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”

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.

Journal: Taliban’s grip is far stronger than the West will admit

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Analysis, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Afghanistan – behind enemy lines

James Fergusson returns after three years to Chak, just 40 miles from Kabul, to find the Taliban's grip is far stronger than the West will admit

Independent, 14 November 2010

The sound of a propeller engine is audible the moment my fixer and I climb out of the car, causing us new arrivals from Kabul to glance sharply upwards. I have never heard a military drone in action before, and it is entirely invisible in the cold night sky, yet there is no doubt what it is. My first visit to the Taliban since 2007 has only just begun and I am already regretting it. What if the drone is the Hellfire-missile-carrying kind?

Three years ago, the Taliban's control over this district, Chak, and the 112,000 Pashtun farmers who live here, was restricted to the hours of darkness – although the local commander, Abdullah, vowed to me that he would soon be in full control. As I am quickly to discover, this was no idle boast. In Chak, the Karzai government has in effect given up and handed over to the Taliban. Abdullah, still in charge, even collects taxes. His men issue receipts using stolen government stationery that is headed “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan”; with commendable parsimony they simply cross out the word “Republic” and insert “Emirate”, the emir in question being the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Omar.

The most astonishing thing about this rebel district – and for Nato leaders meeting in Lisbon this week, a deeply troubling one – is that Chak is not in war-torn Helmand or Kandahar but in Wardak province, a scant 40 miles south-west of Kabul.

Read rest of this direct look at ground truth….

Phi Beta Iota: We are reminded by this piece of how the best CIA desk officers knew instantly, the day we announced going to war in Viet-Nam, that we had gotten it wrong, that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist, and that we would lose.  By the time Afghanistan rolled around, intelligence had become both jejeune and unethical (silent in the face of treason), and politics had become even more ideologically psychopathic and corrupt than ever before.  James Fegusson has given us a very fine contribution–this is ground truth at its best.

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

and most especially:

Review: War Without Windows

Review: None So Blind–A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam

Review: Who the Hell Are We Fighting?–The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars

Journal: Obama to Leave Democratic Party?

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

White House: Obama Conducting Reign of Terror

Posted on 06. Nov, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in US

Suspected White House leakers are on the run

By Wayne Madsen

President Obama was urged by the few White House insiders from whom he still takes advice to leave the country on his ten-day Asian trip, his longest trip abroad since becoming president, in order to not inflict any more damage to the Democratic Party in the wake of one of the worst electoral defeats for the party of an incumbent president in recent history. According to sources close to the White House, who put themselves in great danger by even talking to members of the media, the plans to have Obama leave for a visit to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan are an attempt to get Obama out of the country while top Democrats can sort through the political disaster created for the party by Obama's increasingly detached-from-reality presidency.

Virtual political guerrilla warfare has broken out between Obama's inner circle on one hand and senior Democratic officials, including outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party strategist James Carville, former Demcratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, and, behind-the-scenes, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton, on the other.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a remarkable “hit job” that will need much more corroboration.  We see two underlying stories that merit exploration.  First Story: Obama is scaring his own party.  It took a lot to piece together all the little bits that have been hyped together here.  Second Story: Obama is beginning to see that he can only win a second term as an Independent, without Biden and without Clinton II.  What we do know is that Obama's advisors to date have been a mix of pogomists, pollsters, and political groupies.  If he ever gets a grip on strategic reality and commits to restoring the Republic with Electoral Reform, he could still be the George Washington of the 21st Century.  On this article, at this time, we stand with Barack Obama and not his detractors.

Complete Madsen reprint below the line so our military colleagues do not have to visit the other site.

Continue reading “Journal: Obama to Leave Democratic Party?”

Journal: Obama’s Choice

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, True Cost, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

New options from the nomenklatura listed below is a silly oxymoron.

Chuck

Pentagon Openings Give Obama New Options

By THOM SHANKER

7 November

WASHINGTON — With critical decisions ahead on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama is about to receive an unusual opportunity to reshape the Pentagon’s leadership, naming a new defense secretary as well as several top generals and admirals in the next several months.

It is a rare confluence of tenure calendars and personal calculations, coming midway through Mr. Obama’s first term and on the heels of an election that challenged his domestic policies. His choices could have lasting consequences for his national security agenda, perhaps strengthening his hand over a military with which he has often clashed, and are likely to have an effect beyond the next election, whether he wins or loses.

