Public Intelligence Blog – Page 3041 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

2011/10/25

John Steiner: 10 Years Late, NYT “Sees” Democracy Now!

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

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A Grass-Roots Newscast Gives a Voice to Struggles

Brian Stelter

New York Times, 23 October 2011

EXTRACT

Some fans as well as critics describe “Democracy Now!” as progressive, but Ms. Goodman rejects that label and prefers to call it a global newscast that has “people speaking for themselves.” She criticized networks in the United States that have brought on professional pundits, rather than actual protesters, to discuss the Occupy protests.

Last week, no United States television network covered the filing of a lawsuit in Canada by four men who said they had been tortured during the Bush administration and who are seeking Mr. Bush’s arrest and prosecution. But one of the men, Murat Kurnaz, a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, was interviewed at length by Ms. Goodman and her co-host, Juan Gonzalez.

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota: Now that the rest of the world has seen that the US Courts are generally corrupt and will not entertain law suits against those that led the US to an elective war costing trillions and including crimes against humanity at multiple levels, we anticipate a flood of law suits against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others. As committed as we are to Truth & Reconciliation (with presidential pardons when full truth has been offered to the public by the individual concerned) we fear that absent a restoration of integrity to the electoral process and to the US Government in the 2012 elections, we are in for a decade of revenge against specific individuals and specific banks now known to have betrayed the public trust.

2011/10/25

Venessa Miemis: Contact Conference Hot Wash-Up

11 Society, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO)

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venessa black & white new — Venessa Miemis

What the Contact Conference Was Really About

I am very grateful to have been able to take part in organizing the Contact Conference, an event that pitched itself as a working festival of innovation, a social technologies exhibitor space, and a celebration of the potential of a network culture.

And it was definitely all those things, so mission accomplished there. The energy in the room was great, the recipients of the three $1oK Innovation Awards worthy, and the four projects conceived and launched at the event exciting. (more details on those things below in Douglas Rushkoff’s letter to participants)

But that’s really only a part of the story.

The bigger picture here is that if we start from the premise that “the system is broken” or “we’re at a critical turning point’ or that “we’re in a global transition,” or any such broad sweeping statements about the functionality of our social/economic/political/environmental/technological/scientific systems, and the majority of the world’s population is either deeply dissatisfied or at the least has an itching feeling that there is something that is just not right… then the only sane choice left is to act.

Read full post.

2011/10/25

Chuck Spinney: Screwing the Greeks – Deeply

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

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Below are two eye opening reports/analyses by two of the best counterpunchers in Alexander Cockburn's and Jeffrey St Clair's stable of bomb throwers. The subject is Greece: its political/economic crisis and the myths surrounding average Greeks being the cause of its crisis.

In the first, Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People: The Myth of Greek Profligacy, my friend Marshall Auerback, argues that the masses of the Greek people (the bottom 80% of a highly unequal income distribution) are being set up as scapegoats to pay for a neo-liberal austerity plan that aimed producing income deflation (instead of a currency devaluation) to improve export competitiveness. Auerback explains why this is really a plan of collective punishment that is guaranteed to fail while shredding what is left of Greece's social contract.

In the second, Naxos Hangs On By Its Fingernails: How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land, Patrick Cockburn presents the reader with a micro-case study of what is happening to average Greeks (i.e. part of the lower 80%) on the island of Naxos, the largest and my favorite island in the windy Cyclades.

Chuck Spinney
Barcelona

Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People
The Myth of Greek Profligacy
by MARSHALL AUERBACK,
Counterpunch, OCTOBER 24, 2011

Naxos Hangs On By Its Fingernails
How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land
by PATRICK COCKBURN
Counterpunch, OCTOBER 18, 2011

Phi Beta Iota: One reason why the Electoral Reform and BigBatUSA endeavors are so important NOW, is because if they succeed in the USA, where Internet connectivity, cognitive surplus, and Occupy awaking have converged, the model can be scaled globally very quickly. At root this is about secular corruption. Pope Benedict XVI had a chance to use Assisi creatively but chose the low road.

2011/10/25

Jon Lebkowsky: Steve Jobs on Convergent Multi-Media

Autonomous Internet, Blog Wisdom

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Apple’s convergent television: “I finally cracked it!”

We’ve been hearing for two decades now about television/computer/Internet convergence. Televisions sets today are advanced digital products, and we connect computers and specialized set-top boxes to ‘em, but they’re still primarily display devices.

In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson writes that Jobs ““very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant.”

Jobs told Isaacson that “I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”

More on the Jobs/Apple vision of convergence here.

I’m imagining a media device that, like the Internet, swallows all other forms: television set, movie theatre, stereo, juke box, etc. But it would also be interactive, a window on the rest of the world. This isn’t exactly cutting edge – those who think about such things expected it before now.

