The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
MassChallenge has awarded OsmoPure, an NCIIA E-Team, one of its four $100,000 prizes. See announcement.
OsmoPure, from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, is developing a low-cost water purification device for developing countries based on simple membrane filtration technology. The team showcased the invention at NCIIA's student innovation showcase in San Francisco earlier this year.
I have rather mixed opinions of Chomsky, but think he is on the mark in this OpEd.
The US Elections: Outrage, Misguided
truthout
17 November 2010
Noam Chomsky
The U.S. midterm elections register a level of anger, fear and disillusionment in the country like nothing I can recall in my lifetime. Since the Democrats are in power, they bear the brunt of the revulsion over our current socioeconomic and political situation.
More than half the “mainstream Americans” in a Rasmussen poll last month said they view the Tea Party movement favorably – a reflection of the spirit of disenchantment.
The grievances are legitimate. For more than 30 years, real incomes for the majority of the population have stagnated or declined while work hours and insecurity have increased, along with debt. Wealth has accumulated, but in very few pockets, leading to unprecedented inequality.
These consequences mainly spring from the financialization of the economy since the 1970s and the corresponding hollowing-out of domestic production. Spurring the process is the deregulation mania favored by Wall Street and supported by economists mesmerized by efficient-market myths.
Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added above. The chapter on “Legitimate Grievances” in ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (EIN, 2008) comes in two parts–domestic grievances warranting state nullification of federal abuse, and state consideration of secession if the legitimate Constitutionally-derived Republic cannot be restored; and global grievances occasioned by a century of unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory capitalism working in unison to loot the commonwealths of all nations–our elite corrupted the other elites, and between them they have come very close to destroying what should be a prosperous world at peace.
Structured Reading on Reality:
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)
Journal: Up to 90 percent of US paper money [in large cities] contains traces of cocaine
Review: Failed States–The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (American Empire Project)
Review: Imperial Ambitions–Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project)
Review: Hegemony or Survival–America’s Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project)
Review: The Umbrella of U.S. Power–The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of U.S. Policy
Review: Profit Over People–Neoliberalism & Global Order
Review: Manufacturing Consent–The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Consider please the moral implications of concatenating the following events:
The Obama administration just humiliated itself by promising
But according to the Jerusalem Post (13 Nov 2010), getting a 90 day suspension of settlement construction is going to be tough. The Israeli human rights group Peace Now just released a report saying that settler construction is booming. The report says that ‘1,126 foundations have been laid in 45 days, compared to 1,888 for all of 2009’ and that Settlers have built foundations for 1,126 new homes in the seven weeks since the moratorium on such activity expired. Moreover, ground has been prepared for another 523 homes, but the foundations for these units have not yet been laid.
And meanwhile, over in Gaza, the Israeli human rights group Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement just won an FOI court case to force the Israeli government to release official documents that reveal the obvious — namely that it is the Israeli government's policy to inflict collective punishment on the Gaza people and that Israel's blatantly illegal blockade of Gaza is not related to Israel's national security (see below). Nevertheless, the US still refuses to condemn the blockade or make its lifting a condition of continued aid paid for by increasingly strapped US taxpayers.
Would it not be more better for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if the US government exhibited the courage to ally itself with the courageous Israeli human rights groups, like Peace Now, Gisha, and B'TSelem who are peacefully challenging the patently illegal policies of their own government?
NOVEMBER 17, 2010
“PUT THE PALESTINIANS ON A DIET”
MEDIA BURY DOCUMENTS REVEALING ISRAEL’S DELIBERATE POLICY OF NEAR-STARVATION FOR GAZA
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php
Israel has been forced to reveal what Palestinians and other observers on the ground have known for a long time: that the blockade of Gaza is state policy intended to inflict collective punishment, not to bolster Israeli “security”.
Continue reading “Journal: Israel, Gaza Blocade, and F-35 Lemon”
Today, with permission, I present Tom Atlee's newest vision, “Are We Ready to Change the Game Yet?,” and at the end, a link to his 2000 audio interview with Jim Rough, pioneer of Citizen Wisdom Councils and author of Society's Breakthrough.
ARE WE READY TO CHANGE THE GAME YET?
by Tom Atlee
Some people say Gandhi was about nonviolence. And he was.
But he is significant for something else that I believe is far more important:
He changed the game.
With no one's permission, he reconfigured the playing field of colonialism to a higher Game in which everything the British did in their smaller, narrower game backfired on them. Prisons, guns, threats and bureaucracies of control not only ceased to work like they used to, but actually generated more power for Gandhi's world-changing Game.
