Journal: Brooks on Assange, Others on Brooks

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Privacy, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

EDIT of 5 Dec 2010 to add commentaries by various others.

David Brooks

Op-Ed Columnist

The Fragile Community

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: November 29, 2010

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had moved 37 times by the time he reached his 14th birthday. His mother didn’t enroll him in the local schools because, as Raffi Khatchadourian wrote in a New Yorker profile, she feared “that formal education would inculcate an unhealthy respect for authority.”

. . . . . . .

She needn’t have worried. As a young computer hacker, he formed a group called International Subversives. As an adult, he wrote “Conspiracy as Governance,” a pseudo-intellectual online diatribe. He talks of vast “patronage networks” that constrain the human spirit.

Far from respecting authority, Assange seems to be an old-fashioned anarchist who believes that all ruling institutions are corrupt and public pronouncements are lies.

Read the rest of this revealing assessment….

Phi Beta Iota: We like David Brooks.  He's less submissive than David Ignatius, less pretentious than Fareed Zakaria, and generally has something interesting to say.  In this piece, most revealingly, he displays his limitations to the fullest.  We are quite certain that David Brooks means well, but the depth of his naivete in this piece is nothing short of astonishing.  The below lists of lists of book reviews will suffice to demonstrate that David Brooks is not as well-read as he needs to be, not as intellectual as he pretends to be, and not at all accurate in his assessment of Julian Assange.  We share with Steven Aftergood of Federation of American Scientists (FAS) concerns about Assange's judgment in releasing some materials that are gratuitous invasions of rightful privacy, but we also believe that Assange is finding his groove, and the recent cover story in Forbes captures that essence.  WikiLeaks is an antidote to corporate fascism and elective Empire run amok.  It meets a need.

Other Commentaries on the Same Article:

Continue reading “Journal: Brooks on Assange, Others on Brooks”

IndependentVoting.org Sells Out–No Labels + Americans Elect + CUIP =Trifecta of Electoral Fraud

03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Mike B & Jackie S? Just a Wild Guess....

Jackie Salit, who helped Mike Bloomberg get elected the first time around, appears to have sold out the Independent franchise.  Below the line is a complete posting from their website preserved for the record…just in case they are tempted to rescript the history.  They tipped their hand.  NO LABELS is a fraud, and this makes Jackie Salit a fraud.  For more on NO LABELS as “four more years” for Wall Street, see the links at the end of this posting.

“No Labels” connects to Independent Voters

Concern about the negative effects of partisanship is growing as evidenced by two high-powered political operatives—one a Democrat, the other a Republican—coming together to create the newly formed No Labels organization.  Independent student leader Nolan DiFrancesco, founder of College Independents and an activist in IndependentVoting.org’s network, attended a No Labels meeting and paved the way for a meeting between our president Jackie Salit and No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson in July.

Continue reading “IndependentVoting.org Sells Out–No Labels + Americans Elect + CUIP =Trifecta of Electoral Fraud”

Reference: How the Oligarchs Took America

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

How the Oligarchs Took America

Beverly & Pack/Flickr

Creating a country of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

— By Andy Kroll

There is a war underway. I'm not talking about Washington's bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders.  It's a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, innuendo, and raging lies. I'm talking about a political war, pitting liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. I'm talking about a spending war, fueled by stealthy front groups and deep-pocketed anonymous donors.  It's a war that's poised to topple what's left of American democracy.

Read the full article…..

Phi Beta Iota: A detailed and devastating article that recommends the book, Winner-Take-All Politics, and places the beginning of today's economic divide with President Jimmy Carter, not Ronald Reagan.  We place it further back, in the 1920's, when Carnegie and Rockefeller structured the role school system and also oversaw the destruction of all public transportation systems they could buy and then liquidate.  It provides details on the specific organizations and their leading lights unleashed by the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court, and decision that in our view should suggest the need to first fire Congress and then pass legislation overturning all Supreme Court decisions permitting corporate “personality” and its requisite privileges that could be reserved for individual citizens.

Reference: No Labels “Non-Party” = “Four More Years” for Wall Street

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Media Reports, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Open Government, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy

No Labels Best Links

Wikipedia Overview

No Labels Home Page

See Also:

The founding fathers had no labels (San Diego Examiner)

WARNING NOTICE:  http://www.taylormarsh.com has a major virus.  Do NOT go to their story on the Houston meeting (apart from its being hype, now it's just plain dangerous).

Phi Beta Iota: We believe the following:

1.  Michael Bloomberg wants to be President.

2.  Wall Street wants Michael Bloomberg to be President not because Barack Obama has failed them, but because he has so visibly pandered to them.  The elite mob includes Burson-Marsteller, the Clintons and Joe Lieberman as well as Peter Peterson and David Walker (former Comptroller General who declared US insolvent in 2007 without being witting of financial crimes legalized by the Clintons and sanctified by Bush II and then Obama).

3.  Two groups have been started, one on the West Coast, one on the East Coast, both focused on convergence in the middle, with Michael Bloomberg as the “natural” anti-thesis to the Republican and Democratic alternatives.  Both are eligible for and will channel massive funding from corporations exercising their ill-gotten “personality” rights.

Continue reading “Reference: No Labels “Non-Party” = “Four More Years” for Wall Street”

Journal: ONE Party–the Wall Street Party–“Owns” USA

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Jock Gill

The documentary film “Inside Job” makes it perfectly clear that there is only one party in DC:  The Wall Street Party.  With five Wall Street minders for every elected official in DC, why are we surprised?  There are of course a few exceptions, but their legislative record suggest they are essentially ineffective.

