The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Crowd-Fundraising For Causes Adds Up Fast
Phi Beta Iota: Excellent story, with $200,641 being the top funded project so far. Imagine the day when the public refuses to pay taxes but contributes to what it really wants, cutting out the carpet-bagging intermediaries. Missile defense and most Pentagon pork would NOT get funded by an informed engaged public. The game has changed.
Online:
http://spot.us (reporting)
http://pledgie.com
Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists
by Angel Rabasa, Stacie Pettyjohn, Jeremy Ghez, Christopher Boucek
RAND Monograph 2010 242 Pages Free Online or $26
Proactive measures to prevent vulnerable individuals from radicalizing and to rehabilitate those who have already embraced extremism have been implemented, to varying degrees, in several Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, and European countries. A key question is whether the objective of these programs should be disengagement (a change in behavior) or deradicalization (a change in beliefs) of militants. Furthermore, a unique challenge posed by militant Islamist groups is that their ideology is rooted in a major world religion. An examination of deradicalization and counter-radicalization programs in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe assessed the strengths and weaknesses of each program, finding that the best-designed programs leverage local cultural patterns to achieve their objectives. Such programs cannot simply be transplanted from one country to another. They need to develop organically in a specific country and culture.
Broadside fired at al-Qaeda leaders
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times, 10 December 2010
ISLAMABAD – A number of senior al-Qaeda members who had earlier opposed the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and some of whom were recently released from detention in Iran, have produced an electronic book critical of al-Qaeda's leadership vision and strategy.
The book, the first of its kind to publicly show collective dissent within al-Qaeda, was released last month. It urges the self-acclaimed global Muslim resistance against Western hegemony to open itself to the Muslim intelligentsia for advice and to harmonize its strategy with mainstream Islamic movements.
By Michael Lind
Many Americans have come to the conclusion that nobody represents them in Washington anymore. They are right.
This situation is not the result of a sinister conspiracy by a single, unitary, all-powerful and diabolical elite. The origins of the disconnect are structural. The mass membership organizations that once represented ordinary Americans at the state and national level have been replaced by elite organizations that raise their money from a small number of billionaires rather than hundreds of thousands or millions of dues-paying members.
Phi Beta Iota: This is the first time we have seen this important idea presented so plainly. GroupOn might yet help solve the problem. What is clear is that the Internet has spawned the fragmentation of groups even further, without offering something like GroupOn that could bring them all back together issue by issue–this was the reason Earth Intelligence Network was created, to be a proponent for a World Brain and EarthGame that could connect all people with all relevant information, and in this way enable informed participatory democracy across multiple boundaries–Panarchy, the opposite of Anarchy. Electoral Reform is an important first step, but as the full article suggests, the public desperately needs some vehicle for representing all of the people all of the time.
Reinventing education and the StudentsFirst.org movement
The US education is in crisis. The evidence is well-known and summarized in my post earlier this week.
A root cause of the crisis is the application of the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of “the system”, to which the students, the teachers and the parents have to adjust. “The system” grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and parents alike.
The root cause of the problems: factory model of management
. . . . . .
The five shifts that are needed in education
Just as in reinventing management, where five fundamental and interdependent shifts are needed, so in reinventing education five fundamental and interdependent shifts need to occur:
1. The first shift concerns the goal which has to shift from a focus on the efficiency of “the system” to one of putting students first.
. . . . . .
Continue reading “Journal: Reinventing Education–Putting Students First”
Owner, Idlewild Books, New York City
10 Books 10 Countries: The Best Translated Books of 2009
If you're reading this, it's probably because literature matters to you, because you agree with the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa that literature is “one of the common denominators of human experience through which human beings may recognize themselves and converse with each other, no matter how different their professions, their life plans, their geographical and cultural locations, their personal circumstances.”
Yet here in the United States, we seem to be conversing mostly with ourselves. Even among those of us who love to read, we are largely cut off from the great dialogue that connects so much of the world (and missing some damn good books) due to the fact that less than three percent of what's published in this country is translated from other languages.
Three percent is low: in France and Spain, for example, both of which produce prodigious amounts of their own literature, more than half the new books published in a given year are translated from other languages. And even among the small number of foreign-language books that do make it into English in this country, about 300 to 400 titles in an average year, how many do you hear about?
If your main source for book news is mainstream media, the answer is: not many. Nine of the ten books on The New York Times's “Best Books of 2009” list were written by Americans (the tenth was by a Brit), as were nearly all the titles on their year-end list of 100 notable books. And very few of the books reviewed in any major American newspaper come from beyond our borders.
Read full article with list of books by country.
Phi Beta Iota: The author makes an very important point. Read the entire post to see his thoughtfully selected examples of books Americans should be but are not reading.
Six years ago, while standing inside a Wal-Mart, Cynthia Caron realized that those passing were walking through the entrance and nobody glanced over at the huge wall frame of missing children. She felt perhaps the general population may have become “desensitized” to the “missing child” posters. She also realized that it was rare to see one for a missing adult.
Cynthia began designing unique banners of missing loved ones which are posted on Internet web pages, blogs and forums with the hopes that a missing person will be recognized. Working with various law enforcement agencies across the country, on behalf of the families, and helping to bring awareness via the media, internet and social network groups relieves the frustrations that families endure when a loved one goes missing and enables families to have peace of mind in knowing that all the necessary steps are taking place. Cynthia interacts on a daily basis with law enforcement and a number of families who are seeking missing loved ones. She also guides those members to supportive groups of other families who have the same experiences. Linking families together has proven to be a valuable and supportive tool both emotionally and physically for those beginning the steps of searching for their missing loved one and LostNMissing is with the families every step of the way.
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 7, 2010 4:00 PM |
CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 |
WASHINGTON – December 7 – The following statement was released today, signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Frank Grevil, Katharine Gun, David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, Craig Murray, Coleen Rowley and Larry Wilkerson; all are associated with Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.
WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in. The people listed below this release would be pleased to shed light on these exciting new developments.
How far down the U.S. has slid can be seen, ironically enough, in a recent commentary in Pravda (that's right, Russia's Pravda): “What WikiLeaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic … After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts can be paralyzing, especially when … government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. …”
So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. … the American people should be outraged that their government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.
