Category: References

I will not replicate all that is at www.oss.net and to a much lesser extent, www.earth-intelligence.net, but do want to recognize a handful of extraordinary individuals by isolating their especially meritorious contributiions to the long-running debate about national intelligence reform and re-invention.

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Tom Atlee: Abundant Democracy Resources

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Open Government, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Reform
Tom Atlee

Dear friends,

In 2001 the Co-Intelligence Institute released a breakthrough compilation of more than 100 democratic innovations.  At that time there was no other comparable resource on the web.

This year we decided — and began — to update this list, to fix its broken links, to add new innovations and resources, and to make it into a wiki to allow other people to add democratic innovations they knew about.  You can see our initial progress online.

While preparing a grant proposal to expand the project, we researched the web for other lists of democratic and participatory practices and resources.  We were surprised to find quite a few.

We decided that to add the most value in the context of this great wealth of resources, our project should

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Abundant Democracy Resources”

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DefDog: Completely False Story from Coalition on Taliban

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Media, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call
DefDog Recommends....

This story is completely false.  NightWatch's compilation of data reveals that “March saw the highest level of fighting up to March 2011 and May was higher still. July looks down, but much more focused and lethal against senior officials.”

Just more of the aversion of truth that permeates Washington…..it also goes against all the previous reporting of having the Taliban on the ropes…..

Coalition holds line on Taliban attacks, data show

By Jim Michaels

USA TODAY, 28 July 2011

For the first time in five years insurgent-initiated attacks in Afghanistan have not increased with the start of a new fighting season, suggesting that a surge of U.S. forces has blunted Taliban momentum, according to the coalition forces.

Read full story…

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Robert Young Pelton: USA Road to Debt Decisions

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Robert Young Pelton

Useful survey on when the recent as well as the further back decisions on going into debt were made.  From April, but so very relevant today.

Running in the red: How the U.S., on the road to surplus, detoured to massive debt

By

The Washington Post, April 30, 2011

The nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis.

. . . . . . .

All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate.

. . . . . .

William Hoagland, who was for years a top budget aide to Domenici and other GOP Senate leaders, said it is simplistic to think today’s fiscal problems began just 10 years ago. In 1976, as a young CBO analyst, Hoagland produced a long-term simulation that showed entitlement costs gradually overwhelming the rest of the federal budget.

“This situation really goes back to long before [the Bush administration], which is to say to old dead men that have long left the Congress,” he said.

Read full article (three screens)…

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Venessa Miemis: Beyond Systems Thinking

Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Briefings (Core), Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Policies
Venessa Miemis

Excellent piece from Rethinking Complexity: Studying Systems for a Humane and Sustainable World.

From Systems Thinking to Systems Being

CONCLUSION

Systems being involves embodying a new consciousness, an expanded sense of self, a recognition that we cannot survive alone, that a future that works for humanity needs also to work for other species and the planet. It involves empathy and love for the greater human family and for all our relationships – plants and animals, earth and sky, ancestors and descendents, and the many peoples and beings that inhabit our Earth. This is the wisdom of many indigenous cultures around the world, this is part of the heritage that we have forgotten and we are in the process of recovering.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Systems being and systems living brings it all together: linking head, heart and hands. The expression of systems being is an integration of our full human capacities. It involves rationality with reverence to the mystery of life, listening beyond words, sensing with our whole being, and expressing our authentic self in every moment of our life. The journey from systems thinking to systems being is a transformative learning process of expansion of consciousness—from awareness to embodiment.

— Kathia Laszlo, Ph.D., directs Saybrook University's program in Leadership of Sustainable Systems

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Robert Steele: Secrecy, Self-Restraint, & Democracy Done in By Elites and “Experts”

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency
Robert David STEELE Vivas

The times they are a' changing.  I was asked to comment on  the recently published Reference: Protecting Sensitive “Open” Information and do so gladly.  The author of that work means well, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the substance of what he expouses.  It is simply not reasonable nor feasible in context.

I know this better than most because I have been here before.  In 1990-1994 Winn Schwartau sparked a public debate and ultimately testified to Congress on the likelihood of an “electronic Pearl Harbor.”  Congress chose to ignore him just as it had ignored all the well-documented warnings on Peak Oil, Peak Water, AIDS, and so on in the late 1970's.  Peter Black and I and others published articles outlining how easily America could be taken down, and how irresponsible the government and the private sector were being about the fundamentals of information security and data integrity.

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Secrecy News: ACLU to Congress on Curbing Secrecy

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, White Papers
Steven Aftergood

ACLU:  CONGRESS MUST ACT TO CURB SECRECY

“Congress must take the lead in challenging the laws and practices that have allowed excessive secrecy to become the dominant feature of our national security culture,” the American Civil Liberties Union urged in a new report on government secrecy.

“The excessive secrecy that hides how the government pursues its national security mission is undermining the core principles of democratic government and injuring our nation in ways no terrorist act ever could,” wrote Mike German and Jay Stanley, the authors of the ACLU report.  “It is time for Congress to make the secrecy problem an issue of the highest priority, and enact a sweeping overhaul of our national security establishment to re-impose democratic controls.”

The report provides a fluid account of current secrecy policy, along with a critique from first principles as well as from recent experience.  Highly readable and thoroughly footnoted, the 51 page report covers a spectrum of secrecy issues, from the state secrets privilege to secret law to the role of national security whistleblowers, and a lot more.  It concludes with a menu of recommended reforms that Congress could and, the authors say, should undertake.

The title of the report sums it up:  “Drastic Measures Required:  Congress Needs to Overhaul U.S. Secrecy Law and Increase Oversight of the Secret Security Establishment” by Mike German and Jay Stanley, July 2011.

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