Tom Atlee is a social change pioneer and visionary, author of The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Works for All and founder of the nonprofit Co-Intelligence Institute http://co-intelligence.org. The book below would not have been possible without his identification and encouragement of many of the pioneers who helped create the book, which then allowed the editor to attract additional leaders in the field to contribute to this collective endeavor.
Phi Beta Iota: Tom Atlee is arguably the single most influential “spirit” in convergence that is occurring as we begin the second decade of the 21st Century. Click on Atlee to see his many listings on this site. His most recent work, Reflections on Evolutionary Activism, is one of a handful of revolutionary reflections pertinent to the urgent need for massive non-violent social change today.
There is also a Wikipedia Page on this national grass-roots initiative. “Where's the Transparency” is the larger meme that the Independents, Tea Party Express, Liberatarians, and others excluded from the current two-party system are sharing.
January 11, 2010
The Obama Reversal That Might Save Your Life (Sierra Club)
Washington, DC — The first anniversary of the Obama administration is only a week away. Perhaps the greatest untold story of the past year is the reversal of George Bush's eight years of environmental counterrevolution. When Bush and Cheney stopped a century-long tradition of environmental progress, the media was flabbergasted by the unrelenting intensity of the assault. But the Obama reversal has been largely unheralded (in fact, virtually unnoticed), even though it has arguably been even more intense.
Records Show Pentagon Aides Who Chaperone Overseas Excursions Spend Thousands of Dollars to Foster Ties to Lawmakers
Instead, the records shed light for the first time on how the military exploits its official escort role on these trips to foster relationships with lawmakers who approve departmental budgets and top appointments. The disclosures also underscore the military's pervasive pursuit of congressional access. Indeed, the military aides who accompany lawmakers overseas are usually the same people who lobby Congress at home; their offices are in buildings shared with lawmakers.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Food handouts were shut off Tuesday to thousands of people at a tent city here when the main U.S. aid agency said the Army should not be distributing the packages.
“We are not supposed to get rations unless approved by AID,” Maj. Larry Jordan said.
Jordan said that approval was revoked; water was not included in the USAID decision, so the troops continued to hand out bottles of water. The State Department and USAID did not respond to requests for comment.
Phi Beta Iota: It will be interesting to see at what point ANYONE in the US military chain of command realizes that AID has issued an illegal order that should not only be ignored, it should be reported to the President via the chain of command.
Nine key factors are examined by BGen McMaster in his talk to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Answers question on why we were so unprepared. Final paragraph of trip report:
Can’t get much from a database and IT networks, but contractors keep pushing and we keep buying. But what really need is experts from anywhere, context, and also need to ask the soldiers! Make Phebe Marr a general! Also pay attention to: Charles Tripp, R. Kadeiri, Sarah Chayes, Barnett R. Rubin and Ahmed Rashid, Michael Howard, Frontline piece on Children of the Taliban, Fariad Ali Han on borders. Educate analysts (and self-educate) on the place, don’t waste time training them on the process.
In a depression, voters want populism. If they can find potent New Deal economic populism, they will vote for it every time, as US elections between 1932 and 1944 show without a shadow of a doubt. But if they do not find economic populism, they can easily fall prey to the cynical demagogy of cultural populism. That is what has happened in Massachusetts.
The only way to be an economic populist is the shift the cost of the world economic depression and the tax burden generally onto Wall Street financial interests, that is to say onto the malefactors of great wealth who created this crisis in the first place. That is the recipe for winning elections in a depression.
Most Democrats appear to be too far gone on the road to plutocracy to learn that lesson. It therefore may well be time to create a new party to represent the one major political current in American life which is not represented by either of the two big parties of the day. In other words, we desperately need, one way or another, a New Deal economic populist party to lead this country and much of the world out of the world economic depression.
Popular Science Wipes the Floor with WIRED Magazine
Latest issue highlights:
Internet in the Ether (airwaves abandned by TV could beam high-speed Internet everywhere)
Out of Thin Air (a little oxygen is all a zinc-air battery needs to become a powerhouse
RENOVATING AMERICA (specifics across transportation, water, power, telecom, and sewage.
Phi Beta Iota: Our first web editor was Dr. Eric Theise, Internet Editor for WIRED Magazine back when Kevin Kelly was in charge, and it rocked then. No more. WIRED has been trashed by advertising, gloss, and a loss of focus. Popular Science is now “the one.”
