Chuck Spinney: Understanding the Arab Transformation — Political & Economic Harmonization, Not Democratization, Is Core First Step

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace, Peace Intelligence
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Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Below is a very interesting summary of the political tensions among secularism and religion and modernism and tradition in Tunisia.  I think the author, who I do not know but whose writings I have followed, is one of the most knowledgeable observers of the Arab Spring.

Chuck Spinney

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

April 2013, Pages 41-42

Tunisia in Turmoil:What Next?

By Esam Al-Amin

THE SPARK THAT ignited the Arab Spring over two years ago came from Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia. For 28 days people across the country revolted against the repression and corruption of the 23-year authoritarian regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Finally, on Jan. 14, 2011 Tunisians celebrated their victory and resilience over tyranny and oppression when Ben Ali fled the country. But if getting rid of the dictator was relatively short and easy, the dismantling of his regime and its corrosive effects on society has proven to be very challenging indeed.

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Berto Jongman: Call for US Torture Investigation and Eradication + Torture RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude
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Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Out With It

Americans deserve to hear the dirty secrets of the CIA’s war on terror. We’ll all be better off with the truth.

In April 1975, Sen. Frank Church impaneled a special investigative committee to look into shocking accounts of CIA dirty tricks. The Church Committee ultimately published 14 reports over two years revealing a clandestine agency that was a law unto itself — plotting to assassinate heads of state (Castro, Diem, Lumumba, Trujillo), carrying out weird experiments with LSD, and suborning American journalists. As a result, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning the assassination of foreign leaders, the House and Senate established standing intelligence committees, and the United States set up the so-called FISA courts, which oversee request for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign agents.

But the war on terror unleashed the CIA once again to carry out dark deeds against America's enemies — torture, secret detention, and “rendition” to “black sites” across the world. How have Americans reckoned, this time, with the immoral and illegal acts carried out in their name? They have not: the CIA has retained control over the narrative. As the Constitution Project's Detainee Treatment report describes in great detail, the CIA falsely reported — to the White House as well as to the public — that torture “worked” in wresting crucial information from high-level detainees, and thus needed to be an instrument available to interrogators. Officials like Vice President Dick Cheney repeated ad nauseum that the CIA's dark arts had saved thousands of lives. Is it any wonder that a plurality of Americans think the United States should torture terrorists?

I wrote last month about the detainee treatment report, but I find it incredibly frustrating — and all too telling — that the findings were overwhelmed by the tidal wave of coverage of the Boston bombing. Because we fear terrorism far more viscerally than we feared communism — certainly by 1975 — we are all too susceptible to the view that America cannot afford to live by its own professed values. But of course that's what Chileans and Brazilians thought in the 1970s. That's why Sri Lankans have granted themselves the right to slaughter homegrown terrorists wholesale, and react furiously to any hint of criticism.

People give themselves a pass unless and until they are forced to face the truth, which is why a public airing of history is so important — and so politically fraught. There's always a compelling reason to avoid facing the ugly truth. In early 2009, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called for an independent commission to investigate allegations of torture.  But President Barack Obama's spokesman said that the proposal would not be “workable.” We know what he meant: you can hardly blame the president for avoiding a colossal fight with Republicans over the past, especially, when he had so many fights he needed to wage over the future.

Obama probably thought that he could put the problem to rest by ending torture as well as the cult of secrecy surrounding CIA practices. He succeeded on the first count, but failed on the latter. In April 2009, he agreed to release the so-called “torture” memos written by President George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), as well as photos of prisoner abuse from Iraq and Afghanistan. But then, after a fierce debate inside the White House said to pit Obama's military commanders against his counselor, Gregory Craig, among others, the administration reversed itself. The president later signed legislation allowing him to withhold the pictures if he determined that the release would harm national security.

Once adopted, the logic of national security carries all before it. The release of the OLC memos, the detainee treatment report notes, was the high-water mark of Obama-era transparency on torture. CIA reports on the death of three prisoners in custody as well as on broad policy towards detainees remain classified; so do the results of inquiries by the armed forces criminal investigation division. The agency's ability to withhold information probably contributed to the Justice Department's decision not to pursue indictments on any of the 100 or so cases of CIA mistreatment which it investigated. Defense lawyers in the military trial of the “9/11 defendants” held at Guantanamo have had to work around a “protection order” which classifies entire subject areas — including anything related to the defendants' arrest or capture, the conditions in which they were held, or the interrogation techniques to which they were subjected. Whatever becomes of the defendants, Americans will learn nothing from the trials.

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Neal Rauhauser: Professionalism & Propaganda

Architecture, Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Design, Economics/True Cost, Money, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience, Sources (Info/Intel)
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Neal Rauhauser
Neal Rauhauser

Professionalism & Propaganda

One of the things I have done over the last six months has involved identifying and observing hive mind constructs in the real world. This happened in the context of examining the publicly visible process of foreign policy making. I wrote thirty three posts that are at least tangentially related to this pursuit. Hive mind constructs will eventually win out over point source propaganda, but it won’t be pretty to watch.

