Paul Craig Roberts: IO Pulse for Thinking America – Don’t Vote for Evil in Any Form – Labor, Not Capital, Should Be the Center of Gravity

Culture, Economics/True Cost, Politics
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Paul Craig Roberts

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.

Don’t Vote For Evil

Back during the George W. Bush neocon regime, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in his UN speech summed up George W. Bush for the world. I am quoting Chavez from memory, not verbatim. “Yesterday standing at this same podium was Satan himself, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.”

Chavez is one of the American right-wing’s favorite bogyman, because Chavez helps the people instead of bleeding them for the rich, which is Washington’s way. While Washington has driven all but the one percent into the ground, Chavez cut poverty in half, doubled university enrollment, and provided health care and old age pensions to millions of Venezuelans for the first time.

Little wonder he was elected to a fourth term as president despite the many millions of dollars Washington poured into the election campaign of Chavez’s opponent.

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Winslow Wheeler: Facts on US Military “Superiority”

Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military
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Winslow Wheeler

Are US armed forces “the best in the world”?  What makes you think so?

Not All That It Can Be

The myth of American military superiority.

WINSLOW WHEELER

Foreign Policy | OCTOBER 11, 2012

EXTRACT:

We also heard a lot of bombast after the first war with Iraq, Operation Desert Storm in 1991; then, the technologists declared a “revolution in military affairs.” The Government Accountability Office (GAO) spent two years looking at that: The air campaign should more accurately be characterized as bombing a tethered goat led by a military jackass, and even then, the air campaign did not live up to the hype. The high-cost “silver bullet” of the war, the F-117 stealth light bomber, badly underperformed its puffery. For example, in contrast to claims that “alone and unafraid” it destroyed Saddam's air defense system in the first hours of the first night, the F-117s actually had help from 167 non-stealthy aircraft and were confirmed by the Defense Intelligence Agency's bomb-damage assessments to have effectively destroyed only two of the 15 air defense targets assigned to them that first night. Overall, the GAO found that effectiveness did not correlate with cost and that on many dimensions the ultralow-cost A-10 close-combat attack aircraft was the top performer.

Full article below the line.

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Berto Jongman: Strategic IO Lite – Moderate Muslim Voices As Understood from Tampa, Florida

IO Deeds of Peace
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Berto Jongman

Seventh Pillar, Inc. is an education nonprofit 501c3 (founded in 2008) in the process of building a simple yet robust online library of Muslim voices against violence–translated by credentialed linguists into 20 languages.

Seventh Pillar, Inc. remains strictly non-political, non-religious, unbiased, and independent.  Seventh Pillar, Inc. is not affiliated with any government, government-connected entity, or propaganda. 

The views of the authors are the authors' alone and do not represent views of Seventh Pillar, Inc. 

This living, ever growing online library is intended as a resource for community leaders, scholars, media, religious leaders, and citizens.

Click on Image to Visit Site

Follow the trail to Tampa, FL below the line.

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Berto Jongman: Strategic IO – Earth’s Magnetic Field 150 Year Flip

Advanced Cyber/IO
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Berto Jongman

The North Pole is moving towards Siberia! Imagine our compasses starting pointing south someday. This is not science fiction. A total reversal of Earth's Magnetic Fields actually happened over 740 thousand years ago. The Earth's Magnetic Field is weakening. Magnetic field strength is decreasing rapidly in certain areas of South America and South Atlantic; up to 12% in 30 years. The decay of Earth Magnetic Field will have serous effect on satellites in space and trains and electrical grids on the ground.

Phi Beta Iota:  As with the post-2012 flooding that has captured the informed public's interest, this is a 150 year evolution, not an imminent threat.  It is however, relevant, and least costly to address if everyone pays attention now.

Berto Jongman: Variations on a Theme – CIA Drones and Suicide Bombs

IO Deeds of War
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Berto Jongman

Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals

Total US strikes: 349
Obama strikes: 297
Total reported killed: 2,593-3,365

Read full article and see data sidebars.

Whither Suicide Bombings?

Exponential growth in suicide attacks since 2001 shows that they have increasingly become a practical tool in a large variety of intra-national conflicts

Berto Jongman: Social Network Analysis of Al-Muhajiroun’s Propaganda Campaign

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War
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Berto Jongman

The YouTube Jihadists: A Social Network Analysis of Al-Muhajiroun’s Propaganda Campaign

 by Jytte Klausen, Eliane Tschaen Barbieri, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, and Aaron Y. Zelin

Abstract

 Producers of Al-Qaeda inspired propaganda have shifted their operations in recent years from closed membership online forums to mainstream social networking platforms. Using social network analysis, we show that behind the apparent proliferation of such sources, YouTube account holders associated with incarnations of the British al-Muhajiroun collude to post propaganda and violent content. European groups commonly use American platforms and domain names registered with American companies. Seeking shelter under speech rights granted by the First Amendment, they evade European laws against incitement and hate speech.

Read full article.

Michel Bauwens: Pirate Party USA – 20 Essays

P2P / Panarchy, Politics
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Michel Bauwens

Essays about Pirate Politics

  • Book: No safe harbor: essays about pirate politics. Reykjavik, Iceland: United States Pirate Party; 2012.
  • Available to download from: http://www.nosafeharbor.com/.

Summary

“An anthology of 20 selections about issues central to the concerns of the U.S. Pirate Party, divided into three categories: (1) government and corporate transparency and accountability; (2) privacy; (3) intellectual property. A good resource for seeing how the apparently narrow Pirate Party core issues pertaining to intellectual property tie in pervasively with much broader social and economic factors.”

Click on Image to Enlarge

Foreword

The first Pirate Party was founded on January 1, 2006 by Rick Falkvinge in Sweden.

Six months later, similar parties started to spring up all over the world. All of these parties started off with the same singular goal of intellectual property reform. But, these disparate parties realized that the roots of the world's problems ran deeper than even intellectual property reform could fix.

With time, these parties added many more items to their platform. These can be condensed into 3 topics – Government and Corporate Transparency and Accountability, Personal Privacy, and, of course, Intellectual Property reform.

If nothing else, 2011 will be seen as the year of the uprisings. The year began with the Arab Spring, in which the citizens of various Middle Eastern countries rose up and either overthrew their governments or caused massive changes in their governing structures. Later in the year – September – the Occupy Wall Street movement began and quickly spread across the United States and to every continent except Antarctica.

Who knows what 2012 will bring.

Read more.