Pakistan: An elite police commando from the provincial police force who was assigned as a bodyguard for the governor of Punjab Province murdered the governor today in Islamabad. The commando dropped his weapon and surrendered to the police, bragging that he was proud he killed a blasphemer. With that, Pakistan's political crisis deepened.
Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation Part II
07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, StrategyOriginal Post with William Drayton, Alexandere Carpenter, and Robert Steele: Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation
Part II–Alexander Carpenter (AC), the Founding Fathers, and Modern Seers
Journal: Get America Working-A Conversation
If you do nothing else, please consider reviewing the many contributions by Tom Atlee via the first line in Part IV: Related Recommended Reading,
AC: And add this from Charles Hugh Smith to the list:
Charles Hugh Smith America's Job-Creation Machinery Is Hollowed Out
Dave Cohen on Job Prospects in the Bubble Economy, looking for a technological driver:
And this for those still trying to believe in the “enlightenment model,” some lowest-common-denominator and somewhat overstated evolutionary psychology:
Ian Charles, Conscious Robots: How We Make a Decision
And add this about computer gaming:
How Videogames Are Changing the Economy
Continue reading “Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation Part II”
Journal: Next Year’s Wars, This Year’s Gay Resistance
08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
The 16 brewing conflicts to watch for in 2011.
Foreign Policy with International Crisis Group
December 28, 2010
Large photos with captions on each
and closer to home….
Officer won't sign order for troop indoctrination, asks to be relieved of command over repeal of ‘gay' ban in military
Worldnet.com,Posted: December 24, 2010
An Army lieutenant colonel has asked to be relieved of command rather than order his troops to go through pro-homosexual indoctrination following the repeal of the policy, which required homosexuals to keep silent about their sexual preference.
Tom Atlee Sends: 10 Hopeful, 5 Overlooked Stories
11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence
5 Overlooked Stories (CSM)
1. Stuxnet
2. TARP is Cheap
3. Common School Standards
4. Rise of Natural Gas
5. Twilight of the Desktop
20 Hopeful Stories (YES! Magazine)
1. Climate Crisis Response Takes a New Direction
2. Wikileaks Lifts the Veil
3. Momentum is Building for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons
4. Resilience is the New Watchword
5. Health Care—Still in Play
6. Corporate Power Challenged
7. A local economy movement is taking off
8. Cooperatives Make a Comeback.
9. A Turn Away from Homophobia
10. Social Movements Still Our Best Hope
Full details below the line
Continue reading “Tom Atlee Sends: 10 Hopeful, 5 Overlooked Stories”
Journal: Analysis of STUXNET, Iran, and US Vulnerability
Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement
David Albright, Paul Brannan, and Christina Walrond
22 December 2010, Preliminary Assessment
Did Stuxnet Take Out 1,000 Centrifuges at the Natanz Enrichment Plant?
10 pages
Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)
Phi Beta Iota: US Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) computer systems are still on the Internet and still very vulnerable to internal and external interference, as well as the standard 50% “errors and omissions” that come with sloppy computer work so characteristic of US vendors. Many sounded the alarm in 1990 (Winn Schwartau, Peter Black) through 1994 (Robert Steele, various field grade officers at the Air War College) but no one wanted to listen. The US is as close to a complex melt-down (political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, natural-geographic) as we have witnessed in our lifetime.
1998 TAKEDOWN: Targets, Tools, & Technocracy
1995 Military Perspective on Information Warfare: Apocalypse Now
Although other papers have been written since then, the three “originals” in the author's view are Major Gerald R. Hust, “Taking Down Telecommunications”, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1993); Major Thomas E. Griffith, Jr., “Strategic Attack of National Electrical Systems”, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1994; and H. D. Arnold, J. Hukill, and A. Cameron of the Department of the Air Force, “Targeting Financial Systems as Centers of Gravity: ‘Low Intensity' to ‘No Intensity' Conflict”, in Defense Analysis (Volume 10 Number 2, pages 181-208), 1994.
Journal: US Corporations Growing Outside US, No Jobs In US
03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
I received this email from a close friend, a Republican of the old school:
“When 50+ years ago Engine Charlie Wilson said what's good for General Motors is good for America, he was mostly right. Now corporations have turned that aphorism on its head.”
Tuesday, Dec 28, 2010 08:03 ET
Where are the jobs? Overseas, of course
American consumers have little to do with the big profits many top American corporations are now racking up
By PALLAVI GOGOI, Associated Press
Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring?
Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.
EXTRACT: Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria worries that the trend could be dangerous. In an article in the November issue of the Harvard Business Review, he says that if U.S. businesses keep prospering while Americans are struggling, business leaders will lose legitimacy in society. He exhorted business leaders to find a way to link growth with job creation at home.
Other economists, like Columbia University's Sachs, say multinational corporations have no choice, especially now that the quality of the global work force has improved. Sachs points out that the U.S. is falling in most global rankings for higher education while others are rising.
“We are not fulfilling the educational needs of our young people,” says Sachs. “In a globalized world, there are serious consequences to that.”
Read complete article at Salon.com….
See Also:
Reference: 2011 Brave New Dystopia
04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecytruthdig, Posted on Dec 27, 2010
By Chris Hedges
The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.
We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.
Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.
