Some people say Gandhi was about nonviolence. And he was.
But he is significant for something else that I believe is far more important:
He changed the game.
With no one's permission, he reconfigured the playing field of colonialism to a higher Game in which everything the British did in their smaller, narrower game backfired on them. Prisons, guns, threats and bureaucracies of control not only ceased to work like they used to, but actually generated more power for Gandhi's world-changing Game.
Gandhi's Game involved, in his words, “experiments in Truth” — a search for Truth, a bigger Truth, a common inclusive Truth, a win-win Truth in every situation. The British — and even many of Gandhi's compatriots — were not aligned to that Truth. They wanted victory, control, and righteousness. These things trapped them in their smaller game until, one by one, and sometimes wholesale, Gandhi's commitment to Truth won their hearts and minds — and Shift happened.
The Pentagon's intelligence directorate is killing off one of its most strategically important mission areas: monitoring efforts by foreign governments to buy U.S. firms and technology, such as the multiple efforts by China's military-linked equipment company Huawei Technologies to buy into the U.S. high-technology sector.
Defense officials tell Inside the Ring that Thomas A. Ferguson, acting undersecretary of defense for intelligence (USDI) and a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) space analyst, initiated the dismantling of the financial-threat intelligence monitoring.
Phi Beta Iota: US Intelligence is out of control–as good as some of the leaders are in terms of diversity of experience within the OLD system, they simply do not have the mind-set nor the authorities to restructure intelligence to the point that it can meet all appropriate needs. The person ostensibly responsible for strategy, a CIA body, has just been made deputy director of DIA, and we have no doubt that a “strategy” exists that might ultimately turn DIA into the analysis center and CIA into a collection management center (while NSA becomes the all-source processing center, all as outlined in Chapter 13 of ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World) as well as all subsequent books such as INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time, this is all too little, too slow, too incoherent, and too expensive. An Open Source Agency (OSA) under diplomatic auspices, and a voluntary shift of $200 billion from Program 50 to Program 150 as a lure for Newt Gingrinch coming into the 2012 coalition cabinet under Obama running as an Independent (miracles do happen), are both essential.
(1) Militaries have used working dogs for a variety of offensive and defensive purposes for years; (2) military working dogs have been very active in Iraq and Afghanistan; (3) airborne (parachute) units have been jumping dogs officially and unofficially for years, although this is the first report I've personally seen of dogs being jumped using the military freefall technique, (4) the biggest problem I see for the dogs is the landing since, before their handler lands, he will likely lower the dog on a 15-20 foot line so that the dog lands before he does so the challenge for the dog is doing a parachute landing fall with four, rather than two, rather slender and fragile legs — kind of difficult to “keep your feet and knees together”; (5) the alternative to (4) above is for the handler to execute a standing landing, something that is at least theoretically feasible for a well-trained jumper using a ram-air canopy under favorable wind and drop zone conditions; that could possibly mitigate the doggie PLF challenge; (6) I think I'm glad I'm not the free-fall jumper since, while you can see that the dog in the photo below is muzzled to prevent bites, unless he's also sedated, he could flop around enough in his harness to make a stable descent to pull altitude a challenge for his jumper; (7) I'm not sure the United States Parachute Association has ever considered this application of the Tandem technique which is well established for willing human cargoes.)
WASHINGTON — With critical decisions ahead on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama is about to receive an unusual opportunity to reshape the Pentagon’s leadership, naming a new defense secretary as well as several top generals and admirals in the next several months.
It is a rare confluence of tenure calendars and personal calculations, coming midway through Mr. Obama’s first term and on the heels of an election that challenged his domestic policies. His choices could have lasting consequences for his national security agenda, perhaps strengthening his hand over a military with which he has often clashed, and are likely to have an effect beyond the next election, whether he wins or loses.
That is all the more reason that Mr. Obama’s choices are certain to face scrutiny in a narrowly divided Senate, whose Republican leadership has declared itself intent on defeating him.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he plans to retire next year, while the terms of four members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are scheduled to end: Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman; Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman; Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief; and Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations.
