Koko: Teacher Burns Herself to Death in Playground

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call
Koko

Koko Signs:  Koko sad. Governments fiddle, people burn.

Teacher dies in France after setting herself on fire

An apparently depressed maths teacher in southern France has died after setting herself on fire in the playground of her secondary school.

Students and teachers rushed to help the woman, 44, after she doused herself with petrol during morning break and set herself alight.

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota:  The USA has already had one veteran burn himself to death, while 18 a day are committing suicide (and in Iraq, more die from suicide each month than from combat).  The US Government is very, very sick of mind, lacking soul and heart, completely divorced from reality and integrity.  A couple of soccer moms are next–are you ready?

See Also:

NH MAN BURNS SELF AT COURTHOUSE IN PROTEST

He may be an example of what is to come – people throwing themselves violently up against the system in order to bring it down.

G.I. Wilson: Killer Drones, Moral Disengagement, + War Crimes RECAP

Joseph Stiglitz: The True Cost of 9/11 — Includes 18 Veteran Suicides a Day

2011 Thinking About Revolution in the USA and Elsewhere (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

2008 The Substance of Governance ELECTION 2008 Lipstick on the Pig (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

Review: Shooting the Truth–The Rise of American Political Documentaries

#OWS Deputy Major Stops Confrontation Over Cleaning

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Law Enforcement, Mobile
John Steiner

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 14, 2011
www.nyc.gov

STATEMENT OF DEPUTY MAYOR CAS HOLLOWAY ON BROOKFIELD PROPERTIES POSTPONING THEIR CLEANING OF ZUCCOTTI PARK

³Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park ­Brookfield Properties ­ that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation. Our position has been consistent throughout: the City¹s role is to protect public health and safety, to enforce the law, and guarantee the rights of all New Yorkers.  Brookfield believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation.

Phi Beta Iota:  NYPD and Bloomberg both understand that flash mobs can hand them their ass.

See Also:

John Robb: Bloomberg Cleaning Out OWS

#OWS Letter Seeking Eviction of OWS in NYC (sic)

Graphic: Twitter as an Intelligence Tool

Journal: PA & NYPD Criminalize Twitter

 

Penguin: Patraeus Orders Analysts to Consult Military

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Officers Call
Who, Me?

Corruption cubed.

Petraeus tells CIA analysts to heed troops on war

AP, 14 October 2011

WASHINGTON – David Petraeus, the former general who led the Afghanistan war and now heads the CIA, has ordered his intelligence analysts to give greater weight to the opinions of troops in the fight, U.S. officials said.

CIA analysts now will consult with battlefield commanders earlier in the process as they help create elements of a National Intelligence Estimate on the course of the war, to more fully include the military's take on the conflict, U.S. officials say.

Read more.

Phi Beta Iota:  On the surface, this is a good order.  Understanding both sides, however, suggests that this is a repeat of the Sam Adams – Westmoreland dictated fraud.  The US military and NATO are lying to the public and to their respective legislative and executive branches about the continuing failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and across Africa.  We no longer post the recurring slams on the falsehoods being purveyed.  It is so very sad when our senior officials are so blatantly lacking in integrity and depriving us all of the intelligence that we are paying for.

See Also:

Journal: CIA and the Culture of Corruption

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

Review (Guest): Fixing the Facts – National Security and the Politics of Intelligence

US Intelligence Lies to “Defer” to General Petraeus

YouTube Sex with Pilots vs. Intelligence Officers

Review: Who the Hell Are We Fighting?–The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars (Hardcover)

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Most)

 

John Robb: Bloomberg Cleaning Out OWS

09 Justice, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government
John Robb

BLOOMBERG VS. OCCUPY

New Rules from Zucotti ParkMayor Bloomberg is moving to shut down Occupy Wall Street at Liberty Square tomorrow at 7 AM.

The ruse he is using: the need to clean the “park.” He has promised that Liberty Square will be reopened after the cleaning but nobody will be allowed to set up anything in park, nor will sleeping bags be allowed (click the sheet to the left for larger version).

Click on Image to Enlarge

This is going to get interesting. Will be working up some ideas for how this could play out. Let's start off with an assumption. This is Bloomberg vs. Occupy. One mind vs. many minds. The goal is to coerce him into changing his mind. Dissuade him. Get inside his OODA loop.

Go straight for him. Maximize the eviction's taint on Bloomberg's personal brand. Personalize the protest/eviction by attaching the blame to him personally. Pierce his shield of bureaucratic impersonality. Brand the eviction with the name: Bloomberg. This is/will be a global stage, use it.

Confuse him. Lots and lots of Flash Mobs. Shut down bridges and major streets. Overwhelm with volume/speed. Non-violent disruption. As soon as police arrive in force, disperse and reassemble at new location. Bikes + Kids. Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. More flashmobs = more disruption. As long as the square is under attack, keep the city tied in knots. NOTE: If they lock down the area, flashmobs are the best way to participate (and get some exercise).