That is all the more reason that Mr. Obama’s choices are certain to face scrutiny in a narrowly divided Senate, whose Republican leadership has declared itself intent on defeating him.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he plans to retire next year, while the terms of four members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are scheduled to end: Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman; Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman; Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief; and Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations.

Read rest of this seriously deficient article….

Phi Beta Iota: The current and prospective leaders being discussed and considered are all inter-changeable.  They share the same paradigmatic views, the same commitment to the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC), and therefore, to suggest that changing out the guard is in any way an option, is to demonstrate profound naivete or a gift for deception.  President Obama is truly at a historic fork in the road: he can go on with business as usual, bailing out Wall Street and carrying on with a global military cmapaign that is both ineffective and unaffordable–or he can reach deep down and come up with one startling insight and two serious options.

Startling insight:  integrity matters.  Doing the right thing is more important than continuing to do the wrong thing righter.

Option A:  Make Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points) the issue.  That will burn down the two-party tyranny and restore the Republic WHILE EARNING HIM A SECOND TERM.

Option B:  Hold an Open Space Technology event on the future of the USA in all its forms, in the Washington Convention Center, a no-notice open public event, with Harrison Owen as the facilitator.

Sadly, we are quite certain neither the startling insight nor either of the two options will be considered.  The Titanic is sinking and the President is being asked to re-arrange the name cards…..thus does the Republic flail in the tar pit of history.

We predict, with a depth of despair, that Obama will choose to go along and eventually be as wealthy as Bill Bradley and Al Gore.  He is one phone call away from greatness, and won't do it.  He lives, we die.

See Also:

Reference: Michael Vlahos on Imperial Court

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

Reference: Obama & Wall Street–Bloomberg Next?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

In my last Counterpunch essay, “How Obama's Initial Personnel Decisions Hardwired the Wipeout” I organized my argument around verbiage describing how Obama “fatal move” to the middle,” leaving the misleading impression that his connection to the middle occurred after the election.  This was sloppy wording and in retrospect it is clear to me that impression did not even reflect what I was trying to say. “Irrevocable” would have been a better modifier than “fatal.” And the word “move” was more related to the perceptions of the people whose enthusiasm he unleashed during the campaign, not Obama's political proclivities.

Obama has always been a center-right politician tightly connected to ruling oligarchs in the US.  I have been concerned about this connection with the oligarchy since December 2007, when I became aware of the people who were advising him on defense, foreign policy, and treasury matters. I publicly expressed concerns about his defense advisors in July 2008 and all of them on 5 November 2008, (see last paragraph here)  the day after he was elected.  “Hardwiring the Wipeout” was basically a first-cut bookend to the 5 November piece (what I called the outer layer of the onion).

Lest you think I am quibbling about what the meaning of “is” is, for the record, I agree with the critical comments (attached below) from my good friend Pierre Sprey, who has taken the trouble to give an incisive correction to my sloppy wording, and which he has graciously agreed to let me forward.  Think of this as a roadmap for probing into the second and more rancid layer of the onion.

——————————- [Sprey's Comment]————————

Pierre Sprey

Chuck,

Superb analysis of why the voters tossed out Bush and his cohorts, how Obama generated such strong support and, two years later, why many of those supporters felt betrayed enough to stay home or to vote Republican. The article is most certainly needed and timely to fend off the tsunami of obfuscation that both the Republican and Democratic pundits are about to unleash.

On the other hand, I view your chronology of Obama's (and the Democratic Party's) “move to the middle” a bit differently–and our differences have serious implications for judging Obama's character, his decision-making and the futility of expecting change in anything but his rhetoric:

1. I see no evidence that there's been any change or “move” in substantive actions and stated policies going from Senator Obama to Candidate Obama to President Obama. Needless to say, over this entire time most of his policy “positions” were (and are) rhetoric cleverly crafted to avoid any specific position at all.

2. Given that early financial backers of Obama in Chicago politics were the Crown family (General Dynamics and super-Zionists) and the Pritzker family (credit business, Goldman Sachs allies and super-Zionists), I'd say it's likely that Obama's commitment to the MICC, to Wall Street and to Israel predated his run for the Senate.

NOTE:  MICC:  Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

Continue reading “Reference: Obama & Wall Street–Bloomberg Next?”