. . . . . . . . .

Links and short descriptions of various sequential endeavors and their findings

. . . . . . . . .

CONCLUSION:

Monolithic corporate forces heavily invested in the status quo are wrestling with networked humans and finding they face a sort of memetic Devil’s Snare. Their struggles may seem to be momentarily successful, but they are only educating their opponent as to their strengths and weaknesses.

The concept of the corporation didn’t really take off until the Catholic church relaxed usury laws three centuries ago. Compound interest depends on exponential growth and humans have pretty much hit the wall in terms of what our environment will support. Any one of climate change or peak oil could undo the perception that we are all consumers living in a conglomeration of free markets. Those two have arrived pretty much simultaneous with a financial sector meltdown and we are entering a period where our society will wind down to the Earth’s solar maximum. A value system based on exponential growth will not survive a disproof by counter example, and Mother Nature responds to neither paper injunctions nor heartfelt supplications.

Some of those networked humans are starting to realize that they need not tear down the corporatocracy by hand and they are already thinking about how and what to preserve. What role does a hive mind play in this? What role can it play when electrical power is intermittent and the supply chains needed for electronic devices are interrupted?

Read full post, see all linked posts with graphics.

Mini-Me: Former Leader of Guatemala Is Guilty of Genocide Against Mayan Group – US Leaders Should Note….

06 Genocide, 09 Justice
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Who?  Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Former Leader of Guatemala Is Guilty of Genocide Against Mayan Group

GUATEMALA CITY — A Guatemalan court on Friday found Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the former dictator who ruled Guatemala during one of the bloodiest periods of its long civil war, guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Judge Yasmín Barrios sentenced General Ríos Montt, 86, to 80 years in prison. His co-defendant, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, who served as the director of intelligence under the general, was acquitted of the same two charges.

“We are completely convinced of the intent to destroy the Ixil ethnic group,” Judge Barrios said as she read the hourlong summary of the ruling by the three-judge panel. Over five weeks, the tribunal heard more than 100 witnesses, including psychologists, military experts and Maya Ixil Indian survivors who told how General Ríos Montt’s soldiers had killed their families and wiped out their villages.

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Gordon Duff: Was Syria Nuked?

05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards
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Gordon Duff
Gordon Duff

SHORT VERSION (Iranian Press TV)

Was Syria ‘nuked'?

Striking evidence of the use of American EPW (Earth Penetrating Weapons) nuclear weapons in Syria has come to light. Experts say the proof is irrefutable.

LONG VERSION (Veterans Today, with videos)

Was Syria ‘Nuked’?

Analysis shows Syria came under attack by Israel using, not just nuclear weapons, but an American nuclear bunker buster bomb, one of several supplied to Israel to use against Iran, one of the last acts of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Marcus Aurelius: Benghazi Lies Now Documented

02 Diplomacy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military
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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

Below is a summary report by ABC News followed by the various versions of the Talking Points; (2) as a series of US Government actions, I don't think there is anything particularly unique in the sequential revision of the Talking Points except that, in this case, four lives were lost.

And then of course the big lie, at Secretary of State level.

The Benghazi Lie

A failure of character of this magnitude corrodes the integrity of the state.

By Mark Steyn

EXTRACT:

Now we know that at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the last night of Stevens’s life, his deputy in Libya spoke to Secretary Clinton and informed her of the attack in Benghazi and the fact that the ambassador was now missing. An hour later, Gregory Hicks received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Stevens was dead. Hicks immediately called Washington. It was 9 p.m. Eastern time, or 3 a.m. in Libya. Remember the Clinton presidential team’s most famous campaign ad? About how Hillary would be ready to take that 3 a.m. call? Four years later, the phone rings, and Secretary Clinton’s not there. She doesn’t call Hicks back that evening. Or the following day.

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Jean Lievens: 3D Printing Migrating Away from Plastic Toward Sustainable Materials Such as Wood, Salt, and Clay

Design, Economics/True Cost, Materials
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Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

The Green 3D Printing Materials We’ve Been Waiting For

by

Eerth Techling

There’s no denying that 3D printing has moved beyond the laboratory and into the mainstream. We’ve seen 3D printed body parts, electronics, and toys. Although the technology has quickly become quite sophisticated, the materials used in 3D printers have been slow to catch up.

Though the idea of print-you-own has big green implications, there’s nothing earth-friendly about an uptick in plastic junk floating around the planet. That’s why we’re so excited about the work of Emerging Objects, a two-architect outfit that teaches 3D printing in Berkeley. Founders Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello are working to move the trend away from plastic and toward far more sustainable materials like wood, salt, and clay.

“Emerging Objects is interested in the creation of 3D printed buildings, building components and interior accessories that can be seen as sustainable, inexpensive, stronger, smarter, recyclable, customizable and perhaps even reparable to the environment,” write the architects. “We want to 3D print long-lasting performance-based designs for the built environment using raw materials that have strength, tactility, cultural associations, relevance and beauty.”

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