The Wall Street Party has constructed a circular tautology that incorporates 1] Wall Street; 2] Government; 3] Academia, and 4] The Press — the American Gang of Four.

It is no surprise that the Wall Street Party has a principle goal of privatizing wealth via tax cuts for themselves, while socializing the pain and suffering by slashing public spending for security in employment, health and education.

Tautologies, such as the ones that prop up the Wall Street Party, are constructed for the sole purpose of being unarguably true and are by design incapable of disproof.  A prime example of the Wall Street Party's abuse of reality is their hijacking and distortion of the works of Adam Smith.

Of course tautologies are false reality distortion bubbles.  They can only paper over the diversion from reality just so long. Then they fail in a big way.  A prime example of this would be the former USSR.

The best way to deal with this is most likely an open source refutation [refudiation?] of the claims of the Wall Street Party.

Phi Beta Iota: Reprinted from Facebook with permission of the author.

Reference: “Human Resources” by Scott Noble

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, History, IO Sense-Making, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform
DefDog Recommends...

From Skilluminati Research [quoting another person]:

Last night I watched Human Resources and I was impressed enough to pass it along. It's a documentary about Social Control, examining the history, the philosophy and ultimately the pathology of elite power. The movie is a full two hours and you can download a copy of the video file right here
(http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FC6BGEOM).

Overall, Human Resources is rough around the edges but still overloaded with gems. Set aside some time to digest this — and take notes.

Scott Noble does an admirable job of fitting ten hours of material into two. I also appreciated the space he gives to all the people he interviews…there's a metric ton of ideas here and he lets almost all of them unfold and breathe at their own pace. The footage itself is very low-fi and some of the interviews feel like they drag on for too long, or wander in circles. Impressively, those moments are few and far between.  Noble can't cover everything, but the scope of this movie alone makes it the most ambitious entry in this strange genre so far, more complete than The Century of the Self and less hysterical than the Zeitgeist franchise.

The film really clicks in the final act, when the focus turns toward the CIA's MK experimentation. I was surprised and grateful to find an extended interview with Dr. Colin Ross, who takes pains to note that “CIA MK” is actually a misleading generalization, obscuring a larger network of projects involving the Army, Naval Intelligence and several other, more opaque agencies. There's a lot of rewindable moments here, tread slowly.

When the perfect documentary about Social Control finally arrives, I'm guessing it will be built on this precise blueprint. This film might be
full of cosmetic flaws, but his argument is (mostly) methodical and devastating. A toast to Scott Noble.

Reference: Legitimate Grievances by Robert Steele

Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Augmented Reality, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, Threats

As we all observe with stunning detachment the symbiotic continuance of Bush-Obama Democratic-Republican support to the Wall Street looting of America led by Goldman Sachs, whose executives continue to “own” the Department of the Treasury and the Bank of New York (Federal Reserve), I believe it helpful to itemize some legitimate grievances that could inspire State by State nullification of federal mandates and regulations, and perhaps a few secessions, with Cascadia, Vermont, Hawaii, and Alaska being well positioned to abandon a compact that no longer serves the United STATES of America, nor We the People.

I am indebted to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and founder of the Middlebury Institute, for teaching me about the urgency and relevance of the secessionist movements, and the detailed reflections that they have published, reflections that I point to here for the common good.

LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES (Domestic)

The Chattanooga Declaration of 2007 (7 Points)

Core Point:  Liberty can only survive if political power is returned from the banks and corporations that have corrupted the federal government, to local communities and States.  The American Empire is no longer a nation or a republic, but has become a tyrant aggressive abroad and despotic at home.

The Burlington Declaration of 2006 (5 points)

Core Point: Any political entity has the right to separate itself from a larger body of which it is a part and peaceably to establish its independence as a free and legitimate state in the eyes of  the world.  Governments are instituted among peoples, deriving their just powers power from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the legitimate goals of life, liberty, prosperity, and self-determination, it is the right of the people in democratic fashion to aleter or abolish it, and to institute new government in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The Logic of Secession: Three Tines to a Trident (A Manifesto by Kirkpatrick Sale)

Core Point: In the face of a rigged game in which two parties have conspired to corrupt, manipulate, and generally monopolize power, third party politics will not work.  Only secession will allow for the emergence of a restored Republic once the federal government and its two-party tyranny are made irrelevant (and starved of revenue).

In Defense of Vermont's Secession from the Union (A Manifesto by Keith Brunner)

Core Point:  Vermont was its own country before it joined the Union, and nothing in the Constitution of the United STATES of America precludes secession from this voluntary compact [Lincoln violated the Constitution in multiple ways, most Americans simply have not learned the truth of the matter].  The American Empire is economically, politically, cultural, and especially environmentally unsustainable, and far from fixing itself, is just getting worse.  When a government of people who have no moral authority are in the possession of enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, in the position to dominate the global economy for their own interests, and continually and foolishly pace the needs of the “economic system” above the needs of the natural world, the time for action cannot be put off any longer.

LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES (Anti-Americanism)

In sound support of the above, I have itemized a list of the behaviors and conditions that have inspired anti-Americanism.  Each is, without exception, a betrayal of the public trust and grounds for abolishing the present political criminal enterprise that has hijacked the federal government and the public treasury on behalf of its banking and corporate masters.   Each of these high crimes and misdemeanors justifying impeachment is derived from one or more works on non-fiction.