Exploding the myth of "War Hero" McCain

I like what "BryklynLibrul" has to say at the yglesias page linked in the above post -

"Since the Wesley Clark episode I’ve wondered why the MSM has played along with the outrageous lies and smears, the stupid myths about McCain, the legitimization of Corsi, etc. And the only answer I can come up with is that they believe that a McCain victory is better for their careers, as it would preserve the status quo and show the uppity blogosphere Who’s Really Boss. Obama’s defeat defeats the blogosphere. And the Jake Tappers and the Charlie Gibsons and the Cokie Robertses love love love their careers above all else."

And this from dougR:

"When McCain reminds us all of his prisoner-of-war status, what he’s really saying is, YOU OWE ME, BUSTER–in effect, looking each and every American in the eye and saying no matter what, remember, YOU OWE ME. And the MSM is looking at each others’ flabby candy-asses and thinking, well, yeah, maybe we do. Maybe we should ennoble this guy, since he went somewhere we don’t know for sure we could hack.

I think that’s the sum total of it. And I think it’s about time Obama started sending out surrogates calling out McCain for deflecting tough questions he can’t answer by hiding behind his POW status. That, “my friends,” is actually a cowardly and ignoble tactic, and it’s become a tic of his. There’s nothing remotely heroic in the way he’s waging this campaign; just the opposite, in fact."

Why isn't anyone, any surrogate for the Obama campaign bringing up McCain's deep involvement in the Keating 5 Savings & Loan scandal of the 80s that cost the country billions?

and - MOST IMPORTANTLY -

Everyone - Please read this excellent exploding of the hero myth by Douglas Valentine - in the June 13-15 '08 edition of "Counterpunch" -

here

The War Lover

Consortiumblog: Why McCain May Well Win

Consortiumblog: Why McCain May Well Win

Conservatives and Liberals

I posted this at alternet in regard to a post about the shooter at the Universalist Unitarian church who was out to get liberals and gays for ruining the country:

I Know that Ken Wilber has stated that conservatives blame problems on individual responsibility (the inside) of people and culture and liberals blame the problems on the outside - unfair social structures and social/economic oppression (although liberals also blame problems on conservatives' GREED, very much an "inside" trait/problem), and that both responsibility and equal rights, fair distribution of opportunities/resources are to blame/are the answers, but I can't help but believe that progressives are more evolved than conservatives.

Quote
---------
They [right-wing propagandists and corporate plutocrats] are at a lower level of consciousness and development than that of liberals, progressives, and greens. We progressives have to stop believing that ranking and holarchy (holistic hierarchy) is politically incorrect. This is a postmodern idea that has outlived its usefulness in deconstructing social darwinism and imperialism. The next move up the spiral is integral pluralism, beyond relativistic pluralism.

The right-wingers are hyper-individualists who have not arrived at a higher, bigger, deeper view of reality as interdependent (us with the environment, and each of us with each other.)

Unquote
---------

New Book: "The Wrecking Crew"

From the Publisher, Metropolitan Books:

From the author of the landmark bestseller What’s the Matter with Kansas?, a jaw-dropping investigation of the decades of deliberate—and lucrative—conservative misrule

In his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and corrupt Washington those politicians have given us.

Casting back to the early days of the conservative revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war. Washington itself has been remade into a golden landscape of super-wealthy suburbs and gleaming lobbyist headquarters—the wages of government-by-entrepreneurship practiced so outrageously by figures such as Jack Abramoff.

It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as the permanent creed of state.

Stamped with Thomas Frank’s audacity, analytic brilliance, and wit, The Wrecking Crew is his most revelatory work yet—and his most important.

About the Author:

Thomas Frank is the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God. The founding editor of The Baffler and a contributing editor at Harper’s, Frank has received a Lannan award and been a guest columnist for The New York Times. He lives, of course, in Washington, D.C.

From Lightbulbs to Leadership

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff

The "free market" idol

The absurd idolatry (blind faith, basically) in the "free" market is (probably) an amber myth embedded in orange culture/society. It's not rational, although, its believers believe with Ayn Rand certainty that it is preeminently so. The "free" market doesn't exist. There are structures of power and privilege and oppression that are quite real. Get real, fools. Another thing: if we leave all decisions to the "market" we conveniently opt out of our moral responsibilities such as rational use of resources, social justice, on and on.

With Apologies to the late Norman Mailer

WHY ARE WE IN IRAQ?



lNew Contracts Reflect Continued Presence in Iraq

Monday 02 June 2008

»

by: Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

photo
A Blackwater security contractor in Mosul, Iraq. The depth of US involvement in Iraq is illustrated by a handful of new contract proposals made public in May.
(Photo: Jacob Silberberg / AP)

The depth of US involvement in Iraq and the difficulty the next president will face in pulling personnel out of the country are illustrated by a handful of new contract proposals made public in May. The contracts call for new spending, from supplying mentors to officials with Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries to establishing a U.S.-marshal-type system to protect Iraqi courts. Contractors would provide more than 100 linguists with secret clearances and deliver food to Iraqi detainees at a new, U.S.-run prison.

The proposals reflect multiyear commitments. The mentor contract notes that the U.S. military "desires for both Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense to become mostly self-sufficient within two years," a time outside some proposals for U.S. combat troop withdrawal. The mentors sought would "advise, train [and] assist ... particular Iraqi officials" who work in the Ministry of Defense, which runs the Iraqi army, or the Ministry of Interior, which runs the police and other security units.

The mentors will assist an U.S. military group that previously began to implement what are described as "core processes and systems," such as procurement, contracting, force development, management and budgeting, and public affairs.

Mentors would have to make a one-year commitment, with options for two one-year contracts after that. As a reminder of what they are getting into, the mentors must supply their helmets, protective body armor and gas masks, according to the announcement.

The marshals service would be organized by the State Department's bureau responsible for developing rule of law programs in Iraq. It "has plans to create an Iraqi service to be known as the Judicial Protection Service (JPS), modeled to some degree after the U.S. Marshals Service, that will ensure the safe conduct of judicial proceedings and protect judges, witnesses, court staff, and court facilities," a notice published last month said.

State's plan is to hire a contractor as a judicial security program manager, who would work out details of how such a service could be put together for the Iraqis. That person or group would develop not only the mission, size and structure of an Iraqi JPS service, but also the personnel, budgeting and training materials necessary, plus "all other aspects of creating the new organization so that the project can be contracted out."

In short, State wants a contractor to put together all the elements so the department can contract the project to another contractor.

State also is looking to hire a contractor to provide "100 plus linguists" who would work for a year each, with as many as four one-year options to follow.

Arabic and Kurdish translators are sought. "Native or near native capability in the foreign language and an excellent command of the English language are required," according to the notice. They will work not only at State's Baghdad embassy, but also at regional offices and with Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

Another contract noticed last week previews the opening, apparently in September, of a U.S.-run prison, now labeled a Theater Internment Facility Reconciliation Center, which is to be located at Camp Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad. The new contract calls for providing food for "up to 5,000 detainees" and will also cover 150 Iraqi nationals, who apparently will work at the facility. The contract is to run for one year, with an option year to follow.

