Most patriotic thing we can do is NOT taking down the US Government.
All three of those are big lies.
Let's rebuild the dream.
Van Jones
In the coming weeks, people all across the country will come together for American Dream house meetings. Let's talk about what a new American Dream looks like and commit to stand together to make it happen.
Find an American Dream house meeting near you. We want YOU to be part of this movement, from the very beginning.
Hub Culture is a global collaboration network with over 25,000+ members distributed across 110 countries. Their stated mission to expand collective consciousness is driven by the blend of online workspaces for knowledge sharing with offline Pavilions for meeting and connecting – all powered by their digital currency, Ven. Below is an interview with Hub Culture’s Founding Director, Stan Stalnaker.
What compelled you to create Ven?
For us it was a matter of practicality – with a global, diverse community, we found that no single currency could offer a single pricing structure for global inventory in Hub Culture. Our members needed a global wallet – as simple to use in Rio as Shanghai. As a social network, we thought linking this system to the social profile of our users would help them share and create value. We needed a simple, transparent way for our members to exchange value and favors, and the answer was Ven. It has been a learning experience for us. The currency has evolved and grown since its debut in the summer of 2007, and we have discovered ways to make it more useful for our members and the planet at large.
You’ve said Ven can be thought of as ‘green money’? Why?
Today Ven is the only digital currency to be priced from a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures. These components give the Ven advantages of other currencies: the basket encourages price stability on a forward basis, and the link to commodities grounds value in hard assets. The introduction of carbon to the basket is helping us think about how money can serve better social purposes – in this case to support and stimulate demand for carbon credits and social impact development, driving offsets for every transaction used with Ven. This is how the idea of ‘green money’ developed with Ven – because its carbon linkages are able to play a role in this area. I really like the idea that Ven is green, social and efficient, with a mission to improve the lives of its users and the communities that use it.
Congress is slowly but surely trying to get the Pentagon to cut back on its overseas information operations, most of which end up being done by contractors.
The latest hint has come from the House Appropriations Committee, which has sliced about $125 million from the $300 million that was being sought in the fiscal 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill for what is now known as Military Information Support Operations (MISO).
Several years ago, when Congress first paid attention to this subject, it was called Strategic Communications and it was said to have been costing around $900 million. That figure then dropped to above $600 million. The programs were then designated as Information Operations and then, last year, MISO.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a cosmetic cut in relation to all the money being wasted on failed acquisition programs, elective and unconstitutional wars and covert actions, and of course “intelligence” and “Cyber-War.”
The Tree of Life may be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (or not); in his film called “The Tree of Life,” Terence Malick plays with the universals – grace and nature parallel good and evil. Nature is will, ego; grace is nurturing. The film’s narrative plays out in Waco, Texas and in the vast cosmos, infinite space and time, surrounding it; it places one very human story in a vast transhuman context. In one primeval scene, one dinosaur, a predator, chooses not to kill and consume another… this establishes grace as something that precedes the human; I think the point is that nature and grace always coexisted, and always will, and grace seeps into nature. “Good” and “evil” are complex and intertwingled.
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I thought the film was magnificent; in it I saw scenes familiar from my own life growing up in a Texas town in the 50s and 60s, though I wasn’t in that family, and I was far more innocent. And Malick’s family has no television set in the living room… imagine what a difference that would make.
The vision of the “tree of life” represents a sense that all life on earth is related… and there’s a tree of life web project that shows that connectedness. The planet is teeming with life, but all species are endangered by the actions and operations of one – is this nature acting without grace? Last night Oliver Markley spoke to the Central Texas World Future Society on the subject of risk and resilience – is civilization at a tipping point toward collapse?
Afghanistan: Special Comment. Longtime Readers know that NightWatch has had a continuing project to monitor the security situation in Afghanistan since mid-2006, using a consistent sample of unclassified reporting. In 2006, when the Taliban resurgence was just beginning, NightWatch began publishing monthly summaries of the security situation.
In the past three years, the number of incidents per month has increased so that compiling and analyzing monthly reports threatened to become a full time job.
NightWatch has continued to track data in detail for all 400 districts of Afghanistan every other month and spot checked fighting reports in between. Preliminary analysis of the data for May 2011 was completed today. The table below shows the data from three tracking measures since last November.
The remarks of the President are beneath contempt in so far as they completely avoid reality. Every statement about Afghanistan is questionable if not an outright misrepresentation. Al Quada and Afghanistan are not the same. This entire statement is a crock of warm, diseased spit. It is offensive in the extreme in its disrespect for public intelligence and the expectation of integrity in governance.
An honest president would admit that we are losing in Afghanistan and the Taliban is gaining (while also resupplying itself from our stocks); that suicide terrorism is directly related to the presence of US troops in countries where there is no public interest, only a special interest.
An honest president would apologize for attacking Libya and committing war crimes in Tripoli, a Congressional declaration of war not being in effect, and an honest president would admit that we are assassinating people–often the wrong people–all over the world.
An honest president would address the fraud that has bankrupted the nation and the corruption in the US government that allows all white collar criminals to avoid justice.
An honest president would admit that the domestic economic and social situation is desperate–the last twenty years have seen what Grover Norquist called the ultimate bi-partisanship: when the two parties get together and agree to screw the American people.
Barack Obama–like his immediate predecessors–is not an honest president. His rhetoric is false, offensive, and if Congress were honest, which it is not, he would be facing impeachment prior to the 4th of July.
Phi Beta Iota: This just in from NIGHTWATCH (forthcoming): …..tells a much different tale than what was said tonight…..
Just finished the first analysis of May 2011 finished. Unprecedented level of engagements of all kinds. Over 2000 for the first time in my data sample. The number of districts under stress is over 280 out of 400, all time high just under three-fourths.
For honest appraisals of Afghanistan, see Spinny Afghanistan. Washington is occupied by people who lack intelligence and integrity, who have abdicated their responsibilities under their Oaths of Office to defend and support the Constitution (not a corrupt chain of command), and who have absolutely no clue how to go about–even if they wanted to–serving the public interest.
Afterthought: The standard retired military flag officers are making fools of themselves across the channels, none more so than MajGen Bob Scales, USA (Ret), who just threw his integrity under the bus on Fox. GO ARMY. This is pathetic. How do we censure retired generals for deceiving any portion of the public?
