Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Reference: Electoral Reform 9 Steps

11 Society, Fact Sheets
One Page Online

Electoral Reform is the “fast track” toward restoring the Constitution and the Republic (We the People must be sovereign or it is not a Republic).  As long as the Executive and Congress are led by unethical politicians working for unethical corporations, public intelligence can and should be used to expose each individual, each transaction, each transgression.  That is the “slow road.”  However, if the Independents, Greens, Reforms, and the honest Libertarians (not faux Libertarians like the Koch Brothers) can get together on this ONE THING, the “fast track” is possible in time for 2012.

Corrected 30 Oct 2010 to number 01-09, not thirteen steps.

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Reference: Obama, Populism, and 2012

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Lawrence Goodwyn: The Great Predicament Facing Obama

An interview with legendary historian Lawrence Goodwyn on Obama, the larger currents in our political life, and the possibility of a rebirth in our democratic culture.

October 30, 2010

What happened to the dream of Barack Obama's transformational politics? There's been very little deviation from the disastrous Bush years on the key issues of war, empire and the distribution of wealth in the country.

I turned to Lawrence Goodwyn, historian of social movements whose books and methods of explaining history have had a profound influence on many of the best known authors, activists and social theorists of our time. Goodwyn's account of the Populist movement, Democratic Promise, is quoted extensively by Howard Zinn in People's History of the United States, and also in William Greider's masterpiece on the Federal Reserve, Secrets of the Temple. You can find Goodwyn quoted in the first paragraph of Bill Moyers' recent book, On Democracy, and cited in just the same way in countless other books and essays.

I interviewed Goodwyn from his home in Durham, North Carolina about the pitfalls of recording American history, Obama's presidency in light of previous presidents, and portents of change in our political culture.

Read Full Long Interview Online….

Contributor John Steiner says:

This is a remarkable, long, worth reading every word interview, in which Goodwyn compares Obama favorably with Lincoln and recounts the history of the financial elites in America. His concluding sentences: ³Strap on your
seat belts, Jan (Frel). The election in 2012 is going to define the meaning of the American idea.

Phi Beta Iota: There are two major flaws with this Democratic Party love-fest: 1) the Democrats are just as corrupt as the Republicans, just more inept; and 2) Obama will not get a second term because he sold out–anyone who had Rahm Emanuel as his “enforcer” and that still has Axelrod as his advisor,while also installing a Goldman Sachs lobbyist as “national security advisor,” is part of the existing system, not its antithesis.  Independents and Electoral Reform (13 Steps) will produce the outcome Goodwyn posits, not Obama and not the Democratic Party.

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

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Reference: Citizen Groups Proposed Spending Cuts

White Papers
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and National Taxpayers Union (NTU) have joined together to propose a list of 30 specific recommendations to reform our future spending commitments. If enacted in their entirety, these changes would save taxpayers over $600 billion in total by 2015, the target date for the Fiscal Commission to reduce our publicly-held debt-to- GDP ratio to a more sustainable level of 60 percent.

Report Online (15 Pages)

While our organizations have often differed about the proper regulatory scope of government and a host of tax policies, we are united in the belief that we spend far too much money on ineffective programs that do not serve the best interests of the American people.

The cuts deal with specific reforms to entitlement programs, defense spending, wasteful subsidies and a broad range of discretionary items of a smaller scale. While these proposals won’t get us all the way there, it is a start that could establish some common ground and make government more accountable in the process.

Phi Beta Iota: The cuts are glaringly obvious and glaringly representative of the deliberate unwillingness of the Congress to properly represent the tax payer and the public interest.  However, the cuts do not go nearly far enough, leaving most of the military budget intact, avoiding the intelligence budget completely, and generally not thinking in new terms such as the elimination of all income taxes, substituting the Automatic Payment Transaction (APT) tax.

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Journal: The Aging of Humanity

11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
DefDog Recommends...

Think Again: Global Aging

A gray tsunami is sweeping the planet — and not just in the places you expect. How did the world get so old, so fast?

Foreign Policy BY PHILLIP LONGMAN | NOVEMBER 2010

Yes, but of old people. Not so long ago, we were warned that rising global population would inevitably bring world famine. As Paul Ehrlich wrote apocalyptically in his 1968 worldwide bestseller, The Population Bomb, “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” Obviously, Ehrlich's predicted holocaust, which assumed that the 1960s global baby boom would continue until the world faced mass famine, didn't happen. Instead, the global growth rate dropped from 2 percent in the mid-1960s to roughly half that today, with many countries no longer producing enough babies to avoid falling populations. Having too many people on the planet is no longer demographers' chief worry; now, having too few is.

FP Photo Essay the Grayest Generation
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Worth a Look: Tomdispatch as Window on Reality

Worth A Look
DefDog Recommends...

Tomdispatch.com is for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our
post-9/11 world and a clear sense of how our imperial globe actually
works.

The site's founder and editor Tom Engelhardt.

Chalmers Johnson is among the contributors.  Here is a link to an older but still relevant entry by the author of Blowback,  Sorrows of Empire, and Nemisis.

Portrait of a Sagging Empire

Posted by Chalmers Johnson at 9:29am, August 17, 2010.
Nation Books is an alternative press focused on truth-telling in the public interest, and the sponsor of the Tomdispatch Project.
See Also:
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NIGHTWATCH Extract: China-Pakistan & Kashmir Terror, Regional Water…and Palestine

09 Terrorism, 12 Water, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

China-Pakistan: Chinese Major General Yang Hui, director general of the Intelligence Directorate, visited Chief of Army Staff General Kayani at General Headquarters on 28 October, Associated Press of Pakistan reported. The two discussed matters of professional interest, according to Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: A visit by a Chinese intelligence general to Pakistan usually signifies a problem. The usual problem is that Pakistan is harboring, aiding, training and abetting anti-Han Chinese Islamic terrorists in the 42 terrorist camps that Pakistani intelligence sustains in Pakistani Kashmir.

Chinese intelligence officials seldom visit unless there is a problem. The Chinese do not seem concerned that Pakistani-trained terrorists kill Indians or Americans, but they do object to Pakistan providing or tolerating training of Xinjiang Uighurs who want to kill Han Chinese.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: This is interesting at multiple levels–it suggests among other things that the US and China could be constructively discussing an international solution to Kashmir and to regional water issues (what really underlies Kashmir).  That in turn could be tied to an international solution and regional water issue around Palestine.

noble gold