The U.S. holds about 20,000 Iraqis at two facilities today, mostly in Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and the rest at Camp Cropper near Baghdad. Along with the facility at Camp Taji, which is expected to hold Iraqis detained in Baghdad, another new reconciliation center, mainly for Sunnis, is being built at Ramadi in Anbar province, where many of these detainees were captured.

In March, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, who runs the detainee program, told reporters that, on average. Iraqi detainees remain in a U.S. facility for 11 months.

But that might not be the case for the roughly 9,000 Iraqis whom he described as having "a very rigorous view of an ideology that we would broadly categorize as al-Qaeda." They are headed to the new reconciliation centers for what could be longer stays.

-------

National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines - but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them to fineprint@washpost.com.


© 2008 truthout


--------------

my notes:

$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Blackwater and associated defense contractors (and their shareholders, of course)

All the translators and linguists except the gay ones, who(m) the administration have purged years ago.

Links to some of my favorite sites

I just made a list of some of my favorite sites for newstrust.net, which I just joined, so I figured I'd post them here too:

http://www.integralinstitute.org Integral Institute
http://www.alternet.org Alternet
http://www.democracynow.org Democracy Now!
http://www.truthdig.com Truthdig
http://www.truthout.org Truthout
http://www.shambhala.com Shambhala
http://www.huffingtonpost.com The Huffington Post
http://www.amazon.com Amazon
http://www.kenwilber.com Ken Wilber's website
http://www.genpo.org/Big_Mind_Big_Heart/Home.html Big Mind
http://integralpraxis.blogspot.com/ Integral Praxis
http://www.naomiklein.org/main Naomi Klein

Enjoy and explore!

Synergize - I'm trying to.....

The Two Party System is Woefully Inadequate

First two paragraphs from a recent blog post

by "jurassicpork" re Dunkin Donuts caving in

to Michelle Malkin and pulling Rachel Ray's

commericals off the air, because of a

Palestinian style scarf she was wearing:

"But consider that this marginal, hysterical

activism of a handful of jerkoff right wing

bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Chuckie

Johnson actually moves multibillion dollar

corporations such as Dunkin Donuts while

the entire power of Congress cannot even

get Blackwater Worldwide, Halliburton, KBR

or the five largest petroleum cartels to even

admit the truth or to get them to curb their evil

intentions by even an iota.

We've come to expect that right wingers are

dumber than some yeast infections I've seen

but somehow it always shocks me that

corporations the size of Dunkin' Donuts still

jump on their PR stool when these mental

mice roar at them from the yawning chasm of

cyberspace."

Your last two paragraphs are amazing (in the

sense of "shocking"), until you remember the

old adage "Follow the money!"

98% of Congress is being well-paid in one

way or another not to disturb the crimes of

Blackwater, KBR, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, etc.

I think it's time to read (and more than just

read) David Sirota's new book "The

Uprising".


Sidebar - re the corrupt Democratic party -

Two parties aren't enough to reflect the

various political levels (moral and otherwise).

Therea are minority <i>progressive</i>

democrats and majority DLC corporatist

triangulating "centrist" democrats, and they

do not belong in the same party. I propose

that progressives join with the Green Party,

whose platform is nearly identical with

progressives' to begin to build a new

higher-level party in the U.S., as has already

been done in Europe, and anti-big-coporatist,

pro-co-operative, pro-interdependent holistic

ecological-peace, social justice party.

Tiger Woods' Partnership with Chevron Legitimizes the Worst of Corporate America

Tiger Woods' Partnership with Chevron Legitimizes the Worst of Corporate America

By
Dave Zirin, The Nation. Posted May 26, 2008.

Tiger Woods is perhaps the most famous, and most dominant, athlete in the world today. The 32-year-old golfer with the multicultural background he once proudly described as "Cablinasian" has somehow accomplished the impossible: made golf on a Sunday must-see TV.

Woods is a trailblazer and already a legend for his ability to perform when the spotlight is at its hottest. But he has also established a reputation for reticence when confronted with the real world off the greens. For all his cultural capital, Woods has refused to take stands on issues that should hit close to home, such as restricted golf courses, or even when the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman suggested young PGA players "lynch him in a back alley" in a "joke" about how they might overcome his dominance. Tiger has largely maintained the tight-lipped silence of a Benedictine monk.

After the lynching comment, ESPN's Scoop Jackson became so frustrated with this disciplined quietude he wrote, "Because of who he is, Tiger Woods has the power to make people listen. Not just hear his words--but embrace what he has to say.... It's a stand he needs to take because people who change the world eventually have to take stands. Whether strong or silent, good or evil, they take stands not to prove their beliefs, but to rectify a situation or condition."

His defenders have always said that behind the scenes Woods has been an agent for change, and that he shouldn't be criticized just because he does his good deeds without media fanfare. They say he wields that influence through his nonprofit Tiger Woods Foundation. Go to the website, and a virtual Woods walks right onto your screen and welcomes you to a place where "kids can achieve anything." The site boasts: "more than 10 million young people have benefited from the Tiger Woods Foundation since its inception in 1996. What started out with limited access throughout America, now reaches out to young people around the world."

Yet now the Foundation is "reaching around the world" in a way that has human rights activists concerned about a business partnership that smells like sulfur.

The Tiger Woods Foundation has entered into an extensive five-year partnership with Chevron Corporation, with the oil and energy giant becoming the title sponsor of the Tiger Woods Foundation World Challenge Golf Tournament.

"Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate," Woods said in a press release on April 3. And Chevron's executive vice president chimed in, "Chevron, Tiger and the Tiger Woods Foundation share similar values...as well as a deep commitment to make a difference in local communities."

They have certainly "made a difference in local communities," but it's nothing they should be bragging about, and certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached. Chevron is in full partnership with the Burmese military regime on the Yadana gas pipeline project, the single greatest source of revenue for the military, estimated at nearly $1 billion in 2007, nearly half of all the country's revenue. These are the same people who are blocking international aid workers from assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The death toll has been estimated at 78,000, but this number can explode as disease spreads and help isn't allowed through the military lines. Even the US State Department has called the actions of the government "appalling."

Ka Hsaw Wa, co-founder and executive director of EarthRights International, wrote in an open letter to Woods, "I myself have spoken to victims of forced labor, rape, and torture on Chevron's pipeline--if you heard what they said to me, you too would understand how their tragic stories stand in stark contrast to Chevron's rhetoric about helping communities." ERI's request to meet with Woods or someone from the foundation has been met with silence

But while the Burmese junta's crimes are localized in Southeast Asia, Chevron is global. Lawsuits have been issued against Chevron's toxic waste dumping in Alaska, Canada, Angola, California. Then there's the matter of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste the company has been accused of dumping in the Amazon.

In a US District Court in San Francisco, the case of Bowoto v. Chevron, Nigerian plaintiffs have accused Chevron of actually arming and outfitting Nigerian oil security forces to shoot and kill protesters. Judge Susan Illston has refused to dismiss the case because, as Democracy Now! recently reported, "evidence show[s] direct links to Chevron officials."

When pressed for comment, Tiger Woods Foundation President Greg McLaughlin issued this statement to The Nation: "The Foundation's vision is to help young people reach their full potential. All our partners share in this vision, allowing us to make a positive impact in millions of young lives." That response, to very serious and very direct charges, is the golf equivalent of a triple bogey.

