Civil Society – Page 291 – Public Intelligence Blog

Pentagon’s Gitmo Recidivism Claims Don’t Add Up

Researchers at Seton Hall and New America Foundation track the Pentagon's claims that released Guantanamo detainees ‘returned to battle.'

Phi Beta Iota: Government claims 1 in 5 and counts those who speak to the press against USG and Guantanamo. Researcers find 1 in 25 at best and observe that the USG is simply not able to get the same story told in the same way more than once.

Appeal Hearing on Guantanamo: Main Issues

On January 26, 2010, a panel of military officers will hear the historic first direct appeal from the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Oral argument in the case of United States v. al Bahlul will focus on three constitutional issues that reach beyond military commissions and terrorism trials. The main issue in the case asks whether the war on terrorism justifies the censorship of foreign media. [Emphasis added.]

aa affirmation — My Truth & Only My Truth

The Age of Affirmation: A new study finds that TV viewers watch the news more for affirmation than for information.

A new study suggests that viewers worldwide turn to particular broadcasters to affirm — rather than inform — their opinions. It's a notion familiar to those dismayed by the paths blazed by cable news networks FOX and MSNBC — although the study finds one (perhaps unlikely) network may actually foster greater intellectual openness.

The study in the December issue of Media, War & Conflict by Shawn Powers, a fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and Mohammed el-Nawawy, an assistant professor in the department of communication at Queens University of Charlotte, found that the longer viewers had been watching Al Jazeera English, the less dogmatic they were in their opinions and therefore more open to considering alternative and clashing opinions.

2010/01/252010/01/25

Journal: Pope Takes to the Web

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence

Pope asks priests to become more Web savvy

The pope is asking priests to become more media savvy by preaching to the faithful from the Internet as well as the pulpit.

Pope Benedict XVI

(Credit: The Vatican)

In his message for the Catholic Church's 2010 World Day for Social Communications, Pope Benedict XVI called on the ministry to use the latest technologies, such as Web sites and blogs, to preach the gospel and encourage a dialogue with their practitioners.

2010/01/232010/01/23

Journal: Freedom of Speech, Personhood, & Corporations Ubber Alles–You Will Be Assimilated

Civil Society, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

After reading this report by my good friend Werther, I would urge you to compare Werther's analysis to the “inside the beltway,” K Street analyses published in today's Washington Post — then decide which you like better.

Chuck Spinney

High Court Decrees Existence of Corporate Übermensch

By Werther (Pseudonym) Electric Politics January 22, 2010

The Supreme Court's wholesale rejection of a century of statutes regulating corporate contributions to political campaigns is a breath of fresh air in a hypocrisy-ridden political process. It certainly ought to sweep away the tendency of timid rationalizers to deny the existence of corporate domination and control of every aspect of governance in the United States — a fact which should have already been made abundantly clear by the terms of the bank bailout and the health care travesty.

It is not inconceivable, using the Court's logic, that antitrust laws could be thrown out as well. Since natural persons have freedom of association, why should not artificial persons have a similar freedom of association? The Court has in fact created a species of Nietzschean Übermensch: a non-human human endowed with the strength of many people and theoretically immortal.

Now that our Supreme Court, with the assistance of a little medieval alchemy, has ruled that property can be transmuted into persons, is it conceivable that it could do the opposite? Before one dismisses the thought, the executive branch, with the connivance of lower federal courts, has already been busy establishing the precedent that persons held at Guantanamo prison and other facilities can be converted into the property of the United States Government, to be held indefinitely.

Who is helped, or hurt, by the Citizens United decision? (Washington Post)

CLETA MITCHELL : The Supreme Court has correctly eliminated a constitutionally flawed system that allowed media corporations (e.g., The Washington Post Co.) to freely disseminate their opinions about candidates using corporate treasury funds, while denying that constitutional privilege to Susie's Flower Shop Inc

ROBERT LENHARD: The balance of power in political contests has shifted dramatically away from candidates running for office and toward corporations and unions seeking to advance their policy agendas.

KENNETH GROSS: Contrary to popular reports, the sky is not falling.

ANNA BURGER: There can be no doubt: The voice of everyday working Americans in the political process will be muted.

BEN GINSBERG: The voices of candidates and political parties just got much quieter.

MARK ELIAS: While few individuals exercise their right to fund multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns, we should expect that corporations will eagerly do so. Given corporate wealth and the legislative stakes, in many elections corporations will dominate paid campaign communications — leaving candidates and political parties as secondary actors.

KAREN FINNEY: At the very moment Americans' mistrust of big corporations, big government and large institutions has reached a fever pitch, the Supreme Court moved to replace a government of, for and by the people with a government that can be bought and paid for by just about any major corporation — from Exxon to Russian-owned Lukoil to China's CPC Corp.

2010/01/202010/01/20

Journal: What Voters Want

10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Reform

photo tarpley new — Webster Griffin Tarpley

In a depression, voters want populism. If they can find potent New Deal economic populism, they will vote for it every time, as US elections between 1932 and 1944 show without a shadow of a doubt. But if they do not find economic populism, they can easily fall prey to the cynical demagogy of cultural populism. That is what has happened in Massachusetts.

The only way to be an economic populist is the shift the cost of the world economic depression and the tax burden generally onto Wall Street financial interests, that is to say onto the malefactors of great wealth who created this crisis in the first place. That is the recipe for winning elections in a depression.

Most Democrats appear to be too far gone on the road to plutocracy to learn that lesson. It therefore may well be time to create a new party to represent the one major political current in American life which is not represented by either of the two big parties of the day. In other words, we desperately need, one way or another, a New Deal economic populist party to lead this country and much of the world out of the world economic depression.

2010/01/192011/10/22

Journal: Trust Busting in the 21st Century

03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF, lays out the political case for “Trust Busting” in the 21st Century — it is a political argument that Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt would have understood and probably approved of.

Chuck

A Trap Of Their Own Design

Simon Johnson Baseline Scenario January 19, 2010

At this stage in the electoral cycle, Democrats should be running hard against big banks and their consequences. Some roots of our current economic difficulties lie in the Clinton 1990s, but the real origins can be traced to the financial deregulation at the heart of the Reagan Revolution – and all the underlying problems became much worse in eight years of George W. Bush’s unique brand of excess and neglect.

The theme for the November midterms should be: Which part of the 8 million jobs lost [since December 2007] do you not understand? The big banks must be reined in and forced to break themselves up, or we’ll head directly for another such crisis.

Instead, the Democrats have fallen into a legislative and electoral trap that – amazingly – they built for themselves.

Continue reading “Journal: Trust Busting in the 21st Century”

2010/01/182010/01/18

Journal: Tea Party Express Rolls Along

11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Government, Reform

Welcome to the Tea Party Express III: Just Vote Them Out!

All throughout the recent Tea Party Express national bus tour we kept receiving calls from people around the nation who lived far away from the route our buses took across America. We vowed at the time to keep the Tea Party Express effort alive – and that’s exactly what we are doing.

Join us from March 27th to April 15th, 2010
as we tell Congress and the White House: “Enough!”

Let’s stand up and stop the bailouts, cap and trade, out-of-control spending, government-run healthcare, and higher taxes! We’re back and determined to take our country back!

Phi Beta Iota: We do not believe that a Civil War is coming for the simple reason that there are not enough organized guns to put down the public if the public is united. The Tea Party Express is more authentic in many ways than the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP), which is much more like organized politics as operated by the two parties that have corrupted the electoral system and block out the other 63 parties from actual participation.

2010/01/172010/01/17