Category: Ethics

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Eagle: Concentration camp survivor, Resistance fighter and the man who inspired the Occupy movement: Stephane Hessel dies at age of 95

Civil Society, Commercial Intelligence, Crowd-Sourcing, Cultural Intelligence, Economics/True Cost, Ethics
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

Concentration camp survivor, Resistance fighter and the man who inspired the Occupy movement: Stephane Hessel dies at age of 95

  • A German by birth, he was imprisoned in Nazi camps during World War II
  • At the camps he was waterboarded during torture sessions
  • Time for Outrage became an inspiration for Occupy Wall Street movement

Jill Reilly

MailOnline, 27 February 2013

Stephane Hessel
Stephane Hessel

Stephane Hessel, the concentration camp survivor who inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement has died aged 95.

Mr Hessel who was a member of the French resistance passed away overnight in Paris according to his wife.

As a spy for the French Resistance, he survived the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald by assuming the identity of a French prisoner who was already dead.

As a diplomat, he helped write the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And at age 93, after a distinguished but relatively anonymous life, he published a slim pamphlet that even he expected would be little more than a vanity project.

But Mr Hessel's 32-page Time for Outrage sold millions of copies across Europe, tapping into a vein of popular discontent with capitalism and transforming him into an intellectual superstar within weeks.

Translated into English, the pocket-sized book became a source of inspiration for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In the book, Mr Hessel urges young people to take inspiration from the anti-Nazi resistance to which he once belonged and rally against what he saw as the newest evil: The love of money.

Read rest of article.

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

This controversial, impassioned call-to-arms for a return to the ideals that fueled the French Resistance has sold millions of copies worldwide since its publication in France in October 2010. Rejecting the dictatorship of world financial markets and defending the social values of modern democracy, 93-old Stéphane Hessel — Resistance leader, concentration camp survivor, and former UN speechwriter — reminds us that life and liberty must still be fought for, and urges us to reclaim those essential rights we have permitted our governments to erode since the end of World War II.

“This slim but powerful volume answered the public's need for a voice to articulate popular resentment of ruling-class ruthlessness, police brutality, stark income disparities, banking and political corruption, and victimization of the poor and immigrants.”   (The Nation )

“INDIGNEZ-VOUS! is creating the sort of stir in France Emile Zola did in 1898, when he published J'Accuse!”  (The National Post )

“Like a song you hum or a film you recommend to friends, INDIGNEZ-VOUS! crystallises the spirit of the time. To buy it is a militant act, a gesture towards community and participation in a collective emotion.”  (Liberation )

‘The book urges the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the “insolent, selfish” power of money and markets and by defending the social “values of modern democracy”.  (The Independent )

Also See:

Indignez Vous!/Time for Outrage! translations (FREE) – Version 1  | Version 2 (pdf)

Audio interview with Stephane Hessel

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John Maguire: John Taylor Gatto on 14 Educational Principles of the Elites

04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

John Taylor Gatto, former school-teacher, outspoken reformer, and  author of Underground History of American Education, on what the Public Education System is neglecting to teach the majority of kids and why we continue to churn out generations of impotent and docile consumers.  THE POINT:  Taught in the elite private schools, NOT taught in the public schools.

01.  Understand human nature.

02.  Have a strong experience with the active literacies (writing and public speaking).

03.  Insight into the major institutional forms and how to pit them against one another.

04.  Repeated exercises in forms of good manners and politeness  —  civility as foundation.

05.  Independent work.  Teacher is NOT the primary learning channel.

06.  Energetic physical sports are required means of learning grace and handling pain.

07.  Complete theory of access to any workplace or person.

08.  Responsibility as an utterly essential part of the curriculum outside the classroom.

09.  Arrive at a personal code of standards for production, behavior, and morality.

10.  Familiarity with master creations across all of the arts — be at ease with the arts.

11.  Power of accurate observation and recording.  Drawing is a way to sharpen perception.

12.  Ability to deal with challenges of all sorts –Gatto's personal favorite.

13.  Habit of caution in reasoning to conclusions.

14.  Constant development and testing of judgment of discriminate value.


Also see
Various audio/video of John Taylor Gatto

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Berto Jongman: Peace Intelligence Proposal, Comment by Robert Steele

Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Where Are the Peace-Intelligence Professionals?