President McLaughlin should think more seriously about what Chevron is and what they do: they pollute, they destroy, they conspire with dictators, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Now they want to burnish their "brand" by partnering with Tiger Woods. Tiger's late father Earl, once said of his son, "He will transcend this game...and bring to the world...a humanitarianism...which has never been known before. The world will be a better place to live in...by virtue of his existence...and his presence."

The partnership with Chevron makes a mockery of Earl Woods's hopes.

To use an analogy from a different sport, the ball is now in Tiger's court. Will he allow himself to be tamed by corporate interests, or will he roar?

Reply to Arianna Huffington's post re McCain and Women's Reproductive Rights

Believe me, being pro-birth control is an absolutely essential part of wanting to find solutions for the most urgent problem of our time, global warming. Becoming conscious stewards of our species' population on this planet is crucial to slowing down the need for and emissions of greenhouse gases, along with alleviating so many other ancillary problems. It's obvious to any thinking, moral person, not stuck (or hypocritically pretending to be stuck in medieval pre-rational thinking).

As for McCain's yelp of "No surrender!" today re the Iraqi War, I don't need to point out how absurd the whole premise of "winning" and "surrender" is re the war; I'd like to point out that this was the same language the war profiteers and others in the Johnson/Nixon admins. used re the Vietnam war. McSame is a dinosaur.

Reply to David Sirota's column

Although I know there is still some bitterness about their putting Nader up for president in 2000 (and I was one of the bitter), The Green Party of America's platform and agenda is almost identical to progressives'.

I know it's a dream, but why not combine the greens with the PROGRESSIVE democrats, NOT the neo-liberal conservative triangulating ones?

I don't know how to facilitate this, but I wanted to put it out there for consideration.

The next level in consciousness and social structure from (and this is a Ken Wilber/Spiral Dynamics Integral concept) is

from
orange/corporate/competitive/independent/man vs nature/nationalistic

to
green/ cooperative (not corporate) business and social institutions/interdependent/man as part of and steward of nature/planetarisitc (planetary) (not a return to a blue dogmatic centralized socialism aka Marxism).

So, in a very profound way - progressive = green.

David, I hope your book tour is very successful; I recommend you to all my friends. Keep up your great work!

Don Harris
racetoinfinity@gmail.com

Political Notes

McCain is trying to frame the war (in Iraq) as "I won't surrender [as Obama will]" (my words between the brackets). This is on the old nationalistic ethnocentric level, not the worldcentric (planetary) level, old-fashioned narrow-visioned, just as in the war in Vietnam.

--------

John (the "old" "straight-talk" "get the lobbyists of out politcs") McCain doesn't want any press (media) at his fund raisers. I'm glad Obama is picking up on this P I'm hearing him now. Apparently, Bush is there - no cameras allowed.

Greg Palast on The War for Oil

y Greg Palast for TomPaine.com/OurFuture.org

[New York, May 22, 2008.]

I can’t make this up:

In a hotel room in Brussels, the chief executives of the world’s top
oil companies unrolled a huge map of the Middle East, drew a fat, red
line around Iraq and signed their names to it.

The map, the red line, the secret signatures. It explains this war.
It explains this week’s rocketing of the price of oil to $134 a barrel.

It happened on July 31, 1928, but the bill came due now.

Barack Obama knows this. Or, just as important, those crafting his
policies seem to know this. Same for Hillary Clinton’s team. There
could be no more vital difference between the Republican and Democratic
candidacies. And you won’t learn a thing about it on the news from the
Fox-holes.

Let me explain.

In 1928, oil company chieftains (from Anglo-Persian Oil, now British
Petroleum, from Standard Oil, now Exxon, and their Continental
counterparts) were faced with a crisis: falling prices due to rising
supplies of oil; the same crisis faced by their successors during the
Clinton years, when oil traded at $22 a barrel.

The solution then, as now: stop the flow of oil, squeeze the market,
raise the price. The method: put a red line around Iraq and declare
that virtually all the oil under its sands
would remain there, untapped. Their plan: choke supply, raise prices
rise, boost profits. That was the program for 1928. For 2003. For 2008.

Again and again, year after year, the world price of oil has been
boosted artificially by keeping a tight limit on Iraq’s oil output.
Methods varied. The 1928 “Redline” agreement held, in various forms,
for over three decades. It was replaced in 1959 by quotas imposed by
President Eisenhower. Then Saudi Arabia and OPEC kept Iraq, capable of
producing over 6 million barrels a day, capped at half that, given an
export quota equal to Iran’s lower output.

In 1991, output was again limited, this time by a new red line: B-52
bombings by Bush Senior’s air force. Then came the Oil Embargo followed
by the “Food for Oil” program. Not much food for them, not much oil for
us.

In 2002, after Bush Junior took power, the top ten oil companies
took in a nice $31 billion in profits. But then, a miracle fell from
the sky. Or, more precisely, the 101st Airborne landed. Bush declared,
“Bring’m on!” and, as the dogs of war chewed up the world’s second
largest source of oil, crude doubled in two years to an astonishing $40
a barrel and those same oil companies saw their profits triple to $87
billion.

In response, Senators Obama and Clinton propose something wrongly
called a “windfall” profits tax on oil. But oil industry profits didn’t
blow in on a breeze. It is war, not wind, that fills their coffers. The
beastly leap in prices is nothing but war profiteering, hiking prices
to take cruel advantage of oil fields shut by bullets and blood.

I wish to hell the Democrats would call their plan what it is: A war
profiteering tax. War is profitable business – if you’re an oil man.
But somehow, the public pays the price, at the pump and at the
funerals, and the oil companies reap the benefits.

Indeed, the recent engorgement in oil prices and profits goes right
back to Bush-McCain “surge.” The Iraq government attack on a Basra
militia was really nothing more than Baghdad’s leaping into a gang war
over control of Iraq’s Southern oil fields and oil-loading docks.
Moqtada al-Sadr’s gangsters and the government-sponsored greedsters of
SCIRI (the Supreme Council For Islamic Revolution In Iraq) are battling
over an estimated $5 billion a year in oil shipment kickbacks, theft
and protection fees.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the surge-backed civil warring
has cut Iraq’s exports by up to a million barrels a day. And that
translates to slashing OPEC excess crude capacity by nearly half.

Result: ka-BOOM in oil prices and ka-ZOOM in oil profits. For 2007,
Exxon recorded the highest annual profit, $40.6 billion, of any
enterprise since the building of the pyramids. And that was BEFORE the
war surge and price surge to over $100 a barrel.

It’s been a good war for Exxon and friends. Since George Bush began
to beat the war-drum for an invasion of Iraq, the value of Exxon’s
reserves has risen – are you ready for this? – by $2 trillion.

Obama’s war profiteering tax, or “oil windfall profits” tax, would
equal just 20% of the industry’s charges in excess of $80 a barrel.
It’s embarrassingly small actually, smaller than every windfall tax
charged by every other nation. (Ecuador, for example, captures up to
99% of the higher earnings).

