Ethics – Page 254 – Public Intelligence Blog

Three new potent Occupy Together resources

Three new exciting resources have just showed up.

1. OccupyCafe.org – a linked phone and online forum space for conversations among everyone “who cares about what is happening on Wall Street and around the world.” Its phone mode uses the advanced MaestroConferencing system that enables activities like breakout groups and hand-raising. Topic conversations begun on the phone can be continued in the online forum, and vice versa. The first phone call is Monday morning. See details below.

2. Organizational consultants study grassroots activist communities – This article didn't exist online, so I got a blurry scanned copy from one of the co-authors and typed it up over a couple of days so I could post it and send it to you. The next day the other co-author posted a clear pdf online, so that's what you get below. I think it is applicable and potentially useful to the Occupy movement.

3. Some very clear advice from nonviolent activist Sharif Abdullah of Commonway in Portland Oregon. Sharif's the fellow who spread the phrase “create a world that works for all” into movement circles. Taking lessons from Gandhi, King, Argentinian activists, and his own work in Sri Lanka, he offers guidelines to help the folks in the Occupy Together movement sustain their transformational impact.

Bit by bit, action by action, conversation by conversation, we develop the collective knowledge we need to make a world that works for all…

Coheartedly,
Tom

Read full post with more detail about each and additional links.

2011/10/20

Tom Atlee: Occupy the Future Together

11 Society, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace

#Occupy the future together

Things are still wildly bubbling in and around the Occupy movement, which is still radically expanding and evolving. Despite many growing pains, the co-creative, committed engagement of the participants is inspiring. So many among them are using the disturbances in and around them as a motivation for personal growth and collective innovation.

Occupy Together is, as they say, a phenomenon. It is such a passionate, complex, self-organizing initiative that even chaos and complexity theories have a hard time adequately explaining it. It is ALIVE!

The word “occupy” – as a connotation-rich idea or meme – is itself a fascinating part of the movement's impact. It invites everyone who wants a new and better world, to claim a space where they can work together to co-create that world. So far, that space is usually a public park. But that's expanding and morphing: More people are talking about occupying a school, a workplace, a bank, a heart, a profession, an industry, a government office, the airwaves, our minds – any “place” where some piece of the new world needs to evolve and replicate itself to become the actual New World. And the word “occupy” suggests commitment to that place, persistence in it, putting down some roots, claiming and owning and taking responsibility for holding it and making it good.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Occupy the Future Together”

2011/10/202011/10/20

Naomi Wolf: #OWS NYPD & DHS OUT OF CONTROL

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street

Arresting a middle-aged writer in an evening gown for peaceable conduct is a far cry from when America was a free republic

Naomi Wolf

Guardian, Wednesday 19 October 2011

Last night I was arrested in my home town, outside an event to which I had been invited, for standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown.

Read full article (includes short video).

Naomi-Wolf-is-arrested-du-007 — Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota: Naomi Wolf is the author of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and also Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. Safety copy of Guardian article with additional comments from others below the line. The NYPD and DHS are OUT OF CONTROL and far, far beyond the bounds of the Constitution. The time has come to begin demanding impeachments of public officials and criminal prosecution of specific police officers so that they might learn what they evidently were not taught: the responsibility to refuse illegal orders. What our military officers abroad and our police officers at home are doing is illegal, unconstitutional, and reprehensible in every possible morally disengaged way.

Updates from Naomi Wolf – Permit Seen, NYPD Officers Were Ignorant or Lying

Continue reading “Naomi Wolf: #OWS NYPD & DHS OUT OF CONTROL”

2011/10/18

Robert Steele: US Secret Intelligence Next Steps

Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Ethics, Government

steele smiling final — Robert David STEELE Vivas

Responding to a media request for comment on Stephen Aftergood's post, Intelligence Community Anticipates Budget Cuts:

“The US secret intelligence community is long overdue for a draconian reduction of its budget from the $80-90 billion a year today that it wastes on contractors producing vaporware, to something closer to the $20 billion a year that Jim Woolsey is on record as saying would be sufficient, and for once I agree with him.”

“General Tony Zinni is on record as saying that when he was in charge of the US Central Command, the secret intelligence community provided, ‘at best' 4% of what he needed to know. The fact is that the secret world is primarily a means of transferring wealth from taxpayers to corporations and banks–it not only lacks intelligence, it lacks integrity.”

“Two books sum up the sorry state of the secret world today–No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence, and Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State.

Continue reading “Robert Steele: US Secret Intelligence Next Steps”

2011/10/162011/10/17

Tom Atlee: #Occupy A Dance of Inspiration & Strategy

03 Economy, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace, Officers Call

#Occupy – a dance of inspiration and strategy

Here are some more good articles and websites about the Occupy Together movement, the global extension of Occupy Wall Street.

In this posting there are a number of pieces about strategy and tactics – appeals to and descriptions of nonviolence (including some tips useful in everyday life as well as demonstrations); what contributed to their success in holding onto their NYC site; the logic of their non-partisan messages that are not tied to specific demands; etc. You'll also find a powerful video highlighting the hypocrisy of US officials condemning crackdowns on Arab Spring protests while condoning crackdowns on domestic Occupy protests.