Phi Beta Iota: The current and prospective leaders being discussed and considered are all inter-changeable. They share the same paradigmatic views, the same commitment to the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC), and therefore, to suggest that changing out the guard is in any way an option, is to demonstrate profound naivete or a gift for deception. President Obama is truly at a historic fork in the road: he can go on with business as usual, bailing out Wall Street and carrying on with a global military cmapaign that is both ineffective and unaffordable–or he can reach deep down and come up with one startling insight and two serious options.
Startling insight: integrity matters. Doing the right thing is more important than continuing to do the wrong thing righter.
Option A: Make Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points) the issue. That will burn down the two-party tyranny and restore the Republic WHILE EARNING HIM A SECOND TERM.
Option B: Hold an Open Space Technology event on the future of the USA in all its forms, in the Washington Convention Center, a no-notice open public event, with Harrison Owen as the facilitator.
Sadly, we are quite certain neither the startling insight nor either of the two options will be considered. The Titanic is sinking and the President is being asked to re-arrange the name cards…..thus does the Republic flail in the tar pit of history.
We predict, with a depth of despair, that Obama will choose to go along and eventually be as wealthy as Bill Bradley and Al Gore. He is one phone call away from greatness, and won't do it. He lives, we die.
Are charges that private military contractors commit egregious acts of fraud overblown? Not according to recent news. McClatchy Newspapers reports that the Louis Berger Group, one of the U.S. government's highest profile American contractors in Afghanistan has agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle allegations that it overbilled the U.S. government.
In return, the Justice Department will end its investigation into allegations that Louis Berger was intentionally overcharging American taxpayers. The settlement, which is just over $69 million, includes civil and criminal penalties.
Louis Berger's alleged overbilling, a practice that dates to at least the mid-1990s, swelled to tens of millions in lost tax dollars. In 2006, a former Louis Berger employee handed the government evidence against the company, two months before the U.S. Agency for International Development tapped Louis Berger to jointly oversee $1.4 billion in reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan.
Court documents reveal that the Justice Department has been negotiating a deal that would “aid in preserving the company's continuing eligibility to participate” in federal contracting in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
According to McClatchy Louis Berger is accused of manipulating overhead cost data and overhead rate proposals submitted to the U.S. government and several states including Massachusetts, Nevada and Virginia.
The Federal Reserve will pump $600 billion more into the US economy and keep interest rates at historical low levels. The short-term impact of the Fed’s move, known as quantitative easing, has been a jump in stock prices across the globe. Many nations, however, have accused the United States of waging a currency war by devaluing the dollar. We speak to former Wall Street economist and University of Missouri professor Michael Hudson. “The object of warfare is to take over a country’s land, raw materials and assets, and grab them,” Hudson says. “In the past, that used to be done militarily by invading them. But today you can do it financially simply by creating credit, which is what the Federal Reserve has done.” [includes rush transcript]
Amazon Page -- New Edition (2003)
QUOTE from the Introduction: “The last time there were a series of devaluations like this it led to WW II.”
QUOTE from the TV Interview: “A legalized way for Wall Street to loot other Central Banks.”
QUOTE from the TV Interview: “In Europe it is illegal for the Central Bank to finance government debt.”
Phi Beta Iota: This interview, viewed in its entirety, destroys the myth of Barack Obama and clarifies with stunning detail the degree to which the Obama Administration is blocking all forms of relief for the public at the state level at the same time that he is assuring that the Chinese yuan will become the global reserve currency. We anticipate all sales of anything to US currency to be blocked by other countries, and we hope that US Governors will start nullifying federal interference with justice at the state level.
John le Carré, the former British spy turned spy novelist, has some grave words for Tony Blair. More than seven years after the invasion of Iraq, the former British prime minister, now out of office and touring the world pushing his political memoir, is encountering serious protests at his book signings.
“I can’t understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretenses has committed the ultimate sin,” he told me when I sat down with le Carré recently in London. “We’ve caused irreparable damage in the Middle East. I think we shall pay for it for a long time.”