Nevertheless, oilman George W. Bush opposes it as does Bush’s man
McCain. Senator McCain admonishes us that the po’ widdle oil companies
need more than 80% of their windfall so they can explore for more oil.
When pigs fly, Senator. Last year, Exxon spent $36 billion of its $40
billion income on dividends and special payouts to stockholders in
tax-free buy-backs. Even the Journal called Exxon’s capital investment
spending “stingy.”

At today’s prices Obama’s windfall tax, teeny as it is, would bring
in nearly a billion dollars a day for the US Treasury. Clinton’s plan
is similar. Yet the press’ entire discussion of gas prices is shifted
to whether the government should knock some sales tax pennies off the
oil companies’ pillaging at the pump.

More important than even the Democrats’ declaring that oil company
profits are undeserved, is their implicit understanding that the
profits are the spoils of war.

And that’s another reason to tax the oil industry’s ill-gotten gain.
Vietnam showed us that foreign wars don’t end when the invader can no
longer fight, but when the invasion is no longer profitable.

*****************

Greg Palast is the author of, “Trillion Dollar Babies,” on Iraq and oil, published in his New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse.

Palast is currently working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on
investigation the latest attacks on the right to vote in America.
Support this effort and receive a signed copy of Armed Madhouse from the author at Palast Investigative Fund.

View Palast’s commentary on oil and war windfalls on Air America Radio’s Palast Report – on YouTube here.

Things to do....

I suspect that Ken Wilber's AQAL theory and AQAL (Integral-AQAL) critical history provides a lot of the answers to these quandaries to be solved and to be worked on.

- How and why did the nascent green emergence of consciousness and behavior/structures get muddled and not succeed in blossoming from the mid-seventies until now (the late 00s)?

Some reasons: Pre-trans confusion was rampant in the late sixties and early seventies. As Wilber has stated, pre-cognitive feeling was confused with trans-cognitive feeling-attention vision, to cite one prominent example. The European unhealthy dissociation that occured during the 17-18th centuries Enlightenment threw the "baby" of the religious/Spiritual line out with the "bathwater" of dogmatic pre-rational myth. Another dissociation (another aspect of the same pathology) (and this may go back much farther than the European enlightenment period) was the dissociation of mind and body, rather than the healthy DIFFERENTIATION of (also science, art, religion, and government) of mind and body.

Rock is a good example - green and second tier rock were about re-integrating the body and feelings and transforming "upwards" to a new green and second-tier level of consciousness and manifestation - a lot of the psychedelic bands - The Airplane, The Beatles, The Dead, The Who, many others,

kleptocray, plutocracy, and corporatocracy defined

klep·toc·ra·cy (klp-tkr-s)
n. pl. klep·toc·ra·cies
A government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.

------------------

plu·toc·ra·cy (pl-tkr-s)
n. pl. plu·toc·ra·cies
1. Government by the wealthy.
2. A wealthy class that controls a government.
3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.
[Greek ploutokrati : ploutos, wealth; see pleu- in Indo-European roots + -krati, -cracy.]

------------------------

Corporatocracy
-----------------

Corporatocracy (sometimes corporocracy) is a neologism coined by proponents of the Global Justice Movement to describe a government bowing to pressure from corporate entities.

Practice
---------
According to the Global Justice Movement, while anyone can become a shareholder in principle, in reality it is frequently only the wealthy who can afford to own enough stock to directly influence the voting (and hence the activities) of a large corporation. As a result, the corporatocracy might be considered somewhat synonymous with plutocracy, government by the rich.

Some argue that a real corporatocracy can only appear when and if a government makes it legal to bribe politicians. According to this argument, that quickly makes politicians very corporate-friendly, and makes it easy for corporations to pass laws as they see fit. Supporters of this view in the United States believe the allowance for campaign contributions has created a situation allowing for pervasive regulatory capture, offering the contributions that prompted Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as evidence. Also, many supporters of this view argue that when the major media outlets are controlled by large corporations, access to information tends to become limited to what serves corporate interests, and corporate interests in turn are able to define the national political agenda. Finally, according to this view, when the majority of wealth of the politicians is invested into corporations, that gives politicians incentive to support the corporations.

According to supporters of this view, the nature of corporations and stock market investment makes some of the desires of corporations unexpected. For example, a national corporation in a purely national industry (non international) would be less worried about a universal regulation which would decrease profits, than a regulation that would target that individual company, since investors would be more likely to divest in the second case.

Some critics of this term argue that the term has no real meaning in terms of political theory, arguing that a corporation is nothing more than a body of individuals, ruled by a governing body (elected by its shareholders) and executives appointed by that body. As such, it is argued to have as much a right as any other body of people to exercise powers. Pursuing the overriding shareholder interest in corporate profitability generally guides the actions of corporate governing bodies, and it is in the pursuit of this interest that corporations exercise their financial and marketplace power in order to influence public policy. However, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Marsh v. Alabama (1946) that a corporation that acts like a government should be treated as one.

The U.S. as a corporatocracy
----------------------------------
There are those who suggest and point to alleged evidence of corporatocracy within the U.S. government by looking at U.S. history with the actions of Sanford B. Dole in Hawaii, William Howard Taft and the Nicaragua Canal, Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Operation Ajax allegedly in support of oil interests and Operation PBSUCCESS in support of United Fruit Company. They may believe Richard M. Nixon played a role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende Gossens to attempt to prevent the Chilean nationalization of copper, on the grounds that nationalization crimped U.S. based Anaconda Copper and Kennecott Utah Copper.

Those disagreeing with the above would argue the United States government was "protecting" America from Marxist governments, "freeing" people of those countries, acting against undemocratic governments, protecting United States citizens or acting for a variety of reasons other than supporting corporate corruption.

The term however is more accurately used to describe actions of Corporations interested in maintaining laws they consider positive for their interests and thus makes it a question of resources to spend (it can be cheaper to give money to a few individuals than to bow to strict laws that cost a lot).

Corporatocracy is also used by John Perkins in his 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man to describe a system of governance controlled by "big corporations, international banks, and government" (Perkins / Plume paperback edition, 94). Harking back to the "military-industrial complex," Perkins claims the corporatocracy is manifested in the following cycle: the World Bank issues loans to developing nations to pay for large-scale development projects; contracts are then doled out to a handful of U.S. engineering firms; as a result, these countries become ensnared in a net of interest payments and debts they cannot repay. U.S. corporations benefit through increased profits, and the U.S. government benefits through securing its political clout and control over developing countries with vast natural resources. According to Perkins, the majority of people in those countries do not benefit since a large portion of their country's budget goes toward servicing the national debt instead of improving living conditions.

Perkins claims that the convergence between big corporations, international banks, and government - according to him, the three pillars of corporatocracy - allows "economic elite" to move easily between these sectors. He offers several examples, including that of Vice President and former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney (Perkins / Plume paperback edition, 91).

Fiction
--------
The concept has been used several times in literary fiction. Two recent examples include David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004) and Max Barry's Jennifer Government (2003). Both are dystopian novels which portray the complete political and social dominance of corporations. Mitchell uses the term Corpocracy. Both novels can be interpreted as making a satirical comment on the current unchecked power of corporations in our societies.

