I just got back from co-facilitating my first Fusion, an amazing two day event in Mill Valley, California! (We modeled it after the Fusion retreat I attended a few weeks ago.)
The framing was intended to address the question many of us are asking at both personal and organizational levels today –
How do we shed old frameworks and practices (both cognitive and emotional) that are not serving us anymore, increase our ability to communicate, build our capacities, form dynamic and high-performance teams, and become more collectively intelligent?
So to answer that question, we gathered almost 20 high integrity futurists and systems innovators from our network to do a deep dive in trust, and actually start DOING IT in order to discover how. This was about kickstarting the process of going from a community of talk to a community of practice and action.
Personally and collectively, the Greeks don’t understand and can’t cope with what’s happening now, let alone what will happen next. The welfare state is being swiftly and deliberately dismantled without any time to set up replacements
Noëlle Burgi
Le Monde diplomatique, December 2011
EXTRACT:
The Greeks struggle to see a way out of what a social worker described as a return to a “barbaric” way of life. They feel abandoned and unable to cope. Strong family ties are buckling under the pressure of diminished incomes and a collapsing welfare state. Those who can leave, do so. The options for those remaining are limited. Some turn to the Church, which arranges soup kitchens and other social services. In Salonika, Father Stefanos Tolios of the Orthodox church, is swamped by desperate people looking for work. Residents of several cities (Volos, Patras, Heraklion, Athens, Corfu, Salonika) have set up community-based informal economies, based on local exchange systems. Families are bringing their elderly back from retirement homes, to recover the monthly charge of € 300-400.
No country could withstand this. Greece is worse equipped to deal with the social consequences of the austerity measures imposed with a “scientific cruelty” (7) by the national and transnational elites.
Phi Beta Iota: The level of detail in this article is superb. The author provides a gripping preview of what could befall the USA in 2012 — Obama will cook the books and spend borrowed money to create a semblance of stability in support of his bid to be President but the bottom line is clear: whoever is elected will deal with a near-total collapse of the economy and the government in 2013. If America does not elect a team with a governance philosophy that places We the People first, we are in for four more years of elite loot-fest and the implosion of what is left of the USA.
In Afghanistan, even minimally accountable democracy may soon be beyond reach. If so, some form of constrained warlord rule will be the most that's achievable.
Success in Afghanistan would not be as difficult or expensive as it was for the United States to win wars in Europe or counter the communist threat. Given the risks and the opportunities ahead, an investment in South Asia is worth making.
The drawdown in Afghanistan may be afoot, but racing for the exits will leave large parts of the country — especially around Kabul in the east — infested with insurgent havens.
The drawdown of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan will proceed rapidly through 2014. As a consequence, the mission will change sooner than many people expect, and that means the fledgling Afghan National Army has to take charge of the fight now.
Judged by any yardstick, Afghanistan has made little progress since 2001. The United States and its allies have bred an overly centralized and ineffective government in Kabul that is hooked on foreign aid and struggles against a resurgent Taliban. Without serious reforms, the next ten years could be worse.
In Afghanistan, the United States faces a choice: either establish a permanent administrative and security presence, or stand back and risk the country becoming a haven for organized criminals and terrorists. Staying forever won’t work, so Washington must accept the risks of withdrawal.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is driven largely by domestic politics. That is a privilege of a country that is both rich and safe. But the United States has security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan that, despite its best attempts, it will not be able to ignore.
Phi Beta Iota: Nowhere in this edition of Foreign Affairs is there any reference to an over-arching strategic model that is reality-based and focused on the public interest. Instead, what we have here are a variety of ideological viewpoints that are totally lacking in any sort of “true cost” accounting analytics.
If we accept this unnamed official's argument at face value, then why is this program, and those like it, classified at the special access compartmented level.
Could it be that the object of the excessive secrecy is keep the cost and some of the performance data from the American people so that they do not know where their tax dollars are going? Of course this obvious question was of little interest to the NYT.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. official says Iran will find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard the captured CIA stealth drone because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.
The official also said Saturday that despite Iran's latest claims to have hijacked the RQ-170 Sentinel and brought it down near the eastern Iranian city of Kashmar, the U.S. is convinced that the drone malfunctioned.
“The Iranians had nothing to do with it,” the official said.
Full Story Plus Past Posts on Drones Below the Line
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – KAILUA, OAHU – The U.S. Secret Service has arrived, street barricades are in place, and the U.S. Coast Guard has stationed itself in the waters surrounding Kailua, Oahu. That is a sure sign President Barack Obama’s security team is preparing for the first family to arrive in the small beachside community as early as Friday night for what is expected to be a 17-day vacation.
The President and his family are traveling separately to Hawaii because he wants resolve the payroll tax cut issue before leaving Washington – and his wife does not want to wait.
But the advanced trip and the cost that comes with it – as much as $100,000 (flight and security) – adds to an already expensive vacation for the taxpayers.
Hawaii Reporter research shows the total cost for the President’s visit for taxpayers far exceeded $1.5 million in 2010 – but is even more costly this year because he extended his vacation by three days and the cost for Air Force One travel has jumped since last assessed in 2000. In addition, Hawaii Reporter was able to obtain more specifics about the executive expenditures.
The total cost (based on what is known) for the 17-day vacation roundtrip vacation to Hawaii for the President, his family and staff has climbed to more than $4 million. Here's why.
Will Germany Kill the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg?
Since the middle of the 19th Century, the central questions in European politics have been been have been the closely connected questions of nationalism and the rise of German power. As my good friend and eminent historian Gabriel Kolko shows in the brilliant essay attached below, the post war solutions of NATO and the European Union, together with the exigencies of the Cold War, put these questions on hold, but their fundamentals remained, sleeping beneath the surface, and today, the conflicting questions of nationalism and German power are again coming to the fore to create ominous problems for Europe and the world.
There can be no question that, until 2007 or so, the European Union — particularly the opening of borders, the free flow of labour and capital, the disappearance of tariffs, and diminution of non-tariff trade restrictions, etc. combined to make life better for the mass of average Europeans. Standards of living rose steeply and social services improved in parallel. This was particularly evident in the poorer EU countries on the southern rim. I saw and experienced this astounding improvement in the quality of life on a very personal level, living on a sailboat in southern Europe since the summer of 2005. I will never forget the comment made to me by an Italian psychologist in Calabria in 2006, which is the heart of the provincial south of Italy, “It is a great time to be a European.” To be sure, he was an educated member of the upper middle class, and not representative of the average Calabrian, but it struck me that this Calabrian saw himself as a European. It was not very long ago, that such a person would only loosely consider himself to be an Italian, not to mention a European.
The Economic Collapse Blog does a terrific job of periodically putting together a compilation of the scariest data points about the US economy. Today is one such day, and the list of 50 economic numbers presented is indeed, as the author puts it, “almost too crazy to believe“… Almost. As noted: “At this time of the year, a lot of families get together, and in most homes the conversation usually gets around to politics at some point. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help you share the reality of the U.S. economic crisis with your family and friends. If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that “business as usual” will result in a national economic apocalypse.” Or, far more likely, 99% of the population can continue watching Dancing with the Stars, as what little wealth remains is terminally transferred to those who are paying attention right below everyone's eyes.