Phi Beta Iota: Our own collective epiphany (translation for Democrats: “aha”) came in connection with the Contact endeavors of Doug Rushkoff, where we realized that connectivity comes first, and that public intelligence will evolve from that, not the other way around. HOWEVER, apart from Range Networks, we see no one seriously pursuing the OpenBTS “dumb” cell phone for free or $2 a month maximum (subsidized in the Third World), nor have we been successful at breaking through to the Vatican (read letter) or Sir Richard Branson (read one-pager), both of whom could have come together in Assisi to converge connectivity with the eradication of secular corruption.

2011/10/252011/10/25

Robert Steele: Electoral Reform Road Trip – Pass It On! And Imagine Every Voter Doing $10 a Year Subscription for Democracy…

Uncategorized

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steele smiling final — Robert David STEELE Vivas

After four years constructive unemployment, largely due to the illegal and abusive practices of DIA and DOHA that are being taken to court–I feel called to focus on Electoral Reform.

Here is the short URL for a campaign to raise $10,000 to take Electoral Reform hand-outs and stimulate electoral reform dialog across America, visiting each of the Occupy sites and where desired, stopping to help organize new Occupy sites.

http://tinyurl.com/ER-RoadTrip

The calculated cost per state is $200 for gas and oil and very occasional repairs, using a 1964 MGB for visibility and because it is my remaining car and daily driver.

I think we can do this. My objective is to achieve a Statement of Demand from across the Occupy movement, with a 15 February 2012 deadline for passage of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012, in time to assure open ballot access and other Phase I reforms for November 2012.

In passing I will try to inspire a BigBatUSA, where every eligible voter contributes $10 a year to protect the Electoral Reform Act, elect non-partisan honest citizens, and move toward a Constitutional Amendment that takes electoral corruption out of the realm of possibility into the future. Basic Math: 100 million x $10 = $1B a year. 200 million x $10 = $2B a year. 300 million x $10 a year = $3B a year. Not extrapolate that out to the rest of the world paying $1 a year for Panarchy with Autonomous Internet, OpenBTS connecting the five billion poor, and it is GAME OVER on predatory capitalism, virtual colonialism, and unilateral militarism.

In passing, where there is an interest, I will discuss my concept of demanding a Coalition Cabinet and a balanced budget as preconditions for candidates desiring to be elected President–anyone who cannot choose a Coalition Cabinet and come up with a semblance of a balanced budget at least 60 days prior to Election Day is simply not qualified to be President–at the same time that any average American willing to do this is qualified–better qualified even–by virtue of integrity combined with collective intelligence.

Here is are some short URLs that I hope all of you — good people trapped in corrupt system — will pass on and or take independent action on.

The short URL for this introductory posting is:

http://tinyurl.com/PBI-Road-Trip

http://tinyurl.com/ER-DIY

2011/10/25

Graphic: Golden Hawk Killing Golden Goose

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

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Tip of the Hat to Marcus Aurelius.

Source

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Empire as Cancer Including Betrayal & Deceit

Worth a Look: Impeachable Offenses, Modern & Historic

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on War Complex—War as a Racket

2011/10/242011/10/24

Mini-Me: Ron Paul Wins Straw Poll in Ohio

Cultural Intelligence, Open Government, Policy

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RUSSIA TODAY*

Ron Paul wins straw poll in Ohio

Are you still a fringe candidate when you pull in more than half of all votes? Just ask Ron Paul.

Even with the establishment cringing at his libertarian leanings and his ideas otherwise radical for a Republican candidate, Congressman Paul received nearly 54 percent of the votes in an Ohio straw poll over the weekend.

The Ohio Republican straw poll was held in the Buckeye State on Saturday, and the majority of the votes cast went to the Texas congressman who continues to show both success and support in his race for the GOP nomination, despite little attention from the mainstream media.

While news outlets have largely focused in recent weeks on the surging popularity of Herman Cain, the pizzaman only raked in nearly half of what Paul got in the straw poll. Following Paul’s first place victory, Cain came in second with around 26 percent of the votes. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney received around 9 percent, giving him a third place standing. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, came in fourth.

Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, both considered top tier candidates earlier in the race, each received less than 5 percent of the vote. In recent weeks their popularity among Republican voters has shown extreme signs of decline.

Paul’s success continues to soar, although he has still not received the same media coverage favored for other Republican hopefuls. In an interview with Alex Jones’ Inforwars last month, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura offered his support for the candidate. “Ron Paul can win. It’s out there. All you got to do is activate and get the silent voters out to vote,” said Ventura. “You have to give them a reason to see their vote.”

Read full story.

* Vastly better than US “mainstream” or UK BBC corrupted reporting.

See Also:

Ron Paul's running mate: Jesse Ventura?

Ralph Nader Hearts Ron Paul, Hails Potential Left-Libertarian Alliance

Mainstream media's blackout on Ron Paul

Fox freaks after Ron Paul wins debate