After soliciting the thoughts of its members, the No Labels organization has settled upon three areas of focus for the group's efforts: Policing partisan politics, promoting fiscal responsibility, and election reform.
No Labels founding member John Avlon announced this decision Monday during the weekly leaders conference call.
“Based on your feedback we have decided to focus on three core policy principles going forward.
CAIRO — As Egyptians turned their anger on symbols of the state late last month, torching police stations along with the headquarters of President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party, they reserved a special hatred for a garish building with black tinted windows in an upscale neighborhood, setting fire to it three times.
Phi Beta Iota: Americans are slow to anger, but we see the day coming when Connnecticut mansions begin to burn….the preconditions for revolution in the USA are virtually all present.
By Heidi Blake and Christopher Hope, The Daily Telegraph February 1, 2011
Al-Qaida is on the verge of producing radioactive weapons after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build “dirty” bombs, according to leaked diplomatic documents.
A leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a “nuclear 9/11”.
Security briefings suggest that jihadi groups are also close to producing “workable and efficient” biological and chemical weapons that could kill thousands if unleashed in attacks on the West.
In a review of nearly 2,500 pages of documents released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a result of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, EFF uncovered alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices. The documents consist of reports made by the FBI to the Intelligence Oversight Board of violations committed during intelligence investigations from 2001 to 2008. The documents suggest that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed. In particular, EFF’s analysis provides new insight into:
Number of Violations Committed by the FBI
From 2001 to 2008, the FBI reported to the IOB approximately 800 violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations, although this number likely significantly under-represents the number of violations that actually occurred.
From 2001 to 2008, the FBI investigated, at minimum, 7000 potential violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations.
Based on the proportion of violations reported to the IOB and the FBI’s own statements regarding the number of NSL violations that occurred, the actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law, Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations.1
US admiration for its soldiers may be deep and widespread, but interest in what they are doing is shallow and fleeting
article
by Gary Younge
Published on Monday, January 31, 2011 by The Guardian
Most of the stories told about Benjamin Moore, 23, at his funeral started in a bar and ended in a laugh. Invited to testify about his life from the pews, friend, relative, colleague and neighbour alike described a boisterous, gregarious, energetic young man they'd known in the small New Jersey town of Bordentown since he was born. “I'll love him 'til I go,” his granny said. “If I could go today and bring him back, I would.”
Grown men choked on their memories, under the gaze of swollen, reddened eyes, as they remembered a “snot-nosed kid” and a fidget who'd become a volunteer firefighter before enlisting in the military. Shortly before Benjamin left for Afghanistan, he sent a message to his cousin that began: “I'm about to go into another country where they hate me for everything I stand for.” Now he was back in a flag-draped box, killed by roadside bomb with two other soldiers in Ghazni province.
There is need for bright news on the democracy front — and, luckily, there is some. (I'm also working to create some in the background, but I've got nothing to announce yet. Cross your fingers.) So I thought I'd share a bit of it the good stuff I've seen.
The first article is an announcement that the Vermont legislature is planning to become the first state to ban corporate personhood statewide. This is a move in the right direction to balance social power — a topic specifically addressed by the most popular article on the Co-Intelligence Institute website, “Democracy: A Social Power Analysis“, written by my father, John Atlee. (Perhaps you'll get a sense of how my upbringing influenced my choice of career when you read it.)
The second article below is an interview with Frances Moore Lappé, one of my early mentors (see “Living Democracy“) exploring themes in her new book GET A GRIP 2. She invites us to both work wholeheartedly on the issues that concern us AND to work on changing the systems (such as money's influence in politics) that create the problems we are trying to solve.
Bill Keller is the executive editor of The New York Times. This essay is adapted from his introduction to “Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy: Complete and Expanded Coverage from The New York Times,” an ebook available for purchase at nytimes.com/opensecrets.
EXTRACT: The government surely cheapens secrecy by deploying it so promiscuously. According to the Pentagon, about 500,000 people have clearance to use the database from which the secret cables were pilfered. Weighing in on the WikiLeaks controversy in The Guardian, Max Frankel remarked that secrets shared with such a legion of “cleared” officials, including low-level army clerks, “are not secret.” Governments, he wrote, “must decide that the random rubber-stamping of millions of papers and computer files each year does not a security system make.”
Phi Beta Iota: Upgraded to a Reference because this nine part overview of the entire process is elegant, informative, and provocative. A very fine contribution of lasting value.
No Labels to tackle hyper-partisanship, fiscal responsibility, election reform
