Category: 07 Other Atrocities

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DefDog: NSA Ubber Alles – Resistance is Futile

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military
DefDog

Outside the normal press field, this is the second article I saw today in
CSO Salted Hash newsletter about Big Brother….

Will Obama preside over the coming of Big Brother?

Privacy advocates and civil libertarians say among the president's broken promises is a failure to restrain the NSA's growing domestic surveillance

By

April 25, 2012 — CSO —

If President Barack Obama is going to win a second term, he may have to do it without the support of privacy and civil liberties organizations, including those in information and personal security.

Increasingly the president, who was expected to fulfill the dreams of civil libertarians by creating a more open, transparent and less-intrusive government, is instead being viewed as a nightmare.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  This is not about Obama — or whoever is in the White House including Romney or Ron Paul or Hillary Clinton.  This is about a financial system that is on auto-pilot, that has rotted out the core of the Republic.

See Also:

NSA Domestic Intercept Map? NSA Lies, Spies in Orwellian World of Gov't Surveillance

The NSA possible domestic interception/collection points have been mapped and include seven AT&T and one Verizon location. Despite NSA Chief Alexander denying domestic spying, NSA whistleblower Binney told Democracy Now that the NSA is lying and has copies of all emails in the United States. Binney added that the Total Information Awareness program was alive and covertly running . . . and may still be.

Read full article, see map of seven known NSA sites focused on domestic US targets.

The Battle for the Soul of the Republic (Reality Sandwich)

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Chuck Spinney: US Senate Notices Next Atomic Disaster in Japan

05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency
Chuck Spinney

Warning Signs for the US

by ROBERT ALVAREZ,
Counterpunch, APRIL 24, 2012

In the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear power disaster, the news media is just beginning to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world posed by the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site are far from over.   After repeated warnings by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S. Senator, it is sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins may have far greater potential offsite consequences  than the molten cores.

After visiting the site recently, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. stating that, “loss of containment in any of these pools could result in an even greater release than the initial accident.”

This is why:

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  This is a classic illustration of how dangerously useless it is to have a massively expensive secret intelligence and “heavy metal” military, without capacity for global coverage, true cost economics, and so on.   Until governments make the shift toward future-oriented hybid governnance — embracing the core ideals of clarity, diversity, and integrity — it will not be possible to get a grip on the challenges and the possibilities facing the human species on Earth.  We have been here before: in the 1970's when Peak Oil, Peak Water, and AIDs were all briefed to the US Senate and to the White House.  The reality is that the corruption characteristic of those bodies then is still with us–there is only ONE serious approach to this and all other issues, and that is the creation of the World Brain and Global Game and a commensurate commitment to integrate true cost economics into every decision, and to make every decision as indigenous communities have done for thousands of years: future-oriented — Seventh Generation.

See Also:

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: US Senate Notices Next Atomic Disaster in Japan”

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Yoda: Thinking in a Foreign Language Improves Decisions

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call, Policies
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Maybe we should stop worrying about analysts w second language capabilities and insist that policymakers have a second language.

Thinking in foreign language makes decisions more rational

To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language.

A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the US and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived.

“Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue?” asked psychologists led by Boaz Keysar of the University of Chicago in an April 18 Psychological Science study.

“It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases,” wrote Keysar’s team.

Psychologists say human reasoning is shaped by two distinct modes of thought: one that’s systematic, analytical and cognition-intensive, and another that’s fast, unconscious and emotionally charged.

In light of this, it’s plausible that the cognitive demands of thinking in a non-native, non-automatic language would leave people with little leftover mental horsepower, ultimately increasing their reliance on quick-and-dirty cogitation.

Equally plausible, however, is that communicating in a learned language forces people to be deliberate, reducing the role of potentially unreliable instinct. Research also shows that immediate emotional reactions to emotively charged words are muted in non-native languages, further hinting at deliberation.

. . . . . . .

The researchers believe a second language provides a useful cognitive distance from automatic processes, promoting analytical thought and reducing unthinking, emotional reaction.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Integrity is not just about people making decisions.  It is about the whole — the context, the clarity of communication, the diversity of views, the integrity of all feedback loops.  Today there is very little integrity in the process of intelligence – on those rare occasions when it actually exists — and there is zero integrity in the policy process, something Paul Pillar and Morton Halperin (among many others) have documented nicely.

See Also:

Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Brookings, 2006)

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)

Paul Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (Columbia, 2011)

Phi Beta Iota: Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

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David Swanson: What Bradley Manning Means to Us All…

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Blog Wisdom, IO Secrets
David Swanson

What Bradley Manning Means to Us

By David Swanson

Chase Madar's new book, The Passion of Bradley Manning, pulls together the essential facts that we should try to somehow deliver to television viewers and victims of our education system.  The subtitle is “The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History.”

