Americans Elect Candidate Ejection Committee Chaired by FBI, CIA, Military Research Chiefs
Americans Elect Mischaracterizes Bernie Sanders on Priorities and on Same-Sex Marriage
All Prior Headlines with Links Below the Line
Theophilis Goodyear: Two Parties–Hammer & Wrench–Not Working
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Americans Are Being Told There are Only Two Approaches to Problem-Solving: The Left way or the Right way
In fact, both the Right and the Left have become parodies of themselves. This is what happens through the process of polarization. Each side becomes more extreme in order to balance what they see as extremism on the other side. Eventually both sides become so extreme that they lose touch with reality and forget how to examine problems from outside their chosen frames of reference. And the process only accelerates over time. It doesn't end until everything is broken.
Most complex problems can't be solved by such simplistic, ideological approaches. In fact such approaches then to obscure vital truths. Problems then become symbolic battles over ideological differences. The problem itself becomes a means to an end, a way of promoting the party line. Solving it is no longer the point. So it either doesn't get solved or the cure turns out to be worse than the disease.
This isn't about finding a position in the middle. That's just another misrepresentation of the nature of problem solving. Complex problems require innovative approaches and innovative solutions. They require ingenuity based on deep insights. Rigid ideologies prevent those kinds of insights.
The Right and the Left have become so ideologically paralyzed that they can't see beyond their narrow frames of reference. They wear ideological glasses that filter out reality. They can no longer properly appraise problems, much less solve them. In the end they only complicate everything. Let's call them the Hammer Party and the Wrench Party. No matter what the problem is, they both loudly proclaim the superiority of their favorite tool. Then they go to work. But either they can't fix the problem or they make it worse. Would you keep going back to a mechanic who broke everything he tried to fix?
Phi Beta Iota: Americans Elect is a BRILLIANT alternative path toward an honest multi-partisan alternative to the left or the right, but it is CORRUPT at this time in its web site implemenation–a rigged deck with no voice for the people.
Event: Occupy Mid-West 15-18 Mar 2012 St. Louis MO
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REGIONAL CONFERENCE IN ST. LOUIS, MO 3/15-3/18
by InterOccupy Admin on Dec 15, 2011 • No Comments
We, the General Assembly of Saint Louis, in the spirit of solidarity call upon our brothers and sisters in occupied spaces across the country to join us in forming the Midwest Regional Summit. We feel that it is time for us to create new spaces to connect in; new ways to share knowledge, experience, resources…
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Please join us on March 15th, 2012 at 7pm CST under the Gateway Arch for the first meeting of the Midwest General Assembly! We have chosen this site as our first meeting spot as it symbolizes much of what we are fighting for. The site on which it now stands used to be low income and working family housing. It was taken from these families in order to build this monument. We would like to meet there and propose that we rename this monument as the Gateway to Freedom!
Michel Bauwens: Michael Hudson on the crucial link between democracy and debt throughout history
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I don’t know of a more crucial text to read in this epochal transition.
Republished from Michael Hudson:
“Book V of Aristotle’s Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies – which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to “take the multitude into their camp” and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history.
Debt has been the main dynamic driving these shifts – always with new twists and turns. It polarizes wealth to create a creditor class, whose oligarchic rule is ended as new leaders (“tyrants” to Aristotle) win popular support by cancelling the debts and redistributing property or taking its usufruct for the state.
Since the Renaissance, however, bankers have shifted their political support to democracies. This did not reflect egalitarian or liberal political convictions as such, but rather a desire for better security for their loans. As James Steuart explained in 1767, royal borrowings remained private affairs rather than truly public debts [1]. For a sovereign’s debts to become binding upon the entire nation, elected representatives had to enact the taxes to pay their interest charges.
By giving taxpayers this voice in government, the Dutch and British democracies provided creditors with much safer claims for payment than did kings and princes whose debts died with them. But the recent debt protests from Iceland to Greece and Spain suggest that creditors are shifting their support away from democracies. They are demanding fiscal austerity and even privatization sell-offs.
This is turning international finance into a new mode of warfare. Its objective is the same as military conquest in times past: to appropriate land and mineral resources, communal infrastructure and extract tribute. In response, democracies are demanding referendums over whether to pay creditors by selling off the public domain and raising taxes to impose unemployment, falling wages and economic depression. The alternative is to write down debts or even annul them, and to re-assert regulatory control over the financial sector.
Full Text Below the Line
Tom Atlee: #Occupy 2.0 Part II – What Happens Now?
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Those who think the Occupy movement will die away just because several encampments in major cities have been evicted are likely to be surprised.
They remind me of people who think that climate change is not going to be such a big deal because the weather in their area has been rather mild. Or the people who thought alcohol use (or drug use) would disappear because it was made illegal (prohibition). Appearances can be deceiving – especially when one only wants to see what's obvious.
I remember how the Great Peace March (which I participated in) fell apart bankrupt in the Mojave Desert two weeks after it launched from Los Angeles in March 1986 with 1200 marchers. The national media reported its demise and moved on to other topics, ignoring the fact that it re-started two weeks later with 400 marchers – still a sizable event – and proceeded to have a profound effect on every community it visited for the next eight months – as well as on the larger society through ongoing reverberations long after it ended in Washington DC in November 1986 with 1200 marchers. Not the least of these was the birth of my own work exploring co-intelligence and wisely self-organizing democracy.
Just because some energy or activity ceases to be clearly and publicly visible, doesn't mean it has died or gone away. Especially when you suppress it with violence, you almost guarantee it will continue, growing and evolving, surfacing with new energy and impacts in new times and places, often to people's great surprise. Addressing symptoms of a disturbance seldom handles the cause, which will soon find other outlets to manifest whatever need is not being met.
Continue reading “Tom Atlee: #Occupy 2.0 Part II – What Happens Now?”
Theophilis Goodyear: Open Source Governance
UncategorizedDomestic spying is evidence that the U.S. Government no longer trusts its own people. But the American people have more reason not to trust the government than the government has to not trust its people.
Open-source governance forces the government to trust its people. By extending trust, the government will hopefully come to realize that the American people are not its enemies. And the American people will hopefully come around once again to trusting their government.
Open-source governance is the perfect cure for healing the ever widening rift between Americans and their government, and to get Americans back to working together rather than all rowing in opposite directions. If the government stubbornly refuses to take its medicine, our country could quickly become a terminal case.
Eagle: Celente in top form— MF Global, banksters, predictions
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Here's a link to Celente in top form— MF Global, banksters, and predictions (not so improbable) including European bank holiday, and (my dread) war on Iran.
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In this edition of the show Max interviews Gerald Celente from trendsjournal.com.
Gerald Celente is a trends forecaster who was recently defrauded by MF Global run by former New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine, who was also former head of Goldman Sachs.
When MF Global collapsed, client cash was taken and apparently transferred to creditors, like JP Morgan.
This commingling of funds has violated the very foundation of the futures market and we talk to Celente about whether he will ever invest money with a brokerage again?