Main article: Megacorp

Examples
Those who discuss coporatocracy often tender Singapore or Chile under Augusto Pinochet, where the state supports a strong free market, with weak and sometimes nonexistent political freedom as examples of Corporatocracy. Although the corporations do not rule Singapore, the state often supports them.
See also

This entry is related to, but not included in the Political ideologies series or one of its sub-series. Other related articles can be found at the .

* Anarcho-capitalism
* Corporate abuse
* Corporate police state
* Corporatism
* Crony capitalism
* Kleptocracy
* Juristic person
* Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
* Megacorp
* The Corporation
* Captive State

Sources

* Perkis, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Plume Books 2006 ISBN 0452287081
* Current Era
* Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
* Canadian Action Party


form of government is a term that refers to the set of political institutions by which a state is organized in order to exert its powers over a political community.[1] Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government".
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Anarchism (from Greek αναρχία , "without archons," "without rulers")[1] is a political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which reject compulsory government[2] and support its elimination,[3]
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aristocracy refers to a form of government where power is held by a small number of individuals from a social elite or from noble families. The transmission of power is often hereditary.
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Authoritarianism describes a form of social control characterized by strict obedience to the authority of a state or organization, often maintaining and enforcing control through the use of oppressive measures. Authoritarian regimes are strongly hierarchical.
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[Greek kleptein, to steal + -cracy.]

That's Entertainment - regressive city

"Iron Man" starring one of the smart actors of our time is off to an all-time smash hit success as of the end of this weekend. Marvel comics superhero tale has already taken in more than $200 million worldwide. They're planning "The Incredible Hulk" with another brainy actor, Edward Norton, soon.

Sad, that we are regressed to mythic-membership center in our entertainment - superhero mythic power gods - so regressed even from the fifties. God almighty! This is what Downey and Norton are up to? Well, I'm sure it pays well, and I guess they're like most of us nowadays - it's too late - the earth is gonna burn up and be miserable in 50 years, so take the money and run ????

So sad and pathetic! Let's all be 12 year olds again.

the idea is to feeling-attention love energy

living in the electric energy LoveLight, co-creating it because you are choosing it which is eternal and surrendering also...

so the practice becomes new systems of both interiroity and exterirority no matter the level - and yes we need more evolved and permanently transpersonal leaders, no matter who fascist that might appear to the sufrace dwellers - it's far from - it's leaders who have transcended ego and who are in a transpersonal network of care and concern for the planet - in raising the consciousness of masses of people through new instant cyber and other communications.

Start with "The Book" and "Up From Eden"....happy discovering....

The awakening to the knowledge of a path

or "the lovelight inner garden" as 19th century romantic might say....
and others now....

The error of relative pluralism is dooming the planet (among other factors)

The fact that most of the population including the

educated media does not (apparently) understand nor

acknowledge levels of awareness that are at play in all

of our politics and in our population is a huge error

that keeps the discourse chasing its tail in "Flatland"

(Ken Wilber's term) - (no depth). For instance, the evangelical Christians are at a lower, much more simplictic pre-rational level of awareness than rational atheists or pluralistic spiritual people, but the left is afraid to acknowledge that there are levels - each one more intelligent, comprehensive, and true that the ones below, because they are caught in relativistic pluralism, not integral pluralism. Ken Wilber is right that this (part of what he calls "Boomeritis") is a main contributor to our being "stuck" chasing our tails and not evolving (progressing) (in fact for the last seven years, reacting and going "backwards".)

Pigs at the Iraq war oil and defense related elite class blues

2:14 AM 4/23/2008

The Republicans have recruited a young Bob Redford clean-cut very good looking model like male Paris Hilton himbo to tout free market and no tax no regulation ideology. He must be a son of the rich or bought by them. This empty shell shills name is Reed - after his appearance on CNN was a snotty commercial for "Russell Investments" oh so daintily muted and tastefully quiet touting by Campbell Scott. Can the corporatoplutocratic big operators/outfits like TW/CNN live off of them - can our economy - ?? doubtful - they have wrung their own neck with their greed these last 7 years - Why didn't they rein in the neocons? Don't get it - except they must've been in on the big under examined profits from the war and have a great cache hidden away in foreign accounts now. But the people are angry and much more on to them now, thanks to the net and roots bloggers like myself.

Great Photo

"Reach for the Sky" by Perabl -

<a href="http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1173197584032751213WowQZg"><img src="http://thumb13.webshots.net/s/thumb4/9/75/84/173197584WowQZg_th.jpg" alt="Reach for the sky"></a>

Watching "Verdict with Dan Abrams" now

Don Siegelman (ex-gov. of Alabama) alleges that Karl Rove was substantially behind his false conviction. Who can be surprised? Who can not believe it?

-------------

I'm sure Phil Donahue's new film is good, but he is so off-point with his answers to Dan Abrahms's questions about the deception that led up to the war, and Cheney's dismissal of the American Public's massive disapproval of the war. See the transcript - I'll post his answers, and ones I think could have been better tomorrow, after the transcript is posted at msnbc.com

Integral Institute - does it have a slight 1st tier political right tilt bias?

I remain and ardent supporter of Ken's work and of the I.I.

I've long had a few qualms about a somewhat right-leaning bias, despite its wanting to be and succeeding to a great degree in being second-tier (transcending both political right and left).

Three points:

1) Ken's support for the Iraq War in 2002, when he failed to see the "Plan for a New American Century"'s plotters backward oil based imperialism at work.

2) The legitimization of Michael Chrichton's absurd (in my opinion) opinions about global warming, characterizing it as "a climate of fear"

3) Having john Mackee (as well as Chrichton) on the board. Mackee is a libertarian, not an integralist, and as the article below elucidates has gotten in some corrupt hot water of his own within the last few years.

I understand that the Integral Institute needs wealthy patrons, but let's have some balance - where are the progressive political voices?

-- insert ref. source here -

As today's New York Times reports Mackey was caught posting on Yahoo Finance's bulleting board under a pseudonym pumping up Whole Foods' stock and blasting its rival Wild Oats Markets. (Not content just to trick potential investors, he even praised his own coiffure: "I like Mackey's haircut. I think he looks cute!" he wrote under the pseudonym Rahobed, a corruption of Deborah, his wife's name.) The posts were discovered during a Federal Trade Commission case stemming from Whole Foods' attempt to acquire Wild Oats.

The libertarian philosophy that Mackey champions argues that government should butt out and let markets do their thing. But without government regulation, à la this FTC hearing, consumers and investors don't have the information they need to make informed choices. All too often, people who appear to be impartial tout products they have financial ties to. At the Department of Education, officials pushed a private student loan company they held shares in. Henry Blodgett of Merrill Lynch infamously pumped stocks on CNBC not because he thought they were good buys (he famously described one in an in-house e-mail as "a piece of shit") but in order to get those companies to do more business with Merrill Lynch.

Companies are supposed to compete by providing the best product at the best price for consumers and a legally-earned profit for investors, but greed has a tendency to get in the way. The business world attracts people who love money, so we need to count the proverbial silverware when they leave the dinner party. Temptation is everywhere in corporate America and businesspeople often cut corners or pull the wool over the eyes of consumers and investors. This temptation only grows stronger when conservatives are in power, gutting government watchdog agencies. Without government regulations governing conflicts of interest we get bloggers like Rahobed and touts like Henry Blodgett. Without the kind of strict anti-trust regulation libertarians abhor, companies tend towards monopoly and consumers get screwed. As John Mackey told his board members, according to FTC filings, buying Wild Oats would help the company "avoid nasty price wars in Portland (both Oregon and Maine), Boulder, Nashville and several other cities which will harm our gross margins and profitability."

The irony of Mackey's outing is delicious indeed. But shouldn't be surprised when libertarians, who after all preach that greed is good, are shown to be so greedy. And we shouldn't buy their self-serving rhetoric about deregulation.

Radical revamp-redit of my blog coming

I've been going over some old posts of mine, and have concluded that many need a major re-edit- some need expunging. Many entries are too "off the cuff" and not thought out. I will be doing this over the next few months (if anyone else out there is reading this - I wonder sometimes lol).

The blocks to publicly financed elections

Money does not equal free speech. Has it ever? Even in the misty-probably-misinterpreted or shallowly interpreted Founding Fathers' era, I don't believe Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton et al conisdered it so. Then we had the resurgent right put in the right-wing dolts we have now in the SCOTUS.

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I was hopin' it would work....

Beliefnet Daily Hindu Wisdom - 021908 -

"The body will be turned by the power of the spiritual consciousness into a true and fit and perfectly responsive instrument of the Spirit."

-Sri Aurobindo

I used to believe that too, but found out one can't heal bodymind traumas and "wounds", etc. holes., from above, not just by something in the vein of "bathing it in The Spiritual Love-Light" irradiating it, so to speak. Only that is not enough, unfortunately.

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I'm repeating myself for emphasis, because both of these are so important

If you want to know why religion has stalled at a pre-rational, pre-modern level, pls. read the genius Ken Wilber's book Integral Spirituality

--------

These articles by (perhaps another genius, or at least a very smart person) Steve Kirsch on global warming are must reading (although very depressing), even if you think you know what's going on - (His other articles are good, too, like his "Who would make the best President?") -

Steve Kirsch's website

It's much worse than we think, folks

These articles by Steve Kirsch on global warming are must reading, even if you think you know what's going on - (His other articles are good, too, like his "Who would make the best President?") -

Steve Kirsch's website

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"I see a fourfold vision" - Blake

Click on above graphic/table/chart to enlarge.

------------------------------------------------------

From "visionspace"'s fractals albums at webshots.com





According to Ken Wilber, evolution tetra-evolves in four quadrants. All space-time occasions have four quadrants . Evolution spirals up this holonic "ladder" from the Big Bang to perfect manifestation as Spirit (Godhead), while, paradoxically, at all points, during the whole process transcends space and time in already perfect FULL REALIZATION.

See 1st graphic (blogger will not let me put it here, for some reason - )there are still improvements to be made in free personal blogging) - it's page 35 of his book "Integral Spirituality" (2006).

Recommndations

The post below must be credited largely to the ideas of Ken Wilber, whom I've followed and admired for 27 years.

I want to recommend two other sources for personal growth and inspiration today.

1) The Hoffman-Quadrinity process - read this essay about freeing oneself from the past and one's "false" conditioned self.

2) The book "Big Mind, Big Heart" by Dennis Genpo Merzel, a simply written and profoundly transformative book and CD.

Fear and Loathing since 9/11

Since 9/11, people in America have used money or have regressed to mythic-membership dogmatic religion to comfort themselves.

The true response is a growth in SPIRITUALITY. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of Western paths. There are some, like gnostic Christianity, "A Course in Miracles", contemplative Christianity (although that's hard to find).
Christianity got "stuck" at the mythic-membership level in the 17th century, because the European enlightenment (The Age of Reason) threw the baby of spirituality out with the bathwater of dogmatic pre-rational (and corrupt, then) religion.

There are lot of Eastern paths through and beyond ego, yoga, Buddhism, meditation. One must work on one's shadow first - the great contribution of Western psychology. (You have to be a whole SOMEBODY before you become a trans-personal NOBODY).

If you find people who use The Bible as a manual, they're medieval, and there are a lot of them in the U.S., unfortunately.

commens about this

The oil economy and the oil level of consciousness and the red meat smoking ignorant about diet and health orange fifties paranoid about Islamosacists a fake - a straw man they put up - have gotten very rich thru the OIL lately - D. is one of them. Oil is warming up the planet - it causes cancer - its distillates like benzene hanging over cancer alley in Louisiana under the trapped poor below.

Big shots mentality - 50s. The karma of OIL is bad. The face that Green can't wake up and tame big orane in China and India, and other growing fiants (Russia, but that's a more contentious story) - is because green has not been allowed to bud in these reactionary necon ORANGE fat greedy stupid mfers out of CIA power oil imperialism - white men's burden - skull and bones - WASP superiority - elitism 50s - yech!

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OIL - The outdated toxic but encouraged by retro-greedheads here fuel choking our culture/planet

The oil economy and the oil level of consciousness and the red meat smoking ignorant about diet and health orange fifties paranoid about Islamofascists a fake - a straw man they put up - have gotten very rich thru the OIL lately - D. is one of them. Oil is warming up the planet - it causes cancer - its distillates like benzene hanging over cancer alley in Louisiana under the trapped poor below.

Big shots mentality - 50s. The karma of OIL is bad. The face that Green can't wake up and tame big orange in China and India, and other growing giants (Russia, but that's a more contentious story) - is because green has not been allowed to bud in these reactionary necon ORANGE fat greedy stupid mfers out of CIA power oil imperialism - white men's burden - skull and bones - WASP superiority - elitism 50s - yech!

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hidden message

1:44 AM 10/20/2007

any second-tier I do/am in will be able to view ALL parts of a situation
too see things from all points of view read

third tier sees things from NO point of view the

I don't know what fourth tier does but observe the arising and passing and rest in love-bliss ? book

11:58 PM 10/30/2007 "Big

The Holland Taylor-narrated "something trust" commercial (and having seen her act, am hoping that she stoops for cash here), is so emblamatic of the sour-egoism le sourgeousie? and contracted false = the status place to be has become - not enlightened
consolation-ville- well I didn't get the enlightenment, but I'm going to enjoy the best sensual diversions...boomers with their five homes and trust accounts and guarded communities and pretend you're happy suffocating but it's better than the regressed semi-tribal wild west out there guns and people without enough work.....tempers flaring with global heat - chaos and street justice or heavy law enforcement presence and incipient fascism - awful both - on the blend line as now I imagine for another 20 years - who knows? Heart,

****RE-WRITE ABOVE **** Big

It's all about getting dough and finding a most comfortable retreat to rest out the storm that seems to be the end of the boomer generation - the next 30 years or so, and the x'ers are getting the message and doing the same in their forties - and I guess everyone is scrambling or just has given uP? or down to a sour stressed level of a big mythic "community" church that's more like a country club for the nouveau upper middle with sadly not much choice to progress unless they come upon yoga and meditation. Mind".

depressing tue. redux

The corporation/company (most of them) only cares about monetary profit, competition, and larger market share and larger shareholder returns.

And this is what our best and brightest are being educated for and aspire to? O brave new pathological orange world that's FLATLAND.

The soul shrivels (contracts) - there's not room for it in the boardroom or the bedroom.

Pessimistic Tuesday night

The environment is tanking. Culprits: overpopulation, ignorance and greed. The average level of the planet is probably blue, more or less. The fact that the leading countries (Europe, Canada, and Aussie/NZ have done better), but the fact that the USA has regressed to pathological orange structurally (with plenty of path. red greed and path. imperalistic blue) and (pahtological?) or just low-level blue spiritually (I'd call it reaction since the 80s - reaction to postmodernism/the 60s) is a big factor. No leadership toward green and second-tier. Just greedy reaction.

I'm watching (parts of) CNN's "Planet in Peril". Pre-rational Chinese medicine is decimating endangered species including many higher mammals like bears and tigers. Pre-green industrialisation along with blue totalitarian anti-democratic government and corrupt orange economic structure is polluting China and the planet enormously. On and on....

-----------------

"All of us are products of our environment" Anderson Cooper just said. Yes, and our envirnment is a "product" of us, also.

This new awarenewss of INTERdependence "uncoils", moves upward on the spiral, and awakens a new awareness and spirit of HOLISM that dramatically alters all our interactions: business/economic, artistic/interpersonal, conservationist/ecological, spiritual, inner/outer growth, loving energy replacing fear, -- I could go on - I've visualised it since 1969.

This simply can't be a first tier shit fo green from orange vMeme/levels, (which is) the traditional designation of environmental awareness.

It must be second tier (or yellow), because it recognizes the new tier of interdependence that is all-encompassing and that can see the first tier in all its levels.

I must be missing in my awareness/analysis some of the gradations in growth from green to yellow (first tier to second) - I know there's a quantum leap, also. I also know that I made that leap years ago, but haven't stayed there with all my lines certainly (and never got there with some of them, such as my 2nd chakra [sexual development]).

Tragic irony of the day

Could there be a more tragic irony that the fast melting of the Arctic icecap is unleashing a race to grab all the oil beneath exacerbating global warming and turning the planet into a living hell even faster, by a planet stuck in (ok - unhealthy) orange, blue, and red?

------------------

I just went over to see what was up lately at "welcome to pottersville" blog. "On strike". Did JP get his knickers in a twist again, 'cause some progressive bigger-daddy blog rejecte another of his pieces? I wish he'd have more confidence in his abilities. I love reading and commenting at his blog. Hope he re-starts it. Maybe he's working on his novel, but "on strike" has the call of the wounded ego to it, unless there's a general intellectual strike against the coup I'm not aware of today.

Two new "pieces" (digital) drawings/paintings by me

More musings for today

Having "free market" fundamentalist (unregulated) capitalism as our culture/society's primary (almost exclusive) value is like living in a suffocating society of competition and fear of death (the more I can acquire, the more immortal I'll become). It's 19th century, to put it kindly. It's also deeply reactionary - the planet's leading cultures/societies (or, at least the leaders of such)should be at green level now firmly there - some W. Europe ones are close, but here in the U.S. the dream has dampened since Reagan (and been fought against virulently by true blue imperial believers and red greedheads).

But enough blaming the conservatives - I do that plenty. I want to get back to considering the poverty of our lives spiritually in this culture now, and I want to say that a new modern/postmodern spirituality is desperately needed. Not a program for those who are ready for second-tier, but something to fill the gap between mythic and integral. New Age had elements; the pre-trans fallacy mucked it up, and Wilber would say part of that confusion was boomeritis narcissism which infected progress along the spiral.

I must find I.S. and read the chapter on the unfortunate (monumentally) void left when the European Enlightenment threw the baby of reglion/spirituality away with the bathwater of pre-rational dogma and orthodoxy.

But I want to get back to saying how alienated I think people are now, even the "Richistans" (the new rich class) with all their quality-of-life consolations.

-----------------

Just saw that Russia is becoming an imperialistic militaristic plutocracy (they did the "shock economic" medicine, and millions are impoverished now, with a small but very rich plutocratic elite) - just as we are (from highly different places) - of course our democracy, mixed economy was so much better than communism (that's a blue level system). But things are going backwards with the great powers.

Sigh.

Joel Osteen's new book is coming out - I'm getting ready to watch his interview on "60 Minutes" - I think he is a self-esteem therapist healer, which is the orange spiritual project, actually - or a good part of it. It's what we were trying to do in t-groups in the 70s; now people get it from mega-churches, if they're not fundamenalist. Fine with me.

I'll edit the above later - I'm sure I'll need to.

were

I'm aligned with this mission

From (courtesy of) http://humanemergence.org

I'm alligned with this mission - they say it can be achieved or substantially begin within a decade - I certainly hope so -

Quote
-------
The Center for Human Emergence (CHE) will function as a global facilitator of the conscious evolution of the human species.

The Center for Human Emergence will be a major international force for encouraging and facilitating a conscious or "directed" cultural evolution in the world. It will operate on a number of levels, including understanding - in a far more comprehensive way than in the past - the cultural underpinnings that drive human behavior, and will be focused on unification rather than fragmentation, presuming that cooperation is more in line with the future we need than competition. CHE will thus find innovative solutions for some of the most complex problems facing the world today, encouraging the development of new tools for making sense of the change that surrounds us, as well as actively helping humanity to embrace new values and perspectives that could provide the framework for significant change.

The (CHE) will provide the foundation of a new international framework for facilitating the transition toward a new era for humanity that better addresses the most fundamental problems that we confront.

The Need

For centuries humanity has largely been reactive rather than proactive: focused on the present and the immediate future, responding to problems, providing only what was then presently required. Now, for the first time in history, humanity is confronted with potential events that are global in scope and too disastrous to allow happen. The only way to assure that these catastrophes do not transpire is to become different people with different tools. We must see ourselves and the world around us in fundamentally new ways and then approach our tasks with new, less intrusive tools.

There is a rapidly growing awareness that these are unique times - that global trends now in place will collide in the near future producing extreme uncertainty for humanity unless we quickly learn how to scan the horizon, see problems holistically and from a cultural perspective, choose the future we want, and move quickly in that direction. What is required is directed human cultural evolution moving us to a new level of awareness, with a new set of values.

Our Purpose

State-of-the-art new tools and theories can be brought together for the first time to provide some of the key requirements for encouraging large-scale social change both in terms of understanding human behavior and in anticipating potential futures.

The Center for Human Emergence will comprise a collection of functions – some of which represent profound breakthroughs in human knowledge and capability – which will, in concert, represent a potential watershed for our species. CHE will, as global cartographers, generate electronic maps designed to monitor the deepest level waves of chaos and order, change and stability, and progress and regression within our collective selves. CHE will be unique in that it will focus on the deeper codes that lie beneath our worldviews, belief systems, and behavior patterns.

By connecting individual projects, in an integrated center, many different groups working on aspects of the larger problems can be coordinated in a commitment to fundamental change.


Centers : Copenhagen and USA

Additional nodes for Phase One – London, Vancouver, Boulder, Singapore, Cape Town and Jerusalem.

“A new emergent ‘Turquoise’ worldview (see Spiral Dynamics Integral), the perspective on which CHE is conceptualized, could be summed up as including:

* A WholeView perspective, with the world perceived as a delicately balanced system of forces in jeopardy at humanity’s hands

* Self is part of a larger, conscious whole

* Emergent selfless motivation, in order that all can thrive

* Experiential ‘collective individualism’, blending and harmonizing

* Expanded mind capacity, deep intuition, consciousness

* Synergize, macromanage, and act together for significant, big picture impacts for the good of all

* Planetary concerns rank above narrow group interests

* An ordered world with new meanings – the synergy of all life forms and forces

* Organized as a holistic, unified organism

* Synthesis oriented”

- Dr. Don Beck

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music - Stuart Davis
imagery - Alex Grey

direction/editing - ?

writing - ?

Video - Ken Wilber on Integral Religion/Spirituality

Wonderful and insightful, of course. I've been a student and fan of Ken Wilber for many years. I've been commenting in blogs and online news and opinion articles for years now, pointing to Ken Wilber and Spiral Dynamics to get the conversation away from the flatland understanding that almost always prevails when people in the mainstream media (or even the edge media) discuss religion and spirituality. Now I have an open source video to put on my blog to point to, not just a name to look up at Amazon.

One more point - because of the European dissociation (threw religion totally out in the 17th century) modern (rational) and post-modern (pluralistic) spirituality is more difficult to "find". I am going to research where the existential and post-existential spiritual thinkers line up here (I'm thinking of Barth and others) - I think the options of seeing peak experiences as only brain firings or ("well it's purely subjective") are anemic, and I think KW probably does too.

One more point: I'm "always" harping on this (well, sometimes strumming) - The War in Iraq is not only a religious ethnocentric war (it certainly is very much in its Shia-Sunni civil war aspect), but also very much an imperialist/economic war. (It may be an ethnocentric fundamentalist [regressive medieval] war for some Muslims and for the alarmlingly [according to more than one poll] large number in the U.S. population who are at a mythic-literalist view of the Bible/Christianity, and perhaps this is a part of "W", (Shrub, to you who demand more respect), but I don't see it in others in the administration or elite class, mostly, of course, I'm talking about the Cheney-Rummie-Carlyle Group neocon cabal, including Perle, Kristol, et al. The only "religious" motivation for the neo-cons is to protect Israel as a secular state not much religion there that I've found).


Very pointedly, see the post below - Naomi Klein - "The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism"

One of my hopes / projects is to put Ken Wilber, Spiral Dynamics Integral, Saving the planet environmentally, and Naomi Klein's macro-economic insights into political and economic equity and justice together in an integral, AQAL study/ group of studies in the future.

Second tier vision is about how we can achieve the healthiest, most equitable, win-win-win-win structures for all cultures on the planet as they live and progress along the Spiral of Development.

Interdependence and clarity (which is second tier and higher) are crucial in the leaders of the nations of the planet now. Who can doubt that?

from Already Perfect/nothingness thou art that Ground of Being to all that arises is perfectly void and full at the same time Ground of Being, i.e. along the always/already Kosmic Joke. Everything is "God" already, playing hide-and-seek with itSelf / ourSelf[ves]. Love and LoveLightLife is the "fuel" of all that is. It simply is the 'I AM THAT I AM" THAT IS ALL THAT IS AND IS NOT AT THE SAME TIME AND NEITHER. Fear is an illusion.

In practical terms, it's time to move to green and to yellow second tier. Orange pathological ''free market" capitalism is red greed in disguise and its carbon energy fuel is producing a planetary problem to say the least - time to move to an interdependent clean energy "fair" trade - full valued (not just military might and filthy lucre hoarding - we knew this in the 60s, but the reactionaries like Cheney and Reagan intervened) planet.

I like Blogs - they can be messy, and they're easy (should I say a bit lazy, in that one can ramble and not document one's positions, if one doesn't feel like it). Sometime, I'll write some disciplined papers ;-).

Live in the LoveLight. Let go of the contraction of your bodymind and realize that you are already living in it and ARE it. Amen. (That goes for me, too).

REQUIRED READING FOR ANYONE WHO CARES ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET

I very strongly urge you to read these two interviews of Naomi Klein (author of the new book "The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism") by John Cusak posted at huffpost - (and read the book) -

part 1 -

part 2 -

This is very important and quite brilliant in its analysis of what's been going on for the last 7 years (and longer) -

The book -



The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuaron and Naomi Klein -

Caption this Picture!

Cate Blanchett and Anna Wintour recently at the premiere of The Great Elizabeth (2007) -

CAPTION THIS - either a description or thought "balloons" for one or both - or all of that - whatever you wish -

News and Notes

"Free trade" (like NAFTA) fattens up the rich elites of the planet - it screws just about everyone and everthing else. Meanwhile, China repeats the worst mistakes of the Industrial Revolution - not leapfrogging over to green and populist capitalism at all - but short term cheat and pollute for the short term bottom line and accumulation of poer "free trade capitalism" "Fair Trade NOW!"

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Valuing short term shareholder value, short term profit, money to the exclusion of all other values (lip service perhaps) - is the disaster of pathological capitalism - rampant now.


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unregulated "free market" corporate Capitalism - it is structurally designed to have no value(s) other than short term bottom line profit / shareholder monetary return,

and therefore, progress/growth/evolution is not old left socialism, which is
invariably a return to central patriarchal authority rule/role central leader BLUE
(see AQAL) level. (mythic-membership level), so the more we move from orange to healthy whole green we can have values driven businesses that are not into a
simple market but are into the health of the total environment, social, cultural,
environmental (natural)....more to come....:-).

See Ken Wilber and Spiral Dynamics - google them for explanations of color vmemes (levels) -

Someone said that

Capitalism minus liberty = fascism

and

Socialism minus liberty = communism

Too simple, (i.e. simplistic), but there is some truth there.



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The dovetailing of Rove and Cheney in 1999 was the year that the U.S. had a soft far right coup, one that wanted to "drown the government in the bathtub", except for plenty of tax and deficit money for military might to imperially grab world energy resources and make money on military industries, also, of course.

Filthy lucre, The Substitute Immortality Project, (See Ken Wilber's book "The Atman Project" - not to mention Norman O. Brown) is at the root.
How banal and how sad.

There might be a true belief motivating some of these corpocrats, a chauvinistic ethnocentric belief that the USA-is-a-lone-cowboy of enlightenment in a sea of danegerous barbarism, but the cynical nature of the coup, especially exemplified by Rove, pts for the bank account motive.

Edit note - 101007 - Now that I've understood the ideas in Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" and understood the Milton Friedman school of economics (see post above dated 101007) - I am more informed about the motive(s). Scary.




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The big taboo of the MSM - getting near the truth that the war is for the benefit of the oil and gas investor elite sector, for the oil (and for the fortunes of the oil and gas and certain defense contractor shareholder upper class elites), for 70% ownership and control of the Iraqu oil for U.S. hegemony in the region, including rights-of-way for piplines to the Caspian (oil and gas) region.

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Thompson - He had his Rolls parked out of sight

when he pulled up to the rally in a dirty Red pickup.


Fred Thompson - of the rich and for the rich ONLY. Don't be fooled. Trickle down officially declared a gross fraud 15 yrs. ago.