Corporations are artificial creations of the state and receive special protections from the state. Thus, claims attorney and author Jeff Clements, corporations should not have the same Constitutional rights as individuals even though some argue that they are simply organized associations of individuals.
In this interview with Michael Ostrolenk, Mr. Clements outlines his belief that many of the abuses of crony capitalism are allowed by corporations exploiting these illegitimate “rights.”
He also exposes how tobacco industry attorney turned Supreme Court Justice, Lewis Powell, helped to spearhead the creation of a constitutional right to corporate “speech” which was recently strengthened by theCitizens United decision. Read more about this issue (and buy his new bookCorporations Are Not People) at Mr. Clement’s website.
My close friend Mike Lofgren writes an important essay describing the nature of ‘truth' in the Orwellian echo chamber that is closing the American mind in the 21st Century.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States has appropriated $806 billion for the direct cost of invading and occupying Iraq. Including debt service since 2003, that sum rises to approximately $1 trillion. The White House estimates the number of U.S. military wounded at 30,000; the web site icasualties.orgstates that U.S. military fatalities from the Iraq war now stand at 4484. It is impossible to estimate precisely the numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths, but they are frequently cited as being in excess of 100,000. There are now around two million internally displaced Iraqis in a country of 30 million inhabitants. As United States armed forces (but not up to 17,000 State Department employees, contractors and mercenaries) leave the country, Iraq is plunging into a sectarian and ethnically-fueled political crisis. Even if it survives that crisis and remains a unitary state, it will almost certainly be pulled closer to the orbit of Iran, our bogeyman du jour.
In view of the crippling costs both human and financial as well as the strategic and moral disaster the invasion of Iraq precipitated, what sort of verdict do you think our leaders – leaders representing a presidential administration ostensibly opposed to the invasion and promising hope and change – bother to offer us? While junketing in Turkey on December 17, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told the press the following:
“As difficult as [the Iraq war] was, I think the price has been worth it, to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world.”
One’s only reaction to this statement is to blink in disbelief and wonder: is Panetta that stupid, or does he think that we, the supposedly self-governing citizens of this country, are that stupid?
Adriana discusses her thinking about heterarchy, including initial thoughts about five laws of heterarchy.
A heterarchy is a system of organization replete with overlap, multiplicity, mixed ascendancy, and/or divergent-but-coexistent patterns of relation. Definitions of the term vary among the disciplines: in social and information sciences, heterarchies are networks of elements in which each element shares the same “horizontal” position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role.
“Hierarchies seem to be like oxygen: they’re all around us, pervasive, visible only to those who study them. Hierarchies are the most efficient system for management and distribution of scarce resources… given that the physical world is defined by scarcity of all sorts, it goes a long way toward explaining hierarchy as our default organizational structure….There is potential to come up with alternatives to our hierarchical organizational defaults, and I think that would be good news for all those trapped in stifling and disempowering organizations.”
An economic model that seeks to include the cost of negative externalities into the pricing of goods and services. Supporters of this type of economic system feel products and activities that direct or indirectly cause harmful consequences to living beings and/or the environment should be accordingly taxed to reflect the somewhat hidden costs.
An Italian radio program's story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.
As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example.Here's why:
What do you think of the following: YouTube has an “informal system” that allows companies with copyrights to automatically scan all uploads for potential violations. If the software detects the “possibility” of a violation (image, tune, trademark, etc.), it automatically tells YouTube to delete the content. This software is so automated, it can censor millions of uploads a day without human intervention.
Here's an example of how this censoring system was used to block speech that Universal music found objectionable:
A site called MegaUpload, a “large file” sharing service based in Hong Kong, is targeted by copyright holders, including Universal Music, for shutdown. They believe the site makes “copyright piracy” easier.
To fight back on the media front, MegaUpload, a popular (50 m users a day), pays $3 million to produce a music video that promotes the service. The video features big name musical talent.
MegaUpload posts the music video to YouTube to share it with a global audience.
Universal Music, uses special access it has the to the YouTube system (inappropriately named the “content management system”) that allows it to scan all videos posted to the service for potential uses of Universal musical content or the mention of or likenesses of artists it has under contract.
Universal Music identifies that several of its artists are in the MegaUpload video. It automatically signals YouTube to remove/take down the video. YouTube complies. It does so automatically and without verification that Universal even has a valid claim to the copyright. Why?
This article appeared in Entheogenesis Australis (EGA) Journal 3 – 2011/2012 (December 2011)
Introduction
In 1974, American professor of psychology Dr Clare W Graves wrote an article for The Futurist magazine titled Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap. Graves described an impending change in human consciousness that would be, in his words:
‘…the most difficult, but at the same time the most exciting transition the human race has faced to date. It is not merely a transition to a new level of existence but the start of a new “movement” in the symphony of human history.’
Click on Image to Enlarge
His claim wasn’t just speculation though, it was based on seven years of field research plus almost 20 years of data analysis. Unfortunately he died before publishing his research findings and therefore his work remains largely unknown. Graves’ theory was used as the basis for the book Spiral Dynamics (Beck & Cowan, 1996) and most of his original research papers were eventually published as The Never Ending Quest (Cowan & Todorovic, 2005).
Dr Graves’ findings provide a credible map for what philosopher and psychedelic pioneer Terence McKenna called The Archaic Revival. According to Graves, humanity is indeed making a momentous leap in consciousness, which is characterised in part by the re-emergence of archaic themes. One of these themes is tribalism; not a regression to ancient tribalism, but the emergence of one global tribe.
Phi Beta Iota: There are roughly eight “intelligence” tribes, or eight different tribal approaches to information-sharing and sense-making. They are all out of touch with one another and stovepiped to irrelevancy within themselves. The “craft of intelligence” in the 21st Century is about M4IS2 – Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making. Within individual nation-states, especially those willing and able to follow the example set by Iceland, citizens and governments must come together on four essentials: Electoral Reform, Coalition Cabinet, Balanced Budget, and “True Cost” Accounting. All of this is possible if the citizens demand and represent one word: INTEGRITY.