I've also excerpted an inspiring, sober open letter from long-time Christian activist Jim Wallis. His whole article is worth reading. It was sent to me by my friend and colleague Rosa Zubizarreta who writes:

“I highly recommend that people GO. visit. see for yourself. engage in wonderful conversations. volunteer. contribute…. yes, there are clearly challenges and difficulties (it's certainly not perfect, as Rainbow Gatherings and Peace Camps and Soup Kitchens and all of those various manifestations of “free zones” are not perfect…) AND, it is so very much alive, filled with many wonderful moments and lots of learning and creativity and connection… On Friday morning in Occupy Boston, there were several classrooms visiting… their teachers bringing them in for a field trip… it was awesome!”

Others have written to me about conversations happening among finance professionals about the changes that are needed in their sector – conversations stimulated and energized by the Occupy Wall Street protests. Increasingly, this aspect of nonviolent protest – encouraging urgently needed conversations about change – is becoming the trademark of this movement. And this is an invitation to those of us who know how to make conversations meaningful and productive…

Blessings on this 13.7 billion year old highly interactive Journey.

Coheartedly,
Tom

See all items and links

2011/10/152011/10/17

Robert Steele: #OWS Non-Violence versus Violence

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Occupy Wall Street is at a delicate point both in the USA and overseas. Despite its clear commitment to non-violence, police violence in the USA–and provocateur violence in Europe–are eroding the moral legitimacy of the Occupy Wall Street.

1) Occupy Wall Street needs to maintain discipline, and both domestically and overseas, when provocateurs begin violence, they must be shut down, shunned, or fled from. The anarchists causing so much damage in Europe must be repudiated instantly and completely, even if this means fleeing the area to regroup elsewhere.

2) Gandhi and Martin Luther King both agreed that non-violence was preferable to violence, but violence is preferable to passive acceptance of great crimes against humanity such as we have witnessed within the Empire for the past fifty years.

3) It is my personal judgment that violence is NOT necessary and could be fatal for the OWS Movement. Because of the Internet, there are so many alternatives to violence–flash mobs being one of them–that I am certain that violence of any sort on the part of OWS adherents is self-defeating.

4) With this in mind, I salute US Day of Rage and their focus on Electoral Reform. This is the reason I have devoted myself to spreading the gospel of Electoral Reform as the singular demand for #OWS around the world beginning in the USA. A General Strike may well be required to force a very corrupt entrenched two-party tyranny to fold (as Ronald Reagan pointed out, less turnover than the Soviet politburo), but in my view Electoral Reform and a General Strike are the two sides of a non-violent revolution that restores integrity to the Republic and shows the way for all other countries (including those that wish to eliminate artificially imposed borders from the colonial era).

Below are some headlines focusing on both non-violence as the avowed method, and violence as the undesired result today, caused by infiltrators to the group (e.g. anarchists, undercover police) not by the group itself. Emphasis is added. The media is exaggerating the violence and failing to properly investigate the actual sources of the violence. OWS is going to have to do this for them, and denounce, in detail and with audio-visual precision, those who do violence to OWS, alongside OWS, or in the name of OWS. But first, here is what I said on the air eight hours before the media figured out it was Anarchists (and probably also undercover police) doing the violence: Robert Steele (Video): Two-Party Tyranny, Obama Will NOT Co-Ops OWS, Violence by Provocateurs Not OWS

Within Twitter, #OWS is the new tag displacing #OccupyWallStreet, and #nonviolence is the method tag.

Below the line: Commitment to Non-Violence, & Provocateur Violence

Continue reading “Robert Steele: #OWS Non-Violence versus Violence”

2011/10/142011/10/17

Mini-Me: Army of Unemployed Persistent Structural Issue

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, DoD, Ethics, Government, Legislation, Methods & Process, Military, Policy, Reform

Army of unemployed is now entrenched in U.S.

Commentary: Structural woes in economy creating ‘permanent underclass’

Howard Gold

Wall Street Journal, 14 October 2011

The public knew this much earlier than economists or pundits did, and as for politicians — don’t ask!

. . . . .

Listen to Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, in a speech a couple of weeks ago.

“These numbers are troubling, especially when more than 40% of the unemployed, or some six million people, have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer,” he said.

“Millions of unemployed workers may take longer to find jobs because their skills have depreciated or they may need to seek employment in other sectors. These structural issues will take time to resolve. Jobs and workers will need to be reallocated across the economy, which is a long and slow process.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The US Government is in grid-lock, with 1950's mind-sets, 1970's technologies, and 1990's spendthrift ways–in other words, it is completely out of touch with reality and has no idea how to cope with the need to retrain a quarter of the population across all age groups in a year or two. Hint: bail out the public, not the banks and certainly not the multiple complexes of corruption. Start by using military to ingest the entire unemployed population into receiving and retraining centers with full salary for each individual committing to retraining.

Category: Ethics

Tom Atlee: Three New Potent Occupy Together Resources