The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Transpartisan dialog on corporate power: Americans as citizens, consumers and employees
I hosted a transpartsian dialog with Lisa Graves, Tim Carney, Arnold Kling and Dean Baker at the “Movement for the People.” conference in Washington DC on January 21st, 2011. It was quite enjoyable.
There is obviously a lot of news about the recent FBI mafia bust. The NY Daily News has mentioned Massive FBI Mafia bust: Organized crime still has firm grip on unions, even at Ground Zero (1/21/11)
Related: Investigative journalist Roberto Saviano's book Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System (about the pervasive crime syndicate Camorra) was made into a movie. NPR reviewed the movie and repeated what was mentioned at the movie's end “Their members have killed more than 4,000 people in 30 years. They are also shareholders in the reconstruction of the Twin Towers.”
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|Related:
+ European webzine cafebabel.com interviewed Roberto Saviano (Claims Comorra most associated with Spain; cocaine is Europe's “white oil”)
+ Documentario BBC “The Italian Patient” Parte 1 (Roberto Saviano appears/interview at 3:45 while in hiding)
+ Roberto Saviano interview (his security situation, the need to change economic system, the political system needs the mafia, alliances between legal and criminal entrepreneurs, compromised ‘free press,' and “before the bullets there is slander”)
+ Curse Of The Camorra (YouTube, Journeyman Pictures, 22min video)
+ Roberto Saviano interview on BBC2's The Culture Show (Obituary: “YOU CAN'T IGNORE THIS”)
+ Al Jazeera report on Roberto Saviano and the Camorra
+ Mafia Take Down – USA (at 15:35, mention of NYC construction mob influence; Sammy Gravano confessing to killing 19 people yet getting only 5 years in prison & later witness protection in Arizona)
+ The Victorious Mafia (Journeyman Pictures, 1998, 23min doc, lacks translation)
+ Scampia Camorra Napoli Ground Zero (YouTube clips of arrests, murders, etc with music)
+ Transnational crime category at PhiBetaIota
Dear friends,
Food is basic.
Lester Brown — founder of both the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute, author of over 50 books on environmental issues, recipient of 26 honorary degrees and a MacArthur Fellowship, and (according to the Washington Post) “one of the world's most influential thinkers” — has just published a cogent article on the rapidly emerging global food crisis in Foreign Policy magazine. He clearly outlines the problem and where attention and resources must be put to ameliorate it.
I knew such a crisis was emerging. I hadn't realized it was emerging so rapidly.
I offer Brown's article here with no further commentary beyond this: His essay — like most other insightful, data-filled articles of its type — omits the key fact that the political and economic systems that generate such situations are not built to respond to them in a truly life-affirming way. “Issues” and “crises” are symptoms of those dysfunctional systems. If social critics and activists spent half the attention and resources on actually transforming those systems that we expend on “issues” and “crises”, we would soon see those “issues” and “crises” being replaced by “solutions” and “creative initiatives”. This is a supreme example of the kind of thing that a wiser democracy — if we had one — would start to address immediately, if it hadn't already done so decades ago.
While many of us work to transform our political and economic systems, we need also to consider what to do in the meantime as these issues and crises continue to grow. So I also offer below two delightful articles on something that we can all do to ameliorate the impact of the food crisis on our own lives and communities. The articles describe not only the functionality of urban gardening but also its enjoyment — and its spread in the face of rising food prices. Significantly, such gardening is a key element in one of the more co-intelligent initiatives I've seen in recent years, the Transition Towns movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns.
Food for thought… and action… and bellies.
Coheartedly,
Tom
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/10/the_great_food_crisis_of_2011
The Great Food Crisis Of 2011
By Lester Brown
Continue reading “2011 Food Crisis, Urban Gardening, Social Systems”
NIGHTWATCH EXTRACT Tunisia: Update. The Tunisian army fired into the air to disperse protesters from the headquarters of former President Ben Ali's Constitutional Democratic Rally (CDR) in Tunis. The CDR has been disbanded but some demonstrators want the building razed. The state of emergency remains in effect.
The interim government met for the first time today. The session concluded with a number of decrees.
The government ordered a general amnesty for all political prisoners, reduction of the curfew everywhere except Tunis, and the reopening of schools and universities next Monday. It also agreed to recognize all previously banned political parties and declared three days of mourning for the 78 people killed during the recent uprising.
In his address, the interim president and former Speaker of the Parliament stressed the temporary character of this government, and determined its tasks to be:
– to make sure that all enterprises get back to normal business;
– to prepare for the forthcoming presidential elections.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The interim president and the prime minister both resigned from the RCD, in which both had been longstanding members. They directed other hold-over cabinet members to resign in today's cabinet session.
The political activities are almost surreal. The holdover political leaders apparently think a “do-over” will be sufficient to correct the authoritarian excesses of the past 23 years. Thus far Tunisians are acquiescing in this bizarre exercise. Meanwhile, the economic grievances that gave rise to street demonstrations remain unaddressed.
Phi Beta Iota: The well-mannered unethical among us will be quick to scorn the above headline, but the comment says it all. Buckminster Fuller was among the first in modern history to point out that the White House was theater, and many others have addressed the huge gap between reality and the images that Wall Street and Washington seek to communicate. Advanced cyber-information operations have been perfected by the financial crime network within which the two political parties are fully complicit co-conspirators. There are 63 other parties in America that have been disenfranchised, and the electoral system is as corrupt as any abroad including that of Tunisia. The current financial and political leadership of the USA really thinks that a “do-over” (the other term is “make-over”) will quiet things down. This isn't just moving deck chairs on the sinking Titanic; this is re-arranging deck chairs floating in the icy waters of the North and pretending the ship of state is still there.
