“I imagine a library atop a remote mountain that collects the essential information needed to re-learn practical knowledge essential to civilization. This depot, open to anyone who journeys there, is the cultural equivalent of the Svalbard seed bank, a vault on the Arctic Circle that holds frozen seeds of crop plants from around the world. The utilitarian documents in this vault would be the seeds of culture, able to sprout again if needed. It would be the Library of Utility, and it would serve as civilization’s backup.”
An excellent read from credible sources in the vein of Phi Beta Iota articulated reforms. Oh, and by the way, surprisingly this was written (in part, this is a two-author article) by a fellow naval intelligence professional (and more surprising is the fact it comes from a senior navy intelligence officer …. not something I would have expected, given how wed to cold-war ideals most of the senior leadership is…
Two Special Assistants to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen say (unofficially) it’s time, strategically, to spend more on education and less on guns. We’ll hear them out.
Although there are important elements I disagree with — in some cases strenuously — US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) has written an important piece on the fundamental changes and massive budget reductions that are needed to improve America's ability to survive into the future.
Macgregor gets the three essentials right, I believe:
1) the threat America faces is now massively reduced; its future character may very well not be what conventional wisdom expects, and Americans need to fundamentally change how we interact with the rest of the world,
2) before any changes are effected in the size, character and funding of our armed forces, a comprehensive audit must be successfully and immediately completed to understand how we spend our money, and funding should be withheld unless and until that is done, and
3) massive changes are needed in our armed forces and their leadership, organization, staffing, weapons, and more.
Phi Beta Iota: The US Marine Corps understood all this in 1989, and sought to change the defense paradigm from worst case to most likely in 1992; then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and his subordinates were not at all interested. Right-sizing defense–and the whole of government–is not that difficult, provided that one has absolute integrity rooted in real-world truthful intelligence. That cannot be said of the US Government today.
The Ron Paul Revolution in 2008 and the tea party movement that followed shows that the American conservative mainstream is starting to awaken to its own pre-neocon past and potential future. It is seeing itself as the bulwark needed to protect our Republic, the rule of law, individual liberty and our fiscal health against those in both parties whose policies have taken the United State to the precipice of disaster.
For those who think both constitutionally as Dr. Paul does and systemically, it's impossible to distinguish between our national debt and our foreign policy. Dr. Paul is one of the few candidates who offers an integrated and systemic way of understanding the difficulties we face as a country and the means to restore our Republic.
It is not about politics. It is about the “American Hologram”, as Joe Bageant calls it:
“All Americans, regardless of caste, live in a culture woven of self-referential illusions. Like a holographic simulation, each part refers exclusively back to the whole, and the whole refers exclusively back to the parts. All else is excluded by this simulated reality.”
Of course Joe, who died recently, is pretty far out there. But his notion of the Hologram, which has become almost sacred in some parts of our culture, is pretty accurate. Compare and contrast, for example, main stream media with Rachel Maddow. She reports, I am told, on the negative receptions GOP members get at their so called town hall meetings. But the MSM? Or look at Wikileaks on Gitmo vs the MSM on Gitmo. Or look at the failure of the MSM to link the decline of the dollar to the price of gasoline.
So what we need is a counter-narrative that strips the current hologram of its power to delude and anesthetize. IE, until we see through the hologram and realize it is naked, as it were, we are not going to get much meaningful change. Change is not what the powers that be want, which of course is why they promote consumption, celebrity and entertainment over all. A nation of zombies, who don't even know they are being duped, is what they want.
This is not rocket science and is well known, but so far no one has been able to articulate a sufficiently compelling alternative narrative.
Nearly a decade has passed since Sept. 11, 2001, and many still vividly remember the fateful day when about 3,000 Americans lost their lives.
However, some are demanding a new explanation for the disaster.
A new registered student organization, 9/11 Truth, has been formed at Central Michigan University in an attempt to raise awareness of the physically unique collapses of the World Trade Center towers. The group follows the views of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group of more than 1,400 architects and engineers who have signed a petition demanding a federal investigation to re-explore the nature of the collapses.
Waterford junior Jared Weston formed the group after spending years conducting his own research on the 9/11 skyscraper collapses. Weston believes one of the most peculiar happenings on Sept. 11, 2001 was the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, which was not struck by a plane.
“What motivated me was the failure of the 9/11 Commission report to adequately address the collapse of building seven,” Weston said. “No steel high rises have ever collapsed from fire in the history of steel high rises, yet we have three instances all on the same day.”
New RSO questions validity of 9/11 attacks, calls for explanations
