Original Source: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K6IU15O9
See the Electoral Reform Web Site with dialog and voting.
See Electoral Reform Documents (crowd-sourced and updated)
David Swanson: Set Your Doomsday Clock to 11:51
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Set Your Doomsday Clock to 11:51
By David Swanson
The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police state. The doomsday clock of our republic just got noticeably closer to midnight, and the fact that almost nobody knows it, simply moves that fatal minute-hand a bit further still.
I'm not referring to the “doomsday” predicted by Leon Panetta should military spending be scaled back to the obscenely inflated levels of 2007. I'm talking about the complete failure to keep the republic that Benjamin Franklin warned we might not. Practices that were avoided, outsourced, or kept secret when Bill Clinton was president were directly engaged in on such a scale under president George W. Bush that they became common knowledge. Under President Obama they are becoming formal law and acceptable policy.
Obama has claimed the power to imprison people without a trial since his earliest months in office. He spoke in front of the Constitution in the National Archives while gutting our founding document in 2009. So why not pick the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights to further codify its elimination? President Obama has claimed the power to torture “if needed,” issued an executive order claiming the power of imprisonment without trial, exercised that power on a massive scale at Bagram, and claimed and exercised the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. Obama routinely kills people with unmanned drones.
Continue reading “David Swanson: Set Your Doomsday Clock to 11:51”
Event: 23-25 Feb Austria Surfing Democracy
Uncategorizedsurfing democracy
Dynamic Facilitation and Wisdom Council – Practitioners Network Conference
There have been many Dynamic Facilitation seminars and successful Wisdom Councils in different places around the world. A strong global network of DF’ers has yet to form. Therefore we plan to host an Open Space for those who have already taken Dynamic Facilitation trainings. At this gathering we will have an opportunity to network, learn, share stories, and to choice-create as we build a community of practice.
The process used in the conference will be a combination of Open Space and Dynamic Facilitation. So the focus will be on your needs and interests. We welcome you to join us in Vorarlberg for a collective learning experience around the topic “to DF powerful change.”
Open Space, Feb 23rd to Feb 25th 2012 Batschuns/Austria
Jim Rough: Citizen Wisdom Councils Gaining Traction
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It's been eight years since Society's Breakthrough was published. Many experiments have been done with the idea presented in this book … in cities, corporations, schools, coops, and conferences.
In the book it's called the “Citizens Amendment” but now it's called ” the Wise Democracy Amendment“. It's one of five Wise Democracy innovations including choice-creating, Dynamic Facilitation, the Wisdom Council Process, and the Creative Insight Council.
The Center for Wise Democracy promotes experiments with these ideas by governments and citizen groups.
NEW VIDEO:
John Steiner: A Nation of Populists and Class Warriors
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A nation of populists and class warriors
By Greg Sargent
Pew Research has just released the most detailed polling I’ve seen yet on Occupy Wall Street, economic fairness, rising inequality, and the lack of Wall Street accountability. If these numbers don’t put an end to the nonsense about how Dems risk alienating the “middle of the country” by embracing a populist “class warfare” message, nothing will:
Roughly three-quarters of the public (77%) say that they think there is too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations in the United States. In a 1941 Gallup poll, six-in-ten (60%) Americans expressed this view. About nine-in-ten (91%) Democrats and eight-in-ten (80%) of independents assert that power is too concentrated among the rich and large corporations, but this view is shared by a much narrower majority (53%) of Republicans.
Continue reading “John Steiner: A Nation of Populists and Class Warriors”
John Robb: Occupy Portland “Snake” March Defeats Police Innovatively, Non-Violently, and Continuously
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Occupy Portland's “Snake” March Tactic Wins Big
An open source protest/insurgency doesn't have a formal doctrine. The tactics and methods (the conflict's source code) used are developed bit by bit, by the participants. This is why the insurgency/protest is “open source”. For a bit of tactical innovation to make it into the conflict's source code it needs to vault three hurdles:
- + It needs to advance the plausible promise of the protest.
- + It needs to actually work in practice.
- + Others need to hear about it (from news reports to cell phones to social media) so they can COPY it.
The Occupy Snake
Here's a small/cool example of tactical innovation that Portland Occupy developed (very nice article by Lester Macgurdy). It advances the promise of keeping a camp and works in practice. The only problem is the lack of coverage it has gotten (which limits its impact).
The Portland Occupation stumbled upon a tactical innovation regarding occupying public spaces. This evolution in tactics was spontaneous, and went unreported in the media…
Now, to move on to the actual application of these tactical principles (that evolved by accident rather than conscious thought), we can take the example of Shemanski park on the 3rd.
Tom Atlee: Sources of the Occupy Movement Part IV
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Sources of the Occupy Movement – Part 4 – Socioeconomic conditions
This post looks at the social and economic conditions that fostered the emergence of the Occupy movement, as well as a timeline of events, books, and commentary that, in retrospect, offer significant precedents or stimulants to the form and energy of Occupy.
Coheartedly,
Tom
*** CONSIDERING THE ROLE PLAYED BY THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, UNEMPLOYMENT, THE TRIALS OF YOUTH, AND THE GENERAL DEGRADATION OF CULTURE ***
Read full post with many links.
PartI . . . Part II . . . Part III
See Also:
Tom Atlee: Drop-Out Economy Meets Twilight of Elites
Tom Atlee: Three New Potent Occupy Together Resources
Tom Atlee: #OWS Emerging Patterns & Suggestions
