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.
First I met with Alexa O'Brien, one of the brilliant minds behind U.S. Day of Rage and its focus on Electoral Reform and non-violence as an absolute. [My memo that Fox news still has not read is here.]
Although they are also focused on a Constitutional Convention, as Lawrence Lessig has been, I reiterated the point that Electoral Reform is the one thing that can be demanded today (no later than 6 November, one year prior to Election Day), with severe consequences for every elected person if Congress fails to pass Electoral Reform by President's Day (February 2012), to include recall or impeachment, and camp-outs at their offices and in public spaces near their homes through to Election Day 2012.
It is slowly dawning on me that I've seen events very similar to Occupy Wall Street.
The first time was on the Great Peace March in 1986 which started out from Los Angeles as a hierarchical mega-PR event with 1200 people and tons of equipment. It suddenly and traumatically went bankrupt in the Mojave Desert two weeks later. 800 marchers went home. 400 marchers didn't. It took them (us) two weeks sitting around an BMX track in Barstow to reorganize with no formal leaders (but tons of ambient leadership) and little support (but tons of vulnerability that soon attracted grassroots support). As we re-started our 3000-mile trek with 400 people, it turned into a 9 month miracle of self-organization (I mean, where DO you put 400 people each night 15 or so miles further down the road?!!), out of which came my first experiences of and ideas about collective intelligence, which led to my life work today. The lives of hundreds of other people were transformed by that March, whose emergent troubadours sang “echoes of our care will last forever..”. The folks at Occupy Wall Street are doing a similar experiment in passion-driven self-organization.
The other comparable events I've seen were run by Open Space and World Cafe – especially Open Space.
Using the extra-judicial liquidation of Anwar al-Awlaqi as a point of departure, Patrick Seale provides very useful and important survey of the strategic and grand strategic implications of the expanding U.S. conflict in what now might be called the Yemen Theater of Operations (YTO) in what is rapidly mutating into a U.S. Jihad against the Islamic world. The United States is now in involved militarily in wars encompassing at least six theaters of operations in the Islamic world, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, with possible expansions into the Sahel and Nigeria, not to mention Iran and who knows where else.
Chuck Spinney
Badalona, Catalunya (part of Spain according to some)
On Friday, 30 September, Yemen announced that a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-operated drone had killed Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaqi, in the north of the country. His grief-stricken father, once a minister of agriculture in a Yemeni government, went to the scene to collect and bury the pieces of what remained of Anwar’s body. It was the seventh U.S. strike in Yemen this year.
Anwar al-Awlaqi was a virulent critic of American foreign policy in the Arab world, and a passionate advocate of al-Qaida’s form of Islamic jihad. He was also a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico, with an engineering degree from Colorado State University. His internet sermons, delivered in fluent English, had a devoted following, especially among young Muslims in the West.
His killing inevitably aroused a storm of controversy in the United States about its legality. In an article in The National Interest, Paul R. Pillar, a former senior CIA officer now a university professor, described it as “essentially a long-range execution without judge, jury or publicly presented evidence.” This is a subject which must be left to the Americans to debate.
What are its probable consequences? The most obvious is that it is likely further to inflame some Muslims against the United States, drawing fresh recruits into the jihadist struggle. “Why kill him in this brutal, ugly way?” a member of his Awalik tribe was quoted as saying. “Killing him will not solve the Americans’ problem with al-Qaida. It will just increase its strength and sympathy in this region.”
A key question, therefore, is whether al-Qaida — including its Yemen-based offshoot, “Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” — is an organisation or a cause.
The 2011 Global Study on Homicide has been conceived to provide a unique overview of the ultimate crime. The picture it paints is of a phenomenon marked by large disparities in distribution, demographics, typologies and mechanisms.
At one extreme, where homicide rates are high and firearms and organized crime in the form of drug trafficking play a substantial role, 1 in 50 men aged 20 will be murdered before they reach the age of 31. At the other, the probability of such an occurrence is up to 400 times lower.
