The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Extract from Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon Press Conference
“We are also creating a new Global Impact Vulnerability Alert System, giving us real-time data and analysis on the socio-economic picture around the world, so that governments can reach those who most need it.”
References:
GLOBAL IMPACT ANDVULNERABILITY ALERT SYSTEM BACKGROUND NOTE 6 July 2009
Charity Navigator has been on our list of Righteous Sites from the beginning. Today we want to highlight their listing and ratings of 129 “think tanks” or Research and Public Policy Institutes ostensibly committed to the Public Benefit.
Of course we all know that most of these are driven by either ideology or corporate funding to achieve pre-conceived ends, but that does not lessen their value. What lessens the value of the whole is that there is no public intelligence capability for aggreagating all that these “think tanks” produce, so that citizens can “make sense” out of the aggregate, have an appreciative inquiry and deliberative dialog, and then reach a sustainable (i.e. affordable) consensus on the entire spectrum of issues affectiing the public.
Intelligence Is A Critical Need
To do the job right and win
By Rep. Peter Hoekstra and Rep. John Shadegg
September 25, 2009 Pg. 21
Phi Beta Iota: Despite the fact that Representative Hoekstra is now Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), neither of these two individuals (or their staffs) appear to know what it would take to do proper intelligence in Afghanistan; why their commentary is fifteen years too late; and/or why it is also moot in the absence of a coherent reality-based strategy and the rescinding of the existing rules of engagement that are incapcitating our troops. Both good men trapped in a bad system, they have no access to ground truth from iconoclasts and are a perfect reprise to the “best and the brightest” on Viet-Nam–brilliantly uninformed.
With a tip of the hat to Intelligence Online, we recommend One World Research as being worth a look. IO highlighted them as being part of the open source intelligence support to litigation against CIA for renditioin and torture.
One World Research is a research, investigation, and consulting firm that provides high-quality services to clients involved in promoting public interest causes. Our clients include law firms, universities, governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups, journalists, and filmmakers.
Utilizing a network of experienced investigators, attorneys, public policy analysts, and human rights experts, One World Research provides a broad scope of services in the United States and throughout the world, including litigation and advocacy assistance, investigative services, research, and consulting.
PHI BETA IOTA NOTE: The Co-Intelligence Insittute is one of the Righteous Sites, but it is the ONLY Righteous Site whose gentle fund-raising we specifically endorse. There is no better investment for a given dollar than in supporting Tom Atlee's inspirational work. PLEASE consider a donation of any amount, $40 is suggested. Robert Steele just gave $250 and usually gives around $1000 a year. Tom Atlee the people's secretary of collective beneficial intelligence.
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Dear friends,
Paul Hawken is author of a number of remarkable books whose titles alone contribute to our thinking — titles like SEVEN TOMORROWS, THE ECOLOGY OF COMMERCE, NATURAL CAPITALISM and BLESSED UNREST. Several
years ago he founded a vast, remarkable, interactive database of, by, and for change agents — WISER Earth http://wiserearth.org. He has a uniquely potent clarity about what is happening in the world, what is
needed, and who can do the job (surprise: It's us!). His passionate clarity was called forth recently in a commencement address he gave in Portland, Oregon (see below).
I sometimes suggest that things are getting better and better and worse and worse faster and faster. Paul mirrors these thoughts: “When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”
He identifies a biological fact that provides perhaps the most important guidance for our individual lives and the conscious evolution of civilization: “Life creates the conditions that are conducive to life.”
Wait a minute… “Life creates the conditions that are conducive to life.” That's a Really Big Idea. It goes by really fast, but it covers a LOT of ground.
Someday take this idea for a walk and see how many ways you can think of that we do (or don't) “create conditions that are conducive to life”. Then ponder all the ways we COULD create such conditions more wisely, for more of life. Then perhaps reflect on what this biological reality tells us about who and how we are in the world:
To the extent we “create conditions that are conducive to life”, we are alive, we are serving life, we are part of Life and the way Life is unfolding on this planet — a newly conscious part of the way Life has been evolving here for four billion years…
That takes me to the importance of system-level change — initiatives that seek to transform our cultural stories, institutions and practices… that create wiser measures of success, health and value… that develop forms of power, organization, and decision- making that tap into the best of who we are when we are most alive and connected, individually and collectively. Think about how profoundly such changes impact the conditions that are conducive to life — in our own lives and in the natural world. System conditions are the cultural equivalent of climate: They influence everything at once.
Hawken goes on to say that “Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.” He wonders, “What we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years.” And imagines that “No one would sleep that night.” Then he suggests we are living in the midst of such a miraculous moment: “This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years.”
And he suggests that we — embodied in the hundreds of new college graduates sitting before him — wake up to “the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation.” He invites all of us to grab this most amazing opportunity and run with it.
He invites a new “generation” to generate what's needed to create the world anew.
Blessings on the Journey.
Coheartedly,
Tom
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Click on the photograph to go to the commencement address.
Issued April 2009 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
