The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
If we cannot tell ourselves the truth, corrective choices are not possible. Here is the truth about the integrity of America's electoral process. We come in 26th in the world, one step above Mexico. Nothing to be proud of.
America’s election nightmare: How voter ID, gerrymandering & fundraising made us a laughingstock
Here's what happens when you suppress votes, draw districts to favor incumbents and allow the rich to buy elections
EXTRACT
This is my first Kindle book, published in conjunction with my briefing it to the Economics of Happiness Conference in Portland, Oregon on 28 February 2015. Below is the full description of the book. Amazon provides Look Inside including the Table of Contents.
Micah Sifry says it best in his new book, The Big Disconnect, when he outlines how all activists are as fragmented and ineffective today as they were in the 1960's. — the two-party duopology and the 42 billionaires behind that two-party duopology have successfully “channeled” all activist groups — including MoveOn and IndependentVoting.org and the Libertarians and the Greens. Everyone is obsessed with “their” hashtag, “their” micro-issues. However well-intentioned they might be, the fact is that we are hanging separately for failure to come together on the ONE THING that we can both all support, and also win: #ElectoralReform.
Continue reading “OPEN POWER: Electoral Reform Act of 2015 – Open Source Activist Tool Kit”
David Rothkopf
4.0 out of 5 stars SUPERB Conclusion–Has Flaws But Still a Strong Contribution, February 25, 2015
Wow. I have met the author and I gave an earlier book of his, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power a strong review, but I was not expecting the deep common sense and pragmatic observations that conclude this book. There are many aspects of our insecurity that the author is not willing to address — notably the deep corruption of our political system and undue influence by foreign “allies” that are in fact enemies but that pales in light of his deep evaluation of how badly we are doing as a government. There are many flaws in the author's arguments better covered by Reviewer Frank J. Wassermann, I put this down to the author trying too hard to not completely alienate all the mandarins he still meets for lunch and at evening events. I embrace most of Reviewer Wasserman's comments but still give the book four stars instead of his two.
Continue reading “Review: National Insecurity – American Leadership in an Age of Fear”
Michael Glennon
4.0 out of 5 stars World Class on One Half of the Challenge, Misses the Other Half Entirely, February 25, 2015
If Mort Halperin, who wrote the original book with the memorable “Rule 1” (Lie to the President if you can get away with it), Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy is kind enough to praise this book, I will over-look the hype (it is NOT the “first”). This is an important book and very helpful to a deep study of the deep state, but it is also severely deficient to the point of mis-leading the public away from the 42 billionaires that own the government; away from the religious and ideologicial treason that skews government policy; and away from the lack of intelligence with integrity that we have a right to expect from our “intelligence” community. It also soft shoes the elite pedophile protective network within the FBI, and the drug-running money-laundering side show at CIA as well as the totally out of control Pentagon elements willing to murder US citizens including military officers to keep their boat afloat — the deep deep state. [I revere the FBI, CIA, and DoD as institutions — my point is that we don't do serious counterintelligence in the USA, all of those organizations have layers of corruption going back to their founders, each layer recruiting and promoting its successors, all far outside the ken of this book.]
Continue reading “Review: National Security and Double Government”
My friend and colleague Andrew Cockburn has a new book out. Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins is more than the title, which I don't like, implies. Much more than just the next anti-drone book, Andrew performs brain surgery on the misguided notion that “critical nodes” in an enemy's infrastructure can be 1) identified and 2) systemically and precisely attacked to destroy the enemy's will and ability to wage war.
This article aims to be a summary of the very basic orientation that I propose for social change.
I start from the classic division of human society in three basic aspects: civil society, the private sector, and the state.
1. The transformation of civil society
Brian Jacob Church spent the better part of a day shackled inside Chicago's Homan Square, denied access to an attorney, before police finally sent him to be booked and charged. Lawyers say the facility is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
• The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site'
• Homan Square ‘black site': surveillance, military-style vehicles and a metal cage
Video from The Guardian below the fold.
Continue reading “Mongoose: A Domestic Black Site in Chicago?”
