Next Ubuntu Linux for desktops and Netbooks will launch Sunday with new cloud features, an updated interface, and better links with other operating systems. Tip of the hat to Paul Harper at Facebook.
Phi Beta Iota: Managing Project GEORGE (Smiley) for CIA's Office of Information Technology, followed immediately by the privilege of creating the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command), and then 20 years helping 90 governments (66 directly) get a grip on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), are the foundation for understanding how to create a World Brain and Global Game that is infinitely scalable. Proprietary software by its very nature is not infinitely scalable in part because it sharply limits the number of end-users that can interface with the software. The monetization as well as the security attributeshave moved from the T to the I, and most simply do not get that.
*Starred Review* Could the U.S. be on the brink of becoming a Third World nation? Syndicated columnist Huffington argues that overspending on war at the expense of domestic issues and the alarming decline of the middle class are troubling signals that the U.S. is losing its economic, political, and social stability—a stability that has always been maintained by the middle class. She pinpoints the beginning of the decline to the Reagan era, with its denigration of a government safety net. But she is nonpartisan in assigning responsibility to George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for supporting monied interests over those of the middle class; she then takes aim at Obama for expending more money to bail out Wall Street than Main Street. She also points to loss of manufacturing jobs, outsourcing, and globalization, all with emphasis on corporate profits at the expense of workers. Although the U.S. has faced similarly fearful times during the late 1800s and the Great Depression, the middle class was not threatened, as it is today. She offers possible solutions for the decline, including creating jobs to rebuild national infrastructure, reforms in home and credit lending, and tighter restrictions on Wall Street. An engaging analysis of troubling economic and political trends. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The Huffington Post founder is sure to get some media traction with her assertion that the American Dream is an outdated concept. — Vanessa Bush
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The US economy has disintegrated, and with it into the abyss plummet the blueprints of neoliberal economists, whose theories about “the free market” have now gone the way of medieval alchemy. No voice has been stronger, no prose more forceful, than that of Paul Craig Roberts in predicting collapse. His weekly columns in CounterPunch have won an audience of millions around the world, grateful for a trained economist who can explain lucidly how the well-being of the planet has been held hostage by the gangster elite. Now Dr. Roberts has written the shortest, sharpest outline of economics for the twenty-first century ever put between book covers. He traces the path to ruin and lays out the choices that must be made. There is the “empty world” of corporate exploitation, abetted by the vast majority of economists; or the “full world” of responsible management and distribution of our resources. Amid crisis, this is the guide you've been waiting for.
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The authors of The New Color Line return with another libertarian polemic, this time taking aim at a justice system that has lost sight of its most important goals. Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton warn of a “police state that is creeping up on us from many directions.” There's the war on drugs, which makes it possible for federal agents to investigate people simply for carrying large amounts of cash. There's the crusade against white-collar crime, which has turned the plea bargain into an enemy of the truth. And there's outright misconduct, abetted by prosecutors more interested in compiling long lists of indictments than ensuring the fair treatment of all suspects. The Tyranny of Good Intentions is replete with examples of how government treads on freedom through ill-willed prosecution and faceless bureaucracy. The book's overpowering sense of disaffection sometimes leads to alarmist prose: “We the People have vanished. Our place has been taken by wise men and anointed elites.” The authors are swift to suggest that America, barring “an intellectual rebirth,” may yet go the way of “German Nazis and Soviet communists.” Yet The Tyranny of Good Intentions is nothing if not well intended; it is full of passion and always on the attack, whether the writers are taking on racial quotas, wetland regulations, or any number of policies they find objectionable. In a jacket blurb, libertarian icon Milton Friedman calls it “a devastating indictment of our current system of justice.” Roberts and Stratton, although right-leaning in many of their political sympathies, will probably find plenty of fans on ACLU-left–and anybody who cringes at the thought of unbridled state power. If the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, consider this book an atlas
Many Americans view their country and its soldiers as the “good guys” spreading “democracy” and “liberty” around the world. It just ain't so.