The Clear-Hold-Build (C-H-B) strategy was first enunciated enthusiastically during the Bush Administration as the new counterinsurgency strategy to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Actually, this strategy was merely an unimaginative regurgitation of Marshall Lautey's “tache d'huile” (oil spot) strategy used to quell native uprisings during France colonial wars at the end of the 19th Century and the first decade of the 20th Century.
The recent escalation in Afghanistan may be taking the unimaginative C-H-B soundbyte to the extremities of its logical absurdity, if the attached report by Spencer Ackerman is correct: Apparently, our forces applied the C-H-B strategy literally to a small Afghan village in Kandahar's Arghandab River Valley of Taliban by using 25 tons of air delivered explosives to CLEAR it off the map (see photo). Ackerman goes to suggest HOLDING will be accomplished because we will spend one million dollars to (re) BUILD it. As part of our cultural sensitivity strategy to HOLD onto the Afghan's hearts and minds during the BUILD leg of the strategy, our troops are holding “construction shuras” with the villagers to compensate them for their loses.
Think of the C-H-B strategy as the Petraeus equivalent of destroying a village to save it — sound familiar?
Chuck Spinney
25 Tons of Bombs Wipe Afghan Town off Map
by Spencer Ackerman, Wired, 19 January
An American-led military unit pulverized an Afghan village in Kandahar's Arghandab River Valley in October, after it became overrun with Taliban insurgents. It's hard to understand how turning an entire village into dust fits into America's counterinsurgency strategy – which supposedly prizes the local people's loyalty above all else.
An American-led military unit pulverized an Afghan village in Kandahar's Arghandab River Valley in October, after it became overrun with Taliban insurgents. It's hard to understand how turning an entire village into dust fits into America's counterinsurgency strategy – which supposedly prizes the local people's loyalty above all else.
But it's the latest indication that Gen. David Petraeus, the counterinsurgency icon, is prosecuting a frustrating war with surprising levels of violence. Some observers already fear a backlash brewing in the area.
Paula Broadwell, a West Point graduate and Petraeus biographer, described the destruction of Tarok Kolache in a guest post for Tom Ricks' Foreign Policy blog. Or, at least, she described its aftermath: Nothing remains of Tarok Kolache after Lt. Col. David Flynn, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th, made a fateful decision in October.
Continue reading “Clear-Hold-Build–VN Deja Vu “Destroy to Save””
Egypt: A spokesman for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood announced that the group is making five urgent demands which the Egyptian government should comply with in order to avert several crises, according to a 19 January posting on the Muslim Brotherhood website.
Muhammad Mursi said the group wants Cairo to revoke the state of emergency, dissolve the People's Assembly and hold free and fair elections, amend the constitutional articles that led to vote rigging in Egypt's last elections, hold presidential elections according to those amendments, and fire the current government and form a national unity government responsive to the Egyptian people's demands.
Comment: The Brothers are belatedly trying to take advantage of the Tunisian uprising. Mubarak could die at any time, but as long as he possesses his faculties he will not fall for lies by his personal security chief, as did Tunisia's Ben Ali, and will not be intimidated by the Brotherhood.
Phi Beta Iota: Dictators will fall before faux democracies because they are on the thinnest ice in the face of angry connected young people with legitimate grievances. The PowerShift that Alvin and Heidi Toffler anticipated in the 19990's has begun to occur. The other threat to civilization can be found in fundamentalists and relativists–those who treat faith as a cult or faith as a convenience. It is a mistake to regard the Muslim Brotherhood as threatening–they are more of an indications & warning. When the right precipitant comes along, Egypt will fall, and the other 43 dictators will follow in relatively quick (ten years) time. Now is when US covert action could shine, but first the White House and Congress and the military-industrial complex must be weaned of their love of dictators. This is also a time when holistic all-source analysis could shine, helping guide a 180 degree turn away from dictators and toward democracy in time for the 2012 “Awakening.”
See Also:
Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extract: Egypt Dictator-Domino Falling?”
Jim Turner, #2 to Ralph Nader in the day, is co-author of VOICE OF THE PEOPLE–The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life. This is his contribution to the current dialog.
My view is that Krugman's article —
— as usual for him, is a clear and articulate presentation of the Order Left position. Like his counterparts on the Order Right, it is long on proscription and short on empathy—lots of shoulds, theys, and inevitables, some but few mights, wes, and possibilities. In this particular instance Order Left Krugman attacks his equally narrow Order Right adversaries over taxes and health as examples of a general indictment of political failure and takes no notice of the free right or the free left.
I admire Krugman as an exponent of his confined view and, when I accept his premises, often agree with him. Nonetheless, he leaves out or minimizes, in this and other columns the fact that one of the biggest divides we face as a nation is the divide between a relatively united country and a significantly unrepresentative politics.
When I originally read this Column I picked out three points I thought were key to Krugman’s inability to successfully address the situation facing all Americans which he seems to want to do.
Continue reading “DELIBERATION: Jim Turner Dissects Paul Krugman”
