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.
Phi Beta Iota: What we notice is that the federal government is spending trillions in an elective invasion of two other countries and in the maintenance of over 700 military installations outside our territory, many of them secret and some of them for purposes antithetical to our values and inconsistent with our Constitution–while Texas has to “make do” in confronting a very real war in which more people die in the border area than in Iraq or Afghanistan.
UPDATE of 19 Oct to resurface the CORE COMMON ISSUE and add THIRD PARTY book reviews (immediately below the line). The legislative proposal still needs work, e.g. ballot access not well covered, but this is the starting point. It was created by Jim Turner and Robert Steele based in large part on points made by Ralph Nader is his book Crashing the Party–Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender. We cannot understand why Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Cynthia McKinney, and Jackie Salit–and Mike Bloomberg–don't get serious about this ONE THING they can all agree on….
Click on either of the images to see a collection of documents on Democracy in America as it could be, should be, must be. The Republic has been destroyed by a combination of domestic enemies and a public slow to realize that it was being disenfranchized.
Click on the page below to read the single page summary of eight simple reforms, most conceived by Ralph Nader, as refined by Jim Turner (Nader #2 for many years) and Robert Steele.
Electoral Reform Act of 2009
Only recently have major financial figures such as John Bogle and Peter Peterson come forward with works that call into question the integrity, santiy, and viability of the Republic as it is now being looted by Wall Street and the two-party tyranny. Below are several titles worthy of study, with links to the summary reviews of those titles by Robert Steele. Below them are twice as many titles capturing the spirit of the Republic that has been in re-gestation for decades. The mood of Middle America is clear: we want our Republic back, and we want both government and commerce to be open, honest, and in the public service. We are going to get what we want by 2012, peacefully, on the strength of our numbers and our common collective intelligence.
Use the Reviews menu to rapidly survey over 1,400 non-fiction books all focused on the future of the Republic and the Earth in the context of restoring the faith of humanity in itself. Each review leads back to both the Amazon page, and to the original review on Amazon should you wish to vote on the review.
Terrorism is, roughly, the intentional random murder of defenseless non-combatants, with the intent of instilling fear of mortal danger amidst a civilian population as a strategy designed to advance political ends. This basic understanding (which admittedly allows for some variation and has some fuzzy edges) cannot be ‘deconstructed’, nor can it be obscured.
Phi Beta Iota: This suggests that state actions including democide, assassination by drone, and all other state-driven means of terrorizing non-combatants through group punishment, are terrorism.
Humanizing “The Man:”Strengthening Psychological and Information Operations in Afghanistan by A. Lawrence Chickering
In this paper, I will argue there are three great challenges the coalition forces need to overcome in their search for narratives that resonate with Afghans and that ultimately will promote support for the coalition and for the government. First is the traditional and tribal Afghan antagonism to outsiders. Second is the lack of a stake that ordinary Afghans have in the larger system. And the third involves a conflict in impact of major activities in the country, a conflict between programs that empower Afghans and programs that disempower them.
Phi Beta Iota: The four levels of war and peace were best explained by Edward N. Luttwak, see Review: Strategy–The Logic of War and Peace, Revised and Enlarged Edition. We raise this point, as we raised it while teaching at a Civil Affairs course at Fort Bragg, because no amount of good intentions at the operational and tactical levels of war can overcome flagrant irresponsibility and immorality at the strategic level, or the lack of anything other than killing tools at the tactical level. War and Peace are a whole. If you cannot start with morality and a just cause, and if you cannot implement a Whole of Government strategy that leads to an outcome of peace and prosperity for those you wish to win over, then everything in the middle is waste–wasted blood, wasted treasure, wasted spirit. And if everything you do on the battlefield and in your supply line is rife with corruption–e.g US funding the Taliban, never mind–then you are thrice cursed and unlikely to prevail.
Phi Beta Iota: Surprisingly, the future cost of Medicare is not included here, which is both considerable, and reducible by 90% by buying drugs wholesale, generically, and overseas, something Congress has been paid to forbid.
“I've been trickled on for thirty years. Tastes like piss.”
— Randall Head, attorney in Louisville, KY
This is the single best explanation of the raging anger in America today I have seen. Reagan voodoo economics sowed a bitter crop that we are reaping with a vengence today. And neither party seems to care or be willing to take corrective action. No wonder we have anger on the streets and in the ballot box. Frank Rich is right, it will not end with the mid-term elections. It will only end when we replace Reagan's magical thinking and its reality distortion field with a reality based economics with fairness as justice for all.
All this 3rd party stuff will not amount to a hill of bean if these 5 heresies are not converted into common wisdom that everyone knows and accepts:
1. We live in a closed system;
2. Corporate profits have trumped democracy for far too long;
3. Global Climate Disruption is a real game changer;
4. Caucasians will no longer run the casino and the country club
5. Knowledge will always be imperfect.
So long as we fail to modify our ‘narrative' to take these facts into account, it is unlikely we, or any third party, will be able to embrace the future with confidence. Any party, economics, or politics that must assert that these truths are heresies is, of course, then based on fiction and lies. That is why, amongst other things, they are intellectually bankrupt. As you may recall, I have been saying this about both parties since about 1993.
#5 is a killer as it is the force that drives the seven deadly sins.
So a third party, technology to the contrary not withstanding, will not matter until these heresies become truths. It is essential that we develop education, politics, and economics that are based on these truths. No third party I have heard of has even begun to tackle this very difficult challenge.
We are in the fix we are in because we deny these 5 truths and, as a consequence, live in a reality distortion field.
Phi Beta Iota: Brother Gill is correct, which is why we started funding this non-profit in 2006. Public intelligence in the public interest is the CRITICAL ingredient in moving beyond kum-ba-ya hand-holding and long sighs of Ommmm. Below the line we RECAP Third Party relevent-entries.
Thomas Friedman wrote in a recent New York Times article, “Third Party Rising“, that he is “astounded” by the level of disgust with Washington D.C. and the two party system he has found among industry leaders in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. He says he knows of “at least two serious groups” on the East and West coasts “’developing third parties’ to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline.”
He predicts that “barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome”.
Friedman cites the harsh indictment of the two major parties by Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond: “We basically have two bankrupt parties bankrupting the country”. Diamond published similar views back in 2008 in a Huffington Post article, Can American Democracy Recover? He cited “a broad and deepening sense among Americans not only that the country is moving in the wrong direction, but that there is something seriously wrong and corrupt with our democracy”. He provides the following specifics:
Phi Beta Iota: We learned this when we went across America for the American Committee on Foreign Relations (ACFR) in the years following 9/11 delivering our lecture, “9/11, U.S. Intelligence, and the Real World.” Americans are not stupid–mainstream media personalities like Friedman are not stupid either, just oblivious. They live in their own world with the Kissingers and CNN faces so bent on being polite they cannot muster a tough question or get a grip on the whole. As we said years ago, Washington may not be interested in reality but reality is assuredly interested in Washington. It's game time.