The book looks at Manning's life story, his alleged action (leaking voluminous materials to Wikileaks), the value of the material he made available to us, the status of whistleblowers in our country, the torture inflicted on Manning during his imprisonment, the similar treatment routinely inflicted on hundreds of thousands of U.S. prisoners without the same scandal resulting, and the value of running a society in accordance with written laws.

The table of contents sounds predictable, but the most valuable parts of Madar's book are the tangents, the riffs, the expansions on questions such as whether knowing the truth does or does not tend to set us free.  Does learning what our government is up to help to improve our government's behavior?  Has the rule of law become an empty phrase or worse?  Who is standing up for Bradley Manning, and who should be?

Read full essay. 

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Josh Kilbourn: US Leads Developed Nations In Percent of People In ‘Low Wage Work’

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Josh Kilbourn

US Leads Developed Nations In Percent of People In ‘Low Wage Work'

Research shows the US is a low wage country
By Mark Thoma
April 23, 2012

(MoneyWatch) – Recent research from John Schmitt of the Center for Economic Policy Research shows that the US leads developed countries in the share of workers earning low wages. The research also shows that increased wage polarization over the last several decades is one of the reasons for the large share of low wage-work in the US. The bars in this graph represent the share of workers in low wage work, where low wage work is defined as employees earning less than 2/3 of the median wage (approximately $10 per hour or $20,000 per year). In this category, the US leads among developed nations…

Research Shows that US is a ‘low wage' country

Click on Image to Enlarge
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James Wall: Israel to Palestine is as Britain to Slavery – “Throw Their Dirty Little Ships Out of the Water” — Tide Turning Against Israeli Atrocities

04 Inter-State Conflict, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society
Sunday, April 22nd, 2012 | Posted by
Historical parallels are never exact. But it is not unusual for us to see moments from the past resonating with moments of the present.
About the author: James M. Wall is currently a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois. From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine.

He has made more than 20 trips to that region as a journalist, during which he covered such events as Anwar Sadat’s 1977 trip to Jerusalem, and the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. He has interviewed, and written about, journalists, religious leaders, political leaders and private citizens in the region. Jim served for two years on active duty in the US Air Force, and three additional years in the USAF (inactive) reserve. His website: Wall Writings.

EXTRACT:

I propose no firm historical linkage between slavery and Occupation, but I do propose a linkage between the demand for action called for by John Newton against slavery, and the passage of a divestment resolution by United Methodist General Conference delegates as a 21st century demand for the UMC to halt its financial support of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people.

It is well past time to “throw this dirty, filthy Occupation out of United Methodist waters”.

Full article with video and illustrated inserts.

Phi Beta Iota:  The continuing economic and political crisis in the USA, one that may escalate to a civil war as well as a national crime wave in 2013, has limited US public outrage against Israel.  However, there are many weak signals that the tide has turned — not only are Americans outraged the role played by Goldman Sachs and the Jewish Chairmen of the Federal Reserve in the destruction of the global and the US domestic economies, but also at the role played by Jewish money and Israeli dominatrix methods in US politics.  We see the day coming when Israel is treated to financial sanctions much as South Africa was.  The Israeli government is to the Palestinians as the white South African government was to the people of color in South Africa.  Justice will have its day in Palestine; we pray this be so.

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Event: 20-22 May DC Whistleblowers Unite with Occupy Washington for Civil and Human Right Conference

07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics

Whistleblowers Unite with Occupy Washington for Civil and Human Rights Conference May 20-22, 2012

(Washington, D.C.) – The USDA Coalition of Minority Employees (http://www.agcoaliation.org) and watchdog group ACORN 8 (http://www.acorn8.com) united with 40 national and international coalitions of good government, open government, civil rights and human rights groups as well as hundreds of individual Occupy Wall Street protesters from across the country, announce an assembly at the Washington DC Capitol to be held May 20-22, 2012. We are proud to announce that MSNBC Host Dylan Ratigan has agreed to moderate and the PACIFICA Radio Network has committed to broadcast the historic event this year.

Over the last six years members from the Make it Safe Coalition (MISC) have arranged an assembly of whistleblowers in Washington, DC each year for an annual conference originally known as Washington Whistleblower's Week. The USDA Coalition of Minority Employees will co-host this year's Whistleblower Summit—Civil & Human Rights Conference , in Washington, DC.  The Coalition has been very active at the US Department of Agriculture since 1994, regarding their continued widespread racism, sexism, reprisal, intimidation, sexual assault, hostile work environment, and other abuses against USDA employees and minority farmers.

The week's events will include an Opening Plenary, New Media Panel Discussion, No FEAR Anniversary Reception, Civil and Human Rights Roundtable, Book Signing, Movie Night, Citizen's Tribunal, Press Conference, Peace & Justice Demonstration, Congressional Lobby Day, Solidarity Dinner and much, much, more. Featured speakers will include some of the following:

Learn more.

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