Journal: US Ruling Class versus Country Class–Deep Insights, Need Integrity and Fact-Based Deliberation

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Officers Call, Open Government, Policy, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
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America's Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

By Angelo M. Codevilla from the July 2010 – August 2010 issue of American Spectator

EXTRACT 1:  They [the bi-opoly two parties] think, look, and act as a class.

EXTRACT 2: The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century's Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity. Our classes' clash is over “whose country” America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what. The gravity of such divisions points us, as it did Lincoln, to Mark's Gospel: “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

Continue reading “Journal: US Ruling Class versus Country Class–Deep Insights, Need Integrity and Fact-Based Deliberation”

Inside the iPhone Maker, the Man Who Makes Your iPhone & the Human Costs

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Media, Mobile, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Technologies, True Cost
photo by Tony Law

The Man Who Makes Your iPhone

September 9, 2010
By Frederik Balfour and Tim Culpan

Foxconn founder Terry Gou might be regarded as Henry Ford reincarnated if only a dozen of his workers hadn't killed themselves this year. An exclusive look inside a postmodern industrial empire.  On a crushingly hot mid-August day at Foxconn's Longhua factory campus in Shenzhen—where a dutiful army of 300,000 employees eats, sleeps, and churns out iPhones, Sony PlayStations, and Dell computers—workers indulged in a rare moment of celebration. First, there was a parade, an Alice in Wonderland spectacle of floats, blaring vuvuzelas, and workers dressed up as Victorian ladies, geishas, cheerleaders, and Spider-Men. This was followed by a two-hour rally inside a vast sports stadium featuring acrobats, musical performances, fireworks, and life-affirming testimonials punctuated by chants of “treasure your life” and “care for each other to build a wonderful future.”

photo by Tony Law

Inside the iPhone Maker

By Frederik Balfour

Foxconn Gives Bloomberg Businessweek Unprecedented Access

Foxconn, the secretive Taiwanese company that produces Apple's iPhone and iPad, the Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, and Dell computers, was forced into the limelight in May 2010 after a dozen employees committed suicide, most by jumping from company dormitories. As part of a much needed public relations effort, Foxconn granted Bloomberg Businessweek unprecedented access to the company's factory floors, worker dorms, suicide helpline operators, and the company's charismatic chairman and founder, 59-year-old Terry Gou. Here are some images of its sprawling facility in Longhua, a suburb of Shenzhen, China, where more than 300,000 migrant laborers work.

Journal: Theater, Circus, or Politics?

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

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Tea Partiers Bring Cause to Washington

KATE ZERNIKE September 12, 2010

Republicans in Tea Party Costumes

A crowd gathered around as a man dressed as George Washington read a passage from the Bible during the Tea Party Tax Payer March on Washington on Sunday.

. . . . . . .

“I believe we’ve got the Republican Party’s attention — we’ve been beating the establishment all over the country,” said Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader and the chairman of FreedomWorks, to a burst of cheering. “It’s time we give the same lesson to the other party.”

Mr. Pence taunted the Democratic leadership: “A recession is when you your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. A recovery is when Nancy Pelosi loses her job.”

Phi Beta Iota: The Tea Party appears to have been captured by the Republicans.  This is one of the reasons we are taking an interest in the Coffee Party, which appears to be genuinely committed to non-partisan deliberative dialog and fact-based consensus.  We are still dismayed that Ralph Nader, Jackie Salit, Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul, and Bob Barr, among others, cannot come together to lead a demand for Electoral Reform in two phases, half in 2010, half in 2012.  That would appear to be the single issue where most can agree, and the single reform that would restore the connection between the public, public revenue, and public spending.

Y Combinator Hacker News Community’s Model for Info-Sharing & Potential for Collective Intelligence

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hacking, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Hacker News” has a welcome page and guidelines page offering an overview of what the organizers expect from those planning on posting comments and why it's good overall for the community.  I (Jason Liszkiewicz) was impressed with this. Hacker News has a solid number of participants and provides a simple and mature format for exploring and contributing thoughtful feedback, insight and resources.

It has a jobs link (mainly for engineers and programmers) and the “Ask Hacker News” link which enables the community to share information and reply to what is shared. Such a model (deemed an “experiment”) that provides mature and thoughtful information-sharing is something we need more of. Communities inter-linking with communities (or at least over-lapping) to spill over each others insights can be invaluable and potentially priceless.

Example: Ask HN: What do you perceive as worth spending money on?

This simple and useful model is something I hoped would emerge + converge from the SMS/text messaging developers at ChaCha.com (humans online responding to text messaged questions) or somewhere else. Converging multi-community info-sharing online, offline, and through the mobile world on a global scale is an exciting possibility.

The next level to all of this exists in the form of ideas or fragmented applications but it seems not beyond that, yet.

Email earthintelnet|at|gmail.com or post something at this new forum to discuss these ideas. Or, provide some mature and thoughtful feedback at the Hacker News community.

