotten both sharp criticism from folks I revere, and complements. I am more than willing to delete this, but I am more interested in having people think outside the lines. I've made some revisions, adding issues and readings in each section. Email me as you please, robert.david.steele.vivas [at] gmail [dot] com. I'm doing this to raise some ethical nuances, not to deny or revise history. Relevance to today: the “government” rarely tells the truth, and the “reasons” it gives for doing things that ultimately benefit the few at the expense of the many are generally, at best, “flimsy” and at worst, “calculated lies.” All institutions are lacking in both intelligence (decision-support) and integrity (holistic transparent analytics). Wars are a form a global crime, they are not fought for the reasons given, and the public ALWAYS loses while bankers ALWAYS gain. We need to change that. Thomas Jefferson had it right — we need to be better armed than the government — not just guns, but intelligence with integrity. That's what I think about.
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A colleague I respect very much suggested I watch Lincoln, the new movie, for an understanding of a leadership style that worked. Having dismissed the movie because of its erroneous depiction of the Civil War as being about slavery (it was actually a war for and against secession, and a war of conquest from the north of the south), I demurred. Today I read the following from Bill Clinton speaking to an adoring crowd in Hollywood, and it put me to thinking about the point my colleague was trying to make:
“A tough fight to push a bill through a bitterly divided House of Representatives: Winning it required the president to make a lot of unsavory deals that had nothing to do with the big issue.” A little shrug. “I wouldn't know anything about that,” Clinton said. His audience laughed.
Abraham Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln's struggle to abolish slavery “reminds us that enduring progress is forged in a cauldron of both principle and compromise,” Clinton went on. This film “shows us how he did it, and gives us hope that we can do it again.”
I have known for some time that I am viewed as uncompromising, perhaps even arrogant, in my insistence on intelligence with integrity, and my intolerance of the civil service and uniformed leaders who pander to politicians who shake down corporations and banks for campaign contributions, and then discount the public treasury by 95% solely for the purpose of getting their 5% kick-back, without any deep thought of the public interest, and certainly without considering any ethical evidence-based decision-support. Those same civil service and uniformed leaders are never held accountable for failure and roll over into retirement jobs with the industries they have not been holding accountable themselves. At the end of the day, 50 percent of every federal dollar is waste, and the other 50 percent is primarily beneficial to the recipient of the taxpayer revenue, not to the taxpayer.
A mass murder and an alleged suicide are very much on my mind these days. The mass murder is that of Sandy Hook, and the alleged suicide is that of Adam Swartz. I am quite certain that the government is covering up the facts on Sandy Hook, and not investigating the death ostensibly by hanging, of Aaron Swartz. I will return to these in my conclusion.
First I will touch on The War, Principle, on Compromise, and then on Citizen Intelligence / Counterintelligence and finally on Autonomous Internet.
SchwartzReport:Three versions of the same story — the Catholic Church is the primary supply, demand, and permissive/dismissive force in pedophelia world-wide.
An independent inquiry into sex abuse in the German Catholic Church was supposed to restore faith in the embattled institution. But now the Church has called it off, citing a breakdown in trust with the researchers.
Some documents the Archdiocese must release are memos between top church officials and their attorneys, medical and psychological records, complaints from parents, and even correspondence with the Vatican about accused priests.
Three years after paying more than $20 million to close almost 30 priest misconduct lawsuits, Vermont’s Catholic Church settled a dozen new cases Wednesday just minutes before the first was set for trial.
Cost: $300; $250 if you've taken a Rheingold U course before; $500 if your company reimburses you.
In addition to the monetary cost, a commitment to participate is required. The real magic is in learning the meta-skill of forming a learning community with strangers around the world in just a few weeks. To get the most out of this experience, you will need to devote 2-3 hours a week to reading, writing, mindmapping. It's the equivalent of a graduate-level seminar.
Read the syllabus carefully. Check the schedule. The reason I'm looking for learners three weeks early is that it works better if everyone gets a week or two head start on the readings. The community is limited to 35 learners. Although the syllabus is freely world-readable, the forums, blogs, and live-sessions are limited to committed participants. This will be the fourth time that this course has been convened. I've learned a great deal about facilitating this community from my co-learners along the way.If you are seriously interested, let me know, and I'll notify you when it's time to pay me via PayPal.
In light of evidence that a cover-up is underway concerning the Sandy Hook school massacre, I’m reposting the following article by Michael Kelley of the Business Insider, first published on Tuesday 7th August 2012. Readers of my firsttwo articles on the Sandy Hook massacre will recognize alarming similarities between the two events.
Notice at the end of Kelley’s article that Holmes’ court records were sealed. What I conclude from this is that the evidence collected by police directly contradicts the lone gunman narrative. This would mean that here too a cover-up has taken place, the logical reason for which is that it was done to protect the real perpetrators.
The Senate passed the FY2013 intelligence authorization act on December 28 after most of the controversial provisions intended to combat leaks had been removed.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the bill was revised in order to expedite its passage.
“Since the bill was reported out,” she said, “the Committee has received thoughtful comments from our colleagues, media organizations, and from organizations that advocate for greater governmental transparency. As a result of these comments, and technical suggestions received from the Executive Branch, we have decided to remove ten of the twelve sections in the title of the original bill that addressed unauthorized disclosures of classified information so that we might ensure enactment this year of the important other provisions of the bill.”
More precisely, the revision of the bill could be attributed to the intervention of Sen. Ron Wyden, who all but single-handedly blocked its enactment after it was approved in Committee last July by a vote of 14-1, with only Wyden dissenting. Its passage by the full Congress seemed to be assured, but in November, Sen. Wyden placed a hold on the bill to prevent its adoption by unanimous consent.
Sen. Wyden opposed most of the anti-leak measures, he explained on December 21, “because, in my view, they would have harmed first amendment rights, led to less informed public debate about national security issues, and undermined the due process rights of intelligence agency employees, without actually enhancing national security.”
Similar spirit to Flight 93 on 9/11. Federal Flight Deck Officer program could serve as a good model for training and standards. A good Ohio legislature would clean up the laws and preclude lawsuits.
More than 450 teachers and other school employees from around Ohio have applied for 24 spots in a free firearms-training program being offered by the Buckeye Firearms Association.
“We’re pleasantly surprised, but it’s not shocking,” Ken Hanson, legal chairman for the association, said today of the response since the group began taking applications on its website 10 days ago. “The demand has been there for quite some time.”
The issue of arming school employees to protect students has been “on the radar” of school boards in Ohio for several years, he said, but the organization decided to launch its training program after the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.
“That was the breaking point,” he said. “We decided it’s time to quit talking about it and move forward.”
Black-Market Abortion Drug Sales Appear To Be Rising
The New Republic‘s cover headline this month is a topic that pro-choice activists speak about occasionally amongst themselves, but rarely address in public: “The Rise of DIY Abortions.” The reason that it's not much discussed in public forums is that reproductive health advocates are data-driven people, and one thing that's nearly impossible to get data on is the prevalence of women quietly buying an ulcer medication named Cytotec from sleazy online dealers and using that to terminate pregnacies at home, far out of the reach of doctors and agencies like the CDC or the Guttmacher Institute that compile statistics on abortions. The writer of the piece, Ada Calhoun, admits that there's no way to know how common these black-market abortions are, but points out that the rise in websites peddling Cytotec specifically to terminate pregnancy (instead for its on-label use to treat ulcers) makes it hard to deny that this is a growing trend:
