From Skilluminati Research [quoting another person]:
Last night I watched Human Resources and I was impressed enough to pass it along. It's a documentary about Social Control, examining the history, the philosophy and ultimately the pathology of elite power. The movie is a full two hours and you can download a copy of the video file right here
(http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FC6BGEOM).
Overall, Human Resources is rough around the edges but still overloaded with gems. Set aside some time to digest this — and take notes.
Scott Noble does an admirable job of fitting ten hours of material into two. I also appreciated the space he gives to all the people he interviews…there's a metric ton of ideas here and he lets almost all of them unfold and breathe at their own pace. The footage itself is very low-fi and some of the interviews feel like they drag on for too long, or wander in circles. Impressively, those moments are few and far between. Noble can't cover everything, but the scope of this movie alone makes it the most ambitious entry in this strange genre so far, more complete than The Century of the Self and less hysterical than the Zeitgeist franchise.
The film really clicks in the final act, when the focus turns toward the CIA's MK experimentation. I was surprised and grateful to find an extended interview with Dr. Colin Ross, who takes pains to note that “CIA MK” is actually a misleading generalization, obscuring a larger network of projects involving the Army, Naval Intelligence and several other, more opaque agencies. There's a lot of rewindable moments here, tread slowly.
When the perfect documentary about Social Control finally arrives, I'm guessing it will be built on this precise blueprint. This film might be
full of cosmetic flaws, but his argument is (mostly) methodical and devastating. A toast to Scott Noble.
As we all observe with stunning detachment the symbiotic continuance of Bush-Obama Democratic-Republican support to the Wall Street looting of America led by Goldman Sachs, whose executives continue to “own” the Department of the Treasury and the Bank of New York (Federal Reserve), I believe it helpful to itemize some legitimate grievances that could inspire State by State nullification of federal mandates and regulations, and perhaps a few secessions, with Cascadia, Vermont, Hawaii, and Alaska being well positioned to abandon a compact that no longer serves the United STATES of America, nor We the People.
I am indebted to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and founder of the Middlebury Institute, for teaching me about the urgency and relevance of the secessionist movements, and the detailed reflections that they have published, reflections that I point to here for the common good.
Core Point: Liberty can only survive if political power is returned from the banks and corporations that have corrupted the federal government, to local communities and States. The American Empire is no longer a nation or a republic, but has become a tyrant aggressive abroad and despotic at home.
The Burlington Declaration of 2006 (5 points)
Core Point: Any political entity has the right to separate itself from a larger body of which it is a part and peaceably to establish its independence as a free and legitimate state in the eyes of the world. Governments are instituted among peoples, deriving their just powers power from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the legitimate goals of life, liberty, prosperity, and self-determination, it is the right of the people in democratic fashion to aleter or abolish it, and to institute new government in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
The Logic of Secession: Three Tines to a Trident (A Manifesto by Kirkpatrick Sale)
Core Point: In the face of a rigged game in which two parties have conspired to corrupt, manipulate, and generally monopolize power, third party politics will not work. Only secession will allow for the emergence of a restored Republic once the federal government and its two-party tyranny are made irrelevant (and starved of revenue).
In Defense of Vermont's Secession from the Union (A Manifesto by Keith Brunner)
Core Point: Vermont was its own country before it joined the Union, and nothing in the Constitution of the United STATES of America precludes secession from this voluntary compact [Lincoln violated the Constitution in multiple ways, most Americans simply have not learned the truth of the matter]. The American Empire is economically, politically, cultural, and especially environmentally unsustainable, and far from fixing itself, is just getting worse. When a government of people who have no moral authority are in the possession of enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, in the position to dominate the global economy for their own interests, and continually and foolishly pace the needs of the “economic system” above the needs of the natural world, the time for action cannot be put off any longer.
In sound support of the above, I have itemized a list of the behaviors and conditions that have inspired anti-Americanism. Each is, without exception, a betrayal of the public trust and grounds for abolishing the present political criminal enterprise that has hijacked the federal government and the public treasury on behalf of its banking and corporate masters. Each of these high crimes and misdemeanors justifying impeachment is derived from one or more works on non-fiction.
A harvest of lies and a complete lack of intelligence
Always, without exception, failure to invest in peace in the aftermath of war
Axis of Evil #1: poverty, disease, and ignorance
Axis of Evil #2: US support for 42 of 44 dictators, idiocy on the other two (Cuba, North Korea)
Scientists have partially reversed age-related degeneration in mice, an achievement that suggests a new approach for tackling similar disorders in people.
By tweaking a gene, the researchers reversed brain disease and restored the sense of smell and fertility in prematurely aged mice. Previous experiments with calorie restriction and other methods have shown that aspects of aging can be slowed. This appears to be the first time that some age-related problems in animals have actually been reversed.
Phi Beta Iota: Utterly fascinating in isolation. However, in the context of the fragmentation of knowledge and the incoherence of policy, this kind of development is frightening in the absence of a draconian move away from stove-pipe and inherently corrupt (again, integrity is about coherence, not honor per se) governance, and toward comprehensive design that nurtures all humans, all minds, all the time.
