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.
Monday, November 7, the Washington Post editorial board published its take on the extreme rhetoric the country has been hearing on the defense budget since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta starting talking about the “doomsday mechanism” that would reduce defense spending. Quoting the newer extreme rhetoric of several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff defending their budget ambitions to the eager-to-listen House Armed services Committee, the Washington Post positioned itself foursquare in favor of hysterics. It was with an editorial titled “Defense on the Rocks: Mandated spending cuts could decimate U.S. military might.” Find it here (although at the web link they toned down the title with the more sympathetic “US Defense on the defensive.”) Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Military Spending versus Competence”
Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said that the War on Terror detainees who made it to the prison at Guantanamo Bay were “the worst of the worst.” At the time, many Americans believed him. Hadn't the detainees been captured by the military or the CIA, or evaluated by experienced American interrogators before being transferred there? We now know that many of the 779 detainees who wound up at Gitmo were innocent.
“Of the 212 Afghans at the base, almost half were, in the assessments of the US forces, either entirely innocent, mere Taliban conscripts, or had been transferred to Guantánamo with no reason for doing so on file,” The Guardianreported earlier this year. Said the Telegraph, “Guantanamo Bay has been used to incarcerate dozens of terrorists who have admitted plotting terrifying attacks against the West — while imprisoning more than 150 totally innocent people, top-secret files disclose.”
President Obama doesn't send suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay. Instead, he kills them with drones.
Worth a close reading. The revealed conflicts of interest and probably high crimes and misdemeanors and nothing less than expected, but astonishing all the same.
As a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, the American people have experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college. Small businesses have been unable to get the credit they need to expand their businesses, and credit is still extremely tight. Wages as a share of national income are now at the lowest level since the Great Depression, and the number of Americans living in poverty is at an all-time high.
Dilbert's Scott Adams on bringing democracy out of the age of wax candles and into the age of touch screens
Scott Adams
Wall Street Journal, 5 November 2011
If Congress had a 9% approval rating while George Washington was still alive, he would have shoved his wooden dentures in his mouth, assembled a militia and marched on the Capitol. The nation's founders weren't big fans of dysfunctional governments. I'll bet we could solve our energy problem by connecting a generator to John Adams's corpse, which I assume is spinning in its grave.
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I've heard people say the United States no longer has the caliber of intellectual giants that authored the Declaration of Independence, defeated a superior British military, crafted the Constitution and built a robot butler that would eventually run away and change its name to Mitt Romney. But that's OK, because individuals are not the primary vehicles for genius. When it comes to the larger matters of civilization, group intelligence is more important than individual genius. To put it another way: Do you know who is smarter than the entire senior class at MIT? Answer: no one.
Today, thanks to the Internet, we can summon the collective intelligence of millions.
Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Adams provides a very thoughtful overview of the possibilities, while avoiding any mention of the corruption that is pervasive in today's top-down elite control “rule by secrecy” environment. The Electoral Reform Act of 2012 is intended to eradicate corruption, assure transparency, restore the Republic, and make direct democracy such as Mr. Adams envisions a reality before 2016. The next President should be of, by, and for We the People, tested in the fires of the Occupy Wall Street kiln.
Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities — that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population.
In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations.
The preamble of the United States Declaration of Independence declares: “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter and abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Occupy Wall Street is an assertion by 99 percent of Americans that our government denies us “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The movement should create a new Declaration of Independence.
In the eighteenth century, the momentum for the American Revolution was fueled by egregious British taxation policy. Initially, colonists were loyal to King George III and asked him to intervene with parliament on their behalf. When George instead declared them to be “in rebellion,” representatives of the original thirteen states adopted the Declaration of Independence.
Momentum for the current American Revolution, Occupy Wall Street, has been fueled by egregious fiscal policy that has worked for the benefit of the wealthiest 1 percent and to the detriment of everyone else. At the onset of Occupy Wall Street, the 99 percent remain loyal to America. They've asked Washington to intervene in their behalf. Some conservatives have declared them to be “in rebellion.” This sets the stage for a new Declaration of Independence.
The problem for Occupy Wall Street is focus. By the time the original Declaration of Independence was signed, American colonists had one objective: leave the British Empire and create a democracy. In contrast, Occupy Wall Street has a laundry list of demands ranging from job creation to abolishing the electoral college.
Nonetheless, Occupy Wall Street is driven by a unifying vision, the perception that the US system is broken. Unfair. That it works for the benefit of the 1 percent but not the other 99 percent. In this sense the current situation is like that in 1776 where our British overlords denied that, “all men are created equal…endowed…with certain unalienable rights…Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The challenge for Occupy Wall Street is to channel widespread discontent into a focused set of objectives that restores democratic process and drastically reduces economic inequality. First there must be a succinct problem statement, such as The United States has shifted from democracy to plutocracy. Control of the government is no longer in the hands of the people, the 99 percent, but instead is in the hands of the rich, the 1 percent. Democracy must be resurrected.
Next, there has to be a concise set of objectives. Here are three suggestions.