By Doron Pely

Foreign Policy in Focus, February 22, 2013

Here’s an amazing fact: None of the world’s vaunted intelligence organizations boast a single “Peace Intelligence” division. Defense and offense are two major strategic aspects of each country’s governance, and national intelligence organizations expand enormous resources to produce and disseminate intelligence aimed at improving each country’s defensive and offensive postures.

Our political masters keep telling us that making and maintaining peace is one of their top strategic goals. Why then do we invest nothing at all at collecting, studying, assessing and exploiting peace-related intelligence?

It just doesn’t make sense.

Theoretically, politicians, decision makers, and other consumers of intelligence reports should strive to get the broadest possible analysis and recommendations. Incorporating high-quality, peace-related intelligence into the daily briefing portfolio of any governing and executing body will achieve just that.

Yet we are told that political and operational decision makers encourage the intelligence producers to come up with impoverished binary (Go/No Go) operational products. In the new Israeli documentary The Gatekeepers, six former heads of Israel’s internal intelligence services say exactly that (and much more).

I am not talking about intelligence organizations’ obsession with studying real or imagined peace movements because they view such movements as potentially subversive, destabilizing, or lawless. What I am suggesting is exactly the opposite – the creation of dedicated “peace intelligence” departments that will try to determine to what extent peace action in “target” countries constitutes an opportunity, not a threat.

Here is a proposal for a “Peace Intelligence” division that will improve the work of any intelligence organization. It would consist of several sections.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Peace Intelligence Proposal, Comment by Robert Steele”

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Eagle: Big Lies, Small Minds — An Explanation

Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

IDEN A:  How the devil does the big lie survive in the face of so much  contrary evidence?

IDEN B:  In the recent movie about FDR (Bill Murray), FDR tells the King of England that people want to believe their view of the world, not to have their views be disturbed by reality.  We have made some progress.  The public seems to be getting used to politicians having affairs.  Some people can handle conspiracy theories (e.g., the movie JFK), but my sister and her husband say that if JFK was killed by a conspiracy, the world would fall into chaos.  Nothing could be believed.  There is a fear of conceptual instability.  It seems that small lies can be refuted, but big lies ….  not so easily.  Perhaps truth needs to be dispensed in small doses.  Too much overwhelms people.  And everyone has a different tolerance for information that disconfirms their present conceptions.  What to do?  Well, one answer is to not challenge the big lie.  I suspect this is where the media are.  Why risk loosing access to news sources and giving one's competitors an advantage?

IDEN C:  Another way of looking at this is place-related.  It may be that the truth — and the ability to discern, appreciate, and leverage the truth — has to be a bottom-up campaign, one town hall, one neighborhood, at a time.  Trying to transform an entire nation or government in the face of very well-funded resistance is futile — tilting at windmills.  Find one village, and help it shine….the spike theory of change.

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Yoda: Women & The Internet — The Force is Strong

06 Family, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Liberation Technology
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

3 things are here to stay: Women, the Internet and human rights

By Claudia Calvin

Yahoo Business & Human Rights Program, Friday, September 28th, 2012

Change Your World (Cambia Tu Mundo), Yahoo!’s Business & Human Rights Summit that took place on September 12th and 13th in Mexico City is an excellent example of what I mean. For a day and a half, women from different countries, backgrounds and experiences in Latin America shared their dreams, lives, challenges and proved that new technologies and the Internet are incomparable tools of empowerment.

I won´t go over the event’s program nor the participants. (Links to them are available here and here). What I want to do is highlight the wonderful lessons I learned after participating in Change Your World.

1. Women are a driving force towards equality in the world.  Yes, women represent not only 50% of the world population, they represent half of the idea and proposal creators. Many don´t know it, but new technologies can help them be heard and allow their proposals and ideas to be included in the development and prosperity of their communities, countries…. and therefore… of the planet.

2. Digital literacy of women in Latin America must be considered a priority for policy makers. Even though Spanish is the third most important language on the Internet with 182,379,220 users,  there is lack of content created and written in it. If you add the lack of women´s voices as content creators in the region, the figures are worrisome.  We cannot allow nor permit the addition of this marginalization to the many other kinds of marginalization women face (education, health, financial, justice and so on).

3. Women and the Internet can be a creative explosion. Throughout the sessions one thing was absolutely clear:  the participants demonstrated in various and creative ways how the Internet can be used to support not only good causes, but very practical economic, social and political outcomes. The Internet can be a democratization tool to help build and consolidate new realities where women´s interests and needs can be not only expressed but included.

Continue reading “Yoda: Women & The Internet — The Force is Strong”