The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Should We Talk to Terrorists? (15 July 2010)
Talking to Groups That Use Terror (USIP, 2011, PDF 105 Pages)
Phi Beta Iota: Both the USA and Israel used terror tactics to achieve their original independence from British dominion. Terrorism is a tactic, nothing more. To demonize it is to betray one's substitution of ideology for intelligence.
The comments expressed in this interview exactly reflect my views–recommended!
Our finest warriors are often our most reluctant warmongers. They have seen firsthand the toll war exacts. They know better than anyone that force can be like a lobster trap that closes with each stage of descent, making escape impossible. So it was when the liberal consensus lured America into Vietnam during the ’60s, and again after 9/11, when neoconservatives clamored for the invasion of Iraq. With the notorious ferocity of the noncombatant, the neocons banged their tin drums and brayed for blood, as long as it was not their own that would be spilled.
One old warrior looked on sadly, his understanding of combat’s reality tempered by twenty-three years in uniform, including service in Vietnam. A graduate of West Point, Andrew Bacevich retired from the military to become a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, a public thinker who has been able to find an audience across the political spectrum, from The Nation to The American Conservative magazines. In several acclaimed books, including The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, and his bestselling The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Bacevich speaks truth to power, no matter who’s in power, which may be why he reaches both the left and the right.
Read rest of interview as published today by truthout.
Phi Beta Iota: The interview was done in 2008 and published today in truthout because of its high relevance to the decline and fall of America today.
Phi Beta Iota: The world is in an interregnum, between “rule by secrecy” and lies from power as the norm, and a very ugly baby Web 4.0 in which bottom-up truth struggles to emerge. We will have a great deal of baby poop to deal with, but over time, public intelligence in the public interest will find its edge, and truths that shock publics into extreme action will emerge. Below is are a few extracts from a very sharp and ably illustrated story, and one expert author's evaluation of that story. Provided for information, “sharing our confusions.” WARNING NOTICE: This story should be read in conjunction with the recent Pentagon declarations that cyber-attacks will be considered a declaration of war. An Israeli virus in US nuclear control systems (attributed to Iran of course), with or without the help of the US Government, could be used to justify World War III starting with an attack on Iran and “precision” attacks on Pakistani nuclear facilities. We believe Israel is “all in” at this point; and we believe President Obama and Congress have lost all semblance of control over the U.S. military-industrial-secret intelligence complex.
Jim Stone Freeland Journalist
Did the Dimona Dozen murder the Fukushima 50?
Fukushima may in fact have been caused by an act of war under the cover of an environmental disaster.
McKinney Leads DIGNITY Delegation of Independent Journalists to Libya on Fact-Finding Mission
1 June 2011
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – Today, independent journalists from across the United States departed on a truth-telling, fact-finding mission to Libya. This coincides with what was supposed to have been a debate in Congress on U.S. involvement in the war against Libya, but the debate got sidelined due to the fact that the legislation requiring a pullout by the U.S. could actually have passed. Both Democratic and Republican leadership are responsible for pulling the bill at the last minute.
Al Jazeera film footage shows that Western soldiers have their “boots on the ground” in Libya overstepping authority granted by the United Nations Security Council for action in Libya. Every day that President Obama contributes to the military action against Libya, he tests the United States Congress and defies the United States Constitution and the War Powers Act which limit Presidential acts of war, subject to authorization by the U.S. Congress.
Incredibly, in what yet may prove to be another act beyond the mandate of the United Nations Security Council Resolution, NATO extended its operations in Libya for another 90 days.
Because the public has become increasingly unable to rely on embedded media to tell the American people the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” the DIGNITY Delegation will shed rare light on NATO's actions inside that country.
According to some estimates, the American people and the global community were lied to 935 times by Administration officials and the media in the lead-up to the Iraq War. As Aeschylus said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” The DIGNITY Delegation is expected to make daily reports while on the ground of the ongoing NATO actions in the country.
For more information please contact: dondebar@optonline.net
TEDxMarin – John Perry Barlow – The Right to Know
16:56
Phi Beta Iota: This is classic Barlow, totally new fresh look, a moving and deeply engaging personal monologue on where we are, where we are going.
“Thought is not a noun to be owned, it is a verb, an action.”
“Copyright is the wrong model for monetizing thinking.”
See Also:
Electronic Frontier Foundation
1992 Barlow (US) Information Wants to Be Free
Review: The Virtual Community–Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier
In 1912, Woodrow Wilson campaigned for President using many Progressive ideas about strengthening the economy: banking reform, tariff reduction and the elimination of monopolies and trusts. The consolidation of these ideas became known as the New Freedom.
After Wilson's election, Louis Brandeis (who was responsible for many of Wilson's ideas in the first place) wrote a series of articles for Harper's Weekly which outlined why the New Freedom was necessary and how best to implement it. In 1914, the articles were collected in book form and published under the title Other People's Money–and How the Bankers Use It.
Brandeis' central thesis was that the large banking houses were colluding with businessmen to create trusts in America's major industries. Brandeis felt that not only did trusts stifle competition, but also they became so large that they became unable to operate efficiently.
Brandeis backed up his arguments with facts–copious facts gleaned from his battles against J. P. Morgan and Charles Mellen in the New Haven Railroad merger battle and from the Pujo Committee–a House committee report that investigated the abuses of the “Money Trust.”
Wilson was able to push through a number of laws regarding the regulation of business and trusts, but in many ways, due to mergers and stock manipulation, conditions in the business world today remain the same. Many of the details in Other People's Money may be dated, but its central ideas remain relevant–so much so that is still in print almost 90 years after it was first published. The chapters here are free online.
Chapter I: Our Financial Oligarchy
Chapter II: How The Combiners Combine
Chapter III: Interlocking Directorates
Chapter IV: Serve One Master Only!
Chapter V: What Publicity Can Do
Chapter VI: Where The Banker Is Superfluous
Chapter VII: Big Men And Little Business
Chapter VIII: A Curse Of Bigness
Chapter IX: The Failure Of Banker-Management
Chapter X: The Inefficiency Of The Oligarchy
Tip of the Hat to the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.
General Hamid Gul, former chief of the Pakistani intelligence service–11:50 tour of the horizon from death of Bin Laden to future of Afghanistan to what World War III might look like if US military-industrial complex is allowed to open a Pakistani front.
YouTube Russian Television Interview Hamid Gul
Phi Beta Iota: Worth listening to every second. BBC (itself a virtual subsidiary of CIA under the US-UK “special relationship”) is rapidly being over-shadowed by Russian TV, Al-Jazeera, and Ha'aretz as sourced of useful open information in English.