Connect with more people than him. Best way to do this: Eyes in the sky. Get a camera/cameras above Liberty Square. Stream the feed. The better the quality the more impact it will have. It will play across the world. Think about how important AJs video feed over Tahrir was when things got hot. Better yet, get AJ to cover it and stream it.

If you have additional ideas, add them below. Good training in tactical thinking.

Hoisted from the comments:

The flashmob tactic was tried here in Panama couple of years ago by the SUNTRACS construction workers union, and with very small groups pre-planted all over the city they drove the police absolutely crazy. Police would show up at location A, mob would disperse immediately, two text messages and now TWO flashmobs would block streets at different locations. They never followed up with it (preferring massive marches to display force) but it worked very well and with much less people than #ows has available. [courtesy: Okke]

Cynthia McKinney: US & Israel Against Africa & Arabia

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, Legislation
Cynthia McKinney

Cynthia McKinney, 10 October 2011.

Third of Four Installments on Libya: Israel and Libya

Once again, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya peels away the veneer of legitimacy and deception enveloping the U.S./NATO genocide currently taking place in Libya. In his first article, Nazemroaya exposed the mechanism by which the world came to “know” of the need for a humanitarian intervention in the Libyan Arab Jamahirya and U.S./NATO admissions of targeted assassination attempts against the Leader of the 1969 Libyan Revolution, Muammar Qaddafi. In his first of these four installments since his return from Libya, Nazemraoya makes it clear that there never was any evidence given to the United Nations or the International Criminal Court to warrant or justify United Nations Resolutions 1970 and 1973 or current U.S./NATO operations inside Libya.

Continue reading “Cynthia McKinney: US & Israel Against Africa & Arabia”

David Isenberg: 9/11 and the Rule of Law – What We Still Do Not Know Ten Years Later

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call
David Isenberg

After September 11: What We Still Don’t Know

David Cole

New York Review of Books, 29 September 2011

EXTRACT

Because so much was done under the veil of secrecy, much remains unknown about the extent of the illegality. Mark Danner’s publication in these pages of the Red Cross’s report on the abusive interrogations of “high-value” detainees provides a glimpse at the horrors US agents inflicted.4 But we do not even know how many people US officials have abducted, rendered, disappeared, tortured, or killed. We do not know the extent of the injuries suffered, and still being suffered, by those we abused. We still know relatively little about the mistreatment of most of the Guantánamo detainees. We have not apologized to even a single victim—not even to those, like Canadian citizen Maher Arar and German citizen Khaled al-Masri, who were targeted for renditions and torture based on misinformation, and have been cleared of any wrongdoing themselves.

Meanwhile, our former president in his memoir has proudly proclaimed that he personally authorized waterboarding—a practice we prosecuted as torture in the past when it was used against our troops. The former vice-president recently replied affirmatively when asked whether waterboarding should “still be a tool” of interrogation. Failing to condemn such blatant wrongdoing in some official way leaves an open wound both for the victims and for the integrity of our system, and implies that the tactics were neither lawless nor immoral. The rule of law may be tenacious when it is supported, but violations of it that go unaccounted corrode its very foundation.

All of which only underscores the continuing need for an engaged civil society committed to the ideals of liberty and law. The past decade suggests that the rule of law may be stronger than cynics thought. It teaches that adherence to values of liberty, equality, and dignity is more likely to further than to obstruct our security interests. But it also illustrates our collective reluctance to confront our past, a reluctance that threatens to erode our most important values.

Read full story.

Koko: Participatory Budget Takes Root in USA

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government
Koko

Participatory Budgeting – A Method to Empower Local Citizens & Communities

Participatory Budgeting” (PB) is a process that allows citizens to decide directly how to allocate all or part of a public budget, typically through a series of meetings, work by community “delegates” or representatives, and ultimately a final vote. It was first implemented in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1990, and has since spread.

PB has recently taken root in Canadian and American soils.

Chicago’s 49th Ward, for example, uses this process to distribute $1.3 million of annual discretionary funds. The ward’s residents have praised the opportunity to make meaningful decisions, take ownership over the budget process, and win concrete improvements for their neighborhood – community gardens and sidewalk repairs to street lights and public murals. The initiative proved so popular that the ward’s alderman, Joe Moore, credits PB with helping to reverse his political fortunes.

The wave is not stopping in Chicago, either. Elected officials and community leaders elsewhere – from New York City to San Francisco and from Greensboro, N.C. to Springfield, Mass. – are considering launching similar initiatives.

Sources:

Government can’t solve budget battles? Let citizens do it.” Daniel Altschuler and Josh Lerner, The Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2011.

Chicago’s Participatory Budgeting Experiment” Nicole Summers, Shareable. April 6, 2011.

Student Researcher: Allison Holt, San Francisco State University

Faculty Evaluator: Kenn Burrows, San Francisco State University