Rather than seeking to stabilize Pakistan, General David Petraeus has been irresponsibly lighting matches with his shortsighted use of Special Forces and drone strikes
by Fred Branfman
EXCERPT 1: But rather than seeking to stabilize Pakistan, General David Petraeus has, incredibly, been irresponsibly lighting matches through his shortsighted and relentless effort to secure Afghanistan by using U.S. forces and drone strikes, and pressuring the Pakistani Army to attack Taliban “sanctuaries” in Pakistan’s northwest provinces. Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's High Commissioner to London for the past 16 years and a pillar of the Establishment, has recently stated that U.S. drone and gunship attacks in Pakistan have “set the country on fire” and threatened that such acts could eventually lead to attacks on U.S. personnel in Pakistan. Petraeus has disastrously miscalculated. The more “progress” he tries to show in Afghanistan, the more he weakens the U.S. position in far more important Pakistan.
EXCERPT 2: The single most important — yet surprisingly ignored — revelation of Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars, is that Petraeus and the Obama team never discussed how their strategy for attacking Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan was weakening the Pakistani state. Woodward also makes clear that it is Petraeus, not Obama, who is driving U.S. policy in “Af-Pak.” CIA Director Leon Panetta declared that “no Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it. So just do it. Do what they say,” according to the book. Petraeus’ power derives from America’s unconscious need for a military hero and his perceived and overblown success in Iraq. But this perception has blinded normally sensible observers to his disastrous performance in Pakistan since becoming Centcom commander in October 2008.
Tip of the Hat to John Steiner via E-Mail.
Phi Beta Iota: the author has pulled together a number of linked references and this is a useful article narrowly focused. He missed the larger picture, the fact that Obama has no strategy and no brain trust (the emphasis being on brains in touch with reality). Obama will get his Wall Street reward on his present course, but he is neither leading nor serving the nation with his ideologically passive-aggressive incoherence across the board–nothing serious on all ten threats to humanity, nothing serious on all twelve core policies, an intelligence community that is pathologically expensive and ineffective, and a Pentagon that is so out of control as to be a cancer on the public blood, treasure, and spirit. these are all good people trapped in a bad system–they desperately need a “wake-up call” and we are not sure that is achievable at this point.
DuckDuckGo, vastly better than Google in its presentation, suggested removing the hyphen and that improved the results.
Based on all of the resources available to the Phi Beta Iota team, we believe that inter-state conflict happens due to artificial scarcities imposed by corrupt elites, and the failure of the elites since World War II to focus on educating the public to achieve collective intelligence capable of creating a prosperous world at peace. For one third of what we spend on war (which enriches banks, not people) we could provide every person on the planet with free cell phone and call center access for life (education one cell call at a time), and thereby–with accountability through transparency–create infinite wealth by leveraging the five billion poor whose annual economy is FOUR TIMES LARGER than that of the one billion rich. This is a mind-set change, it is NOT about money.
November 30, 2010 – Treasures of Connecticut Libraries allows libraries to digitize, for free, up to 100 items in their collection, and then to upload their collection to a CONTENTdm site managed by the state library in Hartford. This collaboration is providing a relatively inexpensive model for libraries that want to expand awareness of their collections and demonstrate their value to a wider public.
We found this information on Library Journal in their article, “In Connecticut, a Small Model of Collaboration.” The project now has 26 participating libraries and their partners, and the searchable collection includes historical photographs, maps, postcards, videos and more.
Welfare states around the world will be forced by hard budgetary constraints to reconsider their current model of provision. The state needs to redefine its relationship with individuals and, crucially, with communities. It must find a way of re-endowing communities with independence and self-sufficiency, of giving them the wherewithal to transform themselves and their neighborhoods. The starting point is rethinking how it can leverage and direct not only its revenue budgets but – as this paper will discuss in detail – also its capital assets in a way that broadens and deepens social action and civic participation.
The opportunity for this new relationship in the UK has arrived sooner than expected or hoped. Given the extent of budgetary cuts, a large proportion of the public estate is no longer sustainable in its current form. We now face an unprecedented mass divestment of state assets, which among other things is likely to include: • Libraries. • Swimming pools. • Community centres. • Public spaces. • Council offices. • Courts. • Police stations. • Prison buildings. • The road network. • British Waterways. • RDA, MoD and Whitehall assets. • Ports.
In the years to come, a huge amount of this wealth will suddenly cease to be public and there is a real risk that such assets will not only be privatised (as during the 1980s) but privatised in such a way as to reinforce existing inequalities of wealth. There is a danger that the net result will be a rent seekers’ paradise, where vested interests triumph over communal need and wealth flows backwards to the already established and upwards to the already wealthy.
We believe that the opposite is possible. Public assets can – and, wherever desirable, should – become community assets, owned mutually or by individual shareholders or stakeholders in association with communities. These public goods can, if properly directed and organised, capitalise both civil society and the bottom 10 per cent of society which currently has negative net wealth.
