It is my hope that our collective reflection on these questions will help create a powerful focus for Thursday's FREE event, Activating the Impulse of Evolution, and will serve as a foundation for the journey we'll be going on together:
1) What is your deepest or highest aspiration for your own spiritual development?
2) In your deepest moments of awareness and clarity, what have you sensed is possible for the evolution of your life, and for human life as a whole?
3) Where have you noticed that you get stopped or blocked in your spiritual evolution? To what degree have you seen that the obstacles to your deepest awakening are actually habits that you have the power to stop enacting?
4) How would you most deeply wish to serve life and humanity, if you had all the capacities you needed? What is your vision for your highest contribution in this life and this world?
5) What do you see as the relationship between your own evolution and the advancement of humanity? In what ways can you see that the highest potentials you want to fulfill and the changes you need to make are not merely personal, but universal to all human beings?
6) What are you most hoping to learn at this seminar?
Next Wednesday, March 20, a fascinating new stage in transnational cooperation will arrive when scores of commoners in twenty countries take part in a Spanish P2P Wikisprint, a coordinated effort to document and map the myriad peer to peer initiatives that exist in Latin America and Spain.
The effort, hosted by the P2P Foundation, was originally going to be held in Spain only, but word got around in the Hispanic world, and presto, an inter-continental P2P collaboration was declared! (A Spanish-language version of the event can be found here.)
As described by Bernardo Gutiérrez on the P2P Foundation blog, the Wikisprint will bring together an indigenous collective in Chiapas with a co-working space of Quito; a crowdfunding platform in Barcelona with the open data movement of Montevideo; a hacktivist group in Madrid with permaculturists in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas; and a community of free software developers in Buenos Aires with Lima-based city planners; among many others.
The Wikisprint will map the various Spanish experiences around the commons, open innovation, co-creation, transparency, co-design, 3D printing, free license, p2politics, among other things. It will also feature debates, lectures, screenings, speeches, self-media coverage, workshops, network visualizations and videos.
This piece illustrates for me the difference between religion (The Roman Catholic Church) and spirituality.
I was stunned to learn, and checked and it is correct: “Less than five percent of money flowing through Catholic charities and hospitals comes from Catholic offering plates. Powerful Christian organizations have secured government funds to underwrite” their costs.
This essay gave me pause and made me think, and I hope it does the same for you.
Despite Vatican efforts to keep the public eye focused on pomp and circumstance, speculation about the real reason for Pope Benedict’s resignation dominates conversation about the papal succession: Is it the Vatileaksmoney laundering? Is it the pedophilia scandal? Might it have something to do with criminal charges filed in European courts? How about the impact of all three on Catholic Church coffers and pews? Is this about immunity or power or finances or brand management?
The Vatican claims to promote a “comprehensive culture of life,” but it is the Church’s comprehensive culture of corruption that refuses to die. Consider yesterday’s scandal in which Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, resigned amid allegations of sexual contacts with priests. Last year O’Brien had called marriage equality a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right.” In fact, in 2012, he received a “bigot of the year” award from the British gay rights group, Stonewall. The combination makes him a poster boy for the notion that homophobia is a symptom of denial. Methinks he doth protest too much.
From the October death of Savita Halappanavar for lack of an abortion in Catholic controlled Ireland, to the pedophilia cover-up being unveiled gradually this spring in California, to the infighting exposed when the Pope’s butler leaked inside Vatican documents, to Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s efforts to obstruct contraceptive access regardless of the public health consequences—Catholic priorities increasingly appear to have two products: harm and hypocrisy. Those who still consider the Catholic hierarchy to be a source of moral leadership are living in a fantasy.
As someone who thinks the world could use a little moral leadership, I can’t resist indulging in a little fantasy of my own: Imagine how different things would be if the Dalai Lama were the next pope.
Recognizes how quickly and radically the world — and our threat environment — are changing.
“This environment is demanding reevaluations of the way we do business, expanding our analytic envelope, and altering the vocabulary of intellignece. Threats are more diverse, interconnected, and viral than at any other time in history.”
Recognizes the importance of integration across disciplines and domains — working toward multidisciplinary and multidomain.
The Introduction alone is reason enough to take the time to download the document.
Robert David STEELE Vivas
ROBERT STEELE: This is a good read. I am particularly delighted that the introduction embraces the specific recommendations I have been making since 1988 within the government and since 1992 publicly. There is more that could be done in terms of outreach to people who will never have clearances, but this is a very fine start. I offer the following supplemental observations in support of the DNI's testimony.
Cyber
Among the mission areas assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), the assurance of trusted communications for US commercial communications and computing including domestic supervisory control and data acquisition systems across all functionalities appears to require a great deal more oversight and performance evaluation; at the same time, the US Government appears to need a Center for Computational Mathematics and a Center for Real-Time Financial Transaction Analytics.
Given the central role played by digital financial transactions in relation to multi-billion dollar money laundering by US banks that have operated with virtual impunity for decades, a decision needs to be made, and appropriate resources devoted to, the application of NSA's proven capabilities against global financial crime rooted in US banks.
Francesca Musiani
Internet Governance is a vital topic and its inclusion in this report is noteworthy. One of the most promising and innovative experts in the world on emerging alternative paradigms for Internet Governance is here in Washington DC completing a Yahoo! Fellowship with the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. Dr. Francesca Musiani does not have a clearance and is not a US citizen. She leaves in June. Her email is francesca.musiani AT gmail DOT com. It would also be beneficial for the IC to be paying Dr. Gordon Cook for Reference: Cook Report on Internet Protocol and at least quarterly consulting, his email is cook AT cookreport.com. Stephen E. Arnold continues to be my virtual CTO and remains a genius. Arnold IT is critical starting point and second opinion for anyone that wants to be moderately tuned in or better.
This search by a number of you, using the same words, is one that I feel compelled to respond to personally. When I was putting together the Smart Nation Act, with Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) positioned to introduce it in his next term, we specifically addressed an absolute prohibition against any use by any covert or clandestine or even overt intelligence organization, of civil affairs as a cover. That provision fell out in the simplified version of the Act. If I were God, anyone caught using civil affairs as a cover would be reduced one grade in rank and expeditiously dischanged from government service–this would apply to both SOF and all elements of the IC.
There is now a petition for a Wall Street Sales Tax online at: http://wh.gov/ARGi
The petition was initiated by the United Front Against Austerity. It has started off strong, and we want to keep the momentum building, so the more it's shared, the better. Thank you!
We've got until April 10 to get 100,000 signatures. Twitter people, can you put this in front of people like Robert Reich, Dean Baker and others to ask them to mobilize their networks?
Getting an official White House response would be huge, but this is also a way to push the concept in front of more people.
CHARGE!!!!!!
Phi Beta Iota: Wall Street transactions (both stock and currency) are among the most numerous in the economy, and they are tax free. The Tobin Tax and the Automated Payment Transaction Tax both call for the widening of the economic revenue “pie” beyond income taxes — indeed, an honest Congress and an honest Executive could eliminate all income taxes by applying either of these taxes (a fraction of a penny) across the economy starting with the financial transactions — including the shadow banks (hedge funds) — that are now completely outside the revenue stream. The FACT that the US Government has been BORROWING $1 trillion a year since 1980 in order to fund BOTH a grossly over-extended entitlements program and a grossly under-performing national security corporate welfare program, should be — but is not — a major public grievance.
