Category: Policies

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Greece About Future of Democracy, Not Budget

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government
John Steiner

Postcard From Greece: This Should Not Be About Austerity, It's About The Future Of Democracy

Arianna Huffington

Huffington Post, 28 June 2011

Given that the Greeks invented democracy, it's only fitting that they're now being given the chance to reinvent it. And yes, I know we Greeks have a reputation for mythmaking and drama — but, as I found out during my trip to Greece last week, those really are the stakes.

Until I went over and witnessed what's happening, I too had become convinced that the real issues were the ones the media were obsessively covering: the effects of a potential sovereign default on the Euro and worries about the crisis spreading to other European countries.

But here's the bigger issue: Can a truly democratic movement break the stranglehold of corrupt elites and powerful anti-democratic institutional forces that have come to characterize not just the politics of Greece, but most Western democracies, including our own? Greece is only an extreme example of an unfolding seismic social shift that is challenging democracies the world over.

What happens in Greece might very well tell us whether democracy will recover from the crisis of legitimacy exacerbated by the financial crisis or whether it will shrink — undermined by the very forces that brought on the crisis in the first place.

It's way too early to tell whether the forces of democracy will prevail, but I came away extraordinarily moved and heartened by the courage, passion, engagement and dedication I witnessed during a trip in which three different perspectives converged.

Read full article….

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Landmark Afghan hotel attacked

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military
Click on Image to Enlarge

UPDATED to add photo.  Guards at the front door, no guards across the totally exposed back end.  Sheraton San Salvador was attacked from the ravine.   Deja vu.

Landmark Afghan hotel attacked

Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2011

Gunmen and suicide bombers strike the tightly secured Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, which has large foreign clientele. It was not immediately known how many people were killed or wounded.

Read full article…

Phi Beta Iota: Well-intentioned professionals like to say that if the US only has enough will to persist, it can prevail against any enemy.  That is not correct.  When the US engaged in elective wars and lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the occupied public, it will inevitably lose.  When the US Government is delusional and ignoring the harsh realities at home, it loses its domestic legitimacy.  Events like the Tet Offensive, or the increasing attacks in the heart of Kabul, accentuate the cognitive dissonance among all parties.  This will not end well for the US.

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Structural Power and Federal Feudalism

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Nathan Allen

While the U.S. government may be described as a massive wealth transferring scheme, looting the middle class for the elite, I’d suggest that ‘wealth’ and ‘elite’ are not precisely correct. The transformation in Western power structures over past three centuries is such that the ‘elite’ was formerly indistinguishable from the government, which is the hallmark of feudal government; whereas now, the locus of power is the government itself, not any particular group of people.

We still find the old system at work in dictatorships – Libya, N. Korea – in which the government is indistinguishable from a small group of people and for whom wealth accumulation is the primary goal.

But wealth isn’t the primary goal of western governments; they have a nearly unlimited ability to create their own wealth (debt and printing money) – or destroy it (debt and printing money). The primary concern of these supposedly post-feudal governments is stability and power, and their primary means to securing these ends is patronage.

Patronage existed in feudal governments, but it was a means to an end (wealth accumulation), and not the end in itself. As such, it’s then not surprising that the primary purpose of most government endeavors – the education and court systems, intelligence communities, healthcare – is to employ the greatest number of people, thus securing widespread government support. Critical mass is reached when a simple majority of the voters earn >50% of their income from government sources – there are people who work for a living and people who vote for a living, and once the latter reaches >50%, the former becomes politically irrelevant.

Continue reading “Structural Power and Federal Feudalism”

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Tax Cuts & Elective Wars Created the Deficit….

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

This op-ed was written by one of my closest friends, who happens to be an old fashioned Republican in the best sense of the term.

Chuck Spinney
Nice, France
The big deficit facing the U.S. is mostly Republican in origin, the Congressional Budget Office says. The Bush tax cuts alone have added $3 trillion in red ink, yet the party wants to double down on its failed policy.

By Mike Lofgren

June 26, 2011

. . . . . . .

Polarization based on juvenile talk radio sloganeering is dragging this country to the cliff's edge. If neither the Democrats nor the party I have served for three decades is willing to act like adults, perhaps it's time for a party that is willing to step into the void.
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Resiliency Wiki & Open Source Insurgency

09 Justice, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of Peace
John Robb

JOURNAL: The Resilient Community Wiki

The great part about starting out small, simple, and a little cheesy is that it can only get better from there.  Using that logic, my friends and I have launched a wiki called Miiu (pronounced me-you).  Miiu is a visual wiki.  Essentially, a catalogue of things (products, tools, etc.) and places (homes, businesses, gov't buildings, etc.).

The Resilient Community Wiki

To start off, our goal is to do what lots of people have asked me to create: a wiki that catalogues everything related to resilient communities.  We'd like to create a visual catelogue of the things (from DIY solar stills to an inventory of homes, farms, businesses in your community) that will be useful in the development of resilient communities.

JOURNAL: Lulzsec as an Open Source Insurgency

Lulzsec has some claims to being an open source insurgency.  It operated as a foco by generating a plausible promise: its hacks were high profile and successful, proving that it's possible to successfully attack/damage all big organizations despite the billions they spend on computer security.   This promise has also generated copycats/clones around the world.  Finally, it is now disbanding (forgoing any formal leadership role).  If they can disband in a way that lets them escape unscathed, that only adds to the promise. Quote from their website:

“For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could.  We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we've gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling.  Please don't stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.”

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Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

About the Idea, Augmented Reality, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Deeds of War, IO Technologies, Methods & Process, Policies, Reform, Standards, Technologies, Tools

Open Source Ecology — 50 Open Source Tools for Resilience

Industrial productivity can be achieved on a small scale….it just requires open source design.  A single DVD is a civilization starter kit.

Interactive Transcript

About The Speaker

About This Talk

Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000).

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US Black Propaganda Behind Warrants for Gadhafi?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Peace Intelligence

Libya, Amnesty questions the Hague‘s findings: Are the rebels making up claims of mass rape?

Libya Dismisses International Court Warrants for Gadhafi, 2 Top Aides

Phi Beta Iota: Based on in-country reporting from Cynthia McKinney and others, we are quite certain that it is NATO that is committing the war crimes, and the rebels who are genociding black Libyans.  We are equally certain the International Tribunal does not have a clue in terms of validated intelligence (decision-support) and therefore conclude that in this instance  the warrants lack legitimacy and credibility and are an act of state–similar to the act of state against Martin Luther King; the act of state that sanctioned Israeli murder of US personnel aboard the USS Liberty; and the act of state that told 935 lies to create an elective three trillion dollar war on Iraq and Afghanistan.

See Also:

Reference: Empire of Lies & Secrecy

Review: Why Leaders Lie–The Truth About Lying in International Politics

Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

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