Gandhi's Game involved, in his words, “experiments in Truth” — a search for Truth, a bigger Truth, a common inclusive Truth, a win-win Truth in every situation. The British — and even many of Gandhi's compatriots — were not aligned to that Truth. They wanted victory, control, and righteousness. These things trapped them in their smaller game until, one by one, and sometimes wholesale, Gandhi's commitment to Truth won their hearts and minds — and Shift happened.
Unfortunately he failed to create adequate social institutions that embodied, sustained, and empowered the Search for Truth by the whole of society. He depended on individuals seeing the light and being transformed. The miracle of his work is that so many people did transform — and continue to transform even to this day — inspired by his words, his life, his work. But in the end, what he left was an inspiring possibility, not an India or a world that was united, peaceful, just and sustainable.
Today's world calls us, with increasing intensity, not just to carry on Gandhi's work, but to carry it further. It isn't a matter of doing nonviolence as he and Martin Luther King, Jr., did it. It is a matter of changing the game.
Which brings me to the current state of U.S. politics and governance. These games are desperately in need of changing. Several recent innovations offer us the possibility to actually accomplish that and the timing is ripe.
Tom Engelhardt
Editor of TomDispatch.com
Posted: November 15, 2010 03:23 PM
The Stimulus Package in Kabul (I Was Delusional — I Thought One Monster ‘Embassy' Was the End of It)
You must have had a moment when you thought to yourself: It really isn’t going to end, is it? Not ever. Rationally, you know perfectly well that whatever your “it” might be will indeed end, because everything does, but your gut tells you something different.
Read rest of long, deep, important articulation….
Phi Beta Iota: Please take the time to link to the entire article at Huffington Post. Tom Englehardt has produced one of the most gripping, detailed, insightful, and provactive snapshots of how three monstrous billion dollar “embassies” in Baghdad, Kabul, and now Islamabad, are the last clarion of the Empire. His piece is a “must read,” both an epitaph on the Empire, and sadly, a preface to the next 20 years of death and debt as we wind down all that has been set in motion.
The International Council for Science (ICSU) is spearheading a consultative Visioning Process, in cooperation with the International Social Science Council (ISSC), to explore options and propose implementation steps for a holistic strategy on Earth system research. Five Grand Challenges were identified during step 1 of the process. If addressed in the next decade, these Grand Challenges will deliver knowledge to enable sustainable development, poverty eradication, and environmental protection in the face of global change.
The details of the Grand Challenges are contained in the document ‘Earth System Science for Global Sustainability: The Grand Challenges’, representing input from many individuals and institutions.
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SCIENCE – PRESS RELEASE
Thursday 11 November 2010
Scientific Grand Challenges identified to address global sustainability
Paris, France—The international scientific community has identified five Grand Challenges that, if addressed in the next decade, will deliver knowledge to enable sustainable development, poverty eradication, and environmental protection in the face of global change. The Grand Challenges for Earth system science, published today, are the result of broad consultation as part of a visioning process spearheaded by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in cooperation with the International Social Science Council (ISSC).
The consultation highlighted the need for research that integrates our understanding of the functioning of the Earth system—and its critical thresholds—with global environmental change and socio-economic development.
The five Grand Challenges are:
Continue reading “Reference: Earth System Science for Global Sustainability–Grand Challenges”
The saga continues….
Petraeus warns Afghans about Karzai's criticism of U.S. war strategy
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 15, 2010; 12:24 AM
KABUL – Gen. David H. Petraeus, the coalition military commander in Afghanistan, warned Afghan officials Sunday that President Hamid Karzai's latest public criticism of U.S. strategy threatens to seriously undermine progress in the war and risks making Petraeus's own position “untenable,” according to Afghan and U.S. officials.
Officials said Petraeus expressed “astonishment and disappointment” with Karzai's call, in a Saturday interview with The Washington Post, to “reduce military operations” and end U.S. Special Operations raids in southern Afghanistan that coalition officials said have killed or captured hundreds of Taliban commanders in recent months.
Phi Beta Iota: There are clearly alternative realities at play here. On balance we believe Karzai is closer to ground truth. Petraeus is out of synch with both Karzai and Obama. His position was untenable before he got there.
Journal: Afghanistan Winds Down
Journal: AF BODY COUNT–$50 Million Per Body
Journal: Taliban Tet a Tet + Tet Offensive
Journal: Taliban’s grip is far stronger than the West will admit