There are many reasons for this but one of the links most clearly identified in this study is that homicide is much more common in countries with low levels of human development, high levels of income inequality and weak rule of law than in more equitable societies, where socio-economic stability seems to be something of an antidote to homicide.
Disparities not only exist in homicide typologies but also in their prevalence in different regions and countries, yet this study shows that intimate partner/family-related homicide is a chronic problem everywhere. Women murdered by their past or present male partner make up the vast majority of its victims worldwide, which explains why in many countries women are more likely to be murdered in the home than elsewhere.
Men, on the other hand, make up the vast majority of both victims and perpetrators of all types of crime, including homicide, and are more likely to be killed in the street. They are also more likely to be young, the street is more likely to be in a built up area and they are most likely to be killed with a gun.
It is the comprehensive cross-national and time series homicide data from 207 countries and territories, forming the backbone of the Global Study on Homicide, which has enabled the extensive multi-national team behind it to come to such concrete conclusions. Analysis of this nature is fundamental in understanding the forces that drive homicide so that measures and policies can be developed to help bring about its reduction.
Let's step a bit outside of the day to day grind. I spent a bit of time watching the Chairman of the Federal Reserve “scold” Congress. This got my brain thinking a bit outside the box. So I'll share with you my thoughts.
The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is part:
Religious figure. The Pope of the Church of Capitalism. The leader of the Church. Final arbiter on the meaning of scripture (arcane economic indicators and economic papers). Is trained in ancient mysteries (economics). Has a council of Cardinals (the Fed board). He also issues indulgences (bailouts and free loans) to banks that he likes.
Royalty. A king of Capitalism. Surrounded by the noble houses of Goldman, JP Morgan, US Bank, and Citibank. Is trotted out to “stabilize” and “orient” government action. Protector of the privileges of nobility (a national/perpetual first night). Be-suited in the garb of royalty. Sometimes (as above) deigns to speak to the assembly of commoners.
Ideologue. General Secretary of the Capitalist Party. When he speaks, the party faithful in the markets listen. He ensures the purity of the ideology (Capitalism). Fights to expand the party's influence around the world. Has analysts devoted to watching/deciphering the actions of his Capitalist Politburo.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Phi Beta Iota: More like the Capo of Government-Sanctioned Financial Terrorism. The Federal Reserve is neither Federal nor a Reserve, but rather a front for the New York banks that are in turn a front for a tiny cabal of financial families that have the full protection (genuflection) of the two political parties that have destroyed democracy to achieve a velvet form of financial facsicm. As the recent audit demonstrates, this organization is out of control.
Below are the working papers that have been posted for discussion in New York City, first with the Day of Rage team (it is neither a Day nor a Rage and it is all about electoral reform), then with the General Assembly at OccupyWallStreet, beginning with a handful of self-selected facilitators.
I will be driving a 1964 MGB, red in color, license VA MGB 64. If we do the human megaphone, it should be around 1700 (5 pm) Thursday or 1100 Friday.
1800 attacks in the past four years causing 4,000 casualties. An armed conflict largely ignored.
Phi Beta Iota: After the unified default by Europe and the revolution in America (electoral reform in time for 2012 to flush Congressional incumbents), the next big challenge is restoring natural boundaries and dramatically accelerating the recognition of the 5,000 secessionist movements around the globe.
– x – x – x – x –
Click on Image to Enlarge
This report aims to set straight a rather distorted record. It demonstrates the veracity of three vitally important facts usually obfuscated in discussions of the subject: (1) the longstanding and growing ties between the CE and its predecessor organization, the ChRI, on the one hand, and al Qaeda (AQ) and the global jihad, on the other hand; (2) the importance of the CE jihadi terrorist network as a united and organized political and military force promoting jihad in the region; and (3) the salience of local cultural and the Salifist jihadist theo-ideology and the influence of the global jihadi revolutionary movement/alliance as key, if not the main, factors drive the “violence in the North Caucasus.”