Sick Systems on a Micro to Macro Level; Not All Vampires Suck Blood; Psychopaths Among Us

04 Education, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Academia, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Media

The following pieces are from June 2010 and 2001. They were found separately within the same day and provide inter-connected insights. Link to the full version..below is an extremely shortened version:

PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US

Dr. Robert Hare claims there are 300,000 psychopaths in Canada, but that only a tiny fraction are violent offenders like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olsen. Who are the rest? Take a look around.
By Robert Hercz (2001)

(three highlights from the article)

+ Hare has said that if he couldn't study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice (Forbes magazine called the Vancouver Stock Exchange the scam capital of the world). This brings a whole other meaning to “psycho-geography.”

+ Soon after he delivered a keynote speech at a conference for homicide detectives and prosecuting attorneys in Seattle three years ago, Hare got a letter thanking him for helping solve a series of homicides. The police had a suspect nailed for a couple of murders, but believed he was responsible for others. They were using the usual strategy to get a confession, telling him, ‘Think how much better you'll feel, think of the families left behind,' and so on. After they'd heard Hare speak they realized they were dealing with a psychopath, someone who could feel neither guilt nor sorrow. They changed their interrogation tactic to, “So you murdered a couple of prostitutes. That's minor-league compared to Bundy or Gacy.” The appeal to the psychopath's grandiosity worked. He didn't just confess to his other crimes, he bragged about them.

+ Know your own weaknesses, they advise, because the psychopath will find and use them. Learn to recognize the psychopath, they tell us, before adding that even experts are regularly taken in.

How to keep someone with you forever (common enslavement tactics)

Jun. 9th, 2010

Rule 1: Keep them too busy to think. Thinking is dangerous. If people can stop and think about their situation logically, they might realize how crazy things are.

Rule 2: Keep them tired. Exhaustion is the perfect defense against any good thinking that might slip through. Fixing the system requires change, and change requires effort, and effort requires energy that just isn't there. No energy, and your lover's dangerous epiphany is converted into nothing but a couple of boring fights.

Continue reading “Sick Systems on a Micro to Macro Level; Not All Vampires Suck Blood; Psychopaths Among Us”

Journal: CIA Links to NYC Mosque Controversy

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call

Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque

By Mark Ames

September 10, 2010 | 2:36 p.m

EXTRACT 1: Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as “business consultant” for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three “strategic advisers.” These include retired four-star General Bryan “Doug” Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed “all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism,” and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he “managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget” and “served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.”

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 2:  So, to recap: From 2006 to 2008, R. Leslie Deak worked as a “business consultant” to this super-secretive security contractor with ties to the CIA and counterterrorism forces, and in those same three years he also donated nearly $100,000 in seed money to the foundation now advocating the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 3:  Goldline is to Glenn Beck what General Electric was to Ronald Reagan: The company sponsors Beck's TV and radio shows as well as his touring act, and Beck is its public face. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, along with the Santa Monica City Attorney's office, are currently investigating Goldline for defrauding customers by railroading gullible customers into buying their most debased products.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, it has been reported that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company Fox News, which airs Beck's program, is also a major funder of Imam Rauf's projects, as Jon Stewart viewers heard all about last week.

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 4: But add to this array of unexpected connections the work of Imam Rauf on behalf of the U.S. government—which includes serving as an FBI “consultant” and being recruited as a spokesperson by longtime George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes, who headed up the administration's propaganda efforts in the Muslim world—and a compelling picture begins to emerge. Bush's favorite Imam, with backing from a funder with connections to the CIA, the Pentagon and the currency trading company that now sponsors rightwing firebrand Glenn Beck, proposes to build a mosque around the corner from the site of the most devastating terrorist attack ever visited on America. In the name of “[cultivating] understanding among all religions and cultures,” he puts forth a project that offends a majority of Americans and deals a significant setback to the broader acceptance of Muslim-Americans. It's a little like Billy “White Shoes” Johnson claiming the only reason he moonwalks after scoring a touchdown is to lower tensions on the football field and raise the other team's spirits.

Prison Planet Alternate View of Entire Piece

Tip of the Hat to Niels Groeneveld at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: It would appear that as the public is becoming more informed and more outraged, the military-intelligence complex on behalf of its global banking sponsors is becoming more brazen.  As it has with the Martin Luther King and JFK assassinations, the Tonkin Gulf and Iraq lies, and most recently with the 9-11 cover-up, the truth cannot be held back.  It has a way of reconnecting that is profoundly moving.

Journal: Gallup Poll on US Public Concerns

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence

September 10, 2010

Nine Years After 9/11, Few See Terrorism as Top U.S. Problem

One percent see it as the top problem today, down from 46% in 2001

PRINCETON, NJ — Nine years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, 1% of Americans mention terrorism as the most important problem facing the country, down from 46% just after the attacks.

. . . . . . .

Still, Americans rated economic issues such as the economy, jobs, and federal spending, as well as corruption in government and healthcare, even higher. They rated terrorism as more important than immigration, Afghanistan, and the environment.

US versus Global Cares
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