The US is fighting three wars (either losing them or stalemating at best), its economy teeters on the cusp of a double dip recession, the distribution of income is the most skewed of all the advanced countries, and this is what dominates politics — and to think, we were brought up to hold the decadence of the Roman circuses in contempt.
Phi Beta Iota: Brother Spinney's question is rhetorical. Politics died with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and has been a theatrical performance ever since–over-priced, we might add. Hybrid networks that harmonize on the basis of shared information are increasingly routing around “imitation” governments.
Most of your articles and information are very reliable and appreciated for what they are. This time, however, it is a mix of good research (Chellis's article) and a bit of exaggeration (your friend of a friend memo.) Chellis's article was published several months ago after she did a very thorough job of discovering the facts and assembling the story in an
engaging way. She definitely understands the political dynamics here in Bolivia, especially the role of racial identity in the process. I am glad you have circulated it. It is important that the Evo fans around the world
understand that, like Obama, his promises and his actions are far removed from each other.
Agency director Panetta expected to become Defense Secretary, replacing Robert Gates
Phi Beta Iota: This is worse than business as usual, this is a dramatic step backwards. CIA is clearly irrelevant, an off-stage holding area for a failed General. In today's context, the best candidate for Defense, Senator Chuck Hagel, has evidently had second thoughts about the viability of the Obama Administration. Defense is about to be raped by the clerks as a bill-payer, rather than right-sized by serious people mindful of Senator Sam Nunn's wisdom:
I am constantly being asked for a bottom-line defense number. I don't know of any logicial way to arrive at such a figure without analyzing the threat; without determining what changes in our strategy should be made in light of the changes in the threat; and then determining what force structure and weapons programs we need to carry out this revised strategy.
This Administration–like others before it–lacks intelligence; lacks a holistic global and domestic strategy; and lacks the integrity necessary to fulfill its Constitutional responsibilities to the public.
See the below [December 2010] article from our old friend, Chellis Glendinning, now living in Bolivia, that she did on the administration's recent anti-eco projects, and the following sent from a friend of a friend also living there now.
Sad to hear the other side of the story…JAS
“Need to tell you that this is all bull. Mr. Morales turns out to play to the international audience (you) — while at home he's got something else going on: industrial development up the kazoo, dams many times bigger than Hoover, nuclear power plants, uranium mining, lithium mining, new oil wells, pipelines through indigenous lands, new highways that tribes are fighting. Every time the people rise up against his plans — which happens constantly now (a friend just lost his eye to the police in the streets) — the administration dismisses them saying they are in the hands of the capitalists or are trying to tear down the state. Plus, public opinion has been cut via new laws that minimize the voice of journalists with heavy fines and perhaps closing papers, radio stations, etc. if
convicted. It is commonly said that EM says one thing but does the other.
“So, here at ground level, we don't take this law very seriously. It's nice, a nice collection of words. Sorry to tell you this. Non-democractic socialism, it turns out, is no picnic.
“The challenge begins now, as the people were too afraid to protest for the last years due to the assault by the right. But that's not a threat just now, so the people are rising up. It's a whole new ballgame at this point.
No one knows what will happen. Today's news is that El Evo liberated a bunch more millions to spend on further industrialization!”
The Ron Paul Revolution in 2008 and the tea party movement that followed shows that the American conservative mainstream is starting to awaken to its own pre-neocon past and potential future. It is seeing itself as the bulwark needed to protect our Republic, the rule of law, individual liberty and our fiscal health against those in both parties whose policies have taken the United State to the precipice of disaster.
For those who think both constitutionally as Dr. Paul does and systemically, it's impossible to distinguish between our national debt and our foreign policy. Dr. Paul is one of the few candidates who offers an integrated and systemic way of understanding the difficulties we face as a country and the means to restore our Republic.
NEW YORK (AP) — Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the “shame of a needless war” in Iraq.
Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of “grotesque distortion” in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country.
The Iraq war taught him that “deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators,” ElBaradei writes in “The Age of Deception,” being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.
The 68-year-old legal scholar, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009 and recently a rallying figure in Egypt's revolution, concludes his 321-page account of two decades of “tedious, wrenching” nuclear diplomacy with a plea for more of it, particularly in the efforts to rein in North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Phi Beta Iota: We endorse the truth & reconciliation process and believe that if the USA is to restore its promise as a contributor to the international community of nations, it must first disclose the truth. In our view, the investigation should begin three months prior to 9-11, when Dick Cheney first mandated a nation-wide counter-terrorism exercise that assured his complete control over the entire US Government on 9-11….an assurance he and his planners needed to not just let it happen, but to execute all the trimmings and then carry on with the Weapons of Mass Deception that committed America to an elective multi-trillion dollar war against multiple countries. Dick Cheney hijacked the Presidency. We all need the truth on the table.
Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York):When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it.
Sustainability experts have called on global regulators to ask companies to report on their sustainable policy and performance, disclosing results in a similar way to financial reporting.
“A ‘report or explain’ approach could persuade more companies to report rather than explain why they don’t,” said Teresa Fogelberg, deputy chief executive of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
. . . . . .
About 4,000 global companies report their sustainability performance, using reporting guidelines recently updated by the GRI.
These focus on 79 issues including consulting stakeholders on important topics, human rights, the impact on local communities and gender matters.