October 8, 2010
Peter Dale Scott, Robert Parry / Consortium News
Alter.Net Editor's Note: Many Americans view their country and its soldiers as the “good guys” spreading “democracy” and “liberty” around the world. When the United States inflicts unnecessary death and destruction, it's viewed as a mistake or an aberration.
In the following article Peter Dale Scott and Robert Parry examine the long history of these acts of brutality, a record that suggests they are neither a “mistake” nor an “aberration” but rather conscious counterinsurgency doctrine on the “dark side.”
For a number of years I reported on the monthly nonfarm payroll jobs data. The data did not support the praises economists were singing to the “New Economy.” The “New Economy” consisted, allegedly, of financial services, innovation, and high-tech services.
This economy was taking the place of the old “dirty fingernail” economy of industry and manufacturing. Education would retrain the workforce, and we would move on to a higher level of prosperity.
Time after time I reported that there was no sign of the “New Economy” jobs, but that the old economy jobs were disappearing. The only net new jobs were in lowly paid domestic services such as waitresses and bartenders, retail clerks, health care and social assistance (mainly ambulatory health care services), and, before the bubble burst, construction.
The facts, issued monthly by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, had no impact on the ”New Economy” propaganda. Economists continued to wax eloquently about how globalism was a boon for our future.
. . . . . .
The wage and salary cost savings obtained by giving Americans’ jobs to Chinese and Indians have enriched corporate CEOs, shareholders, and Wall Street at the expense of the middle class and America’s consumer economy.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.
New US Tactics in Afghanistan Unrelated to Europe Terror Alert
A strong strategic rationale actuated Washington's blanket terror warning to Europe of Sunday, Oct. 3. But the way it evolved reflected the current interplay among the leading American personalities who devised it.
Phi Beta Iota: We do not normally point to anything that requires registration or payment, but in this instance, since it specifically supports our own skepticism about the recent terror alert (see Journal: US Travel Alert–Political and Fraudulent?, we agree with our contributor who suggested the pointer. Below are a few of the headlines internal to the Debka article, and three key sentences.
Angry Pakistani reaction was no surprise
Now to build a cover story
In North Waziristan, Petraeus said, smashing Taliban and local allied forces on the Pakistan side of the border is the key to success in Afghanistan, particularly in the south which has a common border with North Waziristan.
The imprecise, unspecific US terror scare did not impress Europe
Brennan's personal ambition gingered up the publicity
While Petraeus and Panetta kept their uncertainties under their hats and cooperated with one another, John Brennan went off on an aggressive tangent. He issued a welter of leaks to the media without coordinating them with either partner.
France settles scores with Britain
Two days later, France exhibited its fine sense of irony by issuing a travel advisory warning French citizens to be vigilant for terrorists while traveling in… London.
Phi Beta Iota: Just after this story, which has rich detail on Brennan and Panetta lusting for Jones' job, the vacancy was announced and filled. This may be one of the weakest national security teams since the end of WWII.
Although books are listed in the first and authors in the second, this is a good opportunity to list the very special group of books that have shaped–along with experience in the Office of Information Technology at CIA and in standing up the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity–the world view this site's founder and the 800 contributors who were hand-picked over 20 years, taken in the aggregate.
In recent years, a number of Quaker writers and organizations have argued that these core values and the future of our planet are threatened by an economic system that encourages people to consume increasingly scarce natural resources, resulting in environmental devastation, economic inequality, and wars for oil. The alternative they propose is living in “right relationship,” which means radically changing both our individual behavior and social structures so that our way of life honors all of God's creation.
“We draw on a Quaker legacy of passion for doing the right thing and going inward to discover what the right thing is,” explains the website of the Earth Quaker Action Team, which grew out of a gathering in the summer of 2009 where many Quakers felt that God was calling them to engage more vigorously with these issues. “We are people who recycle and re-use, who drive hybrids and bicycles, who take buses and shorter showers, and at the same time know that the sum of individual actions cannot make up for the destructive decisions taken by large structures. We realize we must turn to the power of collective action.”
Phi Beta Iota: We are sensing both an emergence and a convergence coming together in 2012.
