Category: Communities of Practice

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Worth a Look: Medard Gabel, EarthGame and More

Academia, Commerce, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Threats, Topics (All Other), True Cost, Worth A Look
Professor Medard Gabel
Professor Medard Gabel

Medard Gabel was for many years #2 to Buckminister Fuller, and a co-creator of the analog World Game.  As a founding director of Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 Public Charity, he created–and retains ownership of–the EarthGame.

Earth Tools = Serious Structured Games
Earth Tools = Serious Structured Games

Below are four specific modules that can be used NOW to excite both students and executives about the importance of sustainable design, strategic analysis, and the unity of knowledge–what E. O. Wilson calls Consilience.

Advise the President
of the United States in the
Presidential Advisor Game
learn more …

Save the World
from climate disaster in the
Climate Change Game
learn more …

Green Your Campus
in the
Campus GreenGame
learn more …

Bring Peace to the World
in the
World PeaceGame
learn more …

Other BigPictureSmallWorld programs and simulations include the LeadershipGame, The FutureGame and our week-long summer program at the United Nations and Chestnut Hill College—the Design Science Lab.

Phi Beta Iota strongly recommends anything and everything that Medard Gabel has created and offers.Give him a call to see how one of his programs will fit into your program today at 610.566.0156!

NOTE:  We *will* create the World Brain and the EarthGame, it is only a matter of when, not if.  Get started now by engaging Medard Gabel to show you how you can make sense, make strategy, and advance the common good while achieving your own worthy goals.

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Event Report: 9 Sep 09 GMU N Va Economic Liberty Series

Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Policies, Reform, True Cost Meme
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Mr. Rockwell is a very gracious and well-spoken person.  He delivered a prepared speech that will be posted online by the Ludwig von Mises Institute at some point.  Our bottom line up front: the hard-core Libertarians are a one-trick-pony with an obsessive focus on one thing and one thing only: all against the State.  Sadly, despite a great deal of hand waving about Austrian economists, there is not much in the way of economic reflection visible, and the gentlemen was specifically unable to address a question about a natural alliance between the Libertarians armed with scarcity-centered Austrian economics, and the Greens, armed with Ecological Economics, Natural Capitalism, and “true cost” accounting; nor was he able to engage with a subsequent question on a natural alliance with those interested in Evolutionary Living.

Mr. Rockwell, who served as Chief of Staff to Congressman Ron Paul and is now Chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute at a time when it is experiencing extraordinary growth and drawing a great deal of attention, sought to do several things with his planned remarks:

Continue reading “Event Report: 9 Sep 09 GMU N Va Economic Liberty Series”

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Journal: Obama Fires the One Authentic Person on His Team

Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government
Van Jones
Van Jones

Van Jones is authentic.  He was fired as a convenience by the white-half of Barack Obama, the half that is slicker than goose shit on a hot day.  The black half of Obama, the authentic half that “would no more renounce Reverend Wright than my own mother,” that half has been bought off and silenced.

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Journal: Chuck Spinney Highlights Labor Day in a Kleptocracy

07 Health, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Reform
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Where have All the broad Shoulders Gone? Or, Labor Day in a Kleptocracy

posted by Juan Cole
Sept 7, 2009
The unemployment rate as I write is inching toward 10 percent nationally, and that is only counting people who were still looking for a job recently. A vast bank robbery by the corrupt on Wall Street has deprived them of the credit that made the economy go. Labor Day was passed by Congress under Grover Cleveland to celebrate not only the individual American laborer but the labor movement– yes, unions, workers' parades, hard hats and blue jeans (before the youth movement of the 1960s appropriated them, blue jeans were working class clothing, and my working class relatives upbraided me for wearing them as an undergraduate). It is to celebrate all those icons that shills for the barracuda billionaires, such as Glenn Beck, now castigate as “fascist” and “communist.” It is to celebrate what Carl Sandberg did in his poem, “Chicago:”
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;
And of course, the home-makers and retail workers who move the manufactured goods and the teachers are all doing the hard foundational work as well.
Who is not working are the Wall Street thieves who have largely gone unpunished or been actively rewarded for their peculation.
Now Americans have convinced themselves that we don't have a working class. Everybody is middle class, even those who make minimum wage in the fast food industry, or those who are kept as part-timers so that the store (I'm looking at you, Walmart) doesn't have to enroll them in a health care program.
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Journal: Steele on Integrity and the Secretary of Defense Specifically

Ethics, Military
Robert Steele
Robert Steele

In the notional conversation below,  Robert Steele first defends the Secretary of Defense in the context of a White House that is insanely criminal or criminally insane, and then outlines the other position, one rooted in the Constitution and the inviolate nature of Integrity as the foundation for a Republic Of, By, and For We the People.

Robert Gates as Victim

Gates was not and is not the problem.  The problem on this is specifically in the White House and NSC.  Gates is doing his best, but probably wishes he had not agreed to stay on. I don't understand what you've got against Gates.  Every military person I respect thinks the world of him.  The complaints are about the WH crowd.  Gates is trying to make things work–despite the WH.

Robert Gates as Enabler

Gates is an enabler.  Powell left his integrity at home and allowed Cheney to commit high crimes and misdemeanors, now Gates (and Jones) are doing the same thing.  Loyalty is NOT what we swear an oath to.  The Constitution is ABOVE the slime in the White House and on the Hill.

My point is that the absolute most important duty of anyone who swears an Oath to defend the CONSTITUTION is to refuse illegal orders.  I believe that the order to gag McChrystal on needing more troops is an illegal order, a high crime, an impeachable offense, and if Gates “goes along” as Colin Powell “went along” with the 25 high crimes and 935 lies of Dick Cheney, then Gates is —  however good and intelligent a man he might be – himself guilty of an impeachable offense.  This is crystal clear to me.

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Journal: Chuck Spinney on Moral and Mental Collapse of the Federal Government

Ethics, Government, Legislation, True Cost

Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

EMPHASIS: The larger result of this cynical behaviour is a widespread moral and mental collapse that is rapidly transforming our experiment in building a government of the people, by the people, and for the people into a sham that is more like a 21st Century corporatist mutation of 18th Century court of Louis XVI.

Viewed retrospectively, the political economy of Versailles on the Potomac admits to only two stages in the life cycle of any government program, be it defense, a bailout of the banks, healthcare reform, or anything else: (1) It is too early to tell, and (2) it is too late to do anything about it.

Nowhere is the decision-making conundrum implied by these stages more clearly evident than in the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex, MICC, particularly in the acquisition of high tech weapon systems, but also in the decision to go to war.

Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney on Moral and Mental Collapse of the Federal Government”