Full Text: Note on financial reform from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
2011-10-24 Vatican Radio
Please find, below, an unofficial translation of the Note on the reform of the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public authority, released Monday by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
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Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
TOWARDS REFORMING THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL PUBLIC AUTHORITY
In a widely-expected note on the financial crisis and economic justice, Vatican officials accidently call for the establishment of a One World Global “Authority” to regulate financial markets and national governments.
After gently noting that such a project is “a complex and delicate process,” the document begins to capitalize the word, “Authority” in the most unsettling, conspiracy-launching way possible:
Phi Beta Iota: With the exception of the call for an “Authority” and complete ignorance of the alternatives to a new hierarchy, the Vatican document does not read as badly as the above critique suggests. It ends with a call for “unity in truth.” It does not address secular corruption as it should have.
FAIRFAX, Virginia (AP) — Maybe you've got a hunch Kim Jong Il's regime in North Korea has seen its final days, or that the Ebola virus will re-emerge somewhere in the world in the next year.
Your educated guess may be just as good as an expert's opinion. Statistics have long shown that large crowds of average people frequently make better predictions about unknown events, when their disparate guesses are averaged out, than any individual scholar — a phenomenon known as the wisdom of crowds.
Now the U.S. intelligence community, with the help of university researchers and regular folks around the country, is studying ways to harness and improve the wisdom of crowds. The research could one day arm policymakers with information gathered by some of the same methods that power Wikipedia and social media.
Phi Beta Iota: The idea is actually from George Mason University. IARPA is a mess, as is DARPA. If the DNI were serious about growing up, he would have distributed national intelligence councils for each of the ten high-level threats to humanity, each of the core policy domains, and state and local sub-councils, as well as a means of integrating humans, data, and assumptions in an EarthGame such as Medard Gabel is ready to build at a cost of no more than $3 million a year. US Intelligence lacks intelligence and integrity, and is not going to grow up under its current “leadership.”
The triumphalism in the US surrounding the liquidation of Qadaffi may be short lived. That is because most Americans do not appreciate how the legacy of anti-colonialism shapes the contemporary cultural DNA in North Africa or how influential that legacy has been in shaping the revolts of what is now called the Arab Spring. There is more going on in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya than Jefferson's vision of revolution fertilizing the natural rights of man.
The coming elections in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya may well result in victories or strong showings for the Islamic parties in each nation’s politics. The U.S., U.K., France, and Italy will not like such results, should they occur, and may will be tempted to intervene to contain or reverse them by influencing the elections either before the fact or overturning them after the fact. Further intervention would be certain to produce yet more unpleasant blowback.
As Peter Osborne argues below, before doing anything, we would do well to remember what happened to Algeria after the 1991-2 election and leave well enough alone. In what is widely regarded to have been a free and fair election, the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut or FIS) won a stunning victory in Dec 1991 on the first ballot, just short of an outright majority. It was clear that the FIS would win a majority on the second ballot scheduled for Jan 1992, and perhaps even enough votes to amend the Algerian constitution. The Algerian army, aided (incited?) by France and the CIA, intervened to cancel the second ballot. The cancellation triggered a chain of events leading to a nightmarish civil war that ultimately killed over 100,000 people and left a state that is still ripe for revolution.
We may not like the consequences of elections in North Africa – but we must not repeat the mistakes of the past.
By Peter Oborne, Telegraph, 22 Oct 2011
The extra-judicial execution of Colonel Gaddafi has been greeted with international elation, and understandably so. There was very little to be said in favour of that gnarled torturer and war criminal. Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, who masterminded the campaign against him, have some excuse to take the view that with the killing of Gaddafi, and today’s elections in Tunisia, the Arab Spring appears to be entering a hopeful stage.
A veteran U.S. State Department foreign service officer lost his security clearance and diplomatic passport this week while the department investigates him over linking to a WikiLeaks document on his blog and publishing a book critical of the government.
Peter Van Buren, who is 51 and has worked for the department for 23 years, had his Top Secret security clearance suspended indefinitely for what the department calls his unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations regarding “writing and speaking on matters of official concern.” This is according to a memo the State Department sent Van Buren.
The move is purely vindictive, according to Van Buren.
Phi Beta Iota: The class action idea is interesting. Robert Steele is pursuing discovery to acquire all emails to and from Jim Clapper, Ron Burgess, and Tish Long about his varied efforts to secure employment within DoD, as well as discovery of all emails and documents surrounding his application for both the DISL jobs across DoD and the lesser DIA jobs [Steele kept book] that were manipulated to exclude Steele from consideration. There is no question but that DIA and DOHA are in violation while DNI (and before that USDI) were complicit, the only question is how much trouble it will be to document this, and how much can be demanded in damages above and beyond loss of $1 million in lost income–including a “by name” request for Steele to be Chief Instructor for Information Operations and Intelligence at COINSOC in Iraq a few years ago where a legal contract was received from Raytheon for $276K a year, and then withdrawn after DOHA told Raytheon no to a simple SECRET clearance without a Statement of Reasons or due process–the exchanges between Raytheon and DOHA will be the starting point for the lawsuit by Robert Steele against the US Government. It will take time, but the absence of integrity in this specific series will become a matter of legal record. If $10 million can be won–half for the legal team–that will be money earned by Steele for having persistent integrity. Integrity is now back in style–DNI, DOHA, and DIA are the last to know this–and of course the Department of State E Veritate Potens.
This week, on October 20, a diverse assortment of forward-thinking, Internet-savvy, solutions-oriented people gathered in New York City for Contact Summit, a project-focused event organized by Doug Rushkoff and Venessa Miemis. I was originally planning to attend, and was plugged into the small team of organizers. I couldn’t make the event, but have been available as a resource for organizers of related global Meetups, and will help sustain the converation following the event.
Doug had created a prologue video for the remote Meetups scheduled to occur synchronous with the main event. Here’s a summary of his comments in that video – this gives a good idea what the gathering was about:
Click on Image to Enlarge
It’s time to take back the net. Currently the Internet is much too concerned with marketing, IPOs, and the next killer app, and too little concerned with helping human beings get where we need to go. We want to use the Internet effectively to promote better ways of living, doing commerce, educating, making art, doing spirituality. To collaborate on ideas about how to use the net well. There are a lot of projects that need our assistance. From Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, people are rising up. We need solutions. Contact is about finding the others, and working and playing with them to find solutions to age-old problems.
